Applying Exotic Metaphysics (Truth 19.3)

The winds of Oblivion howled around me. The gate was barely stable, the path rarely traveled. But I was starting to feel at home, in Oblivion. So many Shiftgates and Recall spells had given me good practice with magical transportation. The hum of my staff stabilized the gate, and I found my feet landing themselves on hard stone tile.

The air immediately felt… wrong. Stale, somehow. Mechanical. Silver-leafed plants stood around me, growing in their pots. They were strangely symmetrical. Four-leaves every five inches. Too perfect. 

The sky was a cavernous ceiling, so far away that I could barely see it through the air itself. The sky was silver, and there was an iris-like opening, so far away, letting in starlight from Atherium, like an artificial sun.

Around me was a sea of further plants, all various shades of grey and silver. Crystals sat perched in the top of dark slate trees.

Sitting in the distance, the only structure

A creature exploded out of the plants, knocking them aside as it charged me, leaping from the brush to land in in front of me. Scything claws, a hulking body the size of a nix hound. It was a living cyborg- some kind of large horned serpent, one with claws, but extending from its torso were two sets of legs, and a long, sharp syringe built into its tail.

It’s talons came down to rip into my flesh- but I shoved Shadowrend in the way, the Mazed Band clattering to the ground as its form twisted into a familiar halberd. The creature’s talons squeezed, trying to slice straight through Shadowrend, but my will held it together stronger than its strength could push. The claws were wet with plant matter, silvery ichor dripping to the floor. The tail- the syringe- shot over its head, whipping toward me.

I leaned out of the way, twisted the halberd. The bulky creature went ass over teakettle, the silver limbs clicking and clacking as it tried to right itself, twisting and rolling back to its feet. It couldn’t seem to figure out how to get up for a moment.

A perfect opportunity to incapacitate it. A sleep spell just slipped off the thing. It didn’t think like a creature would- it was closer to a dwemer automaton than anything. A paralysis spell started to cling to the thing- but it broke through without a second thought.

So instead, I took a page from Martin’s book and slapped a shield over it. Through the dome, the creature finally got to its feet, claws battering against the shield for a moment, and I take a closer look at it.

Silver veins. Biomechanical parts. A few mysticism spells to look through it… And it’s got bones made out of the same material as its limbs, the same silver, transmuted metal. The organic parts seem to have grown on top of it. The serpent’s heart wasn’t even really a heart- it’s a crystal. Something like a soul gem or a welkynd stone, only completely artificial, pulling power from the world itself. It’s blood, too, wasn’t real. The stone was pulling essentia from Oblivion, forming itself into some kind of strength-boosting elixir. 

I remembered it. The game had called them Hulking Fabricants.

The tail wasn’t what I recalled, but the tail-hinge seems interchangeable. The syringe was full of various alchemical elixirs, all similarly artificial alongside the … and I looked over at the plants. Snipped up leaves seemed to be strewn around them. Mashed leaves were in the serpent’s body, creating different kinds of elixirs in its multiple stomachs, all of them pulsing through the tail into the syringe. The fabricant was a gardener. Keeping up the plants.

I looked toward the brass citadel in the distance, the clockwork city.

Well.

Best hurry on, before more creatures come pouring out to greet me.

===

A different fabricant- a small, horned velociraptor-thing- sniffed along my traces as I walked. It couldn’t quite perceive me under my illusion, but it could smell there’s something nearby- and it was following me to try and ‘follow the scent’. I marched through the halls, stopped only by the various puzzles and security measures. It felt less like the puzzles were actually meant to stop me- more to evaluate my intelligence. Even the most complex weren’t very hard, either, and all failing them did was call another raptor Fabricant to chase after my scent for a few minutes. Most of them wandered off after finding nothing, but the one chasing me was still doggedly sniffing in my wake.

I made my way into a large, cavernous chamber. One of the largest I’d seen. Something crystalline, charged with mysticism, twisted and reoriented itself as I entered. It was like an eye, turning to look at me.

At the far end of the room, two huge, humanoid fabricants stood. They resembled dremora, at first. Their armor, at least, resembled daedric designs. But their essentia was native to this world, empowered by the plane itself. They weren’t summoned, or alien to this world- they were meant to be here.

One of the two figures took a long, loping step toward me. Pulsing through its veins, my magic told me, was a powerful elixir, Restorative, this time. This thing would regenerate, rebuild itself. And it was doing so as I watched. The thing was decaying constantly, boosting its own frame with healing magic. With restoration.

Just looking at it hurt.

Because what was happening to it was the same thing that had happened to me. So long ago. Sotha Sil had tried to fix it, give it a permanent potion regimen- built it into the creature’s very physical makeup- but the creature was still decaying. It still wasn’t meant to exist.

This one had two gems. One in the heart… one in the head. A proper soulgem, for the latter. Sitting in its skull. A soul.

It bows low, hunching down until its face is level with mine. It’s a mask, but the gem-like eyes are alive, silver irises, flooded with elixir instead of blood, stares at me.

“The Divinity Sotha Sil is busy at this moment,” It booms, a mechanical voice coming from its organic voicebox. Its lips don’t move. “He will not come to see you.”

Our shadows overlapped. I saw, suddenly, a different timeline. A powerful one. One where Kirat had given Almalexia the band. A vision of the furious goddess, slamming the construct into the wall, destroying it in a single motion. Storming past in anger.

“I understand,” I said.“May I know when he will be free?”

“The Divinity Sotha Sil will never be free until the day of his death.” It says.

“I misspoke, I apologize. I meant to request when he will be available to speak with me.”

“I have registered your appearance. He will be available as soon as he deigns to select your appearance as a priority.”

“I see. Am I allowed to stay here and wait?”

“Yes.”

I stood there. He stayed leaning forward, face too close to mine.

“... You and your, er, companion. Would you both happen to be fabricants as well?”

“Yes.” He responds. “We are prototypes, a variant meant to be a basic sentient populace for the clockwork city.”

“I see.” You say.

He pauses for a moment. “... We are Imperfect.”

It’s eyes looked human. Too human.

They looked like mine used to.

I was taken back, to that moment I stood in front of the Tribunal Temple, in Mournhold. Decaying. Rotting, like the fabricant before me. I’d been stunned by the sight of three gods, back before I knew Divinity.

Sotha Sil had given me a look, back then. An expression I hadn’t known how to read at the time.

He’d recognized those eyes.

“Every soul in existence is imperfect,” I responded. “You are no lesser than anything else in existence.”

“The Clockwork City is a place of perfection.” It responds. “A solution to the flaws in Aurbis. To be imperfect in a place of perfection is… upsetting.”

“Do you have a name?”

“I am identified as Right-Side Guardian.” It says.

“Well, R.S.G,” I said. “Your master’s goal, to make a place that’s free of Aurbis’s flaws… I think it’s his goal that’s flawed. It’s antithetical to the nature of existence.”

Our shadows still overlapped. I could feel it, slowly decaying. There was something wrong with it. It was Imperfect… because it was too perfect. The Earthbones ruled here, even with Sotha Sil’s alterations in this plane. Even with his rules, the Heart’s power created this being, and the Earthbones sustained it. Both of them hated perfection. Hated the idea of perfection.

“Why?” It asked.

I paused for a moment.

“The world was made for a particular purpose. It is a road.”

“Where does it lead?” It asks.

“Amaranth.” I responded. 

“I do not understand this word.”

“... You will.” I said.

At that, the door slowly began to open. A weary, exhausted looking Seht stepped out. The only of the Tribunal to have fully accepted Azura’s curse. 

He looked at me for a moment as if he expected someone else.

“You are not Almalexia.” He responded, sounding a little startled.

“I’m not,” I grinned.