Saarthal's deepest secret finally revealed itself before Skyl.
When he pushed open the heavy iron door, magicka crashed over him like a tide. Bathed in that pure arcane power, he had the fleeting illusion that he had become a hollow bagpipe, cold air playing the reeds of his bones; that he had become blue smoke, while a surging ocean hammered against the ancient rootwork of his nerves; that he had become a thin, elastic membrane of rubber, scorching blood coursing through every pore.
It was as if his soul were being washed out of his body by those waves of power.
Staggering two steps forward, Skyl reached a high ledge and looked down at the Eye of Magnus. The massive sphere hung above its pedestal, forged from some rare substance left over from the dawn of creation. It slowly rose and fell with a subtle self-spin, dragging a teal whirlpool of magicka round and round it. In Skyl's ears there was only the roar of wind and surf; the rest of the world fell away.
So this was the treasure the Great Architect of Creation had left in the mortal world?
Skyl had no idea how to put his feelings into words.
It all felt almost too easy, too casual. But that was exactly what made The Elder Scrolls world so strange: in an age when the gods were still active, the earth was riddled with buried wonders that could rewrite the course of history.
Ordinary mages couldn't hope to understand the Eye of Magnus. They simply lacked the theoretical foundation. They couldn't use this artifact either; at best they could lock it away in some vault and hope that by doing so they could prevent its own surges from triggering disaster.
Even with Skyl's current grasp of magical theory, he could only study the Eye of Magnus by relying on the unique environment of the Tower of Tomes.
His awe ebbed quickly. Gazing at the artifact, Skyl suddenly understood Gollum from The Lord of the Rings very, very well. Right now he just wanted to shout, "My precious!"
In the tomb, a sealed ancient traitor rose from its stone throne. It was the true warden of the treasure. To Skyl—the intruder, the shameless thief—it would tear him apart with furious elemental power.
Skyl walked down the steps, one after another, until he reached the flat ground where the Eye of Magnus floated.
A hulking Nordic corpse stepped into his path, ebony axe in hand, exuding a chill that cut to the bone as it rushed him.
Seriously?
Skyl swept his hand down. The floor swelled into a gigantic stone palm that smashed the draugr champion away like a bat striking a ball; the corpse hit the wall like a piece of plastic trash and stuck there, impossible to pry back out.
"Hm?" Skyl noticed that, even so, the draugr was still very much "alive."
A thick magical barrier coated its body. The Eye of Magnus was feeding that shield with limitless power—unless he severed their link, the barrier would never break.
Skyl drew his instant-noodle fork—the cheap little utensil that had followed him when he crossed worlds, yet somehow possessed absurdly high magical conductivity. He slowly pushed it into the barrier around the Eye of Magnus. A vast surge of magicka rushed through the fork into his body.
"Urgh!"
A strange new sensation wrapped around him.
Because that magicka was being diverted away, the draugr's barrier collapsed. Skyl didn't even bother looking back; he simply pinched his fingers together and sent hundreds of stone spikes lancing out of the wall, grinding the ancient hero's corpse to dust.
The ancient spell that linked the Eye of Magnus to the tomb failed; the artifact slowly went still and stopped pouring out its torrent of power.
Skyl pulled his fork free, took soul gems from his pack, and began laying out a magic circle, ready to teleport the Eye of Magnus into the Tower of Tomes while it slept.
At that exact moment, time stopped.
If this world had a pause button, then someone had just pressed it.
Skyl looked around. At some point, five High Elves in priestly robes had appeared by his side. They manifested as translucent spirit-forms, but these were no mere illusions—their forms clearly retained spellcasting ability.
The monks of the Psijic Order had finally run out of patience and shown themselves.
"So you're the ones whispering poison in my companions' ears?" Skyl asked mildly.
"Strange mage, whatever your aim, you will cease your work at once!" one Psijic said sharply. "The Eye of Magnus has not yet reached the time when it must act. This world is not ready."
Skyl answered in a pleasant tone. "Don't worry. This world will be saying goodbye to the Eye of Magnus very soon. Because it will no longer exist in this world."
"That too is intolerable. The Eye of Magnus will forestall a future catastrophe. You may not steal it away!"
"I read in your books that the Psijic monks follow the Old Ways," Skyl said. "You respect change, but only the changes that benefit the world, and you stand against every harmful change."
"If you understand the Old Ways, you should realize that what we do is not born of selfishness."
"You are the world's keepers," Skyl agreed. "After all, the Altmer are descended from the Original Spirits. I like your sense of responsibility. I truly believe you aren't stopping me out of selfishness."
The Psijic monks nodded one after another. A few even allowed themselves reserved smiles.
"Strange mage, if we can see eye to eye, so much the better," one of them said.
Skyl smiled back. "Yes, none of you are selfish. Unfortunately… I am."
He drove the fork straight into the Eye of Magnus.
"Stop him!"
A soundless detonation.
The instant the Eye of Magnus was touched by that ridiculous plastic fork, the dormant artifact exploded with a second flood of power. The wave smashed the Psijic spells apart, and time lurched back into motion—or rather, Skyl was dragged back into the linear flow of time once more.
He glanced around. The High Elf mages were gone; in the end, they'd only ever been projections.
Skyl knew that once he let go, they'd stick to him like a bone-gnawing parasite and appear again, forcing a fight.
Pick a fight with mages who could literally stop time? Even a suicidal man would at least pick an auspicious day to die.
Skyl had no idea how exactly the Psijic monks were freezing time, but the fact remained: he had no counter.
So he had to get the Eye of Magnus into the Tower of Tomes.
Fast.
Skyl used Transfiguration to raise a stone slab from the floor, then projected a portal onto its surface. He shouted through it to the three people in the Tower of Tomes, "Summon me!"
"What? Are you sure?" Onmund went pale. Through the portal, he too could see the colossal Eye of Magnus. Right now Skyl, with his fork-wand buried in it, had temporarily fused himself to the artifact. If they summoned Skyl directly, they could drag the Eye of Magnus into the Tower along with him.
But doing that meant Skyl would have to bear an enormous strain. It was like towing a carriage: normally, you use a tow cable. No one had ever heard of using human flesh as the cable.
"Stop talking and summon me!"
Brelyna triple-checked the summoning circle and confirmed the coordinates yet again, this time using the mathematical tools Skyl had taught her.
"My Magnus, come then—and may Azura watch over you," she murmured, briskly slotting a soul gem into one of the array's nodes.
Onmund was still hesitating when J'zargo jabbed his own soul gem into place.
"You're really not worried Master Skyl will be torn apart by Oblivion's currents?!" Onmund was so anxious his face was turning darker than a Dunmer's.
"J'zargo does what Master Skyl says."
"Onmund," Brelyna said, "what you need to do is trust Skyl. The way he trusts us."
The Nord mage let out a long sigh, muttered a Nord curse under his breath, and pushed his soul gem into its node.
The circle thrummed.
The summoning array came alive. The three of them poured their soul-strength into it to stabilize the passage through Oblivion. Deep within the black vortex, a blinding ray of light flared, like a sun leaping up out of the abyss to stain a murky sky with dawn.
Skyl's entire body was wrapped in an indestructible magical shield—the same solution he had just learned from the draugr champion he'd crushed.
He walked through the pitch-black Oblivion tunnel, his fork transfigured into a long rope wrapped tightly around the Eye of Magnus. Like stone masons hauling massive blocks up a tower toward the sky, Skyl dragged the colossal artifact step by step toward his own little god-realm.
Oblivion was as deep as the bottomless guts of some cosmic beast. No mortal mind could truly hold together in that place. All sensory perception of the world, all awareness of self, would be swallowed by the void.
Far ahead, in some endlessly distant place, three bright points of light appeared—Brelyna and the others, kindling beacons to guide Skyl's way.
Wracked by involuntary spasms and tremors, Skyl forced his body forward, step by step, toward the light.
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