Madness
1. Daisy Chains and Laughs

When she left, it was with every intention of coming back.

She had informed the chamberlain that morning. "Haskill," she said, "it has been half a year since I entered this plane, and certain people in Tamriel may have wondered where I am. I must leave for a while, to sort out unfinished business."

The chamberlain gave her one of his looks, as if he wasn't entirely sure if this was the best idea, but he said, "I understand, my Lord. What shall be done about... visitors, while You are away?"

"See that guards are dispatched, if need be. I will not suffer intruders in My realm."

"Very good, my Lord."

"Do not trouble yourself too much, Haskill," she said. "I shall return within the month, and when I do I intend to seal the Door. No one will enter My Isles unless I summon them here, to Madness."

"As You say, my Lord. Shall I have Your gear assembled?"

She packed light, and left much the way she'd come six months ago, in patched fur and scratchy felt, a bow on her back and a dagger at her waist. She left her staff and princely raiment in Passwall, to wait for her until she returned. The table and the metronome still sat by the Door at the top of the hill. But the guard on the other side had gone, and brown Khajiit bones littered the gate platform.

Walking to shore she breathed the air of her native plane. It smelled of rain and breeze and Bravil. Not all pleasant, not all unpleasant. She'd grown up with these smells, and they never changed. In her Isles, the smells were always different, all the time, refracting with her whims like light through a prism. Everything was like that in her Isles, floating, drifting, bubbles and fishes in a bowl of paints.

None of them had been sure what would happen when she took the throne. A mortal she was, they thought, not a daedroth, and would she die like other mortals? What powers did she have? They doubted her, like all followers doubted.

She sat down beside a boulder on the shore to rest and contemplate. Doubters, she thought. They were weak, and stupid, and afraid. She knew she would not die. It had come to her as she sat on her throne for the first time, as the smells and sounds and colors of her Isles whirled lazily around her center. She prodded them, pinched them, peeled them, and they resonated at her touch. The doubters could have their doubts. She ruled the Isles. She was Sheogorath.

She thought she would see the way of the Empire before closing it off forever, and for the next month, she breathed Tamriel. Muddy brown Tamriel. Foggy gray Tamriel. Beer and sweat. Bitter and sweet. Salt swamps, snow, and sewers. The aging empire that she had saved, once, and that had forgotten her as quickly as it had itself. The provinces were breaking off one by one like frostbitten fingers, and the blackened palm festered with infection and cancer. Immigrants and refugees poured in from all sides; legionnaires struggled to keep any peace at all as small armies of outlaws marauded the roads; upjumped councilors, drunk on newfound power, ripped up the land and wealth like so much meat, while petty nobles scrabbled at the offal they left behind. The Empire boiled like piss in a pot, and no one was sure what anyone else was doing or why. When she felt she'd seen enough, it was a simple matter for the Champion of Cyrodiil to stage her own suicide.

She left the note in the bedroom of her Skingrad manor for anyone who might have cared enough to read it. Don't try to find me, it said. I am walking into Niben Bay, and I am not walking out. (It was even true, sort of.) She wrote it with the spare ink she found stored in her basement, the wells upstairs dry from months of disuse. The basement room was abandoned. She supposed she should not have suspected differently. Still, she wondered where her maid had gone, and hoped she was somewhere happy, wherever that could be. Perhaps she would greet her in the Isles, a child of Madness.

That night, when everything was finished, she left Skingrad hooded and cloaked. There was one thing still left to do. She made her way to the Imperial City to say goodbye.

She moved slowly and invisibly, taking care that the contents of her heavy sack did not clank and alert any waiting bandits to her presence. She caught sight of the city just as dawn was breaking behind it, and crossed the bridge to the city isle as morning spread across the sky. Beautiful as it was, she couldn't say she would miss any of it. She had mornings of her own now, to do with as she would. In any case, that wasn't why she was here.

They still hadn't put the roof back on, but then she didn't really see how they could. She sat by his foot. Laid a hand on it.

"Martin," she whispered to the air. The last emperor of Tamriel. He'd given his own life to save it, just so it could tear itself apart once he'd gone. She sat there for a long while, until the Temple was crowded with cityfolk and the sun was high in the sky. If she'd still been mortal, she reflected, she might have missed him, though he'd have been the only one. But Daedric Princes did not miss mortals, and now it was time to go.

She left by way of the Waterfront District, walking invisibly out onto the water, south to Niben Bay. When she reached the mouth of Lake Rumare, she emptied her sack into the water. She paused briefly to watch the armor sink, the armor of emperors. It shouldn't have been given to her, she thought as it disappeared into the depths; Ocato should have worried himself about other things. Like keeping the Empire together.

But the Empire did not matter anymore. She was coming back to her realm, her Isles, and once she closed the Door she wouldn't look back. She walked on, south to the island as the sun of Nirn set upon her one final time.

When she got there, the Door was gone.