Applying Exotic Metaphysics (Descent, 24.1) (Patreon)

I was on my back, gasping. 

I stared up at a virulent green sky. Pages whipped and flickered, their words blurring together. Swimming through the storms above us were whales, and sea-things made of carved bone, the notches and wounds in their bodies telling stories no mortal has time to read.The air was too thin, and tasted too much like iron and blood for me to breathe properly. The world didn’t want me here. It was cold, tickling my throat with thin fibers in the air. When I sat up, the ground beneath me wavered like a waterbed, and I sank slightly into the membrane. Ink rushed up through the membrane. I glanced down for a moment to see it was all just pages, parchment, and leather stitched together, stained and inklogged beyond readability. Small, trilobite-like crab daedra no larger than a hand scuttled along the floor, needlepoint legs pricking into and out of the paper, leaving behind stitches made of their silk.

The walls were made of books. It was like they’d all been put through a hydraulic press, squeezed and melted together. The spines were cracked and warped, and they smelled of ozone.A hulking thing stood at my side. Part of it was Sesslan. I could feel it. The rest of it was… not. The lurker’s main structure was normal, but one of its four arms was bulky, overgrown- it had too many tendrils, too many claws. It almost looked cancerous. A conjuration spell for Sesslan’s oarblade sat clenched in one of its claws, carved into the thing’s cancerous meridian lines.

“Summoner,” It burbled, using its voice instead of our usual telepathic connection. “Are you yourself?”“... Yeah,” I said, and got to my feet. The ground moved beneath me, and thankfully the ink didn’t seem to soak into my clothes. “I am. Are you?”

“Yes. No,” It said, switching from one mouth to another. “We are not your Sessalan. Your fragmentation or our Animus is not complete. We are not bound by your contract. We are not your Sessalan.”

“Right. Okay,” I panted, gasping for air. “I appreciate that you pulled me out of there.” I was careful not to thank him- especially considering a hostile Daedra might take that as some kind acknowledgement of debt, and I couldn’t be sure about the rest of my summon’s Animus.

Sessalan didn’t respond. It simply walked a few steps toward the books, and its claws began to work. It was pulling at some of the books fused into the wall, picking and perusing at them, even as it moved some books elsewhere. It was like I’d showed up in the middle of Sessalan’s day job, and he was too busy to talk with me.It bothered me on a level I couldn’t really admit. I knew, in theory, that Sessalan wasn’t my friend. I’d seen him when the Dragonfires were gone, when my summoning brought his full being, but this version… This one was cold. This was seeing a friend act like he didn’t know you.

“So. Miraak is kind of over-fucking-powered,” I grunted, and Sessalan stopped to look at me for a moment. Then, he slowly nodded, before going back to his books. “Any idea what we can do about it? And about the dragons?”

“You may make use of the books you find here, if our Master wills.” Sessalan’s head says. The burbling, cancerous thing on its shoulder seemed to groan with its own voicebox, warningly.

“That would make my head explode or something, probably.”

“Almost certainly,” Sessalan responded.

I took a breath.

I’d need to make a plan. 

The first part of the plan would be getting the hell out of Apocrypha. Preferably with my brain intact. 

“Right. Well. See you,” I said. I started to walk. I wasn’t sure where I was going, exactly, considering going from and to Oblivion without a proper Door is harder than shiftgates, and I had never been an excellent conjurer. But I didn’t really know where to go. I gripped Shadowrend tightly, glancing down at the shape it was in currently… to see it had become a small pen. The type you used inkwells with.

A moment’s thought, and it… stubbornly remained a pen.Shadowrend didn’t respond, even as I reached out toward its shadow. Its Potentia didn’t even react with mine. My shadow’s Potentia didn’t react with itself, either.Shadow Magic didn’t seem to work here. Joy. At least I could be confident that my normal magic did. I pulled in some Magicka from the air, ignoring the itchy, ironlike taste of it, and started to walk.

Four Seekers drifted down the hallway, convening together to face me.

When I turned around, on the far side of Sessalan, two lesser Lurkers strode closer. 

Joy. They knew I was here. I took a breath, drew the tanto off of my belt- 

And the ground began to move. It tore itself out of the inky sea, the ceiling-less hallway curling upward into the sky like the tendril of some grand thing. My stomach turned over as the sea seemed to rotate under me, like the entire world was tilting. It kept going, until the world seemed upside-down. Other hallways were moving too, visible in the sky, like some kind of titanic creature.Gravity didn’t change. I didn’t feel any inertia, or anything except the visual shift. It was more like the world itself was moving around me. Then, in the sea above me, a set of numerous eyes, each larger than the biggest Netch I’d ever seen, poked up through the ink to meet mine.

“Daughter of Mawaleel,” Hermaeus Mora Gazed. “You have intruded.”

“Sorry, I didn’t exactly expect to. If you’ll show me the exit…”

“You no longer please me,” he peered, and the ground quivered. Something coiled in my gut, something sharp and painful like my ribs grew barbs. “You have long since exhausted your usefulness to me, and your continued existence is unnecessary.”

“Oh.” I said. Because what else is there to say. “I don’t suppose there’s an appeal process?”

“You have allied with the Prince of Order. You have tread upon Fate. Your secrets are known. There are no appeals.”

The air congealed around me, making it hard to move. A razor-tipped tendril shot from the sea above me, shooting down toward my heart-

A sound like ripping flesh and hissing meat came from behind me, and something slammed into my back.

Sessalan had pushed me out of the way.

I bounced off of the wall as I tried to catch myself myself back to my feet. The seekers moved inward, spells blasting out toward me. I reflected one, and threw myself out of the way of the others.

I heard the sound of ripping flesh again, and turned.Sessalan was holding half of one of the Lesser Seekers. His cancerous, swollen arm had burst. Something inside- something red and purple, something with scales and lizardlike eyes peered out. Skittering, buglike claws reached held onto a powerful illusion spell, one cast on… the rest of himself.He’s puppetting the part of himself that isn’t my friend.

Go, Maria, Sessalan burbles.

I charged the seekers. The magicka welled up in my palms. I knew not to use shock, and with the cold and booklike nature of this realm… Fire might do.

I remembered the echo of Relonikiv’s Fire shout, the memory of that first flame, the moment of creation- and I cast.

“Yol,” I hissed. My fire blasted outward, my best attempt at replicating Jsashe’s Godfire spell, and the searing heat and blinding light washed past the Seekers. All three of them shriveled and writhed.

I ran past them, feet bouncing along the membrane. Behind me, Sessalan fought his own kind. Hermaeus Mora peered down, not at me… but at him.

“Fascinating. Halt.”

The air grew thick with needles and spikes in my throat, in my lungs. Moving prickled my skin with needles.

Sessalan continued to move. He pulled the other Seeker in half. His arms and legs split open, as if resisting the order of the world was destroying him.

“What have you become?”Tendrils plucked Sessalan into the air. He ripped and tore at them, but there were too many- too numerous. Some of them pierced his tendrils, and others still carefully curled around his limbs.

“We are a pair of winged horses and the charioteer alike.” Sessalan spoke. The words he used weren’t in any native tamrielic tongue. It was in Jel- the specific hissing terms and words he used were the only ones that fully fit the concept he was trying to say. “Yours are unruly, and obey your basest instinct. I have fed mine with Amaranth. There is no right lesson, learned alone. I am the Duke of Pitiful Revolution.”

Something cracked in my soul.

The name Sessalan was bound to the restrictions and law I’d written into the contract. It was a name, an artificial nymic, and Sessalan had somehow broken it. Something curdled in my gut again.It wasn’t even partially Sessalan anymore. Sessalan wasn’t a name, anymore. It was just a nonsense word.

The Duke of Pitiful Revolution hung from Hermaeus Mora’s tendrils. The cancerous, mutated arm, and the lizardlike head within rolled a single, bulging eye toward me.

A spike of alien, daedric thoughts, centuries of knowledge and study ripped through my skull.

I didn’t fall, the solidified will of Apocrypha hanging me from the air like fishhooks in my skin.

“Vaaz. Miiraad. Vus.” The Duke of Pitiful Rebellion Shouted, and he did it as a dragon did. The words unspooled into my mind. (Split apart into many bodies, we pieced together the tower of Tel Veyond with you. We did it with song in our heart. We built when we were named to fight and to learn. We did not build a Tower, But we built a tower. Open, then, the door to those beautiful, misty days.)

The air split open beneath me. I fell, back to reality. Back to Nirn.

In the courtyard of Tel Veyond, through the rift in the sky, I watched Hermaeus Mora disassemble my friend.

Something deep inside of me- something cold, and empty, and hollow, knew that Hermaeus Mora would never let him go. Not until the day he knew what the Duke of Pitiful Revolution had become.

And he never would.