Applying Exotic Metaphysics (Revenge, 16.5)

Magic raged around me, the world’s magicka focusing. It coiled itself into amorphous bands, coiling roots and vines made of congealed amber energy. Pulling me still, holding me in place. Histmagic.

“I’ve come with shear and axe,” I said, my limbs locked into place. “Knives for carving and fire for burning.”

“Heretic.”

“I’ve come with curses on my lips and the shards of broken fate in my hands,” I said. “This is my declaration of war.”

“You’ve come to die.”

“Get good, Scrub.” I responded- and focusing my magicka into my limbs, I reinforced myself using the secrets learned by Serpent-Eating-Atronach. My limbs surged with power, impossible, irresponsible power, and I ripped my way free.

From my belt, an old ebony tanto slipped free- and I slammed it into Queen Demia’s jaw, up and into her brain.

She didn’t bleed blood.

She bled sap.

Her lips, wet with sap, pulled themselves into a richtus grin. I could see the glint of an ebony blade behind her teeth.

She thrust a hand- and those amber vines slammed into me, blowing me away. The tanto ripped itself free from her body. I sailed back, slamming into the wall behind me. At the bottom of the stairs, where the argonian guards raised their weapons.

“You cannot kill my speaker, Heretic. I hold her soul in my embrace- and I can return her whenever I wish,” Demia’s lips said, standing at the top of the steps.

I dropped the sap-covered dagger into my shadow- into my Sea of Maybe. And slowly stood.

“Yeah. I know.” I said.

Then I let go of my shadow, and the false me- the false shadow- faded from existence. Gone from Gideon, gone from the castle. Gone from existence.

====

Far, far above, in the Battlespire, my real body sat. I opened my eyes. The gem still sat clasped in my hands.

There was a surge of power running through the battlespire. I looked forward, toward the archway of stones set into the far end of my chamber. An anchor for a shiftgate.

The orrery, far beneath the battlespire, spun wildly, humming- and the Shiftgate opened.

I looked through, at the surface of the city called Gideon.

“Burn,” I said, and a surge of intense, impossible heat surged through the shiftgate- an inexorable, unstoppable beam of pure heat and light.

Wood reinforcements. Imperial quarried brick. Ayelid transmuted gold-white stone.

All of it boiled away, down to bedrock- and beneath it, I could see something squirm.

The bedrock below what used to be Castle Gideon shifted.

The tendrils of an ancient, brilliant creature began to writhe, beneath. Gleaming, brilliant blue lines shimmered across the moving, living branches. Meridian lines- so charged with magicka that they were visible to the naked eye.

My scintillating beam of magicka poured free, again- but the tendrils raised themselves, and I could feel its anima contorting, casting a spell. A spell-mirror rose over the entire city- and my beam reflected itself back into the sky, burning through the atmosphere. Straight toward the still open shiftgate.

I caught it, subsuming my own magicka into my Sea of Nothing- and from there, it became potentia.

The Hist began to weave a new spell, amber tendrils rising from its animus to help with the weaving. The tendrils were made of Magicka so old, stored from so long ago, they felt somehow stale.

Despite all my skill in magic, I didn’t know what it was. It was complex, hideously so, enough that the hist needed dozens- nearly hundreds- of limbs weaving at the same time.

My shadow ripped itself outward, through the shiftgate- and coiled around the open gate. The bulbous, twisted shadow wasn’t real. It had no substance, no mass.

At least, until I poured the battlespire’s magicka into it. What was once restoration magic, I refactored through Mannimarco’s thaumaturgy, on Shalidor’s theories on the Self- and most of all, Shadowrend’s teachings.

“Fortify All,” I demanded, enchanting my shadow- and through magic, something fake and transitory was given enough properties to become something real.

A second body awoke- anchored to the shiftgate, like an eldritch horror stuck halfway between realms. My eyes opened- dozens of them, across the bulbous, twisting mass of shadowflesh. Fins spread themselves wide, dozens of uneven, oversized wings, fanning out to catch the sun, the magicka in the air, pulling it away before the Hist could.

My shadow’s shadow extended over Gideon. People were screaming. Panicking. Argonian guards were pointlessly shooting arrows up at the whorling shadowbeast that was taking shape above.

I stood, on the Battlespire, taking a step closer to the shiftgate. Shadowrend extended through it, cracking bones and twisted pseudoflesh stretching up and out.

Sendrasa was on her knees, staring up at the sky, prayers spilling from her lips toward a series of dead gods.

It ripped through the shiftgate, and straight down, toward the crater in Gideon.

Akulakhan’s open claw, bared itself- and came ripping down, through space, into the surface of the Hist of Gideon.

Amber tendrils crossed themselves over the thing’s main mass. Creaking vines and ancient branches coiled over themselves. My claw pounded down. Branches broke.

The spell went off anyway.

Something was screaming in my mind. It was words I’d heard before- read before, a lifetime ago.

-builtgrown wash branched out in snapthorn bellybass-

It wasn’t just messages roiling through the dreamsleeve- not just memospores.

-superliner slip seed stalkstrum crawler-

A memospore was an idea. A thought- a dream of a message. A meme, transferred through the dreamsleeve.

Something was bulging at the barriers between worlds, and it was no memospore. No mere message, no transmission.

It was a dream. An airship. A weapon. All of the above, all at once.

The fabric of the world ripped itself apart, and something barreled through the rift.

The hist ship- the Warspore- ripped itself free from the dreamsleeve. Calyx spores clinging to its branches, stalkstrum planks bridging it together. Meridian lines empowered with corolla vines. Creatures clung to it- creatures that were both Argonian and Not. Soulless piles of meat and flesh, piloted by the hist in their souls.

A cannon made out of a dream opened wide- and a beam of sheer, utter Reality tore through my shadowmass as if it were barely there. A weapon made out of sheer mathematics.

More bulges pushed at reality.

A weapon- an indescribable weapon, using the building-blocks of reality itself- ripped at my mass. I winced in pain- but I couldn’t help but grin.

It was only beginning.