Dragonborn Saga

Chapter 739: Failsafe

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Neloth had a lot of questions. His mind was racing, and he was having a hard time maintaining and organizing his thoughts.

"Jon Dare, what in all that is unholy did I just go through?" He asked with a mix of anger and impatience.

"Jon isn’t here. I am sorry, but aside from basic knowledge and simple combat abilities, I don’t know much." Jon, or the one who is supposed to be Jon, answered in a mysterious way.

"How?" Neloth was greatly bothered, "Who are you then?"

"I don’t have a particular name, but Jon called me a Failsafe. I am designed to take over Jon’s mind once Jon becomes a prisoner of Hermaeus Mora." The one who said it was Jon himself, in his flesh and blood, which made it twice as complicated for anyone to understand how this even happened.

"What? Failsafe? Designed?" Neloth was having a hard time getting this all into his head.

"Through intense and rigorous mental exercises, Jon Dare has split his personality to create me." Failsafe added.

"Wait, wait, hold on! Jon Dare managed to artificially create a dissociative identity and lock it in his mind as a countermeasure to protect his mind if it was to get invaded." Neloth asked like that is the most ridiculous thing he ever spoke.

"I am not an expert, but that sounds more like it." Failsafe replied in all honesty, "But to think the original me would have had this good of a friend who would risk life and limb to come and save him from literally the deepest pit in Oblivion, he would be incredibly touched."

"Hold on! Who said anything about friendship? I’m here by my own choice, not to save someone else. Who do you think I am?" Neloth replied with all his haughtiness.

"Actually, I haven’t had the pleasure. Who are you?" But the reply that Failsafe had given him made him close his eyes and gnash his teeth.

"My name is Neloth, and I am a Great Wizard of House Telvanni." Neloth said and then added hastily, "And you shall address me as Master Neloth since I am your superior in seniority."

"Oh, a senior! I haven’t realized it. Very well, Master Neloth, I’ll be in your care." Failsafe said with an innocent smile that didn’t fit this whole atmosphere.

"I… I am not coping with this any bit." Neloth looked at Failsafe and couldn’t believe that this guy was actually Jon’s safe mode.

He is too polite and too easy to talk to for the thug-like Jon.

"So, Master Neloth, where should we be heading?" Failsafe asked.

"That’s… I was hoping you would shed some light on that situation yourself or… Nevermind." Neloth said and looked back: "You said this is the deepest pit in Oblivion, right?"

"I concluded that, yes." Failsafe replied and pointed backward, "I think to contain this manner of creature, only the deepest part of Apocrypha would suffice… Just a hunch, though."

"And a pretty good hunch at that." Neloth nodded.

Right now, the two of them were as far away from the creature that dwells in this deep level of Apocrypha as they possibly could.

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"The Son of Hermaeus Mora… to think we would run into something like that." Neloth exhaled as he started racking his brain.

"It is a very powerful entity, but its weakness is sleep. For some reason, it can’t resist it." Failsafe said.

"And how do you know that?" Neloth asked.

"I did my own research and manipulated some of its wild emotions. It is a very emotional creature whose ability to think is very different from our own." Failsafe replied.

"How so?"

"It unintentionally projects its thoughts outside its mind like signals. They are a bit like sounds, but once they surround someone, they lose the ability to reason. However, the sheer number of thoughts and the appearance of the creature itself are enough to drive any normal man insane."

Neloth heard what Failsafe said and almost quivered from worry. He held his own forehead as he looked down while struggling to come up with a plan.

"Did Jon Dare incorporate all his knowledge in you?" Neloth asked.

"Basic knowledge of Magic, Combat, and common things are embedded in my memory. As long as it is not the type of knowledge Hermaeus Mora is not obsessed with, I have it."

"Smart thinking." Neloth was impressed with the whole concept.

"Now we must get out of here. The sooner we get done, the better." Failsafe said.

"I agree. As I entered her by my own volition, I noticed that the way back to the surface of Apocrypha couldn’t be up. The sea of ink would allow us in but not out." Neloth said and thought a little, "Maybe we should explore down there?"

Neloth was pointing at the endless abyss below the part they were standing on.

"Not a good idea at all. That place is so deep and so filled with deprived knowledge and memories that they start to turn into living animate things. You go down there, and I don’t guarantee the safety of your mind." Failsafe said he pointed in the direction of the being called the Son of Mora, "That thing was born in that abyss, and its mind is just as twisted as the place down there."

The Son of Mora, now that it is mentioned again, made Neloth’s body quiver from a strange repulsive feeling he couldn’t explain.

"That Son of Mora, even after getting this far from him, I can feel my thoughts being contaminated with his." Neloth said, "How do you stay focused?"

"The best way to block those brain signals is to be mad yourself."

"Ah, fight fire with fire." Neloth smiled but he couldn’t seem to be able to do it the Jon way.

"The best way to guarantee our safety would be to get out of here. Can you cast any magic that would make us travel far distances?" Failsafe asked.

"Not with this much mental interference."

"Then it would be in our best interest to keep moving." Failsafe decided on a direction to walk in first.

If Apocrypha was a nightmarish realm, the Depth of Apocrypha is the place where those nightmares are made. The environment around them was ever-changing and always unique. One would get lost if the places he passed through were similar to one another, but as every place they passed through was different from the others, it was simply impossible to be able to chart this place out.

Then Neloth started to come up with mad theories.

"What if it was that every place we pass through doesn’t lead back to where we came from?"

"What if it were that every one of those places is a chapter in Apocrypha that Mora hasn’t released just yet?"

"What if we are not in a material realm but rather in a mental one, like an ever-changing dream, and we are trapped in the head of the dreamer?"

"What if this place wasn’t actually real and we faded from reality as…"

"Where do these what-ifs keep coming from?" Failsafe asked.

Neloth paused for a second before replying.

"I am a Telvanni Master Wizard. Do I have to explain how my superior thinking works?" Neloth asked.

"Actually…"

"Fine! But I’ll only explain once." Neloth said and continued, "The whole place seems like a whirlpool of wild imaginations, mixed environments, and remnants of images captured by artistic minds…"

"I was saying…"

"… Since this is Apocrypha, we can think of its depth as a more profound place, but there will start to get things wrong. Apocrypha isn’t meant to be a profound thought, but actually quite the opposite. A place where great thoughts die…"

"You see…"

"… And then, when you think about it, Hermaeus Mora likes to keep his victims from regaining their knowledge at all costs; that’s why he has this son of his that carries the true essence of Oblivion, which causes forgetfulness and ignorance…"

"You are right."

"… and it must be… huh?"

Neloth had to take a second to realize that Failsafe was agreeing with him. He felt somewhat satisfied and nodded.

"Alright. Alright. I see that my genius has rubbed off on you." Neloth said without a shred of humility.

"Haha!" Failsafe laughed awkwardly,"It was just written with some of these floating characters near the abyss. Something about surrendering one’s knowledge to where Oblivion ends and true oblivion begins."

"Oh… oooh… great! Right, not great, I mean!" Neloth couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed that he wasted so much brain energy on one thing while it was already declared right out in the open.

"Actually, if you look that way..." Failsafe pointed with his index finger towards something behind Neloth.

Once Neloth turned, however, he could see nothing but darkness upon darkness. Still, this darkness started to gradually become seeable through, and something filled Neloth’s vision to the point where it scared him.

"Motherfucker!" He cried out.

Behind him was the Son of Mora, who seemed unconscious as he stood submerged in the abyss, his consciousness calmer than before.

"I am not sure he is a mother fucker or has a mother to begin with."

"It’s an insult!"

"Funny enough, he would have woken up if he understood it, so easy on the insults." Failsafe said.

Neloth felt light-headed for a bit but he started to contemplate this new mess they were in.

"So… I can’t help but feel like we are in a nightmare." He said.

"Tried benching yourself?" Failsafe asked.

"You have no idea how many times I have." Neloth replied.

"So we are dreaming and in reality at the same time." Failsafe nodded as if he had figured it out.

"You mean like a Mental Space?" Neloth narrowed his eyes while trying to wrap his head around Falilsafe’s rapid pace of thinking before finding the right word for this phenomenon, "A Dreamsleeve!"

"A Dreamsleeve?" Failsafe felt familiar with the word, but as he couldn’t access Jon’s memories to the full extent he needed, he waited for Neloth to explain.

"It is an obscure and rarely mentioned concept… widely misunderstood too. Two widely disparate functions have been ascribed to it, though they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. One has been mentioned as a method of communication that has been used to contact people across vast distances. Think of it as a conduit for sending special transmissions, used by magicians and Imperial clerks. To reach it, one must have at least part of their brain constantly meditating, as one aspect of the conduit is its ability to carry images of concepts not yet "real"."

"Well… I am not Jon so… I’ll leave this brain stuff to the genius you." Failsafe said.

"Of course, it is a given for the genius me to know, but I must always explain it to lesser brains. You know how it goes." Neloth said to make sure to secure the credit before…

"I guess if we are in a Dreamsleeve, we can have some sort of influence on reality. Maybe… merge ourselves with the dream and then take control of it… just saying… You’re the expert here." Failsafe said while looking around.

"That’s madness! How do you possibly think of..."

Neloth was baffled by the idiocy he just heard, but he stopped talking and started thinking. Knowing Jon Dare, this man always has some sort of plan, and if Failsafe is like Jon, this may actually be doable.

"How do you think of the things I was just about to say?!" Neloth said, laughing to himself, "My genius is really rubbing off on you."

"It is possible only thanks to your guidance, senior." Failsafe replied with courtesy.

"Yes… Now, we need to figure out how to merge ourselves with this reality. It will require a lot of focus." Neloth said and started looking around for a place where he could shelter himself from the chaotic thoughts of the Son of Mora that were plaguing the atmosphere.

"He doesn’t seem to have a hard time merging his thoughts with the dreamsleeve." Failsafe pointed at the sleeping Son of Mora.

"Huh?" Neloth couldn’t get what Failsafe was trying to say.

"He’s sleeping." Failsafe said, "Don’t we just need to do the same as him?"

Neloth looked between Failsafe and the Son of Mora while realizing how good Jon’s intuition was despite the lack of his magical knowledge at the moment.

"Yes… let’s just… sleep…"

It didn’t make sense to Neloth but soon he realized that in order to get away from the Dreamer, he needed to be a Dreamer as well.

Neloth and Failsafe laid down on the ground of this abyss and closed their eyes, ready to sleep. As sleep will leave their psyches lucid and vulnerable to all the thoughts in this space, they will have to mingle with things unknown to this world and face the primordial madness of things no one has ever experienced before.

That’s their only way to escape.

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A/n: Help me reach my Goal on P4treon & Join Discord! ?? https://linktr.ee/donovel or Google "Donovel Linktree’’ ??