Chapter Text
Lord Seht hosted powerful visitors in the Clockwork City. His own private venue, in a sense. A dinner party fit for a god. The denizens of the districts could sense their arrival anywhere under the golden gears of the sky. Such arcane might mingled easily with the great brass hum underfoot and the ever-present divinity of Sotha Sil himself. At times they moved slowly, the ripples of their aurbic shadows drawing Apostles like curious minnows in the wake of a boat. And at times they couldn’t be bothered, teleporting as they pleased about the landscape, auras flashing like lightning through the souls of citizens.
It was a fact of life that had never much impacted the daily comings and goings of Caliya Derynval. Until the day one of those bolts felt the need to strike just outside her front door.
Three polite knocks echoed tinnily against the heavy bronze plate. Rumbles of thunder tremored through her heart. The Dunmer set down her spoon and crossed the kitchen with a curious frown as she re-tied her hair. Technically a Clockwork Apostle herself, she was a reclusive woman who lived far into the wastes, on the outskirts of the Radius in one of Lord Seht’s many abandoned cliffside projects. The path to the rock-carved building was too difficult for the average lost adventurer to bother scaling, and other Apostles themselves had no reason to make the journey, either. Company was nearly unheard of.
The door wasn’t locked, but it was in need of an oiling. The handle and hinges both creaked as they swung open to reveal a tall, slender, older Dunmer gentleman with silver hair swept back into a tight tail and a neatly-trimmed goatee ringing a slightly downturned mouth. The rest of him was encased in heavy-looking black and red plate armor, but despite his thin physique its weight didn’t seem to trouble him in the slightest. Immense power radiated from every inch of his body, pressing almost physically against her chest, as though his soul itself was attempting to force entry into her home.
At the sight of her his brow creased visibly, as though he had expected someone else to answer the door. The possibility that he’d arrived at the wrong abandoned cliffside orbservatory seemed to cross his mind.
“Good day,” the mer greeted, peering over her into the dark interior of the receiving hall before returning his sharp red eyes to hers. “Might you be Caliya Derynval?”
His accent was typical of a cultured exodromal, but his tone was flat, neutral. Underwhelming. Almost disinterested.
“I am,” Caliya replied, looking him up and down. “Can I help you, muthsera…?”
She phrased it as an invitation to introduce himself, since he clearly already knew her. When the silence stretched, he finally showed a sign of life. An eyebrow quirked in derisive surprise. The edges of his plate rattled as he folded his arms.
“Oh, don’t tell me Sil sent me to the one tin disciple who doesn’t know the name ‘Divayth Fyr’,” he sighed. But he seemed to recant with a frown. "No, perhaps this could be advantageous…"
"Oh." Realization squeezed her throat. “Of course I know the name, Lord Fyr,” she told him. Only a fool didn’t. But despite her physical reaction, she wasn’t really the deferential type. Even to grand master wizards like him. “However I don’t believe we’ve met," she continued. "You’ll forgive me for not hanging a portrait of every one of Lord Seht’s personal guests above the mantle in case of emergency. You might have guessed that I don’t host many visitors way out here.”
He was here for a reason, after all. His sort didn't just drop by an old wasteland orbservatory for a social visit with the commonfolk. And the irreverent gamble paid off. A smirk twisted the corner of his pale lips. The mer glanced behind himself at the sweeping expanse of dust and brass that was her cliffside view of the world. “No? A shame. Hanging factotum-generated portraits of Sil and his associates seems exactly like the sort of thing you devoted lapdogs would do, after all. Right after you’ve finished lopping off bits of your body to turn yourselves into machines…”
As he opined about her colleagues, Caliya took a moment to gather herself. Divayth Fyr. On her doorstep. The mer's reputation was legendary. He was a reasonably frequent visitor to the City -- perhaps one of the most frequent, outside Vivec himself -- and everyone seemed to have an opinion of the famous wizard. Mostly negative, though they'd never admit it to his face. But then again, the feeling was mutual. He seemed to have a rather sour opinion about the Brass Fortress’s population and lifestyle as well, with particular disdain for the religious devotion of Lord Seht’s followers. And he was often vocal about it.
Or so the rumors went.
Frankly, Caliya couldn’t blame him. She didn’t much care for her so-called peers, either.
Which was why she lived out here, and not in there.
“How can I help you, Lord Fyr?” she asked.
His roving gaze snapped back to hers like a thrown dagger. “Perhaps you would like to invite me inside?”
Inside? She cast a glance back through the front room into the kitchen beyond, and her dinner. Right now?
“...Don’t get me wrong,” he continued flatly over her shoulder. “I enjoy a good dusty, breezy clifftop shout as much as the next fellow…” She felt him lean closer, his aurbic pressure increasing significantly. He was trying to peer in as well, to see what she was looking at. “I assure you, whatever blasphemous experiments you may or may not be conducting out here are beyond my interest.”
That wasn’t the problem.
She backed away and opened the door wider, permitting him entry. “You said Lord Seht sent you to me?”
“Yes,” Divayth replied, stepping through and looking around. It was an airy but unremarkable space, functional brass-and-glass fixtures and austere walls lined with bare pipes, in the style of most of the city’s interior decoration. “You see, I have a problem rather connected to his charming little clockwork realm, and he suggested that I visit you to solve it.”
Caliya closed the creaking door behind him and drew a breath. “Well, you’ve arrived at a poor time,” she admitted. “I’m in the middle of dinner. What is the nature of your problem?”
Divayth scoffed, half-interrupting her last few words. “Oh, far be it from me to interrupt dinner, Ms. Derynval, please. You’re only holding up one of the greatest mages to walk the face of Nirn.”
Unfortunately for one of the greatest mages to walk the face of Nirn, she wasn’t kidding. “If Lord Seht sent you to me, it must have been for my research into the wild fabricants,” she replied, undaunted. “Can I offer you a book to read while you wait? One of my unpublished research journals? I would assume a wizard of your caliber would have read the published ones before seeking external assistance.”
The revelation sank in slowly. His eyes didn’t leave hers. “...You’re quite serious, aren’t you?”
If he thought she was going to drop everything and tend to his needs without warning and waste a perfectly good meal, either Divayth Fyr was about to experience a rude awakening, or Lord Seht had knowingly sent a harbinger of death to one of his favored students’ front doors.
“With respect, Lord Fyr,” she began, “preparing the meat of a fabricant for elven consumption requires six to twelve hours to cleanse the oil and destring hundreds of filaments of brass veins from an entire beast. It takes ten minutes to eat, but only fifteen to decompose into an inedible slurry of foul jelly when left to its own devices.” She started toward the library, hoping he would follow. He did. “I’m not certain why Lord Seht sent you here now, but I cannot afford to waste it.”
“Everything you people eat is an inedible slurry of foul jelly,” Divayth quipped thoughtlessly. “I fail to see the difference. I thought those beasts weren’t fit for consumption, isn’t that why all of your food is a colorless mush squeezed out of a tap?”
“Yes,” Caliya replied, pausing before her mess of a personal bookshelf and wishing she’d gotten around to organizing it last week like she’d planned to. Chalk slate, engraving plates and paper notebooks from Nirn Above lay scattered about shelves that stretched floor to ceiling. “However, they failed to lay a mush-tap pipe this far out into the wasteland, and the other Apostles enjoy attempting to force me back into their fold by restricting the amounts I’m allowed to carry when I have to come back for more. Thus, I supplant my nutrition with local game creatures to defy their wishes.”
“Hmm.” He stepped up beside her, one elbow perched on his wrist, fingers stroking his beard as he studied the academic chaos. “A rebel. Finally, something I might like about you.” He flicked his fingertips toward the kitchen. “Go on, then. Eat your slop before it degenerates. We’ll discuss how I hope to enlist your aid when you’ve finished.”
“You’re too kind, my lord,” Caliya replied as she turned her back, unable to keep the sarcasm from coloring her tone. “Please treat the paperwork gently, and I apologize for the lack of organization.”
She paused by the threshold when he didn’t respond, and glanced back. The indignation in his fiery stare skipped a nervous beat in her heart, but there was still a faint smirk on his face. She didn’t want to be afraid of him, but common sense and basic self-preservation begged her to be a little more cautious than that. All these grand masters could be a temperamental bunch, after all.
“I hope you know when to rein in that sharp tongue,” he warned with an edge of amusement. “It might cut someone some day…”
She didn’t trust herself not to add fuel to the flames. Instead, she offered a curt nod and headed back to her kitchen table.
The “meat” was already beginning to separate and dissolve into the clockwork gruel around it. Caliya pushed the soupy melt around the brass bowl with her spoon, hoping to find some of the still-solid chunks and force them down quickly. Seht had really picked a terrible time to send her such prestigious company, but what bothered her more was that he knew. He knew the consequences of his decisions before he made his choices. He knew she was eating, and he knew that sending Divayth Fyr here would force an early confrontation between them. But why? What did that gain for this situation? The Father of Mysteries could have easily entertained any company for another ten minutes and avoided all of this. And what could Fyr possibly want from her? She was a field researcher who specialized in deconstructing the anatomy of fabricants. What did someone of his caliber need from her, that Seht himself or any other Apostle couldn’t provide?
She studied her meal as she ate, as though the answers could be divined from some particular arrangement of its deterioration. Perhaps dinner was just meant to slow down the encounter. To give her a platform to push back against his insistence. A point of assertion, to inform him that she wasn’t the sort who could be kicked around so easily, as someone like Divayth Fyr might be used to.
Or, perhaps she’d never know.
The wizard’s power pressed down on her as he approached the kitchen and frowned, field journal in hand. “Is that stench coming from your meal?”
Yes, it was.
“Open a window if you need to.”
She wasn’t proud of having to eat things like this, and Caliya tended to turn her shame into a shield.
“You realize that’s rot, yes?” Divayth needled.
She held out a spoonful. “You sure?” she asked. “Care to try some, to be really sure?”
“Ulgh.” His lip curled. Despite being across the room, the dunmer still physically recoiled. “What a miserable life.”
“Thanks, I’ll note your opinions in my forthcoming biography.” A spot of white dripped to the table with a soft plat. She shoved the rest into her mouth before more was lost. It tasted as awful as it smelled, but she pushed it down anyway.
“...I thought this place couldn’t get more barbaric,” Divayth muttered. But instead of returning to the library, he flipped through her notebook where he stood. “I will never understand why you grovelling so-called scholars tolerate this mistreatment and neglect. Whatever Sil’s teaching you isn’t worth this abuse, you know. Not an ounce of dignity among the lot of you.”
“I’d rather die on my own terms than suffocate to death in the mindless bureaucracy of organized religion.” Another spoonful, down the hatch. Slimy. It sat thick in her stomach, threatening discontent with its new surroundings.
He nodded into the book. “So you’ve chosen to poison yourself. Creative. I suppose I might do the same, given the alternatives.”
He left her alone for a few more sludgy, jellylike mouthfuls before raising his eyes.
“I noticed you’ve failed to defend your saintly patron from slander. Most of your type tend to stare in disdainful horror when I raise the spectre of Sil's cruelty. He spoke highly of you in recommending your services to me. Do you not feel the same about him?”
Caliya stared down at the liquefying remnants of her dinner in quiet impatience. Couldn’t he just leave her alone for five more minutes? She was almost done. Although the churning in her stomach suggested that maybe she wasn’t.
“Does my opinion of Lord Seht factor into your problem?” she replied, looking up. “He’s a god; he’s busy. He has better things to do than hand food to the needy. The Clockwork City isn’t a forgiving world. It’s no secret that it wasn’t meant to support mortal life. It’s a harsh wasteland of scarcity where the weak die and the clever amass what little luxury this place has, to the detriment of all others. I have no opinion of it. It just is.”
Divayth abandoned all pretenses of browsing her journal. “What drew you here, then?” he asked. “If you’ve no interest in licking Sil’s bootheels?”
Caliya stared him down for a long second, wondering what that could possibly matter, and why such a grand master of the arcane would care. She finished her meal and rose, then immediately regretted the decision. She’d waited too long. This “food” was going to be a struggle to keep down.
“Wasn’t my choice, if you really need to know. My mother came here when I was a child,” she informed him, trying to control her quickening breath. A clammy chill swept her skin. She turned away with the bowl and spoon to hide the healing magic she attempted to massage into her guts. “And she died soon after. I never knew how she got here, or why. But I refused to live in the gutter with the rest of the Slag Town outcasts.”
She carried the bronzewear to the sink and submerged it in a thin, oily pool of water sitting in the bottom of the basin. A film clung to her fingertips as they dipped below the surface. The stink did little to soothe her restless stomach. She'd wash it later, after he was gone.
“Seht called you an Apostle,” Divayth challenged.
Caliya turned to face him, spreading an arm to brandish her stained but still recognizable robes. “And I still am, technically. I studied their teachings and was initiated into the order.”
“...As an orphan.” He seemed to want to come closer, but another sniff of the air kept him where he stood.
She started across the room. A cramping pain seized her abdomen. She staggered toward the table and caught herself, panting as it passed.
“If I’ve been sent here to witness your death, I’m not reporting it to Sil,” the master wizard sneered. “And if you’re about to return that foul waste back to the earth, I’ll have nothing to do with that either.”
“Why don’t you just go back to the fetching library like I asked,” Caliya snapped down at the table’s edge, “and I’ll be with you in a minute. I need to lie down.”
And yet, despite her anger and dismissal, he followed her to her bedroom, and leaned against the doorframe while she clambered onto the stiff slab that served as her mattress. For a long moment, she stared at the ceiling and breathed. Shockingly, Divayth respected the silence, taking the moment to properly browse whatever book he’d been carrying around this entire time.
“...When you’re up to the task of talking,” he began softly after a few minutes, “I am curious to know where these notebooks came from.”
"The writing?" she exhaled, "or the books themselves?"
"The books," he clarified. "The materials to craft an object such as this are not available in this realm."
“Gifts,” Caliya replied, feeling significantly better already. “Lord Seht stops by from time to time with more, and to collect completed works for review and publication.”
“Sil gifts you paper notebooks from Nirn?” Divayth asked.
“Yes.” The woman turned her head to see him better. “It’s how I know he approves.”
“Of your work?”
“Yes.”
He flipped studiously through a few more pages until he came upon something that drew his brow into another frown. The wizard peered closely at it, looked at something outside the room, and closed the book.
“Come back to the library when you’re feeling stable,” he informed her.
“Whatever you wish, muthsera,” Caliya sighed at the ceiling as he left.
His gait flinched, but he seemed to think better of further confrontation, and vanished from sight. She wasn’t sure if that exhale was a sigh or a laugh.