Applying Exotic Metaphysics (Return, 18.3)

The air felt strange here. Chaotic. My shadows reached further, twisted through strange angles and it made the world feel more slippery than I was used to. Shadowrend twisted through my hands, coalescing into a halberd just long enough for the Gatekeeper’s enormous blade-arm stick into it. When he tried to withdraw it, the weapon stuck, sending me stumbling forward sending me stumbling back. Shadowrend was strangely… gooey. Softer than it should have been. Almost too amorphous to use, at least for a weapon.

I let go, letting it fade into my shadow again, and then leapt to the side as the Gatekeeper’s blade-arm slammed down into the ground next to me. I thrust a blast of energy into the beast’s gut, but he barely stumbled back, his skin already fusing back together. He’d ignored a blast that would have ripped through any normal Flesh Atronach with barely a wound.

I frowned, for a moment, ducking beneath the next swing. The ground- pure stone- felt too mushy to my feet, as if I were sinking partially into the shadow. When his weapon was clear, I experimentally tossed a small spark against him, a firebite about as strong as the first one I’d ever thrown. He shrugged it off like my previous blast- but he moved just as much, as if the attack had been just as inconsequential.

So this is what it was like to be in the Shivering Isles. Things didn’t make sense. In fact, the more sense it made, the less that actually mattered. An attack that should have destroyed him, didn’t. But an attack that shouldn’t have hurt him, did.

Right. I still remembered the games. You’d have to use his own body- or his creator- against him. It all fit Sheogorath’s ethos, I figured. Let your enemies destroy themselves, albeit a lot more literal in this case than metaphorical.

But that was for Sheogorath’s Champion. That was that poor sod’s mission. It wouldn’t be Emylee, and it wouldn’t be me.

The Gatekeeper’s free hand thrust a palm at me. A blast of corrosive energy lashed out, one I battered away with my free hand and a quick Shield spell. Or one I tried to. The shield blocked the corrosion fine, but the spell had a rider effect I’d never seen before. With a shrieking sound, my arm wrenched itself backward. I twisted tail over teakettle across the too-soft marble, before slipping off the raised dais entirely and into the mud.

I’d let myself get soft in the few months since my fight with the Hist. The Gatekeeper stared at me. His faceless head seemed to be both grinning and growling, smiling and snarling. He waited for me to enter his area again, to walk within his domain of the Gates.

“Right,” I said, pushing myself back to my feet. “Fuck you, then.”

I wrenched my arm back into its joint, and the tingles -and pain- stopped as soon as I flooded it with another healing spell.

Then, with the sip of a potion- enough to last only a few seconds- I charged. The Gatekeeper swung its blade again, and I caught it in both claws. My talons shrieked, but even as they cracked and fused themselves back together, I was able to stop the decapitating blow. The gatekeeper dumbly tried to pull its weapon back. I followed it, the two of us spinning like some kind of perverse dance. When it finally decided it couldn’t shake me off, it clenched its other fist. Magic poured in.

It thrust its palm at me… and I jumped.

The blast blew me away. This time, as I sailed away from it in the same direction, allowing it to boost me.

Shadowrend’s wings spread, catching the air. The wings barely moved, but I was able to hold them stiff enough to sail me in the direction I wanted… until I landed atop the Gates of Madness.  

The rest of the Shivering Isles. To my left, the brilliant flora and glowing fauna of Mania. To my left, the dark and dour lands of Dementia. Passion and depression. Ecstasy and Dread.

As I stood there, the form of a bald, semi-portly manservant was suddenly standing before me. There wasn’t a shimmer or the presence of magic- it was as if the world around suddenly willed him there, and there he was. He gave me an even, slightly-disapproving frown. He may have looked human- an almost boring example at that- I could tell from the depth in his eyes that he was anything but. A fragment of Sheogorath, or one of his Daedra. Something of that nature, anyway.

“Sup, Haskill,” I said. It hadn’t even been an hour since we’d last talked.

“... Dear visitor, I believe you were meant to defeat the Gatekeeper,” Haskill said. “Rather than simply scale the Gates.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know this was a place where rules and laws were so important,” I drawled, and the thing in Haskill’s eyes flinched, though he didn’t. “I thought I’d do the creative thing.”

“... Attempting to endear yourself? Lord Sheogorath will no doubt see through such clumsy attempts at garnering his favor,” Haskill responded.

“Probably!” I said, “Anyway, I did tell you that I wasn’t going for the position he’s looking for. This way, I’m leaving the Gatekeeper intact for when his champion-to-be does jump into the mouth of madness. Makes things easier on both our ends, yeah?”

“We will see if My Lord agrees with your interpretation of events,” Haskill drawled. He gave a light half-bow and ceased to exist, if he had ever been there in the first place.

“See you in New Sheoth,” I called to empty air, and started to walk along the division between the two sides of the Shivering Isles.

===

Again, I was staring a Daedric Prince in the flesh. This time, steel grey eyes bored into mine, even as the rest of his face was stretched into a wide grin.

“Oh, wonderful. Wonderful! So nice to see you here in my humble, luxurious palace! I didn’t even set out the placemats! Or dinner. I do love dinner, you know,” Sheogorath says, “But that’s beside the point. You’re that guest! The one that keeps insisting you won’t be my champion! I could see how you might not be considered a mortal, and that was going to be one of my requirements…” He looks me over, thinking. “No, no, you won’t do at all. You’re too much. I can’t have you go do all the little tasks my Champion would need to.”

“That was my reasoning,” I responded. “Not to mention that I have a good idea how this whole thing might end.”

“Ah, ah! Don’t tell me,” He says. “I won’t abide by spoilers. Unless I’m the one doing the spoiling. Or if it happens to be a Tirdas.”

“Of course,” I said. “But the reason I came here did have to do with those spoilers. Some of them, anyway. I wanted to talk about the big secret.”

“Oh, I can do some talking. But no spoiling how my plan works out, alright?” He asks. “But first, we do have something else to talk about.”

“... Is it about how I dealt with the Gatekeeper?”

“Of course!” He says. “If you don’t walk through the gates, then you haven’t been given my gift! You didn’t pick either Mania or Dementia.” He sighs, and scoffs. “And I can’t exactly bestow my gift upon you magically. We both know you’d do something impossible and avoid it. So we’ll have to do something else.”

“What would-”

Hot, white pain flashed through my gut. I stumbled back as Sheogorath was in my face, ripping something out from me. My intestines spilled free, propelled by something more than magic. Propelled by the force of the world itself. The pain was staggering. I fell onto my back, tail twisting uncomfortably.

“See? Trauma!” Sheogorath smiled down at me, wiggling my own organs in his view. “A little bit of spice in the soup!”

“... Ow.”

“Ow? Just ow?” He asked

“Fucking ow,” I hissed.

Those cold, alien eyes looked at me for a moment longer… and then he started to chuckle. Full-on belly laughs, all but collapsing back in his throne- after knocking some of my intestines out of it. He continued to laugh while I shoved more and more healing magic in myself, regrowing the wounds I’d suffered. I had to slice through the loose organs. It hurt. Not as much as the wound that necessitated the healing, but it was really the surprise that was the worst part.

Slowly, I pushed myself back to my feet.

“See, if you were my Champion I wouldn’t do that, in case you were reconsidering.” He responded, raising his eyebrows like he hadn’t just fucking disembowled me. He licked his finger, and then wiped his gore-stained hand on the throne. “Ah. Your mother does do some wonderful cooking.”

“Asshole.” I snarled. But I couldn’t really put too much heat into it. This was exactly the sort of thing Sheogorath was supposed to do. “I just wanted to talk about Jyggalag.”

“... Oh, really now?” He asked, leaning in. “Well then, I’d put your intestines back where I found them if you hadn’t already done that yourself.”

“Yeah, whatever.” I said. “This is about the Greymarch.”

An inhuman smile graced his green-and-brown eyes.

“You already know. I can see the thoughts eating at your brain like many little worms. You know He’s me, don’t you?”