Backfire
"Please wake up, sir."
Martin stirred, confused. Where was he? He felt oddly rested. "Hm?"
"Ah, good. You're awake. Please come with me."
Haskill stood at the door, holding bunches of flowers and looking bored as normal. "My lady is due to die today, and I get the impression that you would like to see her off."
"Where is Esbern?" Martin asked, getting out of bed.
"Your companion was sent back to Cyrodiil after last night's events," Haskill said, offering Martin a few marigolds wrapped in purple cloth. He himself held a small bouquet of daphene blossoms. "He wished me to tell you that he awaits your return, and that he hopes it will not take long."
"...Thank you."
"It was my lord's decision," Haskill supplied. "My lord is very protective of all his children of madness. He does not take kindly towards attackers. Be grateful his punishment was not more severe."
Martin frowned, still not completely awake. "I see."
He followed Haskill outside the castle, the sun shining brightly above them. "It seems we are a touch late," Haskill said. "If you will."
"Will... what?"
Haskill stared at him, still looking perpetually bored by his presence. He grabbed Martin's arm, and dragged him closer. "Hold tightly, please."
"What—"
Haskill disappeared, dragging Martin along with him into a cold void of black nothingness. After a few tense, panicked seconds, Martin felt his feet hit the ground again, gasping for air.
Sheogorath stood amidst a pile of bones, back against a broken pillar, staring off into the distance. In one hand, he had a handful of dandelions, roots and all, the other resting lazily on his staff. Amelie was sitting on the marble slab beside yet more bones, looking out into the sunrise, her hair blowing in the wind and obscuring her face. New Sheoth was clearly visible, far to the southeast. Haskill cleared his throat politely, waiting for the two rulers to turn around.
Sheogorath picked up his staff, looking jovial.
"We nearly fossilized, ye took so long!"
"I apologize for our lateness, my lord," Haskill said politely. "My lady?"
Amelie still gazed into the clouds as she responded. "Everything is in order."
"Are you quite certain?" Haskill asked apprehensively.
"No mistakes. Not today," Amelie assured him.
"Amelie, what is going on?" Martin asked finally, forcing the words past the lump in his throat.
Amelie stood up slowly, carefully, looking as though she might teeter over the edge with a sudden gust of wind. "Today, I die."
"Amelie, you cannot be serious."
"Perhaps the passage of time is difficult for you, as a reincarnated mortal, to grasp," Haskill offered up. "It has been centuries since you last walked the land, am I correct?"
Martin stared blankly at him. "Y-Yes. But I—"
"Then you are well aware that my lady has greatly overstayed her welcome as a mortal herself," Haskill pointed out.
Sheogorath stood beside Amelie, quietly speaking to her. Amelie listened, looking tired, and nodded.
"What will happen to her?" Martin asked.
"I'm... uncertain about the specifics of her circumstance," Haskill said carefully. "We shall see."
"We shall see, is that all you have to say about it—"
"Martin."
Amelie had approached him without them noticing. It occurred to him that this was the first time he had ever seen her hair down, a cluster of blobby white flowers tucked behind her ear. She wore a knife on her hip, but held nothing else.
"Do you remember? What I told you after Jean died?" Amelie asked.
"What? About... about his helmet?" Martin said, struggling to sort through his memories and recall. "His helmet and bow?"
"Both Jean and Anna Marie left behind things that should have protected them," Amelie corrected. "Anna Marie's sword and shield, she lived and died by them. Jean's helmet and bow had gotten him out of many a dire situation before."
"And you wondered what you would leave behind for your own grave," he remembered.
"That was when I was still anticipating death as a Blade," she admitted. "Now, though. There is nothing left to protect me, and nothing left for me to do."
"How can you say that? There is unrest in Tamriel, there are people in need of help!" Martin insisted.
"And it is no longer my place to help them," Amelie said. "That falls to you, evidently."
"But Amelie—"
"Why do you want me to stay alive?" Amelie asked, more curious than angry as she turned Martin's every argument back on him. She was calmer than she had been the previous night. Perhaps it came with age, as Martin knew firsthand that the stoicism was not from staring death in the face. "I can no longer help you, and there is nothing left for me to do. Gods' sakes, I am about to restore a Daedric prince to his throne after centuries of having to rule his domain myself."
"Amelie..." Martin searched her face for any sign of worry or hesitation. Nothing he could say to wouldn't end up backfiring on him. "I have only just found you again."
"And I promise, I will be there when you ascend again," Amelie assured him. "Martin, I do believe that you have returned to Nirn for a reason. And that reason is not in the Shivering Isles. Whatever the reason, it does not pertain to me."
Martin dropped the flowers he was holding, Haskill scrambling to pick them up as Martin and Amelie embraced.
"I truly am sorry," Amelie said quietly. "For last night. I was upset."
He gave a hollow laugh. "Just upset?"
"I am old. Hold me accountable for nothing." She pulled back, looking him up and down. "Gods, those scars. I thought I would never see them."
Martin's face fell. "I never wanted to bring them to you. Not like this."
Sheogorath loudly cleared his throat from behind them. Amelie turned and kicked a skull at him, launching it through his shins.
"RUDE."
"There is still good to do in Tamriel," Amelie told Martin, ignoring the Prince. "But this time, I can offer you no more help than this, the reassurance that you can succeed."
"You cannot know that," Martin said despairingly. He'd had a hard enough time coming to terms with the Oblivion crisis, and he hadn't even done the bulk of the work. How was he supposed to go forth and be a hero now, alone? "I can't, can't just—no."
He took her frail hands in his own, struggling to accept the fact that mere moments from now, she would no longer be alive.
"No one knows if you will succeed," Amelie admitted. "But I do know that you can. You can do this, Martin. In the face of adversity, anything is possible. Although, you no longer have Akatosh in your pocket to back you up."
Martin cracked a small smile, despite the occasion. He was somewhat comforted to see that Amelie herself was also smiling. "It was a nice failsafe while it lasted."
"Don't give up now," Amelie told him. "We were willing to trust you with the Empire two hundred years ago. I would be more than willing to trust you with whatever needs doing now."
"But I am not a hero," Martin said, uncertain. "This isn't my area of expertise."
"No one is an expert hero," Amelie reminded him. "No one is good at it. The only thing that separates successful heroes from unsuccessful ones is death and injury."
This made him feel no better. "Comforting."
"Take comfort where you can."
"I... I never wanted to have to face the world without you at my side," he said, voice breaking as he scrambled to string together the right words. "Please, don't leave me on my own. I have never truly been alone."
"This isn't about you." Amelie shook her head, a faint smile still on her face. "I am too weary to go on any more adventures, but you are never alone. If ever you need guidance, look to the stars. Perhaps I will be watching, with all the legions of heroes that came before you."
Martin, unable or unwilling to continue speaking, nodded mutely. Amelie, seeming to sense this, tugged her hand free.
"Hit first. Don't miss," she reminded him, walking back towards Sheogorath.
"Ready, little rose?" he asked.
"And willing."
No one heard the words she said as she approached the edge of the cliff. Chances were, only Sheogorath himself would have been able to discern the Daedric language. The inaudible, unintelligible words were lost as Amelie leaned into the sun, dagger in hand. Martin turned away rather than watch, flinching as he heard her body fall to the marble ground. The knife clattered away, disturbing a pile of bones as it came to rest.
Silence fell for a moment. The wind stopped. Sheogorath stepped forward, planting his staff in the growing pool of blood surrounding her. A surge of magical energy shot up through it, infusing it with an ancient power. His transparency lessened, the Prince becoming more and more solid with each passing second.
Sheogorath magicked up a gravestone, marked only with the symbol of a rose.
"Well, I'll be damneder than I am now," he said, continuing to solidify such that the sun no longer shone through him. "It worked."
"Of course it did," Haskill said huffily, stepping over her body to examine the grave. "She wouldn't have attempted it otherwise."
Sheogorath shrugged. "Done what she was born for, I s'pose."
"Is that all you can say about it?"
While the prince and his chamberlain bickered good-naturedly, Martin could do nothing but stare at the ground, unable to lift his eyes to the grave or to the fallen Amelie.
"You needn't have stayed." Haskill looked somberly at Martin. "If you had rather—"
"I could never have brought myself to leave," Martin admitted, eyes still fixated on the little white blobs of petals, spotted with red. They rolled half-heartedly away from the gravestone, leaving a faint line of blood in their wake.
"They mean goodbye," Haskill supplied helpfully. "My lady became quite fond of flowers and their symbolism in the past years. These mean 'I desire to please,'" he added, laying his daphene blooms down.
"And these?"
Martin set his sad little flowers down on the marble rather than approach the Prince and the grave.
"Marigolds? I thought you might like them," Haskill said innocuously.
"Why?"
"They symbolize death. And grief, depending on who you ask."
Swallowing hard, Martin nodded. "What about the dandelions?"
Sheogorath turned towards them, lobbing his handful of dandelions over his shoulder and onto the grave. "What, those little things?"
"Please tell me you didn't just pick them from the castle garden on the way over," Haskill sighed.
"I put some thought into it!" Sheogorath insisted. "Y'ever thought about how hard dandelions are t' kill? Rosy was jus' like 'em."
"Dandelions are weeds, my lord. My lady will not appreciate weeds on her grave," Haskill said testily.
"Mortals aren't meant t' live that long. And fer good reason, from the looks of it," Sheogorath said, disregarding the chamberlain entirely.
"For a mortal of her age, she looked rather well," Haskill pointed out. "Wouldn't you agree?"
"Course 'e does," Sheogorath answered for Martin. "But we expected that." He drew himself up to his full height, squaring his shoulders to Martin. "Now, ex-Emperor body-stealer, I'll really have t' kick ye out."
"Wha...?"
Sheogorath crossed his arms, glaring down at Martin. "Been a while since I've seen ye, but ye're not you. Get out."
Helpless, Martin looked to Haskill for guidance. Haskill returned to his signature bored look, summoning a book out of thin air.
"You are a friend of my lady's, and I feel as though I should be sorry for you," Haskill announced. "Take this."
"What is it?"
"Before her return, she spent time in the north," Haskill explained. "These are her observations of what I can only assume is some sort of lost language."
Martin flipped through it. Most of the pages were blank, but the few in the beginning were covered with script. The writing was shaky, but legible. Haskill was right, the language was unfamiliar, but... somehow?... sounded right in his mind.
"What language is this?" Martin asked, fascinated.
"I never asked. She never said."
"Can ye take this outside?" Sheogorath asked, impatient. "Really, ye're gettin' on m' nerves. An' now rosy's gone, I don' have to be polite."
Martin looked up from the notebook, looking between the increasingly impatient Sheogorath and the unhelpful Haskill.
"I must agree," Haskill said, turning away from him and magicking up what Martin thought could be embalming tools. "Please do leave."
"But—"
"You must be familiar with some form of adventuring," Haskill said. "You know, place one foot in front of the other, face the direction you want to go. Off with you."
"Please, allow me to grieve her, at least," Martin pleaded. "My dearest friend has died, and you expect me to, to just go along my merry way?"
"It'd be nice, yes." When this garnered no response, Sheogorath rolled his eyes. "Lost cause, aren't ye. Dearest friend... Lonely, unloved, and unworthy, you are." Sheogorath shook his head, laughing as he and Haskill turned to leave. "Come on then, Haskill. Bring her along, we've got work to do. Let's go see what we can find."
Haskill obeyed, lifting Amelie from where she had fallen and vanishing with her.
Martin said a soft prayer, sitting down on the marble steps beside the bloody, vacant gravestone. "You kept her safe, but take her now? I wished not to be without her. What am I to do?"
The world was silent, and he was alone.
