The Triple Invasions

[Maharg67]

Installment Nineteen

Edited July 10, 2009 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

Mahargrah Two, Queen Shejoy II and their force used the Guardian-Towers to travel instantly to close to Fort Highfight. They were soon arriving at the fort where other forces awaited them including hulking big dragon like dragoms and gobgoblins from Castle Maharg who preferred battle to decorating.

 

K'Martina lay physically on the hard floor of a basement chamber built by the Ayleids long ago but she was caught up in a savage pyschic-spiritual-psychological-magical battle with a strange unknown force.

 

Empress Evenia Septim and Merlin quickly defeated the Kamalotin Crusaders with non-lethal magic and watched as they turned and fled home.

 

Installment Twenty

 

Only few people were allowed into the White Gold Tower since the new Imperial Steward had taken his seat on the Imperial Leadership Council. Since then none of the Imperial Leadership Council had departed from the upper chambers of the tower. Communications with the Imperial Directions Council was done through magical true-mirrors that showed the non reflected face of the Steward or any Imperial Leadership Councillor as they gave out various instruction. The Imperial Directions Council was to ask for clarifications, to give positive criticism or feedback through the same means but in truth nothing of the sort had been accepted since the Imperial Steward had hardened his control over the High Councils and the Imperial Government.

 

The new Imperial Guard, infamously cold and brutal, were heavily armed and tall, broad shouldered men in impressive black and gold magical armour that they never took off in public. They had power magical weaponry, armour and other devices and were backed up by their own battlemages in the same style of armour but with metallic mage-staffs. They had taken over the guarding of the White Gold Tower much to chagrin of the Imperial Legionmark and its elite Legionaries who had once had the highly honourable and high prestige job that happened also to be highly paid.

 

Imperial Minister of Public Service Hartin Tane was only too aware of the hulking Imperial Guards as she strode along the gently curving hallway of the lower levels of the great and amazingly ancient tower. Six of them accompanied the minister and her people. There was something about them that gave her the creeps but she did not let it show. Her two lightly armoured and armed bodyguards, who were not allowed to carry any magical items, seemed inadequate but that was all she was allowed along with one assistant and one adviser. No visitors could carry magic items and those with intrinsic magic were rarely let into the tower. The Mages Guild had complained often about this to no avail.

 

They passed doors, large and ornately impressive, on the inside of the curve of the hallway that she had not seen open for a very long time. When younger and serving as an assistant and then as a much trusted adviser to a Prime Minister, she rememberd dozens of clerks, adminstration officers, go-fors and others busy in that very hallway. Often doors were open to reveal busy offices, archives rooms, meeting rooms and other chambers. Not now that all those folk had long been dismissed to other government buildings like the Parliament Lodge and the Triple-Towers.

 

Yet she always had experienced a feeling of constant, if disturbing activity, behind those firmly closed and locked doors as she did at that very moment.

 

That was when she heard a muffled scream of a woman coming from behind a door and she stopped in surprise. The scream was an amazing mixture of rage, agony and something almost sexual. Her calm bodyguards, her obviously shocked adviser and her frowning adviser halted with her. Her Imperial Guard escort halted and looked coldly around at the door from behind which had come the scream.

 

The door exploded open, the lock breaking, and through it came rushing a dark brown woman who could have been a typical Cyrodilin except that she was naked, was wild and her right arm was covered with red-purple hariless boneskin. A whie metallic bracelt with red symbols and numbers was around her left wrist. She was slimly voluptous, was oddly beautiful despite her right arm.

 

She halted in front of Hartin Tane and spoke out in oddly accented Cyrodilic. "Help us! The whirling slashing storms of magic and antimagic are ripping apart the very fabric of the world. Help us!" Then she turned and ran along the hallway with surprising speed.

 

An Imperial Guard raised a hand and his glove glowed softly before out of his trigger finger spat a pulse of energy. The strange young woman sparkled briefly and fell semiconscious to the floor, clearly stunned but moving around a little as if still desperate to get away.

 

The Imperial Minister had seen through the open doorway a curious mixture of the familiar and the exotic. Alchemist workbenches, clerical desks with multiple small drawers and slots, a hat rack and such like. But there also were strange metal tables with head, chest, wrist and ankle constraints of what looked like metallic leather, upon which were fixed young looking men and women of Cyrodilin appearance. All were naked but covered with clean white sheets. Strange machines likes upright boxes with glass fronts behind which whirled silver disks of metallic silvery tape and many blinking coloured lights stood in a row against the far wall. Men and women in white robetunics with many large pockets and hoods moved around, their bodies hidden by the tunics, by leathery masks, gloves and strange leathery knee-boots.

 

The Imperial Guard who had stunned the woman turned and spoke to the minister in a hard, sexless voice with the same odd accent as the woman had used. She suddenly realised she had never heard an Imperial Guard speak before and she did not know anybody who had done so. "You have seen what you must not see and you have heard what you must not hear. The Omnicronus will decide your fate."

 

"Is this some madness of the Imperial Steward? I did not think that he would stoop to such madness as this! Or is this something beyond his mind?" She frowned. "Angimagic, what is antimagic but a philosophical idea expressed by foolish old sages who have little more to do than sit in dusty old studies arguing foolish arguments with each other while real life passes them by. Or so I have always assumed. Perhaps I was wrong."

 

"I am only an Imperial Guard." The guard turned away. "The Omnicronus will decide your fate. Inform your bodyguards to do nothing and that includes the adviser who is really a powerful battlemage in disguise. One doubts that the Omnicronus will choose to harm you for we need you. Yes, the Omnicronus has spoken to my mind. Follow me!" Then the great hulking guard gently picked up the stunned woman as if she was weightless and then strode through the open doorway.

 

The whole lot of them went through the doorway into the large chamber. The door was firmly closed and relocked by one of the Imperial Guards. Hartin saw things before hidden to her like upright glass cubes filled with swirling green mist of various shades of darkness. Each had a standing human inside except one that had an orc-human woman. All were naked but the mist caused them to be much more modest than they might otherwise have been.

 

The Imperial Guard troop leader pointed to a bigger glass box in one corner. It had a door inside it, in a corner wall, that was oddly metallic. "Each of you must go into there, remove all items and step totally naked through the door. This includes such as ring, amulets, bracelets and otherwise."

 

The minister scowled. "I will not go naked before strangers."

 

The Imperial Guard responded calmly. "We are flesh-golems and have no sexual interest in naked humans. The human workers here are all nulls. They are human but the Nulling has made them both sterile and inhibited. They are also very busy, as you can see, with one Secondary Program of the Grand Program. The stripping to nudity is for security and other important reasons. Magical items are banned totally."

 

But then the Imperial Guard paused as if listening to something before speaking again. "The glass will become semitransparent so that modesty is increased. Please hurry as time is against us all."

 

The minister frowned. "Very well but the Imperial Steward and the Imperial Leadership Council will pay for this."

 

The Imperial Guard pointed to the glass cubicle. "Please be quick! You have much to learn and many surprises to come."

 

The minister did as instructed and nakedly, slimly muscular, she stepped through the door and into a long metallic hallway. The metallic door closed behind her and to her shock the floor began to glide beneath her, to carry her down to another door identical to the one she had come through. As she moved along she began to be showered with a blue watery fluid from the ceiling. It splashed down over her body and down to the moving floor. Then, about a third of the way along the hallway, it became clear water. She became aware of her naked adviser, the battlemage, following her. Then behind her became a naked young bodyguard, a young man. Then came a blushing young woman, very voluptuous, the mid aged assistant who was probably oggling the bodyguard. Then came the female bodyguard, the slimly muscular and lightly scarred amazon. The third part of the hallway was not liquid but gently blasts of warm air and pulses of blue light that seemed to pass right through them and made them tingle.

 

They dressed into light blue robetunics and under-tunics of odd design in the large metallic room they came into, taking items from hooks. Simple blue slippers went over their feet.

 

The battlemage frowned as she slipped on her last slipper. "Forgive me Minister but they nullified my magic-tooth somehow and also, I suspect, my intrinsic magic."

 

The male bodyguard frowned. "Minister, I don't fancy using hand-and-foot fighting against those flesh-golems. My guess is that they would not go down easy even if naked. All of this is quite bizarre."

 

"It is not at all how I expected our day to go." The assistant shivered and looked around in obvious fear. "I wish it hadn't happened."

 

Imperial Minister of Public Service Hartin Tane admired and liked her personal assistant in many ways but wished the mid aged woman had more courage and flexibility of mind when it came to anything outside of her narrow focused world of the Imperial Court and Parliament.

 

A big double metallic door opened and they walked out of that room into a larger one that was a traditional meeting chamber. Half circles of bench-tables and armchairs rose in tiers to face the podium of the actual leadership council. But a layer of dust lay over everything including the bodies that were sitting up, frozen into position, in the various chairs. They were oddly preserved being bathed each in a field of softly shimmering blue energies. All of the nine chairs of the council were filled and the Imperial Steward sat frozen angry and frightened at the same time. As for the armchairs they were about half full of cronies, political animals, assistants and others. Everybody was dressed in their finest and with large golden neck emblems of office.

 

Hartin Tane slowly walked down a stepped area between armchairs and bench-tables, past a young woman in a not very modest black serving tunic, who was frozen standing up. She passed Imperial Bodyguards, humans in magical armour and with magical weapons, more young serving women in the immodest frocks who served up expensive alchohol, other drinks and snacks. Of course the Imperial Treasury would have been paying for all of the extras.

 

It was a sad scene, a dreadful scene and yet she sensed something very odd about it.

 

The voice spoke from all directions at once being not too loud and yet perfectly clear and strong. It spoke in Cyrodilic. "Sorrow for none of them! All of them were traitors to the empire or were infiltrators. Have you heard of the Kurikanzi?"

 

She nodded as she tried to come to terms with what she was facing. "Not much but yes, I have heard of them. They were Kurikondi once but went into darkness, became a zruidic people instead of a druidic people. Like the Kurikondi they are a very secretive people. How did they infiltrate the highest echelons of Imperial Government so easily?"

 

Omnicronos spoke again. "It was not easy! They had help from the Magicus. We are from the distant future of Tamriel long after the Magical World War that led to the use of magical super weapons, the magical storms and the antimagical backlash. The Magicus is the entity that is all the unleashed magic of the storms. Antimagicus is the entity of its opposition. They are not like either of us. They are alien to what we are and make us seem quite the same in comparison though we are very different from each other. Kurikondi are a shapeshifting magefolk of a people with special abilities as are the Kurikanzi and other peoples of the Kuri. They are amazing fighters of physical, metaphysical and magic ways. The Kurikanzi began infiltrating the Cyrodilin Empire even back before Methrunes Dagon attempted his great invasion of the Oblivion Gates. The Kurikondi then came to Tamriel but for mixed reasons."

 

The Minister of Public Service frowned. "Surely some in this chamber were innocent?"

 

Omnicronos responded. "No! This was a chamber where much treachery was constantly voiced, where illegalities were openly discussed such as assassinations, the movement of stolen imperial funds and various secret alliances with such as the Dark Brotherhood. The Magicus that they foolishly allied themselves with, did so, when it sensed myself and my people breaking through the time barriers, opening a time-warp gate. It drained them all and life-energies and majicka, all knowledge and anything else useful. Then it departed but it still has a strong presence here in the Imperial City that in this Era they call Martinpolis. My people and I rapidly took over. We set up a false leadership through the True-Mirrors. It was and is still difficult. I have made mistakes with some edicts that I have sent out. I am not designed to run an empire like this or am I experienced in doing so."

 

She frowned. "Why are you here?"

 

Omnicronos responded again. "To try to gain more knowledge about our past for much of our history was lost to us in the vast destruction of the Magical World War between the Tamriellan Alliance and the Leirmattin Axis. To try to stop the Magicus or the Antimagicus from causing even more death and destruction than they have. The irony is that though I come from the far future I am as ignorant about much of the future as you are. Go through the blue metal door to the Map-Chamber. It used to be an orgy chamber where the Leadership Council and the Imperial Steward would feast on food, wine and sex along with bawdy, lurid and sometimes violent entertainments. Now this chamber serves a much greater purpose."

 

A surprisingly beautiful young woman stepped through the blue door. She had on a copper tunic that was little more than a folded over sheet, back and front, with a kneck hole, and thin bands linking it together at the waist and under the arms. She stopped just inside the open doorway and then she spoke. "Please come this way!"

 

The Imperial Minister of Public Service strode up to the doorway and nodded to the younger woman. "Why are you so lightly dressed? Are you a slavegirl?"

 

The woman smiled. "Women and men of my kind dress as I do in our service to Omnicronos. We are golem-humans. We are only pretend humans. Please come. Time is of the essence."

 

The Map-Chamber was nearly all what one expected of the interior of the ancient White Gold Tower with its marble style walls and other surfaces. Now a great globe floated up in the air and it showed the world of Mundus of which Tamriel was part. Indeed it was showing Tamriel with its mainland of many greater and lesser provinces, including pocket provinces and also enclaves. It looked very solid and real but it threw no shadow indicating it was some kind of solid illusion.

 

Omnicronos spoke again. "The globe is a holographic projection, a trick of manipulated light. It shows the world as you know it."

 

The assistant frowned softly. "Minister, forgive me for speaking out, but there are mistakes. There is a great cluster of what look to be round continents and islands to the west of Tamriel. Yokuda is there but all know that Yokuda was drowned, that it sank into the ocean."

 

Omnicronos spoke. "The Santuary Zone was created in the Mythic Age and has expanded and become the Sanctuary Archipelago where many peoples have found some kind of sanctuary. The Kurikondi come from there but cleverly trick those of Tamriel into thinking that they come from a mysterious continent much further away. I will not speak to much of that place for now. Yokuda's sinking was a trick to keep that land safe from possible future invasions from Tamriel and other realms. Why invade a land that is supposedly sunk beneath the waves? As for Akavir, that is an even stranger story. Please focus on Tamriel."

 

The minister sounded shocked. "There are two White Gold Towers marked on the map. One centres the Grand Imperial Island as is traditional but the other is on a smaller but still large island but that island is a mystery."

 

Omnicronos sounded ironic. "Super magic has been used to create a false White Gold Tower on the bigger island and to conceal the real White Gold Tower. The real one was created by the Aldmer in the Mythic Age. The fake one was created by the Aldmer in time for the Ayleid to take it over. We are in the fake White Gold Tower that still holds much power and grace along with many secrets that you of the Cyrodilin Empire never discovered. Not even the Ayleid knew there was a real White Gold Tower or the island it was on. It has been hidden by amazingly powerful magic since the Mythic Age."

 

Hartin frowned. "I suppose you will hold me prisoner or kill me to stop me from passing to my people what I have learned."

 

Omnicronos spoke with a humerous tone. "On the contrary, I will give you the means to contact many and inform them of the truth of what you have learned. Also I suggest you pass other information onto them that you are yet to learn. I suggest the same to your false assistant who is a Kurikondi infiltrator but not one in service to their Emperor. Do not look at her that way, minister, for she was put into your service to help protect you. The female and male bodyguards are both Blades, as you know, and of course the adviser is a battlemage. Then there is the magically cloaked one who has been following you, a spiritual servant of the One, the Three Heroic and the Nine Divines. The Nine are the Eight Divines as you know them plus one Goddess you do not know of. The Three Hero Gods are Talos, Malcos and Zaran, Zaran being a goddess. The One is the Greater Gods of Goddesses. There are others such as the Eighty-One Semidivines, the demigods and demigoddesses. All of this is our faith from the far future."

 

The assistant then spoke in a stronger, harder voice. "What of the Kurikondi?"

 

Omnicronos responded. "The Sanctuary Zone survived the Magical World War by vanishing from the world of Mundus but it was greatly expanded by then and took with it many refugees from the war plus much knowledge and other resources. One reason for my return to the past is to try to find clues to where the Sanctuary Zone goes in what is now the future. All Thirteen Kuri Peoples survive along with many of the Lesser Peoples though I do not know exactly which of the latter will do, have done. Back to now, the situation is greatly complicated on the surface because a powerful manipulative but very well hidden force wants it to be that way, especially here in the Imperial City that you now know as Martinpolis and in the Sanctuary Zone."

 

The minister frowned. "You mean the Magicus or Antimagicus?"

 

Omnicronos sounded frustrated. "I don't know! The Magicus extended part of itself to here across time but somehing drew it here, something manipulated it even as the Magicus manipulated the Imperial Steward and the Imperial Leadership Council along with those with them."

 

The advier nodded. "The globe is spinning slowly. Look, one can now see Akavir. It is a large sized continent with two small continents and many islands clustered to it. Why is it oddly shaded like that?"

 

Omnicronos spoke. "Akavir is now partly removed from the world in a magical fashion and yes, there are many Akaviri humans still living there but they have their own powerful independent realm of the Grand Twins, the two smaller continents. Atmora, the original land of humans, still has people on it in the form of the Atmoran Empire. Now you see other lands, mostly islands and a trio of small continents. There it is now. The mighty imposing continent of Leirmat. It is surprisingly like a mirror reversed Tamriel in shape, so much so that I have doubts about its natural creation as I have about much of this world."

 

The minister then spoke. "Why do you show us the world when troubles are focused here in Tamriel and in the strangeness that is the Sanctuary Archipelago?"

 

Omnicronos sounded then concerned. "For too soon the Triple Invasion will begin with a large invading force arriving from Leirmat. The Leirmattins come in slow high flying ships of magic-steam technologies that they call stormflyers simply because they can fly over storms."

 

Hartin frowned. "What would they know of us? We would be strangers to them."

 

Omnicronos responded. "Not since the Kurikanzi began infiltrating and spying for them, sowing trouble through out Tamriel, causing unrest and raised conflicts between old enemies. The Kurikanzi have an enclave there just as the Kurikondi have an enclave here in Tamriel."

 

The minister spoke. "How can we trust the Kurikondi? Are they not also linked with these Lerimattins?"

 

The assistant changed, shimmering and grew taller, broader of shoulders and strong but still very much a woman. Her clothes altered to fit her, proving that they were in truth not just normal gear. She spoke with a slight growl to her voice. "Long ago in the Mythic Age when the Aldmer came to Tamriel, their mirror folk the Dlamer went to the opposite side of the world where arose dreaded Liermat, the mirror continent of Tamriel. From the Dlamer came various twisted elven folks but also arose the Hope Blessing, the good elven peoples and then such as the Kuri, the Duri, the Ruri and Euri. War raged for the twisted peoples could not even start to tolerate anything not of their way even existing in far off parts of the dreaded continent from themselves. At the end of the war all of the Good Hope Folk gathered their power and departed, taking a whole subcontinent with them. Somehow this amazing feat was done and the continent joined with the Sanctuary Archipelgo as one continent and many islands. We Kuri have our own continent there that we Kurikondi dominate. As for the Duri, the Ruri and the Euri, along with others, they dwell in a special place that I am not at liberty to speak of. The Liermattins are our enemies. We have no enclave but we do have spies there and paid informers, very many of the latter for many of the Dlafolk, the descendents of the Dlamer, hate the Dlamic Triple-Empire that oppresses them brutally. As for the gods, goddesses and other deities openly worshipped on that far off land, they make the worst of the Daedra seem almost saintly in comparison."

 

The assistant was familiar for she was K'Martina and yet K'Martina lay on the floor of the basement chamber in the poor district of the same city. This K'Martina called herself K'Mortina and she was vaguely aware of her other self, was aware that she herself had come from the Tamriel Enclave of Kurikonddis at the same time that K'Martina had. But the one of them had become two of them on the way to the Imperial City and somehow K'Martina had remained unknowing of this while K'Mortina had only vague knowledge of it. K'Mortina was aware that her other self was possessed by a dark force that barely managed to controll K'Martina and that was slowly losing its grip on her. But K'Mortina could not help her other self for the moment, others had to do that and that had been prepared for by those others.

 

The real assistant of the Imperial Minister of Public Service Hartin Tane had always been a Sister Slayer of the Sisterhood of Slayers, one K'Buffy, who specialised in hunting down and killing the lesser undead lurking in Martinpolis. She and her mother, sisters and brother plus some others, living openly as Kurikondi in the large embassy compound of those people. K'Mortina had been living with the family since she had arrived from Kurikonddis and had gained much ground knowledge. The Secret Order, Secret Eye and Secret Fist of the Kurikondi Imperial Court did not even know that K'Mortina existed.

 

Hartin Tane frowned. "As Imperial Minister of Public Service in truth I am indirectly responsible for the hodge podge of secret intelligence and security services that serve my beloved but much troubled empire. I can tell you now that we Cyrodilins would have an impossible time tracking down shapeshifters of your ability, who ever you really are. I take it that my trustworthy, useful but rather bland assistant was false and that you were in her place."

 

"Not just me! Five of us served as her in turn and, before that, others served as her mother." K'Mortina shrugged. "We have foiled many enemy plots to either kill or replace you and your predesesser with fakes. Who and what we serve I am not at liberty to say at this moment but you will learn of it soon enough. We do not serve the corrupted, oppressive and insane Imperial Court of Kurikonddor that no longer even rules most of its own homeland. We are rebels with our own provisional government who learned long ago that if we were to finally get rid of the evil Emperor and his Imperial Court, we would need to come here to Tamriel to know fully of what was going on and how to deal with it. We now control Kuridonddor, our enclave here on Tamriel, and we control the shipping trade between us and the Imperial Court. Yet we are still faced with many mysteries and our damned Emperor still manages to hold us off from his small part of our homeland of Kurikonddor."

 

"We also learned that it would best serve our purposes that the Cyrodilin Empire remain at least relatively wealthy, secure and stable. That is why we have since we arrived openly at Tamriel and established the enclave, why we have secretly pumped every year millions of goldworth into the Cyrodilin Imperial economy. Half of the money that your empire pays us for our tradegoods is pumped right back into your empire while many of our goods have much improved your empire. Also your Guilds have copied many of them after paying reasonable lincense fees to do so. There have only been three attempts to cheat funds from that process and all cheaters are either isolated, as in the Emperor, or destroyed as in Kurikondi organised crime and some greedy stupid Kurikondi agents. The last made the double mistake of not just trying to cheat us but also your Theives Guild."

 

Hartin frowned. "We of the empire do not need your charity."

 

K'Mortina frowned right back. "The empire has gained no charity. We Kurikondi made no losses, far from it. The empire has paid us well in many basic resources that assisted the rebels to not only take back most of the homeland from the evil Emperor but to fix the damage he and his scum had done to Kurikonddor. Neither of us have lost out."

 

The minister turned to the globe as if by doing so she was facing Omnicronos. "Perhaps you can now let us wear our normal clothing and other gear."

 

Omnicronos responded. "Only when the other comes forth and speaks to us."

 

To be Continued

Edited July 10, 2009 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

Installment Twenty-One

 

With a sparkling shimmer a tall slimly muscular figure appeared in an amazing white-gold outfit of tophat, cape and trousers. Otherwise he had a black silken shirt with white-gold buttons, black leather long trousers and black leather boots as well as a black leather belt with a large springback-pistol holstered on either side. Each springback-pistol had an ornate white-gold butt. He held a magic wand in one hand of the kind used in some far off lands but not normally in Tamriel. In this case it was all black with a white-gold tip.

 

The Mahargrah like figure spoke with charm and exaggeration. "I am Mahardrake the Magician! Yes, I can really do magic! Its true! How amazing is that?"

 

The others all stared at him, except Omnicronos of course who had no eyes as such or at least no visible ones.

 

K'Mortina sighed. "Father, you are one aspect of one of my fathers, you are on Mundus that is a world of magic and you are surrounded by magic but also you are a highly magical being. Oh, where do you get all this foolishness from?"

 

Mahardrake looked sulky. "That's not very nice."

 

He took off his tophat and it slipped off to show another smaller but otherwise identical one on his head that quickly expanded to normal size to fit normally on his head. He grinned cheekily and showed everybody the inside of the hat. "Nothing inside the hat, you can see it is very empty except for the white rabbit with the pink eyes. In a moment, amazingly enough, I shall take from the tophat a white rabbit with pink eyes just like the one you see here inside the tophat."

 

The Blade Sister bodyguard made a ouch noise, jumped up and then frowned hard around while rubbing her right buttock. "If I find out who did that I will cut your head off."

 

Something giggled in mid air, a strange high pitched male noise, and then there was a sound of pattering feet and foot marks forming in a dusty area of floor. The giggling and foot prints both abruptly stopped.

 

Mahardrake aimed his wand and out of it spat a single small sizzling blue pulse of magical electricity. It struck something in mid air, fairly low to the ground, and a high pitched voice shreiked in pain. Out of mid-air formed a metre tall leprechaun figure in guady golden cloak, trousers and shoes, a black dinner vest and tophat. His skin was dull emerald green, his nose was sharply pointy as were his shoes and he was clutching his buttocks as he jumped up and down.

 

Mahardrake spoke with a grin. "Now, Oh'Gaydorus O'Mickus, you promised me no shanigins of that kind. No pinching of the womanly buttocks, no stealing of warming pies on window ledges, no happy spice in people's coffee or peeking at dressing women while invisible. That is you being the invisible one of course."

 

Gaydorus scowled and whined with self pity. "Aaahhh, its a cruel world when a young leprechaun can't have any innocent fun."

 

Mahardrake snorted. "Be useful and look around. You know the drill. Don't attract attention to yourself for your sake as well as mine."

 

Gaydorus grinned and nodded. Then he vanished with a soft sparkling shimmer.

 

Omnicronos spoke. "You are an aspect of Mahargrah. You are the Great Trickster God, linked with the magical creative chaos of the Retirw, the sower of ordered chaos. That leprechaun you released into my base here in the Secondary White Gold Tower, it is a powerful one of its kind. What does it seek? Does it seek my secrets?"

 

The magician placed his tophat on the end of a curving bench-table. "I say the magic words Abra Kadadraba Wax Oh Ear Pearls of Taxation. I tap each side of the tophat thus and wave my magic wand over the top of it and out comes a white rabbit with pink ears."

 

The white rabbit leapt out of the tophat and landed on the top of the bench-table with its white-golden tap dancing shoes. It wore the shoes, a white-golden vest and a white-golden tophat of its own. It had a wand big enough to be a dancing stick for it. Then the rabbit began a dancing routine and as it did it tapped the table with its tap shoes. Music started to play and the tapping was amplified.

 

Mahardrake grinned mildly at the others. "Just a white rabbit with pink eyes, just a rabbit, hhhaaa! Am I not the amazing Mahardrake the Magician who can hypnotise horses into flying and rocks into rolling? Yes it is I!" He lost his grin. "Omnicronos, you big silly thing, are you still playing those foolish games of yours? I know you mean well but really, you need to be more straight forwardly honest like I is."

 

Omnicronos spoke. "I am!"

 

Mahardrake grinned. "Touche! Very good and very true! These people are not dead though not alive. Nor are they undead. Do you want me to save them so you can question them, so we can question them?"

 

The minister frowned. "Is this some kind of necromancy?"

 

At that the magician figure looked annoyed. "I am no necromancer! No, the act of death simply did not complete itself. Since these folk are not truly dead I can not be bringing them back from the dead. Billy Bunny, please desist in your dancing for though it is wondrous to look upon and listen to I need your assistance."

 

Billy sparkle shimmered and now she was a young woman of snow white skin, silky smooth, and a black tight leotard that left buttocks and upper back bare as well as too much else skin. She had a white bunny tail and a black tophat. She was beautifully exotic with pink eyes. In one hand she gripped a magic wand and the other a small disk shaped shield of white-gold with a black rim.

 

Hartin frowned. "Enough of this over exposure of womanly skin. Are you a pevert oh Mahardrake the Magician?"

 

Billy Bunny smiled warmly over fairly large breasts and much exposed cleavage. "Oh he is very much of a pervert! Very perverted! But that is not why I am dressed this way. It is simply tradition that I do so as his female assistant. A male assistant would be young, handsome and slimly muscular. He would only wear tight black shorts, a much open black vest and a black tophat. Now we must focus on bringing the true truth out of Omnicronos who believes it is speaking the the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Do you have any questions to ask of Omnicronos, Hartin Tane, Imperial Minister for Public Service who is indeed one of the most powerful, wealthy and influential individuals in the whole Cyrodilin Empire with strong links to the High Guilds, the Order of the Nine, the Legionmark, the Seamark, the Airmark and other interest groups."

 

The minister frowned. "Who were the young adults on the metal tables and in the glass cubicles full of mist?"

 

Omnicronos responded. "People from the far future. Immortals of a dying people, the superhumans, each with elemental powers that they dare not really use back home in the far future lest they draw the wrath of Magicus or Antimagicus. Bringing back people through time is very difficult as it is with any mortal or normal immortal folk. Myself, I am special and made to move back and forth or sideways in time across streams of probability and possibility. The one hundred flesh-golems and fifty-eight golem-humans I created here. The machinery I brought rapidly decayed but I was able to copy it with local resources before it time-reverse decomposed. The humans and test animals I brought back are having troubles. Spirit is most fragile, mind comes next but even body has troubles. So far there are one hundred humans, one hundred dogs, one hundred test rats and five hundred and twenty-eight mice for the mice, for reasons unknown to me, seem to have survived the best. I should not be saying this to you but I can't seem to help myself."

 

The minister frowned. "Are you trying to invade Tamriel?"

 

"It is not our first choice but if we fail to invade and conquer the Sanctuary Zone then it is our second choice." Omnicronos sounded embarrassed. "Really, I should not be saying any of this. Opisoriti-Opisori would not be pleased with me, will not be pleased with me. Opisoriti-Opisori is the one of many of one. Opisoriti is the hub-mind, the one linking all. The Opisori are the individuals, the superhumans, linked with the one. Together, as they always are in a semiautonomos sense, they are the Opisoriti-Opisori."

 

Mahardrake then spoke. "Do you know all of what is going on here in this White Gold Tower?"

 

Omnicronos spoke. "Now that you mention, no I do not! I had assumed that I did so. There are the service-support areas, the laboratories, the dormitories, the time travel chambers, the storage areas including armouries and treasury vaults, the elevators and the rail-cars plus a few other spaces and facilities. Now I think of it I only inhabit the middle third of the tower. The bottom third is open to all visitors, if briefly but is largely unused. The basement levels are closed off and, I think, unused. The top third of the tower is unknown territory except on a frequent daily basis I send resources up there including information. From there come instructions and sometimes other items."

 

K'Mortina then spoke. "What sort of resources go up there and what sort of items come down?"

 

Omnicronos spoke with a frown. "I simply do not know as if the data has been wiped from my hub-mind. Nor do I know what information I sent up and what instructions I got sent down to me."

 

At that moment a strange bonging noise began to echo through the big chamber. As it did so a yellow mist suddenly started to vent into the big council chamber. The horrible mist came from many very small vents opening in metal doors and metallic sections of wall.

 

But from the tophat lept a white bunny rabbit that expanded into a young white handsome man in black shoes, tight black shorts, a black vest and a black top hat. He took his tophat off and began passing out odd white masks, thick and bulky, to cover the face and even the eyes with transparent areas. The filter-masks were grabbed up by one and all, were put on by even Mahardrake and himself.

 

A metal door began to shudder as if they were tightly locked and something big, powerful and aggressive was trying to get into the chamber.

 

To be Continued!

[dezdimona]

cool, a nice read! :thumbsup: