Dragonborn Saga

Chapter 773: The Night Heir Prophecy

"Mother! How… Why are you with him?"

The blood in Serana’s veins turned to glacial ice as her gaze darted between the two figures before her, as if they were two stars that should have existed in entirely different constellations.

Her breath hitched, and the words clawed their way out of her throat, each syllable a fragile, trembling thing.

"What... what is the meaning of this?" she croaked, her face in utter shock, painted in hues of paleness not even a Nord vampire would achieve on their skin palette.

"Serana, my daughter, I have missed you truly," Valerica spoke in a voice that was cold and distant, not just because of the frozen corners of this ancient chamber, but with a magic that had lingered for hundreds of years on these walls.

"Mother!" Serana called back, her voice a mix of sadness, hopelessness, and anger, as she switched the tone she used and recognized the fatal error she had committed. "Valerica, what are you doing standing beside that man?"

The one to reply this time was Harkon himself, her aloof and distant monster of a father:

"Serana, don’t be so hard on your mother." He spoke softly, yet no hint of kindness or remorse came from his voice, "She has been through much, and you are going through much as well. It seemed like an opportunity for our family to converse without outsiders interfering."

No matter how much he spoke, even if he were to sing the ballad of Ragnar the Red, Serana would not even turn to look at his face, as her focus was just on Valerica, with whom she hoped she could at least have some chance of bonding.

"What do you want?" Serana asked, her voice cold, hostility ever growing in her eyes, and a look of bitterness clear on the twists and twitches of her face.

"To speak," Valerica replied, and a smile formed on her face, "You have always been a good listener, daughter, a better student than any I have taught, and one day I knew you would surpass me, your master."

A stark contrast to Harkon, Valerica was warm and smiling, happy and full of life, traits that are hard to find in a vampire.

"Are you kidding me?"

Still, Serana was even more revolted by the sight she could not withstand, almost wanting to throw a tantrum, but knowing that she was at a disadvantage as there was little she could do, she took the secular approach of observing before acting, just as her mother had always taught her.

"That is nothing but the truth, Serana. You have surpassed me, you have surpassed your father, you have surpassed any other vampire in history, even Lamae, whom you cling to as your new motherly figure; even the Daedra will feel nothing but fear and greed towards what you have achieved. You have outsmarted us all, and with what? A single infant forming in your womb?"

And here came the silence, the shock, the fear, the dreadful sensation of a crisis drawing near. "Why" and "How" were the two ends of a spectrum of thoughts that kept ringing back and forth in Serana’s head like an alarm.

"What do you mean?" Serana asked, her words struggling to form, "It is only… a child. Half a vampire, half a man."

"I told you, didn’t I?" Harkon spoke, his cold eyes fixed on Serana, freezing the sensation around her heart like the cold grip of winter, "She has no idea what she has done. Not even the Gods can see this one coming."

"What do you mean?" Serana was fully aggravated, losing her cool at the mere sensation of concern regarding her child, "Speak, damn you."

"You said half a vampire, half a man, Serana, but you are sorely mistaken." Valerica turned to speak; to torment Serana was akin to a cold slap of reality, "You may be birthing half a vampire, but the other half is no man, is no mortal either."

"An ancient prophecy, a romance tale for us vampires, so cruel and so... far from our reach," Harkon spoke, a sliver of emotion betraying his stone-cold face as he gazed away from Serana, closing his eyes and dreaming of the fantasy, before opening them again and gazing back at his daughter with the coldest of gazes.

"The Night Heir, half a vampire, half a god."

Valerica’s declaration formed nothing more than a frown on Serana’s face, as she then turned the other way, calming her mind, thinking, rethinking, and making conclusions.

"So you are saying that, just because the father of my child is the Dragonborn whose soul is divine, my child will be this new twisted prophecy you two are now bonding over, this… Night Heir?"

Ridicule, not an emotion alien to the deep bond of a parent and a child. When a parent grows old and loses some of their sense of the world, falls out of fashion, or is not up to date with the latest happenings of the world, children are always the first to show ridicule. However, that grey in their hair, those wrinkles on their skin, and those calm smiles of knowing how immature and pure their child still is, speak volumes of experience and tomes of history repeating itself, just in a new fashion. R̃ÅŊỌΒЕṨ

"Sadly, daughter, it is not what you think," Valerica said calmly.

"It isn’t?" Serana retorted, still.

"Jon Dare may be the Dragonborn of prophecy, but even if he becomes a god the next day, his seed in your womb was sown with mortality. A god does not reproduce, after all," Valerica spoke.

"Then?"

"He may have been a conduit, a catalyst, but you brought the divine into the equation you two formed together: Sithis on one end, as you became Listener to the Dark Brotherhood, and Lamae Bal on the other, as you switched your allegiance of blood to hers. And just like that, the Elder Scroll of the Sun had a new prophecy recorded."

"An Elder Scroll?" Serana questioned what she heard and looked at her mother intently, "Of the Sun? Not of Blood?"

"Yes, daughter, The Elder Scroll the Sun," Valerica replied with a satisfied smile, knowing now that her daughter was no longer pushing back against such curiosity.

"Why the sun? Is it something similar to the Tyranny of the Sun? Will my child also blind the eye of the Dragon?" Serana asked, with fear swirling in her heart, "You know what will happen if this is true. Our kind will still be hunted to extinction. The mortals will do anything to reclaim the sun. Mother, this is the madness you left that man for."

"No, Serana, it is no longer the same old madness," Harkon himself replied this time, "You have changed things, you have switched our fate. You are the Mother of the Night Heir. We are his or her grandparents, our family and line shall now rise to new heights. Even something as trivial as the Tyranny of the Sun is no longer worth anything compared to what you have achieved."

"You’re kidding me, right? Your lifelong goal? Your greatest obsession? No longer worth anything?" Serana asked with utter disbelief, walking back and forth in the chamber, looking at the large illusory images of her parents with utter frustration.

"It is true, daughter. You cannot imagine it yet, but you have changed everything for every vampire on Nirn," Valerica said, her voice rejoicing as if the world she lived in right now was a heaven she had arrived at from the cold ends of hell.

"And you will be remembered as one of the greatest vampires in history, the saviour of our kind, the one who opened the path of greatness for the House of Volkihar," Harkon added, his voice reverberating all over the chamber.

Serana looked at them and then let out a short laugh, shaking her head wryly. Thousands of years of living in the shadows must have finally driven them to the edge of madness.

"And what does that grand prophecy of yours speak of, Valerica?" Serana asked, no longer wishing to see that woman as the woman who opposed the madness of that man who sacrificed them both for power.

"Three verses."

Valerica raised three fingers, and her smile was nothing short of blissful, as if she was singing those verses over and over and over in her head, each time with hope rejoicing in her heart.

Serana waited patiently until Valerica was finally ready to speak to them, and one by one, each line was a greater shock than the one before.

Valerica parted her lips and poetically spoke:

"The Dragon descends, when the Night Heir sings."

She then turned to Harkon, who only smiled menacingly and sang the next verse:

"Dawn’s Beauty rises, no vampire it stings."

Serana’s heart raced with every word.

The Night Heir is the title they associate with her child. The Dragon descends when the heir sings. The meaning is clear: the Dragon can be Akatosh, and it can be time, but "Descends" is a softer word than "Falls" or "Blinded" from the older prophecy.

This means something; the Dragon and her child are related. Why not, when the father is a Dragonborn?

But then the second verse made it clearer. Dawn’s Beauty is the sun, but it is also Tamriel’s name. But if it says, "No vampire it stings," then this is not just a normal prophecy; it is a world-shifting one, indeed.

It means that the sun will no longer burn vampires, that they will be immune to its gaze, a horrifying and terrible notion. While not as terrible as the Tyranny of the Sun prophecy, it will mark Serana’s and Jon’s child as the public enemy of all anti-vampire factions.

Serana put her hands nervously on her swollen belly and feared the worst. Still, with a father as powerful as Jon Dare and with a backer as strong as Lamae Bal, this crisis can be averted.

After all, it is not the worst prophecy… yet.

But when the two then faced Serana and spoke together the last verse, she fell to her knees, knowing that, even if the world had a hundred Jon Dares lined up together around her child, there would be trouble, there would be danger, there would be devastation.

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"My ladies! I thank all that is sacred and holy for you to arrive at my rescue at such a time."

Sybille Stentor stood before the two famed women who mothered Skyrim’s legendary hero, Jon Dare. These were, of course, Hilda Firemane and Nurina Aren.

"I could not believe it when I got your message, Lady Stentor. You called for us to Winterhold with utmost urgency," Nurina spoke, checking the sorry state of Sybille Stentor, one of the strongest mages in Skyrim.

The woman was reduced to a broken version of her former self, walking without an arm, as it seemed she had lost it in a recent fight, and was now struggling even to stand stably.

"By the Gods, woman, we had to cut through a horde of a hundred crazed men. What is the meaning of this?"

Hilda, on the other hand, was rather impatient, since she had sailed with her ship and crew to an unknown spot in the northern wastes of Hjaalmarch on short notice at Nurina’s request, instead of joining Jon’s Golden Army that was storming Castle Volkihar.

"Danger, my ladies! I must warn you… and everyone," Sybille struggled to speak.

"Will you live?" Hilda asked.

"Blood. I will live on blood," Sybille replied with obvious restraint, "But I can survive till morning’s light."

"You sure about this?" Hilda asked Nurina, her axe pointing at Sybille.

"Jon has always known Lady Sybille is a vampire. She is on our side," Nurina called Hilda’s temper off with the mention of Jon before turning to Sybille, "I will offer you blood, as I happen to keep some on hand."

"Thank you," Sybille was immediately happy to hear it, as none of her recent enemies had had any blood on them for her to replenish her powers.

"First, tell me what you want Jon to hear," Nurina still held her offer from the vampire.

Seeing no leeway, Sybille had to trust her reluctant allies and give them a sign of her goodwill.

"Nearby, there is a sealed cave. I trapped a human man inside, a moth priest who was kidnapped by vampires and forced to read a prophecy for them… from an Elder Scroll."

Each word sounded more dangerous than the next, but upon the mention of moth priests, Hilda became instantly agitated.

"Damn them," she said and turned away, "They can rot in Oblivion; they have done nothing but bring ruin to my family."

"Calm down, Hilda," Nurina acted as the voice of reason, as always, and turned to Sybille, "I assume you want to warn us about that prophecy, a valiant effort on your part, but we know of a prophecy called the Tyranny of the Sun; it is what the vampires obsess over."

"No! Not that stupid prophecy," Sybille cried and dismissed that prophecy as stupid before saying, "This is a different prophecy, one that is tied to the fate of everything, most of all the House of Dare… and the Firemane Clan."

Those words rubbed the two ladies in different ways, making Hilda more agitated and Nurina more curious.

"Speak it," Nurina said.

Sybille took a while to fix her seat on the ground, as she was holding her back against a broken tree in that field of snow, and looked right in the eye at the two women before speaking the ever-grim prophecy.

"The Dragon descends, when the Night Heir sings."

"Dawn’s Beauty rises, no vampire it stings."

"A pact forged anew, by the Amulet of Kings."

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