Chapter 6

"Tel Fyr…" Ndugu said to himself as he wandered down empty corridors. He continued on into The Hall of Fyr and looked around in confusion. Clearly these are his quarters, there was a bed, alchemical ingredients, a smallish library decorated with skulls as book ends and a near full set of Limeware (which Ndugu pocketed, don't ask how he did this because the inventory system of Morrowind is as inexplicable as it is complex, it is assumed that some sort of rip in the fabric of space-time is involved. That or Velcro, but since one had yet to be understood and the other yet to be invented, we just say to hell with it all and say that Ndugu has extremely deep pockets in which to put everything, including a roughly 2' by 3' Limware Platter, a largish Limeware Flask, and two medium sized Limeware cups, not to mention an seemingly infinite amount of gold that never seems to weigh anything whatsoever)

He wandered a bit more and faintly heard humming. Curiously enough it seemed to come from above him, rather than any other perfectly rational direction (though the Telvanni aren't particularly known for their rationality cough Therana! cough), so he decided to jack a Standard Potion of Rising Force from the lot of alchemical ingredients mentioned earlier. Upon drinking it, he suddenly felt…odd. He shrugged after it's apparent lack of effect and continued to search the room for another means of getting up the shaft that led to the incessant humming. Suddenly Charlie from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory burst randomly into the room, snatched up one of the Rising Force Potions, and started chattering (rather insanely, it must be admitted) about how he was a bird, plane, etc (birds apparently don't exist in Morrowind, only Cliff Racers, and no one's ever heard of a "plane" before, so you could understand his considerable amount of shock and confusion upon a random, strangely dressed white kid doing this, as well as what he was about to do next). The insanity was further demonstrated itself when he began doing somersaults and back flips in mid air for no apparent reason. Ndugu was about to demand knowledge as to exactly what the fuck he was doing up there, and what drugs he was taking because he wanted some, when he suddenly found himself doing roughly the same exact thing, minus the acrobatics and claims to be things that, in Morrowind, don't exist. Charlie continued his inane ramblings as Ndugu watched, half amused, half irritated, until finally he took notice of a large fan that they were slowly, yet inexorably ascending to.

"WE'RE GOING TOO HIGH!" screeched Charlie. "HELP, HELP, WE'RE GONNA DIE!"

"STOP FUCKING SCREECHING, WE'RE THE ONLY ONE'S HERE!" Ndugu yelled back, now half irritated, half fearing for his life. The blades of the enormous fan whirred with a thump-a-thump noise about them, then paused, deciding they would make a different sound altogether, then decided they rather liked the first sound they were making in the first place and went back to that, then started once again.

Suddenly, Ndugu noticed a second level between the floor and the blades of the fan and decided that curing his disease, fulfilling a prophecy, and saving the world outweighed being sliced to ribbons by a seemingly misplaced fan that couldn't decide what sound it wanted to make, and floated into the roof of the second floor. Charlie wasn't quite as fortunate (nor intelligent enough to make the obvious choice), and thus commenced experiencing his utterly horrific, terrible demise. The thump-a-thump of the fan was replaced with a sickening sound that closely resembled the sound of a pre-adolescent actor from the 1970's being sliced to ribbons by a large fan. Ndugu was still pressed against the ceiling of the second floor as blood and less identifiable fleshy remnants rained down the shaft, and a Dunmer in wicked black and red armor walked up to the ledge and peered down at the red puddle that was Charlie. With a satisfied grunt he turned and went about his business.

"Uh, a little help here?" Ndugu suggested, plastered to the wall as he was. With a vaguely uninterested glance the Dunmer snapped his fingers, which must have cast a 100 dispel spell which cancelled his potion, and thus he hit the ground rather hard. He got up and joined the armor clad Dunmer, who was studying various books as though he seriously expected them to read themselves for him which, curiously enough, they didn't. This was much to Ndugu's disappointment, because he couldn't read the books, it being in a strange, unfamiliar alphabet that would soon become relevant, but isn't now so we needn't mention it presently.

"Um…are you the wizard that inhabits this tower?" Ndugu asked.

"I am," he said, "Divayth Fyr, the only one who lives here. Aside from the corprus beasts, if you call that a life. Also, there is Vistha-Kai, the Argonian guard for my Corprusarium. Sometimes I hear screams emitting from the Onix Hall behind a big locked door, but I find it best not to ask questions and have Kai slide some food under the door every hundred years or so. Well, at least I assume he does, I haven't been down there in about a thousand years,"

"Don't you need to eat too?" Ndugu asked.

"Oh dear, I'm afraid you bring up quite a good point," the wizard replied, and presently shrank into nothingness. Ndugu let a considerable "huh?" of alarm before the wizard rematerialized, laughing.

"You fool, do you really think a four thousand year old wizard needs to eat? I haven't had anything to eat in over 19 centuries!" Divayth said.

Ndugu considered this for a moment before noticing the half eaten sandwich stuffed in between the plating of his cuirass and greaves, but decided to let it go and half Divayth live under the (false) impression that he needn't consume tasty scrib jelly spread over bread, lightly toasted by a firebite spell. Ndugu wondered why anyone would make such an outrageous claim to begin with, but found that it had absolutely nothing to do with anything of any particular level of relevance. Instead, he thought about Charlie. He thought about him so much that it provoked him to make a bit of an inquiry.

"Why'd that kid get hacked up?" he asked.

"Because," he said simply, "he keeps taking my Rising Force Potions and asks me where I've hidden all of the chocolate, and why the 'Umpa Lumpas' in the Coprusarium had tried to dismember him. After a while I decided that the best course of action would be to build a massive fan and chop him up into little tiny pieces, then feed his remains to the corprus victims. Unfortunately, it took a bit of time from my current project,"

"Which is?"

"Trying to make these books read themselves," he replied. He stared for a little longer.

"Why didn't you just ask him to leave?" Ndugu asked.

"Eh? Vistha-Kai? I happen to admire the considerable length of his peni-"

"WOAH! No, I'm talking about the kid," Ndugu said. Divayth shrugged in response.

"If you do me a favor, I can rid you of that corprus," he said. Ndugu was about to ask him how he'd known that, but then suddenly realized that the hemorrhoid had grown back, for him being so half irritated.

"What do you want?" Ndugu asked.

"Go into the Corprusarium and find Yagrum Bagharn. Ask him about that thing he was supposed to get me a few hundred years ago. To be perfectly honest with you, I can't even remember what it was, but as I said, I don't get out much, and needless to say, I don't get many visitors who aren't either drooling, corpus infected idiots, or smallish pre-adolescent boys accusing me of hoarding chocolate, of which I've admittedly had one of the latter," Divayth said.

Ndugu had already left a quarter of the way through the wizard's rambling, but unfortunately missed the bit about what exactly he was supposed to get, and from whom. He just assumed wandering around aimlessly in an eccentric, four thousand year old wizard's lair sounded like a fun thing to do, as well as perfectly safe, but he was staggeringly wrong on both accounts, as we will discover later.