Applying Exotic Metaphysics (Return, 22.3) (Patreon)

The Crystal Tower’s Stone made things as clear and as stark as things could be. It cast a cold, white light. It wasn’t aetherial- it was something else. It was refinement to the point of pointlessness. 

It was turning me from a person into a mammal. A mammal into biology. Biology into chemistry.

It cut me into smaller shapes still. Chemistry became matter. Matter became a collection of planets orbiting one another.

Earthbones into atoms.

Refactored. Analyzed. Cut down from emotion into thought. Meridian lines divided into nerves. The light of Aetherius into discrete categories of electromagnetic radiation. Love and hope and spite into discrete chemical compositions. A dance becomes a series of impulses and muscle memory. A dream becomes a hallucination generated by the storage of short-term memory into long term.

Its light flays things alive. It stops being something spiritual. It starts becoming something physical. Materialism at its worst.Grinding down the essence of the universe and unable to find anything from the mulched remains but mass.

No wonder Goranthir mentioned people never came back. I could see this making people zero-sum.

Lovilian Silmane peppered me with magic. Mysticism was beyond him, on a fundamental level, but his Alteration was insane. His magic was complicated, carefully balanced. Precise spells with exacting requirements, magicka converted and cycled through his nerves unit by unit rather than by pure feel. It’s his actions that are bombarding me with his thoughts and actions, seen through the stark light of the Prism. I can see his philosophy as he casts his spells.

I’m dancing around his arguments, literally and physically. His magic is easy to unbalance, easy to adjust through just warping the laws of physics slightly. Through whistles and chirps, Tonal hisses. I’m holding my own- more than that- I’m winning. I’m getting closer to him. Cutting through his shields, bypassing his spells. Waves of silence try to cut my spells off at each turn, but he’s locked into his rhythm. He can’t push past that, through that. So I make myself off-beat. I can see the rhythm he’s pushing. I’m a better witch than he is a wizard. It’s nice, for once, to be superior to my enemy. For once to not be against someone stronger, or faster, or better.

A crystalline lattice throws itself up in front of him. Creatia, ripped from Oblivion, reinforced with alteration. He’s panting, sweat beading on his brow. He’s almost out of power.

The Atronach shines on my shoulder.I smash straight through it with my fist. Lovilian stares at me, mouth agape- and I hit him in the nose.My fist shatters against his illusion, and my wrist breaks.

Lovilian isn’t standing there. He isn’t even sweating. He isn’t even anxious. Hell, he doesn’t even seem to have done anything except cast a few illusion spells.

Sitting completely intact, implacable, is the Prism. The stone of the crystal tower.Reality shrieks.Or maybe it’s just me.Standing there, I saw… Me.

I saw myself. All of myself. The totality of my existence.It was just around a hundred and seventy thousand words. Getting slightly longer over time, at a rate of one word per word.

I could see myself. I could see myself seeing myself, and then seeing myself seeing myself seeing myself.

Mirror Logician.I got the joke now.

“Welcome to the Order, Sapiarch.” Lovilian said. His words stretched into vibrations of the atmosphere as it slid through the Prism’s light, but I understood it. I touched the stone. Therefore, I was a member. 

Without hesitation, I blasted him with a burst of Magicka. A wide-angle blast, from all directions. I kept my mind in my magicka, holding onto it even after it left my body. This time, I could feel the blast impact him. Not in just a sensory way, but on a spiritual level. A way he didn’t even really understand. One I don’t think he even could.

The ground trembled.

“You cannot stop it,” He spoke.

It trembled again. Another footstep.“It knows you.”Another step.“It sees you.”He smiles.“You showed yourself to it. It knows all the filth of your kind.”I slammed a sleep spell into him. He was out like a light. But the ground continued to move.

The steps were coming from the Prism. Through the light.I saw it.

Numidium approached.

It knows LORKHAJ.It knows the goddess I once was.I could see it through the Prism.And when Lovilian made me touch the tower’s Stone, force-inducted me as a Mirror Logician, something it had been ordered to destroy…It could see me through the Prism.

Numidum Approached.

This Stone was a gateway into a place of pure logic. A cutting, rending force that destroyed everything. When Numidium fought them, they… fought back. They trapped an echo of it here, and they’ve been facing it ever since.Now they’re trying to release it. Lovilian got my attention. He drew me here, and it would see… me. It would come for me. It would break through. Landfall.

But I had a flexible mind. I had a Stone in front of me. I could pull some heinous bullshit, right?

This Stone cut the metaphysical into the literal. It granted leverage over that aspect. This thing didn’t lead to anywhere on Mundus. It didn’t lead to anywhere into Oblivion, either.

Metaphysical into literal. What about… metaphorical into literal?

“Gateway of energy. I can see into it. Numidium can see out.” Truth. Logical, in the light of the stone.I focused.“It’s a gate-I-can-see-into. It’s a gate Numidium is going to step through.” Another truth, uttered by my mouth. The further I stretched from the truth, the faker it would feel. The harder the spell would be.I focused harder. Mysticism, hard-trained by the Witch, pushed through my head. Grooved lines of illogic and self-hypnosis crunched the words and thoughts together.“The-Prism-is-a-gate-I-can-step-into,” I said. It was a “TRUTH,”

Then I opened a Shiftgate.

“Shadowrend,” I said. It rose around me, hardening. Solid material. Airtight, even around the visor.

We stepped through.

===

To call it titanic would be wrong.

It doesn’t even have a size, really. Size isn’t a matter that factors into Numidium’s existence. Whatever you can think of, it’s bigger. Whatever it needs to be in order to be the most.

It beggars belief. It’s more. It’s stronger. It’s more durable.

Immediately, I know fighting it isn’t going to be an option. It would be like going to a slugging match against Dagon Mehrunes again, except with my arms tied behind my back.

The Numidium is an existence that cannot be fought. It’s an existence that cannot be won against.It stares. It looms over me.If I fight, if I do anything but talk, it'll destroy me. So I speak.

“The Dwemer were contrarians. They decided they didn’t like the way this world was. They decided they would rather leave it.”It doesn’t respond.“Thus, they built you. They said ‘no thanks’, and now that’s what you do.“

It doesn’t respond.

“Except here’s the thing,” I say, “I don’t think they actually existed.”What about Yagrum Bagarn, about the ruins, about the histories and books?

“Yagrum came from oblivion, right? Could be a daedra. Can’t be sure.” I drawl. “Ruins? Could have been built by the falmer. Maybe Akatosh put them there to test our faith. As far as the books… Well, books are written by people. People can lie or be wrong.”

It vibrates in place. If it is real, then those that created must be, right?

“You don’t exist either, of course.” I say. “I can’t be sure anyone’s seen you, except for me, and… well, I did just get tricked by an illusion.”

The tower walks.“Does it?” I ask. “Don’t think it does. There’s no ground here. No anything, really. It’s an abyss. How can you walk if there’s no ground?”It walks again. I cross my arms.

“Here’s the biggest inconsistency,” I say. “If you can reject the world, if you want to deny everything… Why are you even here? Why don’t you just go home? Why don’t you just… leave it be? Who is it hurting? It’s not hurting you, since you can’t be hurt.” 

It hesitates, for a moment. The world was created for people to enjoy. It exists to make the world for people to enjoy. It exists to let people love.

“Then why reject it? How does that help?”

It stares, for a long moment.

Then, for the first time, it speaks.

“I AM -“

It sounded sTrange. It HissEd of jyggaLag. Of mIrrors and Azura and many many roads.

I was actually befuddled for a moment- uncomprehending. I didn’t get it. The name didn’t mean anything to me. It hissed of Molag Bal and Mannimarco, it hissed of Sapiarchs and castles. Of serpent-men who were just men and the clasped arms of hated enemies.“THEY ARE REAL I AM REAL AND I CANNOT BE DENIED,” it howled.“I think,” I said, finally.

I’d realized what Numidium was. How it worked. It was the energy of denial, of rejection. But people kept taking it in. They kept caring about it, and looking at it, and treating it like it was there. I’d been just trolling it before, but now I was sure.It needed to be seen. It needed to be validated."I think I don’t actually care about you or what you think,” I said.

Then I turned around.I left.Numidium didn’t follow.