Disclaimer: What's Bethesda's is theirs, likewise for mod creators.
Chapter 10: Owl Pellets
He was falling and then he was drowning. Now he was waking in a cold sweat and cursing loud enough to wake the other sleepers in the decompression bubble who grumbled sleepily at him before going back to sleep. Curtis sat up in his bunk and the station medic hurried to him to check for any bad drug reactions. "I'm fine, I'm fine. Just a nightmare," he reassured him. The medic wouldn't give him any sleep drugs because his body didn't need anymore drugs when it was busy processing out the diving drugs so the medic used instead a touch of magic to relax him and help him get back to sleep.
"Done with the dramatics? Can we talk now?"
Curtis frowned at the dunmer dressed like Dr. Who, Number Four, leaning against the iconic blue police box. The eerie, original 60's test-tone oscillation calibration waves, spliced and rewoven as music floated in the atmosphere. The idle question, "Are we in sync yet?" drifted through his mind.
He stared rudely at the dunmer. Familiar yet no name came to mind. "Do I know you?" he asked at last. He had that familiar knotted beard that Curtis associated with wizards and other "old" people in the Game. As for hair, this one had sides buzzed close leaving only a strip on the top to the back. It gave him the predatory look of a hawk.
"Not really," the other replied in so familiar tones. "You only used the College when it came time to find the Dragon Scroll and enrolled only to get the Gaulder amulet piece in Saarthal. Your brother would know me right away."
Click. "Savos Aren. Didn't recognize you out of uniform."
Savos acknowledged this with a tilt of his head. Then he smiled slightly and flicked the ends of the long, multi-colored scarf wrapped loosely around his neck and shoulders.
"Why the fuck did you do this to me?" Curtis roared.
Savos looked at him coolly. "Would you rather be dead? The effort to tunnel through dimensions is great and can only be maintained briefly. The window to catch a soul as it transitions from life to death is even briefer. Of the hundreds dying within the timeframe we had to work in, your soul was the only one that matched our basic specifications."
"And Slitter, was he the only one you could find in your 'timeframe?'"
"The only one suitable in Winterhold for your needs, so yes.'"
Curtis pivoted away and examined their surroundings to give himself time to think. In this little dream world they were on the roof of the College. The Countenance building.
"You said 'we.' Who's 'we', kemosabe?"
"That would be Jhunal, the Atmoran God of Wisdom and Knowledge. Jhunal the Hunter of Truths. Most of the world mistakenly thinks he's just another name for Julianos."
"Huh. And the owl?"
"His avatar."
"Oh, right. Avatars. So Jhunal's the owl, Kyne's the hawk, and... What are the others?"
"Of the ancient nord pantheon, The Fox is Shor and then there is Tsun the Bear, Stuhn the Whale, Dibella the Moth, Mara the Wolf, Orkey the Snake, and, of course, Alduin the Dragon.
"Enough questions now, Curtis, and let me give you the answers you initially demanded. It's time to bite to the center of the Tootsie Pop. Yes, you get a second life because we've chosen you to help others who are getting their second chance at life. You need to get into Skytemple. The Sleepers have overslept and their beds will be their coffins if you do not get to them in time. You've done well thus far — you have the tools and accrued the necessary support. In the name of Jhunal now go, Pooh bear, and use that considerable wit of yours to bring the lost back from the darkness.
"Or, as those in your world would say, time to get your ass in gear, Champion, and bring it."
Curtis woke. The challenge, "Bring it," echoing faintly in the back of his mind. He vaguely recalled images of a dollar bill with wings flying away. Funny thing, he could've sworn the Illuminati eye in the pyramid on the back of the bill was glaring at him.
Then he frowned. The scarf he'd been knitting before he went to sleep... He could've sworn he'd stowed it properly in his waterproof dive bag but now it was wrapped around his neck. Well, at least the knitting needles had been pulled out before going on his neck.
+—+—+—+—+—+—+
"Why this sudden interest in an Atmoran god the nords don't even bother to remember?" asked Urag.
"Aw, c'mon, Urag. You know I told you from the beginning that when I died in my world I was almost hit by an owl and I heard it name-dropping 'Savos Aren.' I'm starting to have dreams again. Not the dying part anymore, thankfully, but owls. Owls and Savos, or that particular voice actor, telling me it's time to wake up or some such.
"Now from all this I'm somehow getting the feeling that while Jhunal was a non-element in the Game I'm familiar with he's not unimportant to whatever's going on now. There's a story here and maybe I need to hear it and I think you know the connection. Mind clueing me in? How did Aren die this time? Where does the Owl God fit in?"
"It has to do with Solstheim," Urag finally admitted. "I know you get past dreams of Slitter's life. Have you ever had any dreams about working on temple? Of watching others working on a temple? Do these words sound familiar, 'Here in his shrine that they have forgotten?'"
Curtis scoured his hazy memories. It was hard enough recalling factual pieces about Slitter's life. But to recall the man's dreams?
"The zombie dreams. You're dreaming and then you wake up, knowing you were having a nightmare, and then you wake up again confused as hell because you realized you were dreaming of waking up from a nightmare. Yeah, I've had that montage." Those dreams had, in fact, gotten so bad recently that he'd resorted to sleeping potions and magic-enforced meditations with Colette or Drevin to straighten out his dream-deprived psyche.
"Mon—? Nevermind. Give it some thought," said Urag. "Before I can tell you anything I have to clear it with some people. You could probably figure out some of the tale just by talking to any Solstheim people here but the answers you want, well, some of them are confidential and need permission to be released.
"But if Savos Aren starts telling you things before I or Tolfdir can, tell us before you act, got it? You don't want to go crossing the plans of the wrong people."
"Seems to me I'll upset them if I haven't done my job once they get here." Where in hell did that come from? Urag scowled at him and Curtis could only look confused. He shrugged helplessly.
"Hey, so you really think it's Aren talking to me in my dreams?" He asked uncertainly.
Urag grunted. "Yeah. He gave his soul and life to pave the way for Jhunal to help the Archimage in her battle against the First Dragonborn and Hermaeus Mora. She took out the other Dragonborn and Jhunal, Hermaeus Mora. So now there's an aedric god ruling a daedric realm. We've been trying to determine how this changes the rules of the Aedra refraining from direct interference. Evidently, Jhunal is changing that rule. You would know better than anyone about that, Curtis.
"So I suppose this means I don't need to ask our own ghost talker to confirm Aren's ghost. It's obvious he's back and in Jhunal's service."
"Ghost talker?" Curtis perked up. "You mean you got an actual one here? Who?"
"One of those people I need permission from before I can tell you. Now go away, Curtis, so I can start writing to people for those permissions."
+—+—+—+—+—+—+
"So your dreams tell you there are live people inside Skytemple?" Colette refreshed her mug of heated spiced wine from an enchanted ewer then refilled Curtis's mug. She looked over the ruins now backlit against the setting sun.
"Kinda live. I'm thinking cryo sleep. Uh, an induced deep sleep and then their body temperatures are lowered just above frozen so that there's no cell damage. Maybe a heartbeat or two every few months."
"That seems unnecessarily inefficient," said Colette. "A soul gem powered preservation spell of some sort would be better. Perhaps one to preserve the body and a specially prepared one to hold the soul and then triggered to release or return the soul with a waking spell."
"Yeah." Curtis thought about that possibility. "Suspended animation" was just a generic, imprecise term. But now that he really had to consider it, how would that be effected? If it was magic based, could the College handle magic from another era? He wondered about that. Although he only played the vanilla versions of Elder Scrolls 4 and 5, he knew the skills and magics and menu system were radically different between the two.
How old was the magic in Skytemple? First Era? Older? The First Era lasted nearly 3000 years. Dwemer disappeared just short of the first thousand years. Shalidor founded the College in the First Era. The Falmer Holocaust started before the First Era and finished sometime in the first century. Was the temple built before all that? Who would have built it? The falmer since they were the original inhabitants?
No, the building was in the nord style. If dwemer were involved, as evidenced by the brass-like metal of the underwater pipes, then the whole structure was hidden in the ground and likely the nords, looking to bury someone important, merely built on top of an area they perhaps sensed was an area of strong magic.
All he knew about the falmer was from the Skyrim game. Blind goblins infesting caves and dwemer ruins; enslaved, blinded, and twisted by the drugs the dwemer forced them to take.
He pondered the devolution of an entire race, how it could be accomplished in less than a thousand years. That would be, what, only two or three generations of mer? That couldn't be enough time unless there was another factor beyond drugs.
"Collette, remember that discussion we had a while back about Restoration magic can only return a body to its original, healthy state? What if the original state was genetically damaged, say, by drugs affecting a baby during the gestational period. Like thalomide babies? Possibly the mother's body would have aborted a damaged fetus, but what if healing magic was used to, um, to stabilize the damaged creature and it survived, damage intact, to birth, to breed?"
GalacticHalfling: No shark mods. This group aren't great sorcerers to be able to control a mighty sea serpent so they'll have to settle for a shark. * I remember as a child first reading about "raptures of the deep," the condition of nitrogen narcosis. Cute illustration opening the concept, a guy in an old fashion diving suit trying to kiss the mermaid that was embracing him. Said mermaid in reality was a large octopus and her puckered lips were the beak. Eh. I figure "story time" + "tales" + elves in a decompression pod = "why not a bad pun." These maormer aren't exactly on on a shopping expedition.