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]

Chapter 9-Threshold

The stars were wrong in this place.

Carnius was used to looking up at the night sky and seeing pinpoints of light against a black or blue backdrop, with perhaps fainter white light behind them. But here, it was different; the comforting and familiar orbs of Masser and Secunda were gone, and while stars still shone, they were patterened in strange and unsettling half-shapes that he could just see when he let his eyes unfocus. Behind them, crimson and purple nebulae bled light across the sky, celestial cuts and bruises, as if Kynareth had been beaten and ravaged and her corpse hung across the sky as a warning or trophy. Yet despite this unsettling wrongness in the sky, Carnius found the sight from the back of Jayred’s raised porch a difficult one to look away from.

Next to him, a few lanterns burned, filled with some kind of herb in order to ward off the mosquitoes that swarmed from the swamp where the Nord kept his herd. He could hear the Swattle calling in the distance, and he was wondering if they were in any way related to the creature that he had encountered on the road earlier that day.

“Quite a sight, isn’t it?” a familiar voice said from behind Carnius. He glanced up to see Jayred sit down on the chair next to him, two bottles of mead held between his fingers. He was wearing an apron for woodworking, the thick cloth covered with pale dust, and the sounds of bone being crafted had echoed out of his the entire afternoon. He offered Carnius one of the drinks, and the Gladiator took it with a nod of thanks, pulling the cork from it and taking a swig.

“A Redguard I was sweet on use to love looking at those,” Jayred said as he took a seat, glancing skywards. “She always kept saying could see patterns in them, was determined to find them. Said she reckoned you could draw power from them somehow, and wanted to work out the way to do that.”

“Really? What happened to her?” Carnius asked.

“Well, she got Sheogorath’s blessing and was allowed through the Gates,” Jayred said. “Never heard from her since.”

“You trying to follow her, then?”

“Nothing so romantic,” Jayred replied. “There isn’t much good pasture for Swattle here in the Fringe; the best stuff is over in Mania and Dementia, so I’m going to get my herd through and get them a new home. What about you, friend?”

“I’ve been…trying to get away from some things back home,” Carnius said after a moment. “Make a fresh start.”

“In the Isles?” Jayred asked, shaking his head with mirth. “Between you and me, Carnius, you seem pretty…you know, all together. I’m not trying to be rude here, mind, but you just don’t really seem like the sort who would go there. Not sure you’d necessarily fit in, that’s all.”

Carnius nodded at that. Jayred had a point; it was true that he wanted to go somewhere where his fame wouldn’t follow him, but it would really have been as simple as just leaving Cyrodiil. Skyrim and High Rock were always supposed to be pleasant, and Hammerfell was good if you could deal with heat. But part of him wanted to go further than that; get away from more than just the fame, but to escape the bad memories. As much as he hated to admit, there had always been a savage thrill in bloodshed and combat, an adrenaline-laced joy in the feeling of bone crunching and blood splattering underneath his knuckles. But with Agronak, there had been nothing but guilt, shame and the feeling that he had deserved no victory, as much as Agronak had wanted it to end that way. He needed to get away from all that, find something to occupy his mind.

“You ever mind that idea?” Carnius asked after a moment. “Being mad?”

“Do you ever mind being sane?” Jayred asked. “It’s just the way I am. If I was unhappy about it, then I just wouldn’t be that way. Simple as that, really.”

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it,” Carnius conceded. Something occurred to him, and he added; “Completely unrelated, I know, but do you want anything for putting me up tonight?”

“The help you’ve given me tonight more than makes up for it, my friend,” Jayred said. “I’d be an awful Nord if I begrudged bed and a good meal to a man who I was going to be fighting and possibly dying alongside tomorrow.”

“Let’s hope we won’t be doing any of that,” Carnius said. “You sure these bone arrows of yours will work, right?”

“If there’s one thing I trust in, my friend, it’s bones,” Jayred replied. “You keep the Gatekeeper occupied, and I’ll make sure my arrows do what need to be done.”

Carnius nodded.

“Good,” he said. “Just make sure those shots are good ones; I doubt I’m going to be able to last against that thing for too long.”

“Hah, seeing the work you did on those skeletons and shambles today, I’m sure you’ll be fine,” Jayred said. “Don’t worry, Carnius, tomorrow you and me will be able to go to anywhere we please in the Isles.”

He raised his bottle of mead, and Carnius clicked his own against it.

“To victory, my friend,” Jayred said.

“To victory,” Carnius echoed. “Let’s hope we get it.”

- - - - - - -

They drew a crowd as they made their way through Passwall. Jayred in his leather armour, his bow strung and a quiver of a few dozen bone arrows at his back, Carnius with his gauntlets, raiment and pack, his only worldly possessions.

Dredhwen was sitting outside the Wastrel’s purse with he breakfast spread out on the table before her, talking to Relmyna about something, and glanced up as the two of them passed back.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“We’re killing the Gatekeeper,” Jayred replied. “We’ve found the secret.”

“Secret?” Relmyna scoffed. “There’s no secret, you fool. Still, seeing you two die will be entertaining. And perhaps I’ll do something nice with your bones when you’re dead, Jayred.”

She stood from her seat, following the two of them and announcing out; “Come one, come all, Passwall! My dear child is going to kill two more imbeciles who think they can make their way onto the Isles without Lord Sheogorath’s blessing!”

People began to lean out of the doors and windows of the houses, heading outside and following Carnius and Jayred as they made their way up the hill towards the gates.

“Well, no backing out now,” Carnius remarked to Jayred.

They reached the top of hill, and Carnius dumped his pack on the side of the road. He checked his potion skins and cracked his knuckles, rolling his head from side to side to loosen up the muscles. Uncaring for their presence, the Gatekeeper waited by the imposing portals that were the Gates of Madness. Jayred put string to his bow and rested an arrow against it, ready to draw.

Carnius turned round to crowd, and called out; “Anyone where taking bets?”

“I am,” a Redguard in purple silk finery said. “As mayor of Passwall, I’m the man for it.”

“Alright,” Carnius said. He pulled the purse he had from his belt out and dropped it inot the man’s palm. “All this on me. Should be about two thousand Septims in there. What’ll be the odds on me winning?”

“Million to one, I think,” the Redguard replied.

“We’ll work it out after I’ve won, then,” Carnius said. “Jayred, let’s go.”

The Nord pulled the arrow tight as Carnius strode to the centre of the Gatekeeper’s arena. He tried not to laugh at the bitter irony of this situation; in his bid to get away from the Arena and all its ties and memories, here he was, striding into the centre of yet another in order to perform for a crowd.

He reached the centre, and there was a snap behind him as Jayred loosed an arrow. The projectile arced over his head and buried itself in the meat of one of the Gatekeeper’s brawny shoulders. Its gaze snapped towards the interlopers, and it roared, the sound a deafening wave of noise and fury that almost staggered him. With thundering steps it charged, massive cleaver raised and the ground shaking from each footfall.

Carnius dodged out of its way as it swung at him, throwing himself from the path of the immense, blood-stained blade that rested on its left hand, air whistling around its edge of blackened and gory iron. Another of Jayred’s arrows stuck into its arm, eliciting a booming roar of pain and rage, and the Gatekeeper wrenched it free. The wound wasn’t closing, Carnius saw as he backed out of its reach; the plan was working.

It turned to face him, and Carnius managed to yell to Jayred; “Shoot it in the legs! Lame it!” Its cleaver slashed down towards him in the next moment and he sidestepped away, the impact splitting the stone beneath it. The Gatekeeper reached for him with a massive, meaty paw, blade still embedded in the ground, and he slammed his fist into the tip of one of its fingers. The digit jerked back with a crack and Carnius backed away, Gatekeeper giving a moan of pain. It wrenched its blade free, finger snapping back into place, but it bellowed again as one of Jayred’s arrows embedded itself in its thigh.

It advanced on Carnius as the gladiator backed away, the immense guardian ignoring another arrow that thudded into its back, hand and cleaver raised. Carnius had his own fists up, and he skipped back as the massive blade swung towards him, its edge slicing a thin gash across the hardened leather of the armour. As brushing as the impact was, the sheer strength behind it staggered Carnius, turning him around, and the next thing he knew the Gatekeeper’s massive fist slammed into his chest and sent him flying.

He landed at least a dozen yards away on his back, breath knocked from his lungs and his head swimming. For a few moments, he lay there, head swimming and his chest aching with pain, and there was dim, muffled noise of somebody shouting abuse. He rolled his head to one side to see a Nord – Jayred? Was Jayred his name? – waving his arms and yelling at the Gatekeeper, loosing another arrow.

After a moment, he shifted an arm underneath him, grunting as pain in his ribs flared up. Gritting his teeth, he pushed up, shifting his feet underneath him, and stood. He fumbled for the skin of healing potion he had, ignoring some of the people in the crowd pointing at him and calling out in surprise. He popped the stopper off and drank, gulping the slightly bitter draft down and half-draining the skin, wincing as he felt his abused and ravaged ribs snap back into place. A few dribbles ran down his chin, and he wiped it with the back of his gauntlet as he clipped the container back onto his belt. The Gatekeeper was thundering towards Jayred, the Nord fleeing from the oncoming giant as it tried to reach him. In a moment, Carnius guessed its path and set into a run.

In moments, he had covered the ground between him and it, the Gatekeeper still distracted by its pursuit of Jayred. The final step was a leap as he burst into a jumping punch, leading with his left hand and pulling it away as his right slammed down with his entire bodyweight behind it; the technique was risky and left him wide open, but against a distracted opponent that couldn’t counter, dodge or block it, it was devastating, especially in concert with the enhancers for strength in his gauntlets and raiment.

With the force of a meteorite striking the ground Carnius’ knuckles hit the side of the Gatekeeper’s knee. Jagged bone, gristle and brackish blood exploded out of the other side of the impact site and it collapsed with a ragged scream. It swiped at Carnius with its hand but the half-blind swing went over his head and he backed away. Jayred took the opportunity to embed an arrow in its head, but its thick skull and the iron helmet it wore over that protected it from a lethal hit, the projectile jutting from the helmet.

It pulled itself upwards, bone snapping back into place as Jayred fled to get distance between himself and the Gatekeeper. The broken skin resealed, bloody stains the only indicator that the injury had occurred, and the guardian construct turned to face Carnius, sweeping away the arrow embedded in its skull. It gave a low, rumbling growl, and Carnius realised what that meant. He’d hurt the thing, even if the injury had healed, and now it was personal. It wanted him dead more than anything else now.

It swung at him, but Carnius darted forwards and to its left, ducking under the behemoth’s slash and getting behind it. He grabbed the shaft of one of the arrows that was embedded in its thigh and wrenched it free with spatter of black-brown blood, and he ignored the foul taste as some of it splashed onto his teeth and into his mouth. The Gatekeeper bellowed, but Carnius stabbed it home in the back of its knee, the joint buckling under the impact.

He felt something close around his arm as the Gatekeeper grabbed him with two of its fingers and hurled him away, but Carnius rolled with the impact and stood quickly; he could feel bruises forming, but this time there were no broken ribs to contend with from the hammerblow punch that had sent him flying.

The Gatekeeper charged him, gait ungainly as it limped forwards. Its cleaver was raised and it swept down towards him; Carnius barely managed to throw himself out of its way, and he landed with a roll, coming up in a crouch as the Gatekeeper rounded on him. He broke into a sprint from the low, ducking under the grab it tried to seize him with and leaping up to grab at the bands of thick, cracked leather at its belt. Kicking off its ankle he hauled himself upwards, wrenching an arrow from the flesh of its back and raising it to stab at its neck. This close, he could smell the deep stench of the Gatekeeper, a scent of rotting flesh, preservative fluid, roasted meat and old blood.

The Gatekeeper’s hand grabbed him, and he cursed as the grip wrenched him from its back and held him so they were face to face. It roared, the noise nought but a deafening blur of sound that battered at his eardrums like the fists of an enraged Orc, and he winced as a gust of fetid breath blasted against his nostrils. His hands were still free, above its massive fingers, and he saw the arrow was still in the grip of his gauntlets. He raised it and stabbed, drawing the tip along a line of stitching that ran down its wrist, the sharpened head gouging along the gap in its skin and snapping the twine that held it together.

The Gatekeeper screamed, dropping Carnius and collapsing to its knees as it fumbled for the wound, trying to somehow close it. Blood flowed from it in a thick, stinking stream, more sewage than viscera, and the tattooed runes covering its skin glowed with arcane power.

“You idiot!” Carnius heard Relmyna shriek from behind him. “Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?!”

“What?” Carnius yelled back as the Gatekeeper continued to roar in pain.

“You broke its containment!” Relmyna said. “Those stitches kept its element contained!”

“Element?” Carnius asked. “What element is that thing made of?”

“It’s a Flesh Atronach, you fool!” Relmyna snapped as the Gatekeeper roared and bellowed, twitching and writhing with agony. “And the most powerful in existence; that stitching bound its power into its form and made it immortal, and now that binding has been broken. It’s made of the element of flesh! And now that’s completely uncontrolled!”

Carnius glanced back at the Gatekeeper just in time to see it explode.

Its skin bulged, stitching bursting as something swelled from beneath it. Barbed tendrils of malformed muscle and gristle rippled outwards from the fissures rent into the Gatekeeper’s form, bristling with bony spines. Jaws filled with great fangs opened up, and arms and limbs tore from the Gatekeeper’s form, rolling eyes of every hue opened from beneath newly-formed lids. In moments, the humanoid form of the guardians of the Shivering Isles’ threshold was gone, replaced by a ravening, mewling abomination of random body parts, tendrils and fangs, all formed without any regard for reason or sanity.

Screams erupted from the crowd as the unbound power that gave the Gatekeeper its immortality breathed in the air of the Fringe, its form swelling and shrinking as great sacks were filled and emptied by the gasping of dozens of mouths. The crowd began to flee, and Carnius saw Jayred dither for a few moments.

“Get those people to safety!” he ordered, glancing back at the insane amalgamation of flesh and bone that now dominated the area before the Gates of Madness.

“What are you going to do?” Jayred asked.

Carnius picked up a bone arrow that lay on the ground beside him, the tip still bloodied from where he had rent the Gatekeeper’s flesh and unwittingly unleashed its power.

“Something really stupid,” he said. “But I think I know how to kill this thing.”
Jayred nodded, and turned to the crowd with a yell of; “All of you, down the hill, now! Go!”

The Grand Champion of the Imperial City Arena turned his attention back to the thing that had once been the Gatekeeper. The tendrils that had burst from its form began to sweep and coil around either side of him like serpents, but Carnius ignored it, focussing his attention on the heart of its abominable form. He could still see its iron helmet there, some final anchor of its form that gave it something that he hoped against hope was a vulnerable point. And it was only at the height of his head.

Jayred’s faith in bones had better not be misplaced.

He ran, sprinting forwards as the tendrils struck towards him. Most of them missed, the Atronach still trying to coordinate its new form, and with the back of his free hand Carnius battered away one that struck for him. He heard them coil and writhe behind him as he ran, closing the distance between them as he made for the core of the beast, arrow gripped and ready to stab down like a dagger.

He ducked under a swipe from an arm tipped with razor talons as he got close, got in reach of the helmet, raised the arrow and drove it home.

It punched through the metal and buried into where he thought its brain would be. Shrieks and roars bellowed from dozens of mouths and jaws, and its limbs flailed and thrashed. The flesh that made it up began to turn translucent and ethereal before Carnius’ eyes, changing from something solid to smoke and mist of pinkish hue. That was picked up by the wind and began to disperse, leaving the withered form of the Gatekeeper, nothing but torn skin clinging to bones.

Carnius took a few breaths to steady himself as he looked at the body below him, seeing the glint of two keys lying on the stone just beneath the body, one caught between a pair of ribs. He peeled away a flap of skin, grimacing at its leathery, canvas-like texture, and picked them up, looking at the two gates ahead of him.

And miles away in his crystal-topped tower, almost due east of Carnius, Sentinel sat back in his chair from where he had been watching the combat, a low whistle escaping his lips.

“Well,” he remarked to nobody in particular. “Now there’s a turnup for the books.”