Knowing that you have one and a half gallons of magicka isn’t exactly enough for you to make a gauge out of it. You’d still need to know what total amount that is out of, and have some way to tell how much it’s changing by each time you cast a spell.

The first question, though, might have an easy solution. You direct your thoughts back to the skeleton and wonder how much magicka it would take before your tank is full.

The skeleton forewarns that it was not created to display magical aptitude, and only possesses the basic magical knowledge the Makers^® have decreed necessary for client relations^†. As it understands things, however, the question isn’t “how large your mana tank is”, but rather, “how much mana you can wield control over”. Have you ever siphoned power from a soul fissure?

No, you think in response.

Have you ever attempted to animate a nonstandard skeletal construct with more bones than the soul bound to it originally possessed?

No, I haven’t.

Have you ever used alteration spells to warp a larger area to fit within a smaller area of a different shape?

No, I don’t… think so, but will admit a degree of ambiguity on that one.

Well, storing mana for spellcasting is like any of those things you haven’t done. There is no maximum amount one can carry so much as there is a functional limit to what an individual can learn how to manipulate.

Oh! So it’s kind of like finding how much you can lift? You just have to keep picking up weights and see at what point you can’t do it?

The skeleton supposes so, though such an analogy seems unnecessarily abstract and difficult for CairnCorp^®‘s clientele to relate to. If you would like to estimate the upper limit of your mana-wielding capabilities, the simplest route would be to gather or generate mana and take note of the point at which you can wield no more.

You can’t generate your own magicka, so doing a test like that isn’t exactly… easy for you, you admit.

Oh, right, you forgot you have money now. Everything is easy for you.

You splurge and drop 221 septims on the strongest magicka potion you can find. The skeleton informs you that you now have approximately seven and a quarter gallons of magicka. Nice.

You ask the skeleton if that’s a good amount for a mage to cap out at. It ponders the question for a minute, then explains that its etiquette training suggests an abrupt change in topic. How’s the weather on Nirn?

It’s… Nirny, you guess. You’d say “normal”, but the meaning of that might be lost across planes.

Before you go and blow a hundred septims worth of magicka on a summoning spell, you check with the skeleton as to whether there are any ways to bring the spell’s magicka cost lower. Like, are there… better ways to cast it? You’re already cleaning up the blue squiggle.

The skeleton tells you that the mana usage of star-tesseract-style conjuration predominantly comes down to the efficiency of the leyline. A straight line will be more efficient than the one used during your previous summon, but conjurers with more experience navigating the planar layout can typically forge a route shorter than a straight line. Routing through smaller planes helps.

You don’t suppose there’s a map available explaining the shortest route?

An nth-dimensional map such as that would be very difficult to portray in a two- or three-dimensional model. Celestial routing efficiency is typically^‡ regarded as a skill conjurers pick up through experience. CairnCorp^®‘s official stance^[1] is that conjuration technique is best improved through regular and repeated conjurations with CairnCorp^®.

But like, we’re already telepathically communicating. Is there no way to just transfer the maps into my head?

It stresses that this is a front-level mental link through a long-distance leyline. What you are asking would require transferring a conjurer’s actual experiences navigating starmaps.

You said there were magical ways to shift experiences from one person to another, right? Is that something I could use here? Like, could I get a more experienced conjurer to use that experience-tampering magic you mentioned to show me how he-

Oh. Okay.

Huh, maybe you should’ve actually read this book rather than just idly holding it that entire time. You didn’t even get a chance to take up the skeleton’s offer to connect you to Vaermina’s plane.

Though, if what it said about bi-hourly mind wipes is true, you guess you can just try again in half an hour.

Or two hours. It’s weird that ambiguity still exists telepathically.

The skeleton’s thoughts about restoration magic implied it might actually be able to make you better at other types of magic. If restoration magic is really that powerful, you doubt using it is as simple as thinking happy thoughts or believing in yourself.

Or eating a book about it.

As for Asotil, you’ve been giving the road regular checks and the most you’ve seen is a trapper carrying some rabbits. The sun is going down, though, so it’s pretty likely Asotil’s schedule was shifted six hours forward and he’ll show up in a couple hours.

You… guess if you have a full tank of magic, a temporary block on summoning, and no apparent route forward with restoration, it’s time to try the lightning spell.

You doubt you’ll have time to get much of a handle on it before Asotil shows up like he said he would, but… yeah.

While you don’t want to upset another space-skeleton, you cautiously push the topic further. Restoration magic means conjurers last longer, which means more conjurings. And that’s what CairnCorp (^®, the skeleton adds) wants, right? Repeat customers?

The skeleton acknowledges that the BAD MAGIC is indeed a method conjurers may utilize to prolong their living state, although its use is heavily discouraged by CairnCorp^®. If customers are concerned about personal safety, it is recommended that they prepare their paperwork well in advance† and keep a skeletal minion on hand at all times, as this provides protection without endorsing the school of Restoration.

Sensing your confusion, the skeleton explains further. CairnCorp^® is one of the few conjuration planes to offer undead servants, meaning your summons are not only of the highest quality^[1], but immune to poisons, exhaustion, and mind control that would affect a conventional Daedric summon‡. However, their undead nature also means they are uniquely susceptible to several forms of specialized magical combat utilized by a very small number^[2] of mages. Most of these spells focus on temporarily breaking the bonekin’s link to the Masters^®, but those versed in the BAD MAGIC often take a more heinous path, tampering with the bonekin’s very past.

A bonekin targeted by these spells will find itself having lived the most unspeakable of horrors. We recall every sight, feeling, and sensation as though it was our own. It weighs heavily on our shredded and reconstituted souls, leaving us shaken to our very core until our bi-hourly mind wipe.

Oh, wow. I’m… sorry I brought it up?

From now on I’ll be careful talking about restora-shin!

Like the tibia kind of shin, which is a bone.

So, ah, you seem very good at staying hydrated. Is there a dignified way to drink from a dish?

While there is very little about this in the etiquette knowledge the Makers^® have supplied, the skeleton’s limited information suggests the proper route is to place your fingers in a circle around the rim, stabilizing the edges of the dish as you bring it to your mouth.

Don’t worry, you’re still watching the road!

Nobody has shown up since the textile merchant. At most, you’ve seen a few deer.

You have been trying to slightly increase the time between checks, hoping that this will jinx Asotil into walking past the city just in time for you to notice him walking away and chase after him. So far, this has not worked, and you may need some stronger type of jinx-magic.

His name is now Quentin. His favorite food is chamomile tea and he wants to learn woodworking so he can start a shop selling children’s toys that help teach math. It would be emotionally devastating if Asotil showed up and stepped on him.

In retrospect, jinx-magic might not actually be a real thing. Taking a more proactive approach, you turn your attention back to the skeleton.

You think about your predicament. You are waiting for a friend to show up, but don’t know when he is going to arrive. You don’t want to leave this rock, lest it cause you to miss him, but you would like to search around and see if there are any better vantage points. Would it be okay to maybe pull the skeleton over to Nirn to act as an extra pair of eye… sockets?

The skeleton delightedly informs you that guard duty is a perfectly acceptable and encouraged use of your CairnCorp^® bonekin. According to its readings, however, you have insufficient magical energy to perform a conjuration at this time.

Wait – you can see how much magicka I have?

Of course it can read your mana quantity, the skeleton thinks. In order to provide an optimal conjuration experience, CairnCorp^® carefully monitors numerous‡ attributes of customer wellbeing. Your mana quantity is among these.

Can you, like… tell me how much I have? Because I don’t exactly know how to tell.

Certainly! Would you prefer it in metric or Imperial?

Oh! I mean… like, on one hand, I recognize metric is better. Everything being based off multiples of ten just makes sense, you know? But on the other hand, the Empire’s units are what I grew up with. When someone says “one meter”, there’s still this split-second thought of “oh, so about three feet”, and I don’t know if that ever fully goes away. It feels like I still think in Imperial, but on some level I also feel an obligation to try to stand against that. Like, to force myself to use metric units until I stop instinctively converting them in my head and instead just feel comfortable thinking of one meter as one meter.

The skeleton asks you to confirm it understands correctly: you would like the measurement in Imperial.

… Yes, please.

The skeleton informs you that you have one and a half gallons of magicka.

Ah… how much is that?

About five and a half liters.

No, I mean, like… how much does it take to do a conjuration spell?

It varies based on the conjurer’s skill, the skeleton thinks in response. For a caster of your demographics, a basic bonekin conjuration would take approximately twice the amount of mana you currently have, or three gallons. Based on your personal conjuration history, it is estimated the spell would take approximately sixteen times as much mana as you currently have, or twenty four gallons.

Let me guess: this is because of all those pictures I drew on the way there last time, isn’t it?

The skeleton notes that drawing pictures with a leyline you actually intend to use is, in practical terms, a terrible idea that would be met with ridicule were the skeleton capable of such behavior. But because the glorious Makers^® have freed the skeleton of such vices, it instead commends you on your creativity and dedication to the arts.

Additional resource credits:
AMKitsune – image positioning help

Don’t worry, you are sure this will have no negative consequences and that you’ll be able to stop whenever you want.

Getting straight down to business, you briefly think about yourself – an amateur mage seeking to learn more about conjuration – and your appreciation toward the Soul Cairn for getting you out of that sticky situation last night. Telepathic introductions are weird.

The skeleton is happy to hear that you found CairnCorp^®‘s conjuration services satisfactory, and hopes this is a sign you will continue summoning with them in the future. It considers the possibility that, if you enjoyed your experience, you’ll perhaps see fit to recommend CairnCorp^® to your friends^†?

You make a mental note to mention it to all three (!) of them at some point. How’s the ball-and-net game going?

The skeleton observes that today’s game in the Temple of Activity is progressing with the usual amount of harmonious perfection^‡. The glorious Makers^® have decided that it will win this game and the next by a narrow margin, before moving on to the regional championships where it will lose 1-6, 1-6.

Sounds like the skeleton, ah, has its day all planned out. You could call back later if this is a bad time?

It banishes that thought, stressing that it would enjoy nothing more than to serve you right now to the best of its capabilities^‡†. It requests a moment to pull up your files.

Sure, you think, no hurry. Mostly you just have some general questions.

First of all, about those files…

You hope to the skeleton that you might be able to tweak a few of the details that were entered last time. Your initial registration was expedited a bit due to the situation you were in, but now that things have cleared up you’d like to correct some minor inaccuracies.

The skeleton notes with a tinge of disappointment that a number of the basic account setup questions, such as the registrant’s name and birthday, are set at the time of registration and cannot be adjusted^[1]. This is part of the reason new users are encouraged to prepare their account well in advance^[2] and double-check answers thoroughly for spelling mistakes.

It wasn’t really a “spelling mistake” so much as the Ideal Master (^®, the skeleton adds) throwing in a bunch of answers to get the account made more quickly. You were a little too busy to care much at the time, but now that you’re no longer in mortal peril and summoning might become a regular thing for you, you’d kind of like to change your name away from “Slutty Meatsack”.

The skeleton reemphasizes that your registration name cannot be adjusted at a later date^[1], as your information has already been added to the Holy System in the appropriate alphabetical location. Additionally, if the exalted Maker^®, chose your name, it is most certainly an excellent name and the skeleton cannot comprehend why a change would be desired or necessary.

Would it be possible to at least change the language to something other than Dragonish?

Language preferences are indeed fully adjustable^‡‡. In the interest of providing better service for you and other customers going forward, would you be willing to provide the reason for the change?

Your Dragonish is a bit limited, you think in response. Also, you’re pretty sure dragonlings don’t have a written language. That ream of papers the skeleton is holding just has “<SCREAMING>” written repeatedly on every page.

The skeleton can see where this might be a potential inconvenience. A prayer has been sent to the Makers^®, and your language preferences should be updated within 3-10 business days.

The snake is imaginary! It can feel neither hot nor cold. There is no reason to worry about its wellbeing.

You can give it sassy little arms and make it give a thumbs up, though. Hopefully that’s enough to pretend it’s happy and comfortable.

Jessi wrote:

Katia: Enquire about the wide range of available deals on Summoning Circles!

Aaanyway, so, next point of business: I’m still pretty new to this whole “dealing with otherworldly entities” thing. I’m wondering, what exactly is the… model, here? Do I give you something in exchange for you sending skeleton people to me?

For legal reasons, the skeleton clarifies that CairnCorp^® does not send “skeleton” “people”. You pull bonekin from the Soul Cairn^® using basic conjuration technique as you would from any Daedric plane, while CairnCorp^® ensures your conjured aid is fully repaired and readily available when you need it, as well as providing customer service and manaback guarantees^‡‡† in the rare case that problems should arise.

As an ordinary conjurer, you won’t be buying from CairnCorp^® directly. Rather, new conjuration codes will be purchased through one of our licensed resellers. Upon using a code, it is securely and nontransferably bound to your account and will remain uniquely yours until you have been fully dead^‡‡‡ for at least two years, whereupon your account is automatically closed. Your Free Conjurer Account entitles you to summon one (1) Soul Cairn denizen at a time, although this number increases if you choose to upgrade to a Platinum Account.

Okay, you think, that seems almost suspiciously non-evil. There’s no secret trick here to take over my mind or steal my soul?

CairnCorp^® prides itself on an inviting environment and friendly customer service. We would never steal your soul, although we offer competitive^‡‡‡† rewards should you sign it over voluntarily. If a customer is on the fence about this decision, we encourage them to seriously consider whether they had any better plans or prospects for their soul.

Alright, so, I’m gonna change the topic before I start thinking about that too hard.

Third question. It’s a longshot, but… just to check, do you guys ever tamper with dreams?

CairnCorp^® is a high-quality provider of conjuration services^[4]. Altering dream states falls outside the purview of their business^[5].

I mean, not as a business thing, but maybe as advertising? Have you ever given people scary dreams to make them see your company name, or feel like they need skeletal defenders? Anything like that?

The skeleton recalls that a nightmare-based marketing campaign was proposed at a meeting several centuries ago. As CairnCorp^®‘s planar location is optimized for ease of summoning^[6], not dream intervention, the suggested campaign would have been operated in collaboration with the Daedric Prince Vaermina. However, the analyghasts foretold that such a campaign would draw interest to Vaermina’s plane of Quagmire more than to the Soul Cairn^®, and it was ultimately concluded that the gains of the campaign would not outweigh its price.

So you didn’t do it, but you did think about it. As in, it’s something a summoning plane might consider. Also, you implied you have a way to contact Vaermina?

Although CairnCorp^® highly discourages its customers from fraternizing with hazardous Daedric entities, most planes ruled by a Daedric Prince have a public number for business inquiries. The skeleton would be happy to forward your call to Quagmire, if you have questions about purchasing nightmares.

You might take the skeleton up on that offer later, you think in response. You’re still new to this conjuration stuff, and don’t really know how to reach places.

But, ah, before that: fourth question. I’m sorry if this is outside your plane’s specialty, but do you know anything about restoration magic?

The skeleton wishes it knew less about the BAD MAGIC.

It did not work. The road to the coast remains as Legionnaire-free as ever.

You’re glad you look good! You feel like you managed to hit the fine line between “looking nice” and “looking like you’re not carrying money”. Given your experiences these last few days, you figure that’s probably the right place to be.

As for the “blue line” magic: you absolutely aren’t sure if it’s the right thing to do here. It’s just kind of how you’ve been imagining magic.

Neither the book you read nor anyone else you’ve spoken to have said anything about blue lines – plus, magic looked all angular and purple when the Ideal Master took over your vision. It might just be a subjective thing nobody sees the same way, in which case you feel like it shouldn’t matter how you visualize healing?

In the interest of experimentation, though, you imagine a more realistic cartoon snake vomiting comic panels on your hand. It doesn’t heal your claws, but it does succeed in making the experience much, much more uncomfortable.

This is a borrowed book from the Mages Guild library! A guild you now officially belong to!

Leaving intelligent and helpful notes in the margins would be one thing, but you’re not going to needlessly scribble all over a book you’re probably supposed to return.

You meticulously vandalize every human depicted in the book.

This does nothing to forward your quest or improve your magical abilities. Not only that, but you have ensured the next owner of the book will know a khajiit was struggling with it and thought this might help.

Well.

That would solve the “book’s next owner judging you” problem.

But: you’re not going to eat the book.

Wildbreeze wrote:

Katia I’m begging you please move your coffee milk off of the books. It stresses me out

It’s been a little longer than that. Closer to three.

Asotil said he’d request a six hour shift in his schedule. It’s most likely he’ll show up either three hours from now (if the schedule shift didn’t get approved and he arrives the normal time) or nine hours from now (if it was shifted six hours forward, not back). It’s also possible he is running ahead of or behind schedule, in which case he could show up at any time.

Even if he doesn’t show up until nighttime, though, you’ll at least have lots of time to read books and practice things. Probably behind timeskips.

Like that one right there. You got tired of sitting so you ran into town to use the bathroom, ran back to the rock to make sure Asotil wasn’t visible on the road (either coming or going), then back into town again where you bought a toy crossbow that shoots toothpicks. You’ve almost gotten good at using it. Back to magic now.

Right. You close your eyes and try to forget about all the swirly blue lines and complexities of magic.

You focus on the you in the past. The you that had claws. The you that was “stored” in your mind while preparing to cast the healing spell.

You are that you. She is you. You are one and the same, and the separation of time does not change that.

You are not trying to heal. You are healed.

Yeah, it didn’t work. You are still clawless, and that guard on the wall probably thinks you’re doing some kind of very-low-energy yoga routine.

That just sounds like a very roundabout way of asking “do you like being a talking animal that panics about everything”.

And no, you take more pride in the fact that you worked stuff out okay despite being a talking animal that panics about everything.

If that’s true, you guess you’re supposed to just… wait until you believe in yourself more? Waiting until you get better feels a little antithetical to the entire idea of healing magic, but maybe there’s some part of you that’s just not ready for healing yet. After you spend some time being a competent and successful mage without huge problems all the time, maybe something you can’t see right now will just click and you’ll be able to use healing magic too.

Or maybe you’re overthinking this and are getting too dramatic for a magic type that can apparently be taught to illiterate people by a cartoon snake.

Well, whatever. If you’re giving up and going back to what you’re good at, at least “what you’re good at” is more respectable than it used to be. And these last few hours weren’t a complete loss: you learned the limits of your abilities. Those limits are higher than you thought they were a week ago, but you guess they’re still… there.

Healing can go on the shelf for a while. You reach out along the now-familiar path to the Soul Cairn, and your melancholy is mitigated by the usual blast of sudden happiness.

The skeleton on the other end is pleased that you chose to contact CairnCorp^®, and wonders how they can be of aid.

Additional resource credits:
Squiggles – Asclepius

Okay, for one, you have no claws left on any of your hands or feet. For two, you saw how practicing on your claws turned out, right? Given that you need some kind of new bodily damage every time the spell fails to take, moving on to actual wounds seems like a slippery slope that will end nowhere good.

You thank the very confused textile merchant for helping you frame the visual gag, and keep true to your promise to buy a scarf afterwards.

When asked about Imperial Legionnaires, he reports seeing a few between here and Elsweyr, but all headed the opposite way as him. You tell him he’s very nice for a khajiit. He’s not sure how to take that and says he wants to go now.

While the book is frustratingly light on details, the later pages do give a bit of justification for why it had you practicing on yourself.

Apparently, healing other people is something that only comes once you’ve mastered the basics. It’s not just a matter of storing someone’s uninjured state and willing them back to it: it involves storing your own uninjured state and willing it onto them. In the words of the cheerful cartoon snake, “you have to learn to catch before you can juggle”.

The book goes on to explain that “Restoration” is a misnomer, and that a practiced master can move beyond simple healing. They can temporarily displace entire experiences into someone’s history, giving them education or training they never received. The first step to this, though, is the basic self-healing spell: learning how to bottle up a little piece of time and release it right back where you got it. And that “incredibly simple” thing seems to be what you’re stuck on.

You’re not going to eat the book.

Fireballs involved emotion. When you learned telekinesis, though, it was completely different; you were giving tiny little pushes to the magical properties of things to make them work a different way. And when you briefly used conjuration, it was different from both of them, with you navigating through extradimensional space by the stars.

The fact that the Mages Guild had entirely different sections on the bookshelves for different magic types suggests that each one probably has its own theory and principles. There might be some overlap – you did manage to get a tiny bit of telekinesis from a bird pun, and started the conjuration spell with the normal blue line stuff – but you wouldn’t count on the secret to Restoration being something as simple as a different kind of wordplay.

For all you know, it might not even be something you can approach like a puzzle. The snake did say intelligence wasn’t a factor, and that if it didn’t work, you had to “believe in yourself harder”.

kaay wrote:

use this as reference for restoring your claws: Superimpost it over your hand. Make it stay that way. After all, your body will feel better if it does.

You thought for sure that one was gonna work. It was a solid idea and you did the dramatic darkvision flash and everything.

Nope, you can still make fire.

Unless that was the last of your magicka just then.

Nope, it wasn’t.

Unless that was. You have wasted two fire spells worth of magicka confirming you have magicka, and you still don’t know.

Also: Asotil still hasn’t shown up. You didn’t forget, you’re still checking.

You don’t… think that’s the issue? Sure, you’ve had plenty of times where you comforted yourself with lies, but you feel like your overall self-perception isn’t off base. It might seem like you’re hard on yourself sometimes, but really you just have a lot of problems and you’re extremely aware of them. And you’re not blind to the good things about yourself, either! Like, you did a cool thing last night and saved the day. Plus, you’ve been in Cyrodiil for less than a week and have already become a hundredaire. A high-end hundredaire too, over halfway to thousandaire. You’re okay.

And if your self-perception is screwed up in some weird way you don’t understand… well, that just makes you feel a little worse about yourself. Like, there’s something broken inside you that you can’t see, and it’s keeping you from learning the magic spell you want to learn. The thought is making you sad, which is pretty much the opposite of the snake’s advice to “believe in yourself”.

Maybe it’s time to take that break to mess with your clothes.

Well for one: these greens don’t get along at all. It’s like someone was halfway through a painting and had to remix all their colors, but ran out of yellow. You know aesthetics should come second to practicality, but there’s still a line you’d rather not cross.

Even on a practicality level, though, this is just throwing on even more layers on your body in the middle of summer. It’s not adding any actual armor, and honestly, if you needed to turn invisible, you could get the invisibility cloak out of your inventory about as fast as you could put up the hood.

Gekquerel wrote:

Overshirt from sneaking suit, pants and boots from arena armor, belt from mage robes. should be light enough to be wearable over fur and cool enough for summer, and leaves the hood to use as a backpack

That, though… is actually surprisingly functional. It’s good for walking, good for riding, good for summer, and doesn’t scream “rob me, I’m a high-end hundredaire”. You’d have to alter the sleeves a little, but it’s nothing you can’t handle with a silver dagger and a dangerous amount of believing in yourself.

Gaedar wrote:

Do you know what that means? Change… veeery… slowly. Not enough to get spotted by passerby, but slow enough that it isn’t your standard time!

You’re gonna do it. You’re gonna change super slow and seductively to jinx Asotil into appearing.

The guard is on a different part of the wall right now and the merchant is inside. Plus, changing clothes is a very functional and purposeful thing, so it won’t be too weird if someone sees you. Though, hopefully still awkward enough to make Asotil show up. You stand on the away-from-the-city side of the rock just to be safe.

The slow kind of seduction has never exactly been what you were known for, but you figure it’s basically just changing clothes but slower.

Here we go.

How is this something you are bad at.

This spellbook is the least helpful thing you have ever read.

You haven’t given up yet. But, you’re also not exactly making much headway.

You understand the concept. As the book has repeatedly gone out of its way to emphasize, healing magic is very simple. You’re supposed to hold onto a mental picture of how things were, and then regurgitate it onto how things are. The scant few pages on actual theory described it as “moving little bits of time”, which definitely sounds pretty neat on paper.

The problem is that it’s not leaving the paper. According to the book, pulling the memory into reality is the part of the spell that expends magicka, but storing the memory beforehand is the part that beginners mess up. If the healing spell does not work, it means your imaginary snake did not properly eat the comic panel or whatever, so you have to start over with something new to heal. This time, “believing in yourself harder”.

That… isn’t what the metaphor meant.

The author foresaw this confusion, though, and had an entire page explaining that you weren’t supposed to literally eat the book.

Well, your coffee turned out okay at least. You were kind of hoping it would turn the milk brown, but it still tastes like coffee.

As for Asotil, you’ve been glancing down at the road practically every page (which is frequently, considering each page has maybe five sentences). So far, you haven’t even seen so much as a courier. Imperials are notoriously regimented, though, so if Asotil said he’d request a six hour shift in his schedule, there’s a good chance he’ll show up exactly six hours from the original time.

Not so good of a chance that you’re willing to wait inside, though. Six hundred septims and a successful cup of coffee isn’t enough to make you start trusting your luck again.

“Good girl” would usually feel a bit demeaning, but you think Scleepy has lowered your standards enough to appreciate it. Thanks.

And you already tried wearing the cloak and robe together; it was a little cumbersome for your tastes. Remember that you basically have a full-body fur coat under everything you wear, and that it’s the middle of summer.

You are carrying three complete outfits at this point, though, each with lots of interchangable parts. If you wanted to make the invisibility cloak or even armor part of your normal wear, you could probably find some fancy and aesthetic way to combine the different pieces. It could be a nice little break from declawing yourself at the behest of a cartoon snake.

Plus, you’re pretty sure Asotil will suddenly show up right when you’re changing. That seems like the sort of thing that would happen to you, and you’re willing to capitalize on it if it means meeting up with him and getting back to Quill-Weave’s.

Additional resource credits:
Squiggles – Asclepius

Okay, okay, fine.

Despite having three potentially life-saving new magical skills you could spend this time learning, you overwhelmingly conclude that the best course of action is to attempt making coffee, despite having no knowledge of how to do so. With any luck, getting a little more wakefulness in you will keep you from making dumb decisions, such as this one you are making right now.

Plus, depending how long this takes, you might end up having time to read a book afterwards anyway. A giant cat can hope.

They are brown! You guess that means they’re already cooked?

Yeah, it has that “burnt wood” texture.

You guess you just let it steep now, like tea? Unless you made some horrible unforeseen mistake, that was actually surprisingly easy and disaster-free.

Also, Asotil didn’t show up in the last five minutes, meaning you still have time to work on your spells.

You… haven’t really ever thought much about that.

A week ago you didn’t even know someone like you could do magic. If it had turned out all you were capable of casting was some simple little light spell, you still would’ve been overjoyed about it, and probably gone around calling yourself the Light Wizard.

But having every route suddenly open to you like this, and people asking what sort of things you’re interested in and what you want to do? It just kind of makes you realize that you don’t know. You never thought it through this deeply, since planning for something unattainable would just make you sad.

You do have a vested interest in not dying horribly. You also seem to have an increasing propensity for getting horribly injured. Plus, since it’s a new type of magic you’ve never tried, maybe it’ll be the one that clicks something inside you and makes you go “wow! This is what I want to do forever!”.

If nothing else, being a master of the healing arts at least sounds more dignified and sophisticated than being a fireball-thrower.

Additional resource credits:
Squiggles – Asclepius
DPronin – Thumbnail sketches
because I kept putting them off

Not today, bad ideas! Up here you have a nice, elevated vantage point that lets you see for miles, whereas down there you’d be surrounded by hills and trees. Even if you didn’t instantly get eaten by bears or fall down the mountain and break both your legs (which, let’s be honest, would absolutely happen), you’d just be making it even harder to spot the person you’re looking for.

Plus, if he had shown up and left a couple minutes early, you’d still be able to see him on the road from here. And just in case he showed up super early:

Hey, you call up to the wall guard. Did you see an Imperial Legionnaire come by?

‘Fraid not, the wall guard says.

Okay, thanks, you say.

There. The guard didn’t see anything, and his whole job is to pay attention to his surroundings and make sure nothing potentially dangerous is happening near the city.

And just in case the guard is slacking off and missing things, you double check with the Dagon cultist. He confirms that no Legionnaires have come near the town. You thank him, offer him a sweetroll, and ask if he’ll take one up to the wall guard too, if he’s headed in anyway.

Asotil being late wouldn’t surprise you. Apparently, protocol mandates he stop and kill every potentially-threatening animal he sees (which you witnessed a lot of on the way here). Plus, there’s always a chance that his schedule-shift was denied, or that it got shifted less than six hours, in which case he could show up at any time. Everything is going great right now, so you want to make sure you don’t step away the exact moment he shows up.

As for your inventory, your new acquisitions are a bottle of milk, a box of glazed sweetrolls, a new set of arena armor, the new grammar book for Quill-Weave, a “leek” (weird Cyrodiil onion), some magicka-restoring mushrooms you’re pretty sure you sold the shopkeeper yesterday for way less than you paid today, and a bag of coffee beans.

You aren’t exactly sure how to turn coffee beans into coffee, but you figure you can work that out while waiting. You know roasting is involved at some point in the process. Presumably not the step that makes it hot at the end, since you’re pretty sure it’s not called roasting when done to liquid. It’s just… heating.

Nope! Everything you sit on is warm and comfy.

Those couple months you were shaved were the first and last time you experienced the horrifying world everyone else lives in. There is literally one advantage to having fur, and this is it.

Okay, you’re pretty much over sweetrolls now. You absolutely did not need to get the box of 24.

That sounds like a good reason to get a grip on healing magic before trying the lightning out. Though on the other hand, learning magic the proper way (as in, reading a book) probably involves a lot less injury than your ordinary “desperate experimentation” style of learning, so starting with healing may not matter.

You’re not sure how long you have, so you guess you have three choices of where to start. It could be pretty useful to get a basic grip on healing magic, but it’s also a new type of magic you know absolutely nothing about and don’t even have accidental experience with. Lightning, on the other hand, might come to you more naturally since you already have a tenuous grip on fire, but having another way to burn things wouldn’t exactly mean as much. It’s not like you and Asotil are going to get jumped by an evil bandit who can somehow only be hurt by magic that’s not flames.

Then there’s also the option of reading more into conjuration. Even if you technically did use conjuration magic already, it was only one time, it was based off a single diagram you saw in the book, and the Ideal Master said your “leyline was too sloppy” to have been usable without help – meaning there’s a lot you might still have to learn just to do it again. Plus, unlike the other magic, you actually have someone you can turn to if you need a hand learning it. Which… you guess kind of makes thematic sense, for conjuration. It’s basically just calling for help, even if it’s technically breaching the barrier between universes and cavorting with ageless, inhuman entities.

Or option four: you could try to make coffee.

Hey, this might be a weird question, but… would you have any interest in traveling back to Anvil with me?

What, Gaius asks, drop his duties to act as your personal bodyguard? There’s a Fighter’s Guild full of bored mercenaries who would happily take the role.

No, I mean like, so we can figure out more about the nightmare thing. Out of all the people and Khajiit on Nirn, some mysterious entity made you and me in particular have these nightmares. Nightmares about two very specific things, and both starting around the same year. There has to be some plan or motivation behind it, and if we could spend more time comparing the similarities and differences between our experiences, we’d be that much closer to decoding it. I have a courier job to finish, but you’re the best lead I’ve found on this, and it sounds like I’m the best lead you’ve found too. And like… I want to know if you’re into the idea of talking this out further while coming with me back to the coast.

A little.

Is that, like, a yes, or…?

It’s “a little”, Gaius says. Assuming everything you’ve said about your king-nightmares is truthful, then you’re right: between the two of us, we might be able to narrow down their cause. At the same time, though, I’m not sure how much you can be trusted. Consider it from my perspective: after fourteen years of unholy nightmares instilling a completely reasonable and justified apprehension of cultists, an ex-cultist suddenly shows up purporting to have similar nightmares and wanting me to come discuss it further. If I were royalty, and I posed such an offer to you, would you trust me and accept it?

Probably not, but I kind of expect others to be more rational than me with this stuff.

Hence “a little”. I might not fully believe you, but I do want to know more about your experiences with the nightmares. I’m not ready to take vacation days so a serial-cultist of allegedly-benign motives can lure me into the woods, but if you’re willing to spend some more time in Kvatch, I’m not averse to your presence.

Aww, you like me! Gaius explains that there’s a large gap between “not being averse to someone’s presence” and “liking them”. You tell him your bar is really low and this counts as a win. He is your friend now, there is no escape.

But no, like, I really need to get this courier job done; a friend is counting on me. I also want to meet up with the Legionnaire who took me here, to show him I’m doing okay and have actual money and skills now. He believed in me, and I kind of want to show him his investment paid off. His belief investment. It’s complicated. It’s a thing.

Right, Gaius says. You’ll be coming back to Kvatch though, I hope?

I mean, probably? It’s not like the city’s gonna just disappear. We’re nightmare buddies now, we’ve gotta figure shit out.

Captain Gaius doesn’t trust you enough to hug you, but he respects you more than to leave you hanging.

While hiring or conjuring a bodyguard is definitely an option, they would 1.) cost probably a third your money or all your magicka, 2.) pale next to the unparalleled protection of the Imperial Legion, and 3.) not be proud of you for completely turning your life around. The option is still on the table if some unexpected horrible disaster somehow causes you to miss Asotil, but your current plan is to not miss him.

Honestly, you have a bunch of books to read, so you don’t have a problem with just waiting out in front of town until you see him approach the base of the mountain. There’s a nice rock out there that’s in sight of the town guards while simultaneously giving you a good view of the road below.

Before you set up your little camp, you still need to get the new book for Quill-Weave and spend a couple updates doing one final comprehensive shopping trip around town. If Asotil usually shows up at 5:00 PM, and his schedule was moved either forward or backward by a maximum of six hours, that gives you a good…

Oh fuck.

Still. Better safe than sorry.

Okay okay okay, before you say anything, I want to say that I’m sorry. When we first met, it wasn’t right for me to mock you for being afraid of cultists. I should’ve known better, especially when I have my own nightmare-induced phobia that nobody else takes seriously. Also, I shouldn’t have gone flaunting to you that I used to be a cultist, especially since it was only half true. Like, technically I was in a lot of cults, like three at any given time, and it was mostly just getting gangbanged on stone altars. I know that’s probably too much information but I’m trying to be honest and open here and that always goes weird places. Just bear with me for a minute.

When I told you I had terrifying, recurring nightmares that were almost just like yours except with a king instead of a cultist, I swear I wasn’t lying. And when I said the dream had tried talking to me with big, glowing letters the other night, I also wasn’t lying. It was just as weird to me as it probably sounded to you, and I totally get why you thought I was bullshitting you. But like… I’m not; I’m confused and trying to figure out what’s going on with my weird nightmares, just like you are.

I’m sorry I handled everything between us really badly. I hope we can be, like, not friends, but in that sort of comfortable state where you aren’t going to punch me in the face. Just coexisting; you afraid of cultists, me afraid of kings.

Well I still say kings aren’t scary in the slightest.

Two and a half hours later, Gaius begrudgingly concedes that there are perhaps some valid reasons for people to be afraid of kings. Likewise, you admit that a reasonable apprehension of cultists could be conditionally justified. You’re glad the two of you cleared that up.

So let’s say you were telling the truth yesterday. The nightmare was carrying on per usual, then suddenly big, glowing words appeared, addressing you directly?

Yes! They told me not to be afraid. And then, like… the big king attacked me, I was about as afraid as anyone would be in that situation, and the floating letters berated me for it. They said they’d be back later, and to “wait there”.

And did you see them again last night, Gaius asks?

To be honest, I haven’t slept since then. My life’s been taking a pretty good turn recently, so my current plan is basically to just never sleep again.

Speaking of, is that coffee on the table?

Gaius says that it’s two hours cold, and also his. You ask him what the fine would be for stealing his cold coffee. Two septims, he says. Okay, you say.

Anyway, if the big, glowing words in the nightmare were telling me not to be afraid, they can’t be Vaermina, right? You said she was really big on fear and really bad at lying.

Understatement on the lying, but yes. Assuming you’re telling the truth about having nightmares like mine and aren’t yet another bogus lead, this glowing message could very well be the “dream thief” she spoke of. But, if the words you saw were the same entity giving the nightmares, why would they object to your fear? Were they speaking as though it were some sort of twisted test?

Not really? It was more like they didn’t have control over the nightmare. Realtalk, though: four hours ago my major goal in life was to find thirty septims I lost, so speculating on the machinations of supernatural entities is kind of whiplashy and already feels like a horrible mistake. Is there, like, some evil god expert we can field this to?

Far more of them on Nirn than I am comfortable with. But, few other than Vaermina cultists claim their dark patron holds any dominion over dreams and nightmares. A vampire, maybe? I believe one lives over on the east side of town.

Okay, tangent here, but I’m glad we’re just both openly acknowledging that fact right now.

Wait – Vaermina gave you her number! She said to have a conjurer call if you found any new information about your nightmares. I’m a conjurer now, and we have information! If you give me the number, I might be able to ask her for help!

Gaius cocks an eyebrow. You expected me to hold onto a scrap of paper given to me by an unhelpful demon?

Wha… yes! That was clearly an important item! Why would you throw away something given to you by a literal evil god?

I feel like we have very different ideas of what should be done with things left behind by evil gods.

Whatever, you say. The point stands. She said she wants information on your weird dreams – our weird dreams. She’s the Daedric Prince of normal nightmares, right? The next time one of us is having a normal nightmare, maybe we can get her attention and tell her about the weird glowing letters?

Hold on, Gaius says, you have normal nightmares?

You never found the trick to that? If you concentrate really hard on something else scary when you’re going to sleep, like half the time you’ll have a normal nightmare instead of a crazy monochrome terrortrip.

Outside of a reasonable apprehension toward cultists, there aren’t many things that scare a seasoned Captain of the Guard.

Man, you screwed yourself over then. You gotta be like me: afraid of kings, queens, and also everything else.

Oh, speaking of being afraid of everything: do you have a patrol schedule for the Legionnaire on the Gold Road? I need to head back to Anvil, but I wanna travel with him if I can. Safety and all that.

Safety is rarely much of an issue along the road to Anvil. But, if memory serves, on Tirdas he reaches the base of the mountain around 5:00 PM.

When we traveled here he said he was going to request a six hour change in the schedule to catch a bandit that’s been dodging Legion patrols. Have you heard anything about that?

Any change in local patrol schedules would have been reported directly to me, and I haven’t gotten anything. I wager the bureaucrats are probably still waffling on it, or just passed it along to the Fighter’s Guild. Then again, if the goal is to catch a bandit off-guard, the change might be unannounced.

Great. Guess I should’ve, like… asked if it was shifting six hours earlier or six hours later.