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Jyggalag arrives at the Palace of Sheogorath at precisely noon. He has arrived at noon for the past seventeen consecutive days. Sheogorath has not been in the palace for any of them.
Today, however, the Madgod is hanging upside-down from the chandelier, juggling what appears to be three eyeballs and a wheel of cheese. "Oh! You're still coming! How delightfully predictable. I thought you'd have given up by now, but no—noon, every single day, like a very boring cuckoo clock. Cuckoo! CUCKOO!" He drops all four objects. They bounce. "What can I do for you, my favorite geometric nightmare?"
"I require—" Jyggalag begins.
"—my assistance with a matter of inquiry! Yes, yes, you've said. Seventeen times. I counted. Well, Haskill counted. I got bored after three." Sheogorath drops from the chandelier, lands in his throne with a flourish. "So! Ask away! I'm feeling generous. Or gassy. One of those."
Jyggalag produces a tome from his robes. Opens it. Every page is filled with questions, meticulously numbered. "Question one: On a scale of—"
"Forbidden," Sheogorath interrupts.
"—one to ten—"
"Still forbidden."
"—how would you rate—"
"FORBIDDEN!" Sheogorath's cane strikes the floor. Somewhere in the Isles, a chicken explodes into butterflies. "No scales! No numbers! No rating systems! You're not reviewing a tavern, Order! Ask a real question or I'll turn your skeleton inside out just to see if it improves your posture."
Jyggalag's quill hovers over the page. He has not accounted for this variable. "I... do not understand what you want."
"EXACTLY!" Sheogorath claps his hands together. "Oh, this is delicious. The Prince of Order doesn't understand! Write that down! No wait, don't write that down. Writing is what got you into this mess in the first place. Close the book."
"I cannot close the book. The book contains my questions."
"Your questions are terrible. They're boring. They taste like ash. I know because I ate one yesterday." Sheogorath leans forward. "You want to understand what you experienced? Fine. But you're asking the wrong questions. You don't need data. You need therapy. And lucky for you, I am EXTREMELY qualified! I've driven hundreds of mortals insane. Surely I can drive one Prince sane. Probably!"
"That is not—"
"Question one!" Sheogorath announces, ignoring him entirely. "What's your favorite color?"
Jyggalag stares. "That is not relevant to my inquiry."
"WRONG ANSWER!" A bucket of eels appears over Jyggalag's head. Does not fall. Just hovers there, threatening. "Try again!"
"I do not have a favorite color. Color is simply the wavelength of—"
The bucket tips slightly. An eel flops out, lands on Jyggalag's shoulder.
"Gray," Jyggalag says flatly.
"GOOD! Progress! And why gray?"
"It is... efficient. Neutral. It contains all possibilities of—" Jyggalag stops. The eel is staring at him. "The gray before dawn. When everything is potential. When Order has not yet asserted itself but chaos has not yet awakened. When the world is... waiting."
"Ooh, poetic! I didn't know you had it in you. Well, I suppose I did have it in me, which means you had it in me, which means— oh, this is getting confusing." Sheogorath waves his hand and the bucket vanishes. The eel remains. "Question two: What's the worst part?"
"Of what?"
"Of EVERYTHING, obviously! The curse, the Madness, the millennia of being me—which, let's be honest, is usually quite fun but probably less so when you're the Prince of Order trapped inside. What's the part that makes you want to scream? Or do you even remember how to scream? Can you demonstrate?"
"I do not scream."
"BORING! I'll scream for you. AAAAAAAAAAAH!" Sheogorath screams. It goes on for an uncomfortably long time. When he stops, he's grinning. "See? Therapeutic. Your turn."
"The laughter," Jyggalag says.
The grin fades. "Ah."
"I remember laughing. At suffering. At chaos. At the destruction of Order. I remember finding it amusing when I destroyed my own realm, over and over, because destruction was inherently entertaining. I remember—" The eel falls off his shoulder. Jyggalag does not notice. "I felt joy. Genuine joy. And I cannot reconcile—"
"—that you liked being me," Sheogorath finishes. "Even though you hated being me. Yes, that's a nasty little paradox, isn't it? Hurts worse than the transformation itself, I'd wager."
"Yes."
They sit in silence. The eel wiggles away.
"I have all your memories, you know," Sheogorath says eventually. "Every single one. I remember being you before the curse. I remember your Library, your realm of perfect Order, your absolute certainty in everything." He pauses. "Also, you were insufferable. Just dreadfully boring. Did you know you once spent four hundred years cataloguing types of dust? DUST!"
Jyggalag stares. "It was necessary for—"
"It wasn't! Nobody needs dust categories! But anyway—" Sheogorath waves his hand dismissively. "Sometimes I'll be doing something perfectly reasonable—like yesterday, I spent six hours convincing a merchant he was a spoon—and suddenly I'll think, 'What's the point? This is just noise.' And for exactly four seconds, I understand why you spent three thousand years trying to obliterate my Realm. Then the feeling passes and I turn someone into a sweetroll."
Sheogorath produces a bottle of wine from thin air. Pours two goblets—one is a perfect crystal goblet. The other is shaped like a screaming face and it... screams. "Look, Order. You can't think your way out of being traumatized. You were broken and remade and broken again. That's not a mathematical equation. That's just pain. Very dramatic, very cosmic pain! But still just pain."
"I do not know how to exist with pain."
"I know. That's why you've been haunting my doorstep like a very punctual ghost." Sheogorath offers him the screaming goblet. Jyggalag takes the crystal one instead. Sheogorath shrugs and drinks from the screaming face. It continues screaming even with wine in it. "Here's what we're going to do. You're going to come back. Every week. Maybe at different times, just to spice things up? Variety, you know. And I'm going to teach you something mortals are surprisingly good at."
"What?"
"Feeling terrible without needing to understand why." Sheogorath grins. "It's very freeing, actually. Highly recommend it. Though coming from me, that might not be a ringing endorsement."
Jyggalag looks at his tome. Pages and pages of useless questions. He closes it.
"I will return in seven days. At noon."
"Of course you will." Sheogorath sighs dramatically. "You're so predictable it's actually painful. But fine! I'll prepare something special. Maybe more eels. Or possibly frogs. Something amphibious, certainly." He pauses. "Oh, and Jyggalag? You're allowed to just say 'I need help.' Those are words you can use. Even you."
Jyggalag stands. Does not answer. But he takes the crystal goblet with him when he leaves, and later, alone in the spaces between realms, he drinks from it and remembers what it felt like to want something.