Chapter 90: Threads and Lost Blades
'You fucking nerd.'
'...You still haven't told me what that means.'
'Fine, I will tell you about the seal magic I used. Though it includes the use of a Daedric artifact you can't have.'
Another clause later, and Azhidal was already using his soul to sign the contract while a smirk, not of good nor evil, but of success, crossed Yuri's face.
The moment Azhidal signed the contract, a force overtook him and enacted upon him a condition that he was completely unaware of. If the dead could gasp, Azhidal would swallow the sky, because he felt like he was being completely gouged. Yuri unsealed the plate that was atop him and witnessed one of the earliest and greatest enchanters in Mundus sprawled out and clutching at the air above him with his bony hands, one of which was being branded by a mark.
While Azhidal went through his conniption, Yuri looted him of what was now rightfully his. The mask he was wearing was pulled, revealing a weathered skull whose skin stuck to the face. The armor too, which he was wearing, vanished into his inventory without resistance and he pulled them out for a nice little inspection, and was pleasantly surprised with the magnum opus of Azhidal himse-
"What...have you done to me?" Azhidal flashed his glowing orange eyes at him with a pitch of resentment, but knew full well that he was already bound to not attack him nonetheless. He had figured out by now that the detailing around the edges of that fanciful contract was actually a language he wasn't familiar with as some of the same patterns were now on his hand.
"Good morning to you too. Feel any different?"
"There's a white haze around you, with a bit of grey tinge."
"Welcome to my world, avenger. Every thinking creature has the capability to be judged on a karmic scale. If a sentient being kills a being of good karma, they are tainted with bad karma. If a sentient being enjoys the suffering of others and inflicts it on those with good karma, their karma also worsens. If a being of good karma kills one with bad karma, their own improves marginally. If a being of bad karma starts to kill others of bad karma, they can slowly clean their ledger. What you are now seeing is this dynamic. White means good, grey means borderline or neutral, black means evil or liable. Those are only examples, killing isn't the only way to gain karma's good or bad attention. You'll figure out the rest in time. I've also added a few personal touches to your brand. Kill a being of good karma and you will feel everything they did when you started to hurt them."
"...Why...have you done this?"
"Your revenge, it's nice and all, but it's best if you don't turn into Pellinal yourself no matter how strong you become. He once nearly destroyed whole parts of Elsweyr because he thought the Khajiit were elves, you know? Didn't even apologize for that when he was corrected. Now let me finish. The brand will allow me to summon you for aid whenever I wish and monitor your actions, I can also read your mind without issue and take whatever information I desire. That's it! You're free to do as you wish within those guidelines."
"You mean to delay my revenge? I won't attack the race of men in Nirn despite their ledgers, Jailer."
"That name can stay with Vahlok, mine is Yuri. I don't care if you only attack the Elves, just follow their karma and you'll be fine. Deviate," Yuri's golden eyes burned brightly and bore down into the Dragon Priest who was still in his hole in the ground. "and I will know." He leaned over and pressed his forehead, implanting all the knowledge of sealing he had, before turning around and taking a stride up a staired corridor leading to his next Black Book.
"That's it?! No bonds of service, no missions or selfish requests?!" Azhidal climbed out of his hole looking like an average draugr in Dragon Priest robes while being anything but.
"Don't tempt me!" Yuri's voice echoed down the dark stairs and Azhidal murmured to himself while his shoulders lost all tension.
"I guess... I guess knowing between sinful and righteous isn't so bad." Azhidal never killed women or children non-combatants even if his comrades did. It reminded him too much of the wife and child he lost, and he didn't want to make another him.
But that didn't stop a vicious smirk from growing across his undead face. The avenger had returned, his resurrection assured despite being conditional.
Yuri strode up the stairs which became a familiar fleshy texture as the fires that illuminated the path went from a warm orange to an unnatural green. A totem of eldritch chaos held a tome of incredible value in a room that would welcome sacrifices to its knowledge. But they would receive no more.
{Thanks to OverdoseOnSleep, this book's power was made with their help. Threads match the definitions of Filament and Filigree to a tee.}
'Filament and Filigree, by Jelketheris.'
Told in the perspective of a blacksmith, Filament and Filigree spoke of how his innumerable failures on a single theoretical concept of his he wanted to make real became an obsession. With every strike of his hammer, Jelketheris started to see the result of an action on the long run of his product before it was actually taken and started to slowly avoid setbacks while fine-tuning his work as a whole. Every action he took in his forge became a thread, the end of which was visible as an instinct. Strangely enough, he found a thread going from his forge and leading into thin air, unable to be followed. Jelketheris never managed to apply this power to anything besides blacksmithing, but he went on to become extremely successful. Further chapters in, the author loses his writing patterns and a bit of his sanity while pursuing to apply the power to anything. Cause and effect become his lifelong goal, blowing the money he had earned in his blacksmithing career to try obsessing over more pursuits and never succeeding. While outside practicing archery, the thread coming from his forge stretches from his house and into the woods beside it. Jelketheris goes to investigate, but is killed by a bandit wielding one of his very own forged knives.
Yuri is somewhat alarmed by the story. It seems this power of following Cause and Effect can only see the most immediate results, and not seeing the future is what killed him. But obviously, this was one of those parable-type warnings about power and how it is used.
It seems it also needs to be something someone is sufficiently talented or experienced at and won't simply create threads for every scenario. Entanglement would be an understatement otherwise.
Yuri held out his hand and tried it for himself. In his head a standard fireball spell took shape, and in his vision, a blue thread went from his shoulder beside his head to his palm while he could feel, not exactly see, how the fireball would play out. Yuri activated the fireball spell just as the thread said it would happen, and told himself with absolute certainty that he would throw it at the wall in the Black Book room. A thread extended from his fireball to the wall and he gained the same feeling, almost like a mental image without actually taking any space, or how exactly it would gouge the wall and where the rubble would come to rest. He even felt a pebble somewhat tap his shoe.
"...Incredible. This likely applies to anything, really, but combat will become a cake-walk if I can apply this to the actions of an opponent."
"Please take that damned book with you as well, that Daedra was more trouble than he was worth. He took my knowledge and expertise for free and I had to search endlessly through stacks of personal anecdotes of several thousand morons to find a single useful tome, some of which I already knew. I almost started to hate my thirst for knowledge."
Yuri packed away the Black Book without a word and vanished into the air, heading to pick up the girls who were already wrapping up in the Bloodskal Barrow.
───※ ·❆· ※───
Toni and Ally ran into a disgruntled old couple while the crone was pleading to the husband to stop following his obsession with his grandfather's remains which would likely get him killed. Ally, the good soul, decided to hear him out and tell him if they found anything related to Crescius' great grandfather or the secrets of these mines. Toni said nothing, because it worked and they got access to the 'useless' mine. But if Yuri sent them here, then nothing was useless.
They both kept a sharp eye out for anything of value while diving into the mine. The mine ended fairly quickly when they had to use a key Crescius gave them to continue past it, and Nordic tombs waterlogged in pure crystalline blue water below them joined the majority of the path. Cave-ins pressed the walls of some rooms and displayed evidence of structural damage along much of the tomb, as if the mine was encroaching on the stonework. Toni found a deposit of some kind of blue and icy ore inside a tomb. She knew it didn't grow naturally and someone had to mine it to place in this tomb, but the deposit looked completely natural and formed a single piece without appearing as if it had been mined before.
It was extremely hard, whatever it was, but she raised her hand like a claw and still managed to dig into it to take out a chunk sample for Yuri.
Further in, several soul-stone-powered traps awaited them that tried to blast them with forked lightning, but they easily teleported out of the way and kept their guard up. The further down they went the more mist collected on their faces, and the pair found a giant waterfall that somehow likely had to do with the waterlogging upstairs. The tombs started to be covered in a viny and natural feeling due to the water's assistance. One last natural rock corridor had an opening overlooking a natural cavern surrounded by a familiar type of stone formation.
Just like probably directly above them, hexagonal and pencil straight stone carvings rose across the border of the whole room like a cage that supported it from a horizontal cave in. Water seeped in from above in thin falls and coated the floor in twin streams that led to their side of the room. The room mostly took on a blue hue due to this. The twin streams converged and took their leave to their right and bore through a cave-in. On the opposite side of the room, past a few skeletons, a single door stood proudly and was illuminated by torches that refused to go out.
The girls leapt down and approached the door, but Ally knelt down by one of the skeletons and picked up a journal by it.
"Looks like we found that guy's great-grandfather."
Ally skimmed through the journal, whereupon the writer realizes this tomb to be his final resting place after suffering wounds from Draugr, and makes a few hypotheses about the way to use a blade to open the door in front of them.
Meanwhile, Toni looked at this giant door-like contraption coated in runes and likely utilizing moving blocks at its edge with some impatience. Two red-orange lines could be found on a thick and runed stone ring surrounding a round door that had a straight line through it.
Toni looked through the Traveler's Grimoire and was pleasantly surprised to find a cool and powerful-looking bow inside. She could probably use that to bust this door open!
A screech tore through the air to Toni's right, and her hair stood on end as a beam of red-orange energy drew a line in direct correspondence to the line that was in the thick ring. A wide block in the ring was pushed into the wall behind it and a thicker piece underneath advanced upward with a grating sound to take up the space it left perfectly.
"OOOooooohhhh!" Toni found out that Ally already discovered the key to this pattern, but she was holding a vicious-looking red greatsword. Like a signal flare, it shunted blood-red and orange energy from the blade, which was fashioned with runes and had a triangular make instead of having straight edges.
Ally gave a smirk and continued busting down the moving block puzzle with her energy blasts, and the ring parts joined above the door in two perfect halves. The door, which was cut in two parts, joined the ring above it and a giant red line divided the whole structure in half. Ally gave one last great swing downward and sent a beam that clipped the door in half as it gave a spiraling welcome.
"That thing is cool, I imagine Yuri would love to use it to upgrade his enchantment expertise."
"I kinda like it, even if it is a bit awkward to hold. But it's draining my energy to use."
"Like your strength? Mana? Vitality?!"
"Mana. But I can't tell it to use less or more mana, just when it flashes out with power. It also doesn't feel like my mana after it exits the blade."
The girls made a move on and discovered an open space that was covered in an Olympic-sized pool with a single stone platform jutting into it like an orca-sized immobile diving board. This platform had a very nice looking chest on it, but they felt something underneath the water and thus didn't approach the chest willy-nilly. He felt like their their strongest opponent yet.
"You ready, Ally?"
"Ready when you are, Toni."
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
Reddsaint
Reddsaint Cliff
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone