Melded III

They met in the place where the ashland became wasteland. Each stood on the wrong side, she in the ash, and he in the waste, and looked at one another across that now indefinable line where the particles of two minds tangled together.

"This is awkward," said Savos Aren.

Sarah Lyons, her helmet tucked under her arm, scowled. "No shit."

"It's good to see you." He moved toward her, hand outstretched. "The actual you. I've been living your—"

Savos's stride brought him to the edge of the wastes, and that indefinable line became a tangible wall of malthought that kicked him away. Pain lanced through his arm and he fell into the dust. Outside this mindscape, his body writhed on the stone floor. The connective sigil beneath him heated to a pitched crimson, and a fluted whine echoed around the domed chamber.

Savos sat up. The dust floated around him, dislodged by his fall. He looked at the woman of steel. "You still don't trust me."

"Of course not."

"Sarah, most people who've spent a few days in another person's head would learn to trust the person."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"You're joking." Savos got to his feet. "Sarah, look around you. This isn't the real world. We are in one another's souls, standing in a miasma of metaphor and insecurity. The world as you see it, filled with the things that you try to avoid by talking about the weather."

"You're high, mutant."

"Drop the act, Lyons. You may not believe in magick, but you know my name and you know where I'm from." Savos pointed at the ash beneath her feet, and the blazing volcano dozens of miles behind her. "Please. Humor me."

Sarah watched him for a long moment, a long moment wherein Savos held his breath and prayed that a woman born and bred to trust no one and believe nothing but concrete truth would, amidst an unreal moment, decide to take a leap of faith.

When she finally spoke it was with great reluctance. "Explain everything," she said.

"When you and Arthur landed, you were both unconscious. The soul meld was the only reliable way that I could assess what kind of threat you would be, if any at all. It's an imperfect practice, but it worked." He paused. "Or I thought it had."

"So your telepathy trick backfired and now we're in one another's brains."

"That is a way to look at it." Savos looked at her. "I didn't expect you to go along with this at all."

Sarah's face was unreadable, as were the emotions flowing off of her. Despite their joining, her present feelings were still closed off to him. Her past was a matter of shared record between them, impossible to hide, but her emotions were absent from this interaction. She was on guard—a child of the wasteland.

"I've watched you," she said. "Like seeing your memories through your eyes. I suppose that's part of this soul meld, too."

"It is. What have you seen?"

"The day you took office. The expedition, and what went wrong. Your mother dying." There was a pause. "Nidala."

The last one stung. He thought he had gotten used to that pain, waking up with her face in his mind every day for the past twenty years, but hearing her name spoken in his mind by another woman was like salt in the slice.

"Then you've seen it all, it would seem."

Sarah was quiet. Then, apropos of nothing, she stepped across the dividing line, her heavy boots sinking into the charred ash of home. She held out her hand, and the barrier that had suffused her blew out like a bubble of thunder, knocking powdered radiation throughout their shared thought-space.

"I'm sorry this got so fucked up, Savos," she said. "But I'm not sorry for punching your friend."

Savos shook her hand, a contact representative of a meeting of minds. Thought-space shifted, and the skies above peeled back to become one raw, pink horizon that brightened at the edges of vision. The dents in the meld had begun to heal. It was only a matter of time.

"Friend is a strong word," Savos said, as his mind became his own again. "I would say something like wart or political fungus."

"Ah." Sarah Lyons drifted away from him, from out of this unconscious space to something higher that approached waking life. "Good thing I hit him."

And then they awoke.

((()))

"They are what?"

J'zargo's words rang around the library. Onmund put his palm across the kajiit's mouth to silence him. The College's library was a whispers-only environment, and Master gro-Shub was known for his stern talkings to. The last thing Onmund wanted was a lecture and a demerit.

"Quiet!"

J'zargo knocked his hand away, but lowered his voice just the same. "They remain in the College? Where?"

"Beneath the east wing. An old store room or something." Onmund shrugged. "It's off-limits to first years, though."

"Who would want to go down there? Had J'zargo known such a thing would come to pass! J'zargo was sure that the automaton woman was to be killed."

"Then the soul meld would have fallen apart, and the Arch Mage would be dead."

Onmund turned. Brelyna Maryon sat nearby, her feet propped atop a study table. She had a book in her hands, but she was looking at him. Her looks always made him uncomfortable, and he found that his tongue was inoperative.

J'zargo spoke for him. "What does this mean, soul meld?"

"Do you ever read books?" Maryon smiled. "Soul meld, children. Should I break it down into root etymology? Soul—like the intangible energy in your heart? And meld—a combining of two things. I wonder what that means…"

"Spare J'zargo your pedantry, woman!"

Maryon and Onmund turned to him as one. "Shhhh!"

"First year!" boomed a voice from the head desk. "Over here, now."

The kajiit moved away, leaving the two alone. Maryon cleared the seat next to her. "Sit down, farmboy. Take a look at this."

Onmund did as he was told, and looked at the book open on her lap. It was a diagram of asymmetrical sigils, similar in very rough form to a soul capture symbol. Like many texts on the mystic arts, the ink became mercurial the longer Onmund examined it. The sigils spun and interlocked, and the symbols' edges faded in and out beneath the off-white surface. He let his eyes lose focus to better grip the material.

Not that he could—at least not completely. This text was clearly beyond his ken, a fact that he recognized instantly. "So you think the Arch Mage attempted this soul meld?"

"I think he's the only one who possibly could," she replied. "Look at these theories. I couldn't touch this if I had a year to work on it."

"Never thought I'd hear you admit that."

"Come now, am I that conceited?"

Onmund smiled. "That's your word."

"Farmboy has bite." She chuckled. "Who would have known?"

"Why would he do it, though?"

"Wrong question." Maryon looked at him. "Why do we do anything? Because we're mages, and mages are overly curious and willful people. So the question isn't why, but what went wrong?"

"Who says something went wrong?"

"Really, farmboy? You were there on the ice when we found the woman. Didn't you think it was strange how she passed out and we carried her back to the college? And why was Tolfdir so frequently in the Arch Mage's quarters? The soul meld went awry, and we had to repair it by bringing that woman back here."

"Assuming that's true, and that we did need her to somehow save the Arch Mage's life, she did still attack us. So why is she still here?"

Maryon smiled. "That is the question of the day."

((()))

The chamber was once an alchemical laboratory in the early days of the school, though neither of its current occupants knew it. It was a large, domed room with a flue to allow an escape for smoke expelled by testing. Now it facilitated a fire, stoked in the center of the room and tended to by a child. The fire was needed. This deep beneath the east wing, down in the bedrock of the school, there was little to keep the two warm—and neither one was used to the cold.

Arthur Maxson shifted in front of the fire, the poker in his hand. His new clothes felt funny. They were scratchy and clung in all the wrong places. He wondered what kind of animal had been killed to make them, and had no idea that the clothes were cleaner than anything he could find in the wastelands of home. He wore his father's jacket on top of everything, its long hem dragging the stone floor.

He turned a log and looked at Sarah. She was out of armor, wearing her olive drab tank top and utility pants. Her combat boots were flat against the wall. Arthur watched her muscled back as she did sit-ups. Sweat coated her arms.

The T-51b was empty, a shell suspended on a jury-rigged assembly of chains hung from iron rods that Sarah had jammed into the mortar. Its chest plate was retracted, opened up like gullwing to expose the hollow cavity beneath. When he was a kid, Arthur would stick his head into Elder Lyons' suit when it was like that and shout. The echo was close and funny, like living in a soup can.

Now he saw the suit for what it was—a weapon. A gun with an empty chamber. It was dangerous, and he couldn't imagine sticking his head anywhere near it.

The door to the chamber chunked open and Arthur looked around to see the Arch Mage enter. Savos Aren was alone, as he always was, and he came with a plate of food—rolls, fruit, and a slab of cheese. Something Arthur could not identify was slung across the old elf's back, bound by a leather strap and wrapped in maroon cloth.

"I come bearing gifts," he said in English.

Sarah grunted out her last sit-up and stood, taking the plate from him. She handed it down to Arthur. "Good morning," she said.

"How can you tell?" said Aren.

"You've got a twenty-eight hour day, sunrise at about eight after midnight." Sarah bit into an apple. "That and you brought us breakfast. And we just woke up. So, there's that."

"You counted our days while you were on the ice?"

Arthur spoke up. "I did."

Aren looked at the child, and Arthur knew he had surprised the Arch Mage. He was used to surprising adults with the things he knew. Being a kid had that effect on people. It wasn't just that he was responsible for learning the calendar of their new world that had surprised Aren, though. It was that Arthur had spoken up not in English, but in Imperial common. His meld with Lyons had intuited that the boy was bright, but this was the first time Savos came to understand it for himself.

Aren switched back to common. "How well can you understand me?" he said.

"Parts. Most of it." Arthur stood up and stretched. "It's easy."

Aren smiled. "I'm glad to hear that."

Sarah spoke up, in English. "Arthur's a smart kid. Even after our little mind meld, I find I've got to really concentrate to pick up on your pig Latin. It's been rough. Yet Arthur just listens to people in your library and understands."

The Arch Mage raised an eyebrow. "I had heard the two of you were out and about around the campus."

"We've been exploring," Sarah said. "It's good to know your surroundings."

"I trust the students and faculty have been kind?"

"Haven't had a lot of interactions with them, personally." Sarah jerked a thumb at her armor. "Even without the language barrier, the suit tends to simmer conversation."

"I can imagine." Aren walked past them, towards the suit. He looked back at her, for permission. Sarah nodded, and he ran his hand along the chest plate. "Have you given thought to our earlier discussion?"

Arthur had not been privy to an earlier discussion, and had no idea what the Arch Mage was referencing. He looked at Sarah, whose face had grown harder at the man's words. "Yes, I have," she said. "The answer is still no."

Aren smiled thinly. "You don't trust me."

"Savos, I've been in your heart." Sarah joined him by the power armor. "I've seen who you are, and I know you would look after Arthur as best you could. My worry is that your best isn't my best. I know your failures, too. And I know what a mirelurk your pal Ancano can be."

Arthur felt suddenly cold, despite the fire. Sarah planned to leave the college, and there had been a discussion about leaving him behind? "I'm staying with you," he said.

"I know, Arthur," she said, then turned back to Aren. "I'm not ungrateful. That's a nice thing to offer, but where we come from, nice is usually a trap. Besides, you don't have the knowledge to get us home. I'm planning to find someone who does."

"Who?" Aren asked, surprised.

"Arthur has a plan," Sarah said.

"I've been reading," Arthur clarified.

Savos looked between the two Earth-born. "Care to explain more?"

"Not really," they said in unison.

Aren nodded. "As I thought. Still, if you do intend to go wandering, you will need a weapon." He pulled the strap from his torso and dropped the maroon cloth, revealing a sword as long as Arthur was tall. "I used this blade for many years. It was forged in Elsweyr, by a seclusion of forgotten arms-makers deep in the Tenmar forest. The kajiit are not known for their steel, but what kajiit steel there is tends toward the extremes of small and quick or deliberately large and heavy."

Sarah took the sword, holding its leatherbound hilt in both hands. The blade was thick, and twice along its length bulged slightly in diamond-shaped hard points, where the force of a collision could snap a weaker blade. "I'm guessing this is the second type."

"Indeed." Aren pointed at the diamond shapes. "Traditionally, the blade is to be used two-handed, but I imagine with your armor, you could manage it with one. It is a sturdy, deadly weapon. In Skyrim it would be named a greatsword, but the kajiit use a term passed down to them by neighboring Cyrodiil. They call it a claymore."

"Claymore," Sarah said, weaving the blade back and forth, getting a feel for it. Her sweat-slicked arms controlled the hilt and sway of the blade with the ease of a seasoned warrior. Aren offered her a scabbard and she sheathed the weapon. "Thanks, Savos."

"Thank you, Sentinel. I know that the circumstances by which you arrived here were horrible, but your very existence has excited a passion for discovering the unknown that we too often forget in academia." Savos extended his hand. "In Skyrim, the locals like to shake hands palm-to-forearm, to bid one another farewell."

"Understood," said Sarah, and she clasped arms with the Arch Mage. "I'll keep good care of your sword."

"Claymore."

"Right."

Aren walked away, pausing to kneel by Arthur on his way out. He spoke in common, not to deceive Sarah, but to relate better with the boy genius. "Keep her safe."

"I think it's the other way around," Arthur said. "She's the one with the armor."

"Maybe so." Aren grinned, and tapped Arthur's forehead. "But the strongest wall in the world can fall to a disciplined mind privy to its cracks. Take any book you wish from our library, Arthur. You have my permission."

Arthur didn't know what to say, and watched the Arch Mage leave. The door shut behind him.

"What'd he say to you?" Sarah said, lashing her scabbard to the back plate of her armor.

"Nothing much," Arthur said, sitting back by the fire. He watched the flames, deep in thought. Sarah looked at him, and saw that he was slipping into a deep concentration. It worried her, what he might think of in that moment. If the horrors of the Brotherhood's fall were still fresh in her battle-hardened mind, she imagined they were doubly intense for the child.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Just thinking," he said. "The matter transmitter creates a swap environment, right? To teleport someone or something, it needs to trade places with something of equal mass on the other side."

"So I was told." Sarah squatted next to her young charge. "Why?"

"When we landed here, the transmitter dropped us out of the sky." Arthur did not look away from the flames. "I'm wondering what we traded places with at two hundred feet in the air, that weighs the same as you, me, and that power armor."

Sarah looked at Arthur. She said nothing, and tried to convince herself that the chill she felt was due to the cold of the chamber. The fire burned on.

Author's Note: This is a really infrequent story. This is another chapter of it. From here on, we're gonna do a slice-and-dice sword-and-sorcery story mixed with scenes in the Wasteland, which are gonna be shoot-and-smash guns-and-clubs stories. Dragons will be around a lot, too.

Have a good one.