This is meant to be an introduction to how Shadow Magic fits into the TES world and how it can be applied in combat and as a roleplaying device. While this is based on lore, Shadow Magic is somewhat vague and I filled in a lot of gaps myself. I'm also an author before I'm an RPer and feel I explain myself better in a story. In the next few days, I'll post the Character Build in the appropriate group for the character and historical figure Azra Nightwielder, the original Shadow Mage.
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J'zargo's Lessons in Shadow Magic
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“Khajiit… sees… Oh, J’zargo sees nothing! Apologies, Arch-Mage,” the cat amended himself, backing off in frustration and wiping his brow.
Azra Nightwielder didn’t let his disappointment show. He held his hands out again and his apprentice took them, his smooth, warm fur grasping tightly. Determination was set in his slitted eyes. J’zargo had never found a magic he wasn’t able to master. Shadow Magic, however, was far more complicated than the standard schools.
“Relax your eyes. Most magic is very emotional and relies on instinct rather than skill. Shadow Magic is entirely a mental art. It’s seeing through time and space—through the stars of Magnus, the shadows in a room, the magicka and life energy in every soul—use whichever metaphor works best, but every shadow has a catalyst and would not be here if its creator never existed, if the events that caused you to light a candle never happened.”
They had been here for over an hour and J’zargo was getting impatient. The colour never drained from the world, no matter how hard he focused, and all he could see was the Hall of the Elements, and the small crowd of teachers who were trying to discreetly listen. Apparently, forbidding the use of the hall only included students. But Azra was unconcerned. This was a guided lesson and unless one of them grabbed the strings of his robes, anything they gained could be read about in some obscure tome he published an era ago.
“Let your mind wander over the years of your life,” said Azra calmly, “your time with the Synod and in Cyrodiil, your childhood in Elsweyr. Find a point where your life could have changed.”
J’zargo licked his lips. He was probably quite sick of thinking of his own life and wanted to do more substantial, not to mention he was running out of ideas. “When J’zargo bought his ticket to Skyrim. The one to High Rock was far cheaper and J’zargo was low on funds. He was tempted.”
Azra took a deep breath and started to stroke the mage’s paws. “There are many colleges of magic in High Rock, but nearly all are political. One who isn’t is the Varden Institute. Imagine you went to High Rock, joined this institute and became a great wizard.” J’zargo liked this idea, clearly. “How would you come here, to the Hall of the Elements half a world away?”
It wasn’t necessary to start off by connecting a shade to the place they were already in, but Azra had found this was the easiest way to train apprentices. Azra watched J’zargo’s eyebrows twitch and willed him to see. As he attuned himself to a world where this Institute J’zargo existed, Azra watched himself and a J’zargo dressed in ornate robes converse near a pillar, mere shadowy figures.
“As an envoy,” said J’zargo at last. “Wearing black—no, no, purple mage robes with gold and… and…” J’zargo’s eyes glazed over and he turned his head to the empty alcove. His grip tightened.
“Relax, calm down. Listen to my voice. I’ll pull myself in with you.” Slipping his mind from one shade to another was as easy as breathing. After the familiar rush of coolness wash over his mind, Azra squeezed J’zargo’s hands, his claws now digging in painfully.
J’zargo looked back at him in an ecstatic panic. “Jzargo has done it,” he said hoarsely, turning to the envoy and this world’s Azra, who were now discussing international relations. The world had lost much of its colour, but Azra solidified their connection, enriching their vision of the hall. There was still a slight warble and blur to it, though, which worried Azra.
“You need to relax,” he said with urgency. “If you can’t sustain yourself in here, you’ll be ripped back to our world and it won’t be nice. They can’t see us, but won’t appreciate it if we’re revealed.”
A shudder went through his apprentice as he watched Faralda conduct a lesson on frost spells. The Hall of the Elements was, more or less, identical to their own, but it was bustling with students practicing magic, the roar and sizzle of it surrounding them. J’zargo’s breath whistled between his fangs as he breathed deeper. As the minutes slipped by, the buzz to the world melted and most things calmed as J’zargo did.
“This is…”
“I know.”
“This world…”
“I know.”
“That’s J’zargo.”
“I know.”
Azra let J’zargo absorb this new magic for a few minutes, keeping a close eye on his self. “Now, it’s one thing to blend with the shades. There’s a fair amount of knowledge that can be gained. Once, there was a time where kings and princes came to me, to demand I teach their diviners and fortune tellers.” Azra dropped J’zargo’s hands and, with them, his dreams and old memories. They crossed the room to stand beside their doubles.
“But there is something infinitely greater to be gained. Something I think you will appreciate.” Azra smiled wryly. “Power. A power greater than the Elder Scrolls. At my height, even the Princes of Oblivion didn’t dare take me on.” J’zargo’s eyes glistened and Azra laughed. “Well, at least, Hermaeus Mora and Boethiah, and not at the same time, heavens no! And when my concentration snapped, I fell into a magically induced crystalline coma, awaken each time by some wayward traveller.”
“This was what happened during the War of Bend’r-mahk, yes?” J’zargo reached out one claw to touch his double, looking uncertainly at his Arch-Mage.
“Yes, and then, much more recently.” Azra casually placed his own hand on the back of his self and pushed. Rather than the double stumbling forward, he rolled his shoulders and Azra’s arm went straight into him. “As you can tell by the grey hair and fur, this world is years ahead of our own. These versions of us have had much longer to study magic and master it. Judging by the hefty sword on your belt, this envoy is very skilled in blades as well. By using the link we have with our own shade—as they are the same people as you and I—we can borrow their minds, their skills and talents. Things we might lack.”
Azra rooted around in his shade, stepping into him, then back out. A heady waterfall assaulted his mind as he felt this Azra’s life pass him by, the knowledge he had gained and the enemies he killed. Not much was new, though. This was a fairly similar shade to his own self. “As I suspected, this world is far older and this Azra is very skilled indeed at Destrucion, and he even took up Illusion, which I never had any aptitude for.” Azra felt the special hum of Illusion magic and knew he could weave even the most complex of spells, casting it with the same familiarity as a bolt of lightning or the summoning of an atronach.
J’zargo still looked wary of his self.
“Don’t worry,” said Azra. “This world is stable. Even if it’s not a full bind, all I want you to taste is its principle.”
J’zargo stepped into his shade, who doubled over in agony. Azra’s double reached out, concerned, and the envoy stood up, rubbing his chest.
“This one’s body does not tend to agree with such heavy Skyrim food. If you excuse J’zargo,” said the envoy. He was suspicious, though, and as he turned to leave, he stared directly at Azra.
Azra’s J’zargo, however, was lying on the floor, having fallen out when the envoy stood up. His chest heaved as he gasped for air. The world fritzed and it was filled with flashes of static. Azra pulled J’zargo to his feet and ended their expedition smoothly, rather than risk being thrown out.
The lesson ended, and the students snapped from the world. The copies of himself and J’zargo vanished, and Azra was once again holding J’zargo’s hands in the center of the hall. When they reached their world, J’zargo stumbled backwards and fell, landing hard against the stone ring of liquid magicka. He dipped a finger in it and breathed the cool relief, still breathing heavily. Then, suddenly, he began to laugh. A deep, joyful laugh, rather unlike his dark snigger.
“Never has J’zargo felt a thing so magnificent,” he cried from the floor.
The professors behind them looked on in confusion. From their point of view, the two hadn’t moved for several minutes before combusting into this display.
Azra laughed with him, pulling him to his feet. “Before it wears off”—the whisper of conjured Daedra filled the room—“I suggest we try out those sword-fighting techniques your shade was so famous for.”
Before J’zargo could catch his breath, Azra threw himself into a familiar shade. In this world, Azra had abandoned magic at a young age and pursued a life as a bounty hunter, a sellsword talented in the use of all weapons and armor. Sleeping soundly in a tent in the deserts of Hammerfell, his beard thick and untamed, they melded quickly and Azra returned himself to his own world, energised with martial knowledge. The knowledge and familiar, yet not innate, power coursed through his veins. The only give away that he had in this world was a slight unfocussing of his eyes.
J’zargo summoned his own bound sword and began to say, “This one is unsure what you mean—” But Azra had already made his first move, slashing down with the weightless weapon. Instinctively, J’zargo parried, but it wasn’t the parry of a frightened, defenseless mage. He pushed back, twisting his sword at to lock at Azra’s hilt and stepping back with practised grace.
Halfway between terrified and thrilled, J’zargo eagerly continued the fight. Both were quite skilled and as the spell began to wane, the weapons fading back to Oblivion, there was no clear victor.
Azra beamed and put his hand on his apprentice’s shoulder. “Wonderful! You really are coming along marvellously. I wouldn’t advise you practise on your own, as it can be very dangerous, but I’ll teach you some more next week. For now, we must travel to Falkreath. There’s a rumour about some rogue werewolf, and I’d like to check it out.”
J’zargo ran to keep up with him. “Will the Arch-Mage teach J’zargo to make this knowledge permanent?” Azra slowed then stopped, his hand on the doorknocker, about to brave the wild snow of Skyrim.
“There are very few rituals in magic that are evil in themselves,” he said softly. “I regret that the power you seek is brought about by such a ritual.” Azra ushered his apprentice to his quarters and waved his professors away.
His quarters were dimly lit by magic lights and almost every tabletop hummed with his own brand of Shadow Magic. Azra guided J’zargo into a rough chair. “I was young, brash, and just as power-hungry as you,” he began. “In fact, I take you on as an apprentice only to avoid what happened with myself as a young scholar.”
“You discovered Shadow Magic, created it, an entirely unknown branch of magic?” questioned J’zargo.
“But not without price. While much of it was my own knowledge and cunning—as you felt, our little jaunt in the shades, through the Void, drained no magicka and harmed no soul—but I was not alone in creating this.” Azra lit a candle, touching the wick to evoke a fire spell. “I do not know whether it was a Divine or Daedra that assisted me, but every experiment I conducted went right, even the hazardous explosion that should have killed me, that did wipe out half of the armies of Hammerfell, that blew a crater in the ground larger than the College, all it did was put me to sleep, frozen and safe. Someone wanted me to succeed, to bring Shadow Magic to Tamriel, and to train apprentices. Every one of them is renowned. Jagar Tharn. Pergan Asuul. Dozens more.”
J’zargo’s eyes widened with surprise to learn that his master had brushed cloaks with such men, let alone teach them. Every one of them was a great tyrant in his time.
“I honed artifacts, bringing things to creation from the energy that spans the shades—weapons, armor, potions—things that hold the power of a person’s shade, that allow him to access it without journeying across the Void. They were misused, stolen, but I kept working. I had to go deeper, further, breaking the rules of reality, rules so solid no one ever thought to put them into words.”
Azra sounded bitter, now, and eyed the candle flame with some degree of hatred. “I found a way to be able to influence the shades, to become corporeal within them, rather than the spectral consciousness you and I were in the hall. I purposefully created a Shadow of Conflict. Such Shadows are created when many, many shades are created at once. There are always shades being created, but when events have so many far-reaching variables, too many shades are created at once and the boundaries between shades weakens. The energy of the Void, a dangerous dark magic, can seep into the shades and be harnessed to break the rules that hold Mundus together.”
“How did you create a Conflict?” asked J’zargo hesitatively.
Azra turned his eyes from the candle to his friend and smiled weakly. “I started a war in several shades. I killed the Emperor dressed in full elven armor, speaking the then-dialect of the Altmer. An Elven-Imperial war that destroyed both parties. Tamriel as we know it was gone. I killed millions, perhaps billions, but I said that because it wasn’t in my own shade it didn’t matter. Their lives weren’t real.” Azra took J’zargo’s hand. “When I said merging yourself permanently with your shades was evil, I meant what you have to do to attain it. You need to cause catastrophe after catastrophe, breaking several shades and appeasing the Dread Father of the Void to even access such power.”
“Sithis,” whispered J’zargo.
“Black Soul Gems, filled with the souls of men and mer. I collected hundreds of them and found a weak point between the shades. And then it’s just like any other ritual: some blood, some chanting, an offering and an altar.”
“And the power?”
“I used the Void to rip holes in the world, dozens of them, to all the people I could’ve become. The warriors and mages, assassins, spies, soldiers and sorcerers. Even a Lord of Oblivion. The legends of every art imaginable. Anyone can do anything, and we can all become a legend in our field. Feeling their shadows creep across the ground, seeing their worlds through ragged holes like so many windows in the sky, their hearts and minds enter yours, it’s the purest expression of Shadow Magic. My art.”
Azra put J’zargo’s hand on the table and swallowed back his regret.
“Then, of course, the Hammerfell armies came, hearing of what I planned to do, and they broke my concentration. You know what happened next.”
“They shouldn’t have,” said J’zargo firmly.
“I’m as fond of my own life as anyone else,” chuckled Azra. “But does anyone have the right to be a God? It’s a question the Living Gods of the Morrowind Tribunal once asked themselves. And even then, what is even the difference between the nameless Divine, one who you have never met or interacted with, and a man you can meet and speak with, to ask for favour and serve in person? Sotha Sil even dared to question Azura in such a way, and she cursed his people to become the ash-skinned Dunmer. Even if you choose to take the power to serve your own people, or to serve the cause of scholasticism, you are not yourself once you finish the ritual. I attempted it a second time, years later, and succeeded before attempting to end my life. With the minds and souls of so many, you lose who you were. It’s quite the price to pay for such a power.”
The candle cast long, flickering shadows on the table and across the floor. J’zargo watched these shadows pensively, feeling ashamed and confused. The shadows began to move in a more purposeful way, but J’zargo was hardly surprised when the shadow of Azra’s hand touched his own again yet he felt no physical touch.
As they linked their shadows, J’zargo felt the ritual Azra experienced twice. The soft, high grass swaying in the wind and tickling his hips. The burning sun and ice cold altar of black stone. The hundreds of fist-sized soul gems, black as night, their contents swirling. The panic and anticipation racing through the young Azra’s mind. He flipped through his spindly hand-written notes and began to recite a long spell in a language older than Daedric. It didn’t call upon Magnus or Oblivion for its power. It demanded something more primal…
There was a sharp, sudden slice, and a deep gash scarred Azra’s hand, blood dripping to be lost in the grass. The world stopped. A steel knife fell into from his bloodied hand into the grass. The sun grew cold, the grass wilted and fell like soldiers on a battlefield, the soul gems disappeared in puffs of black smoke, and a jagged hole, so dark it sucked in the light of the frozen sun, ripped open before Azra. He chanted more feverishly as more soul gems vanished. His robes whipped around him in a furious gale, and the roar of magic filled J'zargo's ear as the hole tore itself open.
As the typhoon of magic and wind stopped, the hole began to pulse steadily, changing into a more defined shape. All was silent for a moment and Azra seemed to think it was okay to step forward, but a long, whispery black tentacle rolled from the door to the Void, creeping across the dead ground. First one, then several, spilling out into the world, wriggling hungrily. When the first tendril caught Azra’s shadow, he commanded it in the same language, and the tendrils wrapped around his shadow’s body, moving slowly, caressing it submissively. He was their master, for the moment.
The hole of the Void closed when the last tendril slinked out, but hundreds of windows broke into the world with the sound of a lightning strike, some quite far away, others near, and each showed a new world, with a new Azra. An Azra wielding a battleaxe, slaying his way through the desert. An Azra commanding delicate nature magics in a southern jungle. An Azra at the head of an army, wearing the robes of an official battlemage. An Azra working as a miner, a fisher, a baker, a smith. One by one, the tendrils slinked away from his body and crawled into the windows, hanging out like writhing snakes.
It wasn’t a flashy sort of magic but J’zargo could feel its power from the memory. Azra kept chanting and the tendrils kept moving, reaching into each window, their ends dangling free. When he changed his incantations again the tendrils retracted, each holding onto the ankle of a shadow. Some of these shadows wore bulky battle-armor, others slick armor, or simple robes, but the shadows crossed the ground unwillingly, caught in the grasp of the Void’s tendrils, scraping the ground with shadow-hands and shadow-feet, broken free from their bodies.
Azra gave the last command and waited, watching the approaching army of shadows, his mouth dry and hands twitching. As the first tendril touched his shadow again, he started to scream. J’zargo screamed. He felt it. The pain of his soul being torn to make room for new ones, his mind being dissected by the new people invading his body. He could feel Azra’s regret. He didn’t want this, to become a thousand people in one body. All he wanted was their abilities, their mastery, their power. He didn’t stop screaming for several minutes, and when all the shadows merged with his, the tendrils becoming a part of him, he lay on the ground with tears in his eyes. The sun returned to its warmth and the grass grew again.
J’zargo heard the rabble in Azra’s head, the arguing, the confusion and fear. He felt them begin to disregard the simple Shadow Mage, his genius, in favour of their own. They overwhelmed him. They began to push the young Azra from his mind, but J’zargo tasted his resolution, his bitterness.
He heard the storm magic cantrip and watched the grass around the wizard begin to smoke and burn. As J’zargo felt himself fade from the memory he watched the slow growth of crystals over the incapacitated, but not dead, Azra. The crystals from his secret patron to safeguard him until he was once more allowed to awaken.
As the vision finally faded, J’zargo was again in the Arch-Mage’s quarters, sitting over a flickering candle, with a fully grown Azra in front of him, staring sadly across the table. Azra reached over and wiped the tears from J’zargo’s eyes. As his mentor withdrew his hand, J’zargo noticed the deep scar in his palm, jagged like lightning. It had always been there, but now it drew his eye.
“It’s all in the past, my friend, and is a ritual that ought to be forgotten. It will die with me, I promise. Not even the most righteous should become a god.”
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This is my first (probably not last) contribution to the Story Corner, and I couldn't find any directions for titling or tagging, so I messed up please correct me.
This is meant to be an introduction to how Shadow Magic fits into the TES world and how it can be applied in combat and as a roleplaying device. While this is based on lore, Shadow Magic is somewhat vague and I filled in a lot of gaps myself. I'm also an author before I'm an RPer and feel I explain myself better in a story. In the next few days, I'll post the Character Build in the appropriate group for the character and historical figure Azra Nightwielder, the original Shadow Mage.
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J'zargo's Lessons in Shadow Magic
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“Khajiit… sees… Oh, J’zargo sees nothing! Apologies, Arch-Mage,” the cat amended himself, backing off in frustration and wiping his brow.
Azra Nightwielder didn’t let his disappointment show. He held his hands out again and his apprentice took them, his smooth, warm fur grasping tightly. Determination was set in his slitted eyes. J’zargo had never found a magic he wasn’t able to master. Shadow Magic, however, was far more complicated than the standard schools.
“Relax your eyes. Most magic is very emotional and relies on instinct rather than skill. Shadow Magic is entirely a mental art. It’s seeing through time and space—through the stars of Magnus, the shadows in a room, the magicka and life energy in every soul—use whichever metaphor works best, but every shadow has a catalyst and would not be here if its creator never existed, if the events that caused you to light a candle never happened.”
They had been here for over an hour and J’zargo was getting impatient. The colour never drained from the world, no matter how hard he focused, and all he could see was the Hall of the Elements, and the small crowd of teachers who were trying to discreetly listen. Apparently, forbidding the use of the hall only included students. But Azra was unconcerned. This was a guided lesson and unless one of them grabbed the strings of his robes, anything they gained could be read about in some obscure tome he published an era ago.
“Let your mind wander over the years of your life,” said Azra calmly, “your time with the Synod and in Cyrodiil, your childhood in Elsweyr. Find a point where your life could have changed.”
J’zargo licked his lips. He was probably quite sick of thinking of his own life and wanted to do more substantial, not to mention he was running out of ideas. “When J’zargo bought his ticket to Skyrim. The one to High Rock was far cheaper and J’zargo was low on funds. He was tempted.”
Azra took a deep breath and started to stroke the mage’s paws. “There are many colleges of magic in High Rock, but nearly all are political. One who isn’t is the Varden Institute. Imagine you went to High Rock, joined this institute and became a great wizard.” J’zargo liked this idea, clearly. “How would you come here, to the Hall of the Elements half a world away?”
It wasn’t necessary to start off by connecting a shade to the place they were already in, but Azra had found this was the easiest way to train apprentices. Azra watched J’zargo’s eyebrows twitch and willed him to see. As he attuned himself to a world where this Institute J’zargo existed, Azra watched himself and a J’zargo dressed in ornate robes converse near a pillar, mere shadowy figures.
“As an envoy,” said J’zargo at last. “Wearing black—no, no, purple mage robes with gold and… and…” J’zargo’s eyes glazed over and he turned his head to the empty alcove. His grip tightened.
“Relax, calm down. Listen to my voice. I’ll pull myself in with you.” Slipping his mind from one shade to another was as easy as breathing. After the familiar rush of coolness wash over his mind, Azra squeezed J’zargo’s hands, his claws now digging in painfully.
J’zargo looked back at him in an ecstatic panic. “Jzargo has done it,” he said hoarsely, turning to the envoy and this world’s Azra, who were now discussing international relations. The world had lost much of its colour, but Azra solidified their connection, enriching their vision of the hall. There was still a slight warble and blur to it, though, which worried Azra.
“You need to relax,” he said with urgency. “If you can’t sustain yourself in here, you’ll be ripped back to our world and it won’t be nice. They can’t see us, but won’t appreciate it if we’re revealed.”
A shudder went through his apprentice as he watched Faralda conduct a lesson on frost spells. The Hall of the Elements was, more or less, identical to their own, but it was bustling with students practicing magic, the roar and sizzle of it surrounding them. J’zargo’s breath whistled between his fangs as he breathed deeper. As the minutes slipped by, the buzz to the world melted and most things calmed as J’zargo did.
“This is…”
“I know.”
“This world…”
“I know.”
“That’s J’zargo.”
“I know.”
Azra let J’zargo absorb this new magic for a few minutes, keeping a close eye on his self. “Now, it’s one thing to blend with the shades. There’s a fair amount of knowledge that can be gained. Once, there was a time where kings and princes came to me, to demand I teach their diviners and fortune tellers.” Azra dropped J’zargo’s hands and, with them, his dreams and old memories. They crossed the room to stand beside their doubles.
“But there is something infinitely greater to be gained. Something I think you will appreciate.” Azra smiled wryly. “Power. A power greater than the Elder Scrolls. At my height, even the Princes of Oblivion didn’t dare take me on.” J’zargo’s eyes glistened and Azra laughed. “Well, at least, Hermaeus Mora and Boethiah, and not at the same time, heavens no! And when my concentration snapped, I fell into a magically induced crystalline coma, awaken each time by some wayward traveller.”
“This was what happened during the War of Bend’r-mahk, yes?” J’zargo reached out one claw to touch his double, looking uncertainly at his Arch-Mage.
“Yes, and then, much more recently.” Azra casually placed his own hand on the back of his self and pushed. Rather than the double stumbling forward, he rolled his shoulders and Azra’s arm went straight into him. “As you can tell by the grey hair and fur, this world is years ahead of our own. These versions of us have had much longer to study magic and master it. Judging by the hefty sword on your belt, this envoy is very skilled in blades as well. By using the link we have with our own shade—as they are the same people as you and I—we can borrow their minds, their skills and talents. Things we might lack.”
Azra rooted around in his shade, stepping into him, then back out. A heady waterfall assaulted his mind as he felt this Azra’s life pass him by, the knowledge he had gained and the enemies he killed. Not much was new, though. This was a fairly similar shade to his own self. “As I suspected, this world is far older and this Azra is very skilled indeed at Destrucion, and he even took up Illusion, which I never had any aptitude for.” Azra felt the special hum of Illusion magic and knew he could weave even the most complex of spells, casting it with the same familiarity as a bolt of lightning or the summoning of an atronach.
J’zargo still looked wary of his self.
“Don’t worry,” said Azra. “This world is stable. Even if it’s not a full bind, all I want you to taste is its principle.”
J’zargo stepped into his shade, who doubled over in agony. Azra’s double reached out, concerned, and the envoy stood up, rubbing his chest.
“This one’s body does not tend to agree with such heavy Skyrim food. If you excuse J’zargo,” said the envoy. He was suspicious, though, and as he turned to leave, he stared directly at Azra.
Azra’s J’zargo, however, was lying on the floor, having fallen out when the envoy stood up. His chest heaved as he gasped for air. The world fritzed and it was filled with flashes of static. Azra pulled J’zargo to his feet and ended their expedition smoothly, rather than risk being thrown out.
The lesson ended, and the students snapped from the world. The copies of himself and J’zargo vanished, and Azra was once again holding J’zargo’s hands in the center of the hall. When they reached their world, J’zargo stumbled backwards and fell, landing hard against the stone ring of liquid magicka. He dipped a finger in it and breathed the cool relief, still breathing heavily. Then, suddenly, he began to laugh. A deep, joyful laugh, rather unlike his dark snigger.
“Never has J’zargo felt a thing so magnificent,” he cried from the floor.
The professors behind them looked on in confusion. From their point of view, the two hadn’t moved for several minutes before combusting into this display.
Azra laughed with him, pulling him to his feet. “Before it wears off”—the whisper of conjured Daedra filled the room—“I suggest we try out those sword-fighting techniques your shade was so famous for.”
Before J’zargo could catch his breath, Azra threw himself into a familiar shade. In this world, Azra had abandoned magic at a young age and pursued a life as a bounty hunter, a sellsword talented in the use of all weapons and armor. Sleeping soundly in a tent in the deserts of Hammerfell, his beard thick and untamed, they melded quickly and Azra returned himself to his own world, energised with martial knowledge. The knowledge and familiar, yet not innate, power coursed through his veins. The only give away that he had in this world was a slight unfocussing of his eyes.
J’zargo summoned his own bound sword and began to say, “This one is unsure what you mean—” But Azra had already made his first move, slashing down with the weightless weapon. Instinctively, J’zargo parried, but it wasn’t the parry of a frightened, defenseless mage. He pushed back, twisting his sword at to lock at Azra’s hilt and stepping back with practised grace.
Halfway between terrified and thrilled, J’zargo eagerly continued the fight. Both were quite skilled and as the spell began to wane, the weapons fading back to Oblivion, there was no clear victor.
Azra beamed and put his hand on his apprentice’s shoulder. “Wonderful! You really are coming along marvellously. I wouldn’t advise you practise on your own, as it can be very dangerous, but I’ll teach you some more next week. For now, we must travel to Falkreath. There’s a rumour about some rogue werewolf, and I’d like to check it out.”
J’zargo ran to keep up with him. “Will the Arch-Mage teach J’zargo to make this knowledge permanent?” Azra slowed then stopped, his hand on the doorknocker, about to brave the wild snow of Skyrim.
“There are very few rituals in magic that are evil in themselves,” he said softly. “I regret that the power you seek is brought about by such a ritual.” Azra ushered his apprentice to his quarters and waved his professors away.
His quarters were dimly lit by magic lights and almost every tabletop hummed with his own brand of Shadow Magic. Azra guided J’zargo into a rough chair. “I was young, brash, and just as power-hungry as you,” he began. “In fact, I take you on as an apprentice only to avoid what happened with myself as a young scholar.”
“You discovered Shadow Magic, created it, an entirely unknown branch of magic?” questioned J’zargo.
“But not without price. While much of it was my own knowledge and cunning—as you felt, our little jaunt in the shades, through the Void, drained no magicka and harmed no soul—but I was not alone in creating this.” Azra lit a candle, touching the wick to evoke a fire spell. “I do not know whether it was a Divine or Daedra that assisted me, but every experiment I conducted went right, even the hazardous explosion that should have killed me, that did wipe out half of the armies of Hammerfell, that blew a crater in the ground larger than the College, all it did was put me to sleep, frozen and safe. Someone wanted me to succeed, to bring Shadow Magic to Tamriel, and to train apprentices. Every one of them is renowned. Jagar Tharn. Pergan Asuul. Dozens more.”
J’zargo’s eyes widened with surprise to learn that his master had brushed cloaks with such men, let alone teach them. Every one of them was a great tyrant in his time.
“I honed artifacts, bringing things to creation from the energy that spans the shades—weapons, armor, potions—things that hold the power of a person’s shade, that allow him to access it without journeying across the Void. They were misused, stolen, but I kept working. I had to go deeper, further, breaking the rules of reality, rules so solid no one ever thought to put them into words.”
Azra sounded bitter, now, and eyed the candle flame with some degree of hatred. “I found a way to be able to influence the shades, to become corporeal within them, rather than the spectral consciousness you and I were in the hall. I purposefully created a Shadow of Conflict. Such Shadows are created when many, many shades are created at once. There are always shades being created, but when events have so many far-reaching variables, too many shades are created at once and the boundaries between shades weakens. The energy of the Void, a dangerous dark magic, can seep into the shades and be harnessed to break the rules that hold Mundus together.”
“How did you create a Conflict?” asked J’zargo hesitatively.
Azra turned his eyes from the candle to his friend and smiled weakly. “I started a war in several shades. I killed the Emperor dressed in full elven armor, speaking the then-dialect of the Altmer. An Elven-Imperial war that destroyed both parties. Tamriel as we know it was gone. I killed millions, perhaps billions, but I said that because it wasn’t in my own shade it didn’t matter. Their lives weren’t real.” Azra took J’zargo’s hand. “When I said merging yourself permanently with your shades was evil, I meant what you have to do to attain it. You need to cause catastrophe after catastrophe, breaking several shades and appeasing the Dread Father of the Void to even access such power.”
“Sithis,” whispered J’zargo.
“Black Soul Gems, filled with the souls of men and mer. I collected hundreds of them and found a weak point between the shades. And then it’s just like any other ritual: some blood, some chanting, an offering and an altar.”
“And the power?”
“I used the Void to rip holes in the world, dozens of them, to all the people I could’ve become. The warriors and mages, assassins, spies, soldiers and sorcerers. Even a Lord of Oblivion. The legends of every art imaginable. Anyone can do anything, and we can all become a legend in our field. Feeling their shadows creep across the ground, seeing their worlds through ragged holes like so many windows in the sky, their hearts and minds enter yours, it’s the purest expression of Shadow Magic. My art.”
Azra put J’zargo’s hand on the table and swallowed back his regret.
“Then, of course, the Hammerfell armies came, hearing of what I planned to do, and they broke my concentration. You know what happened next.”
“They shouldn’t have,” said J’zargo firmly.
“I’m as fond of my own life as anyone else,” chuckled Azra. “But does anyone have the right to be a God? It’s a question the Living Gods of the Morrowind Tribunal once asked themselves. And even then, what is even the difference between the nameless Divine, one who you have never met or interacted with, and a man you can meet and speak with, to ask for favour and serve in person? Sotha Sil even dared to question Azura in such a way, and she cursed his people to become the ash-skinned Dunmer. Even if you choose to take the power to serve your own people, or to serve the cause of scholasticism, you are not yourself once you finish the ritual. I attempted it a second time, years later, and succeeded before attempting to end my life. With the minds and souls of so many, you lose who you were. It’s quite the price to pay for such a power.”
The candle cast long, flickering shadows on the table and across the floor. J’zargo watched these shadows pensively, feeling ashamed and confused. The shadows began to move in a more purposeful way, but J’zargo was hardly surprised when the shadow of Azra’s hand touched his own again yet he felt no physical touch.
As they linked their shadows, J’zargo felt the ritual Azra experienced twice. The soft, high grass swaying in the wind and tickling his hips. The burning sun and ice cold altar of black stone. The hundreds of fist-sized soul gems, black as night, their contents swirling. The panic and anticipation racing through the young Azra’s mind. He flipped through his spindly hand-written notes and began to recite a long spell in a language older than Daedric. It didn’t call upon Magnus or Oblivion for its power. It demanded something more primal…
There was a sharp, sudden slice, and a deep gash scarred Azra’s hand, blood dripping to be lost in the grass. The world stopped. A steel knife fell into from his bloodied hand into the grass. The sun grew cold, the grass wilted and fell like soldiers on a battlefield, the soul gems disappeared in puffs of black smoke, and a jagged hole, so dark it sucked in the light of the frozen sun, ripped open before Azra. He chanted more feverishly as more soul gems vanished. His robes whipped around him in a furious gale, and the roar of magic filled J'zargo's ear as the hole tore itself open.
As the typhoon of magic and wind stopped, the hole began to pulse steadily, changing into a more defined shape. All was silent for a moment and Azra seemed to think it was okay to step forward, but a long, whispery black tentacle rolled from the door to the Void, creeping across the dead ground. First one, then several, spilling out into the world, wriggling hungrily. When the first tendril caught Azra’s shadow, he commanded it in the same language, and the tendrils wrapped around his shadow’s body, moving slowly, caressing it submissively. He was their master, for the moment.
The hole of the Void closed when the last tendril slinked out, but hundreds of windows broke into the world with the sound of a lightning strike, some quite far away, others near, and each showed a new world, with a new Azra. An Azra wielding a battleaxe, slaying his way through the desert. An Azra commanding delicate nature magics in a southern jungle. An Azra at the head of an army, wearing the robes of an official battlemage. An Azra working as a miner, a fisher, a baker, a smith. One by one, the tendrils slinked away from his body and crawled into the windows, hanging out like writhing snakes.
It wasn’t a flashy sort of magic but J’zargo could feel its power from the memory. Azra kept chanting and the tendrils kept moving, reaching into each window, their ends dangling free. When he changed his incantations again the tendrils retracted, each holding onto the ankle of a shadow. Some of these shadows wore bulky battle-armor, others slick armor, or simple robes, but the shadows crossed the ground unwillingly, caught in the grasp of the Void’s tendrils, scraping the ground with shadow-hands and shadow-feet, broken free from their bodies.
Azra gave the last command and waited, watching the approaching army of shadows, his mouth dry and hands twitching. As the first tendril touched his shadow again, he started to scream. J’zargo screamed. He felt it. The pain of his soul being torn to make room for new ones, his mind being dissected by the new people invading his body. He could feel Azra’s regret. He didn’t want this, to become a thousand people in one body. All he wanted was their abilities, their mastery, their power. He didn’t stop screaming for several minutes, and when all the shadows merged with his, the tendrils becoming a part of him, he lay on the ground with tears in his eyes. The sun returned to its warmth and the grass grew again.
J’zargo heard the rabble in Azra’s head, the arguing, the confusion and fear. He felt them begin to disregard the simple Shadow Mage, his genius, in favour of their own. They overwhelmed him. They began to push the young Azra from his mind, but J’zargo tasted his resolution, his bitterness.
He heard the storm magic cantrip and watched the grass around the wizard begin to smoke and burn. As J’zargo felt himself fade from the memory he watched the slow growth of crystals over the incapacitated, but not dead, Azra. The crystals from his secret patron to safeguard him until he was once more allowed to awaken.
As the vision finally faded, J’zargo was again in the Arch-Mage’s quarters, sitting over a flickering candle, with a fully grown Azra in front of him, staring sadly across the table. Azra reached over and wiped the tears from J’zargo’s eyes. As his mentor withdrew his hand, J’zargo noticed the deep scar in his palm, jagged like lightning. It had always been there, but now it drew his eye.
“It’s all in the past, my friend, and is a ritual that ought to be forgotten. It will die with me, I promise. Not even the most righteous should become a god.”
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This is my first (probably not last) contribution to the Story Corner, and I couldn't find any directions for titling or tagging, so I messed up please correct me.
