Applying Exotic Metaphysics (War, 17.4)

A Shiftgate stood wide open, far above me. Through it, the Battlespire. Hovering in the sky, buzzing as it ripped magicka out of the air, feeding it through itself, through Shadowrend, and through me. I focused, pulling the battlespire through, spells being woven not just with my own hands, but with Shadowrend’s. Enchantments, conditional alteration magic. Even Tharn’s worldweaving, as limited as it would be this close to a land that wasn’t mine.

But I wasn’t the only one preparing.

Something washed past me. A blast of potent energy as something called out. It wasn’t a word, not really. It was a song. A chorus of teeming, numberless voices. It boomed from the city’s gates. My talons gripped the road, digging long furrows in the stone as it pushed me back.

Beams flickered into existence, over the city. Torrents of light pointing downward from the sky, pulsing with light and flickering. Warped distortions in space, holes in Aetherius. Weirgates. One after the other after the other. Six in total. One for each city- except Gideon.

Each pulse, a new arrival. A new soldier. A new puppet to the Hist’s will. But I was ready.

Empty potion bottles shattered against the broken road around me at the same time the Warspores opened fire.

The sky howled. Warspore’s cannons and powerful spells crashed wildly against the Battlespire’s barriers. Shields of fluorescent purple crackled as spears of amber light crashed against it. Vortices of empty, colorless light flickered and disappeared, impossipoint weapons clashing against conjured blocks of raw creatia. Simple, fragile constructs, made to block their attacks.

Argonians stood at the gates. They held dwemer crossbows, imperial ballista, daedric bows, fully-drawn and ready. Glistening spears of amber light, hovering over the shoulders of robed sapspeakers. I could see shadowscales creeping in the shadows of their allies, ready to spring loose and pounce. Mages conjured spheres of fire, crackling lightning, or even pulled bound weapons into existence.

I shot forward. Time was warped, congealed around me, pushing through my veins like my blood had been replaced with battery acid. Crackling magicka roiled through my meridian lines, spirit and anima persisting where my nervous system failed to keep up. The wind tugged at my hair, ripping at my scalp and clothing.

The ground exploded as shadowscales burst from the cracks between the stone, from the darkness under the walls, or the shadows of the warspores.

As one, they leapt, blades oriented toward my body. But I couldn’t help but grin.

It had been too long since I’d been able to let loose.

I spun, my fingers opening wide, magic erupting from my palms.

I designed the spell years ago, to put into a staff. While the staff didn’t last, the idea did.

Chunks of shadowscale fell into pieces, singed and sliced and killed all at once. I wasn’t exactly holding them- but the scintillating, hiltless blades of plasma hovered inches away from my fingertips as if I were.

The guards on the walls froze, stunned, for a moment, and that was a moment I took to kick off the ground toward them. Some of them- faster on the draw than the rest- let loose their arrows and weapons.

My shadow consumed them all, as I ran.

I swung. Pulses of magickal energy radiated off of my conjured blades, and dust exploded from the wall as ancient imperial bricks shattered. People fell from the shuddering, shaking wall. Arrows went wide.

Then I swung my other blade, from my other hand, and they were dead before they hit the ground.

A second swing had the wall teetering precariously, fallen bricks and shattered stone crumbling.

I swung a third time-

And it stopped.

The blade, and my arm were locked in place. Amber light coruscated along the surface of the gates, the surface of the wall. It was growing, like vines, around the edges of my blade.

I released the spell, but the magicka remained, sticking like glue to the amber light. The plasma sword was still stuck in place, still existing. A link, iron-clad, the same matrice keeping it aligned with my palms was working the other way- locking my arms in place. I could see the way the anima roiled along the wall, the way the amber sucked me in, kept my arm and spell frozen. The amber energy roiled past me, around me. Entangling me, not just the spell.

For a heartbeat, I could see a brilliant, light. A baleful, angry amber. It was like staring into the sun. The argonians standing on the wall froze in place, as time seemed to twist and congeal.

“WE WHO RODE THE TOWER ADAMANT. WE WHO ARE UNITED IN SIGHT AND PURPOSE. WE WHO ARE ARCHITECTS OF ALL PAST AND FUTURES.”

As it intruded on my anima, I could feel it. Cold runes, careful and exacting and too-perfect.

Weaponized math. Mnemolic sorcery.

Possibilities were dwindling. Impossibilities were dwindling as well. Anchored by the same effect holding me in place. I poured magicka down my frame, a magic disruption spell blasting away from my wrist, trying to smash through the amber energy congealing around me… but nothing.

I realized. The Psijics had been a test. This was the same principle that they had used, only orders of magnitude more powerful, reinforced with mnemolic sorcery.

“YOU THOUGHT MERE MAGIC WOULD BE ENOUGH? MERE FALSEHOODS? AN ADJACENT PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS?”

The argonians on the wall fell to their knees, and I could see the amber light ripping at them, plucking energy from their bodies. Magicka poured from them, into the brilliant light. Souls linking, connecting- a matrix of temporary meridian lines. It was like the city was a singular lifeform, ripping magicka out of the air and slamming it into me like a hammer.

All of my magicka, being poured to me from the battlespire, raged against the sudden force stopping me. But casually, the Hist raised slightly more. Pulling at an entire city’s worth of people’s energy.

“YOU ARE A FOOL, WITCH-QUEEN. YOUR FEEBLE ATTEMPT STOPS HERE.”

The magicka blasted away at my shield, ripping it away. Then, a small purple spark appeared in front of my eyes.

Impossipoint detonation, right in my face.

In a heartbeat- sudden, too sudden- I would be dead.

It would kill me.

Then Kirat’s hand clasped around it, and it was gone.

“What are you standing there for?” Kirat cackled. She stabbed her spear into the amber light, and twisted- the amber light shattered, releasing my magic. “I thought we were breaking into this place?”

“Kirat?” I asked. “What in oblivion are you doing here?”

“I’m not the only one,” The khajiit smirked, windmilling one of her two spears in the air. A blast of fire slammed against it, scattering into small wisps of flame- and then, from the sky, coruscating beams of virulent, red energy sliced through one of the warspores. It fell apart in pieces, as Voryn Dagoth slowly descended through the air.

“How-”

“Down!” She said, suddenly, and ducked her head, ears flattening against her skull. With someone as crazy as Kirat hits the deck, I followed her. Voryn, still slowfalling, raised a powerful sphere of destruction magic, and turned to face the forest behind us.

Over the horizon, hundreds or thousands of dozens of long, heavy spikes of metal shot out from the Marsh. A full fusillade of javelins, all made of twisted daedric steel exploded out of the forest, felling dozens of trees as most of them went wild. The storm of daedric metal slammed into the gate, into the warspores, into the wall. They slammed into everything possible… then shuddered in place, cracking and splitting apart, breaking into fragments.

A figure in the heaviest daedric armor I’d ever seen shrieked toward us from the road outside the forest, lightning roiling under her feet. Levitation magic, unbalanced and uncontrolled, but frighteningly potent.

I knew that spellwork. The only battlemage I knew who was both that clumsy and that effective at once…

Emylee shrieked forward, her feet trailing crackling lightning as she wobbled up to us, her heavy layers of armor pockmarked and dripping wet.

Kirat just cackled. “Did you fall in a lake?”

“You two ran ahead!” Emylee yelled back.

“You were quite inaccurate, human.” Voryn said, feet touching the ground next to him. “You endangered me.”

“Don’t be a big baby. You were a god for a while. How could I kill a god?” Emylee responded.

She cast a quick spell- conjuring another oversized, twisted daedric javelin, nocking it to an oversized bow. She drew it back…. And let loose.

Reality broke like a mirror in front of her. One spear became two, which fractured and became four. Then eight. Over and over again, exploding forward and multiplying as they flew. Eventually it became a storm, another fusilade of spears peppering the entire city of Lilimoth, Gates blowing their way off the hinges, warspores above starting to list and shift in the air.

“... Why are you three even here?” I asked, finally, as Emylee strode up to me, the heavy-yet-weightless clanks of her oversized, overheavy armor serving as a telltale sign of her appearance.

“Well, Emperor Martin sent us.” Kirat says.

“And he said a bush with Tiber Septim’s voice told him where you’d be.” Emylee said.

Voryn Dagoth just crossed his arms, looking toward the gate. Heavily armored argonians were already marching toward us in lockstep, tower shields raised.

Kirat seemed to throw something. It was nothing, at first, a small packet of congelealed, roiled space.

Then a purple spark appears. The Impossipoint detonation she’d stolen, the one she’d saved my life by taking.

It flares, and then empty armors and half-eaten metal collapse to the ground where there’d once been argonians.

“... After you,” Kirat says, a grin on her face.

With my three friends flanking me, we entered the city of Lilmoth.