Intermission II, Part VII: Freeing Kata Nu

By Archcanon Tholer Saryoni, Patriarch of the Tribunal Temple

I travel beneath the Holy City and beneath the City Below into a place that defies my understanding of what is real and what is not. Ancient warding spells still glow with energy in this place, but it is not like anything I’ve ever seen before. The architecture curves in ways that I can only describe as non-Euclidean and the material is like nothing else I’ve ever seen before; it is stone, but some kind of stone that doesn’t exist anywhere but here and as I brush my fingers against it, I feel it draining what I have of my strength and my mental reserves ever so slightly. Whatever this is, it’s not natural; it’s something—wrong. Something created just to hold the Hundredth Child and to prevent it from ever becoming strong enough to escape and that gives me pause for concern, but what choice do I have? The Destroyer carves a path through our home and he will punch through the Ghostgate and into the heart of the Red Mountain and the Sharmat’s fury will cover Morrowind in storms that will leave us broken and hollow, begging for the sweet release of death, but is this really a better option?

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Kata Nu isn’t even mentioned in the Lessons because he is a monster best left forgotten, but here I sit in the heart of the labyrinthine corridors that form his prison and I meditate. I do not pray in this most foul place. There is no point. My prayers would rattle around these twisting halls forever until there was nothing left and only then would they have any hope of reaching the ears of Lord Vehk, but they will not. And even if they did, does it matter? Does it matter how far my prayers run when I stand here a traitor to everything I once believed? Would ALMSIVI even listen or would my prayers fall on deaf ears? I suppose it doesn’t matter, because what matters now is that I reach Kata Nu before the Destroyer reaches the Ghostgate.

I just hope that I am not making a great mistake, but it doesn’t matter. The time for decision making, for thought, for really anything besides action—that time has passed and now I must free Kata Nu from his prison and I can only hope ALMSIVI will forgive me and that in doing this, I do not damn my people to a worse fate than that posed by Dagoth Ur, but the time for action is now, so whoever finds this diary, know that I died here freeing Kata Nu not as an act of malice or hatred, but because I had no choice but to. I had to do it or else everyone I’ve ever known will be ravaged by the Sharmat’s Great Blight and they will suffer eternally in the legions of the Lost. So for that reason, I am unleashing the Devourer and I hope that you understand that all that I have done has always been done with the greatest of intentions.

Forgive me, ALMSIVI.

Forgive me.

­-Archcanon Tholer Saryoni, Patriarch of the Tribunal Temple