The Dreamer, the Observer, and the...

{100 Chapters, 240,000 words, and over four thousand loyal readers every week. Thanks for sticking around, and here's to the future and the distant end.}

{Disclaimer: The decades of philosophically and intellectually cumulative masterclass that is Elder Scrolls Lore is repeatedly argued over threads by people far more knowledgeable than me, remaining fantastically mystical and hard to understand for any beginner. So if you are one of those Loremasters on Reddit, forgive me. I was barely more than a Skybaby when I decided to write this and had no idea the rabbit hole which I would willingly cast myself into out of love and Love. This is not real canon, but my own, in order to make something new. This is not love, which understands all other perspectives and cherishes them, but Love, which hallucinates a separate Aurbis in its sensory deprivation without care for the thoughts of others.}

In the next instant, Yuri was looking over a wheel.

Or was it the real secret Tower he had been searching for? Or was it God? Or was it I?

Glittering stars where the other gods fled through and the sun through which Magnus ran from his mistake surrounded the host of celestial bodies easily counted but not easily understood, in the Mortal Plane Mundus where the 8 spokes of the wheel also circled in harmonious supervision. The supervised Nirn was at the center, the hub of the Wheel and the Arena crafted by the trickery of Lorkhan, a new testing grounds to turn gods into men and men back into gods. But Yuri did not have the mindset of a god, but a man who was grateful to have met so many people in that Arena and grateful yet to take what he loved from it to continue his journey after this episode of his life.

He saw the ring-shaped mash of void pockets that still managed to glitter with sinister colors surrounding the spokes, the Divines, forebodingly and arrogantly along with all the other smaller voids dotting the Oblivion realm. He even saw the empty spot from where he took the original Soul Cairn. Beyond even that, an ethereal layer of white and pink and golden and turquoise clouds wrapped the wheel in a puffy ring. Aetherius, where Magicka came from and where the sun and stars led to and where the Divines are privileged to take their faithful dead. Well, most of them, anyway.

But even Yuri could not tell at this moment, which angle he was looking at the Aurbis from. Only that he could breathe its very air while still feeling so so far away. But he could certainly see what he had wanted to the most all along. That on its side it all overlaps into the secret Tower itself. Aetherius which is Stasis overlaps with Oblivion which is Change overlaps with Mundus which is a beautiful mixture that challenges the perceptions of both and plays with the fact that neither is infinite or infallible or even eternal as they would first seem.

Yuri looked at this straight and all-encompassing Tower image and couldn't help but become enraptured for a few moments. And in those few moments where he felt his vision sink deeper and deeper into the canvas littered with innumerable meanings, the image inverted and split in two sides as if a door was opening in the image and he went through it at a pace defying observation.

And beyond that door was revealed a man, whose left side was painted with a dirtied brush in a maddened frenzy and whose right remained untouched and unblemished. Even being before him, Yuri could not use any means to distinguish this interesting character from the surroundings despite clearly being apart from the void in every manner. Perhaps they had come to an agreement. The man first spoke in a voice of clear yet deep and reverberating song, indistinguishable from any other sound in the Aurbis yet encapsulating them all in distracting yet orderly chaos.

"I saw you when you fell and came to me, oh falling star, and wondered what changes you would bring. Was this your methodology, outsider? Bereft of malice or ambition yet undeniably greedy and curious?" The man tilted his head to his tainted left and leveled his black and white eyes to the newest visitor.

"A good question. Personally, my greed and my curiosity were aroused by this creation of yours. But in the end, I bring... a new beginning to this place. My name is Yuri Nightingale. What is yours?"

Yuri had an odd conjecture but didn't quite believe it himself.

"Anu, and Padomay. Either is fine. You seem confused?"

"Those two names were separate people, I believe?"

Anu/Padomay nodded his twice-fold head and reflected for an unmeasurable moment in this Timeless space before expounding. "You are familiar with the creation of the Aurbis, yes?"

"I thought those were fairy tales. Nir, who you loved, died from a battle spurned by Padomay's envy, but not before creating the twelve worlds. Those too, nearly destroyed by the same Padomay before you salvaged it into Nirn and took him with you into the void to spare it?"

In that same tale, it was said that the Aedra and Daedra were made from the blood shed during that battle.

"That is true. From then, our battle continued. While I could not be killed, Padomay would not die for long, his onslaught endless and vicious, knowing no patience, returns evermore in a suicidal hatred. But it was in those moments of silence and nothingness here between each of his deaths that I heard and saw the most. I dreamt of the world, the universe below that the two of us had created through Nir and our own destined bloodshed. I dreamt of that which I Loved, and then began to see it, and see it all for what we and it truly were."

Yuri was pensive. This was the Amaranthine story, the story of how the Dream became the Dreamer, was it not?

"I saw every part of what we and my love had created as a fragment of single omniscience, an ignorant Dreamer. A godhead. And then our war resumed the next moment. But the true inquiry buried itself deeper to the forefront of my thoughts as I was left with the question. Was my hated foe, who had torn and sundered all attempts of furthering my Love, myself as well? Was I him, and he me? Was Nir, who was created during our propagation, merely a reflection of us and destined to die by our hands as well? With each clash and with each of his repeated deaths my hands were stained until finally, I consumed him. I became us, and with the essence of us both, fully came face to face with the embellishments of our possible existences."

"You saw the Godhead."

The two-faced man nodded his assent before resuming. "I assume you were born with the privilege of never doubting you were real, outsider, but I was not. It was Love, or rather selfishness, by which I remain in full agency. I loved, therefore I am, I thought, therefore I am, I asked questions of my validity, therefore I am, and I observed, therefore I remain. It was at that moment, no longer shattered and in full breadth, mirroring that selfish Dreamer, that I was tempted to start anew and make my own Dream. But when I looked down upon all that was because of him and now, because of I, that I again saw myself in every piece of it. Every soul down there at every point in Time was a fragment of me, of him, being a part of this Dream yet being real because it had its own thoughts and its own observations, uncountable angles by which the same fabric is viewed and weaved. It was thereupon I decided that to Observe in all my Love and Will and Power, in defiance of its intolerant Truth, was to let it be real in every passing moment. It is now I do so, catching my creation between beautiful truth and lie, allowing the fragments who observe it to decide for themselves where they stand among it."

Yuri looked back to the door he came in from and saw it was true. The Aurbis, divided between Dream and Observable fact, two sides remained a single piece.

'The Dream didn't become the Dreamer, but an Affirmer of the Dream who could Observe it all at once and make it somewhat real. Magic was so easy for the greatest of wills because this universe is steeped in uncertainty.'

[Sub-Firmament Observed, Record of the Aurbis Obtained 100%. Would you like to Synchronize?]

Yuri smiled, and with some melancholy accepted the symbolic finality to the likeness of the Aurbis he had come to know and Love. Yet inside he also rejoiced, for even if his Lovers were once a fragment of a single Dream even as they bonded to his Record, now they would be Recorded and crystallized in lawful permanence alongside him.

"And then you came as a falling star, Willful Outsider, fully conscious of and desiring anything within view yet ignorant of the final truth while the final truth remained ignorant of you. I, who had known and will have known everything within the Aurbis from beginning to end was given the opportunity to observe something new and be as ignorant of the consequences as you were of the truth. This leads me back to my question. Have you achieved what you set out to do? Is this it? Will you become another Dreamer, or another Observer? Will you leave and remain the Willful Outsider, escaping the bonds of this realization?"

"I told you, I bring a new beginning apart from each notion of the Dream and its players. I speak, and therefore it all is, therefore I say Yes."

[By Recognition of Akasha, you have been Titled: Akashic Archivist, and this Record is now yours to have and to hold for as long as you may live. By Recognition of the Godhead Anumay, you have been Titled: The Ignorant Man. By Order of Akasha, this Sub-Firmament will be brought to the Record, may the Laws bring great opportunity and treat all creatures with equal favor.]

Nothing happened immediately, but they both felt something on the horizon. To the edges of the void, they looked fervently as a scout checks for enemy vessels or friendly reinforcements. It came from beyond that seemingly infinite sheet of darkness, one by one the white stars arrived in singular bravery to penetrate the void as the front linemen. Two by two, the multi-colored array further expanded itself and the flanks revealed themselves. Dozens upon dozens came the nebulae and the cosmic bodies of distant and full worlds.

By the very wonder of the two observers with equally agape mouths, the cosmos grew alive and dominated the territory of the empty void, collapsing the reality of a lifeless space lightyear by lightyear until the stars flew past them in a lively flurry and extended to the edge of Aetherius.

As the stars grew closer and closer, they felt the very fabric of the universe changing before their very eyes. That great door that split the universe between dream and observation closed tightly and revealed an image that was the fusion of both, the will to dream and the wisdom to perceive inherent truth being equally capable. The 8 Divines and the 17 Daedra were shaken to their very core, finding themselves within an unfamiliar yet perfectly stable fabric while realizing that their wisdom had suddenly been skewed and their influence nearly broken. The most powerful mages, entrenched in the ways of Magicka, would soon find that its purity was slowly rising and the way it behaved was altering slowly but surely.

The princes of Oblivion would find that the paths to invading Mundus had become arduous and risky while the Divines, though their worldview was shaken, would find that the plane they already inhabited would allow them to grow deeper and more powerfully tied to Nirn. In the Record, the distinction of separate planes was an unforgiving one that only allowed incredible energy, ties, and knowledge to be expended in order to cross it. The afterlife typically granted in Aetherius can no longer support the entry of the recently deceased from Nirn, but the Divines mostly allowed their followers to join them on their planets after death, which would only allow them to grow stronger through the Law of Faith. As for Talos, the one now tied to Nirn, he would grow the closest to the new laws eventually while pursuing that instead of being numb in the CHIM he had achieved but gained at the cost of his interest in the Dream.

Obviously, CHIM and Amaranthine pursuits were no longer a viable option to ascend. The Record crystallized Anumay in his position while sealing reality in a solid and undeniable state that retained aspects of the Dream and the Observation, making questioning it more of a Socratic approach than an attempt toward apotheosis.

"Ha...Hahaha....Hahaha!" Anumay laughed slowly and wholeheartedly while a tear streaked down both sides of his face.

"It's... as if the original beauty was given a stage to be told with a higher purpose, given the chance to expand with more principles lighting the way. What have you done, Yuri?"

"Don't you mean 'Ignorant Man'?" Yuri smiled mischievously and leveled a questioning eyebrow toward him.

"I...uh... meant that in all the best of philosophical regards...Wait, how did-?"

"I kid you. Welcome to the Record!" Yuri raised his hands out to gesture to the changed Aurbis and flashed a great big grin.

"Haha...Thank yo-"

*Cough cough!* "Ugh... my head..."

Yuri and Anumay both widened their eyes like deer in the headlights for a split moment before looking behind them.

"The original Godhead, I presume?" Yuri whispered to Anumay, who merely nodded dumbly before Yuri continued. "Where did they come from?"

"They were always here, everywhere. I thought if they woke up I would be forced to sacrifice myself and start the Dream all over to keep it on course. I have you to thank once again, Yuri..."

"I'm right here, you know," We said to the two.

We looked at the two-faced man and recognized him instantly. The constants of duality represented in the struggle of every human, realized subconsciously in our Dream as the God presiding over each and every detail in it. But we were definitely startled that he appeared here after already opening our eyes.

We looked at the Stranger absent from every detail but the last of the Dream and for a time didn't recognize him. But from him a pattern could also be seen. Just as every one of our favorite parts in the Dream, he played the Hero. The one who toed the line amidst that duality to find a resolution and bring peace within it. The stranger was the one we idealized ourselves to be, the one we wanted to be, the decider of an era.

Those two were polite enough to let us ponder, so we continued. We looked down upon the world that we envisioned and lived through day by day, and we witnessed the changes that the stranger brought to give life and breathe to what we once thought would never be real, and we saw that it was good.

We laughed a bit before saying to the two of them: "I like what you've done with the place."

And we turned around to start a new daydream, to create a new world until a new hero picks it up and decides they love it too much to let it go.

"Where are you going now?" Yuri asked us, and we smiled.

"I don't know, maybe I'll stick around and keep watching you." We flashed a mischievous grin and let him wonder. "Good luck!"

And with that, we the Dreamers took our leave.