Star Thirteen: (Aem'uvus)
Aem'uvus' nursery was littered with opened novels and completed projects. His bedsheets were a heaped mess on the floor, and his tools were slick with oil. But despite following his father's instructions, Sotha Sil had not yet come to collect him. Nor, even, had any explanation of his whereabouts been offered from the factotums. The child's anxiety had not ebbed, but it was joined by abject bewilderment.
"Father?" he called out. "Father, can you hear me? I'm still in the nursery. I haven't—I haven't left. There's bars on the door that I can't open. Did you forget I'm in here? Father?"
Silence met his words. Aem'uvus let out a small sigh, his shoulders slumping, and looked to his fabricant. Between the Dovah-Fly models scattered about the floor, and the unwound skeevatons and single verminous fabricant, Vennu's flawed form offered him some small comfort. Even with its single too-short leg, the one patch of smooth metal on its hide from where it had stumbled so often, it was a testament to happier times. Times Aem'uvus had no reason to believe were at their end, at least for a short while.
"Still no answer," he said. "It's been too long. What if he's hurt? What if he doesn't—" The child paused and steeled himself against the thought. "We have to get out and find him. Even if it makes him mad, we—"
As he spoke, Aem'uvus felt a ripple of magicka in the air; familiar, but the rhythm was alien and unsettling. Just off enough that he could sense it, though as more of a feeling than a conviction.
His head rose towards the door. It was still sealed shut, but he felt as if someone – or something – approached. Its energy drew closer and closer, and despite the peculiar tempo, it held the distinct flares of his father. The child pricked his ears, and listened as heavy footfalls reverberated on the other side of the steel. He willed his mouth to open, but it would not. The entire situation felt wrong.
The footsteps thudded to the door, then paused. There was a beat in which all was still and silent. His muscles tensed. If he moved, he feared he would be ensnared in some trap that had been set to capture him.
Then came the knocking.
"Aem'uvus?" murmured Sotha Sil's voice, but it was void of his warm, soft comforts, and conjured in the child's mind dark shadows that flittered just at the edge of his vision. Each knock echoed as a rap…rap…rap…around the nursery. Chills ran down his spine, and he did not rush to respond. "Aem'uvus? Come and open the door for your father."
His throat was dry. It took every muscle in his face to force his jaw open, and when he spoke his voice came out as a near squeak, quiet and hesitant. "I—I can't."
Another pause. He heard a rustle of clothes, but more liquid than he recalled them. "I've no time for games, Aem'uvus. Come. Open the door. I have a new friend for you to play with."
"There are bars, Father. On the door," he replied. His feet shuffled on the floor, twisting the hem of his shirt in his hands. "I can't open it."
It was a dreadful laugh that followed. The sort he had read in old stories when a villain revealed themselves, or an unwitting fool was startled by the betrayal of a Daedric Prince. Aem'uvus heard as the voice moved, clothes rustling with their liquid-esque strangeness, and the sound of gears whirred a touch louder than he remembered them.
"Then let me leave your new friend behind," came that malevolent chuckle. "After all, what sort of father would I be if I left my dear son to die alone?"
"What—?"
He had no time to finish his thought. From the slightest gap beneath the door, a pool of darkness started to ooze. It was as if the voice had conjured a tar pit, or tipped over a large inkwell. But it hummed with evil, chaotic intent, foreign to the halls of the Cogitum – foreign, even, to the energy his father had excused as an experiment. Aem'uvus backed away, further into his room, and could do little else than watch as it seeped inside.
Had he the presence of mind, perhaps he would have protected himself sooner. He would later realise he was mesmerised. Darker than a shadow, humming a tune that was both distant and recognisable, it appealed to some deep part of himself that lurked further than he had the courage to explore.
Then it started to rise, and from the darkness morphed a human-like figure with eyes that shone as amethysts.
"Vennu!" he shouted. "Come here!"
The fabricant scrambled on its too-short leg, and Aem'uvus had only a second to snatch it from the floor as the creature before him rose to full height. It was tall – not so much as his father, perhaps, but enough to impose upon him a sense of terror. A svelte physique and long tendrils falling past its shoulders made it appear almost feminine, and in its hands a maul of impossible proportions started to shape itself. Its eyes remained fixed on him. On either side, his guardian fabricants came to life. But the child could not will his legs to move, nor loosen his grip around his pet. An unnatural stillness fell over the nursery.
Then it screamed, and he found himself dropping to the floor.
"Kill it!" he bellowed as the creature flew towards him. At the last moment he threw up a ward, which it crashed against with such a force that the spell almost shattered. Had his protectors not fallen upon it then, perhaps it would have broken through. Aem'uvus squeezed his eyes shut against the sound of metal meeting darkness, though he could not shut his ears. The clang and smash of battle, the crackling robotic voices - "Engaging hostile Daedric presence," - drowned out all thought, until he was shivering and frightened and wished, desperately, that his father would come and save him.
When a final thud rang across the room, a deafening silence followed that turned his blood to ice.
Aem'uvus slowly raised his head. What he saw before him was devastation. His guardians laid in pieces across the floor, covered in that evil black ooze. The monster, hands gripped around its maul, stood firm, staring at him while its shoulders rose and fell with laboured breath. Behind it, the sealed door and its enchanted bars appeared to mock him.
The maul was reared once more. The creature rushed forwards, and when it slammed into his shield he felt the tremble, saw a bloom of energy that appeared, at least for a moment, as a crack across it. Aem'uvus flinched. He could do no more than watch as the strikes continued, and each time it wore more of his strength. Even though he wanted to move, to run, his feet remained rooted to the floor. His wide eyes could not tear themselves from the sight.
In truth, he was not certain what snapped him from his trance. Perhaps it was a falter in the monster's form, or the forks that ran as power-sapping lightning before his eyes. But he suddenly heard the slam of its weapon, the shrieks of a thing enraged, and the scene that moved almost in slow motion returned to full speed. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. He leant forward, half-crouched and clutching Vennu to his chest.
"Leave me alone!"
The scream came out of him with a shockwave of power. The ward expanded out and crashed against the creature, sending it across the room with an inhuman squeal. Aem'uvus stared as it floundered on the floor. It was not until it lifted its head that he remembered the danger.
He leapt to the side of the room when the maul was thrown at him. He heard it clang against the wall just behind his bed, but he had no time to look. In a moment he was at the door, desperate to shatter the barrier while his assailant retrieved its weapon. The initial shot of adrenaline had left his hands trembling, and as he struggled to summon his strength he heard a metallic slide across the floor, slow, deliberate footsteps that grew louder and louder.
"Open, open, open!" he half-pleaded, but no lightning, no flame, no amount of ice or arcane energy could even coax movement from the bars. When air brushed the back of his neck, he sent out one more burst of fire before he launched himself from the strike. The force of the maul hitting steel sent reverberations through the room. But it was more than that. More than a sole bang and a shriek of fury.
There was a crunch – as of metal rending.
Aem'uvus forced his eyes open. The door that had once stood so firm and unyielding was torn asunder. An enormous slash like a claw-strike had revealed the hall, – and he saw his salvation.
The monster turned towards him. It lifted its weapon above its head, eyes trained on him, unwavering in its goal. Despite the quiver of his lip, he lunged forward and through its legs. Before he even realised he had slipped through the tear, he and the pet he held were racing down the halls of the Cogitum. Vennu acted as a weight that made him trip and stumble, but he pushed on, harder and harder to put distance between himself and the screeches that echoed behind him.
His home had become a warzone. Fabricants were either in pieces or hostile, but to a foe he could not see. The air was oppressive and suffocating. But he heard the growls that followed him, crackles of robotic voices – "Engaging hostile Daedric presence," – the thundering of weapons that served to slow the creature's chase. He had but one thought in his mind as he weaved his way through those machines that were once so familiar to him.
Heem-Tei, he told himself. Heem-Tei can help. I have to find him. I have to go to the Basilica.
But as he tore through the Cogitum, he saw more and more of that foul corruption. It seemed to coat his beloved metal and machinery, until all that was left was evil and alien. He hoped, prayed, even, that no obstacle would stand between him and the lift.
His dismay when he rounded that final corner was palpable.
The lift – the one he had dreamt so often of ascending, his future and now sole hope for escape – was drowned in that same darkness that had invaded the rest of the Cogitum. It appeared as an impenetrable wall of shadow. It stunned him to see, and for a moment he forgot that he was in a race for his life. Aem'uvus approached it with a childlike wonder, at once horrified and entranced, until he was at its feet and craning his neck to stare.
"Look at it," he murmured to Vennu. His free hand reached forward as if he meant to touch it, but it lingered in the air, moving with the swirls that appeared almost in his mind rather than in his vision. "What is this…?"
For a few seconds, he marvelled at the hall, lips parted, deaf to all but his own fascination. The wall was ever influx - real, not real, colours that he had never seen, that were difficult at first to comprehend. If he listened closely he thought he could hear his name, called across a chasm deeper than space and time. Aem'uvus moved closer. His hand reached further. He was millimetres from touching it.
Then he heard the drum of a march, and he wrenched his eyes from the wall to see a formation of ten, twenty, thirty fabricants, each in rows of five. Reality came crashing down on him. In the same instant, the monster roared into the hall. It lost its footing enough that it careered into the opposite wall, but Aem'uvus flinched and lost whatever precious seconds had been afforded to him.
If not for the fabricants, he would have been cornered. The moment the creature appeared, the machines turned in unison towards it, and the mantra that dominated the Cogitum was called out amid a flurry of blades. The child watched as gleaming attachments plunged over and over into that black hide, and the soft voices that called his name fell silent as he abandoned them for escape.
"The classroom…" he murmured to himself. His feet started to move, his heart pounding inside his chest, his lungs tight and screaming. "The classroom!"
The child ran down the hall as quickly as his short legs could carry him. He heard as fabricants were felled, felt as their bodies hit the floor, but he did not look until he had reached the lift and clambered aboard. His pursuer had taken up after him with a vengeance, and as he half-dropped Vennu beside him he reached for the lever and pulled.
Latches snapped, gears turned and started to groan. The platform jolted to life, but when Aem'uvus looked he saw that monster racing faster than he could move. There was no doubt it would catch him before he could rise out of its reach. In one last show of strength, he lifted his hand.
"Stay away from me!" he bellowed. A rash of lightning erupted from his palm. The shriek split his eardrums, but his pursuer was halted in its tracks. It gave the lift those few seconds it needed to pass the threshold, and the shaft and its blue lights shielded him from the horrors that raged beneath his feet.
Aem'uvus let out a slow, steadying breath. Adrenaline all but evaporated from his body, and it left his knees weak enough that he collapsed into the wall behind him. He felt the drag against his back as the platform ascended, but he could not force himself to stand.
"We're safe," he said to his pet. "We're safe."
The shakiness of his voice did not inspire conviction.
That whole memory was a nightmare.
I could feel Aem'uvus' terror, hear the blood rushing in my ears – by the gear, I even felt the soles of my feet hurt when he was running! I never thought I'd see something so…so…so evil! And Lord Seht put this in there? What was he thinking? What was—
Calm down, Relarise. There's no use for speculation without all the facts. I mean, U-vee was nervous, wasn't he? He had reason to suspect whoever—whatever was on the other side of that door. The fact that this upsets all you've been raised to believe has no bearing on the truth of the matter.
These memories are showing me that what I've been taught and reality are two very different things.
