Chapter 23 - Solutions
"Well, this was a waste of time..." Yang Xiao-Long muttered, as she glared around her new office. "Nothing in the College's records are of any use to us!"
"I still can't believe they made you the new Arch-Mage..." Serana replied drily, still poring over documents regarding the artifacts they'd found. "You only know one spell, for blood's sake! One!"
"I guess they just really wanted the fame that came from being affiliated with the Last Dragonborn." Yang shrugged, shaking her head. She knew the College had been struggling for the past few decades, but still... making her the new Arch-Mage instead of Serana?! She honestly didn't know what the College had been thinking.
Then again, that was somewhat of a common theme, throughout the past few months she'd been with the College. They'd accepted a Thalmor auditor, allowed him access to almost anything he'd wanted, unsupervised, and when they'd found the Eye of Magnus...
It had been a good thing Serana had been able to retrieve the Staff of Magnus when she had, if not that damned elf might've actually been able to destroy the world.
Once again, Yang found herself wondering just what was wrong with Skyrim. She'd come to the College, seeking answers, and had ended up saving all of Tamriel, again! By the Divines, she could just picture Jaune's face, when he'd hear of this...
Yang's eyes suddenly felt warm and wet, and she blinked, forcing the tears away. This was no time to get sentimental. She had to focus, on what she could do.
"I still miss him, too." Serana said, trying to comfort Yang. Her friend hid her emotions well, and had kept up a strong facade for the past six months, but Serana's enhanced hearing had heard her sniffling, at night, when she was alone.
Yang felt a sudden surge of anger, and was for a moment tempted to snap at her, to remind her whose spell it was that had sent him away.
She quickly fought the urge down, breathing deeply.
Serana hadn't intended for such consequences. And Jaune would have been disappointed in her, if she'd done such a thing.
She couldn't just play it off either, though; couldn't just give the usual biting sarcasm that she and Serana usually shared.
She still couldn't joke about him. The wound, even after half a year, just hurt too much. His absence, just hurt too much.
Yang settled for just looking out of the window, sighing deeply, accepting Serana's gesture.
"We made plans, you know." Yang finally began, after a companionable silence, allowing herself one moment of reminiscence, of weakness. Emotions she'd have never known the value of, until Jaune had coaxed them out of her.
"For after the dragon crisis. We would have returned to Cyrodiil, maybe met my father. Then, we'd have just gone on an adventure throughout Tamriel. Knowing him, we'd have probably ended up saving the world and a bunch of villages and cities again." Yang smiled sadly, losing herself in her imagination.
"Oh, is that all?" Serana smirked, unable to help herself. "I would've thought you would've wanted more, with the glares you gave any female who even looked at him"
Yang frowned at her: "I wasn't that bad..."
"Yang. The only reason Jaune didn't notice, is because he's Jaune."
"Alright, fine! Maybe I did want something more!" Yang huffed in frustration as she admitted the truth, as much to herself as to Serana. "But it just never seemed like a good time! It took him a while to finally get used to Skyrim, to being in a new world, to accepting that his world was gone, and then there was the Volkihar War, Alduin's return and the Dragon Crisis..."
"..."
"... I guess, I just figured there'd always be later. That it didn't matter, that we never became more intimate. Because he'd always be there for me... and as long as he was, I could do anything..."
Serana looked at Yang, and at that moment saw a scared little girl, afraid of being alone, latching on to a single person. "Yang..."
"And he promised me, he'd return safely." Yang firmly insisted, as the moment passed." And you know what he always said."
"Strangers are just friends you haven't met yet?" Serana feigned ignorance, all while internally sighing. Well, she'd still happily settle for this Yang, rather than the depressed, tunnel-visioned Dragonborn of the past six months. She knew only Jaune could've gotten her to crack.
"An Arc never goes back on his word, you leech." Yang shot back, rolling her eyes. Determination overtook her features again, and she vowed: "I swore I'd keep him safe, but I let him risk himself, despite Akatosh's warning. I will get him back, and when I do, I won't let him go. Never again."
"Has Akatosh given you any more visions?" Serana shifted uncomfortably, not liking the direction the conversation was going in.
"No." Yang shook her head, disappointed. "Not even when we visited Gelebor, at Auriel's Chantry."
Once again, the Nord within Yang raged angrily. She was Dragonborn, a child of Akatosh! Why was he refusing to help her now?!
Once again, Jaune's influence tempered her emotions. She remembered his outrage at Vyrthur. She wouldn't disappoint him.
Shaking her head, Yang changed the subject: "So, Serana, what can you tell me about the Eye of Magnus and the Staff of Magnus?"
Serana just sighed, pulling out her notes. At this point, as far as she was concerned, Yang was unhealthily obsessed. But she didn't have the right to intervene.
Yang may not have said it out loud, because Jaune never would have, but Serana knew that, deep down, Yang held Serana responsible, almost as much as she held herself responsible. And that just made Serana feel worse, because she knew she was guilty.
"What do you know about Magnus?" Serana asked, as she found the relevant book.
"Not much." Yang admitted. "Just that he's the God of Magic, to the Bretons."
"That's... a bit of an understatement." Serana murmured, and corrected her friend: "Magnus is another name for the Sun, because the Aedra we know as Magnus tore a hole through Oblivion to Aetherius, to escape the creation of Nirn. That hole, the Sun, is how magicka flows into our world."
Yang nodded in understanding, but frowned. "So, what's the Eye and the Staff, exactly?"
"The Eye... it's connected to Aetherius." Serana explained. "Powerful, but uncontrollable. That Aldmer, Ancano, was trying to destroy the world by simply unleashing the energies contained within. Crude, but effective."
"And how's the staff connect to all this?"
"The staff allows one to siphon off energy, and thus harness it." Serana held up an ancient historical record. "It's the key to controlling the Eye..."
"Which should have enough magicka to power your spell." Yang finished excitedly, jumping to her feet.
"Or help it bypass Aetherius, yes, but that's just one problem solved." Serana looked away.
"What do you mean?" Yang blinked.
"Yang, powering the spell was just the first step. The biggest issue, is that we don't actually know where Remnant is!" Serana pointed out. "My spell requires focus, a destination in mind! And neither of us have been to Remnant! No one has, except for Jaune!"
"And if we had him, we wouldn't need the spell." Yang looked down for a second, before violently turning her desk into splinters, roaring: "Damn it!"
"Yang, calm down!" Serana shouted, as the room shook and shuddered violently.
"Calm down?!" Yang snarled.
"Now that I have an energy source for the spell, I can try combining it with a spell to locate Jaune." Serana explained slowly, patiently, soothingly, before jokingly adding: "It's either that, or you try reading an Elder Scroll for knowledge of Remnant's location."
Yang frowned at the joke, thinking about how it'd been their quest for the Elder Scrolls that had gotten her into all this trouble, and at the thought of waiting any longer, before something else clicked in her mind.
Yang could've sworn she heard a faint gurgling laughter, as she looked out of the College, and towards the ice fields to the North.
The Divines may have abandoned her, but there were other beings out there, some of whom also wanted Jaune Arc.
"Stay here, and do your research." Yang instructed a confused Serana, as she made to leave the College. "I'm going to be gone for a while... there's another lead, I haven't tried yet."
-SEPTIMUS SIGNUS'S OUTPOST, FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER-
Yang slowly descended into the glacier, hoping that her hunch was correct.
As she reached the bottom rung, she carefully got off, and turned around.
The giant cube, the Dwemer Lockbox, had been opened.
Presumably, Septimus had finally gotten the blood of elves that he'd wanted.
She doubted that was a good sign.
"Septimus?" Yang called out, before cursing quietly at the lack of response.
She'd wanted to ask him for a favor, but it seemed like she was too late.
As she turned to leave, however, a quiet breeze blew through the glacier, and Yang heard a voice from within the Dwemer Lockbox.
Every instinct she had screamed at her, told her to turn back right there and then.
She ignored them.
She hadn't come this far, to turn back now.
As she entered the Dwemer Lockbox, her eyes spotted two things of note.
A massive book, bound in what looked suspiciously like human hide.
And a pile of empty robes.
"Come, Dragonborn." A voice echoed from all around her, as a familiar black portal materialized at the mouth of the Dwemer Lockbox. "Behold, the Oghma Infinium. It contains the knowledge of the ages as revealed to Xarses, my loyal servant. But that is not why you are here, is it?"
Yang grit her teeth and clenched her fists, forcing herself to ignore the monster's taunts.
She knew Jaune would be horrified with her, disappointed with her, for what she was about to do.
But at least he'd be here, to be horrified with her, to be disappointed with her.
She didn't know how much longer she could bear to wait, to have her spirit shattered by false hopes and dead ends again and again.
She just wanted him back.
"Go to Solstheim. Travel to Miraak's Temple." Hermaeus Mora ordered the Dragonborn, and she could have sworn it was smiling, even if she couldn't see it. "Kill Miraak. Only when you have taken his place as my champion, will I tell you how to get Jaune Arc of Remnant back."
Author's Note: And here we have the second-last Elder Scrolls-focused chapter. Did anyone honestly not see me tying in the College questline, Hermaeus Mora, Miraak, and the Dragonborn storyline? Don't worry, it'll be skimmed over too.
And Yang... at this point, Yang's honestly being driven by an unhealthy obsession. As the hero of Skyrim, slayer of Alduin, she basically has all the fame and fortune she could ever want... but at this point, it's not what she wants.
Yes, Yang still finds the daedra distasteful... but take into account her abandonment issues, throw in six months of survivor's guilt (and possibly some daedric whispering in her dreams), toss in the fact that the only thing restraining her, keeping her sane, is the memory of her lost love, and add in a dash of enabling from Serana (who also feels guilty). ... well, I hope you can see why she's about to make a literal deal with the devil.
And before anyone says anything about how I've spent so long building up Yang just to do her dirty... would this have nearly the same impact, if I hadn't been building Yang as a character? Believe me, I'm not enjoying writing this portion of the tragedy...
Regarding Serana... sure, she has some interest in Jaune. Some of it might even be romantic. But she's not going to act on it. Both canonically and in this story, she sees herself as impure, defiled, from the ceremony that saw her debase herself to Molag Bal and become a Daughter of Coldharbor. She has way too much baggage to even consider a romantic relationship. More to the point, though, Yang is her friend. Her good friend. Her good, possessive, scary-as-Oblivion Dragonborn friend. She's more than content to let her be with Jaune.
