Applying Exotic Metaphysics (Return, 18.1)

Tel Veyond stood. A shiftgate was wide open above it, an open portal to the Battlespire, raining magic down around us.

We were in the sitting room, relaxing- lounging- after our escapade. Eidoron’s Ward leaned against one of the walls, next to Emylee’s bound daedric armor. It was a little difficult getting the armor off of her, since it hadn’t been designed to be removed conventionally, but we’d managed.

Out the window, in the artificial lake I’d blown a hole into, the Ancestor Lizards were splashing and playing. The Alpha was wrestling with the others. The nesting mother was back under Mawaleel’s roots, but I’d be relocating her as well.

Emylee was stuffing her face with sweetrolls. Sesaslan had been getting better and better at baking, especially with the enchanted cookware I’d stocked the kitchen with. Voryn sat on the floor, focused carefully on us, but I could tell he was distracted- his eyes kept darting over to the whole set of Vivec’s Sermons. I couldn’t tell if he wanted to look them over, or if he’d noticed that they were modified versions. Versions I’d been looking into with Mannimarco, taking apart Vivec’s words.

Kirat sat on my couch, feet on my lap, reaching out to snag the an old porcelain bottle of shein as I slid it back to her.

“... I don’t understand exactly what happened there,” Kirat said. “What were you trying to do? When are we going back to do it right this time?”

I sighed. I took a sip of my own glass, and winced. The shein was simultaneously sour and bitter at the same time, a strong scent.

It was exactly what I needed. I glanced down at my hands. They had the twisted argonian form Mawaleel had given me, but every time I looked… I could just see how hollow it was, now. How hollow I was.

“I … I succeeded.” I said, finally. “We don’t have to go back. It’s done.”

“I mean- you got stabbed and we ran away.” Kirat said, blinking. “When are those tree things going to attack us back?”

“They won’t.” I said, finally. “... They’re gone.”

“Gone?” She asks, frowning.

“... Their gods were like a daedra prince. Weaker, but more real at the same time.” I said. “They had their own pocket plane… but it wasn’t in Oblivion. It was nestled in the Dreamsleeve. Like a dam in the river. So I had to go there, and that meant getting in mortal danger.”

“So you had to die?” Kirat asked, worry flashing in her eyes.

“... Like Dagoth Ur.” I said, and Voryn shuddered, putting all of his focus into me. “I had to be close enough to death that both were possibilities. I had to be awake in the dreamsleeve, and dead in reality. I couldn’t come back to life, because I was already alive. I couldn’t die, because I was already dead.”

“So these gods. You killed ‘em, right?”

“... No. I kicked them out of the universe.”

“That’s not possible.” Voryn says.

“They’d created their pocket plane through one of the densest, hyperagonal morpholiths I’ve ever found.” I said. “Like how a lich anchors their soul through their phylactery, to use as a portal so they can access their own soul externally. That’s the ‘lost city’ that the Eye of Argonia was supposed to lead to.”

At Emylee’s confused expression, I sighed. “You ever blow bubbles? Like, with soap?”

“Yeah…” Emylee frowns. “I think we stole my da’s pipe for it.”

“They effectively blew a bubble into Atherius, using a powerful soul gem as the metaphorical ‘pipe’,” I said. “So I… well, I went inside. I locked the door… and I used a modified form of Soul Trap to feed it through itself again. Like putting the pipe inside the bubble. Uh, infinitely nesting it inside of itself.”

“Hypoagonal Numantia Theory. The Selectives called it ‘Liberty’.” Dagoth responded. “Destination pointing to the source. Without access to the wider world, it has no anchors to Mundus.”

“Yeah.” I said. “According to Divayth’s weirder books, that means, well... They’re gone.”

“Like the dwarves?” Kirat asked.

“... The dwarves could theoretically come back.” I said, and somehow Kirat shivered.

“So. What now? We won, right? What’s the next step of your master plan?”

I grinned. “I’m done. It’s done. I’m free to do anything I want. This whole time, the Hist were just… weighing on me. The risks they posed, the assassination attempts, the end of the world perpetually on the horizon… And now I’m free.”

“... So?” Kirat asked.

“I might do some mage stuff.” I said. “Work on my research. I’ll probably have to deal with the ramifications of what happened in Lilmoth, but… I’ll explain it to Martin. Return him the Battlespire and everything.”

“Nice.” She drawled, drinking straight out of the bottle of shien. She barely even reacted to it.

We lapsed into silence. Emylee scribbled on a scroll alongside one of Sessalan’s minion forms, the two seeming to be marking eachother’s work. Ritual circles- conjuration-based, it looked like. It was a complicated mess, at first glance, and I wasn’t about to try and puzzle it out while drinking.

Kirat sighed, relaxing and staring off into space. She folded the empty bottle behind her hand and it vanished.

“Voryn?” I asked, finally. “What do you remember, from the dreamsleeve?”

He closed his eyes for a moment.

“I was a god. A piece of something… infinite and endless. I was the many and the one.” He said, then opened his eyes again, “Was that how it was for you?”

“No,“ I responded. “No, not at all.”

“What was it for you?” He asked.

Like I was a cardboard cutout propped up by a two-by-four.

“Not that.” I said. “... Kirat, how about some mead?”

“Finally, a proper nordic drink.” She said, and pulled out a sealed, wooden pitcher. “Not as good as the stuff from Honningbrew, but what can you expect from Solstheim?”

I smirked, and the two of us got back to drinking.

===

The Battlespire floated above the Arcane University, over what had once been the imperial watchtower. Now, a weir gate stood in place. New battlemages were being trained up there, even as it poured magic energy down to resupply the magicka wells. Along one of the walls to the Orrery, papers had been pasted over the wall. A handful of astrologers and mages were arguing over them, one holding- and trying to place- a symbol for the Necromancer’s Moon. A priest of Julianos was standing nearby, trying to keep the arguments from exploding. On the other side, a handful of apprentices were holding staves, watching as Dovyn Aryn casually levitates in place, holding a similar staff. Their staves sparked and sputtered underneath them as they followed his instruction, discs of magickal

I walked through the gates. Emylee frantically waved down from one of the windows at the top of the Praxiography center, where she was no doubt preparing to destroy another warded testing chamber. I waved back.

The Lustratorium had seen quite a lot of work, ever since the Oblivion Crisis. With extra funding from the Empire, and with the fees they’d been paid for helping with repairs, there was quite a lot of reconstruction going on. Of course, I’d done my part, as well.

“Maria!” One of the alchemists ran up to me. Round-cheeked and homely, Julienne Fanis was the new head of the Lustratorium, and we’d been working together on this over the past few weeks. There was what looked like ash on her face, except for a spot around her eyes, and a spot around her nose and mouth. Mask and goggle markings. “We’re seeing results!”

“What kind of results?” I asked. “… New Virtues?”

“Oh, no.” she says, calming down a moment. “Though that would be incredible. But we’re seeing work orders of magnitude more pure than before! Yes, come look.”

She led me to the back side of the Lustratorium, and down the set of stairs into the basement. The apparatus stretched from wall to wall. An assembly of once-copper pipes, transmuted to dwemer metal. Bands of blue and red and green were wrapped around each pipe. A boiler sat in one corner, rumbling. Red-hot rods- refined fire salts, pressurized and compressed to size- were visible through tempered malachite, making the water boil around it. The steam turned a wheel. The wheel ground up some simple mushrooms- Cairn Bolette- shaking them through a sift. An apprentice transferred the sifted Bolette into a small plate, and slid it into a compartment above the boiler. It sizzled and burned, even as a fan sucked the smoke up into another pipe

Where hot steam and smoke rushed up one of the red-banded tubes, cooled water- rushing over a layer of sand, over a layer of frost salts and beyond that- rushed down into the same tube. Condensed liquid started to drip down.

That wasn’t all. The assembly was a long line of apparatus, alternating pieces of malachite, glass, and pipes. This was no simple retort. No simple alembic. It was a refinery- a separation engine.

Ashes, calcinated to perfection began falling through another sifter. Furthermore, buzzing on a vibrating plate, suspended in magicka-rich fluid, small crystals were growing- sparks dancing along them as it solidified. Solid chunks of void salt. The only worrying thing was the set of gas masks along the wall, filters made of paper and sponge.

“... It’s working?” I asked, eyes wide.

“It’s not only working,” She says. “Each extract works alone. One doesn’t need to combine another ingredient to induce alchemical effects! It’s much more powerful together, of course, but…”

She rushes over toward the dripping condenser, and holds a small slip of paper underneath it. She catches a drop, and holds it out to me. The residue is red… and as I watch, the paper seems to be growing small shavings of bark, regrowing.

“The fluid extract is almost entirely pure health potion.” She responds. “If you drop in a few mugwort seeds, it combines alchemically to create even more potent healing potions.” She says. “And the crystal works almost perfectly as a replacement for Void Salts in most recipes. The calcinated residue is an isolated version of paralysis cure, what little use it has.”

“Send it to Morrowind’s Guild, with a request that they test it.” I said. “They have a native creature that induces paralysis. They can make use of those potions.”

“Perfect!” She says.

I grinned. Each ingredient would need the machine to be rearranged, but if done right… you could mass-refine a resource, producing raw ingredients of each virtue.

“What’s with the masks?”

“Ah. The refinery is building up some residue just after the condensers. It was building up powder on this duct here. We’re having to pull it out and scrape it every hour. The powder, if inhaled, has a… side-effect.”

I glanced at the mushroom for a moment.

“Loss of intelligence.” I said. “A stupefying effect.”

“Yes.” She sighs. “It’s easy to cure with some spells or potions, but it’s been quite a problem. It’s a dangerous substance, since the effect doesn’t revert naturally.”

I glanced at the assembly, thinking about it. The whole thing was already pretty complex, and every little bit we added to it, it would get more complex.

Then again, this was a toy. An experiment.

“... Well, that means we need to figure out a way to isolate it as well.” I said with a grin. Julienne’s eyes lit up, and before we could get to work, an apprentice rushed down the stairs.

“P-pardon me, Wizard Faris. The Emperor is here. H-he’s requesting Master-Wizard Maria’s presence.”

I perked my head up… and then shot past the apprentice, talons scraping against the stairs, my tail whipping out behind me.

Finally, after cleaning up my mess, Martin was home.