Torin felt a genuine headache starting to throb behind his eyes, separate and distinct from the cold, crawling dread that just being in Sheogorath's presence invoked. Death was one thing. He'd faced that. You fought, you won or you lost, it was simple.
What Sheogorath might have in mind… that was a kaleidoscope of unspeakable, creative horrors.
The last ti he'd felt this utterly helpless was when that gibbering madman had forced the cursed blood-red book on him outside Riverwood. But at least back then, he'd understood the transaction—take this, it's a problem. Your problem.
Now, he was standing before an infinitely more nacing, infinitely more unstable entity, and he had no clue what the price of admission was, or even what the ga was called.
He needed information. He needed to figure out what the Mad God wanted, and he needed to give away as little as possible about what he knew until he did. And he had to do it while being as unpredictable as possible. Playing chess with a hurricane.
He cleared his throat, the sound dry. "Let's say," he began, choosing his words with the care of a man disarming a trap, "just for the sake of argunt, that I was avoiding you. And I'm not admitting to that."
He t those burning yellow eyes, forcing his own gaze to remain steady. "How would you even know? If you were omniscient, you wouldn't be Sheogorath. You'd still be... you know who."
The Mad God looked at him blankly for a long, terrifying mont. The silence stretched, thick and heavy. Then, a low chuckle bubbled up from his chest, growing into a full, wheezing laugh that echoed in the void.
"Ha! The sheer audacity of ya, mortal! You've got more balls than sense. I like that!" Sheogorath wiped a nonexistent tear from his eye, his grin manic.
Then, just as suddenly, the laughter stopped. He tilted his head, his expression shifting to one of intense, puzzled scrutiny.
"Or… wait." He tapped his chin with a long fingernail. "Maybe it's more sense than balls. Maybe ya knew I'd like the audacity. Hmm." The yellow eyes narrowed, the playful glint fading, replaced by a spark of genuine, dangerous irritation.
"This is making quite confused. I don't like being confused. It makes the voices argue." He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a sinister whisper. "And it makes quite bitey."
Gritting his teeth, Torin pushed forward, clinging to the only strategy that seed to have any effect. "Well," he said, his voice tight, "it's better than bored, isn't it? Bored is… predictable."
Sheogorath stopped his low growling. He rubbed his thick, white beard thoughtfully, the gesture almost comical. After a long mont, he nodded.
"A fair point, mortal. A very fair point. Anything is better than boredom. And when you've lived as long as I have… boredom becos yer worst enemy. It sits in the corner and picks its teeth with yer mories." He shuddered dramatically.
Torin opened his mouth, ready to steer the conversation back, but Sheogorath simply raised a hand. The gesture wasn't threatening, but it carried an undeniable finality that made Torin's jaw snap shut, his unspoken words turning to ash in his mouth.
"I suppose," the Mad God mused, pacing a small circle on the featureless stone, "I can give 'confused and bitey' a chance. Variety is the spice of life, after all! Or un-life. Or whatever this is."
He snapped his fingers, as if suddenly rembering. "Now, what was it you asked? Before you so rudely distracted with philosophy?"
He paused, his face a mask of exaggerated concentration, as if trying to recall sothing from ten millennia ago. "Oh, yes! About how I would know."
His grin returned, wide and terrible. "Well, that's actually quite simple. I have… informants. Little birds. Or, more accurately, little raving lunatics. There's plenty of madn all over the place, see? Chattering away. Sotis they make sense. Sotis they sing opera about turnips. And sotis… they see things. Interesting things. They act as my eyes and ears."
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "occasionally they moonlight as my nipples, too. All in good fun, of course."
He gave his own chest a fond pat.
Torin could only stare, utterly speechless. The taphor was so absurd, so completely unhinged, that it circled back around to feeling like it might be a literal, horrifying truth. He forced the image out of his mind.
But a deeper confusion was taking root. Madn? What madn? What could any madman have possibly seen or heard that would lead the Prince of Madness to the specific conclusion that Torin was actively avoiding him?
He didn't associate with madn. He went out of his way to avoid them, in fact. The only 'madman' he'd had recent contact with was the gibbering fool in Riverwood who'd given him the cursed book years ago, and that man had been swallowed by a portal, never to apear before him again.
And Torin had never told a living soul about his ta-knowledge of Sheogorath's potential presence in Solitude, or his deliberate plans to skirt the city because of it.
Not Kodlak, not Aela, not even Echo.
So how…?
Torin's frantic, fruitless train of thought was shattered by an impish, high-pitched laugh.
"Look at ya!" Sheogorath chirped, clapping his hands together. "Squeezing your noggin so hard I just might make it pop to fit the expression! Squelch! All over the nice floor."
He waved a dismissive hand. "I'll spare ya the trouble and Haskill the effort of wiping the floor. Madness, you see, mortal, is up for interpretation. It's in the eye of the beholder!"
He began to pace, his cane tapping a erratic rhythm on the stone. "A man running 'round town while pleasuring himself with a dead skeever? That's an instantly recognizable form of madness. Classic. A bit gauche, but classic." He winked. "But there are lesser, more subtle forms of insanity. The kind that don't get you locked up, just… talked about."
He stopped and raised a single, bony finger. "For example! What could be more mad to a farr than a man who risks his life every day, not for food or family, but for little tal discs? Chasing glory and gold instead of a good harvest?"
He spun on his heel. "And what is more mad to a warrior than a man who is content to spend his days elbow-deep in mud, raising cows and plowing the earth, when he could be holding a sword? To each, the other is utterly, completely barmy."
Torin's eye twitched again. Why did this guy keep putting such vivid, horrific images in his head? The dead skeever… was Sheogorath trying to make him go mad? Was that the whole point of this visit? To crack his mind open like a nut?
He quickly dismissed the terrifying thought.
"Doesn't that… make you actually all-knowing?" He said.
Sheogorath firmly shook his head, his expression turning surprisingly solemn. "Nay. Not all-knowing. It just ans I can learn whatever I want to learn… but never everything. There's no fun in that. No surprises!"
The solemnity vanished, replaced by a look of theatrical regret. He fixed his yellow gaze on Torin. "I learned much from watching you, you know."
Torin froze. A cold dread, colder than the void around them, seeped into his bones. "What?" he breathed. "But I'm not—"
"Not mad?" Sheogorath promptly interrupted, his voice dripping with mocking pity. He let out a soft, genuine-sounding chuckle. "Oh, my dear boy. We're all mad here. So of us just wear it on the outside. You…"
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a whisper. "You wear yours on the inside. All those strange little thoughts you used to have... the way you hungered for blood before you climbed that pile of snow and rocks. That's a very special, very interesting kind of madness."
He let out a long, almost wistful sigh, his eyes drifting from Torin's face to settle on the simple silver hawk amulet resting against his tunic—the amulet of Kyne, purchased at Falkreath so long ago.
"I imagine," Sheogorath said softly, a hint of real annoyance in his voice, "we would have been formally acquainted years ago… if not for the interference of a certain soone. A certain… windy, ddleso soone."
He tapped the air above the amulet with his cane, a gesture of profound irritation.
Torin rubbed his forehead wearily, the beginnings of that headache blooming into a full, throbbing pressure behind his eyes. That… actually made a twisted kind of sense. Sheogorath hadn't needed a spy or a specific madman's report.
The Mad God had simply been watching. For years. Noticing the patterns, the odd decisions, the knowledge that didn't fit. Of course he'd conclude Torin was avoiding him. The man (God?) was literally a personification of chaotic perception.
His hand drifted to the cool tal of the hawk amulet at his throat. He gave it a thoughtful rub. So, Kyne might have been shielding him all this ti. A silent, divine interference keeping the worst of the Mad God's attention at bay.
He might actually owe the Mother of n sothing more tangible than just wearing her symbol. A debt for later.
At least one piece of the terrifying puzzle snapped into place: Sheogorath wasn't here for a quick, whimsical murder. If he'd wanted Torin dead or turned into a talking cheese wheel, it would have already happened.
The Prince was being… patient. In his own, manic way. That ant he wanted sothing. Torin didn't like being a piece on soone else's gaboard, especially not this one's, but for now, he had no moves left but to play along until he understood the rules.
He took a deep, steadying breath, the air tasting of ozone and static. "Then, once more," he began, his voice carefully neutral, "let's say I was avoiding you. Which, again, I'm not admitting to. What would it take… to earn your forgiveness for such a transgression?"
Sheogorath's grin stretched from ear to ear, a terrifying crescent of delight. "Oho! You're quite clever for a mortal," he purred, twirling his cane. "And I hate clever mortals. They always seem to think themselves special. They want to bargain, to negotiate, to find the loophole in the fine print. They want to be the hero of their own little story."
The grin didn't falter, but his burning yellow eyes narrowed, pinning Torin in place. "You, on the other hand… you know better than that, don't you? You know the story is bigger, ssier, and you're just trying not to get any on your shoes. You don't want to be special. You just want to be left alone."
He said the last words with a mix of mockery and sothing almost like… understanding.
Torin just stared, utterly silent.
The assessnt was so unnervingly accurate it stole the breath from his lungs. He hadn't expected the Prince of Madness to have such a cold, clear grasp of his core motivation. The feeling it left him with was a confusing, chilling cocktail.
Was he supposed to be flattered that a god had paid such close attention? Or utterly, pants-wettingly terrified because a god had paid such close attention?
In the end, the terror won by a landslide. But he kept it off his face. Showing fear was predictable.
Torin let out a long, slow sigh. It was a sigh of pure, unadulterated resignation. What else was he supposed to do? Argue? Run?
"Alright," he said, the word flat and heavy. "What is it you want, then?"
Sheogorath's grin was one of imnse, smug satisfaction. He clasped his hands together, his cane tucked under his arm. "It's quite simple! Elegant, even. Soone will soon invite you to the city. To my city. Up there on the pretty rock." He pointed a bony finger upwards, though there was only void above them. "Don't refuse."
His expression twisted, the manic delight curdling into sothing petulant and threatening. "…Unless you find yourself begining to miss by the ti the ssenger arrives. Then, by all ans, do refuse! I do so love a good chase. It gets the blood pumping. And other things squirting."
Normally, a line like that would have sent a fresh chill of horror down Torin's spine. But in that mont, he was so utterly, profoundly exasperated by the sheer, anticlimactic absurdity of the request that he just stood there.
He stared at the Mad God, his face a perfect blank mask of dumbfounded stupidity.
Sheogorath's grin sohow widened, beaming with pride. "I know what's going on in your mind, mortal!" he crowed, pointing a finger at Torin's forehead.
"You're probably thinking… 'Did Uncle Sheo really just… do all of this? The falling, the void, the cheese, the terrifying insights… just to get to walk into the damned city? The city I was already next to?'"
He paused, letting the sheer ridiculousness of it hang in the air. Then he spread his arms wide in a triumphant, theatrical declaration.
"AND YOU'RE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!" he shouted, the words echoing with manic joy. "And you have no one to bla but yourself! All that sneaking, all that skulking in the shadows like a guilty little grape! You made it interesting! And now… you get to visit. Ta-ta!"
With a final, echoing cackle, Sheogorath snapped his fingers.
The endless stone platform, the void, the Mad God himself—it all vanished in a swirl of purple and yellow motes that slled vaguely of elderberries and despair.
Torin blinked.
He was standing, barefoot, in the middle of his inn room. Morning light stread through the window. His armor was still in a heap. The washbasin still held its dirty water.
And Echo was still sleeping on the ground, her paws wrapped around a perfect, bright yellow wheel of cheese.
...
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