Skyrim is the property of Bethesda Softworks
To my surprise and almost immediate irritation it was five of us that set out from the College of Winterhold for the glaciers that grind the northern extremities of Skyrim. With me came Aela my fiancé and Lydia my friend. Had it just been the three of us, the journey would have been pleasant apart from the chilly, mosquito-ridden conditions. But the College's star students, Red and Blue also joined us. They were the College's price for Urag gro-Shub's assistance. The senior faculty had needed a politically acceptable excuse to get the College's two most controversial people out of Winterhold. Evidently the two mages had been closely involved in the ruin of the town.
Red was assigned by Arch Mage Aren to guide us to Septimus Singus' last known location. Urag gro-Shub attached Blue to check on his long-absent friend. Their actual names were Morgan and Ghent, but everything about them from clothing choice, to spell preference and personality traits could be associated with red or blue. The colors just became their identities for me.
Morgan was a soft-featured but beautiful young Breton woman maybe twenty years old with red hair several shades brighter than either my own or Aela's. Her long, unruly mane was barely kept in check by a black bandana. She wore a red mage's robe beneath a leather breast plate. Her spell list was limited, but consisted of a series of tremendously powerful fire spells. As a person, she was just as explosive. I came to learn that her emotions were rarely predictable, always on her sleeves, and she had difficulty sublimating or expressing them with any sort of moderation.
All of which made me fear for Ghent's safety on an hourly basis. Roughly Morgan's age, the Nord had chosen to associate himself with the color blue. I don't know how he pulled it off; but his blue hooded cloak, blue trousers, and the pale blue tattoos on his arms and broad face (most likely his whole body, but I wasn't that curious) gave him a handsome and mysterious profile.
His charismatic appearance was in stark contrast to his reserved and almost shy personality. I've never met a more dedicated iceman in all my travels. Don't play cards against him: You won't be able to read his bluff or spot a tell and his vast collection of illusions and mystic spells would have you thinking your aces over eights full house was a pair of twos.
"She's not a people person is she?" I grumbled at Lydia as another of their episodes flared up ahead of us. After eight days, we were in sight of the small ice-encrusted island that Septimus had adopted for his base of operations. For the whole journey the two mages had been an essay in how to respond to mixed messages with verbal abuse. The day was old and my patience for being caught between the wizards was wire thin when we decided to camp on the shore of the Sea of Ghosts. The pyromancer had chosen to begin scouting a path across the ice floes between the shore and the island. The illusionist opted to go with her.
"She's just not used to working with people," Lydia temporized. Aela was off hunting and wouldn't be back with supper until dusk. Time alone was one of her most important needs. At that moment I was envious. Not half a day had gone by without those two getting into an argument. It had begun at the College before we even crossed the bridge and gotten worse as the days passed.
"Blue seems to know exactly what to do to piss her off," I remarked. It was a fact that I found truly bizarre. Stringing more than six words together at a time was a rare event for the illusionist yet however unobtrusively he behaved, he was adept at pushing Morgan's buttons. A brief orange flash appeared on the ice in the fading daylight. The popping sound of a firework came to my ears shortly after.
"And she's using explosive spells on open ice." I hid my face in the palm of my hand. "Way to think things through. Call them in before she gets both of them killed."
Lydia stood from where she and I had been building a camp fire out of driftwood and placed her fingers in her mouth. Her shrill whistle cut across the late spring ice and broke up the fight. Blue and Red came back like a pair of guilty children. "Red, what did I tell you about using destruction spells on members of your party?" I asked, holding up a piece of wood for her to ignite. Her slightest touch was enough to set the stick alight.
"That I'm lucky Aela didn't tear my throat out," she sulked.
"That's right. Nobody attacks anyone else in the party. And Blue, what have I told you again and again about touching other people's minds?"
"Do it with enemies all I please but never to allies without their permission," he mumbled with his hands buried deep in the folds of his cloak.
"So for fuck's sake stop doing it! The rest of us are getting tired of this little war you two are waging. You're going to work together." They glanced quickly at each other. I had tried treating them like adults for the past week to no lasting effect. My current attitude was something new. I thought back to a punishment I had received more than once as a child. One that I hoped would work well here. "Aela will be coming back with the evening meal any time now. Whatever it is, the two of you are going to dress it out." They both blanched at the thought of the unpleasant and for them unfamiliar task. "And you're going to do it in silence, without magic, and most importantly without an altercation."
Quiet reigned until Aela returned with a fair sized ram across her shoulders. She, Lydia, and I warmed ourselves around the fire while Red and Blue clumsily learned the ins and outs of butchering a wild animal. Being a pair of experienced hunters, Aela and I couldn't help but laugh at the awkward and uneven cuts of meat they brought for me to prepare. At length however, the whole kill was cleaned and cooked. The next morning brought further gratification to us as we saw in the clear light of day just how messy they had made their work. Nothing teaches humility like having to walk around in good clothes covered with blood and animal fur.
Red and Blue led us in the morning to the island where Septimus Singus had made his camp. Entering Singus's outpost was the beginning of a descent into a maelstrom.
The outpost itself defied conventional logic. I was mistaken in thinking the large mound of ice was a true island. It was in fact the upper portion of a great iceberg. The tiny half-frozen door outside led directly to a ladder taking us deep within the hollowed ice mountain before leaving us on a long winding ramp leading still further down. The orange glow of a few torches lit the cavern from below us while the brilliant sunlight outside shone yellow and green through the dozens of feet of ice above our heads. The air was alive with the odd noises of ice cracking and refreezing and the grinding of large chunks in the water outside.
At the bottom we found an old man reading from a small bookshelf in front of... something. The brass-colored metal and the exposed multitude of gears identified the contraption as being of Dwemer-make. It was not less than twelve feet tall and I guess it was cube-shaped, but I could be wrong as it was embedded in the wall of ice behind it. It looked to me like a colossal gaming die waiting to be thrown.
The old man smiled at our wonder. "When the top level was built, no more could be placed. It was and is the maximal apex," Septimus greeted us. I think. As he spoke in his sing-song voice, he appeared to be addressing a section of the ice behind us. Or my shoulder. Or a book on a small table.
"What keeps you in this horrid place?" I blurted out, unable to suppress my curiosity.
"Ice entombs the heart," he replied, talking to Red's bandana. "The bane of Kagrenac and Dagoth-Ur. To harness it is to know. The fundamentals. The Dwemer lockbox hides it from me. The Elder Scroll gives insight deeper than the Deep Ones, though. To bring about the opening."
"You have an Elder Scroll? Here?" Would I have to pry it out of his cold dead hands? I wondered.
"I've seen enough to know their fabric. The warp of air, the weft of time. But no, it is not within my possession."
"Master Singus? Are you alright?" Red asked.
"Oh I am well child. I will be well. Well to be within the will inside the walls."
"So where is the scroll?" I pressed.
"Here," he answered simply with a shit-eating grin on his face. Naturally we started to look around.
"Well, here as in is plane. Mundus. Tamriel. Nearby, relatively speaking. On the cosmological scale, it's all nearby!"
And mages wonder why normal people can't stand them. "Can you help us acquire an Elder Scroll or not?" I asked.
"One block lifts the other. Septimus will give what you want, but you must bring him something in return."
One of these days, I'd like to hear a wizard say, 'Absolutely! I would be glad to help you save the world. No strings attached. What can I do?' Instead I suppressed my tantrum and said aloud, "That seems fair. What do you need?" I heard Lydia and Aela groan behind me.
Singus replied from the corner of his mouth. His ear was pressed against the Dwemer contraption, "You see this masterwork of the Dwemer. Deep inside their greatest knowings. Septimus is clever among men, but he is an idiot child compared to the dullest Dwemer. Lucky then that they left behind their own way of reading the Elder Scrolls. In the depths of Blackreach one yet lies." I would swear that I saw Sepimus lick the thing before tearing himself away from it.
"Have you heard of Blackreach?" He asked Blue's boots, "Cast upon where Dwemer cities slept, / the yearning spire hidden learnings kept."
"If there is any way you can keep this simple, please do," I begged the madman.
"Under deep. Below the dark. The hidden keep: Tower Mzark," Septimus explained unhelpfully.
"Could you just please speak plainly? Where do we need to go?" I asked.
"Alftand. The point of puncture, of the first entry, of the tapping. Delve to its limits, and Blackreach lies just beyond. But not all can enter there. Only Septimus knows the hidden key to loose the lock to jump beneath the deathly rock. Two shapes I have for you. One edged one round." He paused for a moment to give me two metal objects from his bookshelf. One was a sphere and the other an ornately carved cube. They were of the unmistakable brassy metal that was found in the Dwarves' cities. Both fit easily into my two hands and if I have seen their like since, it has been within a Dwemer ruin.
"The round one for tuning. Dwemer music is soft and subtle, and needed to open their cleverest gates. The edged lexicon for inscribing. To us a hunk of metal. To the Dwemer, a full library of knowings. But... Empty. Find Mzark and its sky-dome. The machinations there will read the Scroll and lay the lore upon the cube. Place the lexicon into their contraption and focus the knowings into it. When it brims with glow, bring it back to Septimus and he can read once more. Trust Septimus. He knows you can know."
"What do you want with this Elder Scroll?" Lydia asked suspiciously.
"Oooooh! An observant one. How clever to ask of Septimus. This is a Dwemer lockbox. Look upon it and wonder. Inside is the heart. The heart of a god! The heart of you. And me. But it was hidden away. Not by the Dwarves, you see. They were already gone. Someone else. Unseen. Unknown. Found the heart, and with a flair for the ironical, used Dwarven trickery to lock it away. The Scroll will give the deep vision needed to open it. For not even the strongest machinations of the Dwemer can hold off the all-sight given by an Elder Scroll."
Ghent and Morgan are based on Wizards of the Coast's Jace Bleren and Chandra Nalaar. They're two of my favorite fictional characters so I built them in Skyrim when I realized I had yet to try a pure mage build. Rather than publically bash one of the best games I've ever played, I'll just say that after a few hours I returned to Ieago and never looked back.