We emerge back at Vastarie’s tower near the Ayleid ruin whose name has too many L’s in it, almost stepping on Ilara’s tail in the process. A quick round of apologies, and Ilara slinks off to find a warm spot to curl up in while the rest of us head downstairs. Vastarie wants to rest for a moment and get her bearings about herself before we head back to Vulkhel Guard.

“Fighting him again after so long brings back some unpleasant memories,” Vastarie says. “While I was trapped down in the ruins, I spent a good deal of time entertaining myself over speculation on what was happening in the outside world, from the plausible to the ridiculous. Mannimarco becoming a god fell squarely into the ‘ridiculous’ pile, to be concluded by his defeat at the hands of Sheogorath.”

“You imagined that?” Abnur asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, yes,” Vastarie says. “Sadly, I did not have access to any writing materials at the time, so you can be spared the details. You try being trapped in a ruin for a century without thinking of ignoble ends for Mannimarco.”

“I see your point,” Abnur says. “I was already thinking of ignoble ends for him simply by being trapped for weeks in a tower whilst being forced to carefully inspect overflowing crates of soul gems.”

The situation devolves into fisticuffs when Lyris demands of Abnur where Sai Sahan is, and Abnur admits that he doesn’t actually know where Sai Sahan is specifically, and seems to think that his knowledge was why I went to rescue him.

“You must think very poorly of me if you didn’t believe I’d come to the rescue of any complete stranger that asks me for help,” I say.

Eran snorts in amusement. “Anyone. Even if he’s in the middle of doing something else, he’ll drop everything just because someone asked him to find their dog.”

“That’s not an exaggeration,” Merry adds. “That actually happened. That, in fact, actually happened just a few days ago.”

“I see,” Abnur drawls. “I suppose I should not mock the blind heroism when it benefited me. We seem to be missing the old man here, though. Where is he?”

“Holed up in a cave like some sort of bum,” I say. “I don’t know if there was anything important about that specific cave of if we can convince him to come somewhere less damp and more convenient.”

We (by which I mean Abnur, Vastarie, Lyris and me; the others feel no need to crowd into the damp cave) portal back to Vulkhel Guard and return to the Harborage, where the Prophet is waiting. Abnur repeats his report and Lyris refrains from dislocating his jaw this time. And that’s when the Prophet decides that he has some sort of secret he wants to reveal.

“I am Varen Aquilarios,” announces the Prophet.

“Who?” Vastarie asks me.

I shrug. “Beats me.”

“Did… you not read anything about recent Imperial history?” the Prophet (Varen, I guess?) asks. “Or remember what I told you about before?”

“That name is about five syllables too long for me to remember,” I say.

“I’m the former Emperor. The one whose hubris resulted in the weakening of the liminal barriers and led to Molag Bal’s invasion of Nirn. I’m responsible for all the chaos and death across Tamriel these past few years.”

“Uh… no?” I say. “I’m pretty sure that, unless you were somehow masterminding everything telepathically, most of it really isn’t. Hell, a lot of it isn’t even Manny’s fault, for that matter. Most of the problems on Auridon stemmed from an overly ambitious worshipper of Mehrunes Dagon.”

“Nonetheless, he would not have had the opprtunity to commit the terrible crime against the world that he did if it weren’t for my actions,” says the overly self-loathing former Emperor. “I know you must be angry. You must hate me for it.”

“No, I don’t ‘must’,” I say. “And anyway, it’s not like you were messing around with the Heart of Lorkhan or anything.”

He clears his throat. “The red diamond in the Amulet of Kings is a drop of blood from the Heart of Lorkhan.”

I stare at him incredulously. “That red diamond? Oh for fuck’s sake.” I put my face in my palm. “Are you fucking serious?”

“Now do you hate me?”

“No,” I say. “I think you’re a bleeding idiot for even touching that thing.”

“I told you it was a bad idea,” Abnur says aside to him.

“Then you realize how imperative it is for us to find it,” the pointlessly secretive old man says.

I recoil in horror. “Find it? No, that thing should be left alone and buried somewhere.”

“Would that we could, but we must not allow Mannimarco to get his hands upon it.”

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

I stare at him for a long moment, then look aside to Abnur. “You said Manny was trying to attain godhood.”

“Indeed,” Abnur says.

“Fuck,” I utter.

“I don’t know that that amulet alone would be sufficient to attain apotheosis,” Vastarie muses. “But someone as clever and ruthless as Mannimarco might just find a way to do it.”

“Keeping that thing out of his hands is imperative, yes,” I say, taking a deep breath. “But I’m not rescuing Lyris’ friend whose name I already forgot again just because of information he might have anymore than I did Abnur. I’ll rescue him because it’s the right thing to do. Just find him and point me in the right direction and I’ll hit everything in between.”

“I can respect that,” the guy who gives people stupid titles says. “We will need to divine his location.”

There’s a bit of discussion as to where, precisely, they should be doing their divining from. Vastarie eventually convinces them that she’s got a perfectly good house, albeit one that’s still kind of a mess at the moment, and she has a bit of a personal stake in Manny not fucking everything up. Abnur, for his part, is also entirely too dignified to want to loiter around a damp cave for who-knows-how-long. Finally, the old man reluctantly acquiesces, and we portal back to Grahtwood after gathering everything up. Seriously, why had he even picked that spot in the first place? I can understand at first wanting to hide because we had no other allies at the time, but it’s totally unnecessary.

“My cave was perfectly adequate,” Varen says, sinking into a dusty armchair. “A sense of destiny permeated the air.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, there’s no destiny in…” I throw up my hands. “Why do I even bother to argue about that?”

“You, too, will fulfill your myriad destinies in time, Vestige,” Varen says.

“Ugh. I don’t care if you were the former Emperor or any of that, but I’m so very tired of hearing about prophecies and destiny. And I’d also prefer not to be called ‘Vestige’, as if the most important thing about me is that I don’t have a soul.”

“Which name would you prefer, then?” Varen wonders.

“Yes, what is your actual name, ‘Black Wolf’?” Abnur asks wryly.

“Would you like to hear some titles to rival yours, most of which aren’t important anymore?” I retort.

“Oh, be my guest,” Abnur says. “This should be interesting.”

“Very well, then,” I say, folding my arms across my chest. “I am Indoril Nerevar Mora, Moon-and-Star, sometime Hortator of the Six Great Houses and Great Ashkhan of the Velothi, King of the Chimer and First Councilor of Resdayn.” I pause, gazing at his incredulous expression. “Not that literally any of that matters anymore, since my so-called friends betrayed and murdered me, and sacrificed me to fucking Molag Bal.”

“I… see,” Abnur finally says. “I will admit, that was… not what I was expecting. Here I had been about to bemoan how my own titles and lands, even my life, are forfeit with my betrayal of Mannimarco, but it would seem that you have lost far more than I.” He frowns. “You’ve been in Coldharbour for thousands of years? How are you still sane?”

“He’s not,” Eran pipes in from across the room.

“Completely batshit,” Merry agrees.

“Thankfully, I’ve been on Nirn long enough that Coldharbour is largely becoming a blur at this point,” I say. “In this era, in the interests of my former friends—you know, the ones who are are over there on the other side of Tamriel pretending to be gods—not finding out I’m on Nirn again and trying to kill me in such a way that might stick more this time, I’m going by the name Neralion, a common Altmer agent in the employ of Queen Ayrenn. The only ones who know the truth are the people in this house, Queen Ayrenn herself, and her spymaster. And a few mages who helped me out shortly after I escaped Coldharbour.”

“I will keep your secrets, then,” Abnur says, and looks around at the building some more. “This place is a great improvement over that cave, although it could use some work.”

“Indeed,” Vastarie agrees. “I was not planning on receiving guests already, and have not had long to clean up the place, I’m afraid. With the help of Nerevar, I was recently able to escape from being trapped behind a ward in a nearby ruin due to betrayal by a servant of the God of Schemes.”

“He does quite a bit of rescuing,” Merry says.

“We will need to bring together the Five Companions again,” Varen says. “And minus the traitorous Mannimarco this time, you ought to be the final member.”

“I’m flattered that you want me to join your party, but I already have one,” I say.

“It has been ordained by prophecy. ‘The soulless one will become the brightest of five stars…’”

“Oh, I guess that one’s accurate enough, then,” I say. “If rather vague. I mean, there’s a lot of Soul-Shriven in Coldharbour. At least some of them have to have wound up in groups of five.”

“So you’ll join?”

“No, I already have my own five companions,” I say, gesturing in the general direction of my friends. “I mean, four other than me. We’re pretty tight.”

Abnur snorts softly in amusement. “You take things far too literally sometimes, Varen. You thought you should have been preordained to be Emperor, but now you believe that even this prophecy is talking about you. You’ve been breathing in destiny for so long you can no longer see what’s in front of you in more ways than one.”

“You may be right, old friend,” Varen says. “There are things about this one that even I cannot make sense of. He is a puzzle, and not one that is mine to decipher.”

“That’s me,” I say. “Ruling king of confusion since the First Era.”

Abnur looks over toward my companions. “I believe I missed a round of introductions here, as well. These are your associates, I take it? Hopefully adequately competent ones?”

Eran says, “We’re usually pretty good at keeping him from doing anything too crazy or wandering off after shiny things when there’s something actually urgent that needs to be done.”

I attempt to give a round of introductions, but Eran interrupts me to give people’s longer names. “Eranamo, Merormo, Gelur, and Ilara-daro.” Upon hearing that, Ilara’s eyes widen in surprise. I hadn’t realized Eran had actually read my book on Khajiit honorifics.

“And none of you care that Varen is the former Emperor, either?” Abnur asks.

“Not particularly,” Merry says amid the others shaking their heads. “I’ve been meeting a surprising number of historical figures lately. One upstart human warlord doesn’t make much difference to me.”

“I would protest that description,” Varen says, “but in hindsight, it does seem like that’s all I truly was, doesn’t it.”

“The way I hear it, there’s a lot of so-called ‘Emperors’ in Cyrodiil these days,” Eran says. “Rumors in Elden Root say that at any given time, there are six people claiming to be Emperor. There is one undead Argonian by the name of Dies-Quite-Often who becomes ‘Emperor’ for an hour or so a few times a week.”

Abnur groans. “I would dearly like the situation in Cyrodiil to become stable again. Theoretically, my daughter Clivia is supposed to be in charge, but she’s just a puppet for Mannimarco and holds no regard for her own father, and she clearly cannot do the slightest thing to keep order there or to prevent lizards with foolish names from briefly dancing upon the Ruby Throne.”