Chapter 40: To Boldly Go
The pilgrim starts unenlightened, searching in the darkness to find the path. The illusion of enlightenment beckons only to disappear just as one gets closer, extinguishing hope, plunging the pilgrim into darkness and despair. Did the pilgrim still seek? Did the pilgrim have the determination to boldly go ever forward no matter how dark the path to the next twinkling of light?
The pretty pink-tinged bio-luminescent flowers that shrank back into their tubes reminded him of those underwater worms in those coral tubes. There was no darkness with the night-vision helmets because the flowers clumps may as well be a cluster of 100-watt bulbs.
Yup. Whether the secular military boot camp or a religious one, the first task is to traumatize and break down the recruit for rebuilding. So, boot to the head, and reboot to a new configuration. For Snowmer and Altmer, the loss of light was a traumatic descent into Oblivion. For Dwemer, this was underground life, a stroll through stone gardens. For the others, the vampire was indifferent, and the Nord Companions hated the caging confinement of tunnels and caves. Curtis/Slitter was kind of enjoying it. A year ago, Slitter would have been freaking out over the unfamiliar darkness, the damp, and the noises, but a year of deep-diving to the ocean floor and days spent in decompression bubbles got him used to strange environments. And he'd finally come to trust Curtis. If Curtis was not freaking out, then neither would he.
Curtis, for his part, eh, this was more crawling around in dank basements and under old buildings. It was annoying and inconvenient, but all part of the job. "Stop it, you twisted fetcher!" Slitter snarled. "What?" Curtis responded. "That oversized chaurus monster in that ship," Slitter snapped back, bouncing images of hapless ship engineers winding their way through the bowels of the starfreighter Nostromo only to be torn apart by a giant black insect-like creature. "Oops. Sorry." Curtis said sincerely. He hadn't realized the backroom of his mind was screening the Alien sci-fi movie. He sniffed the air. Cockroaches. Masses of cockroaches. He remembered being part of a team hired to rehab a restaurant shut down by the health department. Thousands of cockroaches in the walls and under the floors.
"Thanks for clearing out the Falmer and the chaurus," said Curtis to Gelebor and Serana. "Without them, this is actually a beautiful place. It's like a cathedral of water and lights." The Snowmer looked at him as if he were crazy.
Gelebor and Serana led them from the initiation tunnels and small rooms to their first large cavern, past Falmer huts, pens. The bodies stank and were already covered with fungal slime. These Falmer had to have every inch of the cavern and connecting tunnels memorized to perfection because, here, the echoing roar of fast-moving rivers and waterfalls made any sort of echolocation impossible.
They finally emerged into blinding light. Except for Lesshan and Kineher, the two Snowmer who were born and lived in the Vale before their fateful cruise, the beauty of the Vale after the dark caves was awe-inspiring. Gelebor had been thorough in telling them of the decline of the Vale the 4,000 years he'd been watching over it. Still, those two women cried out in shock for what wasn't there. "The initiates chapel," explained Kineher. "The hours or days spent in the cave are usually sufficient enough to test their spirits and resolves and put them in the proper frame of mind to receive enlightenment. The rest of the journey between the shrines is for contemplation." She looked to Gelebor, tears springing anew in her eyes. She had asked weeks ago of the fate of the families in the Vale. He had to tell her that they, like most, fell to the vampires. Her children, who had served in the guards with him, died one by one in the subsequent centuries of fighting the vampires and poison-twisted mutants.
Those had been intense weeks. The Altmer priests had worked tirelessly on mental therapy with the Snowmer. Drevis Neloran had, surprisingly, pulled out his rusty skills as an ex-acolyte of the Tribunal; his Dunmer mindset seemed to resonate better with the Dwemer. And, as a master Illusionist, the hard-line definitions needed to preserve one's mind against its own power fit the Dwemer preference for logic.
Even Joric had helped as he could. Naturally, neither Snowmer nor Dwemer wanted to burden the young boy, yet as the only priest of Jhunal, their new god, they couldn't shut him out when he came asking questions, curious questions, questions that were gentle suggestions and hints to help them with their internal dilemmas. Curtis had clued them in that the boy's fragile, flighty mannerisms hid the fact that he was a strong seer burdened with many visions and data loads since an early age. It would likely take him years to build an internal O.W.L (Web Ontology Languages), a metaphysical language and syntax base for computers to help untangle and sort the chaotic data. Curtis recommended they seriously consider Joric's questions because they were likely from Jhunal, filtered through a child's mind. And they could also take it as a good sign that Joric's nature changed the god's directive to something less forceful. An invitation to play, not a command to perform.
Curtis had the impression that Jhunal had been a long time without followers and, being the equivalent of a hermit god, he wasn't used to people yammering at him. Gruff and a touch impatient and willing to help for a time, but the god was the type to eventually kick a worshiper out of the nest so that he could go wandering alone. The type of god who reflected that if you needed 24-hour direction and care for the rest of your life, then the relationship was a failure.
Teaching the boy fell largely on Drevis's shoulders because, again, he was reviving his old lessons learned in the Temple to Almalexia — strong emphasis on rhetoric and debate skills, along with the basics of illusions and psychology. Balancing out Drevis's occasional bouts of ego was Joric's friend, fellow student, and acolyte of Zenithar, Flavia Romano of House Felix. Officially, she was there to major in Alterations. Her secondary goal was to befriend Joric and help him work out his definitions of Jhunal's religion. It was a concern for the Felix's since they were adopting Jhunal as one of the primary gods of the new House Mora and bringing the god to Morrowind.
Also, because Zenithar had told her to assist Jhunal. Gods of exploration and industry. Maybe there was something there.
"Well, people, we've definitely got our work cut out for us. Gelebor, if you would lead us to the first shrine?"
At the other end of the valley was the shrine of Illumination. As the shrine lifted itself out of the ground, Auri-El's star at the top glowed as it seemed to gather energy rather than radiate outward. And there was a definite tonal eruption as it set itself, ready for use. Step inside to a space with four other walls set between columns. One panel showed the door back to shrine at the end of the Dark Passage. This was a stark example of how the Falmer developed their teleport technology and dependence on sight. Line-of-sight, rather. The Snowmer network topology seemed to be a fully connected topology as each of the five stations, when fully active, would show a door to the other four. Of course, the pilgrim had to travel to each shrine and activate it by drawing water from the "font of knowledge" in each shrine.
The Dwemer teleport power pylons were each individually keyed to a specific tonal sequence. To use the teleport stations, one had to have the correct index key. Kind of like a token ring network because one could only index the previous or next station in the ring. There was, of course, a master index key that allowed the user to power up any station and travel along the entire circuit of the ring. Such keys were only in the possessions of the engineers charged with keeping the teleport ring functional.
They camped around the first shrine. Curtis and his Dwemer were all over the shrine, studying and speculating on its power configuration. And it kept the Snowmer mostly distracted by being drawn into a technical discussion of how they were taught to handle power. None in his group specialized in teleport magics, having only introductory lessons in the theories behind the discipline as it related to their own specializations.
Curtis reminded them that it was essential they find a way to work with the Falmer stations. He wanted to find a way to create an out-of-network transport point to the college of Winterhold. He also knew that the Dunmer Mage-Lord Baladas had managed to work out new laws that allowed teleportation to work after the Oblivion Crisis altered the way magic worked in this reality.
Was it possible to create a hybrid Dwemer-Snowmer teleport station? Could they successfully introduce it to the ancient Falmer network without causing instabilities?
"So, the ghost prelates all disappeared after talking through Lord Revyn?" he asked Gelebor. Curtis was taking a break from the wayshrine study. He really didn't know enough anyway to contribute anything. He gave his impressions to his Dwemer and let them run with the ideas.
"Yes. It was the first time in centuries the shadows stopped being puppets and intelligently responded." Gelebor sighed and lay back in the grass to stare up at the evening clouds tinged red and pink in the setting sun. "It was so strange. The shadows stood silent and spoke through Revyn. His voice, but only in tone. He spoke Falmeris, the local accent, and phrasing. That alone had me believing it was a true manifestation."
"Huh. Wow. Unlikely he would know the language of a lost people," said Curtis.
"Yes, sometimes even I have trouble remembering how to speak the tongue I was born with. I've had no one else to talk to. I know I sounded like an inarticulate idiot when I first tried to talk to the awakened ones, but it had been so long. I've lived longer than any mer has a right to. A curse and a blessing, I suppose. I don't know." He looked sideways at Curtis. "If I haven't said it before, I'll say it again — you've exceeded my expectations, champion."
"Yeah? Glad to hear it. But, truthfully, it was as much as for my sake as for theirs. I hope you'll believe me when I say that Dumac would never have condoned this. He'd worked too closely to Nerevar to think that way about other mer. But, you know, it wasn't an opinion shared by all in his clan. He lost Clan Rourken over it, the bunch that left Morrowind to go west to the Reach and built a lot of those intake cities where your people fled to and were betrayed."
"That was on them, not him," said Gelebor. "But that was then. And it is a past with too heavy a burden to keep carrying forward. This is a time to start anew, as the holy ones of Auri-El keep telling us to do."
Curtis smiled somewhat bitterly as he lay on the grass beside Gelebor. It was a heavy burden, one he found he couldn't lay down. When Jhunal revived Dumac's memories, the emotional and spiritual burdens came with it. Reparations had to be made. Dumac, he knew, wouldn't have turned on the Falmer like that. His friendship with Nerevar had shown him the benefits of expanding and developing interactions with other cultures. Dumac's nature, his nature, was that someone had to step forward and take charge for the collective good.
No, he wasn't trying to be a hero. We don't need another hero, he whistled, thinking of the gorgeous singer who'd etched that song of rage and prayer for salvation into his spirit as a child. A tonal singer of a generation. Just trying to be a helper, he added, thinking of a gentler, red-sweater minister of faith that also influenced more than one generation.
Farkas and Vilkas brought in two deer. Curtis loved the distinctive spotted and striped hides of the Vale animals. He was surprised to learn the sabre cats had the same pelt markings while all the other predators were standard colors of the outside world.
Lady Serana and the Altmer priests returned from their foraging, bringing in onions, gourds, apples, and various herbs.
While the Altmer and Snowmer had their evening prayers, Curtis and the Dwemer discussed teleportation. Pretty much all of the intertwined magic and science mathematics and theories were beyond Curtis. Even Dumac would have had a hard time following because the hard-core sciences weren't his area of expertise. He'd been a warrior, statesman, diplomat, and financial paper-pusher. His knowledge of magic had been standard combat and defense levels. Learn how to use it, but no in-depth instruction on the physics behind the spells. Slitter was snoring in the back of his mind while Curtis kept drifting off to cinematic clips from Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, Sliders, and Quantum Leap. Teleportation, dimensional shifts, alternative quantum realities, ghost dimensions — a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.
X—X—X—X—X—X—X
The calibration test tones echoed overhead against the high ceiling. They were in a long hall. There were pedestals on which stood Falmer in priestly vestments. The sparse, all-white design was like a museum or art gallery; the windows were tall and narrow, and "outside" was a play of shifting rainbow light.
"I don't recognize this place."
"I'd almost say one of high temples."
"Hall of statues, the great temple. Those are the prelates of the shrines," said Gelebor.
"Welcome, initiates," said several ghostly voices in unison.
Curtis looked around. They all seemed to be present. All of them — Altmer priests, a startled vampire, and the Companions. Curtis noted that Brother Salindil and his priests were dressed in what had to be formal priest vestments. The Companions were missing their Skyforge steel armor and instead were in wolf skin garb complete with wolf skull helmets. The Companions looked on edge. They hadn't been sleeping and had volunteered for all-night guard duty, and yet they were here. At least they didn't appear here as giant wolves or werewolves. No one else here, except Serana, knew they were infected with the beastblood.
A young, chubby-cheeked Joric from the Game appeared at one end of the long hall and ran towards them. "Yo!" Curtis called out.
The kid skidded to a stop. "I'm not lost. But we have to be elsewhere. Keep up!" He ran into one of the windows and disappeared into it.
"Okay, you heard him, folks. Let's go!" Curtis ran into the window and slipped on a pile of loose papers as soon as he went through. Gelebor caught him, preventing him from sliding off the ramp into the inky black water below. Tentacles writhed down there. "What the fuck?"
"Welcome to Apocrypha," growled a man, appearing from behind a stack of moldering books. He dressed in a mix of wizard robes and armor and wore a mask with tentacles fringes. He was flanked by two freakin' ascended sleepers, except these sleepers had too many arms, a mouth of gnashing teeth for a stomach, and floated, their legs replaced by vaguely twitching tentancles. "Follow. That feathered bastard wants to see the lot of you."
"Fascinating," said Lady Serana, loud enough for their mysterious guide to hear. "This place is as Helsette described it. It is about as gloomy and depressing as the Soul Cairn but wetter. Stinks of the death of ideas. Helsette also mentioned that it's not worth it to get too interested in reading anything here, or else you end up like those two things."
"Just as well I left my reading glasses at Mzark," joked one of the Dwemer. The other Dwemer chuckled, and Curtis remembered that Mzark had been expressly built for reading Elder Scrolls. Giant lenses, magically charged, allow a researcher to read the Scrolls without going blind or being drawn into any time warp.
"I'm guessing that guy is Miraak the Rebel Dragonpriest and First Dragonborn," said Curtis. "Lost all his credit with a demonic bookie and got debt-collected." Miraak audibly snarled.
"Do not be unkind," admonished Brother Salindil. "He is Dragonborn, and although he has strayed from the path Auri-El laid out for him, he does hold the spark of divinity."
"He tried to conquer the world, brother," said Curtis.
"So? He failed where Tiber Septim succeeded — with the help of the Numidium, I might add."
"Oh. Oh, yeah. Right," Curtis acknowledged, ducking his head.
The plaza Miraak led them to had been cleaned. The shelves of books and scrolls were likewise pristine and neatly organized. In the center, was a familiar garden with floating grow lights. Around that were tables and padded chairs. The Dunmer gardener straightened up from his work and came to greet them.
"Hey, Savos!" Curtis called out, "Nice to see you again. What's the occasion?"
"A pleasure, Curtis. We brought you here because deus ex machina, as it were. Such an ironically useful phrase from your world." He turned to point with an open hand to two baskets of scrolls and a stack of books on one of the tables. "That's the necessary information on Snowmer teleport shrines and notes on the changes in majicka — the tonal changes and power spectrum shift degrees — that will affect the teleport process." There was a candle next to the baskets; its markings indicated five hours' worth of burn. "You have the rest of the night to study."
Curtis looked to Drilira, who was leading the study on teleport technology because her expertise in phase shift sciences was nearest the teleport science. "On it, my lord," she said. "No papers or pens, so we can only take out what we remember?"
"Yes," said Savos. "You only have this one night." She nodded.
"Honor and thanks to our lord Jhunal for this opportunity," she stated. Some of the Dwemer and Snowmer echoed her. Dwemer and Snowmer crowded around the precious knowledge and quickly distributed it for each to cram in as much dense technical data as they could in one night.
"Not to sound ungrateful, but freebies like this aren't for nothing," said Curtis. "Anything I should know?"
"Oh, it's all for the same purpose, the same Game. You need fast transport to the college to continue your work with the Falmer. What you discover here will also help Baladas perfect his studies to rebuild a stable teleport platform on the Aldmer network. You also have your work with the Nerevarine to bring hope to Morrowind."
"You gotta be shittin' me. Is this what being Jhunal's champion means?"
"Comes with the uniform," Savos said with a smile, suddenly tossing a bundle at him.
Curtis caught it, tore off the paper, and gaped at the red shirt and familiar gold delta and black starburst badge on it, then started laughing. Star Trek, the original. Redshirts were engineering and security, the sacrificial pieces.
Red, commented Slitter, with a snorting laugh, is the color of House Redoran.
Engineering and security. Engineering securities. What? Where did that come from?
"You guys aren't shy from askin' a lot, y'know?"
"Well, forgive us if we seem to have high expectations and faith in our chief engineer's ability to pull miracles from his toolbag of tricks."
Curtis eyed him thoughtfully. Yeah, yeah, now he remembered how early on he'd fancied himself the chief engineer holding onto the captain's chair only until the wandering captain and his away team came back. Looks like they were back. The captain, however, wasn't what he'd expected. Skyrim Game, you think Dragonborn, not a giant snowy owl.
Brother Salindil gently cleared his throat and said, "Excuse me, Archimage Savos, but is there a reason the rest of us were included in this journey?"
"I believe most of you came along because of the connections you developed in dream time," answered Savos.
"Ah, but the rest of my brotherhood have not participated and only just came to Winterhold to make the journey to our new haven. Lady Serana has never been part of our dream exercises, nor has the Harbinger and his brother."
Curtis observed the ones mentioned. Aside from Lady Serana, who'd spent centuries entombed in a nightmare, the others seemed fuzzy around the edges and stared vaguely around like sleepwalkers.
"True." The former archimage shrugged.
"Since they're here, got anything useful for them? Oh, I know, any works by Vyrthur?" suggested Curtis. Gelebor made a faint noise. "The Falmer had to have their own variation or customization of practices."
"An excellent notion. Follow me." The priests and Gelebor followed and were soon settled to reading ancient Falmer scriptures, philosophies, and ceremony instructions.
Curtis studied the twins. "Hey, guys, you awake?" They stared dully back at him. He was sure he saw a glimmer of awareness in their eyes. He recalled that werewolves don't really sleep or find any rest or healing if they did manage to nap, hence the constant hunger to feed. "Say," he said to Savos, "is the history with the Glenmoril witches true? Will killing them, cutting off their heads, and burning it in the tomb of Ysgramor the way to free the Companions from the beast blood?"
"Yes. Burning the heads in the firepit before Ysgramor's body will work. The only other way is to find and challenge the Huntsman himself. Unlike the Bloodmoon challenge, such a challenger will be fighting all three aspects of the god. Even so, it's no guarantee their souls will be free unless Hircine feels their skill and how long it took them to die was worth a reward."
"Huh. Screw that. Guess it's a witch hunt if they still want it."
"You hear that, guys?" he asked the twins. "If you can remember, ask me again when you wake up. To make it easy on you, I'll ask you to tell me about Kodlak's research on lycanthropy, then you'll know you weren't just having a weird dream."
Really weird dream. When Curtis woke, he found his pillow was the Star Trek shirt.
Related Shopkeeper's Wife story(s): #21 Twisting the Blade; #49 Show Me the Wayshrine
Related story(s): #13 Killer Instincts; #32 Ex Machina; #33 Busy Work