Collective Dementia

He sought for the sharpest blade in the IS and IS NOT, sought to master the cut of new forms.

Sought to separate himself from his twin.

The numerous artifacts that carried his very essence a proof. To be a master of the blade was a mere side's effort of this.

Your Grace or Gracie he once affectionately called him, was a particular stray cat when he found him on the street. He was a mangy straggly tomcat, although Chrys could not confirm the latter as he lacked the typical chubby cheeks and scoundrel flirtatious behaviour of a fully developed unspayed male typically do around females. He was too slender, androgynous like a teenage male cat who still stuck firmly to their mother but at the same time, he was too big to be that young. The community cats did not like him at all and viewed him as another nuisance-making run-of-the-mill tomcat despite he was actually a sickly-looking cat. There was hardly meat on his bones, and his silver-striped fur had been matted, his bright yellow eyes though had been oddly clean and free of the typical diseases cats of his type are prone to have.

Gracie refused to eat the wet slop of canned food nor the dry biscuits he usually gave out to the community cats. Chrys thought it was because he was being meek, bullied because of his sickly nature, but putting the food in front of him resulted to no cats daring to approach him, not even the usual cheeky ones. Stray community cats had a pecking order, mothers usually led a clowder, and they often get into hissing fight with other clowder for space, time, and resource. Tomcats have separate hierarchy and aren't technically the king of the community cats. They were too unreliable and have far too wide territory for that to be the case, if anything there were just vagrants who flirt their way into mother and daughters' group, but they were respected enough to be left alone so long they weren't openly hostile.

It was clear, the community cats treated him like a visiting tomcat despite his sickly figure would have caused him to be kicked out. Catching Gracie had been difficult as well, since he had no love for even the expensive cat food and refused to fall the obvious cage trap. It was only when Chrys accidentally dropped his takeout while warding away curious and hungry stray cats that he found his fried battered fish with melted cheese being snatched away by Gracie.

Gracie has a love of human food be it quick takeouts from street stalls or expensive restaurant meals. He would only eat human food and nothing else, although his own cooking and the processed factory food was only good enough to entice a sniff. That doesn't mean Your Grace would still walk into a cage, not even a well-hidden one even if it has the greatest food mankind ever made.

Chrys literally had to leave crumbs of takeout meal on the streets and rooftops just to lure him to his place. The plan was to use force in a small space, but that plan didn't amount to much as Gracie would slip easily out of his hold or even any of his spells. It was uncanny how much a wriggling escape artist he was. Chrys even had a hunch that even if he managed to put him in a cage Gracie would cause a jailbreak next since he somehow escaped his place despite locking the windows and sliding door.

Drug attempts had been made, pills hidden in his meal, crushed tablets in his gravies, but he was not affected one bit by the contaminated food. It was then Chrys resigned himself that he would at least try to make Gracie relax and trust him enough to hold him. That plan was left to dust because Gracie got better on his own as he ate his food, and the least touching he allowed was when he actually leaned with the side of his front legs on his lap, then petting was allowed. Any attempts from Chrys would result to the cat leaving on the spot immediately.

He had far too much dignity for a cat, hence Chrys sarcastically named him Your Grace when he finally gets to cradle this insufferable cat in his arms. He could have sworn Your Grace smiled back at him before he opened his cat's mouth to a yawn. It was either Your Grace or name him after Alfiq, the sapient house-cats of the moons. It would made sense if he was an Alfiq despite Khajiits no longer exist on Tamriel and refused to return to Nirn. But he wasn't an Alfiq…

Chrys found himself squeezing the beans of Gracie's paw that had been offered to him as a form of comfort.

"Do you feel better now?" Your Grace blinked slowly at the man before him on his knees as he hung his head low.

"No." A sullen voice replied but he carefully retracted his hand back and raised his face to his cat's.

He mentioned the House of Gods. Particularly, he asked for him to represent him. Your Grace's tail thumped against the counter impatiently.

"Don't you… can't you use your champion to represent you instead?" He asked the obvious.

"He's unfortunately unreliable." Your Grace yawned and stretched out his claws. "He attempted to commit suicide again with his necktie, and if he's not recovering from substance abuse, he's currently stuck investigating homicide."

There was a lot to unpack from that.

"Then… why did you choose me?"

It was a cliché question, an irritating question even since Gracie's ears tilted back at that. Gods have never been part of Chrys' life from the beginning. He never prayed, they never intervened. He didn't despise them, nor did he love them. To him, there were just there like the weather or people passing by him on the street. Although there were some who argued that every mortal soul had a guardian spirit assigned to them, but Chrys heavily doubted such superstition.

Most of all, Chrys was not crazy.

Bright yellow eyes stared at him. "Chrysanthos, you're the one who chose me."

"That was when I thought the cat distribution delivered you!"

"But I'm still your cat, no?"

"Why were you a cat in the first place?!"

The pointed ears went back, and a snarl was formed on his cute face when a thunderous voice finally snapped. "Zenithar banned me from his noodle stall. He BANNED me when it was DAGON'S FAULT, IN THE FIRST PLACE!" Somewhere behind, he heard Itchy's mechanical legs scrambled quickly under the couch as Your Grace fuzzy grey tail slapped repeatedly against his kitchen's counter. "So, I boycott all the city's food!"

Was that why he looked so miserable and mangy at that time? For some reason Chrys had a feeling it was a misunderstanding of some kind, since if he wasn't at fault Zenithar would…

Zenithar would what? "Who's Zenithar?" Chrys suddenly asked.

Gracie narrowed his yellow eyes on him. "Name the Eight Divines," he commanded.

That was easy. "Mara, Kynareth, Dibella, Julianos, Arkay and…" Chrys mouth froze.

Why were they called the Eight Divines again?

"Name the Dragon God." Another damning question came.

"Alduin," he answered.

"His other names!" Your Grace yowled. "He has other names!"

Alduin is Alduin. There was no other Dragon God. Yet, Chrys felt wrong like he was trying to recall something missing.

"So it has begun." Your Grace glowered. "You have books, Chrysanthos, I'm sure there was one with a world map in it. Bring it here."

"I could just bring up the map on my courier?" He offered his smart device instead.

"You're my human, Chrysanthos, and I'm your cat. And do you know how cat-human relationship works?" Gracie narrowed his eyes with his ears turned back. "I tell you something, and you listen and do something."

He wasn't wrong, but still…

"Yes, sir."

He sullenly turned and went for his unkept bookshelf, carefully minding his footsteps in the dark and approached the knickknacks sprawled in a disorganised manner, put at their places without a thought on the shelves. There were magazines series mostly of mundane-graphy, he pilfered through them, trying to recall the one he was sure that wrote about the history of maps.

When he found it, he brought it over and quickly flip through the slick pages before he laid it down before his cat, unfolding the large modern map of Nirn.

It was mainly focused on one large mainland continent that was called Tamriel in ancient time. Though there have been records of at least an isle southwest of the mainland, but historians have deemed that place nothing more but Dunmeri fiction, a form of blatant denial and erasure. The gods and the dead though did admit there used to be an isle there but refused to speak further out of shame and disgust.

The history that led to the event of Landfall was a touchy subject, ones that still resulted racial hostility between Men and Dunmer, as the latter argued the former brought disaster onto all and should never be brought back. Such sentiment though had been applied to the Khajiits as well, as they were argued to have sided with the fictional merrish race at fault.

That was why the wedding was such a big deal. It was at least to celebrate of moving past the sordid history that could have consumed Mundus entirety by the union of a famous Hero of Men of Aedric lineage with the Hero of Dunmer, the champion of the Daedric Prince, Azura.

"You remember there were mountains north from Cyrodiil?" Gracie asked.

"Yes." The city's water came from the rivers connected to the groundwater to the north.

"Point them on the map."

It was muscle memory, Chrysanthos has done this multiple times, and his finger landed on the area above Cyrodiil where the ocean was.

Chrys blinked and looked again. Where were the mountains? He quickly pulled up his courier and opened the live map of Nirn, and found the same issue. Flipping the modern map to its ancient counterpart also showed the missing mountain range.

"It's gone." His voice was low and shaken.

"The fact you still remember shows they were great importance for Cyrodiil despite it being technically part of Skyrim," Your Grace noted.

"It's the source of water!" Chrys told him.

"Kynareth is your source of water, so calm down." The cat slow-blinked. "She isn't completely gone or all of you would be dead from no air."

"But what about power?" Chrys suddenly asked.

The city literally runs on great meteoric crystals that pretty much serves as a syphon of Aethurius magick. The fact his lights were not on did not bode well and the lack of city lights outside his balcony showed he was not alone with this problem. The reason his courier was still running was because its last power was stored in the battery.

"Magny magic has completely quarantined Mundus off." Gracie sneered. "You will find no stars or sun will shine on Nirn anymore."

He can do that!

"Well, no." Your Grace cut his thoughts off. "He technically can't cut off all connections, it would be like un-mixing grey paint."

But the city was still without water and power!

"You're correct."

Your Grace purred loudly enough for him to hear before he leapt on top of his shoulder, his weight was not something to scoff at despite his slender figure since beneath his silver-stripe fur Chrys remembered there were dense muscle. He was a healthy tomcat after all.

"Best we start heading out as soon as we can."

Gods fight not to kill, but to be cruel – to break another's will. Because, you see, you can't kill Gods. It's impossible. The serpent's death is a freak of nature, not the rule and even then, we know it's just some form of slumber.

Cruelty is second nature to the Gods. But it's a good thing, don't you think? They won't imagine us dead like we do when we hate another.

They don't want us to die. They want us to suffer just as they do.

Sheogorath: Sorry, Haskill will not be dipping a single one of his toes on Mundus! Hates the mundane. But I think he would like you, Chrysanthos.