Madgod Options

[Colonel Mustard]

Hey everyone.

This has been rattling around my head for a while now, and I figure I might as well get it started with and continued while I've got the drive to write it. As you might have guessed, the following is based off the Shivering Isles, but I'm doing my own thing with it somewhat, so I should probably say now that, while there are bits of this that you'll recognise, there are a lot of parts that you won't; I'm bringing in a lot of new character ideas and so forth, and there will be interesting things done.

Anyway, I'm not very good at this whole introduction business, so I'll just let you get on and read it. Do enjoy!

Madgod

Chapter 1-The Champion

Sing deep, sing low, sing the song
pay the piper to play it on
to his tune you must dance
and slumber in eternal trance
for deep within its secret dreams
madness desperate plots and schemes
the gauntlet breaks the chain of snakes
and its bloody bounty it finally takes
the starving serpent eats the tail
consuming slowly as a snail
but patient, hungry, it awaits
the cyclic feast it anticipates
will we be free or forever slave
hear the siren call of ‘obey’
or will Madgod rise and strike down
mercury tide that would Isles drown?

Do not be here when it will come. It is hungry. It is angry. It has plans. Your nice little world which you’re reading this in won’t be all that nice if they come to fruition. Oh no. You lucky, lucky things. You honestly have no idea. Must I explain?

Very well. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

Let’s step back. Right now, we are at the end. To begin at the end is impossible. Not impossible, no, not here, nothing is impossible here, but to begin at the end here is implausible. Is that the word I want? No. Unnecessary. It is doing it wrong. Sometimes it works, but here it does not. So let’s take a step back from here.



His fished crashed down, crunching bone. A scream rang out.

“Mercy! Please, mercy!”

“Mercy?” he asked, gauntlet raised above his head, his scarred, battered face contorted with rage. “You want mercy? That’s just too good.”



No, not far enough, further back we go. We need to get to before that. No context. That’s too close to the end for what we want.



He and Her Ladyship turned around on the glass platter as it rose above the city, stepping around one another’s feet as they danced.

“See,” she said. “I told you you’d be good at this; it’s all about the rhythm.”

He nodded, glancing down at their feet self-consciously as they moved.

“Relax,” she said, steering a hand gently down his back, guiding him along. “You’re learning fast, my dear.”

The world spun below them as they danced on their rotating glass platform, hovering in midair.



No, further back still. Is this it? Is this the place?



He pulled himself up the top of the ladder, through the trapdoor, into the great glass globe at the tower’s very top. He stared at the figure sitting cross-legged a few feet from him on a cushion, and the eyes of the man stared back at him.

In a voice as thick and rich as Felldew, Sentinel said; “Ah, you’re here. I saw you coming, you know.”



Not here, no. No, no, where is it? Where do I start?



The Angel of Rage slammed down before him in a landing that sent a cloud of ash blossoming around her. Wings of flame and lightning pinned themselves to her back, and a mace of fire materialised in her hand. Her ruined face twisted into a grimacing snarl as she beheld the intruder.

“Why are you here, mortal?” she demanded. “Why should I not destroy you?”



Not yet. She comes partway through. This is all too late, nobody will understand it, you fool!



They opened with a creak, and he saw it spread before him. A twisted landscape of gnarled roots, growing upwards into the air whilst leafy branches clawed at the ground. Rock formations of shimmering, rainbow stone formed bizarre shapes, ones that seemed to gain form as you looked at them, moved, grew, reached towards you. Faces grew from the scenery, hungry mouths and gasping maws, clawing talons.

He blinked and glanced away, setting off for the city in the distance.



No, not quite. Nearly there, nearly there. Here we are. Here, we begin.



He was drinking to the death of his best friend.

He getting slapped on the back, cheered, toasted, hailed as a hero, bought drinks, and all for the simple reason that he had just killed his best friend.

The night was a blur of tankards, one swallowed after another. There were yells of encouragement, the crowd urging him on once more, their favourite, their hero, their champion. He could only remember them being quiet from earlier, when they had all fallen silent right after that moment.

The taste of ale, the smell of smoke, the offensive eye-watering blur of flaming torches. He couldn’t focus his gaze properly, he noticed, and his tongue felt numb. He was getting drunk. Good.

“’nother drink!” he slurred out, swaying as he did so. Behind and beside him, the rest of the Blue Team cheered their approval and assent, ordering another round. He wasn’t paying tonight. He didn’t know who was paying tonight, and he didn’t care. What he wanted right now was noise. What he wanted right now was cheering. What he wanted right now was distraction.

His head was numb, spinning, buoyant. He managed to grin as complete strangers approached him, shook his hand, and grinning was good. Grinning meant he was happy, and he knew that it was important that he felt happy, that everyone expected him to be happy. He thought he was happy, so he was. He had the ale down the hatch, and that was good. That was a good way to get happy, get happy quickly.

“That’s our Carnius. Ain’t that something? Our Carnius, of all the people.”

That was one of the boasts. One of the favourites

“Waterfront boy, he is. Knew him since he were a kid.”

And there, another. He could pick the threads of conversation out as the Waterfront locals boasted about him, their Carnius, who had grown up around here. A real local hero. Something to boast about. Something to be proud of. Just went to show.

He stood, the sudden movement sending him swaying. There was a chorus of questions about what he was doing, where he was going and he answered them with; “Goin’ out back. Be back in a minute.”

He stumbled outside, moving through the inn, the crowd of blurry faces parting before him. He caught snippets of detail, a grin from an admirer, an alluring look from a hopeful wench, a torch burning in a bracket, a knot in the wooden surface of a table. The din of the tavern muted as he entered the back alley. It was a good tavern, that one. Good stories there. That time he and Agronak had nearly got arrested for brawling, only for the Watch to recognise who they were and haul everyone else off but leave them be, shaking their hands as they did so. That was one of the good ones. One of the favourites.

He urinated down the back wall, in the quiet, concentration taken up by the task at hand, before he finished relieving himself. And then, for a moment, in the quiet that followed, he was drawn back to earlier that day, in the hush that had come. The hush that had come when the battered, broken corpse had slumped to the floor of the arena, armour clattering, as Carnius had stepped back from the body of Agronak Gro-Malog, the Grey Prince. The hush that had come as he had limped away, down to the bloodworks. The hush that had come as he had done so without acknowledging the silent crowd, with the cheering only rumbling into his range of hearing as he had splashed chilly water from the Basin of Restoration onto his face.

And for a moment, the clarity and the harsh reality he had been avoiding since then hit him like the blow from a warhammer. Agronak was dead. He had killed him.

Carnius Hackelt, new Grand Champion of the arena, leant forwards against the wall and quietly wept for what he had just done.

[Colonel Mustard]

MOAR!!


Chapter 6-Through the Looking Glass

The last person that Carnius wanted to see at the moment was down in the Bloodworks as he entered them. Practising a feint of some kind with his huge scimitar, Ta’Xarna’s pads were skittering and hissing against the stone floor as he moved on the balls of his feet as he swung the curved blade with a whoosh of movement. He saw Carnius and grinned, bringing the blade up so that its tip pointed towards the ceiling.

“Carnius!” he called. “I did not expect to see you here just yet. What are you doing?”

“Just getting some things of mine,” the gladiator replied. “Don’t mind me.”

Ta’Xarna shrugged and went back to his practise, slicing a figure of eight in the air before him as he whirled the scimitar around. Carnius let him work, heading to the chest and mannequin where his things were kept. His first action was to slide his champion’s raiment off its place on it rack, and place it into the pack he had dumped at his feet. Noticing what he was doing, Ta’Xarna halted his practice, frowning at Carnius.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Carnius paused as he unlocked the chest that stored his gauntlets. He had really been hoping to avoid this conversation.

“Getting some things together,” he said, not looking up at the Khajiit.

“And putting them into a backpack,” Ta’Xarna said. “You are travelling?”

“Yeah,” Carnius said. Overhead, noise muffled by the thick stone, he could hear the faint, dull roar of a cheering crowd. “I’m going away for a while. I’m not sure how long, yet.”

“Leave?” Ta’Xarna asked. “But you are Grand Champion.”

“And that’s why I want to leave,” Carnius said.

“But you can’t just go,” Ta’Xarna protested. “The Arena needs its champion. And you’re that champion.”

Carnius shook his head.

“That’s the problem,” he said. “Look, what does every gladiator here, every pit dog and brawler and all the others want to do once they join up?”

“Become Grand Champion, of course,” Ta’Xarna said.

“Exactly,” Carnius said. “And here I am. Grand Champion. I’ve achieved the goal, I’ve won, I came out on top, and I hate it.”

This earned him a raised eyebrow.

“Why?”

“For a start, I had to kill Agronak,” Carnius said. “And as much as I’ve been trying to put that behind me I’m still having trouble doing that when I have to come in here every day and see where he used to be. And now I’m here, I’ve got no goal. Nothing keeping me here. I’m just going to have to sit around and kill time until somebody kills me. I need a fresh start, Ta’Xarna, and I need to go somewhere where nobody will try and follow me. I need to do something new.”

Ta’Xarna was quiet for a few moments, before he said; “Khajiit thinks he sees.”

“You do?”

“Think so,” Ta’Xarna said. “And Khajiit does not think he could stop you if he wanted to.”

“Alright,” Carnius said. “Thanks, Ta’Xarna.”

“It is no problem,” the Khajiit rasped. “You are good friend for Khajiit.”

Carnius extended a hand, but Ta’Xarna simply grabbed him in a hug, a tuft of fur on the tips of his large ears brushing against Carnius’ cheek. The Grand Champion nearly staggered before he hugged Ta’Xarna back. It was broken a few moments later.

“You will be coming back, yes?” the Khajiit asked.

“Honestly, I’ve got no idea,” Carnius said. “Maybe.”

“Then where are you going? Khajiit might need to find you.”

“That doorway in the Niben Bay,” Carnius said.

“The one that the Courier says has that strange land behind it that drives people mad?” Ta’Xarna asked. “Are you sure?”
“As I said,” Carnius said. “I need a fresh start. I’ll see what I can make of that place.”

“If you are certain,” Ta’Xarna said. He shrugged. “I wish you the best of luck, my friend. And you will be welcome back here in the Arena if you decide to return, of that I will be certain.”

“Thanks, Ta’Xarna,” Carnius said with a smile. “I’ll miss you, my friend.”

“And me you,” Ta’Xarna said. “Now go, my friend. Go and visit the land that makes everybody go mad. Perhaps Khajiit will follow one day; he would fit in nicely.”

Carnius grinned at him, placed his gauntlets into his backpack and left.

- - - - - - -

The journey to Bravil had been a pleasant one, in its own, rather unexciting way. Carnius had taken one of the Imperial mail coaches that jolted and rumbled between the cities, delivering passengers and letters as they went, and had spent the last three days enjoying the journey. It was fairly slow, and while the two brawny carthorses that pulled it moved faster than a man could walk, it was certainly not a match for the speed of a single rider, and the horse of the Legionary that guarded it never had to move faster than a canter.

Along with the driver and the soldier guarding it, Carnius shared the ride with a young alchemist who had just graduated from the Arcane University and was visiting her aunt in the city, and a Nord with aspirations towards becoming a merchant. They were pleasant enough company, though Carnius was carefully vague about what he was doing, but much of the conversation was occupied by the doorway in the bay; the alchemist was determined to collect some of the samples of its bizarre flora to present to the university, but much of the talk was of the people who had returned from it in the past week, every one of them having been driven mad. That news had been almost enough to deter Carnius, but he was determined to see this through; for some reason that he couldn’t quite explain, he wanted to visit that door, to go through and see what lay on the other side. He was determined to.

The carriage rumbled to a halt at the gates of Bravil, where the bridge that linked the town to the rest of the land met the road. Carnius clambered down as the coach driver set about dealing with its cargo and the horses, staying only long enough to pay the man before he left.

To his east was nothing of interest to him, only hilly wilderness, but to his west the entire Niben Bay sprawled out before him, the vast expanse of water iron-grey as it reflected the cloudy sky. He could see an island sitting in the centre of it, sharing the water with a number of fishing boats that were scattered across the lake, bright light glowing from some unseen source on the miniature isle. At the bottom of the slope that lead down to the shore was a small collection of huts next to a pier, several rowing boats tethered to it.

On the porch of one of the huts, a Bosmer with greying hair was reclining on a rocking chair and smoking a pipe, and a single eye opened as he saw Carnius approach.

“Greetings, traveller,” he said with a nod to Carnius. “What do you need? Fresh fish? Bait and tackle? Line and hooks?”
“Actually, I was hoping I could hire a boat,” Carnius said.

“A boat?” the Bosmer asked. “What for?”

“I’m hoping to get to that island,” Carnius said, pointing out to the small chunk of land in the centre of the bay.

“Oh, you’re one of those, eh?” the bosmer asked. He pulled himself to his feet with a grunt of effort. “Well, if you’ve got a deathwish then I suppose it’s not my place to stop you. Be ten septims to ferry you across, Imperial.”

Carnius shrugged and handed over a small handful of coins to the Bosmer, who lead him along the pier to a rowing boat. Carnius slung his pack into its bottom and climbed in, the Mer following suit, pulling out a set of oars with wrinkled and calloused hands and setting a steady stroke to push them across the water. The journey only took a few minutes and lacked conversation, and the elf pulled the boat up next to a pontoon on the island, bid Carnius farewell and pulled it away back to the bay’s far shore.

A man in the uniform of one of the city’s guards was waiting for him, his sword sheathed and his helmet nowhere to be seen, and Carnius raised a hand to greet him as he approached. The air here was hot and damp, greasy with muggy warmth despite the clouds that hid the sun, and Carnius could already feel sweat creeping down his neck.

“Hail,” the guard called as Carnius approached. “You’re here for the doorway, I’m guessing.”

“That I am,” Carnius said. He frowned as he saw that the guard’s blade was made from barbed and bladed ebony, no doubt Daedric in origin. He wondered where he got such an expensive and rare weapon from on the mere pay of a watchman.

“Thought so,” the guard said. “You’ll want to talk to Captain Prentus about that; he can fill you in. He’s just up the pathway.”

He gestured to a small path between two thickets of bushes whose long, vine-like branches had wound around each other to form ropes of some kind, tipped with flowers that somehow bore an unsettling resemblance to a grinning skull. To his left, what looked like a gigantic mushroom towered a good ten feet in the air, thick trunk twisted and contorted so its bulbous head faced down onto Carnius himself.

A buzzing sounded next to him as he walked up it, and he glanced over to see an insect hovering next to him, examining him with three faceted eyes, suspended in the air by a trio of wings that span around above its head. He waved at it and it darted away into the undergrowth.

Carnius stopped at a large canvas tent that stood on one side of the pathway, and glanced in. A couple of men in guard’s uniform were talking to each other and Carnius called; “There a Captain Prentus in here?”

“That would be me, friend” one of the guards said as he glanced up at Carnius. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m here about this doorway,” Carnius said. “I heard you could help me.”

“I see,” Prentus said. He glanced back at the other guard. “We’ll talk later, Gyrus.”

He stepped out of the tent, and nodded to Carnius.

“Walk with me, friend,” he said, setting out along the path. Carnius fell into step next to him as they headed up towards what looked like steps leading up to a stone platform. “What’s your name?”

“Carnius Hackelt,” Carnius replied. “Formerly of the Imperial City.”

“Captain Gaius Prentus,” the guardsman replied. “Just call me Gaius.”

“So, Gaius, what exactly is this doorway?” Carnius asked as they began to climb the stairs. “I mean, what does it look like?”

“See for yourself,” Gaius replied as they reached the top.

It was a statue, of sorts, carved from veined grey stone that was flecked with mold in the shape of three heads all conjoined at one eye in a manner that made Carnius’ skin crawl. At its centre where the edge of the two outermost foreheads met was a cleft, as if an axe had been driven through the crown and the water stain that flowed down from the divide’s nadir was a trail of blood. Each bearded face held a different expression; the left a mirthful smile, the right a vicious snarl and the centre was opened in a scream or a roar, a bright ball of soft-edged light glowing from it. As Carnius looked up at the central pair of eyes, he couldn’t shake the feeling that the carven pupils were staring at him.

“There it is,” Gaius said. “It appeared about a week and a half ago, now, and me and the rest of the Stonetakers were sent by the Count himself to guard it.”

“Stonetakers?” Carnius asked.
“We earned that name in the Crisis,” Gaius replied. “We had to fight our way through an Oblivion Gate that was threatening Bravil, took the Sigil Stone that was sustaining it.” He tapped the head of spiked mace of black and crimson steel that rested at his belt. “I took this mace here from a Dremora Lord, of all things. But we’ve been guarding this place to deal with anything that tries to come through.”

“And what has been coming through?” Carnius asked.
“So far, only the people who went in,” Gaius said. “And none of them have been right in the head when they come back.”

“I heard as much,” Carnius nodded, looking at the gate. There was greenery on either side of it, he saw, the left’s dominated by garish and bright flowers, the right by large, drooping mushroom and fungi, all of those a dismal grey-brown in colouration. “Nobody’s come back sane?”

“Not one,” Gaius replied. “We generally get the more harmless ones off the island and to the local chapel where someone can look after them, but the violent ones have to be dealt with rather more severely. Doesn’t help that half of those ones seem to all be heavily armed mercenaries and adventurers.”

“I’m guessing that there are a lot of those,” Carnius said.

“A fair number,” Gaius replied. “There’s also been quite a lot of people who’ve come here because they feel like they’ve been…called.”

“Called?” Carnius said.

“That’s the only way I can describe it,” Gaius said. “A lot of people have arrived here because of some kind of compulsion; just turned up because they felt called to this place somehow. People looking for purpose, I’d say. A lot of them had no real idea why they were considering coming here, but felt they had to go anyway; there was a High Elf who had come all the way from Chorrol here just a few days ago, and he hadn’t even heard of the doorway. Just felt he had to go east for some reason, and found his way here.”

Carnius nodded.

“I’m guessing you’re going in there for the chance for gold,” Gaius said, glancing up and down at Carnius, clad as he was in his armour and carrying a backpack filled with supplies.

“Not quite,” Carnius said. “One of those ones hoping for a second chance, I guess. I just thought I’d go prepared.”

He tugged at the backpack’s straps.

“Well, no more time to waste,” he said. “I’m going in.”

“Best of luck to you in there,” Gaius said, extending a hand. “I’d rather you didn’t go in at all, but it isn’t really my place to stop you. If you have to, then I suppose you have to.”

“Thank you,” Carnius replied as he shook Gaius’ hand.

He bunched his hands into fists, the leather pads around the palms of his gauntlets creaking, set his teeth and headed into the portal’s yawning, hungry maw.