The Crystal Palace was many things: grand, bright, expensive, expansive, ancient, all of these things and more.
Right now, to its owner (the deed was somewhere in the vault), it was a perfect conduit for copious amounts of magical energy.
Flurry Heart checked her notes once again, then slightly moved one of the ritual crystals (not to be confused with normal crystals) to the right. If it went wrong this ritual probably wouldn’t kill her, but it was nice to be cautious. And besides, having to start over again - or explain why the Palace was short a tower - would be a pain in her flank she’d rather do without, thank you very much.
Once the crystal’s position had been adequately corrected, she surveyed the room for (hopefully) the final time. Crystal array, check. Ritual circle drawn from her own basically-divine alicorn blood? Check.
She took a breath, and began to cast the spell. Yellow magic swirled around her horn, then quickly darkened until it was near black, then sprang back into magenta-
‘’Flurry? Open the door!’’
Parents trying to stop her from something that she was 60% certain wasn’t going to kill her? Check.
She glanced in the mirror. Well, she didn’t look dead, at least. Score one for her!
By now, her horn was a swirling mass of colours, and she could feel the immense magic coursing through every part of her body. She could also see it interacting with the blood and the crystals, and not just the one she’d set up; the entire room was slowly warping into the same chaotic mix of colour as her horn had become.
‘’Damnit, open the door!’’
‘’I’m busy, Mum!’’ she called back.
‘’Flurry!’’
‘’Busy!’’
The door would hold a minute more, tops. She needed fifty-five seconds more. Close enough.
The corona of magic around her horn began to pulse as it expanded and swelled into an orb. Just a few more seconds…
The door burst open.
Flurry slammed the orb down right in the middle of the circle.
The world turned rainbow.
|-x-X-x-|
Vivec regarded the new arrival in his palace-temple. It was a tall winged unicorn mare, white-pink of coat with a vibrant mane of purple-pink and turquoise that sparkled with clearly magical energies, done up in an intricate way. There was also a crystallised heart set around a snowflake on her flanks, which too radiated magic, and it wore some silver items that looked vaguely like what an Altmer noble might wear.
Quite possibly the most interesting thing he’d seen all day.
‘’Greetings,’’ he offered to the mare, ‘’and welcome. What brings you here?’’
The thing stared at him for a few seconds. ‘’... Huh.’’
‘’My name is Vivec,’’ he said. ‘’Who might you be?’’
‘’I’m Flurry Heart,’’ the horse - evidently called Flurry Heart - answered. ‘’I got here through a ritual that went… I don’t know if it went right or wrong, but it went somewhere.’’
‘’Quite,’’ Vivec agreed. ‘’Since you are evidently not from here, I shall quickly summarise for you: you are in Tamriel, on the plane of Nirn within Mundus, or reality as it exists within the Aurbis. I do not know where you hail from, as I cannot see beyond the confines of the Aurbis.’’
Technically not completely true, but true enough that it shouldn’t matter.
‘’That doesn’t ring a bell,’’ Flurry Heart said. She looked around the room; Vivec followed her gaze as she looked at the various wall paintings and frescoes that had been meticulously crafted over the centuries of this building’s existence, and saw her eyes light up at the possibility of knowledge.
Eventually, Flurry turned herself back to face Vivec. ‘’My apologies for intruding upon your home,’’ she said, bowing her head slightly. ‘’It was not my intention to disturb you.’’
Vivec waved it off. ‘’You have not disturbed me at all, my good mare. Indeed, just your presence alone has given me inspiration for a great many new poems!’’
‘’Oh… Well, I’m glad for that.’’
Vivec inclined his head. ‘’My only request is this: how did you come here?’’
‘’Uhh… I made a ritual that was intended to send me to a different universe that mirrored my own, but I definitely screwed up the ritual somehow. I have no idea how though, nor do I have any idea how I’m getting back from this place. Do you want the specifics?’’
‘’How did you do this ritual?’’
‘’I used a crystal array as conduit and some of my own blood to provide sufficient binding force for the ritual proper to take hold. Us alicorns have pretty magical blood, so it worked well enough. Though now I think that might have been what messed up the ritual in the first place, actually. Alicorn blood hasn’t exactly been tested much, and I couldn’t do much experimenting myself.’’
‘’I see…’’
‘’So anyway, once everything was set up I started chanting the spell, but my parents tried to break down my door and stop me from doing it at all. No idea how they found out, I guess I wasn’t as sneaky as I thought. Still though, I’d locked the door with a chair and several high-level lock spells, so I was alright for the moment. Then they broke through right as I reached the climax of the spell, and I think they might have tried to stop it right as I had created the portal. Maybe that is the reason I’m here instead of where I wanted to be.’’
Vivec held up his hand. ‘’Thank you for telling me. I think I know how to return you to your own world, but first I need your help with something.’’
This was either going to go great, or go terrible.
|-x-X-x-|
Dagoth Ur sensed… Vivec?
Ha!
That old fool was coming back here? Alone? And he had brought Wraithguard too!
Yes, this would be the moment of his victory! He would slay Vivec and take the final tool of Kagrenac from him, and then his ascendancy would be complete! With a hearty laugh, he reached out to his Ash Vampires…
And found that they were all ‘dead’; none of them were able to speak to him, and all were in the same regenerative coma they always entered after being slain in the physical world.
But this was impossible! Vivec was alone, with neither Almalexia nor Sotha Sil to back him up! And he had not brought an army either, so how had he slain all of his kin so easily?
Dagoth let out a long sigh, and gathered his power to him. This fight would still be in his favour. Vivec was already weak, and surely drained after fighting all of Dagoth’s kin. He would not stand a chance against him!
Dagoth waited patiently as Vivec steadily made his way up and into Red Mountain, saying nothing until the so-called Living God was finally before him.
Then he said nothing for a few more seconds, as he stared at the… creature - what else could he call it? - that accompanied Vivec.
‘’Hello, Voryn,’’ Vivec greeted, looking as unflappable as ever. ‘’Your welcoming committee was well-received. My congratulations on your hospitality.’’
‘’What is this?’’
‘’I’m just visiting,’’ Vivec said, as innocent as could be. ‘’Doing some sight-seeing, enjoying the comforts of Red Mountain, sampling from the local cuisine…’’ He let out a wistful sigh. ‘’Oh, and ending your tyranny, of course.’’
Dagoth, despite himself, laughed. ‘’I am tied to the Heart, fool. You cannot slay me without losing your power.’’
‘’Actually!’’
The fucking horse was speaking.
‘’He can!’’ the horse that was speaking continued. ‘’By using the tools of Kagrenac very precisely, your connection to the Heart can be severed as long as there is time to do so. It’ll only take a few minutes, after which you will be nothing but a memory.’’
‘’Impossible!’’
‘’Very much not.’’ The horse glanced at Vivec - the bastard was smiling. ‘’Would you do the honours?’’
Before Dagoth could respond, he was hit with a blast of pure energy that utterly destroyed his physical form. With a growl, he called himself back and materialised in front of the Heart, just in time to see the pair of enemies approaching at a leisurely pace. ‘’I will not have this!’’ he roared, before attacking.
His attack met a shield of Vivec, before the False God responded with his own assault, one which Dagoth countered easily. To a mortal, Vivec was mighty, but here in the heart of Dagoth’s power, he was nothing.
‘’I am a god,’’ he said with a chuckle as he steadily forced Vivec back. ‘’How can you kill a god? What a grand and intoxicating innocence!’’
‘’I’m not the one killing a god,’’ Vivec bit back, seemingly uncaring of how much ground he was losing.
‘’Indeed not,’’ Dagoth agreed. ‘’Neither of us will today, for you are nothing but a thief and a liar, traitor.’’ He broke through Vivec’s defence and sent him flying into the wall, but before he could capitalise on this Vivec had already moved away again.
‘’You are, for once, completely correct,’’ the most infuriating mer Dagoth had ever met countered easily. ‘’I am a thief and a liar, such I freely admit. And is it not liberating that I can do so?’’
‘’You are a disgrace!’’
‘’You’re about to be dead.’’
At that moment, Dagoth felt something snap. It wasn’t anything physical, it was deeper than that. ‘’What?’’
He turned around to see the horse grinning at him, tools of Kagrenac held in yellow light around her, the Heart of Lorkhan behind her. ‘’No!’’
‘’Too late, Dagoth,’’ Vivec said behind him, and then he knew nothing more.
|-x-X-x-|
‘’That was easy,’’ Flurry quipped.
Vivec raised an eyebrow at her. ‘’For you, perhaps.’’
Flurry shrugged. ‘’It wasn’t the easiest thing I ever did, mind you, but I expected fiddling with the heart of a god to be harder. Oh well.’’
‘’I think it says more about your skills with the arcane,’’ Vivec observed dryly.
‘’Maybe.’’
Vivec laughed. ‘’I shall collapse this travesty into the lava, I think,’’ he said with a gesture at Akulakhan. ‘’And then I shall replenish myself, so that I might return you home.’’
‘’Yeah, about that…’’
Ah.
‘’You wish to stay awhile?’’ Vivec asked, and when he got a nod back, continued: ‘’Of course. I shall announce to Morrowind that you slew Dagoth Ur with me, and you shall have all that you desire.’’
‘’Do you guys have a library on magic?’’
‘’I know someone who does.’’
This is what you get for isolationism, Seht.
Author's Note
This was fun.
Blame UnknownError for this. He's responsible. I will not elaborate.
This also means I've now featured all three members of the Tribunal in their own TES crossover oneshots. Yay.
