I hear Rikke and her troops at the gate.
She should've left.
I hear a crack of lightning and a roar of surprise. I try to shout, to tell Odahviing to flee, but I can't even move my mouth.
I listen, then, in silence, smelling the charred bodies of the Ironline and the Legion. Odahviing is too brash, too brave.
Like me.
And like me, he's not strong enough.
For some time, I hear nothing but the wind and the faint crackling of the dying flames. And then footsteps. Jo'rabi calmly walks back into view and sits down in front of me.
"Now we can talk." He waves his hand, absently, and I feel the paralysis recede from my mouth.
He sighs. "You said you know who I am but it means nothing. I am no one. Just a counterpoint to your presence, an amalgamation of everything bidden toward the realization of your end."
The sky darkens and snow begins to fall. Because I couldn't be miserable in Windhelm without it being cold, I suppose. "We're alike in a lot of ways," I say. "Both slaves at one point. Mistreated. Abused. Wanting to punish the world for what it did to us."
He shrugs, looking at the paving stones. "For a time, I felt as you describe. My original masters, who named me, sold me into the cold oblivion of Skyrim, where I, only a young boy, found myself in the hands of a cruel orphanmaster, a woman consumed with hatred. Aware of her weakness, she took revenge on her charges, including me. I could have killed her, I suppose; I had wrecked the pirates' fleet because I had grown tired of them. But these were the first of my kind I had been around. I wanted to see what they were like. In time, she came to amuse me. Her frailty. Her pettiness. I set fire to one of the other children to see how she would react. She was angry that I had drawn attention to her, and sold me, in turn, to a moth priest visiting from the Empire.
"His cruelty was different. Ignorant. Unaware. There was no conflict in his mind as he used me to his satisfaction, even while taking great care to school me in the ways of his order. I delayed killing him for the same reasons as before; I was curious. But one day, he bade me be present for what he rightly suspected would be his final reading of an Elder Scroll, before the blindness took him. The scroll concerned the Cult of the Ancestor Moth. More interestingly, it concerned me. And not for any great purpose. Just a passing mention of my fates, most of which involved dying, moderately old, alone in the Tower. Friendless and confused. I didn't accept that.
"I entered the archives unbidden that night and began to tear open every scroll I found. They seared my mind, screaming at me with their million possibilities. I couldn't stop to finish any of them. Even as I began one, it would seem to me endless and meandering, and I would toss it aside for another. Even as the guards attempted to accost me, and I wove magics to deflect them, I continued to search the scrolls for some kind of meaning. Some pattern to guide the world as I saw it."
"Did you find it?" I ask.
He looks at me. "The pattern is chaos. This, and all times, and all futures, are destined for chaos. An endless collision of particles, making and unmaking dreams and songs and stories. For months, I hid, my mind burning with what I had learned. And I had learned so much. I forget nothing, and so forgot nothing, and eternity lay open to me. And I accepted it. My life to that point, a piece of humanity tossed from one master to another, now had meaning. I was part of the noise, the grand cacophonous symphony of competing scores. And I remained in that knowledge for some time...until I discerned your presence."
I can swear those gray eyes are actually watching me. "Your echoing, deafening absence from it all. You, and your kind, threatened the pattern."
"For a moth priest," I say, "you weren't taught very well. Dragons aren't apart from the scrolls. We still have fates, too. They're just...bigger. More complicated."
He growls. "Random chance ill-supports the notion that the scrolls I perused all happened to leave out mention of your futures, Dovahkiin. If you follow the scrolls, why does your fate elude me?"
Even as I say it, I realize it's true. "Maybe that's because there is nothing. You don't see me in any of the futures because I'm not in any of those futures."
Jo'rabi takes a long, deep breath of almost palpable satisfaction. "So you finally acknowledge that you must be ended."
"I didn't say that," I say, staring him down. "You haven't killed me yet, because you won't. And you can't. You say you're just a disinterested hand of fate, restoring order. But I think you're angrier than you admit. I can see that burning in your eyes, and hear it in your breath. You want to see the world burnt to the ground for what it did to you, but won't admit it, because if you actually went and did it, you'd be just like everything else: an effect with a cause. So you used me as a pretext for marching up here and throwing Skyrim back into chaos. So you won't kill me because...you just won't. It's not in your future."
"Then we remain here for eternity, orbiting each other at the center of the maelstrom, unwilling to sink, while the world falls apart around us."
I'm quiet for a moment, thinking it through. An idea is working its way through my mind. I don't really like it, but I know he will. "I've got a better idea. Show me Serana and I'll tell you."
He's silent for almost five minutes. I wonder if I've misjudged everything, misjudged him, and if he really will just kill me now. But then he nods. "You have accepted the way of things, Dovahkiin. Very well."
There's a flash, and then Serana is next to me. I want to lunge at her, embrace her, but remember I'm still trapped by Jo'rabi's magic, just as she is. "Where were you?" I ask, trying to steady my voice.
"With him," she says. She looks tired. "Right in front of you at times. Hidden from sight and sound. You were so close, once, I could have breathed on you if not for the spell keeping me bound." She looks at Jo'rabi and her eyes flash fire, but then her gaze returns to me, softening. Worried. "I heard that whole conversation. What are you planning? What are you going to do?"
Jo'rabi actually laughs. I think he's figured it out.
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