A/N: polyphonic overtone singing—a good analysis (vocal & visual), lookup The Charismatic Voice on Youtube who reviews Anna Marie Hefele's video on the subject ··· Song="Times of Your Life"
Ancient Knowledge, p.3
She nodded and stepped forward. She drew a deep breath and then began singing.
Sound of Silence, translated to ancient Dwemeris. From Drilira, it was gentle sorrow and longing need, mourning of what had past recovery.
Curtis harmonized wordlessly, employing the polyphonic overtone technique he'd been diligently practicing since his capture by the Thalmor to boost the power she was projecting in her song and encourage environmental or stage resonance. And behind them, Drevis worked his magic to invoke Calm. Together, they created a power zone of reflective peace.
The Dwemer ghost lowered its staff. By the third stanza, two others had appeared to listen.
They began softly humming, harmonizing with her. Afterward, the ghosts approached. They looked only at Drilira, and they bowed to her.
"Welcome," said the first ghost, a tonal architect by his gear and styling of his beard and hair. The other two were engineers. "It's been a while since we've heard such music in our halls or felt such power."
"I am Drilira Jhodlen, a kagrenac of Bthar-Zel."
"Bthar-zel. Are you another assassin?" The asking ghost put a hand on his sword.
"Assassin? No. Why— Ah, yes, the Aetherium Wars. No, I am no assassin. I am not interested in Aetherium. I came to borrow the wisdom of the lexicon. I am endeavoring to rebuild the teleportation system. You must be aware by now that I am alive, though our people have long passed from this world." The ghosts all looked in different directions. The living party waited silently until their hosts were ready to speak again.
"You will want to speak to Kadahk Mezalf. He remains the highest rank among us. He was — is — the facility manager."
The eyes of the ghosts now studied the rest of the party. "What manner of mer are these?" asked the second ghost, gesturing to Curtis and Drevis.
"Dunmer from Resdayn."
"Dark mer? Did something happen to the Chimer? Did the Daedra gods finally start crossbreeding cattle to dremora?"
"Whoa. Close enough," laughed Curtis. He jerked a thumb at Vivec and added, "You should take a look at that guy if you wanna talk half-'n-half." Vivec glared at him, and the hand holding his spear twitched. Drevis looked like he was considering turning invisible.
"That one sings well for a mutant," said the first ghost, nodding at Curtis.
"And there's a young Atmoran, and that one looks like a Nede from jungles of the mountains," said the third ghost of Elden and Arniel, respectively.
"These three are scholars of knowledge," interjected Drilira, waiving at Curtis, Drevis, and Arniel. "The other two are guards."
The ghosts looked doubtful at bestowing the title of "scholar" on Drevis and Arniel. "I would gladly escort you to Kadahk, but your companions must wait here." Drilira frowned and looked at Curtis.
"Please reconsider," said Curtis, stepping forward. "We—" he gestured to himself, Drevis, and Vivec, "— came a long way from Resdayn to consult your knowledge base. Our kagrenac died in the latest disaster to afflict our land, and his project notes disappeared with him. We hope the knowledge in your lexicon can substitute. Drilira has been remarkably gracious to accompany us this far, but Resdayn is not her home. It is ours. We must be the ones to carry the knowledge back. We do not want to abuse your hospitality. Please do not force us to."
"You would fight a whole city?" challenged the second ghost. But as soon as it said that, it looked confused. So did the other two.
Curtis saw reality attacking them. Reminding them…
He began crooning.
Good morning, yesterday. You wake up and time has slipped away. And suddenly it's hard to find the memories you left behind. Remember, do you remember?
The ghosts bristled, suspecting a spellcasting. They hesitated as Drilira held up her hands, palms out, as she immediately began softly translating Imperial Common to Dwemeris. While they were distracted, Drevis recast Calm.
The laughter and the tears, the shadows of misty yesteryears. The good times and the bad you've seen and all the others in between. Remember, do you remember the times of your life?
Reach out for the joy and the sorrow. Put them away in your mind. The memories are time that you borrow to spend when you get to tomorrow.
Here comes the saddest part — The seasons are passing one by one. So gather moments while you may. Collect the dreams you dream today. Remember, will you remember the times of your life?
Gather moments while you may, collect the dreams you dream today. Remember, will you remember the times of your life?
The ghosts focused ferociously on him as they contemplated his song. Their forms brightened and waved as they remembered.
Two vanished. The one remaining shrugged, turned away, and began walking. "Come on, then. I'll take you to Kadahk," it called back over its shoulder.
"Guess we'll have our 'Kadahk' moment," Curtis murmured.
"What was that?" asked Drevis.
"Oh, one of the songs from my past life. Colette likes the sappy, sentimental stuff, so I've been recalling and translating them for her. Personally, 'Gather Ye Rosebuds,' the PDQ Bach interpretation of an honored Dead Poet Society member does it for me."
"Um, yes. Whatever," sighed Drevis.
With an escort, traveling the complex halls of Avanchnzel was a long and peaceful walk. Their guide had been a young mer when he died, and he gradually overcame his shyness under Arniel's enthusiastic siege of questions. They learned Avanchnzel was primarily a research center devoted to studying the surrounding volcanic lands and the ancient volcano (Throat-of-the-World) that had created most of this part of the world.
About Kadahk Mezalf — "He died a month earlier than I did," recalled the ghost. "Assassins from western clans managed to get in. They got to him, but he refused to tell them the location of the Forge, and they killed him. I died while repairing pipes damaged by the explosives they set off to cover their escape. I was in full protective gear, but it wasn't enough," he sighed. "It was just bad luck."
"'The Forge?' You mean the Aetherium Forge?" asked Arniel.
"How does a Nede know of the Aetherium Forge?"
Curtis interrupted, saying, "The Kagrenac of Vvardenfell sent half his students here to study your supervolcano. The idea was to compare its characteristics to our Red Mountain. Ideally, to find how your mountain managed to vent its pressure and avoid a catastrophic explosion."
"Oh, yes, I recall hearing about that group," said the ghost. "They did talk a lot about the Atmoran barbarians, Chimer barbarians, and how their radical Kinlord Dumac was cranking with the Chimer."
"Wow. You make that sound so obscene," grumbled Curtis.
X—X—X—X—X—X—X
"You want to take the lexicon, not 'borrow' it, " summarized Kadahk flatly.
"Yeah," admitted Curtis. "It's inconvenient for us to keep coming here, even if with your cooperation. And it's a sad waste of all that knowledge just sitting here unused. You might as well give it all to Hermaeus Mora then."
"Bah," Kadahk spat. "But much as we like to think it holds the most of our Dwemer knowledge, I don't know if it can help with Red Mountain after it has erupted."
"We're hoping it has some of our Kagrenac's knowledge via his students who came here. If I remember correctly, that was a condition. Any scholars who came to Avanchnzel were obliged to give knowledge to receive knowledge. So he sent some of his brightest students. We're in a bind over there. We've lost all his project notes. The only hope we have is that enough was in the minds of his students that we can recover."
"Condition holds. What knowledge have you to exchange?"
Curtis and Drilira looked at each other. "This was all after my time. I'm sure anything I know is outdated," she said.
"Well, I'm worse. Dumac passed the exams to qualify for Master Tech. But he was not an inventor, researcher, or innovator. His talents were project organization, financing, and that kind of stuff. And me, hell, you know what I've got. Notions and memories. It took you geniuses to figure out how to make it real."
Curtis glanced at Kadahk and asked half-jokingly, "How about the memories of an ex-god?"
"You are offering to give away my knowledge before you've even asked me?" challenged Vivec.
Curtis's expression was puckish. "Y'know, it kinda makes mad sense. You want to restore Vvardenfell, and you know Dwemer tech holds the key. I don't have time — or any of my people — to go with you right now to help find and explore Dwemer ruins. Even if we did, I'm not risking my people in what's left of Sotha Sil's Clockwork. You may still have some godly power to survive Clockwork, but the rest of us sure as heck don't. Even Nerevar won't go there after his last experience. But there may be key secrets in there. Plus, in exchange for your knowledge, you get the knowledge of Dwemer kagrenacs. You can then walk into a ruin and assess what's vital from junk. Having key targets would be a more efficient use of my people's time when we're ready to go to Vvardenfell. Think about it," he urged.
Vivec withdrew and sat on the floor. Bodhisattva, dreaming of all possibilities. Drevis sighed and knelt on the floor, watching him. Curtis shrugged and turned back to Kadahk. "I don't know if you can extract knowledge from a Chimer brain. And, believe it or not, he was a god in the past. Artificially self-created and sustained by the power of a dead god, but still a god-level existence for some thousands of years."
"But not a patron of technology, that much is obvious."
"Um, no. Battle. A Warrior God. Still, I'm hoping he's learned stuff from Sotha. Now that one was tech patron and avid scholar of Dwemer sciences."
"Then might one assume he does not need our lexicon if he had learned our technology. But from what I am hearing, he has not learned much."
"Uh, yeah." Curtis's shoulders slumped.
"Our lexicon is programmed to receive only certain data."
"I'm certain anything I know is dated," said Drilira. "Your knowledge, my lord, is alien. Heavy of theory, but woefully insufficient on hard data. Between the two of use, we may be able to supply something to make an equitable exchange."
"I'm willing," said Curtis.
"Then let me discuss it with him."
"Go for it."
X—X—X—X—X—X—X
When going through airport scanners or MRIs, always tell the operators if you have metal inside to prevent nasty reactions to the giant magnets. When getting your brain cells data-scrubbed by machine-controlled magic, tell the operators if you have more than one soul or three terminal minds (albeit one virtual) relying on your CPU and partitioned drive.
Curtis recalled dying. But he was also Dumac, and Dumac remembered dying thousands of times, of which Curtis was the last, most recent one. Before Curtis, he was a strike leader in 1921 during the Battle of Blair Mountain, a confrontation of lawmen and strikebreakers against the striking coal workers, and died to machinegun fire.
The heart of Vvardenfell. The Chimer called it the Doom Drum. For the Dwemer of Vvardenfell, it was the source of fire and power manifested in blood-red crystals. When The Kagrenac found Lorkhan's heart, Dumac discovered the Dwemer could dig too deep, and some mysteries and secrets are best left uncovered.
He had been careful not to touch the Heart as he worked to free it from its prison. But the force of Voryn stabbing him in the back caused his blood and body to fall against the pulsing organ. His power compared to a god — even a dead god - was insignificant, but a lock pick can be a small, thin wire or a paper-thin metal shim. Kagrenac's prison, calibrated to hold a particular god's power signature, was disrupted by the interruption of this non-parameter power. It was enough. Lorkhan broke free.
Blood sacrifice. Voryn had made it, and the Dwemer had paid it. Through Dumac, all Dwemer disappeared from Tamriel along with Lorkhan. However, Lorkhan rewarded the focal point of his vengeance by sending him into a void beyond Oblivion.
Only a single watcher noted the movement of a tiny spec tumbling wildly in the darkness and followed, expertly tracking a mole through the wormholes of space and time.
Dumac's earliest memory of his life in his new world was a cold land and mud, upside-down grass bowls that barely deserved the name of "huts," and scrabbling around the scree of mountains for particular shiny stones he didn't know the word for. Copper. His tribe thought him strange for digging fire pits to drop stones in, but they liked the pins and ornaments he made. Another life in the same type of country, working with gold ores to make ornaments for trade. The dawning of awareness in Late Neolithic Europe. Then south for other lives in the Fertile Crescent. Uruk, Sumer, Babylonia, Derinkuyu — always building, mining, or creating tools and devices. Always a builder and crafter, dreaming of darkness and devices that could make life wonderful. Most of his lives were there, with a few lives east to oversee laying the foundations of Angkor Wat, designing temples in Sukhothai, and mining stones for Preah Vihear.
Death was rarely peaceful or painless. He'd lost count of deaths by mine accidents, construction accidents, and all the fatalities that happen in workshops and construction sites. Where others dreamed of cities in the heavens, he yearned for ones deep in the earth. And deep as he'd dig, he never quite heard the music he wanted — the heart of his world.
And now he lay in a warm cocoon of absolute darkness. Shielded. Not even muon particles of the cosmos penetrated to track fairy wisps of light trails in his eyes. And the beat of the world. Not Lorkhan's, not Vvardenfell's, but it was the hum of Tamriel against the metal walls of a Dwemer city and soothing buzzing, bleeps, clicks, and hissing of steam-driven machinery.
* Registry deep clean scan completed *
* Begin registry cleaning *
* Registry cleaning completed *
* Begin registry defragmentation *
* Registry defragmentation completed *
* System reboot Y/N? *
What the hell — go for it, thought Dumac. I'm home. I can finally rest.