Ordering Madness, an elder scroll series fanfic

Ordering Madness

"This is horrendous."

"If ye didn't want me to pull ye outta Mora's tentacled embrace, ye shoulda just said so!"

Leara Rose-blade banged her head against her uncle's table. Despite the fact that Oromis was the Mad God himself, he seemed to still remember the family he'd left behind in Tamriel, including the ones who fell to madness or to Daedra. Which was basically just Leara and her mother. This proved somewhat helpful when Leara found herself suddenly dead (was it that wretched Bosmer? Or a Thalmor agent, or...?) and cast into Apocrypha to be Hermaeus Mora's personal Dragonborn until Alduin returned at the end of an eternity to eat the world without her interference. But her dear Uncle Sheogorath wasn't having that, no siree, so just like when he pulled his "favorite" niece Marelen from joining her parents in Aetherius after her fiery death, he took possession of the Dragonborn's afterlife.

It wasn't that she didn't like the Isles, because they were rather fascinating. The vivid colorscape of Mania and the dreary bleak lands of Dementia that she caught from the windows were truly interesting enough to peak her curiosity. But she missed Skyrim's snowy mountains, Cyrodiil's ancient cities, High Rock's forests, and not to mention her children and Ulfric! How did they fair without mother and wife, and Skyrim without her queen?

Ice crept from Leara's hands where she gripped the table in frustration. She had nearly anything she might wish for in the Shivering Isles, except that which she wanted most.

"Martin's birthday is the 17th of Rain's Hand," she reminded herself under her breath, "and Faea's is Last Seed...the 20th...and Ulfric's is in the middle of summer, it's..."

"Lee Air Uh..."

"...it's Midyear. No, Sun's Height the..."

"Lee Bee..."

"...6th!" Leara paused a moment, struggling to recall still more information. "Mine is Sun's Dusk the 3rd..."

"Bravo! Now stop turning my table into a popsicle! We aren't into apotheosis here anymore!" Sheogorath cut into the Half-elven Dragonborn's breathless whispering.

Leara started and wrenched her hands back from the table, only to realize that the entire surface had frosted over like the ice fields of Whiterun. Or was it Winterhold? ...Windstad?

"I'm sorry, Uncle," she sighed, sinking back into her chair, "It's just getting harder to remember them."

Sheogorath snapped his fingers, turning the dining hall table back into its regular puzzle pattern state. He then gave her such a sympathetic look that Leara was certain it was Oromis looking back at her and not the mad Daedric Lord who had pulled her from Apocrypha. It was gone the next moment, however, almost as if it had never even been there.

"Have ye spoken to yer mum lately?" Sheogorath asked, changing the subject as he always did when Leara became too melancholy and reminiscent for his liking.

"I have no desire to," she replied, inwardly cringing at the thought of speaking with Marelen Ormand. Her mother, for she was still her mother, was a madwoman, an insane and flamboyant Altmer who barely any resemblance the soft spoken and clever teacher she'd been for the first eleven years of Leara's life, and Leara, in all the time she had been in the Isles, never felt ready to face the mother who apparently hardly even knew her, despite how little she herself remembered about her in return.

Sheogorath hummed and stirred his tea with a dagger. "There's a word for people like you!"

"I know..." Leara grumbled and banged her head on the table again.

"Coward! Cow award! Do they give cows awards for being cowards, or do they give cow shaped awards to cowards? Are they awards for people with cows?" He rambled off, and Leara sighed.

She was trapped in a haze of madness where everything had gone barmy except her, and even then her mind felt like it had been through a bender. Was Paarthurnax the dull white dragon or the black one with red eyes? Or maybe that was Odah...Odah thingy.

She hit her head again.

"I don't think that's gonna help ye very much, m'dear Avy!" The Mad God laughed.

And that was another thing; no matter how often he called her Leara or any derivative there of, he always slipped into calling her "Avy" after they'd been together awhile. She didn't even know who that was! When he had first called her that, she felt she almost could remember, like it was the name of an older family member or a person she'd admired once upon a time, but more and more that feeling faded, until "Avy" elicited the same response as any other one of his nicknames for her had: nothing.

With her head on the table, Leara felt almost ready to tear her hair out. But she'd managed that once before and in retribution her dearest Uncle Sheogorath had made it grow back in blue and corkscrewed. It was back to normal now, wavy and mahogany, but she never wanted to look like a frozen sheep, or worse, again.

"I just want to," she started, before cutting herself off to bite back the words. Want to do what? Drink greenmote, kill random strangers? Steal eyes from priests and elves? No, no, and no, Leara was certain she didn't want any of that.

"Yer as indecisive as yer grandmother! Have I ever told ye about the time she ran away because she didn't want to be a princess and she ended up shacking with the Emperor? Hypocritical she was, that Avy..." Sheogorath went on, spewing nonsense about heroines and emperors and things Leara didn't understand and couldn't recall ever knowing before.

While the Mad God continued his rambling, Leara glanced wanly out one of the dining room windows, the one that viewed her mother's gardens in Mania. Marelen Ormand was the Duchess of Mania, which surprised Leara on occasion when she remembered because its sister seat in Dementia was never the same two weeks out of four. Her uncle had tried to get her to become Dementia's duchess, "To save poor Haskill the volcanos of paperwork! If ye took the seat, he could drop it all into an actual volcano!" But Leara always declined quietly; she was the Queen of...the north and giant flying lizard things, not the Duchess of Dementia, and she was sure Ulfric wouldn't like for her to pledge her service to another kingdom, realm, world? The Half-elf sighed into her still cold hands. There were butterflies in the garden, which she knew were things her mother (and she herself) were fond of. But these butterflies weren't like the blue and purple ones she recalled chasing with fits of fancy as a child; these were like clouds, but pink, and more than once she'd seen someone pass by one and pluck it from the air and... eat it.

"...then she threw my staff at the blasted beast! Avy, Avy, Avy! Ye don't through a man's staff at a Minotaur! Whether it's the Wabbajack or not!" Sheogorath laughed suddenly, startling Leara enough to cause her to face him.

In one hand he held the Wabbajack, waving it around like a wild conductor leading a symphony only he could see, while in the other he held a Minotaur drinking horn. Seeing his niece's renewed interest, he extended it toward her. "Greenmote?" He offered.

Leara shrugged halfheartedly and accepted the drink. It tasted funny, getting weirder and stranger in flavor every time she drank any. She had never indulged in Skooma, seldom drank ale or mead, and had felt rather ill the one time Lydia...was her housecarl Lydia? Or that Jolinar lady? No, it was Lydia. Jolinar was a mage. Leara had felt absolutely sick the time Lydia gave her some of that Sleeping Tree Sap. Why was everything purple?

Why was everything purple?

Leara looked down and realized she'd already downed half of the contents of her uncle's drinking horn, and not only that, but the world had gone purple as well. She quirked an eyebrow at him, only for him to snort.

"Ahahah! Ye look like a grape! The "grape" queen!" Sheogorath laughed.

So it was like when that apprentice accidentally turned one of the teachers green. Leara suddenly felt disconcerted; had she been the teacher? Or was it Faralda, Tolfdir, or Jolinar?

"Yer mouth is shut but ye keep thinking about my favorite blonde!" The Daedra cackled, but this time Leara payed him no mind. She only frowned at the different landscapes beyond the windows, thinking. Behind her, her uncle was raving on about his "Dunmer", whatever that was, and Jolinar and some lady named "Alvivecia".

"I thought it was Almalexia," the Dragonborn Queen whispered in confusion. Who were all these people anyway? Ulfric was her, um, was he her king? They were married, she recalled, with two children, which meant he was her husband, right? Father of her children, Martin and Faea. Yes, she nodded, before shaking her head. No, Martin was the name of an emperor of Tamriel long dead and Faea was an orphan and Ulfric Stormcloak wouldn't want a wife with even a drop of Elven blood by his side, she was sure. So sure, wasn't she? Was she really a queen? A half Altmer couldn't be queen of Skyrim, or Dragonborn.

Couldn't she?

Wasn't she?

Leara Rose-blade frowned again, even as the purple effects faded away. Why was it so hard? Why couldn't she remember any of it? She couldn't remember much of present history, her own or the world's, and she knew less about the past!

Growling deeply, the Half-elf spun around in her chair and sent a large spire of ice toward a window. Then another and a third and still more until at last every window in the room was shattered and glass littered the floor like icy dust.

That caused Sheogorath to quit his asinine babbling and Wabbajack wagging long enough to simply stare at her.

"Lea?" He ventured at last, sounding more like her uncle and less like the Prince of Madness.

But Leara could only stare at the dark empty holes in the walls where the windows had been. She rose slowly to her feet and padded toward the one that used to show her mother's vast and whacky colored gardens. She ignored the pinch of glass on the underside of her bare feet as she made her way across the room before at last getting on her knees on the windowsill. The other side of the window showed only darkness, hollow and quiet.

The crunch of the broken windowpanes underfoot behind her told Leara that Sheogorath had come after her, still she looked out into the darkness in silence.

After a little while, she felt her uncle place his hand on her shoulder and give it a squeeze. "Yer mother," he began, sounding less insane and more melacholy, "died in a shower of fire and fear. She wanted to forget her death and the reasons why and gave way to her own imagination to do so. She was always running away, your mother. That's why she is blissfully ignorant of everything beyond a few simple thoughts and memories. You, on the other hand, spent your whole life chasing history, trying to know everything about your legacy while guarding yourself and keeping secrets from everyone you ever came across, even that husband of yours. Yer paranoid, as it were," the soft voice of her Uncle Oromis explained before he started choking out a crazed laugh, heralding the Mad God and fueling Leara's growing horror over his words. "Ye've gone mad, Lee Air Uh!"

The dragon like scream that tore from Leara Rose-blade's lips was of such force that the glass dust shook and the walls and their motley tapestries quivered. Sheogorath's deep chuckle sounded out amidst the Half-elf's wailing. After a long moment, the clearing of a throat drew the Mad God's attention away from his niece and toward his chamberlain, Haskill, who stood by the door to the dining room.

"The Duke of Dementia requested that your, in his words, "dragon harlot," stop shaking the foundations of New Sheoth. Apparently," the balding man gave a bored sneer, "it is disrupting the bone cages he's made from the remains of his predecessors. What would you have me do, sir?"

Sheogorath chortled and waved the Wabbajack absently. "Throw him into one of those cages, Haskill! I've got a grrreate new candidate for the Dementia seat!" He hauled the still screeching Leara to her feet, which were both smeared with blood from where she'd walked over the window shards on the floor. He presented the former heroine to Haskill with a smile.

The chamberlain regarded the distraught redhead passively and nodded. "Very good sir," he replied crisply, and taking Leara's arm, he led the crying Dragonborn away.

Once the sounds of her wailing had vanished in the distance, Sheogorath turned and assessed the destruction Leara had caused in his dining room. "For shame," he grumbled with a shake of his head. "The lass has no manners!" He stared at the windows in thought, trying to decide what to do with them, when he heard the door open.

"Uncle Sheo?"

The Mad God turned to find his Duchess of Mania looking dazedly and only slightly worried about the room. "Ah, Mary! Bit early for your tea, aren't we?"

A twitch of her eyebrows was enough to let him know she was frowning. "I heard roaring."

"Did ye now? Ya know we don't have dragons here in the Isles," he reminded her. He watched as she poked around absently at the broken glass on the floor.

"It sounded like a girl. Was it her? The dragon queen?" The part of Sheogorath that was Oromis, Marelen's actual uncle and caregiver, twisted painfully at the look of concern that dusted over her pale golden face. She wanted so badly for the "dragon" to come to her, and yet he knew that she didn't know why.

Instead of answering her question, he said, "I've anointed a new Duchess to oversee Dementia and Crucible and I believe she will hold the office for a long time yet."

"Really?" Marelen quirked her head to the side slightly, looking only passively intrested. "What's her name?"

Sheogorath hummed and snapped his fingers, vanishing the glass and turning the windows into portraits of himself in different costumes. If Leara wanted to sulk and stare at windows for the rest of her afterlife, she'd have to do so in her own dining room.

"Uncle?" Marelen spoke, reminding him that he hadn't answered her question.

"Oh, her name's not terribly important," he shrugged. "She calls herself Leara," he told her before turning to examine a portrait of him with a green vest and ginger hair. Ah, that was a good look! He should wear that face more often!

"Oh," Marelen said lightly. Then, "Uncle?"

"Yes, Mary m'dear?"

He heard her hesitate before at last she asked, "How's my daughter?"

"Oh, Mareleth is just fine. She's the High Queen of Skyrim, ya know!" And he wasn't lying. The part of him that was Oromis and uncle to Marelen felt wretched for withholding information from her, but he was a Daedra, and he liked holding the strings to his puppet duchesses. Marelen had no clue that Leara the Dragon Queen was her daughter and Leara would never go to her mother, broken as they both were.

"She is?" Marelen asked in vague wonder, just like she did every tike he told her her daughter was a queen. "That's wonderful. Mama and Father would be so happy!"

"Yes, they would!" He echoed. "Now run along Avy and we can pop off to the Hill of Suicides for your sunset tea later!"

"Oh course!" Marelen nodded slightly before flouncing put of the dining room, pink puffy skirts, red curls and all.

Sheogorath sat back down in his chair and picked up his tea cup as Oromis cleared out half of their mind to rant over his manipulations, but the Daedric Prince of Madness only shook his head, knocking the Altmer into the side of their shared head. It didn't do for his mortal half to whine at him, as it tended to give him headaches.

Next to his saucer, a poster popped into existence. Curious, the Mad God unrolled it and peered over the contents. All it was was an announcement that "Leara Rose-blade" was the new Duchess of Dementia, blah blah blah, more formalities of the most insanely boring kind, blah, and all of it was sequestered under a picture of a scowling redhead adorned in torn mage robes sitting on the throne in Crucible. The bloody feet were a nice touch.

"She put up quite a fuss until she was forced into the throne, sir," Haskill informed him upon reentering the dining room several minutes later. "After that she went rather quiet. She is likely planning something."

Sheogorath only laughed at his words. "I'd expect nothing less from Avy's grandkid!"

"Yes, the Hero of Kvatch rather dislikes you, sir. Lady Leara's animosity is not surprising," Haskill mused.

"Yes she does, yes she does..." The Prince of Madness laughed again, recalling Oromis' sister's anger over the Greymarch.

"You did, after all, take over her brother and kidnap her daughter," the chamberlain continued.

"Yes, yes, you needn't remind me!" Sheogorath waved his hand at him with a scowl. He forgot often how Averin was such a stick in the mud.

"Of course, sir, my apologies."

"Don't be so dour, Haskill! Now, pack me a picnic basket and don't forget those little cucumber and cheese sandwiches! Avy, I mean Mary and I are going to the Hill of Suicides for her sunset tea," he ordered.

"Of course sir," Haskill nodded before bowing himself out of the chamber to go prepare his Lord and the Duchess's basket, leaving the Mad God's resonating laughter behind him.

Author's Note - I probably have other stuff I should be writing (actually, I do) but I wrote this last weekend when I learned that the canon fate of the Dragonborn is to go to Apocrypha. Obviously, that's a horrible idea. We don't want another Miraak, so I had my Dragonborn, Leara Rose-blade, rescued by her conveniently a Daedric Lord uncle. Now she is subject to madness until Alduin comes back and eats everything.