During the time of Alduin's return, in a remote corner of Skyrim, the Prince of Knowledge had sought a new champion. In that place, the two of them had met.

The mortal had served well in replacing his predecessor. But when the time came to finally accept his role, he had imposed one condition to be satisfied first. He knew he was too powerful, too valuable in potential, for it to be refused.

A grown man born blind, if given the sense of sight, would be reduced to madness by his new perception of the world. So it was with forbidden truths. Mortals were blind to the true nature of reality. They understood their surroundings through intuition, reason, logic. These were contrivances. Systems as arbitrary as the elements of destruction spells, designed to allow mortals to function in the world around them. One glimpse of any greater truth would cause these systems to collapse. What worth was there to life, when nothing in the world truly existed to begin with?

The Daedric Prince's undying focus on forbidden knowledge rendered him, and the full extent of his power, inherently beyond mortal comprehension. All past mortals to partake in this knowledge were overwhelmed by its nature, left unfit to use what they had learned. And so he had requested that his new master transform him. It came at an inherent price, one that most mortals would have refused. But his choice had been made long ago. This was simply another step down that choice's path.

A great length of time had been spent on the process of relearning. Once, had he been asked why he cared for those around him, he would have replied with a heartfelt declaration of love for all life. Now, such a notion struck him as absurd. There was nothing of note for him to love. The entirety of mortal existence was as significant as his most fleeting instances of imagination.

And so he had needed to affirm to himself the most basic tenets of being. Not such things as love and compassion, but the foundations of logical assumption. He knew now for a fact that no ideas or objects were necessarily equal to themselves. A triangle could have four sides and remain a triangle. A truth could be false and still true. Logic was essentially something that mortals had made up.

In order to continue on his path, he had to arbitrarily, voluntarily choose to accept that mortal logic was true, even though he knew it was false. There was no dissonance here, necessarily. After all, mortal logic was false, so he knew there was no transgression in considering it true and false at once.

A triangle could have three sides if he wanted it to. Or it could have four. He had decided that his triangles would have three sides from then on.

And he repeated this process for all conventions of thought. He chose to adhere to mortal logic, just as he chose to adhere to his path. On some level, he was aware that this was all an act. He knew better than to let these things matter to him. He simply chose to follow the directions of the act anyway.

The process took time, but eventually, he was able to act as though he were himself. He acted as though the world around him were real enough to affect his thoughts. Not because his emotional responses pleased him—that would have been an explanation befitting mortal logic, and thus no longer relevant—but because he chose to. There was no further explanation. None was needed.

It was in this frame of mind that he continued on his path. He experienced love, and loss, and unending fear. And he chose for these things to matter to him. Every moment was a challenge to his intellect. Sometimes the strain was almost too much to bear.

But he knew that he had made the right choice. He was free of the shackles of mortal limitation. This would not be without consequence.

Middas, 9:54 PM, 15th of Rain's Hand, 4E 202

Soul Cairn

Where Sovngarde was a realm of eternal life, the Soul Cairn was of eternal death. The land was gray, gloomy, overtaken by a shadowy haze. What light came from above was a dim, unnatural blue. There was no sun here. At the apex of the sky, ringed by a thin, spiraling violet halo, was an empty void.

The mortal wandered through the mist at a leisurely pace, undisturbed, unafraid. He knew he would find what he was looking for.

He stopped at the sight of a large stone tower. Floating above its roof, visible even from down on the ground, was a massive crystal fragment, wreathed in light. It looked crudely chiseled into a vague teardrop-like shape, standing on its thicker end. Its coloration seemed reminiscent of amethyst, though it was certainly made of nothing known to mortals.

This was one of the links to the Ideal Masters, the rulers of this plane. They had no physical form, or even individual names. These crystals were the conduits by which they communicated with material beings.

The mortal stood before the foot of the tower, and simply thought. The Ideal Masters' lack of form was irrelevant. Such aspects of existence were, after all, contrivances. He did not need his bodily senses to determine their presence.

There were many Ideal Masters, and yet there was only one. He sensed their collective pattern of thought, but no trace of individual distinction. Their minds were fundamentally alien to him. It went without saying that these were some form of Daedra, but they functioned under no Daedric Prince's supervision. They felt less like servants and more like opportunists, gathering at the site of spent souls for their own gain.

The Soul Cairn was the abyss into which all lost souls fell. Parted with their bodily existence in Mundus, but unable to traverse the gap between it and Aetherius, they were trapped in this low corner of Oblivion instead. It was an eternal prison for all its inhabitants, except for its Daedric keepers. Its existence was little more than a senseless punishment.

After some length of time, a voice sounded in his mind. A chorus of guttural whispers, spoken in perfect unison.

"What do you want?"

Some believed that truth was dictated by power. Others believed that it was a singular constant, beyond all opinion. Still others believed that the truth was too dangerous to ever approach.

None of these beliefs were wrong. The only truth in anyone's world was the truth they chose.

Long ago, the mortal had made a choice of his own. He had chosen to devote all his power to the well-being of his world, regardless of what sacrifice it took. Even after his fateful transformation under Hermaeus Mora, when he had been stripped of his humanity, his soul scoured from black to white, he had not abandoned his choice.

He had always known that this task would demand something extraordinary from him. The greatest threats to his world existed beyond the reach of mortals. But he was no longer constrained by the ways of mortal thought. His thoughts were limitless.

The Daedra had been afraid. They had understood the danger on their horizon, and done their best to save themselves. They had bestowed all the gifts they could on their mortal heroes, and sent them forth into battle, hoping to avert the threat they perceived. They had failed.

Iseus looked up through the slitted eyes of his golden mask. "I want to destroy you."

The only truth in the world was the one he chose at this very moment.

The End