Imperial Discovery: Pontius Marius's Journal (fanfic and art by me)
## The Journal of Pontius Marius: Entry #412
**Date:** 2nd of Rain's Hand, 2E 582
**Location:** Alinor, Summerset Isle
The Altmer speak of perfection as if it were a stagnant pool, but the air of Alinor is thick with an almost suffocating current of Magicka. It hums. It vibrates in the teeth. My peers in the Mnemonic Order scoffed when I altered the rods and cones of my own retinas—weaving threads of Alteration directly into the optic nerves to achieve a state of *Vivid Inscription*—but today, that painful spell bore fruit.
I was granted attendance at the Royal Feast of the First Aldmeri Dominion. Queen Ayrenn Arana Aldmeri presided. The decadence was absolute: honey-glass decanters of Comberry wine, roasted gryphon thigh served on platters of spun sun-glass.
Yet, as the feast concluded and Her Majesty turned to board her royal carriage, the ambient magicka in the courtyard rippled. My enhanced sight caught the refraction of light through her silken kirtle. It was an anomaly. An anatomical obscenity concealed within the royal anatomy itself. Lodged precisely within her majesty’s behind was a device of gleaming brass and ticking, hyper-dense gears. It pulsed with a tonal rhythm that made my eyeballs ache. I held my tongue, knowing a single gasp would mean the Headsman’s axe, and fled to my lodgings to sketch it from perfect memory.
I left for Cyrodiil before sunrise.
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## Entry #435
**Date:** 16th of Midyear, 2E 582
**Location:** The Imperial City (In Hiding)
I showed the sketch to Praetor Lucan. He turned as pale as a Frost Atronach. He did not say what it was, only that the temporal resonance of the drawing alone was causing his grandfather clocks to run backward.
*"There is only one intellect ancient enough to gaze upon a design of this paradigm without going mad,"* Lucan whispered, thrusting a purse of drakes into my hand. *"Go to the East. Find the Chimer-Who-Was. Find Fyr."*
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## Entry #498
**Date:** 22nd of Sun's Dusk, 2E 582
**Location:** Tel Fyr, Vvardenfell
The Corprusarium smells of rotting meat and ozone. Divayth Fyr looked at my sketch for less than three seconds before his ancient, crimson eyes widened. He did not speak to me. He merely gestured with a clawed, Daedric-gloved hand toward the lower bows of his tower, where the bloated, metal-wheeled remnant of a forgotten race wallowed in his own decay.
Yagrum Bagarn. The Last Living Dwemer.
The creature took my parchment into his fleshy, corrupted hands. A wet, wheezing sound escaped his throat—a sound I realized was a laugh.
> "A *Chrono Anchor*," Yagrum muttered, his voice echoing with the hollow resonance of Deep Elven tonal architecture. "But not of Kagrenac’s forge. No, no. This is too elegant. The brass is... refined. It has survived the Numidium's paradox. It is a time-travel journal, human. But it does not record words. It anchors the *Animi* of the traveler to a specific junction in the non-linear gradient of the Aurbis."
I asked him what it meant. I asked him who would wear such a device.
Yagrum looked up, his weeping eyes fixed on mine.
> "The Anchor cannot interface with flesh, Pontius. The biological matrix would reject the tonal gears within seconds, turning the bowels to ash and lead. It requires a chassis of pure, zero-point animuncula. A machine. A construct designed to mimic the High Elves so perfectly that even the Stars are fooled."
My hands are shaking as I write this. Queen Ayrenn is not a child of the Aldmeri bloodline. She is an advanced, autonomous machine sent backward through the digital bleeding of time from some unimaginable future era.
And she is ticking.