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The Frozen Hearth

Earlier

Jarl Korir stared at the tiny slip of parchment that a guard had handed him not ten minutes ago.

Join me for a drink? – G.

He'd almost thrown away the invitation on principle; Grimnir hadn't bothered with any titles—or names, for that matter—and was treating his lawful ruler as if he was just another man! That he was the Arch-Mage didn't matter—as far as Korir was concerned, holding authority over a bunch of lunatics like that just made him the most lunatic of them all. At this point, Korir was beginning to think that even this man's status as the Dragonborn was going to be a moot point—a man could only throw his weight about him so much before it started to hurt his body.

So in the first minutes of nightfall, then, Korir had gone to the Frozen Hearth, dressed in his full royal regalia and ready to give him a piece of his mind. It didn't take him long to spot Arch-Mage Grimnir, seated at a wodden table opposite his —except, to his confusion, anything that signified he was Arch-Mage at all was gone. In place of the stately blue robes of that position, Grimnir now wore a faded red jerkin, tan pants, and boots that looked as if he'd just bought them used from Birna's shop. The only piece of finery Korir could see on him was the satchel slung over one shoulder.

The Jarl's confusion rapidly gave way to shock as he realized that Grimnir looked rather more scarred than when they'd last met—the man was missing an ear, for Talos' sake! Korir thought as he spotted the gruesome injury. Had this threat he'd been dealing with for the past week really been as dangerous as the mages had claimed that day?

Grimnir, at any rate, didn't appear too bothered by his injury, as he waved at the Jarl. "Hail, Korir!" he called out. "Come, take a seat! The night is cold, and the mead is warm!" He brandished a bottle of the stuff in his direction.

Korir was too absorbed in the sight to immediately hear him. But his mind caught up in short order, and he walked towards the table until he was feet from the Dragonborn.

"What are you playing at?" the Jarl growled, pointing a finger at Grimnir. "Why did you call me here, and why do you deign to treat me as if I was just another man?"

Grimnir was unfazed. "Isn't that all we are, in the end?" he asked. "Just men? No names, no titles, no list of accomplishments—nothing but the name we were given at birth?"

He pushed a bottle to Korir. "Come and drink, friend. Forget about your title for a time. Let us enjoy the time the gods have given us."

Korir thought he was beginning to understand why Grimnir had dressed the way he did—he was trying to tell him that he wasn't here as Arch-Mage—or, indeed, as Dragonborn. But the clothes did not make the man, Korir knew, and neither did the armor make the warrior. Grimnir would have to try a lot harder to entreat his Jarl tonight.

"Someone once told me—earlier today, as a matter of fact," Grimnir went on, perhaps sensing what Korir was thinking, "that a true hero doesn't simply protect his people from threats and ill will. He walks among them, sharing words, food and drink … and fears of the war to come."

This, finally, gave Korir pause. The news of what had happened in Windhelm had traveled like wildfire, even by the standards of the province. Almost all agreed claimed that the Dragonborn had proven a match for the menace that had infiltrated the city—though it still remained at large, which gave the Jarl mixed feelings as to whether such a monstrous being ought to face justice or death for the things he had done—and so there was no question in Korir's mind as to whom had said that to Grimnir.

And so, with a heavy sigh, he sat down, and uncorked the bottle Grimnir had lent him. Korir, like any Nord worth his salt, was well accustomed to the drink, and knew from first taste how much to his liking he'd find a bottle. And this bottle, he thought as he took a draught, was among the best he'd ever tasted.

"I told Dagur you'd be coming along tonight," Grimnir told him as the Jarl nodded his approval, and he uncorked his own bottle and took a swig. "Apparently he'd been keeping the very best of his brew apart from all his other barrels until Ranmir sobered up and paid his tab." He sighed. "Poor man. I hope the gods give him peace soon."

Korir decided against telling Grimnir that Korir had not turned up in town ever since Grimnir and the others had come back—and the snowy wastes that encircled the town were not to be traveled lightly by a man who couldn't hold his liquor. He settled, therefore, for nodding his head in sympathy. "Poor man," he echoed.

For a while longer, neither man spoke, merely wishing to enjoy his mead. But Korir thought he could catch Grimnir taking glimpses at him, just for a split second. It was hard to see, with how poorly this part of the tavern was lit, but the Jarl was almost certain that the Dragonborn's blue eyes had flickered in his direction.

Korir sighed as he drained the last of his bottle. "So what did you want to talk about?" he asked with a slight note of irritation.

Grimnir lowered his own bottle from his lips. "How much do you know about what happened in Windhelm today?"

The Jarl thought. "Probably just as much as everyone else in the province by now," he said. "The Palace of the Kings was attacked by that monster from the Sightless Pit you told me about. His attack was foiled, and he escaped. Ulfric's considering the attack an Imperial plot to crumble the Stormcloak movement from within, he's sending every last ounce of his military might to Haafingar Hold, and so on and so forth." He looked at Grimnir. "And I'm guessing you're going to tell me I'm wrong yet again, aren't you?"

Grimnir bit his lip. "In fairness, the Imperial plot is honestly news to me. I was under the impression that Ulfric was hoping to weaken the Thalmor's grasp on Skyrim by driving the Empire out of their last stronghold in Solitude. But that's neither here nor there," he said dismissively. "Do you happen to know why M'Alga was in Windhelm in the first place?"

Korir gave a shrug. "I've heard rumors these necromancers behind M'Alga are aligned with the Thalmor," he said, feeling a sour note of distaste creep into his throat at the sheer notion of such an alliance. "Considering how badly Ulfric wants to boot the elves out of Skyrim—and the sooner the better, aye—I wouldn't put it past the Thalmor to assassinate him, make it look like a band of sorcerers was responsible."

"Unfortunately, however," said Grimnir, "rumors are often far from the truth. I don't blame anyone for being wrong—there weren't very many eyewitnesses inside the Blue Palace at the time. And truth be told, I thought M'Alga would go after Ulfric myself, for a long time. Then again, I'd also thought he'd kill the Emperor instead of trying to kill Elisif. I won't lie to you, Korir. M'Alga vexes me—and the more times I see him, the more I want to know why he did what he did."

He sighed. "He wasn't in Windhelm to kill Ulfric, you see. He infiltrated the city to kill someone else. One of his lieutenants—Varulf Blackmane, his name was."

Korir's eyes widened. Someone tried to kill the Harbinger of the Companions? The very notion of it was absurd, more so than even the fact that apparently Grimnir hadn't known the man was a Stormcloak at all until just now. Varulf was already a local legend in Whiterun Hold, even before he came to be Jorrvaskr's newest de facto leader after the untimely passing of Kodlak Whitemane.

"Now, I think I have an idea why the Thalmor would be interested in Ulfric," Grimnir continued. "But Varulf is a complete mystery to me. What would anyone—Thalmor, necromancers, or otherwise—stand to gain by killing him?"

At that moment, Korir understood why he'd been called out here. He wasn't particularly fond of the method, to be sure, but the Stormcloaks were among the Jarl's more favored subjects of conversation. No one else in Winterhold was quite so connected to the Stormcloaks as he was—which did the Dragonborn no favors; Korir would have thought Grimnir would be more favorable to Ulfric as a fellow Nord.

He leaned back in his seat. "Not a lot's known about Varulf's early life," he said. "He was born to a woodcutter out in Bruma, I can tell you that much. First swung an axe when he was barely six."

Grimnir looked intrigued. "Varulf wasn't born in Skyrim?"

Korir waved a hand. "Bruma's close enough to Cyrodiil's northern border that it might as well be," he said. "And there's nowhere in Tamriel that's far enough away for anyone not to hear about the Companions—and Varulf certainly heard of them. Thought of them as heroes, he did. Every day when he was a lad, he had dreams of joining their ranks, fighting for honor and glory. And the second he came of age, that's exactly what he did. Took his old man's axe, tied a rucksack on the blade, and walked his way into Skyrim with his parents' blessing.

"That was about … ten, fifteen years ago, I'd say," Korir went on. "He wasn't in Jorrvaskr all the time, see, and he certainly didn't head there straightaway. He worked at the mill in Falkreath for a while, did an honest man's living—then one day, he just … up and left town. No one noticed at the time—a dangerous prisoner had escaped from the city jail, and that was the talk of the town for some time. Same day, even, I've heard some people say. But eventually, after the hubbub about the escaped prisoner had left, the town soon noticed Varulf had left, too, and to this day, no one's entirely sure why. Varulf doesn't really talk much about his life for some reason—either something bad happened when he was a lad—or nothing happened at all, and he figured a life without hardship was the same as having no life at all."

"Mm." Grimnir said nothing else, and his silence spurred Korir to keep talking.

"Anyway, at some point he joined the Companions, did some odd jobs for them around the province, as Companions often do," he said. "He kept on doing that for roundabout a decade, and then that whole mess with Kodlak and that bandit group, the Silver Hand, happened. Rumor was Varulf slaughtered them all personally for what they'd done. Apparently the other Companions made him Harbinger shortly afterwards; I don't know if it was because of that, or something else he did. But early last year, about a month after he was declared the Harbinger, he showed up in Windhelm, and swore fealty to Ulfric Stormcloak and all he stood for."

"That's something else that interests me," Grimnir said. "I didn't think the Companions were ones to take sides in this civil war. They didn't care about serving the Empire or the Stormcloaks, only the people of Skyrim. So why would Varulf go against that? What would he gain from joining up with Ulfric?"

Korir took some time to collect his thoughts before he answered the question—he didn't really know himself, after all, and Varulf was probably not keen to tell. Korir knew when someone wanted to keep a matter private, and he wasn't one to snoop. That having been said …

"I'm not even certain the idea was Varulf's to begin with," he explained. "He certainly didn't go out all that way for it in the first place. From what I understand, one of those odd jobs with the Companions landed him there in the first place. Couldn't tell you what it was, or even if he completed the contract—because soon after he got there, he stumbled on a murder scene. Barmaid, name of Susanna, body torn up like you wouldn't believe. Horrific scene."

He stopped here to blow his nose—undignified for a Jarl, yes, but as Grimnir had pointed out, being a Jarl meant nothing to two Nords talking over drinks.

"She wasn't the first, either. A killer had been stalking the streets of the city for months by then—the Butcher, they called him. The guards were spread too thin, with the war and all, so they didn't have the men they needed to investigate these murders. So Varulf offered to help catch the Butcher—and he solved the case in a matter of days."

Grimnir leaned forward, clearly interested. "What did he find?"

Korir took a breath. "The cuts on Susanna's body were consistent with the way the ancient Nords embalmed their dead," he said. "Since no one did the practice anymore, Varulf concluded that someone in Windhelm was practicing necromancy."

Grimnir did not dare interrupt. Korir thought he'd never seen the Dragonborn look so intrigued in a conversation—even if it was something as morbid as this, he said to himself as he took another steeling breath. "A short while later, he was proven right," he said. "One of the victims' houses had a secret room that was covered in gore … and there was an amulet, too. Hidden, though not very well. I heard Varulf offered it to the local curio store for a respectable sum."

"What kind of amulet?" Grimnir asked.

Korir grimaced. "A Necromancer's Amulet."

Nothing could have prepared the Jarl of Winterhold for what happened next: Grimnir Torn-Skull leapt out of his seat so quickly that he crashed into the wall behind him.

"The Necromancer's Amulet?!" the Arch-Mage said weakly as he sat back down. "The same amulet created by Mannimarco himself?!" He took a long, shuddering breath. "What the hell was it doing in Windhelm?"

"No one knows," shrugged Korir. "Somehow, the owner of the curio shop had discovered it—oh, yes," he added as a questioning look appeared on Grimnir's still-shocked face, "he was the Butcher all along. Not for much longer, though—Varulf made sure of that." He chuckled—while it would have been satisfying to see justice dealt to someone so monstrous, necromancy was still necromancy, and an act to be punished by a swift, unrelenting steel blade to the neck. "From what I heard, Ulfric personally offered Varulf a position in his own army after he brought the Butcher to justice. The Harbinger accepted, and … well, you know the story from there."

Grimnir frowned. "Ulfric doesn't seem the type to hand out such things like they're party favors," he said thoughtfully. "There must have been a good reason for it. Killing a serial killer can't be reason enough."

Korir sighed again, and leaned so close to Grimnir that the two men were almost nose-to-nose. "You didn't hear this from me," he said, "but I think it was just a publicity stunt. I'm not saying Varulf's a bad hand with an axe—"

"—nor should you," Grimnir cut in, "I saw him hit M'Alga right in the face with Wuuthrad—"

"—but the fact remains that he's still a Companion," Korir continued. "One of the two—Varulf, Ulfric, I don't know—seems to think that having one faction's allegiance will help spread the word about the other's efforts throughout the province and maybe even beyond. If it's Ulfric, he wants to spread the word out to Tamriel that the Empire—and the Thalmor with them—isn't invincible. And if it's Varulf, chances are he wants to make the Companions a household name throughout the land." He coughed. "I'd say he's off to a good start," he added, "if what you said about him just now is true."

"So that's why M'Alga went after Varulf," Grimnir said, half to himself. "The Harbinger found one of Mannimarco's artifacts, and somehow the Black Worm found out. They wanted it back."

Korir laughed again. "I'd have liked to see them try," he said. "The moment Varulf knew what the amulet was, he dropped it like it carried the plague. Foisted it off on Ulfric's court mage, so I heard—old Wuunferth—and then he went and sold it to some museum in Morrowind. Supposed to hold a bunch of Daedric artifacts and the like."

Grimnir snorted. "Fat lot of good it'll do, keeping it there," he said. "I've had enough experience with powerful artifacts to know that they aren't just some trinket. They don't obey you—more often than not, you're the one obeying them. They have a mind of their own, you know—they've been known to abandon whoever possesses them at will on some occasions. It's as if their creators don't think anyone else but themselves ought to possess such artifacts of great … magickal … "

The Arch-Mage trailed off, a dreamlike expression slowly spreading across his face—eyes wide and slowly blinking, mouth sagging and half-open; the dumbstruck look of someone who'd either just had a dreadful shock … or a momentous revelation.

" … magickal power," he finished, his voice at a whisper. "Artifacts of great magickal power … "

Korir blinked. What had come over Grimnir all of a sudden? Was it something he had said?

"I can find him," Grimnir mumbled—and then, suddenly, his face split in a wide grin. "That's how I can find him!"

His sudden, booming laugh nearly deafened Korir, and caused half the tavern to go quiet. The Jarl saw Dagur out of the corner of his eye; the bartender was frozen in the act of wiping a dirty mug, and looked at Grimnir as if the man had finally gone mad—which was entirely possible, given the circumstances.

"Find who?" Korir said irritably as he dug a finger into his ringing ear. "Damn it all, man, what are you on about?!"

But Grimnir was already dashing for the door, his Arch-Mage's robes half pulled out of the satchel he'd been carrying. There followed a few moments where Grimnir struggled to put his robes on while simultaneously trying to exit the tavern, while Jarl Korir ran after him, desperate to know what in the name of the Nine was going on.

Finally, Grimnir succeeded, and bull-rushed the door nearly off its hinges as he sprinted out into the town. "ODAHVIING!"

Jarl Korir, who had just cleared the threshold of the tavern, skidded so suddenly to a halt that he fell, right on the edge of the steps. Quicker still, before Grimnir's Shout had even finished processing in his mind, he scrabbled back into the tavern, his backside still smarting from the tumble.

Grimnir, meanwhile, kept on running, which Korir considered a fortunate event—hours later, he would swear blind to his wife and son that the behemoth that passed over the inn, mere moments after he'd retreated inside, had grazed the rooftop in its descent. The beds and tables rattled, and drinks spilled over Dagur's counter—and for a very brief moment, a shadow had swooped low over the tavern, casting a split-second shadow on the stunned patrons beneath.

The earth, however, did not shake, nor did Korir's world explode in fire and scales. Even so, it was a full minute before the Jarl summoned the courage to totter up from his hiding-spot under the nearest table to the doorstep of the inn, and out into the street.

By that time, however, the Dragonborn and his dragon were long gone from his sight.

"That's one way to make an exit," Onmund remarked, his tone much weaker than usual—though this was less in response to Grimnir's tale, and more because of the fact that a dragon was decidedly not his favorite way to travel. The Nord looked rather green, and as he spoke he stared straight ahead instead of at the Arch-Mage, eyes fixed on the horizon.

"Did you really get that much out of Korir?" asked Brelyna. "With just one pint of mead?" Her face incredulous despite its total lack of color as Odahviing soared over the swamplands outside of Morthal. Regiments of Stormcloak soldiers marched under them—squirming patches of blue and brown from so far up high—no doubt making their way to Solitude.

At any other moment, this would have captivated everyone's attention. The Arch-Mage's story, however, was proving to be so engrossing that none of the mages spare more than a passing glance for the army underneath.

"Now hold on, hold on," Grimnir said, waving a hand in agitation, "I haven't even gotten halfway finished with my story yet!" He returned his free hand to Odahviing's other horn to keep from falling a hundred feet from his steed.

"Anyway, what Korir said about the Necromancer's Amulet made me absolutely certain where I had to go next … "

Grimnir had wasted no time in mounting Odahviing's neck; the great red dragon had come within scant inches of running aground with how low he had skimmed the main street of Winterhold. In one flourish, the Arch-Mage had grabbed one of Odahviing's horns, and pulled himself aloft and onto the dragon's smooth neck.

"Take me due south, Odahviing—along the Velothi Mountains!" he yelled over the rush of wind that came as the dragon ascended once more. "There's someplace I need to visit there. I'll tell you when I see it."

The dragon dipped his head once, and beat his massive wings harder as he followed the road below them, turning slightly southeast towards the northernmost peak of the mountain chain that formed Skyrim's eastern border.

Grimnir watched the scenery pass by in a blur. He saw Windhelm for only a moment, and he thought with a pang of what had happened there just hours ago. M'Alga's leering face flashed in his vision, but only for an instant, and by the time it had faded from Grimnir's sight, the city was already gone.

He saw other sights below him as Odahviing continued on; there was a statue he did not recognize, around which a group of men and women battled violently to the death, spattering blood on the snow-covered stones. Next came a stronghold of Orcs, high in the Velothi range, with an old wooden bridge that linked it to a forge. From here, Grimnir could just barely make out the few thatched roofs that formed the mining settlement of Kynesgrove—where he had encountered Alduin for the first time since Helgen's destruction, and slain the dragon Sahloknir—before they too passed from his vision in the blink of an eye.

The Arch-Mage turned then—and his heart quickened when he saw what lay ahead—a giant, snow-covered mound, so smooth and perfectly curved that it could not possibly be natural.

"Land there!" Grimnir quickly instructed Odahviing, and the dragon did his bidding without delay, turning right in a wide arc, performing a lap around the mound in search of a suitable place to land.

Grimnir had never seen this place from so high up before, and he took a moment to appreciate the design behind the structure—for it was indeed unnatural, yet at the same time older than most civilizations in Tamriel. Most of the building remained covered by heavy snowfall, yet there were several points—round, flat surfaces of some aquamarine material Grimnir could not make out—where the snow had not fallen. He wondered if some sorcery had gone into making this possible, some ward to deflect any adverse weather conditions—or if it was something of the substance itself. No one on Tamriel yet knew the answer, and those who had constructed it were unable—and likely unwilling—to say anything.

The last thing Grimnir saw before Odahviing descended low enough that the perfect curve of the artificial mound was lost to sight was the largest of the teal portholes, easily as wide as he was tall, and twice as wide as the other polished surfaces like it. Its creators had placed this porthole at the summit of the mound—dead center above the point where Grimnir hoped his last, best hope at finding M'Alga would be.

It did not occur to him until much later that the whole thing looked rather like a giant eye, forever staring upwards at the sky of Tamriel and its moons—and the many mysteries that lay beyond.

Odahviing touched down then, his claws coming to rest upon loose rock that crumbled under his weight. There had been an avalanche here, Grimnir thought—and a recent one, too; this had not been here last time. For a split second, the thought occurred to him that the way inside had been caved in.

But immediately, his heart was calmed as he saw the doorway that had been carved into the rock; the avalanche had barely missed covering the entrance. But the loose rocks were still very large—and very sharp as well; Grimnir noticed several particularly jagged boulders with edges that looked as though he could lose a limb trying to climb past them—and so he bade Odahviing to climb closer to the entrance, to the edge of the rockslide where the rocks were neither so large or so plentiful.

"I shouldn't be long," the Arch-Mage said as he dismounted from Odahviing. "Give me … ten, fifteen minutes. If I'm not out by then, you can go about your business. I'll give you a Shout if I'm still alive after that."

The red dragon's eyes furrowed in what Grimnir assumed was a puzzled expression. "If you are still alive?" Ohahviing repeated in Tamrielic, one of the few dragons Grimnir knew to have even a basic understanding of the language. "You have told me of this place before, and your krongrah here. Kos hi zofaas do dilon, orin fod hi krii?"

Do you fear the dead, even when you kill them yourself? Grimnir did not know why that question shook him as profoundly as it did. The dragons had a propensity to speak in riddles, and nothing they ever spoke in their language had a single meaning—there were more layers in their Words than even the Voice could explore.

"You never know what you might find in a place like this," he responded. "Remember when I told you about my encounter with Vulthuryol?"

Odahviing appeared to take Grimnir's meaning, and nodded.

"I won't be in there for very long," the Arch-Mage said again. "Besides, if you're that worried about me," he added with a small smile, "you can always stick your head in and ask how I'm doing."

That seemed to satisfy the dragon, and he crawled forward a few paces on his wingtips, and dipped his head into the entrance hall as Grimnir opened the door to the Oculory of Mzulft—

Brelyna's face suddenly lit up at this point as she let out a loud gasp, audible even over the rush of wind as the four mages soared into Whiterun Hold. She would no doubt have said more had J'zargo not thumped a paw into her stomach, silencing her before she could utter a single word.

"Hush, now," purred the Khajiit, flicking a bit of dried bile off his whiskers as the Dunmer continued to cough. "This one loves a good story, yes—and it is very rude to interrupt a good story, lest the climax be given away."

"She would have figured it out sooner or later, anyway," chided Grimnir, who in truth was rather flattered that J'zargo was apparently so entertained by his tale, "but you have my thanks."

The interruption thus averted, the Arch-Mage returned to relating his story.

—and ran right into a Falmer.

It was hard to tell who was more surprised than the other. Grimnir and the cave-elf stood only feet away from one another, his blue eyes to the Falmer's eyeless, wrinkled face, both their mouths moving in surprise, but no words coming out.

The Falmer recovered a fraction of an instant first, and unhooked his crude axe from the strap on his back. He raised it aloft, and made a chittering shriek that all of Mzulft had to have heard.

That, more than anything—along with the footfalls of what sounded like a half-dozen armored, angry Falmer approaching the corridor—brought Grimnir back to his senses. All at once, as the shock of the encounter faded, he remembered where he was, and what was standing before him … and behind him.

And he ducked behind the door.

An instant later—"Yol … Toor SHUL!"

Grimnir saw the Falmer emerge from the corners of the hall at the exact same moment Odahviing shouted through the open doors, spitting an immense torrent of fire that filled the corridor completely, and might have roasted the Arch-Mage as well were it not for the fact that he had leapt behind the sturdy Dwemer construction. The Falmer, on the other hand, had nowhere to go—but blind as they were, they had no idea what was coming until it had already immolated them. Nothing but clouds of drifting ash was left of the guards that had been roused by Grimnir's intrusion into Mzulft.

Judging by the faint sounds of chitters and shrieks that continued to echo inside the ruin, however, Grimnir doubted they had been alone. There's a lot more of them than last time, he thought as he listened to the cacophonous noise. But thankfully, it didn't sound like any more of them stood between him and his objective.

Nevertheless, Grimnir stayed as quiet as his body would allow as he navigated the corridor. He didn't have long to go—just a short distance, a left turn, and he'd be there—but he didn't want to be taking any chances with how many Falmer he'd heard in this section of the ruin.

As Grimnir silently walked on, he saw the ransacked remains of food and drink, and of bedrolls and crates. The lot of them were ruined, and recently too. The Falmer had been making themselves at home here, by the looks of it; with none of the Synod left to barricade the door, the cave-elves had been free to stake their claim here.

That was where everything had changed, really—the Synod, one of the splinter factions of the Mages Guild in Cyrodiil, and their political motivations for being in Skyrim. They too had been in search of the Staff of Magnus, and had sought to recover it for the sole purpose of consolidating power in the name of the Emperor. But the Synod had quickly learned that the dangers of Dwemer ruins had not died with the dwarves.

It wasn't long, therefore, before the Falmer and their chaurus quickly tired of the Imperials' violation of their territory, and quickly slaughtered all but two of the unfortunate expedition. One had died of his poisoned wounds at the front door of the city in front of Grimnir's own eyes; Brelyna, J'zargo, and Onmund could do little to save him. But he had provided the key to the rest of the sprawling city, and to the last of the Synod's survivors, one Paratus Decimius, who had explained to them the workings of the arcane machinery contained at the summit of Mzulft—the same summit where Grimnir was now headed.

He pulled open the doors, and beheld the massive golden sphere on its plinth—the inner workings of the Oculory, large enough to house a dragon, with its many lenses of bluish-green glass glinting in the lamplight. The sound of the machinery inside was deafening, a mechanized song of turning gears, pumping pistons, and hissing boilers that made Grimnir's bones vibrate uncomfortably. He ascended the long ramp that wound around the machine.

Then, suddenly, he froze. Something had moved above him, just at the edge of his vision; had Grimnir blinked at that moment, he would have missed it completely. Not that it would have mattered—the Arch-Mage became aware of the clicking, growling noise of Falmer at the exact same moment he'd seen one of them from below, through the glass ceiling that also separated him from the Oculory controls.

The cave-elf didn't sound alone—Grimnir thought he could hear at least one chaurus with him. He felt his heart almost stop then and there—chaurus venom was extremely potent, and had been known to eat right through Dwemer metal if the conditions were right. If they had harmed the Oculory in some way … Grimnir broke into a jog, and his fingers sparked with lightning as he climbed the ramp onto the next level, not bothering to be subtle; hopefully the Falmer would consider dealing with an intruder more important than the contraption far beyond their understanding.

The Arch-Mage's suspicions were confirmed as he left the ramp: a single armored Falmer, perched in front of the panel that controlled the Oculory's focusing lenses. He, and the two chaurus scuttling about the room, had evidently been ransacking the whole place—bits of books and parchment were scattered about the floor, and puddles of black ink and dark red blood were splashed here and there.

A detached part of Grimnir's mind wondered where the blood had come from as he prepared to charge a lightning bolt. It was a few moments longer before he realized that Paratus Decimius was nowhere to be seen.

The Synod agent had been suspicious of Grimnir's motives from the moment he'd been rescued. He was also very shrewd, despite having suffered the harrowing experience of surviving an entire horde of Falmer with naught but a tightly locked door. The four mages had hoped that with their combined efforts, the location of the Staff of Magnus would be determined shortly.

And so it had—but there had also been complications as well, complications that made Paratus even more distrustful of the College; if the circumstances had been different, he would likely have attacked them, and forced the mages to silence him for good. J'zargo had been for the idea anyway—being so far from Cyrodiil would essentially make Mzulft and both the Eye and Staff of Magnus a lost cause for the Synod Council. Brelyna, however, had talked him out of it—there was nothing to be gained from killing him, and doing so ran the risk of dragging the College out of its historically neutral stance in political matters.

However, as Grimnir spared a moment's glance at the bloodstains, he guessed that it didn't really matter. With no one else to guard the door, Paratus had been helpless to fend off whatever Falmer had not been already slain. He had either been killed or captured—and this being the Falmer, Grimnir knew neither experience was a pleasant one.

And though he had never garnered much respect for the brief time he'd known the agent, Grimnir resolved to make the Falmer's situation an equally unpleasant experience.

He let fly with his lightning at the nearest chaurus, who'd been busy gnawing on a piece of scrap metal near the giant armillary of the machine. The blast hit the metal, and flowed through the insect's pincers and into its spiky body—with the end result being the dog-sized bug exploding into a mess of chitin and goo. The other chaurus skittered behind a stone chair behind its master, and spat a gob of venom at Grimnir, which he quickly deflected with a hasty ward.

The Falmer hissed defiantly at him, and clutched a long staff of half-rotted wood, topped by the severed head of a dead chaurus, a filthy soul gem grasped in its razor-sharp pincers. This soul gem now hissed with the grayish-white mist of charging frost magic.

Grimnir ducked out of the way as the Falmer brandished his staff at him, sending dozens of icy shards streaming from the soul gem, shattering against the stone and ripping apart threadbare banners and carpeting. Fortunately for the Arch-Mage, the gem's energies must have been severely drained; the spikes of ice were nowhere near the size he was expecting, and the torrent of magic ended almost as soon as it had begun.

The silence descended upon the ruin with a suddenness that did not seem entirely natural in a place where echoes lasted for many times longer than the sounds they imitated. But from his hiding place by the ramp, Grimnir heard, in that silence, the sound of a crude, chitinous sword being drawn—and he knew he had his chance.

He bounded out from the ramp, and the instant he saw the Falmer—"TIID!"

The chaurus had chosen that precise moment to fire another blob of its acidic spittle at Grimnir, and as time slowed down to a crawl around the Arch-Mage, he could see the individual flecks of the corrosive substance even as he sprinted out of the missile's path and charged a pair of lightning bolts. Both Falmer and chaurus, who by now looked as if they were wading through tar with how slowly they were walking, took one arcing bolt each to the head; their brains momentarily sizzled as the electricity burned the organs to ashes in an instant, and their bodies skidded to a halt on the metal dais in the middle of the chamber.

As the effects of Grimnir's Shout wore off, the Arch-Mage, his opposition vanquished, turned his attention to the reason he had flown all this way—before he promptly groaned in irritation.

The armillary that contained the focusing crystal array—the key component to the entire Oculory of Mzulft—was missing said key component. The beam of light that shined down from the translucent glass lens atop the Oculory now shined upon nothing but a thin ring of metal.

For a moment, Grimnir felt his heart sink; Mzulft was far and away the biggest Dwarven ruin he had ever delved into, except perhaps for Blackreach. Trying to locate the crystal in this deserted city would take ages—and with only less than a week after the mages' excursion through Mzulft, there was no telling how well its population of Falmer had recovered!

Then Grimnir remembered how the previous hive of Falmer had stolen the crystal from Synod agents, and how its leader had took it as—presumably—some kind of trophy. The possibility raised his spirits; it meant the chances were he wouldn't have to trek very far to recover it—and the Falmer he had just slain looked armored enough to be a chieftain in his own right.

So Grimnir—grimacing as he rolled back his sleeves—set to work about turning out the pockets of the Falmer. Within seconds he cried out in triumph; the crystal array had been tucked beneath a swaddling of dirty leather that covered the Falmer's chest. He gave the crystal a quick once-over, making sure none of the lenses had cracked and none of the crystals inside the array had broken off, before inserting the device into the armillary.

With a quick shove, Grimnir sent the focusing crystal spinning upwards to meet the beam of light from the roof; it stopped almost at the exact same moment the beam hit the crystals. There was a flash of greenish light as the beams were reflected and refracted all around the Oculory, split by the crystal array and the arcane machinery of the Dwemer, until they came to rest on the ringed ceiling of the chamber.

Grimnir noted with an annoyed snort that the beams weren't precisely touching the smaller lenses spaced around the round pane in the center—nor were they precisely aligned. But that was to be expected; the crystal was very sensitive to even the slightest change in temperature; he remembered how Paratus had said the cold climate of Skyrim had been enough to warp it completely during the Synod's initial expedition, setting them back immensely even before the Falmer had wiped them all out.

There was a simple answer to this, regardless. First, however, Grimnir would have to realign the array until the beams were more properly focused; a simple application of basic fire and frost magic, in the right amounts and at the right intervals, would accomplish this. He did this, then, keeping an eye on the beams as they slowly shifted along the ceiling, waiting for when the array would reach its closest possible approximation to where Grimnir and the others had aligned it the first time.

Several long minutes passed before Grimnir was satisfied with the new positions of the beams, but he was still not done. Evidently the Falmer had been experimenting with the controls of the lenses above him, ignorant of their true purpose; the reflective surfaces were in completely the wrong places from before. It was an easy matter to return them to the right positions, but the process was time-consuming; Grimnir knew every passing second meant another second that Brelyna and the others were on their own, and M'Alga's location remained out of his reach. But there was nothing Grimnir could do at present, and he was well aware of it—for one thing, he only knew how to slow time down, not speed it up.

So, with a sigh, the Arch-Mage proceeded to maneuver the lenses back to their proper positions, feeling his heart quicken with each progressive press of the switch. It was slow work; the three buttons on the panel, and the revolving sections of ceiling each one controlled, behaved about the way it would be expected to after four thousand years of little to no proper maintenance, save for whatever automatons ever ventured up to this part of Mzulft. But they worked regardless, and after some time, Grimnir pressed the button for what he hoped would be the last time.

By the time the last lens was aligned, and its respective lance of light was bounced off the lens and back into its original beam in an ever-increasingly brighter sequence of illumination, Grimnir's brow was beginning to perspire, and he nearly leapt headlong from the control panel in his haste to see the fruits of his labors.

He was not disappointed.

The first time he had seen the perfect map of Tamriel being shined on the stone before him, Paratus' consternation at the initially-less-than-informative results had been lost to Grimnir, so engrossed had he been in this marvel of the dwarves. The second time around was no less captivating, if only because the layout of this map was not quite the same as the first time around.

At that time, the Eye of Magnus had amassed so much power in Grimnir's absence that it was actively interfering with the map, preventing the Synod from identifying the locations of almost every other location of a potential source of an exceptionally powerful magickal artifact. In fact, the only such location that had not been distorted was that of Labyrinthian, the site of the Staff of Magnus. Whether this was because of its connection to the Eye, or simply because of how powerful an artifact it was on its own, Grimnir was not certain.

The map that had now appeared before him was slightly different in its appearance, but much more significant in the meaning behind that appearance; without the Eye of Magnus to interfere in the results, Grimnir was able to identify dozens of locations of interest with a single glance, and hundreds more at a closer inspection, spread out all over the map—each one of them marked by a miniscule illuminating dot. Of these, Winterhold yet remained the most illuminated; no doubt, Grimnir thought, because of the Staff of Magnus' presence in his quarters there, along with a pair of ancient carved masks, and gods only knew what remnants of strange forbidden magic yet remained in the Midden—the Augur of Dunlain, that sinister Daedric gauntlet, among other things.

But only one of these magickal locations currently commanded Grimnir's attention—the one that was moving.

It wasn't much of a movement—just a vibration, really, and for a moment Grimnir wondered if perhaps his eyes, or the flicker of the gas lamps, hadn't been playing tricks on him. It only took a moment of close examination for him to confirm that this was not the case—and instantly, Grimnir knew that his hunch had been correct.

He had been banking on the necromantic ritual that had played its part in creating M'Alga, fusing the bodies, souls, and the magicka of ten powerful necromancers into a single being. That large an amount of concentrated magicka had to have been picked up by the Oculory's inner workings, and so it had tonight. What was more, the Oculory was showing that moving point at a location just north of Solitude.

The Emperor, Grimnir realized with a shiver. Fervently, he hoped that Brelyna and the others had not been too late in reaching the monster.

He turned to leave—and then, quite suddenly, stopped. It was in the corner of his eye; had Grimnir's attention been focused even an inch in another direction, he would have missed it completely. He whirled back on the map of Tamriel, where he had seen the sight … and felt his jaw drop at what he was seeing.

A line—thinner than a fingernail, but as bright as the setting sun—was being drawn on the map, from off the edge of its western boundary. As if being penned by the most meticulous of invisible hands, the pulsing stripe of light slowly crossed the seas to the west of High Rock and Hammerfell, passing them by without a pause …

Grimnir watched breathlessly as the miniature streak approached the shores of the Summerset Isle, the home of the Altmer and the seat of the Dominion … it crossed the northern edge of the coast … the western peninsula … it was heading for a brightly illuminated dot … was this perhaps Alinor? Grimnir thought, the capital city of the Isle?

And then—for the second time in as many minutes—the Arch-Mage of Winterhold had the shock of his life.

As if playing some children's game of connect-the-dot, the slicing beam bounced off the shining point of light that Grimnir believed might be Alinor, veering off to the north, slightly east—and Grimnir instinctively knew where the beam's final destination was going to be: it was heading for Skyrim—no, he amended. Not Skyrim.

It was heading for M'Alga.

Try as Grimnir might, he could not tear his eyes from the display. He knew the beam was going to connect with M'Alga, but what would happen next? Would it simply bounce off again? And what was this beam, anyway? For it to even show up on this display, and so brightly at that, indicated a reading of truly immense power.

What was going on?!

Grimnir was only dimly aware that everything he had ever believed about M'Alga and the threat he posed was being turned on his head. Of all the things he had expected to find with the Oculory, this was the very last on that extensive list. He had no idea where to go from here.

But the tiny representation of M'Alga was moving again, and much more noticeably this time: he was moving south, now—south and slightly east, by the looks of it. This new development gave the Arch-Mage pause; the direction M'Alga had chosen to move was incredibly suspect. He wondered if perhaps his three companions had driven M'Alga out of Solitude, or if … No, he thought hurriedly, shaking his head to get rid of the thought. He would not believe that until he had seen the evidence with his own eyes.

But the fate of the Emperor seemed like a minor inconvenience to Grimnir at this point. Because a new thought had occurred to him, as he watched the dot of M'Alga enter the swamps of Hjaalmarch: the line was being erased around him, fading from the map as if a rag was erasing its presence in one smooth wipe—

And Grimnir suddenly realized what was going on. He stood there, open-mouthed, and his finger traced the remaining sections of line as a hundred puzzle pieces fitted into place in his mind: the difference in M'Alga's voices … You are strong … but I am stronger … the strange, affable brutality with which he had conducted himself … No, master! Please let me kill him! …

The Arch-Mage leapt back from the map of Tamriel as if he'd been stung. Without a second look backward at the display, he sprinted from the Oculory, and back out into Skyrim, nearly plowing headlong into the snout of Odahviing as he skidded to a halt.

Before the dragon could ask what had happened, Grimnir was already clambering onto his neck. "Solitude!" was all he was able to gasp out as he caught his breath. "Take us to Solitude now! Fly as fast as you've ever flown before!"

Odahviing's growl sounded almost human in his excitement. "Be careful what you say, thuri," he said as he climbed from the debris of the avalanche onto smoother, more solid ground. "I may take it as a challenge."

With a bellowing roar, he launched his scaly bulk from the summit of Mzulft, and spread his wings to their fullest extent. "Tiid … Klo UL!"

The world around them flashed bluish-white, and though he could not see it from where he sat, Grimnir could imagine the town of Kynesgrove reduced to a near standstill, its townsfolk able to see nothing but a brief flash of dark crimson scales. But, as it turned out, Odahviing was not done.

"Amativ wah krongrah, Dovahkiin!" bellowed the red dragon. "Wuld … Nah KEST!"

Grimnir barely had time to hang on for dear life before an immensely strong force wrenched at them from somewhere below Odahviing, grasping them like some children's toy and catapulting them forward with the strength and speed of a Daedra Lord.

"—and a few minutes later," he said to the wide-eyed mages, "we arrived here."

Grimnir groaned as he concluded his story. "I wasn't prepared for Odahviing to resort to such drastic measures in getting me here," he grunted as he rubbed his legs, still rather numb from undergoing the combination of extreme speeds and slowed passage of time Odahviing had subjected him to, "but I'm glad he did all the same." He patted the nearest horn he could reach, in fresh appreciation for his capabilities of his steed.

"I'm sorry I wasn't able to meet up with you in time to rescue the Emperor," Grimnir said then, looking at the three mages. They had related their own experiences before he had told his story, telling the Arch-Mage of their unexpected guest on board the Katariah, and of M'Alga's unexpected behavior before his departure from the Emperor's ship. All of them looked crestfallen by the time they had finished bringing him up to speed, and none more so than Brelyna; Grimnir knew the Telvanni hopeful's pride had taken a serious blow tonight.

"But don't hold that against yourselves. I don't think there was anything we could have done to predict what happened tonight. Besides," Grimnir added, with an especial look at J'zargo, "I think you all did a wonderful job facing that brute. I'd say you all did more damage to him on that ship than I have the whole time I've known him."

Khajiit were not known for blushing, but J'zargo tried his best anyway—though his whiskers still drooped from nausea.

"But he's bound to have regenerated his injuries by now," Onmund said sullenly. "He grew back a whole entire arm when you first faced him. What we did is nothing next to that."

"Eyes are very sensitive organs," replied Grimnir. "Complex ones, too. Regenerating them just isn't enough if they're as damaged as you say. Maybe M'Alga's capable of that—but if he isn't, then J'zargo's little trick damaged his eyes permanently." He let J'zargo betray a glimmer of pride again before he continued. "But I'm worried that might be enough.

It was a mark of the importance of Grimnir's discovery that the sense of wonderment on the faces of his companions was dispelled almost the instant after his story was concluded. "I guess you were right, Brelyna," he remarked to the Dunmer. "If he wasn't being controlled before, M'Alga's almost certainly under the Thalmor's control now. He can't rely on his eyes any longer—so he's relying on his master or masters to guide his movements now."

"That's not possible!" Brelyna almost shouted back at him. "Arch-Mage, I'm near certain that what you were seeing in the Oculory—that line of light across Tamriel … I think that's the tether that binds them together. It's no different than any other link between a summoner and his thrall—M'Alga's the puppet, and that's his string. But this tether is on a much bigger scale than I ever thought possible. There's no way the Thalmor or the Black Worm could have a powerful enough source of magicka to make it visible on that map!"

"We already know they're working together," said Grimnir. "Maybe they're combining their efforts—doing together what two forces on their own couldn't?"

" … Maybe, but—"

A powerful gust of wind buffeted them as Odahviing sailed over Eldersblood Peak; fortunately, if there was a dragon roosting there right now, it was elsewhere, likely hunting for prey. Brelyna grasped at Grimnir's shoulder to keep from falling over; when she next spoke, her voice was almost inaudible over the rush of the wind.

"Grimnir … we are so far in over our heads now that we can't even see the light of day," she said. "This whole entire mess has gone far beyond elves and necromancers. I'm not saying they're not involved in this—that tether, or whatever it is, wouldn't even be near the Isles if they weren't. But if everything you're telling me about the things you saw in Mzulft is true, then whoever was responsible for creating M'Alga—and controlling him—is doing so from a completely different continent!"

The Arch-Mage felt his arms sag to his sides as the confirmation of everything he suspected was true sank in. M'Alga's master was far more powerful than any of them could ever have imagined—more cunning, more devious, more ruthless. Dozens of ideas and thoughts swam in his head—some of despair, but others of hope, only to be swallowed by the knowledge that they were chasing a foe that had been out of their reach from the beginning. It no longer mattered whether or not M'Alga died by their hands.

At the heart of it, J'zargo's words echoed in Grimnir's head, he is just another thrall. And the Arch-Mage knew that in the mind of a necromancer, thralls were expendable, regardless of their power. If M'Alga was compromised, then his master would simply sever the tether that bound M'Alga to his will—leaving M'Alga to die in an instant, and Grimnir and his companions with no hope of ever solving the mystery behind them both.

But Grimnir was not about to give up hope just yet. On his way back from Mzulft, the beginnings of a last, desperate plan had begun to take shape.

"I think M'Alga's planning to get out of Skyrim," he said to the mages. "By what you all told me, it sounds like the Emperor was his last target. After he was eliminated, he said he had 'no reason to remain here anymore,' right?"

Onmund nodded.

"So we know he's escaping, then," said Grimnir, "and going by what I saw on the map, I think he or his master already has an escape route in mind—he's heading south, probably thanks to that tether. He'll go right through the southern border into Cyrodiil, then Valenwood, and finally to the Isles. I'm betting that's why the tether stopped there first—M'Alga's master wants him to wait there for some reason."

"The Isles are a long way from here," Brelyna noted. "Are you sure Odahviing is up for that kind of journey?"

A loud, prideful snort from the red dragon was the only answer she received.

But here, Grimnir shook his head. "As much as I'd like to defer to his judgment on this one, I don't want to turn this into any larger of an incident than it already is. The Empire probably won't take kindly to a dragon in their territory any more than they will M'Alga—especially since they're probably aware of the part we played in Solitude by now.

"At any rate," Grimnir went on, "I'm not planning on chasing M'Alga all the way across Tamriel to the very core of the Thalmor." He paused here, to let his next words sink in more effectively.

"I'm planning on taking him down in Falkreath Hold."

The looks of surprise from his companions were nothing less than what he expected.

"Why there?!" Onmund's face bore the most shock of the three. "Falkreath's too far away for us to warn!"

"We may not need to warn them this time," Grimnir said. "If I'm lucky, he'll ignore the town completely. M'Alga's top priority is escaping the province—I'd wager a full set of dragonplate that the same tether his master's using overrides any sense of free will he might have gained during his time here."

He leaned in close, dropping his voice to a hoarse whisper. "Gentlemen, lady … and dragon," he said, with a smile on his face that Jarl Korir would truly call madness, "we're going to turn that tether against them. Now, here's what's going to happen … "

Next chapter: Grimnir's plan has unintended consequences that reach across the continent ... and beyond.

A/N: Any of you ever get that feeling that the universe is out to tempt you? The moment I vowed to have this completed by the end of June, what news should I get but the new Terraria patch coming out almost exactly the same day. Oh, the anticipation …

Hope you enjoyed the new chapter! - K