Applying Exotic Metaphysics (Return, 22.5) (Patreon)

The chamber resonated with magic. Wards of all kinds were laid on the arena, and I could feel their magicks buzzing against my own. I stood off to the side, up the stairs leading out. There were all sorts of seats, ready to watch exhibitions, but they were empty. The only people in the chamber were me… and the duelling combatants.

“For in the Earthbones lie the restrictions laid upon us,” A young altmer girl recited, eyes closed. She wove the magicka in her palms and fingers, feeling it out with relatively new senses, after her regimen of magicka-draining poisons taught her how to feel it as keenly as I could.

The curving, coiled strands of magicka were perfect circles, linked together like a series of chains without touching. Different layers to a single spell, each of them supporting one another.

The girl’s two scamp lackeys- whose names I still hadn’t quite caught- stood there, Clubs in hand, as they rampaged against the girl’s opponent. Their weapons splintered and cracked as Goranthir held them off, straining against the Burden spell I’d put on him.

“The restrictions I demand to overthrow,” The girl continued, screwing her eyebrows together in focus.

One of the scamps grunted, hard, Goranthir kicking it in the ribs. It collapsed, hissing and spitting at him. The other one didn’t hesitate to throw its club at him and grab at its companion. Goranthir barely ducked out of the way of the club- only to stumble back as one scamp threw its injured comrade onto Goranthir’s swords. It willingly skewered itself onto his blades, just to grab at his hands. It licked his face, and he recoiled reflexively in disgust as it cackled, holding the blades in its own chest even as Goranthir tried to shake the thing off. The uninjured Scamp charged at his legs. The prince stumbled under the increased weight of my spell as his footing suffered. He stumbled, but flicked the scamp off of both swords with a heave- then nailed the scamp clinging to his legs through the back.

“Through the miracle of Magicka, I break free,” Rinnala finally said. She opened her eyes, and the circles suddenly aligned into the magickal equivalent of a railgun. I was always amazed by altmer magic. It wasn’t exactly the same as Tonal Architecture or the Thu’um, but it was based on recitation. Exact wording, exact language use. An altmeri spell was like a poem, or a haiku, and this one seemed even stronger.

Goranthir noticed Rinnala had stopped reciting. His eyes widened and he tried to throw himself out of the way.A corridor of wind roared through the warded dueling chamber. It wasn’t just blowing wind- when it was going fast enough, hard enough, it hit like a train.Goranthir slammed against the wall with an impact that would normally be hard enough to break bones. But when his shield broke, the chamber’s wards shuddered, and he disappeared.Only to fall onto the ground next to me, forcefully recalled away from the arena, and thus the fight.He panted on the ground, breathing deeply now that he actually could.“Do we have to spar with that burden spell?” He asked. Rinnala primly snapped her fingers, the scamps disappearing, and then made her way up the stairs toward us.

“If you weren’t Burdened, she wouldn’t have had a chance.” I said. “Sorry, Rinnala.”“Kena Manatsoni, must you be so cruel to me?” The altmeri girl frowned. She liked to switch back and forth between dunmer and altmeri customs. From what I could tell, it started out as a way to mess with people who saw her as a perfect elven princess, but I was starting to think she called me kena as a sort of respect, since I’d been ‘raised’ in Morrowind.

“Your control is perfect. Better than mine, and your studies are going very well. You are excelling.”“You are prefacing your actual thoughts with compliments.” She said

“You’re too much of a perfectionist.” I said, finally. “Too perfect. Your chanting requires time. In the time it takes a battlemage to throw a dozen firebites, you might be able to get off a single spell with the power of twenty.”“And yet it’s the first one that matters. Yes. I see.”

She reminded me of a complete antithesis of Emylee, in her own way. “... I half expected you to argue,” Goranthir said. He got his wind back, and stood straight back up again.

“Why would I argue when she is correct? I will never be a battlemage. And yet, I still won.”“I hadn’t expected your scamps to throw themselves on my weapons like that.” He said. “Did you tell them to do that?”“I told them to help me win.” She smiled. For a moment, I saw Mannimarco’s smile. That sort of gloating, confident grin. She never had anything less than complete trust in her contracted familiars, and somehow, she’d earned their trust in return. Daedra couldn’t be permanently harmed, but swords still hurt.

“Well. They did.” Goranthir sighed.

“Goranthir, I’ve noticed you’ve started conjuring a bastard sword more often lately.”“I’m training in case I need to wield Umbra."

“And how’s your progress on Feather?” I asked.“Not great.” He frowned. “Alteration is not my strong suit, and I can’t supplement it with mysticism. Part of my conjuring involves feeling the weight. I can’t focus on feeling weight and ignoring it at the same time.”“Not a problem. We can workshop it. We’ll figure something out. Maybe based on your Birthsign.”

“Absolutely. Thank you, Maria.”

“And Rinnala. What was different with your chant?”

“You noticed that? Yes. I chanted in the third high tone.”

I raised my eyebrows. I’d mentioned the dwemer tonal architecture, and gave her a bit of the basics, but I didn’t know she was trying to develop it.“It took me quite some time to experiment with it. It’s… been difficult. The tones are all hard edges. My chants are softly curved ones.”

“I... kind of get what you mean.” I said. That was sort of the problem with teaching magic. Everyone had their own personal way of doing or learning it, and there was no ‘one size fits all’ for anything. For someone like Rinnala, who talks half the time like she’s giving a book report, to start talking about the ‘vibes’ of a sound, it meant we were dipping our toes into some esoteric territory.“I’ve been experimenting with a single-syllable magelight chant.” She offered. “By practicing it at different tones, I can determine output, magicka cost, and other exotic adjustments caused by them. The eighth low tone turns it red, for example.”

“Right. That might be nice for me to take a look at. I’ll do some experimentation on my own, and we can work on that, too.”

At that, there’s a flash of actual sincere hope on her face.

She must have thought it was kind of a dead end. The tones were pretty exact. There weren’t any gradients, and you’d have to switch tones between words, and that was a lot easier said than done. But there was potential there.

Especially since Martin had wanted to work on linguistic magic, before the political aspects of the Mage’s Guild- and then, you know, being Emperor- took priority. I’d have to see if he’d be willing to send me his notes. 

Then, there was a knock at the door. I flicked a wrist out and opened it telekinetically. Queen Morgiah stepped in, immediately bracing for a tackle hug from Rinnala.“Hello! Sorry to bother you, but there’s some things I need to speak about with your teacher.”

She gave me a single meaningful nod. At that, I nodded back.Morgiah had found a way to get at the Thalmor.

=====

The doors were locked. An old high elf carefully ran his fingers along the edges of the doorframe, and I felt whisper-thin straws of magicka roll from his fingers, through the soul gem, and into the door’s frame. There was a delicacy to his work that I couldn’t believe. I wasn’t bad at enchanting, though I never really used the skill very often, but his magicka was refined into small tendrils, almost like a brush, and the energy from the soulgem was his paint.

His skin was strangely ashbitten, something you usually only saw in dunmer that spent a long time near the ashlands. On altmer, it dulled the golden gleam and gave him a slightly bronzed look, not to mention the pale scars and wrinkles. It made him look older than he probably was.

Sitting in the other chair, looking bored, was a dunmer. He wasn’t as old as the high elf, but he laid back, one leg up on Morgiah’s little tea table, eyes closed like he was napping. I couldn’t feel anything strange about him, but his shadow felt strange. It felt almost flat, like an animal’s shadow.I was in my ‘Marlia’ disguise, hands folded primly in my lap as I relaxed on a backed chair. I would never want to get rid of my tail permanently, but it did make sitting down a problem sometimes. Morgiah sipped at her tea. 

I wasn’t sure why we were here, or who either of the other two people were, but nobody was saying a word until the door was, as Morgiah said, ‘properly sealed’.

Eventually, the high elf stepped away from the door.My ears popped, and everything felt closed off. Sealed. My connection to Sessalan was suppressed.“It will not last forever, but it is complete. We cannot be observed.” He said, and stood straight, turning to Morgiah. “Can we actually speak now?”“Yes,” Morgiah relaxed. “I suppose we must introduce everyone. This is Qorwynn.”My spine straightened. I knew that name.

The dunmer opened an eye toward me. “I already knew, but I’m impressed the kid does too. Did you tell her?”

“I haven’t.” Morgiah said. She sounded surprised.

The Enchanting trainer, the best one in the games. I hadn’t thought about him in a long, long time, though those memories were still hidden away in my brain. If I remembered properly, you’d need to use magic or something to prevent him from being hostile.

“My name was never well known,” Qorwynn said, “But how do you know it?”“Let’s just call it mysticism and leave it at that. All I really know is that you’re an enchanter,” I said. “One of the best in Vvardenfell. If not the best.”“Yes.” He said, no emotion in his tone. “Morgiah smuggled me to Vvardenfell, long ago, so I could study the old teleportation networks. And now I’m here, paying back that debt.”

“Next, Error. It’s a pseudonym.” Morgiah said, gesturing to the dunmer. “He’s-”“From a Thieves’ Guild.” Error cuts in. Morgiah tenses, but lets it go. “Which one? I’ll never tell. Why am I doing this? I'll also never tell.”“Finally, Maria Manatsoni,” She continues, gesturing toward me. “The Winged Witch, though I admit I don’t know the reasoning behind that epithet.”

Error opened his other eye and sat up, examining me closely. He looked me over closely.“Isn’t she an argonian? That’s not an illusion. I’d know if it was. Not fleshcrafting, either, her entire body is different.”

I focused, and pushed myself into my original form. My tail whipped out around me, and my skin crawled as new scales burst from my legs and hands.“... Okay. That’s a trick I’ve never seen.” Error grinned. “Getting Televanni’s headtaker in this too, huh? I’m impressed, Morgiah. What next, Zurin Arcturus hiding in a cupboard?”

The queen rolled her eyes.“We’re here to deal with the Thalmor.” She said. “And I trust you all with the full details of the plan I have developed. Qorwynn will create a long term storage chamber. We’ll need to keep an altmer alive there for an unknown amount of time. She mustn’t be able to leave, be tracked, or escape.”

“Kidnapping a member of their leadership, I would assume.” Qorwynn says. “Such a thing will not be easy. The energy source of soul gems is partially generated through the ritual release of the soul to the dreamsleeve. If it is to be completely untrackable, that will not be a perfect or elegant solution. We would need a… morally questionable amount of black soul gems.”Morgiah frowns.

“Would Welkynd or Varla stones work?” I asked, and pulled one out of my Shadow of Maybe.

“By the spider bitch herself,” Error hissed. “Where were you hiding that?”

I shrugged, and handed the Varla stone to Qorwynn.

Qorwynn examined it, and tugged a thread of magicka out of it.

“If we could somehow gather the number required, then yes.”

“I have enough,” I said. I’d created a lot, before I’d had to split from Shor. “On top of Jagar Tharn’s early research with the Mage’s Guild, which might be useful. He did keep the Emperor imprisoned for a decade, after all.”

Qorwynn nodded. He was trying to stay servile and careful, but I could see the hunger for knowledge in his eyes. He nodded.“That… that would do it, yes.” He said. “What’s my job?” Error asked.

“You’re going to pull knowledge from our captive’s mind. As much as you can.”“I’m not a bad illusionist, but that sort of thing isn’t especially easy.”

“We will have will-weakening poisons and the like, of course.” Morgiah said, “You’ll have the finances of Firsthold to aid you in your task.”“Hah! It’s like I never left Morrowind! I love nobility.” Error grinned. “Yeah. So who’s the target?"

“Lady Arannelya.” Morgiah responded. “She is one of the youngest members of a small noble house, notable for its position south of Alinor and their strong navy. They’ve been keeping quiet until recently. They’ve begun strengthening their navy even further. They claim it is to assist with facing off maomer pirates and sloadcraft, but I have good reason to believe they’re preparing for an overt takeover after they’ve gained publicity.”

“Are these reasons related to the same Beautiful informants that fell for the Thalmor’s trap last time?” I asked.Morgiah sighed. “That was a misstep. I have already apologized for that incident.” She says. “No, I used other sources to confirm this. Arannelya is a member of the Thalmor’s elite, the high council, and with her information we will very likely be able to recover the others.”

“Who’s going to be doing the kidnapping?” Error asks. “I may be Thieves’ Guild, but I’m not a footpad. Plus, kidnapping is a bit beyond the sort of stuff I’m allowed to do.”

“Maria will.” Morgiah says.

I am?

“Into and out of hostile territory? Through Alinor itself? Carrying a wailing n’wah?” Error asked. “You think you can do that? Mark and Recall isn’t going to cut it.”I thought about it for a moment.

“She wouldn’t be wailing. She’d be paralyzed.” I said. “As for in and out…”“Shiftgates,” Qorwynn said. It was the first thing he’d said in a while.

“... Yeah. That was how I was planning on getting out,” I said. “How did you know?”“Divayth Fyr’s apprentice. Master of conjuration. Only makes sense.”

“... Yeah. I won’t be able to shiftgate there in the first place, not without knowing the coordinates.” I thought about it. “My altmer disguise didn’t hold up very long, so it’s probably nothing more than a polite fiction…"

A moment later, I had an idea.

“What kind of wildlife is there in that part of Summerset?” I asked.

“Why do you ask?” Morgiah asked, and Error began to laugh.

“The shape change trick!” He cackled. “Perfect. Qorwynn, tell the lady what animal she needs to turn into.”“Why me?”“You’re the only one who grew up in Summerset.”“Right,” Qorwinn sighed. ”So. Birds.”

“Winged witch indeed.” Error said.

It wouldn’t be long until we had the name of every member of the Thalmor’s leadership.