Morndas, 11:18 AM, 13th of Rain's Hand, 4E 202
Sleeping Tree Camp
The Thalmor wasted so much of its own time. Every Justiciar, every last officer, lived and worked in fear of everyone else in the chain of command. Failure to support the values of the Thalmor resulted in execution. The wrong word to the wrong person resulted in execution. Not having enough fun executing people resulted in execution. Most of their energy just went into keeping everyone in the ranks all nice and oppressed. It was a wonder they ever got anything done.
Still, Eredra supposed, when the Thalmor wanted something badly enough… She hadn't really known how that sentence might end, until today.
Once Lusay had left for Markarth, it'd just been Darco and herself watching the Sleeping Tree. For days on end, with the tree looking extremely obviously different from before. She had no idea what the odds were that the Dragonborn would come right back and finish them off. But he must've understood that they had plans with this tree in particular, and he hadn't destroyed it.
Worst case scenario, the Dragonborn would notice the Sleeping Tree's little makeover, and both Eredra and Darco would end up failing to evade him—but Eredra knew who was looking out for her, it wasn't really a big deal. Besides, it was too late for anyone to keep this camp out of Thalmor control. They could and would just keep sending reinforcements.
Or they could do what they'd done today.
Like any morning of the past week, it'd started with Eredra sitting all by herself, on top of the rocky hill over the cave. Darco was still asleep down below. The Sleeping Tree was sitting there all pretty and silvery, but not really doing anything yet. They'd already buried all of those burnt corpses by now, too. Basically, there wasn't a lot to do besides just lay back and stare at the clouds.
But then, at some point there, just this morning, she'd sat up and had a look around. Open plains in every direction, all wide and brown-ish and empty… And way in the distance, way down to the south, a huge mass of black silhouettes marching in her direction.
From the south, not from the west. These weren't from Markarth.
Eredra didn't even bother to climb down the hill. She just rolled off the edge above the cave mouth, and landed on her feet facing the entrance. Darco had been on night watch. He was fast asleep right down there, sprawled over about three or four different bedrolls.
"Hey! Lieutenant! We have company!"
Darco had been treating his stay here like a fun little camping trip. Walking around, enjoying the outdoors, roasting stuff on open fires, singing songs from back in his school-going days. (That would be the school with people falling off roofs and breaking tailbones.) But, credit where it was due: his reflexes hadn't dulled a bit since Orphan Rock. By the time Eredra said the word 'company', he was already up on one knee, casting mage armor on himself.
"What've we got?" Darco didn't even bother to rub his eyes until he was standing. He'd been sleeping in his commoner's clothes. To a Thalmor officer, those basically were nightwear.
"A big, big crowd. Somewhere between fifty and a hundred. Coming up from the south."
"Right, so the reinforcements?"
"Doubt it. They're coming from the wrong direction."
Darco scowled and walked up past Eredra. He had the nerve to scoop up his waterskin from the ground and take a swig on the way. "Who else is it going to be, the Imperial Legion?"
When the two of them stepped back out into the open, the crowd had come close enough that Eredra could make out what they were wearing. Every single one of them was in a Thalmor uniform.
"Well, then," she said.
Darco dropped his waterskin at his side. "What."
"When I sent word home, I didn't think they'd send us a mob of Justiciars. … Wait here, Lieutenant."
With that, Eredra set out from the camp, walking slowly towards the approaching group. There were so many of them. She didn't remember the last time she'd seen so many uniformed mages in the field.
One was walking out in front, ahead of the others. Looked like a male, stoutly built, tall even for an Altmer. Eredra definitely hadn't ever seen him before. When they were about a hundred yards apart, she gave him a wave. He waved back.
She had to presume that these mages knew the Thalmor personnel on site were out of uniform. If it weren't for that, there was a fairly high chance that this guy would've answered her with a lightning bolt.
"Commander Eredra, I presume," the lead elf called out, once they were within calling distance.
"You presume correctly!" She waited till they were pretty much face-to-face before stopping, and when she did, the entire crowd stopped too. Not a crowd, actually. Up close, Eredra could tell that they'd actually been marching in a loose staggered formation.
The lead elf gave her a perfunctory salute, which she returned. His features were heavy and broad by Altmer standards. A bit pale, too. Actually, everything about him made Eredra think of archetypal Nordic warriors. He looked like he would've been right at home in full plate armor and a battleaxe, cleaving a path through dremora in Oblivion's own plane.
"I am Commander Anbion. Your call for aid has been heard. This is the 9th Unit."
Eredra's words caught in her throat.
Anbion waited for a moment, then raised his eyebrows. "Is everything all right, Commander?"
What was there to even say to this? Talk about overkill. Eredra didn't even know how many of these units existed.
"When I, uh… When I asked for reinforcements, I didn't think they'd send a mage unit."
Anbion shrugged pleasantly. "Cyrodiil was getting boring. Total stalemate."
"I'm sure guarding a tree will be a big step up."
"Is that it?" He pointed past Eredra's shoulder. "The Sleeping Tree?"
"Yes, it is. You should see how fast your magicka recovers when you cast spells near it."
"That will be useful. With your permission, Commander, my mages will begin their work."
Short, to the point, showing deference to the officer in charge on location. Admittedly, Eredra hadn't really done that last one herself. But she liked this guy.
And thus, Sleeping Tree Camp had become host to a Thalmor mage unit.
As of today, the only accurate part of Sleeping Tree Camp's name was the 'Tree'. The Sleeping Tree wasn't exactly asleep anymore, and the camp had become a fort.
The 9th Unit swarmed over the camp grounds with a sort of systematic routine that reminded Eredra of dance steps. She didn't even recognize half the spells they were using. At first, it didn't even make any sense, they were just casting alteration magic seemingly into the air, but then things started to happen.
Thousands of glossy black tendrils, like strange vines, began to sprout from the earth surrounding the camp, maybe a hundred feet out, in all directions. With the passing minutes, they grew broader and greater—and twisted and wove together, forming lattice-like walls, five feet high, then eight, then ten, completely surrounding the Sleeping Tree. Eredra was perfectly fine just sitting where she'd been on the hilltop, and watching. By the time the vine-things were thick enough to merge together into solid walls, they were as wide as the trunks of decades-old trees apiece.
Within fifteen minutes or so, the black vines had formed a sort of dome around the Sleeping Tree, with a huge gap in the top and center. The entire area that Eredra would've considered part of the camp was still right under the sun. A few of the mages were using bound swords to actually cut an arch-shaped exit in the wall. While they started pulling out chunks of glistening black material, Commander Anbion walked over and sat right down next to her.
"We'll put in a canopy later," he said, like it was no big deal and his mage unit hadn't just made a magical fort out of tar-colored tree roots. "It'll be a little while. You were right about the tree, this normally takes hours."
Eredra pointed towards the doorway. Light was streaming in through holes they'd managed to cut out already. "Is… Is that stuff alive?"
"Sort of. We just called on the earth around here to cooperate with us. The roots will dry out as the day goes on. They'll end up more like stone. But not actual stone. It starts crumbling after a couple of weeks."
"Does anyone else know this magic?"
"It's very new. We started work on it after we learned the fate of the 14th. It would be an insult to their memory, to follow them into the grave by the exact same path."
This magic looked like the sort of thing a mage unit would cook up. Completely impossible to do singlehandedly, not resembling any existing spell, fulfilling a function never before done by magic. More than that, it'd been designed from scratch over a scale of weeks, in response to a strategic defeat someplace else.
And Eredra was getting to talk about it with someone of equal rank. More importantly, someone who wasn't greeting her with the usual lofty arrogance and veiled jabs. Conversations not involving the word 'sir' were always so relaxing.
"It's fitting," she said, smiling.
"What is?"
"When I poured the sap into the pool—" she gestured to the Sleeping Tree right before them— "the tree went from looking half-dead to looking like this in just a few minutes. And I remember thinking, maybe destruction doesn't have to be so much easier than creation. Maybe there's a better way to do it. And now you've just… The only thing the 14th Unit did in Skyrim was burn the whole damn Reach down. I like this more."
"You know what would be even better?" Anbion made the same gesture. "You get that tree doing what it's meant to do for us, and we can change a lot more than just the Reach. Your superiors are treating this endeavor with all due attention. It's my understanding that we may be getting observers for Alinor for the final procedure."
"I'm sure they'd love to see the realization of their ultimate goals, and so on and so forth. … Who expected it to come in the form of a tree, though?"
"Not altogether unlikely. Throughout the ages, there have been so many different things used to try to achieve … essentially the same one objective. The Heart of Lorkhan, the Staff of Chaos, the Eye of Magnus…"
"The what?"
"The thing those boys and girls in Winterhold dug up in Saarthal. I don't blame you for not knowing the name."
"Right." Eredra still had no idea what he was talking about. Probably best not to push that one. "The Sleeping Tree sort of sticks out on that list, doesn't it? Everything else is the Thing of Stuff. It should be the Tree of, uh… The, uh…"
"Sleeping Tree will do. No one's considered renaming the Elder Scrolls to include an 'of', if memory serves."
"I take it none of those other ones ended up granting anybody godlike power."
Anbion shook his head.
"So how are my superiors so confident that this tree will succeed when all those other things have failed?"
"Because this time it's our turn to use the magic object of the week, and we're better than everyone else?" He exhaled sharply in something sort of resembling laughter. "I wish I had more answers than I do. But we are looking at the single clearest opportunity to achieve our goals in the entire Fourth Era. It's worth a mage unit's attention."
Eredra paused, giving a thoughtful look out into space, then nodded slowly.
Not everything here was adding up. For someone who just came in from Cyrodiil, Anbion was being very professional about not spouting fresh new war stories at her—but for someone so interested in getting the Sleeping Tree to work, he wasn't asking many questions. She couldn't put her finger on it beyond that.
Also she was only really still in control here because Anbion was letting her be. Between two officers of equal rank, authority usually would go to the one in command of a fucking mage unit.
She seriously couldn't get over that. It was like waking up and seeing Mehrunes Dagon perched next to her bedroll. There just wasn't a right way to react.
The mages had finished cutting out the archway. Looking through it, it seemed like they were doing the spell again, and another layer of black vines was sprouting up a ways outside the existing wall. Eredra could only barely see it from here.
"How many times are they going to do that spell?" Eredra turned to look at Anbion again, this time just curiously.
"Quite a few. This spell may only last for a few weeks, but if this endeavor works, it means we're building a fortress that will stand from this day until the end of Time."
They exchanged wry smiles at that.
"Also," Anbion added, "I think we may need the protection. Our intelligence network has been giving us some disturbing implications."
Instantly, the whole situation was turned upside-down. It hadn't even occurred to Eredra that being out here for so long would put her information out of date. Of course Anbion was working off of things she hadn't learned about. "What've you heard?"
"At first, it was more what we hadn't heard. We sent word to our agents when we arrived in Skyrim, but not a single Empire-controlled hold capital we've contacted has responded. Then we stopped by Falkreath, and… It turns out that we're facing a new problem. Some soldiers from the Dragonborn's personal entourage were stationed there. Defending it against a dragon priest, who's turned half of Skyrim's dragons against all of us mortals. That's all we know."
Eredra knew that she should have felt a stabbing pang of dread right then. This was catastrophic news. Skyrim was very possibly falling apart in ways that the World-Eater himself hadn't managed to cause. But she didn't feel particularly afraid, or even surprised. Not worth contemplating, though. There were some things best not thought about too hard.
She did her best to look taken aback anyway. "That's… That's not good. What's been your response to this, uh… Change?"
"So far, none," Anbion shrugged. "We have a mission. This doesn't affect its objective. But I fear that if that dragon priest comes here, not even a mage unit will be enough to protect the Sleeping Tree."
A Thalmor mage unit was a hundred mages with the power of ten thousand. Not long ago, one such unit had scoured an entire hold of Skyrim with so much fire that the local native faction had ceased to exist. Today, at the Sleeping Tree camp, another such unit was literally building an entire fortress in a span of hours. As far as Eredra could tell, the mage units could do pretty much anything they were ordered to.
She was completely fine with just sitting here and watching the 9th Unit at work. And if some super-powerful ancient dragon priest came after them, that'd probably be fun to watch too.