Applying Exotic Metaphysics (War, 17.3)

The city was cold. Only half the torches were lit, and the streets were nearly empty. Hawkers and traders still tried to sell their wares, but it wasn’t nearly as loud and boisterous as before. It was as if they’d felt wary of raising their voices.

Far above, the Battlespire still loomed. My illusion- the powerful spell clouding the future from the Hist’s vision. The battlespire was the core of the spell, the lynchpin holding it together. As quickly as magicka surged in, false impossibilities surged out. Whispers to the world. An illusory Elder Scroll, telling a fate that would never happen.

It was nearly my greatest work.

I walked in through the city, even as people edged away from me. Their eyes didn’t focus on me properly. Whatever magicks the psijics used, the citizens of Gideon had no access to. They saw me not as the queen bitch of the Battlespire that had attacked the city, but a shrouded figure. If I made them uncomfortable, then so much the better.

The alchemist’s shop was closed. The lights were off, the door locked. It didn’t stop me for long- the Thief was with me. With a simple lockpick and a twist, the door was open in a second. I walked in, keeping my hood tight around me, and heard muttering in the back of the room. The pungent scent of kresh grass and xanthe root filled the air. Candlelight flickered beneath the door.

Without hesitation, I opened it. Sendrasa Varelnim sat at her lab, a half-brewed potion sat in her alembic, a series of ingredients arrayed in front of her. As she noticed me, Sendrasa shot to her feet, ripping a malachite sword off the wall. She held it up, and the flickering of the candlelight was joined by the flickering of the flame in her other hand.

“I’m back,” I hissed in Dunmeri, and the point of her sword started to waver.

I grabbed the sword by the blade, ripping it out of her hand.

Her fingers clenched on the firebolt, ready to thrust it at me.

“No,” I said, and clamped my hand over her firebolt. A spark of magicka washed past us as the spell failed, and a small burst of flame exploded against our palms- but it barely even singed my skin. Sendrasa was never a very powerful spellcaster.

The elven woman all but fell back into her seat.

“I know you,” She says, slowly, fogged eyes trying to peer through me to my real form. Her voice was as low, ashbitten, and caustic as ever.

“You wronged me, once upon a time,” I said, “But I get the impression that wouldn’t narrow down the list.”

“Just tell me what you want,” She demands, finally, unsteadily getting back to her feet again.

“Hist sap,” I say. “You were ordered to collect as much as you can, in as many varieties as you can.”

“I did.” She said, slowly, “But what will I get in return? You already took your reparations from me. I didn’t even have enough to keep me my shop in Mournhold. That much I can remember.”

I stretched out my arm, and opened my shadow. Sendrasa took a step back, eyes wide, recoiling at the glint of the dozens of eyes staring back at her. She twitched as the first few rings fell from my shadow onto the floor. Then things got a bit louder as I began to dump most of the old loot I’d acquired from my rampage through the Telvanni traditionalists, the stuff I couldn’t sell or pawn easily.

“Not much of it is Dres,” I drawled, as my shadow continued to pour plates, goblets, old limeware platters out of my Sea of Maybe. “But it should be more than enough for you to return to Mournhold.”

The older alchemist woman stared down at the pile of historic treasures. Mundane, but heavy with history. I had gold, of course, but Sendrasa struck me as someone who might find this more valuable. Eventually, the torrent slowed to a trickle, and then stopped.

“... Fine,” She says, “This is enough. Barely.”

“Barely?” I scoffed.

“Extra surcharge for purchasing supplies while I’m closed,” The ornery dunmer said. She turned, and pushed aside a portrait set into the wall. Behind it, a safe. From a ring on her finger and the pendant on her neck, she pushes them together to form a key, unlocks the safe, and pulls out a small box, lined with nix-ox velvet. In it, held in place, were multiple vials. Each vial labeled with a date and a place.

Helstrom. Soulrest. Thorn. Stormhold. Archon. Blackrose. Each of them had a clear date, within the past month- and each were full of hist sap.

“Lilmoth is empty. So is Gideon.”

“The Gideon Hist is dead, fool.” She snarls. “And my contacts couldn’t get access to the one in Lilmoth.”

“No matter,” I said. “This will do.”

“Fine, then. Get out.” She says. “Get out of my house! Whoever you are.”

I grinned, putting the box into my shadow. “Very well.”

“Let’s never meet again, S’wit!” She snapped. I flipped her off in response, as I slammed the door shut behind me.

From my shadow, the Alpha burst free, and I climbed atop his bulky, scaled back.

“Go.” I said, and the Alpha went.

===

My shadow was shuddering. I could feel the spell barely clinging to me, anymore. Events were moving onward. My actions were taking me closer and closer to my goal, and the closer I got, the more the future was changing. It wasbig enough that my illusion spell could no longer cover it. It was like the faster I moved, the more the spell tore away from me. My magicka waned, even as the battlespire dumped everything it had.

The magic was beginning to flag, finally. The fabric of the future was straining. The magic was pulsing, shaking in place.

“Faster,” I said. The imperial road was in a heavy state of disrepair, half-submerged in the murkmire, but the Alpha didn’t care. Anything it couldn’t leap, it could wade through. Anything it couldn’t wade, it could climb. I’d been trading out Lygling for Lygling, mount for mount, but it had rested long enough.

Finally, in the distance, I could see them. Ancient imperial walls, half-sunk into the marsh, but replaced- built up, even- by layers of old stone, dredged up from the marsh and placed atop eachother. Half-buried in stone, the city sat on the coast.

The city of Lilmoth… was in shade.

Bulky, floating things sat floating in the sky above the Black Marsh. Some resembled trees, clinging to hovering rocks. Others, ancient ships dredged from ancient memories, rusted and pitted metal covered in green, healthy plantlife. Inverted ziggurats- stepped pyramids- hovered in place, the soulless limbs of the Hist sitting astride them. All of them ripped from the dreams of the hist, ripped from their memories.

Then, after a moment of strain- of complete concentration- I couldn’t hold it anymore. I released the magic, and a wave of exhaustion hit me. My face returned, my shadow back in place.

The Hist could see the future again, perceive the truth. My illusion spell had finally fallen.

Noise crashed against the dreamsleeve, pulses of magicka so sudden and panicked that I could feel it against my skin.

Dozens of warspores, hovering in the sky, began to shift, reorienting themselves.

Horns blew, in the distance. Emergency alerts. Calls for guards. Argonians began clambering up the walls, weapons in their hands. Guards getting ready. Murkmire naga slithered out around me, waking up from their subaquatic nests. They took underwater, secret paths into the city, ready to protect it with their lives.

I shoved a handful of potions down my throat, feeling the churning, buzzing feeling as it revitalized me, restoring what missing magicka I had.

Just little old me and her pet lizard, against an entire civilization.

Except… it wasn’t just me. Now that the spell was done, I still had my link to Shadowrend. My link to the Battlespire. The link to…

“Sessalan,” I whispered, and all Oblivion broke loose.