Maharg67

There is a depthless sadness in me today, yesterday and perhaps tomorrow which into I sink but never fully ever floating supended unable to reach firm solid ground of relief of gladness of bliss but despite this there will come a time when I will walk upon solid ground again Days of Depression Maharg67

SIXTEEN Down the rampway had come the three old folk, the Cyrodilins on their crude sled with all their possessions. The ramp tunnel was effected by the magic that enclosed and supported the pocket realm of Little Anvil; that is it only seemed to go just a fairly short distance but anything moving up or down it actually moved a great distance. When the mimickri came rushing down the rampway they came in the form of copper, silver and golden goblin shapeforms but these spat pulses of energy and their armour, shields and swords glowed with more magic. They were more powerful ranging from golden down to copper and more numerous ranging down from copper to golden, which was normally the way of the mimickri. Mahargrassa had fought mimickri countless times before and now noted that these ones shared things in common with them. Firstly they were too uniformly the same to be the real things, apart from the obvious of colouring. Normal goblins came in many varieties of shape, size and their gear of course. There was one species of goblins but many subspecies. The mimickri looked somehow all the same as each other except for the colour variations being all the same size, shape and carrying identical looking gear. All were all based on males while female adult goblins often fought in battle. The fake goblins crashed against an invisible magical barrier that the sled had passed safely through and were halted as sparks erupted around them. Lizen-magic and arcane magic fought each other, causing odd side effects. The air rippled. The mimickri did not snarl or go beserk as normal goblins would. They attacked the magical barrier with methodical well organised discipline. But they failed to get through even as Little Anvil was swallowed up by the Sanctuary Zone that was at the core of Mahargastle. The false goblins flickered out of existence as the Master Spell, probably realising it was wasting energy, simply withdrew the mimickri from the battle. The old bodyguard, clutching his steel broadsword, sighed heavily and slipped the weapon back into its scabbard. He spoke then. "I am glad they were driven off. They popped out of the air just as we started down the rampway and they killed a good friend of ours who helped us move everything to the chamber from which the rampway starts. We will miss him greatly." She'Ralla sighed. "Oh, Bono, you are such an old sentimentalist as so many warriors are at heart. The man only helped us when he could profit from it. He was a greedy fool who we only used because we didn't want to put any of our real friends in danger." The bodyguard blushed lightly. "Well, yes, but he is dead. Do you think that he betrayed us to the Master Spell?" The lady smiled. "So your sentimentallity is quickly cut short by streak of survival instinct. He may have done except he would have been too frightened to do so. Now where is Old Uriel?" The three newcomers looked around and observed Mahargrassa, Old Uriel in his big old wheelchair, the Empress and the young adults. Upon seeing the Empress the three scowled. She'Ralla spoke again. "So the traitor shows herself." At that moment the rampway tunnel simply shimmered and was replaced by a normal looking area of wall. All of them felt a gentle shifting movement and the air lightly shimmered for a moment. Mahargrassa nodded. "Little Anvil is now a Semiautonomous Demizone of the Sanctuary Zone. The rampway tunnel was too dangerous to keep and now opens into a normal large chamber beneath Anvil Harbourside. Now, ladies and gentleman, what have you got hidden magically in that sled of yours. I can sense special arcane and other magic at work there. There is a good chance with nine master-dragons flying high overhead that you drew their attention." The other lady now spoke. "Nine master-dragons? More like three hundred master-dragons and many other kinds of mimickri. Winged goblins, gremlins I think they are called, wyverns, griffins, harpies and other things I do not know of that the Master Spell has copied. I thought I saw some fake lesser daedra and other kinds of demons up there." The former Empress of the Cyrodilin Empire frowned. "I will have food, drink and water brought up here along with some trestle tables. That is if you can stand to be served by a traitor and her children. I was no traitor. I served the cause of my people most loyally until I saw the madness of it. I was and still am not even human." Then she stopped in obvious shock. "Three hundred mimickri? The Master Spell would only gather such for a major action. Is it finally going to invade those islands off the coast?" Old Uriel sat up, yawned, stretched and looked quite awake and alert. He studied the situation and the poeple. Then he spoke. "Quite a long time since my favourite ladies and their gallant bodyguard visited me in Little Anvil. Still time did always pass here faster than it did outside to some extent. Now to tell you a secret that will shock you for I am in truth..." "Old fool, of course we know you were Emperor Uriel Septim VII!" Tre'Ralla snapped mildly. "You really did tend to let too much information go with your rambling stories. Too many times you said 'I' instead of 'him' and 'my' instead of 'his' and so on." The former Emperor looked sulky. "Damn it cousin, you stole my thunder again. You so annoy me when you do that. Even a former Emperor likes to have some fun." He turned to the former Empress. "My sweet please have food, water and drink prepared for the downstairs large dining chamber. Have them open the big Viewing Window and let us show them what Little Anvil really is." Old Uriel opened a lid on one wheelchair arm and revealed two vertical rows of brass buttons, an odd square mirror and four dials. He grinned and pressed one. At once a woman figure appeared out of mid air, a young slimly voluptuous lass in a rather skimpy barmaid's outfit of the kind worn in the harbour. She flounced and then bowed to the former Emperor before she began to dance and sing a naughty sea shanty while invisible muscial instruments played. Everybody looked at the former Emperor who blushed and hurriedly pressed the same button again so that the magical illusion switched off. "Eeehhh that was just something little I came up with which to amuse myself." She'Ralla sighed. "Still a dirty old man then, your majesty. Eeehhh do the clothes always stay on then and is she always a blond?" Old Uriel tried to look nobly offended but failed. He sat up instead. "Oh, very well, I am a dirty old man but I want to show you something important, something that Broothada never knew about because I did not want him to. He did not really trick me at all. It was I who manipulated him." "I needed to have Little Anvil active, I needed to keep you here my Empress and all the younger ones also. As I said already, it was I who manipulated Broothrada, or should I say K'Makra. K'Makra is powerful but not as powerful as he was for insanity, stupidity and arrogance have caused him to waste away much of his potency and to damage himself badly. While I was in this wheelchair I was carrying out a variety of useful projects and hobbies. The projects were for Tamriel but the hobbies were just for me." He twisted a dial, twisted another dial and examined the coloured symbols appeared in the small square mirror. Then he pressed the same button again. The same young woman appeaered again but this time she wore the robes of an Imperial Sage of the old empire. She solemly smiled at people and then she spoke. "Greetings! I am the Sage of Little Anvil's Archives. How deep is my belly button?" The former Emperor slapped his knee and grinned. "As deep as the Sea of Delight." The figure smiled and nodded. "Very good! Please be patient while information is uploaded from the primary archives sphere." Mahargrassa nodded and snorted with mild annoyance. "I should have known but you were always able to outsmart me in some ways." "Only because I am much older and have much more experience than you do, my dear." He smiled at the two ladies and their bodyguard. "I am Mahargrah, I have always been Mahargrah, or at least one aspect of him. The real Emperor got poisoned as a baby by Mythic Dawn Followers. I killed them and made it look as if their vile mission had failed. Then I replaced the poor boy. The only way I could save him was to send him to the Sanctuary Zone. He had a good, rich life with his mother who was not his official mother, the previous Empress, and two siblings." He shrugged. "I went through life as the Emperor not knowing I was anything but the Emperor until I was confronted with the treacherous plot of the Mythic Dawn. Only then did the truth come bubbling up out of the depths of my mind. Yet it was not the whole truth. Mahargrah has hidden that away even from himself for some reason I do not know." The young adults all scurried off with orders from the former Empress who walked over and stood next to Old Uriel to stand there passively. That is she looked that way but she was very dangerous as any Kurikanzi was. Old Uriel took one of her hands and kissed it. Then he kept holding it. The illusionary young woman spoke again. "I am ready to answer questions of the Projects." Old Uriel sighed. "

Thanks very much dezdimona, will be adding a new episode here soon. I suggest you finish reading the last. FIFTEEN Mahargrassa attempted to deal with a threat 'beneath' Anvil Harbour in a dimensional pocket realm known as Little Anvil. K'Martina and K'Mortina were in the ancient fortress roughly southwards of Anvil on the Cyrodilin Coast trying to deal with the forming of an alliance between various forces opposed to the TriEmpire and the Master Spell. There it seemed also that the Nine Divines and Nine Holies had somehow made a very important decision. Two aspects of the Eternal Champion, Jasmine the Battlemage and Conanar the Paladin, were trying to work out what had happened in the ancient hidden place beneath a cathedral in the Black Marsh. They were seeking out secrets and trying to help the Oomir. Mahargrah was in Mahargrastle who was in Martinpolis. Both of them made careful preparations as quickly as they could to make their first real move in the move to free Tamriel and its people from the oppressive danger it was under. Yet to look at Mahargrah all he seemed to be doing were normal activities like meditating, reading various books, playing for and caring for the pets and ever-babies, training with his followers and so forth. A white golden machine, an elegant engine-wagon, pulled three elegant passenger carriages and three maill-courier carriages along a great railway line suspended above the forests by evenly spread out pillars. The pillars were great marbled stone structures, elegant and ornate with statues, formations and flying-buttresses linked up outwards to other parts of the rails. The amazing magical machine drew its energies from the TriNetwork that in turn drew energies from the Master Spell. It hummed softly and inside the efficiently furnished and fitted cabins there was an odd slightly disturbing sensation like cobwebs lightly stroking the body. The all elegant TriImperial, a golden haired and skinned humanoid that was very human in shape, a man, had never ever gotten quite comfortable with such sensations. But they were the norm where ever powerful lizen-magic was constantly used and the rail-wheelers nearly always in use. They were needed for their were barely enough of them to do what they had to do to help keep the TriEmpire functioning. In theory the Master Spell should have been doing much of the work being carried out by the Tamriel wide rail-wheel network but the Master Spell had been ignoring many of its duties, was searching for something and doing other things that the TriImperials found disturbing. It was back on Leirmat that the real trouble between the TriEmpire and the Master Spell had begun. Since the conquest of Tamriel had been carried out the split between the TriEmpire and the Master Spell had been slowly becoming stronger. The Master Spell had assisted strongly and well in the conquest of Tamriel, had in some ways shown more focus and strength than ever before. Tamriel had fallen in a month which was quicker than any other of the chosen continents had fallen in the past. What was the Master Spell up to? Tri'Yuransa was head of the dreaded TriBeholders , the security-intelligence service of the TriEmpire, with infiltraters, observers, informants and other operatives serving through out the Tamriel mainland. There were also many openly kept and secret bases, safe houses and other establishments. Yet the biggest strength of the TriBeholders were the numerous puppet slaves who would willingly give information to the TriEmpire even if it meant betraying loved ones. This last factor was not one that pleased Tri'Yurnsa but there was not much he could do about it. Though a golden humanoid and high in the common ranks, classes and castes of the TriImperials, he was not elite, was not of the rare few who actually ruled the TriEmpire. So it had surprised him when the TriEmpress herself had called upon him to do a very dangerous and special task for her. She had not spoken of the TriEmpire but only of her needs. Being one of her admiring followers he had agreed with just enough reluctance to show he was rational enough to have doubts. This was to show he was more able to do his duties. Now he looked out through a big window as he stood in the golden silken metallic robes of a high caste merchant. Of course he would not move openly as his true self, that was only done under special conditions. Around him stood three tall elegant figures in silver robes who were in theory just bodyguards but in truth were very lethal X'Assassinators. They would willingly die to save his life. The others in the carriage were all Tamriellins, quiet mortals be they human or orc or other folk, each in fairly good to very good clothes and other gear but nothing very exotic. Luggage was mostly in luggage compartments beneath the main cabin and only hand luggage was visible. All of the mortals there looked sleepy but none willingly slept. There were no babies or smaller children for travelling on the rail-wheelers could harm them if they slept. For all those who slept while travelling in the swift moving rail-wheelers could suffer terrible nightmares and some would have terrible fits, sometimes leading to death. He looked out over jungles, a wide flowing blue river and in the distance a ruined Tamriellin city of slowly crumbling walls, towers and other structures. It had not been destroyed by the invasion but had thrived for a fair while under the TriEmpire. But then one dreadful day the TriNetwork had failed in the city of Bruma and the Master Spell had fallen upon it with ravenous hunger. The TriImperials had all escaped thanks to the ancient Compact and had even managed to take a fair few mortals, even animals, with them. But most had been lost. For a moment there was a flash of green ghostly light above a partly collasped guard tower and for that instant a terrible creature was exposed that was an ever changing, flickering thing that was not anything in particular but which kept altering in a disturbing fashion. Then it was gone. Nobody went to Bruma willingly, not even the toughest and most powerful of the TriImperials. Animals and magical entities kept their distance. Normal plant life did not grow near it. But in and around Bruma things still grew, parodies of life, and other things thrived there that were worse than they. The Empress had told Tri'Yuransa something most odd and that was that the Master Spell, which in theory was centred in the Imperial City, was in fact focused in the ruins of Bruma. Then she had given him three items to take to the edge of Bruma, to the edge of the terrible contamination and, of all things, to communicate with the Master Spell. Or at least with an aspect of it for nobody could communicate with the whole of the Master Spell. He was not at all happy with his assighnment which was easily the most dangerous that he had ever had. They would get off not near to Bruma but at the nearest city and from there would make further plans. Then he saw something that not only surprised him but shocked him. For a clearing was revealed and in that clearing was a large village surrounded by a tall wooden palisade. It was foolish for such a village to exist so close to the evil of Bruma but the locals had persisted in staying. There were TriBeholder informants in the village and they had reported that people did sneak to the areas closer to Bruma to loot ruins such as villages and a town and even a castle or two. People also like to take lizen-magic mutated plants and smuggle them to collectors of the exotic to make a fairly big profit. The TriEmpire intercepted most of these items but some did get past. The village gained a high level of living from these illegal activities. But now they were paying a price as hordes of Corprus zombies, humans, humanoids and animals, came rushing at the wooden palisade in thick waves. Above them came flickering monstrocities, things that glowed corpse light green, that refused to stay one thing or another, that spat what looked like corpse light flames. The flames shot out and caused parts of the wooden wall to explode into burned splinters and burning fragments. The village's temple, little more than a semi-covered shrine surrounded by circular gardens, was a semiwilderness of long neglect but now golden white light covered it, emanated from it, outwards. Villagers were fleeing into that light and as they did so they were vanishing and animals were doing the same. The TriImperial saw this and he knew that the Nine Divines were active in the villlage, that somehow they had slipped past the power of the Master Spell. But how had this happened and why now, why here? It made no sense to him any more than did this sudden attack on a village by the entities of the ruins of Bruma. Why corprus zombies, sometimes known as corprusies? Why these horrific flickering monstrocities that had been glimpsed before near or above Bruma by many and just what were they? Something in the village exploded and a large building literally went up in smoke, flames and what looked like small objects from where he stood but many were human shaped ojbects. He cursed silently to himself for he had planned on going to that village of Ever Light Green but now he would have to go to somewhere far worse on his journey to what was left of Bruma. That is a nasty little hole called Bruma's End. He supposed that the name had meant to be humerous but he did not find it so. The rail-wheeler kept on speeding along and suddenly he could no longer see the clearing, the village or the things happening there. He linked into the Trinetwork and prepared to communicate with the TriBeholder HQ in far off Martinpolis. To be Continued in SIXTEEN!

FOURTEEN The two aspects of the Eternal Champion made their way carefully along the big wide hallway tunnel and to the vaults that the Waymer had left behind so very long ago. Jasmine the Battlemage and Conanar the Paladin were impressed not only with the great size of the hallway tunnel but with the great hulking but somehow elegant statues emerging from both walls. It seemed that the Waymers had denied the reality of the Gods and of the Daedra, that they had concluded that all were of one Godhood and were less powerful, less central than the natural balancing universal forces. Action and Reaction, Negative and Positive, the Natural Inclination of Balance were some of the spiritual axiom symbols they read that came partly out of the wall. Yet the most interesting items were the joke symbols, the beautiful displays of flower patterns carved out of the rock and the figures of elf like Waymer playing in semiwilderness gardens. These Waymer were displayed as being playful and certainly far from aloof and they wore only loincloths and pouch dotted belts with slipper-boots, including the women. Yet there were always warriors standing on sentry duty and what looked to be some kind of big hulking golems. Oomir followed including the Cheifton and a Shaman, in this case a woman, who held an elaborate staff. Yet there were also Argonians from the surface, shorter marshies and taller lizardfolk, who came with armour and weapons. The Oomir were better armed and armoured than they had been but not as well armed as were the Argonians. There were both marshie and lizardfolk mages. Yet the closer they got to the vaults the stronger was the sense of something both dangerous and quite alien. The Cheifton had the jigsaw puzzle box proudly strapped to his back. He never completed the jigsaw because he would take it apart so he could carry it around with him but this did not phase him at all. But now he spoke quietly, knowing that the Eternal Champion would pick up his words easily. "The Oomirs came with the Waymers a long time ago when the Waymers disagreed with what the Aldmers were doing. What they disagreed with we are not very sure. We think that it had something to do with the Master Spell, the great spell that the gods used to create the mortal dimensions with. Waymers dared to confront even the Divines and speak out aloud doubts they had about the wisdom of what had been done to create the mortal plains." The Oomir Shaman nodded her head and spoke. "Also the Waymer were deeply concerned about the arrogance and other dark aspects emerging amongst the emerging new elf peoples be they Dwemers, Ayleids or Altmers or others whose very existence in the Mythic Age has been forgotten such as the Tezmers, the Wingmers, the Sangaka, the Aquamers and others. Not all of these were elves. We Oomirs have the Nine Hundred and Ninety Nine Tablets of Memory to call upon but even they have many gaps, unexplained terms and sometimes even contradictions about the Mythic Age and Tamriel." Jasmine then spoke. "The Eternal Champion existed during the Mythic Age. We were created during the Mythic Age as we are now but we existed even before then but have long forgotten in what form or why. We are many but we are one. During the Mythic Age time and space were far more fluid than they are now. Alternate realities existed right next to each other. The gods and goddesses moved in the mortal dimensions in powerful avatar form and caused turbulance in time and space. Contradictions in your histories may simply be true recording of contradictory realities that did exist in a way that they could not do now." The Shaman responded. "The Waymers did not face overt prosecution but they were pressured to be quiet. They decided in the end to go deep into the Underlands to find a new home. We Oomirs went with them for the Waymers were very kind to us. The Waymers brought not only our people but our animal friends and our possessions. We came in wondrous fashion in great white golden saucers that flew through the air and then sank down through the very ground like ghosts." She sighed. "But then the Waymers suddenly changed their plans. They informed us that us Oomirs had to leave the white golden saucers and dwell here closer to the surface. They gave us many gifts and were very sad but they said they suddenly had been forced to take on new plans for they had learned something most dreadful. We insisted that they take with them ten thousand chosen Oomir warriors, mages, workers and techs to assist them and reluctantly they agreed but in exchange they gave us more gifts." Conanor then spoke even as the great hallway tunnel opened into a great, grand chamber, a mighty dome that expanded out across into the distance so much that the far wall and the high dome apex were indistinct. At the very centre of the great disk shaped floor was a mighty statue that reached high into the air. It was both beautifully elegant and horrifically ugly at the same time. It was a three headed woman-man figure looking in three directions at once, being all white golden, with nine arms reaching out holding nine mighty items. The statue moved slowly, impossibly, both moving its arms and turning slowly on the spot. It held a great sword, a great shield, a great gun, a great shovel, a great axe that was a tool, a great sickle, a great book, a great crystal box device and a great staff. The Oomir Cheifton shivered and pointed. "The vaults are well hidden in the very air itself, in the floor and are linked to the Statue of Three and Nine. We do not know why the Waymers built this place, why they left the things that they did in the vaults. With them went the Brave Ten Thousand and then the Waymers and their beautiful white golden saucers were gone." Conanor spoke in a commanding tone. "Only Jasmine and I will go further for now. Please stay very still and make no sounds. What ever we do, no matter how strange we behave, please make sure you keep to this." Puzzled but generally happy not to go deeper into the great dome, the majority hung silently back though they did spread out and prepare for possible trouble. Jasmine and Conanor walked out into the dome proper and then stood still for a very long moment. Then Jasmine chanted out aloud a long string of strange and disturbing words that appeared to be of no language known in modern Tamriel. At once the air of the great chamber began to shimmer. Then Conanor chanted out aloud and again the air shimmered but this time it also sparkled. Jasmine took out of a pouch a small silver ball, kissed it and through it high into the air. The ball span and zipped along with amazing speed. It struck something invisible high in the air and was deflected to one side. As it struck the something the thing appeared briefly and it was a terrible creature, a glistening green translucent thing hanging in the air like a putrid ball of jelly. Out of it stretched nine glistening tentacles that each ended in a great bulberous disk shaped eye with one big always staring eye ball. The silver ball kept striking and deflecting all around the chamber until many such creatures were exposed. There were nine of them. Then the silver ball darted back to Jasmine who grabbed it easily, blew softly on it, kissed it and slipped it into a pouch. Jasmine and Conanar led the whole group slowly, carefully and quietly back down the hallway tunnel to where they would be safer. They found a large chamber where the Argonians went off to a far corner to rest and otherwise busy themselves as the Eternal Champion asked them to do. The Oomirs sat cross legged on the floor on old woven mats of strong, long lasting but surprisingly comfortable make. Conanar and Jasmine sat cross legged on mats and faced them. Jasmine spoke first. "You did not take us to the vault chamber that you spoke to us of earlier. Why not?" The Cheifton sighed. "We do not know for we only not really alive for we are just a kind of magically made creature. From fleshvats and shaping-orbs did we arise very long ago. We only know what we are programmed to know and we do what the hidden voices tell us to do even if we do not really want to do it. Now though we are free to talk as we have not been for many centuries." Conanar nodded. "We have placed on you Oomir in this chamber a freedom by removing from you a dark and hidden force that controlled you. What really happened when you and the Waymer came here?" The Shaman sighed. "The Waymer, we Oomir, our animal friends and others came in three great, nine medium and eighty-one small saucerships of white golden metallic beauty. They arrived here and split into three fleets each with one great, three medium and twenty-seven small saucerships. The first fleet went deeper into the Underlands and we do not know what became of them. The second fleet went to some other place that we do not know of and the third fleet remained here." She went on. "We Oomir were at first very happy. We lived good lives and had plenty of time for rest, relaxation and puzzle solving, doing our arts and learning in our way. The Waymer sometimes joined us but much of the time they carried out secretive experimentation. At the time there were just over three million Oomirs in our cave systems that we still inhabit. We Oomirs had freedom of mind though the Waymers could always choose to control us through programming for the Waymers left us free." The Cheifton sighed. "Our memories are blank to what happened after that though we know many centuries passed, that many dramatic things happened. We are not sure what to do." Jasmine smiled. "Practicalities first. We will finish freeing you and all the other Oomirs of the programming controls, which are fragmented and messy anyway as if nobody had actively mastered them for a very long time. The Argonians are moving down here to be freer from the Master Spell and to create a large settlement here. We have to get you Oomirs fixed up and feeling better." The Shaman and the Cheifton smiled as did the other Oomirs and then, abruptly, they froze in place. They were not harmed but just deactivated. Jasmine sighed and took a small crystal tipped wand device out of a pouch. "We can only do what we can. A great crime has been committed here but just one of many, I suspect, by the same dark force, brother-self." Conanar grimaced. "We can only do what we, what I, can do, sister-self." He took out a small optical device and began to adjust it. "I wonder if anybody is making some nice strong coffee." Continued in FIFTEEN!

Hot Shots Life of Brian and a few others.

Growth!

THIRTEEN Mahargrassa made her way carefully through a big old abandoned basement chamber past heaps of slowly rusting iron, disturbing surprisingly little dust with her lightest of treads, and clutched her staff carefully. There was danger in that place that looked generally odd but harmless. There were heaped wooden boats of various kinds that had been brought down a stone ramp from the surface. Rows of big wooden oars stood upright in wooden racks. A big ship's wheel was propped against an area of wall that also had leaning against it a finely carved figure of a mermaid, bare breasted as was tradition. In a big book case were rows of leather bound ledgers, chronicles and other books of accounts. A big set of shark's teeth hung on one wall above a whole set of big stuffed fish. A set of shelves held valuable brass and glass compasses, ocean oriented crystal-balls and other navigational equipment. Another area of wall had a large wall tapestry of a map, not totally complete or accurate, of Tamriel with a focus on surrounding waters but it looked most impressive. The antimagical ghostly force came hurling towards her, a translucent sailor man swinging a great big cutlass of a sword with savage certainty at her. But she flickered and the blade darted through empty air. She was suddenly crouching some five metres away. With amazing speed the antimagical weapon turned and shot at her again. This time the spirit tried to get her before she vanished but this time she struck it with the tip of her staff. There was a flash of energy and the antimagical phantom vanished. The gnarled old man cackled away and then wheeled his big old wooden and iron wheelchair out into the open. He was wrapped up so much and was peering through odd leather and glass goggles, that it was hard to tell what race he was. He was apparently human. The wheelchair was magical and moved all by itself, slowly with a soft humming noise. He grinned at her. "Ugly I am and older than most might assume but I have the know how and skills to make this chamber immune from that damned Master Spell. No Mimickri have come here so far and no puppet humans either. That would greatly impress many folk but perhaps not you so much. Something tells me that you are not quite the mortal, not quite the same as myself." She nodded. "I am Mahargrassa, daughter of Mahargrah, and I am the Lady of Ordered Chaos." "A living goddess!" He cackled again. "No wonder you went through my antimagical guardian so easily. He will soon generate again but this time he won't attack you. What brought you here, my dear, and would you sit on the lap of a sweet, trustworthy old man and make him happy?" She sighed. "I might but I can not see any sweet, trustworthy old man, you old codger. You have a wonderful collection of goods here." At that he nodded. "Indeed but mostly gathered by others. I used to love sailing, especially in the big Imperial Sailships that are mostly in ruins now or cared for up in dry-dock. Except that is those who escaped to islands where the Master Spell and the TriEmpire have no power. I remember a whole fleet being built to increase the ocean going military and trading power of the old empire as well as to explore the world's oceans. None of those well planned exploration, diplomatic and trading expeditions ever got to set out across the seas. A great disappointment that but I doubt you came here to speak of such matters. She slipped onto his lap and he cackled again. Then, facing him, she spoke again. "So who are you that you know that I am a living goddess, that you know my name though I have not been on Tamriel for a long time?" At that the old guy dared to lay a hand on her leg and she did not protest. He grinned a crooked grin of pleasure. "A few centuries back I awoke one very early morning in the sewer tunnels below the Imperial Prison. Very old tunnels and slowly crumbling back then. My face seemed familiar to me but my memories were blurred, were broken, were often dark. I woke in a very fancy cloak and carried a fancy magical longsword. I was surrounded by dead Imperial Blades, bodyguards of the Emperor and the Empress that none spoke of openly." He shrugged. "I was Emperor Uriel Septim VII and I should have been dead. Indeed I remembered being killed by Mythic Dawn Followers while the Eternal Champion fought to save me. At the moment of death a strange blue-white light of magical energy filled me up briefly and after falling down I had strange dreams, disturbing but also delightful. I looted the poor noble Blades of what useful items I could, put on some of their gear and left my robes behind. I could have openly declared myself to be the Emperor but something deep inside me told me that this would be far from wise. I had changed fundamentally and also time, history, destiny, fate had passed me by. It was up to others now to lead the Cyrodilin Empire." He shrugged. "I did make contact with some old friends and they sensed also that I had changed, that my role was now to be something else. Now at last I could focus on finding my wife, the Empress, or at least the truth of what had happened to her. I was convinced that she was not the cheating thieving fool that many assumed she was. I made contact with the Blades and at first they assumed I was some kind of trick of Methrunes Dagon and they almost killed me. Martin, my dear son, saved my life as I wish that later I could have saved him from his fate. Later the Eternal Champion came to me and informed me that in trying so hard to save me she had accidentally transferred to me some of her vital essence as something called an Eternal. After Martin's death she stayed. She and a few Blades began to assist my search for my wife. She told me she is but one aspect of many individuals that make up the Eternal Champion. It is most strange." "And he found her, the dirty old man!" A fairly youthful looking woman came into the chamber pushing a small handcart full of cleaning gear. She was cleanly but practically dressed in a knee length dress and behind her came some young men and women of various ages. "You can get off his lap now, my sweet. I was the Empress just as this old man was the Emperor. He has been napping for about a month now and has let the room get all dusty and grubby." Mahargrassa slipped lightly and gracefully off the old looking man, kissed him quickly on the forehead and darted across the room to sit on a three legged wooden stool. The former Empress sighed. "You move amazingly quick and you left only the slightest trace in the dust. I suspect you would have left none if you had been trying not to do so. How did you learn about us?" "Two fine old ladies, overtly mad but covertly quite cunningly brilliant, and their lover bodyguard." Mahargrassa stretched and threw back her hood now to fully reveal her head. "I have asked them to leave the open living of the harbor and to come down here to live because they are too soon to die if they remain up there. They protested but not too strongly after they learned the truth of what was being done to them." The old man in the wheelchair shuddered. "Globeli! Those life draining monstrosities. I wonder that we do not just destroy them and stop the TriEmpire and the Master Spell from feeding." The former Empress gave orders to young men and women who shared in general both his and her husband's features. At once the five young men and four young women set out busily dusting and sorting things. Then she spoke again. "They are more than welcome to live down-ramp from here with me in a finer quality place. Hopefully being away from the draining of life energies and the stronger influence of the Master Spell will assist them to regain health and fitness." Mahargrassa nodded. "To destroy the Globeli would be very difficult for they are constructed of amazingly strong materials and have many forms of protection. There are many Globeli. More importantly there is a chance that the TriEmpire put the Globeli into place in order to slow down the feeding of the Master Spell, that if they were gone the Master Spell might simply start killing people in the many thousands if not millions. The three could continue their rebel activities from down here but perhaps it is time for them to retire." The former Emperor frowned. "How much of the truth did you show them?" Mahargrassa sighed. "Not much! Just enough to get them to have all their wonderful belongings smuggled down here and to come and live down here with them. How much of the truth have you seen, Emperor Uriel Septim VII?" All the young adults looked startled and stared at the old man in amazement. Mahargrassa sighed again. "You did not tell them the truth. I am sorry that I blurted it out." The old man grinned. "They know me as dad or granddad or great granddad, depending on who is knowing me, or just Old Uriel. Yes, boys and girls, I was once the Emperor of the Cyrodilin Empire but back to work with you. I will tell you some fine stories later." He turned back to the living goddess. "As for the truth that I have seen, have experienced, there is no real way to relate it but from what I see in your eyes you know much more of these matters than I do. I remember when the invasion began. For all of our secret preparations, our attempts to be ready for it, we were taken totally by surprise. The only good thing was that by then my wife was with me again, we had forgiven each other, and with some new adopted children we fled into the secret place down below Anvil." Mahargrassa smiled. "This is actually a dimensional pocket realm like Mankar Cameron's Paradise, a magical and antimagical creation cleverly designed to hold back the Master Spell but also to be hidden from the Master Spell. You and others studied the works of that insane genius and then created this place but what is the anchor for this pocket dimension?" Old Uriel sighed. "The wheelchair is the anchor and I am tied to the wheelchair. The Master Spell is seeking something. Its creatures, its mockeries of life that we call the Mimickri, are everywhere hunting for this thing. I am constantly needing to focus in order to keep Little Anvil secret. Why did you really come here?" She smiled. "Little Anvil is even now being safely and securely drawn into the Sanctuary Zone and yet it will remain, in a sense, here below Anvil. Even now you will find the pressure easing off you and you will begin to become younger, healthier. Soon enough you will be able to leave your wheelchair. I did not come here for any particular purpose but I am on a journey of discovery. I am seeking answers and yet I have yet to find the proper questions to ask. Who bound you to the wheelchair and the spell? Was it the Eternal Champion?" The former Emperor shook his head. "The Eternal Champion was rather angry with me when she found out what I had done. Jasmine the Battlemage was the aspect of the Eternal Champion who tried to save me from the Mythic Dawn and who accidentally caused my rebirth. No, it was..." He suddenly looked very surprised. "I can't remember who instigated the spell of this pocket realm and who said that it was linked somehow to..." He sighed heavily. "No, it all escapes me. Truly the need to keep Little Anvil secret has drained me." He slumped heavily in his chair. Mahargrassa went to him quickly and taking a small metallic leather belt out she carefully wrapped it around his head, his forehead, and fastened it but not to tight. At once small yellow, green and white crystals in it began to glow softly. At once the figure in the wheelchair sighed heavily, relaxed and went to sleep. She made him more comfortable. Then she turned and stared hard at the former Empress and all of the young adults who were now standing there and staring at her. "Why did you betray the Emperor and his two sons?" The woman slipped off the dress and revealed a fancy robelet of black and blood red stripes. It was Mythic Dawn. She scowled. "The Emperor was supposedly wise but he was always a weakling at heart or so I thought at the time. Manker Cameron was a brilliant and powerful man who promised a wondrous new dawn and who promised me endless youth. Instead the Emperor spoke of the need to die, the need to come to an end." But then she pulled off the Mythic Dawn robelet and threw it to the floor. She was now in a knee length under-dress. "Old fool was right and Manker Cameron was the real fool in the end. The old man told our boys and girls many stories and they pressured me to change my mind. I tricked Manker Cameron and instead of going to his Paradise as promised I went off with my husband into hiding." "It was no Paradise!" Mahargrassa frowned. "Though it had the general appearance of one. Many of Manker's followers who ended up there ended up cursing him for it became their prison, a place of suffering for them." The other woman smiled. "Thank you for telling me that. Now I can tell you that it was a man called Broothada who influenced Old Uriel to do what he did. Broothada who was powerful a mage but who also had antimagic. Broothada who shifted his appearance and who smelt vaguely of undeath and of dark places, who said he had visited the realm of Oblivion to speak with Methrunes Dagon himself. Broothada was not impressed with the Daedra Prince for he saw him as a powerful but narrow minded deity of shallow imagination. Cunning, yes, but not brilliant." "Kurikanzi!" Mahargrassa frowned and then she spoke of the Kurikondi who came from a continent called Leirmat and the Kurikanzi who had broken away from them long ago to turn to evil and to serve the TriEmpire. She also informed this woman, and all the others listening, that the Kurikanzi and the TriEmpire had split largely due to the treachery of the Kurikanzi. But she did not know just what the Kurikanzi did that was so treacherous. The other woman had put her normal dress back on. She now stood next to her husband. "Why do I get the feeling that there are things that you are not telling us?" "Because there are things that I am not telling you." Mahargrassa responded. "Did this Broothada, hardly his real name, meet with Manker Cameron?" The woman nodded. "Yes he did! At first Broothada was impressed with his genius but later he turned against Manker's growing insanity. Maker Cameron was unable to see the basic truth that Methrunes Dagon was out to turn Tamriel into a living hell ruled oppressively by himself. Methrunes Dagon would have probably crushed Maker Cameron as a possible threat once the Daedra Prince had conquered Tamriel. I always wondered why there are so many sea related items in this chamber when we are so deep underground and how they were brought down here." Mahargrassa snorted. "The whole chamber and everything in it were closer to the surface but when your husband created Little Anvil it all was brought down here because he wanted it all down here. It always did comfort him to be reminded of the sea. Should you not know this?" The other woman shook her head. "The children and I were in Anvil but were were hiding in another part of the harbour, over where they used to have the cattle yards which are now just a few rotting fences and lots of grass. I often find it surprisingly difficult to remember how much time hass passed since something happened or when something happened. Many people do." "The Master Spell twists time and people's perception of time." Mahargrassa looked around. "Perhaps Old Uriel had more than comfort in mind when he brought this chamber downwards by using magic. Hidden here amongst all of the shelving and the historical artifacts are devices of power. I can sense them. You and these young people are prisoners down here. He has you trapped down here but why?" Suddenly Mahargrassa laughed sourly. "Of course, you are Kurikanzi or hybrid-Kurikanzi. Old Uriel trusted you so far but not far enough to let you out of Little Anvil. When did he discover the truth about you?" Former Empress Ujena Sareda Septim grimaced. "When we rescued him from a Kurikanzi killer team by shapeshifting and using other zruidic powers. You are wrong. Old Uriel trusts us but Broothada turned this place into a magical trap for us when he created Little Anvil. Broothada wanted us trapped down here because I figured out his true Kurikanzi identity. The truth was a deep shock for he is none other than K'Makra, the very first Kurikanzi who seduced us away from the Kurikondi path and into darkness. K'Makra is easily the most powerful Kurikanzi who has ever lived though there are other Kuri individuals far more powerful than he." At that moment down the ramp slid a large wooden sled carefully piled with furniture, fittings, art-works, chests, sacks, lidboxes and much else. Clinging to the back of it were two elderly ladies and a man. As the sled slid across the floor and began to slow they all three looked relieved. But then the aged bodyguard cried out. "Monsters are chasing us down the rampway." To be continued in FOURTEEN

Good in many ways but needs description, the basics of environment and the characters. I found myself wanting to know who the person was, where they were and also how they got there and found the answers difficult to get. Your use of emotions, of subjective view point, is very good.

TWELVE K'Martina listened to the Cyrodilin Empress negotiate with the representatives of the newly created Daedric Front that was the daedric effort to defend the realm of Oblivion. Both K'Martina and the Empress had been surprised to learn that the Master Spell had launched raids of its mimickri monsters through reactivated Oblivion Gates to what had once been the Oblivion Territories of Methrunes Dagon. The raiders were often driven back or even destroyed but always left trails of death and destruction behind them. The Master Spell seemed to be seeking something. No TriImperials had been directly involved in these raids. The daedra also faced a new threat that had first appeared when the TriEmpire and Master Spell had come to Tamriel and that was the Ardead, a great force of undeath, that was rising through out parts of Oblivion to attack the daedric realms. The daedra had feared the two enemies might be united or even be one but when mimickri raiders met ardead invaders they attacked each other brutally and with out mercy. Traditional enemies were being forced to form alliances. K'Martina sat on a dirty old once ornate wooden chair while the big old table, which was held up at one end by a big old crate, sat at the middle of a meeting chamber. Documents were heaped on the table as the Daedric Front Envoy sat contemplating yet another counter proposal. So far the negotiations had only been mildly frustrating because both sides badly needed the alliance and they knew it. So far the Kurikondi and their alliance with Summerset Isle had only been lightly referred to. So far she had spoken only a couple of times and had managed to give the impression of defining her people well while in truth giving away very little about them. That was when she felt the strange but not harmful or highly disturbing sensation go through her body. And suddenly K'Martina was in two places at once. It was a trick that special Kuri could do but not so often the Kurikondi who focused on other strengths. While K'Martina kept at the table, K'Mortina found herself once more in the now amazingly big Chamber of Glowing Statues where she was confronted by the Nine Divines of Tamriel and the Nine Holies of Leirmat. All of the statues were still glowing softly from within. The eighteen statues were looking inwards towards where she was standing and she doubted that this was a coincidence. Nor was the fact that none of the Cyrodilin Imperial or Daedric Front were there in that chamber, that she appeared to be alone except that she sensed that she was not. Akatosh the Dragon God of Time spoke first, or at least his statue, his avatar did. "Rarely does a god speak to a mortal so directly as I do to you now but you are no mere mortal but a living goddess. You come here as the Chosen One of the Kurikondi to scout ahead of a possible invasion of Tamriel. Yet you know that such an invasion is bound to fail by itself for the Master Spell will launch all of its puppet people at your invading forces in waves of death. Swarms of mimickri will attack you." K'Mortina frowned. "The Kurikondi are more waiting to try to defend Summerset Isle than we are preparing to invade the mainland of Tamriel. We wish only to infiltrate and learn more about what is going on. As for myself being a living goddess, how can that be when my mother and both my fathers were normal Kurikondi? Still, it is well noted that I have capacities beyond the normal for Kurikondi." Akatosh-Avatar spoke again. "Your third father is Mahargrah, Lord of Ordered Chaos." She nodded. "Very good then! He assisted the free forces of Leirmat in many ways to drive off both the TriEmpire and the Master Spell. I doubt that you influenced me to appear here in secondary form just to tell me this. What do you want of me?" The powerful male voice spoke again. "Mahargrah is here now on Tamriel along with Mahargastle and others. Mahargrassa has emerged in Anvil. We would like to know what Mahargrah is doing here. We would like to know what Mahargrassa is doing here. Mahargrassa is your half-sister. The Eternal Champion has emerged once more in Tamriel as two avatars. The Eternal Champion has in the past been loyal to us but now has begun to question our ways, our teachings, our priestesses and priests. This does not please us. Serve us and you will be well rewarded." But then Amazoniss, the Goddess of Protection of Nature and Life, spoke out through her avatar, through her statue. "Do you claim our followers, Akatosh? The Nine Holies of Leirmat would not have you do such. Long ago in the Mythic Age when the mortal plain was being created, mistakes were made. These mistakes were made by many gods, the Aedra, who make up in truth but one godhood. The Eight Divines were Thirteen Divines back then, a truth that has been concealed for far too long. There were Thirteen Holies. The mortal ways were not just created but were recreated for they had existed before in another form. The Master Spell was created to make the working of the mortal dimensions easier and quicker. Why? Because the Aedra were far from fully united on the merits of creating mortality and those who supported it wanted to make sure the mortal dimensions came into existence." Akatosh-avatar spoke again. "Yes, I now admit that we rushed the making of the Master Spell with out fully understanding what we made or the ramifications of its long term existence. We assumed we could build it like any tool, use it and then put it safely away lest we need it again. But it was far more complicated and powerful than we imagined and it gained its own intelligence. It stopped being just a spell and became a magical entity in its own right. But we do not know what happened after that though we have strong theories on the matter." Then Magikidus the God, the Holy of Magic from Leirmat, spoke. "More than any of the Nine Holies or the Nine Divines that survive, I delve into the inner most nature, laws and limitations of magic. For a very long time now I have suspected a dark truth but now for the first time I will voice it out to others. The Master Spell was interfered with during its creation and it was secretly taken over by a twisted deity, that is by one of the Aedra who had turned to darkness. That god or goddess may well still be in control of, may even be merged with, the Master Spell." A profoundly troubled silence fell amongst the Nine Divines and the Nine Holies. Ratty, all fast and powerful but sweet and adorable, came rushing across the big chamber and paused only briefly before he leaped into K'Mortina's arms. She grabbed him up, hugged himself to herself and then held him at her side as she might a child. He had paused only enough to realize that she, K'Mortina, was just as good as was K'Martina, was somehow the same entity. Ratty looked eagerly around at the great big softly glowing stone statues and chittered with much excitement. "What big glowing statues for?" K'Mortina smiled. "These represent the Nine Divines of Cyrodiil and the Nine Holies of Leirmat, especially Central Leirmat. These are avatars." Ratty sighed. "Ratty only thought they might be good for lighting up good things like hunting mice or playing games or finding treasures. Ratty not smart enough to know about big things." The eighteen deities all laughed softly and warmly, the sound drifting through the great chamber because Ratty, all of one metre tall not including the tail, had pointed out their apparent helplessness at the time. In truth their glowing statues seemed only good for a Ratty's use. Yet it was also a compliment, a praise of sorts that Ratty in all of his practicality had been served so usefully by eighteen great gods and goddesses. With out being voiced an important decision had been made by these goddesses and gods. K'Mortina kissed Ratty on top of his head and wondered what the ramifications would be. To be continued in THIRTEEN!

ELEVEN Mahargrah strode across the big chamber that was about half filled with people. Then he carefully placed the large wooden barrel of sweet-water onto a table. Orphan children and teens were eating and drinking at the tables or were lining up to get more. That is except those doing chores or who were entering or leaving the room. There were a fair few adults and animals that had come with the new people now dwelling in the Community Wing of the Maharg Mansion, as both were now called. The two black dogs followed him faithfully and he now scratched them on their heads as they stood either side of him. In her pouch at his front a female ever-baby faced frontward and contentedly devoured a slice of apple. All these orphans were away from the influence of the Master Spell. At least half had been rejected by society because they had magical, antimagical or nullmagical properties and now, hopefully, they would join in the battle against the Master Spell and the TriEmpire. Sisters, Iniates and teenagers, Novices Compassionate, could be seen along with newer Assistants Compassionate but they were outnumbered by children. Thankfully Orphanage workers were there also being a dozen women and five men. But only orphans and other Orphanage folk had been cominginto the safety of the mansion that was more than a mansion. People who had barely survived in the sewer network and other underground spaces beneath the city, who had escaped there from the Master Spell or the TriEmpire, or who were just misfits, were being accomodated in another set of chambers. The merchants of Martinpolis were happy with him for though Marhargastle could and did generate many goods in various ways, he had ordered, prepaid for and had delivered a range of goods. Yet he had also had proven very hard and fast when it came to those who tried to cheat him as a grocer, a blacksmith and a gallery operator had soon found out.. He bought a steady stream of groceries, furniture, fittings, artworks, books, historical artifacts, unwanted animals, defunct magical items, scrolls, scrollbooks, tools, weapons and much else. He bought more of the more common goods and more carefully of the less common stuff for he did not wish to draw too much attention to himself or cause some sort of trouble in the local market. While he was fairly generous with his offers he did not go overboard as not to monopolise the buyer's market. Any very special items he needed, he gained through more secretive means, using his new array of contacts in the city including the Sisterhood Compassionate, the Brotherhood Protective, the Order of Truth and others. The Order of Truth were a secretive but loose group of scholars, a few sages, journalists, artists and others seeking to learn, record, catalog and report the truth. Many of them were now using their own group of rooms in the great structure. The Sisterhood Compassionate, the Brotherhood Protective and others had brought not only people but as many resources as they could into the mansion and were bringing more. The number of orphans and others in need of sheltering had dropped from the original flood to a steady trickle. The TriEmpire, for all its dark side, did make sure most people got their basic needs met including a basic health care system of new style doctors, nurses and medics. But apart from the serums, that did not work for some, they could not protect people from the Master Spell itself and they could not even see that the Master Spell was a problem because they were puppets. It was not obvious but both he and Mahargastle gained greatly from the influx of people, good and other things into the castle. Mahargrah spoke quietly to the air in such a way that none could easily read his lips. "Mahargastle, you have done some more mapping of the city." Mahargastle spoke quietly back and did not have to worry about anybody reading her lips. "Nine of those Globezi are in the city. Once a month any healthy adult over twenty will visit a Globezi once to have life energies drained from them. Exceptions are those who are considered less useful to society such as many elderly, people get older faster now, or the supposed medically incurable, of which there are more now, plus misfits, rebels and outlaws. These are locked into a big institution where they are kept under suprisingly reasonable conditions but each goes to a Globezi once a week until they perish. Dead bodies are always totally destroyed and all possessions are either claimed through inheritance or are donated to the official welfare shops or are recycled." Mahargrah frowned. "This is a refinement of the network-system that drew life energies from people back in Leirmat. It is created, I suspect, by the TriEmpire not just to make sure there is a steady supply of life energies to feed the generation of lizen-magic, but is an attempt by the TriEmpire to better control the Master Spell and its horrific addiction. The special serums given to people for free, that slow down the harm done to the masses of the oppressed, are for the same reason. Yet there might be something emerging in the TriEmpire that goes against its major trends. That is there may be TriImperials who have come to oppose what the TriEmpire has become and to oppose the Master Spell with its bizarre addiction and sickness." The TriEmpire had once been a mighty and good empire, though not perfect, that ruled most of the super continent of Shozkria. The Master Spell had somehow emerged in Shozkria, coming out of its sleeping place where it should have staid, but had come into mortal existence in a distorted fashion. Mahargrah had been in Shozkria, had been a genius fool who had welcomed the Master Spell as a way of generating fabulous new magical technologies. He and others had been manipulated by an unseen and amazingly cunning force into combining the TriEmpire's Magi-Core with the Master Spell. Too late had Mahargrah and other realised the horror they had released upon not just their own motherland but upon others to come. A terrible war was fought as millions of refugees fled in magical arks from the now terrible TriEmpire. Mahargrah died as he sacrifised himself to destroy a great arsenal of magical weapons, knowledge and other devices to stop the new TriEmpire from using them. This weakened the plans of the TriEmperor and TriEmpress and gave the chance for many other people to escape by going down into the Underlands beneath the continent where the Master Spell could not reach for some reason. Mahargrah was reborn, much to his astonishment, as the Lord of Ordered Chaos. He gained Mahargastle as a companion who was actually linked with him in a special fashion. But it was centuries later and Shozkria was largely a great wasteland where twisted creatures roamed or grew plant like, where healthy air, water and food was hard to find and where softly glowing ruins of the old empire were found dotted across the landscape. There were also many undead and such as aggressive ghosts. Life was hard down in the Underlands but much better than that above. They faced a corprus plague and an invasion of swarming Underworlders. Mahargrah assisted the peoples there in many ways and yet most saw him as a great villian of the past and never forgave him. He left the new TriRepublic as an official hero but because the new TriPresident demanded he go. Only a relatively few voices were raised to defend his right to stay though more demanded that he leave Mahargastle behind because everybody loved her. Yet many people also chose to leave with Mahargrah and inside Mahargastle who would end up inside the Sanctuary Zone. As for the TriEmpire and the Master Spell, they were long gone to find their next victims. He had never returned to his homeland or the world that it was on. He spoke again. "There are still older network-systems in operation?" She responded. "Yes but they have been altered to fit Tamriel. There are TriImperial Communications through Teleways. There are the raised Rail-Wheel lines, the sealed Highways and the special Teleport Network that is less often used. There are the Death Game Arenas but death games are held less often then they were back in Leirmat.." She went on. "All those were on Leirmat but now there are TriImperial Defence Force Forts at every city, including here at Martinpolis where there is a big one. It seems that the TriEmpire has built up new military forces and is no longer depending fully on the Master Spell to generate mimickri creatures to do its battles for it." Mahargrah snorted. "Perhaps it goes further than that. Perhaps the TriEmpire can no longer trust the Master Spell not to turn on it, not to attack it." She spoke again. "Then there are those who are chosen to go to Imperial City for various reasons who never again return. Whether they go to be punished or rewarded or other reasons, whether they go openly or in secret, none return. It is a steady stream from all over Tamriel. This seems to be something new." He nodded. "It is coming time for me to venture out of your confines, my sweet, though Mahargassa is now out there, is now active in Anvil." The ever-baby stretched her arms out and looked up at Mahargrah's face with a hopeful cute look because she wanted some more apple. He kissed her and then gave her another slice before he gave some small chewy meaty snacks to the dogs. To be continued in TWELVE!

Spoken from the heart! Flows gracefully and wonderfully!

TEN The Eternal Champion walked around the great dusty cobweb cornered chamber while the Oomir celebrated. That is not just the ones who had been in cages, they celebrated resting on their backs on filthy mats found somewhere in big old metal storage chests, but others who had come out of hiding now the undead were gone. They carried some magical items, some good metal weapons but mostly they had little more than simple wooden clubs. What had happened in that place, what was the truth? The Aymers had come there but had passed through quickly except for a dozen who staid behind to investigate the area and to welcome any more Aymer who might make it. The Waymers were long gone, were but vague memories and a few tablets to the Oomirs, but there were Oomirs there and they had gotten on well with the elfs. But the Aymers were arrogant though not so much as the Ayleids they had been, and upon finding forbidden locked vaults they had insisted on opening them. The Oomirs had begged them not to do so for the Waymers had locked the vaults for excellent reason. Three of the Aymers, being less arrogant and more open minded than the others, changed their minds but they were outvoted by their comrades who were greedy for Waymer secrets and power. From the very first opened vault had come undeath in the form of swirling grey dust driven by a dreadful necromancic force. Nine of the Aymers had at once fallen under the spell of undeath, had died almost instantly and had arisen as powerful lichs under the domination of a strange undeathly force. The nine Aymers were those who had been greedier and more arrogant. The other three Aymers used powerful magic to hurl back the lichs and fell backwards. The Oomirs also fought but they were unable to give much assistance except for a handful of Oomir mages. But then an ancient trap-spell of the Waymers had been triggered, flamelight had exploded outwards and three of the lichs had perished while the other six had fled, weakened. The Oomer Chiefton nodded gravely as he held a curving steel scimitar in one hand and a leather shield in the other. "We Oomir gathered all the smaller and still functioning artifacts, golden tablets and other useful Waymer items that we could find and gave them to the three Aymers. The Aymers worked hard and learned dreadful secrets from the foolishly opened vault that they again carefully locked up. They said that they knew now where the undead had actually first come from and it was not the realm of Oblivion as was widely assumed even by the daedra." The undead had first appeared on the continent of Tamriel but only after the first Corprus Plague had caused wide spread havoc and death during the Mythic Age. The Aedra had dealt with the plague and had wiped away most of the undeath that had come after it. But the undeath had then come again in the form of the lesser undeath. The Chiefton went on speaking. "When the Corprus infected die and if their bodies are not burned or otherwise destroyed, under certain conditions they become the lesser undead of zombies, zombars or even skeletars." The Eternal Champion nodded. "I spoke with Emperor Martin I about that back before he gave his mortal life to save Tamriel from Methrunes Dagon. Martin was a true sage though he had no documentation to say so. He had learned necromancer secrets as well as from the various daedric cults, along with more standard magic. He said that it was commonly suspected amongst necromancic sages that there was a very vital link between the Corprus disease and the undead. What was missing was the knowledge of the vital factor that caused dead Corprus victims to sometimes become the undead instead of dying naturally and rotting away as they often did." The tall robe figure shrugged. "After the Oblivion Gates were closed I searched the libraries and archives of the Arcane University, of the Imperial Palace and even of the White Golden Tower. What I found was most disturbing. In those places where much aggressive arcane magic had been used, where there had been intense magical battles, those where the places where the Corprus dead turned into the undead." He stretched and then sighed dramatically. "The use of arcane magic is linked with the rise of the undead. I tried to warn the Mages Guild of my findings but they ignored me as they had ignored so many others who had come to the same conclusions. I became so unpopular that I ceased to be Archmage and instead became Honourary Archmage, a title with out any authority, and was politely but firmly kicked out of the Arcane University. I sense now you want to say something else of importance." The Oomir leader nodded. "One odd fragment of knowledge came from that vault before the three Aymer fled from it in fear, they sensing something ancient and evil inside it, and that was most strange. It said that the Corprus Plague itself had been created accidentally by something called the Master Spell when the Aedra had used the Master Spell to create arcane magic of the mortal existence." The Eternal Champion nodded. "Now I truly do understand much more. Some vital piecs of a jigsaw fall into place at last. The Nine Divines, the other Gods, the Greater Daedra, all and too many others, have tried to hide the truth even from themselves. Mortal arcane magic, the undeath and the Master Spell are all tightly linked." The Chiefton looked puzzled. "What is a jigsaw?" The tall man took two ornate wooden boxes out from beneath his robes and gave them to the Chiefton who slipped his sword away so he could hold them. "Each of those is many small cleverly made wooden pieces of a picture that you put together to make up a whole picture but the pieces are cleverly designed to make it harder to do. Hence each is a jigsaw puzzle. The picture for each jigsaw puzzle is up on the inside of the lid. Have fun!" Oomirs loved such things and the Chiefton beamed happily for a moment but then he lost his smile. "The three surviving Aymers created some amulets, potions and spells for us to use against the undead and prepared their own magic to do the same but something was wrong. When they had gone deep into the undeath vault to learn at least some of its secrets, they had been infected with a very powerful version of the Corprus disease. They started to become very sick. They did what they could for us Oomirs before they drank powerful pioson and died peacefully." The Oomir looked up at the much taller Eternal Champion and shrugged. "We fought since then and killed all but one of the lichs. Then other lichs came from where, we do not know. They came as ex-Aymers and they came with zombies. We fought them all and killed all until there only survived five lichs and no lesser undead. We lost too many of our folk in those battles but at last we had the enemy trapped here. Now only two lichs, the two guarding the Oomirs who were in the box-cages, survive and our scouts are tracking them." The Eternal Champion shook his head. "They are now destroyed. I am one aspect of the Eternal Champion and my name is Conanar the Paladin. Here now is Jasmine the Battlemage who is also of the Eternal Champion." The beautiful, deadly Jasmine came pacing into the great chamber with her great metallic mage-staff. She was also robed and beneath the robes was white golden armour. She threw back her hood to reveal a white golden helmeted head and a red-brown face. She spoke then. "So it has come to pass as was predicted back before the birth of time. If we have arisen again then so Mahargrah and Mahargastle must be here also." He nodded. "In Martinpolis, the new city outside of the Imperial City on the eastern side of the Imperial Ring Channel, they have appeared. I can sense them because they allow me to do so. You also awoke in the cathedral but in another room." She nodded. "In the pantry of all places. Still it is better than waking up in a prison cell in time for a doomed Emperor and the Blades guarding him to show up and wonder just how I got there. It is good to see you, brother." "And you, sister." He smiled. "Let us go and watch this fine Cheifton of the Oomir attempt to do his first jigsaw puzzle. That would be good fun and a fine way to relax for the moment. We have done all we can for the sick Oomir, the undead are no longer a threat here and we need to wait for reinforcements to arrive from the surface along with more supplies and equipment." The Chiefton smiled very richly because his people loved puzzles. To be continued in ELEVEN!

NINE (Continued) The copperish master-dragons were suddenly joined by two more triples. The mimickri then slowly glided forward, graceful and deadly, spreading outwards as they did so. The nine of them began to hover there, wings very slowly and gracefully sweeping up and down. Dragons were magical, flew in truth by magic despite the need of the wings, and these false dragons flew because of lizen-magic. Mahargrassa frowned. "How many people are sent to the Imperial City by the TriImperium for various official or unofficial reasons?" The two ladies and their beloved bodyguard and lover, gave the young woman curious looks. Lady Tre'Ralla spoke then. "TriImperium? The TriImperial Government!" Mahargrassa frowned some more. "When you look at the TriEmpire what do you see? Do you see something like the Cyrodilin Empire or other empires that have existed on this world that is called sometimes Mundus, sometimes Nirn and sometimes even Tamriel as this continent is? Do you see the TriImperials as normal individuals when they appear in public as golden, silver or copper coloured metallic humans? Do you think that there is a hidden government with thousands of public servants at work just as there was in the Cyrodilin Empire? Do you imagine great and powerful military forces when you think of how first Shozkria, then Tuvovo, then Shenmardi, then Leirmat and finally Tamriel were conquered?" Lady She'Ralla shook her head. "In truth we rebels are a pathetic joke of a network struggling even to survive in any but the most isolated areas and those areas where the Master Spell is weaker. We do not know what to think. We do know that we face contradictions and puzzles that all those mastered ones, those who are dominated by the Master Spell, can not see!" Mahargrassa smiled sadly at the three. "I see in your minds that you consider yourself to be relatively lucky, that you consider yourself to be basically free thinking, to be free living. You spend your lives here where the Master Spell is weaker. Do you know that the whole of Anvil is an area where the Master Spell is still powerful but relatively weaker for the Master Spell is based in the Imperial City and gets weaker as it reaches outwards. Anvil is also in a pocket of weakness just as there are outer pockets of strength. Yet even here the Master Spell weaves its deadly influence." She sighed. "Time to go indoors and to have something to drink before I show you the truth. Better to start simple, to start safer and in a space you are familiar and comfortable with." Lady She'Ralla nodded. "Good idea but not yet. Firstly we must visit the..." She suddenly looked puzzled, even a little shocked. "the Harbourside Globeli where we will all three rest peacefully for an hour in blissful nudity in shifting fields of light along with many other Anvillins while..." The other two were also looking shocked now as if they had come awake to something that was happening that they had not even been previously aware of. Mahargrassa nodded. "I threw up an antimagical shield around the four of us. You were not even consciously aware that such places as the Globelies existed but visited there once a month to have your life energies sucked from you. But you are not ready to face this truth fully and I now gently suppress, for the moment, this relevation from your minds." The three Cyrodilins suddenly lost their look of shock as they forgot about the Globeli, at least they became not so aware of it at a conscious level. The bodyguard spoke briskly. "Ladies, we must be off soon for we have an important place to go to. Perhaps we could meet with Jarna, and I suggest we keep using that name, at her place later at about eleven tonight after we have rested." Rested from having been vamped in the local Globeli but she was not about to say that aloud. She bowed to them gracefully and then the three went off. In the distance, where all the locals could both see and not see it, was a big pale off-white softly glowing crystal dome. The building that had been smashed down so it could be put in place still lay partly in rubble around it but the big entrance way was clear. Into it flowed normally active people and out of it stumbled tired and sometimes exhausted folk. A few were helped out or even carried out. Now and then, though she noted none at that moment, a dead or dying body would be brought out on a litter. Sisters Compassionate and Brothers Protective worked together, a dozen of them being six of each, and they knew what was going on. They helped those that came out, helped the sickened and deal with the dead and dying in a big old building next to the Globeli that dwarfed the human built structure though it was a whole three levels high. The sisterhood and brotherhood had a deal with the TriEmpire, were protected by the TriEmpress herself, as long as they kept the secret of what they knew to themselves. As Mahargrassa watched the two fine old ladies and gentlemen walk off she felt sickened again, as too often she did, for they were in truth not so old after all. For they were just into their late thirties. Before the TriEmpire and Master Spell came to Tamriel at that age they would have still been at least quite youthful and brisk. But in the TriEmpire the Tamriellins grew older, sicker and died quicker than they used to do and they sickened and died more often than they used to. The same had happened first to Shozkria, then Tuvovo, then Shenmardi, then Leirmat and finally Tamriel. And yet there had been differences in what had happened on each of these continents as other factors had also changed. What had not changed was that each continent had suffered terribly. She turned and walked towards a wrecked looking sailing-ship that concealed inside itself a very special place. Mahargrah, her father, had awoken in Martinpolis along with beloved Mahargastle, her mother, and now she had greater support behind her. But still she had to be careful just as they did for they were going against very powerful enemies and the Master Spell and the TriEmpire were only two of them. Continued in TEN!

NINE While K'Martina dealt with the various forces down inside the fortress on the Western Cyrodilin Coast, Mhargrah assisted the Sisterhood Compassionate to bring people, equipment and other resources to the mansion that was in truth far more than a mansion and the Eternal Champion started learning the truth of the Aymer, the Waymer and the Oomir along with others. The grey robed woman made her way carefully and warily along the old worn footpath in Harbourside outside the tall coastal walls of the city of Anvil. Rotting and collapsing jetties held abandoned sailing ships and galleys. Some few were converted into living places and were better cared for while some had already sunk into the now clear harbour waters. She kept her youthful attractive face well hooded. It was a large harbour but now it was no longer used as one except by a small fleet of fishing boats that dared go out to sea and smaller ones that went only out into the actual harbour. The exception were ferry boats that went to and from small clusters of islands west of Anvil where communities dwelt away from any real influence of the TriEmpire or the Master Spell. The Master Spell was actually weaker there, closer to the waters, and many fled there to live a life of poverty and fringe acitivity just to escape the oppressiveness of the great invading magic. They mingled with criminals, outcasts and goblins. Goblins hated the Master Spell and a fair sized community had grown up in and beneath the harbour in caves there. The goblins did not want trouble and were surprisingly the least to trouble others. Mahargrassa, who was locally called Jarna, was antimagical, an antimage, being of those who had always existed weakly and unoted until the Master Spell had made them stronger, had brought out their true nature. She projected a shield around herself, both subtle and only lightly effective, that that weakened the Master Spell's ability to be aware of her with its broad reaching multiple facet alien intelligence. She passed old stone warehouses that were now fairly bustling communities, crowded places of residence, barter, working and pleasure but also, too often, violence. The only law here were a few bands of vigilantes and one more respected self made Harbourside Sheriff and her two deputies plus eighteen constables. A couple of older women, once fine ladies of wealthy Guild Families, wandered past in ragged once expensive clothes and muttered to each other as they clutched to themselves bags of fruit, bread and other stuff. The two would be far more insane on the other side of the city walls. With them went their loyal old bodyguard, a wiry muscular man in well used but cared for steel armour. He carried a fine quality steel longsword in a scabbard and a wooden club in his right hand. He stopped and faced the young robed woman with a smile on his face and she also stopped to pull back her hood. Mahargrissa had good leather armour beneath her robe and a set of Akaviri blades of the little known Akaviri humans, the Hukaviri. "How long have you come in from Tempresta? Do you bring special goods with you?" She smiled back. "Mostly good news of sorts. Akaviri military forces have occupied the last of the Temprestan Islands and have destroyed the last of the Pirate Lords. The Pre-Emptive Alliance still stands strong thanks to uniform fear of the Master Spell and the TriEmpire. The story of the horrors carried out on Lerimat have influenced all Nine Great Realms of Akaviri, even the Tsaesci, into joining forces. Those of Akavir fear that the TriEmpire and the Master Spell will go to their lands after they leave Tamriel in a state of devistation." The two mad old ladies looked up at the young woman and suddenly they were looking at her from beneath their hoods with very sane, clear and sharp eyes. For they were far from being mad, being instead go-between agents between the Tamriellin rebels and the Akaviri based Pre-Emptive Alliance. They also served other purposes for the rebels and had done so for many decades. The three had met the mysterious young woman Mahargrassa, or Jarna as they knew her, a fair few times but knew next to nothing about her. This was odd for the two ladies had many connections and ran a big network of active agents, semi-active observers and passive informers in and around Anvil. Suddenly, high in the sky above, swept three big copper coloured dragon figures. But these were not at all dragons but were so called master-dragons, were mimickri entities projected from the Master Spell. Being copperish they were of the weakest but most common kind. Despite this they were physically and metaphysically powerful and threatening as they reeked of lizen-magic. They were looking towards Tempresta. The dame called She'Ralla spoke then. "Normally we are not so direct, we twins, but we need to know this? Who are you? Who do you really serve?" Magrargrassa spoke to these two sharp and brilliant minds. "I serve Mahargrah, Lord of Fates, Lord of Ordered Chaos, once the God of Ordered Chaos, who has returned to Tamriel and who is now is Martinpolis. I would have told you this today even if you had not asked. Look above you. There may be a TriImperial attack on the islands and the Alliance forces there have not truly had enough time to dig in yet. As you know, apart from Akaviri forces there are Cyrodilin Imperials who fled there in large numbers when the TriImperial invasion of Tamriel began and those which were already there." She then went on. "I had to make sure you were not of the treacherous Master Order, those Tamriellins who were not controlled by the Master Spell but who serve the TriEmpire out of greed and desire for power, who foolishly see themselves become TriImperials one day though this is impossible." This time Tre'Ralla, the other elegantly old identical twin of a Cyrodilin, spoke. "We have had excecuted over fifty of these Master Order, these lying, murderous fools of the TriEmpire. Yet we have also learned some interesting facts recently from one of them who realised, almost too late, what a fool he had been. He was due to go to the Imperial City to gain his reward of TriImperial Citizenship when sickness stopped him getting into a teleport-carriage with two other fools. Then he was told he had to wait another year to gain his reward. He attempted to contact the other two who had gone but with out any success. Then he travelled in secret, through semiwilderness, to Martinpolis. There he attempted to find out what had happened to the two who had gone away in the vanishing teleport-carriage. Their dead bodies were found by beachcombers living on the eastern shore of the Imperial Ring Channel. As often they are these days, the bodies were skeletal as if all of the blood and life-energies, along with most of the flesh, had been literally sucked out of them." She smiled. "But the ones who murdered these two traitors made a mistake, or so it seems. They found a small curious book of metallic leather. In it was written in New Cyrodillic neatly written accounts of their arrival in the Imperial City, their theft of the book to write in, their strange slavery in a changed part of the great old city and the strange things they had done there. Both men were made to have sex with women who felt uncomfortably strange and looked disturbingly strange, who drained them of energies even as the copulation took place. They were made to over indulge on strange rich foods and drink plus lots of water. They slept in glassy capsule-beds and had endlessly depressing or ecstatically pleasurable dreams that threatened to send them mad. All this took place inside a vast dome of pale glowing crystal, a great but bizarre set of roofless chambers under the dome plus great green slimy gardens of marsh like nature. The dome seemed far too large to fit on Imperial Island let alone in the Imperial City." "Not a dome but a bubble with the top half filled with atmosphere." Mahargrassa responded. "The TriEmpire is seminomadic. When and where it goes it takes the Globeuli with them for they are the real core of the TriEmpire. Each is great but still larger inside than outside. Each is invisible from the outside if cloaked by lizen-magic and all here on Tamriel are so cloaked except those hidden below ground or under water. The bodies should not be getting out of the Globeuli let alone the city or island. I suggest that somebody in the TriEmpire, somebody powerful, is trying to send a warning to normal Tamriellins of what is really happenings. This sort of thing has happened before. It happened when the TriEmpire dominated Leirmat. Such messages helped persuad many to rebel who previously assumed that they could quietly live and survive in the TriEmpire." To be continued in another Post!

EIGHT The young Empress came in dull grey travelling robes and armour. In her hands she held a wooden quarterstaff that was reinforced with steel caps and bands but K'Martina sensed hidden tricks in this seemingly basic weapon. She was not typically beautiful but striking and she carried much charisma in her fairly short, fairly slim frame. With her came Blades be they Guards, Knights, Battlemages or Healers along with a few others. This included large battledogs and smaller nimbler tracking and hunting dogs, pack-ponies and some pack-donkeys. Then she was coming to a halt and was looking around in amazement at the fallen items from the army of the undead, the great collapsed Kurikanzi warrior and the great army of Ayleids, Dwemers and Aurorans plus the big magic-mechanical spiders. But the oddest was the woman in tough travelling gear sitting cross legged, meditating calmly amongst it all. Blade Commander Jeffries III stepped forward and indicated the lot with a sweep of the hand. "We should perhaps deal with them before they become active. These are not our friends." The young Empress in exile shook her head. "No, they were fighting the undead and that makes them all to be potential allies against one of the major threats that face us. Also the one meditating is fully aware of us and is extremely dangerous." K'Martina slipped calmly and smoothly to her feet. She bowed gracefully to the Empress and then walked to stand before her. She then spoke. "Your Majesty, you are wise. Even the Kurikanzi has been transformed by the light that came like a flashing blast to change everything. It destroyed the undead, releasing damned souls to the Cycle of Birth and Death-Rebirth. Did you do this?" Empress Elenari Septim shook her head. "I wish I had such power so that I might use it against the TriEmpire, the Master Spell, the rising undead and the other threats. I suspect that is much that we have to discuss but first, what of these beings?" The great Kurikanzi warrior sat up as an armoured hulk and groaned. Then it spoke out loud in Kurikonddica the ancient common language of all the Kuri peoples. "I am no longer Kurikanzi! At least no longer will I serve the Kurikanzi Overlord or the Way of the Zruidic Path that leads only to a kind of undeath and damnation." He stood slowly but somehow gracefully despite his bulk. "I will serve you K'Martina of the Kurikondi." K'Martina nodded in quiet acceptance though this was a sudden and big change in Kuri History. She then turned back to face the Empress. "You understand Kurikonddica! I am impressed. That is supposed to be a secret language." The Empress shrugged. "Kurikanzi infiltrators were captured back even before the TriEmpire came with its damned Master Spell. Before they died they told us much. No, we did not kill them. They died peacefully of old age in a hidden settlement. It was about twenty years before the invasion came and the then Emperor began the preparations against the invasion. Movements of armies, stockpiling of hidden vaults and depots and much else was done. The War of the Five was only partly real. It was mostly falsehood to disguise the truth. Kurikanzi infiltrators, shapeshifters like you, started the war but we took over." The big hulking man laughed sourly. "No Kurikanzi is like her, is like K'Martina. I would have been proud to die by her hands and die is probably what I would have done if we had come to fight each other." The Empress nodded. "The preparations were in three parts. The attempt to defend the empire openly quickly came to nothing. The Emperor died not at the hands of the enemy but at the blade of one of his oldest and most trusted bodyguards. The second part was on going resistance, a movement of raids and trouble making for the TriEmpire. It also has largely failed as we rebels do not have the support of the population of oppressed peoples for their very minds are oppressed. Then there is the third way, the movement deep underground to the Underlands of many thousands of people and down there the continuation of some kind of free Cyrodilin Empire. It thrives well enough despite various difficulties and some threats." K'Martina smiled. "Very good. Why are you here?" "A dream! A persistent nagging dream of the kind that I have that come true." She sighed. "I came with these brave Blades and other folk. Here, hopefully, will be formed a large but unlikely alliance against the TriEmpire and its Master Spell." K'Martina shook her head this time. "No, it is the Master Spell and its TriEmpire. Despite appearances it is the Master Spell that is truly in charge. It always has been." "Then the last Archmage of the Mages Guild was correct." The Cyrodilin leader responded. "The Secret University has taken the place of the Arcane University." K'Martina bowed briefly again. "As Imperial Envoy of the Kurikonddic Empire I offer you a treaty, an alliance, to wage war against the Master Spell and the TriEmpire. But for now let us have a rest and wait for these others to wake so that we might communicate with them." To be continued in NINE!

SEVEN When the Mother Compassionate of the Sisters Compassionate knocked on the big main doors of the mansion they opened up quietly inwards. There were three puzzled looking Sisters Compassionate standing behind her in the same kind of knee length robes clipped closed all the way down the front. The four women looked into a large empty entrance chamber, that is empty of life. For it had fine fur rugs, marble statues on pedestals, wall tapestries and bright crystal-lamps in ornate brass fixtures. A great ornate white-golden mechanical clock stood against one wall and small clockwork figures marches, rode horses and danced while celestial orbs whirled and a hidden music-box played a fine tune. Mother Compassionate Terrirara Ni'Clenn had seen much of oddness in her life, too much poverty and misery, a little too much violence, but this chamber was not only very exotic it promised even more behind the three big wooden doors. On each wall was a large, heavy wooden, lightly ornate door. To her right was one marked in various languages, including New Cyrodilin, the words East Wing, Mahargrah Guild. Before her was a door marked Mahargrah Private Domain. To the right was the door marked Mahargrah Community Centre. Each door had a crystal disk embedded in it but two were glowing softly red while the one to the right was glowing softly green. Sister Compassionate Marina Tarana stepped forward and spoke. "Forgive me, Mother Compassionate, despite your previous words I must observe outwardly that there is a very odd but pleasing feel about this place that began when we first came through the gate but which is stronger now we are inside the building." Terrirara responded. "I observed the same for here the Master Spell itself is screened away meaning that here is a great but subtle power at play. I came here to plead for a case of obtaining this building as a new community centre for the sisterhood but now we face a very unexpected situation. Perhaps there is hope here?" The door to the right swung quietly and smoothly open and Mahargrah himself stepped out in a silken house-robe. At his feet were two dogs being a bigger older female and a old pup male both of chunky handsome looks and black fur. They wagged their tails and panted in a friendly way at the newcomers. Mahargrah sighed and spoke. "Well how goes it in merry old Martinpolis? I just arrived recently myself. I see the Sisterhood has come here with the appearance of this fine metropolis." The Mother Compassionate bowed briefly. "You are Mahargrah of legends? I sense power in you and powerful shielding. The sisterhood had hoped to buy this old city mansion to use as a much needed community centre..." He nodded. "You can much of the East Wing. Please follow me. I have plenty of questions to ask. I hope you have plenty of answers to give." The outer doors closed all by themselves and were again firmly locked. There was silence as they entered a large chamber that was a mixture of lobby with many comfortable looking chairs, stone statues, wide long couches that looked as if they could be used as beds, big thick floor furs that looked as if they also could be slept on, great metallic urns with big brass tap-sinks, large shelf-cases neatly filled with useful items, metallic machines that looked like dispensers of some kind, colorful rich wall tapestries and a great big horizontal serving slot, a counter like arrangement. There were also other items. The chamber could take easily a hundred people with out anybody missing out on a couch or a chair. Mahargrah bowed to the Mother Compassionate. "Apart from this chamber there is the area behind the counter, five large office chambers, five large storerooms full of hopefully useful items, a large meeting room, a set of five healers' rooms, twenty toilet-rooms, five large bath-rooms, five dormitory rooms, ten bedrooms, five bedsitter apartments, a large kitchen, two fair sized kitchens, five dining rooms, five large library-studies, one museum-gallery chamber, an alchemist laboratory, a large indoor garden area with sky-windows that can open to let in the rain, a large meeting hall combination theater, and a other facilities including a fair few empty spaces. This building is bigger inside than out and is divided into zones. You may only come into this zone." Almost as one all three Sisters Compassionate fell to the floor but they slowed as a gentle but strong force slowed them down, then lifted them and carried them with a soft shimmer, to lay them on various couches. Neither Terrirara or Mahargrah seemed at all surprised. She spoke. "The Master Spell influenced those three strongly. Will they survive the freeing process? Despite being mastered by the Master Spell they have done much good for the Sisterhood Compassionate and are good people at heart. I would hate to see them come to harm." He nodded. "We will need to do something special for them and others like them along with those who suffer worse than they do." Three young robed women raced into the chamber, each in Sister Compassionate robes but not with the normal ranking hem and neckline bands of orange, red, yellow or white. Orange was Mother Compassionate, red was Guardian Compassionate, yellow was Sister Compassionate and white was Initiate Compassionate. These three had bands of grey and would soon be known as Assistants Compassionate. With them came three metal mage-trolleys that moved all by themselves on rubber wheels. Each had a flat bed platform, was a trolley meant to carry patients. Mahargrah nodded. "A healing immersion chamber awaits the three of them." He turned and hugged her to himself. "How are you, daughter?" At that she snorted. "I look a good deal older than you do but I feel young enough though much better away from the oppressive draining effects of the Master Spell. It feels like a fog has lifted from my mind. A few of us are old enough to remember when the TriEmpire and the Master Spell fell upon this poor war, famine and plague ridden continent. I was in Anvil and at first it seemed that the city would put up a big fight as it had done against one of the False Emperors during the War of the Five. But then the more powerful magic of the mages simply failed and many people, none of them mage, null or antimage, suddenly became loyal to the new empire." She shook her head in wonder, in remembered shock and horror. "The Order of the Nine called upon the Nine Divines and for a while the skies filled with strange thunder and lightening. But then it was gone and since then the Nine Divines have remained silent to all as have all gods and all daedra in most of Tamriel. No magic, no priestesses or priests as we knew them, no Emperors and yet much is the same, at least on the surface. Except that nobody feels extremes of emotion, neither good or bad. We all live a fairly dull, a very consistent existence. There is no more real creativity, no genius, no real celebrating, nothing to make life vital." "Then there are those who fade away, who go to sleep until they go into a coma and never awake. There are those who go insane in various ways. There are those who sicken with mysterious incurable illnesses to become bed ridden or crippled or dead. All these and other such odd troubles are still relatively minor but are slowly but steadily increasing." She shrugged. "The serums that the TriEmpire give out for free, they seem to help but the serums are costly to make, there never seems to be enough of them and they are becoming slowly less effective." He nodded. "Perhaps I could also assist there though it would be strange for me to assist the TriEmpire in doing something." He stretched. "Beneath us but still inside this 'zone' are entrances into the sewer-utility tunnels of this city, a large and complicated maze that you may smuggle people through to come into this place but never leave, at least never back to Martinpolis or Tamriel. Bring others openly, of course, who will officially be here." She smiled. "Do not fear, we will do this in such a way that the TriEmpire will not notice anything." In this she was both right and wrong. The Assistants Compassionate and the mage-carts took the three sleeping Sisters Compassionate away from that chamber. He led her off to meet the animals, the ever-babies and others. Continued in EIGHT!

Impressive. Words beautifully suited to the butterfly form and the form to the words.

Excellent! Nice real feeling flow of emotions and honesty.

SIX The Eternal Champion was slowly becoming younger even as he helped remove stone blocks in the catacombs beneath the marshlands cathedral. They were not only surprisingly extensive and complicated, they were designed to hide secrets. Argonians were busy assisting him but so were human, orc and marshies, a cousin to the magical brownies of the woods and jungles, as they carefully moved the ancient stonework. They wished to damage nothing both out of respect and because they might need to put the wall back as it first had appeared. They were revealing no crude dug out space, no caves, but a stone hallway tunnel lit by dull glowing crystal-lamps fused to walls. Not Ayleid but Aymers, the secretive elves of Argonia who had once been of the Ayleid. The Aymer ancestral kingdom had dared to turn against the increasing brutality of the Ayleid rule, had fought against slavery of any being be it human or any other. Their reward was to be treacherously attacked by three neighboring Ayleid kingdoms at once. But the kingdom had bordered relatively close to Argonia and the Aymers had all escaped except for both a rear guard who fought to the death to slow down the attackers and those who faked the deaths of all. The Aymer had vanished downwards never to bee in the marshes again. The Argonians had not fought them for the Aymer gave them gifts of five powerful magical artifacts that were long lost in the marshlands along with the ancient ruins they lay in. Later the Cyrodilins had controlled that area of Argonia they called the Black Marsh and had built the settlement and then the cathedral on that island. The Order of the Nine found the Aymer tunnel but for some reason had concealed it behind walls and a maze of catacombs. A short marshie lifted up a block with surprising strength considering his one metre height and vanished with a sparkling shimmer to appear again up the hallway. Marshies in simple tunics of skirt and jerkins, both men and women, did not normally find comfort in enclosed spaces but did not seem to mind these catacombs. It helped that all the aged coffins and other remains in that area were fake. The Eternal Champion gestured all to stop. Then he took up a torch and it flared into flames, almost smokeless but bright burning with far more brightness than heat. He picked up his staff and then stepped into the high wide tunnel. The pressure of the Master Spell eased off at once. He spoke then in New Cyrodilin, a language all the marshfolk in that area seemed to know well. "I sense no danger but we need to be cautious. Who will willingly go with me further into the hidden Aymer places?" Three marshies and three lizardfolk went with him, the taller Argonians being armed and armoured more Cyrodilin style and the marshies holding magical staffs of marsh wood. They only went for about ten metres when they encountered a large Ayleid style door with a tree design inside translucent material. The Eternal Champion quickly found a way to open it and it did so. The group of seven made their way along the same hallway tunnel, the doors swinging closed behind them, down a rampway tunnel and then into a great dome shaped chamber. It was flooded with enough light that he caused his torch to go out and the others did the same with torches or crystal-handlamps. The seven stood and looked around in shock. It was Ayleid in some ways, with power-stones of valar and welkynd kinds but also some less common kinds, in various wall sconces, on top of pillars and such like. There were high block areas rising above and walkway bridges. But there were also statues of elf figures sitting regally and robed in thrones or in armour with weapons or others just doing every day tasks. One was of an Aymer woman in a bath, quite naked, the bath being real clear cool water pouring in through a chute and out through hidden means. Metallic tablets of ancient elvin languages and other symbology were stacked neatly inside horizontal shelf-slots carved out of stone walls. Some others were fused to wall surfaces by hidden means. Then there were the short, squat, vaguely elf like humanoids dressed only in loincloths and pouch dotted waist belts, both men and women. They had albino white like skin and large pale yellow eyes. Their hair on their heads was dark off-white. There were fifteen of them, ten being female. Each had a curious ornate pistol holstered at his or her side and a shortsword at the other plus some knives, a canteen and some random odd items. They had been busy sweeping up floors and dusting other surfaces all over the big chamber but now they stood frozen watching the strangers. The Eternal Champion bowed gracefully and then he spoke in an ancient common Ayleid language. "Greetings to the Oomir, wondrous servants of the Aymer. We come in peace seeking simply answers to the nature of this place." One, a woman, ran forward gracefully and stopped to look up at him with big, lovely yellow eyes. "You know these things why? Oomir supposed to be secret. Aymer supposed to be secret?" He smiled. "I read the various tablets on the walls. Also I am the Eternal Champion and sometimes knowledge comes unbidden to me. We come in peace. Where are your lords and ladies?" The Oomir smiled richly and very warmly at him. "You are big and handsome. Lords and ladies mostly went away a long time ago. They took the Three Secret Ways. Now there be one thousand, two hundred and three Aymer here. They have some children also but not counted as full Aymer until coming of age ceremonies though they are well cared for. Aymer love their children more than most Ayleids do. You must be escaped slaves from Ayleid Kingdoms." The Eternal Champion smiled at her attempts to seduce him. "The Ayleid Kingdoms vanished a very long time ago and the Ayleids can no longer be found in Cyrodiil. Humans ruled Cyrodiil, they are called Cyrodilins, for a very long time. Then came the TriImperials who conquered Tamriel. They brought with them the Master Spell." At this the Oomir woman shivered. "That would explain much. Our lords and ladies have been much agitated over the last few decades. They have us guarding this chamber and we also keep it clean. My name is Oo-Olly! Do you think I have lovely eyes? You could give me child and we could be very happy together." He bowed briefly. "Thank you! I will consider your offer." But then a tall, elegant elfin lady was entering the room in robes that came down to her ankles. She smiled luke warmly at the Eternal Champion. "We have been waiting for you. Please forgive the Oomir and particularly young Oo-Olly. She simply wishes to gain status through bearing one or more children of unusual status. Lady Alzi'Tafu dreamed of your arrival some months ago. The dream cost her the last of her sanity. I am Alzi'Siffen, her elder half-sister. Please follow me as we have already laid out food, drink and fresh drinking water for your satisfaction." She stroked the much shorter Oomir's head, turned and moved off elegantly and gracefully. The marshies and lizardfolk knew enough to be cautious and of course he was also. The food, drink and water was in a large alcove of the same great chamber, an alcove hidden from the area they had first walked into by a great block platform of stone. There were no Oomir in that area. Aymer soldiers stood guard against walls in armour and with various exotic weapons. Both weapons and armour were magical. The Aymer noble faced the newcomers and spoke. "Oomirs are easily agitated and though we have told them much, there are things we have not told them, especially of that we are unsure of. You awoke in the cathedral that now stands above us on the island?" He nodded. "Yes, in the bedroom of a long dead priest. A cathedral of the Nine Divines. I see no evidence of daedric worship." "We gave that up when we ceased to be Ayleids and became Aymers." He nodded. "A wise move. Respect them but do not worship them. What is this place?" Alzi'Siffen looked around. "Our first arrival point beneath the ground. No, we did not build this place though you might easily assume so though we came here long before the cathedral was constructed. Another Mer came this way, a mysterious elvin people who's very existence is a fact lost from commonly known history. They came here in the Mythic Age. They were called the Waymer for they followed what they called the Way of Wisdom Seeking. The Waymer came from the Aldmer but were soon estranged for they did not agree with the path that the majority, the Aldmer, were taking. The Waymer rightly saw a lack of wisdom and compassion in the rise of the Altmers, Ayleids, Dwemers and other new elf peoples." "We added to the chamber but we also learned from the golden alloy tablets of wisdom left here for any to read. It strengthened out dislike of slavery and improved the reasons for wanting to see the end of such. For previously we had considered that slavery of humans and other non-Ayleids weakened the spirit of our people but then we saw also the compassionate side of doing so. We added our own tablets." Then she indicated the table of food and drink, the crystal bowls of sliced fruit in sweet spiced fruit juice, the crystal jugs of exotic wines, the plates of sweet-rolls, the savoury and sweet pastries and other items. "Oomir cultivate shoomrik, mossgri and ashork in the caves close to here. Then we transform them into perfect but highly nutritional copies of various foods and drinks. Please take your fill." But the Eternal Champion lifted up his staff high into the air and out from it shot an expanding globe of magical energies, silverlight and just burning white light. At once everything changed. The great chamber was now in darkness, was dusty and filled with cobwebs in some places. The tablets were gone. The tables were there but they were wreckage, were smashed furniture. In the middle of the air floated garish blood-crystal bowls and jugs of blood red substances. The Aymer were elvin lichs in armour or robes, were terrible in their decayed undeath, were leering at the seven newcomers. Alzi'Siffen grinned yellowing fangs in mockery at the newcomers. "Very good! It would have been too easy to trick you into drinking and eating Oomir blood and flesh spiced with some nice undeath magic. Now we fight." But the Eternal Champion just sighed. "You are already undone!" With screams of hate, agony and terror the lichs all perished, burning away brightly and savagely, their gear falling to the floor. Then they were gone. The Oomir they had met first of all were gone, had been cleverly projected illusions but they found filthy, hungry, sickly Oomir in steel cages in an alcove close by. The elvin lichs who had been guarding them had vanished, fleeing away. To be continued in SEVEN!

Very interested!

Why even a cat may look at an Emperor! But for all that the cat may still go hungry! The taste of honey dripped from her lips as I kissed it away with a passionate eagerness. The night sky was half full of bright shining moon. Even the noise from the freeway was romantic.

FIVE K'Martina was surprised by the enemy that came racing out of a large open doorway through which came also the reflection of strange flickering lights of some kind. At once she crouched, focused and sent out a globe shaped wave of energy that deflected enemy long range attacks. Aurorans came racing across the big chamber in magical golden battle armour and each held a battle-axe in the right gloved hand that glowed with exotic magical energies. From the top of the axe, the stunted rod tip, came pulses of disintegration magic. Each also held a large circular shield in the left hand that glowed with magic but in the centre of each shield was a stubby spike that fired off small sizzling hissing darts of energy. But with the Aurorans came Ayleid warriors in silvery armour but the elves were armed with a variety of curious weapons. About a third held bolt-action dart-guns powered, it seemed, by some kind of magic. Each had twin barrels and bolt-darts were fed into the open breech of one side while the other seemed to be left loaded if needed in a hurry. Each weapon ended in a long spike to thrust into an enemy. These spikeguns fired off magical darts with lightly exploding tips. About a third came with tridents and the three sharp prongs sparkled and crackled with electricity of exotic colouration be it blue, purple or red. And the last third or so carried each a long thin sword in the right hand and on the left hand what looked like a horrific looking glove puppet, a thing of metallic leathery fibre, of glowing energies and a mouth of long, sharp fangs. Except that projected into the air before each of these was an energy form of the glove puppet head that crackled, glowed and hissed out of gaping mouths. K'Martina had fought Aurorans a long time ago, in another phase of her existence, when she had been seeking an artifact in the realm of Oblivion. She had met but not fought Ayleid when she had come to Tamriel once way back in history during the same life. These Aurorans and Ayleid were outwardly much the same except some minor changes in the armour and some big changes in their weapons along with the Auroran shields. Yet she sensed there was another, more important difference, that was more subtle and hidden. But then came steam-spiders, large and hulking, each with a figure hidden inside a kind of semitransparent bubble. Each monster had two double jointed arms that ended, on the right, in a great slashing stabbing blade of yellow-white energy and, on the left, in a big tube with a hollow end that hurled out hissing, sizzling, exploding fireballs. Dwemer soldiers rode on their backs in exotic semi-covered metallic baskets firing off the same type of spikeguns as some of the Ayleid were using. Dwemer elves in and on the machines, Ayleid elves on foot and Auroran daedra fighting as an alliance against who? She stepped back into the alcove and unleashed a multiple mix of magic and other forces. Magical items through out the alcove glowed and shifted or just vanished. Mage-staffs and other devices lifted into the air. Then they formed out of mid air, elementalons like softly shimmering humanoids of flamelight, silverlight or lifelight. Each gathered to itself weapons, armour and other objects of usefulness and these items altered to suit them. Items literally altered as they flew through the air to the elemental humanoids. But K'Martina could only summon five mid-power elementons in that place. Reinforcing them were globular balls of many melded together materials that emanated magical energies of many kinds. They were formed out of various smaller and more basic magical items. They floated in the air. The flying-platform and other larger and-or more complex devices were left alone. The strange alliance of beings rushed past the entrance of the alcove and only bothered to glare at her threateningly. They did not attack her and so she did not attack them. Instead she emerged in time to see the force confront another one of the undead. Skeletars, zombies, zombars and also liches in armour. The liches came floating through the air. Vampires came also in armour but also in robes. Weapons, armour, robes, staffs and other items were of a magic new to her and yet which seemed in some ways familiar. It was a dreadful new form of undeath magic, antinatural by its very 'nature' and intrinsically aggressive to and parasitic of life. It was a gamble but she found it easy enough to choose a side to attack. Yes the daedra and elvin peoples could often be evil but the undeath she faced was worse than anything she had ever confronted before, even in the worst parts of the realm of Oblivion. It was not just the undead creatures but it was inside them and was around each of them, was around all of them. It sucked at life energies. It grasped at living things and was painful to 'feel'. She hurled the magical balls at the undeath and watched as they exploded into expanding spheres of savage flaming, crackling, freezing and bright flashing magical energies. Undead screamed, collapsed, were hurled back and often burned away. Even powerful lichs suffered terribly even if they did not meet true death. Even as this went on the combined attacks of Ayleid, Dwemer and Aurorans also smashed into the front ranks of the undead, most of them being lesser undead of the zombies, zombars and skeletars. The lesser undead collapsed, burning away to unnatural grey ash that in turn vanished away with amazing speed. Why the battle was taking place in that ruined fortress she did not know but was starting to suspect the truth. The Cyrodilin Empire had found powerful secrets in that place and had then used them while keeping them hidden. Perhaps those very secrets had been used against the TriImperials as they attacked the fortress. The undead outnumbered her and her new allies by more than ten to one even if most of them were mere lesser undead. They kept pouring out of a circular opening in the stone floor, a secret way most likely opened by some kind of magic or at least she sensed as the disk of stone had simply vanished but in a fashion to suggest it was meant to do just that. Anyway there was a large rampway tunnel leading from that down deeper into the ground. It was then that the Kurikanzi came racing at the undeath from another angle, a creature of pseudo-undeath attacking the undead because Kurikanzi hated traditional undead and visa verso. The Kurikanzi hurled into the ranks of the undead like a great tumbling magical boulder that hurled, crushed, burned and killed many. The great warrior used the monstrous sword with incredible speed and agility, slicing through ranks of the undead like a peasant cutting down wheat with a sickle. The two armies met in a tide of war cries as she found herself given room by her new allies, sensing they did so reluctantly even as she so joined them. Then she and her five elementons were fighting savagely, they using weapons and she using her hands and feet glowing with powerful magical energies. K'Martina moved endlessly, smoothly and with amazing power and agility. Her graceful form did one endless karta. Sometimes she struck more directly at the more powerful undead, giving them the benefit of more focused power, and used indirect attacks on the swarms of lesser undead. Then, with a dreaded shock, she realized that the Aurorans, Ayleid and Dwemer that fell to the ranks of the undeath only sometimes died a natural death, their souls releasing into the Great Cycle of Birth and Death-Rebirth. For sometimes their souls became visible tormented shades, ghosts of a kind but not truly dead as ghosts were. Nor were they truly undead. But these shades somehow made the field of undeath stronger though they did not directly attack life. Worst of all some were becoming undead, not lesser and not of the greatest power, but vampires in the case of the elves and something new and twisted in the case of the daedra that she knew, somehow, were called the ardead. Knowledge came to her sometimes unbidden from a source unknown to her and it might often be only partial but it was never false. The undeath was slowly winning and she considered using more powerful magic or other tricks. She reached into a metallic pouch with some reluctance but suddenly... Suddenly the whole great chamber exploded with amazingly powerful light. K'Martina cried out as it seemed to go through her, to make her briefly transparent. The sunlight burned away the undead and the poor shades died normally and drifted away into nothingness. She fell to her knees even as her elementons vanished, their armour and other devices cluttering heavily to the stone floor. The great Kurikondi collapsed into semiconscious onto the floor. The daedra and elves did the same, the great magical-steam spiders coming to an abrupt halt, except the Dwemer in the baskets who collapsed into the caged devices. The brightness ended as quickly as it had begun. With difficulty she looked up to see that all the stone statues were now looking translucent and they glowed from within. Walled areas were now openings and showed more chambers with statues that had not been seen before such as the rest of the Nine Holies of Leirmat. She sat down into a cross legged position and meditated to gather herself for something big was about to happen, or so she sensed. To be finished in SIX!

Went home one day? Went home one day But home was no longer home Met old friends one day But old friends were no longer friends Beloved pets long in the grave Old landmarks transformed Family were strangers now And one was just a sad reflection of old deep feelings Went away again And never returned!

light bulb, yes! (Not murdered!) portable dismountable storage device?

Just because something is obvious does not mean that it is true. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle