Flashback (Valan)

 Prompt: Flashback

A/N: The idea that Nerevar just kinda lives inside Valan's head and occasionally decides to go hey here's a handy bit of information or otherwise make his thoughts know (to the point of maybe rarely possessing him) is an idea I find really fun considering the extreme difference in their personalities. *cough* Valan being a big procrastinator and Nerevar wanting to finally rest in peace once Dagoth Ur is done *cough*

Recently I have been having strange dreams, they feel like flashbacks to old memories, but I know they aren’t. Or if they are, they certainly aren’t my own. Since arriving in Morrowind my thoughts and emotions have been overall unusual. I expected a certain level of nostalgia when returning to my homeland, but I am able to find my way around cities I have never been to as if I knew them like the back of my hand, and names and faces that I have only heard in passing before conjure up vivid mental images. Am I going insane? One day I bring it up to the master of the Blades here, who only tells me not to bring it up to the Temple or they’ll lock me away…or worse. That doesn’t sound ideal, I just got here after all. Later however he mentions something the ashlanders believe, some sort of prophecy involving Nerevar the ancient warlord. Perhaps my flashback type dreams have something to do with that? Caius Cosades says it’s possible, and the Blades have been looking into the prophecy themselves, but if I want to know anything else I’ll need to do some favors for him and his associates first.

Wandering the streets of Balmora one night on my way back from doing yet another fetch quest for the spymaster I’m stopped in my tracks as a stranger grabs me by the arm and stares at me, telling me all manner of frightening things in a monotone voice about Dagoth Ur and the Sixth House. The man seems almost possessed as he warns me that the supposedly lost house of Ur was only “sleeping” and now has reawoken, and to go to Red Mountain before letting me go and wandering off as if nothing happened. With my heart feeling like it might beat out of my chest, a frightening feeling in and of itself given my low resting heart rate I run as fast as possible to the little house that Caius lives in and slam the door behind me, locking it in every possible way. “I think I know why I’m having flashbacks.” I tell the spymaster, panting and out of breath, having run all the way there. The spy looks at me curiously and with some level of concern. “Tell me more about the Nerevarine Prophecy.” As I sink into the floor Caius tells me what he knows and finally gives me directions to the closest Ashlander tribe.

After trekking through the ashlands and employing the knowledge that I have however small an amount of ashlander blood in me I'm able to get an audience with the wise woman and undergo a series of tests. In the end, after a number of tiring and mentally taxing trials my presumptions were correct, the flashbacks aren’t mine, they’re Nerevars. The tribes have unified around me to name me Nerevarine, the prophesied hero who will defeat Dagoth Ur. Here I was thinking I was just some kid from Sadrith Mora who thought they were going insane.

Once back in Balmora I sit reading one night about The Tribunal and their history when my head begins to feel heavy and I lay down in the attempt to get some relief from the feeling and associated dull headache as my thoughts begin to feel foggy, at some point I must have passed out. When I wake up, with more vivid mental images of The Tribunal than I’ve ever experienced before given my lack of sight, and a raging headache I smack the side of my head with my hand as I sit on the edge of the bed. “If you’re going to do that can you at least be nice about it?” I ask rhetorically, trying to get the headache to go away. “No.” A voice inside my head responds, one that is very much not my own. What?!