The Elder Wood: Part 1

Links: Prologue; Part 1; [Part 2] (https://www.reddit.com/r/teslore/comments/4gudes/the_elder_wood_part_2/)

We begin our tale in a room underground, beneath the newly-made Dwemer fortress of Mzuleft, with Sorthund, a minor Tonal Architect, preparing an experiment. The room looked like any other Dwemer-made room. The Dwemer weren’t known for their hospitality after all.

The walls were lined with whirring cogs and rotating pipes. Animunculi Spiders ran across the floor and assembled more and more of the machine from the blueprints on a giant table in the middle. In one of the corners of the room, stood a small panel. It had two buttons, a dial, and a flat horizontal compass-like machine that had its pointer drooping downwards. In front of it crouched a Dwemer, with a screwdriver, fixing in cogs in the back of the panel. The lamp on the ceiling flickered with green light.

Sorthund stood up from the panel and stretched his back.

“Dammit, this is taking too long. Kagrenac could start up his robot any minute.”

The lamp flickered and swayed, as the ceiling rumbled. The Chimer were going to get through.

Sorthund ran to the door, and pulled a lever. The door slammed down from above, and would completely disguise his laboratory from the invaders when they got into the fortress.

He notices that some of his Spiders were done. That was good. He needed to finish this experiment and calm himself down. He could tell himself that he was stupid to believe in charts from old machines. But if he wasn’t?

“No! No, that wouldn’t make sense….”

Sorthund mumbled something about Aetherium shards and stumbled over a Spider as he went to the grab some.

More and more Spiders were finishing their work. Cogs were starting to whir, and steam began to flow through pipes. Sorthund placed the three data-crystals into tiny slots next to the panel. In case anything went wrong, the data-crystals would record it.

As the last Spider finished his part of the machine, the ceiling rumbled again, and he heard sounds of battle above him. The Chimer had broken in.

The two of the buttons clicked into place, and the pointer of the compass-like machine began to move clockwise. Sorthund ran over to it and rotated the dial, then pressed the two buttons at the same time.

Both of the crystals began to glow as the data input began. The pointer was speeding up, about to reach its top speed. Sorthund allowed himself a smile. The two crystals seemed to glow with a welcoming light and the pointer spun with a steady and fast speed.

“Fantastic! Spiders, start managing the machine, it could stop any second, there’s only a specific amount of steam left heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee---…. ” – Sorthund began.

Everything had stopped. The cogs weren’t whirring, the steam wasn’t flowing, the Spiders weren’t moving, and Sorthund was stuck in mid-sentence.

Time had stopped.