The moment Skyl and his companions stepped out of the Tower of Tomes, they were immediately hemmed in by a ring of Psijic monks.
The Psijics were so furious their eyes were practically popping out of their heads.
"Are you here to fight," Skyl asked, doing his best Doctor Strange cosplay, "or to negotiate terms?" He even Transfigured himself a red cloak for the occasion. The three Disciples of the High Tower behind him were already itching for a brawl.
What stood before them was, once again, only a magical projection. The High Elf at the head of the group came straight to the point and demanded that Skyl hand over the Eye of Magnus.
"Stranger mage, you have no idea what a crime you've committed against this world!"
"I know exactly what I've done," Skyl replied mildly. "And I don't care."
The Psijic looked past him to Brelyna and the others. "Will you truly stand as this man's accomplices, and drag the balance and cycle of the world toward its end?"
"Some answers are obvious," Brelyna said as she began summoning a storm atronach. "If a world can be destroyed by the loss of a single object, then it doesn't deserve to continue. Besides, the Eye of Magnus is not one of the 'Towers' that support the world. Psijics, there's no need for you to be this aggressive."
"The Eye of Magnus is different from a Tower, but no less important. The world is close to destruction, and yet the observer's gaze has vanished from Mundus. This is unacceptable." The Psijic monk patiently explained the magnitude of Skyl's crime.
"World-Eater Alduin is fated to be defeated by the Last Dragonborn. Even if Aurbis must end someday, that lies in a very distant future. Why torment yourselves over it now?" Skyl said.
"This is your final warning. Surrender the Eye of Magnus."
Skyl shook his head. "You're nothing but projections. Psijic Order, cloistered away from the world… stop making me laugh with your arrogance."
He had barely finished speaking when Brelyna's storm atronach crashed into being behind him. J'zargo and Onmund began layering Ironflesh and magical shields over their companions.
Seeing that, the Psijic monks moved as well. Surging magicka gathered at their call. These long-lived High Elves had trained their spellcraft for centuries; their casting technique had reached absolute mastery. In a single breath they had stacked up their defensive wards and were already weaving terrifying Destruction spells.
Skyl was in no hurry. He raised a single finger. Magicka pooled at the fingertip, flowed through a complex spellform, and turned into a tiny orange fireball. It spun rapidly, swelling and contracting, like an overexcited heart.
As its heartbeat quickened, its color dropped from warm orange to cold blue, then to blinding pale cyan. Finally, the fireball turned into a semi-transparent pure white sphere. Billions of motes of magical flame crawled, flashed, orbited, collided, and swallowed each other across its surface like the raging shell of a star.
[Extreme Arcane: Explosive Fireball]
[Transfiguration]
[Copying Charm]
[Banishing Charm]
[Tracking Charm]
The young mage named Skyl brought his finger to his lips and blew gently at the white-hot fireball.
The white fireball blossomed into a thumb-sized butterfly of light—then split into thousands more, scattering like a blown dandelion and fluttering toward the Psijic monks on every side.
On their delicate white wings, rainbow whirlpools shimmered—that was the air itself twisting under the heat of the flames.
One little incandescent butterfly brushed against a high-speed spinning ice spear released by a Psijic. The scene was feather-light, as if a butterfly had merely alighted on a branch.
Boom.
The blast blew outward. That thumb-sized butterfly suddenly swelled into a blinding globe three meters across. The shockwave ripped through the Saarthal catacombs; the ground and mountains overhead shuddered.
The swarm of butterflies danced.
They drifted down onto the defensive wards of the magical projections.
For a heartbeat, everything fell silent. The Psijic monks' faces twisted in horror.
The next instant, the world turned into a sea of fire.
Furious shockwaves rampaged through the cavern. Scorching, supersonic magical flame became howling gales, tearing and melting everything in their path. The ancient tomb became a volcanic furnace. Stone vaporized under the heat, too fast even to resolidify. With nowhere else to go, the pressure bulged upward and blew the ceiling apart. Pillars of fire punched through the ground, tearing open the earth and spearing the sky.
Before the explosion hit, Skyl Apparated himself and his companions to the surface.
They stood halfway up the mountain, watching as a column of fire roared up from the original site of Saarthal and blossomed into a white mushroom cloud in the sky.
Most of Skyrim felt the tremor. From all across Winterhold Hold, and even the northern half of Eastmarch, folk could look to the mountains and see that strange cloud boiling up between the peaks.
"Exquisite Destruction magic, Master Skyl," J'zargo said, applauding.
"You flatter me," Skyl answered modestly.
This had only been a light warm-up. The Elder Scrolls' history had seen far grander spectacles. A duel between two top-tier mages could literally tear a chunk off the continent. Solstheim had been created that way; it was originally part of Tamriel, but when the first Dragonborn Miraak fought the dragon priest Vahlok, the land split and drifted out into the sea.
Brelyna looked worried. "Those Psijic monks are very devout in their Old Ways. They definitely won't give up that easily."
They weren't afraid of them, but being hounded endlessly would be a headache.
"Looks like I'll need to find a way to fool them," Skyl said. That thought led him at once to an old pal—his buddy Hermaeus Mora. The mass of Daedric essence Mora had left him would serve nicely as fake divine power.
He returned to the Tower of Tomes at once. With copied ebony and a sliver of creation-residue, he made a full-sized outer shell, then placed Hermaeus Mora's eyeball at the core. At a glance, it was more than convincing. On top of that, thanks to the corruptive taint of Mora's essence, anyone who tried probing the fake for its true nature would get their mind scrambled.
Skyl put quite a lot of care into this counterfeit Eye. Getting the Psijic Order to swallow it, though, would take more work.
"All right then. Job's done. Let's head back to the College," Skyl said as he stepped out of the Tower again. "And we'll bring the 'Eye of Magnus' to the College with us."
The others blinked. Brelyna was the first to catch on. "Yes, we should head back. With a discovery this big, the Arch-Mage will be shocked speechless."
Onmund still looked a bit foggy, but as soon as he heard that, his brain finally caught up. "The next Arch-Mage is clearly going to be you, Skyl."
"Mm. Let's use Flight to get back," Skyl said, voice dripping mischief.
All three of them froze.
Twenty minutes later, College of Winterhold courtyard.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Under Mirabelle Ervine's despairing stare, three wobbly rocket cones slammed into the flowerbeds. Their misaligned jets blasted out in random directions, turning most of her carefully tended alchemical plants into mulch.
Skyl, by contrast, had gotten the hang of his "Skyl's Flight" spell. He came down nice and slow—but the gust from his reverse thrust still hit hard enough to rip an entire patch of pansies up by the roots.
"I swear on my ancestors," Mirabelle said, voice shaking with rage, "if you don't have a perfectly good explanation, then for the next year, all the courtyard flowerbeds are your responsibility—Skyl, Onmund, Brelyna, J'zargo. All of you!"
"I know you're upset, Professor, but let's not be hasty," Skyl said, flicking his wand in a broad arc. "Back to how you were—Reparo."
The wrecked courtyard rewound like time itself, restoring everything to pristine order.
Mirabelle's blood pressure also returned to normal. "So. Did you find anything?"
"Something huge!" Onmund shouted.
"A world-changing archaeological discovery!" J'zargo chimed in.
"Better tell the Arch-Mage," Brelyna said. "We've found the Eye of Magnus."
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