88 Mirrors and Masks

Yuri stood in the upper center of the island, covered in a thin veil of snow despite only standing here for less than a minute. Only 400 feet above sea level, maybe less, and it was already glacial. He looked at a semicircle entrance shaped like a stone vault leading to White Ridge Barrow, the first Nord crypt he had done in a while, and gave a huff before deciding against walking the whole thing. With ESP, he felt the layout of the entire barrow and discovered a part of this world he usually chose to ignore.

Spiders.

Not Frostbite Spiders, the ones you can make with a salt pile and either a gemstone or a soul gem. In his eyes, it was the alchemists' replacement for the school of Conjuration. The entire area was covered in webs made by these runaway experimental spiders or pods housing their offspring.

'Where on Mundus have you gone, Kro?' A deep and regal voice echoed lightly in his head, but it still surprised him.

'Ah, speaking of Conjuration, I completely ditched my dragon.'

Yuri spoke into the green sigil on his hand that had lit up, "Dremlaashon, are you well? I'm in Solsteim, not much to do around here."

'Solsteim? I heard the land there is barren no matter the season, I will stay here. I am contacting you for a certain... inquiry...' Drem faded the end of his sentence out.

"Oh? Do tell."

'...I am...I have gained a taste for my fellow Dovah...'

"...Drem...It's okay to be gay"

'Gay? I do not know what that means. If killing and eating my fellow Dovah is gay, then I certainly am, then'

"Oooooooh, no, that's not what that means. Does this bother you?"

'I grow a bit melancholic when I realize that it doesn't seem to bother me at all. But I also found myself capable of eating their souls, which I find doubly confusing.'

"That part doesn't confuse me at all. As a True Dragon, you are still immortal but not in the same sense as the ones here, so you require food. If Dragons are the only nutrition that can fill you, it's no wonder you started to seek them out. As a True Dragon, you most likely started seeing the rest of them as lesser, so having no qualms about cannibalizing them is not a mystery. The soul eating part is natural, you were once a necromancer who delved deep enough to be locked into the Soul Cairn. Having those powers when you transformed probably made them strengthen and branch out in a few ways. Just don't get into that kind of altercation with Paarthunax."

'Paarthunax? Alduin willingly resurrected him?'

"He never died. When I come back I'll give you both a gift you'll surely like."

'Hm, very well. I shall go and meet Alduin's lieutenant for the first time.'

Back to the barrow. His interest in jumping spiders? None! Yuri felt further through the blend of Nordic crypt branching everywhere in odd places with mineshafts and a cell that a dead spider enthusiast shared with a steampunk spider easy-bake oven. Over a gorge in the middle of a wide-open space that may have once been an altar or a church to respect the dead, and through a series of wooden stairs his mind 'wandered'. Webs concealed almost every one of pathways and mind-spiders took control of every single bandit dumb enough to use this place to escape the cold. Walking through all this would have made Yuri blast the place with holy purgatory.

Yuri ran into a spatial intent ward near the back of the actual crypt, attempting to stop teleportation to where he surmised his treasure lay.

'Bingo'

Yuri flashed out of the white world and before the ward, then stepped past it and into a hallway that led to the resting place of Dukaan. Dukaan sent a wave of ESP through the area but felt nothing at the supposed point of entry.

Behind a snow-white and smooth mask scaled with curved dips in the mouth area and only slits for eyes, a lich's eye sockets began to glow a bit fiercely. He could not feel anything, but as a servant of Herma Mora, he took that as a bad sign.

{Mask Picture Here}

A throaty and ancient voice echoed from behind Dukaan's mask and into the leading hallway.

"I can tell you aren't the same as the others, those who come for a slim chance of treasure or dare to change their lives over a single night. Only Ice awaits you down here. Only pain which follows incredible temptation."

But the intruder would not be cowed. His voice came from the very walls and ignored the warning for his own curiosity.

"Why Dukaan?" He asked, in native Dovahzul. "I mean, why is your name Dishonor?"

"...Haha, how good to hear that language," Dukaan relished. "I was tasked to guard this book, this Black Book away from any who sought its power, so that Herma Mora may not rise in this territory. I did not fail my task, technically. The book has not left that pedestal in thousands of years. But I fell to temptation, and in my restlessness, I read that book."

Yuri stepped out of the hallway and leaned on a post, shocking the Dragon Priest momentarily. Seeing the man himself finally let him witness the essence of the intruder.

He... He was Magnus? He felt like a singularity of magnificent power even in the Merethic Era, and a sense of incredible warmth, light, and power suffused the air around him in a thin sheen.

"So you're saying you were given an insulting name because you read a book you were guarding for thousands of years?"

"I read the book and also became a servant of the Gardener of Men in my greed. My allegiance was questioned, I was bound here and cursed to continue my duty for a period, but then the Dragon War ended with my jailers dead and the key forever lost."

Yuri inspected the room and the Dragon Priest during his explanation. Below the platform he was on, a twin set of stairs led to a small room, a word wall at the back of it and a throne just before it occupied by a frozen man. Below the platform, in a concave little hole in the wall, the Black Book sat on its pedestal. The Mask was most likely responsible for his current appearance. Ice coated every inch of his body and whitened the throne he sat upon. His flesh hadn't decayed, merely staying under the ice as blackened and frostbitten as humanly possible. He was a frozen undead. Yuri frowned at the treatment these dragons gave to one of their longest followers. Willingly being a Dragon Priest back in the Merethic Era was probably the closest Nirn equivalent to climbing a corporate ladder as high as you can despite knowing that they will never cross the threshold of the truly rich their CEO enjoys. People do it because they have the ambition to seek the best for themselves even when they know it isn't fair. But humans do whatever they will to survive, which is a merit and a demerit.

The dishonored one continued, "But perhaps I don't need the key anymore. Just a little bit of sunlight will do!"

Dukaan let his hands go free and a world of white stretched beyond him to turn every surface close to him into a frozen canvas. A flurry drifted from his frozen body as he rose with cracking noises from the throne he hardly left anymore. The winter canvas stretched to near the platform Yuri stood on. He let his eyebrows dip slightly and closed his eyes while shaking his head.

"As you wish."

Yuri's eyes glowed their gold brightly while a ring of golden fire wrapped him gently before pressing out from him in a certain radius. The winter halted and trickles of water fell to the ground while curtains of steam rose to the ceiling like the crippled front line of a war. But Yuri swore that if Dukaan had lips he would surely smile.

"Come, is that all you have?! You'll be entombed in bitter cold for eternity if you don't rise to the challenge!" Dukaan blasted a white beam of pure cold from his index in Yuri's direction. Yuri didn't even move, the beam turned into steam upon impact with his orb and vanished.

Instead of taking time to unlock the ESP ward, Yuri made Empyrean thrusters on multiple points of his backside and sent himself hurtling to Dukaan before he could react. Dukaan saw the scene in slow motion even if his body couldn't keep up. In stupendous form, Yuri leapt as golden fire shunted off of his back in heaps. His right arm which ended in a spear hand was blistering orange and gold as the tongues of fire extended in the arc of his descent like a curved pillar. Dukaan held his arms out to his sides, not as if to cast but as if to accept, even to pray.

Time resumed, and Yuri's arm popped all the way through Dukaan's chest to the bicep as the Empyrean flames spread maddeningly while disintegrating everything it passed. The ice sealing the Lich quickly melted even before the fire reached it, as if in fear.

"Hahaha, thaaaaaat feels nice," Dukaan raised his head in comfort as the fire stretched up to his neck, but looked down as the fire burst from his eyes to say goodbye. "Give my regards to Magnus for me, hero."

Yuri smiled and gave a nod without trying to correct him, and Dukaan returned to ashes.

Yuri sighed deeply through his nose and shook his head, fighting back a single tear. He breathed in and cleared his thoughts before looking down at the mask he left.

Yuri picked it up and inspected the runic formations on the back of it behind the face. Empowerment in the field of ice magic was present, sure, but it shared space with shackles. This thing was the cold and bitter entombment. Putting this on anyone would kill them and give them the same power in death that Dukaan wielded, and the pain he endured.

Yuri sold the damn thing for 2,000 RP and turned around to the Sallow Regent.

"The Sallow Regent, by Hawfip the Crafter... Oh, it's a play."

Hawfip starts the play with a murder. A woman steps onto the stage with a bloody and broken scepter to give a woeful soliloquy. The entire story is centered around a man who gave his soul to a Daedra in exchange for his wish, 'To be everything I want to be, to be everyone I want to be!'.

Grimu, the main character of this play, is given the ability to change his appearance at will. Using this knew power, he enters the world of the political and masterminds a number of events to his advantage using the faces of those he kills. Amidst all his efforts of replacing everyone who gets in his way with himself, he grows sickly and ragged by the strain of making sure every single person he replaces is accounted for and nobody finds out.

Grimu's wife comes looking for him in the palace, since the only face he forgot to keep accounts for was his own, and finds her husband talking to himself in the throne room of a completely empty palace, changing his face to match the participants of his conversation. In a rage, she kills the maddened pretender who silently killed a country, but he reverts back to Grimu with a face of blankness upon death. Thus the first scene also becomes the last. "Woe betide my fate-wrecked heart, Which gives no tender shine to he, Who gave his favors up to gods, And brought his blood-struck mind to me."

{None of that was canon except the quote, which is the only readable portion of the book.}

What did Yuri get out of this? A life lesson, surely. Wear too many masks and you'll forget your real face. It's good to be honest with who you are and approach every one of your weaknesses and strengths with fearless impartiality.

The other thing? The ability to change his appearance at will. Advanced flesh magic, to be precise, and not an illusion. His muscles will be much harder to rearrange due to their nature, but creating new appendages?

Yuri stepped into the open space before the frozen throne and took his shirt off. His bones, shining like crystal yet black as obsidian, sprang from his back like spears near the shoulder blades and started branching down from the spear like roots. They eventually formed a sort of webbed outline and grew thinner the further from the spear they were. The black spears grew a bright green sheen like they were coated in mucus, and flesh and muscles ejected and squirmed out of the bones to form a tight and muscly mesh. When the mesh was done, it looked like two ribbed and thin yet powerful nets or sharp flags waved behind him. Feathers came after, and they thickly joined one another to cover the expanse of the powerful wings like grass in a field. These feathers were also black, and coveted the light which they drank greedily and did not return. Each bristle of each feather refused to glow even the slightest bit. Yuri summoned an Eye of Arathmoor and looked at himself all around.

He looked like Lucifer without the horns. He always liked black feathered wings as a concept, or the concept of Fallen Angels. Maybe that was part of his rebellious phase, but he still likes the style.

'I should teach this to those two, wings are surely more energy efficient for them than levitation magic.'

Yuri broke open the ward and TP'd into the open air, gaining control of his new wings fairly quickly and preparing to give the girls a surprise.

{Next: Embittered Destroyer and Threads}