Chapter Three: Maps and Missions

3 E., Late Year 1

Orphael leaned back in his chair, rubbing tired eyes as his shoulders protested too long in the uncomfortable reading chair. Around him, the silence of the library, deep in the bowels of Pinnacle Rock, pressed against his pointed ears.

It was spectacular. Amazing. He looked at the two maps again, one relatively new, the other much, much older, and frailer. At first glimpse they looked like two completely different places, and yet, if one looked closely, one could see several similar characteristics – the Hill of Suicides smack in the middle of the Isles, the Madgod's Boot, the Laughing Coast, all surrounded by the unending, unbroken Sea of Oblivion.

And yet, on the new map, the Capitol of New Sheoth lay near the Enjaen Coast, in the southernmost hills of the Jester's Spine. The old map, however, showed the capitol further north and farther inland, in the mountains themselves, with the stronghold off farther to the west and Pinnacle Rock nearer the capital.

I dunno. I seem to remember it being a little closer to the Rock, maybe it's just faulty memory. That was what Kyzzik had said. And here was some form of possible proof. But why? And why so much damage? Yes, the Isles repaired quickly, yes, the locals came trickling back – mingled with new faces of those invited in. But why should it be so? If there was such a great battle, why did no one remember…?

Because surely someone would have survived to remember...wouldn't they?

Obviously Lord Sheogorath had prevailed, of course he had and yet…the circular attempt at logic made Orphael's headache worsen, blood pounding insistently behind his eyes. He knew better than to read in the dark, but had gotten distracted before lighting the room properly.

Orphael rose, waving his magelight to glow more strongly, an odd shade of green that did not make his eyes ache in the otherwise dim room. Landmarks did not, Orphael scowled, simply get up and walk around…not even here, of all places.

"Did you find something interesting, young man?"

Orphael instinctively reached for the sword by his chair, but looking up found Lord Sheogorath's Chamberlain Haskill standing in front of a blank wall, as if he had simply walked through it.

"Just doing a bit of research," Orphael answered slowly.

He did not like Haskill, though he would quickly admit it was no real fault of the chamberlain's. As far as Orphael knew or cared there were men, there were mer, there were many forms of Daedra, and there were Daedric Lords, and each looked like something specific, or had certain traits by which they preferred to be defined. One didn't confuse an Aureal and an Auroran, just as one didn't confuse a Mazken and a Dremora. Azura liked to be a female, Mehrunes Dagon a male, and Hermaeus Mora – Orphael shuddered – a squid.

However, Haskill looked like a human man, but he felt, his presence dictated that he was not human. The contradiction Haskill presented made Orphael's skin crawl. It was hard enough keeping some semblance of order – though no one would ever use that word – in the Isles without Daedra who masqueraded as humans…or humans who were halfway to being turned into Daedra, or whatever Haskill actually was.

As far back as Orpahel could remember, in the farthest splinter of memory, Orphael remembered Haskill. A permanent fixture on Lord Sheogorath's court. Neither in favor, nor out of it, neither completely necessary, nor so unnecessary Lord Sheogorath had no use for him. Neither this, nor that – the only thing about Haskill that made sense: a lack of sense.

Haskill walked forward and looked at the maps, then looked at Orphael. "Playing cartographer, are we?" he asked. This Mazken was, he knew, too curious for his own good, and not unintelligent. A deadly combination.

"No. Just thinking."

"An excellent pastime." Haskill reached out and pulled the old map towards him. "But I think," he looked up, catching the Mazken's eyes, "you'll find this map is not a map." Haskill's voice took on a tone laden with Daedric magicka, a twofold sort of magicka, like red enthusiasm and dark green despair twisted inextricably together. "It's a toy. A game. A fancy our Lord Sheogorath had drawn up, to see what his kingdom could look like, if he ever decided to rearrange it."

The Mazken's blue eyes had gone blank, the pupil turning brilliantly green, as if something in his eyes were catching and reflecting his magelight, like a cat's eyes reflected normal light. At his shoulder, his magelight grew to barely a flicker, as if the power sustaining it had suddenly slacked to the barest most tenuous trickle. "Of course." Orphael answered unblinkingly. "The Mazken live to serve Lord Sheogorath. If he wishes to rearrange his empire, we will be ready to rearrange ourselves, to better protect it."

"Very good." Haskill raised a bony hand and snapped his long fingers.

The Mazken flinched, as if he had just been struck, then groaned, rubbing his eyes and the bridge of his nose. He did not see the old map's contents change, until it looked like an ink painting of a country, rather than a proper map.

That should take care of the last of the little details, Haskill decided. All the pesky details, and only one person in the Realm able to manage them all. What a life to lead.

Orphael's head swam. He remembered Haskill talking, but not what the…the contradiction had actually said. His head continued to pound. Blast these headaches. He knew better than to read in a room too dark…

Prompted by that thought, his magelight burst into three smaller lights, all of which swelled to the size of grapefruits and gave off powerful light which was easy on tired eyes.

"I was saying," Haskill prompted, as the Mazken looked up, eyes once again blue with black pupils, and green glints from the magelights bobbing around his head, "that Duke Vaelar has been replaced. Duchess Syl will be taking over his quarters in New Sheoth. Lord Sheogorath wishes you to escort her from her current place in Fellmoor."

"Duchess…Syl?"

"Yes, Duchess Syl," Haskill replied almost tonelessly. "Surely you remember her?"

"Of course." Orphael lied, though he suspected Haskill saw through the fib.

Haskill sighed. It was so frustrating trying to get the Mazken to do anything when it required memory from beyond their current incarnation. Something about the Waters of Oblivion, to which they went when they died and from whence they returned to the realm corroded their memories, fragmenting them. The price, Haskill knew, of sanity in a realm of insanity.

Doomed, in a way, to make and repeat the same mistakes, in hopes this time the mistake did not kill them, enabling them to finally learn.

The price, he supposed, of representing law and some semblance of…he did not like to use the word, so he did not. "Duchess Syl happened to be Duke Vaelar's High Inquisitor." Haskill prompted. "During this period of restructuring, Lord Sheogorath has decided to promoted her."

"Yes, the paranoid one." Orphael nodded, knowing this word could apply to half the residents of Dementia and most Mazken. He preferred, however, when speaking about his fellow Mazken to use the word 'cautious'.

"Yes, the paranoid one. You'd best get to it. Lord Sheogorath is throwing a party. He wants all has Courtiers there. I believe," Haskill sighed, "he's acquired a clown for the occasion." He had never, in all these centuries, understood his Lord's preoccupation with clowns…or maybe he did. They were, Haskill mused, unbelievably cheerful and all the more unnerving for it. It was hard to tell whether a clown better suited the Manic side of the Isles or the Demented.

With a sigh Haskill dismissed the notions entirely. When one worked for the Madgod, one learned when not to expound on lunacies. There was no point. No point but the one your head makes…the stray thought flickered across Haskill's mind, an echo of his Lord, something Sheogorath had said before, or would say in the future. He dismissed this as well, another occupational hazard.

All Haskill knew was that if Lord Sheogorath wanted a clown, he would have one. And if the clown wound up chewing on the courtiers, and trying nibble off their hands so he could juggle them instead of something harmless like apples or pears or even cheeses…well. As long as Lord Sheogorath was happy, the courtiers would line up to volunteer their hands.

It still made a mess on the carpets, and it was Haskill who was responsible for making sure the mess did not set in. Joy unbounded, a chamberlain's life.

For some strange reason, Orphael's skin prickled when Haskill mentioned 'clowns', as if it remembered biting teeth. "I'll see to it immediately, Chamberlain."

When Orphael looked up from his perfunctory bow, he found Haskill was gone.

Looking at the fake map he shook his head. It would be nice, this new setup for the Isles. It put Lord Sheogorath so much closer to the conscientious, never ending watchfulness of the Mazken, his truest and greatest servants.

It would also cause a great deal of trouble, particularly for Dementia. They so relied on certain concrete facts. If a normal mind would snap when a Plane rearranged itself, he worried for what would happen to a madness-blessed mind.

--3. E, Year 430--

Nelrene was in a bad mood, as she threw her gear down on her old desk. Seeing Orphael smirking at her from the doorway did not improve her mood in the least. In fact, it took a lot of restraint not to throw something at him, just to watch him jump or take injury. "You? Again? I told you no!" she snapped before even asking what it was he wanted.

Orphael snorted, watching as Nelrene continued to check her gear. One of the many Mazken called to the New Sheoth Palace, at the request of Duchess Syl, Nelrene would not be ruling the roost much longer. And Orphael fully intended not to ask Nelrene for permission to do the thing he wanted. He would ask Udico – the infinitely more reasonable Mazken replacing Nelrene as Pinnacle Rock's administrator – for permission to conduct his research.

"I'm not here to ask anything of you, Grakella." Orphael answered. "I was asked," which meant he was ordered, "to make sure you got underway safely. This is," he added, "at the whim of the newly instated Grakella Udico."

Nelrene grit her teeth, and not because her rank and position was suddenly rearranged. For the past five years she had served as the Grakella of Pinnacle Rock and had done it well. That, she knew, was why she was going to New Sheoth. New Sheoth already had a Grakedrig serving as the Captain of the Guard for House Dementia. Therefore she must and would accept the post and the wider responsibilities as the Second Officer.

The last Second Officer had died when Syl thought Grakella Ulanna was plotting against her life. It was certainly not the first time Syl's guards needed fresh faces – though when it came to that, Syl tended to forget whom she had murdered routinely. Ulanna had not yet come back from banishment via the Wellspring, though, which saddened Nelrene. Ulanna was a friend, after all.

What made her grit her teeth was the fact it was Orphael sent with her - or more likely, he would see her as far as Fellmoor before returning to Pinnacle Rock.

Nelrene tugged the straps on her bag of gear, trying to ignore the male standing before her. Something about Orphael had always gotten under her skin – whether it was his true intention or not. She could not adequately explain it, so she generally did not mention it, for fear of being thought irrational, and finding her abilities to serve the Isles and Lord Sheogorath in question. Still, when he smirked at her like that, as he was doing now, it made her want to chew his bottom lip off.

Orphael was not pleased with the orders either. He knew why Udico had elected to give Nelrene an escort partway: to make sure Nelrene didn't think of something she needed or wanted to do, and double back to do it, before getting to the Capital. Nelrene tended to find herself fixated with the minutia, and it was part of her obsessive nature to want to make sure all the minutia was taken care of before she left to do something else.

Orphael understood the obsessive nature of the Mazken, and deep down was very glad his obsessions tended to be more practical than things he couldn't control. It was still the same topic it was last decade, and the one before that, all the way back to the last time he'd found himself suddenly dead, and climbing back out of the Wellspring several floors down.

What are they? The mysterious structures. In the last thirty years, they proved relatively unremarkable, his research into them preserved in writing so banishment and recall could not totally destroy his work. But what were they for? They felt so very alien and yet…not.

Nelrene looked up from her pack, still ill of temper, to find Orphael staring into nothing, his smirk still in place, but less pronounced. Looking closely she could see the tiny scar at one corner of his mouth, which gave him part of his characteristic smirk. All Mazken had scars, many believed they had had them when they first climbed out of the Waters of Oblivion to serve Lord Sheogorath. Proof of battle skills.

Wounds from powerfully magical objects sometimes carried over, too. Nelrene herself still had the mark from the time she found herself with Goldbrand rammed through her midriff. She remembered the blade, remembered the injury, still had the scar…but did not remember the face of her attacker, or why she had found herself in such a position in the first place.

This was not, after all, Azura's Moonshadow, where all things were perfect.

Whatever his personality flaws were, Nelrene could not entirely squash the notion that he wasn't bad-looking, as far as Mazken went.

When Nelrene stomped off, pushing past Orphael, the Mazken shook his head and followed her out. The trip to Fellmoor would not take that long – time was sometimes only relative, dependent on Sheogorath's mood. He had taken a trip from Pinnacle Rock to New Sheoth in under a day, once, and the return trip took almost two weeks. For no apparent reason.

Then again, what did one expect in the realm of Madness?

Still, Orphael half-wished he was going all the way to New Sheoth. He loved the streets of Crucible, especially in the evenings. It was always worth a trip to Sickly Bernice's Taphouse for a drink. He knew very well that her 'illness' was less an illness and more a form of paranoia. But it did not stop him from liking her – though, he did not like to spend too much time in her company. The constant sniffling and coughing made him want to cough and sniffle too.

Orphael snorted, not needing to squint once he and Nelrene left the darkness of Pinnacle Rock. The hazy air of Dementia, today chill and humid filled his lungs like sludge, but he did not cough. After all, this was still home.

The air in Mania would make him cough. And sneeze – all that pollen, all those spores.

--Author's Notes Appended--

As far as the stratification of the Mazken and Aureals, I'm using the classes listed on the UESP. The Mazken orders are, from lowest to highest, as follows. Kiskengo, Kiskella, Kiskedrig, Grakendo, Grakella, Grakedrig, Autkendo and may be listed with an additional title (for purposes of differentiation from others with the name designation (First Officer of the Watch Grakella X, Second Officer, Grakella Y, etc).

For the purposes of the story, Autkendo is a rank used only in time of war, the Mazken High Commander. Grakedrig refers (but is not limited to) to the Captain of the Guard of the House of Dementia and the Commander of Pinnacle Rock. Grakendo and Grakella may be thought of as officers or specialists while Kiskengo, Kiskella, and Kiskedrig may be thought of as the enlisted. The Aureals are similarly stratified. I will probably at some point take liberty with ranks and swap them. Remember: Mazken and Aureals live to serve Sheogorath, so they will promote, demote, and regulate themselves based on the ability to serve the Isles and Sheogorath, and with regard to their societal structure.