I was lost, at the end. I didn't know what to do.
Two weeks had passed between Lauraine's return from Miscarcand and the Battle of Bruma. From there, it had taken three weeks to recuperate and practice the ritual to open the portal to Paradise.
Lauraine had spent the better part of a week in Paradise hunting down Camoran, though it had only felt like hours. On her return to Cloud Ruler, they had spent three weeks getting messages to Chancellor Ocato and arranging the visit to get Martin into the city and lighting the Dragonfires.
And now, hours before they were due to set off for the Imperial City, Lauraine was wandering the corridors of Cloud Ruler Temple, counting back through the last three months in an attempt to place her last monthly cycle. She was wearing her new armour, so moving down the corridors in the middle of the night meant she was not much disturbed.
The night of their return from the Battle of Bruma had been a triumphant one, and too many barriers had fallen. In the firelight, with too much wine in her blood, it had been to easy to leap headfirst into the new forgiveness between her and Martin. Too easy, to remember the feel of warm bare skin against her own, to catalogue differences as hot lips blazed a trail down her neck. (His lips were no longer chapped, as they had been when he worked the fields. She was no longer soft, from years of living underground and crawling through cellars to assassinate targets.) There had been others in the years in between, for both of them, but it was too easy to be careless.
Lauraine counted again. Seven weeks since the night of the Battle of Bruma. Nine weeks since her last monthly cycle. In the back of her mind, present as it always seemed to be in the early hours through till the mid-afternoon, rose the uncomfortable nausea that had first struck her a week ago.
With a frown still on her lips, she turned around in the corridor and headed for the west wing. Only Baurus had seen her by the time she got to the Emperor's quarters, and he looked uneasy as he stood there. Lauraine could tell immediately that there was a conversation going on in Martin's room that was making Baurus deeply uncomfortable. She stood beside him outside the door, intend on eavesdropping, and grinned at Baurus' scandalised look.
"-It will be seen as the Blades attempting to push their agenda-"
"-What agenda? The Blades have protected the Emperors for years, this would be no different."
"Uriel's ghost, with all due respect Your Grace, she is a member of the Dark Brotherhood and an agent for the Daedra besides. You can trust her, but can you trust those who pull her strings?"
"Jauffre, have you heard yourself? The taverns are going wild with stories of the Hero of Kvatch. Do you think the people would accept anyone else? They are singing songs in her honour already, Jauffre."
"The moment you are Emperor, heirs will need to be produced immediately in the event of any assassination attempts by Camoran's followers. The nobility will want you to marry nobility, and are you sure this is what she wants? To be trained to be an Empress, when she lives freely here?"
There was a laugh from Martin.
"You haven't researched her very well, have you my friend? If she were not involved in this, if I had not met her, she would have been on any list of eligible women you pushed my way. The woman who adopted her in Kvatch was the niece of Count Goldwine."
A long-suffering sigh followed that statement.
"Your Grace, I beg you, think long and hard on this. Your decision needs to be in the best interest of the Empire."
"I am accepting the throne for the empire. I never wanted this, I grew up a farm boy and a priest. Let me make one decision for myself."
Jauffre's response was spoken very lowly, enough to the point where neither Baurus nor Lauraine could hear it. Baurus looked uncomfortable, and Lauraine raised a brow. She stood on the opposite side to the door to Baurus when she heard movement towards the door, and acted as though she had been on guard there the entire time.
When Jauffre left the room a few minutes later, he gave her a brief look before he realised she was there, and it followed with a long stared tinted with embarrassment, but she ignored it in favour of following him into his rooms. She slid the sliding door shut behind her, and stood in the doorway until Jauffre motioned her closer.
"I apologise for what you might have heard from in there, I assure you I meant you no offence." He sat down at his desk and motioned for her to stand near him: Lauraine moved to stand next to the bookcase.
"No, I understand your reasoning. My past is not the most illustrious, though he is right when he says that there can be no objection to my nobility, at least."
Jauffre inclined his head towards her in agreement, before he moved his hand in a gesture for her to speak.
"That may be, but I'm sure you did not come here to talk about that."
Lauraine took a deep breath, "No. I need your advice, Grandmaster."
Jauffre gave her a look of concern, tilting his head slightly as he nodded.
"Of course, you may ask my counsel on anything."
She gave him a nervous grin that turned into an expression of full on panic, and it changed so suddenly that Jauffre was half tempted to give her his seat and wait for her to explain. But Lauraine regained her composure, though she was wringing her hands in front of her when she finally gained the courage to speak.
"I think I'm with child."
"Quickly now, come on!" People were screaming, but still they listened, allowing Lauraine to herd them through the doors to the Palace district. "Keep going through until you get to the Arena, the fighters there will protect you!"
As the citizens were fleeing the Temple district and following Lauraine's instructions, Martin was stood with Jauffre and Ocato observing the giant Mehrunes Dagon rampaging through the district. Lauraine slammed the doors to the Palace district shut and stood there with them, feeling once again that total hopelessness.
"We have to get you to the Temple of the One, there has to be something you can do." Martin looked lost in the robes that were almost too big for him, robes she had last seen his dead father clad in. She wanted to shake him: the citizens of the city were his people, he couldn't let their first view of him be this.
"There is nothing we can do, it is too late."
Lauraine did not answer that immediately: three Daedra had spotted them, and along with Chancellor Ocato she briefly left them to fire off her arrows. She had ripped an ebony arrow from the chest of a scamp when she looked up to truly see Dagon for the first time in her life.
It was horrifying. Four arms and skin redder than the lava that flowed through his cursed Deadlands, with brute strength behind him, the Daedric Prince was causing absolute havoc in the district. She turned to look at Martin, and saw him looking at her desperately.
"Don't look at me like that!" Lauraine almost hit him as she approached him again. "I can't fix this, you are the only one who has a chance! There has to be a way to banish him!" If it wasn't solved, she'd have failed.
"Banish…" He gave her a look then, of one who has just had an epiphany. "Yes, I can banish him. Quickly, with me." He initially led them to the Temple, but Lauraine pulled him behind her to keep him out of the way of stray arrows.
With Ocato and Jauffre behind Martin, he was relatively safe as they moved slowly but surely to the Temple of the One. Any Dremora that Lauraine missed with her arrows were frozen by Ocato and his deadly array of destruction spells, and Martin himself even killed a few with his spells. He did not cast many, though, conserving his mana for some unknown plan.
Ocato threw a shield spell up around Martin as they passed Dagon. Jauffre and the mage then used themselves as a distraction, casting spells and hacking at his legs in order to pull his attention away from Martin. Lauraine shoved Martin through the open temple doors, and slipped in after him.
Slamming the lock over the door was no easy feat: the sound of ringing steel and the charge of magicka could be heard inside, and there was the sound of screaming from the guards who were left to fight.
Martin grabbed her and, spinning her to face him, he kissed her like he never had before. It was desperate, sorrowful, and full of a regret that sent alarms blaring in Lauraine's mind. When he pulled away, he looked distraught.
"I do what I must do, Lauraine. I cannot stay to rebuild Tamriel and rule her. That task falls to others. The Septim line must now pass into history."
She thought her heart had stopped beating.
"No, no no, Martin no, you're not… You're not…" He shushed her, not understanding.
"I must go. The dragon waits." He pushed her back to the wall and turned, running to the white altar in the centre of the temple. Lauraine could not move, could only watch as he stood whilst the Temple roof was ripped off with a thundering crack. Her heart beat wildly, and her stomach lurched as Mehrunes Dagon raised his axe to strike.
He hit nothing. One moment Martin was there, and the next he was engulfed in golden flames and growing. His body was twisting, bones snapping and realigning as he kept growing taller and wider. Dagon was as transfixed as her, staring at the transformation. There was a howl – no a roar- and flames were bursting forth from the mouth of a giant, golden dragon.
The avatar of Akatosh himself.
The fight that followed was gruesome. The avatar had deadly sharp claws that ruthlessly tore flesh from Dagon, but Dagon had an axe that was brutally slammed into the side of the dragon. He rammed the butt of the axe into the dragon's face, and for a moment Lauraine thought it would fall back from the force. It lunged forwards at the last minute, however, and sunk its teeth into the unprotected neck of Dagon.
The blood spatters covered the entire district, and Lauraine herself did not avoid a glob of blood big enough to cover her breastplate. She pressed herself hard against the wall as the dragon shook its head, treating Mehrunes Dagon as though he were nothing more than a ragdoll. It pulled, bringing flesh and muscle with it in its teeth and throwing them over the side of the temple. The dragon then reared, sending flames of white light towards Dagon. There was a low whine, a sound unlike any Lauraine had heard before, followed by the explosion of Dagon. Waves of his own light followed, striking the moving dragon before he disappeared from Tamriel forever.
The dragon panted, retracting its wings, and glanced around with ragged gasps escaping its muzzle. It cast a single glance around the Temple district before it threw its head back and let rip a vicious, victorious roar. The sound twisted around the empire like a banshee: Lauraine was certain its echoes would be heard in all the cities and maybe even across the borders.
The scales rippled once, and the colours of Dagon briefly shone through before the scales hardened and the dragon stopped moving. Skin and scales turned to stone before her eyes, the new transformation creeping up the body of the dragon as it roared. After a minute, it was solid stone.
Lauraine stood staring at it for minutes, maybe hours, in a state of shock. It wasn't until someone tried to force the doors open that she moved, and even then it was to stagger forwards and press her palm against one of the legs of the statue. Splashed with blood, she simply stared at it, unflinching even when the doors to the temple were blown off.
It was Jauffre and Ocato who entered, in a state of panic until they saw her at the base of the statue. Ocato continued to look around wildly, whilst Jauffre looked first at Lauraine and then at the Dragon.
"Martin, where is Martin? We are victorious, he has saved us! Where is he?" Ocato made to approach her, but Jauffre held him back with a shake of his head. Ocato drew the dots immediately, and seemed to deflate in his joy.
"Then this is a victory with a cost. What an emperor he might have made. We are an Empire without an emperor. It was a necessary sacrifice but… there is none in the Septim line left to lead."
Jauffre looked at her then, as though gauging whether he should say anything. He paused for a moment, before looking to Ocato.
"There is one other."
"Who? Is there another bastard son of Uriel Septim?" At those words Lauraine looked up; her eyes were red, but no tears were falling yet. Jauffre shook his head at Ocato.
"An unborn child of Martin's. We have no way of knowing yet if it is male or female. Or even still alive, after you came into this battle against my wishes." The last was directed at Lauraine, and Ocato's eyes snapped onto her with a thread of hope.
"And it is Martin's?" Ocato's word were not meant to insult, but Lauraine narrowed her eyes.
"I beg your pardon?" There was a haughtiness to her words that showed Jauffre the noble-raised girl was still in there somewhere. Her back straightened, and she looked at Ocato with defiance in her eyes.
"Bastard or trueborn? Are you sure you are with child? You must be in the very early stages if you are." Ocato's observation struck a chord with her, and she almost felt herself getting annoyed if not for Jauffre speaking up once more.
"Trueborn." Lauraine's eyebrows nearly reached her hairline at the lie. "I officiated it myself, a few days before the Battle of Bruma."
Lauraine fixed her eyes to the ground, hiding the surprise on her face at such a bald-faced lie.
"Martin did not know, something I advised against, but we did not foresee this happening. And you are right in saying it is early stages for the babe, but she is sure of it, and one of our Blades confirmed it with knowledge she had gained when working with the Mages' guild."
"Then there is an heir… but these are unusual circumstances. The last time this happened we had an Empress regent, but Martin was not crowned…" Ocato trailed off, looking at Lauraine thoughtfully. From her place on the floor, Lauraine twisted to look at Ocato.
"Empress regent?" Her voice had risen several octaves, the horror palpable at the implication as she sank to sit on a broken piece of the altar. Ocato swallowed thickly.
"Take her back to Cloud Ruler Temple. In the chaos of today we have no way of knowing if any assassins could have gained entrance to the palace. Keep her safe, keep the babe safe, and I will make a public announcement once you are safely at the Temple. When the babe is born I shall make another announcement. For now, the Elder Council will need to convene to hear about this and decide what we should do once the child is born." He gave a nod to Jauffre, but turned to Lauraine before he left.
"In my capacity as Lord High Chancellor of the Elder Council, I hereby proclaim you Champion of Cyrodiil. And, as a small token of gratitude for your service to the Empire, I will order a suit of Imperial Dragon Armour made for you." He gave her a truly grateful smile and a bow, before taking his leave.
Jauffre bent down to sit beside her on the floor. "There will be visitors in here soon enough. We will have to leave."
She shook her head. "There has to be a way to get him back. All magic is reversible."
"I fear this one may not be. Come, my dear, you cannot stay here forever." When she did not move, he sighed. "Blade, leave. It is best not to linger."
Lauraine stood at the command, though unwillingly, and gazed at the statue for what would be the last time in over a year.
"I'll find a way to reverse this, I will."