Earwyrm

If the Aurbis is a Dream in the mind of God, then Akatosh is a niggling worry that just won't go away. If the Aurbis is Music, then Akatosh is an earworm, one of those annoying jingles that you just can't get out of your head.

Actually, it's worse than that. Mundus is a giant musical instrument, each Kalpa a separate tune, and Akatosh plays them all at once. The Godhead cannot hear itself think for the endless crashing discord of all that looped music. The Earwyrm is the Amaranth's total psychotic breakdown. Of course, a Deity's mental collapse can also be the natural habitat for many a mortal soul; it may not be the way things are supposed to be, but it's all most of us have ever known and we'd hate to see it change.

Change, however, may be in the offing. The Thalmor dream impossible dreams and one by one they are ticking-off items on a list. Deceive Mankar Camoran: check. Use Mehrunes Dagon to destroy the Septim Emperors: check. Engineer a civil war in Skyrim; check. Manipulate Snow-Throat to bring about the return of Aldun; check. Arrange that the final confrontation between the World-Eater and the Last Dragonborn should be in Sovngarde; check.

The final point is crucial. Without the Civil War to bloat Sovngarde with souls, the Prophecy would have found resolution inside Mundus. Inside Time all that could be done would be to banish Alduin and delay the Inevitable once again. In Sovngarde however it was possible to disrupt the Alduin Matrix as it applies to the Kalpa in question. There can be no further manifestations for the World-Eater. In that Kalpa, there is now no way for Time to end gracefully.

Now unconstrained, the Kalpa lurches forward like a wagon freewheeling down a steep, steep hill. Uncontrolled, it shoots on past the point of Convention and extends into areas of the Grey Maybe that are visited but rarely. Inside time, Age follows Age in unending progression, the beings that dwell within evolving ever more elaborate technical and social frameworks, rapidly becoming something that would be entirely incomprehensible to their Fourth Era forebears and continuing on with change fomenting change, until even distant Magnus can only shake his head in wonder.

Time is stretched ever thinner, trying to encompass such an unintended span. Eventually, the Dragon does not Break so much as Shatter Beyond Repair. Now instead of being recycled through the Closed Kalpic System, mortals are streaming out into Untime; the broken Kalpa has become a pipe spewing unprotected souls into toxic subjectivity. Some are promptly decreated by carrion numidia, others are snatched up by Talosian drones, each forcing their own temporal context, keeping the soul viable like a goldfish in a bowl until it can forced to confront the true nature of the Aurbis. Here and there the Jills perform a rescue, gathering loose mortality to be released at some other, more stable point on the Wheel, but the Jills are overstretched, weakened by the effort of supporting an overextended temporality, and there is only so much even they can do. And, of course, some souls are absorbed by predatory atemporalities, and some few thrive, becoming strange alien gods, cast adrift far from any possible worship.

From the Earwyrm's perspective this is an unmitigated disaster. If allowed to continue, Mundus will empty of souls and the AEpressure that keeps the Dreamsleeve inflated will drop until The Sleeve can no longer support Mundus and the Wheel will finally crash in on itself. Of course, this has already happened, was always going to happen and is still happening right now, so talking about it changing things is woefully imprecise. The most annoying thing, really, is that this is just the sort of flaw that should have been picked up by Quality Control before the Arena went live. Lorkhan might have pointed out that there are an infinite number of Kalpas to check and the flaw in this case was hidden by scollevent timeshimmer - he had an excuse for everything, that one. Still, there's nothing to be done by this stage, so probably it's just something that will have to be Put Up With.

Still, the Thalmor want to change what is Possible, and if Possibilities change, this broken Kalpa gives them something to change to. And maybe that's enough to give the Earwyrm some persistent nagging worries of his own...