As Lena kept being pulled into portals that led her into other worlds, time progression in her life was getting more and more confusing. The years she lived seemed to run in parallel to the years passing on Nirn, which was one of the reasons she stayed away. Although many people she knew were sufficiently long-lived to breach the gap, seeing them suddenly aged half a lifetime when only a few years had passed in her own life, was more than unnerving. “Stay away from Nirn” had been Lena’s solution, even though it smacked severely of the tactic of large prairie birds that she’d read about in a book – apparently, when danger was approaching, they’d bury their heads in the soil, although not being able to see the danger hardly made it go away…

For the benefit of the readers however, we shall try to establish a timeline relative to the passage of time on Nirn.

With the conclusion of the Oblivion Crisis, the 4th Era had begun. During this time Lena was a vampire, and trouble was brewing in the Dark Brotherhood – there were rumours of a traitor, with the events around the Purification of the Cheydinhal Sanctuary soon to be set in motion. This would take a few years, ending with the memorable night in Bravil that was an intensely private affair for Lena and Lucien, and unless either of them decides to share it, we won’t by prying. After that night, Lena disappeared to the Shivering Isles where the Greymarch was slowly gathering strength. The exact dates of these events are unknown.

In some ten or twenty years that followed, Lena found a cure for vampirism and defeated Jyggalag, thus ending the Greymarch. She became the sitting ruler of the Shivering Isles, Lord Sheogorath, while the Prince was away undergoing the transition from Jyggalag back to Sheogorath. It should be noted that time passes differently on the Shivering Isles, so this period didn’t feel to her like twenty years – it felt a lot shorter.

After the Greymarch Dylan joined Lena in her explorations of the Shivering Isles and became a trusted friend. At some point he took her to the Mazken Wellspring that restored Lena’s appearance ruined by the cure of vampirism – after the Wellspring visit she no longer looked like an old woman but instead looked like her youthful self, never to age again.

The next hundred years or so were mostly spent in other realms, with the most notable and lengthy stays being Gransys and Albion, in that order. In Gransys Lena met Scorpio, but then lost him again with her return to Tamriel. Albion came some time after, taking another twenty years of her life and forging her bond with Sanguine. How much time had passed on Nirn in the meantime, is unknown, but that was the period when Lucien almost lost hope of seeing Lena ever again appearing in his fort, so it must have been a very long time.

Some time around 4E160 Prince Sheogorath returned to the Shivering Isles and Lena returned to Nirn. She found her property confiscated and her house in Bravil repossessed, for the feeble reason that she had missed the Imperial Census more than a few times and was suspected to be dead. She found the news extremely distressing, boarded a ship bound “elsewhere” and left Tamriel with the intention to never return. The ship was bound for the Northern Realms, yet another world where Lena would spend some time. She met Geralt there, learned that he was her brother, but when the war in that world turned it upside down, she decided to sail back to Tamriel. Another bond forged and left behind, it seemed.

While Lena was away in the Northern Realms, Tamriel was fighting a war of its own – the Great War with the Aldmeri Dominion raged between 4E171 and 4E175. Iver and Hauk Serck-Hanssen were just twenty years of age when it began, twin brothers and Imperial battlemages. They were drafted to fight the war, Iver on the front lines and Hauk with the Special Forces division to act behind enemy lines. Being a Nord, he was sent to Skyrim where he spent most of the war. He met a woman there whose husband had run off a month after the wedding, yet she gave birth to a son in due course. It was impossible to say whether the boy’s father was her runaway husband or indeed Hauk, but Hauk was the one who kept coming back to her and the boy when his Legion duties permitted. She died some twenty years later.

Hauk and Lucien met for the first time during the Great War as well. The Aldmeri Dominion considered it a merciful thing to do to employ an assassin to quickly end the lives of their agents who got captured by the Imperials, and Lucien was sent out with just such a contract. Sending a Speaker to kill a weak and defenceless prisoner was a wise choice – it wasn’t the prisoner who presented a challenge, but his inquisitor, and Hauk, or Animal as he was known in the Legion, had made a name for himself by then.

That meeting followed by several others, until towards the end of the war the Empire had need of its best and most loyal citizens to infiltrate the Aldmeri Dominion itself, and Hauk and Lucien found themselves on a ship to the Summerset Isle on a mission that forged their bond for the rest of their lives.

Around the year 4E195 Lena was finally back in Tamriel. Her house was still not her own, but with her status restored from “dead” to “living” in the Imperial Archives, she could breathe easy. Meeting Geralt in the Northern Realms and learning that she had a brother, brought back what memories of her childhood she still possessed. She did not remember her mother who died when Lena was just four years old, and she never knew her father, although it seemed that the bond between her mother and father had been strong. Lena’s adoptive grandmother knew who they were, the bond had been real, and there was a reason why her father was staying away. But it wasn’t the time to reveal those details yet. Lena’s grandmother died when Lena was just sixteen, and all that she knew was that some day, when the time was right, she had to go to Skyrim for answers. So, her father was a Nord… but beyond that, she knew nothing.

Lena decided that that “some day” had come and went to Skyrim. She didn’t have any particular purpose there, and it wasn’t her first visit either, but she had a peculiar feeling about it. One thing led to another, and Lena discovered that she was Dragonborn. She also discovered that Geralt arrived in Skyrim after too much turmoil in his own life back in the Northern Realms. With her head spinning, Lena returned to Cyrodiil.

These chronicles start at about that point. Lena met Hauk soon upon her return, and they quickly became close friends, spending much time adventuring around Cyrodiil. Lucien appeared in Lena’s life again, as her Speaker and oldest friend, and later…. Well. It would be a futile attempt to try and summarise in a few words the tribulations of the soul, so we won’t even try.

…

Back in the years before the Great War, Lena and Sanguine were lying on the warm sand of one of Sanguine’s islands upon their return from Albion. Sanguine was massaging Lena’s heart that she had pierced with her dagger some moments before, ending her stay in that world. Once again, death seemed the only way out, and Sanguine was not about to accept that.

“Don’t do that again, I am not a healer,” he said when Lena opened her eyes. “Your heart is working again, but only just. You mortals are too fragile for such adventures.”

“How..?” Lena looked around, realising where they were.

“Teleport,” Sanguine shrugged. “I wasn’t going to try anything there, with all of them watching,” he grinned. “My powers work best in my Realm, anyway.”

“So you could have teleported out of there any time,” Lena gave him a long look.

“Any time after you got me out of that prison,” Sanguine nodded. “That damned collar… it was sapping away all I had.”

“Then why did you stay?”

“Couldn’t leave you behind,” Sanguine shrugged again.

“You are not making sense,” Lena shook her head. “Obviously, you could have taken me with you. So, why stay?”

“Well…” Sanguine coughed uncomfortably. “They were having a bit of a bother with that tower there, it seemed they could use some help from someone like me…”

…

Some time later Lena was fit enough to leave. As much as she treasured her time with Sanguine, she wanted to get back to the Shivering Isles, perhaps even visit Nirn again. Sanguine would never be far away, however.

“What do you see in mortals, My Lord?” A dremora from Sanguine’s clan asked cautiously. “Their lives are fleeting.”

“They are,” Sanguine nodded. “But they fill them with passion, with strife, with love and care, jealousy and murder… Well, some of them. The boring ones don’t interest me either.”

“Hmm… And this mortal, that just left… She killed a lot of our kind in her time, yet you make love to her now. Why, My Lord?”

“They served Mehrunes Dagon!” Sanguine exclaimed and spit. “She deserves all the loving for killing that lot!”

“As you say, My Lord,” the dremora said with a bow, not wishing to push his luck. Sanguine was known for his bouts of temper.

“If I may serve, My Lord,” a female dremora approached, baring her breasts. “We will be here when that mortal is dead, why concern yourself with passing matters? What is your desire, My Lord?” She looked at him longingly, removing the rest of her clothing.

“I should banish you all to Oblivion for an epoch or two!” Sanguine exploded in anger. “My desire! You know nothing of that!”

“That was the wrong thing to say, sister,” the male dremora pulled the female out of Sanguine’s reach. “He isn’t in the mood.”

“He’s never in the mood for us, what’s all this stupid obsession with mortals?!”

…

Sanguine’s temper vanished as quickly as it flared. He opened another bottle of Cyrodilic brandy, downing half of it in one swig. Mortals… mortals had to take their lives a day at a time and try to stay alive. They had no escape to Oblivion when the going got tough, they had no return when it overwhelmed them. They had the drive to make every moment count. “Not like this lot,” Sanguine squinted at a group of dremoras a distance away. “They have no idea what life or love actually means…”

He snapped his fingers and teleported away to another island. The island of Everrest was quiet and empty, apart from the birds and the fish, the butterflies and the crickets. Sanguine entered a cave that was a burial crypt. Yes, mortal lives were fleeting, but he treasured every memory of the time spent with his lovers, past and present. Strong women, all of them, determined, wilful, driven and passionate, now lying at rest in this cave. Many more were buried in family crypts with their mortal ancestors, but those that felt they belonged no where, had a place on the Everrest. “They live in my memory,” Sanguine smirked at the dremora’s remark. “Dremora females have such lovely bodies and remarkably empty souls… Lorkhan really laughed at us with that. What a creation! No, give me the lesser bodies of mortals, for their spirit compensates amply.”

Out of the cave, Sanguine sat by the water watching the sunset. The sun was always setting in his Realm, it was that magical time of day between the afternoon and evening. Why let it slip away when you can hold it still forever? It was his Realm, he was the Lord.

“What would Lena be doing now?” He wondered. “Return to the Shivering Isles, Sheogorath isn’t back yet, so it’s more of the same looking after the people business for her. Sheogorath really hit the jackpot this time… Why did we have to condemn him to this stupid cycle? Isn’t order just another form of madness?” Sanguine shook his head, his thoughts returning to Lena. “She will return to Nirn, of course,” he thought. “To the man she loves yet doesn’t dare to love… She will go to his fort when he’s not there, she will feel his spirit and imagine the rest… Talking about a sacrifice…” He shook his head again. “But why? Because they are not ready yet. Because love is not about holding, it’s about setting free… Something that those dremoras will never understand.” He sat quietly for a while, sipping his brandy. When the bottle was empty, he opened another. Brandy didn’t have much of an effect on a Daedric Prince. “She will fall asleep in his bed… He will return, finding her there. He won’t touch her, apart from perhaps a light kiss without waking her up. She is back. He will be patient until such time when she is ready to touch him with her eyes open.”

How did he know all this? Sanguine knew mortals, and much of it was simply what he deduced. Some of it was what he gleaned from Lena’s mind. He tried not to pry, but when she lay dead in his arms, he used the one power he knew would bring her back – the power of possession. He gave some of his life to her, he could see the world through her eyes, he knew what she was feeling and saw the feelings she denied to herself. He saw her memories, he understood what Lucien meant to her and she to him. “One day,” he thought. “One day they’ll face it. But not yet.” Time proved him right, of course.