Middas, 5:01 PM, 15th of Rain's Hand, 4E 202
Sleeping Tree Camp
The giants were a peculiar lot, even by Tamrielic standards. On the ladder of civilization, they shared a rung with the Falmer—far above the common beasts of the wild, but nevertheless short of the hallmarks of black-souled races. They lived in small camps scattered through the countryside, entirely content to tend their mammoths in quiet seclusion.
Little more was known of the giants' nature, for every attempt to study them was met with a uniformly violent response. Of this scant knowledge was that the giants rarely, if ever, wandered from their homes. Nearly every settlement of theirs in Skyrim was decades old, if not more.
Accordingly, when Savos had been told to travel to the Sleeping Tree camp, he had already known its precise location. It was rare indeed to encounter a giant camp not demarcated on any map. This was simply to be yet another of the countless landmarks he had already read about, with the added excitement of the chance to encounter a murderous, godlike dragon priest from the darkest hour of his past. He never seemed to run dry of things to look forward to.
When he reached the city of Whiterun, the Arch-Mage found it entirely deserted. The walls and towers were unmanned, the gates left wide open. He had expected to happen upon a grotesque exhibition of carnage, but there was not so much as a sign of violent disturbance. Casting to detect life yielded absolutely nothing, as did detect dead. The produce in the marketplace stands had long since gone to rot. He had refreshed his supplies at the general goods store, left his estimate of the price (plus some extra) sitting on the counter, and departed in due haste. The fate of Whiterun's inhabitants was best not speculated upon, let alone investigated.
Whiterun Hold was chiefly an open, empty plain—with the emphasis currently upon its emptiness. Between the capital city's gates and the Sleeping Tree Camp, the only landmark whose location he recalled was the Western Watchtower. He passed by it only close enough to observe the collection of incinerated skeletons outside its walls. Once again, he had no desire for a closer look, certainly not under these circumstances. There was a dragon priest waiting for him, and it would not do for him to arrive late.
For a time, Savos had feared that he would not be able to find the camp. He knew its location on a map, granted, but the only map in his backpack was of the warp and weft of reality itself. From what he had read on the subject, he knew to expect a lone, leafless tree, colored in gleaming purple-gray bark, likely no taller than the mammoths in its vicinity. Even in these plains, perhaps freer of visual obstruction than any other land in Skyrim, he did not trust that he would find such a remote and unmarked location.
This came to its resolution on the 15th of Rain's Hand. For three days, he had walked westward, the Throat of the World steadily shrinking behind him, and nothing coming to take its place. Soon enough, he knew, he would approach the Reach, and thereupon confirm that he had missed the camp and gone too far. The Arch-Mage was beginning to wonder what consequences his homeland would suffer for his meandering, when on the 15th, he passed over a gentle hilltop, and the Throat of the World ceased to be the most noteworthy thing in sight.
Whether or not this was the Sleeping Tree Camp, he knew not. It was plainly impertinent. Not a mile ahead of him, a massive dome of tempestuous magical force stood upon the plain. Its surface was nebulous, constantly shifting with violent currents and undercurrents, entirely opaque and silvery-white like so much frost.
Savos broke into a sprint without a moment's pause. Never before in his life had he seen anything even vaguely similar to this thing, but if he were to guess, he would posit that it was some sort of barrier.
A universal tenet of all magical effects was that they were usable only by animate beings. This was the keystone of enchanting, for example—an exploitation of this rule, bestowing magical power to an inanimate object by trapping a creature's soul inside it. There was simply some aspect of life, some fundamental quality, which attuned all living things to the potential of magic.
As the Arch-Mage drew closer, that sliver of connection within him slowly began to brighten. Like the ebb and flow of magicka, the sensation fell within his recently acquired expanse of awareness, and yet it was not magicka. It was not so focused, not so utilizable. The barrier, or perhaps something within it, was radiating a formless yet overpowering aura of magic.
The dome spanned perhaps a hundred fifty yards in diameter. Savos himself was utterly dwarfed in comparison. It felt as though the entire College of Winterhold could have fit within its walls. And by the time he reached its edge, it was akin to standing at the foot of the Throat of the World. Utterly insurmountable. He dared not extend a hand to touch the arching wall's tumultuous surface. At this proximity, the barrier audibly hissed and crackled with barely contained energy. He imagined that touching it would reduce him to a state not unlike that group from outside the Western Watchtower.
Then again, he had ultimately succeeded in scaling the Throat of the World. There had to be some way through this barrier. Or, rather, some way past it.
The procedure of moving between planes of existence was, ultimately, an infuriatingly simple matter—the traveler simply needed to cease to be in one plane and begin to be in another. There was no relevant spell, no secret ritual capable of such a feat. Its fundamental principle amounted to simply having sufficient strength of will.
To Savos Aren, sufficient strength of will came as easily now as the most transient whim. He cast a mage armor spell upon himself, muttered a prayer to whomever this concerned, and ceased to be in the mortal plane.
A barrage of images flashed past his vision. He caught only glimpses. An archipelago of blackened stone in a sea of molten lava. A labyrinthine structure of black right-angled shapes all mashed together, lit from above by sickly green-yellow sky. A rocky chasm, endlessly deep, bridged by the spine of some gigantic skeleton. A black tower against a purple backdrop, a swirling conduit of energy rising from its highest point. A massive, orange-yellow orb, glowing brightly, floating in a pale blue fog.
Not a second later, Savos was standing on firm ground once again. His sense of balance failed him, and he fell to one knee, his head hanging low, eyes shut tight.
When he was ready to look around himself, he realized he was on the inner side of the magical barrier. It felt as though he were looking at the surface of the sea from underneath. A dim, bluish light shined upon him, but he knew not whether it came from the sun or from the barrier itself.
Within this space, there was a massive structure of stone—or at least something with the color and texture of stone. Rather than being made of bricks, or even monolithic surfaces, it was a twisted web of sinuous columns, as though grown instead of built. Like the magical barrier around it, the structure's walls and roofs were essentially the same surface. Savos circled around it at a running pace, casting spells of invisibility and inaudibility as he moved.
This clearly was not the work of Morokei. If it were, he could not fathom its purpose. Nevertheless, there seemed to be a double door set in the outer wall not far ahead, so at least he would not need to tear this entire structure apart in pursuit of answers.
Instead, he stopped before the doors, raised forth one hand, and tore them out of their frame. They splintered loudly into several separate pieces and fell unsupported to the ground. Far less tearing overall, this way.
The antechamber of this structure was dirt-floored, apparently unaltered from outside, and illuminated with magelight like his own college. After a moment of silent observation, Savos realized that four elves in Thalmor robes were standing and staring back at him.
One of them cried out a warning. The Arch-Mage lifted the nearest broken slab of wood from the ground and sent it propelling through the open doorway. It messily cut down three of the mages all at once. The fourth began to cast a mage armor spell of his own, but Savos had not relinquished his telekinetic hold on the door fragment, and he swung it straight into the side of the elf's head. The results were quite spectacular.
So this structure was populated by the Thalmor. If this were indeed the Sleeping Tree Camp, it meant that they had not only built (or grown?) this entire fortification around the site, but somehow walled it off with an unheard-of variety of magical force. And much like the encounters at Whiterun and the Western Watchtower, Savos decided not to spend any time waiting and thinking. His time was best spent acting.
As he advanced through the doors, the Dunmer refreshed his mage armor, and briefly cast to detect any other life in the structure. An indefinite flood of countless bright red auras appeared through the latticed walls. Perhaps tearing this entire building down would be an apposite response after all.
There were three doorways from here to the rest of the interior. Besides this, the room was featureless. Brilliant orbs of magelight floated above iron brackets fixed to the curving walls, but the room was otherwise empty. This was far less to work with than he had hoped for.
Savos expected that they would send atronachs before endangering themselves with a direct confrontation—and he was right. By the time he had reached the chamber's center, all three passages were filled with a seething mob of flame, frost and storm atronachs. They would converge on him in a matter of seconds. The reaction time of these mages was truly commendable, to have summoned these so quickly.
This was a perfect example of the limitations of destruction magic. No matter what destruction spells Savos might have unleashed at that moment, he would not have been able to bring his full force upon them, for any element he chose would have no effect on the atronachs of the same element. A pitfall for the dilettantes and amateurs of arcane combat.
With an outstretched hand and an orange aura, Savos lifted the bloodstained piece of wood from the floor and flung it down the center corridor. It smashed itself into a thousand fragments, but not before crushing every single atronach in its path. As the fireballs and lighting bolts began to come in from the left and right, he replied with a pair of the iron brackets from the walls, torn free and hurled in either direction. He walked onward to the next room without stopping to observe the results.
This next chamber appeared to be some sort of common living quarters. It was the size of a city keep's main hall, and sported a long, vaulted ceiling from one end to the other. Several long wooden tables spanned its length, with dozens of chairs lined up, dishes of food, and countless chests against the walls. More importantly, there were upwards of forty uniformed mages waiting for him, all standing with spells readied.
With one hand, Savos maintained his telekinetic aura, but with the other, he projected a ward. A blinding wave of destruction magic bore down upon him from two score different sources, and he effortlessly deflected its entirety. Quite a few of the mages fell dead in that opening moment, dispatched by the very spells they had meant for the Arch-Mage. The spells all ceased, understandably, immediately thereafter.
If he were to remain in this doorway, it might have been possible to bottleneck his aggressors, and in so doing nullify their superior numbers. But while his decision-making skills were free of the impediment of violent anger—in fact, he felt a chillingly deadly calm—he preferred a far more proactive approach. These were trained, professional soldiers, and they would be far stronger if allowed to regroup. It was imperative not to give them the chance.
Thus, he chose to run straight out into the middle of the hall, between two of the parallel tables. The mages renewed their counterattack, but he was prepared for this, and responded with a taste of his own destruction magic. A tremendous burst of lightning issued forth, seemingly from the earth itself, and for a fleeting moment, nothing was visible but the radiance of all-consuming directed magic. A matter of seconds later, Savos shared the company of some dozens of piles of smoldering ash.
No sooner had he cleared the room than yet more mages began to pour in. They came through doorways on all sides, too quick and too numerous to count, barking orders to one another, conjuring bound weaponry and taking aim. This was worrying. A ward could shield him well enough from any direct destruction spells, but would be useless against a spectral arrow. A change in tactics was due.
Savos leapt up into the air … and stayed there. His telekinesis flowed through his own being. He lifted one of the chests from its place against the wall, and with a graceful spin, swept it across the entire room's length. Half a dozen elves fell from that one motion, but yet more were pouring in, and so he continued moving.
At the far end of the table beneath him, one mage was preparing a massive destruction spell, building up in an ominous fiery aura. Savos noticed just in time to see the fireball come to being. He somersaulted backwards through the air as it passed overhead, and as he righted himself, slammed the entire table forwards. Everything resting on its surface was thrown into the air, and the hapless mage was pinned to the wall, or at least his upper half was.
A few arrows bounced off Savos' body. They did strike him painfully, but courtesy of his mage armor, left no serious injury, at least not yet. Bound ammunition tended to dissipate almost immediately, he knew, so rather than try to return these to their senders, he simply redirected his telekinesis to flick the subsequent arrows aside.
He briefly issued his life detection once again. All of the red auras were clustered around his present position—all but a tiny few, perhaps one or two, well beyond the far end of the hall. Whatever those auras' owners were occupied with, it was clearly something more important than the unstoppable attacker tearing through their comrades, and so the elf touched down and began to move in their direction.
Almost as an afterthought, he cast another shock spell like the previous one, then flung some of the wooden chairs at the few who survived it. The hall narrowed down to a corridor at the far end, then stopped with a large double door, not unlike the one he had torn down previously. Another life detection spell confirmed that the auras up ahead were the only ones left.
It was ironic, he supposed, that for all his disdain of destruction magic, it had proved so efficacious in his attack. Ironic, but not unpredictable. This was his first time fighting with the benefits of the Skeleton Key, after all. While he was confident that he would soon be using entirely original spell, or perhaps even magical effects belonging to no school of magic at all, now was hardly the time for experimentation.
Savos opened the doors expecting to find another corridor, perhaps a winding path laden with traps, or at least some manner of obstacle. Instead, he found himself within a massive dome-like structure, strongly reminiscent of the magical barrier from outside. Its circular wall was adorned with countless dots of magelight, and its upper portion was wholly transparent, like glass—he could even see that barrier through it. But the central focus of this room was a total surprise, and he realized instantly that he should have expected this from the start.
The tree looked like nothing he had ever seen, even after the precedent of the barrier outside. It shone with glimmering inner brilliance, resplendent in iridescent silvery tones, and, he realized, letting off that energy he had felt even from half a mile away. Looking upon it directly, he felt that presence in his mind more powerfully than ever.
One last mage stood between him and the tree. A massively built fellow, tall even by the already generous standards of Altmer, and preparing a spell whose nature Savos did not care to learn. As he walked, he reached out with one hand. His opponent froze in place, struggling futilely against unseen bonds. Savos continued walking as the mage's body burst apart in a shower of fragmented flesh and bone.
Curiously, a few Thalmor corpses already lay on the ground before him. They seemed to have been killed very recently. One of them had been opened across the throat, and the blood was still bright red.
That feeling in Savos' mind was threatening to overwhelm his other senses. He did his best to ignore it as he came yet closer. The Sleeping Tree stood in the middle of a small pool of water, at whose edge lay another dead mage. Savos realized that there was one more still alive, standing knee-deep in the pool itself, one hand resting on the tree's glowing bark.
This last one looked strangely familiar. Her face resembled one he had seen not long ago, he knew, but any further recollection eluded him. It mattered little. Whatever this elf was doing with the tree, it was obviously the Thalmor's intention to see it through no matter the cost, which naturally made it an urgent priority to stop.
As Savos readied his telekinesis one more time, he noticed that there was nothing coming out of the mage's other sleeve. In fact, it looked like her left arm simply ended at the wrist. The realization struck him like a physical blow.
"Elma One-Hand," he called out. "Do you remember me?"
The Altmer slowly turned her head to look at him. "Yes, I remember you," she said. "Don't try to attack me. It'll only hurt you."
A prescient remark indeed—Savos had been preparing to give her the same treatment as the penultimate mage from half a minute ago.
He stopped at the pool's very edge, right by the deceased mage sprawled on the earth. "I don't know what you're planning to do with this tree, but I hope you know why I'm here."
"Don't worry, I do. It's the same reason I'm here." The Thalmor officer smiled slightly. "You have no idea what kind of power this tree has. The intensity alone… It's very hard to harness."
The same reason she was here. Savos honestly could not tell whether this Altmer was genuinely aware of his motivations or simply bluffing to stall for time. He wished he weren't so forced to leave it to chance. It was almost painful, having come so far, standing before what very well seemed to be the catalyst of the world's end, and he was at this mage's mercy. Only almost, however—were it not for the energy threatening to overtake his basic functions of thought, he might have been deeply frustrated, but alas.
Savos lowered his hands to his sides. His magic's usefulness was at a definite end. "I don't suppose you would mind telling me what you intend to do with this tree?"
The elf opened her mouth to reply, then froze. For a few long seconds, she stood by the Sleeping Tree vacantly, utterly transfixed by some unseen force, and then looked up at Savos. "He's here. He's using the Staff of Magnus on the wall I put up. It'll come down in less than a minute."
So Nocturnal had been right after all. He would meet Morokei here. It was simply a question of whether this mage could enact her plan in time, and whether it spared anyone else in the world from its effect on the dragon priest.
"Please don't destroy this place," he said, not even controlling his own words. "Please. If we are truly here for the same reason… Don't undo this all."
"Your fears are unfounded. Of course we're here for the same thing. Never forget, Savos, we all have our part to play."
And before he could react, the mage produced an ebony dagger from her robes and slammed it into the Sleeping Tree's trunk.
Everything went white.