Skooma Cat (TES V: Skyrim)

[Chairtastic]

"I used to think that the worst thing in life was to end up alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone." - Robin Williams
---
Chapter 77: Blood of the covenant.

In the frozen wasteland of Atmora, there was a hole in the ground. Not an icy, cold hole -- but a warm, divinely charged hole. It was a hole caused by an impact crater -- and at the deepest point, there was a heart of solid stone that continued to beat.

Meridia looked down on the heart from Oblivion and wondered how things had ended up as they had. All of her children disliked her -- and her only son was convinced she had lied to him all his life. Things hadn't been great but she thought she'd started on the road to making things better!

She watched transfinite amount of divine energies spill into Mundus around the heart. In a couple hundred years, the heat it emitted would rouse an ancient volcano from sleep and see the return of Atmora. Once more the triumvirate of holy mountains would be complete -- and in some way, she would have Lorkhan back.

A palpable distortion was all she got in the way of warning that her current husband had arrived at the pinnacle of her mountain. While she was light everpresent, he took the form of an orange outline around a purple figure -- a Sithis-shaped hole in existence. "You seem glum, Meri-pants!"

The prismatic essence which Meridia was made of shifted into the cooler side of the spectrum. "For good reason. Have you seen our son?"

Sheogorath as a hole in the world contorted unnaturally. "Is that all you wish to talk about? One son? He's cute, and fun to mess with, but hardly the most important thing in the world, Meri-pants." He chuckled. "Well, given his recent promotion, I guess he sort of is." The Mad God's tone became low, edged in malice. "But he won't be that way for long. Then he won't be as uppity, and I can go back to playing with him."

She of Infinite Energy rankled at the dismissal. "Sheogorath," she said with a tone of warning.

"You know, you're right! I should let Kyne play with him some, to keep things interesting!" The hole-in-the-World grinned with near-human teeth. "See, I can't wait until Morihaus drops the brother bomb on our boy -- he'll have to delete certain images from his slate, I bet."

Again, Meridia spoke the Mad God's name as a warning.

"Oh right, I guess that High Elf witch broke it, so it's a moot point." Sheogorath flipped his hand dismissively. "Darn, was going to be so deliciously awkward too."

Red-spectrum light gathered into a hand and smacked the hole-in-the-World. "Our son had his realm -- one he built up from nothing -- wrecked by what you said!"

However this time, Sheogorath didn't just take a smack. His eerily human grin vanished and he lashed out at the prismatic spectra. Sheogorath had never hit her before, even when she'd hit him first!

All throughout Meridia's realm, all the Rooms, the echoes of the two attacks lingered and drove the Daedra and souls collected there to stillness.

"His realm broke apart because you lied over the course of a lifetime, and kept him distant so that you could control him as Azura controls you." Where there had been a smile in the hole-in-the-world there was a vicious snarl. "You were never there for him, or any of them. Aye, I wasn't always of one mind on how to parent them -- having more than one mind is so much fun -- but I was there. You weren't." Sheogorath's voice became intermingled with a mortal's -- a woman who in the past Era had been a great hero. "I let them know me, to understand me, and decide how they feel about me. All you've ever done to them is act distant because you couldn't bear them not loving you." The Mad God spoke an alarming amount of sense, particularly for being a hole-in-the-World.

All the sense in the world could have been contained in that point of insight, and it wouldn't have mattered. Meridia let loose a cacophonous roar and threw her light-self upon Sheogorath.

This time the Mad God did nothing. He let Meridia tear into him, vent her spleen because he knew he had hit the magic button to get it through to her why the situation had unfolded as it had. He reformed as quickly as she tore him apart, so the only end result was Meridia wasting her attention on the attempt.

When she had spent her spleen, Sheogorath grouped up around his bizarrely human teeth and resumed his hole-in-the-World appearance. "What do you even know about him, hmm?" The Mad God huffed, indignant. "I'm the boy's main antagonistic force, and I at least know his favorite food, his favorite mortals, his favorite colors, and what his flesh tastes like. Have you ever given him a nibble?!"

"No," Meridia answered in a tone of despair. "I don't know any of those things."

"In order: flatbread hamburgers; his husband, students, best-friend, some random Nord named Hadvar, and that Ri'saad person; pink, blue, and green; and sort of like oranges and pork mixed together with a bit of that cheese that tastes of despair." Sheogorath flapped his arms and rose through the air to hover closer to Meridia's prismatic cloud. "The boy dislikes me -- that's fine, I don't care -- but at least I'm part of his life. I act like this cause he asked me ta' do it. And any time he's been in trouble, he could call on me for help -- but not you. You never even gave him yer damn number to call if he needed something."

With every failure of her listed, Meridia shrank in size and dimmed slightly. When her husband offered an embrace to help with the uncomfortable thoughts she had, Meridia took him up on it. Without time to measure it, their embrace could have lasted an Era of the world or a scant few seconds -- it mattered little. "What would you suggest?"

Sheogorath laughed, he chortled, he chuckled, and wheezed all from different mouths. "Well, the first thing I would suggest never asking me for parenting advice. The second thing would be to do what you did with Peryite: Attack his enemies on his behalf." The hole-in-the-World grinned. "However, I'm still his primary antagonist so I'll be shielding them for a little while longer -- just until that Yagraz girl lines up the trajectory."

--

Mohamara's first order of business after he got dressed was to shower the kittens with affection until Jo'leen had to step in.

Baby Jone was lifted up higher than Mohamara could jump, which the kitten found tremendously fun to be so tall, and carried over to his crib. "Khajiit understands missing ma'khajiit terribly," the giant cat said in an understanding tone, "but ma'khajiit like to keep schedule -- it helps them learn later." She pointed over to where Jode had curled up on top of an armoire. "Even feisty cat naps at a set time."

The pink tojay arched a brow but didn't stop the nurse from getting Jone ready for his nap. He climbed up to the top of the armoire to give Jode a blanket to nap with and a quick head-bonk before he let her get to her nap.

"If Ja'khajiit has time, he could nap with the kittens?" Jo'leen gestured to the box Mohamara had been locked in on the trip to Winterhold.

"A nap would be great -- but I can't." Mohamara hopped down from the armoire and trotted over to get one last glance at Jone. Both kittens had started to lose their color points and transition into their juvenile coats. Jone had started to develop a blotched pattern, not unlike a cat species Mohamara had once seen at a zoo, but he couldn't recall the name. Jode had started on the path to spots.

Baishi, visibly larger than when Mohamara had last seen her, lept off from her mother's shoulder to climb to the top of the armoire and lay down with Jode. It seemed that the two had become friends, though Mohamara tried to reign in hope.

With both kittens seen to, he left the room and went downstairs. Nordic houses in the Fourth Era were more or less open concept. Only the fireplace was a fixed feature -- if the walls were made of wood it could reasonably be assumed they were only loosely attached to the wall and could be moved around. In Eras in the future, this would become the basis for open concept lair apartments, some with walls made from upsized prego blocks.

He arrived in the kitchen space and saw Marcurio and the undead Snow Elf had been in a staring contest for apparently quite some time. Their eyes had become inflamed -- not literally. Though Mohamara couldn't shake the hardwired Meridian urge to set the undead on fire out of principle, the man had helped summon him back into Mundus. The undead would be allowed to continue existing.

As Mohamara looked at him he was filled with vague half-remembered memories. A young elf who foolishly crafted a sword for the god of archery and gave it as an offering. The version of him that remembered these things had been annoyed, but Mohamara felt a surge of empathy -- he remembered how desperate he'd been to earn Meridia's approval when it was something worth seeking to him. And perhaps he could cure vampirism once the Soul Cairn was fully under his control?

With those thoughts in the back of his mind, the cat sat at the table next to Marcurio and rubbed his head on the Imperial's arm.

Marcurio immediately broke the staring contest and focused on the pink tojay -- specifically by placing his hand dead center between Mohamara's ears and scratching his scalp through is fur. "Feeling better, love?"

Mohamara noted the way the Snow Elf's lip curled when Marcurio used the l-word. Those vague memories brought up names and events, and the ones that bonded with the Snow Elf also tied to the name 'Vyrthur', so Mohamara guessed it to be his. Vyrthur's sympathetic bonds were a tangled mess, but he could follow the lines of thought between him and Marcurio -- Marcurio tripped the uncanny valley for Vyrthur. He was so much like a dragon, or Dragonborn, but wasn't -- and it freaked Vyrthur out. Mohamara had felt that with stuffed life-sized tojay dolls that had been available in Fallmart when he was a child -- at first he had thought that they were others like him, but as he went up to them he noticed they weren't. He could only imagine how worse off the experience would be with a subject that could move and talk.

"A lot, yeah." Mohamara could help but purr as Marcurio plied his cat-petting talents. "Still being drained, but they're mostly full up so there's not as much of a drain as it was before." The divine cat's eyes went unfocused as he followed the sympathetic bonds that connected him to the thieves -- it was easy to cut the connection but if he did he wouldn't be able to easily reabsorb the power. "They're near the middle of Skyrim right now -- the Throat of the World, along with some tangled knot of sympathetic bonds that I don't recognize."

"According to your students," Vyrthur said, reserved, "the Thalmor brought in some odd statue, like the Numidium but made of stone. They connected it to the orb they're calling the Eye of Magnus, then left."

The part of him that was Auri-El stirred and immediately desired vengeance upon the elves for using his unborn sibling as a power source. Mohamara took his mind off the situation to manually work out why those feelings of vengeance had manifested so rapidly -- he hadn't defaulted to 'vengeance' mode right away before. And when he followed those bonds they led back to the idea of family. Even though he wasn't a fighter, he wanted to do his part to protect his family, and that sibling hadn't had a chance to be born yet -- maybe they never would. Ultimately it would have to be Meridia to decide what to do with the Egg of Magnus, as it was hers.

And if she did decide to do something with the egg, he'd be there to promptly kick her in the teeth rather than let her ruin someone else's life.

When he connected those dots he couldn't help but think that he had started to develop issues and that perhaps a therapist was called for. Were there even therapists in Fourth Era Skyrim? He was going to ask Marcurio when he tuned back into their conversation and noticed his husband-to-be on his micro-slate. Everyone else in the dining area had left, with their dirty dishes still on the table -- because they were barbarians who clearly had never heard of a wash basin.

"...Yeah, I don't think anyone here would object to that, can you make it hurt just a smidge more than you were previously?" Marcurio held the micro-slate up to his ear rather than use the looking glass servitor, so it wasn't immediately apparent to whom he spoke. The Imperial quickly noticed Mohamara looking at him and visibly brightened. "Hey, he's back from his god-visions, want to talk to him?" The Imperial frowned shortly thereafter. "Alright, fine, I'll ask."

Mohamara could already pick out the sympathetic bonds between Marcurio and the person on the call, but the mess of emotion on the other side made him uneasy.

Marcurio took the micro-slate off his ear and addressed Mohamara directly. "Yagraz wants to know why you didn't call her for help after the Thalmor yanked you."

The cat's ears drooped and he looked away. "The Thalmor in charge stepped on my slate and broke it." Marcurio was quick to anger, so Mohamara expected him to shift into immediately plotting vengeance.

"Yagraz, I have to put you on pause for a moment. Husband stuff." There was a soft 'boop' sound, and seconds later Mohamara found the Imperial's micro-slate held out in his field of vision. "Yagraz once told me that the two of you had a secret way to talk to each other so that I couldn't cut her out of your life. I'm guessing the slate was tied to that, and her reaction to you being incommunicado sort of reinforced that guess."

Mohamara's ears perked up when offered the micro-slate. He took it and turned to look at Marcurio again. "But I made it for you." Did he not like it? Had he only been using it out of obligation?

The Imperial promptly booped the pink cat's nose. "I'm loaning it to you, love. You're perfectly capable of creating your own once the fools sapping your power and resources are dealt with." The Imperial's smile was reassuring. "Your friend wants to talk to you, and I think you're going to want to hear what she has to say." He tapped the screen on the micro-slate to bring up the unlock menu.

While the micro-slate was unlocked, Mohamara arched a brow. "Wait, if you had her on pause, then it shouldn't need unlocking." He looked up at Marcurio with confusion. "Um, I think you dismissed her by mistake."

Marcurio arched a brow and shook his head. "She thinks I can't use the thing very well, so it lets me totally cut off the conversation and restart it when I have a comeback for her."

"You play a dangerous game, Mr. Tullius." Mohamara stuck his tongue out at the Imperial then looked down at the background for his micro-slate. It was a selfie of the kiss they'd had literal minutes after Mohamara had given the Imperial the micro-slate. How had he figured out how to take a selfie that quickly? "And apparently a hopeless romantic too."

The Imperial scritched Mohamara's scalp again then stood up. "Not so romantic that I'm going to sit out the plans for how to savagely murder the Thalmor responsible for this situation. Seeya in a bit, love."

When the thief-mage had left the room, Mohamara tapped the call servitor to recall Yagraz's number. It buzzed for only a few seconds before she picked up.

"Slick, I swear on Malacath's masticating mashers that if you do that again--"

Mohamara cut her off by way of a looking glass request. "Hey, giant woman, it's me!" His tail was up and his ears at max height, able to talk to his friend again!

"Short stuff, you motherfucking piece of shit, you better have a good reason for making me worried or I'll kick your ass as soon as I've smashed Sheogorath's head open."

The cat rolled his eyes. "You always say you'll kick my ass, but then I give you the kitten eyes and you back down. I've even got actual kittens to back me up this time!"

Yagraz snorted. "Your cute powers won't save you this time, short stuff. This time I'm too pissed to be distracted by how adorable you and your babies are!"

"Go ahead and try it, you jolly green giant. It didn't work the last five times, it won't work this one, either!" It was like old times, before the time travel, the horrifying revelations, and people interested in what he represented rather than who he was. But that moment of brief bliss couldn't last -- he couldn't not talk about what he'd found out to Yagraz. "....Meridia's my mom."

"I know, short-stuff." Yagraz's reply was immediate and weary. "Your uncle told me Sheogorath had told you."

Mohamara realized then, that Yagraz had never answered his looking glass request. She hadn't declined it either, just left it. It was for the best, however, as the cat rested his head on the table and kept the micro-slate up to his ear. "You were right. Every time you told me I was wrong about Meridia being a 'good' Daedra, about how kind and loving she was." It worried Mohamara how he didn't seem upset to admit that -- he just felt exhausted. "You can say 'I told you so', now."

"I told you so." Yagraz didn't say anything for a long time, but Mohamara could hear her breath to know she was still on the line. "Did that help any? Get you angry? Anger is what I was going for."

Mohamara shook his head before he remembered she couldn't see him. "No. I'm still just… stuck wondering how she could be part of the love sphere and just… not care about me when I lived in her temple all those years."

The Orc could quickly see where the cat's mind went, seemingly, for she stopped it with her next words. "You didn't do anything to deserve being alone when you should have been part of her family. If she didn't want you in her life, fuck her. You've got a new family now, and she doesn't have to be a part of it."

While those words were shaped in the meatspace of Mundus, a great endeavor was undertaken in Oblivion. Hundreds of Mohamaras were pulling on chains and pushing spokes of wheels to assist. That which they moved sparkled of mnemonic warmth -- a loving embrace, food to put misery far away, an inviting fire to see the faces of your comrades by. The Mohamaras lifted it from the wreckage of their former home and, through jury-rigged engine cranes, to a new resting spot. Where once the attack dog of the Ideal Masters had made his lair, the sphere of Family was positioned above. The roof had been torn open and additional Mohamaras scrambled to get tubes and clamps in position for the new sphere. A gap had been made for Family, alongside the marble-sized Kindness sphere and vine-covered Life. While Yagraz continued to speak, the sphere of Family was released to fall into place and be reactivated.

Mohamara spasmed suddenly, though he didn't know why. It was enough to shake him from his melancholy mood, however. "Heh, speaking of that. I got to meet my sisters while I was incommunicado. They're all shorter than me!"

"Wow, short-stuff. You must've needed a microlens to see them."

"Fuck you too, giant woman."

--

On an island three miles off the coast of Haafingar, there was a millennia-old castle. It was a piece of architecture from a time long ago -- pointed arches, detailed statuary, pointed spires, and other such grim features. Colorless, dark, and weighed down with tens of thousands of dead souls held in torment.

Unseen, Kyne's birds and Arkay's butterflies filled the air above the castle, each called to ferry a soul into the afterlife. They couldn't approach for the chains of Molag Bal were wrapped, similarly unseen, around the castle and all that existed within it. But Meridia could see it -- through her beacon as it rose into the air above her recently completed temple.

The lair of the apostates had been a stain on her view for thousands of years, as previously Molag Bal had been too careful in guarding his Champion. But Boethia's meddling had seen the Champion parted from the Mace, and Molag Bal's power weakened. Even if Meridia were not the mightiest Prince, she could lay low the apostate lair. She also saw, in the distance, mortals who dared threaten her wife's sacred mountain -- her chosen throne -- her Throat.

Meridia opted to kill two birds with one stone.

Her voice rang out in the invisible spaces of Nirn, the threads of Life that wove together and became Nature when looked at from above. "I am Meridia, Prince of Light and Life! Harken to me!"

Sunflowers turned and faced her, the wind stilled so it could listen, the tide halted so it could obey.

"I call to that which fell here before time, that which has cooled and gone still with inactivity. When Lorkhan lied and plucked my wings so I would support his Endeavor! The piece of me that dwells in Mundus still -- awaken!"

Kilkreath stirred. A tremor that rattled the half-abandoned embassy at the point, all the way down to Castle Dour and For Hraggstad at its roots. Fissures opened up through which noxious gas flowed.

"You formed of my wings, of my blood and bone! Head the words of your master! Rise! Awaken!"

Molten rock rose up through the fissures, as another earthquake widened them. In Solitude city, people could see the smoke at the top of the long-dead volcano and knew fear -- it was dead no longer! Meridia bade herself wake one more time, and a third, even greater earthquake began. Cracks deep enough to show the molten rock within Kilkreath formed all along the northern side of the mountain, from mountaintop to mountain's root. However, the invisible agents of Arkay and Kyne could see the cracks extend into the sea, and below the water.

The apostates never knew what killed them, as it tore its way up from beneath their feet with fire and rage. On wings of tempered steel, it rose -- a living suit of armor as tall as a mountain. Flame and light spewed out between its feathers to lift it up, while the many gemstone eyes along its body looked about. While the castle went to pieces all around it, only one tower remained standing -- that which held a portal to Meridia's son's new realm.

Born aloft like a feather, the armor of Meridia rose and saw what Meridia had -- a perverse doll that aimed to tear at Kyne's Throat. While Kyne and Arkay's minions snatched up the souls of the damned and apostate alike, Meridia's armor took to the wind, sailed over Solitude, and toward Kyne's mountain.
---
Don't worry, Harkon lived. He's buried under twenty tonnes of curtain wall, but he's alive. Technically.

 

[Grosstoad]

Aaaah, the complicated love and family lives of daedras and aedras and others alike...

 

[Zap Rowsdower]

Aaaah, the complicated love and family lives of daedras and aedras and others alike...

Click to shrink...

It's mythological. If your mythology has all the gods getting along perfectly rather than being perfect Jerry Springer fodder, you're doing it wrong.

 

[Chairtastic]

"Greetings! Sheogorath, Daedric Prince of Madness here! I'll be taking over Chair's job of talking before and after the chapter this time! I'm here to inform you wee mortals that the next chapter will be The End. Chapter 80 will be an epilogue. Our time together is running short! But fear not, I'm working on one of those cheeses with holes in it, with holes specifically for each and every one of you! Stop on by the Isles, and let's see what you turn into once you reach the other side."
---
Chapter 78: Tower support.

Yagraz spent her time wisely -- in that she consulted the Code to find if her goal was honorable according to Malacath, then began to train when she found it was. She was going to act in vengeance upon someone of her tribe who had been mistreated -- the Code demanded blood. She paused to consider -- did Daedra bleed? According to short-stuff, Mora had bled plenty when Jyggalag ate him alive, but it hadn't been what would normally be considered blood. Mora bled secrets, and those secrets had infected the blood of those who watched him, thus the blood type blue situation.

That train of thought distracted her, so she put it out of her mind. On the frozen northern shore of Solstheim, she stretched her muscles before her act of vengeance. Miraak observed her from atop a frozen rock nearby, silent for the majority of the exercise.

"You acknowledge that it wasn't Sheogorath's fault," the First Dragonborn said out of the blue, while he crossed his arms and looked out to the sea. "So why does his punishment win out over Meridia's?"

"Intent, mostly." Yagraz smashed a boulder with Volendrung to test her accuracy -- there had been a hole in the boulder, which she aimed the centermost spike through. When she pulled the weapon free of the rubble, she found the section of rock perfectly locked onto Volendrung's spikes. Awesome. "He said it to hurt my friend, he used Meridia being a shit parent as a weapon. I'm going to hurt him for that." She shrugged when Miraak tilted his head at her. "Who cares if it won't last long? It's the right thing to do."

Miraak shrugged. "You could make his suffering last longer with the Thu'um. That Shout -- Dragonrend? It hurts a Daedra just as much as a Dragon."

Yagraz paused, then looked over her shoulder. "Never heard of Dragonrend."

The First Dragonborn pushed himself off the rock and walked toward her. "Huh. I would assume the Greybeards would instruct you in it if you're to be Paarthurnax's puppet. Allow me to share with you the Words which made even Alduin scream out in pain." Swirls of color burst from Miraak and surged into Yagraz as he shared memories, ideas, and comprehension with her.

Joor. Mortal. To feel one's body dying all around them but grow so used to it that they felt it no longer. Zah. Finite. Once all was spent, there would be no recovery, no second chance, just the end. Frul. Temporary. Here but for a few scant moments, and never to return again.

Yagraz and Miraak were dragons in mortal form, so they were better equipped to handle such Words -- but for a moment it hurt to understand them. The Words were a curse, and the curse was a shackle. It pinned her down inside her skin so that she couldn't escape her own mortality. For several minutes afterward, she was keenly aware of her breathing and heartbeat -- to the point of distraction. For that time, she understood why the High Elves considered Mundus a prison. But when it passed, and she could just be herself again, she found the notion of life as a prison foolish.

She rather likened it to when she was a teenager and she would do stupid things with short-stuff that would get them in trouble and her yelled at by her Pa. As a grown woman she saw how stupid those actions were, but at the time it had seemed the clear course of action. While she got back to her feet -- for the revelation had dropped her to the black-sand beach -- she pieced it together why Dragonrend hurt dragons, and thus Aedra and Daedra.

Immortals could only grow older. They couldn't grow up.

Once she had brushed all the sand off her armor, Yagraz met Miraak's eyes through his mask. "Alright, that gave me an idea. I need you to help me design a new Shout -- one that will make Sheogorath's existence from here on out absolutely hellish."

The Nord's eyes crinkled, the only sign that he enjoyed her sudden change in vengeance goals. "Of course, provided you don't mind me using this new Shout myself."

Yagraz waved her hand flippantly. "It'll only work on ancestor spirits so whatever." She stopped to consider, then frowned. "Well, it would only have negative effects on them, anyway."

"What did you have in mind?"

Yagraz led Miraak to sit down near his original boulder seat. "I want to make Sheogorath look back on his decisions and realize he fucked up, and that the situation is so far gone that he probably can't un-fuck it up. And then I'm going to smash his mortal form's face into paste."

The First Dragonborn cupped the chin of his tentacle mask in thought. "Hmm, a nebulous task to undertake. And Dragonrend is insufficient for this?" When Yagraz responded in the negative, he nodded. "So we're to take the ultimate dragon-slaying Shout, the first Shout created by mortals, and make it even better. A sequel, as it were." Miraak chuckled and clapped his hands onto his knees. "This will be fun."

--

Serana hadn't ever thought she'd see the Soul Cairn with her own eyes. Or that she would want to, as the stories her mother had told her weren't very inviting. But with all the actively hostile elements blown away, it was a surprisingly beautiful place. The deep purple sky sparkled with aquamarine stars, fewer than Nirn's stars and more evenly spaced. According to the Daedric construction workers that had worked in the ship, they were actual aquamarine gems set into the outer layer of the plane, each would have been the size of the Throat of the World if she stood next to one. She had been fed some story about how the gems were necessary to distribute the workload for plane maintenance among the Ideal Masters.

Those same Masters had been handed over to the construction workers for 'immediate repairs'. They had an entire line of Soul Cairn undead, tormented souls, and even a dragon all strapped to a Dwemer conveyer belt -- they called it 'the reassembly line'. Slabs of the ruined ship had been removed to create a walled in building to house the reassembly line and the devices used to reassemble people.

From the frantic notes he took, she guessed Tolfdir found the whole thing spectacularly interesting. The scruffy cat had found a spot on top of the foreman's shack where they could watch the reassembly with fewer obstacles in the way.

"Fascinating," the Master Alterer said while he watched the construction workers start in on the dragon. "So that's what became of Durnehviir. Trapped in the Soul Cairn? But why? He can't have come here for power -- he ruled Bromjunaar, the capital of Skyrim in his time."

Serana shook her head, stretched out and popped some vertebrae. "Dragons and vampires are rather similar -- both crave power in ever greater amounts."

Tolfdir paused, then looked over at her with his notebook lowered. "Even you?"

The vampire cat shrugged. "Yeah. But I'd been second only in authority to my parents for hundreds of years before I was locked up. There was no more power to get that didn't require replacing them, and I didn't want to."

She considered where she would go from here on -- cursed as she was, she wouldn't be welcome among her father's clan. Did she even want to be part of them anymore? Learning at the college, even if she had been cursed, was fun. The Pink Coats had been nice to her, and she'd got to meet Morihaus in person.

Valerica and Harkon would undoubtedly not approve of her choices, or the curse. But neither were around to voice their opinion, so Serana let it be what it was -- her decision to live a life she wanted. She looked away from the reassembly line just as a vampiress in armor similar to hers was brought to the focus of the construction workers and machinery. "To be honest, I kind of don't want power so much as I want to have some fun with my life. Learning magic, hanging out with those pink goofballs? That's fun." She pinched the bridge of her nose. "And don't tell anyone I said this, but being a cat is pretty fun too. The acrobatics I can do makes me feel like a dancer."

Tolfdir regarded her and held his pencil up to his lips in consideration. "You sound like you're disproving your earlier point. What you say you want is clearly different from what you say vampires want."

Serana narrowed her eyes at him. "What are you implying?"

The scruffy cat chuckled as if he weren't the subject of her glare. "I think you're changing who you see yourself as. I think you're not letting your vampirism define who you are -- but you're letting you define who you are."

The vampiress held Tolfdir's gaze for a moment then burst out laughing. "You've been a cat too long, you're talking nonsense."

Tolfdir shrugged. "I may be wrong. We haven't known each other all that long -- perhaps I've just seen things that I want to see, hmm?"

In the back of her mind, while she laughed, Serana couldn't help but wonder how nice it would be to be someone different. It would be great if she didn't have to be a vampire minion of Molag Bal, or related to monsters and have to clean up their mess in her life. Perhaps one day she could just let herself just be Serana and be content.

--

"...Yeah, I expect her to just try smashing the problem and it won't work. ...Well, because smashing is all she really knows how to do -- she's got almost a million kids, come on. The jokes just write themselves."

Marcurio returned from the strategic meeting with Vyrthur and the Pink Coats to find Mohamara still on the micro-slate. The Imperial had been gone for at least an hour, to discuss the merits of destroying the golem before the Thalmor on the grounds of the Numidium's historical effectiveness. The dishes that had been left behind were cleaned by invisible hands and put away while Marcurio watched.

Mohamara hadn't seemed to notice his fiancee's arrival yet. "Yeah, so when you can get them to all agree to come to Mundus, I think we just swarm them and lock it up while I dismantle the connection. I did something similar in Markarth a while ago, it should be fine."

Marcurio approached, silent as a thief in the night, and put himself directly behind the diminutive cat.

"Alright -- I'll get started while you talk to them. ...No, I know exactly what to say to get my way with Marcurio, don't you worry. Can't wait to see you in person! Bye." Mohamara quickly ended his calling, then turned to face Marcurio with a serene smile. "Hey!"

This did not please the thief-mage. "You knew I was here?"

The tojay nodded. "When you're this close, I can hear your heart beating." He stuck his tongue out to blep at the Imperial and turned fully around on the bench. "So, how much did you here?"

"That you apparently have plans of your own, that you didn't elect to share with us who were planning the attack." He crossed his arms and tapped his foot against the ground. "And that you know how to 'get your way' with me. Now, I'm legitimately curious as to what this plan could be. And why you would need to cajole me into it." The Imperial shrugged and began to count off on his fingers. "It's not like you were recently incapacitated, nearly crippled, that our children were beside themselves for days because they wanted you back so badly, or that your power is being actively drained."

Mohamara's blepping did not stop at all. "Well, let's answer that in reverse order. Number two, I don't intend to solve this problem with violence. And number one, I know from Sheogorath that a lot of the Thalmor are followers of Boethiah. They take themselves super seriously, so if I act like a complete jackass and don't take them seriously, they'll defeat themselves trying to make me."

"Or stab you to death." Marcurio's expression was neutral in its displeasure. "Stabbing you to death is still on the table as a way to defeat you without defeating themselves."

Mohamara shrugged. "How about we compromise?"

Marcurio's right eye twitched, but he covered his eyes with one hand and sighed to hide it. "Alright. Let's try and compromise about you risking your life, again." He took a deep breath and removed his hand from his face. "I'll come with you, and we try your plan if they're too strong."

"Counter offer: I bring you, Vyrthur, and Orthorn, and we try my plan first." Mohamara held up his hand when Marcurio opened his mouth to counter-counter offer. "And! I'll agree to wear that cultural dress thing you designed for me at our wedding." It was clear from his expression that he thought he'd won.

The problem was, Marcurio was less certain that he could negotiate better terms. He had really liked the design for those Nibanese-style wedding clothes. Finding information about Meridian marriages had been next to impossible -- they hadn't written it down anywhere, so he'd gone with his culture as a template and applied Meridian iconography. In light of recent events, he might have needed to eliminate those. But all these thoughts served to distract him.

It had been so long that Marcurio hadn't said anything that Mohamara's blepping was combined with a grin. "Can't think of a counter-counter-counter offer? I can tell you want too," the cat's tone became sing-song. "So in the absence of another offer, I guess we'll just--"

"I want another kid," Marcurio said it without thinking, and he regretted it the moment he said it, but he couldn't stop. He needed to have some control of the situation when people he cared about risked their lives. "Jone and Jode are purely from you, and that's okay. I love them all the same. But I want a kid that's from both of us." Marcurio didn't even realize he hadn't framed it as a compromise -- but an additional demand -- until much later.

The pink tojay was absolutely stunned. His grin/blep combo had fallen apart in his surprise. "Um." This began a stuttering and blushing fit for the cat. Utterly adorable. "O-okay, fine. But after the wedding, alright?"

"I'm alright with waiting until after the honeymoon." Marcurio was magnanimous and gave his fiancee -- and himself -- more time without a fifth member of the immediate family.

However, this only made Mohamara turn even redder, and stutter more. At long last, he managed to articulate a sentence: "I didn't think we'd be going on a honeymoon…."

The Imperial scoffed, and put on the guise of a suave and forward thinking man -- not at all someone who foolishly asked for additional children. "Of course we would. I have arrangements for a lovely stay in Leyawiin -- the realtor assured me that the sunsets on the Topal bay are magnificent."

"Oh, that actually sounds pretty good." Mohamara realized he had become distracted, and shook his head to clear his thoughts. "Alright, I accept your terms. Let's grab Vyrthur and Orthorn and get going." He paused and looked over at the shelves full of food from the caravan of mages. "Do we still have any sleeping tree sugar around, by chance?"

--

On the slopes of the Throat of the World, a battle raged. High Hrothgar, the ancient fortress of the Greybeards, stood severely damaged with a series of holes in its roof as if something had stepped on it. Which, given the immense stone golem that climbed its way to the summit despite the battle, probably had transpired.

The Greybeards themselves fought against the invaders -- three incredibly powerful High Elves, that seemed most annoyed that the Greybeard's Voices could harm them. They had strolled in, with expectations of slaughter, and been soundly launched off the side of the mountain like dumbasses. They were annoyed the first time it happened, and doubly so when it happened the second they floated back up to the fortress.

After the fourth time, they met up atop the surface of White Lake to discuss a plan -- and were even more annoyed that they had been forced to employ strategy.

Ancano, greatest in rage, suggested the most viscerally pleasing option. "We have the power -- we could blow up the mountain and be done with this whole affair."

Ondolemar shook his head even though he wished the solution could be that simple. "We can't. Akulakhan is built like one of the Towers but is unaligned, it can destroy not only the physical Tower, but the metaphysical copy which controls the Nord's narrative! Akulakhan has to destroy the mountain, or all this effort was wasted!"

Radiant Elenwen looked up and saw the problem had grown infinitely more troublesome. "We have greater issues to deal with." She spun Sunna'rah and let its divine light propel her away. "Such as getting out of the splash zone."

Her fellows didn't know why she left until they too looked up and saw the sunlight blocked by Akulakhan as it fell from the mountainside. They hastened to follow in radiant Elenwen's footsteps, but they were not as wise and were swept away by the huge wave that resulted when the golem struck the lake.

Elenwen rose up through the air, past the clouds, and saw that which had cast down Akulakhan. It was bigger than the golem, bigger than Anumidium, and bigger than Crystal-like-Law when it had stood. It had the shape of a mer, made of chrome steel, with wings of fire and metal, and eyes like jewels all across its body. "So we've made you afraid, to call on this tenuous fragment of yourself."

The Emissary had meant it to jab at the Daedra, but the distance between them was too great -- it could not hear her. So the great machine put one hand up to the wing-like protrusions from its face that mimicked mer ears.

What had been meant as a simple 'I can't hear you' gesture was taken as a direct slight by radiant Elenwen. Her grip on Sunna'rah tightened, and she clenched her teeth while her expression barely changed. "Mock me at your peril, Daedra," she said, warning. "I have stolen the power of one god -- I will steal yours too if necessary."

Because it still could not discern her words at the tremendous distance between them, the Daedric machine then lifted its other hand to the other pseudo-ear on its head, doubling the attempt to mime.

The air around radiant Elenwen burned, light flew from her like a bonfire. Anger that she had remained in control of before slipped the leash at last when even one of the gods mocked her. "Fine then! Your hubris will be your downfall, Daedra!" Divine light gathered at the hollow point of Sunna'rah and formed into a lance blade that scorched the very air. Radiant Elenwen brought her wondrous power to bear and launched the lance blade like a projectile.

Arrogant in its superiority, the winged titan made no move to defend itself from the attack.

Meanwhile, in the contested domain of the Soul Cairn, spheres were rapidly brought online. Kindness provided no power of its own but amplified the power of others. Life flowered and spread greenery across the previously blighted surface of the Cairn. Family melted the chains of cruelty and decay which had held the Ideal Masters in power and spun threads of love in their place. The fourth sphere was illumination. The measurement of time, trademark gift of the Day, and the first word that was spoken in Mundus. Light.

And since radiant Elenwen drew her power from the owner of those spheres -- her attack had an unexpected burst of strength that amputated the Daedra's metallic arm at the shoulder. The sundered limb tumbled down the side of the side of the mountain, toward the lake below.

Anacano and Ondolemar, finally free of the tide that had been generated by Akulakhan hitting the water, rose up onto the lake's surface as if it were solid. Ancano helped Ondolemar remove a particularly tenacious slaughterfish from his colleague's coat and the two of them dried themselves with but a thought.

Ancano slapped his ear, and tilted his head, to get small bits of water out of the other ear. "Well, I'd say this proves my idea in the right."

Ondolemar scoffed and dropped his hood to quickly comb his hair back to regulation slicked-backedness. "If anything, I'd say the golem falling from the mountain proves we can't just blast pieces off. At least there was a lake here to cushion its fall."

The hoodless Thalmor sneered and used his slightly greater height to try and intimidate Ondolemar. "Come off it! You and Elenwen have been making this whole thing needlessly complex, and now we have to start the entire climb again -- and still deal with the Greybeards!" He stomped away in a huff. "Violence is the simplest way to deal with our problems right now -- and if I'm wrong may the gods strike me--!"

He didn't get the chance to continue his foolish demand, as a titanic metal arm that had fallen from high on the mountain struck the lake's surface. Specifically, the palm struck Ancano dead center, like one would swat a fly. The rest of the arm flopped to one side and began to sink. When the whole limb had vanished to the lakebed, Ancano was left on the surface, spread-eagle.

Ondolemar rushed to see if Ancano was alright but soon realized that it was foolish to think so after such an event.

Ancano himself addressed this, by speaking as if in a state of delirium. "Mummy, I don't want to go to Skyrim…."

--

Pixies danced -- literally danced -- through the air in the former conference room of the Ideal Masters. They trailed hoses, threads, and in one case spaghetti behind them to weave in and out through the walls. When they were done, a subordinate function would take the noodly items and connect them to polished black mirrors which were then mounted on the walls above Dwemer metal desks.

With tools of thought and association, they drilled into the walls to mount panels of switches, gauges. With six or seven subordinate functions working together, they could move most of the heavy equipment -- but for that which was even heavier, they had their brother.

Morihaus Breath-of-Kyne, the legendary hero of the First Era, and father of the first Emperor was utterly smitten with his 'adorable' baby brother. The minotaur had rapidly developed a dialogue with his three-quarters of a million in sisters over how memetically cute the Mohamaras were. But to the hero's credit, he didn't forcibly cuddle any of the major or subordinate functions.

However, he didn't hesitate to 'rescue' subordinate functions that his sisters had carried off. It was a nefarious plan, and thus it worked like a charm.

Morihaus had recently left the conference room to retrieve a major function his sisters had absconded with -- Mr. Imaginationy. The indignant cat had spent the entire trip back straightening his uniform until they returned. Immediately upon Morihaus' return with the officer, he was approached by nine subordinate functions who asked for his help.

"Sure, sure," the minotaur hero said while he set Mr. Imaginationy down. "What needs moving?"

"Not moving," one of the subordinate functions piped up. "It relates to the Thu'um." The crowd of Mohamaras shifted as another subordinate function bought forth a slate upscaled to fit Moirhaus' giant hands. "We found some backlogged tasks related to the thu'um, and wondered if you could review the cases?"

The legendary hero took the slate, activated the screen, then took his reading glasses from one of his pockets to look as pompous as possible while he reviewed the documents. "Hmm, lasting race-wide curse and undocumented Dragon soul acquisition?" He nodded several times as he looked over the notes attached to the file. "I'll have to look this over, do some experiments, maybe a physical. But I can look into this, no problem."

"Thank you." The subordinate functions in the crowd then scattered back to their previous jobs, with only the slate-carrying one still in front of Morihaus.

"So, what's with all the looking glasses?" Morihaus tabbed through pages of notations on the Dragonborn subject and glanced at the plethora of polished black glass screens set up around the room. "You don't need those for internal regulation, do you?"

"This space is being repurposed -- it will not serve as the command space for the realm." The subordinate function that had carried the slate seemed to have no purpose other than to wait for the slate to be returned, so he answered Morihaus' question. "Once all spheres are online, and the power leak is sealed, this will be the service station from which we can begin repairs."

Morihaus looked up from the screen with an arched brow. "Repairs on the Soul Cairn? I thought that was being done at the Boneyard?"

"It is." The subordinate function gestured to the screens again as chairs were placed in front of them and subordinate functions placed audio clips onto their ears. Each screen lit up as switches around them were flipped, and the correct aspect ratio set. Each subordinate function sounded off their station and its status.

"Ada-Mantia online, physical structure good." "Red Mountain offline, physical structure severely damaged." "Crystal-like-Law offline, physical structure severely damaged." And so on. They listed abstract names that seemed to make no sense.

Morihaus had heard of most of them before -- names like Ivory-Claw, Topaz-in-Name, and Snake-Palace were new to him, however. They corresponded to certain joint-posts in Mundus' physical structure that held the world together.

Mr. Imaginationy had been distracted by the theft of his hat by their pasta-obsessed sister and returned with it covered with it covered in rotelle and macaroni. "Make sure everything's ready to transfer them over to the solar creatia grid," he told the seated subordinate functions. "We have to be ready in case Snow-Throat goes offline, then we only have Ada-Mantia and Topaz-in-Name left. I want eyes on all incomplete Towers, and activation protocols written for them asap."

Morihaus became intensely more interested in the screens when he heard his mother's mountain might be in trouble. He clopped over to the screen for the Throat of the World and saw a titanic Daedric machine with one arm as it swing at a small glowing ball. Mundus had changed a lot since he was last there -- he didn't remember the mountain being covered in illusioned flowers, or that there was a lake on the Whiterun side of the mountain too.

"What's that?" He pointed at the lake, where something appeared to rise from the water.

"An incomplete Tower that we're writing activation protocols for." The subordinate function that was assigned to Snow-Throat found it hard to see his assigned task through the giant man-bull in the way and promptly elbowed his brother. Except his brother was dressed in ebony armor so the function only succeeded in bashing his funny bone on the hero's abs.

"Wait a minute, where's the Numidium?" Morihaus looked around and caught sight of a different observation function as it gestured to him. When the man-bull arrived at the second station, it showed the great brass golem on the ocean floor with giant crabs scuttling all over it. "Is it… being made into a coral reef?"

"No," the Numidium watcher replied. "The crabs are just feeding on the corpses of fish that are stuck in its joints."

The legendary hero's face screwed up in confusion. "Why would there be fish stuck in the Numidium?"

"Because it provides shelter from whales." As if on cue, a small pod of whales passed by the Numidum, chasing tuna the size of wagons. Their chirping cries caused the observing function to shudder and briefly remove his ear clips. "Hopefully it will move once it's reactivated."

"It's going to reactivate?" The legendary hero looked down at the observational function and squinted. "You know you seem really calm about all this. What if they succeed in taking down the Throat of the World then go after Ada-Mantia?"

The Mohamara function shrugged. "What they're trying to do with Snow-Throat won't work on Ada-Mantia. And by the time they realize that they won't have time to get to Topaz-in-Name before we bring an incomplete Tower online." He gestured to the Snow-Throat observer screen. "I mean, just look at how she fights. She's using our power like it's a gun, no higher thought put into it at all."

There was a long pause while the other subordinate functions realized what the Numidum observer had said, then the whole room's worth turned as one to glare at him.

During that time, Morihaus scratched his head and watched the fight. "What's a gun?"

Mr. Imaginationy quickly realized the slip-up that had occurred and hastened to correct it. He had a subordinate function stand on another's shoulders while he stood on the first's and they tower walked to Morihaus. Mr. Imaginationy with the pasta hat then gestured to the man-bull's biceps and made a motion to flex the limb. When Moirhaus compiled, he poked the bulging muscle repeatedly. "These are guns. Huge guns."

Morihaus looked at his arm, then at the Daedric machine in combat with a mutated elf, and squinted. "I guess I can see it… not a really accurate comparison though. It looks more like she's using it as a projectile weapon of some kind."

"Must just be a memetic thing from our time, then. Sorry for the confusion."

---

"For those of you who can't be arsed to re-read, Topaz-in-Name is the only active Tower in Akavir. It's this pompous thing -- a statue carved out of a mountain of one of those tiger people holding a giant citrine. I suggsted a citrus fruit, but no, can't have anything interestin' in Akavir. Harrumph!"

 

[Richardson]

"I AM GOING TO SHOUT SOME SHAME INTO YOU, YOU STUPID.... STUCK-UP.... ANTI-FATHER!"

I like the way Yagriz thinks.

 

[Chairtastic]

"Looking back, when ye aren't used to looking back, is painful. So many jokes I could have told better. So many ideas that only needed a wee twist to be brilliant! You know, when you mortals talked about hindsight, I always assumed you just had eyes on yer buttocks."
---
Chapter 79: Be better than me.

Orchendor led the way through a distortion in the air and emerged in the ruined courtyard of Fellglow Keep. The green cat waited for everyone in the hit-squad to get through before he trotted off toward the cliff which overlooked White Lake. While he watched the rambunctious mess that was Meridia in conflict with Elenwen, a stone golem of enormous size in conflict with gravity, and two other Thalmor in conflict with dignity, the party expressed distaste with his teleportation.

"My neck feels slightly… off," Vyrthur muttered and felt his neck and lower jaw. The vampire turned his head this way and that, he even went so far as to pop the vertebrae, before he stood straight in front of Orthorn. "Am I off-center?"

Orthorn shook his head, but obsessively scratched the side of his nose. "It feels like there's something under my skin on my nose, can you see anything?"

The vampire's face was flatter than the plains of Hammerfell. "Well, there's a number of scratch marks, like someone dug their nail into your skin there." His words were sculpted from snark, laboriously etched with sarcasm and polished with snide undertones. "But that's the usual for you."

"Oh, thanks! I was worried," Orthorn smiled as he replied, perhaps he didn't pick up on Vyrthur's attitude. Or perhaps he chose to accept the words even if they were meant as an insult. The High Elf cheered up and went to look out on the lake with Orchendor.

Marcurio, however, looked up. And there he saw Sheogorath, seated on a cloud and chewing upon dandelions. The Mad God waved at Marcurio who in turn wordlessly asked how many fingers he was holding up. He quickly went to stand at Orchendor's flank and did his best to keep the green cat out of snatch-and-grab trajectory for the Nord-like Daedra.

"Alright, here's how it's going to go," Orchendor started as he stood and clapped his hands. "Orthorn!" The cat whirled to point at the Pink Coat. "Your target is Ancano, and your goal is to make him laugh! Do you accept this mission?"

The High Elf blinked, then moved past the cat to look down at the lake. He shaded his eyes for a better view, then nodded. "I can do that, no problem." Without further words, the Pink Coat turned and ran away from the cliff. Once he was far away he gathered up frost magic and made a runway of ice that he ran along until he had the momentum to slide and keep moving. Orthorn ramped off the cliff.

While he vanished into the distant view of the lake, those that had not launched themselves could hear a faint but loud 'yeehaw'.

"Good!" Orchendor clapped his hands. "Khajiit is so glad that his student sees the path to victory. Next, he would like to give Vyrthur his assignment." When Vyrthur approached, Auri-El stood in front of him. "Our father, Sheogorath, has a minion down there. We don't know his name, just that he wears a hood." The blue cat scanned the water's surface and pointed to a distant black speck. "There he is. Your mission is to confuse him as much as possible."

"I will rise to the occasion, my lord." Vyrthur didn't leap from the heights at great speed. Instead, he calmly walked up to the cliff and Shouted. "Feim… Zii Gron!" The Snow Elf became translucent and immaterial and threw himself from the cliffside like a diver.

Auri-El wove an illusion of a scorecard with the number ten on it as Vyrthur vanished into the water below. When he turned to Marcurio, he was Mohamara again, and immediately floated up to hug the Imperial. "Process of elimination probably helped you figure out who your target is, right?"

Marcurio kept his eyes on Sheogorath while he returned the hug. "I'm going to go to Elenwen, I'm going to use my thiefy ways to steal that staff, then let Meridia squish her."

Mohamara's tail bapped him in the nose. "No, you use the staff and J'zargo to banish Meridia's armor."

The Imperial grumbled, "he's not even ready yet," but didn't argue further. It had been difficult enough to follow Moharmara's description of love as 'the attractive force' which anchored their feet to the ground, which drew objects downward when dropped, and which flight resisted. He simply couldn't comprehend the intense mathematics that had been involved in launching J'zargo up into the sky so that the force of love would draw him downward directly onto Elenwen if Marcurio did things correctly.

"I'm going to talk to the golem -- it has an unborn sibling powering it, and I can't just leave it to suck them dry. You're going to see a lot of visual noise when it happens… don't just fire blindly because it looks scary, alright?"

Marcurio held the cat tighter and squinted at Sheogorath. "I'll be sure to take aim first."

"That's all I ask." Mohamara didn't adjust his grip but there was a tenseness in his hug. "I know he's there. I know you've been glaring at him, and he's been taunting you." The cat's tail swayed, to convey annoyance. "Don't let him egg you on, alright? Yagraz will deal with him -- you don't have the firepower to seriously hurt him and if you try he'll just turn you into a yo-yo or something."

Sheogorath made finger-wands at Marcurio while the dandelions he had been chewing on floated away on the wind.

Marcurio wordlessly asked Sheogorath how many fingers he was holding up a second time. "I'll understand if you want to use a similar boundary to mine when this is all over and done with. It's probably best if we just slam the door on all this family nonsense."

"I'm still working out this whole 'god of family' thing, so I can't just kick people out." Mohamara's whiskers brushed Marcurio's neck scar when he nuzzled into the Imperial. "Though I could just… not talk to them." The cat pushed away and fell back to the ground. "Alright, if we stay hugging, we'll never save the day." Pink became green, and Orchendor opened a portal for him to step through. "Khajiit loves Marcurio very much."

The Imperial put his hands on his hips and leaned backward, to pop his spine. "Love you too." Marcurio floated up through the air and tried to keep his eyes on the Daedric armor and Elenwen in the sky behind Sheogorath. He could feel the distortion from Orchendor's portal fade, and the fact that Orchendor wasn't there to stop him anymore made him want to lash out at Sheogorath. He settled for being snide. "What's wrong, Mad God? You're not doing much of anything despite how we aim to stop your minion."

Sheogorath shrugged and tore off a piece of the cloud to eat. "Mmf. You ought to know by now, I don't really care about the minion, or what his goal is. Just as long as he helps me be the villain my son asked me to be."

The Imperial stopped moving and whirled on Sheogorath. The unmitigated gall of the Prince of Madness made Marcurio see red for a split second. "Well, maybe Mohamara should ask you to leave and never come back."

Maniacal laughter was the response he got. "Perhaps he should! We'll see how it goes next time."

Horrible memories of the sound Mohamara's neck made when Sheogorath had slapped him so hard it killed him, being dragged back through time, and the lingering threat of such a future being allowed to happen chilled Marcurio's rage in its tracks. "What are you saying?"

Sheogorath leaned backward on his cloud and clapped his booted feet together. "Oho! Curiosity! I love it when the mortals I torment get curious. So many avenues for new games." The Mad God's torso rotated independent of his lower body, so Sheogorath could turn and face Marcurio with his chin in his hand. "You remember how I pulled you through time? Well, the rules for avoiding a Dragon Break -- with capital letters, ooh -- is that a version of the person needs to be there when I bring them back."

Marcurio vividly remembered the icy cold feeling he'd experienced when he touched his past self and avoided the idea to elope. A crash as Meridia's armor was slammed into the mountain drew his attention for a moment. When he looked back, Sheogorath sat pretty on the cloud with one leg crossed over the other, smug. "There's no version of Mohamara here except him -- and why would it change things if there was one?"

Sheogorath chortled. "I like this version of you -- each time the boy and I do this, it's all so predictable. But you -- you made some changes to the usual script." The Mad God's voice became low and malicious as he stood up and approached Marcurio, walking on thin air as the Imperial did. "First you get my boy to elope, then you ask the important question. There's no Mohamara here, so why would it change?"

The Daedra lunged forward and threw one arm across Marcurio's shoulders, then walked with him on the thin air. While he did, framed portraits of horrible scenes flitted into existence briefly. It was like Marcurio had entered into a grisly art gallery. The first was a bloody mass of gore -- Marcurio only recognized it as Mohamara from the tojay's head frozen in the process of rolling away -- a sabre cat napped nearby. Another had his husband frozen as he was torn apart by skeletons. More and more horrible things were depicted but Marcurio was not allowed to look away -- Sheogorath held his head to look at them.

"The boy doesn't always get to this point, you know. Sometimes he makes a mistake, ends up dead because of it. Other times he just wishes he was dead, and I have to grant that wish for him." The Mad God waved his hand, and the portraits disappeared. "Oh, the troubles and trials of being an attentive parent." He leaned away from Marcurio in a 'woe is me' pose. "But!" He quickly perked up. "This time it looks like he's just going to soft reset on his own. And with a Dragon Break at play, things might be interesting!"

Marcurio flexed the power of the Eye and freed himself from Sheogorath's grip. "What in Oblivion are you talking about?"

Sheogorath, miffed that his toy was free, gave Marcurio a dirty look. "Did you never stop to wonder why a child of two Princes would be born in Mundus? I'm sure he told you at some point that what's powering that golem is one of Meri-pants' eggs -- who do you suppose that egg turns into?"

The Imperial, college educated, a master thief, and great at economics, quickly pieced together the disparate bits of information to reach a conclusion that set his hair aflame with primordial rage. "You motherfucker." His hands clenched so hard his nails drew blood from his palms -- his vision went blurry as his eyes partially shapeshifted into a fire as well. "You evil, malicious, motherfucker."

The Mad God made an 'ugh' sound and spread his arms in a 'what can you do' gesture. "Hey, it's better than me actively killing him, right?" As if his sour mood hadn't existed at all the white-haired Nord was all smiles suddenly. "It's not even the first time it's happened! I happen to know that while it hurts to be reabsorbed into such a comparatively simple structure, he won't remember a thing."

Marcurio's temper finally snapped and he launched himself at Sheogorath and became a man of pure fire.

Sheogorath, fortunately, was not there a second later. A spiked weapon soared down from above and struck Sheogorath in the face. He made a ridiculous noise, like a mix between yodeling and genuine screaming as he was launched down to the surface of White Lake.

"Good distraction, Slick!" Yagraz, on the back of Kipgolsik, soared downward. There was someone Marcurio didn't recognize on the frost dragon's back as well, but they didn't stop to let him get a good look. "Go do your part of the plan! We got this wacko!"

As if Marcurio could just go off with that revelation and complete his part of the plan. He looked around, as an orb of fire, and saw the golem as it rose from the water. A speck of pink told him all he needed to know about where Mohamara was near there. The living flame dashed through the air and made a beeline for the golem, almost exactly for the runed orb that protruded from its chest.

--

Ondolemar had been focused on Akulakhan since Elenwen seemed even in combat ability with the winged metal titan. He used the mud at the base of the lake to repair damages the golem had suffered and tried to ignore the strange noises Akulakhan made. He particularly tried to ignore how they sounded like crying.

Akulakhan couldn't be crying, it was just a tool.

The sound of ice cracking drew Ondolemar's attention away from the golem just enough to realize there was a strange white Mer in monochrome moonstone armor literally skating along the surface of the water. Ice branched out from the Mer's feet like he was the avatar of frost itself. The two Mer stared at one another while they stood on the lake's surface in different ways.

"You are interfering in official Thalmor business," Ondolemar said on instinct more than anything. They hadn't really planned on anyone just approaching them during their assault on the mountain. Of course, they hadn't anticipated being knocked off the mountain, either.

"Well good, I was afraid I was interrupting you on your day off or something," the white-skinned Mer replied with a sardonic tone. "I know it feels to be worked so hard that you fight tooth and nail for any period of rest. Even to the point where you lash out at people who want to help you." Ice continued to spread out from where the white-skinned Mer stood, forming a layer of frozen fractals that started off transparent then became white as it gained thickness.

"Leave now, or you will be assumed to be hostile." Ondolemar wanted to just blast the stranger -- too tall to be anything other than another Altmer with bleached skin -- but he could begin to feel the divine energy within him diminish. If he spent too much, he would have nothing left to help tear down the heavens.

"Hmm, yes, you see hostility everywhere." The stranger walked effortlessly on the ice, his hands behind him like a butler. "A sign of a high-stress position with inadequate cooperation. Tell me, do your coworkers help you with your tasks?"

Meanwhile, Ancano floated on the surface of the lake. He did not lay, as the improvised fly swatting he'd gotten had messed him up just a tad and he had directed his divine energy inward for repairs.

"Enjoying a swim too, eh?" A stranger's voice said, muffled by the water.

Ancano rose from the water and saw another Altmer in pink robes swimming nearby. The newcomer did the backstroke like it was a pleasant day at the beach -- and this baffled Ancano. "What?"

"Well, how much longer will this lake be here? Eventually, the water will get over the top of that snowbank, and it's going to start eroding from the other side." The stranger indicated the distant line of white where the unmelting snow blocked the river. "So you have to enjoy it while it's here, right?"

"Who in Oblivion are you?"

"I'm someone of minimal importance, like you." The other Altmer flipped onto his front and dove underwater. In a moment, he was next to Ancano, with a broad grin. "You probably took that as an insult, didn't you?"

Ancano slapped at the stranger, one of their captive's minions he realized, but struck the water when the other Mer dove again.

"Over here!" The Pink Coat surfaced and squirted water at Ancano with his hands. "Oh, we can make a game out of this!" He dove again as Ancano launched an explosive ball of fire at the water. Moments later he surfaced elsewhere on the lake. "Come on try to hit me!"

Ancano found he had forgotten about his ruptured kidneys in favor of the pursuit of violence.

--

When Orchendor found the golem, he was hit with a sudden bout of sympathy for the creature. It had landed poorly and one of its arms had shattered. The golem had waded to the shore of White Lake where it slumped over, held the stump and seemed to cry from the pain. It didn't weep, but it made rhythmic whines and keening cries to mimic crying -- and due to the nature of the golem mimicry could become genuine at any moment.

"Shh, it's okay," Mohamara said as pink overcame green. He floated up to its head and ran his hands along the Dwemer-like headcrest. "I'll help the pain, don't worry about it. Just focus on me, okay?"

The gemstone eyes of the golem glimmered, but it lacked the face to react further. It seemed to understand what he'd said, and took its hand away from the stump so Mohamara could look at it.

While he did, the pink cat dove into the golem's sympathetic bonds to figure out the cause of the tangle. Visually, the wound simply resembled shattered stone with a core of white bone -- semi-liquid mud had been attached to the limb in some attempt at repairs. "Used bones as the base structure, and that lets you feel pain. Whoever designed you didn't have your interests at heart, big guy."

Mohamara breathed into his hands and focused on the part of him that was Life. Life's greatest strength was the ability to heal and grow despite old wounds -- so he focused on that while he repaired the golem's arm. Visually, it seemed like the bone and mudstone began to regenerate as a Troll would.

"I've got no beef with you, big guy. Once I get my mom's egg out of your chest I'll find a way to turn you on again." Mohamara paused, pinched the bridge of his nose, and sighed. "Poor choice of words."

The bonds he could see in the golem were superficial. It was drawn to flowers and butterflies with childlike wonder -- it had scaled the mountain since it saw many up there. And even while Mohamara repaired its arm, it turned and poked at tundra cotton that grew on the lake's edge. Like a child, it had short term memory problems -- it had completely forgotten how badly it was in pain moments prior since the pain had stopped and there was a distraction nearby.

When the arm was repaired, Mohamara floated over to the runed orb jabbed into the golem's chest. "Oof, this is a bad tangle." Mohamara decided it wasn't safe to pull out the Egg with such severe tangles. How he hadn't seen it before, he couldn't fathom -- perhaps he'd simply not looked. Without touching the Egg itself, Mohamara began to pull on the individual bonds to find where the tangles originated so he could pull them apart. As he did, he found himself reliving his own memories more often than not for each knot he undid.

That didn't make sense -- why would the tangles in an unborn god bring out his memories? Each one was different than what he knew had actually happened as well. The sabre cat had only taken his tail -- but the tangles remembered being devoured alive. He had escaped the Thalmor in Markarth, but the tangles remembered torture at their hands.

"Something's fucky in the state of Orsinium," Mohamara said while he tried to piece together what these tangles really were.

He completely missed Marcurio dive-bombing him away from the golem until they hit the muddy shore. This surprised Mohamara because Marcurio had never tackled him, nor purposefully got the velvet clothes he painstakingly made for Mohamara messy before.

"The egg is a trap," Marcurio said while he was on top of Mohamara. "Don't physically touch it -- it will suck you in and dissolve you into itself -- apparently Sheogorath's done that with different versions of you created by Dragon Breaks."

Mohamara blinked once, twice, three times, all while he tried to ignore the mud in his fur and clothes. His position, on his back with the Imperial on top of him, gave him a slightly obscured view of the battle on the mountain. Meridia's armor and the Thalmor witch were still fighting evenly.

"First of all," Mohamara started while he flicked the mud off his ears. "How do you know that? Second of all, I appreciate you coming to help me -- but this feels super gross, could you get off of me?"

Marcurio didn't do so, instead, he set his expression in stone. "Sheogorath killed you once." All the noise from the battle on the mountain faded in that instance. "Because I convinced you to elope. He somehow has the power to rewind time, and he made me remember him killing you so that I wouldn't defy him again."

The two stayed like that, following the admission. Marcurio had eyes only for Mohamara, while Mohamara spaced out in his attempt to comprehend what had just been revealed. The pink tojay then sighed and tried to relax despite the mud. "Alright. Well," he shrugged, "I kinda knew he had it in him to kill me since he tried to eat me more than once. Add it onto the pile of parental problems we've got to deal with."

Marcurio seemed baffled by Mohamara's complete nonchalance on the subject. He moved enough for the muddy cat to sit up, and had an 'explain, now' sort of expression on his face.

When the pink cat could sit up again he began to use Alteration to convert the mud into dust so it would easily come out of his fur and clothes -- the same for Marcurio's outfit. "I'm done with letting them do things to hurt me. Yagraz and I had a talk about it." For the god of kindness, he pulled off a pretty cruel smirk. "That's why we're going to banish Meridia's armor, remember? We'll just banish Sheogorath too so he can't pull anything like this again."

"I… kinda expected this to be more torn up over this," the Imperial admitted. However, his surprise was short-lived as he leaned down to push their foreheads together. "But I love how quickly you alter the plan to incorporate vengeance."

While they had their moment, the golem had noticed them and crouched down to watch them. When they both turned to see it watch them with gemstone eyes, Mohamara enthusiastically waved. A moment later, with greater hesitation, the Imperial joined in the wave. Akulakhan mimicked the gesture.

"I can keep the big guy occupied until the family shows up," Mohamara said while he stood and dusted the mud that covered Marcurio. "And I promise to wait for backup this time." He then passed Marcurio his micro-slate. "Grab a still-life of their faces when you do it to 'em, Yagraz is going to grab one of Sheogorath when she hits him with that super Shout." And he finished his second pep talk with his own forehead bump action. "And remember that you need to have fun with this, or it might not work."

Moments later, when Marcurio had become a gust of wind to ascend faster, Mohamara floated over to the golem once more. Akulakhan stood up straight and extended a finger for the pink cat to perch on like a bird.

"Want to meet my sisters, big guy?" When Akulakhan nodded, Mohamara cleared his throat and did a series of 'mii's to warm up. In moments, Auri-El stood on the golem's finger, where his Dwemer metal fangs caught the sunlight. "W hope you like Dwemer music, cause We've really enjoyed this one We heard from a metal cube." The cat, as if mimicking a songbird for a princess of impossible size, began to sing. "Rastsvetali iabolni i grushi, poplyli tumany nad rekoj…"

Meanwhile, in Oblivion, a cascade of noise began to rise from the Soul Cairn. In the Aurbis, the body of Anui-El whose soul was Auri-El, one could Shout at the world and change it. Those who knew the music of creation could become architects of tones and build reality out of a song. Heat and cold, solid and liquid, light and darkness -- all of these were notes. All bound up in a sphere brought online in stages. Sound, then Tone, and then Melody -- the sphere of Song.

In the sphere chamber, the three mnemonic control rods -- Sun, Blood, and Dragon -- were pushed together to meet in the middle. They formed the spokes of a wheel, with the five active spheres between them. An empty space lay between Sun and Dragon, where the last sphere would be activated.

But back in Mundus, the singing cat was the signal for a mass migration. On a castle three miles off the coast of Haafingar, a lone tower stood out of the ruins of a castle. All in all, it was perfectly stable and structurally sound. But that changed when a mass of small winged women bigger than most clouds began to pour from the tower. The roof was torn off and cast aside, walls were torn down, and the debris landed on an armored man who had crawled from the rubble below.

The cloud of small women danced through the air and headed southeast. They could grow even smaller as they wished, to move around the minute pieces of air that pushed against birds as they flew. This allowed them to fly faster than Mundus wished. However, the large minotaur that they carried with them was still subject to Mundus' retaliation.

"Ack! Cold! We're moving too fast! Would you stop going up and down so drastically -- you're going to somehow give me the bends if you keep it up, I can just tell. Lookoutforthatflockofgeese--"

He did not have as pleasant a flight as his sisters, needless to say.

However, soon enough they were in the heart of Skyrim, and they found a singing cat. How peculiar! Hundreds of thousands of tiny women swarmed around Akulakhan, but the golem seemed delighted by the sight of them. To something so large, they resembled butterflies of so many pretty colors! He particularly liked the big, minotaur-shaped, bird -- for of course it was a bird as it was covered in feathers.

"We are glad to see you have arrived," Auri-El said once the song concluded. He gestured to the golem. "This is Akulakhan, it appears to love flowers and butterflies. Would those of you in a floral mood mind helping it see some of the most beautiful flowers?"

Immediately the throng of pixies surged to life, half stayed to float around while the other flew into Akulakhan's face. Each pixie showed the golem a flower she had summoned -- some had based their entire outfit around the flowers they showed off.

"This is a daffodil! Aren't they droopy?" "Hey, look, this is flax, you can make clothes from this!" "This is a fire lily -- the nectar is flammable!" "And this is a water orchid! I think you're supposed to drink them? Why else would they have water in their name?" "This is blisterwort! It grows in caves!" "You silly bitch, that's a mushroom, not a flower -- hey! No hitting!"

Around that time, one of the pixies discovered that Akulakhan was made of sediment-rich mudstone. She then had the bright idea to plant a flower in Akulakhan itself. Immediately the flower began to grow, and this was noticed by the rest of the flock. In seconds, Akulakhan's arms and upper body were covered in flowers and one species of mushroom.

The world shuddered with a quaking sound after Akulakhan looked at its flowery self. Like an excited child, the hundred-foot statue bounced up and down on its feet in an expression of joy.

"Hey, goose-bull-man," Auri-El commented as he floated alongside his brother. "Sheogorath's trapped the egg, so We can't get it out. What're the odds he's set it so the first et'Ada to touch it gets absorbed?"

Morihaus pointedly ruffled his little brother's blue fur as much as he possibly could in retaliation for the 'goose' comment. "Pretty damn likely, all things considered." He put his chin in the crux of his pointer and thumb, to think. Minutes later the minotaur's expression grew positively malevolent. "It'd be pretty poetic if we could put Sheogorath in there, but I think that'd count as abuse to this thing even though it's not born yet."

"This one concurs," Orchendor said once the green-shifting had completed. "He thinks that Sheogorath has earned that temporary death, but the egg has done nothing to deserve being an instrument of murder."

"Yeah. I mean technically, it has already, but -- why are you green?" The man-bull turned and was clearly confused by the cat's color change. "Wait, was that racist, is this a Khajiit thing? I thought the prismatic Khajiit were killed off by the Thrassian Plague." As brothers were obligated to do, he immediately started to ruffle the green cat's fur too.

Orchendor's eyebrow just kept going up, and up, until it threatened to lift away from his skull altogether. "This one is different aspect -- he switches between them to learn how and when is appropriate, like kitten learning to walk."

"Oh, sorry. I don't have aspects, so I didn't know." There was some awkward silence between them while they waited for the other parts of the plan to work or fail so that they could move on to the final part. "So… after all this, you're getting married right? Your birthday's in a few days, is that when it's going to happen?"

Orchendor shook his head and spread his hands out. "The Imperial wants Khajiit to see a face sculptor to get his hands and feet fixed -- wedding will happen after recovery period passes. Which reminds this one -- yes, you are invited. Same with your mom, though Khajiit doesn't know if she wants to spend time with his dad."

Morihaus scratched his horns and smiled awkwardly. "Don't worry, she knows how Sheogorath is. He's my dad too."

Orchendor blinked, stunned. The three-quarters of a million sisters in the air blinked. Akulakhan poked at a rose bush that grew out of its elbow.

"Khajiit doesn't know how to feel about Sheogorath having extra-marital affairs with his mother's wife. It seems like one more thing that Skooma Cat just did without considering consequences."

"Where is he, anyway?"

At that precise moment a warbling, cascading scream split the air apart and sent a ripple across the surface of the lake.

"Khajiit guesses Sheogorath is in general that-a-way direction."

--

Sheogorath had tried to make jokes. He had tried to be cute. Yagraz had no time for his bullshit. She was one of Malacath's Children -- those who cried out for vengeance against those that had wronged them and their family. Short stuff couldn't beat Sheogorath in a fight -- Slick would try but the Daedra was canny. She and Miraak picked up on that after Volendrung caved his head in.

The decapitated Sheogorath moved like his head was still in one piece -- his mouth even made some smart alec remark. But when Miraak and Yagraz charged it again they were both thrown off by how easily Sheogorath dodged them. They were both armed with artifacts of Princes, so perhaps Sheogorath could be harmed by them -- but Mora hadn't been. At least, not enough to dodge.

The Mad God toyed with them, clearly, so Yagraz signaled to Miraak. "Occupy him for a moment!"

Miraak, with knowledge from Mora's library, knew how to occupy the Mad God's complete and undivided attention. The First Dragonborn sang a cheesy song from the Shivering Isles about New Sheoth. But he did so in the proper key.

The Mad God stopped his merry jig and grew a new head, he was so enraged. He walked along the surface of the water to the shore where Yagraz and Miraak stood. His flesh and clothes distorted like a cat's hackles while still seemingly human. "What you're doing there… you're not doin' it right, sonny. You're supposed to sing it in all in soprano clef, but that's clearly treble." Sheogorath pinched his fingers together and advanced on the Dragonborn with eerie speed.

Miraak drew him away from Yagraz so she could line up the shot. Sheogorath was the god of music -- they wanted him at least stunned from his mortal form's destruction to use the Thu'um on him. The First Dragonborn skated across the surface of the water through the Whirlwind Sprint Shout and looked back to see if Sheogorath had pursued him.

The Mad God loomed over his shoulder as if he had been there the whole time. With inhuman strength, the Prince wrangled Miraak into facing him and began to squeeze either side of the Nord's head. "Let me see, a bit of a narrower jaw might just fix that clef problem you have…."

While this all went on, Yagraz stilled herself. Like Malacath had taught her, she listened for the faceted noises that were the passage of time. With Volendrung she shattered the seamless melody and created a region of anti-noise. It was like a tear in the air, through which she saw Cyrodiil.

There was an archway made of three faces and a cathay Khajiit nearby. She stepped from the archway, dressed in many layers of black robes as if she was in dire need to be somewhere.

Yagraz only knew her name -- S'fara -- and that the woman was the mortal who acted as Sheogorath's vessel from the Third Era onwards. The Orc hero longed to crush her to death with Volendrung -- but the hammer wouldn't rise for her to throw it. "Guess I gotta see if my tomahawk skills have gone to shit…" She took her skyforge steel ax from her belt and lined up the shot. The Break in the Dragon began to close rapidly -- she would only get one chance.

The ax was thrown and the portal closed.

Miraak began to fear that Sheogorath would kill him before their plan could move forward -- but suddenly the Mad God let loose a horrible noise. The First Dragonborn was let go and launched through the air by the shockwave Sheogorath emitted from his hideous wailing cry.

The Mad God reached behind him to try and get between his shoulder blades -- where a time-worn ax suddenly stuck out dead center. His vessel had been hit directly in the spine.

Yagraz cursed and took up Volendrung again. "Debilitating, but not lethal. Shit."

Sheogorath's face was streaked with inky black blood that poured from his eyes, ears, and mouth against the force of gravity while he grabbed the haft of the ax and yanked it free. "Ya know, I knew it was coming," he said while he examined the item and then threw it aside. "But even so, that hurt like hell." The ax he had discarded spun through the air toward Whiterun, where it breezed past the balcony of Dragonsreach palace and cut off the beards of every man who had assembled there to watch the spectacle. Sheogorath actually seemed winded -- he leaned forward and put his hands on his knees. "Oof, that hurt almost as bad as that time I got into a limbo competition with one of those snake-people." He looked up and waited for a minute before he narrowed his eyes. "That's it? That was what you had planned? Ax me a question, and what? I leave out of the goodness o' me heart?"

"Just waiting for tetanus to kick in," Yagraz said to him. She smirked when Sheogorath's eyes widened visibly despite the distance between them. "Made sure to get some rust on my ax before I threw it. When's the last time you got vaccinated?"

The Mad God's limbs began to convulsively spasm. Breaking bones and twisted cartilage filled the air with snaps, crackles, and pops. Sheogorath opened his mouth to speak, but his jaw slammed shut with such force it broke his teeth. "Okay," he growled around his forcibly clenched jaws, "I admit, that was really clever -- getting my vessel infected like that."

"Thanks, I put a couple of days of thought into it." Now was the time. Sheogorath was weak, his vessel had begun to twist and break itself from the strength of the disease -- but it would not stay that way for long. The new Shout -- crafted specifically for the Mad God, would see its use.

"Bok!" Age. Not bound to time, the sum total of an entity's existence. "Siiv!" A verb that meant to find, to gain, to acquire. "Onikaan!" Wisdom, insight, inner peace. Miraak and Yagraz had decided to name the Shout Reality Check -- for it forced the target to experience their age and reflect on their actions in a mature, wise, way. The three Words combined to take the shape of a white-gold mass of energy that drilled through the air toward Sheogorath.

When the mass hit him, Sheogorath's tetanus-locked jaw broke itself as he forced it open to scream. The Prince of Madness writhed, his skin seemed to boil, and his white eyes burst into flames. It was a couple of minutes of agonized noise before the Daedra could speak. "What… have you done to me?" Many voices were overlaid on top of each other when the Mad God spoke. "This isn't… what have you done to me?!"

Yagraz smirked. The veneer of superiority and untouchability had finally left Sheogorath. What he experienced wasn't just isolated to his vessel -- it would spread to his core across the barrier in the Shivering Isles. "Oh, just something to help you grow the fuck up and act like an adult." She casually leaned on Volendrung while she watched, certain that Malacath looked upon this development with joy in his heart.

Meanwhile, in the Ashpit, Malacath's manifestation sat on a long couch in a fluffy robe and slippers shaped like monster paws. He ate from a bucket of popped corn kernels and watched a program on his scrying orb. "No, Stands-in-Wonder," The Prince of Vengeance called out to the character on the orb, "she has a knife!"

Sheogorath's vessel began to wither. His already pale skin became ashen, his Nordly figure eroded under the strain of age. The Prince of Madness watched his hands shrivel up, and weakly twitch, and soon after crumble into powder. He looked up at Yagraz, as his face became gaunt -- his eyes had long been gone and left only burned holes. "I'll get you for this, mortal."

"Maybe," she shrugged, "but my money's on you being out of commission for a long, long time." Her vision shifted to a dark mass that covered Sheogorath in shadow. "Particularly if he has something to say about it."

--

Elenwen and Meridia's armor were no longer equally matched -- Elenwen had taken the advantage and pressed it. The radiant Thalmor witch grinned like a madwoman as she slammed the titanic Daedric construct into the Throat of the World repeatedly. She thought she'd won.

And that made it easy for Marcurio to sneak up on her. While she gloated to the battered and broken armor, the thief-mage stole up behind her and shifted his shape.

"Emissary," he spoke in the shape of Ondolemar, with the man's voice borrowed by his stalhrim whistle, "the golem is damaged. I require more energy to repair it and get it moving."

"Here," she said, without turning, and held the staff out. "Our victory is assured now -- with Sheogorath's protection and the strength of true gods. Would you care to watch as I destroy this shard of a weak Prince?" While she held the staff, she gathered an enormous amount of divine energy into her other hand, perhaps to obliterate Meridia's armor outright.

A terrible wail shook through the air. It followed a shockwave that shook the snow from the mountain and sent Meridia's armor sliding down to the lake below. Elenwen and the disguised Marcurio were tossed about for a second by the wave before Marcurio attacked.

He abandoned his disguise and made his fingers combine into a curved steel blade that he used to lop off Elenwen's hand that still held a burning mass of divine energy. The amputated hand fell like a comet into the water below and seemed to explode after it passed below the surface.

Stunned, and momentarily betrayed, Elenwen looked at her stump. Divine energy from the staff began to automatically heal her wounds. "Should have remembered." Sunna'rah brightened in her hand as she brandished it at Marcurio. "Gloat when your enemies are dead, not before!" A bolt of divine energy sailed from the hollow point of the staff -- which Marcurio moved around as he became a being of smoke.

When he had closed the gap, one hand grabbed Sunna'rah while he became an Imperial of sculpted ebony. As it turned out being kicked in the chest by living ebony did not enable one to grip onto magical staves. Without the divine energy in Sunna'rah, Elenwen couldn't fly. Marcurio watched her fall, hundreds of feet still until she hit the water, and plotted her trajectory. He had to remind himself he couldn't murder her -- she was still ambassador to the Dominion and that would lead to war. But in his mind, he imagined a spear of ice that caught her as she fell and would give her some additional suffering before she hit the water.

He had to be satisfied with the distant splash that was Elenwen as she struck the lake. He had to make do with the fact that her body wouldn't be found, perhaps ever. He had to make do with the fact that she would be remembered as a traitor, a fool, and how severely she damaged the Dominion's reputation.

Perhaps it was Mohamara's influence, but he found that combination an acceptable trade for direct murder.

--

Two explosions of golden light signaled Vyrthur and Orthorn's success in their missions. The divine energy that they had possessed had been released to saturate White Lake alongside Elenwen's. This divine energy sought release and touched the memories of the water. Fish, plants, and mudcrabs suddenly appeared in the waters as if they had always been there.

Ancano was lucky, as it turned out. He had been distracted from his own healing for so long that when he finally burst out laughing from the game he played, he died quietly. Orthorn watched as the Thalmor's amusement faded, and the internal injuries he'd neglected rapidly caught up to him.

"I don't know what Daedra you served," Orthorn said while he briefly touched the cadaver. A touch of Stoneflesh weighed down the Thalmor's corpse so it would sink below the water. "But you are dead, and the dead should be mourned. I will mourn you like you are mine because someone must."

Who would have thought a simple game of "Uriel Five" would cause the Thalmor to laugh?

With his part done, Orthorn swam toward the ice sheet that Vyrthur had brought with him. There he found the Snow Elf on his knees next to the other Thalmor male who lay on his back. While he climbed up onto the ice, he managed to catch the tail end of their conversation.

"...all of this is a dream?" The Thalmor asked, dismayed.

Vyrthur nodded. "And like a dream, it seems so vividly real, doesn't it? You can choose to forget the dream if you wish, but it looks like your dream is ending. You're going to wake up." The Snow Elf gestured to the Thalmor's body.

As Orthorn approached, he saw the Thalmor's body become translucent. As if the Mer were an illusion, he faded visibly into nothing. It was somehow more disturbing than Ancano's death had been.

Suddenly desperate, the Thalmor grabbed Vyrthur's arm and looked up at him. "Who… who will I be, when I wake up?"

Orthorn couldn't see Vyrhthur's face, but he could hear the unusual softness in the vampire's voice. "For better, or for worse, you will be you."

The Thalmor pleaded with Vyrthur with his eyes. When the vampire's reply didn't change, and the fading had reached his torso, the fascist Altmer began to weep. "But I hate being me…." He cried until there was nothing left of him except echoes.

With nothing left to kneel for, Vyrthur stood. "Did yours force you to use the shield?" The vampire barely turned his head to speak to Orthorn, perhaps he'd known the Pink Coat was there all along.

"No," Orthorn replied. "After I completed my task, the Master's energy burst from him like a broken pipe."

"Mine did the same." Vyrthur looked up and pointed toward the Daedric construct half in the lake. "Soon the last part of the plan will see the Glister Witch banished from Mundus properly."

Orthorn looked at the armor as well -- the head was dented, one of the gemstone eyes was shattered. The wings were severely damaged, but functional. The armor hadn't moved for a long time, up until another body hit the water.

The remaining eye flared to life, and the construct struggled to stand. Its one remaining arm reached out in the direction of the golem -- where the Master and a gathering of Pixies were. It had taken all of two bumbling steps before it was stopped.

Othorn chewed on a chunk of ice that had broken off from the sheet while a comet seemed to streak down from the heavens. That could only have been J'zargo, the Master's minion, who had gathered fire from the border of Mundus and Aetherius to play out his part of the plan. He tapped Vyrthur on the shoulder and turned his back on the scene. "The Master said we can't look at it from this close-up."

The vampire grumbled and turned his back on the scene as well. He did this just in time to watch a Nord elder in oversized clothes of purple and orange go sailing across the surface of the lake toward the golem on the far shore. "I'm guessing that new Dragonborn you told me about was responsible for that?" Vyrthur inspected his armored fingers, completely unperturbed by what had just happened.

Orthorn, similarly unbothered, looked over from whence the projectile man had come. "Hmm. Well, there looks to be Miraak, Yagraz, and some minotaur over there. The minotaur's rubbing his fist, so I guess he's the one who punched Sheogorath like that."

"He has a good punching arm. We would do well not to be punched by him."

"Iunno, it could be fun!"

"Gods above, you're worse than that Giller person."

--

Mohamara watched while both his parents were effectively taken out of the picture for the immediate future. Meridia's armor had started to make an attempt to reach him and his sisters -- but Marcurio put that effort to rest with his part of the plan.

The tojay watched Marcurio use Mohamara's divine energy to catch J'zargo, aflame from his trip to the edge of the world, and launch the Aedric construct directly into the armor's back. Supercharged thusly, the Servitor could use Mohamara's Meridian amulet as a true sigil stone. When Servitor met Daedric armor, a portal of Daedric fire opened up and both metal figures passed through.

Up next was Sheogorath, delivered into the same portal by Morihaus via a physical toss.

Mohamara whistled to get his sisters attention while they planted more flowers -- and blisterwort -- into Akulakhan's body. "I'm going to deal with mom and dad, can you guys take care of the egg situation without me?"

Three-quarters of a million thumbs up were his answer.

With the power of flight, Mohamara soared across the surface of White Lake and into the portal himself. When he stepped out on the other side he was in a courtroom of prodigious size, the gallery full of minor Daedra. Walls of rainbow-colored wood, curtains of water vapor anchored before windows in the shape of diamonds -- such fanciful construction could only be the work of Oblivion.

Sheogorath and Meridia in their human forms sat at the position of the defendants, with a bar of High Rock Spring soap wearing a tie was their legal counsel. Mohamara moved through the gateway of subliminal thoughts to sit at the plaintiff's table alongside his representative, a Daedra in the shape of an Orc. In the juror's box were a fine assortment of cheeses all dressed in small outfits.

"All rise," said a gray-robed bailiff announced, "for the honorable Judge Jyggalag."

In strode jagged Jyggalag, static in his form, so Anuic that the waters of Oblivion boiled around him to create a layer of steam around his body. The Prince of Order, made of chrome metal, sat down on the judge's throne with a ponderous thud. The spikes on his head caught the light and redirected it to shine directly in Sheogorath's eyes. "Bailiff," the dethroned, yet ironically throned, Prince ordered, "read the charges."

While Mohamara was in trial, his hostile takeover of the Soul Cairn neared completion. The soul habitat of the original realm was finally pried from the wreckage and repairs could be made. The original soul habitat looked incandescent when compared to the purple and blues of the Soul Cairn -- and after a quick compatibility check, it was determined that they couldn't just transfer the pre-mythic formations into the Soul Cairn. But they could manage both without much difficulty, as Sanguine did with his transfinite realms.

Thus the soul habitat was ejected from the Soul Cairn -- it appeared as an orb of light that floated from the whale-realm's jaws and up toward Magnus. While one realm floated, the other swam -- pieces of the skeletal whale iconography broke away while it too ascended to the surface of Magnus.

Inside the Soul Cairn, news began to feed into the protoform control room. Mr. Moody was handed a notice from the reactor room -- good news at last. The officer flipped a switch and pulled down a speaking crystal to prompt the inter-realm noisemaker for an announcement. "Attention, all hands. The power drain has been dealt with -- the reactor is clear for instrumentality. Please complete your current task and get to your stations for immediate Solar Furnace activation."

After the announcement, Mr. Pessimismy quickly approached Mr. Moody -- and narrowly avoided being crushed by their dragon patient who had briefly escaped the reassembly line. When he got close, he held up his general issue slate to muffle his speech. "Shouldn't we do a stress test, first? Maybe designate a Tower?"

"Yep," Mr. Moody said, confident as he looked over the tangled mess of pipes, tubes, and components.

"So why are we leaping right to instrumentality?"

Mr. Moody struck a pose, and in so doing pointed to Mr. Reflectiony's workstation -- it was far behind the others as Mr. Reflectiony hadn't fully recovered yet. "Because our impulse control hasn't been installed yet!"

Back in the courtroom, things were not going well for the defendants. What had started as an attempt to take the sting out of Meridia's negligence charge by way of her temple's foster care system turned into an absolute disaster on Sheogorath's side. This came to a head when the Oblivion surveillance handage finished playing through a lovely pair of rainbow women as they devolved into severe dementia over the course of an afternoon.

For Mohamara it was a horrible experience that marked the very last time he was put with a foster family. For Sheogorath, seemingly, it was a charming afternoon stroll. The event worsened the case of Meridia's negligence as the victims had been both Meridian -- entitled to her protection, which never came.

Jyggalag banged the gavel stone to silence the gallery when they formed their words into soft fruits to fling at Meridia and Sheogorath -- confident that neither Prince would remember them. "The time for fruit flinging is over and done with -- please confine further projectiles to soft vegetables and berries. And a reminder for the smartass in the back, ferns are strictly prohibited." His hollow eyes looked upon the fruited defendants, impassive. "The evidence you've offered has only strengthened the plaintiff's position. Have you additional evidence?"

Meridia had her bald head in her hands while Sheogorath flipped through a notebook of cheese slices with writing upon them.

"Hold on," the Mad God said, "I think I have something from an alternate timeline version of the boy to help us, Meri-pants." He looked excited as he flipped to one slice of cheese, but quickly his excitement melted. "Oh wait, this version was eaten alive by whales trying to get your beacon back. Does that help us any?"

The defendant's bar of soap attorney slid across the desk in admittance that the defense rested.

Jyggalag nodded his spikey head and regarded the courtroom as a whole. "The time has come for closing arguments. Mr. the Clankiller, you may proceed."

"Thank you, your honor," the Orc shaped Daedra nodded and stood from the plaintiff's table. "Firm and soft cheeses of the jury, my client is not asking much -- just an apology. He is a god of great tautological means in his own right…."

Mohamara rested his head in the palm of one hand propped up on the table. This had not gone how he wanted -- he thought they would lie and give him a meaningless apology, then they could part ways for a while. But they couldn't even manage that -- they'd fought to the last to remain in the right. Meridia, he thought, would be better as she shared the sphere of Kindness with Mohamara.

Kindness wasn't enough to make a bad mother good, as it turned out.

Back in the Soul Cairn, dozens of subordinate functions affixed safety vests and lifelines to themselves, to Soul Cairn natives, and to their guests as the time for instrumentality drew near. The relevant switches had been thrown ahead of schedule, and the control rods already began to meet at their designated axis of rotation while the orbiting spheres lit up with divine light.

All at once a spasm went through the major functions. They froze in the midst of their duties, then immediately returned to them with a degree of panic. Mr. Moody was the hardest hit by this as he looked over readouts from the reactor and the progress bar to instrumentality. A sudden bit of movement drew his eyes up to Mr. Reflectiony's work area, where the injured officer stood with bandages over most of his face and one arm in a sling. The other arm was used to ask Mr. Moody how many fingers Mr. Reflectiony held up.

Impulse control and general reflection functions had been restored. Which of course led to a panic among the officers as there had been no stress tests, they had designated no Tower of their own, and they didn't have a sixth sphere in place yet. They hadn't even thought of the technical problems that would come from having the Sun as a control rod and a possible sphere!

Mr. Moody was saved when a call came in from Tower support, Mr. Imaginationy's department.

"Alright, we screwed up big time," the Imaginative officer said through the slate.

Mr. Moody looked on as the panic began to spread to some of the subordinate functions. "I can see that."

"I had my boys writing activation protocols for incomplete Towers, and we managed to get one together. We did some mental gymnastics to make it happen -- don't ask questions you don't want the answers to, just get the boss to sign off on the document I'm sending." Mr. Imaginationy's call ended abruptly, and the space on Mr. Moody's slate was soon replaced with a file.

Mr. Moody skimmed the document and found it made his head hurt, which in turn made all the subordinate functions heads hurt. To get the problem out of his head, he hastily forwarded it up the chain of command and hoped nobody would think to blame him for the situation. Fortunately, most of the people in the position to cast blame, cast it on their father.

Mohamara sat through the defense's closing argument and his representative's rebuttal in a mostly unchanged position of bored dissatisfaction. In a shower of pink sparks, a slate in the style of the Telvanni Impressionism, which had been used for Mohamara's subordinate functions, appeared on the table with a notification. He ignored the arguments to give it a once over.

There was some confusing bit about him being the temporary stone for a Tower until it was switched to the solar grid -- he needed to be invested in the world before he could create the solar grid. According to the report, he was already connected to the Tower due to time fuckery, which Akatosh had filed an official injunction over. Time was of the essence, per his major functions' notations at the end, so the pink tojay just signed his name at the bottom to get it over with.

The slate vanished in a shower of pink sparks just as Mohamara's representative returned from his rebuttal statement. "Alright," the Orc shaped Daedra said. "That soap had them confused for a moment, but I think I got them back on our side."

Jyggalag banged the gavel stone again to silence the room. "Firm and soft cheeses of the jury," he said while he turned to look upon them. "How do you find?"

The bailiff went to each cheese and stuck them with a fork, then placed them into a fondue pot. The gallery waited with bated breath as the cheeses melted together. As the last cheese liquified, a chunk of bread was dipped in via a long-stemmed fork. That cheesy bread was then given to Jyggalag, who stuck it through the slats in his helmet.

After a moment of texture consideration, chewing, and aftertaste analysis, the Prince of Order banged his gavel stone again. "The jury finds in favor of the plaintiff. This court awards the requested damages -- a formal apology -- along with a sum of power from each parent as punitive damages. Court is dismissed." With Jyggalag's proclamation, the courtroom began to dissolve, as it was no longer needed.

"I gave it my best shot, grandma," Mohamara muttered to himself as he stood and started to walk to the door. "Thanks, Mr. the Clankiller -- I hope to have Yagraz back on the track to Ashpit soon with my brother's help."

"That's all Lord Malacath asks, Mr. Ahramani," the Orc shaped Daedra said while he gathered up his papers.

At the threshold, where lesser Daedra marched from the courtroom and gossiped, Mohamara paused to look back at the defendant's table. Meridia and Sheogorath were still there -- even as it ceased to exist. Meridia turned to look at the cat, but she couldn't hold his gaze for long. "No matter what," he said to himself, "I will be better to them than you were to me." Then he left and looked back no more.

--

The sugar desert had passed through the surface of Magnus uninhibited. As an Aetherial Realm, it would naturally have floated there. The Soul Cairn, freed of the predatory iconography, took the shape of an unassuming sphere as the sugar desert did.

Within the working structures of the Soul Cairn, all who could be secured were secured. The one exception was the soul of a particularly ornery dragon who wanted to eat everything. Even Mr. Moody had his lifeline secured like all the functions. It had enough give to where he could make another announcement, as instrumentality drew closer. "Alright, boys, girls, and those of unspecified or non-applicable gender -- the process is automated at this point! Hold on, don't do anything Sheogorath would want us to do, and we'll come out of this with minimal damage!"

Outside, the two soul habitats pressed into the surface of Magnus, and through the liminal barrier, each other. But Magnus was a coin with three sides -- that which opened to Aetherius, that which opened to Oblivion, and that which opened to the Mundus. The pressure from the two sides forced expansion in the third.

While all of that cool shit was going down, the Mundus side of Magnus began to distend. Due to the considerable distance, this was not quite visible at first. Eventually, the curvature caused some shift in the light so that people with telescopes made the incredibly poor decision to look directly at the sun and realize there error seconds later. The sun no longer was a hole in the outer layer of the world -- it was a hemisphere.

Back in the Tower support room, those monitoring the inactive Towers waited on bated breath for one worker to complete his task. All of their work in upgrading the Towers from the Stone and Thief system to the solar grid system would be worthless if they could not bring their own Tower online in time.

All seemed to be going well until the subordinate function stopped and looked around frantically. "It needs a designation -- what do I do?"

Everyone looked to Mr. Imaginationy who in turn looked at the looking glass which displayed their Tower-to-be, Akulakhan covered in plant life -- with hair of wisteria lilac, shoulders covered in flowers and fungi -- almost to the point where the Dwemer metal around its head and torso was not immediately visible. "Designate it Moss-Agate -- two words like its precursor, and attuned to Life in particular." The officer wasn't at all certain of his decision, but he had to make one. That's what he'd been put in charge for.

With a few minutes of typing, the eight Towers of Tamriel became nine. Akulakhan, Moss Tower, Moss-Agate, stood as an echo of Walk-Brass whose narrative was of a people who longed to be gods. Akulakhan stood in refutation of that narrative -- and was given the narrative of a people who wished to be happy. Immediately the lights in the Soul Cairn powered by the reactor dimmed and shuddered. Power streamed from the five spheres to the hub of the wheel, and out through the gap to flow into Akulakhan -- into the World.

--

As Mohamara stepped out through the portal to Oblivion, the sun emerged as a sphere from the hole that had been Magnus. The portal closed behind him, and so to did the empty space the sun had occupied. There was no fanfare as Eight became Nine. Mohamara focused first on fishing J'zargo from the lake, as the Servitor was too heavy to float, then rejoined his friends, and siblings. His family.

The Egg of Magnus mirrored the sun, it left Akulakhan and left empty space that filled itself shortly thereafter.

There was much hugging as the days passed, following the failed toppling of Snow-Throat. Mohamara hugged each and every one of his sisters before they left for their own homes in Oblivion -- he would see them again at his wedding, there were no doubts. Morihaus stayed at his mother's mountain to help her Greybeards rebuild, but he made sure to ruffle his pink brother's fur up as he had the blue and green aspects first.

Vyrthur hugged his god goodbye and accepted the offer for a cure of the illness that had caused their schism -- to be born again. They would see each other again, in different lives, with different names, as friends, not master and servant.

Yagraz took Miraak to Whiterun to meet her daughter, and prepare for the wedding. She grinned like a crocodile while she and Mohamara hugged their to be short-lived goodbyes. He and Marcurio joined in the friend-obligated threats against Miraak in the vein of 'if you don't respect her, we will rip your skin off'.

Marcurio, Orthorn, and Mohamara departed back to the east of Skyrim -- though Marcurio insisted they go to Riften first. In the Imperial's mind, it was time to get Mohamara's claws back.

One by one, the Towers that the Thalmor had chopped down came back. Red Mountain ceased her endless ash-spewing, and the earthquakes that had shaken Morrowind for centuries came to an end. It would not offset the further hardship they would endure, but it would save lives that otherwise would be lost.

The White-Gold Tower was the next to awaken again -- and when it did, fireworks of unknowable providence were launched in celebration. The residents of the Imperial City were glad for the show but had no idea as to the reason. It was a moment of merriment when there had been no cause -- in short, frivolity. After White-Gold, the Crystal Tower made a return. Alinor's residents went to sleep one day, and on the morrow, the Crystal Tower stood again where it had been knocked down. The Thalmor naturally claimed credit, but it mattered little whom had been the cause, the long-lived people had a piece of their past returned to them.

Green-Sap's return was part of a greater return of Valenwood's forests, that had been cleared per Aldmeri decree. The graht-oak trees and lesser plants sprung up from the soil and tore apart Dominion fortifications and colonization sites where they rightfully deserved to stand. Orichalc returned with the most visible fanfare -- as scores of fishermen returned to port one day with news of islands that had risen from the ocean before their very eyes.

Walk-Brass came back to the world unnoticed, as it was sunk beneath the waves. Free for the first time, the Numidium walked off into the ocean to bother, and be bothered by no one anymore. Then came the non-Tamrielic Towers. Akulakhan went wherever there were flowers or beautiful things, but what it considered beautiful seemed to change as it traveled, and so too did the foliage that grew upon it.

The Thalmor had aimed to shake the pillars of heaven, and in so doing made them stronger. Let all who would tear down the World see the folly in this.

--

Marcurio was both annoyed with his husband's willingness to submit to Nibanese tradition, and happy with it at the same time. It was an old belief that the newlyweds should not see each other in their wedding attire until the time of the ceremony. There were older traditions, such as ritualistically taking the bridal equivalent from their birth family to have them in the groom's own, but Marcurio opted to not follow that one. The tradition was also surprisingly lenient -- the Imperial set up screens through half of their chambers so that they could still chat while they prepared.

The Imperial glanced through the screen where he saw the Pink Coats Mohamara had brought with him to Riften from Winterhold attend to the cat's appearance in silhouette. Today would be the last day he had to look at the hideous wheelchair the cat had been confined to for his recovery period. His gaze lingered on the mitten bandages that covered the cat's hands and reflected on if it had been right to press for the corrective face sculpting.

Jode made her presence known by way of air walking to Marcurio's half of the dressing room. "Mario," she greeted, happy in her vest, and sparkly hat. "You and Momamama look pretty!"

She had obviously fished for a compliment, but Marcurio couldn't not give it to her. He reached out with his recently manicured hand to scratch below the Big Moon's chin. "You look pretty too, baby girl. Prettier than any of your aunties. Just don't ruin your outfit by going after the fish too soon."

This set off a five minute 'but dad' 'no' go-between that Marcurio knew he had inflicted on his own father more than once. Jode was better at it by dint of being cuter -- but Marcurio could distract himself with his makeup where Seneca only had wine. Wine made one weak to parent-tricks.

"I've overheard a lot of the guests talking about us," Mohamara commented once Jode had won the battle by a slim margin and went off to get her early fish. "A lot of them seem to be in denial that I'm not a woman. Adannna, am I really that effeminate?"

One of the shadows of the Pink Coats broke off her task to visibly hesitate before she resumed. The Khajiiti woman sighed and clarified. "Is most common for Khajiit women to be bald, Llorona. And he has very… feminine cheekbones. This one was not certain until she heard him speak."

Marcurio could practically see the cat's pout through the screen, and he was sure it was adorable. "Are you feeling up to taking the bandages off yet?" He watched the tojay's shadow for a reaction while he stood up from his chair.

"Well, I have to get the sandals on at some point," the cat replied. "And someone made sure to include detached sleeves that attach to rings, so I can't skip out on that either. So… yeah?" Mohamara's shadow held up his hands and the two Pink Coats began to unwrap the bandages. "Ow, not so fast, you're going to pull my fur out!"

Marcurio took his eyes off the scene to dress in his wedding ensemble. Since the event was to also announce his position as the Emperor's heir -- before the old man was poisoned later in the evening -- it had to be somewhat extravagant. Previous emperors had favored the use of purples, deep blues, and furs, but Marcurio aimed to set himself apart from that which had come before. He wore clothes in the colors of the Rift, of Autumn, in the style of the ancient Cyrods as he'd made Mohamara's ensemble. After he was done dressing, the bandage removal seemed to have completed as Mohamara's hands were not mittens when Marcurio next looked at their shadows.

"Huh. So I just flex a little and -- whoa!" The cat held his hands away from him, evidently, he'd unsheathed his claws quicker than expected. "That's cool! And it doesn't hurt? How do you trim them?"

"The outer layer of the claw breaks off, Master," Adannna confirmed as she moved around the screen to help Marcurio affix his cloak. "To put them back, just relax. Is not so complicated."

"I can just tell I'm going to wreck some sheets when I'm sleeping and these just slip out…"

Marcurio chuckled at the image and remembered how one of his sister's cats would get their claws stuck sometimes. It would be fun to see if Mohamara had the same event happen to him. A more serious topic came to mind when Adannna used the Eye of Mohamara to pin the cloak in place. He waited until she went back to Mohamara's side to bring it up, however. "You're sure you don't want to… make an announcement or something? Your side of the family will show up, and I get the feeling they'd want you to get a… substantial following, as it were?"

The cat's shadow shook his head. "I'm okay with where I am. And what would I do, hmm?" He used his newly freed fingers to count off some reasons. "I'm the god of family, everyone thinks Mara does that. I'm a god of life, everyone thinks Meridia and Arkay do that. I'm the god of kindness, but everyone associates that with Stendarr. Song? 'Sheogorath's the god of music, right?' The sun? 'But that's Magnus!' Teaching? 'But Julianos has all these schools dedicated to him!'" The cat put on a higher pitched voice for his hypothesized reply, it made Jone giggle to hear it. Mohamara hastily left the wedding prep zone around his seat to lick Jone to let the tubby kitten know he was loved, then returned. "And the ninth Divine? There was recently a war about that." Mohamara's shadow shook his head emphatically. "Let everyone else in the family chase the worship of more and more people -- I'm okay with providing a service to make the world better."

Marcurio, in the face of such humility, did as husbands ought to do. Respect their wishes and plot legislation to legalize their religion.

The mood of the room changed when a huge person in armor made from bones burst in through the door with an Imperial girl in a green dress behind them. "Yo, newlyweds," said Yagraz as she made finger-wands to both of them on either side of the screen. "Spitfire told me you two were still getting ready so I can by to make fun of the way Slick dressed you both, and so Lucy can see Jone." The armored Orc pointed at the cradle, and the Imperial girl positively zoomed over to it.

"Oh, Malacath's manly mandible," she said, in awe of the spotted kitten. "He's the cutest cousin ever."

"You can hold him," Mohamara said, "if you let Adannna show you how."

While Lucy gushed, and Adannna showed the girl how to hold the kitten, Marcurio examined Yagraz in her bone armor. After a moment's inspection, he gathered it was dragon bone armor. An impressive set, but he knew it was not the Companion's preferred style of armor.

"I thought you favored light armor," he commented while he haughtily examined his perfumes for the perfect fragrance. "Why the sudden switch to heavy?"

"Because, Slick, all the scales got used in making you two some wedding presents!" The armored Orc thudded over to Marcurio, threw her arm over his shoulder, and shoved a scaly parcel into his arms. "You're lucky I didn't let those Radiant Raiment girls go with the 'dragonscale smallclothes' idea. What's the point of making things from dragons if you don't show it off?"

Marcurio couldn't deny the accuracy of her sentiment and unfolded his parcel while she went to give Mohamara his. It was a dragonscale overcoat, with a plethora of hidden pockets -- ideal for someone of Marcurio's chosen profession. "Hmm, functional, excellent craftsmanship, and plenty of room for enchantment to add on -- a splendid gift." He set it in the closet where his wedding clothes had been and returned to his previous task. "What did she get you, love?"

"The tradition only counts for you seeing me in my wedding clothes, right?" Mohamara called over the divider, and his shadow scurried over to where Jone's cradle was. "Because she got me something I've wanted since the moment this guy grew too heavy for me to carry physically." Moments later, before Marcurio could respond, Mohamara came around the divider in his smallclothes and wearing a dragonscale harness on his chest that allowed him to carry Jone inside. The kitten was confused, but not upset at this development.

Marcurio stared for a second before he quickly whipped out his micro-slate and snapped a pictograph of the scene. "I can't wait to show that to the kids when they're older," he said with malicious glee. His face split in a wide grin as the Khajiit realized what had happened. "Hold on, I'm going to go show your sisters and your brother."

"Wait! No! At least get a pic when I'm wearing trousers!"

But it was too late, as Marcurio had dashed through the door. He knew Mohamara wouldn't follow in just his smallclothes, so he languidly walked through the halls of Riftweald Manor -- a recent purchase -- and out to Riften's streets. The guests all had gathered at the temple of Mara not too far away, so Marcurio expected he could share the pictograph with most of Mohamara's sisters before the cat could arrive to try and stop him.

As it happened, something else stopped him.

He saw, among the crowd of people from across the province and beyond, a familiar face who in turn saw him. Seneca Tullius. Marcurio was about to move on with his plan when his father handed his wine back to the server that had given it to him -- an unprecedented feat -- and rushed over. It would be rude to run, or Marcurio would have sped up to avoid him.

"May I have some words with the groom?" Seneca tried to play it off like he hadn't rushed like everyone hadn't seen him rush. "Please?"

That made Marcurio stop mid-stride. General Seneca Tullius, 'the Troubleshooter', had said 'please'? Where other people could hear? The rumors that would circulate could ruin Marcurio's mother's day for years to come. He of course turned and gave the golden-armored general a curt nod and nothing else.

Rather than let the whole world know their personal business, Marcurio led the way to a chapel in the nearby graveyard. Secretly it housed a back door to the Thieves Guild, so if he needed to escape Seneca's idiocy, he could before the old man could react. The groom cleaned off a section of the wall and promptly leaned on it. "What do you have to say, Father? Going to implore me to arrest the Guild once I'm Emperor? Never have fun again for fear of political ramifications? Have an affair to produce a Man for the Elder Council to be sure of their racial supremacy?"

Seneca looked around the chapel, down to his feet, and took a deep breath. With the poise and grace expected of a general, he suddenly looked up and met Marcurio's eyes. "I'm sorry." Seneca held up a hand to forestall Marcurio's questions. "I was a bigot, an ignoramus, an imbecile, and a poor father not to see the signs when they first presented themselves." Clearly, Seneca wished he did not hold Marcurio's gaze, but he did anyway. "I shouldn't have said those things to you, I shouldn't have let your mother say those things to you. And I shouldn't have thrown you out of my house, then take umbrage with how you chose to live afterward. I was wrong -- as a man, and a father." That was a lot of words to say all at once, so Seneca took a moment to breathe. "I won't ask for forgiveness I don't think I deserve. And if this is the last time we see each other, I'm okay with that. You're a fine young man, a son I can be proud of. And…" Seneca struggled with the next part of his admission visibly. "I know you will be a better father than I was to you. I know you will never make your children feel unwelcome and alone in their own home, as we did to you. I say it again… I'm sorry."

There was a long, awkward silence between them. Marcurio's expression of feigned disinterest did not change as he examined his father's face for signs of lies. Political lessons from his childhood came in handy still.

Seneca took this as an implicit rejection of the apology and turned to leave. But he was stopped when Marcurio closed the gap and laid a hand on his father's shoulder.

"I can't forgive you and mother for all the things you said," Marcurio admitted, no longer disgusted with his non-violent reaction. "But I can start on the path to forgiveness. Because I've seen parents far, far worse than you. It offered me some… perspective, I guess." If Marcurio had Mohamara's sense of affection, he would have hugged Seneca. As it was, he simply patted the general's shoulder. "Apology accepted." His expression became far brighter, as Seneca visibly relaxed. "Would you like to hear about your grandchildren?"

By the time Marcurio and Seneca finished their talks about the kittens, Mohamara found Marcurio and put a stop to the pictograph sharing. Fortunately, he had thought to send it to Yagraz so the memory would be preserved for future use.

Without Sheogorath or Meridia in attendance, and with Seneca to reign in Marcurio's mother, the wedding went so much better than either groom had hoped for. After the newlyweds had shared their wine and stomped upon the glass, there was a toast held before the reception.

'To being better today than who we were yesterday. To pushing forward, despite hardship. May we put happiness and love above being right. And may we find in each other a family worth fighting for.'

THE END.

---
"Oh, boo hoo hoo! It's done! It's over! My wee baby boy is getting married and I'm stuck talking about boring payment plans with Haskill and me wives. Who's going to swing about from the chandelier if I'm not there?! Well, probably that Cicero feller. I quite like him, he reminds me of me! But wait, I've been told to hand this to y'all for your listening pleasure. For some of you, it won't be able to just click on it -- you'll have to search 'Take on Me (Symphonic)'. And no, don't ask how I pronounce the parenthesis with my mouth, you won't like the answer. Anyway, here's your credit music."

 

[LordFarie]

It's been quite the journey, but I suppose all's well that ends well. I didn't understand a lot of the lore, but it still was pretty coherent, so thats a plus.

 

[Grosstoad]

Aww, still waiting on the daedric parent redemption arc, since daedra, monolithic as they are, still are susceptible to change.

 

[Krazyfan1]

Aww, still waiting on the daedric parent redemption arc, since daedra, monolithic as they are, still are susceptible to change.

Click to shrink...

Eh, Redemption isnt needed for everyone...

 

[Chairtastic]

Aww, still waiting on the daedric parent redemption arc, since daedra, monolithic as they are, still are susceptible to change.

Click to shrink...

They had their chance for redemption multiple times. Meridia even took some steps toward it, but ultimately she struggled so much with doing what was best for her children vs her being right that it ended up paralyzing her. Sheogorath had multiple lifetimes worth of chances, but his madness kept him from taking the presented opportunities.

 

[Richardson]

I feel like I'm gargling happiness and sunshine.

It's warm and hugging me all over, gah! Time for kitty-gods to heal everything. Except for his father, who needs to be slapped upside the head with growing up a second time.

 

[Chairtastic]

And here we are. The epilogue. From this point on there will be no more Skooma Cat, and the sequel might not come out for a long time. I'm glad I saw this through to the end, I'm glad I got to have the conversations with y'all. Writing this story made me smarter, it helped get me out of a major depressive episode of my life, and it actually altered my sense of morality. Check out the end notes for a treat.
---
Chapter 80: After the end.

Five Years Later.

Winter in Cyrodiil was as warm as summer in Skyrim. Years of living in the capital, and Mohamara still couldn't take the literal heat -- his workshops were all enchanted in the Deco style for cool climate control. Most of his wardrobe had coolness stitched into the fabric, though early on he had done too good a job and it led to water vapor trailing behind him. Rumors that he was, in fact, a ghost of Marcurio's dead lover still circulated, despite repeated public appearances.

Being Emperor-Consort involved a lot of public appearances, specifically to explain why farmers needed to send their children off to 'Llorona's house' to learn letters, numbers, and city-folk subjects like magic when there were crops to harvest. Cyrodiil and High Rock took to the notion well enough, but Skyrim was another issue in and of itself. Mohamara found the best results from the argument that 'I cannot give you all the tutors and private teachers that my children by happenstance enjoy, but I can give you this so that our children, the next generation, have it better than we did'.

Having a new baby to care for won him the support of many parents who were unsure of his motivations. That new baby drew the pink tojay out of his musing and back to her with a surge of mewling to be held. He set aside his slate to pick up his purrito baby girl and held her close so she could tell it was him. The gray-furred cub was heftier than Jode or Jone had been at her age, but per the advice from Jo'leen little Inersha would grow to eclipse them in size as a pahmar-raht Khajiit.

In the small space of the Imperial carriage, it was impossible to keep from the twins that their baby sister was awake again. In moments, Mohamara had a pair of demigods that fought for a chance to see Inersha. In five years, Jode had grown into an adult due to being an alfiq, while Jone had become a portly five-year-old -- respectively they had become a snark elemental and a spoiled sweetie. Unlike Mohamara, they weren't dressed with short-sleeves and trouser legs -- they had grown used to Cyordiil's warmth and needed to bundle up in Skyrim.

Jode, far smaller than her brother and Mamma-Pappa, could easily get in to lick at her sister's face. "She will be big," the Big Moon told the Little Moon. "She will be so much bigger than Jode, Jone, or Momamama when she grows up. Khajiit wants to ride her into battle, it will be glorious"

"But if she's big," Jone added, "she can help us get to the high places! Like the cookie jars!" The puffs on the Little Moon's winter hat flopped around as he excitedly bounced from the mental image.

Jode was less than impressed and gave her brother a flat look. "You can move things with your mind, and this one can fly."

Jone's eyes went wide as he contemplated this. "Oh yeah, I forgot."

Mohamara dragged a claw across the air and pulled a bottle of warm milk from nothing for Inersha's meal time. "Maybe she'll be smart," he offered to the younger cats, "and she'll be the one to help you with your studies?"

"No!" Jone flopped onto Mohamara's arm and kicked his feet. "Don't let her turn into a teacher, Momamama! They're so boring and mean and… and…."

"Uninteresting?" Jode offered with an arched eyebrow.

"That!" The Little Moon pointed at Jode to indicate his agreement.

"Does he know what's also uninteresting? Having to wait for years for Khajiit's brother to learn how to talk and find out he mumbles his words." Jode stuck her tongue out at her brother who took his mitten off and threw it at her in retaliation. "Ack! This one has been wool'd, oh it hurts! Oh no she's going, she's going," the speckled alfiq flopped onto a cushion and covered her eyes with her paws. "It's getting dark. Remember her as she lived, Momamama!"

Naturally, Jone thought he'd seriously hurt his sister and went to convince her not to die.

Inersha, still too young to have her eyes open, happily drank her milk while the other cats played dramatically nearby.

"Save some energy for playing with your cousin, you two." Mohamara could tell from the strength of sympathetic bonds outside that they neared their destination. So while he fed Inersha, and the young cats played, he drew the Emperor-Consort regalia out of their chests with invisible hands and quickly dressed himself. All the 'regalia' consisted of was a few accessories with the Imperial diamond on it. They weren't even made of precious metals, just good Skyrim steel. But it satisfied the Elder Council that he looked the part enough to where they stopped complaining every session at least.

They seemed to find 'peasant dress' or basic humility insulting on a personal level.

When the carriage came to a stop, Mohamara stood from his seat, returned Inersha's bottle to Adjacent Place, and gently prodded the younger cats into getting ready. He struggled not to find the sight of Jone helping Jode get her tiny hat in place supremely cute. Jode had become quite fond of berets and simply had to have one in her size.

The carriage door opened, and Mohamara automatically started down the steps. His promptness usually gave the impression that he was prepared to leave on a moment's notice, which had unfortunately started a trend with the spouses of other prominent Imperial figures. Soon after, Jode and Jone left the carriage like a pair of giggling gremlins, in search of mischief. But they would find none, as they were immediately set upon by their cousin who scooped them up in her arms and squeezed tight.

"Ahh!" Lucia, the Warmaiden's forge apprentice, squealed as she spun her cousins around. "You two get cuter each time I see you!"

"Lucy," Jode feigned, "you're squishing this one!"

"Faster," Jone cried, as he enjoyed the spinning.

Mohamara let the children look after themselves while he stepped through the door to Breezehome. His two best friends, one of whom was his husband, were seated in the two chairs before the firepit. The years without cataclysmic events had been good to all involved, though stress from ruling had added some gray to Marcurio's hair. Yagraz had gained some as well, and it hit Mohamara that it would soon be time.

He watched them as they chatted about the pros and cons of different means of destroying a fort -- Yagraz was firm on the side of a siege, while Marcurio favored outright obliteration -- they didn't realize Mohamara had come in at first. Her housemates weren't around -- presumably, Miraak and Brenuin had gone to the tavern.

Mohamara didn't feel dread at the good death that would come to Yagraz -- whenever Malacath sent it to her. She'd wanted that life for as long as he'd known her -- and he was glad that he had been a part of getting that back to her. It just sucked that Inersha wouldn't get to know her aunt as well as the older children had.

The pink tojay cleared his throat and offered the purrito cub to her father. Marcurio's face lit up at seeing the cub. He'd been in Morrowind when she was born, and this was the first time he'd seen her.

Right away, he became a doting parent and gushed about each little thing about Inersha. From her tiny sabre fangs, to how she squinted her eyes, to the mews she made when he threatened the warmth of her purrito confinement.

"And who's this little bundle of meeps and meows?" Yagraz stood to loom over the Emperor's shoulder at the little girl. "Aww, she's so chubby! Must take after you, slick."

Marcurio paused in his gushing to level a glare at Yagraz. "I'll have you know, I've maintained a healthy weight."

"Well she certainly can't have gotten all this chubbiness from short-stuff's side of the family, he's all skin and bones!"

Since Yagraz had abandoned her seat, Mohamara went to it and sat down. Inersha was the topic of the day -- she stole it away from whatever official business the Emperor would have with Jarl Balgruuf later on. Mohamara had his own official business, to help plan for a house for Llorona in each settlement in Whiterun hold.

However, as he watched he began to suspect something. He noticed that Marcurio had on his dragonscale coat and that there was almost completely diffused magicka around the Imperial's hands. "Marcurio, dear," he spoke while the Emperor was busy nuzzling the cub. "Did you ditch your security detail again? I don't feel any of them around here."

Marcurio opened one eye, looked at Mohamara, at Yagraz, and back to Inersha. There was a solid ten seconds of silence. "Initiate plan N," the Emperor said and dashed away with the cub.

Yagraz immediately wrapped one arm around Mohamara's neck and delivered a noogie with the other. "Run, slick! Run!" She struggled to hold the wriggling and biting pink tojay. After ten seconds, she let the cat go with a wide grin. "Ten-second head start, that's how it is short-stuff."

"Well jokes on him," Mohamara huffed and fixed his hair. "Cause she was just fed, so she's going to need changing soon."

As if predicted, the Emperor of Tamriel soon returned to the scene with a stinky baby in need of changing and got an earful for ditching his guards. The lecture ended when Jode came in, eight feet off the ground and walking on air. Lucia hung from her like she was a tiny zip-line, while Jone clung to his cousin's back. Thereupon the Imperial girl got to gush about her new cousin while Inersha was changed.

Tomorrow, the Elves could decide to go to war again, or Malacath could decide he'd found a death worthy of Yagraz, or the Vigilants of Stendarr would find proof that 'Llorona' was a Daedric Prince. But today, they were a happy family, reunited after years apart.

It was a good day.
---
Not something long, not something hugely different, but it's an indicator of how things will go forth.

The reason this was delayed was that I commissioned some art for the story. Check it out below.

 

[thepsyborg]

Writing this story made me smarter, it helped get me out of a major depressive episode of my life, and it actually altered my sense of morality.

Click to shrink...

Dang. Good for you! Always happy to see someone make it out the other side of a depressive period.

He struggled not to find the sight of Jone helping Jone get her tiny hat in place.

Click to shrink...

This sentence makes no sense. "He struggled not to find the sight [of Jone helping Jone etc]" what? Struggled not to find it amusing? Struggled not to find it adorable? Or did he literally lose the sight of the incident, and is trying to find it again in the face of weird magic bullshit happening to his eyeballs? (That would be...actually entirely possible, in this story, but I don't think it's what you were getting at in context.)

 

[Chairtastic]

Dang. Good for you! Always happy to see someone make it out the other side of a depressive period.
This sentence makes no sense. "He struggled not to find the sight [of Jone helping Jone etc]" what? Struggled not to find it amusing? Struggled not to find it adorable? Or did he literally lose the sight of the incident, and is trying to find it again in the face of weird magic bullshit happening to his eyeballs? (That would be...actually entirely possible, in this story, but I don't think it's what you were getting at in context.)

Click to shrink...

Thank you! Not fully out of it, but definitely in a minor depressive period now rather than major! And it should be fixed now!

 

[thepsyborg]

He struggled not to find the sight of Jone helping Jone get her tiny hat in place supremely cute. Jode had become quite fond of berets and simply had to have one in her size.

Click to shrink...

...I hate to nitpick the same sentence twice in a row, but...should it be Jone helping Jode get her tiny hat in place?

That is definitely supremely cute, though.

 

[Chairtastic]

One of these days, I will not fail basic english. One of these days, I will be able to say I can edit things successfully. But it is not this day!

Also, fixed.

 

[finbikkifin]

A good ending and good art and a good author. A good thread.

 

[Richardson]

Superkat powers, activate! Form of: Uplifting encouragement!

You are a good person, who has done a good thing. *Pat. Pat*

 

[Kirbstomp]

Sorry to necromancy but I have to know: which divines/Daedra/supernatural beings turned up to the wedding?

 

[Chairtastic]

Sorry to necromancy but I have to know: which divines/Daedra/supernatural beings turned up to the wedding?

Click to shrink...

Mara, Dibella, Morihaus, Sanguine, Vivec and Clavicus, the dancing lobsters, Moha's many sistera, Arkay, and most of the Khajiiti pantheon.

 

[Chairtastic]

Howdy y'all. If you enjoyed Skooma Cat, consider giving the sequel fic a look-see. Here's the link!

Grey Fox (TES, AU, Sequel)

The Tenth Era is a time of change and permanence. Rogues are a-dashing, buckles are a-swashing, and tombs are being a-raided. What a time to be alive. What a time to be a fox.

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