Applying Exotic Metaphysics (Truth, 19.1)

A bottle of Mazte sat before me as I lounged back on the sofa, legs crossed. Sessalan was rummaging around, baking- his small, diverse bodies taking care of the tower as he had during my adventure.

“Sorry I couldn’t exactly bring you with,” I said.

“No offense has been registered,” He hissed back into my mind, “Your apology is unneeded. Conjuration into another plane is… unwise.”

“I know. Especially with how floaty the laws of physics were there, I didn’t want our contract to be… fucked with. Like the Crisis.”

Sessalan nodded.

“I’m going to invite a guest as soon as the sun’s down. Mind grabbing a troll body from the basement?”

As the sun set around Tel Veyond, I glanced over at the pile of bones Sessalan had gathered for me. Most of it was on the seat opposite mine, with the feet and legs piled on the floor. The three-eyed skull stared back at me.

Then I pulled out Shadowrend. It became a glistening sphere, a crystal made of soulgem- a perfect, pristine scale model of the Necromancer’s Moon.

I set the model down on the table between us, and glanced back at the skull.

Mannimarco smiled back.

“What an interesting way to summon me,” He said.

“Shadow Magic tends to be a ‘what if’ sort of thing, so… What if the Necromancer’s Moon was here right now?” I said. “Plus, well… It was more an invitation, really. You could have chosen not to answer.”

“True, true.” He says. “But I’ve intruded on you so often without asking, I may as well be polite and do you the favor of accepting your invitations.”

“Plus I doubt you’ve got much good company up there, when the Warrior’s Eye is watching,” I drawled.

He sighed.

“Godhood is more boring than I’d expected. But it has its upsides.”

“Would you have preferred to have the Jill take it all from you?” I asked.

He frowned for a moment.

I uncorked the mazte and poured both of them into earthenware cups, stolen from telvanni towers.

“For you, Kena.” I said. He smirked and took his glass.

“You’re so touched by the dunmer, even now?” He asked, and took a sip.

“Divayth basically raised me,” I said. “It’s a beautiful culture.”

“Even the slavery?” He asked, raising an eyebrow. “And weren’t you breton before, during the Warp?”

“As far as the slavery… that won’t last much longer. Not under Martin’s Empire. He’s got his eye on the argonians. If Dres keeps fucking around…” I swirled my drink and took a sip. “As far as Breton. Nah. The Warp thing… I wanted to ask you about that.”

“And how will you pay me? In… dunmer saltrice wine?”

I rolled my eyes. “It’s no liquid sunlight spun into booze, like I’m sure you high elves are used to. But it’s pretty good.”

He took a sip.

“It is.” He said, after a moment.

“Brewed it myself. There’s some tricks from back home that I’m trying to introduce into alchemy here, and making better booze is one of those things I’m playing with.”

“My complements to the brewer, then,” He says. “You must have used some sort of magic to make it potent enough that I could taste it.”

“I enchanted it,” I said. “It took a bit of shadow magic, but I’ll send a copy to your acolytes later. Then all your liches and undead minions can eat enchanted sweetrolls all day long.”

“Wonderful!” He said. “I suppose that would be more than enough payment for my incredible magical knowledge.”

“Right, then. Eight wielders of the Totem of Tiber Septim.” I said. “Eight different major events of the dragon break. Eight different Numindiums, acting at once and in opposition of one another.”

“Yes.” He said. “My greatest focus was on the argonian, Bloodscale. It was from his shard of the dragon that my greater self was born. But through your… lovely enchanted device, and the memories of my minions, I could perhaps tell you about the others.”

“... Tell me about the Breton.” I said. “The one you called the ‘most distant’, that didn’t give the Totem to anyone.”

He thought about it for a moment, and then extended his hand over Shadowrend. “May I?”

I nodded.

He extended his hand. He intoned, a low, humming incantation. Too long for human breath to maintain. I felt Shadowrend twisting. It was a subtly different Necromancer’s Moon, a ‘what-if’, if a different Agent had given the totem to Mannimarco. His eyes flickered.

“She was born on Cybiades island, in the Iliac bay. A terrible storm flooded her home, sinking a portion of the island into the Iliac bay. She became a refugee and orphan. Uriel Septim gave the refugees homes in Cyrodiil. Months later, Jagar Tharn impersonated him.”

“Did she look like me?”

“She did. Your human aspects, anyway,” He said. “After the Interregnum, the blades had to be reconstructed. New people needed to replace the monsters and daedra Jagar Tharn had summoned to imitate the Blades. One of the new recruits was Maria. She was… hard to notice. She had no particular skills. No particular abilities. She specialized in nothing, but somehow achieved things regardless.”

“She looked like me. But did she act like me? Did she talk the way I do?”

He looks away from the false moon, glancing back at me. I could feel the magicka pushing.

“... I don’t think I or my minions ever listened to her talk.” He said. He focused, his eyes squinting. “In fact, I believe she may have been mute. A quiet thing, slip of a girl. Dedicated. Slipping in and out of dungeons through unknown means. She didn’t cast spells. She didn’t fight. I remember when she brought me the ghost of Prince Karolis, bound within an experimental soul gem of mine… and it turns out she’d crushed his body beneath an elevator in his own dungeons. To get into Scourg Barrow to meet with me, she’d hidden in a pile of bodies meant for resurrection. Amidst the dead and rotting. She didn’t even act like it was a concern.”

I nodded.

He glanced at me again.

“When I told her about the Underking, she didn’t flinch. She didn’t even move. It was like she wasn’t even a person.”

“Like she was hollow?”

“Yes.” He responded. “Like she was mad. But… I didn’t ask. I didn’t even consider why she might be acting that way. It was like… like I forgot she existed.”

Mannimarco took his hand away from Shadowrend, and I could tell he was shuddering slightly. He frowned, and met my eyes.

“... She may have had your face, and your name. But she was not you.”

“What did she do with the Numindium?” I asked.

“Didn’t I say already?” He asked. “It destroyed her. She’d implanted the Mantella inside her, like a star in the hole in her chest, and raised the Totem, and ceased to be.”

Like a hole-

I leaned forward.

“... What did the others do? The other Agents?”

“The Mantella was placed inside of them, of course. There was no other way for-”

“Like this?” I asked, and I let my shadow subsume my armor for a moment.

He raised an eyebrow.

“Interesting,” He said- and it didn’t sound like Mannimarco.

“The Grove of Reflection.” I responded. “It’s supposed to show you what you really are.”

“And?”

“Pelinal Whitestrake had the Red Diamond. For the Agent, the Mantella. For the Nerevarine, Muatra. For the Hero of Kvatch, Nirnroot. I don’t know about the Champion, but-”

“Balac, the Sigil Stone at the head of the Staff of Chaos.” Mannimarco said. “Jsashe was not originally as powerful an atronach as she’d always been. It was how she faced Jagar Tharn.”

“... Right.” I said.

I let go of a breath I hadn’t thought I was holding.

“I have good reason to believe all of them are Shezzarines. Heroes. Doom-driven.”

“Yes. Seems like it. Doom-driven, Doom-drum. Mantling, as much as they can, the only knowable fact about the missing god.” He says. “However… You are different. You have nothing.”

“I have the Shadowrend.” I said. “Or Gharjyg, more likely-”

“Which is sitting on your strangely short-legged table and your brow, respectively.” He says. He takes another sip of Mazte. He smiles. “And not in your chest. Because neither of them fit, do they?”

“... So if I’m not a Shezzarine, what am I?”

“I have no idea.” He responded. “But I know who might.”

“Yeah?”

“The last member of the Tribunal.” He said. “Sotha Sil.”

“... I thought he was dead.” I said.

Mannimarco smirked- and then there was nothing but a troll skeleton sitting there.

“You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?!” I snapped. “Pull off that stupid ‘drop heavy shit and then cease to possess this dead body’ bullshit on me again?”

I sighed, and turned to Sessalan. “Put the body in the closet and lock it. Then get me a quill and some paper. I’ll be sending a letter to Kirat.”