Chương 694: A Journey Ends
A/n: Help me reach my Goal on P4treon & Join Discord! ➡️ https://linktr.ee/donovel ⬅️
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Losing all your loved ones, being unable to do anything about it, being trapped in the memories of the old you, and struggling through an oblivion of one's self. Laaneth was already in a bad situation after the last events.
But if there was one man in the entire world who would know these feelings way better than her, it is none other than Yagrum Bagarn.
The Last Living Dwarf. [A/n: Added to Discord Gallery!]
A Dwemer from an age long gone, a man who survived through time thanks to his immortality, Yagrum Bagarn was a legend to many. All of Tamriel's mages would pay endless fortunes to meet with the last Dwemer craftsman, but he was usually a shy one.
"Rest here, child. Sleep well."
Yet that legend stood on his eight spider robotic legs and helped Laaneth lay down after her last mental outbreak. She was struggling with reality and seemed to have suffered immensely from the loss of Glymet and Swims-at-Night.
Yagrum, the bearded obese Dwemer who was covered in a grey layer of blighted skin, was no stranger to loss. As the last living Dwarf, let alone being an immortal, he must have at least some loose set of screws but that is what made him competent enough to handle the devastated Laaneth.
As soon as she was put to sleep, Yagrum Bagarn faced Jon Dare who was busy with the Mechanical Heart.
Yagrum watched what Jon did carefully and with just a single glance, he was able to discern what Jon was doing. Seeing the young human wizard put that much effort into stabilizing and fixing the Mechanical Heart, Yagrum had a smile curling up his face.
"You've grown just fine I see." Yagrum said as he started approaching Jon.
As his focus was no longer needed to maintain the Heart, Jon replied, barely turning his head halfway.
"I have heard of you but I don't believe we've met before." Jon replied.
"We haven't officially met but that day in Tel Fyr, I watched your challenge against Master Fyr's dungeon." Yagrum said as he gave Jon a throwback to that time when he first encountered the Fyr sisters and Lord Divayth some years ago. That happened when Alfe Fyr ambushed Nurina and kidnapped her back to Morrowind.
Jon smiled as he remembered those times.
"I never noticed you were there." He said.
"You wouldn't have. Officially I have been in Clockwork City for some time now. I've only been keeping tabs on my Laboratory from here." Yagrum said, "While you were not the only challenger of the time, you defeated the Sotha Sil formation I recreated and got the Storage Cube that I carefully hid."
"Sorry about that." Jon couldn't contain himself and gave off a short burst of laughter before gradually returning to the gloomy mood that was suffocating the room.
"So…" He continued asking, "I assume you are here for the familiar vibe of the place."
Yagrum shook his head in response.
"There is nothing familiar in this land. Sotha Sil has built something ingenious but I don't feel anything relatable to my people here." Yagrum said, "Well… I felt there was something familiar but I couldn't find it on my own until…"
Yagrum seemed in a state between fear and excitement as he raised the thing he was holding on to for the past few minutes.
Ram's Head.
Jon saw that and let go of the Heart's restoration process.
"So Ram was a Dwemer." He said with interest.
"To be honest, I have no idea." Yagrum's reply, however, couldn't confirm or deny Jon's hopes.
"How so?" Jon asked, filled with curiosity.
With a big sigh, Yagrum stroked his beard with his fat hands and turned around.
"Follow me." He said.
As Yagrum walked out of the Chamber of Lorkhan, Jon followed behind him but he soon halted his steps before Galyn and the other Clockwork Apostles who arrived later.
"Take care of Laaneth until I arrive." Jon said.
"And the Heart?" Galyn asked.
"It is stable now. The machines shall take care of the remaining phase of restoration and the Heart has its own protection protocols. It will retreat by itself to the hidden depths of the city at some point when maintenance is done."
"That's a relief to hear. Thank you, Master Jon." Galyn bowed his head despite the mixed feeling he had towards Jon who insulted Sotha Sil on a few different occasions.
As for Jon, he strode behind Yagrum Bagarn and caught up to him deeper beyond the chamber.
"So this is the Inner Curiosity of Sotha Sil!" Jon wondered as he stood and saw what he saw.
In front of him was a large chamber filled with sections, walkways, mazes, and many blueprints laying around. It was like the grandest laboratory ever.
"I've taken my liberty to use this place as my workstation." Yagrum laughed in awkwardness.
"You were here the whole time while Mecinar was wreaking havoc?" Jon asked.
"Aye… Don't get me wrong, boy. I was as terrified as your average sissy Altmer. Fighting and bashing skulls the way you did… that's not my thing." Yagrum denied all interest in violence.
"Truly? How in Oblivion did you survive all that time then?" Jon asked with shock written all over his face.
"You think the Last Living Dwemer would be the Last Living Dwemer because of his prowess? Bah! If I hadn't laid low, we wouldn't be talking like this."
"So underwhelming!"
"That's the problem with all Master Fyr's disciples, brutes with brains."
Jon couldn't help but admit that Yagrum Bagarn was right on point with what he said. Still, there seemed to be something Yagrum was intending to show him and he was too focused on his surroundings to reply.
It was like that until they all arrived at a large sealed tight gate.
"Interested in unlocking that for me?" Yagrum pointed at the gate and asked Jon.
With narrowed eyes, Jon shifted his focus towards the gate and slowly examined it. He looked closely at all its details and was impressed by the craftsmanship and the arcane layers laid upon that gate.
"What do you think?" Yagrum asked.
"Interesting." Jon exclaimed and got closer to the gate, "I wasn't sure before but now I have no excuse."
"About?"
"My brother Wulfur will kill me. He's obsessed with all manner of Dwemer technology but this… this will get him mad that I didn't bring him over."
"That's not Dwemer!" Yagrum said with a light chuckle.
"I know." Jon nodded, "If I am not mistaken, this is Sotha Sil's personal and ingenious craft. Despite the fact that the Clockwork City is all about imitating Nirn, the technology of Sotha Sil is almost at the level of the Dwemer… alas…"
"???"
With Jon's judgment, Yagrum Bagarn himself was worried by that last word Jon used.
"What is wrong?" Yagrum asked.
"The Technology of Sotha Sil compared to that of the Dwemer is as real as the Clockwork City compared to Nirn."
Jon's opinion made Yargum's eyes widen and look not just at the gate in front of them but all around him.
"You can't be serious!" Yagrum said with obvious agitation.
"How long have you been here, Master Yagrum?" Jon turned to Yagrum Bagarn and asked.
"I don't…"
Yagrum Bagarn seemed reluctant to answer but after a whole minute of agonizing over the raging thoughts inside his head, he finally spoke them out.
"Seventy years." He said.
"I see…" Jon nodded and carried a look on his face filled with pity, "It is your memory, isn't it?"
Yagrum couldn't face Jon and simply turned away with obvious dejectedness.
"Even Sotha Sil used Memory Stars to store the memories he's too afraid to forget." Yagrum said and sighed.
After all, he's an immortal.
In the 8th century of the First Era (approximately 3700 years ago), Yagrum Bagarn was an assistant craftsman of the Dwemer Craftslord Kagrenac, creator of the famous tools of Kagrenac. The entire race of the Dwarves disappeared from existence while Yagrum Bagarn was on an otherworldly errand. That saved him from the Dragon Break during the War of the Red Mountain which led to the disappearance of the Dwarves.
As becoming officially the Last Living Dwemer, Yagrum Bagarn searched for his own people while entering the service of Tamriel's greatest Sorcerer, Lord Divayth Fyr, Jon's Great Grandmaster.
Many years later, he contracted the Divine Disease, aka the Corprus, and became in his current physical state with a bloated body and disabled legs.
While Divayth Fyr was able to halt the Corprus from turning its victims into husks, the process didn't cure them and left them with some aftereffects that included some physical deformities as well as an immortal body.
The two most famous individuals who gained immortality like that are Yagrum Bagarn, the Last Living Dwarf, and the Nerevarine, Hero of Morrowind.
Due to such abnormal immortality, the minds of the individuals who gained immortality via the Corprus started to deteriorate at certain points of their lives and their old memories became distant and so unreal. It was something as close to clinical dementia.
In the case of Yagrum Bagarn, he needed someone like Jon with a good eye for advanced technology to tell him the vast distinction between the Original Dwemer technology of his own people and the imitations of Sotha Sil. Jon went as far as claiming that the Clockwork Technology is based on the fact that it exists within the Reality created by Sotha Sil and wouldn't amount to anything near the genius of the Dwarves.
Depressing? It may be if one looked at the grand scale of this world and Nirn. However, if one chooses to ignore the big picture, at least one can satisfy themselves with what is fake.
[A/n: the point here is that because Sotha Sil created his own world, he could make this world's rules to support his technology and imitate Dwemer Technology. On one hand, some people can power and use Dwemer technology on Nirn but no one is capable enough to rebuild the entire Dwemer Civilization like Sotha Sil unless he changed the rules of the world itself. It is similar to how Jon created his Domain to be an illusionary realm that resembles modern Earth without knowing all the inner workings of modern technology.]
But this leaves a paradox at the end. Was Sotha Sil more capable than the Dwarves as he created his own realm despite being a digital one, or were the Dwarves smarter and more capable when they created things like the Original Tools of Kagrenac and the Walking Brass Tower (aka the Mechanical God, Numidium)?
Luckily for Yagrum and Jon, they wouldn't find out the answer to that question. Jon decided not to speak any further and waited for Yagrum to put his thoughts together.
"Either way…" Yagrum scratched his bald head and spoke to Jon, "… Beyond that gate, I think there is something related to the Dwemer."
"I take it that you have a rough idea of what it is?" Jon asked.
"Probably something related to this little guy." Yagrum pointed at Ram's head and said so.
"You deactivated Ram?" Jon asked.
"For now." Yagrum replied, "He is too precious to leave unattained. I don't know how you found him but during all my stay in this city…"
"It was like looking for a needle in a haystack."
"Indeed." Yagrum nodded, "Moreover, the locking mechanism of the gate. You surely know how to open it."
Jon looked at the gate and nodded as he saw the three sockets on its exterior. These three sockets had three shapes. One was arm-shaped, one was dagger-shaped, and the last was hammer-shaped.
"I understand."
Jon nodded and recovered the Tools of Kagrenac, the Replicas which Sotha Sil created and Glymet recovered. Earlier, Jon wanted to destroy them per Galyn's request for no one to exploit the Mechanical Heart again but Yagrum requested to wait before doing that.
So they were also keys. Jon was really curious about what secret which lies beneath the gate they unlock, a secret that is mostly related to Ram.
Carefully, Jon put Keening in the dagger-shaped socket, Sunder in the hammer-shaped socket, and Wraithguard in the central arm-shaped socket.
*CLICK*
*Click-Click…*
With the sound of the artifacts being accepted on the gate, the large gate started to turn like a wheel and go inside the wall to clear the way for the chamber behind it.
A vault, a dark vault filled with nothing but research papers, old writing tools, and a punch of Memory Stars lying around everywhere.
In an odd sensation, Jon felt as if the mess outside the vault made by Yagrum's research was a replica of the mess inside.
"That's it!" Yet it was as if Yagrum Bagarn had spotted something else, "Sotha Sil's study."
Without a shred of hesitation, Yagrum stepped into the vault and looked around it.
All of the papers in this place were blueprints, magic scrolls, and charts for large and complicated machines and buildings. They were simple yet marvelous and ingenious in their own way.
Yagrum didn't care about the blueprints and such and started touching the Memory Stars one by one.
"It has to be here! It has to be in there." He kept mumbling as he looked through each Memory Star lying around.
"I think they are only personal memos." Jon said but Yargum barely listened.
Jon knew what Yagrum was looking for. Relatively, it was the easiest thing to guess from the Last Living Dwarf.
He was looking for a trace of his people. After hundreds and thousands of years, the last Dwarf is still looking.
He was sure that to create this Dwemer-like Clockwork Realm, Sotha Sil had something of the Dwarves left in his position. Something powerful enough to match the intellect of a Dwemer.
Jon watched that and sighed as he went through his fruitless search.
He must have already gone through Ram's memories and realized how incomplete and unreliable they were. That's why he is looking for something that can make sense to them.
While Yagrum was wrong about this as Jon thought, Jon himself was also wrong. The answer they didn't expect was just about to hit them right on the face.
As Yagrum was agitated by the voice of Sotha Sil that kept echoing in his head whenever he held a Memory Star, he soon realized that something was amiss and started to go through the whole thing one more time but…
Just as he did so, his mechanical legs got tangled up with some long curtain hanging in at the end of the room. Neither Yagrum nor Jon expected anything when this curtain was torn down but as soon as they saw what it was covering, the two of them almost fell on their asses.
It was there all along, the Dwemer source that Sotha Sil used. The target of Yagrum's search. Hardly could Jon understand what he saw but it was there, sealed in a green liquid tube, the body of someone.
The ears were as pointy as those of an elf but the skin was dark in a different tone than that of the Dark Elves. The body build was weak but the bone structure was strong and the jaws were clearly distinctive.
Moreover, two large tusk-like fangs rose from the lower jaw of that person. They looked like that of an Orc but that person hardly looks like one. He also had long braided hair.
What was that they just saw?
Jon was somewhat repulsed by the Orc crossbreed but unlike him, Yagrum Bagarn was looking at the thing in awe, unable to believe that this could be the closest thing he could ever see to a Dwemer.
An Orc/Dwarf. It was somehow mind-boggling for all the men that saw it but not for a particular woman.
"Dwarf-Orc!"
Laaneth's voice was heard, Jon and Yagrum turned back and looked at her, someone who seemed to have an answer they did not.
Laaneth was resting her arm on Kota's shoulder and slowly walked into the room. Her appearance was miserable but she seemed to have found some power.
"Laaneth, you must rest." Jon wanted to offer a helping hand but she ignored him and turned to Yagrum.
"That is… or he can be… none other than… your king." Laaneth said as Yagrum's eyes kept widening, "Dumac Dwarf-Orc, Dumac Dwarfking, Dumalacath."
She said those names that struck the two men like lightning.
Dumas, the uniter of the Dwemer, the other leader of the Chimer-Dwemer First Council alongside the Hartator Indoril Nerevar.
All eyes turned to the man in the green liquid tube and with a lot of hesitation, Yagrum slowly placed Ram's head on the pedestal in front of the tube.
Ram's eyes opened slowly and a voice spoke the most complete sentences that were to ever come out of that head.
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A/n: Help me reach my Goal on P4treon & Join Discord! ➡️ https://linktr.ee/donovel ⬅️
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