Your Truth Cannot Stand
A Skyrim Fanfiction
Chapter 5: Oh No, She’s Relatable
Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: Descent into Darkness
Chapter 2: Strange, Meet Stranger
Chapter 3: Enchanted
Chapter 4: A Dragon, a Daedra and a Justiciar Walk Into a House…
Chapter 5: Oh No, She’s Relatable (you are here)
Chapter 6: I Need to Speak to the Thalmor’s Manager
Chapter 7: All I Should Have Been
Chapter 8: Paralysis Analysis
Chapter 9: It’s the End of the World as We Know it
Chapter 10: Gods and Pawns
Chapter 11: I Was Like You, Once
Chapter 12: Solace from the Sky
Chapter 13: Awakening
Chapter 14: Second Chances
Chapter 1: Descent into Darkness
Chapter 2: Strange, Meet Stranger
Chapter 3: Enchanted
Chapter 4: A Dragon, a Daedra and a Justiciar Walk Into a House…
Chapter 5: Oh No, She’s Relatable (you are here)
Chapter 6: I Need to Speak to the Thalmor’s Manager
Chapter 7: All I Should Have Been
Chapter 8: Paralysis Analysis
Chapter 9: It’s the End of the World as We Know it
Chapter 10: Gods and Pawns
Chapter 11: I Was Like You, Once
Chapter 12: Solace from the Sky
Chapter 13: Awakening
Chapter 14: Second Chances
It was surprising how many Words of Power the young Dragonborn knew. It seemed she’d been studying obsessively since she was first summoned to High Hrothgar.
Some of them had easily identifiable effects, like torrents of ice or fire. Others’ purpose was less clear; ripples of color burst from her mouth, and while they often scattered objects and dust, he couldn’t tell by looking at them what else they were supposed to do.
All he knew was that she was reluctant to explain her abilities in detail, she warned him never to move between her and her target when she was using her Thu’um, and the target in question was completely unaffected no matter what its assailants did.
Their arsenals were useless, the front door remained sealed, and Molag Bal wasn’t even bothering to pelt them with objects anymore. In place of flying household goods, the truth lay as thick as the unnatural gloom: the Daedra didn’t have to attack them directly. He only had to wait.
As the last combination of spells and Thu’um faded from the air, Ondolemar fought not to let his shoulders sag with weariness and defeat.
To his right, Kierska still stood tall and alert, strangely unaffected by their absolute loss. A hint of fatigue tugged the edges of her eyes, but her shoulders were high, and her tail was still swaying briskly.
“I think we’ve tried all of them,” she commented, turning to face Ondolemar. “Unless you have any spells you haven’t used yet.”
He shook his head. “I do not. I take it you’ve used all of your Thu’um?”
“All the ones that affect the target as opposed to the user, yes.”
Every spell and Shout, in every combination they could think of. And all of them were useless.
“Then there’s nothing left for us to try.”
“Nothing for us, anyway.”
“Oh?” Curiosity and hope flickered cautiously to life, like a cornered rabbit peering from its hiding place and sighting a possible escape. “What do you mean?”
“You didn’t sound sure when you said you knew what to do, and you couldn’t cite the specific spells you were going to use, so I told Lydia to go get backup if we didn’t come back in two hours.”
“Oh, really?” he asked, as curious as he was dubious. “What manner of backup do you expect to succeed where a member of the Thalmor could not?”
“I know a priest who has experience with Daedric princes and their artifacts, but he’s fairly far away, so we might have to wait for two days or more before he gets here.”
“Assuming he arrives, and is able to assist us.”
“Exactly.”
It wasn’t as certain an escape as he’d hoped for, but it was better than nothing, and as the two of them made their way through the tunnel toward the house above, his dampened spirits began to rise. “I’m glad to hear you thought ahead. Though I can’t help but wonder why you didn’t tell me earlier.”
“If we’d won within the first two hours, it wouldn’t have mattered,” Kierska explained as they emerged into the basement. “As it is, it looks like we’re stuck here until he arrives, so we might as well eat and then go to sleep. The more we can conserve energy, the longer we’ll last.”
Ondolemar half expected Molag Bal to laugh at that, but it seemed the Daedra was no longer interested in the impotent intruders. Either that, or he found it more amusing to leave them wondering.
“At least our host seems to have given up on harassing us,” he observed. “It is fortunate that he cannot manifest himself here physically.”
Kierska’s mouth flattened as she handed him a wheel of goat cheese. “Yeah. Especially given that I’m the resident Dragonborn, so if anyone would have to get possessed by Akatosh, beat up a Daedra and die, it would be me. Not that I’d likely be able to do that, without the Amulet of Kings.”
Her eyes flashed, as if an idea or memory had abruptly sparked to life, and her hand paused in the process of pulling a second cheese wheel from her pouch. “Speaking of which, that reminds me of something I’d been wondering about Talos worship.”
Ondolemar’s mouth was full of cheese, so he settled for a questioning “Hmm?”
“I was wondering why someone – whether gods if it’s true, or superstitious mortals if it isn’t – decided Talos was the one and only Dragonborn who should become a god. You’d think Martin would be a better candidate, having fused with a god and all. And it sounds like he was a better person.”
“Not that a human could become a god,” Ondolemar reminded her as she took a bite, silently praying that she wouldn’t try to contradict him. She could be aggravating at times, but he didn’t want to have to arrest the only person with whom he could have an intelligent conversation.
Her frown was not encouraging, and she gave a quick, straining swallow to clear her mouth so she could speak. “You know, you Thalmor keep saying that, but you seem to forget that Talos wasn’t even completely human.”
It took him a moment to realize what she was referring to. When the memory struck, his eyebrow rose. “I take it you’re referring to his nature as a Dragonborn.”
“Yes. In the book The Amulet of Kings, it says Akatosh drew blood from his own heart, and blessed St. Alessia with the blood of dragons. So if that’s how Dragonborns get our dragon blood, that would mean we have the blood of a Divine running through our veins.
“I’ve also been told that Dragonborns have the soul of a dragon… how big a difference that makes, I don’t know, but from what I understand, dragon souls just plain can’t die like mortal souls.
“So even if the mortal, human parts of a person couldn’t ascend, if the blood is divine to begin with, wouldn’t it keep being divine after death? Could it and the immortal dragon soul somehow combine, and keep their divinity and immortality?”
It was… an intriguing concept. And, to Ondolemar’s horror, almost a plausible one.
“Of course,” the feline mused, too busy frowning at the ceiling to notice his dismay, “that would equate to a dragon soul wrapped in a blob of disembodied blood, floating around in Aetherius, which doesn’t sound like a very viable life form… unless it could form a body around itself… if it even needed a body… ugh. I need a book on god anatomy.”
Now it was his turn to swallow quickly so he could speak. “They do not necessarily need a physical form, but…” But it was hard to make his mind latch onto the idea enough to build on it. It was incomprehensible – dangerous – to imagine that heresy could be truth.
It could destroy much of what he’d believed in, and believing this could get him killed.
“Either way,” Kierska complained, gesturing broadly with her cheese, “that whole theory brings up a big, tangled mess of other theories that I wouldn’t even know how to test, let alone prove.”
“And do you… believe this theory?”
“Well… as I alluded to earlier, a big hole in that theory is that if it was just a function of Akatosh blood and a dragon soul, you’d think it would apply to every Dragonborn equally. But nobody’s ever said anything about the other Dragonborns becoming Divines.”
“And do you…” He was almost afraid to ask. Would I have to consider this grounds to arrest her? “...want it to be true?”
“Well… no.” She shook her head, and as her hesitant voice faded from the air, Ondolemar studied her eyes for signs of truth or falsehood, silently praying to see the former.
He saw neither. Both were drowned beneath a well of sadness, whose depths seemed strange in one who was normally so nonchalant.
“To be honest,” she continued, “I have mixed feelings about that. It’s… not easy sometimes, being a Dragonborn. Especially one who was already kind of a weird combination before I found out I was part dragon.
“I mean, since I came to Skyrim, there’s been Nord culture EVERYWHERE. In the accents, in the architecture, in the attitude, the décor, the music, the naming conventions, everywhere. If you’re a Nord, you can be totally surrounded by people and culture that you’re part of and identify with.
“And same for if you’re an Altmer in Alinor, or an Imperial in Cyrodiil, but… when you’re a Khajiit who got stranded in Cyrodiil during the Great War, you grow up kind of weird, in case you couldn’t tell from the… everything.”
“It would explain your accent and some of your speech patterns,” Ondolemar observed, wondering how many times he was going to have to drag the rambling feline back to the topic at hand. “But what does this have to do with Talos?”
“Well, it just… it would’ve been nice, to have someone alive I could talk to who was kind of like me, and could understand what I’m going through. Maybe not the cultural issues, at least not to the same extent, but…”
Her furry arms gestured widely, as if to encompass everything. “The expectations. The pressure. The feeling that your body is partly the wrong shape, because your soul is literally a different species than you body. The knowledge that there’s nothing in the world like you except you.
“I don’t think most people think about that. They know Dragonborns are different, but they don’t think about how being so different feels.”
She’s right – I hadn’t thought about that. He’d known she bore a rare power, one he hoped to guide to its full potential, and that she felt a strong sense of responsibility, but the isolation… that, he had failed to notice, despite it being something a Dragonborn and a Justiciar in Skyrim had in common.
He wasn’t sure what to say, and when he failed to speak, she continued. “Since there’s no other Dragonborn alive that I know of, if I was ever going to be able to speak with someone who was like me, a Dragonborn god would be my only chance.
“But then I read and asked people about Tiber Septim’s life, partly to see what kind of person he was, and partly to learn more about what it means to be Dragonborn, and… instead of feeling informed and reassured, I just ended up more upset and confused than I was when I began.”
“Oh? How come?”
“Well… he accomplished a lot, and earned a lot of people’s respect, but the number of innocent people he killed or left homeless in the process, like the civilians and children who were murdered in the sack of Senchal, which I had to learn about from a fellow Khajiit because the Empire was too damn cowardly to admit to it, and the neutral families he destroyed to replace them with loyalists, and…”
The fur on her tail began to rise. “Depending on who you believe, he drove people out of their homes so he could build the Numidium, and he even killed his own child in Barenziah’s womb…” She gave her head a sharp, hard shake, as if doing so could dislodge the memories and fling them far away.
“And on top of all that, he sold some of his opponents into slavery, and his empire pretended to outlaw slavery, only to not just let it keep happening, but to actively protect it…”
Her fist tightened on her shield. “I may be a sellsword with a body count big enough to fill this house, but I save my violence for people who are an active threat to other people. I kill dangerous criminals to STOP terrible things like what Tiber Septim and his army did.
“As much as I wanted a Divine who could understand me on a visceral level, and as much as the properties of Talos’ shrines and amulets suggest that he would be kind of a patron deity to people like me, if he was a deity at all… reading his story made me realize we could never understand each other.
“As much as me saying this would horrify a lot of people, I feel the same way about Talos that I do about Molag Bal.
“He – or at least, his artifacts – have powers and properties that regular mortals and their creations don’t. And sure, sometimes I do wear Talos’ amulet, for the same reason I wear the necklace I enchanted myself: because its magic helps me win fights.
“But even if it was proven that Talos is a god… honestly, even if he was standing right in front of me in full god form… I don’t think I could ever worship someone as evil as him.”
Her muted voice faded into a silence that hung like smoke in the unnatural gloom, broken only by Ondolemar’s quiet “I see.”
There was so much more to say. So much she had put into words that he’d thought but never expected to hear echoed by another person in Skyrim, and some things he’d never considered before.
But where to even begin?
Perhaps, as seemed to be the most natural thing for both of them, with the first thing that came to mind.
“I, too, have sometimes wondered how people could be so eager to embrace someone like Tiber Septim as a god. True, his reign was considered very prosperous, so perhaps that pushed the memories of his atrocities from people’s minds, but it is hard not to see his worship as an endorsement of his earlier actions.”
“Exactly!” Her emphatic agreement, so rare in this land, was like a warm hearth after a long, lonely journey through the cold. “I don’t think worshiping at a shrine I don’t like is reason enough to hurt someone, but Talos had no such morals, and he hurt people for way less, so why are HIS actions all right?!”
“To many in Alinor, they are not. Humans may have short memories to go with their short lives, but there are some in the Dominion whose grandparents were alive when the Numidium attacked.”
Kierska’s eyes went wide, and in answer to her unspoken question, he nodded, his gaze straying briefly to the floor. “Both of my parents were orphaned as a result of his conquest.
“Their shared grief and anger, and their search for meaning in service to the gods, was what brought them together. It was they who warned me not to be deceived by the Empire’s attempts to paint a flattering image of the invader of our land.
“To see him as a Divine is to insult every true god by association, to pretend that his actions should be celebrated, and to risk leading people astray from their intended afterlives. It also harms his victims’ faith in the true Divines, as some believed that the gods had betrayed them by rewarding their abuser.”
He’d hoped for another show of agreement, or at least an expression of interest in further exploring his statements.
Instead, Kierska remained silent, and her gaze drifted to a corner of the floor. Ondolemar probed her with his stare, trying to guess the thoughts that were swirling behind her eyes, and hoping her earlier agreement with him meant he could finally stop worrying about having to arrest her.
He wanted to be sure. “Knowing all of that,” he asked quietly, “are you still entertaining the possibility that Talos could be a Divine?”
Her eyes lingered on the floor, and when she finally spoke, her muted voice struck him like a blow. “When the Thalmor had my family killed during the Great War, I didn’t want to believe it was real. And I didn’t want to believe that some people in Elsweyr still saw the Thalmor as saviors.
“But in the end, I had to accept it. If the evidence proves that the Thalmor stopped the Oblivion Crisis and ended the Void Nights, I’ll have to accept it.
“And while I know firsthand what you mean about feeling like the Divines rewarding Talos would be a betrayal of his victims, if my research convinces me that Talos became a god, and your research doesn’t disprove it, then I’ll accept that, too, regardless of how I feel.”
Dear Divines… I had no idea. He had gotten the impression that she had a low opinion of conquerors in general, but that his own people’s military ambitions had done her such grave personal harm…
“I… see,” he said slowly, buying a few inadequate seconds to scrape together an answer, when he felt like he needed an hour. “I’m… sorry to hear that. If you don’t mind telling me, why was your family killed?”
It must have been justified. I hope it was justified. Though, that would mean having to say to her face that it was justified…
Her eyes bored into his, steadied by the same piercing certitude that filled her voice. “Because some members of my family were students of history, and we knew what happens when a group that looks down on another group rules the people they look down on. It never ends well.
“We didn’t expect the Thalmor to be any better for the human provinces than Tiber Septim was for Elsweyr, so rather than repeat history’s mistakes and let the Thalmor rule people they clearly disdained too much to rule fairly, we used our trade caravan to bring supplies to the Imperial army.”
The edge faded from her voice, leaving it distant and strangely neutral, as if her emotions had retreated somewhere too far away to touch. “You’ll probably think their deaths were justified. I suppose all’s fair in war.
“We had blood on our hands ourselves, by the time we got cornered. But the Thalmor still started that war, and mislead countless once-good elves into joining that mass murder, so as far as I’m concerned, the blood spilled on both sides was their fault.”
Ondolemar’s jaw tightened, and he quickly, silently recited the justifications he’d hammered into his own mind as he threw ice spikes through the throats of Imperial soldiers.
“It is true,” he said at last, “that the Great War caused much devastation on both sides. But such is the method that the Empire used against many of the people it conquered, and no less is required to prevent them from doing it again. Would you rather the humans continue to rule Tamriel, despite their long history of misusing that power?”
“What I’d rather is that people just stop invading each other. Let people rule their own provinces, visit or immigrate peacefully if you want, and quit trying to rule over people you don’t even like or understand. That goes for the Thalmor AND the Empire. If people want to form consensual alliances, fine, but don’t use subjugation as a substitute.”
So the Dragonborn believes in pipe dreams. For all her power, she’s still a child.
“I did not realize you were so idealistic and naive,” he commented, letting his surprised disappointment show in his voice and ignoring the glare he got in return. “If the Thalmor do not take power in the mainland first, how long do you think it will be before the humans try to reclaim what they once stole and lost?”
“Good question,” she returned brusquely. “No clue. Here’s a question of my own: how long do you think the Thalmor could’ve controlled the provinces by force, killed anyone who disagreed with them, and committed the kinds of atrocities the Aldmeri army did in the Imperial City, before something like the Alessian uprising or Accession War happened?”
“With proper management of any signs of rebellion, perhaps indefinitely, though I doubt our rule would have been as corrupt as you describe.”
“That’s probably what the Justiciars on the road thought when they were trying to murder me.”
Hot frustration was starting to burn in his chest, and he took a step toward her. A distant corner of his mind warned him that his cheese was melting and crumbling in his hand, but he was far beyond caring. “And what would you have us do? Wait for mankind to cause another series of Dragon Breaks?
“Watch idly while their infighting continues to paint the land in more blood than was spilled during the First War, and their mages tamper with forces beyond their control and comprehension, until they finally cause a disaster that destroys all of Nirn?
“Wait for them to drag our lands back under their incurably corrupt rule? What of your own people, who were abandoned to slavery at the hands of the Dunmer while the Empire idly watched?!”
From the way her jaw clenched, he could tell he’d struck a nerve. Then the corner of her mouth twisted into a tortured semblance of a smile, and bitterness leaked like sour poison into her light, casual tone.
“I will admit, it’s a point in your favor that we’ve never seen an Altmer pull a Mankar Camoran and let a Daedric Prince into Nirn… or keep and mistreat slaves for scores of miserable years before eventually abolishing the practice… or use violence to establish their preferred form of government… yeah. That would be unprecedented and horrible.”
DAMN her! He knew it was the wrong reaction, an instinct to shoot the messenger that was all too reminiscent of the actions of which she’d accused his underlings. And he couldn’t deny that the events she’d cited were true.
But to even imply that the wise and cultured Altmer could be compared to the brutish younger races… to their own hated conqueror, no less… “Are you saying,” he asked, his voice low, tight and dangerous, “that the Altmer are the same as Tiber Septim and his ilk?”
“The Altmer as a whole?” She shook her head. “Nah. The Thalmor? I’ll put it this way.
“Talos destroyed neutral families just so he could replace them with his bootlickers. The Thalmor hunt and kill dissidents, even after they flee the Dominion. Talos annexed territory in Elsweyr to build the Numidium; the Thalmor demanded a big part of Hammerfell.
“Talos killed innocent people to expand his territory; so did the Thalmor. Talos’ army staged a massacre in Senchal, and didn’t even spare the kittens; the Aldmeri soldiers terrorized the people in the Imperial City after they took over. So the way I see it, it’s just… different scales, different prey, same snake.”
Same… No. That could not be true. Cultured, idyllic, rational Alinor was nothing like the primitive, barbaric foolishness that held the lesser races in a grasp that could only be broken by Thalmor rule.
But he couldn’t deny that the parallels were real, and more numerous than he’d ever considered.
“Was it worth it?”
Her voice derailed his thoughts, and he suddenly became keenly aware that he was breathing heavily. Her once-distant stare was fixed on him, not harsh, but unrelenting, quietly pinning him in place.
There was a hint of anger there, beneath the tight veneer of neutrality, but far more vivid and terrible was the piercing light of pain. So much pain.
“I asked Talos that,” her strained voice continued, “when I tested his shrine. But whatever form he’s in right now, either he didn’t want to answer, or he couldn’t. So since he and the Thalmor are so much alike, now I’m asking you.
Her words began to spill out faster. “You told me why you thought the Great War was worth it, even with the thousands of deaths on both sides. But what about what you’re doing to Skyrim?
“Whatever you’re trying to accomplish by wiping out Talos worship, was it worth helping to start a civil war, where even MORE people die? Kidnapping people? Torturing them? Killing them?
“The ruined economies, the starving people, the bandits who resorted to stealing and killing to get by, the people who were killed by bandits and other threats because the armies were too busy to protect them? I know what the Stormcloaks are trying to do and why they think it’s worth it, but what in Oblivion are the Thalmor trying to accomplish that’s worth all that?!”
He’d been prepared for her anger. He’d known he would have to endure endless hostility when he accepted his assignment in Skyrim.
But he hadn’t been prepared for her voice to break.
How do I explain this in terms she’ll understand? How do I prove the rightness of Thalmor rule and the Talos ban, which so often require bloodshed to create progress, to someone who fights to prevent such bloodshed?
How do I explain the right of a superior people to rule, to another person of superior power who seems to care for lesser beings as if they were her own?
He drew a deep, bracing breath, trying to ignore the slight liquid shimmer in her piercing eyes. It was hard to believe that the small, soft Betmer in front of him had blood in her veins of an older, more powerful stock than his, but for all that the Dragonborn seemed to identify with people who were beneath his own, she herself wasn’t someone he could easily dismiss.
I don’t want her to walk away unconvinced like most Nords do. I want to make her understand. I want to KNOW my arguments are compelling enough to make an intelligent skeptic understand.
I’ll start with the most important part.
“When it comes to the worship of Talos, it’s true that some people have chosen to cause a great deal of trouble over a false human god. However, they fail to consider the long-term consequences of their actions. As I said before, the worship of Talos leads people astray from the true Divines.
“This can have implications long beyond their mortal lives, in addition to inviting divine retribution in this life. And every person who follows this heresy risks leading others astray, so it’s not a simple matter of leaving those individuals to face the consequences of their own poor choices.”
He’d hoped his words would mollify her. Instead, Kierska’s eyes went narrow, and her tail lashed so violently that it almost struck the walls.
“So you start wars, and you kidnap, torture and kill people, with confirmed negative consequences for the victims and their families, to prevent the theoretical effects of their worship on their afterlives and the theoretical possibility of angering the Divines?!
“What gives you the right to control what afterlife people go to, or to decide what the Divines are angry about and murder people for it, instead of letting the Divines speak for themselves?”
“Did you not say it yourself?” Ondolemar shot back. “Superiority comes with responsibility, including the responsibility to teach those less knowledgeable the error of their ways before those errors produce drastic consequences.”
“And how do you know those consequences will be more drastic than the ones you’re already dishing out?!” she demanded. “Can you prove it?”
“We-”
“Either you can’t prove it,” Kierska growled, barreling over his words with uncharacteristic impatience and taking an ominous step toward him, “in which case, you have no business enforcing it, or you can prove it, but the Thalmor would still rather use violence and fear instead of persuading people with logic!”
“There’s no POINT in using logic on people who will not listen to it!” he roared, echoing her one-step advance with his own.
Her voice rose to match his. “Then SHOW me your logic! Prove to me that you know for sure that the afterlife you’re saving people from by torturing them for their religion is worse than the torture itself, and that Talos worship will make the gods angry enough to do something worse than what you already do!
“And maybe, while you’re at it, prove that Talos isn’t a god, despite what his shrines and amulets imply. I may not like the humans’ murderous, thieving, slave-dealing maybe-god, but I also don’t like people being killed over something that isn’t even proven.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but his voice was drowned out by her roar. “And while you’re proving all that, maybe give me SOME reason to believe that Tamriel being ruled by the people responsible for all that torture and death wouldn’t just make things worse for everyone but the people who lick your boots!”
Ondolemar had been squeezing his cheese too tightly for too long, and it finally crumbled in his hand, in a way that felt appallingly symbolic. His chest was heaving, and the words that spilled through his mind felt dangerously inadequate.
We only want what’s best for Tamriel. And that requires Thalmor rule.
But if we cannot prove that the harm we did in pursuit of that goal was truly necessary, or that the end justifies the means… if I can’t convince her that the Thalmor are better than the Empire…“Different scales, same snake” is probably what she’ll say.
No… even proving that we’re better than the Empire might not be good enough. She’s set apart from both of them, judging both and finding both wanting. She isn’t weighing us against the Empire; she’s weighing our benefits against our costs.
But she’s listening. She wants to learn. And unlike the Nords, who walk away in disgust rather than probe for details and proof, she wants to understand. That means I have an opportunity to bring her to our side.
If I can convince her that the Thalmor are right, then this time the Dragonborn will be on our side instead of the Empire’s. Even the stubborn Nords might listen to her, a living piece of their cherished mythology.
If the Dragonborn chooses to align with our interests, and we guide her to her full potential, there’s a chance that the Thalmor could claim our rightful place, without the innocent bloodshed she so detests.
I just have to convince her that that path is worth pursuing.
The growing tension in the air warned him that he was spending too much time thinking about his answers, and too little time giving them.
I’m failing as a representative of the Thalmor. The jittery thought raced through his head, threatening to freeze his mind. I’m supposed to be reminding the locals of our power and superiority, not getting bowled over by questions I can’t answer! Think, Ondolemar, THINK! Remember your training!
But neither his training nor his experience in Skyrim had prepared him for this.
There was no force in Markarth as relentless and erosive as the curiosity of a Khajiit, slowly crumbling through the layers of his knowledge and eating its way toward a core whose contents he was starting to realize were hidden even to him.
He’d always accepted what he was taught. His Thalmor trainers, and the consequences of contradicting them, demanded it. And he’d always believed his elders when they said their superiority to the Empire was evidence of their right to rule.
An inquiry this deep, and a bar set this high, were an unfamiliar test – one he could not pass before time ran out.
He’d been silent for too long. He could sense her disengaging, see the dulling of her eyes as she mentally withdrew.
He wanted to pull her back. To reengage her, to get another chance to convince her. But she was already shaking her head.
“Maybe this isn’t the best time for this,” she said dully. “We’re tired, angry and frustrated, part of me wants to claw your face, and you just squashed your cheese.
“I’ll ask again tomorrow, when it isn’t so late, you’ve had a chance to think, and with any luck, we’ve both had at least a bit of sleep. Hopefully the homeowner doesn’t start throwing things again.”
Ondolemar wasn’t fond of excuses, but by now he was desperate enough to latch onto this one. Yes, that’s it – I’m just tired. And she caught me off guard. I just need time to rest and think, and then I’ll be able to answer her.
“Very well,” he replied. “I assume you know where the bedrooms are?”
“Bedrooms?”
He didn’t like the way she emphasized that ‘s’. “Yes,” he said slowly, irrational hope that she was just being tired and dense mixing with a hint of mischief, “where the beds are.”
Her eyebrow climbed, and she gave him an unimpressed, half-lidded stare. “You know that I know what a bedroom is. And I’m afraid ‘bedroom’ is a more applicable word, because there is only one. It’s this way.”
Wait – there’s only one and she’s leading me there, we’re going there together… “With more than one bed, I hope,” he noted as he followed her, and she shook her head without turning around.
“Nope.”
Oh, no. His fingertips dug into what was left of his cheese, and his footsteps faltered. Does that mean we’ll have to share a bed?
Her armor is covered in spikes, and I’m wearing a robe. If either of us moved, I’d get impaled in my sleep. Unless she took her armor off…
His mind stalled for a moment, then split itself in half and went racing off in two different directions.
She must have other clothes, right? She can’t sleep in that armor, and sleeping naked with me would be most inappropriate, so she’d better have other clothes.
I wonder what she looks like in them.
It doesn’t matter. A Mer of my superior breeding debasing himself with a Khajiit would be scandalous.
Though, she would be very soft and warm… And it’s been a long time since I’ve had positive physical contact of any kind…
No. She may be intelligent, relatable, and surprisingly understanding for a person who’s clearly not on the Thalmor’s side, but to throw myself at the first person who cares what I think and doesn’t spend our whole interaction wishing I would leave is beneath me.
She’s sleeping with her armor on, and I am sleeping somewhere else.
“Here it is.”
Her voice broke through his racing thoughts, and he stared at the bed in disgust. A rough wooden frame, with a straw mattress and bearskin blankets. Primitive, inelegant and uncomfortable, like almost everything in Skyrim.
At least it wasn’t made of rock, unlike many of the beds in this miserable city. But there was still the awkward matter of-
“You can sleep on that if you want,” Kierska derailed his thoughts again. “I’m not.”
“Oh?” That makes things slightly simpler, but now she’s got me curious. “Why not?”
“If we try to share a bed, I will probably stab you with my armor. And if I sleep in that bed, I’ll have nightmares about bears. I have a keen sense of smell, you know.”
“I see. It is easy to forget how much your people rely upon a sense that I myself seldom think about. Given the excessive use of dead predators, I imagine the local décor must be a problem for you.”
Her eyes squeezed shut, and her mouth flattened sourly. “You have no idea. One time, I woke up, saw a bear head looming over me, and was so startled that I yelled ‘FUS RO!’ to try to fend it off. It flew off the wall, bounced off the ceiling, and came down on my head.”
Laughter bubbled in his throat like a spring in a desert, and half of it escaped as he tried to decide whether or not to suppress it.
It was so seldom that he had a reason to laugh. And to his relief, when he looked at her face, she was grinning back.
At least she didn’t seem to hate him, even if she probably did hate the Thalmor as a whole.
I shouldn’t care, a corner of his mind reminded him. I accepted this assignment knowing I’d be hated by everyone around me, and I vowed not to let that dissuade me from my duties. Then why?… No. I’ll ponder that once she’s out of the room.
“Well,” he replied, keeping his voice deceptively smooth, “hopefully you can find an adequately bear-free resting place here. In the meantime, I bid you good night – or at least, as good as a night can be in a place such as this.”
She responded with a wry smile. “Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the falling bear heads bite.”
Another chuckle, another grin. And then she was gone, loping out of the room with that smooth, easy jog whose footfalls seemed almost too light for her size.
For all their animalistic traits, the Khajiit could be graceful creatures, when they weren’t collapsed on the street in a fit of moonsugar ecstasy.
Ondolemar carefully lowered himself onto the bed, grateful for the thick, stiff weave of his robe between his body and the straw.
A moment later, he realized it was still poking him, and after half a minute of uncomfortable squirming, he spread one of the bearskins over the brittle plant matter before lying down on top of it and pulling the too-small second blanket over himself.
And then, at last, his mind was free to latch onto the question that was gnawing the edges of his thoughts. Why does the thought of failing to convince her bother me so much? The tactical advantages of persuading her are clear, but the thought of falling short in her eyes… bothers me more than it should.
Is it because she’s impressed me? I suppose that could be part of it – this land provides so few opportunities speak with someone on my level, who actually cares what I have to say and who understands that Talos isn’t the hero his followers paint him as.
It’s frustrating to fail in front of her. Disenchanting the amulet, disabling the altar and breaking Molag Bal’s hold on this house, adequately explaining why the Thalmor’s actions are right when Talos’ similar actions were not, and why our goals are worth the harm we’ve done… I’ve already failed too many times.
If I failed to convince her due to her inability to understand a clear and convincing explanation, I could dismiss her and move on. But I couldn’t give that explanation, and I need to remedy that.
It’s not just for her sake. It’s for my own. I need to know the Thalmor are right. I need to be able to prove it – not just to her, but to myself. And to anyone in the future who asks.
I need to know my truth can stand, even when it’s scrutinized.
~*~
Carnaril’s fingers gripped the bridge of his nose, while his other hand clenched on the handle of his mace. “You idiot,” he muttered, the weapon swaying in his restless grasp as if his arm was itching to use it. “I should kill you on general principle.”
Ondolemar’s slow, swimming mind floundered through a blur of pain and thirst, like a dying fish trying to find the words that had dug his grave.
He’d thought he’d spoken carefully. He’d recited the facts, the conversations, and his strategic, religious and political motives… had he said something about his conflicted feelings, his scandalous thoughts, or his dangerous, heretical doubts?
Had he revealed his admiration for someone who might be their enemy?
He couldn’t remember. Could barely think. All he could do was force air through his parched throat and into his broken chest, and try to stay alive. “Is there… a problem,” he gasped, “…with trying to recruit… the Dragonborn?”
“An endeavor that’s unlikely to succeed, considering her history with the Thalmor and her current feelings regarding us.”
“She is… willing to accept… reality… even if she doesn’t… like it. If we can… prove the value… of our cause… and the rightness… of our rule…”
“And do you truly believe that outcome was ever likely?” Carnaril demanded. The mace arced in an ominous swoop around his hand, and Ondolemar tried and failed not to flinch. “Or is it more likely that she has planted doubts in your mind, which could grow into treachery?”
“I simply intend… to examine… the evidence… to ensure that… any skeptics… can be convinced of… our position.” The end of that sentence didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t tell what was wrong with it. Could barely even remember what he’d just said.
“Skeptics like yourself?”
“Skeptics like her – obviously.”
That last, exasperated word was a mistake – the blow to the side of his head made that clear. The world blurred into darkness, Carnaril’s voice faded into the distance, and once again, the ruthless grasp of healing magic dragged his mind back to his tormentor.
Like being bludgeoned off a cliff and then hauled up by my throat, he thought bitterly, forcing himself not to invite further misery by glaring at the torturer. At least my head is a bit clearer now.
“Now,” Carnaril said wearily, as if convinced that he was wasting his time but wanting to be thorough, “you’re going to drink some water so you can stop rasping like a dying crow, and then you’re going to tell me what happened when you and this troublesome cat woke up.”
Some of them had easily identifiable effects, like torrents of ice or fire. Others’ purpose was less clear; ripples of color burst from her mouth, and while they often scattered objects and dust, he couldn’t tell by looking at them what else they were supposed to do.
All he knew was that she was reluctant to explain her abilities in detail, she warned him never to move between her and her target when she was using her Thu’um, and the target in question was completely unaffected no matter what its assailants did.
Their arsenals were useless, the front door remained sealed, and Molag Bal wasn’t even bothering to pelt them with objects anymore. In place of flying household goods, the truth lay as thick as the unnatural gloom: the Daedra didn’t have to attack them directly. He only had to wait.
As the last combination of spells and Thu’um faded from the air, Ondolemar fought not to let his shoulders sag with weariness and defeat.
To his right, Kierska still stood tall and alert, strangely unaffected by their absolute loss. A hint of fatigue tugged the edges of her eyes, but her shoulders were high, and her tail was still swaying briskly.
“I think we’ve tried all of them,” she commented, turning to face Ondolemar. “Unless you have any spells you haven’t used yet.”
He shook his head. “I do not. I take it you’ve used all of your Thu’um?”
“All the ones that affect the target as opposed to the user, yes.”
Every spell and Shout, in every combination they could think of. And all of them were useless.
“Then there’s nothing left for us to try.”
“Nothing for us, anyway.”
“Oh?” Curiosity and hope flickered cautiously to life, like a cornered rabbit peering from its hiding place and sighting a possible escape. “What do you mean?”
“You didn’t sound sure when you said you knew what to do, and you couldn’t cite the specific spells you were going to use, so I told Lydia to go get backup if we didn’t come back in two hours.”
“Oh, really?” he asked, as curious as he was dubious. “What manner of backup do you expect to succeed where a member of the Thalmor could not?”
“I know a priest who has experience with Daedric princes and their artifacts, but he’s fairly far away, so we might have to wait for two days or more before he gets here.”
“Assuming he arrives, and is able to assist us.”
“Exactly.”
It wasn’t as certain an escape as he’d hoped for, but it was better than nothing, and as the two of them made their way through the tunnel toward the house above, his dampened spirits began to rise. “I’m glad to hear you thought ahead. Though I can’t help but wonder why you didn’t tell me earlier.”
“If we’d won within the first two hours, it wouldn’t have mattered,” Kierska explained as they emerged into the basement. “As it is, it looks like we’re stuck here until he arrives, so we might as well eat and then go to sleep. The more we can conserve energy, the longer we’ll last.”
Ondolemar half expected Molag Bal to laugh at that, but it seemed the Daedra was no longer interested in the impotent intruders. Either that, or he found it more amusing to leave them wondering.
“At least our host seems to have given up on harassing us,” he observed. “It is fortunate that he cannot manifest himself here physically.”
Kierska’s mouth flattened as she handed him a wheel of goat cheese. “Yeah. Especially given that I’m the resident Dragonborn, so if anyone would have to get possessed by Akatosh, beat up a Daedra and die, it would be me. Not that I’d likely be able to do that, without the Amulet of Kings.”
Her eyes flashed, as if an idea or memory had abruptly sparked to life, and her hand paused in the process of pulling a second cheese wheel from her pouch. “Speaking of which, that reminds me of something I’d been wondering about Talos worship.”
Ondolemar’s mouth was full of cheese, so he settled for a questioning “Hmm?”
“I was wondering why someone – whether gods if it’s true, or superstitious mortals if it isn’t – decided Talos was the one and only Dragonborn who should become a god. You’d think Martin would be a better candidate, having fused with a god and all. And it sounds like he was a better person.”
“Not that a human could become a god,” Ondolemar reminded her as she took a bite, silently praying that she wouldn’t try to contradict him. She could be aggravating at times, but he didn’t want to have to arrest the only person with whom he could have an intelligent conversation.
Her frown was not encouraging, and she gave a quick, straining swallow to clear her mouth so she could speak. “You know, you Thalmor keep saying that, but you seem to forget that Talos wasn’t even completely human.”
It took him a moment to realize what she was referring to. When the memory struck, his eyebrow rose. “I take it you’re referring to his nature as a Dragonborn.”
“Yes. In the book The Amulet of Kings, it says Akatosh drew blood from his own heart, and blessed St. Alessia with the blood of dragons. So if that’s how Dragonborns get our dragon blood, that would mean we have the blood of a Divine running through our veins.
“I’ve also been told that Dragonborns have the soul of a dragon… how big a difference that makes, I don’t know, but from what I understand, dragon souls just plain can’t die like mortal souls.
“So even if the mortal, human parts of a person couldn’t ascend, if the blood is divine to begin with, wouldn’t it keep being divine after death? Could it and the immortal dragon soul somehow combine, and keep their divinity and immortality?”
It was… an intriguing concept. And, to Ondolemar’s horror, almost a plausible one.
“Of course,” the feline mused, too busy frowning at the ceiling to notice his dismay, “that would equate to a dragon soul wrapped in a blob of disembodied blood, floating around in Aetherius, which doesn’t sound like a very viable life form… unless it could form a body around itself… if it even needed a body… ugh. I need a book on god anatomy.”
Now it was his turn to swallow quickly so he could speak. “They do not necessarily need a physical form, but…” But it was hard to make his mind latch onto the idea enough to build on it. It was incomprehensible – dangerous – to imagine that heresy could be truth.
It could destroy much of what he’d believed in, and believing this could get him killed.
“Either way,” Kierska complained, gesturing broadly with her cheese, “that whole theory brings up a big, tangled mess of other theories that I wouldn’t even know how to test, let alone prove.”
“And do you… believe this theory?”
“Well… as I alluded to earlier, a big hole in that theory is that if it was just a function of Akatosh blood and a dragon soul, you’d think it would apply to every Dragonborn equally. But nobody’s ever said anything about the other Dragonborns becoming Divines.”
“And do you…” He was almost afraid to ask. Would I have to consider this grounds to arrest her? “...want it to be true?”
“Well… no.” She shook her head, and as her hesitant voice faded from the air, Ondolemar studied her eyes for signs of truth or falsehood, silently praying to see the former.
He saw neither. Both were drowned beneath a well of sadness, whose depths seemed strange in one who was normally so nonchalant.
“To be honest,” she continued, “I have mixed feelings about that. It’s… not easy sometimes, being a Dragonborn. Especially one who was already kind of a weird combination before I found out I was part dragon.
“I mean, since I came to Skyrim, there’s been Nord culture EVERYWHERE. In the accents, in the architecture, in the attitude, the décor, the music, the naming conventions, everywhere. If you’re a Nord, you can be totally surrounded by people and culture that you’re part of and identify with.
“And same for if you’re an Altmer in Alinor, or an Imperial in Cyrodiil, but… when you’re a Khajiit who got stranded in Cyrodiil during the Great War, you grow up kind of weird, in case you couldn’t tell from the… everything.”
“It would explain your accent and some of your speech patterns,” Ondolemar observed, wondering how many times he was going to have to drag the rambling feline back to the topic at hand. “But what does this have to do with Talos?”
“Well, it just… it would’ve been nice, to have someone alive I could talk to who was kind of like me, and could understand what I’m going through. Maybe not the cultural issues, at least not to the same extent, but…”
Her furry arms gestured widely, as if to encompass everything. “The expectations. The pressure. The feeling that your body is partly the wrong shape, because your soul is literally a different species than you body. The knowledge that there’s nothing in the world like you except you.
“I don’t think most people think about that. They know Dragonborns are different, but they don’t think about how being so different feels.”
She’s right – I hadn’t thought about that. He’d known she bore a rare power, one he hoped to guide to its full potential, and that she felt a strong sense of responsibility, but the isolation… that, he had failed to notice, despite it being something a Dragonborn and a Justiciar in Skyrim had in common.
He wasn’t sure what to say, and when he failed to speak, she continued. “Since there’s no other Dragonborn alive that I know of, if I was ever going to be able to speak with someone who was like me, a Dragonborn god would be my only chance.
“But then I read and asked people about Tiber Septim’s life, partly to see what kind of person he was, and partly to learn more about what it means to be Dragonborn, and… instead of feeling informed and reassured, I just ended up more upset and confused than I was when I began.”
“Oh? How come?”
“Well… he accomplished a lot, and earned a lot of people’s respect, but the number of innocent people he killed or left homeless in the process, like the civilians and children who were murdered in the sack of Senchal, which I had to learn about from a fellow Khajiit because the Empire was too damn cowardly to admit to it, and the neutral families he destroyed to replace them with loyalists, and…”
The fur on her tail began to rise. “Depending on who you believe, he drove people out of their homes so he could build the Numidium, and he even killed his own child in Barenziah’s womb…” She gave her head a sharp, hard shake, as if doing so could dislodge the memories and fling them far away.
“And on top of all that, he sold some of his opponents into slavery, and his empire pretended to outlaw slavery, only to not just let it keep happening, but to actively protect it…”
Her fist tightened on her shield. “I may be a sellsword with a body count big enough to fill this house, but I save my violence for people who are an active threat to other people. I kill dangerous criminals to STOP terrible things like what Tiber Septim and his army did.
“As much as I wanted a Divine who could understand me on a visceral level, and as much as the properties of Talos’ shrines and amulets suggest that he would be kind of a patron deity to people like me, if he was a deity at all… reading his story made me realize we could never understand each other.
“As much as me saying this would horrify a lot of people, I feel the same way about Talos that I do about Molag Bal.
“He – or at least, his artifacts – have powers and properties that regular mortals and their creations don’t. And sure, sometimes I do wear Talos’ amulet, for the same reason I wear the necklace I enchanted myself: because its magic helps me win fights.
“But even if it was proven that Talos is a god… honestly, even if he was standing right in front of me in full god form… I don’t think I could ever worship someone as evil as him.”
Her muted voice faded into a silence that hung like smoke in the unnatural gloom, broken only by Ondolemar’s quiet “I see.”
There was so much more to say. So much she had put into words that he’d thought but never expected to hear echoed by another person in Skyrim, and some things he’d never considered before.
But where to even begin?
Perhaps, as seemed to be the most natural thing for both of them, with the first thing that came to mind.
“I, too, have sometimes wondered how people could be so eager to embrace someone like Tiber Septim as a god. True, his reign was considered very prosperous, so perhaps that pushed the memories of his atrocities from people’s minds, but it is hard not to see his worship as an endorsement of his earlier actions.”
“Exactly!” Her emphatic agreement, so rare in this land, was like a warm hearth after a long, lonely journey through the cold. “I don’t think worshiping at a shrine I don’t like is reason enough to hurt someone, but Talos had no such morals, and he hurt people for way less, so why are HIS actions all right?!”
“To many in Alinor, they are not. Humans may have short memories to go with their short lives, but there are some in the Dominion whose grandparents were alive when the Numidium attacked.”
Kierska’s eyes went wide, and in answer to her unspoken question, he nodded, his gaze straying briefly to the floor. “Both of my parents were orphaned as a result of his conquest.
“Their shared grief and anger, and their search for meaning in service to the gods, was what brought them together. It was they who warned me not to be deceived by the Empire’s attempts to paint a flattering image of the invader of our land.
“To see him as a Divine is to insult every true god by association, to pretend that his actions should be celebrated, and to risk leading people astray from their intended afterlives. It also harms his victims’ faith in the true Divines, as some believed that the gods had betrayed them by rewarding their abuser.”
He’d hoped for another show of agreement, or at least an expression of interest in further exploring his statements.
Instead, Kierska remained silent, and her gaze drifted to a corner of the floor. Ondolemar probed her with his stare, trying to guess the thoughts that were swirling behind her eyes, and hoping her earlier agreement with him meant he could finally stop worrying about having to arrest her.
He wanted to be sure. “Knowing all of that,” he asked quietly, “are you still entertaining the possibility that Talos could be a Divine?”
Her eyes lingered on the floor, and when she finally spoke, her muted voice struck him like a blow. “When the Thalmor had my family killed during the Great War, I didn’t want to believe it was real. And I didn’t want to believe that some people in Elsweyr still saw the Thalmor as saviors.
“But in the end, I had to accept it. If the evidence proves that the Thalmor stopped the Oblivion Crisis and ended the Void Nights, I’ll have to accept it.
“And while I know firsthand what you mean about feeling like the Divines rewarding Talos would be a betrayal of his victims, if my research convinces me that Talos became a god, and your research doesn’t disprove it, then I’ll accept that, too, regardless of how I feel.”
Dear Divines… I had no idea. He had gotten the impression that she had a low opinion of conquerors in general, but that his own people’s military ambitions had done her such grave personal harm…
“I… see,” he said slowly, buying a few inadequate seconds to scrape together an answer, when he felt like he needed an hour. “I’m… sorry to hear that. If you don’t mind telling me, why was your family killed?”
It must have been justified. I hope it was justified. Though, that would mean having to say to her face that it was justified…
Her eyes bored into his, steadied by the same piercing certitude that filled her voice. “Because some members of my family were students of history, and we knew what happens when a group that looks down on another group rules the people they look down on. It never ends well.
“We didn’t expect the Thalmor to be any better for the human provinces than Tiber Septim was for Elsweyr, so rather than repeat history’s mistakes and let the Thalmor rule people they clearly disdained too much to rule fairly, we used our trade caravan to bring supplies to the Imperial army.”
The edge faded from her voice, leaving it distant and strangely neutral, as if her emotions had retreated somewhere too far away to touch. “You’ll probably think their deaths were justified. I suppose all’s fair in war.
“We had blood on our hands ourselves, by the time we got cornered. But the Thalmor still started that war, and mislead countless once-good elves into joining that mass murder, so as far as I’m concerned, the blood spilled on both sides was their fault.”
Ondolemar’s jaw tightened, and he quickly, silently recited the justifications he’d hammered into his own mind as he threw ice spikes through the throats of Imperial soldiers.
“It is true,” he said at last, “that the Great War caused much devastation on both sides. But such is the method that the Empire used against many of the people it conquered, and no less is required to prevent them from doing it again. Would you rather the humans continue to rule Tamriel, despite their long history of misusing that power?”
“What I’d rather is that people just stop invading each other. Let people rule their own provinces, visit or immigrate peacefully if you want, and quit trying to rule over people you don’t even like or understand. That goes for the Thalmor AND the Empire. If people want to form consensual alliances, fine, but don’t use subjugation as a substitute.”
So the Dragonborn believes in pipe dreams. For all her power, she’s still a child.
“I did not realize you were so idealistic and naive,” he commented, letting his surprised disappointment show in his voice and ignoring the glare he got in return. “If the Thalmor do not take power in the mainland first, how long do you think it will be before the humans try to reclaim what they once stole and lost?”
“Good question,” she returned brusquely. “No clue. Here’s a question of my own: how long do you think the Thalmor could’ve controlled the provinces by force, killed anyone who disagreed with them, and committed the kinds of atrocities the Aldmeri army did in the Imperial City, before something like the Alessian uprising or Accession War happened?”
“With proper management of any signs of rebellion, perhaps indefinitely, though I doubt our rule would have been as corrupt as you describe.”
“That’s probably what the Justiciars on the road thought when they were trying to murder me.”
Hot frustration was starting to burn in his chest, and he took a step toward her. A distant corner of his mind warned him that his cheese was melting and crumbling in his hand, but he was far beyond caring. “And what would you have us do? Wait for mankind to cause another series of Dragon Breaks?
“Watch idly while their infighting continues to paint the land in more blood than was spilled during the First War, and their mages tamper with forces beyond their control and comprehension, until they finally cause a disaster that destroys all of Nirn?
“Wait for them to drag our lands back under their incurably corrupt rule? What of your own people, who were abandoned to slavery at the hands of the Dunmer while the Empire idly watched?!”
From the way her jaw clenched, he could tell he’d struck a nerve. Then the corner of her mouth twisted into a tortured semblance of a smile, and bitterness leaked like sour poison into her light, casual tone.
“I will admit, it’s a point in your favor that we’ve never seen an Altmer pull a Mankar Camoran and let a Daedric Prince into Nirn… or keep and mistreat slaves for scores of miserable years before eventually abolishing the practice… or use violence to establish their preferred form of government… yeah. That would be unprecedented and horrible.”
DAMN her! He knew it was the wrong reaction, an instinct to shoot the messenger that was all too reminiscent of the actions of which she’d accused his underlings. And he couldn’t deny that the events she’d cited were true.
But to even imply that the wise and cultured Altmer could be compared to the brutish younger races… to their own hated conqueror, no less… “Are you saying,” he asked, his voice low, tight and dangerous, “that the Altmer are the same as Tiber Septim and his ilk?”
“The Altmer as a whole?” She shook her head. “Nah. The Thalmor? I’ll put it this way.
“Talos destroyed neutral families just so he could replace them with his bootlickers. The Thalmor hunt and kill dissidents, even after they flee the Dominion. Talos annexed territory in Elsweyr to build the Numidium; the Thalmor demanded a big part of Hammerfell.
“Talos killed innocent people to expand his territory; so did the Thalmor. Talos’ army staged a massacre in Senchal, and didn’t even spare the kittens; the Aldmeri soldiers terrorized the people in the Imperial City after they took over. So the way I see it, it’s just… different scales, different prey, same snake.”
Same… No. That could not be true. Cultured, idyllic, rational Alinor was nothing like the primitive, barbaric foolishness that held the lesser races in a grasp that could only be broken by Thalmor rule.
But he couldn’t deny that the parallels were real, and more numerous than he’d ever considered.
“Was it worth it?”
Her voice derailed his thoughts, and he suddenly became keenly aware that he was breathing heavily. Her once-distant stare was fixed on him, not harsh, but unrelenting, quietly pinning him in place.
There was a hint of anger there, beneath the tight veneer of neutrality, but far more vivid and terrible was the piercing light of pain. So much pain.
“I asked Talos that,” her strained voice continued, “when I tested his shrine. But whatever form he’s in right now, either he didn’t want to answer, or he couldn’t. So since he and the Thalmor are so much alike, now I’m asking you.
Her words began to spill out faster. “You told me why you thought the Great War was worth it, even with the thousands of deaths on both sides. But what about what you’re doing to Skyrim?
“Whatever you’re trying to accomplish by wiping out Talos worship, was it worth helping to start a civil war, where even MORE people die? Kidnapping people? Torturing them? Killing them?
“The ruined economies, the starving people, the bandits who resorted to stealing and killing to get by, the people who were killed by bandits and other threats because the armies were too busy to protect them? I know what the Stormcloaks are trying to do and why they think it’s worth it, but what in Oblivion are the Thalmor trying to accomplish that’s worth all that?!”
He’d been prepared for her anger. He’d known he would have to endure endless hostility when he accepted his assignment in Skyrim.
But he hadn’t been prepared for her voice to break.
How do I explain this in terms she’ll understand? How do I prove the rightness of Thalmor rule and the Talos ban, which so often require bloodshed to create progress, to someone who fights to prevent such bloodshed?
How do I explain the right of a superior people to rule, to another person of superior power who seems to care for lesser beings as if they were her own?
He drew a deep, bracing breath, trying to ignore the slight liquid shimmer in her piercing eyes. It was hard to believe that the small, soft Betmer in front of him had blood in her veins of an older, more powerful stock than his, but for all that the Dragonborn seemed to identify with people who were beneath his own, she herself wasn’t someone he could easily dismiss.
I don’t want her to walk away unconvinced like most Nords do. I want to make her understand. I want to KNOW my arguments are compelling enough to make an intelligent skeptic understand.
I’ll start with the most important part.
“When it comes to the worship of Talos, it’s true that some people have chosen to cause a great deal of trouble over a false human god. However, they fail to consider the long-term consequences of their actions. As I said before, the worship of Talos leads people astray from the true Divines.
“This can have implications long beyond their mortal lives, in addition to inviting divine retribution in this life. And every person who follows this heresy risks leading others astray, so it’s not a simple matter of leaving those individuals to face the consequences of their own poor choices.”
He’d hoped his words would mollify her. Instead, Kierska’s eyes went narrow, and her tail lashed so violently that it almost struck the walls.
“So you start wars, and you kidnap, torture and kill people, with confirmed negative consequences for the victims and their families, to prevent the theoretical effects of their worship on their afterlives and the theoretical possibility of angering the Divines?!
“What gives you the right to control what afterlife people go to, or to decide what the Divines are angry about and murder people for it, instead of letting the Divines speak for themselves?”
“Did you not say it yourself?” Ondolemar shot back. “Superiority comes with responsibility, including the responsibility to teach those less knowledgeable the error of their ways before those errors produce drastic consequences.”
“And how do you know those consequences will be more drastic than the ones you’re already dishing out?!” she demanded. “Can you prove it?”
“We-”
“Either you can’t prove it,” Kierska growled, barreling over his words with uncharacteristic impatience and taking an ominous step toward him, “in which case, you have no business enforcing it, or you can prove it, but the Thalmor would still rather use violence and fear instead of persuading people with logic!”
“There’s no POINT in using logic on people who will not listen to it!” he roared, echoing her one-step advance with his own.
Her voice rose to match his. “Then SHOW me your logic! Prove to me that you know for sure that the afterlife you’re saving people from by torturing them for their religion is worse than the torture itself, and that Talos worship will make the gods angry enough to do something worse than what you already do!
“And maybe, while you’re at it, prove that Talos isn’t a god, despite what his shrines and amulets imply. I may not like the humans’ murderous, thieving, slave-dealing maybe-god, but I also don’t like people being killed over something that isn’t even proven.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but his voice was drowned out by her roar. “And while you’re proving all that, maybe give me SOME reason to believe that Tamriel being ruled by the people responsible for all that torture and death wouldn’t just make things worse for everyone but the people who lick your boots!”
Ondolemar had been squeezing his cheese too tightly for too long, and it finally crumbled in his hand, in a way that felt appallingly symbolic. His chest was heaving, and the words that spilled through his mind felt dangerously inadequate.
We only want what’s best for Tamriel. And that requires Thalmor rule.
But if we cannot prove that the harm we did in pursuit of that goal was truly necessary, or that the end justifies the means… if I can’t convince her that the Thalmor are better than the Empire…“Different scales, same snake” is probably what she’ll say.
No… even proving that we’re better than the Empire might not be good enough. She’s set apart from both of them, judging both and finding both wanting. She isn’t weighing us against the Empire; she’s weighing our benefits against our costs.
But she’s listening. She wants to learn. And unlike the Nords, who walk away in disgust rather than probe for details and proof, she wants to understand. That means I have an opportunity to bring her to our side.
If I can convince her that the Thalmor are right, then this time the Dragonborn will be on our side instead of the Empire’s. Even the stubborn Nords might listen to her, a living piece of their cherished mythology.
If the Dragonborn chooses to align with our interests, and we guide her to her full potential, there’s a chance that the Thalmor could claim our rightful place, without the innocent bloodshed she so detests.
I just have to convince her that that path is worth pursuing.
The growing tension in the air warned him that he was spending too much time thinking about his answers, and too little time giving them.
I’m failing as a representative of the Thalmor. The jittery thought raced through his head, threatening to freeze his mind. I’m supposed to be reminding the locals of our power and superiority, not getting bowled over by questions I can’t answer! Think, Ondolemar, THINK! Remember your training!
But neither his training nor his experience in Skyrim had prepared him for this.
There was no force in Markarth as relentless and erosive as the curiosity of a Khajiit, slowly crumbling through the layers of his knowledge and eating its way toward a core whose contents he was starting to realize were hidden even to him.
He’d always accepted what he was taught. His Thalmor trainers, and the consequences of contradicting them, demanded it. And he’d always believed his elders when they said their superiority to the Empire was evidence of their right to rule.
An inquiry this deep, and a bar set this high, were an unfamiliar test – one he could not pass before time ran out.
He’d been silent for too long. He could sense her disengaging, see the dulling of her eyes as she mentally withdrew.
He wanted to pull her back. To reengage her, to get another chance to convince her. But she was already shaking her head.
“Maybe this isn’t the best time for this,” she said dully. “We’re tired, angry and frustrated, part of me wants to claw your face, and you just squashed your cheese.
“I’ll ask again tomorrow, when it isn’t so late, you’ve had a chance to think, and with any luck, we’ve both had at least a bit of sleep. Hopefully the homeowner doesn’t start throwing things again.”
Ondolemar wasn’t fond of excuses, but by now he was desperate enough to latch onto this one. Yes, that’s it – I’m just tired. And she caught me off guard. I just need time to rest and think, and then I’ll be able to answer her.
“Very well,” he replied. “I assume you know where the bedrooms are?”
“Bedrooms?”
He didn’t like the way she emphasized that ‘s’. “Yes,” he said slowly, irrational hope that she was just being tired and dense mixing with a hint of mischief, “where the beds are.”
Her eyebrow climbed, and she gave him an unimpressed, half-lidded stare. “You know that I know what a bedroom is. And I’m afraid ‘bedroom’ is a more applicable word, because there is only one. It’s this way.”
Wait – there’s only one and she’s leading me there, we’re going there together… “With more than one bed, I hope,” he noted as he followed her, and she shook her head without turning around.
“Nope.”
Oh, no. His fingertips dug into what was left of his cheese, and his footsteps faltered. Does that mean we’ll have to share a bed?
Her armor is covered in spikes, and I’m wearing a robe. If either of us moved, I’d get impaled in my sleep. Unless she took her armor off…
His mind stalled for a moment, then split itself in half and went racing off in two different directions.
She must have other clothes, right? She can’t sleep in that armor, and sleeping naked with me would be most inappropriate, so she’d better have other clothes.
I wonder what she looks like in them.
It doesn’t matter. A Mer of my superior breeding debasing himself with a Khajiit would be scandalous.
Though, she would be very soft and warm… And it’s been a long time since I’ve had positive physical contact of any kind…
No. She may be intelligent, relatable, and surprisingly understanding for a person who’s clearly not on the Thalmor’s side, but to throw myself at the first person who cares what I think and doesn’t spend our whole interaction wishing I would leave is beneath me.
She’s sleeping with her armor on, and I am sleeping somewhere else.
“Here it is.”
Her voice broke through his racing thoughts, and he stared at the bed in disgust. A rough wooden frame, with a straw mattress and bearskin blankets. Primitive, inelegant and uncomfortable, like almost everything in Skyrim.
At least it wasn’t made of rock, unlike many of the beds in this miserable city. But there was still the awkward matter of-
“You can sleep on that if you want,” Kierska derailed his thoughts again. “I’m not.”
“Oh?” That makes things slightly simpler, but now she’s got me curious. “Why not?”
“If we try to share a bed, I will probably stab you with my armor. And if I sleep in that bed, I’ll have nightmares about bears. I have a keen sense of smell, you know.”
“I see. It is easy to forget how much your people rely upon a sense that I myself seldom think about. Given the excessive use of dead predators, I imagine the local décor must be a problem for you.”
Her eyes squeezed shut, and her mouth flattened sourly. “You have no idea. One time, I woke up, saw a bear head looming over me, and was so startled that I yelled ‘FUS RO!’ to try to fend it off. It flew off the wall, bounced off the ceiling, and came down on my head.”
Laughter bubbled in his throat like a spring in a desert, and half of it escaped as he tried to decide whether or not to suppress it.
It was so seldom that he had a reason to laugh. And to his relief, when he looked at her face, she was grinning back.
At least she didn’t seem to hate him, even if she probably did hate the Thalmor as a whole.
I shouldn’t care, a corner of his mind reminded him. I accepted this assignment knowing I’d be hated by everyone around me, and I vowed not to let that dissuade me from my duties. Then why?… No. I’ll ponder that once she’s out of the room.
“Well,” he replied, keeping his voice deceptively smooth, “hopefully you can find an adequately bear-free resting place here. In the meantime, I bid you good night – or at least, as good as a night can be in a place such as this.”
She responded with a wry smile. “Good night. Sleep tight. Don’t let the falling bear heads bite.”
Another chuckle, another grin. And then she was gone, loping out of the room with that smooth, easy jog whose footfalls seemed almost too light for her size.
For all their animalistic traits, the Khajiit could be graceful creatures, when they weren’t collapsed on the street in a fit of moonsugar ecstasy.
Ondolemar carefully lowered himself onto the bed, grateful for the thick, stiff weave of his robe between his body and the straw.
A moment later, he realized it was still poking him, and after half a minute of uncomfortable squirming, he spread one of the bearskins over the brittle plant matter before lying down on top of it and pulling the too-small second blanket over himself.
And then, at last, his mind was free to latch onto the question that was gnawing the edges of his thoughts. Why does the thought of failing to convince her bother me so much? The tactical advantages of persuading her are clear, but the thought of falling short in her eyes… bothers me more than it should.
Is it because she’s impressed me? I suppose that could be part of it – this land provides so few opportunities speak with someone on my level, who actually cares what I have to say and who understands that Talos isn’t the hero his followers paint him as.
It’s frustrating to fail in front of her. Disenchanting the amulet, disabling the altar and breaking Molag Bal’s hold on this house, adequately explaining why the Thalmor’s actions are right when Talos’ similar actions were not, and why our goals are worth the harm we’ve done… I’ve already failed too many times.
If I failed to convince her due to her inability to understand a clear and convincing explanation, I could dismiss her and move on. But I couldn’t give that explanation, and I need to remedy that.
It’s not just for her sake. It’s for my own. I need to know the Thalmor are right. I need to be able to prove it – not just to her, but to myself. And to anyone in the future who asks.
I need to know my truth can stand, even when it’s scrutinized.
~*~
Carnaril’s fingers gripped the bridge of his nose, while his other hand clenched on the handle of his mace. “You idiot,” he muttered, the weapon swaying in his restless grasp as if his arm was itching to use it. “I should kill you on general principle.”
Ondolemar’s slow, swimming mind floundered through a blur of pain and thirst, like a dying fish trying to find the words that had dug his grave.
He’d thought he’d spoken carefully. He’d recited the facts, the conversations, and his strategic, religious and political motives… had he said something about his conflicted feelings, his scandalous thoughts, or his dangerous, heretical doubts?
Had he revealed his admiration for someone who might be their enemy?
He couldn’t remember. Could barely think. All he could do was force air through his parched throat and into his broken chest, and try to stay alive. “Is there… a problem,” he gasped, “…with trying to recruit… the Dragonborn?”
“An endeavor that’s unlikely to succeed, considering her history with the Thalmor and her current feelings regarding us.”
“She is… willing to accept… reality… even if she doesn’t… like it. If we can… prove the value… of our cause… and the rightness… of our rule…”
“And do you truly believe that outcome was ever likely?” Carnaril demanded. The mace arced in an ominous swoop around his hand, and Ondolemar tried and failed not to flinch. “Or is it more likely that she has planted doubts in your mind, which could grow into treachery?”
“I simply intend… to examine… the evidence… to ensure that… any skeptics… can be convinced of… our position.” The end of that sentence didn’t feel right, but he couldn’t tell what was wrong with it. Could barely even remember what he’d just said.
“Skeptics like yourself?”
“Skeptics like her – obviously.”
That last, exasperated word was a mistake – the blow to the side of his head made that clear. The world blurred into darkness, Carnaril’s voice faded into the distance, and once again, the ruthless grasp of healing magic dragged his mind back to his tormentor.
Like being bludgeoned off a cliff and then hauled up by my throat, he thought bitterly, forcing himself not to invite further misery by glaring at the torturer. At least my head is a bit clearer now.
“Now,” Carnaril said wearily, as if convinced that he was wasting his time but wanting to be thorough, “you’re going to drink some water so you can stop rasping like a dying crow, and then you’re going to tell me what happened when you and this troublesome cat woke up.”
Author's note:
That moment when you're researching TES lore, and you realize worshiping Talos is kind of like the TES version of white people creating and protecting statues of mass murderous racists.
I still don't agree with religious persecution, especially when it's as violent as the stuff the Thalmor do, but I can see why they're pissed off, especially given that some Altmer might be old enough to have firsthand memories the Numidium's attack. Much of what the Dominion did to the Empire, the Empire did to the Dominion and Elsweyr first.
I'm disappointed that Skyrim didn't explore that aspect of their motives more instead of turning Tiber Septim's victims into mostly flat cartoon villains. (They did the same thing with the Forsworn and the Falmer... I'm noticing a pattern here.) They did such a good job with the Stormcloaks and Imperials, it's a pity they didn't give the same care to other major factions.
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