62: Shadow Mind

The world was stolen from me nearly instantaneously. I was plunged into a shadowy, empty void. I still held the staff here, but it was empty; lifeless. I illuminated the area with a spell, but it only strengthened the harshness of the shadows that swam around me. A familiar voice echoed around me suddenly.

“I thought it was ready,” said the voice. “I thought it was time.”

I lifted my feet and moved forward in the void, though my movements were strange and uncoordinated. I seemed to be swimming, but on dry land. The voice returned after a moment’s silence.

“Was I too hasty?” it said.

I felt I was closing in on the source of the voice, though it was hard to tell from the echoing all around me. I lurched onward.

“How could this happen? Could it be that I will never be restored?” It was chilling how familiar the voice was, though I had no inkling as to where I had heard it before.

I tried to call out to whatever was producing the voice, but I could not force out any noise. Not even my breathing was audible, though I was growing weary from the awkward lurching I was doing.

“Am I to remain this way?”

I slowly found myself gaining on a form bundled up on what might be called the ground. It was dark and featureless, though I could see it shifting and undulating slowly. The voice spoke again, and I was certain it was coming from the shape on the ground.

“Is this to be my prison forever?!” the voice suddenly grew frantic, demanding an answer of me.

The form curled up below me slowly began to unfold. It was bizarre. I seemed to be able to see it from all angles and yet each one had its own dimensions. It unfolded into an impossible number of arms and legs, rising rapidly above me as it grew. It was like a spider with an infinite number of legs, and suddenly it looked at me.

“ANSWER ME!!” The voice screamed. The creature towered above me and rattled with the earthquake instilled by the voice. It reared up and smashed down around me, crushing where I was and where I could have been.

Yet somehow I was unscathed. Even as the limbs continued to descend and crush the life out of me, I stood watching as it clearly missed me again and again. I stood at a distance, curiously alarmed but uninvolved, like a man watching a rodent ripped to shreds by a hawk. Finally, I decided some action was necessary, and I crushed down on the creature with the lifeless staff. For some reason I was towering above it, it was now no bigger than a spider.

But it was also as big as a silt strider, crushing legs dancing around me as I struck out with the staff. Each blow I scored destroyed a limb or part of the creature, and each blow also brought back some life into the staff. It began to glow faintly as I beat back the creature, and as the number of limbs slowly decreased, it grew brighter and brighter. Finally, I was standing above a quivering black blob. Robbed of its limbs, it was decidedly less frightening. I spun the blindingly white staff and brought it down upon the blob.

“Am I better off this way?” The voice said as I was pulled back into reality.

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I stood atop the gateway arch, gripping the faintly glowing staff in my hand. The fog had receded into the staff, and I saw that Artan and the Nerevarine were dusting themselves off, though they still looked markedly confused. I was also pleased to see that the massive oblivion gate was dormant, its stone pillars were as black as obsidian and the portal was closed. I cast a spell of slowfall and jumped down to the Nerevarine.

“Nerevar!” I called as I descended, “I have the Staff, now what would you have me do?”

“What?” he said dazedly. “Oh! Of course!” He strode off towards the oblivion gate and drew both of his scimitars. I ran after him after I landed.

I caught up with him just as he reached the base of the oblivion gate. “Aha!” he said, “It’s as I suspected. Whatever your friend did is interfering with the gates, but it hasn’t closed them. We need to destroy the pillars before the gates reopen.”

“But that would take the strength of a silt strider to bring down!” I looked behind me sadly at the fallen carcass of the silt strider, entangled in the broken metal of the Daedric Spider. The Nerevarine yelled and then struck the two pillars with his scimitars. Nothing happened.

But then, magic began crackling up the stone from where the blades had made contact, and soon the whole gate was crumbling down around us. I moved back to a safe distance. I stood mouth agape as the Nerevarine sheathed his blades and turned to me. “Get Artan inside and wait for my instructions. I must deal with the other gates now, before they return to full functionality.” With that he sprinted off towards the other battle sites.