I hope you all haven't forgotten that Sheogorath isn't exactly a good parent. Or a decent parent.
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Chapter 58: Temper, temper.
The entire caravan of mages had been diverted to the ruins of a Dwemer city, Alftland, publicly for the reason of permitting a storm to pass and to let the Pink Coats make use of their newer, stronger morpholiths.
But the real reason was something small, selfish, and created just as many problems as it solved.
Prior to the diversion, Mohamara and Orchendor had been in their crate, getting used to their new love powers. There had been a brief hiccup where they got a rush of the bad families Marcurio and nearby mages had experienced, but that had passed. Marcurio, meanwhile, had taken to appreciating like Life, Love hadn't significantly altered his beau's appearance. He floated alongside the crate while it was carried by spellswords, and pondered.
But he didn't do so for very long--too much pondering creased the forehead, and Marcurio had no intention of getting wrinkles until he hit fifty at least. His pondering led him to knock on the slider to Mohamara's box, and wait for two tojay to appear on the other side. Whereupon he made a dangerous suggestion that could easily have gotten them both on the bad sides of multiple Daedra.
"We should elope."
The spellswords carrying Mohamara's box gave each other a 'what the fuck' look.
Mohamara and Orchendor looked at each other, then at Marcurio, like he had advised them to drink liquid iron. "Both sets of our parents are planning to be there," Mohamara said. His tone made it seem like he was explaining an obvious flaw in the plan.
"Yeah-huh."
"Our myriad sisters will likely show up," added Orchendor, his tone mirroring Mohamara's.
"More than likely." Marcurio rested his head in his hand while he continued to float along.
"Everyone in our family has anger problems, and us canceling the wedding to elope would give them an excuse to--," Mohamara's fearful rant was cut off by Marcurio asking him a question.
"Who said anything about canceling the wedding?" The thief-mage arched a smug eyebrow at his beau's confused expression. "We let them have their pageantry, big fancy wedding and all that… but in secret, we'll have been married for months already at the time. No one would know but us, these two fine gentlemen who will accept a bribe to keep their mouths shut if they know what's good for them, Mara, and some witnesses." He watched the tojay cats work out his line of thinking for a moment before clarifying. "I refuse to let our wedding be a painful memory for either of us. So we marry in secret and let the crazies ruin what basically amounts to a vow renewal. Follow me so far?"
"Wait," one of the spellswords carrying Mohamara's box spoke up. "Did you just threaten us?"
"Giller, I swear to every god known and unknown if you don't shut up and take the bribe I'll stab you to death myself," said the other.
Marcurio allowed himself to be distracted by their antics for but a moment before he focused again on the only one(s) whose opinion mattered in this situation. His mind was already plotting out two initial routes that could be taken from that point, branching off of 'yes' and 'no' respectively. No matter what the answer would be, Marcurio would be ready to seamlessly move along with his beau's choice.
"Alftand has a cathedral," Orchendor said at last. "And we still have the calling password in our slate Khajiit thinks." The emaciated cat vanished from the slider, and a moment later was replaced with the Dwemer-metal slate. "Yes, still got it! ...Um, wow, Khajiit didn't know Alftand was so badly damaged."
"Well of course it is," Mohamara said back. "It's not fully restored until, what, the fourteenth era?"
"But--we could use their cathedral. Get some people down there, act as witnesses, maybe summon aunt Mara, and it'll be done!"
"Why does it having a cathedral matter, love?" Marcurio reached in to scratch under Mohamara's chin so Orchendor could speak uninterrupted. That the pink cat became a half-melted weight which leaned into his hand for it was almost as good an outcome as getting the information, honestly.
"Mysticism, mostly." Orchendor looked at Mohamara half-melted, then pouted at Marcurio until the Imperial began to scratch his chin too. The strength of the scratching was reduced so that they could speak. "Places of worship are closely tied to divine energy."
"And oaths made in the presence of that type of divine energy, dead or alive, tend to be stronger," Mohamara added. "So while you can pray anywhere, the gods can more clearly 'hear you' in a temple." The pink cat's ears flicked while he was scratched. "Hmm, I wonder if Volskygge counts as a temple for--"
Both cats rose up off Marcurio's scratching fingers to look at each other in a panic. "We forgot to start building Meridia's temple!"
"No, you didn't." Marcurio gently reminded the two cats and would have added some physical affection to that, but they had moved too far away. "You told your followers to start on it, had the local quarries begin digging up the rock, and set up everything with the artists before you even left, remember?"
The two cats looked at each other, confused, then lowered their ears. Mohamara spoke for the pair of them. "I… don't remember that. But okay, that's started."
"Maybe you should write this stuff down? So you don't forget all the important things you're supposed to be doing?" Marcurio suddenly tilted his head back in thought. "Though I do that too. Granted, I have a lot less important things to do than you do." The cats found his hands again, and he returned to chin-scratching. "But, Alftand you say? Does that mean we're going through with my proposal?"
"So exactly what sort of bribe we talking about? Money, physical goods, women? I mean, the cat's supposed to be a god, he could just like make wives for us or something."
"Giller, if you don't shut the fuck up I'm going to drop this box and shank you right now."
"But--"
"No buts!"
And that was how they diverted to Alftand, once an important communications hub of the second Dwemer Empire. On the way down to the cathedral, they encountered a team of explorers who were both happy and sad to have them. Happy because an army of nearly a hundred mages, low skill mages mind, was enough to get them out of the sticky situation of being captured and tortured by Falmer. And sad because it meant that the price for their lives was that they'd get no treasure.
Mohamara didn't much care for the treasure or lack thereof, he had only been distracted from his eloping to stop a pair of Khajiit brothers from coming to blows. One was a skooma addict and in heavy withdrawal, and had stabbed his brother over imagined skooma. The Caller went to work healing the cathay stab victim's injury while Adanna brewed up a cure for Skooma made from a few drops of Mohamara's blood. Neither process would be done quickly, but the mage-crowd had no objections. The chance to see the inside of a Dwemer city, broken down though it was, and get a trinket seemed worth the additional delay. To prevent any chance of them being discovered easily, Mohamara had left his Meridian amulet in the Caller's care, publicly so that students could begin to enchant the explorer's equipment.
As they went down into the depths of Alftand, Mohamara's two halves, Marcurio, Serana, Orthorn, the Servitors, the babies, and Yagraz on a looking glass session were ridiculously overpowered for the Falmer defenses. Falmer that tried to fight were reduced to literal red paste in some cases, metaphoric red paste in most. Dwemer automatons would approach them threateningly, then pause and look at them. Every time, Mohamara and Orchendor thought really loudly the tune they had heard while hallucinating in the Reach nearly a year ago.
The tune was actually the calling password for Dwemer facilities. The Dwarves could speak across great distances, a skill that would be one day used to permit slates, micro-slates, and all varieties of devices to communicate from potentially continents away. That was the call, which could be mimicked by the thoughts of mortals. Loosely translated, the password meant: "I am a Dwarf, I am a laborer here to dig. Those who do not Call with me are my slaves. Let me pass."
The automatons let them pass.
Alftand's cathedral was a temple to Reason and Logic, Julianos and Jyggalag--though the Dwemer denied that the two could be assigned mortal traits like names and personalities. Directly above the entrance to the holy building was where they aimed to go. A few dead Falmer, and up a couple flights of stairs, the would-be husband pair stood on either side of a lever where they had set up Mohamara's slate. On Yagraz's side, she had brought a friend of hers--a priest of Mara--to officiate the wedding.
"It was Mara who first gave birth to all of creation," said the Dunmer priest on the other end of the looking glass.
Mohamara chose to let that slight against Meridia slide--lest he accidentally summon her.
"And pledged to watch over us as her children."
Again, the tojay shifted on his feet in mild annoyance. The Sphere of Love rattling around in him instinctively told him that such was his domain, and he should smite the mortal for saying otherwise. But he reigned that in, he'd been the god of families for all of a day thus far--no one knew who he was.
"It is from her love of us, that we first learned to love one another."
Marcurio bent down and offered his hand to Mohamara, who took it. They hadn't really been the hand-holding type of relationship, the cat realized. It felt weird. Nice, but weird. Orchendor was only slightly jealous, as he held onto both kittens during the proceeding.
"It is from this love that we learn: A life lived alone is no life at all."
Though they did not share it with each other then, both grooms felt that sentiment on a deep, personal level.
"We gather here today, under Mara's loving gaze, to bear witness to--"
"A parental veto on all of this! Really, lad, I'm so happy you did this, your sisters never got this far in a relationship that I could play the forbidding father routine!" Out of nowhere, Sheogorath popped into existence between the two and shook them about the shoulders. "Eloping! What a grand idea! Shame I have to quash it really--but dear old Meri-pants has her heart set on being there for the event."
"Sheogorath, Dad," Mohamara started but was tutted to silence while the Mad God physically picked him, Orchendor, and their kittens up all at the same time in a hug.
"It's just--I'm so proud of ye, laddie! You're defying me! Meri-pants too! A year ago you woulda ate your own hands first!" He squeezed them frankly too hard--Mysticism telekinesis had to be used to keep the kittens from being compressed. "But, proud as I am, this cannot proceed." Sheogorath grew a third arm to flick disdainfully at the priest of Mara on the looking glass. "Go on, go, you aren't needed no more. Except by all those people who do need you and are dying because you're not there. Perhaps you should go help them."
Fortunately, a plan had been hatched for exactly that situation. The babies were teleported away into the arms of Orthorn as a distraction, whereupon both Mohamaras drew back their legs and delivered a swift kick to the Mad God's squishy bits.
Gods doing violence to each other carried more weight than mortal-on-god violence. And even when he'd become a god, Mohamara's power relative to Sheogorath had been laughable. But the combined effects of three spheres and the unique properties of Kindness allowed him to hit above his metaphysical weight class. So that double groin-kick didn't just distract Sheogorath, it hurt.
It hurt like a bitch.
But neither cat knew that right away. They escaped their father's grasp and rejoined Marcurio in front of the slate. "Hurry up and get to the 'I do' part before he recovers," said the two cats as one.
"Wait--if your father has objections--" The Dunmer priest was cut off once again by Sheogorath.
The Mad God had grown demonstrably nicer over the Fourth Era and beyond. He loved fun, and he loved his children. But it had been a significantly long time since he'd felt something that actually hurt him. Meridia punching him in the face stung, but she pulled her punches specifically so that it never go worse than a sting. Except when she didn't, but Sheogorath enjoyed that too. When a non-Meridia person inflicted actual, appreciable, pain on him… Sheogorath tended toward the quintessential mortal trait of hitting back.
Which took the form of slapping Mohamara so hard the cat's neck twisted unnaturally, produced a sickening crunch, and carried the cat off the platform from the strength of it. Naturally, the elder scroll and Orchendor went flying with him--but the other tojay had gone unnaturally limp. They landed on the other side of a barred gate, in plain view of the mortals and immortals on high. Neither moved from their spot on the ground. Perceptive eyes, like Orthorn, Serana, and Marcurio noted that neither of them were breathing.
All around Marcurio, the scene became chaos. The Servitors sparked, smoked, and struggled to remain functioning. An earthquake started up in response to a god's murder. Yagraz appeared on the looking glass and demanded answers. Sheogorath made a face like he'd accidentally dropped some food on the floor. But all Marcurio heard was a persistent white noise, all he saw was Mohamara. It was like the immediate aftermath of the revelation that Mohamara trusted him--nothing else in the world existed.
"Things have been going too well, recently. Something bad's going to happen soon."
"For every good thing in my life, something bad has happened to make it a net negative."
His beau's words rattled around in his head like bees. And then a wasp joined them.
"We should elope."
His own words. The entire reason they were down there was that Marcurio had offered a change of plans on a whim. The Khajiit he loved was dead… because of him.
No, Marcurio thought to himself as he remembered Sheogorath's involvement. Because of him. The half of Mohamara's Eye that he had with him howled to life, and Marcurio became a being of elemental fire once more. In such a small space, it had quite the effect.
"Slick, no!" Yagraz tried to stop him from half a country away.
"Slick, yes!" His fire-voice howled as he launched himself at Sheogorath. It didn't matter that he knew the Mad God was well out of his depth, or that said Mad God also had half the Eye himself. Vengeance demanded violence, and Mohamara wasn't there to convince him otherwise this time.
He only barely acknowledge Jone's wailing as he tore into the stunned Daedra with claws and fangs of flame.
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Serana, Orthorn, and the babies took shelter in the shadow of J'zargo while the Mad God got his metaphoric shit pushed in by an angry fire elemental. Frankly, she was surprised she hadn't spotted he was a fire elemental in disguise before. What else could just float along like that?
She'd come down for a divine wedding and ended up in the midst of a divine brawl.
"Big guy, you okay?" The Nord vampiress asked of the cathay-raht. He had stumbled backward and shattered a significant portion of the architecture behind him when he hit it. His spasms, the way metal seemed to grind whenever he moved, the way smoke rose from his nose and ears didn't speak well in her opinion.
"Okay, adjective--... Okay, adjective--...," the Servitor said back to her, with a voice unnaturally deep. His eyes would flash and light up in bursts when he tried to move in a more articulate fashion, but never long enough to permit him to stand. Neither of the cat-god's other Servitors were faring any better--the crab-like one seemed to be on fire when she last looked.
"I think we're on our own, any ideas?" Serana turned to Orthorn who had the unfortunate task of containing Jode who sought immediate escape and pacifying Jone who wailed louder than she thought was possible.
"Momamma!" Jode was wailing too but refused to let it paralyze her. A benefit of being more developed, Serana guessed.
The cat had been kind to her--expected of the God of Kindness. And she was sad that a genuinely involved and empathetic deity had been lost on what should be a happy occasion, but that wouldn't get them out of the situation alive. "Orthorn, come on! You're supposed to be able to do the impossible!"
The High Elf was thrown completely off his game by the sudden murder of his god and the need to keep divine children alive and safe. "Um. Ideas, ideas, ideas." He looked around and then clenched his eyes shut. "I'm not good with ideas! I just.. do things!" Jode bit him in her bid to escape, but he hardly noticed. "The master…."
Seranna slapped him to keep the High Elf from devolving into tears too. "Hey hey hey! Come on, we can't stay here, we need to fix this somehow!"
"Fix this… fix it!" With half his face red from the slap, Orthorn lit up with sudden inspiration. "A tojay of the master's size could safely be revived within a few minutes depending on the Restoration magic used! We fix the broken parts, and everything will be okay!"
Sheogorath skipped across the ground and struck the far wall like a stone tossed at a pond. He seemed no worse off from Marcurio's attack, detached enough to shout 'whee!' as he went.
"That's a fantastic plan, how good are you at Restoration magic?" Serana was disheartened when her question took the metaphoric wind out of Orthorn's sails. "What?"
"I don't know Restoration magic… I've never gotten hurt badly enough to need it. And nothing I could Conjure knows how to heal either!"
Serana pinched the bridge of her nose. The High Elf, it seemed, would not deliver her from the situation. She'd have to do it herself. "Alright. Fine. I have an idea--but it's a desperation move so don't give me crap for it when we're out of this!"
Without a thought to Orthorn's reaction, Serana bolted for the stairs. Perhaps he'd think she was abandoning him, perhaps not. She was more focused on not getting between the elemental in the shape of a huge fire-dog and the Daedric Prince brawling it out. Once she was at the gate, it took only a little squeezing, and she was through. The two halves of the dead god lay there, still as stone with the elder scroll between them.
She picked up the one with the broken neck and quickly spun his head back around to where it ought to be. "Well, on the plus side, with those chompers no one will be able to tell the difference." Her quip delivered to the corpse, Serana opened her mouth wide enough to expose her own fangs and dug into the dead god's neck.
For how awful the situation was, she couldn't help but note that the cat's blood was the single most delicious she'd ever tasted.
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For the curious, a rotation of around 270 degrees happened there.
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