Traversing the seemingly endless city grounds had become increasingly dangerous. Now that there were no more creatures that would follow me I faced the problem of reality itself standing in my way. The confusing structures posed some danger if I got too close to them. And sometimes some debris would appear right in front of me out of nowhere only to vanish a second after, making me question how likely it was that one of those stone fragments found their way into my body somehow as they appeared to occupy some higher dimensional plane of existence. I had read about higher dimensions in mythomathematics before while I attended a learning facility in my earlier years. I remembered not much of it but just enough to speculate that this must have been what was happening here. Some intense distortion in the fabric of space created these anomalies and for my worldly mind, there was no way to understand or safely deal with them.
It got worse once I reached the edge of the second circle. The third and innermost circle that sat just outside the grand fortress, the nature of whatever was descending slowly upon it still rather obtuse, was victim to the most extreme corruption. The roads themselves bent and twisted in unnatural ways. Some would stay in place, which were usually the ones I took to move forward. Because others would shift in and out of existence similar to the houses and other buildings around me. They were absolutely not safe to tread upon and I could only guess what it might mean to fall through the world. I might end up in some sewers again. Or I might not and get ejected into space, where the goddess dwelt. Maybe even emerge in Tamriel or Oblivion. At this point in my tiresome journey, any place I could think of, Daedric or Nirnic, would be better than the Painted World. At least some Daedric Prince could be bargained with to get back to Tamriel. By the Nine, or Eight, even if I was to somehow emerge in some prison, dungeon or daedra-infested cave I could probably deal with that. But this crumbling world with its unclear geometry and hazardous air?
As I passed by another row of impossible houses I wondered what force caused this effect, and whether or not it spread. Was it some form of inherent decay that afflicted the world, beginning at the heart of its creation spreading outward to destroy everything there was in it? Or was it the result of whatever Atebid did in his vile lair? If the former were the case then surely, the fortress in the very center of Bendicia would be subject to the dimensional corruption as well? Then again, it was not for me to know. I realised that there were many things I didn't, and couldn't, understand. I observed the fabric of reality completely collapsing sooner rather than later. For some houses now not only shifted their geometry. As I passed by them, their very walls seemed to open up and close again, the floor was phasing in and out of existence in places, random things in the sky that I didn't know the nature of appeared, growing in size from their center, and then shrinking again into nothingness. What happened here?
The entire world seemed to appear and disappear in 'waves' of matter popping into existence like the things in the sky, and then shrinking away again. This effect was so continuous that it seemed like the floor was perpetually in motion. Sometimes, holes opened up out of nowhere only to be sealed shut again. I realised how easily I could become trapped in this geometry. But this wasn't the worst part of it. As I carefully trod these alien grounds, this wholly unfamiliar world of unsure… well, everything, I couldn't shake the feeling of being watched by something. Something unseen to my naked eye, but I felt the presence. That was until I observed… something 'grow' out of the air before me? I could see something that looked like arms and hands and some part of an upper body and two different halves of legs appear and approach me. I tried to avoid whatever it was and saw how different parts of the same organism appeared as I moved around it while other parts of it disappeared. It seemed to be inherently humanoid in overall appearance, if a bit tall and lean and unnaturally thin. But if my assumption about the nature of this new reality was correct, which was that, apparently, multiple three-dimensional objects appeared to occupy the same space depending on the angle that I looked from, this being that just came at me must have had a minimum of 32 limbs! But not all of those body parts could be seen all at once, as the majority of them were invisible, yet present in a different angle of the same space, if that makes any sense.
Never have I felt more out of my depth than at this point. How was I even to combat a being like this? All of those questions, however, were washed away when I saw what I believed to be its face. I… cannot accurately describe it. All I saw were more eyes than anything should have and at least eight mouths, but, again, not all at once but surfacing and submerging into the surrounding air intermittently to give the impression of a continually… turning? figure. I questioned my own senses, but I manifested a bony, sinewy claw and sliced the air in its direction anyway. When I did, I felt the weirdest sensation. It was as if my hand was thrown back and forth through dimensions as it tore the creature apart. I thereafter witnessed a fountain of fleshy bits of black skin and blue blood erupt from the vacant space in front of me. At once, at least half of the corpse disappeared through the floor as the parts hit the ground. At least I think this is what happened. After this experience, I hoped that I never had to see one of them again. But soon, I would.
The most troubling quality of these entities was the fact that, from certain angles, they were altogether invisible. As I walked, I felt another presence. My heightened perception allowed me to ward off an attack of some thick tendril that struck at me out of nowhere. As I moved around it, parts of the creature became visible while others phased away. There was no telling as to how many limbs it had. Around me I defended against a barrage of unforeseen strikes. Out of thin air its appendages appeared to strike and then vanish once more. I attempted to retaliate but found that it dodged into empty space only to appear a moment later into my plane of existence, lunging at me. I rolled away but somehow rolled right into more tendrils. I seized the opportunity to cut them off, a good number of them disappearing into the same, invisible void as the thing had a second before. What was worse, the environment around me shifted in just the same way. Fragments of structures and flooring appearing and disappearing with every step. This area of the city was confusing enough by itself but having to focus on an organism that transcended my own reality made it impossible to tell where I even was in relation to anything at all. The environment itself was a large enough threat but these entities made it so much worse. I was not equipped to handle that.
The only thing that kept my mind sane and my orientation somewhat stable was the unmoving fortress not too far off - and the pillars beside it. They were still normal and so, I didn't lose my way. Nonetheless, there was still the wounded… whatever it was to deal with. To my luck, cutting off parts of its body resulted in some blood leaking from its gashes which would make its position more obvious even if it hid within the deeper recesses of its own reality as the blood splatters frequently entered my point of view. That made it easier to tell from what angle I could anticipate the next attack. With the creature wounded, I was suddenly able to get a somewhat better grip on how it operated in its own reality so that I could position myself in the right angle relative to what I assumed its position was, making it visible to me. Using careful positioning and mindful steps I was permitted to repeatedly attack it first and avoid retaliation. It turned out to be quite durable in spite of my advanced mutational weaponry so it took me a lot of back and forth to land a final blow. I saw its blood dripping to the floor on my left and concluded that it must be directly in front of me, so I moved forward with confidence to reveal it in its depth of anomalous fabric of space. It didn't anticipate my move and was even startled for a moment. I used this surprise momentum to deliver a crushing strike to its amorphous head, splitting it in the-Divines-know how many different pieces. It collapsed in on itself, disappearing into some unseen pocket of its dimension to leave behind only a small puddle of blood that seemed to in- or decrease in size based on my relative position to it.
My head was hurting from absolutely everything. The more time I spent there the more I longed to finally go home. I just couldn't go on like this. There was no way I could endure this any longer with my mind and body intact. I closed my eyes, holding my head with both hands to try and calm myself. Was there no end to this? Just then, I hurt myself by running into something. As I battled the creature I had moved inadvertently closer to my destination and ultimately ran into the gates to the fortress. Seeing a normal structure with normal objects again was a sight for sore eyes. I basked in the glory of the mundane. The doors were slightly ajar. I looked back one more time at the collapsing world and noticed several of its denizens move towards me. I hesitated not and slipped through the crack in the doors, shutting them behind me. For some reason, they couldn't get in. I turned around and saw a grand hallway with a high ceiling and knew I was in the right place. This must be his lair. This must be where Atebid was hiding.
—
The fortress interior was majestic. Yes, it was made from the same black stone, but ornately chiseled with intricate patterns on the walls and a smooth, tiled floor. A crimson carpet conjured an air of regality. However, one did not have to look hard to spot other 'decorations' of more sinister purport. The windows were as tall as the enormously high ceiling and depicted in stained glass something red and seemingly otherworldly yet familiar. From the ceiling itself hung numerous cages filled with either decaying, marred corpses or skeletal remains. Some bodies hung there suspended on chains driven through their flesh or ropes around their necks. And yet others were still leaking blood, which told me that Atebid's operations seemed to be rather active.
All the corpses were so high up that it was impossible to reach them by any normal means and I briefly asked myself just how he managed to do it. Then again, he was capable of levitation. This entrance hall was very spacious, yet lacking furniture or other amenities aside from large candlesticks of roughly my height to illuminate the area. There were three paths to take, arranged in a cross pattern. One straight ahead, the other two to the left and right. In the center of this crossroads was a small blood fountain. My intuition told me that the area that I was ultimately looking for, namely Atebid's ritual chamber (or whatever it was), must lay situated straight ahead, for I could spot a spiral staircase in the distance that led both up and down. And I suspected that down was the direction I had to take. It always was. Perpetrator apprehension over the years has taught me that nine out of ten evildoers will hole up underground if they can - and typically lament if they can't.
I chose to completely ignore the side paths. The matter was pressing and I didn't have the time to scavenge for supplies or rare items. Or meet some random person who is inexplicably not hostile giving me some mundane task. Time was of the essence. With each passing minute my hopes of rescuing Nephethys shrunk. Not only did the presence of the Nephethys-shaped monstrosities tell of something that must have been done to her. The very way everything around the fortress changed and shifted was unnatural in a way that had me form the conjecture that this wasn't normal. Some force was being set free of such a magnitude that it threatened to alter this world's reality itself. The more I thought about it, the more the crazy idea made sense. If Atebid could tear the fabric of reality to somehow seize control of entities which were mostly invisible and capable of just phasing through solid matter and attack from altogether hidden angles and pockets within their own space, he could probably create a small army of mostly unkillable soldiers. If he managed to… domesticate them, for lack of a better word. Truth he told, those things seemed more like creatures than an intelligent, sentient species. Then again, I don't know. And I never came to know.
I made my way carefully over to the spiral staircase off in the distance at the end of the long hallway right in front of me. Although I did notice several doors and archways with glimpses of other rooms on either side of the hallway I let myself not be distracted by the prospect of discovery and instead ignored all of them in favour of the end goal I had in mind. After all, there was only one thing that I needed to find in that place. Everything else was negligible and useless. If I could get to her fast enough, I repeatedly told myself, I could save her, destroy the bloodthirsty lord and go back to Tamriel. If I was just quick enough, I thought time and time again, I could prevent major disaster from happening, for I suspected there to be a monumental threat for the entirety of Nirn at hand. If only I could work swiftly enough to bring Atebid to his knees, I would become the hero that this entire journey seemed to have prepared me for.
After a while I reached the end of the hallway and wasted no time before I descended into the bowels of the castle. The stairs went on for quite a while and then I was absolutely awestruck at the sight that unfolded itself in front of me. At some point, the walls around me and the stairs ceased to exist and gave way to an enormous ceiling that stretched far in each direction. Beneath me were narrow walkways of black stone that hung suspended in the air. And beneath them a gaping abyss of a kind blacker and deeper than the darkest night known to man, mer and beast. The yawning pit drew me in. This must have been where he was hiding. I travelled carefully down the walkways and descended deeper and deeper into the pit. But somehow, there didn't seem to be an end to this black, empty space. After I've gotten past a point at which I could see the ceiling, when darkness was all around me, I made up my mind and decided to go up once more. Something about the place didn't seem right and a low, distant sound from below told me that I should not dare go deeper. I never discovered whatever it was that lay hidden beneath the fortress.
I made my careful way up again and found that, curiously, he must have been hiding in the tallest spire of the fortress if not underground. If he was not, I thought, then I would have to search the entire thing high and low after all. I caught my breath after having gone up to the surface again but quickly ascended the spiral stairs to hopefully find Atebid. The staircase was enormous. It spanned the entire dimensions of the tower, having me run in very wide circles to get where I needed to go. Obviously designed to tire out any intruder before they even got to him. But when I reached the very top, the fortress shook violently. Something above me crumbled. Through the large windows I saw debris and roofing fall. I hurried up the stairs.
When I finally reached the top, a large, red door was the only thing between me and whatever caused the structural disruption. I figured I was as ready as I'll ever be at that point, so I commanded my hand to turn into a fleshy, bony, sinewy blade in advance and opened the door.
Before I go on to describe the sight in front of me I want to reinforce the point that I have been exposed to many disturbing vistas throughout my travels in this accursed land. Many, many things that would have broken lesser men. I want to emphasise that these are not mere mad ramblings but rather an accurate account - as accurate as I could make it - of what took place on the top of that tower.
Approaching the door, the ground beneath my feet shook violently once more. Maniacal laughter was heard from the other side. I reached out and the door fell forward at the merest touch, showing a floor littered with debris and blood. And the Lord in the middle of it. Arms outstretched, he beckoned to the heavens in an unknown tongue at the top of his lungs. And when I took a few steps forward, I saw what he was beckoning to.
The tower itself had been reduced to a dust-filled stone platform. Walls and roof were gone to permit me a view of the horror. As I stepped out onto that platform, not only did I see the masses of mangled creatures clawing at the city walls and the shadowy, naked terrors that stalked the streets. On either side of the tower, there was an enormous, ivory-coloured moving pillar swaying back and forth. Upon noticing a strong, unpleasant smell, trying to locate its source, my eyes wandered up to where the two pillars met somewhere above me, obscuring my view of the blood-red sky.
I stared in disbelief for a while until a droplet the size of a small boulder would narrowly miss me. It took a while to understand, to make the connections in my head. Those pillars standing next to the tower were legs. And they met, above the pillar, above me, flanking a gargantuan perineum with all the amenities of a female body. It was pulsating. It was leaking. And it was in the middle of something terrible.
Above it, what I had to assume had to be a large belly moved on its own. The sight was surreal, even more so than whatever dimensional holes I slipped through in order to even get close to the tower.
“Isn't it beautiful?” I heard Atebid ask as he turned to me. “The Goddess, a mother! Bringing this realm's new deity into existence as a fledgling god. Thou'rt very lucky to be its witness, Thorus Blackward. Thru all trials thou'st come hither. Once born, the goddess might ask you to enter her service yet!”
Once my mind was able to focus again thanks to his interruption, I started looking around for Nephethys. She must have been there somewhere.
“I see. I know thy desire. The girl. Fret not. She is on her way. And she will arrive soon.”
I could not fathom what this possibly meant, but I knew that this unholy elf had to die. With my arm already in position, I dared attack the fiend.
—---------------
The first strikes were evaded by him with ease, my blade penetrated the empty air beside him. I kept stabbing into emptiness as he kept dodging my assault. Finally, having had enough of this game, Atebid lunged forward and had me crash into the stone floor with the palm of his hand. Said palm, now raised, gathered crimson crystals until they assumed the shape of a spear, ready to impale me. He anticipated that I would roll to the side and, within a matter of seconds, nailed me down to the floor by my left shoulder. My arm was unable to move and I conjectured he tried to take away the only weapon I had. However, I flexed my muscles and let a wave of energy ripple through the entire arm that shattered the spear into a thousand pieces. Surprised was he by that surge of power, having utterly miscalculated the extent thereof which allowed me to send my bladed hand deep into his flesh in a moment of his own bafflement and inadvertence.
A terrible grin was his only response before he took me by the wrist and decoupled my hand from his flesh by force. His gaping wound closed in an instant and I struggled for control, his tight grip keeping me at arm's length. Once again I did the unexpected and punched him several times in his face with my other, normal hand, almost breaking it in the process. He let go, allowing me yet another attack. But this time, he saw it coming and shot a beam of blood in my chest to throw me back. Albeit not particularly powerful, it did tear away some of my skin.
I sprung up and landed on my two feet, crouching down to avoid another ethereal strike he sent forth. I pressed on, blade up front, so I could meet him face to face. My bone and his blood clashed in a fulminant display of power neither of us knew I had. The two of us struggled, danced a deadly dance around the platform's surface as its edges crumbled away under our combined weight. We tried pushing each other off its brink, we threw each other to the ground only to find that the opponent deflected the assault. We met as equals on the battlefield in brutal close combat.
Riddled with holes were we both, healing our wounds did we at a distance before being drawn to each other like violent, lethal lovers in a tragic romance. Like a thorned flower was the passionate touch of indescribable frenzy. A burning flame of heartfelt hatred touched us both as we tried to end each other's existence. And then, we met at the very edge of the tower. Exhausted, yet determined. An unforeseen push was all it took to send him plunging into the depths of the warping city below. However, I forgot how powerful Atebid truly was.
A flash of crimson radiance emerged from the ruins and the fiendish dæmon shot upward, high into the sky. Atebid pulled the same trick that the high priestess once did when we were still allies. His ribs, disfigured into flapping wings, glowing crimson radiance, leaking blood beneath him. His heart exposed, but he knew his weak point better than his subordinate did. He came soaring through the corrupted air, a rain of deadly unlife erupting from his flesh to coat the ground beneath him in small craters, blanketing me in sores. But this was a battle of attrition. My self-healing capabilities are a match for his and so his assault did nothing but to fuel my resolve. However, he had the height advantage. He was untouchable.
I evaded and endured downpour after downpour of his unholy might, trying to figure out a way to pick him out of the sky. But then an idea crossed my mind. A risky move that would define this battle's outcome. My bubbling flesh reformed underneath the writhing muscle. I made it tear open, blood gushing out of my forearm as my blade of bone dangled on a pair of sinews. I tightened them and flung them into the air, my only weapon disembodied. The bony tip connected to my adversary and he kept flying onward, tearing the hand from my wrist in the process. I observed as Atebid flew and flew, then turned around mid-air to dive through it in my direction. His face, twisted in anguish and hatred, his eyes staring at me with relentless determination. And then I saw the damage I had done to him. His heart cleanly impaled, the attack a last-ditch effort to try and end my life. But he knew I couldn't just move out of his way and let him tumble to his death In solitude. I had to catch him mid-flight and somehow survive to get my only means of defense back.
I decided in this moment that offense is the best defense. Atebid came at me with superior speed. Surely, he would take me to Oblivion with him if I waited on his approach. Instead, I began running. It needed to be timed perfectly since the surface area i had was yet small and if I was too early I would miss him just barely and fall off the edge. If I began running too late, however, I would not have speed to match his advance and would be sent into the depths below regardless. My large steps propelled me forward rather gracefully as I played with certain doom. In a few heartbeats we met each other.
I lunged at his form. I buried my arm into his chest and reconnected my hand to my body as the impact shoved the blade through him. Now I was connected to my enemy and the sheer force at play pushed me to the edge of the tower quickly. I jumped, flipped backwards and drove Atebid into the ground, his flesh tainting the stone below as we slid closer to the edge. When he went over said edge, his body weight sent him cascading down into the unknowable, bending space as I propelled myself off his body, into the air and land safely on the platform. And just like that, it was over.
—---------------------
In the moments following this pivotal triumph, I was treated to a long, brooding silence atop the bloodstained tower, crumbling under the scars of battle. The bloodthirsty lord himself was no more, and yet there were still lingering questions as to how to proceed from this point forward. Most urgently was the question of my egress from the Painted World. I had hoped to unveil a magic portal to Tamriel upon finding and defeating him but it became very obvious that this wasn't the case. Instead all that existed was an ill wind at the top of his abode. I could, I thought, surely go back inside the main structure and look for some means of teleportation or otherwise mystical gateway. Maybe a painting, just like the one that brought me here. But not only me. For my second concern were the whereabouts of Nephethys. She had been taken, surely she must be within the castle somewhere. So, weighing my options, I concluded that the best course of action was to more attentively explore the main structure and find both her and an exit.
Just as I folded my legs inward to place my feet firmly on the ground to stand up, I witnessed the sky darken. I remembered a detail I had forgotten during the fight. Something so strikingly odd that it was erased from my mind altogether. The goddess, as she was called. Her light. It faded. And, curiously, she stood towering over the platform I was on. A sight too absurd to put into words, a naked female body that was impossibly large. A riddle. An oddity. Something to consider. A third path, a course of action. Had her light not gone out I would have not even noticed her presence. But now my attention had been arrested such that I felt that I needed to know why she was here. What had Atebid been doing that required the goddess?
Many questions as to her significance in this particular situation were revolving in my head for but a moment. All of these thoughts congealed and were washed away when a wave of fluid from above cleansed me and the ground. My gaze turned skyward, where the goddess stood above me, leaking fluid from her cavity, twitching unnaturally as she did. A shock seized her enormous body and water turned into blood, turned the tower into a cataract, a fountain. A wave of vermillion splendor that put even the receding tides of the crimson sea to shame. Something inside of her appeared to be moving, writhing in the divine flesh. Tearing at it from within.
Several large gashes opened along the divine belly's lining as the body continued to seize up and shake violently. Bladed tentacles clawed their way out of the heavenly womb. The pungent odor was unbearable, yes. But the sight was more terrible still. The flesh opened up into a growing hole from the lower belly to the vaginally cavity, torn open in brutal fashion by whatever thing it was that wanted to free itself. And then, in what little remained of the light, I saw fleeting glimpses of a familiar figure. However enlarged and grotesquely altered, the likeness was unmistakable. The darkened skin, now more akin to basalt than blue, the white hair, the eyes glowing with a murderous shimmer. It was her.
Reborn into a new form, she fell out of the fleshy cavern onto the blood-drenched platform below and in her wake, the lifeless body of the Goddess tumbled backward. A quake of apocalyptic magnitude rippled through the Black City and the surrounding landscape when the sacred corpse fell, burying everything beneath it before dissolving into liquid flesh that would flood the perishing lands of this accursed world. Red grass, strange flowers similar to the ones in the decaying forest and trees made of upward-spiralling muscle tissue grew from it, new life blossomed from the deceased deity in the same moment of her death. Total annihilation, followed by rebirth. A new age dawned on the Painted World. I watched in horror as the quake continued to obliterate even the lands far off, and sure enough, the tower structure beneath us crumbled to dust as well. A consequence of this perfect destruction. An entire world brought down by the birth of a fledgling god, and imminent renewal taking hold as everything is being wiped from existence.
I fell. And my vision went dark.
When I regained my senses, I beheld a different world. The Black City was gone, the wasteland was gone. Nothing remained as I knew it. The grass I sat in was soft, thick and warm. Before me were pulsating trees and a bubbling pond. Strange bipedal creatures, faceless and without skin or any discernible gender emerged from rhythmically beating sacs that hung suspended from twitching branches. Upon emergence, they quickly scuttled towards the nearest shrubs, all of which seemed to be swaying without wind. They huddled together, shivering and without direction.
I observed them touch each other gently. Curiosity and uncertainty. But they didn't seem to be in pain despite the absence of skin. A new people, yet to fully develop and new at life. One of them, whom I presumed to be the eldest, broke off from the group and held its hands closer to its faceless visage. I heard it as it drew its first breaths, and underneath the quivering fingers a mouth revealed itself, inhaling and exhaling, playing with its tongue around lips and sharp teeth. If anything, the poor creature looked even more repulsive now but I also felt that this was but an intermittent stage of its full metamorphosis.
I decided to leave them alone and take my first few steps forward. In the distance, the bubbling pond was surrounded by a different kind of tree. These trees did not bear any sacs or fruit but their fingering twigs were home to nests and these nests were home to winged animals with clannfear-like mouths and claws like those of daedroths but smaller. They seemed to possess tough skin of a beige tone and appeared fully formed. Many such avians of varying proportions and shapes called these trees their home. Their gurgling cries to one another filled the air.
Around the pond grew taller grass with glowing red tips, wetter and thicker than its shorter variant. An oblong thing slithered within the blades of grass, but I couldn't make out the details. It appeared to be preying on some rodent-like beasts that were scurrying about nearby, digging into the fleshy soil for sustenance revealing that the ground itself seemed to be edible. The slithering predator lunged forward and caught one of the rodents and swallowed it whole. The remaining animals turned their tails and scattered into the grass and their burrows. I was a witness to a developing ecosystem as it was being created.
Since the bubbling pond was quite malodorous I turned and moved away from it, passing by more trees and creatures until I finally reached the edge of the forest. Here, in the outskirts, I stood before a field of grass and glowing flowers. Tiny insects swarmed around the fields, hopping from flower to flower. Within the grass, too, there was life, more arachnoid in nature. But in the distance, a larger entity sat writhing against the crimson horizon. I approached it slowly to assess what it might be. A shapeless, featureless lump of flesh with rudimentary limbs writhing in its own filth. A being in metamorphosis just like the bipedal ones were.
Under the open sky now I could only see red and grey clouds but no obvious light source. Far off at the horizon's edge I fancied rain falling. And on a different stretch of that edge there were mountains and forests and rivers spilling out of the rock. It was a world in flux, at the dawn of its creation. But it was no wasteland anymore filled with boundless horrors and hunger. It was grotesque, but fertile and peaceful. Was this Atebid's vision all along? Or did something change it?
“Isn't it beautiful?”. A familiar voice as sweet as iron on the tongue spoke softly to me. I turned and saw her smile, the fledgling goddess, hovering before me. Her body was as I remembered, rich and dark and full of promise. Her presence was enchanting, mesmerizing, tantalizing. “Don't be afraid, my dear Thorus. The spell of the wicked one failed its purpose when his heart stopped beating during my transformation”.
Her silver hair hung long and glistening over her chest. Her eyes assessed me with care and affection. Her loving gaze brushed away my fear, as it once had in the past. There she was, Nephethys, empowered and sanctified. “I know your heart's desire. To be with me, forevermore. As you have been in the past, when our journey was treacherous and unbearable. But never did you abandon me in your heart. Your love to me has fueled your resolve. And I have to thank you”. She motioned around herself, her curves reflecting the light of the crimson sky. “For this”.
She paused for a moment, then her eyes met the ground and her smile faded. “Alas, it cannot be. You do not belong in this world and I fear that it will consume you should you stay. I am its creator and guardian, and I must be here, in my new home. You, however, must leave, lest this realm's creations swallow you, make you part of it, erasing you in the process. But know this”.
The gentle caress of her tender fingers wiped away a tear on my cheek. Then she took me by my changed hand and felt it, held it to her heart. “I will never forget you. Not in a thousand cycles, not in a million eras of your worldly plane of existence. And for as long as you live, you will forever be connected to this place by the hand that shaped your flesh.” Our lips touched, the most bittersweet kiss burned in my heart and set my immortal soul ablaze. It was as much ruin as it was hope.
“Come now. I need to show you something”.
Holding her hand tight, we walked back into the forest close to the spot where I woke. Her closeness was comforting and painful. I felt my heart shatter with every step. We stopped, and Nephethys gestured towards the ground. There was a small area, overgrown with vines of striking red color. She let go and waved her arms back and forth, making the vines and roots disappear. She reached into the indentation in the ground and from it emerged what I have been looking for ever since I first set foot into the Painted World.
“I found it in the rubble and thought to safeguard it from the growths. When we first came here, we were looking for this. When I held it, I could sense its importance. Observe how the surface ripples when I touch it.”
She presented to me a very large, stunning painting of the Imperial City, likely as seen from the Jerall Mountains near Bruma. The White Gold Tower, the place of my office in the Imperial service, stood out to me. My heart sank when I looked at it. I was torn between worlds. There was this longing to come home, but… was this home anymore? Could I ever return to Tamriel and live a normal life? Resume my profession? “Come on, touch it, see what it does”, Nephethys urged me. My fingers brushed against the rough canvas and felt the dried paint. I looked at her. “Nothing's happening…?”
She chuckled into the back of her hand. “Not with THAT hand, Thorus”. Her genuine amusement humbled me, but touched me so sweetly. I smiled, then reached out again. This time, the canvas behaved like fluid under my fingertips. “This will bring you back into the world where you belong”.
Did I belong in Tamriel? I no longer felt that my home could be determined by my place of origin alone. More so, my home was determined by the place where my heart felt the most confident beating. And that place was with her, wherever it was. “Oh, my love”, she gasped, almost wept. “I can feel your thoughts. I know your heart. But you must go. I could never forgive myself if you were to perish at the hands of a world that is not your own. And I now know what happens to the souls that die here. I don't want this for you.”
I looked once more at the painting in its entirety. Large enough for me to walk through. A golden frame. Sturdy, like a door. No doubt intended by Atebid himself to be a gateway of sorts for perhaps an invasion. I felt the canvas again and it bent beneath my touch. I felt Nephethys’ hands on my shoulders. “This is goodbye, my love”, she whispered into my ear. “But fear not. I have prepared for you something to remember me by on the other side.”
And with a last parting kiss, she pushed me forcefully into the painting and I was flung through the dimensions once more.
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