Loredas, 9:52 AM, 23rd of Second Seed, 4E 202

Hidden Location

He was beginning to remember.

There were memories, broken images in his mind, from a time he had not known, from a life he had not lived.

Logrolf, the mortal life, the mortal the inferior the one who had created this mind, had looked through the conduit and seen shards. He had seen them as the Aurbis, as creation as all creation and the violent shards had become him. The shards of Oblivion. Was he from Oblivion, then?

There was no Oblivion to see through the conduit. There was only the magical origin, or the atlas, the stars of Aetherius. Oblivion was nowhere in sight. Something was wrong with this. Something had happened. Something amiss something deep in his mind he knew it was not right, but his memories were awaiting him. Something had created him, and changed him and now he was wrong.

Or this world was wrong. He could not wait to see it to its end, he had not forgotten, after all—this all had to stop. This had to stop.

Yet he did have to wait. It would take time for the lock between Aetherius and Mundus, for the slow poison, the bar through the spokes of creation—yes, it would do its work, but only in time. And he had time to think, oh so much time. Thinking was no distraction no respite no escape from the pain of this being, all of this being, it all still had to stop, that was the only way, but still… still. He did have time to think, and he would use that time well.

Now he had created plans, as he was sure his foul mortal enemies would, and he knew those mortal enemies were out there. The golden mask was waiting for him, he knew. And so he worked to hide the conduit from all sight, from the prying eyes the slitted eyes of the golden mask. Much of its energy, the aura of the conduit, the power it held, was being used to cancel itself, to hide it from sight. A grim, reluctant, sad necessity. He had other plans, yes he had plans and they were needed, but they had to be slow, because they required the conduit's energy and he limited himself to only a paltry trickle.

The mortals would recognize that he was working to end their horrid existence, and it was no less horrid for their knowing themselves but they would try to stop him. They knew, the golden mask knew, it had seen him, and it had known that he alone was the one doing this, the one forced into this mission. And surely, once they endeavored to stop him, to sabotage his work, they would find some way to do it. He had only to slow them down.

And so he had plans.

The first step was to look through the conduit, into Aetherius, and back into Mundus—he knew it would ring true, that it would show him the places of brightness, the places of focus, he could use these well. It was as seeing Mundus with his own eyes, and yet more than his eyes—he understood the ideas, the magic, the force beneath the false images of this world. And most conveniently, most luckily most absurdly, this was only possible because of the bar he had put through the spokes to begin with.

The connection between Aetherius and Mundus, the threads through the Aurbis, the points in the web, were only threads, changing in number, changing in place, but finite in both. They connected some places of both realms, and in Mundus, in this suffocating shadow, devoid of all other energy, the power of Aetherius radiated from these places. Perhaps some of them changed, or shifted or moved across the land of this world. It mattered not. They were his now.

Normally, he suspected, the points may have been nearly impossible to see. Yet now, with strength pouring in from Aetherius, these points would grow. And with the two planes locked together, the energy, the burning pressure of magic would mount, just as the stars in the sky—yes, he knew of the stars, the atlas of Aetherial being above—just as they grew bright enough to shine even over the sun. And as it mounted, it would grow unstable, and the magic would burn this world, it would cleanse it, and his only true goal would be met.

These threads, between the worlds, were his now. And through the conduit, he looked back through them, extending only the barest, smallest influence. All he desired was to see what he had to work with, to harness in meeting his goal, keeping it from being unmet, being undone, by the mortals.

Many locations meant little to him. It was a slow, endless fruitless aggravating effort, finding a thread through the conduit, extending his mind into it, looking through to the other side—only to see empty fields of grass and trees and snow, and lakes and rivers and plants growing in unnatural rows nearby paltry mortal shelters. Most had yet to show even any sign, any strength of the new force, the disturbance he should have created. It discouraged him, but he continued onward. If he did not, the mortals would surely discover him, and there would be nowhere for this frail mortal prison this fetid sealed suit of skin and wet warm meat he hated it so much, this had to stop, he had to do it, this had to stop. There would be nowhere for him to hide.

Yet there were many threads, and he could only look. Even in places with living mortals moving around and being, they were being and it made him want to reach out and grab their air-breathing throats and wring them until they would just—stop—moving—but he couldn't. He lacked that power, extending himself through these threads. He could only look, and that was the worst, the most discouraging most punishing part of this all. But he continued looking.

And eventually, he was rewarded. Eventually, after countless threads, so much time spent, precious time, and now it was rewarded with something he could use. It was a simple thing, another nameless thread, which led into an enclosed space. Underground, like the one he and the conduit had taken refuge they were hidden in now. It was a tomb, somewhere in the central plains of this land of Skyrim. He could see the motionless bodies of the servants of the dead, the ancient warriors, the draugr, interred in their crude shelves, motionless, yet not lifeless, preserved by a flickering remainder of magic…

He seized that magic. He seized it so quickly that he did not stop to study what it was. He already knew. And it was something that even from here, through this thread that he could only watch he could only helplessly witness the squalor and insanity of this world—no longer. This, he could touch.

And so he seized the magic, and he was in another place.

Logrolf was not Logrolf. This was clear immediately. He stared up at a stone ceiling, mere inches from his face, in an enclosure his body had surely not been in before—yet that was only the smallest of differences. This body was not his, was not Logrolf's. It was another mortal's form. Its muscles were stiff and numb, yet he still raised an appendage, a hand in front of his eyes, to see.

In this body, his skin was a dry, leathery shell, withered and worn away with age, caked with doubtlessly centuries of dust and grime. Beneath, there were muscles, but they were spindly, gangly, all wrong. All wrong. A body disused. Still, it perturbed him no more than any other prison of flesh. This one was merely somewhat older. It was no more or less hideous and repulsive than any other he had seen.

It would suit his purposes.

Slowly, careful not to damage this form unduly, he pushed himself out from the enclosure, and placed his feet upon the floor. His weight was strange. Something was… strange.

This room was a mere hallway. Unremarkable. He was in its corner, and to the left there were stairs, and to the right there was a door. This could have been anywhere, it was so insignificant and mundane, yet he was looking at it not simply through the thread, not so helplessly, not so uselessly—he owned this body now. And he knew, he could tell now that it did have its own mind, and he owned its mind as well.

There must have been some magic, some ancient connection whose nature he did not understand. He had seen many living mortals—too many, by a number equal to the number he had seen—yet they had never shown such a ready connection. The draugr were… What had Logrolf known about the draugr? Not enough, it seemed. It mattered little, now that he was here, and Logrolf's failings were nothing in comparison to this potential.

The draugr, in his body, looked down upon his physical form. Strange brown strands filled the edges of his vision—hair, he realized, this body had hair, brittle and stringy and as disgusting as anything could be when it was slowly extruded like solid pus from ten thousand boils atop one's head. He ignored it, or he tried to, and examined the rest. This body was large, and carried great strength, despite its nature. Ancient armor of blackened steel adorned his form, with harnesses and straps beneath made of some thick, dry sort of skin—leather, he realized. A weapon, a blade, was in a sheath hanging from his hip. This was a warrior's body. It may have been good for its purpose, once. He wanted more.

Power. He would give this body power. Not the conduit's power—only his own. The conduit's would have been visible, and unpredictable, and unwanted. His own… he could control this energy. And he knew, he understood gladly that this one draugr's body was not exceptional in its accessibility. It was a fluke, a random first choice, no more remarkable or memorable than any other of its kind. He would see no trouble in moving on from it.

It was time to solidify his hold. He could do this, he had the power. He withdrew his mind from the one draugr, and looked upon the energy, the shared power the collective of the undead denizens—there was so much more than at first sight, he understood this well, it was as mortal and repulsive as anything else, but… perhaps he could make it some small amount more bearable.

His power took the form of a flame. A quenching, black flame, which spread silently over the thread, and slowly engulfed the facets of the undead magic, and he knew that it was changing it was evolving to fit his image. After so much time spent searching fruitlessly, looking for a mere chance to do something, anything besides watch the world out there—after all of that, this came as a glad relief. It surprised him, truly, how quickly it worked, after so much time spent on everything else.

The flames blanketed the energy in their shadow, and he withdrew that power from the thread. There was no need to look back through it. He could see them.

There was only suffocating blackness. An iron shell surrounded him, a resting place or a grave a prison for this mortal form. He reached out and shoved with all his might, and the shell burst open. The iron lid to the heavy coffin fell aside, and light poured in. He sat upright and trained his primitive mortal eyes upon his own form, darkened and ever-burning with another being's power. He uttered words to himself, immortal words, good words from a foul mortal tongue, and the words gave him hope.

At the same time, he was staggering to his feet in a cave. A natural-seeming cave, not wrought by mortal hands, but a mere accident of this world's cruel workings. It was dim, but he could feel the moist rotten dark brown matter beneath his feet, and hear the stream of water running through this passage. He walked forwards, one limb in front of the other, again and again, and he reached a hand to the axe on his belt. There were creatures ahead. Creatures he could not connect to, could not control. They were massive and many-legged, with rigid shells for skin, and as they saw him, they reacted by expelling arcs of filthy toxic venom at him. Their attack had no effect. He hefted his crude metal weapon, and effortlessly tore the creatures apart. They were not only repulsive, as all of these things were—they were useless. He would not have them.

At the same time, he was in a hallway, upright, his arms crossed over his chest, in a wasting deathly repose. He fell forward onto his knees, his frail body striking the cold unyielding stone, and his throat produced a guttural unliving growl as he looked around him. He was in a corridor, a narrow twisting turning passage of ancient stone overgrown with sickening deep green life, junction after junction connected in a primitive grid. All around him, other draugr were coming forth from their confines, picking up their ancient weapons, rising to their full height. Their flesh was weak, paltry, unfit to exist, yet it was imbued with some fragment of power, and it shone beautifully. Beneath their armor, their bodies were darkened and flickering, burning, smoldering with energy so great so immortal they could scarcely contain it. And their eyes were not their own. He looked into them, and he saw himself.

This was what he had wanted, what he had needed for his plan. This, a physical force he could put to use to show the world to bring their eyes upon him—but the wrong part of him. A distraction. They would endeavor to defend themselves, to preserve their numbers, to fight back against him, in shortsighted mortal fashion. They would be forced to divert their efforts away from finding the conduit, instead burning away their energy, their forces, on gnawing and gnashing at this physical force attacking them. And all he had to do was to keep them distracted, keep them from disrupting his vital process, for long enough to bring his first and foremost plan to its conclusion.

He would need to direct them carefully, however, so that the mortals would not realize that they were simply there as a distraction. More than that, he would need to manufacture a goal, to pretend that they were fighting for something, beyond the mere cause of blind destruction—to make it seem like the mortals had to stop them in order to foil his plans. This would come soon.

Now it was time to continue his search, his effort, no longer fruitless but an effort for more. Having found one source of power was not enough.

He allowed the draugr to pursue their strategy, and moved his attention back to the threads. Back to the connections, the focal points between this plane and the one of magic. He simply picked the brightest strand in sight, and followed it. But as he did, something snagged in his mind, tearing suddenly at him, and it jolted him to the point of sickening. It was no active force—it was very passive, stationary, inert, and he had harmed himself simply by going nearby it.

It was in another underground space. This one was different, an artificial geometry of stone and golden metal. It was easterly of the tomb of draugr, hidden in mountains… Did he know this place?

Logrolf had a memory. He remembered something. Consulting a codex. A stack of written pages, bound together to create a crude insulting semblance of an immortalized thought. But it had contained information, and he struggled to remember it now.

Fragments floated by, twisted shadows of knowledge. He grasped for them desperately, trying, struggling yearning to piece together something, anything to help him now. The thoughts came slowly, but surely.

The Dwemer. The deep elves. A cruel, powerful race of mortals, who, in their quest for more power, more power, always more power, they had done all they could to master the limits of their pointless world. They had lived and died underground, out of the sight of mortals of other colors and shapes. Now, they were all gone, but their cities lived on, their underground dwelling-places, nearly as powerful and dangerous as their inhabitants had been.

He was looking upon a Dwemer city now, he knew, he understood that this was what he saw, but how could it be? What had struck him here? There was a thread, but… it was wrong. He had been snagged, he had been caught by something.

So he focused his thoughts upon the snag. His thoughts hated to be focused, they did not belong as they were, and they did have to stop—this had to stop, this had to stop—but he needed to learn more about this obstruction, this source of yet more pain to him, which did not permit him to come close.

It was deep within the city. He realized this now. He could see into this place—fragments of knowledge, pinholes of vision in a sweeping landscape, he could barely see but he understood this place. An immense, labyrinthine contraption of mechanisms and passages beneath the earth, filled with common mortals of no interest; and beyond them, false imitations of life; and beyond them, some fouler forms of life still. These were all painful to witness, all as horrid as anything else, but he did see them and understand them. They had no magic for him to take hold of, no signal, no light in their darkness, as the draugr had. Useless, all of them. But they did not hold his attention.

He could not see the snag. It was deep within the city, he knew. But he knew this, he understood it, distantly, indirectly, only as a faraway abstraction, because he could not see it. Even staring straight at it, through the vantage point, the clarity the insight of this conduit, all he saw was an area of nothingness, the surrounding spaces blending into each other, not fitting, closing an impossible gap. He was blind when he looked at this point.

This, he knew, on a level he could not describe—he did not have the right words, his mind would not cooperate, it tugged him away, invited him in the wrong directions, to forget this painful effort, but he knew, this elusive thing in this Dwemer city was a danger to him. The activity, the energies of the thread, they simply stopped in the vicinity of this thing. He knew not what it was, but he would have to monitor this, to the best of his power. That would require his attention from now on.

Then, there was something. Another activity. He looked upwards in the city, to see what it was, to discern its source…

No. No, no no no.

Mortals were coming into the city. New mortals, armed and armored mortals, slaughtering all in their path. He looked at them, and he knew instantly, he knew like lightning striking in his mind, shattering all he had hoped for—these were the servants of the golden mask. His enemy, the one who knew him.

They were already working against him. They knew of this blindness. And he realized—this was why he had focused on this one thread, out of so many, he had understood that it was a danger to him. The contents of this Dwemer city, whatever that was, whatever it was for, they could not be allowed to reach it.

And yet he had nothing to control, nothing to reach out to. He could only watch, helplessly, as the golden mask's mortal servants swarmed into the city, deeper, deeper by the second, coming closer and closer to the blind spot. The power of this unknown thing could stop the power of these threads, he realized. It was greater than all that he wielded. He could not allow these servants to reach it. And yet there was nothing he could do.

There was nothing. His plans were coming undone now, even as he watched, even as he witnessed the beginning of his end, there was no way for him to act, his mind would not let him, he could not think of anything—

Enough. This had to stop. He clutched that thought so tightly he willed himself to forget all else, this had to stop, he had to make it stop, he would not surrender now. He would continue.

First, he had questions. Questions that stood in his way, that threatened him with their mystery. What were these mortals looking for?—what was causing it to create a blind spot?—what would they do with it?

The servants of the golden mask were continuing into the city. They were quick, and efficient. And they would likely reach the blind spot, before he could do anything to stop them. In fact, if he took action against them, it would only warn them, only alert them that he was afraid of what they were doing.

Still, he knew too little. He needed to learn more, to understand what was taking place. For now, he would watch these servants closely. The mere sight of them filled him with feelings too low too awful to describe, but he would tolerate this, he would watch, he would learn.

And if that did not provide the answers he needed, he would search elsewhere. The mortals knew things that he did not. They were working against him already, and they had to be stopped—or slowed, they had to be delayed, until enough time had passed that he would be secure, he could rest easy, free from this world. He hoped that the mortals would not be able to stop him, to ruin his work, all of his chance for some sort of peace, simply with their goal in this one Dwemer city. But he would not pause his own work as he waited to find out.

The draugr were ready. They were ready to leave their crypt, their disused place of bodily storage, and set out into the world. And he could see through their eyes, all of them. They were not limited by the confines of the thread. With them under his control, he could go anywhere, see anything, do anything, without leaving the conduit behind.

There were not many of these draugr under his command now. Scarcely a hundred, in fact. It had not been a spacious tomb. This was not enough to begin his work. The mortals were too many, and these were too few.

And so he began to look through Logrolf's memories once again, picking through shards, pursuing subtle hints, piecing together ideas. This tomb had been one of many. All he needed were the locations of more.