ers

             (4E-201 15th of Last Seed)   

                  Darkwater Crossing 

     It was cold, windy, and wet. Galeron's hair and pants fluttered wildy in the early morning mountain gusts, as he gazed down at Darkwater Crossing below him. Even though there was a barrier around him to keep off the snow, it didn't prevent the cold from chilling his bones. As per usual, Galeron found that the cold kept him alert and on his toes. He definitely believed that there was a time and place for comfort but this wasn't it. This was a stakeout.

     Standing invisibly upon the highest nearby peak, Galeron had spent most of the night revisiting the last few months of developments in his mind.

     He recalled sending out Morila and Venerus to spy on the Riften "nobility," specifically Maven Blackbriar and Wylandriah, the Jarl's court mage.

     They had summoned him, just as ordered, the moment that the two of them happened to show up at the Bee and Barb or Blackbriar Meadery at the same time. As Galeron had hoped and suspected it would be, the place they finally appeared together was the Bee and Barb.

     Once summoned, Galeron had conjured a large basketball sized sphere of psijic energy and, to Wylandriah's credit, she adapted to the situation quite quickly and instantly summoned a shield around herself and a few others around her.

     However, there was no attack yet. The energy that Galeron had conjured, and caused to pulse outward over the Inn's entire interior, washed over her shield completely unhindered. This psijic energy formed a barrier sealing inside everyone currently occupying the Inn. As it pulsed outward, it had also extinguished all forms of natural light, causing Wylandriah to respond by conjuring a ball of Magelight.

     As soon as some light had returned, she and a few of the others noticed a black  fog, gleaming with tinges of purple and red, swiftly pouring out from Galeron's Staff of Induction and spreading across the floor.

     This black fog, once it surrounded someone's feet entirely, would quickly form, upon itself yet of itself, black writhing vines pricked all over with nasty looking thorns. These vines would then snake their way up and around a person's neck and begin throbbing.

     The Induction Vines, just as Galeron had designed, sucked the blood from a victim until they were nearly dead. Their own blood, now merged with the magic fog, would re-enter their body, thus kickstarting their initiation into the Crying Corps.

     The weak damaging effect that his Induction Mist had would slowly finish the job of ending their lives, as the other energies of the mist began bonding the victim's blood and soul to Galeron and forming a fake magicka core.

     As this process continued happening throughout the rest of the Inn, Galeron would point his Induction Staff at a single victim, in order to fully submit their soul to him, and then immediately move on to the next.

     Wylandriah hadn't been still during Galeron's attack, she began attacking him through her barrier the moment she noticed the mist. However, all of her attacks dissipated, before ever reaching Galeron, accompanied by a sudden but brief bursting of pale gold and blue colors.

     She, of course, understood that Galeron had a shield of some sort surrounding him but she assumed that she could burn through his magicka reserves, before he could hurt too many people. While being completely wrong, Wylandriah continued sending out bolts of Lightning that continued to dissipate harmlessly upon Galeron's psijic shield.

     This charade only continued for a couple of minutes, since the other occupants succumbed rather quickly to this sudden and unusual attack.

     Once Wylandriah and her refugees were the only ones left alive. Galeron summoned a fist of psijic energy the size of an adult torso, which caused the eyes of the survivors to nearly pop out of their heads.The fist was then sent hurtling into Wylandriah's shield, completely shattering it into tiny specks of light and sending her and the others flying into tables and chairs and eventually against the wall.

     With no other defenses to call upon and just barely hanging onto consciousness, Wylandriah and her former refugees were all successfully Inducted.

     Every day after that event, more and more of Riften's populace presented themselves, unknowingly and at varying locations, to be Inducted. By the end of the week, Galeron officially controlled the entirety of Riften's populace and by the end of the month the entire Rift.

     That had been a momentous occasion for him and his Eldritch Society. At that juncture, he finally felt as if he could call his organization a proper power within Skyrim's political scene. It may not have much of a reputation, at the moment, but, then again, that was the way it should be. If he could keep it that way, then he would be doing his job well.

     Every one of those Inducted in that manner, were given explicit instructions to continue living their lives normally and to avoid drawing suspicion from any travelers. Even if they didn't need to eat or sleep anymore, they were ordered to put on the best performance possible no matter who was around. The only exception to this was that their daily intake of food could be slightly reduced so that the Rift could increase its exports.

     Since that day, Serana's already substantial workload had been multiplied many times over. To remedy this, Galeron had to shove most of her responsibilities onto Jarl Layla Law-giver and Wylandriah and even appointed Iona the Housecarl as Serana's assistant, so that Serana would be freed up for obligatory sexy time.

     Even though their sexy time was technically mandatory for her, as per their agreement, it couldn't have been more obvious to Galeron that, where there was once apprehension and hesitation in her eyes now there was only lust and longing. 

     Once she had got ahold of that abomination dick, she didn't know what to do with it. To make matters even worse, or even better, she had apparently witnessed most of Galeron's exchange with Hermaeus Mora and had literally wet herself when she saw him talking to a Daedric Prince like a boss.

     Although her interpretation was a bit embellished, since she had referred to him as having 'rubbed his balls in the face of a Daedric Prince and walked away unscathed.'

     These were all rather wonderful developments by themselves but, afterwards, he had spent some time experimenting with magic circles and flesh Atronachs.

     The magic circles turned out to be a thing and were quite useful for repeat casting but not much else. He could, instead of summoning a type of magicka and then putting it to the task of a certain spell, form a circular diagram reminiscent of a rune trap enchantment and simply plug his mana into that circle. The circle, then acting as a sort of rune trap/enchantment hybrid, would perform the spellwork indicated by the magic circle. Then, only a re-infusion of magicka was required to repeatedly spam that ability, without reforming the spell or the spell specific energy.

     This was certainly interesting to Galeron and he knew it might one day be very useful but he had quickly moved on to creating Flesh Atronachs. This particular study had been much more difficult than most of his scholarly undertakings, simply because there was very little information available on how the process worked. 

     Even with his now widespread influence, he had only managed to scrape together seven books, only three of which were actually written specifically on the topic. The others only mentioned the practice in passing.

     Luckily, he had managed to create a rather rough draft flesh Atronach but, knowing that he would need much more time to perfect this craft and that his time was running short, he begrudgingly set this study aside, as well.

     One very important thing that he had learned from his Flesh Atronach experiments, however, was that the Gargoyles that he had fused with Induction Mist Familiars were slowly gaining new knowledge! They were actually improving, growing as individuals from their personal experience.

     He had recalled his Gargoyles as a point of reference, whenever he thought to use a similar method on the Atronachs. In his examination of their condition, he realized that although the Familiars, like the Gargoyles themselves, were severely lacking in intelligence, this was only their "embryonic form," so to speak.

     These Pseudo-souls, as he had been calling them, weren't really that at all. They were really more like Quasi-souls or perhaps underdeveloped souls. Either way, these Quasi-souls had the very real potential to graduate to full fledged souls, it would just take a lot of time.

     As a matter of fact, his one successful Flesh Atronach creation happened when he fused a pile of properly prepared human flesh with a Quasi-human soul.

     Normally, if one wanted to create undead, one would either attempt to raise a corpse with its original soul or use another soul to raise it. Attempting to raise a corpse with a soul that didn't belong to it, usually resulted in an extremely fierce fight and the soul would be none too happy about those conditions. 

     Likewise, if a corpse's soul had already passed on and you wanted to summon it from Oblivion, having access to its corpse would almost guarantee success in that arena. Although, it would most likely still put up a fight.

     These were the original rules of necromancy that Galeron had managed to work out, after his various breakthroughs over the past year. The overly complicated and misleading information from his time in Darklight Tower had been thoroughly rewritten by his own experiments, analysis, and insights.

     This new and proper understanding of necromancy, led to a massive overhaul of his Crying Corps and his True Crying Corpses.

     After working out all the kinks (giggity), he summoned Quasi-human souls which he fused with Induction Mist and then fused with Morila, Venerus, Cicero, and Casimar. What this accomplished was to essentially add a separate soul into their bodies that was, nonetheless, fused with their own souls. These Quasi-human souls had not only been infused with Induction Mist but had also drank and assimilated Galeron's blood. Thus, both the blood binding and soul binding of the Induction Mist created a vice-like control over them.

     Once fused with the already bound souls of a Crying Corpse, the Quasi-soul aspect would not only allow his undead to learn and grow, which they were already capable of doing, but they would now grow in the direction of being naturally and willingly loyal to him. The Quasi-soul aspect would allow everything that made a person who they were to remain while nudging their natural allegiance unerringly towards him. This way, any commands he gave them that weren't sufficiently strict or airtight, would be less likely to result in a loophole, allowing for possible defection against him.

     This discovery had set Galeron to work pumping out Quasi-soul after Quasi-soul, until every single undead he'd turned was fused with one.

     It had only taken him a couple of days to complete this task, since the continuous practice made him increasingly more proficient in this magic. By the end of it all, he was conjuring four Quasi-souls at a time.

     After all this occurred, Galeron had only a month and a half left until the return of the dragons. As such, he had picked up where he had left off with his rune meditation. He only had a handful left that had yet to be fully assimilated but they all contained meanings that were either completely or mostly unique to the Elder Scrolls Universe. He had no point of reference for most of the concepts they represented and so, for some of them, it had taken several weeks for him to completely comprehend them.

     As he restarted his meditations, they had all been comprehended and all that was left to do was form them in his magicka core. Yet, even this was harder with these runes because he would often get the meanings in the wrong order or get them confused with other recently learned but similar meanings.

     On top of all this, these runes were all completely unknown to him before obtaining the Eye of Magnus. He had discovered several unknown runes from unknown languages but there had also been unknown runes from languages in which he had thought himself fluent.

     Nevertheless, these last few runes dealt with time, space, realm, nirn, and essence, all of which had many complicated and even overlapping meanings that were often hard to distinguish from the others.

     Just last week, Galeron had finally completed the assimilation of the last five runes, experienced a massive boost in his magicka reserves, and began pep talking himself into finally trying to meditate on one of the primary runes that normally appeared on the Eye of Magnus.

     The last time he'd tried it, his head had nearly exploded and he wasn't looking forward to reliving that. After several minutes of hesitating, he eventually prepared for the worst, gritted his teeth, and got down to it.

Majesty!

     That's what had laid before him whenever he entered his mage eye and meditated on the chosen rune.

     It was an entirely new world of runes, magic, and magicka! It was Tonal Magic!

     The shape that he saw when focusing on this rune was not the two dimensional representation he had seen on the eye. He could clearly see an intersection of that shape that looked like that rune but it was not that rune. All the runes on the Eye of Magnus, he realized, were actually either full intersections (primary runes) of the three dimensional shapes he was seeing or they were separate intersections that had been brought together (secondary runes.)

     That's right! Every single normally appearing rune on the eye, was in actuality a much more complicated three dimensional rune that was the basis for Tonal Magic!

     Galeron hadn't even known about the Tonal Magic aspect, until he formed a Tonal Rune (primary rune) by itself as if he were forming one of his recently discovered magic circles and then stimulated it with magicka.

     The magicka suffused itself throughout the rune and the rune was set aflame with a fire that, despite looking like a normal flame, was actually hotter than even the hottest flame that Galeron could've previously produced. 

     That, however, wasn't all that happened. The rune itself seemed to be humming or at least vibrating at a specific and constant audible frequency. After trying this with several of the three dimensional runes, he gradually became more certain that this was indeed Tonal Magic.

     Each Tonal Rune produced a different sound and, after several hours of experiments, he realized that these sounds weren't pure, because of all of the background noise. No matter what it was, any sounds that overlapped with the tones of the runes would, ultimately, alter the way that the sound was perceived by the listener.

     This revelation led to yet another discovery wherein he concluded that the dragon's language or shouts, most likely being a form of Tonal Magic, were essentially just Tonal Runes expressed through the roar of a dragon. The same Tonal Runes through, let's say the grunts of fornicating Walruses, would have the exact same effect but would sound completely different.

     It didn't take Galeron more than a day of messing around with his new runic toys for him to make a decision that he felt he probably should've made a long time ago.

     Galeron, along with Venerus, Morila, and Casimar ventured forth to High Hrothgar. There they preyed upon the old men living there, waiting invisibly in the shadows until one of them was on their own and then ambushing and overwhelming them with the corundum Paralysis Stakes, a healthy dose of psijic energy, and touch of Induction Mist.

     It took less than two days to Induct all twenty four Greybeards. They had managed more than one Greybeard per hour, which Galeron was quite satisfied with, along with the increased number of Grey Beards in comparison to the game.

     Luckily, the Greybeards had the unfortunate weakness of being dependent on their voices and so while any competent user of Tonal Magic might well be able to successfully counter or overcome Galeron's magic, as long as Galeron got the drop on them and sealed their lips first, they were more or less helpless before him.

     With the Greybeards under his control, he then set about determining whether or not he could absorb their knowledge from them, the way the in-game dovahkiin had. Even if the game animations had been similar to the dragon soul absorption animation, he knew they weren't transferring dragon souls. They were only transferring knowledge and understanding. 

     In conclusion then, having unlocked his tolerance for dealing with Tonal Runes, he should be capable of receiving their transferred dragon shouts.

     In fact, he was capable of absorbing the Greybeard's understanding of dragon shouts but the more he absorbed the more his head began feeling like it was going to explode, like that time in Saarthal.

     After some consideration and meditation, he realized that this type of transfer required him to "digest" the understanding for some time before it could be fully and reliably utilized.

     It was with these new breakthroughs, revelations, and abilities that Galeron stood here today, having fully digested the words Fus and Roh as well as having at least taken a glimpse at most of the Tonal Runes and their meanings, Galeron felt fully prepared for what was coming.

     Could he have been more prepared, perhaps, but he wasn't entirely sure how without having more time. In his mind, a confluence of his own dedication to the pursuit of power, his own intelligence, and a smattering of good fortune had allowed him to reach a level of power, understanding, and accomplishment in magic that few his age could similarly claim.

     Galeron felt like his childhood was fully behind him and today was the first day of his path in this world as a complete man: mind, body, and spirit. A man on a mission, a long arduous near impossible drudge through ever more challenging obstacles to obtain the height of power in this world.

     Galeron brought his focus back to the present and the scene before him and soon noticed a procession of soldiers and carts marching through the pass.

     Galeron smiled softly under his mask. 'And so it begins.'