Skyl's plan to rebuild Winterhold had first sprouted back when he was just playing The Elder Scrolls. Once he actually arrived here, that thought quietly took root. It all came from a very simple question:
"What would happen if Winterhold were rebuilt after the Great Collapse?"
Easy enough to imagine; and when it came to actually doing it… it turned out not to be that hard either.
On the seventh of Hearthfire, on a calm, clear morning, Skyl stood at the edge of the cliff, with the raging Sea of Ghosts churning below his feet.
He had been standing there in silence for half an hour.
Wrapped in thick fur coats, the people of Winterhold had gathered in the centre of the settlement, and the mages of the College had already assembled there as well.
Brelyna stood at the front of the crowd, calling out to them. Her words turned into pale mist in the chill autumn air. The people were restless; Nords' distrust of mages had not faded in the slightest. But ever since the College had persuaded Jarl Korir and driven out all the Stormcloak guards, the common folk had had no choice but to obey. The migrants from Riverwood still held out hope for their new lives and trusted Skyl, so they remained quiet and orderly.
"Everyone, follow me," Brelyna said, walking at the head of the procession. The mages walked behind her, and the people of Winterhold trailed after the College in a thin, uneven line.
"Skyl, everyone's here," Brelyna murmured at his side when she reached him.
"Thank you, Maryon."
Skyl didn't turn around to make any kind of speech. He continued facing the heaving sea. Beneath those icy, salty waves, buried deep in silt and darkness, lay the walls and palaces of the old capital.
From an inner pocket of his robe, he took out the disposable plastic fork that had come with his instant noodles when he'd crossed between worlds, and transfigured it into a massive ebony staff, leaving a socket at the top.
He removed the Eye of the Tower from the chain at his chest, took out its pitch-black core, and set it gently into the socket at the staff's tip.
Skyl raised the staff high.
Whoom.
A surging torrent of magic erupted. From the tip of the staff, a seven-coloured stream of power roared upward, like a rainbow bursting out of a volcano's mouth. It speared into the sky and then spilled outward into wild gales. Over Winterhold, brilliant bands of light unfurled and drifted, as if they were the swirling skirts of the goddess Kyne.
Such violent magical phenomena could be picked up by precision instruments not only across Tamriel, but all over the planet Nirn.
The people of Winterhold cried out in terror. They cursed all mages as murderers and demanded to know what evil deeds they were plotting now.
Kliman took on the task of calming the Riverwood migrants, while Jarl Korir chose instead to flee with his own townsfolk.
The mages of the College paid no attention to the panicking crowd. They simply gazed, entranced, at the magic blazing across the heavens, silently praising Mage Skyl's unfathomable mastery.
"Re! Pa! Ro!"
Each syllable that left Skyl's lips was as heavy as thunder. Long ago, the skies of Skyrim had echoed with the shouts of dragons and heroes. Now, the incantation from the Harry Potter world, hurled from Skyl's throat, was like a Dragon Shout in its own right, resonating with Nirn's earthbones—the very laws of the world.
The ground began to tremble.
It was as if the spirits of creation had awakened. The rock beneath everyone's feet shuddered like quivering steel, making it impossible to stand. Houses and forests shook the snow from their roofs and boughs; avalanches thundered down the mountains all across Winterhold Hold. The Stormcloak army marching north from Windhelm toward Winterhold was blocked as well—the earth shook under their boots, and the soldiers stalled in alarm and confusion. Their general, Galmar, swore under his breath as he stared at the shimmering rainbow veil over the northern sky, caught between advancing and retreating.
"Re! Pa! Ro!"
The command rang out, clear and resolute, like thunder on a summer night.
The Sea of Ghosts boiled. A mass of darkness deeper than iron-blue rose slowly beneath the surface. Shoals of fish scattered in panic, some even flinging themselves onto the shore rather than remain within the black shadow's reach. The three-tusked horkers roaming the ice raised their massive bodies and bellowed mournfully twice before fleeing out to sea as fast as they could.
"Reparo!!"
The ebony staff was pierced through by the blazing torrent of magic. White radiance seeped out from the tiniest seams in the metal, staining the dark wood a muted gold.
Skyl's body lifted slightly off the ground.
He swung the staff and brought it crashing down, with all the world-shaping force of a titan from myth raising his hammer over a newborn land.
In the silence that accompanied the soundless roar,
Winterhold's sunken old capital rose from the Sea of Ghosts. Hundreds of millions of tons of stone and soil seemed to lose their weight and floated upward, slowly adhering themselves to the broken cliff-face before Skyl.
The ground extended outward from where he stood. Shards of the city surged in from every direction like flocks of birds, each piece settling back into its rightful place.
Houses, palaces, streets, fences, inns, harbours, ships, warehouses… every detail of the city that did not involve plants or living creatures returned as if time itself were running in reverse.
A magnificent city is not built in a day, but it can, it seems, be restored in a single one.
When the rainbow light faded from the sky, when the earth stilled, when the mountains lay silent and the sea fell quiet, what lay before the people was Winterhold as it had been seventy-eight years ago.
The ancient capital was desolate yet solemn. On the rooftops and in the streets, the only movement came from fish and horkers that had not managed to escape in time, flopping and wriggling about. When migratory birds returned next year, they would find that their ancestors had already left nests here in this city long ago.
Skyl drifted back down to the ground, gently removed the Eye of the Tower from the tip of the staff, and tucked it back into his necklace. He then turned the staff back into an instant noodle fork and slipped it casually into his pocket.
He turned and smiled at Brelyna. "Now we're only missing the settlers, aren't we?"
Brelyna stared at the College of Winterhold. The perilous skybridge that had once hung out over the sea now rested solidly against the slope, its handrails and guards restored so there was no longer any fear of tumbling into the waves to your death. Her eyes shone, half dazed, half radiant. "Magic can do this as well? It's unbelievable…"
Savos Aren looked at the familiar streets, the changed yet unchanged universe, and without realising it, his eyes filled with tears. "It's wonderful. Truly wonderful."
The bewildered people of Winterhold crept out from their hiding places and walked through the grand streets of the old capital. For a while, none of them could find words big enough for the shock and awe churning in their hearts.
No one felt that conflict more keenly than Jarl Korir. He was a complicated man. On the surface, he always put on a front of rejecting the College, but in private he valued the mages deeply. When Aren had come to tell him about this mad plan to rebuild, Korir had eventually agreed. Perhaps he couldn't bear to let go of his power; perhaps he truly cared for Winterhold and its people.
"You weren't lying… Winterhold really has come back…" Korir held his wife and child. He wanted to laugh wildly and he wanted to break down sobbing, but in the end he only let out a long sigh, because he knew the road ahead was still a long one. Whether that distant horizon would bring a new dawn or only a final dusk, no one could say.
Kliman was the first to recover. He clapped Skyl on the shoulder. "You really did it."
"Go pick a house you like," Skyl said, folding his arms across his chest, apparently in quite a good mood. "No one's living in them now anyway."
"Want me to pick one out for you too? We could be neighbours."
"Suit yourself." Skyl nodded, offering no objection.
Brelyna's eyes lit up. "Then I'm going to pick out a house as well."
Behind them, J'zargo was holding up his phone, livestreaming Mage Skyl's restoration of Winterhold for Onmund. Onmund, in turn, held his own phone up; on the screen, he was standing inside an ancient, crumbling temple, with a blond Nord man beside him, leaning into the camera with a dopey expression.
"I regret it so much!" Onmund groaned. "I never should've come to Whiterun! I wanted to witness Mage Skyl's display of power with my own eyes!"
J'zargo: cat-is-smiling.jpg
The blond Nord man pointed at Skyl's back in the video. "That man is Mage Skyl?"
"Yeah. Impressive, isn't he?"
"Mm." The Nord's face settled into a look of pure, guileless stupidity. "I want to learn that too. Can he teach me? I'd be willing to run errands for him."
"Mage Skyl is very busy. If you don't have the talent, you can forget about that kind of luck. Here, I've got a copy of Candlelight. Take it and start with that. When you can understand it, then you can come talk to me again."
The Nord man answered with an obedient "Oh," took the spell tome, and started leafing through it with great interest.
"Enough reading for now, we still have to go get the Dragonstone," Onmund said, clapping him on the shoulder and urging him to move.
"Onmund."
"What now?"
The Nord man raised a hand and cast a floating orb of pale light.
"I've learned it."
"…Huh?" Onmund was utterly stunned.
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