Travius lie on the ground in almost complete darkness. The only light was the reflection of what seemed to be a distant moon. He awoke confused and in pain. He sat up and saw the ground beneath him ripple and waved like water beneath his movement. He fought through his pain and stood to his feet.
He looked in all directions and still found nothing but an endless void of darkness all around him. His breath felt cold and labored. The environment was not cold but every breath he took created a push of cold air. Matter of fact, this environment felt like nothing at all. No wind, no heat, so smells, no sound. Complete nothingness.
He put his hand on his chest and felt ice. He tried to see through the darkness and felt several parts of his arms and part of his face was also trapped in the cold sting of ice as well. He wasn't impaled and it wasn't stuck to his skin, it was as if his heart and lungs frozen, as if they had become ice. He could feel his veins pumping the cold through his body.
He heard a familiar voice echo his name through the darkness. He started to walk around and try and find the voice. The ground beneath continued to ripple under his feet, He was walking on a sea of black water. He finally heard the familiar voice of his Anaelle echo from above him.
"He's not dead. He can't be" the voice cried.
He noticed the water in front of him started to ripple as if someone was approaching. He tried to cast a bound sword but nothing happened. He tried to cast a flame spell to light his path but was still not able to produce anything. The movement of the water was getting heavier and then completely stopped. He then saw what appeared to be an empty robe float towards him. The small reflections of the moon providing his only light seemed to follow this empty robe until could see the figure wearing the robe was just a fog as black as the water he was standing on.
The water began to ripple again and from beneath him hundreds of black snakes began to arise from under the water. The snakes slithered in a circle around Travius. The circle was getting bigger and bigger as more and more snakes appeared from underneath the water. After making several circles around him the snakes all began to twist together until they created the form of one large and horrifying monster of a serpent . It slithered away to the hooded figure and started to disappear into the fog.
As more of the snake were engulfed by the fog it started to form a solid figure in the robe. Eventually a human like face developed under the hood and the figure began to seemingly float towards the knight. It had the face and shape of a human on its top half but the bottom half still looked like that of a snake. The figure continued to move closer leaving a trail of fog behind it. More small snakes began to appear and slithered around the figures body. They were even slithering in and out of the figures nose and mouth.
As the figure got closer Travius could feel a sickness in his stomach as if he was poisoned. The feeling intensified the closer the figure got. He fell to his knees and started to heave and tried to vomit but nothing came out, he looked up at the strange figure with defiance in his eyes.
"Death is not your destiny today" the figure said in an androgynous voice.
This was the same voice he heard before he blacked out in the longhouse. Repeating its ominous statement. The hooded figure slowly hovered barely off the ground in a slow circle. Travius doing his best to see the face but all he saw were two narrow empty white eyes and the slithering tongue of a snake protruding from its mouth. Each time he circled him he could feel the sickness getting stronger and stronger.
The figure finally stopped while In front of him and knelt down. The figure seemed to get a joy from Travius discomfort. It reached to touch his face and Travius fought back his sickness and and quickly tried to grab it by its throat but as he touched it ,snakes began to slither up his arm and to his own throat and began coiling themselves around it, restricting his breathing.
The serpent figure began to hiss as Travius suffocated.
"That's what you were trying to do is it not?"
The serpent asked then simply lifted its hand and the snakes all slithered away off of him and ran into the robes of the figure.
Just as the snakes left, so did the feeling of illness. Travius fought his weariness and stood up and got right in front of the figure and spit on the watery ground between them. To his surprise the spit came out as a chunk of ice that skittered atop the water until it began to sink. Travius looked at his own footing and saw he was still walking on top of the water.
"Nearly half a century and they finally give me someone appealing, someone worthy." The serpent said to him as it again started to float around Travius.
Travius started to circle with the serpent, never letting his eyes leave the horrible figure. Now that the feeling of sickness was gone he could feel the ice pumping through his veins again. In an odd way the ice seemed to calm him.
He just continued to stare at the serpent. After spending years with Jorgensen he learned alot about the Daedra, their realms and their behaviors. He has dealt with them before and was quite confident of who this was.
"You have no fear of me at all do you?" The serpent asked him
"I fear only death, and you're not death." Travius said as he again tried to cast a flame spell but was still unable.
The serpent stopped and flicked its pointy tongue at Travius.
A large black fog again started to waft its way in behind Travius and passed over his body. It swirled slowly in front of him as the moonlight moved itself right above them and created a beam of light on the fog. Much like it did with the serpent, It started to form into a solid shape until Travius could see a Breton wearing the same armor he saw in his visions back in the longhouse. He was handing a baby to what looked like Forsworn. After some short conversation he saw the Breton hand another baby to an Imperial agent who he had a much more animated conversation with.
"They tried to hide you from me, and poorly at that they did. They left little clues so they could find you again, I succeeded where they failed you, just as they failed me. I've been following you your whole life." The serpent spoke from behind him.
"Is that me? How do you know this?" Travius asked as the images all fell back into a fog.
"No, wait! Is that me?!" He pleaded
The fog began to take a new form. A small children's bed. The old wooden frame looked familiar to him but he couldn't quite remember until he saw two almost ethereal people enter the beam of light and sit on the bed. It was him as a young boy and the adopted mother he once had.
Now he could remember. To the riches he had now that bed would be nothing but at that time it was so much more. After years of sleeping on dingy cots in the orphanage that bed might as well of been sleeping in a cloud.
More than just comfort, that bed symbolized the first place Travius ever really felt loved. Those moments like the ones being displayed now, Travius curled up on her side reading aloud to her as she encouraged him while he struggled learning and pronouncing the words. It had been so long since he had thought about her that it almost felt like he was remembering someone else's life.
The serpent stood next to him
"I saw you as a little child who knew nothing of a motherly embrace, you know of only the pity of those burdened with your care. How joyful you were for those couple years with that elderly woman, and how grateful you are now. If she hadn't taught you to read and write you would never be where you are now. It was that skill more than your magic or your looks that allowed you and your brutish companion to thrive."
Travius became teary eyed as he saw her cough into a handkerchief and quickly close it before his younger self could see the blood. He noticed how frail and sunk in her face looked and thought this memory had to be from her last few months. Whatever disease took her was swift and ruthless. The fog then lost its shape and her images were gone as quickly as the disease took her life.
The fog then shifted again and this time it was an image of young Travius sitting against her tombstone. He had his knees pulled up to his face in which he tried to bury it to hide his tears, as if the torrential rain weren't already accomplishing that.
"And here. The only love you had ever been shown lay buried in the ground. Her cold hearted husband blamed you. He wouldn't even let you go to the funeral and locked you from the home. He tried to send you back to your orphanage but they left you to the streets."
Travius tried to reach out and comfort the image of his young self but his hand just moved through the fog as if nothing was there. He knew what happened next. A guard came into view. His younger self looked up at him. Hoping for a helping hand or some sympathy for a grieving child. Instead the guard threatened to arrest him for trespassing in the graveyard at night. The only hand extended to him was to grab him by his shirt and drag him outside of the graveyard. Where he was left wet, alone and afraid. He kept yelling at him to go home. He had no home.
"What kind of rulers are these? What kind of authority leaves a child in the cold?" The serpent asked him.
"Poor ones." Travius responded. "Your being too generous with them hero, too generous" the serpent responded.
The fog again made the current vision disappear and form into a new one. This one showed Travius older than the former visions. Much like the last vision, the background gave it away immediately. He was fifteen and this was the first time he had to take another life.
Vhornyak and himself had quite the scheme in gambling dens. They would play cards and while they were losing terribly at cards, the other one would pretend to be too drunk and was robbing everyone's belongings while the victims gloated in victory over the two boys.
After a few times of doing this, the bandits responsible for the gambling dens caught onto their act and were taking a violent vengeance upon Vhornyak.
Four men held Vhornyak on the ground kicking him repeatedly as Travius was skulking around the corner, the gamblers unaware of his presence.
He had been in plenty of fights at this point in his life but he was outnumbered by grown men and his usual fighting partner had been bested and was assuredly injured.
The serpent stood next to Travius and watched the vision with him.
"You had been selling your body to an old wizard for money, disgusting old hag he was, but he paid you well. Not just with money, but with his knowledge. He had just taught you a new spell hadn't he?"
In the vision Travius came around the corner and shot a small fireball at the bandits. At this point he hadn't had combat experience to hone his magic ability and his fireball was not the torch of death it is now. It caused nothing more than an obnoxious burn to be treated. It did however take their attention away from Vhorynak.
The four men charged at him and he tried to cast his new spell but it failed. They came closer and it failed again. In a panic he tried one last time and just as the first man grabbed him, a Daedric sword appeared in his right hand.
He had weilded a dagger plenty of times. A small dagger was a necessary item in his world but he had never weilded a full sword, much less a magical one. He swung it wildly and caught the one who grabbed him right in chest. The sword moved like a warm knife through butter as it came through his chest and out of his back.
Travius froze and his eyes went wide. He had used his fists and his flames plenty of times to win a fist fight or to scare off an attacker, but this was the first time he had ever killed anyone. He watched as the man gasped a few breaths and then his eye went empty as he died on his sword.
Travius sword dissapeared and the body fell to the ground. The other three men cautiously backed away as Travius recast his sword and swung it towards them. They could see that Travius had no real idea how to swing that thing and attacked him.
They easily knocked him down and began kicking him repeatedly, same as they were doing to Vhornyak when he arrived. With all their focus on Travius they forgot Vhornyak, who had pulled himself up and grabbed a large rock.
With no one paying attention to him he brought the rock down on a gamblers head.
When they turned to look at him Travius managed to kick one of them in the leg and knock him over. Travius slowly got up and could feel broken bones in his ribs. He was too disoriented to cast any magic in this state so he pulled his small dagger. The man he knocked over was getting up slightly faster than him and lunged and Travius to tackle him but he didn't see Travius dagger until it was in his stomach and he fell on top of him.
Travius pulled himself out from underneath the man and then rolled him over to remove his dagger and saw the man was still Breathing. Travius knew at this point he had to finish this. He put the dagger onto his throat. He hesitated for a moment but when the man started to resist he quickly sliced it.
He stood up on his knees in a state of shock and saw Vhornyak was on top of the final gambler, choking out his last bit of breath. Just as this happened an unknown man came into this vision and he never saw the entire altercation, all he saw was Travius slitting a throat and an orc strangling someone on the ground. The vision had no sound but he didn't need it. Travius remembered every word of the conversation.
"Murderers! Guards! Guards" the man yelled.
"No! Please! They attacked us, we were only defending ourselves." Travius pleaded.
"We'll let them figure that out." He said
"Guards! Guards!" He continued to tell.
At this point both of them started to move towards them man. He started to run but Vhornyak tackled him and held him down.
"Sir, please! The Guards won't understand!"
"And neither do I. Piss off, you little street rats! Guards!" The man yelled again. Vhornyak covered the man's mouth.
"We can't let him go Trav" he said with a solemn tone.
Travius began to cry and pulled his dagger.
The real Travius also began to cry and mouth words. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry"
In the vision he saw his younger self repeatedly stab this man in the stomach. Then Vhorynak dragged his body with the others and placed the dagger in his hands. Trying to make it seem like he was part of the fray. They both heard someone else coming and ran off.
The fog dissipated and instead of showing a new form it just started to hover and aimlessly float around Travius. Travius fell to his knees and continued to cry. As the serpent moved closer to him and stood over his body.
"Your plan worked. The bodies were found hours later. The guards said some down on their luck gambling thugs attacked a man and he fought back. It ended in tragedy for all of them. Including the wife and five kids that man had. You could always take solace in knowing his children believed he died after taking out four people in his own defense." The serpent said.
"Why? Why are you making me relive these memories?" Travius asked.
"I'm not showing you anything that doesn't already haunt your dreams." It said as the fog began to swirl again and formed another memory.
"What kind of society puts their children in these positions. To where they are so untrusting of the authorities that they murder to keep them away. You were only defending yourself."
Travius watched the fog again, this time it showed him in Morthal. Tied to a cage in a carriage. Several Justicars were urinating on him and laughing. He did notice something he didn't notice before. He saw one of the Justicars discreetly walk away from the rest. The justicar turn towards him and began walking away from the vision. As the Justicar got closer he saw a familiar face, Malfor. As Malfor left his sight so did the vision as the fog returned.
"Why are you showing me this? I already know the Empire are incompetent. I knew it from that day." Travius asked the serpent.
"Because Even after all this time you still haven't figured out what needs to be done. These rulers of yours, they ignored you through your childhood then decided to put a weapon in your hands and have you shed blood for them. Blood that only had to be shed because of the consequences of their own cowardice. You and the Orc won that war for them and they left you in the hands of a sadist to say thanks. For days you went through humiliation and torment that would have killed someone lesser.
When you were finally freed from your torture you were then blamed and disgraced. Meanwhile your tormentor was allowed to continue on. They abandoned you to be at the mercy of the elves.
It was ten years before you got your justice for what the Thalmor did to you. Justice that was rightfully yours. Justice you only received because of my meddling."
The fog began to move again and this time
It formed an image of Travius on the ground in the longhouse with Volonare putting his hands inside of his chest and poisoning his lungs with ice magic.
"You may not see it now, but he left you a gift. I know you feel the changes in your body. I'll quote The Inquistor myself"
The Serpent then began to change its own form as it was absorbed by its fog. When it cleared the Serpent now took on the form of Volonare, and in Volonare's own voice it said.
"I can take my last breath but I'll never truly die, at least not for you. I am a part of you now and forever."
It then started to split itself apart as if the serpent had grown itself again out of Volonare and was now two different forms. The serpent now remained silent as the Volonare illusion began walking around Travius and said to him
"They continue to fail you, even now. For some time now Imperial spies have been trying to warn them of the threat the forsworn create with the Ink Son absorbing the clans. They didn't listen.
I did though. Turned out he was much more than I ever could have hoped. Do you want to see the price your home has paid for the Empires lack of action?"
The fog then moved in front of Travius and he saw the college collapse into the sea.
The fog then formed a sight of Vhornyhak on his knees as Casix cuts his arm off and then dissapeared.
"Wait, what was that?!" Travius yelled
The fog shifted again to show Casix violating Aratore on what appeared to be the streets of Winterhold.
"Was that what I think it was?!" Travius yelled angrily.
The fog now moved to show the entrance to Winterhold where Travius could see hundreds of people, many of whom he recognized, bound and beaten. They were clearly being used as a human shield as he saw Jorgensen on one side atop his horse yelling back and forth with a heavily tattooed Forsworn on the other side.
"Is Jorgensen in Winterhold?!"
The fog then moved and swirled again into one last vision. It showed Travius laying in the mine. Anaelle tending to body. He saw Malfor reading aloud to the girls next to them. He saw M' Araues and a red guard in a dark brotherhood outfit that he didn't recognize. Then he saw M'Arques, the redguard and Anaelle all quickly jump and grab weapons as dozens of Dunmer in robes swarmed into the mine.
"Is this happening now?" He yelled but the serpent remained silent.
The Dunmer all surrounded them. They all drew their weapons but knew they were never going to win this fight. Then one of them cast a mass paralysis spell and they all fell to the ground and the Dunmer all collected Travius body and carried him from the mine.
"What is happening?! I've had enough of this! I'm not playing your game anymore Boethia!" He yelled
After finally saying its name both the figure of the serpent and of Volonare started to laugh in unison. Then from all around him Travius could see hundreds of soldiers start to surround him. As they got closer he could see they were all wearing black and gold armor. The same armor he had seen in two different visions today. Several of them carrying a flag with the crest on his coin.
"If you know who I am then you know you will play my game because you have no choice. Before you brashly decide to resist the inevitable let him ask you a question." Boethia said to him.
The fog then formed a vision of Volonare in Winterhold. It showed Volonare walking away right before the arrow was shot. Boethia stepped back and Volonare again approached Travius.
"Why did you allow me to leave that day?" Volonare asked him.
Travius watched the scene unfold. "I didn't allow you to, you ran off like a coward, and I protected my people from your men. Then I allowed them to butcher the Justicars like the monsters they are."
"And if I had gotten Yarwil as my Prisoner, then what?" He then asked
Travius thought about it for a second before he answered.
"You would have been dead before you ever bound his wrists."
The fog then reformed to show Winterhold last night. He could see a large crowd of his people tied up and creating a barrier. He saw Jorgensen and his Acolytes atop this horses and the dismembered corpse of the forsworn below their feet. He was conversing back and forth with a heavily tattooed Forsworn atop his own horse. Eventually he sees Jorgensen breathe a large stream of fire. This should have been fatal but he saw that the fire went just past Casix face.
"This Ink Son, Casix. You saw him maim your self proclaimed brother. He violated your Steward. He takes a harem on your bed and he burns your city. Take a good look at the scene. Notice where the archers are pointing. The Ink Son is using the citizens of your city as a shield. Using their lives as blackmail to the Dragon. He claims to have you and your family captive. The dragon puts on a display of theatrics and gives him a full day to hand you over before he comes to rescue you. A lot can happen in a full day. If it were you. After he mutilated your loved ones hostage and burned your home? How much time would you have given him?"
He watched the vision as Jorgenson pulled him and his men away and they left the city. He took several deep breathes as he watched them leave his home and his people to the mad man.
"I would have ripped that bastards heart out and ate it and I would have killed anyone in my way to do so." He said.
The fog twisted again to show Casix sitting at the dining table in Travius's own home. He saw frightened battered women all around and Elenwen walk in. They had a bit of a conversation and Elenwen walked out. Alive.
"No matter what, it always comes back to the Thalmor doesn't it?" Travius spoke
He looked over to the figure of Volonare but found it stuck in time. No movement or words. Just an empty stare.
"The empire is weak and incompetent. The Thalmor relies on that. They are the obstacle that needs to be defeated until the The Empire can be over thrown by a real leader." Boethia said to him.
"You mean Jorgensen?" Travius asked.
"Jorgensen isn't here to begin my Trial is he? You are." Boethia stated to him matter of factly.
The black and gold figures got closer the moonlight shifted to shine right on Travius and in this beam of light could feel his magic begin to reform in his body. The power he felt was incredible, as if the potions were still running through his body.
"I can release you now. You can save your family and your city. You can mount that savage's head for everyone to see. Then the status quo will continue. The empire will continue to allow threat after threat into your life. Or you can go through my trial and become what you were promised to me. You can be the leader you were destined to be. This is the only choice I will ever give you."
The fog made one final vision appear to him. It was Winterhold at this very moment. His people thrown out on the streets while forsworn continued to pillage, rape and kill. Thalmor agents being allowed into the city to help. Debris of its own destruction being used to build walls. He saw an ever growing pile of dead bodies and the sun shining through where the college once stood."What will it be Hero? Will you end this now and save your city, only to have to do it again? Or will you accept my gift and fulfill your destiny, become not what your home needs now, but what your world needs forever?"
"Begin your trial then, Prince."
The figure of Volonare came in from behind and whispered in his ears.
"I am a part of you, now and forever."
It then dissipated into an icy blue fog itself and flew into Travius nose. He took a deep breath and absorbed his nemesis. Travius could then feel a surge of magical energy rush through him as he felt his body become cold again and the water beneath his feet began to freeze.