"Crack of dawn, all is gone except the will to be/
Now they see what will be, blinded eyes to see"
Metallica, "For Whom the Bell Tolls"
He nudged me with one of his elbows. I shook my head to gain focus. I sighed, and focused my eyes back on him. "Fine," I replied belatedly to his statement. He approached the door we had come from and turned the doorknob. I sighed and sprinted up to him. He turned and looked at me before he opened it slowly, cautiously. The door screeched opened loudly and revealed what appeared to be the hallway we had recently came from.
Except now, the hallway was all wrong. The velvety material had formed life of its own, and seemed to be writhing. As we stepped into the hallway, the pain in my knees returned. I gritted my teeth as Sheogorath commented on the hall, "This hallway isn't right at all. This…it shouldn't be happening." He rubbed the bridge of his nose with the two first fingers of his left hand. I cocked my head. "You know more about this place than you're admitting. I know it," I remarked, pointing a finger at him without being too accusatory. He turned towards me and sighed.
"Aye," he replied quietly, "I know all about this place. I know everything about you." I folded my arms and scoffed. "Were you planning on telling me this?" I interrogated him infuriately. He folded his own arms and paced around me. "To be honest," he replied unconcernedly, "I never thought you'd make it this far." He sauntered up to the front of me and stood inches from my face. I recoiled. "What's that supposed to mean?" I asked him frightfully, my voice choking on my words. He rubbed the nape of his neck.
"Most would be horrified by now," he replied indifferently, circling around me. I did not like the mind game he was playing one bit. I placed my hands on my hips. "Tell me then. Where am I?" I questioned him with frustration in my voice. He chuckled and smirked. "Walter," he replied condescendingly, "I'm sure you can figure it out." I groaned as I seethed. I turned around and glared at him with my fists clenched. He then started laughing hysterically.
"For someone claiming not to be impulsive, you are volatile," he sneered at me, gazing into my eyes derisively. I narrowed my eyes at him. Nothing sets off my temper worse than being laughed at, but I needed to keep a cool head. I relaxed my body and watched his sneer fade to a scowl. I heard him walking off somewhere and I twisted around to face him. He was almost all the way down the hallway. Again, I moaned in my irritation. I licked my lips.
"Sheogorath," I yelled at him, "she's not that way." He stopped in his tracks. I watched his body tense up. I watched him slowly face me. "Do tell me where she is," he responded to my statement in a very unhappy tone of voice. He narrowed his eyes a bit in skepticism. I shouted back at him, "You're not going to find her here." He looked at me questioningly and began strolling towards me. The ground crunched and squished beneath his hard black leather boots.
It wasn't long before his face was right up in mine. His odd, glowing eyes were nothing more than mere slits. "She's not here. She never was," I said, rubbing my temples in thought. He backed up a few steps from me and crossed his arms again. "Zarrexaij, as the Daedroth," I explicated calmly, "never existed." He stared at me with offended eyes. He recoiled, and barked at me, "You liar! Think of something better to stun me with." I sighed in aggravation.
"It makes perfect sense. If she was ever real, you would be able to sense her," I argued, stroking the facial hair I was growing on my chin. He exhaled, and peered at me. He looked quite livid, as well as about to lash out on me in anger. Sheogorath asked me with a raised eyebrow, "Why would I do that?" I scratched the underside of my lower jaw. "Well," I explained hesitantly, "you are the Mad God…." His nostrils flared a bit, and his both his eyebrows raised. "You need to work on your explanations," he sighed, turning around and beginning to trek back down the hall.
I grit my teeth and bit my lower lip in thought. Really, I'm not much of a people person, so empathizing with him enough to understand the situation was damned hard. "I think the gutter of your mind created it. I can imagine what solitude does to the mind of someone who can no longer say 'I' and feel like it. I guess when someone of your power wishes so deeply of something… it becomes fabricated into their world. Maybe you thought you needed her, but you didn't anymore, so your unconscious mind made you kill her. You said you made her, and that's not a lie, except that you made her up. Maybe… not only did you need someone to be with you… but someone to… punish you," I raised my rough voice. Once again, I observed him stopping in place. He spun his body around and replied, "No, that is not true at all! I much most certainly did not!"
The countenance on his face was not angry; rather, it was very alarmed because he had no expected me to figure him out like that. I approached him carefully. "You were right that we aren't so different," I remarked cool-headedly, "you're in complete denial, and that's something you've accused me of." He tilted his head and glanced at me distrustfully. He strode around me, scrutinizing me. "How do I know you aren't just trying to keep me away from her?" he questioned me, leaning forward as I turned to face him to get his face up in mine. The right side of his face twitched in scorn. I sighed and replied.
"I have no reason to do that. I want to get out of here as much as you do." Sheogorath lifted his right eyebrow and withdrew himself. "If you're deceiving me, remember that I have plenty of rationale to smite you," he reminded me in a collected voice. His taut body slackened slowly. He blinked his no longer narrowed and suspicious eyes and notified me a bit dispassionately, "I still have a memory to show you." I emitted a long breath and mentally prepared myself for the peculiar psychic pain. I held out my hands with my eyes closed and felt his smooth hands grasp mine.
The last sensations I felt that were my own was the supernatural smarting of the veins in my hands, then in my arms, then in my chest, then everywhere, and the sound of my screams of pain echoing in the hallway. His mind seized my own immediately and held it in its telepathic communication. Slowly, with his clairvoyant sight that was eerily like scrying, the darkness opened up. His senses filled my brain with frightening things. The musty, dark place didn't appear to have much going on in it. I could barely make out any details. I saw several platforms and bodies and realized the nature of this place.
It was a sepulcher. I wondered why he chose to show me a vault of cadavers. One of the bodies came into my focus. The skin of the body had long since been gone. A little bit of dust had settled over the large body. After further inspection, the body revealed itself to be quite familiar. It was the dead body of the mortal form of Sheogorath. In any case, his body, aside from lacking skin and the obviously broken neck, was in bad shape. It appeared that his body had been somewhat burned. There were holes in the muscles of the shoulders where stakes had been driven through. For a moment, I swore the feet of the body moved.
I'm pretty sure they did, too. I heard a very faint sound, and suddenly the closed eyes of the body opened. They were a tremendously bright green and almost appeared to glow. Gradually, body sat up, outstretched an arm, and inhaled noisily. I heard his body produce a faint gurgle. I recognized the gurgling as speech.
"Ooh, my nerves," the body moaned gutturally. I heard bones popping as his body sat on the longer edge of the platform. The once inanimate feet touched the dusty floor and Sheogorath's body howled in pain. "It… hurts…so…much," he whined in a voice that was slowly returning to normal. He managed to stand up and walk around in the vault.
The skinned body managed to find a torch lit area of the tomb. When Sheogorath stepped into the light, I watched his still broken neck crane to look down at himself. His broken neck made a horrible grinding, liquid sound. He groaned. "I wanted to die," he wailed, "I wanted to die!" His face, nothing more than muscle, tendon, and bone, twisted up in anguish. He covered his face with his eyes. "Oh, it hurts," he complained with a look of pain on the recognizable remnants of his face.
Sheogorath uncovered his eyes. They were tearing up and lubricating his eyes, as they probably had not done for days. "Arkay didn't protect me from this," he sighed, rubbing where his right eyebrow used to be. His eyes were now very bloodshot. He began wandering around the sepulcher. After a few minutes of stumbling around the corridors, he came across the stairs that led up to the surface. Gleefully, he climbed up the stairs and turned the doorknob of the door preventing him from releasing himself into the day or night. He frowned profoundly. It was locked. I heard Sheogorath curse, but the words were incoherent. "I don't think I have any magicka running through my body," he remarked to no one in particular. A voice behind him spoke to him.
"You silly, piteous thing. Feel deeper into yourself. You're more powerful than you think you are." Sheogorath turned around and saw a man that looked remarkably, no, exactly like him sitting on a platform downstairs. The man was wearing elaborate clothing. He grinned up at Sheogorath and waved. Sheogorath ambled down the stairs and asked him curiously, "Who are you?" The man smiled widely. The smile was…familiar.
"Why," he answered ecstatically, "I'm your conscious mind. To be precise, I'm the half that governs your memories and your connection to reality." Sheogorath blinked and looked at the man with uncertainly. He questioned him, "What does 'conscious mind' mean?" The man stood up and trotted up to the skinned Sheogorath. "It is the part of your mind that is aware to your feelings, your surroundings, and your thoughts," the man replied politely, taping his left temple and laughing. Sheogorath continued to look at him distrustfully.
"You're mad," he replied coolly, folding his skinned arms. The man frowned a bit and stroked his goatee. "Actually, you're mad. I'm just a part of you. You always did have a warped connection to this 'reality'," the man replied factually, though his tone was a bit teasing. Sheogorath sighed and looked the man in the eyes. He interrogated him jadedly, "What's going on here?" The man beamed ardently again at his companion.
"Well, you died. I suppose in a sense that isn't entirely true, but that's the best way to describe it. Your soul still exists, and so does your mind. What happened when you died is that your soul ascended to the heavens… but not to the Heavens. Poor you. Instead, your soul went to this magnificent place called 'Oblivion'. Apparently, you caused plenty of negative change and, well, muddled things a tad bit up on Nirn, but don't worry. They reserved a nice throne for you, Sheogorath. They were lacking a Daedric Prince of Insanity, and you were the first in line for that title," he explained in a cheerful voice. Sheogorath's jaw dropped and the muscles of his face twitched. Sheogorath replied to the man, "That's nonsense." The man shrugged, and replied, "Nonsense is a type of sense. If you don't think I am being sincere, you can see for yourself in Oblivion." Sheogorath sighed, and asked the man, "How would I get into Oblivion?"
The man smiled psychotically, and his eyes lit up like morbid lanterns.. "Oh, there are several ways, my dear Sheogorath."