"And if you don't believe/
The sun will rise/
Stand alone and greet/
The coming night/
In the last remaining light/"
Audioslave, "The Last Remaning Light"
He did not pull me from his mind this time. Sheogorath's mind was clasping tight onto mine. At some points it was very uncomfortable. Sometimes I wanted to pull away, but under his superb mind I was powerless. As I said, it was claustrophobic inside his expansive psyche. The image had faded out again. We were looking at us again. He was so pallid. He had embraced my shell body, and rested his head in my chest. I heard him sigh. I don't think he was done quite yet.
Of course I'm not done yet, Walter, his mind-voice told me in a morose voice. The image in his mind blurred out. We were back into his past, what ever it was. We were back in his late teens, in his house. He was standing, and dressed in a similar robe, only this one a forest green. He was standing around while a few people around him bustled. The young former Sheogorath looked confused and overwhelmed. In the commotion, one of the people, a man at least a head shorter than him, trotted up to him.
"I suppose you are lucky you were his apprentice. He wanted his apprentice to have his belongings after he died, and that apprentice is you," said a man in very fine clothing. His hair was neatly cut and a shining brown. He was fairly young, and definitely one of the noble members of society. Sheogorath looked at him suspiciously, and interrogated, "Everything?" The noble chuckled at the younger man's disbelief. "Everything, including the house, his book collection, his service business, and even the clothes he hasn't thrown out," the noble replied. He was looking up at Sheogorath and grinning. It wasn't a sly grin at all. Sheogorath's expression was very thunderstruck.
After the obnoxious strangers had left what house was not his, Sheogorath laid in his old bed, gazing up at the wooden ceiling blankly. He was beneath the warm fur covers in his green robe. He looked like he was thinking about the whole ordeal. I wanted to reach out into the past and touch him. I had the distinct impression that he was a loner anyways. He seemed to be destined to be alone. The banker had been born alone, after all.
Alone. The former Sheogorath sat up in bed. He sat on the side of the bed and stood up. Then, he ambled out of the room and into the cold room of his dead master/father. The room's air felt empty and still to him, I could tell. He looked around the room. There was a large single-person bed at the northern end. There was a blue rug on the floor. He had a large wardrobe, a dresser drawer, and a bookshelf full of books, too, not to mention various baskets and chests. The wardrobe was closest the Sheogorath on the south-eastern wall, with the dresser drawer in the corner of the south-western wall. The bookshelf was on the western wall. He walked over to the wardrobe and opened it, and sighed.
"Well, I should have expected this: none of the clothes will fit me. Guess I'll have to go in the village," he mumbled to himself. He gathered the various old robes and folded them neatly. Then, he rummaged among the furniture of the room. He took a few large, empty grain sacks out of a chest next to the wardrobe. The robes were taken out of the closet and folded neatly. After that, he placed them in the sacks, slung them over the shoulder, and started his way out of the house.
When he was outside, I noticed that the house he lived in was a little ways outside the village. It was atop the hill the nobles live on. However, it was in the large, lush forest of the land. He jogged a good few lengths into the villa section of the village. Sheogorath got quite a few strange looks as he sprinted into the more business-oriented area of the village. He was panting when he reached an inviting house. I inferred that it was the tailor's housing. When he stepped inside, he was welcome quite warmly for being an outcast.
"Why hello there, lad. I haven't see ye around here for a while," a rough, voice greeted the adolescent. Sheogorath was inside a lantern and candle-lit home. The den was made into sewing room, with a loom and stool, a shelf stocked with sewing supplies and material, and a counter. There was a tallish, slender pale man behind the counter. He had very dark hair and gray eyes. He had a menacing presence, though he seemed to be friendly enough. Sheogorath placed the full sacks of clothes on the counter.
The tailor looked at Sheogorath funny. I wanted to chuckle at that very unique glance the man gave him. "Lot'sa clothes there," he commented, "Must mean you want me to make you some." The tailor laughed, and smiled at the young customer. The tailor took out a robe and looked at it. He then spared a glance at Sheogorath, and frowned. There was quite a difference between that robe, and Sheogorath's in size.
"Weell," the man said in his dialect, "I've forgotten how tall you are. Good thing you're about out of the age to be growing. You'll probably grow about an inch or two, and then you'll stop." He opened the counter hutch, and slid through it. I watched him throw Sheogorath's mind-eyes as he took out a measuring device and did the measurements of the young man. The teenaged man sighed as the tailor did this tedious task. He looked very bored. Finally, when the man was done after a few long moments, the tailor said something.
"I'll give the robes a few extra inches to grow in. You'll have to wear boots with them for now. Since the robes you are trading in are excellent quality, I'll do the robes and make you boots with no charge. Just between you and me, of course. Come back in about a week or so to check up on the progress," the tailor told him. Sheogorath nodded, and left the robes as he headed outside. I wondered myself why Sheogorath showed me this memory, but it was somehow important to him. Buying new clothing was a start, he informed me affectionately.
I felt his mind brush over mine, and my mind went cold again. It was an awful feeling, to have your mind go numb as it is abraded by another mind, especially one sharper than your own. The image in his mind blurred out once more, and he returned to the sight of him holding me. His embrace on my mind loosened, and I returned to my reality once more. I gasped, and felt Sheogorath's cold hands clutching mine. "May we go back to the room? The one with the bed?" I asked while shivering. I started to become cold myself. He looked into my blue-green eyes.
"We can now go back, I suppose," he replied to me gleefully. He didn't seem to like this dull room much himself. We walked out of the room together clutching each other as our teeth chattered. The room's temperature had dropped, and I was happy to get out of there. The hallway had changed again. The walls didn't change⦠but the floor did. It was starting to turn black itself, and there was a trail of blood to the door that concealed the room with the bed. Sheogorath stepped in front of me, and investigated.
He opened the door slowly. It creaked as it crept open patiently. He stepped inside, and looked panicked. I entered the room myself, and found my hairs raised. The trail of blood led up to the bed. On this bed, there was a track of a purple-black, stinking goop. I gazed at Sheogorath, who was looking a vampiric pale. The window's light was no longer a white. It was a bold rust. The Daedric Prince looked out it. We both heard a voice as he gazed out of it.
Sheogorath, this soft, young voice whispered. It send my spine curling and crawling in fear. My Daedric companion returned to looking aloof, yet sad. I recognized the voice, and I think he did, too. It was Zarrexaij, and that was depressing him. "Walter, Zarrexaij can't be here. This place cannot hold her captive," he muttered to me in a low, hapless voice. His eyes dulled significantly. I scooted up towards him, and told him, "You don't know that. Don't give up hope now. We've gotten this far together. You know what? I think this place is just a giant puzzle. It wants us to solve it." He gazed at me skeptically.
"This place is naught but a nightmare," he said coldly, "I have given up hope in heart. Walter, I am terribly spent." I'll admit that; he did look tired. I never saw him that tired throughout our journey together. He wanted out of it, and so did I. I tired of the infinite symbolism myself. "Carry on for me," I begged the Daedric Prince, whose eyes looked lifeless. He was staring out the window blankly. Sheogorath looked incredibly lost in thought. I couldn't blame him. "I never, ever meant to hurt her," he said to me frostily. I knew he meant it, too.
Now, what was so horrible that happened to him that he wouldn't tell me quickly? I wanted to damn it to Molag Bal. I did not understand, and I had been trying very hard to empathize. I no longer wanted to blame it on his insanity; he wasn't all the insane, as I had learned. At this point, it seemed that he was the sane one, and I was the one who was barking mad. He knew something I didn't, and he wouldn't tell until he absolutely had to. Bless his metaphorical heart.
I guess we all hold secrets, but some secrets are deeper and darker than others.
