AN: Set in Cyrodiil shortly before the Oblivion Crisis. Not really canon. Bethesda owns The Elder Scrolls.
The first time it happens, she is staring into a Varla stone, analyzing its structure which seems slightly different from the usual ones, when she hears a whisper. Rielle.
She whips around, fire on her fingertips, the stone clattering on the floor.
Nothing.
She blames the huge amount of work Irlav Jarol has brought her from Vahtacen, the lack of proper food and sleep. Angry at herself, she quits working and falls into her bed.
The next morning, again.
Rielle.
Nothing. Always nothing.
She ignores the whisper for the rest of the day, focuses on her study, never flinches when she hears the sighed word again and again. The concentration takes its toll on her body, but her sleep is troubled and restless, filled with endless hallways of white stone and darkness.
At her workplace, even before she sits down at her desk, she can hear the familiar call, soft and luring to her tired, distracted mind. She is nervous, jumpy, snaps at the slightest offense until her colleagues go out of her way.
She quits two hours earlier, asks a few of the other mages without going into detail, but they all just shrug and dismiss her. Julienne gives her a potion that ought to prevent nightmares. It brings her no peace, just the urge to throw up.
She tries to keep herself awake during the night and succeeds, but in the morning she is reluctant to even enter the lab. The mere sight of her workplace fills her with dread and revulsion.
Loriel, Moriel, Rielle, admavoy angu! Mittavoy angua math!
With a terrified whimper, she flees the laboratory. She almost falls to her knees, all dignity forgotten, but Polus grants her four precious weeks of vacation.
The first half she spends in Skingrad, samples the local wines, listens to the chatter of her guildmates. She helps one of them at his summoning attempts, gently leads him away from the borderline necromantic spells to scamps and clannfears, but that's not work - it's recreation. She has a good time there and leaves westwards with many fond memories.
Anvil is almost the exact opposite. Where Adrienne hasn't bothered about her underlings unless they interfered with her research, Carahil always has a watchful eye on her mages. Still, it's a beautiful city, the weather alternating between pouring rain and blinding sunshine, ever filled with foreign voices and the salty smell of the sea. The two weeks pass quickly between long strolls along the shoreline and even longer conversations with strangers from every port at the Abecean Sea. She regrets that she has to leave, but she feels recharged, renewed, reborn, focused and filled with energy.
Until she enters the Imperial City again.
The familiar stone seems to close around her, the high walls grow until they blot out the sun and only the white, eerie glow of the buildings remains. She can feel the cobblestones shift under her feet, trying to trip her. But she forces herself to go forward. The past four weeks have returned her strength, the stubbornness, abition and determination that made her an excellent mage and a brilliant researcher. She won't give up again.
Arctavoy sou aldmeris.
It takes weeks of gritted teeth and chewed fingernails, of nights hunched over her desk, all alone with the shadows and the whispers, but then she finally sets the puzzle together.
The crown feels heavy in her hands and even heavier on her head as she slips away with it like a thief in the night. She isn't a thief, though, no thief ever returns what was stolen, do they?
The ruins loom above her, elegant broken arcs, unbelievable shattered beauty, an eagle rising on ancient wings.
Mittavoy!
She walks through soundless hallways like a ghost among many, until she is sure she too has died without noticing, simply stopped breathing between one step and the next. She can feel the life slowly draining from her, the colours fading away until only bright darkness remains in the glow of the stones and the Welkynd crystalls.
Racu...
She walks down endless stairs, deeper and deeper, until she arrives at a dead end. She almost cries when she sees the smooth wall, but then it slides into the floor.
She enters. The room is huge, so vast that the glow of the stones cannot illuminate its edges; maybe it goes on forever and ever. It's empty, except for a throne in which a dead thing sits, all darkened skin taut over dry bones.
The dead thing stirs, looks at her with blue, burning eyes. "Rielle", it snarls, and she walks nearer, her feet moving of their own accord. Somewhere in the back of her head she hears terrified screams, a voice that sounds quite like her own wailing, begging, but she pays now mind.
She stands before him and sees its smile twisting the ancient flesh as it stretches out a hand. She shivers as it touches her cheek. "Aran."