Atop a Tower on Moridunon

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[This essay by the Skingradian poet Pallav Valernius (2E 846--3E 21) was written during the latter days of the Tiber Wars. At that time Valernius was indeed touring the lands of the Aldmeri Dominion, recording their oral histories and traditions. The backdrop of the dialogue presented here -- the horrific destruction of an elven city -- remains, however, quite dubious. Footnotes are by the editor. Book art above. --The Editor.]

One morning we climbed up a beacon tower just outside the city of Firsthold. It was an old tower, far older than any I had ever visited, with steps carved into the rocky side of the mountain. After a long ascent through the mist and clouds we made our way through the final doorway that was hidden behind a curtain of glass-like ivy and emerged on the top of that magnificent tower. It was a beacon tower, yes, but no signal fire was lit. It would have all been in vain. The land below was laid out before our eyes in all its awe-inspiring vastness. The walls and roofs of the city below, the white sands of the beach and the blueness of the sea. All was silent. Across the sea Numidium could be seen approaching -- a great brass shape against the horizon. The waters boiled where it walked. We stood there watching.

My guide, an Altmeri scholar of great learning, was the first to break the silence. 
"Cyrod," he said, "is making war on us." 
"Yes," I replied. "They have the weapon for it now. My kinsmen are no longer weak and disorganized." 
"Your kinsmen," my guide said, "are children." 
"Might have been in the past, I agree, but surely their great deeds now prove otherwise?"

"They have brought the Dunmer to their knees," my guide said, "and so they could have had the very thing that beats in the heart of this world for themselves -- yet they are content with the brass puppet that was given to them. And they use it as an instrument of conquest! So, children they are. Alinor will surrender under this attack, of course; there's no question about it. Still, I shall be surprised if this fledgling Empire is still standing a decade after this General Talos is gone. The empires of men are fickle. They are born out of warfare, and so they soon die out. It is as if the only reason for their existence is so that your people could build mausoleums for the glorified warlords [1] that momentarily helm them. Tell me, as death might come for us both soon, what is it that your kind thinks awaits you?" 
"An eternity in the light of Aetherius awaits those who are worthy--kings, heroes, wise men--but for common folk such as myself, the priests say, that by the blessing of Arkay our bodies shall rot in the ground, and our spirits shall be reborn." 
"And what do you think of this?" 
"I think that the cycle of life and death doesn't care about the opinions of mortals, but the promise of rebirth does bring me some hope and consolation." 
"You believe there's 'consolation' in the Arkayn Cycle? A 'promise of rebirth'? Being tied, like a beast of burden, to a millstone, doomed to walk in a mindless circle forever? Shows that your kind have not yet forgotten your slave's instincts. I can not imagine why anyone would want to submit to such a dull fate. We elves are closer to the old Ehlnofey and so we have a better understanding of death and how to properly face it." 
"Some elves eat their dead," I interrupted remembering what I had seen on my travels in Valenwood. [2] My words visibly irritated my guide. 
"There is wisdom there, which I could perhaps explain in a way you would be able to understand, but I will not speak for my Bosmeri brethren. Suffice to say that their customs, to me, are mere quirks compared to the outlandish barbarisms that plague the races of men."

He paused.

Far below doom had come to Moridunon. The land was engulfed in flames. Numidium shambled in and out of time. A crackling sound like lightning. A choir of wails. Either we were safe in our tower or we were not; there was nothing we could do about it. We watched. I began to tremble.

"You fear death," my guide spoke again, "You could begin to understand us by starting to loathe it instead." He drew breath and continued: 
"We are blessed, so you might say, with long lives. That is only an illusion, or rather: it is a thing so meaningless that it might as well be an illusion. We dedicate our lives to learning, and then remembering what we have learned. That is no small feat. Can you imagine the things I remember? Of course you can't. There are whole schools devoted to the study of these visions. Your view of life and death and time is worse than twisted: it's over-simplified. To you, everything is linear. You are born, you live, time moves in one direction, and then you die. You think, or hope, the rebirth is a continuation of the same linear movement, that the Arkayn Cycle is something you will survive and observe. You are wrong. When the wheel spins downwards, it crushes you under it, ending your life, and when the wheel spins back up, a new life begins -- and what an insult is that new life! Weakened, broken and humbled, stripped of everything it ever knew and of everything that made it what it was, thrown back into existence against its will. So you see, this Nirn of ours is a prison, my friend. Your precious life is a sentence. And the rebirth where your faint heart finds its solace is nothing more than a breaking wheel. It is the very antithesis of hope." [3] 
"I see," I said, even though I did not.

The earth quaked. A gargantuan shadow blocked the sun.

Suddenly, Numidium was facing us. It looked right through us as if it was some sort of a demented god and we were two specks of dust too tiny to comprehend. Out of its open jaws there came a tormented howl, and then it was gone. Embers spiralled in the air where it had been.

"Don't be fooled," my companion hissed. "It was laughing at us." [4]

Footnotes: 
[1] In the original manuscript, Valernius wrote "crowned apes?" above "glorified warlords"; it is supposed his guide made use of an ambiguous phrase. 
[2] See Valernius' earlier "A Feast in Elden Root". 
[3] This rather stark view of the world has been contested by Imperial and elven scholars alike. 
[4] It has been suggested that Valernius' tour was at the behest of the emerging Septim Empire, and that he was, at least partly, a spy. However, such a close and dangerous encounter with the Brass Golem -- if it is indeed true -- does not support these claims.