Chapter 2: A Vital Checkup
"Hear ye, Hear ye! The Watch urges you to be on the lookout for an Imperial man with short brown hair and brown eyes, wearing a white shirt and tan trousers. He is wanted for trespassing, public indecency, resisting arrest, assault of an on-duty guard, and petty theft. The suspect is unstable and dangerous. Do not give chase, but alert local authorities if you have a location on the suspect."
The town crier rings her bell, and people turn to face each other and gasp loudly, murmuring among themselves. Some claim to have seen him, some point in certain directions. Others shake their heads and shrug.
Leodes pulls his head back from around the corner and sighs.
Last week, I was a guard upholding the law. Now I'm a wanted criminal. Reduced to stealing clothes and being kicked out of my own house. Nothing makes sense to me anymore, but I wasn't about to let myself get arrested without figuring out what the hell is wrong with me.
He looks at his hands. Adrenaline keeps them shaking, as his heart beats rapidly.
What are you, Leodes? Alive? Dead? Or something else entirely? Maybe the Prophet would-
Leodes shakes his head and grunts.
No. Not the Prophet. I need answers from someone I can trust. Someone who can actually tell me their name.
Leodes steps off from against the wall and pulls up his hood, and keeps his head facing the ground to make it less likely to be detected. With his hands in his pockets, he glances down the alleyways for some clue of where to go.
Down one alley are a few beggars, wearing tattered clothes sitting on the ground against the wall with broken beer bottles next to them. One is asleep. Beyond it, on the other side of the main road is the Fighter's Guildhall.
No. I may know a lot of people down at the Fighter's Guild, but if not even my wife recognizes me, I doubt they will. I'd be better off walking into the jailhouse myself.
Leodes ignores this alley and moves forward, looking down another to his left.
This one doesn't have any people in it, but a few rats scramble across the ground, and a horrible stench permeates within as if something is dead and rotting away. Trash litters the ground, and there are various charred marks on certain spots of the walls. Beyond the street after the alley is the Mage's guild.
The Mage's Guild, of course. Whether Magic is involved or not, there's a better chance that someone there will listen to me long enough to at least consider my story before sending the guard after me. I've met enough Mages to know that the crazy and unbelievable is just another puzzle to unravel for them.
Before Leodes even sets foot beyond the current wall he hides behind, he sees the shadow of someone turning the corner on the opposite side of the road. Leodes jumps back close to the wall.
The shadow becomes a person. A Dunmer with red hair, wearing a brown wizard hat with a feather, and the traditional mage's guild robes. He looks preoccupied with thought but turns down the alley that Leodes was considering going through.
Well, if I wanted to get the chance to talk to one of them alone, now's the best chance.
Leodes runs out from behind the wall, across the street and down the alley, after the mage. He tries to make his run look at least a little natural and slows to a fast-walk once actually in the alley.
He looks back behind him to make sure no one else is coming and tries to get caught up to the Dunmer. He hears the Dunmer saying things aloud to himself, under his breath, as he bends down and starts picking through the trash, shoving things aside.
Leodes pauses for a second, confused, but then presses on.
"Excuse me," Leodes says, nearing him. The Dunmer doesn't seem to notice.
"Hello?" He says again, but the Dunmer doesn't respond.
Leodes sighs and reaches out his hand to tap the Dunmer's shoulder.
The Dunmer gets spooked and jerks wildly up and loses his grip on what he's holding. A metal box hits the ground, making a loud clang against the stone, and opening up a lid as it tips on its side.
"Sorry! I didn't-" Leodes says. Several rats spew out of the metal box trap, squeaking loudly and scurrying madly in their escape.
"-mean to let your rats escape..." He finishes, looking confused.
Leodes moves out of the way of the rats, but the Dunmer walks past him, with his hands held up in the air.
"No! Don't go! Come back! I promise to feed you well!" He shouts. "...Before I use you to feed my Daedrat..." He says in a quieter, somber tone.
He pulls his hat further down his head in frustration.
"Your...what?" Leodes asks, with a raised eyebrow.
The Dunmer turns to face him, as if only just now noticing him for the first time. He holds his hands out exasperatedly. "Daedrat! My pet! Mr. Nibbles! He's going to be so disappointed now, this was supposed to be his special treat." The Dunmer holds his hand to his chin and mumbles some words.
Leodes stands, still confused for another second, before deciding not to ask about it.
"Again, I'm sorry about that...but, there was something I wanted to ask you," Leodes says politely.
The Dunmer still seems to ignore him, mumbling and holding his chin in thought. He then starts to walk off, down the alley toward the Mage's guild.
"There's something I need help with, something possibly magic related." Leodes continues, calmly and politely.
The Dunmer stops, gasps and raises a finger as if he just figured something out, but still looks the other way, not responding to he keeps walking.
Leodes gets annoyed and runs up to his side. "Look, I just escaped the Daedric plane of Coldharbour and now something strange is going on with me and I don't know what it is!" he shouts. Immediately after he regrets it and looks around to make sure no one else was in earshot.
The Dunmer quickly turns to face him, intrigued. He widens his eyes curiously. "Coldharbour, Molag's realm. Really? What was it like? Does it really look like Nirn but in ruins, with the Imperial palace spattered with blood and excrement?" He says in an excited tone ill-befit of the dark realm he speaks of.
Leodes looks dumbfounded at the joy in his tone when speaking of it. He shakes his head. "No... I mean, I don't know. It was terrible, that's all I can really describe it as. Terrible."
The Dunmer looks a little saddened. "Ah." Is all he says.
"After I left it though, strange things have been happening to me. I was only in there for a week, but when I came back, 4 years have passed. No one recognizes me, not even my wife, and I...black out and appear in other places. Without my clothes on."
The Dunmer nods repeatedly as Leodes tells his story. He seems a little surprised at the part about waking up without any clothes. Then he raises his finger and opens his mouth.
"Ah, I see...so you must be that one I heard the town crier talking about, running around town. Claiming to be a certain Leodes Loreius, who passed away." He nods some more, then purses his lips. "Have you been drinking lately? Skooma? Or perhaps Hist sap?" He asks flatly with squinted eyes.
"No, look, I'm not drunk! And I've never used Skooma, or whatever sap! You have to believe me! I was in Coldharbour! I saw Molag Bal! I saw the Soul Shriven and the Dremora and other Daedra. They tortured me for a week! He plans to invade Tamriel and send down these Dark Anchor machines to merge Nirn and Coldharbour together in something he calls the Planemeld!"
"Wow." The Dunmer says, blinking his eyes. He chuckles. "That's...absolutely and utterly insane, and yet...for some reason I believe you."
"So...You'll help me figure out what's going on with me?"
"Maybe...On one condition. You have to tell me more about Coldharbour, other than just 'it's terrible'"
"I don't exactly like reliving those memories, you know."
The Dunmer shrugs.
"Alright, fine. Can we do this somewhere else, though? I'd rather not re-live my darkest experiences in an alleyway while I'm a wanted criminal. You never told me your name, by the way."
"Gimlyn Ginith, at your service," he says and bows. "And sure, I have a place here in town."
Leodes follows Gimlyn up the stairs of the Inn. The noisy patrons below make it difficult for Leodes to think. He glances back to make sure no one is following them and tugs further on his hood to keep his identity hidden.
Gimlyn pulls out a key and unlocks the door to his room, and they both quickly get inside and close the door behind them. A bar fight breaks out downstairs just below, and the muffled sounds of glasses breaking and people yelling can still be heard slightly, even after the door is shut.
"So...You live in an inn." Leodes says.
"A permanent tenant! Yep. It's small and cozy, but enough to suit my needs and for my work." Gimlyn cheerfully says as he walks through the room.
Leodes steps forward, with the sound of crumpling papers beneath his feet.
A snarling sound makes him flinch and jump back. A daedrat pokes its nose and wiggles its claws through the bars of its cage, sitting on a dresser. It struggles against its prison, to no avail.
"Don't mind him, he can get a bit cranky when he's hungry, and who's to blame for that?" Gimlyn says. He sighs and starts tidying up his desk a bit, with all sorts of papers and books laid out across as if a storm had passed through the room and laid waste to it. It was an utter mess, for a room so small. An unmade bed, drawers sticking out with clothes lying all about.
"How do you live in this mess, Gimlyn? Or better yet, how does the Innkeeper let you live like this?" Leodes asks, incredulously.
"What he doesn't know, doesn't get him killed." A metallic, high pitched feminine voice says.
Leodes looks in the direction of the voice and sees two bright piercing eyes belonging to a purple, winged and scaly creature with horns, perched on the window sill that he just now noticed was there. Her wings – which are more extensions of her hands - point upwards, covering her chest and shoulders.
Leodes jumps back. "What the heck?" He looks to Gimlyn, who doesn't seem at all surprised that this creature is there. He relaxes a little, but still remains on edge. "What is that thing?" Leodes says, nodding toward it.
"Ah, that's Drasilla." Gimlyn says, smiling. "She's a Winged Twilight, one of Azura's favored Daedra. Don't mind her quips, she's just playful, and she couldn't do you any harm even if she wanted to - I summoned her here from Moonshadow, so she's under my control. Still, I like to let her speak her mind." He continues cleaning up his desk.
"The more pitiful mortals I have to put up with, the more eager I grow to watch this world burn." She says scornfully, with a frightening sincerity.
"She's just grumpy that I've kept her cooped up in this room for a few days." Gimlyn says, and picks up some fallen books, placing them back on the bookshelves.
Leodes raises an eyebrow and nods slowly. "Alright... Are you hiding any other Daedra in your closet that I should know about?"
Gimlyn chuckles. "Why would I keep them in my closet? That would be inhumane..." He stops and thinks. "But maybe, just a second. Hopefully, he didn't get out again."
"What do you mean, get out?" Leodes asks with a hint of concern.
"Impy! Look, I have a little treat for you!" Gimlyn holds out a gold coin and crouches down.
"Impy?" Leodes asks.
Suddenly, the bed starts to bump around, and a muffled screech comes from beneath it. A squat, purplish figure with furry legs, a rats tail and long ears darts out from under the bed. It tackles Gimlyn with such a force that it knocks him on his back, and his hat flips on to his face.
Leodes takes a step back and just looks dumbfounded at the sight of this creature snapping the gold coin from his hands and playing with it. It looks up at Leodes with an angry frown and pulls the coin close to his chest and turns around as if protecting it.
"So you have a pet Scamp, too...I saw those in Coldharbour."
Gimlyn pulls his hat back on, stands up and dusts himself off. "No, they're not my pets. Well, Mr. Nibbles is, but these are my..." He coughs, thinking of the right word. "Work associates."
"This mortal you've brought to us is a fine specimen. I'd like to keep him as my pet." Drasilla says with a toothy grin. Leodes looks disgusted.
"Alright, that's enough from both of you. Back to Oblivion for you, until next time."
Gimlyn raises his hands and lowers them, with a purple glow radiating from them. He whispers some words, and both Impy and Drasilla are surrounded by purple portals, which then dissipate, along with them.
Gimlyn shakes his head and raises a hand to his chin.
"I leave them alone for 5 minutes in here and they make a mess of the place. Typical."
Leodes narrows his eyes at Gimlyn.
"So... you want to know more about Coldharbour, you keep a Daedrat as a pet, and have two Daedra 'work associates'...What exactly do you do, Gimlyn?" Leodes asks.
Gimlyn drops some of the papers he was holding and bends down to pick them up.
"Well, I uh. I research...things. For the Mage's Guild. I like to consider myself a sort of Daedrologist. Well, an apprentice Daedrologist. Junior apprentice."
Leodes looks at him doubtfully.
"Really...I just love Morian Zenas- I mean his work. Well, maybe both, but he's far too old for me if he's even still alive anymore-"
"What do you do as a Daedrologist?" Leodes interrupts.
"Well, should think it pretty obvious. I study all things Daedric- but mostly the Lesser Daedra." Gimlyn insists. "I've always wanted to know more about them, how their minds work, what their society is like, and what they do when they aren't busy trying to enslave or kill mortals. The Princes themselves aren't worth the hassle of getting involved with all of those crazy cultists, and you're just as likely to get cursed or killed by the Prince you worship as you are to get anything meaningful out of it."
"Do you think you can trust a Daedra?" Leodes asks with a judging look.
"What I think," Gimlyn says loudly. "is that the Lesser Daedra are misunderstood. I mean, we would probably be pretty crazy too if we lived in a realm lead by power-hungry Daedric Princes. Maybe if we took the time to understand them more, we would have some insight on how to stop the next Prince that goes on a power trip across Tamriel – and maybe even some allies to help us."
"You didn't answer my question," Leodes says flatly.
Gimlyn turns at him, annoyed. "Do you want my help or not?"
Leodes raises his hands and looks down. "Alright."
Gimlyn says nothing but sets down what he was holding and walks over to him.
"Right. Well, we'll start with the basic checkup. I'll make sure your main faculties are still at work. It might seem pointless - but you can never be certain when it comes to interplanar travel." Gimlyn holds out Leodes's arm squints for a closer inspection, and then nods.
"No skin discoloration."
Gimlyn pulls a knife from the inner pockets of his robe and leaves a small cut on his arm.
"Ow, hey!"
"No blood discoloration, and you still feel pain."
He holds a hand on the left half of his upper chest.
"Your heart's still beating. That's good."
Leodes scoffs, and Gimlyn knocks his fist on Leodes's forehead twice.
"Ow, would you stop it? I still feel pain, okay?" Leodes yelps, holding a hand to his tender head.
"Just making sure your skull isn't hollow. Good. Just one more test before we move on to the next phase."
"I could have told you all of this. Is this really necessary?" Leodes asks.
"This may sting a little. " Gimlyn holds his right hand out and prepares a spell. A blue-ish white aura surrounds his hand. He focuses its energy more and releases it at Leodes.
"Hey, what-!" Leodes tries to jump aside but doesn't get out of the way in time.
The spell hits Leodes. He closes his eyes and feels an indescribable sensation quickly spread across his body, but then quickly fade away.
He opens his eyes after a couple seconds, confused. "Was that supposed to do something?" Leodes asks.
Gimlyn looks at him, wide-eyed and jaw open. "It...did. But not what I was expecting."
"What...do you mean, Gimlyn? What is it?" Leodes asks impatiently.
"Leodes...You're Soul Shriven."
Leodes freezes and stares vacantly.
It's happening. You can't run away from your fate anymore.
Leodes holds his hands to his head. He then quickly looks to Gimlyn. "No...No, I can't be. You're wrong, Gimlyn!"
"Here, watch," Gimlyn says. He prepares another spell and casts it toward Mr. Nibbles. The Daedrat yelps and runs to the back of its cage, shaking in fear, squealing. The Daedrat is enveloped in a purplish aura around its body.
"Er, sorry, Mr. Nibbles..." Gimlyn squints. "Anyway, see that purple aura? You have that around you too. Look." Gimlyn says.
Leodes does as he says and raises a hand in front of him. What he says is true, a purple aura emanates from his hand, and, as he can tell, the rest of his body.
Leodes looks back to Gimlyn, confused.
"Now watch," he says. Gimlyn prepares the spell once more and casts it on himself. Gimlyn closes his eyes for a brief second, and then a light-blue aura emanates from his body.
"See? Mine is blue, that's what it normally does. This is a soul trap spell, but it can be used to tell certain things about another's soul...except when there is no soul, it emanates a purple glow instead of a blue one."
Leodes struggles to focus on anything. He starts to feel light headed and lose his balance. Except for this time the proof is irrefutable. There's a certain, calming feeling in that.
"So...it really is true then. I am dead." Leodes says, defeated. He sits down in a chair behind him, keeping a level gaze at nothing. "I'm dead." He says again. It feels a little more comfortable saying it now.
"Well...No." Gimlyn says, looking up and tilting his head side to side. Leodes instantly looks up at him. "Well, I mean yes- but not really...You're more like a...Daedric clone of your soul, with its memories, and the shape of that soul's body in life?" Gimlyn frowns and shrugs.
"...What?" Leodes says, narrowing his eyes and utterly confused.
"Well, I just meant that you're a Soul Shriven, so you're not really dead, because you're not even really you...anymore-" Gimlyn coughs and stops talking, as he realizes mid-phrase that what he was saying could be very rude, given the circumstances. Gimlyn looks away and distracts himself, rubbing his chin and looking at his books, and whistles.
All of the unstable feelings from the uncertainty of his fate come back to him again.
"What do you mean, Gimlyn?" Leodes asks.
Gimlyn doesn't respond, and instead just picks a book at random to start flipping through the pages.
"Gimlyn!" Leodes shouts.
"Huh? Oh, what?" Gimlyn says.
"What do you mean I'm not 'me' anymore?" Leodes demands.
Gimlyn chuckles nervously. "Oh, that? I just uh, misspoke. I was thinking of something else – you should know me by now, heh, always getting distracted, hehe."
Leodes lowers his brows and keeps his sight on him. He stands up and walks toward him. He sighs and speaks slowly, but loudly. "Gimlyn...Tell me what happened to me. Everything. What is a Soul Shriven?" He demands.
Gimlyn closes his eyes and sighs in defeat. He sets the book down and looks at Leodes. "Well, all I have for you is a theory, nothing completely solid-" Gimlyn says.
"Do you Know Anything, Gimlyn? Or is everything just Maybes to you?" Leodes shouts in annoyance with his hands raised. He turns around and paces, resting his head in his hands, covering his face.
"Well unless you want me to do some excruciatingly painful tests on you as I dissect your body to learn every scrap of information I can about you, then yes, all I have for you is a theory...A very well-researched theory backed with my knowledge of Daedrology and from other tomes written on the subject, but a theory nonetheless." Gimlyn says with hints of annoyance. Then it fades and is replaced with curiosity.
"I mean...unless of course, you do want me to do those tests," Gimlyn asks hopefully. Leodes looks at him with his arms arched at his side, in silence. "It could potentially increase our knowledge of Daedrology a hundredfold, and could lead to new innovations in medicine and technology and..." Gimlyn trails off, seeing Leodes's unmoving face. "Alright. Theory it is." Gimlyn claps once and nods.
Leodes folds his arms and looks at Gimlyn attentively.
"Right. As I said, it is from reading other tomes on the subject, and from my own research into Daedrology that has led me to the conclusion that Soul Shriven are in-fact, a Daedric vestige – the equivalent of a soul for a Daedra - that has been removed of all of its memories, subjected into a memory-cloning process with the soul of a mortal, and then submerged into the spawning pools of Oblivion, where a body imitating the one the host soul had in life, is created from those cloned memories, with the Azure Plasm that all Daedric bodies are made of." Gimlyn says as if reciting a speech he had planned multiple times before.
Leodes looks down, deep in thought.
"So...Like how people talk about having spirit animals, being reincarnated from them in a past-life – You, quite literally have a spirit Daedra." Gimlyn says, chuckling. "I wonder what yours was in your previous existence? Clannfear? Maybe Daedroth? What did they do that upset Molag Bal so much that they had your memories erased and replaced with a mortal's?"
Leodes grabs Gimlyn by the collar and raises him up. "I refuse to accept that I'm a Daedra!" he shouts.
"Yep...Definitely Daedroth." Gimlyn mumbles through his restrained neck.
Leodes lets him go and turns around, holding his head. Pulling his hair back out of stress and confusion.
"So...I'm not just dead...I'm just not me anymore..." Leodes says, trying to process it in his mind.
"One of potentially many Soul Shriven versions of you-" Gimlyn says, but then winces, again, realizing the rudeness of it.
Leodes turns to look at him again, and Gimlyn sighs, inwardly irritated with himself, and confesses his thoughts.
"What I mean is, the memories from your soul weren't stolen, just copied into a Daedra's vestige. There's no reason they couldn't have done that with your soul and other Daedra vestiges too. You were gone for four years, after all, by now there could be several other Soul Shriven who look like you and have the same memories of your old life. You were just the most recent to be created from the memories of your lost soul...One might have gone feral, one might be in the process of recreating their body after being destroyed...and the others might still be slaving away or being tortured..." Gimlyn stops and winces again. "But hey, think on the bright side, you escaped Coldharbour, so you don't have to go through that anymore, right?"
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Leodes scoffs. "I was almost to the point of accepting my death, and now you tell me that I'm not even me anymore, I'm just a Daedra who had their memories erased, and replaced with a mortal's memories, and that there are other clones of me who are all still suffering in Coldharbour right now. How do I even begin to reconcile that?" Leodes scoffs. His eyes are wide open and he crazily tugs at his hair, as he paces around the room again.
Gimlyn looks away and frowns with guilt.
"And my wife and doesn't even recognize me...but I guess she's not even really my wife anyway because I'm not even me!" Leodes shouts crazily and kicks over a chair.
Gimlyn looks up and narrows his eyes in thought. "Yes...That part does confuse me. It's never been recorded that Soul Shriven is unable to be recognized by people who knew their host mortal. In fact, quite the opposite. I mean, there is the disfigurations that come over time from being a failed replica, unable to sustain the vestige inside of you that could lead to that...but you look remarkably, well, alive, more than any Soul Shriven I've ever heard of. You must have escaped Coldharbour immediately after your creation."
"Well, I was there for a week," Leodes says and continues pacing.
Gimlyns eyes widen. "What?" He looks at Leodes. "You were in there for a whole week and you still look like that?" Gimlyn walks over to him and grabs his arm, pulling up his sleeve.
"What? Yeah, I told you that before, remember?" Leodes says, confused.
"I remember now, but...this doesn't make sense," Gimlyn says. He turns Leodes toward him and looks him closely in the eyes and scans his face. Leodes steps back away from him. Gimlyn pulls up his shirt and examines his chest.
"Hey, what the heck are you doing?" Leodes demands, pulling his shirt back down.
Gimlyn rubs his chin in thought. "Not a single sign of any deformity, anywhere. I'll have to be more thorough."
Gimlyn reaches his hands for Leodes's pants, but his wrist is grabbed and his arm bent behind his back, making him wince from pain.
"What the hell are you talking about?" Leodes demands, still holding Gimlyn's arm.
"You...Don't look like other Soul Shriven." He says, struggling through the pain.
Leodes lets go. "Well yeah, I know that. Why the heck do you think I've been so insistent that I'm not one of them?"
Gimlyn shakes his head. "No, no. That's the thing. You are. You do not have a mortal soul. There's no doubt of that...But you were there for a whole week. Every witness account of Soul Shriven has said that, by now, you should look like a pale skinned, white-eyed monstrosity, with other possible deformities appearing over time. It's the result of the imperfect copy of your mortal soul's memories rejecting the body that your vestige created, expedited by the nature of existing in Oblivion, where time moves differently." Gimlyn rambles on crazily.
"Yeah, well I was there for a week. I know because I kept track of the routines of the guards when I wasn't busy being tortured."
"This doesn't add up...This is unprecedented. This is scientifically impossible..." Gimlyn gasps and looks up.
"Unless..." Gimlyn races over to his bookshelf, striding his finger across the books until he finds the one he's looking for. He pulls it out and flips through the pages.
Leodes stands still, unsure of what to think of Gimlyn's antics.
"Here!" He shouts and looks up. He follows his finger across the page he opened up to. '...His theory is that the Soul Shriven's bodies are flawed because they have lost the focusing principle of their Anuic souls, so their vestiges are imperfect patterns. I concurred that this was likely, and then proposed the theoretical possibility of a Soul Shriven who, despite having lost his or her soul, possessed some other intrinsic Anuic aspect. This shall-we-say "paragon" Soul Shriven would form an unflawed body in Coldharbour that was a perfect duplicate of the body worn in Mundus. In fact, if this paragon bore a sufficiently high Anuic valence, upon contact with Padomaic creatia its body would form almost instantaneously.'" Gimlyn says the last lines slowly.
Gimlyn looks up with a smile of fascination, looking at Leodes.
"Uh, Gimlyn? What does all of that mean?" He asks.
"It means that when your memories were cloned...you were a perfect copy! Or well, perfect enough that some anuic intrinsic principle passed over to you, but anyway – it means that, that is why your body isn't deteriorating! In-fact, if all of this is true...that would mean you can do something that no one - Mortal, Aedra or Daedra, can do, not even the Divines or the Daedric Princes themselves...You can regenerate your body instantaneously when you die."
"I can what?" Leodes asks incredulously and shakes his head.
Gimlyn closes the book and laughs.
"I get it. I understand it now. This is why Molag Bal went through the trouble of creating the Soul Shriven in the first place. I had always thought, 'why bother wasting Deadric vestiges to create weaker mortal-clones', but now I know, and of course he must have too. This is what he wanted all along. He is the God of Schemes, after all. It was all to learn how to create you." Gimlyn accusatively points at Leodes. He walks towards him.
Leodes steps back. "Gimlyn, you're kind of freaking me out."
"He wanted to pass over the intrinsic anuic aspects of a mortal into a Daedric vestige. The Aedric and Daedric energies together act as a catalyst, sparking the reformation process Daedra go through when they die, into an instantaneous occurrence. Because even Daedric Princes take time to regenerate when they're destroyed. Potentially even centuries, for them. But you...Leodes..."
Gimlyn grabs Leodes's shoulders and shakes him. "You are his key. The key to him learning how to create a Daedric army that cannot be defeated, because if they are they would simply 're-spawn' immediately and return to fight! You were what he was trying to create all along so that he can create more like you!" He laughs hysterically and lets go.
Gimlyn shakes his head and turns around.
"It's ironic, that what he was trying to create all along – the one success out of a million failures, is the one Soul Shriven to escape his grasp. He must be furious." Gimlyn laughs.
Gimlyn stops laughing. "He must be furious."
He looks to Leodes and grabs his shoulders again. "Leodes. You are in trouble right now. You need to listen to me. We need to study this immediately, we need to learn how to use this to our advantage – to protect you from him, because if he finds you before then..." Gimlyn looks very scared. He shakes his head.
"Listen. You said you blacked out and woke up somewhere else. What happened? Where did you wake up at?"
"All I can remember is getting stabbed by someone I knew from work. Then I woke up naked, without any wounds, next to one of those Wayshrines in the city that pilgrims go to." Leodes says and then continues "I don't get it. I don't understand what you're saying."
Gimlyn lets go of him and paces around the room again. "Okay, next to a Wayshrine, that makes sense. Souls go there before ascending to Atherius after death. There's a lot of anuic energy there." Gimlyn nods.
He turns to Leodes. "Alright, you're just going to have to trust me right now, but you didn't black out Leodes. You died, and your vestige reformed your body at the nearest access point of Anuic energy – wayshrines. We need to repeat this process so we can begin to understand it, and how to use it to our advantage before it's too late."
Gimlyn turns around and picks up a knife from his table.
"What? What do you mean we need to 'repeat this process' Gimlyn?" Leodes asks.
"I'm sorry, I'll try to make this as quick and painless as possible," Gimlyn says, grabbing Leodes's arm with one hand and stabbing him in the chest with another before he realizes what he's doing.
Leodes drops to the floor, shocked, confused and bleeding out.
"This was the only way for me to convince you of what you can do, Leodes. You'll understand everything in a few seconds."
"What?...Gimlyn...Why?" Leodes says faintly, before becoming unresponsive. Immediately after, his body vanishes and leaves behind his equipment.
"I really need to figure out how to keep his clothes on him next time." Gimlyn says, shaking his head.
As you can see, I've taken some creative liberty and expanded on some of the concepts of being Soul Shriven, and Molag Bal's interest in creating them. I might write a lorebook about it later. I hope you enjoyed the chapter! Let me know what you think down below as the story continues to unfold for Leodes.