My time with Sanguine might have lasted a moment or a thousand years. I honestly couldn't tell.

  There might have even been a point where we were moving backwards in time because the Daedric Prince thought it would be funny. Time and even space were more a suggestion than a rule to the denizens of Oblivion.

  I tried to not ask too many questions anyway, intent on maintaining the mystery. As long as I kept that in mind, it shouldn't matter how many timelines I was smeared across, I wouldn't spill the beans. Probably. Hopefully.

  Sanguine hadn't been content just sticking to seemingly endless realms that constituted the Daedric Prince either, taking me on the mother of all benders across the myriad smaller realms of Oblivion and even a few fellow Princes.

  I was still piecing the bits and pieces together.

  There were the Shivering Isles, but Sheogorath was absent and Haskill was a bore. Which was strange seeing as the Shivering Isles were the embodiment of Sheogorath, but far be it for me to judge the Daedric Prince of Madness.

  Quagmire and Vaermina were—

  horrifying—

  awful—

  uncomfortable—

  depressing—

  unpleasant—

  —and more. It would have been so much worse were I actually subject to her wiles. However many times the Daedric Prince of Dreams and Nightmares smeared me across the fabric of Oblivion to supposedly try and show me sights that I would never forget, my mind remained untouched.

  The pout Vaermina gave me for it was maybe funny, in an unfathomable horror that which nightmares are made from trying to pout sort of way.

  Nocturnal only stared at me for an uncomfortably long time. Sanguine found it funny for some reason.

  Azura on the other hand refused to look at me and threatened Sanguine with something that didn't translate properly.

  Meridia immediately brought down the hammer on the Daedric Prince of Debauchery, and so falling right into the prank. Which was Sanguine exploding into a thousand and one moans.

  Clavicus Vile kept trying to make deals with me that the Daedric Prince could never get to stick, which eventually got me banished for apparently being a cheating cheater that cheated.

  And there was much more jumbling around in there, wherever there was. Just no giant sex orgies, surprisingly. None that filtered through even when my thoughts went there anyway.

  Even Sanguine was more like a perverted tour guide, more content to try and get me to unwind than try and peer too closely behind the thin veneer of form and substance as Meridia had described it. Which, also being a Daedric Prince, Sanguine had to be intimately aware—

  Wait. No, there was a giant sex orgy! Complete with fountains of wine and rivers of chocolate. I had just declined participating in it, and Sanguine hadn't pushed.

  There was another conversation I didn't want to forget. I was trying to remember it now.

  We had been back in the meadow, at night this time. Sanguine had poured us some wine that shimmered like liquid rubies, and I drank it without much issue. I already knew it didn't have any more effect on my mind than Vaermina was able to accomplish.

  "Shall we be friends, Abomination?" Sanguine asked, still rocking that impossibly hot bod.

  "Friends," I agreed. Then I asked the Daedric Prince about that question I had earlier. I still wanted to put some hot springs or a sauna near my tower, among other things. Whatever made the wait more bearable.

  Sanguine had quirked her head, white hair shifting to reveal the black horns. "Manipulating the waters of Oblivion comes to us naturally." Her equally black nails pulled at her red skin thoughtfully. "I can try and show you, to be sure. Though you promised to show me some of your sights as well," the Daedric Prince reminded me.

  So I had, painting Sanguine a picture of something the Daedric Prince had never known. The internet! And maybe I embellished a little here and a little there, but who would know?

  In return the Daedric Prince peeled back everything to reveal a thing of pink and red and black and white that showed me how to mold the chaotic creatia of Oblivion and fix it in place. Somehow even as a roiling miasma of colors Sanguine still managed to be sensual.

  There were countless other memories I could remember in a heartbeat, but I already remembered enough for several lifetimes.

  I would just have to trust I never gave the game away.

  When I did eventually find myself back on Mundus, linear time reasserting itself, I just sighed as I luxuriated in the sheer simplicity of it all. Even if that meant I was back inside a mountain of a tomb.

  Skadi was snoring softly next to me with Bright-Like-Dawn still curled up on her belly. Adorable.

  There was also something sharp pricking my skin. Which as I soon found out was a vividly pink and red rose.

  There was a note attached, the calligraphy exquisite…

  You were a treat, Abomination! I hope you will not spurn a rose for my regards. You need only pluck a petal and I will come as the dragon allows.

  Sanguine?

  There was something like a haughty sniff from where the Ebony Blade was as the rose smoldered and even preened in my hand.

  As Lydia stirred on my other side, with Skadi not far behind her, I quietly hid the rose away. They still hadn't exactly come to terms with the first Daedric artifact that ended up in my hands.

  Another one seemingly popping out of thin air…

  Breakfast was a grumpy affair, our new bandit friends continuing to make snide comments about how we were all going to get eaten by draugr. Skadi had then sat in my lap and demanded I brush her hair, because obviously she had to look her best while fighting said draugr.

  I wisely didn't argue.

  I offered to do the same for Lydia, but she just gave a funny look as she avoided my eyes, the sky blue comb she was brushing through her black hair speeding up. Bright-Like-Dawn did take me up on my offer, though her hair was already sleek and shiny.

  Still, the tiny Argonian insisted, and she had learned from Skadi how to make puppy eyes at me.

  Soon we were on the move again, following after the thief who Vilkas and his brother had on a very short leash. The other three were given shields and told to keep an eye and ear out. Or two, seeing as the shields dwarfed the even tinier Khajiit that had apparently decided to make Tolfi's ginger curls her home.

  It didn't take long to run into our first draugr, shambling stragglers that were easily dispatched at first, and then more and more and more of them. The way some of them moved, the ones missing limbs especially, was seriously unpleasant to look at.

  It also wasn't just the draugr that multiplied the deeper into the mountain we went, the very atmosphere was oppressive in a way that was hard to describe. Like there was some malevolent intelligence at work that didn't want us here.

  The real fun began when the coffins lining the walls started cracking open, releasing even more draugr into the wild.

  "Yanadz-jo tried, but Nords never happy until Nords in their Sovngarde," the cat complained from her high throne of curls. "This one regrets every day that…"

  I tuned her out, lighting some of the draugr in the distance up like up the dry, decrepit corpses they were, a few of Aela's arrows finding joints and ligaments as well. The others formed a wall around us as we all ventured deeper into the pitch blackness of the tomb city.

  I couldn't exactly spare the magicka or the attention to confirm we were going the right way either, so I just banked on the Dunmer thief's own sense of self-preservation.

  It felt like we had been at it for hours, sweat literally pouring off of me as we navigated the literal city. I must have turned a hundred draugr to ash by now, but the number of them chasing us hadn't decreased. If anything, there were more of them now, some of them practically crawling over the others, a rolling mass of bones and dry, weathered skin. And all their eyes glowed in the dark.

  This wasn't Oblivion either. If Skadi or Lydia or any of them had their head torn off, they couldn't just put themselves back together like nothing happened. They'd be gone, and I had no idea how to get to Sovngarde.

  Knocking back another potion, it hit me as the comforting taste of blue raspberry and more danced across my tongue that I was just down to two as well. The joke was on me for thinking a dozen would be enough.

  At least it took more than a spell or two now for me to start hollowing myself out…

  In an effort to be more economical, I aimed low, taking their legs out from under them. They could still crawl using their arms or hitching a ride, but it slowed them down.

  "We're almost there," I heard. "I'll need to use the key."

  We soon entered something like a cathedral, the ceiling so high that the light from the torches couldn't even find it. The draugr poured in after us like a wave, hundreds upon hundreds of glowing eyes staring us down.

  A shield wall was formed as the thief got to work on the circular door. That's when I noticed something about the walls. They weren't walls.

  They were coffins. Thousands of them.

  The oppressive force returned, and a crack sounded high in the distance, and then another, and another, and another after that. It's fucking raining draugr.

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  They didn't even care that the fall broke their legs, those that then fell on top of them had a smoother landing, and those after them…

  Yeah, it was all kinds of fucked. And they were all headed in our direction.

  It all felt like something out of one of those zombie apocalypse movies. With maybe some black comedy thrown into the mix when said zombies started shouting what sounded like insults our way.

  They were a few seconds from smashing into the shield wall like a nightmarish freight train when the sound of moving stone to our backs saw the door sliding out of the way.

  "INSIDE!" someone yelled, and nobody had to be told a second time.

  There was just one problem. While the sliding door had come to life again, it was moving as slow as molasses, and the undead tsunami hadn't stopped.

  I acted quickly, throwing off my monster of a cloak so as not to burn it. An ungodly amount of magicka was already gathering around my hands again as I pushed my way through, sparking flames which compacted again and again and again and…

  The first few draugr that shamble-crawled through the opening were instantly turned to dust on the wind, and boy did it feel good to see. There was nothing I wanted more right now than to watch them all burn, even as my hands and some parts of my arms turned grotesquely black.

  And that was with my flesh turned to stone. How much heat did you even need to char stone black?

  I only found myself able to breathe again when the door had rolled all the way over and I stemmed the flow of magicka. I quickly downed another potion, the cracks that were beginning to show drowned out in a flood of blue raspberry. One left.

  There were cheers at my back as the shine in my hands peeled away the char. Lydia had retrieved my cloak as well, draping it over my shoulders.

  I felt like a hero now, but once I was out of potions, I might as well start singing hero to zero.

  At least the stone door seemed to be holding against the thousands of draugr still throwing themselves against the other side of it.

  "I'm going to have nightmares for weeks," Farkas grouched, drawing a few laughs. "You're on your own next time your big mouth gets you into trouble, Brother."

  Vilkas snorted, pointing ahead of him with his sword. "Look again."

  Treasure. Some of it even glinted in the sunlight streaming in from a few cracks in the walls.

  Skadi already had a head start on us, though she had ignored the treasure completely for the black wall at the center. The word wall.

  There was still one draugr left, but between all the Companions and Skadi, the poor guy would get dogpiled as soon as he popped out of his coffin.

  I was more worried about how we would get back out. Shaving some magicka off did at least reassure me that there was an exit leading out of here that didn't have us trying to somehow fight through the draugrlanche at our backs.

  Skadi was tracing her fingers over the symbols etched into the wall as I neared, in a similar trance as with Alduin earlier. "RAHGOL AHRK VULOM..." she whispered, though the words seemed to echo louder than they should have. "Rage… Darkness…"

  A sudden nauseous feeling swept over me as that oppressive force filled the room, and I knew where it was coming from. The extravagantly carved coffin was practically brimming with enchantment.

  A violent crack followed, and out of its ruins a hulking monster of a draugr stepped out. He was as tall as Skadi and armored head to toe in armor as black as the Ebony Blade, his cold blue eyes raking over everyone. For some reason they stopped on me.

  The Companions were already moving in when the guy drew in a breath with such force that the world creaked.

  "FUS…" Oh. "RO DAH."

  The last thing I saw before I found myself staring at my tower again was the sound of glass breaking like a techno beat as I was ragdolled a hundred different ways, nowhere to run from the sheer force thrown my way.

  I tried to force myself to return, but no luck. I only hoped it was because my body on Mundus was unconscious and not in several pieces.

  I wasn't sure what I should even do if the worst happened. Pick a fight with Akatosh?

  I left my tower to stare at the impossibly vast dragon curling around Mundus. Though for some reason said dragon seemed almost agitated, the once perfectly clockwork movements rushing and dragging.

  Maybe I should have asked Sanguine how the Daedric Princes sneaked inside instead.

  I was working up the courage to try my luck anyway when I felt the tower tugging me back, and there I found myself back on Mundus. I could tell because I felt like a train had just run me over, cracks and fissures showing all across my stony flesh.

  I focused on mending the worst of them with my shiny hands, at least until my vision had cleared enough that I noticed Lydia not far from me, blood pooling beneath her black hair.

  "Shit, shit, shit," I muttered, hauling my creaky limbs to her side. Touching my shiny hands to her head instead, it took an uncomfortably long time for the blood to even stop squirting out obscenely.

  It wasn't long until I was hollowing myself out, but I didn't see anyone looking my way anyway. Even Skadi was stuck desperately fending off the fucking undead monstrosity, her woad shimmering brilliantly. Neither her nor the Companions had even dented the thing's black armor.

  I also couldn't see Bright-Like-Dawn anywhere.

  "YOL." An inferno of flames sprung from the draugr's black lips, the shimmer in Skadi's woad growing dimmer for protecting her. Farkas's hair had caught fire in the meantime, though he barely even seemed to notice. Fucking crazy Nords.

  I needed to do something, but what? Downing my last potion only returned me from a creaky and hollow shell back to a man, and Lydia was still unconscious. I could call on my crime against nature, maybe, but this guy was worse than Anime Girl, and she took it out in one hit.

  Somehow throwing a rock at him didn't sound like a good idea either, and the ideas that followed were somehow even worse.

  There was a touch of thorns against my stony skin as I was circling the proverbial drain. Had Sanguine known?

  Was it even wise to trust a Daedric Prince?

  Well, I was out of options anyway. I would just have to trust in the power of friendship. And so, retrieving a rose all pink and red, I plucked a petal.

  It happened instantly. There was a rush of wind and a sensual chuckle as a seam tore open in reality, leading to Sanguine. From it stepped out an impossibly thin figure also smothered in black that towered over everyone there, Skadi and the monstrous draugr included.

  In their hands was a sword almost as tall as them completely covered in some kind of script.

  The Dremora, I assumed, gave me a smile, white paper-like skin crinkling unpleasantly. Then he faced the clusterfuck and laughed with childish glee.

  He took a step, and the next moment he was behind the undead monstrosity, the script on the sword burning as it carved through the black armor and came out the other side.

  The others tried to take advantage, probably thinking I summoned the Dremora, but the draugr shouted again. "TIID KLO!"

  Somehow seven feet of armored draugr turned into The Flash, disappearing and reappearing next to one of the chests, retrieving a monstrous hammer as black as his armor. Then he disappeared again, ignoring Skadi and the Companions completely as he and the Dremora smashed into one another, flitting in and out of my vision like two nightmarish blurs.

  Skadi still tried, but even as quickly as she could move, she might as well be a snail compared to those two. The Thu'um, I decided, was bullshit. And so were Daedra.

  I felt some relief when Lydia stirred slightly, her stormy gray eyes blinking open to meet mine. "Thane. Are you…" Her eyes turned to the whirlwind of metal meeting metal. "A Tongue…"

  Right. That was what they were called.

  "And a Daedra?" she questioned, her eyes soon finding the rose missing a petal still in my hand.

  "You have to fight bullshit with bullshit," I commented, but I don't think she got the turn of phrase.

  It was hard to tell who was winning. Honestly, it was hard to tell what was going on at all. It left everyone just watching awkwardly or nursing their injuries. Skadi just had the biggest pout that I found adorable even now.

  "It's good to let him out sometimes," Sanguine whispered into my ear. "He has a bad habit of murdering my guests when he grows too bored."

  The Daedric Prince was talking about the Dremora like he was a naughty puppy.

  The impromptu duel continued until it suddenly stopped, the two of them near the waterfall now. The Dremora's sword finally found purchase again, tearing through the Tongue's enchanted armor with the sound of steel on bone, almost bisecting him.

  I thought that was it when the Tongue gave a croaking, creaking laugh instead, his black lips parting as he seemed to swallow the air again. The shout that followed had the light fleeing the world.

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