“Manny the Worm, Manny the Worm

wanted to watch the world burn.

He rose up, and he fell down

when Neri the Orc King came around!

Mannimarco was an upstart clod

who thought that he could become a god.

Then the Orc King came with an axe and a yell

and sent that fetcher straight to hell!”

I think it came out rather well. I’ll not criticize the bard I hired if it’s not Altmer-perfect. Although the handful of Altmer in the establishment are too dignified to get into it, I catch one of them tapping a foot to it.

Now, though, I need to head to the Mages Guild and speak with Valaste, and I kind of wish that I had some more of that moon sugar elixir for this but maybe it’s just as well.

Valaste is again doing some light reading waiting for me. “Ah, there you are. I heard about what was going on here. You do seem to have a habit of getting into the middle of absolutely everything, don’t you.”

“You have no idea,” I say. “And I’m glad you actually went and talked to people to find out what’s going on outside your books.”

“Oh, yes,” Valaste says. “I even made a friend! I met this Khajiit who introduced me to moon sugar and sells it at reasonable prices. Have you tried it? It’s so relaxing. And it has actually made the translation easier.”

“Yeah, it’s good for that,” I say. “How’s that been going?”

“I’m done with the translation, actually,” Valaste says. “It’s probably just as well that you were… solving literally every problem in Valenwood, from the way I hear it. Too much of the Madgod’s madness at once would probably have been bad and I’d have thrown myself headlong into it if it weren’t for your enforced breaks. For an Altmer, I should really have learned to be more patient by now.”

She has me take the books to flutter like glowing purple butterflies in pillars of light around the room. Shalidor’s glowing purple ghost shows up and declares that he will use the power of the books to bring his island back to Nirn. Seems weird, but I don’t tell Arch-Mages how to Arch-Mage.

He’s a bit busy gloating about how he “won” over Sheogorath, which makes me a bit leery, especially considering that I was the one doing all the work/play. I won’t put it past a Daedric Prince to find a way to punish a boastful Nord, and considering it’s Sheogorath, it might be a particularly creative way. Still, it was very polite of them to wait for me to show up so I can solve whatever problem inevitably arises.

The inevitable problem is that the island is full of Daedra. It seems its previous residents didn’t bother moving out before Shalidor rearranged the geography of the Mundus. On the upside, since we aren’t actually going to the Shivering Isles this time, my friends opt to come along for support.

“Great,” I say. “Killing Daedra with friends is always more fun.”

The island looks like it could have been anywhere in the Summerset Isles, aside from the Daedra at least. It will probably be considerably more boring once the Daedra are removed, alas. But hey, if the mages really want a place that’s pretty, soft, and pink, they can have it.

Sheogorath is standing in front of the main hall when we get there. Shalidor, like an idiot, blusters and attacks him, and gets comically stunned by butterflies.

“Dead Nords, can’t take them anywhere,” I say with a sigh. “Hey, Uncle Sheo! Thanks for the parting gift. It was very thoughtful of you. These Daedra are going to be so much fun to kill!”

(I wonder if Sheogorath uses custom spells that summon butterflies with magic powers, or if they’re just a cosmetic effect he added to normal spells for extra flair. Or if he’s not using spells at all and is just using Daedric Prince cheating.)

We run around the island, collecting crystals, closing portals, and killing quite a lot of Daedra. Shiny is not my most subtle of weapons, but it’s quite good at killing Daedra, at least. I probably won’t use it if I’m just fighting bandits or something. (Unless I somehow manage to lose both Wibbly and Wobbly. Which I wouldn’t put past me.) My friends fight Daedra like they’ve been doing it all their lives. It’s nice to kill things myself, but it’s also nice to see people I’ve trained and fought with being competent enough that I don’t have to do everything myself. Now if only I had an army of them. (I don’t think the world could handle an army of mes. One of me is quite enough.)

“It’s strange,” Merry muses aloud. “I was expecting something a bit more… strange… out of the Madgod. Daedra-spewing portals is practically mundane.”

“I’m perfectly fine with this level of strangeness,” Eran says. “They don’t need to be giant flaming chickens or whatever.”

“Don’t give him any ideas,” Merry groans.

We get all the portals closed, and Ilara collects all the crystals that we were supposed to collect for some reason. (I might not have been paying much attention to the details beyond “go kill all the Daedra on the island”. And this is why I brought my friends.)

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That opens the way into the big building in the middle of the island, and we head inside. Sheogorath and his chamberlain, Haskill, are waiting for us there.

“You certainly did a bang-up job on those portals,” Sheogorath says. “Although it involved more chopping than banging. Plus a bit of zorching and twanging from your backup band.”

Ilara gives a bow. By which I mean she bends her body like an actor after a fine performance, and not that she hands over her ranged weapon.

“But, they’re going to have to stand aside for this one,” Sheogorath says. “I hope you didn’t have your heart set on a final battle with the boss, but I don’t much feel like battling. So you can battle Haskill instead! It’ll be glorious!”

“Let us wait until the audience has finished betting,” Haskill says. “It would only be polite.”

“Well, I’m certainly not betting against him,” Eran says.

“I’m betting he’ll forget I’m not healing him,” Gelur adds brightly.

“He did manage to become champion of Thizzrini Arena,” Ilara points out.

“I doubt anyone there was a significant challenge, comparatively,” Merry says. “It is not like they were Daedric Princes or their chamberlains.”

I have a nice duel with Haskill. I win, of course. But fighting the Madgod’s chamberlain is a delicious sort of fun. Even if Shalidor’s gloating over it more. Whatever.

“Alright, Shally, you got your boring old island back,” I say, or maybe Sheogorath says.

“Woohoo, we did it!” Shalidor says. Well, not those exact words. He might not be ‘ridiculously dignified’ Altmer, but he’s the most eloquent Nord I’ve ever met. Like many Nords, he also swears by Shor entirely too much, as if Lorkhan had anything to do with this specific event beyond orchestrating the creation of the Mundus.

(Lorkhan’s heartbeat still pulses through everything we do. Sometimes I could swear that I actually saw his face, but perhaps that was in a different reality. Nope, not letting this drum start up again. I wish I could just ask Shalidor to stop mentioning Shor in a way that would be concise and make sense but I’m hoping not to interact with Shalidor after this anyway.)

“I’ll give you one more little present,” Sheogorath says, coming up to me. “The name of another boring person you’re going to hate. Tom Gautier. Hero of the Covenant, they call him. What rot. Tommy boy’s just a fancy Breton too big for his britches. Figuratively, that is, he’s actually pretty scrawny. Tch, tch, tch, too good to play with ol’ Uncle Sheo, he was. And they call him a hero! But is he a capitalized Hero or just a common lowercase hero?”

“I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for him,” I say.

“I was going to offer to let Valaste visit the Shivering Isles,” Sheogorath says. “She’s only a little mad! Well, half-mad is better than all sane. I’d offer you a book, too, but I’m sure you’re not particularly interested in the book anyway. It’s not like you have any use for the collected knowledge of madmen who might have had insights about the world.”

My eyebrow twitches. “I think I will prefer to remain only half-mad myself.”

“It might be nice to see but I wouldn’t want to stay there,” Valaste says. “I already hadn’t appreciated Nirn enough.”

“Would you look at that, Neri?” Sheogorath says. “Other people have agency and their fate doesn’t fall solely upon your own decisions! What free will! And not even the sort you have to fight this time in order to bypass a stupid puzzle or something. Wasn’t that something? We’ve had some good times. Drop in at one of my shrines anytime if you ever want to play another game. Toodles!”

Sheogorath and Haskill vanish in a cloud of butterflies.

“You’ve been a lot of help, even if you only seemed to be in it for the game,” Shalidor says. “I’ve been saving a spell just for you. For something I’ve noticed you had some problems with. Fortunately, you don’t need to be as great a mage as I in order to use it. I already did the necessary work in developing it.”

“Yes, you’re quite a great mage,” I say flatly. “Just reconsider getting involved with Daedra in the future. Though you’re probably going back to Aetherius soon unless you want to continue hanging around here glowing purple and I can’t imagine there’s many Daedra out that way. What’s the spell?”

“I call it… Shalidor’s Library of the Mind,” Shalidor says dramatically.

“Wouldn’t want anyone to get confused about whose library it is,” I say. “This is a spell?”

“It’s a mnemonic matrix, a complex piece of arcane craftsmanship,” Shalidor says. “I could explain how it works, if you have a few decades to get down the grounding principles. In short, it’s a memory enhancement. Eidetic memory.”

“You mean I’ll finally be able to remember people’s names?” I ask.

Shalidor laughs. “That and so much more! It allows you to remember every book, every scrap of paper you’ve ever read.”

“I’ll take back every annoying thing I’ve said about you.”

Shalidor works his magic and prepares the spell, and sets up the memory enhancement for me. It… feels weird. Incredibly weird. I feel about in my mind, trying to figure out how it works, but it turns out to be surprisingly easy to use.

… every grievance, no longer how long it takes to exact it. They think that, now that we’re enthusiastic members of their precious Covenant, we’ll forget the razing of Orsinium and let bygones be bygones.

Words pop into my mind as I bring up text with a thought.

… come to Baan Dar’s Boast! Returning to the ruins at Thormar for the twenty-fifth consecutive year!

I’ve read a lot of books since I returned to Tamriel, and a lot of random letters and notes as well, and it shows me all of them in lists I can sort by topic.

… the transpontine circumpenetration of the limen…

Okay, no amount of memory magic is going to make that make sense, but at least I can remember the exact text even if I’m not sure what all those words mean precisely. I try to bring up memories of anything before going to Coldharbour and wind up with a splitting headache. Not trying that again.

“Is something wrong with the spell?” Shalidor asks, noticing my distress.

“I was hoping that it might be able to sort out my memories that got messed up by an event I suspect was a Dragon Break,” I say. “All this resulted in was remembering garbled multiple versions of books with a lot of blank pages. Kudos to your spell for trying, though.”

“Ah…” Shalidor says. “Yes, that could be a problem. Messy things, Dragon Breaks. I once wrote a book of insights on the nature of dragons, but now can only remember it as blurry, mostly unintelligible text. It’s working properly otherwise, though?”

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you. This is amazing. Let me tell you, this is the sort of shit people should be using magic for. I mean, aside from, you know, healing, portals… you know what I mean. Every time I turn around, it seems like someone is doing something obnoxious with magic and just fucking everything up and I have to go hit them repeatedly and stop it.”

Shalidor chuckles. “I understand. People have turned the gift of magicka to foul ends at times.”