Beneath the bleak, overcast sky, a tiny human mage stood on a floating island ringed by countless doors, staring up at the chaotic eyeball drifting in the depths of the cosmos. Within the innumerable sorrowful black vortices—those billions of cold stars—slick, slender tentacles extended, and every stirring sent fine foam rippling outward.
When the foam burst, a fetal egg of Mora's kin would drop. It swelled as it tumbled through the winds of the atmosphere, and by the time it hit the sea it was already mature—launching an endless assault on the North Sea Ghost.
The tides of Destruction surging in from every direction had already stilled upon reaching the floating-island region. Whether it was heat that could burn mountains, lightning that could punch through vacuum, cold that could shatter steel, or shadow that could swallow matter—none of it could cross the wall formed by the encircling doors.
Hermaeus Mora looked down with cold cruelty. In his beautiful, sinister realm of Apocrypha, only one thing was blindingly conspicuous: that brilliant azure glow. A clear blue like the heavens of some other world—cheerful, bright, the kind of blue that makes one's heart feel lighter—gathered around the floating island, dyeing it into a blue star.
The boundless malice of the chaotic universe could not drown that blue star.
It flickered as it always had.
Ancient, unchanged.
"Outsider, you cannot defeat me in Apocrypha. Pay the price for your arrogance." Hermaeus's murmur echoed through the air. "You possess divinity, yet you willingly confine yourself to a mortal shell—can that weak, lowly structure truly shelter your soul? I can already smell the fear and sorrow leaking from this flesh. Oh… a mortal mind is like a castle folded from paper. It cannot withstand wind and rain."
His tentacles wove and crossed like an exquisite loom, projecting an apocalyptic panorama from the depths of space—those lost histories from countless cycles of the world: the collapse of ancient cities, the ruin of mortal kingdoms, bloody slaughter among one's own kind, absurd and shameless depravity, the corruption and miserable death of innocent children, the bleak sigh of heroes meeting their end… All tragedies that had happened, that would happen, even that were happening now, spread across the universe's vast curtain.
A sea of grief and pain—sickening to behold—something a mortal mind could not endure even a glance of.
Hermaeus's whisper became a doom-soaked lullaby. "Fall into nothingness. Abandon your moral rules. Erase that ridiculous humanity. Immerse yourself in warm, comfortable void—and you will never be hurt again."
Skyl closed his eyes briefly. Mora, that old bastard, really didn't fight fair—once he realized magical attacks couldn't do anything to Skyl, he switched to mental warfare. In any law-abiding country, the images he was broadcasting would get him executed five hours straight. Yet those events truly were history—the most brutal slice of it.
Mora's laughter turned even "sweeter." In that sticky, languid tone, it clung like poisoned nougat. "Outsider, look at you. A vulgar life with no nourishment. Your kindness and your evil are both insufficiently pure. You've said farewell to naivety, yet you still haven't embraced cruelty—so of course you suffer when you witness the darkness of these worlds."
"Cheap rhetoric, Mora. Don't feed me your life philosophy," Skyl snapped. "You're just a lump of tentacles. You don't understand human hearts."
Standing within the ring of doors, Skyl drew upon the divine power of the Eye of Magnus. A ribbon of light drifted from every doorway and coiled around his body. The forked wand that had followed him through worlds transformed into a scepter, effortlessly bearing the wash of eternal divine power, as though that was what it had always been meant to do.
Skyl leveled the scepter at the mass of dancing tentacles in the deep void.
[Tarantallegra]
At once, tens of thousands of tentacles—stretching for tens of thousands of kilometers—began dancing with fervor.
A wave of joy echoed through the cosmos, and even the destructive tides started turning into fireworks.
That was the power of a spell. The cheerful Tarantallegra forced the Daedric Prince's manifestation to dance against its will. The brisk, intricate steps made the tentacles tangle and knot—leaving him unable to project those forbidden horror-reels.
The air itself seemed to seethe. Mora cursed under his breath. "You filthy, despicable lowlife!"
Skyl raised the scepter again.
[Conjunctivitis Curse]
Mora's eyes burst one after another. He growled low, robbed of sight within his own realm.
Skyl lightly pressed the door-shaped sigil on the back of his hand. The surrounding doorways resonated—and began to split, cast reflections, and multiply at terrifying speed.
Across the vast deep space, grand phantom doorways rose like planets—staggered high and low, layered upon layered—forming a brilliant blue forest stretching across tens of millions of light-years.
The Tower of Tomes began devouring Apocrypha.
…
On the black sea, the iron steamship raced toward the island wreathed in dragons.
Warships of Mora's kin kept surging up. Daedric creatures fell from the sky's foaming nurseries like a storm that would never end. The elemental trails of destruction still rained down without pause—the aftershocks of the battle in the heavens. Every beam that struck the sea became a colossal pillar of light spanning miles, and the ocean roared.
Fortunately, those aftershocks dealt far greater losses to Mora's forces.
Enchanted cannons fired again and again. The engines ran at full power. Shattered soul gems piled high in empty barrels, spilling out onto the deck.
The sailors of the North Sea Ghost ran across the violently rocking deck. The quartermaster shouted toward the control cabin, "Our soul gem reserves are hitting bottom!"
Brelyna clenched her teeth. "Then we make them on the spot. These Daedra are endless anyway."
Dumbledore said, "Give me a blank soul gem. I can duplicate a batch right now."
Moonshadow's voice remained clear even amid the deafening battlefield. "Dumbledore, use Azura's Star."
The old wizard already understood. He'd long since decided how to apply Azura's Star.
"We need someone to cast Soul Trap."
"I will," Brelyna volunteered immediately.
She cast Soul Trap at the swarming Daedra on the sea. As they died, their souls drifted toward the North Sea Ghost. Dumbledore raised Azura's Star high, drawing in the powerful souls of the Daedra.
He pressed his wand to the energy-swollen Azura's Star and used [Legilimency]. Strands of soul energy drew out like ribbons, and under his guidance they linked to the steam engine and the enchanted cannons.
Azura's Star seemed to become a true star, shedding silver radiance.
It continuously absorbed wandering souls, then continuously released them—acting as a powerful relay, ensuring the North Sea Ghost's endurance.
With Azura's Star, enchanted weapons aboard the warship became like perpetual motion machines, never running dry.
The abundant soul energy drove the enchanted engine into overload. Moonshadow shouted, "Ahead four!"
Aranea's voice tightened with panic. "We'll crash!"
"No," Moonshadow said. "We won't."
In the sea ahead, an elemental trail slammed down from the heavens like a gigantic pillar plunging into the water. In an instant it erased hundreds of Daedric warships. Before that colossal tailstream, the iron steamship was no more than a single grass seed wobbling atop a pond ripple—and the sea-surge blasted up by the impact rose like a mountain, rushing straight toward them.
"We're going to hit!" Lydia shouted on deck, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Dragonborn.
Neloth's brass war-armor leapt out from the sweeping tailstream. The suit was glowing red-hot, the exhaust pipes on its back more than half-melted. He crashed onto the deck of the North Sea Ghost, then turned to look at the overwhelming wave and shook his head with a sigh.
"No time to dodge."
At the very instant the wave was about to smash down, a brilliant blue doorway—thousands of miles high—yawned open. The North Sea Ghost roared through it, and in the next heartbeat it arrived in a bay beside an island, flinging the Daedric battlefield dozens of nautical miles behind them. The crew, saved from death, erupted in cheers.
Then the dragons' roars shook the sky, dragging everyone from joy back into reality. They gathered on the deck and scanned their surroundings.
They had reached their destination.
A man riding a dragon looked down from above—Miraak had been waiting a long time.
The Dragonborn, soaked through with seawater, spat a mouthful of salty spit, raised his sword, and shouted at the sky, "Hey! You, Miraak—time to pay your debt! Hand over your dragons! We can let bygones be bygones!"
His answer was a blast of searing dragonfire.
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