Applying Exotic Metaphysics (Tyrant, 23.5) (Patreon)

Alduin was back.

He was back early. Two hundred years early.

And beyond that, the Prophecy of the Dragonborn was never completed. It could never complete, not with the changes I’d made.  The Red Tower had never trembled, the Dragonborn Ruler never lost his throne. The Hist had been removed from the godhead. The Thalmor were about to be nipped in the bud…

This wasn’t right.

Artaeum being back meant the Psijic had really, really fucked up.

I needed information, and I didn’t know how long the island would stay here. So I ran toward it. 

Waterwalking was useful for that, but it was really the other enhancement spells that helped more. With the speed potion I’d taken, I was moving fast enough that the unsteady displacement of water- rushing waves and tides- moved like slow motion from my reference frame. I bounded from wave to wave as if they were hills, and then- not for the first time- stepped foot on Artaeum’s shores.

I still didn’t know much about the Psijic. They didn’t really announce themselves very well, and they’d been gone from the world for so long that there weren’t many accounts of what they were like. Outside of the times they’d tried to murder me, or the faint memories from the games, back when it was a game to me, I hadn’t met them.

By the time the speed potion wore off, I had gotten to the top of the beach, clambering over a few rocks to see the island proper.

It was beautiful. Green plants tangled together, clovers and small pink and blue flowers scattered across the fields. Ancient trees stretched toward the sky, glowing with veins of light. The air was potent with Magicka, almost too potent. Ceporah Tower stood reaching for the sky like a claw- twisted, almost organically, like a series of tendrils that had petrified that way. 

Perhaps it had.

To the western side of the island, mist rolled off of terraced lagoons, small floating skiffs lay docked. I could see the glow of plants even through the mist, giving the area a glow.

To the eastern side, it was a thick forest, too dark to see much, even with my eyes. Something moved inside it- something big with too many antlers. 

In front, though, was the road  toward Ceporah Tower. On either side were orchards full of strange, various kinds of fruit. Most of them didn’t have direct Alchemical Virtues, not from what I could tell, but they had enough Magicka that eating one would restore your stores easily enough.

I began to walk. I wasn’t sure what I would find. I couldn’t find any people.

Instead I saw the atronachs of various kinds, forced into forms that had them tending the orchards. They were taking armfuls of fruit from them and loading them into carts, but nobody was there to take them. The carts were overfull, and the atronachs didn’t care. The pigs, however, were more than happy to crowd around the fruits that fell off the sides.

Most of them were small, kind of cute ones; they had clearly been domesticated. Some of them even had collars. I suppressed the urge to try and scoop them up, and continued on toward the tower.

“Sessalan,” I ordered, and he appeared- this time in a mount form, a horse I could ride. “There’s something wrong.”

Of course there is, Sessalan murmured into my mind. I smell Apocrypha here.

“Joy,” I clambered onto his saddle. “To the tower in the center.”

I was half expecting magickal alarms or glyphs to go off. I kept my senses open as strongly as I could. I couldn’t feel much, not through the ambient energy in the air, but I still couldn’t believe there weren’t any magickal alarms or glyphs anywhere to alert them to intruders. 

As I got closer and closer to the tower, I also saw the small hamlet that had been built up around it. There were huts made of stone, engraved with old runes, doors so small you’d have to stoop to get through. There weren’t a lot of them, and they were spread quite far apart. Big yards full of alchemy ingredients, mostly overgrown or gnawed apart by wildlife. Most had sitting chairs outside, and others had tables. There was evidence that there used to be people. Books set down outside of houses, ruined by rain. Dishware, too, probably having been cleaned by the same pigs that were out by the orchard.

Beware! 

Sessalan reared back and threw me off of its back as a barrel sitting on the side of the road exploded into ink.

And from the ink, something crawled out.

Whipping tendrils with hooked tips slashed at Sessalan’s horse-form as I landed on my tail.

Sessalan wasn’t in the right form for this. With a concussive blast of telekinesis, the creature blew him off the ground for a moment. I unsummoned him before he could collide with me, leaving me free to examine the creature for the first time.

One of Hermaeus Mora’s Daedric Seekers hovered there, too many tendrils and too many hands. I could feel different circuits of magicka running through impossibly tangled, dizzying meridian lines running through its body- it was casting multiple spells at once.

I hadn’t felt the conjuration. It was already here, then. Waiting.

“Interloper. This place is not for you,” It lisped, raising a single crooked finger toward me. Its other hands- all three of them- were casting two separate spells, ready to cast. “Begone.”

It thrust its one-handed spell- a blast of potent fire, but I drew on my Sea of Maybe. The fire descended into nothingness.

“Sessalan,” I hissed.

My loyal Seeker exploded out in front of me, this time in his proper form. Both maormer oarblades whistled through the air toward the Seeker, only for its other spell- the two-handed one- to complete.

Then there were two seekers on opposite sides. Its meridian lines were halved, split exactly in two- the tangled mass from before now unlayered, like the seeker had been designed to bifurcate. Each had half as many arms as before- but both were still casting.

Sessalan instantly flung his oarblades at one. The sharpened blade stuck halfway through its body, and he charged it.

I charged the other as Shadowrend stretched out into a halberd, and opened my Sea of Maybe again in preparation for whatever bullshit the other one was casting.

“Nightwielder’s Art,” the Seeker lisped. It almost sounded… interested.

Then it finished the spell. 

It pulled from me. I staggered, my magicka and lifeforce ripped free from me. Not just that. I felt my potentia tug out. For a moment- a long moment- I forgot what I was doing. Where I was, why I was here.

If such a thing could smile, this Seeker was doing that, something new grasped in its hands. It was a set of notes, old parchment that had been bound with twine and hole punches.

Exactly like my notes on shadow magic. 

They were my notes on shadow magic. Somehow pulled directly from my mind, copied and cloned.

I felt a visceral burst of hatred- the same hate and spite I’d felt back when Mankar had stolen my notes on Shadow Magic.

So I responded with extreme violence.The first blast was pure lightning. It skittered off of the daedra’s body. Resistant.

I blasted it more, this time with fire. Burst after burst of explosive heat, hot and bright enough that it blinded me. A swathe of inklike darkness rippled open in front of the daedra- and I felt my connection to the fire blast dissolve. It had opened a Sea of Maybe of its own.

The third blast wasn’t so much a blast as it was a rolling wave of ice and frost. It wasn’t a projectile, not something that a Sea of Maybe could catch, so the Seeker recoiled. 

It bought me time to close in, swinging Shadowrend low. In response, it simply lifted itself higher. I only caught it on the lower section, a sharpened shadow blade punching through ink-stained skin. It screeched for a moment, and I saw its Sea of Maybe sort of shiver.

I knew exactly what it was about to do. It could use my tools, but couldn’t master them.

I pushed open my own Sea of Maybe against the Daedra’s. As it shoved my blasts from before back at me, I caught them.

Then, it spasmed- Sessalan’s oarblades finally having killed the other version of itself. It felt some kind of backlash, so I ducked under both portals into our shadows, and stabbed- deeply, into the Seeker’s core.

It withered. Ink and ichor sprayed from its tendrils. The body next to Sessalan dissolved, but this one didn’t- it stopped hovering in place, and simply shriveled, shrinking as it lost ink.

It hadn’t been conjured. It had been physically here. There wasn’t a spellcaster or a summoner that had pulled it here. This thing had been here in truth.

I’d only seen similar during the Oblivion Crisis.

“... Sessalan?” I asked. “What the hell was this?”

Seeker of Knowledge, from my master’s realm, Sessalan burbled. It should not be here.

“Yeah. Clearly. What else do you know?”

Little. I cannot know all. I am a fragment of my true self, he burbles.

“Of course.” I sighed, and looked back toward the tower. “It’s time to speed up. I’m keeping you summoned- I don’t want you back in Apocrypha until we know what’s going on.”

Sessalan nodded. I stepped onto two of his four hands, and he lifted me onto his shoulder- and together, we began to run.

Ceporah Tower reminded me of the Televanni. Not precisely the material, but it had that same sort of organic look. It was made of a thick stone, perhaps, or coral. If it weren’t so finely shaped, I’d have thought it was carved to look like interwoven vines. 

The gate was large and made of adamantium. Impossibly heavy, covered in vinelike growths of pale moonstone like a silver tree on the door.

“Fucking original,” I scoffed. “Do I say ‘friend’ in dwemeris or something?”

The door stubbornly stay closed.I raised my hand, building magicka for a spell.A shadow blocked out the sun above us. Wide wings. Its scales were melted away by apocrypha’s ink, warped and smoothed into a shape meant for swimming.

This thing wasn’t a daedric summon.This thing was aedric.

Sessalan threw me bodily away from the door. He fell into an ink-puddle as the dragon crashed into the ground, landing hard enough to crack the earth in front of the door.

“Hah! Joor Mey.” The dragon insulted me, its belly rumbling. A serpentine, almost devolved head, damp with ink… and it was speaking a blend of Dovah and old Atmoran. “You are too late to witness his ascension.”

“Whose ascension?” I asked, glaring up at him.

“My master, of course. And his master above.” The dragon spoke. “You speak now to Relonikiv, Loyal servant to Miraak.”

I froze.

“And Alduin?”

“Our master, and his master, has a new Middovah,” Relonikiv hissed. A new loyal servant. “And you have the honor of being my first new prey.”

He reared back.Sessalan leapt from the puddle of ink, blades flashing.

The fight began.