"Hey." said Aranwen. "I said eyes right, prisoner. Where are your eyes even looking? You're going to have to tell me, I can't work it out. And I thought I told you not to loom over people suddenly like that. Now look what you've done."
Skavild was impressed. Aranwen had done precisely what she had promised, and obtained a Sload.
"Poor Archivist Halthir." said Very Junior Archivist Linvel. "Is the brandy helping?"
"Honestly, I feel much better now, if somebody will help me up, I will return to the library until the Sload has gone away." said Junior Archivist Halthir.
Aranwen said, "You're going to have to get used to him. I tried questioning him in Northwatch Keep for a while, but the whip just kept bouncing off him. I nearly lost an eye. So apart from exploding him if he tries to leave, he's allowed to do whatever he wants. I thought Skavild might be able to talk to him."
"The Second Archivist is going to be furious about these trails all over the floor." said Halthir.
"I do not want to be banished to Apocrypha again!" said Linvel. "I have not finished today's filing!"
"Apokrifoj eztas humidha kaj mola loko dhe multaj libroj." said the Sload. "Ghi eztagh pli uthila loko porg ezplorado oll lah Mortregionoj, kie libroj nur ekbrulas."
Skavild continued to examine the Sload and said nothing for now.
He was also wondering what he was going to do about the Sload trails, and why he had agreed to the plan. Now there was a giant slug with feet speaking a foreign language and making a mess of Eldaline's floor and she was going to go mad.
"Konduku min jal viagh eztro, subulo!" said the Sload.
"I do not understand what he is saying." said Halthir.
Aranwen became quite cross. "Subulo? Nyeh! Pargolu kun mi tiehl denove kaj mi nutsos vin, vih dikga slima monhstro!"
"I didn't know Felballin School for Gentle Girls taught the Sload language as well, Aranwen." Skavild said at last.
"It is a most prestigious institution." said Linvel.
Ondolemar took up an observational position and watched curiously. As technically the most senior and experienced Thalmor officer present, as Eldaline was still in bed, he felt quite sure that he should be doing something useful in the situation, but as he had been hit with a plank, he didn't.
"Right," said Skavild. "Aranwen, tell him that..."
"I request that you do not allow her to nut me." said the Sload. "Although I do not know the meaning of this word."
"I knew you were just playing games." said Aranwen. "Now, play nicely with Skavild, or I'll wake up the Second Archivist, who is the author of 'Sload: Is it edible?'"
Very Junior Archivist Linvel, understanding that her work reviving Less Junior Archivist Halthir with the brandy was finished for the moment, decided to find some protocol to employ.
"Any representative of a people not engaged in diplomatic relations with Alinor, when present in an official building, is deemed not to exist."
"Junior Archivist Linvel is quite right." said Halthir. "Skavild, you should not have brought this Sload here, as it is decidedly more difficult for us to ignore it when it is in the room."
"Archivist Halthir, you sound very commanding and decisive." said Linvel.
"Listen here, you drooping pair of filing cabinets." Aranwen explained, taking off her helmet and pushing it onto a bookless shelf. "Skavild has come up with a theory. You two weren't with us when we came up against the Sload illusionist on that iceberg. You didn't see how powerful their spells can be. This Sload has everyone in Haafingar believing in characters out of Doryli Vlars books."
"That is preposterous." said Halthir. "There isn't even a Sload here."
"No Sload here." said Linvel.
"Preposterous, is it? Tell them, Skavild. He even invented Lady Flyte."
"Doryli Vlars books?" said Halthir. "Oh, I mean, Who?"
Linvel said, "Invented Lady Flyte? Oh! Malvilda, from 'Carinalda's Stern Mistress! Of course! Archivist Halthir, you were only telling me about this book yesterday."
"You are all sharing in an impulsive mistake." said the Sload, looming.
"Deny it, would you?" Aranwen demanded. "Confess, or I'll thrash the blubber out of you. And me, because of the rebound effect, but that's a risk I'm happy to take in the course of my duty."
"Stop that." said Skavild. "Let's listen to the Sload. Who are you, Sload, and what are you doing in Skyrim?"
"I never thought of that." said Aranwen.
"What were you asking him in Northwatch Keep?" said Halthir.
"I have absolutely no idea." said Aranwen.
"I am called Ambassador Q'Jola. I seek to open diplomatic relations, and have not made your province believe in fictional characters. It would be impossible."
"Don't listen to him, Skavild, or we'll need to think of someone else to blame."
"But the last Sload we met made us see a city that wasn't there." Skavild protested.
Ondolemar at last resolved to assert himself in the matter. "Stop talking to this Sload and explain to me what is happening immediately."
"This Sload says he isn't making illusions of Doryli Vlars characters, like Ollani and Tynus, even though they're all showing up." said Skavild.
"Our illusion spells are powerful. But not to ensnare an entire landmass." said Ambassador Q'Jola.
Halthir said, "Now that you have all enjoyed yourselves with this Sload, which is not here anyway, perhaps you would consider taking it away again."
"I'm not putting this Sload anywhere else until he explains why my theory's wrong!" Skavild shouted.
"Ssh!" said Halthir and Linvel.
"If you wake the Second Archivist up, and she comes out here to find a Sload, she might try to eat him." said Halthir. "If he must explain, Xarxes' Nightshirt, let him explain quietly!"
"Well." said Skavild. "The Ayleid city Nilmarend."
He looked around, but only Ambassador Q'Jola was still in view.
"What did you do? It's exactly how I imagined it when I read Ollani and Tynus."
"As I was endeavouring to explain," said Q'Jola. "I can manifest a nearby thought into an illusion in the mind of a small number of people. But I did not bring your accomplices as too many of you were talking at once."
"This is just the inside of the book I read." Skavild said.
But the Sload simply blomped across the immaculate garden to a raised pavillion. "But I have not read this book, because it does not benefit me. I did not take this thought from your mind. You spoke of Ollani and Tynus by Doryli Vlars, so I took the story from hers."
Skavild followed, and was cautiously seated on a seat upon the pavillion. The Sload really was quite large. And there was no sign of the elves. "You read Doryli Vlars' thoughts, and lifted her book straight out of them?"
"Yes." said Q'Jola.
"Doryli Vlars is nearby? She's in Solitude? I thought she'd be in Morrowind."
"Follow! Observe! A misadventure is beginning in the royal palace."
Ollani sat in the corridor, and the Alessian warriors stood around her.
"I am the loneliest woman on Nirn." said Ollani. "End this."
"Rejoice, Tynus, the last city has fallen." said Sir Urdoc. "Put this sorceress to death."
Tynus' gnarled strength had been enough to throw armoured bodyguards from the walls. But his blade had need only of pitiful force to pierce Ollani's stomach.
"Nilmarend will burn." he cried. The softness of her frail form was known to him in all his many aspects, and now he knew it as her executioner. There was no manner more thorough to deny his love before his fellows, and no purer way to wholly claim his lover for himself than to determine when she would die.
In friendless desolation, Ollani wasted her last laboured breaths, and wishing she had used them to plead for a faster death, she drifted for too long on the blade, consumed by the rending of her being and the welling of her blood, until he deigned to let her fall.
She listened carefully to the murmured voice above where she lay, but she was no longer of their world and their words offered her no sense or comfort. Tynus had prayed that morning, and in a dark and unseen corner of the shrine lay his inconvenient regret. There could be no regret on a day of victory, nor pity. Sir Urdoc cast the princess into the water as Tynus laid the first fire in the garden he had planted.
Gone was Nilmarend, never again to rise.
"I see." muttered Skavild.
"That is the story of Ollani and Tynus, as it was told to me through the mind of Doryli Vlars." said the Sload, blomping out of the pool. "This demonstration of my power should be sufficient for you."
"So, you mean to say you can make a place the size of Solitude in the minds of a few people, but you can't make a few people appear in the minds of everybody in Solitude?"
"This is correct." said Q'Jola. "You have an unusual understanding of Illusion, for a being of no magic."
"Illusion's not even proper magic." said Skavild. "Any idiot can lie. Look at this book. In this version, Tynus didn't even need Mephala the Prince of Lies to corrupt him in his sleep. He did it himself. By the Nine, get me out of this awful place."
"Illusion is proper magic, I am incapable of lying, where is Mephala, you are allowed to have Eight gods, and what awful place?" said Ondolemar. "It is only awful because of the slimy Sload trails everywhere. The Second Archivist is going to like them even less."
A yawning, abysmal darkness engulfed the far doorway to the Second Archivist's private quarters. Then there was a quiet cough.
The staff of the Bureau of Advanced Communications, and probably Ambassador Q'Jola as well, considered their options.
"Good morning, Eldaline." said Skavild, from the doorway. "Something wrong?"
"I have to attend the Heart's Day Banquet and I don't want to go." the Second Archivist said. "To make it even worse, I have a dreadful headache. It feels as though somebody has been thrashing around with a pickaxe in there. What are all those banging and crashing noises in the entrance hall?"
Continues.