Author's Note:It's time for "that." Those who know probably know what "that" is. Be aware, since "that" no longer exists, some dialoge will be a little different, and some events chronology may be the slightest bit altered to fit the story (or where I forget). Thanks to the people who wrote well more than three-fouths the characters in the upcoming. PS: Look up on youtube the song "Libera me from Hell" and play that in the Yokuda I hate rap, but it really fits.

I, Eternity

I'm Here Because You're Here

Leon sat in the room as quietly as he could. But it reminded him of some horror he did not yet remember, and his mouth kept twisting into a feral snarl. The fear from within gnawed at him. He knew that soon whatever this was he would remember. He tried to resign himself to it, but he was going farther back now. It would not be long now before he remembered truly who he was, perhaps even his mortal days.

He knew that the horror was related to that. He saw cages, but nothing else. Imprisonment, a deep-seated, hard-won, and very human desire for nothing but to be out of the cage gripped at him like it would some great beast in the Imperial Zoos.

He began to pace quickly, like a caged lion. He lost track of time, his mind becoming that of a beast, knowing only the way things were at that moment and the desire to have them be different.

A growl escaped his throat as his fist collided with the sturdy dwemer door of his cage. It bent, just a little, but it did. His arm cocked back again as he growled louder, his eyes flaring with a wild madness, and he punched again, denting the door further. He heard the fearful noises of those beings outside.

Those voices... he thought, They're outside. Where I must be.

He roared loudly and punched again. The air outside the cage was stale as well, but it tasted so sweet as it slid through the slit between the double doors. He had dented it enough to loosen the door. He pulled and pushed, but still it did not budge. He punched again, and the door burst open. The old air in the ruin moved about him as he bolted from wall to wall. It felt like the breath of Kyne herself. He began to come to his senses, and found himself in a hall, with the door open to a large antechamber. The last thing he saw there was the flare of a teleport spell before he was ripped off to elsewhere.

The air was truly fresh. It was dry and smelled of a thousand generations of men long gone. Even so many years after, the charge of a great cataclysmic magic was heavy in the air. He looked and saw an old village, repopulated only recently. From it emanated a great and terrible power. He saw the other vampires of the berne around him and realized they had used a mass teleport and brought him along for the ride. He felt the massive shake of fate being unwound and restrung around the people here. One of the vampires approached a breton and began talking like old friends as he waited, not-quite-invisible, at the back of the crowd of vampires.

"So that's why we need you." The Breton said. "You guys can take the night watches, and we'll take the day."

"That will suffice." The vampire in charge said. "My clan will familliarize themselves with the area while we discuss our sustinence."

Leon began walking around the town. Accidentally he may have come, but he felt that he would be needed before the end. He sat down and only his centuries of accumilated self-control kept him from jumping. Behind a giant, scarred man in black armor what he had taken for a massive statue moved. He felt an enourmous amount of power from them both, but it was not Magic. It was something else.

"What do you want?" The giant asked him as the massive black Dragon behind him raised its enourmous head and regarded him. It was a magestic thing, jet black with fangs of glistening white. Ten red-and-black horns protruded from its skull, and red eyes filled with eons upon eons of wisdom stared out from the sockets.

"I've met a Dragon before." Leon said. "Killed him, unfortunately." He remembered his friend from the Second Era. "But he was nothing like this one."

They gave him a hard look. But he knew the kind of beings they were the same as they knew about him. The giant stood, taller than even the average Orc. "I am Largot, King of the Sea."

And I am Nak'Ditargan, Dragon Spirit of Darkness The Dragon said.

Leon bowed. "I am Leon Neleus, really-fucking-old-guy." He knew again that the final echo would soon come.

"Those tattoos are odd." Largot said.

"Yes, they are part of some old magic." Leon said, "Don't ask me to explain because I don't remember much. I do know how to use it."

They spoke for a time of events there, and Largot explained several of the colonists as well as where they were.

They had come from Tamriel all for different reasons. Already many of them had been killed. They were on the colony of Yokuda, the former homeland of the Ra Gada. They were attacked by Sload and a mysterious redguard named Rostrin, who had already stolent the power of the Wind Dragon, becoming even more powerful than Largot and Nak'Ditargan. He pointed to a young Bosmer woman, calling her Laria, saying she had found a magic dagger that had possessed her, but had helped him unlock Nak'Ditargan's power. The Dragons themselves had come from a Nord who radiated power from every pore in his body, Engar, as well as his brother Brennus, who had the Dragon of Earth. He himself was in possession of the Ice Dragon Mateus. However, the only Dragon that had formed was Nak'Ditargan. Along with them was the powerful Breton Telvanni Dan, who had called the vampires here, as well as his Dunmer Mouth Fathis. Finally, there was Saylo Ekissa, a valiant and noble Indoril warrior.

Leon went around with his eyes, examining all of them. Even the ones that didn't know it had a destiny unlike any he had ever seen, from the Bosmer peasant girl to the Dragons, and he felt it approaching with the crushing weight of a tsunami. He shuddered with exitement. Then Largot asked him, "So you aren't like the others. Why are you here?"

And Leon answered truthfully. "I'm here because you're here."

It was then the catapault hit. It came from a ship shrouded in the same power that pervaded Largot. The burst of emotion told him that this was Largot's father. He ran with him to Largot's ship, the Red Fang. He jumped on and the ship rocketed towards the other. They scraped againt the barrier in moments, and Largot tried to break through, but it wouldn't give. Leon saw exactly what he needed to do.

He called from the depths of his flesh, blood and soul all the magic he could muster through his tattoos. They glowed white against the darkness, and he floated above the ground. Largot looked at him, not sure what he was doing, but trusting him with it anyway. He knew the destiny too.

The magic welled before him, a ball of light that came from him, and the love he knew would be shared with and between these colonists. Time itself warped around him as he saw a new son, one who would be truly great and carry the name of Neleus proudly.

With a tear in his eye, he launched the spell forward. It impacted the darkness and pushed with a might unparalelled, bending the dark tide back until small cracks began to form. It shattered like so much glass and the others poured on, knowing already that they had won.

He heard the scream first as the Golems attacked the village. It was the Bosmer girl. But also someone else. His eyes went red as he sprinted across the water. He fell upon the golems like an unholy force, ripping at anything that would give with claw and teeth as he saw not this war, but his first. Back to the days where he was human.

Back to Sard.

The Golems had no taste, but he remebered Ayleid blood on that day even before his vampirism. And the other scream that was not Laria, that was further back still. But Leon knew what would have to be done. It was time to remember it all.

His last moments in the present he was dimly aware of Dan being captured and several of the colonists running off into the woods, most of all Laria. He saw then himself in Dan, and wished him luck. His eyes closed and he began to fly back through Time, back all those centuries three thousand years, as he flew back he saw everything that he had already seen. Then it blurred as he went back even further.

He went back to the very beginning. It was time to end what had began when he fell from the Inn in Skingrad. It was finally time after all of his suffering and uncertainty to resolve himself in the past with himself in the future.

It was at last time for the Era of the Ayleid Kings. It was time for Leon to undergo the First Era Echo.