Endgame

The floor rippled again, sending the scribe to his knees for the fifth time.
He was bruised and shaken. Again, he picked himself up only to be tossed like
a doll as another shock moved through the hall. He reached out an unsteady
hand to the nearest column, but the bone felt slick and insubstantial. He
snatched back his hand and stumbled deeper into the hall as the column
sagged like hot butter.

'I have seen barroom brawls that would make the hardiest pirate weep,' he
thought to himself, unconsciously touching the divot in his tricep where a
dagger had relieved him of some muscle. 'I have weathered scorching
snowstorms and stinking swamps. I've faced down a harpy with nothing but my
tongue with which to lash her ear. I've riddled with spriggans and made a
nymph blush. I've flattered rogues and upbraided princes.'

He reached the next pillar, gingerly sidestepping another Denigroth as it
moved to battle.

'But this!' he continued. 'I am worthless here. An old man who can't keep his
balance. A sniveling wastrel clinging to the coattails of warriors.'

He paused as he reached the third pillar. The titanic battle between the two
great mages threw monstrous light hard against the battlefield. Elf and
khajiit and redguard and Denigroth stood stark between blackest shadow and
blinding light.

Now more figures entered the fray. From the smashed gates there came a second
group. The women! They did find a way into the citadel. With them also were
warriors he did not know. The forbidding dark elf went straight for Elfiran's
Denigroth, relieving a failing Holm'ka. What caught his eye, however, was the
young one, J'layah. Her face was transformed from when he saw her last on
the desert so long ago. She was grim and a fey light was in her eyes. With a
startling yell, she charged the nearest monster, her blade sweeping a
glittering arc through the beast's side. He stood amazed at her sudden
onslaught and fighting prowess. Maybe he had underestimated her, not a thing
often done by the scribe.

                                  ***

Loriella was on her third Denigroth now. Her arms ached and her legs were
heavy. No longer was she showing off her acrobatics, abandoning her backflips
and somersaults for deft sidesteps and rolls. Her lithe movements were
certainly not impressing her enemy. It followed her every move with the
mindless persistence of a force of nature.

'Or a city guard,' she wryly thought to herself.

The thought almost cost her her life, and she snapped back her attention in
time to parry a razor cleaver. She rolled between its legs and thrust her
ebony dagger up. She wished it had feeling there. It would have made this
nightmarish battle all the easier. She almost smiled again at the thought of
that. Her dark humor would get her killed someday...maybe today.

Another long cleaver came close and she felt her rage beginning to bubble
over again. She bared her teeth, showing the beast her broken canine as a
badge of honor.

"I will break another tooth on your hide before you take me!"

From her left came a shrill warcry and a great daedric blade bit deep into
the Denigroth's side. It silently turned its head to face this new opponent
and got a second dose of the biting blade in the center of its chest.

It didn't even stumble.

It went after the newcomer with both cleavers, forgetting the panting, bent,
sweaty khajiit with her two blunted daggers. Loriella looked over to see a
young wood elf wielding a katana which seemed a bit too large for her, but
was wielding it as if born to it. She parried every stroke the Denigroth
threw her, and slipped in many of her own. Loriella had noticed some of the
warriors had decapitated their foes, but J'layah (yes, that was her name)
was not quite tall enough. Instead, the whirling dervish carved at its legs
and torso, spilling white blood upon the bone floor.

The sword was not poisoned, and the great monster took no heed of its wounds.
Loriella stood by a moment catching her breath, but she could not wait for
feeling to return to her limbs. Silently, she slipped in behind the towering
beast and with a grunt, leapt on its back once more. She had been trying to
do this from the beginning, but could not leap before her enemy had spun
about. Now she sunk her blades into its neck, slicing through what was its
spine. It lurched and fell. J'layah, transformed in her battle-lust, diced
its head to ruin though it already be dead.

For a moment, the two women stared at each other, one with berzerker frenzy,
the other with a feral fear. They stood thus for heartbeats. Then J'layah
jerked up and ran down another obsidian devil. Loriella raced after her.

'Without s'tun, she cannot survive,' she thought, then her humor raised up
its head again. 'Of all the warriors in here, and I get paired with a
berzerker wood elf!' Her thoughts changed. 'Oh Cromm, do be careful!'

J'layah had not lost all her wits, and did not fully engage her opponent
before the khajiit arrived. Together they fought hard, J'layah the bait and
Loriella the executor. It seemed she would not have to chip another tooth
after all.

                                  ***

Alduin breathed a deep sigh of relief when that wood elf came crashing into
the beast. Loriella was slowing down and had needed rescuing. He scanned the
hall. It seemed everyone would need rescuing shortly. Friends. It was hard
losing friends. Loriella would have been hardest of all.

Losing! Did they have to lose? He looked again at Balefire and his mortal
enemy. The storm raging about them had a life of its own now, and neither
mage controlled it. The great red opaque eye above was the only thing seeming
untouched in this dissolving pit of hell. Its power stabbed down, taking in
all within the deathly hall, but the scribe had the strong impression the
power was impersonal. It did not care whether all lived or died. It cared
only for itself. Alduin cowered at the thought. Even here, in this den of
sacrilege and doom, something did not care. In the face of all the magic and
fighting prowess, here was something that existed above it all, untouched,
pitiless. It was a thing remote, yet far too close. He let his mind go numb.
This was too much.

Do we have to lose? The question passed across him mind again. He ignored it.
Of course they had to lose! The Heart was moments away from being fulfilled.
The Denigroth were relentless. The heroes were slowing. Already a Werre was
dead! The boy, Joran, was inexperienced. The scribe saw that the moment he
laid eyes on him. The Watchers post had probably been a training exercise.
He was far out of his depth now. Although now new warriors had come... But
what of that? The new dark elf seemed to have an influence over the black
beasts. More of an influence; a deathly aura. But what of that? When Balefire
and the Master were dead, the Heart, the First, would turn its terrible Will
upon those left standing. Who could resist that? No, they were lost.

Do we have to lose?

"Yes!" he shouted at the darkness. "Yes, we have to lose!"

His voice did not carry far in the magicka storm, but the screech of it
started him. He looked back over to Balefire. His large form was almost still
now. Somehow, the Master was still on his hands and knees. Something was
happening there. Alduin peered, but his keen eyes could not pierce the cloud
of light. He sat in the cool of the column, head bowed. He had not the
courage to go closer. He spat on himself.

"Foolish old man! A scribe are ye? A teller of tales? Here's a tale worth
telling, and you can't even get a closer look! Bah!"

He fell silent. No. The words had no effect. Insulting himself wouldn't get
him on his feet. He looked around the column again. Again, Joran was alone,
retreating for Cromm and K'tarin. Off to the right, Holm'ka lay propped
against a glistening pillar, blood coursing from his arm and shoulder. His
exertion had reopened his wound, and he was busy trying to stanch the blood.
Alduin almost moved to help him, but that meant moving across the hall,
through the wild fray. He savagely bit his lip.

"Worthless fool!" This time he shouted it with vigor. "You could save his arm
and all you are worried about are a bunch of black beasties who aren't even
interested in you! It would be perfectly safe to go out there." Somehow,
common sense said otherwise. He came close to weeping.

Old memories flooded through him; brawls he had fought in younger days, the
fear he had felt when confronting a pirate who had just taken the ship he
had chartered across the Illiac Bay, brawls he had weathered in older days,
the vampire ancient he had been forced to entertain for a long dark month,
the child he had saved from a mining shaft.

The child became another. His child. He tried to shut out the vision, but he
still saw his son's round face behind his eyelids, indelibly etched there by
years of guilt. The face was so pale, so at peace. It needn't have happened.
If only the father had moved sooner. No, don't distance yourself this time,
master scribe! If only *you* had moved sooner! You were afraid, afraid to
reach for your son when he needed you most. The ice might have held your
weight too. It *would* have held your weight for that moment needed to reach
him.

"No it would NOT have!"

Yes it would have. Your son was a few arm-lengths away.

"Shut up! You think I don't know that!?"

He looked at you. He called out. He was afraid.

"*I* was afraid!"

You were weak! You failed him. You failed your wife. You failed yourself!

"STOP IT!"

His hoarse shout brought him back to the hall. His son vanished into the
roiling light and shadow. He was standing, shaking. In his right hand he held
his quill, its feathers crushed in his sweaty grip. It was the same hand that
had held that slender branch, that bit of wood that might have saved his son.

"Ricard," he whispered. "I am so sorry."

Through streaming eyes, he took in the battlefield for the last time. Dust
choked the air. Joran had successfully joined Cromm and K'tarin. Holm'ka was
nowhere to be seen. He hoped the Werre was safe. His eyes were brought back
to Balefire and there he saw not a dark elf, but a young boy laid out on the
ice. He heard the dry cracking of it. In his mind, Balefire-Ricard turned to
the old man. His mouth moved but no sound came. Alduin knew the words, still
heard them some lonely nights. Something deep within the scribe stretched,
then broke. His limbs were free, free from doubt and fear. He was striding
across the hall, ignoring the Denigroth as they had ignore him. All he saw
was Ricard. He threw himself into a run, and even as Twilight uplifted her
clear voice in battlecry of "Balefire!" so did he.

"Ricard!"

With savage strides, he closed with the magicka vortex. Mage-wind tore at his
robes and whipped his fine hair about his face. Intense heat curled his wiry
eyebrows and reddened his fair skin, but he felt none of this. At the last, a
Denigroth noticed his advance, turned to cut him down.

Cromm saw the beast move past, but could do nothing, for he was still engaged
and could not abandon K'tarin and Joran. Alduin never saw the towering hulk.
It was within arm's reach when it shuddered. Tenaka had extended his Ant-
light again having briefly moved from Elfiran's side. The Denigroth with
which they were engaged was smaller and easier to handle and for a moment
Elfiran took on the beast himself.. Alduin's attacker disintegrated even as
it swept down its deathly cleavers. Alduin never knew the debt he now owed
the Dreadlord.

He entered into the raging vortex. He cried in pain from the raw magicka
that roiled within, searing his skin and drying his eyes. His lips bled, but
his focus never wavered. He would not fail again. Even at this late hour, he
would be strong as he should have been so long ago. Now he was at the eye of
the storm.

He heard nothing. The two antagonists were statues in a grotesque tableau,
still as becalmed ships in lifeless waters. The great warmage's features
were twisted in pain, anger, triumph. Anguish was there, but his eyes were
alive! Stabbing fire was there for his arch-enemy. His staff lay at his
side, its runes softly glowing in time with his slow ragged breaths. Alduin
was standing over the Master, and had he known it, in the same proud stance
and grim visage as the fallen arch-mage ages long before. His gold-tipped
quill caught the crimson light of the stones and softened them, trading
harshness for warmth. Balefire-Ricard brought up his eyes. Even now, their
gaze was strong, but the scribe was not fooled. There was little life left
there.

'I will not fail you again, Ricard' thought Alduin.

He brought up the pen. The Heart's light bled upon its fluted tip, running
down the length of its shapely head. The purple ink was black, old blood from
his writings.

"This hand withheld life from my son," he whispered. "Now it shall do the
for you!"

He bent over and grabbed a fist-full of smoking robe. His hand blistered, but
he did not yield, but lifted up the Master. The ancient man was light, too
light for a living man. The Words had taken more from him than he knew. With
deliberate precision, Alduin dor Lammoth executed Master Veer'Shule, pushing
the golden quill deep under the base of the skull. The tip slipped between
the vertebrae, slicing into the soft tissue beyond, bringing the Master's
long life to a jerking end. A word escaped from Veer'Shule's lips, but his
will had already passed, and the sound fell hollow.

He stood there, a figure graven in time holding up a limp form, little more
than a skeleton. He stood there, lost within himself. He had killed. He had
never killed before, and he could not understand the feeling. So he stood
there until his hand would no longer hold the black robes. The Master fell to
the floor with a dry whispering. Balefire was still looking up at the scribe,
though his eyes were too glazed and jaw slack.

As in a dream, Alduin fell to his knees and took Balefire's head into his
lap. He sat there, the shell of a man cradling a dying friend. He had failed
again.

"Forgive me, Ricard..."

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Alduin dor Lammoth