life after oblivion, the dragon rampent

Seren found herself at yet another function, with many of her close friend dead, and no real purpose she felt adrift. Some one asked her a question, she answered politely and moved away as soon as she could, moving in to a quiet hallway to sit down and get off her bejewelled shoes.

It seemed that there was a never ending party in her honour. Hero of Bravill, Burma, Chadenhall, the champion of the empire, it no longer mattered, she was welcome and respected everywhere, yet she was the only one who didn’t feel like celebrating or so it seamed. She often sought refuge in cloud ruler castle until Martins sent faded from the sheets and her grief at the memories threatened to choke her. Then she sought refuge with the count of skingrad whose own quiet melancholy over the loss of his much beloved wife reflected her own. She finaly told him about her mother, a witch, how she was hunted, how Seren was raied by the witch hunter to hate witches, her shamefull secret.

Without really thinking she headed to where it all had ended, although in those dizzying moments once the atmosphere had settled martin had told her that then was where it all would begin, and the future was in her hands. A new era, without an emperor, without martin.

Easy for him to say that she thought bitterly. The emperor who would never rule, her grief was tainted with bitterness caused by the suspicion that Martin had opted for the easy way out.

The city guard nodded as she passed by. He looked surprised and a little embarrassed when she caught him checking her body out. Usually she ran around in lose shirts, and leather leggings; the tightly corseted formal gown was quite a difference.

Finally she reached the temple, the dragon’s grate body emerging from the collapsed dome roof, illuminated in the silver moon light, and the sign of the lord twinkled high above them.

A priest came through the heavy doors, holding one open for Seren to pass, he seemed to recognise her.

‘Ah the champion!’

‘Yes?’

‘We have been wondering when you would visit?’

‘Oh, well I have been busy…’ Seren realised she was making up excuses, she had been avoiding the tomb, this was the first time she had returned since she had stood watch that first night.

‘The avatar will grant you your wishes may be?

Seren sighed, ‘I don’t come to ask for favours, or to pray father.’

‘No, what then?’

‘I just want to talk to him, and may be he will listen.’ She smiled enigmatically back at him as she closed the door.

Seren moved towards the large statue, noting the piles of rubble and debris had been cleared away. The statue was so…. It was if it was still alive, as if its flanks should be moving, heaving with breath, though they were not it was just the illusion of the shadows.

She looked up, a dragon rampant, frozen as it let out its cry of triumph, its final death tole.

Seren was perhaps the only person who could look upon this sight and was not overwhelmed with awe. Instead she was filled with a deep sadness. She crossed the floor, and climbed on the plinth to touch the clawed foot, cold stone, and a fitting tomb for the emperor who had fought against and triumphed over oblivion

She sank down, to ley across its talonned foot, tears slipping unchecked down her cheeks as she mourned the lost life’s, the people she had met, befriended, loved only to have them killed. The man who had given her her real name back. She really didn’t give a rats ass if he was the emperor, or that there would never be an emperor, she missed the man, her Martin. She let out a howl of pain as she continued to cry, and her grief bled in to anger.

‘You stupid fool,’ she cried, ‘I bet you didn’t consider what would happen to us once you went and got yourself killed. The hero’s supposed to die not the emperor, every story ends like that, you were meant to survive, you took the easy way out you bastard!’

She heat a low rumble, something powerful and masculine from high above her, the rumble she realised was most defiantly a chuckle. She sat up quickly only to feel the inanimate foot beneath her serge with warmth the flex. She scuttled back as the elegant dragons head stooped down to blink one fierce red eye at her; she might have been scared if it wasn’t for the reptilian smile on the winged titans face.

‘Now that is not fair Seren.’ A voice echoed in her mind, Seren stood up and sniffed diffidently.

‘You were scared to rule, so you took the easy way out, you could have found a way to beet him without been killed, you ran from your responsibilitys.’

‘Well that something we both share then.’ He retorted.

Seren thumped the dragon soundly on the nose, but in the process did far more damage to her hand than the impregnable dragon scales. She let out a curse and danced away, clutching her injured limb as the creature let out another long rumbling laugh.

‘Bloody stupid, bastard, pig headed……’

As Seren was concentrating on her hand, and calling him every fowl name she knew she failed to notice that the laugh had become somewhat more human in timber. So when she cared to turn around it was martin that stood before her in dragon scale armour.

‘Oh Azura, I’m drunk and dreaming this!’ she sobbed.

Martin smiled, and shook his head, before catching her injured hand, laying an open mouthed kiss upon the wound which stung sufficiently to convince Seren she really was awake.

‘Seren, look at me.’ His voice was not completely as she had remembered; there was now a throbbing power behind it. And she saw that his eyes now held a swirling multitude of reds. ‘Your not martin.’ She said pulling away from the creature.

The creature sighed, ‘I am, yet….’ He looked at the floor where martin had smiled at her before he smashed the amulet, ‘I joined with the divine that day.’ It was not an explanation.

Seren now worried that this miracle would be striped from her, launched herself in to his arms. Martin chuckled again, ‘Oh, Seren.’ He carefully took her hand and to prove his divinity carefully licked the wound, laying it completely healed in its wake.

‘Now what were you saying about me?’ he smiled.

@only that you were a coward for leaving.’ She smiled in to his chest clutching at the smooth plate of his armour.

‘I didn’t get given much of a choice if you remember little one.’ He kissed the top of her hear, ‘I’m hear to set things right.’

‘You have returned to me?’

‘Yes.’

She looked up in to his face, and saw the tell tale twitch in the muscles of his jaw, she drew back a little. ‘That’s not the whole story is it?’

‘No, I can return only for tonight.’

With that Seren broke from his arms and stalked away. ‘So you haven’t returned to rule, your just going to abandon us once again?!’

‘I have no place among the living, not now. You know that Seren, that was my fate.’ She said sadly watching her angry pacing.

‘And what of Tamrial’s fate Martin Septim!’

‘I had put her in your capable hands lady Dawn-star, my empress.’ He replied and crossed his arms.

‘My hands! Are you crazy? I was not born to rule Tamrial, I was born a witches’ daughter!’

‘And yet you helped defeat Oblivion, more than helped.’ The man tried to reason with her. Seren sniffed again as she tried to hold back her brimming eyes.

‘I was not born to rule, it’s not my fate!’

‘The gods think otherwise. Have you ever wondered why even in the direst circumstances you alone survive Seren?’

‘Luck.’

‘You once told me that you thought the gods had a plan for you, and for me. Well may be you were right. Now you accuse me from running from my fate, yet you seem to be running away from your own!’

Seren looked at him unbelieving, hurt, angry, yet a little deflated. He approached her cautiously and wiped a tear from her cheek with a gauntleted thumb. She sighed, her eyes were like molten silver and his breath caught, he had forgoten how lovely she was from an arms length away.

‘I dont want to be a pawn for the god's anymore, anyway the councillors would never choose me as empress. How by the nines am I supposed to do anything? She looked questionably at the demi god.

‘You shall raise my child.’ He finally answered.

Seren growled, she sure as hell wasn’t pregnant, so…that meant… A familiar angry spark danced dangerously in her eyes. ‘Don’t tell me you have a secret bastard as well!’

Even the demi god coward in the face of this woman jealous wroth. Seren was fully inclined to slap his divine face all that way back to the darkness it had come from. But as her hand flew through the air he caught her wrist.

‘My child is not yet sired, this is the reason I have returned, the gods have allowed me to return!’

With that said his face swam above hers, his red eyes devouring her face, before his lips descended upon hers in a possessive kiss. And in that brief contact, the moment there skin touched, his memories washed through her, doubling her vision of events.

She saw his shame at sending her in to the mouth of Oblivion again and again, his relief when she returned safe. The night he had watched her fever ridden body, praying that she made it through the night. Tending her wounds once she received the amulet, there very first kiss, there very final kiss, and all the kisses he wished he had give her, all the things left unsaid, ‘Seren, I love you.’ That last battle, how she looked, beautiful and blood splattered, attacking the huge demon lord with no hope of defeating it like a hawk pitched against a bare. That’s when he knew only the greatest of all sacrifices could save them all; he would die so they all could live. He knew that all she wanted was to be by his side ‘I love you Seren, but I have no choice.’

All this Seren saw in the beat of her heart, all he intended was to see her again. He was concerned that she had not stepped up to the role he had left for her, so he would help her with her destiny crating a new line, a line revitalised with the divine blood, to be forged with her courage, loyalty and strength.

He pulled away, and Seren sank down on the edge of the platform, her mind trying to comprehend all that she had seen. Her glimpse at part of the divine plan almost drove her out of her very mind. Martin allowed her a moment to take it all in.

Finally the demi god knelt in front of her, so that there eyes were completely level. Seren found it imposable to avoid his crimson gaze as she felt his metal gloved hands graze down her arms. Seren let out a breath she didn’t know she had been holding. For once she had no idea what to say. Yes he was martin, but he was something else entirely also, by accepting his offer, it would be irrevocable.

‘Say yes,’ martin murmured thickly.

‘What?’

‘I won’t rape you, but I will seduce you if I’m forced to. Im sory you dont have a choice in this, But I would rather you wanted me as you did.’

Seren swallowed hard, and heard her throat click dry and loud in the heavy silence. She bit her lips trying to find the words, and she could find none that expressed what she wanted to say. She could practically feel his burning stare, and so she lent forwards pressing her rose petal lips against his.