Applying Exotic Metaphysics (Return, 18.7)

Shadowrend flapped along my back as I soared through the Shivering Isles. I twisted through the clouds, the disturbing, twisted shapes they were taking. Tendrils reached out from the clouds as if to grab me, and I could see echoes of castles- things in the sky. Mirages. None of it was real, of course. But I didn’t want to focus on them too closely to determine that for sure. I was wrapped in Shadowrend, my form a black, oversized cliffracer ripping through the sky.

I shot down through the sky, twisting down toward New Sheoth. My wings slammed into the ground, diving into my own shadow, and my real form stepped out in the courtyard. From here, I could see the flame of Agnon had been lit, and judging from the Golden Saints standing at guard, outnumbering the Dark Seducers… the new count had picked Mania.

Standing before me were Golden Saints, weapons in hand. Axes, spears, swords. They had in their eyes the same sort of crazed passion, that same sort of devotion that I’d seen in Dorin Fallowhoof’s eyes. Already, he was changing them- and that meant they were changing him back.

“Not one more step, Order Spy!” One of the Saints call. She’s a tall, powerfully-built Golden Saint, a halberd in her hands. “Our lord knows of your treachery!”

“I’d like to speak to the Champion,” I called out.

“You will not pass!” She calls.

Shadowrend extended from my hand, and warped itself into a familiar staff. It rang a chime as I smacked the butt of it against the ground.

She barked out an order, and they all drew back their bows, golden arrows glinting in the sunlight. 

I was done fighting. I stepped forward, and the saints blurred into movement.

They moved like Turik the Ordinator. That alien, perfect archery. Dozens of arrows ripping into me, arrow after arrow hammering through my body. In less than a second, I had hundreds of perfectly-fletched feathers jutting from my body. They’d ripped straight through.

I rippled. It was like raindrops pouring into a lake. Potentia and Magicka rotated wildly, spinning madly inside the empty socket in my chest. The arrows sunk even deeper in, where they’d vanish.

I didn’t even know what I was, exactly, anymore.  I was less and less certain. I hadn’t completely come back, that I knew. I wouldn’t be able to come back until I knew. But whatever realization I was at the tip of, that I was balancing on the edge of a knife for… it was powerful enough to leverage my shadow further than ever before.

I was my shadow. The boundary of my existence was screeching against the boundary of the world. My existence was at war. Everything was conflict. Violence was conflict. Love was conflict.

My staff rang, and I took another step.

My next step took me past the Saints.

Behind me, they were strewn across the courtyard. Armor rent and twisted, weapons broken, bows snapped. Bodies cracked and leaking animus.

Into the palace.

***

“My, my,” Sheogorath says. “How wonderful, you’re back! How was that boring, insufferable little man?”

“I’d say he tried to trick me into unmaking myself, but I’m the one that asked the questions.”

“Oof. Been there before, let me tell you. Nonexistence is so boring! Ooh. Do tell me, what shape is that pretending to be?”

“It’s an old staff I made.” I responded. “I needed to make a special version of an old dwemer artifact to get it to work, eventually. But since it all ran on shadow magic… I figured since this version of Shadowrend is so much stronger than what I originally had, I figured I could get it working.”

“It is quite pretty. It makes music, does it?”

“It makes chaotic noise because it’s every note at once.” I drawled.

“Perfect!” Sheogorath leaned forward and flicked it. One of the panels chimed, a sound that had nothing to do with the thaumic tones needed for the tonal magic. I could feel Shadowrend beginning to twist, to alter. He was sabotaging it, even though something in my brain was trying to ignore it.

“You should have made it hollow. And filled it with beads! Or bees. I forget which.” He smiled at me. “Then you can shake it! Then it’ll be full of dead bees.”

I stared back.

“Where’s your Champion?”

“Oh, he’s under my protection. Don’t think I didn’t notice you’re being more of a fuddy-duddy since you’ve returned to my domain! You’re going to be naughty.”

“And you haven’t ripped out my guts again yet?”

“Well, you haven’t been naughty yet. That wouldn’t be fair!”

“And what if I told you my plan is entirely based around your… much boringer half turn back into you?”

“That’s why I feel like being fair right now!” He beamed. The smile didn’t meet his alien, slitted eyes. The predatory eyes that bore down on me, promising savagery and violence. He’s already waiting for the bloodshed.

“You think your mortal definitions of choice and desire has any sort of influence on me or mean ol’ Jyggy. And since you think that…” His smile was suddenly too wide, with too many teeth. The smile of a cheshire cat. “You must be mad.”

His hand blurred toward me.

The world began to shift, to twist under his will. The entire world turned against me, twisting and writhing like snakes.

At the same time, the same moment, Shadowrend sang.

It sang a song of ‘what if’.

What if I’d been his Champion. What if I’d defeated the Greymarch. Mantled Sheogorath. What if the Shivering Isles were mine?

If the song had lyrics, they would just be ‘mine’, over and over again. A maddened, chaotic, dizzying song, stretching and warbling as it shuddered under our wills.

If Sheogorath had been fully himself, if he’d been entirely dominant, I didn’t have even a sliver of a hope of a dream. But Jyggalag was in there too, and he’d been resisting the change. Resisting the Greymarch. Even a daedric prince’s will wasn’t infinite, and I wasn’t trying to take the entire realm. Just this pocket, just the palace.

My hand caught his. His fingers- claws, twisting worms and predatory talons- tore into my palm.

Mania and Dementia. Love and Depression, Violence and Music. Always half and half. Sheogorath couldn’t- wouldn’t- use violence on both sides of his body at once.

My other claw ripped into his torso, into his guts. There was nothing but putty there, nothing but potent, pure anima, the two whorling humors of mania and dementia.

Then I twisted and pulled. With a ripping noise, and a grunt of pain, the world shrieked. Sheogorath smiled, and I could feel his will forcing the damaged creatia of his form to become intestines and organs, spilling out. Only half of them were human. There were much, much too many to fit inside a single torso… but he was playing along.

A familiar shock of brilliant yellow hair flashed out of one of the adjacent hallways, Dorin Fallowhoof poking his head out, eyebrows met as he tried to figure out what’s going on.
Sheogorath fell, slumping in the chair… and obligingly died. If you ignored him peeking with one eye whenever I looked away, that is.

“Dorin.” I said. The bosmer jumped slightly, glancing at me with a slightly panicked look.

“M-me?”

I looked at him for a long moment. He’d started to become a member of the Shivering Isles in truth, but he wasn’t too far gone. A little obsessive perhaps, a little manic… But he didn’t deserve to get killed.

So I didn’t.

“Yeah. I heard some news while I was in Tamriel, and I thought you might be interested,” I said.

“What is it?” He asked.

“I heard that the Grey Prince is having a match with a half dozen minotaurs,” I lied. “And in just a week!”

“By Azura!” He called, eyes glittering. “I’ve got to get back to the Grand Arena! Goodbye, everybody!”

He bolted out of the room, sprinting as fast as he can.

There’s a moment of silence in the palace. Slowly, as soon as they were alone, Sheogorath’s corpse stumbled back to its feet.

It’s eyes opened. One eye, smooth and featureless. A spherical silver marble. Unseeing, unfeeling. The other, a beast. The slitted eye of a golden saint, trembling and bleeding from the socket.

Shadowrend continued to sing, but the song went… wrong. Twisted. Distorted. Suddenly, I wasn’t fighting against one will, but two. One pure and orderly, harmonizing with the background radiation of Oblivion itself.

“WhY dId yOu piCk HIM?”

“Because, on a certain level… He wants to be human. You want to be human.” I said. 

“Why do you care so much?” He smiled kindly. For a moment, he was uncle Sheo, bringing home gifts for his nephews and nieces. Even with half his face made of blades, steel encasing his jaw.

“... Isn’t it a little sad?” I asked. “To be stuck as what you are? Unable ever to change, or make decisions? It’s like a prison.”

Sheogorath... Jyggalag. Both, or neither. They stared at me, uncomprehending, and fell back into the seat, amidst the offal and drying blood.

“... It is. It is a little sad.” They said, their voices small.

The staff cracked, and I… let go. Shadowrend coiled back around me, nestling in the hole in my chest.

Outside, I could hear people yelling in alarm. The marching of Order knights in lockstep. Mazken poured out of the gates

“Good luck with the Greymarch,” I said.

It stared at me. Emotionlessly. Cold. Calculatingly. Something left inside, some last echo of what was once Sheogorath… nodded. Slightly.

I turned, and left.

All around, Dark Seducers poured out of the woodwork. People yelled in alarm, in despair. The forces of Order were at the gates. Not that it mattered.

Jyggalag was already sitting in the throne of New Sheoth.

There were no clouds. No sun. Just an endless grey.

It wasn’t over. But it was for me.

“Recall,” I said.