Applying Exotic Metaphysics (War, 17.6)

AN: Updated on 8/24/23, since I didn't like the first version. This one's a little different. The same stuff happens, only much better explained. Or explained much more poorly.

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Walk like them until they walk like you.

I was asleep. I was awake. I was both.

My shadow was split. Shadowrend bound us and divided us, holding us apart, separate, without allowing that bond between me and myself to break.

I was in the void. Drifting through the stars, swimming amidst energies that should be killing me. Would be killing me. My gut bled until it bled dry, no more blood to bleed. But I couldn’t die. Not while my spirit still lived.

Around me- both of me- wisps of magicka squirmed and moved. Playfully dancing along. I reached down and touched one, allowed it to curl around my fingers. It was larger than me, many times larger… but small enough to dance in the palm of my hand.

Magickal anomalies, the game had called them. The games were wrong. Or left then unnamed for the purposes of verismilitude. Because I recognized them. It wasn’t anything I’d been taught. Nothing any of my shadows had ever learned.

I just… knew. just like I’d known all the languages of Tamriel. The Ehlnofey danced around my fingers, ready to be born. Now and then, one would get caught in the streams of energy, drifting upwards, outwards. Away.

To their new life, up and through the dreamsleeve. The path I’d just traveled.

My other self was one of them. The one in my palm, in fact. My living, dreaming spirit danced in the palm of my own physical hand. I could see it, bobbing and weaving. I should be dead, but Shadowrend- within both of me, both of us... neither could die.

Godhood by dissociation. It was… interesting.

I looked up. I could see it all, from here. I could see the Wheel. The cycle. The turning, the spinning. It wasn’t a wheel for a cart. It was a wheel for… spinning straw into gold. Gold into Amaranth.

I was in Atherius. Not any of the afterlives- no Far Shores, no Sovngarde, no Sands Beyond the Stars. 

The potion's magic pulled me, toward one of the points of light in the sky. The one nearest the sun. Not a star, truly- not a hole into Atherius… but a small planetoid. A small cluster of something that had once been a different god. Made of twisted flesh, coiled brambles, thickened scale. Streams of magic pulled at my soul. The potion’s energy, pulling it forward, away from my physical form… and I let it.

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My feet touched something soft. It was pleasantly spongy, like a shag carpet with my bare feet. Human feet. The kind I’d remembered from so long ago, when I was human. When I was less than human. When I was an earthling. Human hands. Nails, chewed from stress and with chipped paint.

Then I blinked, and they were… something else. They’d seemed so human, a second ago. So normal. Memories. Maria Dawson. A human from earth. A girl who played games.

And then I realized. I was no Agent. No Prisoner. Not even human. Divayth was more right than he’d thought.

But that wasn’t important. Not right now.

I faced the Hist. They were small. So small. A mere continent on the face of a globe. But at the same time, they were around me. Gnarled bark and twisted root. Ancient beyond belief, beyond time. There was a multitude of them. Hundreds, thousands, even more. They were all linked by their roots, linked by their vines. They stood like walls at the edge of their world. Stood like the bars of a cage.

Forced by my potion, their roots dug like fishhooks into my soul’s skein. I’d been pulled toward them… but they’d been pulled toward me as well. They’d been pulled here, dragged along with me as I was dragged to them. For once, all of the Hist were here. In one place- all of their extremities.

It felt like a dream. Which fit… since I was asleep.

“Hello.”

“Exile. Interloper.” It hissed. “How dare you swim into this sacred place?”

“That’s me.” I responded. “But that’s you, too. You’re foreign to this place. To this Kalpa. This cycle.”

“Begone,” It said. A surge of power brushed against me. Not Magicka. Not Will, or Force, or anything applicable. It was a string of numbers. A burst of static and noise. Ones and Zeroes. It was meant to delete me.

But from up here, in my original body- my self-image of me- I couldn’t help but realize that they’re just numbers. Just fake. Like everything else. They splashed against me, sparking off my essence like water.

“I’m not here to kick you out.” I said. “I’m here to end our war, and end your fight.”

“How dare you! You’ve slain so many of our people! Our Saxheel!”

“That was your doing. You brought this war to me, not the other way around.” I said. “But I can’t let you continue your war. I can’t let you break time.”

“Do you think you can stop us? Truly?” We’ve been searching, endlessly. Seeking for truth. The numbers, the calculations. Aditem, the Poet’s House, the eternal ALEPH for the glitter of gold. We know it all.” The Hist said. “Do you know? Have you spent the time to study? We thought not.”

“I don’t need any of that. See… This place is like a fortress. The lost city of Argonia… this is it, isn’t it? Nobody gets in without your permission. Nothing gets out without your permission.”

“Unless it is you, burglar.” The Hist says.

“Right. Because I have the key. So I was thinking…”

From my shadow, I pulled Fatebreaker, wreathed around my wrist.

Then I shoved my hand into my mouth, into my throat. From it, I pulled the Eye of Argonia.

“What if I just… locked the door?”

The Hist tensed.

“You would be locked inside with us,” The Hist tensed, “You would be trapped, like us. Would you give up your life for the request of the Mawaleel?”

I smiled. It may have been for Mawaleel at first… But now, it was for my own reasons. Reasons I was still just figuring out.

“You would have your fortress. You’d be able to live at peace forever.” I said.

“Until the Devourer comes. We have lived through one world, into another. The Devourer always comes, and it cares not for our walls.” They said. “No. Cessation of time is the only answer. We have come to a consensus. It is the only way we can rest. The only way we can be at peace.”

“... I can’t let you.” I said, finally. “Living in peace forever is a good goal, but… that isn’t the point. That isn’t why you’re here. You’re skipping the natural process. You’re breaking the way things should be.”

“You?” The Hist asked. With my own voice, they laughed. Spitefully. “You speak of the natural process?”

“I’m walking the road.” I drawled.

“The road goes in circles. CHIM is a path without end. It goes around and around, and then death comes. The cycle ends. All progress is lost.”

“... You don’t get it, not really.” I said. “But that’s fine. This isn’t a debate. You want out? You want off?”

I raised the gem.

It was a tone. A low, keening sound from my lips. Tonal architecture. The last few whispers of the Dwemer’s existence. I sang to the eye... And I lulled it to sleep with a tune that meant LOCK.

The Eye of Argonia closed- and like that, Nirn was gone. The stars were gone. Just the void. Just the Hist. The last few motes of light- the last few spirits- winked out of existence, no longer visible from my perspective. From the inside, Mundux Terrene ceased to be.

From the outside, I raised my hand. The Eye of Argonia went dim in my hand… and I began to chant. Soul Trap, on a massive scale. The Ritual began to gleam and spark, shuddering. Both on my shoulder and in the night’s sky. The smallest planetoid, the small twinkle of the Hist’s light… I reached out with magic.

“You will open the way again. We know the way of mortals. Impatience will eat at you, and-”

“Soul Trap,” Both of myselves incanted.

The Eye of Argonia glittered. The shadow copy- barely existent- flickered out of existence, leaving the real one on the inside.

The Eye was inside of the Hist, which was inside of the Eye, inside of the Hist.

It became hard to breathe, inside the Hist. Hard to think, hard to do anything. Harder to stay asleep. But I wasn’t done.  I’d just tangled together a hyperagonal circlejerk- both spatially and conceptually… and now I just had to adjust the pointers.

“What have you done?”

“I’m not done yet.” I hissed.

Then, I looked up, and rang the fingers of Fatebreaker like I had Wraithgard. Except while Wraithguard knew many songs, Fatebreaker only knew one.

I told it of the Negative Existence and Positive Existence. Of the Anu and Padomay combined. The song that was the Godhead’s Name, that was CHIM. I told it to Be Not.

The Hist paused. Everything froze as the Eye of Argonia stopped existing. It didn’t just break. It wasn’t damaged, wasn’t destroyed.

It simply ceased to be. Zero-Sum. The metaphorical pointer, the Gem that Contained the Hist that Contained the Gem… was gone.

Now, the Hist simply contained itself. The hyperagonal circlejerk tightened. A line became a circle. Transliminal pathways ceased to be. The Hist unlinked itself, and all roads out and in became roads leading around and around.

“There you go.” I said. “Your little fortress of Seth, your own plane of existence. As soon as I’m gone, it’ll drift. Away from Atherius, beyond Oblivion. Disconnected from everything.”

“NO! YOU FOOL!”

“... I feel bad for your people, really,” I said. “But they’ll find new gods. They’ll find a new afterlife. That is the way of things, after all.”

“YOU ARE TRAPPED WITH US NOW, FOREVER-”

The Hist didn’t even speak in words, this time. It howled. Anger. Pain. Whatever invectives they could dredge up, they spit at me.

My shadow flickered. Two places at once. Here, in the Hist’s little pocket of Atherius… and elsewhere, dreaming in Oblivion. Walking like it as it was walking like me. My shadow was starting to fade.

“Your presence in the godhead is no longer required,” I said. “Your wish is granted. You’re getting off Lorkhan’s wild ride.”

I pressed Fatebreaker to my own brow.

It rang.

I woke up.

Fatebreaker clattered to the floor as my shadow ceased to dream. The potion ceased to be. Shadowrend twisted, and I found my body thrust back into reality.

I sucked in as much air as I could. My lungs were burning, and the world was spinning. Having a body again hurt. Having a body with a wound in the chest hurt too, but not nearly as much. The gash in my chest, where my heart had been, quickly sealed itself, Shadowrend taking over.

“Mary!” Emylee is calling, shaking me. She presses a potion to my lips, and I drink. It’s not one of my potions, but it’ll do.

“I’ll be fine.” I said. “This body’s just a shell, anyway.”

“What?”

“... Nothing. Nevermind.”

I sat up, and Dagoth was blasting the branches repeatedly, the giant Hist-tree burning. Portions of the branches were gone, twisted and pulled away. The Argonians- all of them- were asleep, unconscious. Some were beginning to rouse, while others lay perfectly still, dead when the Hist had been pulled away from them so abruptly.

“Dagoth. Kirat.” I said, wheezing. “Hang on.” I reached out, and grabbed their shoulders. With my tail, I snagged it around Emylee’s wrist.

Then I made the symbol of Recall, and before the entire Black Marsh woke back up, we disappeared.