Chapter Twenty-Nine: Stir Crazy
A/N: Headers have been updated
There was a limit to how many times she could cast magelight before getting bored, and Evelyn had reached it two days prior. Turning a magic flashlight on and off was only fascinating the first fifty or so times.
She knew it was not going to become a point of light, no matter what she tried, and that the light could change colors based on how much magicka she channeled into it. From a glaring white that was hot to the touch (and had to be tested during daytime unless she wanted to go blind for half an hour) to a dim maroon (which wasn't visible during daytime at all but could be felt as a slightly warm zone of air).
The heating spell was dull - nothing very exciting about heating up food - and clairvoyance was completely worthless. She could find things if they were visible, but anything out of sight was off-limits. Which is the entire point of clairvoyance.
Only two of the three spells she knew worked as intended, and none were combat-viable.
If she wanted to survive Skyrim, she needed to improve her pitiful spell repertoire. And she needed to do it without spellbooks, too. There's nowhere to buy any until reaching Markarth and the necromancer stash only has - surprise, surprise - necromancy spell tomes. Trying to reanimate everyone's dinners would not go over well, especially if the hypothetical-rabbit-zombies turn to ash after the spell ends.
So I need to learn something new without any outside help.
Which was why she was in the process of trying to reason out what made magic work. If she knew how spells worked, maybe she could self-teach herself something? It might not even matter that she had no spell tome. Oblivion had the option of creating your own spells. And, since candlelight spells are not supposed to look like miniature stars, but mine do, you could say I've already made a new spell, right? Now is just the challenge of coming up with a more useful one. And to do that I need to figure out how the magic works.
At the College of Winterhold, you could find mages using all sorts of movements to cast spells. Sergius liked to gesture with his staff, even though it wasn't an actual spellcasting stave, to cast his spells. Tolfdir used awkward waves that looked like jazz-hands on occasion. Colette made angry pointer fingers. One of Faralda's favorite students, a bosmer with pyromaniac tendencies, was known for being impatient and shooting firebolts with snapping. She was forbidden from ever setting foot in the Arcanaeum, naturally, but rumors travel fast in a blizzard-locked College campus. Evelyn had overheard students' opinions on the infamous 'research paper massacre.'
In contrast with the Winterhold mages, the thalmor used his hands only to aim his spells. He cast them using various phrases and muttered words. For a group that spends the day socializing about as much as a rock, I'm surprised the Thalmor use such a vocal spellcasting method.
It made sense now, why Ancano scowled so much - he must think the Winterhold students are being taught 'bad-magic.' Like watching a kid being told that apples fall because they love the ground, and not because of gravity.
But both ways of spellcasting work.
You can forgo hand-waving and cast spells verbally, or you can forgo verbal commands and cast spells using your hands. ...Will you always need one of the two, or is there another variable that's constant? Dwemer used tones, and Shouts are verbal arguments in the dragon language, but the moons and star positions affect magic as well. Those don't make any noise, as far as I know.
Do vampire lords or werewolves have to do anything to transform, or can they just do it on command?
Were there just a ton of different types of magic that needed different styles of casting? Or was there an overarching rule to all of them that had been missed up until this point?
Occam's Razor stated that the simplest option was the most likely. So. Which was simpler? A crazy amount of magic types? Or a conspiracy theory that all of them were really the same thing - just with different flavors?
Like putting a gift card in a ton of different boxes. One may look different from the other, but the contents are the same?...
Evelyn huffed to herself, stepping between the wheel tracks on the road.
...There has to be some underlying rule to it all. Chemical reactions can be endothermic or exothermic and the principle of enthalpy works for both. Position in space is influenced by speed, which is in turn influenced by acceleration, and all three can be summarized using a single equation.
Three variables to list: Position, speed, and acceleration, and they are typically equations of time. So effectively one variable with several constants.
But how many variables and constants would be involved in an equation for spellcasting?
She went through what she could remember about the magelight and clairvoyance spell tomes and began cataloging possible variables.
I'll need to make a list and some spreadsheets if I want to do this properly...
12th of First Seed, 4E 202, Fredas
Evelyn addressed the tree stump in front of her with an imperious wave.
"Be grateful, mushroom garden, that I have decided to grace you with my presence."
She was not going stir crazy from traveling with two antisocial mages. That was absurd.
...This was all in the name of science.
"You get to witness the start of a very important experiment. 'What makes magic tick?' - that is the question."
"I think there's a rule - or set of rules - that governs all spellcasting. Therefore, my" frankly stereotypical "hypothesis is that 'if I cast magelight focusing on different aspects of spellcasting, the strength of my candlelight will vary.' In other words, I hypothesize a correlation between at least one of the variables and magelight brightness."
She took out her stick of charcoal and underlined the hypothesis. She was a bit too lazy to list out all the equipment and relevant safety procedures for the experiment, but she wasn't too worried. Especially considering that the worst magelight can do in the daytime is make your eyes water.
Today was the initial test day, to record any changes in casting strength due to magicka level. Over the next seven days, she would cover sound, movements, subconscious magicka manipulation, focus, an outside force, and physical objects.
One set of tests per 'bathroom break' should suffice.
xXxXxXxXxXx
The results were only partially helpful.
Saying the thalmor's incantation did nothing, and the only thing affected by hand movements was the time it took to cast. The only variables that affected casting were focus, magicka manipulation, and an outside force, of all things.
Who knew that asking politely would be so effective?
But why on Earth -er, Nirn- does asking for the spell's effect work better than the actual incantation?
"Are the potatoes not to your liking, novice?"
She blinked up at Sergius, and then down to the potato skewered on an arrow. The skin was burnt on all sides and had a thin coating of ash.
She poked the attempted baked potato and frowned. It was already cold. How long had it been since she took it out of the fire? With a sigh, she pulled out her dagger and began mashing the potato up inside its skin. Better late than never.
"I forgot that it was ready, honestly."
"And nothing to do with the blandness? Heh, the headmaster at the Bard's College spoiled you, novice, didn't he?"
She tilted her head. "...Spoiled me how?"
"If I had known that there would be sandwiches at the Bard's College, then I might have insisted you wait for me."
She blinked. What was he talking about? She tilted her head.
"Can you not make a sandwich yourself? We have bread, right? And then just add some cooked meat? Don't worry, you didn't really miss much. The sandwiches were... Okay, but not the best. Too much mustard and pepper, for my tastes."
She took another bite of cold mashed potatoes, continuing in the silence. "Now, this soup that I had on the way to Whiterun - that was good. I love me some potato soup. Aprolla - she could make mystery meat appetizing."
More silence.
"You don't like mustard?"
Sergius sounded distraught.
Crap. Is he one of those people that are personally offended when people don't like their favorite food?
"Eh? It's good, I guess. Good on the right dishes. But as I said - the sandwiches just had too much. They were nearly a quarter mustard."
Sergius was still staring at her with wide eyes, so she tried explaining. "It's probably just my preference, but I see it as the difference between having a sandwich with mustard, or mustard with a side of sandwich, if that makes sense?"
Sergius deflated with a sigh. "Novice."
"Yes?"
"Next time, decline politely and wait for me."
She nodded uneasily.
"Sounds good to me."
xXxXxXxXxXx
Evelyn took to scribbling on the back of her spreadsheets. She made lists of the spells she knew from the game and ideas of how to cast them. These spells already existed, so whatever brand of physics that ruled this reality wouldn't stop them from working.
She focused on the less flashy spells.
Illusions and alteration.
The new project was a fresh of fresh air - it added change to her daily routine of meditations on enchanted items and ingredient collecting.
More experiments were conducted.
She found that the most effective way to cast was meditating on exactly what she wanted to happen. Invisibility was her current goal - her spells couldn't get stage fright if no one could see her.
It had reached the point where if she thought hard enough and focused all of her attention on the spell, she could make her hand fade a tiny bit into the background. The light going through was distorted and she hadn't practiced enough to actually see through her hand yet, but it was progress nonetheless.
Absorbing all the light that hit her hand used less magicka, but a walking, talking, human-shaped zone of complete blackness was not inconspicuous.
I could use it at night or in caves, so it isn't totally useless.
She stared at her hand, where the distorted outline of her spreadsheet was just barely visible through her skin. She could see where her bones were blocking the light.
I'd prefer to learn invisibility first, though.
xXxXxXxXxXx
Sitting around the campfire at the end of another long day, the conversation had somehow drifted back to food. Evelyn had hoped that Sergius wasn't still angry about the sandwiches, but with how much he brought up food in conversation lately, it wasn't likely.
Sergius waved toward his pot of mystery stew.
"The masters at the College of Winterhold don't actually eat much better than the students."
Yep. He is definitely not over the sandwiches.
"Suspicions from the local nords make it difficult to ship in luxury goods before they turn foul." He frowned into the fire. "Those suspicions are completely unfounded. The College didn't cause the Great Collapse, and we do not abduct villagers or whatever nonsense they are claiming now." His voice trailed off into an annoyed mumble as he walked off to do some chore or another.
After he was gone, the thalmor leaned backward, eyes narrowed, and sneered. "And what about Savos Aren's allowance of necromancy and experiments? Experiments that are allowed so long as fellow College members aren't injured?"
He said it as a question and an insult - not something for Sergius to hear.
It could have (and probably had) been rhetorical, but he said it too loudly for her to reasonably pretend to ignorance. Evelyn blinked as she processed the question. He made a fair point, but something about it rubbed her the wrong way. She wasn't sure how to respond.
How did he know about the necromancy? She had overheard Phinis' lectures on occasion, and the guy never talked about it - not even for the older students. He avoided the subject like the plague and, according to what she overheard in the library, refused to let people know about his research.
In fact, the only reason she knew about Phinis' necromancy skills was because of the game.
It shouldn't be common knowledge, but...
She relaxed into her seat. It was obvious.
Our wonderfully friendly advisor, Ancano.
With an eyebrow raised, she turned to look at the thalmor, who was still waiting quietly. As if he hadn't just said something only a spy could tell him.
Interesting. Maybe it really is common knowledge that Ancano-
She was inwardly snickering at how terrible Ancano was at subtlety when the thalmor eyes widened. He looked away to glare at the trees - probably trying to act as natural as possible.
The keyword in that sentence was 'trying.' She raised an eyebrow at the thalmor - he was terrible at acting.
Savos' style of education - laissez-faire and allowing necromancy - wasn't advertised outside of College grounds. Something about avoiding attention from the Synod and College of Whispers. She snorted softly. Now that she thought about it, it wasn't surprising that the thalmor knew, considering that Ancano was in the running for 'most obvious spy.' What was surprising, however, was that the thalmor believed Ancano was still operating in secrecy.
As if no one at a school for mages knows what Ancano is doing at their College.
She looked sideways at the thalmor, who stood stiffly, ignoring her. His face was stuck in a half-aborted expression of 'oh crap that lemon was sourer than I expected.'
All in all, very much not natural for a thalmor.
Normally, it was one or the other. Normal, calm thalmor never half-ass their displeased look and are the happiest when left alone to be displeased by all the non-thalmor-ness of everyone around them. The 'I don't care about you fools' willful ignorance and aloofness was saved for those too dumb to realize their own imbecility (she had watched Ancano back, whenever he deigned to grace the library with his presence - his words, not hers).
That this thalmor couldn't decide between the two expressions was intriguing, but pestering him about it was probably not the best for her health. She sighed.
"I don't know a lot about anybody else's experiments, but I can't think of any that endangered the locals, let alone anyone else, at the College of Winterhold."
She thought harder, humming to herself.
"But... There was that time that one of Faralda's students accidentally set fire to an entire floor's worth of paper, and another when one of the illusion adepts got stuck after their invisibility spell worked just a bit too well, but those were both accidents."
Well, maybe not the fire one, but there was no proof (remaining) of the alleged bad grade the student got on her paper, so no one was the wiser.
"And what about your own experiments?"
"Me? I read books and connect points between each in an effort to piece together an accurate document. It's hard to do when my subject makes old stuff look young in comparison. Not that the old stuff of today doesn't look old at all..."
He blinked at her, a quizzical look on his face. She winced - she hadn't explained that well.
"Sorry. Basically: My research is hard because the only books about the falmer seem to have been old and uncertain history at the same time when all the other history of this place was still happening."
She could almost feel his confusion now.
"...The stuff I want to learn about was old when the old stuff of today was young?"
More silence.
"I'm just making it worse, aren't I."
"..."
"Ugh. The Falmer are hard to research because they were here such a long time ago. There. Simple."
The thalmor frowned. "But they are known to lurk in dwemer caves - they are still here, unlike the Dwemer."
"The Falmer as they were in the Merethic era were long gone before the Dwemer were. Evidence indicates that they were actually betrayed and enslaved by the Dwemer, rather than living as pests in the caves. Something about mushrooms, if I remember correctly."
"And what else do you know of the Falmer during that time period?"
Is he actually interested in my research? Most likely not. Is he trying to distract me from his earlier slip-up? Most likely yes. But I may as well play along so he doesn't try attacking anyone to keep the Thalmor world-domination plans on track.
"Well, the Falmer got along moderately well with the Nords' ancestors initially, even teaching one the arts of enchanting and magecraft" Ahzidaal. "...at least, until they went and sacked Saarthal with little to no warning. After that, the Nords' ancestors, including Ysgramor and company, came back and started hunting the snow elves in vengeance."
She registered the thalmor mumbling something to himself. He sounded confused.
Oof. That's gotta hurt his opinions on elven supremacy over men. But... he isn't wrong to be confused. A human victory should have been incredibly unlikely considering that all of the infrastructure in Tamriel at the time was focused in elven cities.
...Unless this was a situation similar to the colonization of the Americas. There weren't any records of plague among the elves, were there?
Would there be any way to figure it out? Would Gelebor know? Should I drop by the creepy Falmer cave sometime in the future? Poke my head into the Dawnguard plotline just for a few questions?
Maybe it wouldn't affect too many things - I can work on streamlining the questions so that I can be in and out of that place in record time.
She nodded to herself. She would try to find Gelebor at some point.
There was a moment of further silence.
And then she remembered why she was talking about the Falmer in the first place.
She winced and focused back on the thalmor. She had forgotten that she wasn't ranting to Urag. She was in a conversation with a thalmor and that required her to not drift into ten-minute silences in between points. What was the question again? Had he asked a question?
She mentally shrugged and decided to continue the timeline from where she left off. She'd keep an ear out for future questions just in case.
"The snow elves were pushed back until the battle of Moesring Pass, where the Snow Prince fell in battle - apparently, some little nord girl with a vendetta trumped however many years of battle experience and well-crafted armor the Snow Prince had."
She hummed in thought.
"I'm actually not sure if the little girl thing happened, seeing as it sounds like something out of a children's tale for teaching morals or something. Why on Nirn would anyone bring their kid daughter to a battle? Regardless of the 'how,' though, the effect was the same: the Snow Prince's death crippled the snow elves' ability to combat the Nords' ancestors. They fought a losing war afterward and eventually made a deal with the Dwemer."
"Which led to the betrayal you speak of."
The thalmor was actually listening to her rant? Evelyn felt her heart warm.
(Not really - she was still shivering in the cold, but it was the thought that counted.)
"Yep. The Dwemer agreed to take them in and protect them, but some undefined period of time later, the Falmer were eyeless and being used for labor in Dwemer mines. The Falmer rebelled, and the War of the Crag began. Dwemer versus Falmer, and it lasted until the Dwemer disappearance following the events at Red Mountain."
Sort of. The Falmer still fight Dwemer automatons.
"Is there anything else you want to know about my research?"
She only noticed that Sergius was back when he groaned from his bedroll behind her.
"Just how many books have you read, novice? - No. Don't answer that question. It's late. Just - I don't know, sleep?"
25th of First Seed, 4E 202, Turdas (Flower Day)
"Why should I do it?"
"Because I'll give you some of the reward money from returning the flute."
Didn't I do all the work there? But Sergius is paying for the rest of the trip... And book money would be awesome.
Did she really want to do this?
Truly? No.
But for the sake of her future book hoard...
She let out a long sigh, and inched her way to the sleeping thalmor, sleeping roll held in front of her like a shield.
She took a deep breath before poking him lightly.
There was no response.
Mouth shut tight with determination, she poked him again.
"Hello?" This can only end badly.
She leaned in closer. "Are you awake?"
Still no response. She was in too deep to stop now.
Another poke. Harder.
"What about now?"
On the fourth try, he jerked awake with sparks on his fingertips. Unfocused, they weren't life-threatening, but getting electrocuted could not be a fun experience. She'd prefer to pass on that.
Crap crap crap.
Evelyn dropped everything and backpedaled to the cart. Her poor bedroll was thoroughly electrocuted. Thank goodness that blankets weren't good conductors, or she could have been hit as well. She nodded seriously toward the aftermath. The bedroll was a worthy sacrifice.
From behind the cart, she watched Sergius and the thalmor glare at each other. The thalmor hadn't realized that it wasn't Sergius' mangled bedroll he was holding hostage yet, but he'd realize it soon.
Hopefully.
She kind of needed that back.
xXxXxXxXxXx
"Are you... eating those?"
Evelyn turned to Sergius, a stem of tundra cotton sticking out of her mouth. Chewing it was very focusing, what with the need to clamp down on her - suddenly and surprisingly active - magicka.
"Yep."
There was a pause.
"...Why?"
She added another stem and her magicka bubbled higher. It was like a dam somewhere inside of her lowering and a shot of coffee all in one. She grinned to herself. It seemed that tundra cotton stems were the parts of the ingredient that 'fortified magicka.' She would have to keep a collection of them on hand in the future, just in case.
"I'm testing the effects."
"Do you know what they do?"
"Can't remember most of them, but I'm pretty sure I can figure out what is what."
If it worked in the games, why wouldn't it work here? ...Though I draw the line at testing ingredients like giants' toes.
"You're testing ingredients by eating them?"
Just the parts that I can, but close enough.
"Yep." She popped the 'p' and pulled out another stem. She would observe and dissect it into even smaller testable pieces. Sergius may not know that she already had all four of the effects written down - all good ones, too - and was just trying to find out which parts of the plant did what, but she knew what she was doing.
Mostly.
Nothing ventured nothing gained.
Sergius just looked skyward and sighed.
"...Divines help us all."