The crystal and it's guardian

Snapping himself out of his wonderous fantasies Nick took out one of his many blank journals and began copying the enchantments on literally every part of the room from the tools to the furniture all of it was copied down exactly as it was seen. The dwemer had thought themselves clever and made sure that the enchantments on the tools were all vague and bound permanently to themselves so they were useless to anyone else but Nick had no intention of preserving the enchantments at all. He could get better versions from the system and enchant them himself so his only use for the tools was the material they were made from.-

Speaking of said material Nick couldn't figure out how the dwemer had gotten so much to begin with that it could be used as mere decoration for this place beyond the drones and tools. The stuff was literally all over the place and Nick found this odd since it made no sense. As an unnaturally created alloy the metal should be in short supply yet the dwemer seemed to have more than they knew what to do with. 'Perhaps I'll find out why by going deeper into the complex.' he thought after packing up the whole rooms contents into the realm.-

Leaving the now empty room Nick finally chose to go through the middle door that to no surprise had a long downward sloping hallway behind it. Like the rest of the dwemer ruin the hallway was made of stone and metal with pipes along it's sides. There were also a few traps here and there that Nick spotted and easily avoided by floating over them with his armor. Obviously the dwemer had never expected a flying intruder when they made the traps so they were entirely ineffective against Nick.-

The hallway went on and on for nearly an hour of slowly floating down it as the temperature gradually grew greater and greater. Finally Nick made it to the huge set of heavily enchanted and locked doors that he assumed contained the final part of the ruin. 'Dear gods that is an insane amount of protection. Clearly that dwemer did NOT want anyone to see what is behind this door.' Nick thought with conflicting emotions about it. On one hand he was impressed by the defenses while on the other they irritated him for being such a pain to get past.-

Anti-magic protection enchantments galore and no less than three super complicated puzzle locks that didn't have any context to them at all. Two days , it took Nick two whole days to figure out the combinations for the locks and finally open the doors. Even then he only figured them out by trying literally every possible combination until he got the right ones. It was all worth it in his opinion however as he finally pushed open the doors and saw what lay beyond them. A vast lake of molten metal that had dwemer constructs attached to it and in the very center a huge crystalline structure that sent chills down his spine.-

Not from it's appearance but because of the sheer quality and quantity of mana contained within it that passively seeped out in tiny amounts. 'Deific presence confirmed , now to ignore my instincts and try and figure out WHICH god it is.' Nick thought seriously as he moved to try and float over the metal lake. The key word there was TRY as the moment he approached the lake it moved as something started to surface from below it.-

First came a reptilian head with well visible fangs that were each nearly twice the size of Nick himself at the minimum. It had huge bronze colored scales with jagged edges on it's neck down alongside long thick black horns from behind it's skull and a massive bulky body like that of a monitor lizard but scaled up to the point of being nearly the size of an entire football field. The creature didn't have wings but it didn't need them for Nick to know what it was , a dragon. "You wouldn't happen to know how to talk would you?" Nick asked hoping to avoid conflict with the monstrous creature if possible.-

That hope was killed brutally as the dragon opened it's mouth and unleashed a torrent of golden colored flames at Nick. He wasted no time at all shooting to the side as fast as his armor would let him barely avoiding the flames that covered a huge area. "Obscuro!" Nick called as he used the blinding curse to try and take away the dragons vision which was a highly recommended move against the creatures. The hide of a dragon is ridiculously resistant to magic and only the eyes were vulnerable normally so removing that sense was a no brainer when dealing with one. Nick was pretty sure that this dragon in particular would prove to be a pain to defeat considering where it was living.