Applying Exotic Metaphysics (Tyrant, 23.6) (Patreon)

The dragon stood between us and the door to Ceporah Tower. Sessalan had both maormer oarblades in four arms. His shoulders contorted as he pulled both of them back, flashing in the sun’s light as he leapt forward- ready to scissor them shut around the dragon’s neck.

Relonikiv’s wing flicked out in a blur. Sesslan’s ribcage crunched loudly as the daedra was blown off of his feet.

Magicka built in my fingers as I wove a quick burst of lightning.

Then, I beheld a true Dragon Shout.

“Yol…” (Behold, the beginning! It blazes with creation! Chaos and Order together become a brilliant forge! We have never seen the first flame, but it lives within all of us!)

“Toor…” (AKHAT burns! An ancient phlogiston, pure and ever so sweet! We sup upon it as our first meal! Father feeds us this memory.)

“Shul!” (Kneel before the brilliance of the sun! This is the gift from our father, a vision of the beginning! This is the birthright of our majesty!)

In just three words, Relonikiv had said so much more.

It wasn’t like the small amount of Thu’um Martin or I had learned. Those were just tricks, pale imitations of what this really was. Visions swam behind my eyes. In the eternal dark, two infinite, eternal things of impossible shapes and sizes met- and at that point, in the dawn of existence, a point of fire. Infinite, primordial heat. The tip of Akatosh itself.

When I came back to myself, the fire was already raging around me, and my fire resistance ring was half-melted on my finger. Sessalan stood in the way, blades crossed over himself- ink pouring from his flesh as he burned, protecting me from the flame.This wasn’t just fire in the magicka-kind of way, or the burning-fuel kind of way. This was Fire, capital F, born out of the universe deciding that it needed to exist. 

That didn’t stop me from slapping fire resistance onto Sessalan. It slowed his burning, but didn’t stop it. He slumped to one knee.

I darted forward, running up his back. Sessalan shoved me forward, up and higher.Shadowrend twisted through my grip, lengthening into a longer, sharper spear. Something that wasn’t just a halberd, but a bident used by silt strider jockeys. My tail whipped out around me as I twisted, thrusting it downward-

“Wuld.” (You think you are fleet? I have wings, little mortal! I have danced with howling storms, and slept beneath the rushing winds. All skies are as below me as you are!)

A flicker of an image- a storm, Relonikiv’s memories of laughing and hunting netches from above- and my bident hit the ground where the dragon had been a moment ago. The dragon’s shadow covered the sun for a moment. He was already flying, having moved upward- through me- without touching me. I could hear his laughs from above as he circled the tower away from us.

The ground was still burning behind us, a V-shape where Sessalan was slowly getting to his feet. The creatia that made up the front half of his body was burned away, leaving hollow sections of his body still seeping ink. 

“... So. is it just me, or are we fucked?”

Yes, Sessalan’s mind touched mine. Relonikiv is the weakest of the three dragons that serve Apocrypha.

The dragon swung around the other side of the tower, coming back at us.

Dragons also do not die, the daedra added.

“Joy,” I sighed, Shadowrend twisting around my wrist as a bracer. “Any bright plans?”

Sessalan twirled both oversized blades into the ground. His lowermost arms unspooled into tendrils, apocryphic tendrils that twisted around the handles. He took two large steps back, the tendrils stretching as he did, his talons digging into the packed dirt beneath his feet

Get inside. I distract, Sessalan said.

Relonikiv’s chest inflated, ready to shout-Then Sessalan pulled. He shot upward like he’d been fired out of a slingshot. His tendril-arms and lower half stayed behind as his form ripped itself in half. His top half slammed into the dragon’s maw, clinging and pinning it shut. Acid ink spilled free from his wounds, and I felt him pulling at my Magicka as he tried to keep himself intact.

From my Sea of Nothing, I pulled free two vials between three fingers. Fortify Intelligence. Fortify Willpower.

Ash Yam, Netch Leather, Scrib Jelly, Whickweat. A heaping mound of Bloatspore in both of them. No negative interactions. Both potions touched my lip in one motion.

Behind me, I felt my tether to Sessalan begin to snap. The dragon crashed into one of the smaller huts outside, knocking the daedric lurker off of his face. He reared back, and spit down a single word.

“Fo.” (The last gift from our father. The latest memory of that which has not yet been. Be forgotten, little Lurker.)

I saw it. The final day, when the two infinite forces parted again, the end of their interaction. The moment the last person who knew of this world forgot it. I saw the end of all things in the ice that spilled free from the dragon’s maw.

If Fire was Akatosh’s tip, Frost would be his tail.

Sessalan’s form froze over. His creatia crystallized into ice- and then shattered, along with my summoning spell. His vestige was gone. Resummoning him would take time and effort I didn’t have.

I turned back to the door. The potions were taking effect. My thoughts were crystalizing, growing clearer. My Meridian lines flared with power, my anima growing stronger.

I pushed Magicka through my arms and hands. could feel whatever warding spells were on the door were potent. But they weren’t nearly as potent as the ones on the Crystal Tower.

I remembered, for a moment, what it was like to be on earth. What it was like to be normal. To be human, and mundane. Where the lights of Aetherius were just stars, where biology worked on chemistry instead of the anatomy of the soul.

I’d never actually been that woman- I was a fragment of something that saw that person, through the hole in the world.

But Mysticism was the art of deluding oneself,

With one arm, I pushed a dispel magic effect into my fingertips.

With the other, I slammed a destructive blast into my palm.

Both of them met the door at the same time.

The door blew off its hinges.

I ran inside, into the curving, petrified hallways of Ceporah tower. 

“Scurrying rat!” I heard Relonikiv howl, as the tower shook, his body trying to force itself into a hole too small for it.

Grey-cloaked figures walked through the halls. They were carrying things in their hands. Delicate equipment. Soul gems. Staves. Scrolls.

There weren’t a lot of them- they were spread out, but they were marching slowly. Almost empty. They moved like the undead, like draugr woken from their barrows.

But as they walked, they groaned a mantra, through clenched throats. Most of them were talking in nordic, their accents too thick and used to altmeri to pronounce it all properly. It’s like it wasn’t them talking.

It was like it was Miraak talking through them.

I knew Miraak, of course. Hermaeus Mora’s greatest (and most unwilling) servant. The first true Dragonborn, trying to get out of his control. The events in the game involved him using this kind of mind control, but this is years early. Centuries early, and entire continents away. He’s a nord, so why would he be making all of these high elves his minions?

I followed them, weaving between them as they made their way up a huge ramped stairwell leading straight upward. This wasn’t like Televanni or Colovian towers. It had a central spoke, and a simple spiral ramp going all the way up. Now and then, doors sat depressed into each side of the spiral, leading to bulges sticking out of the side of the tower, but that’s not where I was heading.

I was heading to the top, and surrounding me were dozens of mind-controlled people. I still had the Fortify Willpower potion, but I knew I’d need more if he tried to control me that same way. If I had to fight the other dragons- or even all three, it was over. If I gave him a chance to shout, it was over. 

I had no idea if a silence spell would work on the Thu’um. It worked against Martin’s experiments, and my own, but something in me said a proper dragon shout- like the kind actual dragons or dragonborn used- could cut right through it, unless I cast it at an unimaginable magnitude. 

I closed my eyes. I delved into my shadow. It had been empty for a while. It wasn’t as if I could break or consume my alternate selves netirely- I’d just broken the links to them, the possibilities for what could have been.

That didn’t mean I couldn’t find a self I remembered.

I’d faced Dagoth Ur, when he was at his worst. And his divine power had almost been enough to win me over, force me under his control through speechcraft alone. There was a very real possibility.

But somewhere, back when I was still ‘alien’ to the world, before I’d found the Hist, there was the possibility that I’d gone to him. That I’d found him, and let him infect me with the Sharmat.

And shadow magic could find her.

Maria of House Dagoth existed, somewhere, in possibilities. She’d killed Dagoth Ur. She’d become the new queen. I’d used her Akulakhan with Shadowrend, when fighting Mehrunes Dagon.

If she had that willpower, that was a willpower that I needed. 

I opened my eyes again. I felt her eyeless skull over my shoulder, hanging off of me.

I took a breath. Then another.

Then I kept walking, this time carrying twice as much weight.

I needed to know why Miraak was here. Why now. Why he had Alduin under his control, and how. 

I stepped out into the summerset sun, and squinted at the three titanic figures perched on the tower’s spires, their silhouettes clearly draconic in the light.

Miraak stood, surrounded in the crumpled equipment the Psijics were tossing at his feet, while three praying mer poured power from them into his figure.

He was ghostly. Not entirely tangible. Not entirely here. His mask was more real than the face underneath it- a permanent part of his anima, connected more to who he is than his actual biology.

“There she is, my lord.” Relonikiv hisses. “The rat.”

“She is clearly part lizard,” Miraak responded, turning to me. “Argonia was great, in my time. They have fallen much. You must be Maria.”

“You know me,” I responded, surprised.

He smiled. 

“You have contracted with the same master as I, so of course I do. “Have you come to aid in my ascension?”

“I came to ask questions.” 

He barked out a guffaw- a low, genuine laugh. “Of course you do. Ever a seeker of knowledge. Well, far be it from criticizing you. Ask away.”

“... Why Alduin?”

“Why not the strongest of all dragons?” He asked. “Why not the most powerful and ancient of them? If I am the master of their king, then I am the master of them all.”

I paused for a moment. “That’s a good point, honestly.”

“I do commend you for recognizing him so quickly, however. I had expected him to Shout my will across Solstheim before anyone recognized him. You will make a useful comrade.”

“... How Alduin?”

“You don’t know?” He asked. “My master knew. It was something you left behind, after all.”

He raised it in his palm, fingers loosening.

The Eye of Lyg sat in his palm. It wasn’t a gate to Lyg anymore, not after what I’d done to it. I thought it was inert. Hollow. But now…. it held a negative pressure. The weight of prophecy, of what should have been no longer having happened. 

“It once led somewhere. He was quite displeased with what you’d done to it, after all, and what you’ve done in the time since.”

Something clicked.

“Prophecy bullshit.” I said. “Alduin was sent forward in time, back during the first era. But when I removed the circumstances behind the prophecy for his return…”

On one level, it didn’t make sense. Cause and effect just means that him being banished should have had him return at the same time he normally would have, since my actions wouldn’t have changed thing retroactively. But this world didn’t work on cause and effect. It worked on stories.

“There was already a hole in the world for him to exit through. It just took a little… adjustment.” He says. “And Hermaeus Mora is the master of fate and destiny, of course. Do you have any other questions, Argonian?”

I looked up at the dragons. Then at Miraak.

One shot.I shoved my silence spell out as hard as I could. The world went numb and dull, like everything was underwater, and I darted forward.

Shadowrend flickered into my hand, a halberd. I thrust it toward him.

“Clever,” He said, his voice alone breaking the spell. He wasn’t even Shouting. Then he took a breath.

“Gol,” he recites, and the ground grows heavier. My feet stopped running, and started plodding. I stumbled, but Dagoth hung on my shoulder, pushing me forward. His Thu’um wasn’t as powerful as a proper dragon’s, and that was the only reason I could still move.

It fell short by an inch before my legs were too heavy to move. Something in me wanted to open the Sea of Nothing, to dump more magicka-full items into the pile, to allow him to sustain his own conjuration. I held it back. 

“Hah,” he demanded. Something in my mind creaked. There was a pressure in my body, in my soul. It was like at the Heart Chamber again. Like being near Dagoth Ur… but without Kirat to back me up.

“TEAR DOWN THE PYLONS” the Sharmat cackled from my throat, and the Shout...broke. Miraak stumbled. I could taste the Heart of Lorkhan, the ashbitten wind and rotten blight bleeding in through the world around us.

Under my grip, Shadowrend lurched forward, even longer- from a halberd into a bident again- shoving deep into the ectoplasm of his body, into the creatia. He grunted, the blades digging deep into his lungs.

“Ash-skinned Devil mythologies,” Miraak snarled, his contempt clear despite a crumpled lung in his chest. I opened my mouth to respond, but-

“MY DEAF MOONS SING AND BURN,” the Sharmat screeched through my mouth instead.

“Fus!” (Begone! You do not deserve to touch my lord!) one of the dragons Shouted. I was blown off of my feet as the image of a mammoth being pinned into the sand flickered into my mind. I barely kept ahold of Shadowrend as my back slammed into the bannister of the stairs back down, and I slumped. My legs didn’t move.

“... Kill her.” Miraak sighed. The dragons hunched forward.

“SESSSALAAAN,” she hummed, my teeth cracking under the magicka I was forcing through my throat.

Something dark and burbling pulled itself through, into reality. It wasn’t Sessalan. It was something bigger, something more powerful. Something more complete. Something that Maria of House Dagoth would have contracted with.

It was the rest of him.

Tendrils wrapped around me, and pulled me into the ink. Into the waters of Oblivion.

Out of Mundus.