"Welcome to the Tower of Tomes."
Still badly shaken, Onmund and J'zargo looked around, taking in their surroundings. It was the Tower of Tomes, yes—but Skyl had worked a great deal of magic here, reshaping the old hexagonal gallery.
What spread out around them now was a meeting hall hanging in the void. All around lay empty nothingness, and in that deep darkness floated uncountable bookshelves giving off a soft light. Under their feet was marble flooring, with a round table at the center and plenty of comfortable sofas and low tables scattered around it. High above, at an immeasurably distant ceiling, a hazy sun hung in place, glassy and dim, with a pitch-black silhouette faintly visible at its core.
Skyl sat beside the round table and waved his two guests over.
The house-elf Gally, balancing a silver tray, politely served them lemonade and gin.
"Master Skyl… whose Daedric Prince's realm is this?" Onmund asked. His voice was weak, a feeble groan forced up from his throat—though in truth he didn't have a scratch on him.
"This realm doesn't belong to any known Daedric Prince," Skyl said, taking a long drink of lemonade.
J'zargo sat there in silence, fur still bristling all over, clearly nowhere near having recovered his composure.
Onmund just stared. "Huh?"
"You heard correctly. The master of this place isn't one of the Sixteen Daedric Princes." Skyl looked at the two kids he'd scared half to death. "Maybe you need a bit of time to process all this. Stay here and relax for a while. I still need to go invite Master Maryon."
"Wait." Onmund clutched his head. "So… Master Skyl, you're the servant of some foreign Daedric god?"
"Yes. That's a very accurate way to put it."
"That's really… Hah, sorry. In private we'd actually guessed you might be the spirit of some ancient demigod reborn. I didn't expect you to be a Daedric servant instead. But why did you bring us into a plane of Oblivion?"
"You're my invited guests. From now on, this will be our meeting place. I'm inviting talented, courageous seekers of knowledge to form a fellowship of inquiry. And you have, beyond a doubt, passed the test."
"Thank you. But… Master Skyl, having ties with any Daedric Prince is never a good thing. They don't share mortal ideas of good and evil, and they enjoy toying with our fates."
"You're talking about the other Daedric Princes. The master of the Tower of Tomes is… different. More… stupid. All right, that's an odd word to use, but you can think of it that way. See that sun overhead? That's the master of the Tower of Tomes. It's extremely inactive, barely reacts to anything. It might already have fallen—what's left could be a god's corpse."
"A god's corpse?" Onmund and J'zargo traded looks, a chill running down their backs—alongside the instinctive curiosity any mage felt at the thought.
"One day, it will return," Skyl said, staring up at the false sun. "Anyway, what are your answers? If you don't want to join, I can erase these memories. It won't do you any harm."
J'zargo finally spoke. "J'zargo will become a great mage, master of Destruction. J'zargo is willing to follow Master Skyl." He stood and bowed.
"Welcome. From now on, we walk the road of knowledge together."
Onmund got to his feet and looked Skyl straight in the eyes. "You said not everyone can keep pace with you. I want to try. I want to see what the distant views look like."
Skyl stood and returned the gesture. "Excellent. Now I'm going to invite the third member of our fellowship. Let's hope she passes the test. Master Onmund, Master J'zargo—wait here for a bit."
A portal opened on a nearby bookshelf. Skyl stepped through and vanished.
Onmund and J'zargo looked at each other, at a loss for a moment.
Gally blinked his big eyes and kept serving them drinks.
"Hey, who are you?" Onmund asked.
Gally didn't understand a word. He only shook his head.
Onmund slumped back into his chair and felt the blood slowly returning to his limbs. "Looks like we've made a major decision," he said to J'zargo. "I don't know if it's good or bad."
"J'zargo thinks it is good," the Khajiit replied.
"You were too quick to agree just now. We should have asked more questions. My head's buzzing with them. Who is the master of the Tower of Tomes, really? How did Master Skyl end up as his servant? Shor above, this is all too strange. Who would've thought he could open a door to Oblivion? And yet, I don't know why, but when something this bizarre happens around Master Skyl… I'm not really surprised."
J'zargo murmured, "No matter what the questions are, Onmund would have said yes anyway. J'zargo only saved everyone some time."
"You've got a point. All right then—the Tower of Tomes. Sounds like a good place. I'm going to go raid the bookshelves."
…
Brelyna was exploring the Midden alone. In the letters from her family, they'd mentioned an "elemental forge," a remarkable magical altar that could transform offerings. Offer up a ruby and some fire salts, for example, and it would conjure a Flame Atronach. Brelyna was sure that if she could figure out how the altar worked, it would be a huge boost to her research into Conjuration.
Not far from the hall, the surroundings grew quieter and quieter. Brelyna's thoughts began to drift—until she nearly walked right into a wandering draugr and snapped back to herself with a jolt.
She really shouldn't be letting her guard down here. There might not be anything instantly lethal lurking around, but this wasn't the safety of the College dormitories.
Brelyna conjured a mystical bow and let an arrow fly—but it missed the motionless draugr. She gave a helpless little laugh. She was a mage, yet here she was, actually taking Skyl's nonsense seriously and playing at being an archer. She didn't know the first thing about archery.
In the end, Brelyna finished off the draugr with a good, honest fireball.
As she went on, more draugr appeared in ones and twos. Most were ancient, desiccated corpses; some were fresher. Odds were, all of them had been stolen from graves by College members. It wasn't for nothing that necromancers were despised. To get bodies, they dug up graves and committed murders. Even the College had officially requested that no one study necromancy on campus.
"Feels like there are more and more of them," Brelyna muttered.
She stopped and decided to turn back immediately—but a pair of voices drifted from ahead, piquing her curiosity.
"…this batch of corpses… nice and fresh… we're out of black soul gems…"
Brelyna slipped closer to the sound.
A man and a woman were speaking. Their voices came through a rotten wooden door, muffled and blurred. She couldn't tell exactly who they were.
"This is such a pain. How many times does that make?"
"Seventy-three experiments recorded."
"Seventy-three failures. Just our luck. Why can't we be like those geniuses? Magic's so stingy with us, and with some people it's shamelessly generous—like a cheap little street songbird."
Brelyna understood at once. Just two apprentices quietly breaking College rules. Nothing too serious.
She turned to leave.
At that moment, the two inside let out a scream of terror.
"Look behind you! It's alive again!"
"What?! I did it? It worked?!"
"No, it still has its memories—it's angry!"
Brelyna froze, slapped her own forehead. "Idiots."
She immediately summoned a storm elemental.
A bolt of raging lightning smashed the wooden door to splinters.
"Stand back! I'm here to save you!"
//Check out my P@tre0n for 20 extra chapters on all my fanfics //[email protected]/Razeil0810.