Martin Septim is Dead

There was a time when I had hoped Tamriel might have been led by an Emperor again, but somewhere in my heart I knew that our quest – no less than saving Tamriel itself – would claim the life of the last member of the royal line. While I knew Martin Septim for but a brief time, the scant few months that felt more like years meant that I knew him better than any soul still living. I will resist being overcome by the sentiment, but he was a friend and I will mourn him as I would any other fellow to fall at my side, Emperor or no.

So the man is dead and his influence will remain like the statue of He-As-Dragon. He will no longer influence Tamriel; will play no future role in holding the kingdom together. It’s for Martin no longer that I worry. Now it is the fate of the rest of the Empire that I dread.

Mehrunes Dagon may have been defeated but it would be folly to consider all threats to the Empire expunged. Bandits crawl across the belly of the land preying on travelers while horrible creatures too numerous to count infest the wilds of the world and spring up in new places as fast as we cut them down. Meanwhile the fragile alliance holding together civilization as we know it is in but tatters. The provinces will begin to turn on each other soon if a strong leader fails to emerge, mark my words. High Chancellor Ocato is an impotent politician and a weakling. He will not hold the Empire together.

The people need a leader and it must be someone who fought these past months but who unlike myself has come out into the light of victory whole. The leader needed now is someone most worthy of looking up to, for as it is now they have no one. Indeed, they look to me for guidance, as if by mere proximity to royal blood I have somehow absorbed some! I can assure you, any Septim blood spilled has landed on our enemies and not on I. So I am not cut out to be that kind of leader. My battles fought in the service of Martin Septim have left me with no taste for those things needing doing now. I have seen and done too much, and travelled roads too far to be the Breton I once was.

I avoid walking among the people now, and stay holed up high in my tower, away from their cheers and congratulations. After that day in the Temple of the One I retreated to this sanctuary in the arcane university, unable to bear venturing out. I shuttered myself away for two whole weeks, having to remind myself to eat, such was my desperate and pitiable state. When I am spotted on the street now, the people of the imperial city crowd 'round and press in against me, begging to be told what it was like to stand in the temple on that day and see those things that I saw. I cannot bear to look into their faces.

It seems my hopes for the Empire have died along with Martin Septim.

Frank Bilders is Dead

The water was cool and refreshing on my hot skin. I was dirty and sweaty, my clothes stained with grime and blood, some my own, some other peoples. It felt bad to be this clean and refreshed after what I'd just done, and to add to my feeling of guilt it was all premeditated.

Frank Bilders is now dead. I killed him with his own sidearm – a somewhat tarnished .50 caliber desert eagle pistol. I tell you this detail not because it’s important (although the image of that weapon will be forever stamped in my mind) but to distract from the painful sense of culpability I feel for his murder.

I mean, I knew Frank stood a good chance of getting hurt but I had hoped that something with the missions execution would go lethally awry, saving me from having to get any more blood on my hands. Every time we work together the man seemed to take another bullet wound. ‘Heh, just another scar to add to the collection’, he would say. Always focused on the job at hand, was Frank. ‘There’s some bugger out there who cut me out of a deal, and I want him dead’, he’d say in his Northern Irish swagger. No need for a reason, or context - Frank wanted something done, and you were going to do it for him.

When the time came, and he was lying on the ground writhing in pain, the situation hadn’t really forced my hand. I had plenty of syrettes, there was time and I could have saved him, but I wanted him out of the way. So instead of his healing his wounds with medicine I took out his own gun and shot him in the mouth. I hesitated, mind you– I very nearly couldn’t pull it off. But I did, and his body is now lying on a road somewhere in Sefapane, gathering flies and a layer of the all pervasive red dust. And I’m swimming up the river. Getting clean. Getting refreshed. There is no music, no victory anthem. Just the water and the noise my body makes as I move through it.

And Frank Bilders is dead.