Elder Scrolls. The Elder Moth Temple. For decades Kaius had lived near and among their number during his time living in the Imperial City, and while he didn’t have anything against the priests themselves, he had something that could be described as a professional dislike for the Scrolls themselves. Fate, as most believed, was fixed, locked in place and woven into the shards of impossibility that were the scrolls, but he knew better from uncomfortable experience. Fate, he knew intimately, was not fixed, and could be altered, changed, and manipulated, but only by those either destined for great things, or with a significant amount of will. It took rare individuals to alter their own fates and that of those around them, and infuriatingly not only were those individuals hinted at within the scrolls, but he knew that he was one of them.
Contained within each Scroll was the endless knowledge of the past, present, and possible futures, but accessing such knowledge was not without a heavy price. It took years, if not decades of training and preparation just to merely glimpse at the face of an unfurled scroll without ill effect, let alone gleaning the tiniest hint of knowledge. Only the priests of the Elder Moth Temple possessed the knowledge and experience to conduct such things and with one arriving at Fort Dawnguard while a Scroll was present made Kaius feel distinctly uneasy. Once again fate and prophecy was entwining together and calamitous events were on the horizon.
Not that he was the only one feeling in such a manner, the Scroll’s presence and its inexplicable ability to move on its own accord had left the members of the Dawnguard on edge for weeks now, but this was different. An Elder Scroll and a Moth Priest, together at the same location was a true rarity, one that no one wanted to take any chances with.
The Order was put on high alert and no time was wasted in assisting Dexion’s preparations to read the scroll. A room was set aside and arranged in such a manner that a handful of the highest ranking Dawnguard could be present, and every other member of the order was placed on guard. The fortress was locked down and secured, the new portcullis and gatehouse put to use and sealed, and only when Isran and the others were confident that nothing larger than a skeever could enter undetected did they commence something none of them had ever believed they would experience.
For once, the Elder Scroll had been where they had left it, sitting comfortably within its heavily secured chest as it was brought up from the deepest portions of the fortress. Fear, anxiety, and a deep curiosity was shared by almost all of those present, watching, but trying not to look directly at the chest and its hidden contents. Especially Gunmar and Durak, who were carrying the chest as they placed it on top of the table before backing away hurriedly.
Compared to the dozen armoured, heavily armed hunters and the likes of Kaius and his companions, Dexion was small, frail in appearance and looking his age but there was a strange energy and eagerness as Isran unlocked the heavy chains and disabled the chest’s protective enchantments. Carefully, and tellingly enough for the veteran vampire hunter, Isran hesitated for the briefest of moments before opening the lid and revealing its contents to the seated moth priest.
“Ah. It truly is one of the Scrolls. Remarkable.” Slowly, Dexion reached in, grasping the artefact and carefully placing it on the surface of the table. “Found locked in a tomb of the ancient nordic peoples?”
“Yes. Since the early First Era.”
“Amazing. In that case, it is one of the few scrolls in existence that I am aware of that have never been categorised or studied by my Order. It’s likely to have never seen the inside of White-Gold either. This is truly miraculous.”
For the moment the scroll sat upon the table’s surface, humming with potential energies and powers beyond anything else in the world as Dexion looked over it with an experienced eye and an expression of obvious awe. Many Elder Moth priests trained their entire lives for a single reading, and since the Concordat War, the Scrolls were incredibly rare finds. Every single Scroll that had once been contained within the Imperial Library in White-Gold had vanished when the Dominion sacked the city, but not because they had been looted. The forces of the Dominion had learned, just as the Dawnguard had in the previous months, that Elder Scrolls were contained only when the artefacts wanted to be contained. When the Imperial City had fallen, the entire collection within the Imperial Library scattered themselves throughout Tamriel. Some priests, like Dexion, were left to wander the lands, seeking out and attempting to retrieve them once more, but over the past decades, only a few had been successfully recovered.
“A true, volumen seniorum incognitum…” Dexion muttered under his breath, his hands glowing and shimmering with energies as he slowly and precisely waved them a few centimetres over the scroll. “The Elder Scroll of… The Sun. This is truly an uncategorised Scroll. You said that it has been read before?”
Standing off to the side, with a pair of heavily armoured hunters either side of her, Serana looked distinctly uncomfortable as Isran glanced at her and nodded once.
“It has. A long time ago. My f?der used prisoners and thralls to read the scroll. Most times… were unsuccessful.”
“Hmm. To gaze upon the face of an Elder Scroll is no small thing. There are some that could do so without preparation, or through various rituals that have long since gone unused. It was said the Dragonborn Emperors could read the scrolls with no ill effect, but I would not recommend attempting such things. I would assume that those attempts resulted in blindness if they were lucky, and madness and mutation if they weren’t.”
A small, tiny nod from Serana spoke more than what her words ever could and more than one of the Dawnguard in the room shuffled slightly further away than they already were from the artifact. Before they had begun Dexion had ensured that none of those witnessing his reading would be standing behind him, or in any position where they might be able to catch a glimpse of the front of the Scroll once he began and none of them present were curious enough to try.
“The number of Scrolls is unknowable, uncountable and typically there is no guarantee that any Scroll in your possession would remain the same one.” Slowly, Dexion continued his gestures as though he was feeling the Scroll’s presence in the air, or as though he would warm his hands over a campfire. “This one however has remained constant. Unchanged for… a very, very long time. Only Scrolls that contain prophecies and warnings of things that are yet to pass remain in such a state, until fate arrives to alter them.”
Gemstones, undefinable and impossible, adorned the long, golden roller that gleamed in the light, and hints of the otherworldly material of the scroll could be seen within the opening. It was undeniably not made of mortal crafts, the gold was not gold, the parchment was not parchment, and all those who looked upon the artifact would never be able to agree on what colours the gemstones and Scroll itself actually were. In fact, to most of those watching, the gemstones seemed to change size, shape and colour every time they blinked.
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“Fate may be a fickle thing, but the skein of our lives are already woven into the Scrolls. It is our fate to be here, now, just as it appears that it is my fate to read this scroll.” Steadying himself, sitting upright in the chair with a deep breath, Dexion carefully lifted the scroll by its extravagant roller with one hand, grasping the thin edge of the non-parchment hidden within with his other. “Now, if everyone will please remain quiet, I must concentrate for what is to come.”
Whether it was the temperature of the fortress’s interior, their building uncertainty or some form of power of the scroll, no one was certain but a chill ran through the entire assembled group as one, leaving them covered in gooseflesh. Closing his eyes, Dexion breathed out heavily and with a surprising amount of resolve overcoming his hesitation, unfurled the scroll in one smooth motion.
Sitting in the chair, the face of the Elder Scroll exposed to his eyes Dexion flinched despite himself but stared for a moment. He was looking, seeking and reading, eyes moving and darting about as though he had just consumed a full bottle of skooma before he began to read aloud.
“Upon the Eight Corners of Dawn, Misrule shall ascend. With the Brass Tower walking, as Time starts to bend. The Red Tower shakes, as the Thrice-Blessed depart, and the White Tower falls, with a void in its heart.” The air within the room felt charged as he spoke, everyone’s skin and flesh tingling as though it was the moments before a lightning strike and Dexion’s body was shaking, vibrating as though resisting reality’s pull. “Now the Snow Tower lies in kingless despair, while the World-Eater’s shadow chokes out the air. The Wheel slows its turning, the dragons take flight, to remake the world with their ancient birthright.”
More than one of the Dawnguard, dressed in their armour stepped back as the aged moth priest continued, their expressions increasingly horrified as Dexion’s body shimmered and the words they were hearing were no longer matching the movements of his mouth. He was still sitting there, his eyes vacant and staring but otherwise unmoving as he read the scroll, but there was a strange delay, as though his words were echoing from a half second ahead of time.
“With Coldharbour’s blood, the Dragon’s eye be stained. Till the Tyranny of the Sun, is forever restrained. Light shall meet darkness and merge into one, beneath the black shroud of a dead, silent sun.” Word by word, arms beginning to shudder from the effort as though he had been holding the scroll aloft for hours, Dexion forced the words out, gritting his teeth even as his entire body became hazy and unfocussed from everyone’s sight.
“I see… I see a vision before me, an image of a great bow.” At some point it appeared that he had stopped blinking, and more than one of the witnesses had the sudden, terrifying feeling that perhaps he had never blinked in his life “I… I know this weapon! It is Auriel’s Bow! Talos protect me, Auriel’s Bow is real!”
Auriel’s bow. There were very few in all of Tamriel who wouldn’t be at least passingly familiar with such a legendary weapon, and Kaius felt a growing chill of true fear as he realised the implications that such a simple statement contained. Like all divinity, the races of Tamriel had multiple names for their gods and while certain gods were more important to some than others, only one was collectively recognised as the god of gods. Auriel, Alkosh, Auri-el, Bormahu… Akatosh. The Dragon God of time, father to Alduin and by extension all of dragonkind. Auriel’s bow was the bow of Akatosh; the bow used at the birth of Mundus at the very beginning of time that launched the disembodied heart of Lorkhan to form Nirn itself. It had been that very bow that had assisted in creation of everything, and the statement that such an Aedric artifact truly existed had world shaking revelations.
Dexion, despite everything appeared to be struggling with more than just keeping the scroll aloft, his arms were shaking, head turning as though he was trying to pull his eyes away from the Scroll or furl it up once more. Whatever power had gripped him tight was refusing to lessen its grip, now forcing him to continue to read its long contained secrets.
“There… There is more here. The voices are fading and the words shimmering and distorting… but… but the bow exists. Here. Now. In Tamriel. It is in the keeping of those whose blind eyes cannot gaze upon its glories. It… It… Oh gods. A triple prophecy… The bow’s location is contained, trapped... within three Scrolls. This Scroll of the Sun... A Scroll of Dragon rending… and a Scroll of Ancient Blood.”
Floor, table and flesh seemed to shudder as his strength failed and the power that held him released its grip once more. No one present saw exactly how it had occurred but somehow the parchment had vanished, disappearing in the heartbeat of time between Dexion dropping it and it hitting the top of the table with a leaden thud that entirely lacked any echo or reverberation.
Unnoticed by the witnesses, and now that it had been read, the intangible parchment of the Scroll retracted itself back into its protective, golden housing entirely of its own accord. Between the wholly unnatural situation and Dexion’s appearance no one was paying the Scroll any more notice as the old man slumped into the chair and almost flopped to the floor. Only Kaius and Isran, moving purely on instinct reached him practically at the same time, supporting the elderly Moth Priest with concern and horror on their faces at his state. While already being of considerable age, Dexion had somehow aged even more during the reading, but what was worse was the way that his eyes were entirely filled with blood with no whites to be seen. Blood dripped out of his nose and his cheeks were stained red from weeping blood instead of tears and for a moment both Kaius and Isran were afraid that the old man had suffered a stroke or worse.
“A triple prophecy. A triple prophecy. A triple prophecy.” He was whispering to himself, repeating the words over and over soft enough that only Kaius and Isran could hear him as they went to his aid. “The eight and one protect us. A triple prophecy.”
For the first time, both vampire hunter and vampire shared expressions of concern and unease, and not just at Dexion’s condition.
“The blood of dragons. The sun veiled from sight. Horrors in the dark. A triple prophecy. There… there was more… Mane… Nightingales… Empress… Towers… Annith. Balserc. Fal. Miscul. Mallari. Wenaya. Lye. Anumi. Tavihr. Too much. It’s all too much. Too much to see.”
“Come on old man.” With a surprising, and uncharacteristic softness, Isran leaned down and assisted Kaius in supporting Dexion as he lolled drunkenly on the chair, before ordering Gunmar and Durak with a sharp nod at the Scroll waiting patiently on the table. "Let’s get you some help.”
Stepping back and letting Isran and another of the hunters move forward and assist in taking Dexion away, Kaius rose to his feet and watched as Gunmar and Durak hesitatingly returned the scroll to its chest once more. His stomach was churning, deeply unsettled from Dexion’s reading and every time he thought he could regain his calm it was gnawed away. Three Scrolls to provide the location of perhaps the most powerful of artefacts he had ever heard of. Night and day becoming one. He knew that he should have been more concerned about the fact that they apparently needed to find two more scrolls, but he couldn’t help but wonder how quickly the world would succumb to the other threat if Harkon succeeded in what it appeared he was attempting.
There was something though in all of Dexion’s words. Something that he tried to resist the urge to feel a sliver of hope. Three scrolls, including a ‘Scroll of Rending Dragons.’ Kaius knew more about the Elder Scrolls than most outside of the Moth Priests themselves and knew that those words during such a time was no coincidence. There were never coincidences with the Scrolls. Maybe it was a clue or a lead for a means of dealing with Alduin, but whichever way, the rest of the prophecy was foreboding and left his skin crawling.
As he looked up and his eyes met those of his companions, and the shadowed form of Serana standing off to the side, the creeping dread he had felt for the past years only increased as he pondered the consequences of a world without the sun. Especially how he was the only one who knew that vampires would be the least of their concerns if the world was plunged into eternal night.
