“This place is rotting my tusks.”

 

Nyatt said it from the doorway, arms folded, broad shoulders nearly scraping stone on either side. Snow clung stubbornly to his boots despite the heat of the suite, leaving wet crescents on the floor.

 

Aithne did not look up from the table. “It’s stone. Your tusks will survive.”

 

Nyatt snorted. “Stone that thinks it’s smarter than me. I don’t like it.”

 

Chyehye, sprawled sideways across one of the couches with a book upside down on her chest, didn’t bother opening her eyes. “You don’t like quiet. This place is quiet.”

 

Nyatt crossed the room in three heavy strides and planted himself opposite Aithne, looming over her notes.

 

“It’s been three weeks. We should go.”

 

Aithne turned a page, careful not to smudge the charcoal diagram beneath her fingers. “We are going. Just not today.”

 

“You said that yesterday.”

 

“And the day before,” Chyehye added, although her tone seemed to imply she wasn’t as bothered by the situation. “And the day before that.”

 

Aithne sighed and finally looked up.

 

The suite was too large for comfort -- vaulted ceiling, large windows, furniture chosen more for prestige than use. Someone had tried to make it welcoming. Someone had failed.

 

Her gaze flicked, unbidden, to the tower she could just see; it rose above Winterhold like a needle driven into the sky, and at its summit the Staff of Magnus now stood mounted in a lattice of stone and brass that had not existed a month earlier. Depending on which member of the college leadership was asked, it was called an installation, a stabilization measure, or a precaution, all of which were accurate, in their way, and perhaps the best explanation they could give when they didn’t really know why it was there, themselves.

 

Aithne felt the Staff constantly, a low pressure behind her eyes, a steady pull like gravity leaning slightly sideways. It drank ambient magic the way stone drank heat, smoothing currents that would have once surged or spiked. The wards around the College no longer crackled -- they breathed.

 

She sighed and refocused on her spouses. “I know. I just need a little more time.”

 

Nyatt’s jaw tightened. “Mor Khazgur’s ready.”

 

Aithne paused, hoping her annoyance wasn’t showing – she had hoped it would take at least another week for their new home to be built. “That was fast.”

 

“We are ṭi nyi -- they didn’t waste time.” Nyatt’s tusks flashed briefly. “They said the space is ours whenever we want it.”

 

Chyehye tapped an idle finger against the wall next to her. “Translation: they expect us.”

 

“They listened,” Nyatt added. “About the wolves. Put people on the walls.” He overrode the ensuing silence with, “We’ve done what we came to do. No one’s waiting on us here.”

 

Aithne shut the book and opened a new one while trying to push down the frustration that was building in her. Nyatt could have pushed, could have reminded her he was technically the one in charge. The fact that he had not deserved her gratitude. No matter how much she longed to just continue her studies for an indefinite time, she owed it to him to give in.

 

Just not quite yet.

 

“Two more days.”

 

Nyatt studied her face, long and intent, the way he did when weighing an oath. “You keep saying that. And every day you disappear into books while we sit here counting cracks in the stone.”

 

Aithne’s mouth twitched despite herself. “And how many are there?”

 

“Thirty-seven in the eastern wall.” Chyehye raised an eyebrow when both Aithne and Nyatt looked at her. “What? You asked.”

 

Later that night, after she and Chyehye had done their wifely duties and her spouses were asleep, Aithne returned to the quiet of room she had converted to her office and tried to think.

 

Everyone in the college had become too accommodating. It was unnerving.

 

No one argued when Aithne asked for restricted texts. No one questioned why she wanted old diagrams, half‑burned treatises, records of disasters no one liked to talk about. Aithne had expected resistance when she made her suggestions, had rehearsed arguments and contingencies. Instead, she had been met with a quiet, almost alarming readiness to agree. 

 

“Yes,” Faralda had said when Aithne suggested extending the college’s barrier beyond the bridge to encompass the town.

 

“Of course,” Tolfdir had murmured when she asked that Saarthal be left undisturbed beyond routine surveys. 

 

“Entirely reasonable,” the Archmage had said when Aithne pleaded that the giant orb remain buried where it lay, should it ever be found again. No one knew what orb she meant -- they agreed anyway, though their minds told her they still thought she was at least half-mad. 

 

Their compliance did not relax Aithne. If anything, it put her more on edge -- compliance born of ignorance was dangerously fickle. She did not want obedience, she wanted them to understand.

 

But how could they?

 

She, herself, after three weeks of nothing but study, had come up with a million ideas about what to do about a giant dragon who could fill the Eye of Magnus so full of power, it exploded. In less than five minutes. The amount of magic to accomplish that was beyond staggering – all the mages in the history of the world combined would take a thousand years to accomplish the same thing, from Aithne’s reckoning.

 

The Staff of Magnus worked because it consumed rather than commanded. The orb worked because it reflected, magnified, and returned force without judgment. Together, they formed a system that removed agency from everyone else, a pure closed loop. But they broke down if agency was forced upon them by, say, a giant lizard shoving more power into them than they could handle.

 

She read until her eyes ached and her fingers smudged with charcoal and ink. Patterns repeated themselves whether she wanted them to or not: objects that consumed. Objects that reflected. Objects that amplified until something broke. Again and again, she returned to the same conclusion and refused to write it down.

 

Some things were safe only as long as they never met.

 

Aithne felt Merks return before she heard him. He had resumed his studies and she had seen less and less of him as the days had passed. It was a nice change, in a way, although she did really miss his tea – he somehow made it just right every single time. She turned as he approached, then stopped short when she saw his frazzled expression. The room seemed to tighten around him -- he stood too straight, eyes too bright, like someone who hadn’t slept and didn’t care.  She ignored the temptation to pull Jorg’s amulet away from her skin so she could read his mind. 

 

“You found something.”

 

 “Yes.” Merks hesitated, itself a rare occasion. “I think so.”

 

 “Think?”

 

 “It doesn’t fit any catalog. It isn’t Dwemer. It isn’t Nordic. It isn’t…anything I’ve seen before.” His fingers twitched, restless. “The theory implications alone…”

 

 “Merks.”

 

 He inhaled sharply and forced himself into stillness. “It can’t be moved.”

 

 Aithne nodded and stood. “Where?”

 

 “Below the old break – a cave hidden by flickering anomalies. It can’t be mapped -- the walls rearrange when marked. Some sort of spatial recursion, but anchored.”

 

 Aithne’s heart thumped. “How could something like that have stayed hidden for so long?”

 

 Merks shrugged. “Because of the flickering anomalies. I’m not sure what caused them, but they…trick the mind into seeing something else than what is there. I only noticed because…” He stopped.

 

“Because?”

He shuffled his feet, a move that would have been adorable on literally anyone but Merks. “I was…practicing flying. And…sort of fell right in front of it.”

 

 Aithne laughed. “You were flying? That’s great!”

 

“It most definitely is not.” He took a deep breath. “I made a portal insignia in the cave. It is just within range – I can get us there once we are clear of the wards.” 

 

“All right, let’s go.” 

 

Aithne took one last look at her notes then followed him as she wondered what secret had apparently been hiding under the feet of generations of mages for who knew how long...and what finding it might do. Some things waited patiently beneath stone and years, and she had learned the hard way that waiting did not necessarily mean sleeping.

 

 

Next chapter

 

Previous chapter

 

Start from the beginning