Skooma Cat (TES V: Skyrim)

[Chairtastic]

Skyrim is such a serious game. Like, seriously serious. Uptight even. So here's a story to try and lighten it up. My goal here is to try and tell a spin on the 'modern person sent into Skyrim' genre, but also add much-needed humor, fun, and silliness to the material. Also yes, the main character is a Khajiit and the caravans feature heavily so if you don't like animal people, you've been warned. Because it is Skyrim, expect some detailed descriptions of violence, injuries, and other unpleasantness. Hope you enjoy!

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Summary: Mohamara was just a tojay Khajiit in Skyrim trying to make a living. He went to Temple every Sundas, he was going to college and worked hard to stay afloat. Never drank, never did drugs, didn't even go to any wild parties. Frankly, his life was all work and no play. Unfortunately for him, a mad Daedra decided he needed a vacation--from the Twenty-First Age to the Fourth.

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It was always refreshing to go to Temple. Father Lovian had a way of sermonizing that lifted the spirits, like a bath but for the soul--rendered clean. Mohamara hardly ever watched the Imperial man while the sermons were said, though occasionally the lights of his rainbow-colored robes were enticing. The Temple always had dust in the air, and it was always fascinating to watch the particles dance around the rays of light that filled the temple from on high. They sometimes made shapes similar to Daedric letters or animals, but you had to be looking closely to see them.

The potluck that happened after the final hymns were sung was the main draw for most people coming to Kilkreath--not the love of the Lady. It saddened Mohamara just a bit--the Lady would love them no matter why they came--but the people couldn't feel her love at all because they didn't love her back. Such was the case with Mohamara's Orc friend, Yagraz. Biggest Orc he'd ever seen, of either gender, and she could throw a punch that knocked people out of their shoes. Her favorite thing to eat at the potluck was, of course, Mohamara's fondue--made with imitation moon sugar.

She derived some sick pleasure from watching others watch her eat the cheese-covered bread that Mohamara couldn't understand. All she ended up doing was making a mess and having people leave her vicinity with red faces. So many people who came to Temple for the food seemed so angry with messy eating--Mohamara had to follow Yagraz around with napkins and insist she clean up regularly.

At least the Orc woman actually sang the hymns in the post-potluck sermons. It wasn't much, but in those moments could feel the light within Yagraz--and he knew the Lady was speaking to her in those times. Perhaps with a few years of going to Temple, she could feel the love as easily as Mohamara.

"Will you come with me to Temple again next week?" he asked her when they left Kilkreath to wait at the air ferry station for a ship heading south--Yagraz to brag to her sisters in Dushnik Yal about all the fancy food she got to eat, and Mohamara to attend his evening courses at the community college in Whiterun. The Orc woman purposely messed up his hair with a two-handed head ruffle, much to Mohamara's chagrin.

"Eh, I dunno short-stuff. You going to make more of that fancy cheese?"

Some of the passers-by in personal air-skiffs or walking on the elevated streets gave the two odd looks. It must have looked silly--an Orc woman in a Companions leather jacket, but otherwise dressed like a punk and sporting a mohawk tormenting a Khajiit literally half her size, who had a more hipster look. It wouldn't surprise Mohamara if someone assumed she was bullying him--some righteous people had tried to intervene before.

"Ack, leggo! I always make fondue for Temple--it's the only time I can afford eidar cheese." And it was something he knew Yagraz loved. He hoped that the love for the food would open her up to the love of the Lady. Malacath had made Yagraz strong, but he loved nobody--not even himself.

"Well fine--I'll come by next week for Temple. But only if you let me teach you how to throw a punch, hmm?"

Mohamara glared up at her through the Orc's hands and his own hair, not amused at all. "And give you a reason to hit me--I'm not stupid."

Yagraz shrugged and smirked to herself, then let the short cat go. He'd gotten used to fighting against her grip, so the sudden release sent him stumbling a bit.

"Please, you knowing how to fight or not, I couldn't hit ya--you'd break like glass." She took a seat on the ferry stop, which Mohamara did as well once he got up. The station, as was the case for air ferry stations, sported a vaguely Dwemer design. Markarth had changed a lot of the public utilities to their Dwemer-revival style once the stone city became the capital of Skyrim. Mohamara hadn't been there to see the change, but he'd heard from his elf professors about the cultural dominance Markarth had developed over the generations.

More than one such elven professor had outright banned slates from their lecture halls because they hated how students could fact-check their lectures in real time. If they'd just stop lying, the cat postulated, there wouldn't be a problem. And if they didn't know the latest material, what were they doing teaching? Mohamara believed it had to do with the inclination of elven scholars to develop a superiority complex.

"That should be the one," Yagraz pointed out, jarring the Khajiit out of his musings. The Dwemer-bronze airship, held aloft by a metal plated air envelope and driven forward by four sets of propellers, took a few minutes to line up with the station so passengers could load on and disembark. The tedious process of standing in line while their passes were scanned to allow them passage was only made better by the rain finally clearing up. And because the weather had improved, the ferry opened up the windows on the covered deck, allowing for a pleasant breeze while it disconnected from the station and started southward.

While Mohamara watched the tall buildings of Solitude fade away in the distance, he wondered if he'd ever be well off enough to afford living in Kilkreath. It was a hoity-toity neighborhood, lots of rich and fake-rich people. He only came there regularly because Kilkreath had the last temple to Meridia in Skyrim--Dawnguard had long since become a purely Stendarr venue. A degree in Mysticism didn't promise a well-paying career, but if he could get into an enchantment internship he could possibly get in on the work for new wayshrines.

"You always get so mopey after you go to Temple," his friend chided and shoved his shoulder a bit. Mohamara almost fell off his perch looking out the window and pushed her back when he was stable again.

"Well, in my religion going to Temple is supposed to be the highlight of the week. So, of course, I'm mopey. You always seem excited to go get the food."

The punk-fashioned Orc made a face and scoffed. This prompted Mohamara to thread his long ears through the gaps in his hood, pull it up, and go back to looking at the winged figure holding the faceted beacon aloft fade in the distance. "Because it's the best food you can get all week, short stuff." Though he couldn't see her due to the hood, he caught glimpses of her black mohawk moving around to indicate she was looking at him. "It's rich people food. Well, and that cheese stuff you make. But if singing songs and standing in a dusty temple while rich people glare at you all the time is the highlight of your week, you need to get better hobbies. Or a date. Or a date with better hobbies. Or take dating as a hobby."

"Yes, thank you, but I will not be doing any of those things." Mohamara's ears went flat against his hood while his tail began to swish in irritation. "I've already got too much coursework--I have to appeal my last test in inter-planar wishes, there are two papers due in introduction to omens, and--"

"And," she purposefully cut him off and started to rub his head again. "If you don't take a vacation or something, you're going to work yourself to death. How about in a couple days you come with me to hear the shaman talk about Malacath? See, when we worship our Daedra, it's a fun time."

A soft but noticeable 'harumph' caught the Khajiit and Orc's attention, prompting both to look at the source. An elderly Nord man, with a prominent amulet of Stendarr around his neck, glaring at them. The two friends teamed up to glare the old man down--Mohamara using the natural eyeshine produced by his face being shrouded by the hood, and Yagraz using her tusks in a threat display. It wasn't long before the old man broke the staring contest, and the two went back to their original positions.

"I'll go if the appeal goes well, and if your sister doesn't manhandle me again."

Yagraz had to force herself not to chuckle.

"Hey, I don't know how many tojay she's met who like that, but I don't care for being carted around like a big doll."

"Then you just need to stop being such a shorty and grow to a reasonable size. Oh no, attack of the tail waps! Whatever shall I do?" The Orc played up her reaction to being bapped repeatedly by Mohamara's tail when he started to thrash it about from annoyance. "Alright, I'll tell her to leave you alone. Just stick by me, and she won't get the chance to trap you in the realm of 'cute kitty'."

When the temple was fully out of view Mohamara turned around and sat in the seat properly. To distract him on the way to the Dushnikh Yal station, he pulled his slate out and clipped on the earrings before browsing for a song.

The time for Yagraz to leave came soon. After exchanging a promise to join her for attending a sermon about Malacath, she left with the vast majority of the ferry's passengers. Dushnikh Yal was a popular transfer stop, allowing people to swap to a ferry heading further east to Eastmarch, or west to the Reach. Mohamara stayed on the ferry as it started the route back to Whiterun and kept to himself while listening to music.

Until he got a call from a number he didn't know. The number vanished almost instantly, as his cipher put a name to the caller: CHEESE4EVERY1. Mohamara knew no one with that name and moved the slider to the red button, declining the call. But instead the call interface popped up over his music, and the caller's orange and purple icon started to blink in time with their words.

"Hello! How are ya?" A voice with an accent he couldn't quite place started off quickly. It was a man's, and seemed to be slightly withered with age but still energetic.

"Um, who--" Mohamara started before he decided not to bother and attempted to end the call. But the button to do so never seemed to register.

"Am I? Well, that's been a topic of debate for a while now actually. But you and I already know each other, lad." The voice went soft and ever so slightly menacing for the last few words. "I just came by to let you know: It's all sorted! I heard you need a vacation, so I decided to take you along with me on mine! We can talk, hang out, eat some clouds together. I'll be swinging by in a second, so be ready to go." The man spoke with such energy and swiftness that Mohamara wasn't able to get a word in edgewise before the call was ended. He had all of a second to blink before someone sat down uncomfortably close to him on the bench.

It was a Nordic man, paler than any he'd ever seen, with white hair and milky eyes. He wore a bizarre suit that seemed… fleshy, with deep patterns on a base of purple and orange fabrics split in half so he had two limbs of each color. "How ya doing, my boy? Meri-pants been treating you well? She's so temperamental with her mortals I half expected you to be a scorch mark when I got around to meeting ya." The Nord man spoke with the voice from the call, and this combined with his sudden appearance made Mohamara jump and almost drop his slate.

"Who in the Ashpit are you?"

The man squinted a bit at Mohamara's outraged tone, and a palpable sense of dread crept over the short Khajiit.

"Um, who are you… sir?"

That got the stranger to break out into a wide grin. "That's a good lad, minding your betters. And bettering your mind--a college boy I see." Somehow Mohamara's wallet had appeared in the man's hand, and after a hasty check of his jeans pockets the Khajiit confirmed it was definitely his. The stranger flipped it open and began to look through the credit slabs and identification cards. "Not on the cheer squad? Ah well, still time for that. Can't go wasting all that cute on books. Or screens, as the young people do."

"Um. Sir, please, give that--back?" Mohamara tried to snatch the wallet back from the Nord and found his hand gripped so tightly by the human that the pain took a second to register. The Nord man's expression didn't change, he just held Mohamara's hand away from the wallet while it was examined further.

"Oh, blood type blue. Must make you popular with vampires, eh lad? But I suppose you being with Meri-pants means you wouldn't want to be popular with vampires. Though they'd certainly want you to be popular with them!" He leaned in to whisper to Mohamara, who held his ears flat against his skull and tried not to think about how he could feel the two bones in his forearm grinding against one another. "Vampires are strange like that."

"Yes--sir, please…." Mohamara's arm was released, and once free he decided the insane Nord could keep the damn wallet and he tried to run. Tried being the key word there. He found himself held fast by his tail--the Nord not holding so tightly as he had the Khajiit's arm, but still strong enough to keep Mohamara from escaping.

"Now, now, don't be like that. This is a fun time! Vacation time!"

With a powerful yank, the Khajiit was pulled back to the seat and made to sit. The wallet vanished from the man's hand, though Mohamara was too afraid to go looking for it. He had started to piece together who the man was--the distinctive clothes, weird accent, and powers that would require significant effort for a mage all painted a bleak picture.

"Look at you, shaking like a leaf. Understandable, really. Meri-pants doesn't really teach her mortals to be able to work with Daedra, ya know? Makes for great surprises when they end up using the wrong fork at dinner and need to be eviscerated, eh?"

Numb, the Khajiit nodded and looked around for the other passengers. None of them even seemed to realize what was happening. Or if they had, they were ignoring the situation entirely.

"Well, go on isn't there something you should be saying since I'm taking you along on my vacation? Did your tongue stop working? Would you like a replacement?" Again, the madman edged onto a low, dangerous tone towards the end.

Mohamara made a low whine in his throat and shook his head no, but still didn't answer. The man was clearly a Daedra, and words could become dangerous with Daedra. Silence, also, could be dangerous but he hoped that silence would just bore the Daedra into leaving.

"How ungrateful! And I spent all these twelve seconds putting together this little get-together." The Daedra appearing as a Nord sighed, longsuffering. "Oh, I didn't expect to get into this little family dynamic right off. Exciting progress!"

The Daedra shifted emotional states so rapidly that Mohamara had to guess him to be a servant of the Mad God, Sanguine, or possibly Clavicus Vile. As he put the thought together, the Daedra seemed to laugh as if he'd heard the best joke in recorded history.

"Me? Serving old Clavicle? You mortals are too spoiled by how fun he is now. None of you even remember the rambunctious scamp he was oh… I think five thousand years ago? Time is so hard to keep track of--it keeps changing! And you mortals keep breaking Time anyway, so what's the point?" While Mohamara parsed that the Daedra could read his mind, the Daedra screwed his brow up in thought. "Well, I guess Alduin was the point? But he's not around anymore, so!" The Daedra released Mohamara's tail, and the Khajiit was about to make an attempt to escape when instead he found the Daedra's arm slung across his narrow shoulders and brought in for a side hug. "I think it's been made clear that you have no idea who I am, and I must say I'm rather insulted." Slowly the arm holding Mohamara began to squeeze like it had with his wrist earlier, only the crushing pain was gradual rather than sudden. "Here, this should clear things up."

A bill of paper money was held in front of Mohamara's eyes. Orange and purple, like the man's clothes, with an upside-down portrait of the man in the middle surrounded by Daerdric script. The concept of Daedra having money was lost on him when Mohamara read the name atop the portrait.

'Sheogorath'.

"Oh." Mohamara broke his silence, trying to make himself as small as possible when he realized exactly who had him in a side hug and was lowkey attempting to crush him.

"See that?" Sheogorath's voice was soft, almost pleasant. Almost. "That moment of dawning realization is one of the best things you can do with a mortal. Makes dealing with all the boring people so worth it."

While he couldn't get away, Mohamara could still move his arms a bit, so he reached up to his shirt and grabbed the amulet of Meridia underneath. A simple silver plated chain holding a faceted orb that shone from within with Meridia's light. Once he got a hold of it, Mohamara began to desperately pray for help. The odds were low that the Lady would deign to save one mortal that the Lord of Madness had ensnared, but still there.

Sheogorath found the whole thing hilarious and wiped a laughter tear from his eye before speaking again. "Oh, praying for Meri-pants to save you? Best joke I've heard in ages. Literally. Ages. And thank you for capitalizing my title there, that's far more respectful." The crushing stopped, but Sheogorath's grip did not relax. "Relax, mortal. I'm not going to be killing you. Yet." Again came the low tone with an edge of menace. "I'm just going to put you somewhere where you can relax, have some fun, maybe solve some problems."

Sheogorath made a sweeping motion with his arm before he screwed his face up in consideration. "Wait," he started, unsure. "I think I used the wrong word there. It's related to 'somewhere', but the wrong suffix."

Mohamara didn't stop praying even though, as Sheogorath kept talking, the inner light from the amulet signifying his connection to the Lady began to dim until it was a colorless crystal bauble.

"Anyway, I've been meaning to have this conversation with you for a while. But I haven't had the free time to come and visit--Uncle Jyggalag isn't going to needle himself, is he?!"

"You… honor me with your presence, Lord." His Lady was clearly in no position to help, even if she was so inclined. So Mohamara resorted to talking, in the hopes he could stay alive long enough for that to change.

"I do, don't I? Which is odd, given how disrespectful, ungrateful, and utterly boring you've been with me isn't it?" With each accusation, Sheogorath squeezed slightly tighter, until the poor Khajiit's spine started to pop as if it were being stretched. "Oh, you make music! Delightful."

The other passengers on the ferry were gone, Mohamara realized. Where they had been were now piles of empty clothing, holding the shape of people as if they'd merely gone invisible.

"But, I suppose that the point of this vacation is to fix these… deficiencies. I mean, you're what, twenty or so years old, and all you've done is work, work, work, work, and heap praise on old Meri-pants." Sheogorath paused, considering, and took his arm off of the Khajiit to scratch under his bearded chin.

"You sound like my friend, sir."

"I'm not sure how to take that. Comparison to a mortal is usually so insulting, but that Yagraz girl is just so endearingly detached from reality. Hmm. I'll decide to be neutral about it this time."

It took a moment for Mohamara to realize he was free before the Khajiit hastily turned, climbed out the window of the ferry, and jumped.

He realized how stupid this was the literal second he saw the ground hundreds of feet below him.

"Ha! I like the execution, but I doubt you'll like the end result." Sheogorath's voice spoke to him even as the ferry grew distant from the force of gravity. The wind whipping through Mohamara's ears did nothing to impede the Daedric Prince's words, which made Mohamara think they came from his mind. "An astute observation. Betcha wishing you had that kind of clarity about ten seconds ago?"

He should be screaming, Mohamara realized. It would be the natural thing to do. But knowing that at least Sheogorath had found him interesting enough to let die of natural causes was a relief. "Yeah, would've been nice." As he fell, he noticed some… peculiarities of the land below. It was rocky, which he only really saw in the Reach. And covered in grass, which he'd only ever seen in the lawns of rich people. Perhaps it was Sheogoath's influence, driving him to hallucinate. "At least the fall won't kill me."

"Aye, it'd be the right nasty splat at the end. Had that happen to me once, still stung a little. But! Meri-pants would be right miffed if I let you die too early, so I'm afraid I'll have to keep you alive. Now, don't let that get ya too hopeful, I'm still a bit sore about how ungrateful you've been. So I'm going to handle this… my way."

Deep below Mohamara, a Dunmer netch herder was learning an incredibly valuable lesson: Netch herding in Skyrim was an awful idea. As everything in Skyrim was fast and deadly enough to grab onto them and pull them out of the sky. The sheer degree of harassment the average netch got made its health deteriorate from stress alone.

There was also the fact that Skyrim's cold climate wasn't good for netches. And neither were Khajiit that randomly fell from the sky, pulverized betty netches on impact and ended up being bounced by the impact to land farther away than logic dictated should have been possible. The Khajiit falling onto his last betty wasn't the last of the poor netch herder's problems, as a pack of sabre cats had taken an interest in the distress of his netches. They didn't last long.

After bouncing away from his netch landing pad Mohamara found himself lying on his side, on a hill, unable to move, and in mild pain from the multiple impacts with the ground. To top it all off, he hadn't even escaped Sheogorath. The Mad God was crouched in front of him, holding his finger close enough to Mohamara's nose that he could no longer see it, but too far away to feel it.

"I'm not touching you," he would sing-song every minute or so while moving his hand and pointed finger around the Khajiit's face. "Not touchin' ya at all, lad."

All Mohamara could do was scream internally as the infernal Daedra played with the limits of his vision while he couldn't move.

"Now, let's have a good look at you while I wait for my luggage to fall off the ferry."

The Khajiit found himself in an all too familiar situation of being moved around like a doll while he was listless, unable to fight back. It was like every single time he interacted with Yagraz' sisters. "Well, you definitely got these lanky limbs from me. But you're just so cute --I could pinch your head off and make it into a doll."

Mohamara found himself holding his breath while the Mad God examined him like a new toy, speaking nonsensical things.

"Oh, you got those fluffy toe things from your mother! Those were just adorable." At some point, Sheogorath had deigned to remove the Khajiit's shoes for a look at his feet--for reasons said Khajiit refused to ponder. "Okay, I've seen enough to be able to tell you apart from other mortals. For a while. Since you want to go off on adventure on your own, I'll go take my vacation alone. Try not to get eaten alive before the paralysis wears off."

And like that, he was alone again. Mohamara didn't put much stock into much of what Sheogorath had said--it was likely purposefully misleading or designed to drive him mad if he thought about it too much. After all, only the Lady was kind enough to make her intentions and desires known plainly to mortals. Most other Daedra worshippers had to speculate as to what their gods wanted.

Over time, the paralysis effect from the netch's innards began to wear off. But during the wait, Mohamara had no choice but to look at the scenery. By how far away the mountains to the south were, he should have been lying in a Rorikstead suburb. Instead, there were plains. The only plains he'd seen were the lands set aside for the native giants to herd mammoths on--both were critically endangered species.

His tail was the first thing that became able to move, and it began to weakly flick about from his lingering irritation. That all stopped when his large ears picked up ever-so-soft footsteps approaching. Way too heavy to be a person. Too light to be a wild horse. A rumbling growl Mohamara could feel rattle his bones sounded from the approaching animal. He'd never heard the sound before, but it awoke in him the need to be quiet and not move. The paralysis helped him stay still, and play dead from the approaching animal. All he could do was hope it wasn't a scavenger.

Suddenly a pain in his tail shot up his spine, along with a sickening crunch. Mohamara had broken his thigh bone as a teenager, and the pain he experienced from his tail trumped that by several magnitudes of order. Even though he couldn't move his jaw yet, he cried out from the sharp agony. Actual crying occurred as well. These seemed to startle whatever creature had snuck up on him and sent it bounding off.

Every time his tail moved, it produced a new stabbing pain, so he stopped moving it. The paralysis worked its way out of his limbs first--starting with fingers and toes then moving inward. By the time Mohamara could move enough to get up from his prone position, he was starting to feel a chill. The reason why became clear--his tail was less than half the limb it used to be, ending in a bloody mess about a third of the way down. There was a lot of blood pooled around the wound. Thankfully, it was downhill from him so it hadn't gotten onto his clothes. Already they were stained and damp from the jelly of the netch he had landed on, but the paralysis effect seemed to be inactive.

With the limited self-healing he knew, Mohamara stopped the bleeding and mourned the loss of his tail. It was painful, and he hoped that whatever had bitten him choked to death on the tail, but not a terrible loss. Walking would be a pain, and his balance would be shot to hell, but a prescription of regeneration meds or an hour in a regenerator would see the tail restored.

Government provided healthcare was great for things like that.

Sure enough, when he got up to walk--after first putting his shoes back on--he was unsteady and stumbled often. "Damn animal, hope it gets rotten teeth," he muttered after tripping on the rocky plains for the twelfth time in a row. The only landmark he knew in the area was the mountains--directly north of Lake Ilinalta, where he hoped the town of Lakeview would be. "Okay, review what we know. Sheogorath is mad. And decided to fuck with me because he's mad. Jumped out of a moving ferry, almost fell to my death. Note to self: Don't do that again."

As he got over a hill, slowly and with many fumbles in the attempt, he saw a strange sight. A mammoth, huge wooly elephantine creature with two sets of tusks covered in wounds and looking to be on its last legs, surrounded by a few quadrupedal animals with thick yellow fur and pronounced fangs--sabre cats. He'd seen them in the Whiterun natural history museum… because the species native to the plains of Whiterun had gone extinct in the Tenth Era.

Which meant that Sheogorath had taken him on 'vacation' to Skyrim's ancient past. However, that was to be considered later, when he got far away from the predatory cat he had no idea the abilities of beyond taking down a mammoth in groups.

"Lake Ilinalta is to the south over those mountains… means I'm heading west. Oh Lady above, let this be a time after Dushnikh Yal exists." The traveling was getting worse, as he had to go uphill and climb over rocks, which his shot balance made for a stumbling, unpleasant affair. The situation was made all the more unpleasant when he started seeing a minor mountain range he had no memory of in the direction he planned to go, which meant going further south and closer to the not-so-extinct sabre cats.

The sight of another person, hopefully not a Daedra in disguise, got the Khajiit moving. In time, he could tell it was an Orc man, which made him hopeful that Dushnikh Yal was in fact in the area and he could make progress on escaping the Mad God's vacation.

The Orc man reeked of the smell of booze. Mohamara could tell the moment the wind shifted to put him downwind. Already, the Khajiit was leery of approaching further, but the Orc had started toward him by then. It became clearer that the man was armed, brandishing a spiked club of some sort--Mohamara didn't know weapons the way Yagraz did. Seeing a normal Orc always made him realize how much taller than average Yagraz was. She stood as tall as a High Elf, but the Orc man was easily half a head shorter than her.

"Hey… you, kid," the Orc declared once he and Mohamara were close enough for the Mer's liking. "Hand over your gold." A bandit, Mohamara realized after trying to parse why a set of leather armor such as the Orc was wearing was even considered acceptable. Yagraz would have torn into the design for how ineffective it was, but to Mohamara it just looked drafty, ugly, and unpleasant.

"I… have no gold?" The Khajiit held his jacket slightly tighter to himself while he tried to parse the Orc calling him a kid. It wasn't uncommon for people to see a tojay Khajiit and think them to be a cathay child, but the facial structure difference and fear of being racist usually kept them quiet about it.

"You look like a rich brat, cat, think I'm gonna," the Orc paused in his disbelief to force himself back from throwing up, and then spoke again. "You think I'm gonna buy that you ain't got gold?"

Mohamara shrugged, and turned out his pockets for the Orc, keeping his slate carefully hidden in the inner pocket of his jacket.

"See? No gold. Now can you just point me to Dushnikh Yal?" Without his wallet, he couldn't even have given the Orc paper currency, which he doubted had been invented yet.

The development of not having gold drove the Orc into a rage, prompting him to lunge forward to Mohamara's surprise. On a better day, he could have danced circles around a drunk of any race. But with his tail amputated and every leg movement producing stabbing pain, such was not the case.

The Orc's hand was easily big enough to wrap around Mohamara's entire neck, from jaw to clavicle, and almost lift him off the ground even when drunk. "So you ain't got gold, but I know a few rich man's kids that'd like them fancy clothes." The Khajiit's ears went flat against his head while he processed what the Orc was getting at, and regretted that he'd been declawed as a child.

Five minutes later, the Khajiit was on his way again, going purposefully as south as he could, in only his skivvies. Fortunately, there was little wind, so he was not constantly reminded of how cold it could be in Skyrim, even in the more pleasant regions. "Maybe Malacath will set trolls on him for robbing a 'kid'," the near-naked Mohamara muttered to himself while trying to avoid sharp rocks There were still no roads in sight, and he was almost glad for that. It wasn't going to be pleasant walking to civilization without clothes.

"One hour in the past, and already naked and missing my tail. Some 'vacation' Sheogo-rath!" Mohamara had, in another instance of talking to himself, taken his eyes off where he was walking to make air quotes and give the sky an unamused expression. And in that precise moment, he stepped into a bear trap, which snapped down around his leg.

The pain wasn't as bad as when his tail had been bitten off, nor as bad as when he'd broken his thigh bone, but it was still debilitating--and unlike the other two injuries it produced an alarming degree of blood loss. Every curse word Mohamara had ever heard in his entire life, and some he made up on the spot, was screamed at the top of his lungs in the immediate aftermath.

It was very clear from the first attempt at getting free that he was not strong enough to pry the fanged jaws of the trap open enough to escape. Thankfully, shock quickly set in and numbed the pain enough for him to examine the situation. "So this is how I die," he realized. "Not to a mad Daedra, or falling two hundred feet--but naked, in the wilderness, trapped like an animal." He stood there and realized another horrible fact to his horror that tipped the scales and drove him into full on crying while he slumped forward in defeat. "That screaming Dunmer witch in 7-H was right!"

The most he could do to actually do about the situation was attempt to keep himself alive with self-healing. But with him constantly bleeding from the bear trap, a novice spell wasn't going to cut it forever - and in his mind, it would just make it more likely that something would find him to eat him alive.

But the alternative was to do nothing. And if he died doing nothing to try and save himself, then what would his Lady say to him in her Colored Rooms? So, lamenting that he didn't study Restoration or Alteration more in secondary school, he kept up a consistent flow of weak healing into his injury.

Large Khajiit ears picked up the creaking of wheels and sound of horses not too far away. Mohamara had been near a road after all. He pondered the value of calling for help when he had no idea the time period or who the travelers were. Perhaps they'd help rather than laugh at his situation. But he had to consider: This was the Reach, unsafe even in Mohamara's time. Who would believe a voice calling out for help away from the road, when there were fucking bear traps potentially in the grass?

But if he didn't call for help, the alternative was to do nothing. He could recall a couple parables from growing up in the Kilkreath temple about the devout not accepting the Lady's help because they did not think she had sent any.

"H-hey! Help! Please, I'm stuck in a trap!" Mohamara heard no voices, call out, but the creaking of wagon wheels stopped, but the sound of horses continued. Whoever was on the road had definitely stopped, and in a moment he heard two sets of footsteps crunching on the grass.

Over the hill stepped two tall-legged people, and for the first time since falling out of the ferry, Mohamara felt relief. They were both Khajiit, a man, and woman. The man significantly older than the woman and dressed in fine quilted clothes. While the woman sported armor of steel and fur in equal measure. They were both easily two feet taller than Mohamara, and from their tufted ears and speckled furs, he guessed them to be cathay.

They did not approach quickly. Instead, they scanned the surroundings with keen eyes, ears, and better height before they advanced.

"Um. Hey! Thanks for not… shooting me?" Mohamara didn't see any arrows on them, but he couldn't ignore the possibility that the droopy-faced elder cathay was a mage who could have ice spiked him from a distance.

"A tojay? So far from Elsweyr?" The more brown-colored cathay woman asked the man in a hushed tone but was quickly shushed by the finely dressed Khajiit. She had a pronounced accent, Mohamara noticed but did not have time to speculate as the pain from his trapped leg began to steadily grow. The numbing effect of shock was about to pass.

"Ja'khajiit, this one thinks you require assistance." The cathay man stopped six feet away from Mohamara and the woman joined him in holding position. "You appear to be stuck in a Forsworn trap for wayward travelers."

"Y-yeah, and it… hurts about as much as it looks." Mohamara took a moment to slow down his breathing. Yagraz would have been chiding him over how little tolerance for pain Mohamara had but she wasn't there. None of this would have happened if she had been present. "H-help?"

The cathay watched Mohamara struggle to heal his injury, then looked around him again, before nodding to the armored woman. "Go get a blanket from the wagon, and tell Atahbah to get all the healing supplies no one's bought yet out." The armored Khajiit nodded and trotted off back down the hill, while the elder remained behind and cautiously approached. "The omen from Skooma Cat said we would find something interesting today, and here is a tojay far too far from home for this one's liking." Mohamara half expected him to crouch down to meet his gaze equally, but the cathay kept standing while talking. "I look forward to you telling this one why you are here, what happened to your clothes, and why you are missing your tail. But for now, Khajiit needs you to stop that healing, and get ready for when Khayla comes back to open the trap."

Hesitant to trust a stranger, even one who offered help, Mohamara stopped his healing and tried to stand up fully despite the pain in his legs and tail. "It's going to hurt even more once it's off, isn't it?" Without speaking, the elder Khajiit nodded, ponderously slow. Mohamara then rewrote history by being the first person to use an expletive that otherwise would not have been heard until the Eighth Era, in High Rock.

--

If you're curious, a tojay Khajiit resembles a cross between an African Wildcat and a Sand Cat. Long limbs, red backed ears, and stripes of the wildcat, and facial structure, fur color, and fur thickness of the Sand Cat.

 

[Chairtastic]

Chapter 2: Sleeping Tree Sap is Bad. M'kay?
---

Earlier Mohamara had been grateful that he hadn't been constantly reminded of how cold Skyrim could be. But as he stood with one leg in a bear trap, in just a pair of underwear, and missing his tail he began to rapidly realize the lack of warmth in his limbs. At some point, he had started shivering badly and probably had made his wound even worse.

The armored cathay woman, Khayla presumably, returned with a rolled up quilt not too long after leaving. Khayla passed the quilt to the cathay man and then crouched down around the bear trap holding Mohamara's leg to examine it.

"A lot of lost blood," she commented as she examined the trap. "And it likely broke his leg."

"Get the trap open already." The elder cathay unrolled the quilt and threw it over Mohamara, even including his head. Once the tojay couldn't see much of anything beyond quilted fabric, he felt the eldest Khajiit double the layers of the quilt by folding it over onto him. The blanket did little to combat the cold even when doubled up. "Ja'khajiit, when Khayla releases the trap, fall backward. This one will catch you. Walking on that leg is not an option."

Mohamara nodded because he couldn't keep his teeth from chattering enough due to shivers to talk. He could still feel the pain, both in his tail and in his leg, but the cold seemed so much more present. Under the blanket, he grabbed the edges of the quilt and wrapped them around himself even tighter.

The trap squeaked a bit as it opened up, and suddenly the strength that had allowed Mohamara to stand with it snapped onto his leg left him. Even if he hadn't intended to do as the cathay had said, the tojay ended up falling backward and being caught early on. The cold provided a sort of shield, it kept the pain from becoming as severe as it had when the trap first slammed shut on his leg. But in exchange, he was shivering constantly due to a cold that felt like he was naked in the Pale rather than somewhere in the Reach.

He was carried bridal style, and soon found himself placed onto a stiff surface on his side with the injured leg on top. Mohamara's ears and nose could pick up enough information to tell him that he was lying in the back of a wagon full of items and that there were two new Khajiit in proximity to him.

"Is so small," an unfamiliar male voice in the same accent as the other Khajiit commented from outside the wagon. "A ja'khajiit? From another caravan?"

"Worse," the eldest Khajiit responded, grave. "A tojay, outside Elsweyr." Sharp inhalations met his words, and the wagon shifted like someone was climbing up.

Hands moved aside the layers of quilt blocking his face and Mohamara found himself looking into the curious eye of another cathay woman. "It is true," she declared before shutting the blankets around his face again. "A tojay!"

Mohamara didn't get the significance, but he knew pretty much nothing about Khajiit culture. Perhaps tojay Khajiit were rare, or they had an important job in Elseweyr?

The cold was inescapable, especially after the blankets up to his waist had to be rolled away so his wounds could be inspected. The second cathay woman hissed, angry--probably at the sight of Mohamara's tail. "This is not good, we have no regeneration potions."

"Don't worry about that just yet. Get the wounds cleaned, bandaged, and a splint on that leg before he freezes to death." An additional weight landed on Mohamara, presumably another blanket.

The cold seemed to only worsen with every attempt to warm up, which made it difficult for the cathay woman helping Mohamara to examine and treat the injuries. "He is shaking too much--we need something to keep him still."

The tojay tried to force himself to be still, but the shivering persisted anyway. He wanted to apologize but ended up with a bit tongue when he attempted to do so. Once more, his face was uncovered, but this time he mostly saw a furred hand holding a purple bottle roughly the size of his head by a narrow neck.

"Ja'khajiit, open. This is strong medicine."

Mohamara forced himself to hold his mouth open while two drops of shimmering, viscous magenta liquid were dropped into it. The taste wasn't unpleasant, but it produced a burning sensation that spread outward from his throat and stomach after he'd swallowed it. Suddenly, his body was too heavy to shiver, though the burning negated the need for the heat generating movement. As he tried to process what the 'medicine' was, he noticed that everything was turning purple--the blankets, the small portion of the wagon he could see and even the cathay woman.

But he didn't have long to process this development, as his face was covered up by blankets yet again. The dark mixed with the purple hue and soon the two combined into a purple-tinged black void.

At some point, he had closed his eyes and not realized, for when he opened them up he was not in a wagon. He was on a dune of white sand, overlooking many such dunes as far as his eyes could see, with four sharply rising gray mountains in the cardinal directions. The sky was a lighter blue than it should have been, with no clouds and with two additional stars in the daytime sky alongside the expected one. They were orange and purple, which got Mohamara to squint in exasperation.

"Can't even let me have my fever dreams, can you?" As if in response to his question, the two new stars started to grow larger. Significantly larger, and it was a second before he realized they were going to crash into the white desert. Mohamara promptly turned around and started to climb further up the sand dune, but once he disturbed the sand it started to slide downward.

After a brief struggle against gravity, he found himself half-buried in white sand at the base of the dune. A monumental crash indicated that something had landed, which made the Khajiit look up from trying to dig out.

It was a grape cluster, enormous in scope. Each grape on the cluster was bigger than the statue of Azura in Winterhold, which in turn made the whole cluster almost the size of the Throat of the World. A second crash drew his attention again, and sure enough, it too was a fruit. A cross-section of an orange, equal in height to the grape cluster.

"Yagraz would have so much to say about me dreaming of fruit." With no longer any pressing matter that he could think of, he started to dig his way out of the sand. Except, it wasn't sand at all. The grains weren't the right shape to be sand--sand was round, but the grains he was seeing were square. On impulse, he pinched some and put it in his mouth and found it to be incredibly sweet. "Sugar? A desert full of sugar?" The Khajiit paused to think about what he had just said. "A desert dessert?"

He only noticed the sudden appearance of a foamy white liquid in hindsight, and soon saw an enormous pillar of the liquid flowing from the sky--directly from where Meridia's star should have been. Again, on impulse, he tasted some when he could reach it and found that it was clearly milk.

"Sugar, fruit, milk…what the--" He didn't get to finish the sentence as the four mountains in the distance began to move as the milk levels rose to cover the last sugar dune--Mohamara's sugar dune.

He woke up craving a grape and orange smoothie.

The cold wasn't so bad, but Mohamara couldn't remember why it had been bad at first. It was summer, wasn't it? And he'd paid his heating bill on time, hadn't he? A stabbing pain in his leg and tail as he tried to roll over onto his back brought at least some of the memory back. But he couldn't recall how he'd gotten out of the bear trap, or where he was now.

"Ja'khajiit," an elderly man's voice called from outside his blanket coccoon. "Do not be moving so much, you will start bleeding again."

That only made Mohamara want to move more because apparently, he'd been bleeding. It took him far too long to muster the strength to even lift his hand, he'd forgotten why he was so desperate to move.

"Just a few more days of travel to Markarth, ja'khajiit, then we will try to get a healer for you." Oh great, he was going to the hospital in Markarth.

"My insurance doesn't work at Markarth Memorial though," the tojay complained. However, as he finished saying that he struggled to remember why he wasn't in an ambulance if he needed a healer. "I don't feel well, but don't have that kind of money." With the Gildegreen Hospital in Whiterun closed due to a fire, the more expensive hospitals in Markarth, Winterhold, and Eastmarch had all taken the time to raise their prices. As Mohamara began to think of hospital bills, he forgot why he needed to go to the hospital in the first place.

"Atahbah, the sap's wearing off. Another dose when you move him next."

Mohamara tried to move several more times, but he was so lethargic that the most he could do was speak or move his fingers. After a time, exhaustion forced him into a dreamless sleep.

A sudden shaking motion woke him up, apparently at night for the sky was dark. The layers of blankets around him were pulled away so that his head and shoulders were revealed. A sudden wave of bitter cold hit him, and Mohamara tried to grab the blankets back but his arm wouldn't move. A cathay Khajiit man, his hair in braided rows and his mustache sporting gold rings picked Mohamara up and moved him around until the tojay was sitting upright at the edge of a wagon. Outside, a gathering of four dour-looking men, mostly tan-skinned Imperial humans. They wore leather armor that seemed to incorporate skirts and had some form of weapon visibly on their person. Some held torches, while two held a bruised and battered Orc between them.

"This is the one he stole from," the cathay man said, hissing in anger. "Cut off his tail, then shoved him into a bear trap!"

"N-no!" The Orc sputtered through his busted tusks. "His tail'd been cut off when I found him, I swear!" He was elbowed in the side, which drove him to cough for a few minutes.

"You're a sick bastard, you know that?" The Imperial man who had elbowed him all but snarled at the Orc, a hateful expression on his face. "First you maim and rob a child, then you lie to my face and think I'll believe it!!"

"Control yourself, Auxiliary." A fifth Imperial man appeared from around the wagon, dressed in heavy metal armor similar to the other Imperial's leathers. Beside him was a far older cathay Khajiit holding a bundle of clothes in his arms. "The man's bound for Cidhna Mine already, don't beat him too badly or he won't be able to work."

"This one thanks you, Quaestor." The eldest Khajiit spoke before laying the bundle of clothes next to Mohamara. "We did not expect to have grandson's stolen items returned to us."

"It was pure luck that allowed us to catch this thief. But that writ I gave you should let you get medical treatment at any Legion camp if Markarth won't let you get a healer. Safe travels, citizens." The Imperials and their Orc prisoner went off into the night, with only their torches to indicate they still existed after a while.

"We're sure they're his clothes?" The first cathay, with the fancy hair, asked of the elder. At some point during the discussion with the Imperials, Mohamara had taken to leaning on the taller Khajiit's shoulder. He still couldn't move very well.

"He's got witbane, doesn't mean he can't speak," the elder Khajiit snapped and started unfolding the bundle of clothes next to Mohamara for the tojay's inspection. "They are yours?"

He didn't know what had caused them to be so badly stained with light-blue patches, but Mohamara nodded.

"And this?" From inside his jacket, a rectangular slab about the size of a book but far thinner was produced.

"'S my slate," to tojay said. He wasn't tired but couldn't muster the strength to move about; speaking was difficult with his energy constraints as well. And as he looked from the slate to the old Khajiit, he found he'd forgotten how he came to be seated at the end of a wagon.

"For drawing? Hmm, perhaps an artist then." The slate was wrapped up in Mohamara's jacket and set aside in the wagon. "Khajiit apologizes for likening you to a kitten, ja'khajiit, but the Men would only believe it that way."

"Racists."

The cathay Mohamara was leaning on chuckled as he lifted the tojay back up to go to his sleeping spot. Mohamara had no idea how he knew where his sleeping spot was but didn't get to ponder it for long. The cathay man uncorked a huge purple bottle and held it up for Mohamara to drink from. "Not too much, small one."

The taste was… like grapes and oranges, Mohamara realized. Somehow he felt like that should have been important, but it didn't.

He dreamed of the jungle, though he had never seen the jungle. Thus the trees stopped existing if he looked directly at them. So most of the time he looked at the yellow grass of Whiterun's plains in between the jungle trees--because it made perfect sense for a jungle to have grass.

Mohamara was being hunted by a giant snake with three heads. One head had orange scales and was filled with light so bright it threatened to set itself on fire. The other had purple scales and snapped at anything and everything it saw--even if there was nothing there. The tail had a third head of golden scales that Mohamara expected to help him, but every time he called out to her, she looked away.

The snake sang a bizarre song as it chased after him, as it phased through trees that stopped existing for brief moments. He'd thought this would make it easy to get away from, but sometimes it would pop up directly in his path and force him backward. The snake, particularly the purple head, snapped at him often and almost caught him by the tail more than once.

But usually, he could escape enough to find the tail head, and beg her for help. And every time, she would turn her head away. This song and dance persisted until Mohamara was fed up, and he lept at her to force her to help. The gold-scaled tail-head snatched him out of the air and devoured him whole.

And Mohamara woke up to find a Nord man with milky white eyes peeking in on him from outside the wagon. The two stared at each other before the Nord man carefully backed away and vanished.

"Ah, good, the sap has worn off." A voice with a peculiar accent spoke from outside the wagon.

Mohamara tried to sit up to look for it but found that his leg produced a searing pain when moved too much.

"The witbane will keep you from being able to remember, but your leg is broken. No moving around until Ri'saad comes back with a healer." A cathay man crouch-walked into the wagon. His strange braided hair and gold-adorned mustache made him seem familiar, but Mohamara couldn't place him. His clothes were odd, layers of fabric topped with a leather jerkin--something Mohamara would expect from an old-fashioned elf, not a Khajiit.

Mohamara tried to sit up, but a stabbing pain in his leg made him think that wasn't a good idea. When had he hurt his leg? When had he gotten into an actual wooden wagon? Where in the seventeen Daedric realms of Oblivion were his trousers?! All these questions and more raced through his mind.

"Here, water." A wooden cup of the indicated liquid was offered, and Mohamara accepted. "Ri'saad will be able to get you a potion for the witbane at least, but it'll taste awful."

The cup was taken, and Mohamara sipped as much as he could while laying on his side. The water… tasted funny? Like the pipes the cathay had gotten it from were bad. Still, it was not bad tasting water, and he needed to be ready for whatever he was about to get that tasted bad.

When he looked up, he was surprised to find a cathay man crouched in the wagon, as if he had always been there. The taller Khajiit's expression was pitying mixed with something else, but Mohamara couldn't identify it. "Um. Who are you?"

The cathay man smiled, indulgent. "You know, you've asked me that often over the past ten days."

"Ten days?" The last thing Mohamara could remember before going to sleep was coming back from Temple and--... The cup fell limp from Mohamara's hand, creating a mess that the cathay hurried to clean up. "I've missed Temple!" Pain in his leg didn't matter anymore, the strange man who had appeared from nowhere making a fuss didn't matter anymore. Mohamara hastily tried to get free of the blanket cocoon. He had to get out!

"Khayla, need help back here!"

A cathay woman in a suit of steel armor that featured Nord designs appeared at the end of the wagon as Mohamara decided that he couldn't trust a leg that stabbed him every time he tried to stand. She caught the tojay as he tried to lunge free of the wagon, and pushed him back in with ease.

Missing Temple was unacceptable! He'd never missed Temple! It was the only part of his life that made him unambiguously happy--he built his whole week around it, and his faith had been rewarded in the past. When he'd been brought back from his first foster family, the Lady herself gave him an audience--he'd been permitted to ask one question of Her.

'Is it wrong that I still love them?'

The question had taken a surprisingly long time for the Daedric Prince to answer, but her answer had cemented in him her divinity. It had done more to convince him the Meridia loved him, and that by going to Temple he could show her that he loved her back.

The armored woman had no difficulty pushing Mohamara back into the wagon, where a cathay man who Mohamara didn't recall being there grabbed him by his jaw and forced a purple potion bottle into his mouth.

"Wait, that's too much!" The armored woman shouted to the cathay man as Mohamara swallowed one, two, three full mouthfuls of the strange grape and orange flavored sap the bottle had held.

Everything turned shades of purple, the forms of the cathay Khajiit that surrounded him twisted and stretched, and the sound of a deep drum beat filled the air.

Mohamara watched as lines of tojay Khajiit walked through a hall of curved stone, bronze-picks slung over their shoulders. They marched in perfect synch, even when they had to walk straight up a wall, across the ceiling, or upon individual rocks falling from high above to cross a cavern. As he watched them, the drums grew more noticeable, until a horn sounded. At the horn, the tojay Khajiit all broke from their line and began to mine--into walls, doorways, each other, or the thin air.

Someone was singing a song, but Mohamara couldn't place who, or where. He also couldn't place where he was, or who he was. He was the pickaxes being swung, he was the tojay swinging them, he was nothing at all. Everything was still so maddeningly purple.

As he watched, the tojay began to grow larger--to the size of Men and Mer. Their fur left their bodies and collected around their heads, in great beards and manes of hair bound up in bronze-like metal.

The sensation of water surrounding him caused him to shake violently out of the dream, and realize where he was. Even as he woke, the song he'd heard in the dream stuck in his head, like an ear snake--coiled around his brain, not letting go.

He actually was in a basin of water, in a stone room that took after Dwemer designs but was clearly too young to actually be Dwemer in origin. Thankfully there was a slightly moth-eaten curtain because as Mohamara took greater stock of the situation he found that his clothes were gone. A nearby chair with a towel and corked bottles made him think that he'd been purposefully placed there.

"From the splashing, I'm hearing in there, I'll guess you're awake at last." A woman's voice called from beyond the curtain, which made Mohamara's ears droop. Someone had seen him like this. "Mind your leg injury when you bathe, the break's healed but we've left bandages on it until the scars close up. Don't take off the ring."

Mohamara noticed a gold band on his finger and had been about to take it off when the woman's voice told him not to. There was some magicka flowing from the ring into him, and his instinct had been to remove the possibly cursed item. Thankfully, the enchanting course he'd taken let him identify the magicka as a weak regeneration effect.

"Get to bathing in there. The Jarl is going to be uppity enough about Khajiit in his city--no need to make it worse by smelling bad."

One of the corked bottles produced bubbles when mixed with the water, which made it much easier for Mohamara to feel safe in the curtained room.

His mind was… foggy, like he'd taken really strong medications and was out of it for days. During the bath, he put together a rough idea of what had happened. One, the Mad God had shown up and taken a personal interest in his life. Two, that interest manifested itself in sending him back to an unknown time before the Tenth Era.

"Um." Mohamara started after realizing he should narrow that down some more. "Could you perchance tell me the year?"

"Two-hundred and one of the Fourth Age. Don't worry, we get asked those sort of questions all the time by people who come down from bad drinking parties and the like."

"Oh… thank you." Mohamara knew next to nothing about the Fourth Era. The last time his school teachers had taught history that ancient, the Khajiit had been six years old. Really, why would he have learned something that was sixteen thousand years ago, with multiple Dragon Breaks in the intervening time?

"When you're done, there are some clothes for you here. Your friends in the caravan sent them up for you since they couldn't come in the city walls."

When Mohamara found the clothes, he was amazed by how far fabric technology had come in sixteen thousand years. What he was given was a rough-around-the-edges green robe, child-sized, with an attached hood and stole. Why the stole had to be sewn onto the robe, he had no idea. And to his surprise, he found his shoes provided as well. Had the cathay found the Orc who'd robbed him?

He didn't know about cathay, but he knew cathay-raht to be the premier warrior morph of the Khajiit species. Morph was almost certainly not the proper word, but Mohamara had only spoken to other Khajiit raised as he was--in the foster care system.

The leg that had been trapped in a bear trap was… noticeably weaker than it had been previously. Every so often, it would give out and he'd have to grab onto a wall or a piece of furniture to remain standing. And even when it worked, he found himself unconsciously limping on that side.

But! His leg wasn't broken, he wasn't freezing any longer, and things were starting to look up in terms of his situation.

The only problem that he had no idea how to deal with at all was that the song from his fever dream was still stuck in his head.

---
Mohamara's part of a sect of Meridia's faith that believes Meridia and Magnus to be the same entity, hence her being referred to a the main star of the day. That should make later parts of the story fun, and hopefully funny.

Also, don't you hate ear-snakes?

 

[Chairtastic]

If what I say in reference to modern Tamriel doesn't make sense, tell me. I try to leave context clues, but sometimes it might not be clear enough.

---

Chapter 3: Happy Birthday~

When Mohamara saw Markarth, it seemed… impossible that the city he'd known would grow from such a place. The only feature he recognized was Understone Keep, where the Jarl lived and lorded over his people. But even that was so very wrong to his eyes. The Keep looked like it was a Dwemer ruin that the Jarl happened to be squatting in--the whole city appeared like that--and not at all the refined place of ruthless efficiency he'd come to expect of the 'safest place in the Reach'.

"You look confused."

From the temple of Dibella--Aedric Goddess of Sex, Drugs, and Rock n' Roll--a priestess had been asked to escort Mohamara back to the caravan. Partly to make sure he wouldn't steal from anyone--a racist stereotype he couldn't get mad at given the time period--and because there weren't any canes or crutches in his size. She was Senna, a Breton woman--tan-skinned like an Imperial but her skull structure was what gave her away. Her outfit was pretty much the same as Mohamara's, a rough robe with a hood and stole sewed on, but hers were yellow-orange. And while it was clear she did honestly hold the 'Khajiit are thieves' view from how she kept special attention to where Mohamara placed his hands, she never hesitated to help him when his leg gave out during the long climb down the stairs leading up to the temple.

"Markarth is not… how I remembered it being." Mohamara answered her question disguised as a statement. "Everything has changed so much."

"I wonder what Markarth you saw last that it seems so different." Senna glared at a Markarth Guardsman, dressed in green brigandine armor with a shield sporting the Markarth emblem and face hidden behind a conical helmet. "Markarth has been this way for as long as I've lived here."

"When I last saw it, the city was…." He was going to say 'bigger', 'grander', or 'cleaner' but all of those would probably have been insulting. Though they were completely true. "Fuller? There were a lot more people, is what I mean."

The answer seemed to sober Senna up--her expression became sadder, and her eyes distant. "I'm sorry, I didn't think about what effect having so many people gone could have."

Mohamara's lack of knowledge about the Fourth Era meant he had no idea why he'd accidentally hit the nail on the head with Senna, so an investigation was required. "What happened here?"

"The war, and the Forsworn." Senna led the way down narrow walkways along the butte at the apex of which sat the temple of Dibella. The city itself seemed to lie in the gulf between the butte and the mountain walls, forming a massive horseshoe shape. Only a few wealthy homes were built into the mountains themselves. And at the 'tips' of the horseshoe lay the marketplace, right against the city's curtain wall and main gate. "Markarth sent many sons and daughters to fight the Aldmeri Dominion, more than any other hold save perhaps Dawnstar. Which in turn led to the Forsworn being able to take the city, and kill more people. Taking the city back didn't lead to a high loss of life, thank the Goddess, but we've been losing people to Forsworn attacks for decades now."

There was something in how she said it, how raw the hurt was, that made Mohamara wish he knew her better to give her a cooldown hug. "I… I didn't know. I'm sorry."

"It's not you that should be sorry, you didn't kill anyone or start the war. But thank you." At first, she had snapped at him but forced her tone to soften before offering her thanks. "Dibella teaches us to find beauty in all things, but I can find none in this pain."

"My Lady teaches that the pain you're feeling right now is the happiness you had before."

Senna actually stopped to look down at Mohamara, incredulous. The Khajiit sighed and leaned against a wall so his bad leg couldn't give him problems.

"Happiness easily becomes pain, that's part of the deal. It's most visible with love that becomes virulent hatred when betrayed. It's a form of self-blame; 'how could I trust them?' or 'why couldn't I do more?' The pain you're feeling is natural, and will pass. But if you cling to it, it will twist you up inside--like a hagraven." Mohamara wished he had a talent with illusions--the priests of Meridia would weave illusions into their one-on-one sermons to give the person images to convey the idea easier. "If you trust in love, romantic love or the passion Dibella teaches, you'll find a cure for your pain. I don't mean to belittle your suffering, but it's clear that what you've heard already didn't help."

Senna watched the Khajiit, unblinking, for a moment before a wry smile spread across her face. "A Lady who teaches to trust in love, huh? I should have figured it out when I heard your name, Moha-Mara. I didn't expect a Khajiit to worship a Divine, but then you're not an average caravaning cat, huh?"

He felt no need to correct her, Daedra worship wouldn't become legal until the Seventh Era--and then only for certain Daedra. If she knew the truth, she could hand him over to Vigilants of Stendaar--god of 'mercy'--who would gleefully beat him to death. Even in his own time, it wasn't too long ago that the white-hooded Vigilants would raid Daedric places of worship and leave them hanging from the nearest tree.

"I… had forgotten that Dibella is not just beauty, that she is love too. Perhaps I've been neglecting the sacred rites if such a crucial thing slipped my mind. Thank you again."

With their little pow-wow done, Senna led the way down to the marketplace, past the silversmiths and the single bloodiest butcher Mohamara had ever seen--he'd brandished a cleaver when the Khajiit looked at the chicken necks he was selling too long. From there, it was out the enormous Dwemer-metal gates.

The city of Markarth had passable external defenses if Mohamara remembered Yagraz' rants about the lack of 'real' castles in Skyrim the semester before last. Outside the curtain wall was a winding path that went down in elevation, intended for the defenders to cast down rocks and arrows on invaders.

The invention of the airship, which Mohamara vaguely recalled happening somewhere in the late Fourth Age, would see all the work put into these ground defenses worthless. Also: Dragons were a thing.

Mohamara remembered attending a guest lecture where a dragon was speaking. It seemed so strange at the time for a dragon to talk about the real-world applications of Mysticism in fields such as agriculture, textile production, and tax evasion.

The best part of the lecture had been when the Imperial Revenue Service busted in and tried to arrest the dragon.

At the base of Markarth's winding path was a three-way intersection of the road. Along one branch were wagons set up like impromptu stores, tended by cathay Khajiit while Nords and Bretons hastened to purchase the goods.

A cathay woman in a dress many shades of blue with a leather apron approached Mohamara and Senna as they drew near. "Ja'khajiit, it is good to see you walking." She nodded to Senna and quickly offered thanks to the temple before the Breton woman departed. "You might not remember me well, but I am Atahbah. I tended you while you were sick and injured on the road."

"Hello, and thank you for that. I'm Mohamara." He held his hand out to shake hers, which visibly confused the cathay woman to the point he lowered it. "I did something wrong, didn't I?"

"Khajiit do not shake hands, little one. That is for the Nords. This one is also confused… you speak like a Nord, but with Khajiit voice. We had hoped it was just the sickness." She shrugged and looked over her shoulder to the customers attending the wagons. "Ri'saad wants you away from the customers until we know what to do with you. You do not mind staying in a wagon until the customers leave, yes?"

"Um. Okay?"

Atahbah led the tojay to a wagon behind the others, where huge bundles of cloth with sticks sometimes affixed within them lay. "Here we keep the tents until we ready to set up. So many customers today, we had no time. It is a very good omen." Atahbah helped Mohamara into the wagon, and over a tent, until he was in between two folded up tents.

The customers did not linger terribly long. But Mohamara passed the time by watching the dust filter in through the sides of the wagon and dance in the shafts of light from above. The shapes he saw in the dust were of strange plants covered in tiny spikes, winding rivers, and vaguely cat-like faces. Once the last customer had gotten the wares and paid the coin, other cathay came to the tent wagon to begin unloading it. Once free, Mohamara awkwardly stood to the side and waited for someone to tell him what to do to help.

But they didn't. They usually just glanced at him, and went about their work, usually with their tails slowly moving behind them--they were confused. The exception was an elderly cathay man in fine quilted clothes around whom the others moved. "This one is Ri'saad." He introduced himself, with his tail more up than any other cathay in the caravan, and his ears forward. "Khajiit welcomes you to the caravan, all official-like."

"Hi. I'm Mohamara." The lack of tail meant that Mohamara couldn't convey how anxious he was feeling. Putting his ears down would be way too aggressive. "Thank you and your… employees? For helping out. What can I do to start paying you back?"

Ri'saad's ears went more into a neutral position, though his face remained ever droopy. "You speak like a Nord. It does not bode well for the questions I will be asking you. Come." A sizable domed tent of quilted blue fabric, like Ri'saad's clothes, was where he led Mohamara. Containers lined the walls, along with a considerable circular rug at the threshold. Ri'saad sat with practiced ease, despite his age, and indicated Mohamara to sit opposite him.

"This one has questions for you, ja'khajiit. The answers will tell us how you may pay back the kindnesses we have done for you until a caravan from the homeland can take you south." Ri'saad paused the conversation to bark an order to one of his cathay caravaneers when they nearly dropped a crate. "Ah, my kindness will be the death of me. But now. First question."

Mohamara sat a little straighter and tried to pretend it was a job interview. Perhaps it was. But he was going to do his absolute best to-... wait, he'd heard something about a caravan going south?

"Why are you, a tojay, out of the homeland with no escort?"

The question seemed important to Ri'saad, and to the other cathay as they slowed their work to listen in. And Mohamara got the distinct impression that the truth was not going to go well with them.

"I was born and raised here." Mohamara didn't flinch as Ri'saad's eyes became narrow slits in his otherwise droopy face. "Well, here, but not here? I… will be born here?" Though he didn't shy away from the elder's gaze, he couldn't help but make an unsure expression as he spoke. "I'm… from here, but far far in the future. Somewhere in the ballpark of sixteen thousand years?"

"That is a considerable distance for the Dragon to be broken." Ri'saad's slit-eyes didn't change, and his tail began to spasm and thump on the ground. "This one was about to ask how you came to be here, but the question is already answered. Skooma Cat gave the omen to find you, likely he brought you as well."

"Um, I don't know who Skooma Cat is?"

Ri'saad flippantly gestured. "Unimportant. So in the distant future, you are born in Skyrim. Why then, did your mother not take you to the homeland?"

"Well," Mohamara shrugged. "Because she was dead. Dad was a deadbeat who ran off on her, she went into labor early, and I survived where she didn't. The cops found my dad, shoved me off on him, and he then shoved me off on the temple in Kilkreath." He had no emotional investment in either of his parents, so detailing the little he did know was quick and concise.

"You have my condolences." Ri'saad's tail continued to thrash about but he closed his eyes to pinch the bridge of his nose. "In Elsweyr, the tojay and tojay-raht Khajiit live in the Tenmar Forest. There they collect starlight to use for making moon sugar. Only they are permitted to become Moon Bishops, who study the stars and the moons to guide the Khajiit as spiritual leaders--only the Clan Mothers and Mane are more holy."

"Well, that's awkward." Mohamara gave a weak fake-laugh and directed his gaze downward. The next tidbit of information was likely to incense the elder Khajiit more--but after already helping him, he hoped Ri'saad would understand. "I've… never even had real moon sugar."

Ri'saad sharply drew in a breath. From the rest of the caravan, Mohamara heard much the same reaction and heard one woman say she wasn't going to share her ration.

"What do you mean 'real' moon sugar?"

"Well…." Mohamara shrugged, and hesitantly looked up. Ri'saad's tail was dancing around like a headless snake, with his ears flat against his head. "Sometime in the future, imitation moon sugar is invented. It's mainly for other races, to get the sweetness without the psychoactive effects."

Ri'saad stared, unblinking before he sighed and his tail ceased thrashing--when he spoke, it was in a defeated tone. "That sounds like an excellent product to sell. Do you happen to know how it's made?" The elder Khajiit seemed to have moved past the seething rage he'd felt earlier, but Mohamara knew better than to trust that.

Meridia did things like that, make it seem like she was no longer angry with you then exact punishment when you weren't prepared for it.

"It's made from boiling the juice of a type of root vegetable in northern Elsweyr, I think? All the labels for imitation moon sugar have it somewhere in their design. Sort of a tear-drop shaped thing, red but with a pink tip?"

Ri'saad nodded. "This one knows that vegetable, and will spread the word to the clans in the desert." The elder looked away, toward the caravaneers. They mostly seemed done setting up their tents and their wares. Currently, a cathay man with braided hair was working on making a fire while others tended the horses that drew the wagons. "The others will have questions for you--expected after spending ten days with you in the wagon speaking madness."

That thought made Mohamara's stomach feel like it was full of stones. He'd been talking, and couldn't remember what he'd said due to whatever drug they'd had him on. But since none of the cathay caravaneers were coming to ask questions yet, Mohamara turned and asked one of Ri'saad.

"You said something about sending me down south. I know you mean well, but Skyrim's my home. Don't suppose I can convince you to let me stay on?"

Ri'saad's droopy face went lopsided from him arching a brow in a dangerous curve. "Ja'khajiit, Skyrim is dangerous enough for those of us who can defend ourselves. A little tojay like you, who can't even stop a robbery? Your being here places both yourself and us in danger--even Atahbah knows how to defend herself where you clearly do not."

The irony of Mohamara refusing to learn how to fight shortly before being sent back into a world where he needed to know how to fight was not lost on him. And as his ears went flat with the realization, he pondered if it was why Sheogorath had picked the Fourth Era for their 'vacation'.

"I could… learn?"

Ri'saad shook his head. "Learn what? How to fight in armor that is not made in your size? To wield swords almost as long as you are tall? To use bows you cannot draw the needed distance?"

"You forget...." The cathay man with the strangely braided hair had come over to Ri'saads tent when Mohamara wasn't looking. The tojay noted that he had peculiar gold bands in his mustache, a Nord steel sword at his side, but no armor. "...that people can fight with magic, yes?"

"I can do magic, even… though I'm not licensed for Destruction spells." Mohamara realized that if he got back to the modern time with knowledge of the Destruction school there would be an investigation. He'd likely lose his scholarships--he already had to bend over backward to get the damn things, the people responsible for them would be happy to have a reason to give them instead to a Man or elf.

"I am Ma'randru-jo." The younger cathay bowed his head briefly before crossing his arms. "This one heard you ramble about a college on the road here. What sort of magic did you study there?" Mohamara's answer drove the braided cathay to bury his face in his hands and groan with the suffering of a retail worker. "Mysticism. Of course."

"I also know a bit about enchantment, if this thing with Sheo-"

"Do not speak his name!" Both cathay hissed. But it was too late, for he was there. Sheogorath rose up from behind Ri'saad like he had been crouching there the whole time. Mohamara's stubby tail fur puffed out from the sight. Both Ri'saad and Ma'randu-jo seemed not to notice him, from how their gaze passed clearly through where the Mad God stood but failed to react.

"Speaking the Skooma Cat's name on his summoning day is foolishness." Ri'saad chided the tojay, his tail lashing again. "We have no offering prepared yet, and his shrine is not set up." The elder Khajiit made no notice of how Sheogorath leaned on him, one hand resting on the cat's shoulder while he looked over the camp.

"Homey little place you've got here. A wee bit short on party favors, given the day, but they'll get it set up." The Mad God spoke in a voice no one but Mohamara could apparently hear. "If they know what's good for them."

"Wait, but his summoning day isn't until the second of Sun's Dawn." Mohamara tore his eyes away from Sheogorath and looked between the Khajiit

"Yes… that is today, ja'khajiit." Ma'randru-jo looked at him like he was simple.

"Oh. It was summer when I left, I thought…."

"That it'd be summer when we got here?" Sheogorath barked in laughter, like a mad dog. "But that would make things so much less interesting, mortal."

"This one understands what you mean." Ri'saad gently patted the tojay on the head. "Breaking the Dragon plays with expectations, which is why Skooma Cat enjoys it so much."

"Wasn't there something else that happens on today?" The Mad God walked upward, as if the air was the ground, with one hand on his chin in a thinker pose. "A court summons? Pushing little Timmy into a well? Assassinating Arch-Duke Nandifer? It's gone and slipped my mind. Or did my mind slip it? Time is rather slippery--due to all that dragon blood."

Mohamara looked directly into Ri'saad's eyes, then looked at Sheogorath several times in rapid succession. The elder cat picked up on it and stood from his side of the rug.

"This one must go and see that the shrine is built. It is too easy to forget such things after a day of good sales." Ri'saad gently pushed Ma'randru-jo closer to Mohamara as he passed by. "Talk to ja'khajiit. If he wants to fight with magic, you are the only one who can teach him."

When Mohamara looked up again at Sheogorath, he saw that the Mad God was gone.

"Don't you go worrying about me." Sheogorath's head passed by, half sticking out of the ground as if he were swimming through water. "I'll figure it out in just a minute or so."

"Now, this would not be so much of a problem… if you had claws like a proper Khajiit." Ma'randru-jo took Ri'saad's place on the rug, crouching down. "The females will want to ask you about what happened to them, by the way."

"My first family had me declawed." Mohamara shrugged, though the news drove the cathay's fur to fluff up in a rage. "Oh, not the surgery thing. If it had been removing my claws I could just grow them back. They took me to a face-sculptor and had her change the way my finger and toe bones were. Instead of having claws, I have digits like a human or elf."

"And in the future, there is no way to reverse it?" Ma'randru-jo's voice had a barely concealed tone of venom.

"Well, yes but you need a face-sculptor who knows Khajiit anatomy. Since the procedure wasn't medically necessary, my insurance wouldn't cover a specialist. I'd been on a waiting list for a charity to help pay for the procedure for about seven years by the time all this nonsense happened." Mohamara then paused and realized he'd glossed over something. "Wait, how did you--?"

"Cathay ears may not be as good as tojay, but we still pick up things even over the racket of setting up camp." The taller Khajiit sighed and leaned back on his hands. "Your future world seems just as cruel as this one."

"Well of course it is, the world doesn't care about us. We have to care about each other." Mohamara shrugged.

"You sound an awful lot like a Moon Bishop for someone who has never even seen the homeland." The cathay leaned forward suddenly and snapped his fingers to indicate he had an epiphany. "There is a face-sculptor in Riften, perhaps she can reverse what was done."

"Something to look forward to, at least. Now, about that magic fighting?"

"Oh, yes. This one will show you a basic Destruction spell: How to throw lightning from your hands." The mechanics behind the Destruction spell were simple after the purposefully frustrating contradictions of Mysticism. After an explanation and demonstration, Mohamara was able to shoot lightning himself.

The very first thing he did with his new magic was to channel the spell right into the specter of Sheogorath when the Mad God passed by until Mohamara's pool of magicka was depleted. As the Mad God rose from the ground, smoke pouring out of his eyes, ears, and mouth, it became clear from just how quiet the camp had gotten that everyone could see the Daedra.

"Would you care to tell the class why you thought that was a good idea?" Sheogorath seemed no worse for the wear of being electrocuted at length. In fact, he stood with his hands on his hips, with disbelief on his face.

"You've been prowling around for a while, unable to remember whatever it is you wanted. So I thought a shock might shake your memory loose and you could go back to your vacation." Mohamara made up a lie right on the spot. In truth, he'd just done it without really thinking that Sheogorath was a Daedric Prince.

However, the Mad God seemed pleased with his answer. "Well thank you very much, lad. I do remember what today is now!" He held out a hand, where an orb of Daedric fire manifested and left a brightly colored wrapped box in the outstretched limb. This was then held out to the tojay. "For you. Happy birthday, son."

Once Mohamara had taken the box, Sheogorath bounced and clapped the soles of his boots together.

"Right, I best be off. Have to see your uncle Pelly about some tea. See to it that these folk get my offering set up properly would you? And try to have some fun, or let fun have you. I'm partial to either, really."

When Mohamara blinked, the Mad God was gone. He looked at the box a bit, trying to process what had just happened. "Huh. Guess I forgot it was my birthday 'cause it was supposed to be summer." He looked over to the stunned Ma'randru-jo, questioning. "Does this make me older or younger, you think?"

"Nope. Nope. None of this." The braided cathay stood quickly and resolutely marched away. "Not dealing with this without some moon sugar. Someone else watch him. Nope!"

----

Ma'randru-jo's just jealous that Sheogorath never gets him anything for -his- birthdays.

 

[LordsFire]

Well, I like it. It's extremely well-written, though your comment about 'lighten up' really clashes with the first couple of chapters here.

I'm wondering when Mahomaro will realize, oh hey, Sheo might actually be serious about saying 'my son,' not just throwing around stuff for silliness' sake.

 

[Chairtastic]

Well, I like it. It's extremely well-written, though your comment about 'lighten up' really clashes with the first couple of chapters here.

I'm wondering when Mahomaro will realize, oh hey, Sheo might actually be serious about saying 'my son,' not just throwing around stuff for silliness' sake.

Click to shrink...

As my friends have pointed out, I don't write fluff. I really, viscerally enjoy making my characters suffer horrible things. So I'm sort of writing against my type here.

 

[Richardson]

Well, that's a hell of a paradox. Heyoo! *smashes destiny with a hammer*

 

[Stratagemini]

... Did Sheo take mortal form and become a deadbeat Khajit dad?

 

[Richardson]

... Did Sheo take mortal form and become a deadbeat Khajit dad?

Click to shrink...

Well, you never saw it coming?

 

[Stratagemini]

Well, you never saw it coming?

Click to shrink...

It was obvious due to their shared love of cheese. Something like that must be inherited.

 

[QuiteEasilyDone]

So really, this is the heartwarming tale of a father trying to reconnect with his son during a time of strife. To pass on the knowledge that his son needs to take over the family business.

 

[Chairtastic]

You are now imagining Sheogorath as a member of KISS.
---

Chapter 4: The Forsworn Conspiracy

After Sheogorath's… visit, Mohamara put off opening the gift to help set up the shrine to the Mad God and prepare an offering. Ri'saad laid out many fine furs before the rudimentary shrine hidden behind the wagons. It was important that no one from the road be able to see the shrine or risk Vigilants of Stendarr being sent after the caravan.

"The Skooma Cat likes pelts for his offerings." The eldest Khajiit informed Mohamara as the shrine was done and the furs arranged like a selection from which a choice would be made. "And it is not difficult for us to obtain them for him."

"Meridia doesn't really ask for offerings," Mohamara responded. Unconsciously he reached for the amulet that up until recently he would have constantly worn. "Just that we destroy undead where we find them."

"Perhaps that is her offering, then? Destroying her enemies, like the Dunmer's 'Good Daedra' would ask?" Ri'saad led the way back to the primary camp, and on the way, they passed Ma'randru-jo eating large pink and white blocks out of a bowl--moon sugar. "Not too much of that, or you'll be too lazy to get up and sell to customers."

The braided cathay made a distant grunt of acknowledgment, but said nothing and avoided Mohamara's gaze.

"I'm guessing the whole Sh-... Skooma Cat thing was something I ought to apologize for?" Mohamara rapidly changed to using the cathay's title for the Mad God, rather than risk him popping in a second time. What if he found his present unopened?

"Attacking a Daedra so close to camp? Yes, an apology would be desired." Ri'saad gestured flippantly over his shoulder while he led the tojay to a small tent with only a patch of straw out front for sitting on.

"Alright--I'm sorry. Won't happen again. Won't summon Daedra on their summoning day without your say so."

Atahbah walked up, holding Sheogorath's present with two rakes--like an improvised reach-grab, and placed it in front of the small tent then dashed off.

"This is where you will sleep and work. There is paper, ink, quills, and charcoal so that you can use your slate to draw pictures for customers as they come by--you will charge a septim per person. Do not shout too loudly when you advertise your service." Ri'saad turned to regard Mohamara in profile, before listing off instructions by counting off on his fingers. "Open the present--but do it away from the caravan, but within Khayla's sprinting range in case you need rescue. My joints are not so good for running anymore. Your fancy clothes are here too but do not wear them often. This one will adjust other clothes to your size."

"Something with trousers would be nice, thank you," Mohamara noted that Ri'saad did not accept or reject the apology he gave, but quickly picked up the present and started walking off down toward the river. His leg didn't give out as much during normal walking, but he still couldn't put his entire weight on it. Would really put a damper on catching up on exercise, but if it meant he could put off dancing until he had trousers, it could be tolerated.

When he was at the river, he sat down and attempted to prepare himself for what a Mad God would consider a suitable present for a mortal. It was then that he noticed a tag attached to one of the box's colorful ribbons. 'To Ungrateful Mortal#73, From Daddy.'

"I swear by the Blue Room if this thing's full of moon sugar or something…." Mohamara looked over his shoulder to see if the 'Khayla' was watching for things like Ri'saad said. He spied a cathay woman in Nordic steel armor casually watching him while leaning against a wagon. She waved, and he responded in kind before turning back to the box.

On a mental count to three, Mohamara opened the box. There was a rush of air as if to fill a vacuum, and Mohamara heard three notes of music. Inside was a plain white cavity in which a folded piece of paper stuck up. After he retrieved it, he gave it a read. 'I've had this picked out for you since before you were born. Couldn't risk you ruining my reputation as the Lord of Music. Enjoy! --Anne Marie.'

"Did he really just give me the most metal gift possible?" Mohamara tipped the box upside down and shook it. "Does he even listen to metal music?"

Meanwhile, in Solitude's Blue Palace a cacophony of unnatural music and lyrics no one could understand rang out through the halls from the Pelagius Wing. Priests from the temple of the Divines had been called, and the Court Wizard was forced to enclose the wing in bubbles of silence so that court business could continue.

"I… guess he did. Huh. At least it wasn't cabbages. Or socks and underwear." With no harm in sight, Mohamara took the box and lid in separate hands he walked back to camp. Khayla met him at the edge of the camp and inspected the empty box and the note it came with before letting him go to his tent.

Inside he found his clothes, neatly folded on top of the same quilt that Ri'saad had used to wrap Mohamara in days prior. Both were rather stained, his clothes with some fluorescent blue stuff and the quilt with a large red patch that could have only been faded blood. To his surprise, he found his slate wrapped up in his jacket, no worse for wear!

"Guess he thought it was just a drawing slate. Not even any cracks--Yagraz was right, buying Telvanni brand really is great for durability." The only thing missing was the earpieces, but he found that he'd been wearing them the whole time. The two clips of thin ebony probably resembled earrings to those who didn't know better. "Now, if I remember I have the print screen servitor installed… oop, gotta recharge."

Mohamara placed his hand on the screen and let the tablet start to leech his magicka supply to replenish its own. The method wasn't as efficient as plugging it into a Welkynd port at home, but it made due in a pinch. A full recharge would take all night through this method, but Mohamara only needed a fraction of a full Welkynd stone to check if he had re-installed the servitor.

"Who needs to draw when you can print screen?" The tojay used the built-in occulory to snap a picture and unrolled a piece of paper which he then pressed to the screen. A line of blue light passed from the bottom of the slate to the top, and when he pulled the paper off it had a fully colorized image of his self-portrait printed there. "And the best part is they can't even tell how bad the picture quality is because they haven't seen better!"

"You know we can all hear you, right?"

Mohamara was interrupted in his small moment of triumph to look up and see several female cathay gathered around his tent. "Oh. Hey ladies."

"What you did there… you created a perfect portrait in seconds!" Atahbah was among the small group and seemed positively stunned by the miracle of techno-magic.

"Um. Yeah. Telvanni's Chiaroscuro slate. Cost an arm and a leg, and it's sorta old, but it's got loads of features." A more sensible man would have worried about polluting the timeline. A wiser man would have seen the danger of telling people about a powerful magical item in their midst. And a more intelligent man would have realized that he was still in the Reach where safety was an illusion. But none of those occurred to Mohamara, who just wanted the other Khajiit to like him. He looked at the cathay women, unsure of what they were trying to convey through body language and unable to articulate confusion without his tail. "... Do you want portraits of yourselves, ladies?"

"You will charge them like they were customers." Ri'saad's voice carried over the wagons. "This one pays them enough to afford that."

Mohamara had substantially less paper to work with and more septims piled in front of him when they left. He realized that he couldn't just leave the coins on the ground--they'd get dirty. So he put them into a wooden bowl and set it aside.

There was… actually, very little happening after the ladies got their portraits. Mohamara sat and let his slate leech his magicka for the charge, and counted the birds flitting between bushes on the road. He vehemently wished his Meridian amulet had been among his clothes, but one missing item out of an entire outfit was unpleasant but acceptable. Prayers could still be had without the amulet--and even if he did have it the connection was broken. But he'd always had some physical connection to the faith he could find security in.

Perhaps that was why Sheogorath had cruelly decided to cut the connection. For the sake of forcing him to have 'fun'.

Rather than pointlessly brood, Mohamara pulled up the hood on his robe and curled up around his slate with one hand on the screen, and took a nap.

--

Days passed, and Mohamara found himself adjusting to living communally with other Khajiit even though it had been unpleasant at first. Once there was a bit less tension in his presence, the cathay were positively mother-henning him to make sure he was checking his bandages, eating and drinking enough, or if he needed help with customers. The last item did come up sometimes, as was expected of ancient Nords.

Washing unmentionables and communal bathing in the river had been something he had taken almost a week to get used to. But he did adapt and found himself growing accustomed to having so many Khajiit around. Unfortunately, most of the clothes Ri'saad got for him were just robes cut down to Mohamara's size, as apparently the child-sized trousers had all been bought already. Ma'randru-jo eventually grew brave enough to try teaching Mohamara more spells though he was visibly hesitant about it.

The portrait making business was not as popular as the rest of the caravan's goods, but it attracted a fair number of the richer citizens of Markarth--to the point that Ri'saad considered raising the price.

And then one day, Markarth City Guards came down to the caravan and demanded Mohamara bring his slate and come with them.

"The Jarl wants a portrait," one of the green-armored guards informed Ri'saad when the elder questioned them. "Here's the money, now get the brat." Two golden coins were thrown at Ri'saad's face but the elder neither moved nor blinked from their impact.

"This one will find a chaperone to escort grandson, please wait a moment." Ri'saad's response was pleasant like he was talking to a customer. The coins that had been thrown at him, he bent down to pick up and played the part of a weary old man exerting himself.

Mohamara watched from behind a wagon and noted the sneer on one of the guard's faces. The man wore an open-faced helmet featuring corundum horns along its rim.

"Wrong, cat. The brat comes alone. Jarl's orders, he only wants one beast in his city at a time. Now fetch the kid, or we'll get him ourselves."

The tojay's ears flicked as he heard Khayla walk up behind him. Crouched down as she was, she still stood almost as tall as Mohamara standing straight up. "Ja'khajiit, this one will try to follow from the rocks. If you are in danger, Khajiit will attempt a rescue. But do not fight back." She emphasized the last part, and then stalked away into the sunset shadows.

"Fight back with what? Sparks? A bound dagger? Ice that the Nords grow up dealing with?" Mohamara asked the shadow that had been Khayla as he grabbed his slate from his tent. As an afterthought, he removed his good shoes and put on a pair of stitched fur ones that Atahbah had made for him. His experience with the modern police was that if they saw something they wanted, they'd take it quick as any thief. It would stand to reason that a boar would be a boar even thousands of years in the past.

At least, since the Nords saw him as a child, he only had to worry about being robbed by them.

With his slate held close, he made his way over to Ri'saad before the elder had to send someone for him. Even though both knew Mohamara'd heard the guards, Ri'saad explained the situation to him like it was an exciting opportunity.

As a bit of petty revenge, when the guards started to lead Mohamara up the path to Markarth, the tojay decided to skip around them because they walked too slow. He literally skipped circles around them for a while before switching to moon-walking.

"I get that you're excited to meet the Jarl." The guard in the closed-faced helmet, seemingly the more tolerant of the two, ventured in an attempt to stop the Khajiit. "But could you walk a bit more normally? You keep doing that in the city, you could fall down the stairs."

"Ah, a dent in his head will be good for 'em. Means he won't be able to go fiddlin' with any locks." The open-faced guard responded to the first, cementing Mohamara's dislike for him.

Regardless, Mohamara did not 'walk more normally', and had taken to sashaying when they got passed the great gates. Ancient Markarth still seemed… too small for Mohamara's liking. It seemed like one big fight would knock the city down to a village's worth of people.

And it was still absolutely filthy. Uneven streets, debris that looked hundreds of years old. One store had literal cobwebs across their Dwemer-metal doors.

However, Mohamara was more concerned with the knife-wielding Breton that came at him the literal moment he passed through the gates, well ahead of the guards sent to escort him.

"The Reach belongs to the Forsworn!" The Breton with a closely shaved head and sturdy mining clothes swung a steel dagger downward in a stabbing motion to get Mohamara in the ribs.

But Mohamara wasn't less than an hour off a spinal injury any longer, and he'd had a week to let the regeneration effect work on his leg--and tail to a much lesser extent. So to a small, agile Khajiit a Breton with no combat training may as well have been a beach ball for how fast it traveled.

"Woop! Almost got me there! Going to have to be quicker than that! Okay, I didn't even dodge that one, you just sorta missed." Mohamara let quips fly from his mouth while side-stepping, ducking, and jumping over the Breton's attacks. A tojay with their tail could jump six and a half feet straight up without much athletic training. Dagi were even better, they could jump so high it made it look like they were flying. So Mohamara without his tail but with some athleticism easily jumped bodily over the Breton and landed atop a jewelry stand awning where he spit-hissed down at the would-be assassin.

The closed-helmet guard finally appeared and tackled the Breton to the ground while the other stomped on his hand to force him to let go of the dagger.

"My heroes!" The tojay rolled off the awning, which drove the Redguard woman manning the stand to jump from surprise. Evidently, she'd been completely distracted by the Breton assassin she didn't notice her awning straining under thirty pounds of Khajiit weight. "Guards, I would like to report an attempted assault on my person."

The open-faced guard was about ready to backhand Mohamara for his cheek when another person entered the scene--Senna, the Dibellan priestess.

"Is everything alright? Does anyone require healing?" She asked around rapid breathing. It was clear that she had been running from the sound of things. "I heard the Forsworn and came as fast as I could."

"Everything's under control, priestess." The closed-face guard responded while he held the Breton's arms and forced the man to stand. "Just gotta pass this Forsworn filth over to another guard, and things will be good."

"Hey, Senna!" Mohamara waved to the Dibellan holy woman. "They let me back in town!"

The Breton woman was stunned by this development to the point where she, along with most of the other marketplace goers just stared while the would-be assassin was frog-marched away and Mohamara led by his sole remaining guard up the road to Understone Keep.

"Be respectful to the Jarl, and do what he says or I'll make a rug out of you, cat." The guard told Mohamara as he opened the doors to the keep.

"Will the other guards make a rug out of you if you disrespect the Jarl?" Mohamara played the part of a precocious child, while on the inside he treated the whole experience like going to the dentist's.

"If the Jarl said so, probably. But he won't."

Inside the Keep, the filth was even worse than outside. There was dirt in the air, not pretty dust that caught the light and danced in the air current. Dirt. The path to the Jarl's throne took them over debris from when the city still had Dwarves. It felt less like the residency of a king in all but name and more like a squatter's abode.

In a great room was the throne hall, up to a flight of stairs and in an alcove dead center. Markarth guards stood flanking the alcove and against each of the load-bearing pillars. Meanwhile, three golden-skinned High Elves patrolled the whole landing. Two in metal-feather armor, and a third in an oiled leather overcoat and hood. In the distance, Mohamara could hear the barking of dogs.

Three humans were in the alcove where the seat of Markarth, the Mournful Throne, sat. Being in this city reminded Mohamara why all the transfer students from Reach secondary schools had been so edgy. Everything in the Reach was edgy. Even the edges.

The humans were two men and a woman. The men, both Nords, were on in years and dressed finely. The woman was a Redguard, in steel armor, and had her hand in easy draw distance of her blade.

"My Jarl, I've brought the beast." The guard made the announcement from outside the alcove while Mohamara watched the High Elves watch him. They seemed particularly interested in his slate.

"I sent two of you, where is the other?" The younger of the two Nords, who sat the throne spoke up. Presumably, he was the Jarl.

"A Forsworn spy was discovered in the marketplace--Alois took him to get processed into Cidhna Mine."

This sparked a brief debate between the two elder Nords, but the guard turned and left the scene. Mohamara was left alone, in front of what passed for royalty in the Reach.

"You are the cat that does those portraits, are you?" Once their debate had finished, the Jarl spoke again. Mohamara had seen that disdain in many people. mostly politicians and the rich, back home. "I did not expect a boy. Approach me."

Mohamara entered the alcove and walked to the base of the stairs, noting how the guards turned their heads to watch him as he entered.

"I said approach me, cat." The Jarl curled his lip, clearly of the mind that he was debasing himself by merely speaking to Mohamara.

Hesitant, Mohamara ascended the stairs until he stood three feet away from the Jarl. He was perilously close to being in a range of being decapitated by the armored woman with one swing, and the oldest Nord watched him appraisingly.

"I am Jarl Igmund, son of Hrolfdir. To have a portrait done for posterity is something I have longed to do for some time. But artists are expensive, and I haven't hours to sit still on my throne while my Hold falls apart around me."

"It would be… this one's pleasure to serve, Jarl."

"I'm sure it would please you more to have the chance to rifle through my cabinets, but if your method is as quick as I'm told you won't get the chance." The Jarl clapped his hands together, and a canvas in a regal frame was brought in by two guards, and set up to Mohamara's right, almost obscuring the oldest Nord man. "How is this done?"

"Just… strike a pose you would wish for posterity, Jarl Igmund." Mohamara held his slate out in front of him. "Move around as you like, just tell me when you're ready." The tojay went the extra mile to have the screen facing Igmund, and use the slightly higher-detail front occuluory, so the Jarl could see his pose for himself.

The Jarl took his time finding a pose he'd like, either not noticing or caring about the tension in the air from having Mohamara summoned like this. He was the one with the power, the one in control, why would he be tense? In the end, he settled on an overall reclined pose with his right arm bent back toward his face with the hand limply facing him. The picture taking and burning it onto the canvas was done in seconds, so the Jarl could review it.

"Excellent work, Khajiit. Guards, escort the cat back to his caravan." Igmund dismissively waved Mohamara off, too busy admiring his new portrait.

"There is no need for that, Jarl Igmund." Silent as a ghost, the hooded, leather coated High Elf had walked up behind Mohamara, driving the tojay to jump a little in surprise. His voice was soft, differential, and compassionate. "With a Forsworn agent in the city, there might be more. You need all your guards right where they are. My men and I have no pressing engagements for the rest of the day--we can escort this Khajiit back as a favor to you."

If Igmund had disdain for Mohamara, he had daggers for the High Elf. Mohamara looked between the two taller men and wished he had never taken to portraits at all.

"I… know the way back. I can go by… myself?" Mohamara tried to speak up but neither of the two men acknowledged him.

"...Very well, Justicar. See that the cat reaches his destination safely. I will not have it said that my guests are treated poorly." Igmund flippantly waved and began a conversation with the oldest Nord about where to hang his portrait.

The High Elf placed a hand on Mohamara's shoulder and gripped it like an iron vice. "Come now, little Khajiit. We mustn't dawdle." For being an elf, the 'Justicar' easily forced Mohamara to walk down the stairs and away from the throne through strength alone, though he relaxed it a bit as they started to leave the keep. The two armored elves soon joined him in marching Mohamara out. Things started to go badly when right out of the keep they took a sharp left turn rather than walk forward toward the marketplace.

"Um. This isn't the right way." Mohamara knew, in his belly, that something awful was about to happen.

"No, it isn't." The Justicar's tone mirrored what Sheogorath would sometimes do, a low tone with just an edge of malice. "You see… I'm so very interested in what a tojay is doing in Skyrim. Without permission."

"Oh." Realizing that doing nothing was going to result in something awful happening, Mohamara did was any sane person would do.

He tossed his slate into the air, slid out of the robe the Justicar was holding him by like a snake shedding skin, caught the slate when he was free, and jumped over the railless edge of the walkway to bounce between jutting rocks until he reached the path to the marketplace below.

"Seeya, suckers!" At least this time he still had his shoes as he ran away from danger in his skivvies. Maybe if he did this enough times he could escape with a complete outfit. By the time the elves had gotten down to the marketplace, Mohamara had already made it out the gates, had several women exclaim and children laugh at his situation and was on his way back to the caravan.

---
No, Sheogorath did not give him the most metal gift possible, but it won't be immediately noticed because it wouldn't fit the story narrative just yet.

 

[Roadie]

I find myself hoping this earns him some useful notoriety as "that Khajit who made a couple of Altmer look like idiots in public". He's already in deep trouble with the Altmer just by existing, so getting some brownie points with the Nords can only help.

 

[Chairtastic]

I find myself hoping this earns him some useful notoriety as "that Khajit who made a couple of Altmer look like idiots in public". He's already in deep trouble with the Altmer just by existing, so getting some brownie points with the Nords can only help.

Click to shrink...

"What part of 'see that the cat reaches his destination safely' entailed sending him running through my city naked?" "*indignant sputtering*"

 

[Sceptic]

I find myself hoping this earns him some useful notoriety as "that Khajit who made a couple of Altmer look like idiots in public".

Click to shrink...

ITYM "that Khajit kid who made a couple of Altmer look like idiots"

 

[Chairtastic]

Intentionally writing silliness or fun isn't my strength as a writer. But I hope to get better while writing this story.
---
Chapter 5: Safest City in the Reach

When Mohamara got back to the caravan he marched past all the curious cathay who saw him coming from as far as the Markarth gates and went to his tent. There, he formed his blood-stained quilt into a mound in which he hid away from the world with his slate.

"Ja'khajiit." Ri'saad's voice came from outside the quilt mound. "Something happen in the city that this one should know? Such as what happened to your clothes again?"

Mohamara sat up enough for his chin to show through the layers in the quilt. "A Breton guy tried to stab me and some High Elves tried to kidnap me. I don't want to deal with anyone else today." Then he laid back down, arranging himself to be as comfy as possible then put on a song from his slate's library.

"This is not a very mature way of dealing with situations like this, you know."

Annoyed by the lack of a tail to convey how annoyed he was, Mohamara sat back up and glared at the source of Ri'saad's voice through a layer of the quilt over his face. "I had to run through a major city in my underwear because some High Elves wanted to play secret police after someone tried to murder me. Working out my embarrassment in private and avoiding social interaction are perfectly healthy in these circumstances. And second of all…." Mohamara blew a raspberry at the cathay elder, then lay back down.

"Fine, this one will leave you be. Khayla, stay close to ja'khajiit until the evening meal." Ri'saad's footsteps faded away and left the heavy metal steps of Khayla outside Mohamara's tent.

The Khajiit lost himself in music for a while, able to forget the day that had happened until something poked him from outside the mound. He reached one hand out and swatted at the thing, but it persisted until Mohamara stuck his head out.

Khayla stood with a Breton man, his face covered in an elaborate dark tattoo and holding a bundle of cloth in one hand. "Ja'khajiit, this Breton said he has a delivery for you from a woman called Senna?"

Mohamara looked from Khayla, who used her ears and tail to convey a guarded emotion--she was ready to fight if need be, to the Breton and squinted. "Why would Senna send me something?"

"I'm sure I don't know." The Breton shrugged and seemed to be forcing himself to act professionally. "I just know she was willing to pay some gold to send it down to you."

Mohamara looked between the two taller people, still squinting, before holding his hand out for the delivery. "Odds on it being some weird Dibellan thing?"

"I sure hope a priestess would know better than to send such things to a child, but she is Dibellan, so anything is possible." The bundle of cloth was handed over, and the Breton turned to quickly leave. With the sun about to set, Mohamara guessed he just didn't want to be out after dark. "Thanks, hope your next visit to Markarth is under better circumstances."

The cloth turned out to be a linen wrap, inside of which was a letter, and a key. Mohamara retreated into his quilt mound to read the letter by the light of his slate and set the key aside.

'Mohamara-

That attack on you in the marketplace was the final straw for me. I'm sick and tired of the Forsworn running roughshod over the people of Markarth. I'm sick and tired of watching them die and not being able to do anything about it. Eltrys, the man delivering this for me, wants to help. Markarth isn't your city, and these aren't your people. But if you want to find out why the Forsworn wanted you dead, there is a key that will let you into a secret entrance to the city through the river. From there you can get to the shrine to Talos, directly underneath Dibella's temple. The guards have not patrolled that route in years. I will not think less of you if you want to stay out of this.

--Senna.'

"You know when you mention twice how I can just opt out I think I really, really can't." Mohamara sighed and reached for a red robe outside his pile. Sheogorath had wanted him to have fun, and uncovering a conspiracy could potentially be fun. Except it was likely to get him killed. Except so was everything in this danged time period. Learning to deal with it early on would do well, he justified.

Really, he just didn't want Senna to get herself killed because of him.

There was something twisted in Skyrim, Mohamara had known that for as long as he'd lived. Mysticism, the study of sympathetic connections between people, places, things, and ideas had taught him to give an identity to the twisted thing within the land--all work and no play. The Reach was the ideal place for followings such as Molag Bal, who thrived on conflict and dominance, for it was the worst of the province's Holds. Mohamara knew how to deal with such brutal connections--not with more brutality, but with flippancy.

It was a required part of a Mysticism degree to learn how to identify such hostile sympathetic connections. In his own time, he was too busy working to keep a roof over his head to live with fun, Yagraz had pointed it out to him more than once. But here, he was supposed to be 'on vacation'. Fun was required, ordered by Sheogorath So armed with this knowledge and only a few actual weapons he knew what he had to do: He had to use the power of fun to keep the Reach from pulling on sympathetic connections to get Senna and her Breton friend killed for trying to end its game while playing by its rules.

He disliked, vehemently, that he had to admit to himself: He would be best served by emulating the Mad God than his own Lady of Infinite Energies. He still loved her and had no intention of letting Undead keep on existing, so he was sure she'd understand.

So! Once properly dressed, and his slate hidden away, and key retrieved, Mohamara ambled out of his tent like he knew what he was going to do for the rest of the day.

"Ja'khajiit, you are feeling better?" Khayla caught his attention, leaning against a wagon in her usual manner of lurking.

Mohamara gave her a broad smile and thumbs up with a dynamic pose. "Nope!" His answer took some time to register with her, and in that time Mohamara had skipped his way down to the river. Part of fighting with fun was to accept that control was an illusion, even control of one's self. So Mohamara followed the impulse to jump out to the rocks and use dancing skill with Khajiit agility to balance on his toes.

"What in the moons are you doing?!" Khayla had rushed to the riverside, but could not follow Mohamara due to her armor. "Ja'khajiit, you could fall with your bad leg, and drown!"

"I know! Makes things so much more interesting, doesn't it?" With his tongue out in a blep, Mohamara lept between the rocks as he moved under the Markarth bridge. As he made his way upstream via this method, his leg did end up giving out from supporting his full weight one too many times. But he didn't go tumbling into the river, just ended up skinning his bad shin a bit on the rocks.

Khayla tried following him, but the river started to stray too close to the city for her. She couldn't leave the caravan with one less guard, no matter how far away Mohamara went.

The river led him under the curtain wall, and up increasingly rapid water until he came to an iron grate blocking his path. Thankfully, there was a tunnel almost immediately connected to this area and thus Mohamara could make his way up and out--considerably wetter than when he'd started, however. Halfway up the tunnel was a second grate with an integrated door, which Mohamara opened with the key he'd been given.

All the while, Mohamara whistled a merry tune, not giving a thought to how a guard could hear and investigate the sound. If they did, so what? Up the tunnel, he went, and he found himself at the top of the curtain wall, under the covered section. The only safe way into the city from there was the main gate, where guards watched for ne'er-do-wells.

So, naturally, Mohamara got a running start and lept off the wall into the city, and landed in the river. Without gravity, the water was not so fast as it had been below, and Mohamara could easily swim to shore.

He passed by several people in sturdy mining clothes, similar to his would-be assassin, hauling ore toward some conical smelters while an Orc man oversaw them. Said Orc was more than a little annoyed by a Khajiit walking in and disturbing his smelter and started after Mohamara who went walking where impulse led. However, Mohamara was leaving an abundance of water in his wake which the Orc discovered when he stepped into a puddle of it and slipped onto his back.

Minutes later two workers, carrying great loads of ore slipped on the water as well and dropped their mineral cargo onto their Orc foreman.

Mohamara was already crossing the bridge to the butte where the temple of Dibella lay--and below it, the shrine of Talos.

"What in Oblivion are you doing in the city, Khajiit?" A female city guard stopped him as he was starting toward the gap in the rock where a prominent double Dwemer metal door lay. "You look like you took a swim in the river. Well? Explain yourself."

Language was superficial to a specialist in Mysticism. The sympathetic bonds between words and the ideas behind them were pretty much the same in all languages regardless of grammar, spelling, or even manner of conveying the information. The point of language was to encode these ideas and keep the information secret from people outside the designated social group. Which in turn led to the development of the Tongues spell in the Mysticism school which allowed the user to understand all written or spoken languages.

So when Mohamara responded, it was in Dunmeri, telling her exactly why he was in the city--to discover the secret behind the Forsworn attacks and put an end to it. But he said it in a tone and body language that would make a Nord who didn't know better assume he was just a panicking child that didn't speak the common tongue.

"Oh, Ysmir's beard don't cry. Look, stay here and I'll go find your mother. Stay. Here." She repeatedly pointed to the ground and then marched off.

Mohamara almost felt bad for taking advantage of a genuinely good guard's kindness. Once she turned the corner he finished his jog to the shrine and ducked inside.

At the bottom of a flight of stairs was a candlelit statue of Tiber Septim, who had become Talos the god. Both Senna and her Breton messenger--Eltrys stood there, whispering to each other. They immediately paused and looked up at him.

"I take it your arrival was not as easy as it was for us." Senna cunningly observed as the sopping wet Khajiit walked down the stairs.

"You shouldn't have got him involved." The fairer skinned Breton chided. "He's a Khajiit, he can't move freely around the city."

"The both of you are so tense, can't do no skullduggery like this." Mohamara got a gasp out of the two of them by cartwheeling down the stairs then transition into crawling up the statue of Talos to sit atop his winged helmet. "Relax, take a load off, punch a rich man in the teeth."

The two humans looked at each other before they then focused on the Khajiit. "Are you okay, Mohamara?" Senna's tone was guarded like she expected a nasty surprise.

"I had a man try to murder me earlier today, an attempted kidnapping, and now you asked me to come back into this city and risk my neck to stop the insidious evil at the root of it. Of course, I'm not okay!" The Khajiit wrapped his legs around Talos' neck and hung down behind him like a second cape. "But if I act like a madman then it's easier to cut through the sympathetic magic that's keeping things the way they are in Markarth." He released his legs and let himself slide down the back of the statue, then scooted around on the ground once there. "And between you two and me, behaving is like this is exhausting. I don't know how Sheogorath does it all the time."

"So there's magic at work here?" Eltrys cut in and looked down at his feet. "So there's not much I can do to help."

"Not necessarily." Senna waved off the Breton man's worries. "Mohamara's a priest of Mara, he has the goddess' insight with him. Dibella's been silent on this, but it could be that Mara is more informed because her more widespread love reaches more minds and hearts. So if this magic can be undone with action, then there's still help you could give."

"Simplification of complex issues is an important first step to comprehension." Mohamara held up one hand to point while he scooted around on his shoulder. "But yes, there is sympathetic magic at work that is consistently connecting violence and death to fear and control here." He left out how no matter what they did that day, it would remain the same for literally thousands of years. "Frivolity and happiness melt those bonds, so the more fun you have the weaker the bonds will become."

"Could that be what the Forsworn have been attempting? An incredibly complex ritual to usurp Markarth through these 'sympathetic bonds'?" Eltrys looked at the priestess and the 'priest' for confirmation.

"...Of course. The killings started shortly after they were removed from the city. They can't take the city through force, so they're going to do it through magic. Hagraven magic most likely." Senna had tapped her chin in consideration before an epiphany struck. "Mohamara, how much happiness would we need to undo their spell?"

"We would need to throw the biggest party in Markarth's history!" The cat had taken to trying to get himself back in a standing position purely by pushing himself into a corner. "Every man, woman, and child would need to be happy."

"Good luck with that. The folks in Cidhna Mine alone would drag down any effort to make a celebration that size happy enough." Eltrys was proving to be a real bummer, as far as Mohamara's madman act was concerned.

"Then the next best thing would be a contradiction. The sympathetic bonds are set up to tie death and pain to fear and power. So you need to cause those things to lead to other results. A death that causes widespread happiness, or pain that people enjoy."

"That last part? I can do that, no problem." Senna informed the men with a wry smile.

Eltrys coughed and developed a pink tinge to his cheeks.

"But it all falls apart if you don't get the mastermind behind it." The humans looked at the corner Khajiit with interest. "All these sympathetic bonds had to have come from somewhere. They develop in response to either the intentional use of magic or over the course of generations. So someone set this all up since the murders are relatively recent, and isn't sharing any of the benefits with anyone else. You can undo all the work they've done so far, and they'll just start it up again. The fish rots from the head down, as they say in Riften."

The humans decided to go out into town to find answers and agreed to come back to the shrine to coordinate what they'd discovered. Mohamara was basically forced to stay in the shrine of Talos until they could find out the cause of the Forsworn attacks, then smuggle him out.

He found it incredibly difficult to stay in the headspace of 'what would Sheogorath do?' while mind-numbingly bored. There were only so many times he could play 'I Spy' with Talos' statue.

Several times the two Bretons both came to the shrine to inform each other, and Mohamara of what they'd found. At first, there were no substantial leads, but then two breakthroughs happened almost simultaneously.

"I found a note in Weylin's room directing him to strike in the marketplace by someone named 'N', I just need to find out who that is."

"There's an Imperial spy in the Silver-Blood Inn. She's been investigating the Silver-Blood family, and after I talked to her a guard threatened me. I think the Silver-Bloods might be involved."

Mohamara clapped his hands together, getting the two humans to look at him as he sat curled up on Talos' head. He spoke to them, in that unique mad headspace where madness and clarity intersected. "How did this come to be? How long have these Silver-Bloods and this 'N' been the Jarls of Markarth, and not Igmund? Like hornets protecting their hive, they will come to snuff you out now that you've both shown to be powerless, and worse--annoying. Provoke the Hornets to swarm and then go wake the cave bear to steal their precious honey. For they only grew mighty from his slumbering."

"... Talos? Is that you?" Eltrys hesitantly backed away from the cat with a madman's eyes that pierced through him.

"Don't be a fool--it's far more likely to be Lady Mara." Senna flippantly gestured, then rushed up the stairs out of the shrine. "And I for one agree with Her advice, let's go."

When Eltrys had gone as well, and Mohamara was alone, again. He sighed to himself and went limp on the Divine's statue. "This isn't fun at all." The act of madness slipped away, and he started to think about what he'd done. Ri'saad and the caravaneers were going to be so angry with him when he got back. If he got back.

"So you're the one stirring up trouble." After an indeterminate span of time waiting for the Bretons to show back up, Mohamara caught three Markarth City Guards entering the shrine, all with close-faced helmets. "I expected it to be another native, but guess cats like making trouble too." The three of them drew their swords and advanced.

"If you don't resist, we'll make it hurt less."

Mohamara just gradually arched an eyebrow as the three Nords approached him. They had left the Dwemer doors ajar, and this proved to be their undoing as Senna, Eltrys and three additional people stepped into view on the temple steps. They were Igmund, Jarl of Markarth, his Redguard bodyguard, and the mysterious elder Nord that had sat with them earlier.

"So you will kill me? On whose authority?" Mohamara kept his eyes focused on Igmund, who sneered but held the Khajiit's gaze silently.

"Thonar Silver-Blood, the only man who matters in this city. You've messed up his deal with Madanach by having Nepos killed. Now the Forsworn gotta find a new middleman, and we gotta pin your murder and all the other deaths on your friends. You know what? I think I'm going to make it hurt bad, cat, to make you pay for all this extra work you're making us do."

"I see. Are you satisfied, my Jarl?" The three Nords didn't stop, likely thinking that Mohamara was bluffing. One reached up to grab the cat, flipping his sword around for a stabbing motion when all three men froze dead in their tracks when Mohamara was answered.

"I distinctly remember ordering Madanach be sent to the headsman's block," Igmund spoke with a barely suppressed fury that bespoke a coming explosion of anger. "Isn't that right, uncle?"

"Quite." The mysterious elder Nord spoke up, giving the three frozen guards a contemptuous look. "Was it not the Silver-Bloods who did the deed on your behalf?"

"It would seem that a was a lie." Igmund turned to speak over his shoulder, another Markarth guard leaned in from around the corner to hear the order. "Round up the Silver-Bloods. Every last one. I want them all thrown into that damn mine of theirs." The longer he spoke, the harder it seemed to be for him to contain his overflowing rage. The Jarl's hands were shaking like he had palsy, and his face was growing red as a tomato. Suddenly, he pointed at Eltrys, who quickly bowed and backed away. "You! You and the priestess did more for this city in one day than those parasites have done in twenty years. I will see about getting you both a position of prominence for this."

"What of these three men, my Jarl? And of Madanach?" Senna spoke up, unafraid of the Jarl in a near berserk state. "If my guess is right, Madanach is behind a long-term Forsworn magical ritual affecting the whole of Markarth--he needs to be destroyed before we can begin taking the ritual magic apart."

"I will see Madanach's head roll. With my own eyes this time! Search the Silver-Blood's papers, if they have him hidden away somewhere I want him found!" Igmund had devolved into full-throated shouting. "Someone pry Calcelmo away from the damn Dwarves and help with this ritual or whatever it is!"

Igmund's uncle left to fulfill these orders, while more Markarth guards streamed into the shrine to apprehend the three that had been inches away from murdering Mohamara. The Jarl stomped his way down to the foot of the Talos statue which the cat was using as a chair. His body language and expression shifted between wanting to do violence to Mohamara himself and angrily pointing. The Nord ground his teeth together and glared vicious daggers at Mohamara who calmly kept a neutral expression.

He'd worked in retail before, and nothing he'd seen from Igmund--including threats of decapitation--was worse than what he'd had customers pull on him when enraged.

At last, the Jarl seemed to force himself into being composed. "You. And your. Kin. May enter. Markarth. To do business. Or buy property."

Mohamara slowly grinned as only cats could while the Nord literally forced the words out.

"But if I hear a word about any of you thieving, or selling poisons, I will make all of you into one. Giant! Rug!" Igmund left, with his Redguard guard following behind him, almost trailing steam behind him.

"Okay, I take it back. That was the most fun I've had in a long time." Mohamara said when it was just him, Eltrys, and Senna again.

"At least now we won't have to smuggle you out of the city. My only plan was to disguise you as a girl and claim I was teaching you Restoration magic." Senna mentioned offhand, which got Mohamara's smile to waver a bit.

"Just because I wear robes doesn't mean I'd agree with wearing a dress."

"A robe is a type of dress, you know."

Mohamara made swiping motions in the air, even though he was easily ten feet away from the Dibellan priestess. "If I had claws, I would scratch your eyes out for that."

"If you had claws, I would almost consider you a threat. As-is, you're too adorable to be able to do me harm."

Eltrys looked between the two of them and arched a brow of his. "I thought you said you only knew each other a little? You two are talking like you've known each other for years."

"It's a coping mechanism--using humor to deflect how stressful the day has been by being over familiar." Mohamara waved off the Breton man's concerns and finally climbed down to the floor like a civilized person.

"Indeed. I'm surprised you haven't done something similar yet." Senna shrugged and walked with Mohamara as the cat ascended the stairs. "Come on, let's leave the well-adjusted man alone."

"He clearly doesn't need us to help deal with his problems. Probably has life goals beyond tomorrow or something."

"Well--good for him."

"Aww, come on!" Eltrys trotted after the two sashaying robed people, feigning a whine. "I have plenty of problems we could joke about--over some mead perhaps? Hey, wait up!"

---

Cats have poor impulse control. So when they abandon what little they have in that regard, things go bad right quick.

But hey, Markarth's over and there is no reason to ever come back to the awfullest place in Skyrim. Yay!

 

[unsanity]

If at any point you have to ask yourself "What would Sheogorath do," something has either gone horribly wrong, or horribly right. Depends on whether or not he answers.

 

[Chairtastic]

Remember kids, if you give your children weapons, to mind the pointy end.
---
Chapter 6: Matchmaker, Matchmaker

For reasons that strongly resembled High Elves that had already stolen one pair of robes, Mohamara did not want to join Senna and Eltrys in celebrating their victory at the Silver-Blood Inn. Instead, he slowly made his way down to the caravan behind the group of guards dispatched to inform Ri'saad about the Jarl's decree.

It felt like he was walking to the Headmaster's office to be screamed at or something, a proximal tension in the air that only got worse as he drew closer.

When the guards arrived at the caravan and began speaking to Ri'saad, Mohamara stayed back near the road sign. More than one of the cathay in the caravan were looking at him with twitching tails and flat ears--clearly angry. Even Ri'saad's tail was swishing back and forth ever so slightly.

But the news that the caravan could now do business in Markarth city proper, perhaps even buy property, got more than one of those upset body language cues to lift. Excited talk of the new profits that could be made reached across the distance to reach Mohamara--and it would have done much to relieve the tension if Ri'saad's body language had not remained unchanged.

Soon enough, the guards turned and left and only the Khajiit remained. Ri'saad's eyes locked onto Mohamara, who hesitantly approached when it became clear Ri'saad wasn't moving. In short order, the tojay was standing in front of the cathay and struggled to meet his gaze.

"You ran off, knowing what you were doing could get you killed." Ri'saad had no anger in his voice or face. Only his swishing tail indicated any danger in the situation. "If not by the river, if not by the Nords, if not by the Forsworn--who had already tried to kill you, then by the Thalmor you escaped."

Mohamara nodded to each one because he knew he would only start trying to explain what couldn't be explained if he spoke.

"And in so doing, you have dismantled the Silver-Blood empire and won us access to Markarth that twenty years of honorable behavior could not. Well done." Ri'saad reached down and patted Mohamara on the head. When he saw how stunned the tojay was, the elder seemed amused. "Khajiit value cleverness and cunning, not obedience. I would be angry with you had you gotten injured again, or done something to sour our relations with the city. But your clever game won us mighty profit both now, and in the future."

At that precise moment, Mohamara's bad leg decided it was the time to give out on him. Mohamara gave a brief gasp as he started to list out from under Ri'saad's hand. "Oh! Gravity works." Then he hit the ground, not hard but enough to ruin the moment.

Someone in the caravan found this worthy of snickering. Ri'saad merely sighed, and helped the tojay up. "This one thinks your leg is perhaps not healing properly--is understandable, Dibellans not known as great healers. Perhaps in Whiterun, the Kynareth temple can fix it."

"Well, maybe it'd be better if I had something better than this weak sauce regeneration effect." Mohamara tweaked the gold ring still on his finger to provide weak regeneration for his leg and tail. "Feels like they just shoved a fox's soul into it or something."

Ri'saad arched his droopy brow as he allowed Mohamara to lean on him until the tojay's leg was recovered. "You think you can do better, ja'khajiit?"

Mohamara puffed out his chest, to limited effect since he was so drastically small. "I got my Enchanting Plus Certification just last year. I'm legally authorized to handle souls up to the greater size category--so I know I can do better. Heck, give me a petty soul and I could still do better than this." He examined the band and stuck his tongue out. "Looks like something they had an intern do."

"This one will see about getting a soul gem for you, then. But come, you have missed the evening meal so will have to settle for cold food."

"Ick."

--

They stayed in front of Markarth only a day longer. During the packing up, Mohamara was asked frequently to use his small size to get into the packed up wagons, heavy with goods purchased from Markarth, and ensure that they were arranged so as not to break anything.

To pass the time on the boring long march north and around the mountains Mohamara still did not know the name of--no one he asked seemed to know either--he listened to music and looked through years of pictures on his slate.

With the earpieces blocking all sound from the outside world, he found himself startled by sudden shaking more than once. Most often it was to tell one of the curious cathay that he couldn't answer questions about the future because he hadn't studied that period of history.

Most couldn't grasp how ancient the Fourth Era was to Mohamara, or how much had happened in the sixteen thousand years between it and his future that he couldn't know all the details.

"You often sit for long periods of time just staring at that thing, holding it while you layabout," Ma'randru-jo commented once while he walked behind the wagon on top of which Mohamara sat and watched the horizon. Since he wasn't walking as much anymore, he could wear his jeans and enjoy having proper trousers for a short time without risking his bandaged leg bleeding on them. "Are you meditating, perhaps?"

"I'm listening to music." Mohamara looked down at the braided cathay and gestured to the ebony clips resting on his ears. "These play music directly into my ears from the slate. If I didn't have them on, it could play for all of you and in the future, that's considered rude."

"Well in the sensible past, having music to pass the time would be much appreciated." The cathay man seemed annoyed that Mohamara had not volunteered the information sooner. "If you don't mind?"

The tojay held the slate close to his chest and looked away while his face gradually reddened. "Um. My taste in music might be… something not everyone in the caravan would like."

"Are they tawdry? Songs of lustful conquests by future men and women we will have to imagine?"

One of the cathay women, whom Mohamara knew to be sleeping with Ma'randru-jo for a week thenabouts, bapped the braided man in the back of the head. Which was good because Mohamara didn't want to have to throw a shoe at the man.

"No." Mohamara held his ears flat but pointed away from his skull. It was a bit of body language he'd picked up from the cathay to mean 'stop talking about this'. "I don't have sex songs on my slate. At least… I don't think any of them are about sex."

But others of the caravaneers who were walking with the wagons had come by to ask about music. Some asked if he had local songs, others wanted songs he suspected were from Elsweyr. But the more he was pestered, the more Ma'randru-jo seemed to smirk at him.

"Alright fine. They're love songs, happy? I keep a lot of sappy romance music on this thing because I'm sad, lonely, and pathetic. Is that the sort of thing you want to hear?" The tojay lamented that his tail was too short for any of them to see how it was lashing about in annoyance.

"...This one would like to hear love songs."

"Khajiit doesn't mind romance!"

"Anything to distract this one from the boring walk, please!"

And of course, they wouldn't behave like normal people. They were Khajiit, normal was anathema to them. Defeated, the tojay unclipped the earpieces and slid them back into the slate. "What sort of love song does the crowd want, then?"

The most common thing he heard was 'songs about distant love', which he sadly admitted made sense. Most of the caravaneers had families back Elsweyr that they were feeding with this work. So he flipped through the lists for such songs.

He led with a song about love that endured longer than the concept of time itself, from a moving portrait he'd seen as a child and kept the song in mind when he'd gotten a slate. From there, he started to work up a retinue with appropriate music and let it play automatically. Time pollution from fourteen different Eras sang out onto the mountainous valleys of the Reach.

"Ja'khajiit, if company is what you require, there are many among the caravan who would court you." After the music had stopped, Ri'saad had slowed his walking to travel apace with Mohamara's wagon.

The tojay didn't even get flustered about it, which surprised even him. "No, there aren't. And even if they were, it's not my people's way to do flings."

Ri'saad and a great many of the cathay bachelors walking or driving carriages gave Mohamara confused looks. "Ja'khajiit, the Khajiit people most certainly do do 'flings'."

"But Meridians don't." Mohamara flicked his ears backward and against his skull, agitated that the caravan's communal nature had wormed into this area of his life. "Every Meridian community has a matchmaker, who watches the children as they grow up and pairs them with someone who would be a good match. If there isn't a matchmaker available, it's up to the parents to find a marriage for their children." A small degree of venom edged into Mohamara's voice as he talked. "My parents won't be born for thousands of years, and I don't know how long I'm going to be here. Sheo… Skooma Cat could decide to end his vacation at any time."

"And if he leaves without you?" Ri'saad's body language and tone made no indication of the venom Mohamara was directing toward him. For one so old, perhaps he had seen this play out before.

"Then I deal with that when it happens if it happens. And don't give the Skooma Cat ideas on how to be crueler than he has already--if you don't mind." The tojay laid back on top of the wagon, where Ri'saad could no longer see him.

There was a short period of no talking by Ri'saad or any of the walkers, before the cathay woman driving the wagon turned around to Mohamara. "You have no… 'match' waiting for you back in the future?" She seemed confused for a second by the words as she asked. "Forward in the future?"

"My matchmaker told me that past the age of fifteen the odds of a good match went down to around two percent." Mohamara put the hood of his jacket up to create some form of barrier between him and the cathay who asked. "So if I wanted to risk being matched with a spousal abuser, or something else awful like that I could keep on or I could just settle on being single the rest of my life. Guess which one I picked?"

"Fifteen is so young to be married, though. You barely know who you are as a person by then." Ri'saad took the cue to interject into the conversation again.

"Guess that's just something we fuck up as time goes on, eh?"

"Aw, sonnie. If you wanted me to pick someone for you… ya just had to ask."

Mohamara's blood froze in his veins as he noticed a white-haired white-eyed Nord walk past the cart. When the tojay moved to get a better look, the Nord was gone.

"Now you said you don't want any spousal abuse? Feh, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you don't want any of the other fun nuances either." Sheogorath was seated alongside the cathay woman driving the wagon, writing something down on a roll of paper with a sausage-shaped pen. It could have potentially have been just a normal sausage. "I should really talk to your uncle Sanguine about this--he's so much better at this sort of thing than I am. Wait!" The Mad God turned and grinned down at the tojay. "How would you feel about being matched with your uncle Sanguine, eh?"

Mohamara started to scoot away from the demented Daedra as his fur began to stand on end. Sheogorath's smile wilted when he got no reaction from the Khajiit.

"Ah, you're right. You're too much of a stick in the mud for him, anyway. But don't worry, I still love ya to pieces. Thankfully Haskill knows how to put mortals back together or we'd have had some problems when you were a baby." He pointed the sausage--it was a normal sausage--at the Khajiit, and wagged it. "And no matter what Haskill says, I most definitely did not try to eat your legs when you were two days old."

Mohamara started to creep down the side of the wagon but found Sheogorath waiting for him on the road when he started to walk, using a flower to write on an orange this time.

"I also see you haven't used that present I got ya, but that's alright. It waited a few thousand years for you, a little while longer won't do it no harm." The Mad God took a moment to ruffle the tojay's hair through his jacket hood. "But! Go to Solitude. Become a bard. That's an order."

Sheogorath's words felt like an iron chain wrapping around Mohamara's neck.

"What do you want with me?" Mohamara whisper-hissed to the Mad God who once more could not be seen by anyone but him. "I get that you're all about driving mortals mad, but this isn't driving me insane it's just giving me heart problems."

Sheogorath actually looked hurt by Mohamara's words. "Oh. You haven't… put it together yet. I'd hoped you could see the connection given that whole Mysticism thing you got going."

"You know perfectly well that actually seeing the bonds is something that only masters can do. Since you've been stalking me since I was a baby, you should know better."

The hurt expression became a glare, and suddenly Mohamara remembered he was talking to a Daedric Prince who could turn him into cheese. Or a woman's beard. Or into seven notes of music if he cared to.

"I'll let that slide since you're very obviously in need of company, lad. But do watch your tone. Or have your tone watch you, I really don't care. Since you're not bright enough to see the connection, I'll spell it out for you, mortal." Sheogorath's pen became a knife, which he used to slash at Mohamara's face just below the eye, then handed the know bloody implement over to the Khajiit.

In his hand, the knife became a manilla envelope which opened on its own. There was a lot of incredibly complex technical information that Mohamara suspected were actually instructions for an outdated music player. But at the bottom was a box circled three times in red.

'Paternity Test: Positive.'

"The results are in, and would you look at that? I'm the father!" Sheogorath scooped up the shellshocked tojay and hugged him so hard Mohamara couldn't breathe.

"Ja'khajiit, how are you levitating?"

--

Ri'saad didn't like that Sheogorath had ordered Mohamara to go north to Solitude, Mohamara could tell by the way his tail went immediately to thrashing about with no warm-up period. He took the news about the 'paternity test' about as well as Mohamara had--that is to say with defeated resignation. But the orders of 'Skooma Cat' were not to be ignored, so the elder cathay sent riders well ahead of the caravan to relay a message to someone called 'Ma'dran'.

It was explained later that Ma'dran was one of Ri'saad's lieutenants, who ran a route from Windhelm to Solitude and back. Normally the two caravans wouldn't meet due to scheduling, but Ri'saad hoped to catch Ma'dran's caravan approaching Dragon Bridge. If possible, he would just send Mohamara ahead with a rider and hope for the best.

Word that the tojay was leaving spread so everyone who had questions or requests to make of Mohamara or his slate pestered him in the days following.

The riders returned with bad news--Ma'dran had already departed Solitude and was passing Whiterun. Thus a decision had to be made that Ri'saad didn't like one bit: Mohamara would stay with the caravan until they reached the road north, where Mohamara would be sent with a rider to Solitude.

"That seems perfectly fine to me," Mohamara offered when the elder Khajiit emphasized how much he disliked it. "As long as it doesn't put the rider at risk going there. I can live on my own for a while."

"No, ja'khajiit. There are Thalmor in Solitude." Ri'saad's droopy face almost seemed animated by the topic. "They will try to snatch you again. Then the problem becomes what if a Nord decides to knife you while in the city? This one has lost riders and messengers to fools like them, even in the most hospitable of cities." Ri'saad talked with the guards of the caravan to see if any of them could be away from the group long enough to help Mohamara.

Said tojay was sick of all the taking he was doing from the caravan, and no give so ducked out of Ri'saad's tent and went around back. Once he was sure none of the people inside would be able to hear, he took some steps away and assumed the general prayer position. One bent knee on which clasped hands would rest with his forehead on top.

"Lord Sheogorath…. Dad. I could use a little help to best follow your orders. So. Um. Help?"

Sheogorath's response was swift, direct, and his usual brand of unusual. Mohamara keeled over in writing pain suddenly and found the cause to be a three-pointed Daedric spear almost twice Mohamara's height in its length. The centermost and largest point had impaled the tojay through the foot he had been kneeling on. Affixed to the spear was a large piece of paper which read: 'It summons atronachs, and reflects spells. Should help you out plenty. --Marianne'

And while the presence of the Daedric weapon did seem to mollify Ri'saad's misgivings about sending Mohamara off on his own, the injury to the tojay had absolutely incensed the elder Khajiit more than had been seen properly. Mohamara had to promise not to solicit help from the 'Skooma Cat' again.

Fortunately, Mohamara's original introduction to the caravan had brought to light the need for healing potions so he only had to spend a day and a half bedridden again. It would still need a healer to look at and fix the broken bones in his foot, but at least he could use the spear as a walking stick. It was oddly fortunate that the spear had impaled the foot on his bad leg anyway.

The caravan stopped for a day outside the town of Karthwasten to sell and buy from the locals before starting eastward to Whiterun Hold. All too soon it came time for Mohamara to ride north with a cathay, possibly to not see the caravan again in a long time. Or at all, if the vacation ended. There were no tearful goodbyes, mostly it was the cathay nagging him to look after himself and to stop getting so badly injured all the time.

And then he was off. He had to ride in front of the cathay rider escorting him because behind would land him sitting on the poor man's tail. The offer to shove Mohamara into one of the saddlebags was always there if he got uncomfortable.

It only slightly worried the tojay that he could legitimately fit into the saddlebags. Secondary school had taught him there were a large number of containers he could fit in. Most of them required the fire department to get him back out, though.

At least it got a few bullies expelled.

The dragon bridge was just as he remembered it being, though made of stone and not metal. After airships became the premier mode of transport, the bridge had fallen into disrepair until it fell apart in an earthquake. The rebuilt bridge was then made from metal to serve as a tourist attraction and local landmark.

But what made him want to stop and take a break was a mountain he remembered: Kilkreath. His cathay escort had been hesitant about stopping so close to Solitude, but Mohamara pulled the 'adorable eyes' trick and got the man to relent.

It was so… strange that the temple of Meridia was so small. The only thing that told it apart from other Nord ruins was the Lady's winged statue atop the roof. The entrance to the temple was barred from the inside, so he couldn't enter in--that left climbing up to see the statue himself.

It wasn't the same statue he'd grown up with. Meridia's statue was second only in size to Azura's in all of Skyrim. But it still had the smaller clasped hand figures that would hold the beacon that would connect all the faithful in Skyrim to the Lady.

At least it would if the beacon was present.

After a cursory look for perhaps a container in which the beacon had been stored, Mohamara had to accept that it wasn't there. So all the times he'd been praying to Meridia since arriving had been in vain--without the beacon, she could not hear him due to Martin Septim's barrier. It acted as a sort of sigil stone in that way.

He tried to follow the sympathetic bond from the statue to its beacon but found that the magic pulled sharply east and south. Eastmarch, he realized after putting the tug of the bonds to his escort's map. The beacon was somewhere in Eastmarch. It would have to be retrieved as soon as he was done following Sheogorath's orders--lest the Mad God visit an unpleasant fate on him.

Meridia would understand, she had an eternity to wait.

Didn't she?

---
So begins the Bard's College questline.

 

[Zerith]

Nice. Nothin else I really gotta say

 

[Sceptic]

Next Sheogorath heavy chapter to be called "Daddy Issues"?

 

[Stratagemini]

Tojay Cat is super slow. His parents are the matchmakers in Meridian communities. His dad said "You want a match? Go to the Bard's College!" He still thinks he's destined to be Forever Alone.

 

[Dromeosaur]

Tojay Cat is super slow. His parents are the matchmakers in Meridian communities. His dad said "You want a match? Go to the Bard's College!" He still thinks he's destined to be Forever Alone.

Click to shrink...

Hey, it isn't that easy to get out of depressive mindset.

 

[Korkator]

Well, you never saw it coming?

Click to shrink...

It was obvious due to their shared love of cheese. Something like that must be inherited.

Click to shrink...

Maybe not as obvious, but that was tipped off even earlier, in the first paragraph of story:

The Temple always had dust in the air, and it was always fascinating to watch the particles dance around the rays of light that filled the temple from on high. They sometimes made shapes similar to Daedric letters or animals, but you had to be looking closely to see them.

Click to shrink...

The italicized part reminded me so clearly of the flavour of Sheogorath's followers that I assumed Mohamara either already had contact with the Prince (maybe even the same way Pelagius did) or he had fairly long-standing, deep-seated issues that would inevitably result in contact.

In regards to the current point of the story, there still isn't any telling whether or not Mohamara is Sheogorath's offspring, or even what "father" and "son" might mean here, simply because an avatar of madness is saying them. I'm trying to remember any examples of what having Daedra blood would entail that we could use to corroborate or deny Sheo's claims, and not coming up with anything. So far as I can tell all we have is personality hints like I quoted and Mohamara's efficacy copying Sheo's style.


Oh, and the trident is supposed to summon atronachs, but which kind is unspecified; a watermelon or oil-slick atronach are just as likely as the usual frost/fire/storm atronachs.

 

[Zap Rowsdower]

Maybe not as obvious, but that was tipped off even earlier, in the first paragraph of story:
The italicized part reminded me so clearly of the flavour of Sheogorath's followers that I assumed Mohamara either already had contact with the Prince (maybe even the same way Pelagius did) or he had fairly long-standing, deep-seated issues that would inevitably result in contact.

In regards to the current point of the story, there still isn't any telling whether or not Mohamara is Sheogorath's offspring, or even what "father" and "son" might mean here, simply because an avatar of madness is saying them. I'm trying to remember any examples of what having Daedra blood would entail that we could use to corroborate or deny Sheo's claims, and not coming up with anything. So far as I can tell all we have is personality hints like I quoted and Mohamara's efficacy copying Sheo's style.


Oh, and the trident is supposed to summon atronachs, but which kind is unspecified; a watermelon or oil-slick atronach are just as likely as the usual frost/fire/storm atronachs.

Click to shrink...

There is in-canon precedent for Demiprinces, but the only one we know for sure of in canon, Fa-Nuit-Hen, seems more Daedra than he does Mortal in mentality.

Morihaus is also sometimes referred to as a demiprince, and was far more mortal in his mentality but being half aedra he's more properly demigod.

Also, neither Morihaus nor Fa-Nuit-Hen looked mortal, since the former looks Dremora and the latter was a minotaur.

 

[unsanity]

There is in-canon precedent for Demiprinces, but the only one we know for sure of in canon, Fa-Nuit-Hen, seems more Daedra than he does Mortal in mentality.

Morihaus is also sometimes referred to as a demiprince, and was far more mortal in his mentality but being half aedra he's more properly demigod.

Also, neither Morihaus nor Fa-Nuit-Hen looked mortal, since the former looks Dremora and the latter was a minotaur.

Click to shrink...

Maybe Mohamara never really had claws? Maybe all the Daedra stuff is covered by a thick layer of fluff?

 

[Chairtastic]

Food for thought, but all the Demiprinces/Demigods we've seen in canon are in full possession of their powers, their spheres, and in FNH's case a realm of Oblivion to administer. There is no evidence for or against them assuming those forms after hitting their second puberty where they start growing into their powers.

For instance--Demiprinces are not easy to kill, but somehow Malacath was able to kill his under Sheogorath's influence. Perhaps they need to reach a certain point of development before they stop being mortals?