This is a sequel to my Currents of Time stories. I thought I was going to stop at three installments, but I changed my mind. Enjoy!

Unknown Time

Darkfall Cave

The snow elves were a lost memory for most of Skyrim. All that remained of their legacy was the scourge of the sightless, animalistic creatures that still bore the snow elves' original name—the Falmer. Knight-Paladin Gelebor preferred to call these twisted beings the Betrayed, to distinguish them from the civilized people that they had once been. The people that Gelebor belonged to even now.

He also used the term 'Betrayed' because that was his former brethren's nature, having been subdued and deformed by the Dwemer millennia ago during their hour of darkest need. Gelebor only avoided the same fate because he and his fellow worshipers had been isolated in the remote Chantry of Auri-El, far from the ravages of the war and tragedy visited on the rest of his race.

Now, he wanted nothing more than to see them brought back to some form of peace, but he doubted it would ever come to pass. In fact, it was because of the Betrayed that Gelebor had no more worshipers to spend these years alongside. Not the Nords, whose war with the snow elves had driven them to seek refuge with the Dwemer; not the Dwemer themselves, who were responsible for the sordid state of the Betrayed; but the Betrayed, who stormed the Chantry in overwhelming number, slaughtering all in their path.

To this day, Gelebor did not understand what had compelled them to venture so far out of their way to exact their cruelty. But the result was the same: the Knight-Paladin now resided alone, by the Darkfall wayshrine, the first and most distant in a long series of portals and paths leading to the Chantry's inner sanctum. Perhaps, one day, another snow elf would find this cave, and he would be able to guide them on their journey. Until them, he remained here, sustained by the power of Auriel alone.

There was no keeping track of years. This cave had been his home for longer than he could comprehend. He never ventured far from the low enclosure in which the wayshrine lay dormant. There were predatory creatures elsewhere in here, he knew, but they had never approached him. For his own safety, he had gladly returned the courtesy. He was alone down here, an eternal guardian of Auriel's sovereignty. From time to time, travelers would come in from the surface, seeking the artifact known as Auriel's Bow, but they never proceeded with the task that would be required of them. The way had become too treacherous.

One specific day began like any other. Gelebor would spend his time in meditative prayer, as he always had. There was never anything to disturb him in this cave. Even if the rest of his race had been denied any form of peace, this solitude was something he could have for himself.

The vision came to him suddenly and without warning.

It was difficult to describe what he was seeing. There was a great, overwhelming light, shining from a distant vantage point, far beyond him. It was all-encompassing, and Gelebor knew he could not see its true nature. But it felt more as if he were being seen himself. No being was visible, no voice spoke to him, yet Gelebor recognized instantly what was happening. Auriel was reaching down to him.

The vision of the light shifted and turned, and somehow, Gelebor knew he was looking upon the Aurbis itself. Mundus, the realm of all mortal life, floated in the center, a glimmering orb of living light. Around it was the murky expanse of Oblivion, a nebulous, shifting cloud filled with dark, alien shapes. And around that still were the heavenly vaults of Aetherius, radiant and colorful, a great atlas with wispy tendrils of light floating inward towards the core of Mundus. Like rays of sunlight, these were dimmed and lessened by the clouds of Oblivion, until their ends barely traced over Mundus's surface. The magic of Aetherius, imbuing this world with its energy. Gelebor knew this well.

But then the shapes suddenly changed. In a single, decisive stroke, entire swathes of the clouds of Oblivion were wiped away into nothingness. What remained afterward was only a fraction of what had once been. Some few clouds remained as they were, floating serenely through the Aurbis, but where the others had been, there was only empty space. Gelebor was faintly aware that he had just witnessed the greatest act of destruction ever seen in the span of all Time, yet he could not pass judgment. The Aurbis had simply changed.

Then, another change began to slowly take place. Where Aetherius' tendrils of light had once been reduced to near-nothingness by the haze of Oblivion, they were no longer so obstructed. The few clouds remaining had reformed into a new barrier, but it was too wide, too thin, to stem the new tide. Now, where the tendrils of Aetherial magic touched the core of Mundus, they touched with violent brightness. Radiant, multicolored light burned across what had once been a sedate glow. And then, before more could unfold, the view of the Aurbis shifted away.

Now he looked upon the distant, encompassing light of Auriel once again. And he knew, just as truly, that he was being looked upon as well. In that moment, he realized that this was Auriel's call to him. This was a command, a plea, for action. The Aurbis had changed, and something had to be done, or it would be a change for the worse.

And with that, the vision ended, and Gelebor saw only the walls of Darkfall Cave.

There could have been no greater turning point. In this moment, the endless centuries of isolation, the longing for the old glory of the Great Chantry of Auri-El, all of it fell away. Gelebor was a servant of the sovereign of the snow elves. A vision such as this was completely unheard-of for anyone in his lifetime. And it showed him that his time of quiet guardianship was over.

It was time to leave Darkfall Cave. He would see what the world needed of him now.

There was little preparation to do before leaving. Gelebor simply took a slow look around the cave he was in. Somehow, over the years, he had forgotten that this truly was an unpleasant place to be. The air was cold and dank, the walls cramped and jagged. There was little in the way of light. He would not miss this place.

And so the snow elf fixed his sacred Prelate's Mace to his belt, gave one last glance to the shrine that had kept him company for so long, and set out into the body of Darkfall Cave.

There were creatures here, nearby. Gelebor's footfalls were soft upon the cave earth, but he would certainly be noticed. It was no matter. He simply strode past them all, trolls and spiders and anything in between, giving them not even a flicker of attention. His blessing under Auriel had kept him safe in this cave, and his faith remained in it now. All that he needed to do was to find his way out.

As he walked, he wondered what sort of world would await him outside. The last he had seen of Skyrim, the Nords had been spreading like wildfire, clashing with all in their path, while the Dwemer had been waiting in the shadows for his people to come fleeing to them. From what he had learned from the few travelers to find him in Darkfall Cave, the entire Dwemer race had vanished from existence some centuries ago, and an empire of men had arisen from the central land of Cyrodiil. Beyond that, he knew little. He suspected that he would find a people struggling with great hardship, possibly in the form of yet more war. Perhaps he could be of some sort of aid as he searched for the meaning of Auriel's mission for him.

The mouth of the cave was not hard to find. All Gelebor had to do, essentially, was to keep on the uphill route. After a mere few minutes of walking, he turned a corner and found that the next passage was lit up by the sun. This gave him a sudden moment of pause. He had not seen sunlight in a long, long time.

At this point, Gelebor stopped to take a deep breath in. He could smell the fresh air, he thought. Air that wasn't stale and wet. It was pleasantly cool. He smiled to himself slightly, then continued walking up to the mouth of the cave, looking up into the light to let his eyes adjust. He wanted to enjoy this first sight.

Nothing could have prepared him for what he saw. Auriel's vision had been less of a shock.

Outside the mouth of the cave was an endless expanse of gray and black. Lifeless, and silent. Everything, for as far as he could see, had been burned to ash. Shrubs and trees had been reduced to blackened stumps. Rolling hills that might have once been covered in verdant grass under the shining sun were now burnt beyond recognition. The only sound was the desolate noise of a cold breeze in the air. This was beyond the destruction wrought by a natural fire. Someone had burned this land deliberately.

This land. The land he now returned to. Even the Betrayed had never been this ambitious in their desire to destroy.

Gelebor walked forward in a meandering daze. The ground crumbled beneath his feet with every step. He could scarcely believe that what he was witnessing was truly real. And yet it was, and his duty to Auriel demanded that he accept this. This was the world he had to work in now.

He hoped that at least this burnt swathe of land wasn't larger than what he saw. There had to still be some sort of world out there for him to protect. For lack of anything else to do, Gelebor found a traversable path through the ash, and began marching out in search of something new.

The burnt swathe of land was far, far larger than what he had seen. Two days of travel passed as he wandered through the dead wastes. On the first day, only some hours after he had left the cave, he found the only sign of settlement that he had seen thus far. It looked as though it had been a small village, once, ringed with a wooden palisade wall. The wall had been reduced to rows of dull black stubs on the ground. The buildings, where they had been, were piles of ashen rubble. Utterly unidentifiable. They must have burned with furious heat to be so reduced.

Gelebor could not bring himself to go within what had been the village's walls. But even from here, he could see that this place had not been abandoned. There were …. skeletons, strewn about the ground, between the buildings. More than a dozen of them. They were so completely burnt that their remains seemed fused to the earth.

He could not look for long. He had to continue walking.

But that was the first day. The sun set, and he rested; the sun rose, and he traversed an endless path along silent hills and cliffsides, all as burnt as he had seen already; the sun set, and he rested once again. Only on the morning of the third day of travel did he finally find something new.

What he found was a river. He first saw it from atop a low, broad cliff, looking down upon the water from above. The water was clear and shining in the morning sunlight, rushing audibly over the rough stones of the riverbank. Finally, something besides the ash. He had not known what to think, walking for so long through so much lifeless land. The only thought that had kept him moving was the ever-present memory of Auriel's vision. He was here for a purpose. It simply had to be true.

But now he looked down upon the rushing waters below, and he knew that he had found something of note. The cliff was too high for him to reach the water from here, so he descended by its gentler landward slope, and circled around by a wide berth. He simply desired to see this river more closely. After these past two days, Gelebor felt he needed the change of scenery.

His eventual path towards the river took him over a shallow hill, much lower than the cliff before. He could hear the sound of the water from quite the distance away. As he approached, he realized he was hearing more than the water this time. There was another, higher noise. A strange, droning chime, one that sent a foreboding chill through Gelebor's chest. There was nothing to do but come closer.

As he crested the hill, Gelebor realized that the sound belonged to a nirnroot. A single herb, growing somehow on the riverbank, amid all the death that had swallowed this land. It was bathed in a brilliant halo of pale light, much colder in hue than he remembered. But it was unmistakable, and so extraordinary that he stopped in his tracks and simply stared.

What made it so extraordinary wasn't merely its location—it was its size. This one nirnroot stood as tall as his chest. It had the same cluster of branching leaves with the same cut-away edges, like an ordinary nirnroot would, but it was ten times larger than it ought to have been. Gelebor had never seen, heard, or read of anything like this before in his life.

He did not know where he would find them yet, but one thing was abundantly clear—he needed answers.