Silence fell within the tent, the echoing shouts and rolling thunder of thousands of feet on the march muffled slightly through the linen and cloth walls. The battlelines were prepared and soon it would be time to unleash the full might of the Empire on the invaders, but for the moment there was peace. A sense of comfort in the pending chaos as the Emperor and his Champion looked at each other.

  "Pity you weren't here sooner. If you had been, I wouldn't have ended up laying here, watching my army run around leaderless."

  "But you managed to survive at least."

  "Ha. There is that, and that definitely matters to me a lot, but despite everything you managed to survive as well."

  Kaius raised his eyes, meeting the Emperor's gaze and seeing the sadness that mirrored his own.

  Despite his reputation, Titus Mede II licked his lips nervously at the sight of the warring emotions within the man standing before him. There were few who knew the truth, but the line of the Mede Emperors since the founder of their dynasty, his great-great-grandfather Titus Mede I knew the identity of the ‘Eternal Champion’. Most within the Empire believed the Black Blade to be specifically chosen individuals who swore an oath of silence and utter devotion to the Mede Emperors. Those who ruled the Empire knew differently. They knew who he was, and even more importantly, they knew what he was.

  "Are you loyal, Kaius?"

  Of all the questions that Kaius may have been expecting, this was not one of them, shocking the vampiric Blade for a moment before he answered.

  "I am."

  "Why?"

  If the first question had been shocking, the second was confusing and he looked up into the Emperor's features, seeing only the honest yearning for an answer. A curiosity that couldn’t be contained.

  "Why am I loyal to you, or why am I loyal to the Empire?"

  "I know all too well why you are loyal to the Empire.” Titus laughed, before grimacing as he held his side again, where an assassin's blade had scraped ribs. “You care about people. A strange trait for a vampire, but you certainly aren't an ordinary one."

  Kaius said nothing for several long moments, appearing to have as much emotion as a statue or a dwemer animunculi. There was however a sudden nervousness in the way his face tightened and he ground his teeth together.

  "I'm loyal to your family because your grandfather helped mine."

  "I used to read his journals, and especially his memoirs when I was younger." The steel blue eyes burned into Kaius's own and a smile creeped onto the Emperor's face. "It always fascinated me the stories that they contained. The way that they were to be kept secured at all times with some of the most potent magicka available to the Empire. Do you know how I reacted… the first time I read my grandfather’s journals?"

  Kaius shook his head.

  "I sat in my room for the entire night, staring at the opened pages before me. I couldn't comprehend it; my family’s protector and my teacher wasn’t just a vampire. He was the hero of Kvatch and the champion of the Oblivion Crisis. A vampire who could walk in the sunlight, cursed by the blood of daedra, and yet blessed with the ability to rule their own destiny. What was even more difficult to comprehend was that the immortal being who was outside the influence of the Elder Scrolls, had chosen to spend their existence protecting my family."

  "I never read the stories he wrote." Kaius said truthfully. "but I remember when I first met him. I fought by his side at Kvatch."

  "Yes, he wrote that in his journals. You made quite an impression on him even then. You made even more of one when you supported his claim to the throne."

  "It had been in my power to do so as Count."

  “You do realise that taking your family in was his way of repaying you for everything you had done?” Titus’ smile grew broader, but softened. There was always something disconcerting looking on a man who was nearly two hundred and still appeared in his thirties. "He would have heaped glories untold upon you and your family and ensured that you would never have had to fear again."

  "It is not my way to simply accept charity."

  "No… No it is not. But you have to ask yourself Kaius; why must you continuously pay a debt that you have repaid, hundreds of times over?" Seeing the darkening expression on his face Titus continued, forcing himself to sit up further from the cushions behind his spine. "I am truly sorry for everything that has happened my friend. I would grant you anything and everything within my power. Although I know that what you truly wish for, no one has the power to grant. Not even an Emperor."

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  "I desire revenge."

  "With all I have learned from those memoirs and the last forty years of your tutelage I would be terribly concerned if you didn't." His voice softened. "I unfortunately know all too well how it is to lose children, even if the circumstances differ between us."

  The creaking of leather and metal was audible over the background noise of the Legions preparing for war, and Kaius fists clenched so tightly the gauntlets slightly deformed. One hand, trembling and shaking, reached up, and surprisingly carefully grasped a worn, but cared for axe-and-sword pendant hanging around his neck, on its handmade leather loop. Of all the armour and equipment that Kaius was wearing, from the peerless ebony plate armour and chainmail, to the gleaming, golden katana by his side, only the amulet of Talos appeared out of place. Cheap, crude, but a source of great sorrow and emotion for the vampiric champion.

  "I have heard it said that the dead do not weep." Watching the surge of emotions as Kaius struggled to contain the overwhelming sorrow that churned within him, Titus’s expression turned to one of mirrored sorrow . "Even if I knew nothing but your true nature, I would know enough about you to trust you with anything in all of Tamriel. Only the Daedra and the Dead do not weep, and I know that my family has been right in trusting you for all these years. It makes the decision I have to make all the easier, but I have one last task for you, my old friend.

  There was no surprise in the depths of the cold brown eyes. Sorrow yes; but not surprise. Kaius had been expecting something like this from the Emperor, but if anything he was expecting it to have been riding on the wings of failure instead of gratitude.

  Shivering, Titus instinctively railed against the cool temperature within the tent as something in the depths of his mind and soul realised the weight his words carried. It had not been a difficult decision, maybe for his mother perhaps, but Titus knew that it had been a decision made for him four years before, when the upturned cart spilled its rotting contents at his feet. Eyeless, swollen and rotting, one hundred and thirty-three decapitated heads had been dumped on the steps of White-Gold Tower, tumbling and staring blankly into the nothingness of death.

  Kaius had been there, by his side is his role as guardian and representative of the Blades. It was his actions that had given Titus the strength to be able to stare down the Thalmor delegation, and make the biggest decision of his life. It had been Kaius, his old teacher of history, military tactics and swordsmanship, and the way that he had bent down over the pile of heads that had been more terrifying than the threat of war. Every action had been precise. Every movement was smooth and perfect, but Titus alone knew how much raw emotion was coursing through the black armoured figure. There was no sign of the impossible depths of sorrow that had filled the ancient vampire, growing so great that it had breached the veil between sorrow and rage.

  One hundred and thirty-three decapitated heads had lain on the ground, along with the weapons and armour that they had wielded in life. Titus had watched as Kaius knelt down, carefully retrieving a personal item, a sword gifted to a loved one from where it had lain, and he knew that at that moment, the Aldmeri Dominion had made a terrible enemy.

  An enemy, it seemed they were blindly and almost purposefully filling with such a terrible hatred and anger, that he was fearing for the lives of all mortals within Tamriel. It was only a close personal friendship and through the knowledge of Kaius's incredible humanity, that Titus didn't consider attempting to have Kaius's killed. That, and the fact that if two hundred years of failed attempts from every beast, man, mer, demi-gods and daedric princes couldn't kill Kaius, then he doubted anything at an Emperor's command would suffice.

  "The Dominion will pay for what they have done." Titus couldn't help but feel the chill of fear as the Kaius's features tightened around a skull pushing forward against his flesh and his voice was twisted into an inhuman growl.

  "They will, but it will not be the Legions or the Blades that will succeed in passing judgment. The Dominion is weakened and on the cusp of defeat, but so are we. We have no more strength left to give. The Legions are spent, the Blades are decimated and one way or the other, the war will end today. You have seen what the Dominion intends to do, and what the Thalmor will do, if Cyrodiil and the Empire fall into their hands. I fear that all of this has only been the beginning. They are planning something else. Something more terrible than slavery and genocide, and I believe that you, and only you will be able to stop them. You can’t do so from my side though. You will need to be a free agent for whatever comes next.”

  "I will have my own vengeance whether I have to take my sword from one end of Tamriel to the other, and kill all in my path."

  "You and I know that is not within your nature.” The laugh that quickly devolved into a wracking, painful cough ,caused Titus to groan as it pulled on the stitches holding together some of his wounds. “You are a killer, but you not a murderer."

  Seeing the cold look in Kaius's eyes, Titus couldn't help but feel the slightest trace of doubt. His son's murder years before had begun unravelling the threads of Kaius's humanity, and the more recent loss of his daughter may have come very close to severing them entirely.

  "I swear Titus, in my childrens’ names, the Dominion, will pay. I will not stop until they have been ground into ashes."

  “Kaius Treblanus Desin. You are hereby freed of any and all oaths or allegiances to both me and the Empire. You are freed to walk your own path in the service of the men and women of Tamriel, but I have one, last final order to give you.”

  The eyes that were consumed with deep, and terrible shadows burned into his own, and Titus shivered again. Somehow it was though the weight of destiny had been lifted from his shoulders and transferred to his lifelong friend, but under it all he couldn’t help but fear what Kaius could accomplish. An immortal with the power to influence fate and prophecies, was even more dangerous than the machinations of all the daedric princes. It was especially even more dangerous than the threat of the Aldmeri Dominion, but fire sometimes needed to be fought with fire.

  "Give me your order…" Kaius said at last, looking Titus in the eye with a face as impassive as the Jerall Mountains. “My friend.”