Sixteen Accords of Madness: Volume XIII – Peryite’s Tale

A cough. It was just a little cough, but a cough all the same. A cough that carried across the wind and between the trees and eventually slipped through all the forces unseen until it found itself inside the Realm of Peryite, where the Taskmaster caught the cough while it was on its way towards one of his pits.

“Ah, a new sickness,” he breathed through a mouthful of forgotten infections and forbidden plagues. “I must see this closely.” And with that, Peryite materialized into Nirn amongst fetid marshlands in front of the dying body of a twisted man, whose body gleamed like metal in the fading moonlight. Peryite ducked down and took a deep sniff of the body, and immediately knew all about this new ailment.

“Hmm, the infection is fast and swift,” the Taskmaster commented to himself. “But the death… slow and painful. I could use a sickness such as this.”

“As could I, Taskmaster.” Peryite turned around to see Sheogorath, the Madgod, appeared accompanied by a chorus of hollow screaming and wielding his accursed staff. “Would you like to compete for it?”

Peryite rolled his eyes and reached down to take a piece of the sickness with him. “I do not wager with fools.”

“Tsk-tsk, only a fool would call those that are superior to him a fool.” Sheogorath said with a grin, tugging his beard. “Are you interested yet?”

The Daedric Prince of Pestilence growled deep in his throat. “Watch your words carefully, Madgod. No one is my superior, and you’d best remember that.”

“So you are interested!” Sheogorath exclaimed as he began prodding the now dead Kothringi with his staff. “Great, I was beginning to grow bored. I don’t like being bored.”

“You are mistaken. I never agreed to your challenge.”

“Of course you did. You just didn’t realize you did, but I did. I did, didn’t I?” The Madgod’s annoying laughter began echoing across the wetlands as Peryite realized that this challenge of Sheogorath’s could turn out to be beneficiary, and motioned for the other Daedric Prince to stop.

“Fine, yes, alright I did. What is it you would like to wager?”

“Ah yes, the wager,” Sheogorath pulled his beard again before settling down on a tree trunk sticking out of the ground. “A contest of who is the fastest Prince in Oblivion. We each take this sickness and we spread it throughout the land for four nights and five days, because who wants four nights and three days? Anyway, whoever spreads it to the most people will earn the title of the fastest Prince and also gets to keep the illness. Do you accept?”

And at that Peryite began to laugh. For it was common knowledge that he was the fastest Prince, capable of spreading destruction throughout an entire city in only a single day. But he admired the Madgod’s boldness, and decided to have fun with this competition.

“Let us… play… this game, Madgod.”

Sheogorath’s eyes opened with glee and he threw his staff into the air so he could clap his hands together. “Oh, splendid! This will be so much fun, my dear Taskmaster! ” And with that, both Princes took a piece of the sickness and vanished so they could get to their work.

For four nights and five days the Taskmaster rode the winds as an invisible cloud of disease and suffering, floating into towns as swift as lightning and leaving as soon as he left half the populace in ruins. But as he did this he realized he never saw Sheogorath at all, and that disturbed him. He completed his traveling from the north to the west at the fourth day, and it was on the fifth day when Peryite and Sheogorath materialized back in the east where they had started.

“Greetings, Madgod,” Peryite said smugly and grinning, knowing that he had won. The Prince of Madness sat on his tree trunk, his face completely unreadable. The Taskmaster frowned at that expression, but continued on anyway. “Look at all the mortals I have ravaged.”

The Prince of Order used his power and changed the earth on which they stood into a map of Tamriel with nearly half of it covered in greenish ooze, signifying his influence in the areas.

“You have clearly lost, Madgod.” But it was at this moment Sheogorath’s face broke out into a grin and he used his own power on the map, where Peryite’s face turned to a mixture of shock and anger when he saw that the entirety of Tamriel was covered in the purple haze of Sheogorath’s influence. “Impossible! You cannot have gotten to the entirety of this land in four nights and five days! I didn’t even see you work. You have clearly cheated.”

“Ah, but I did, I do, and I’m still doing it my dear sweet Taskmaster,” Sheogorath laughed in delight. “You did not see me moving, because I was moving to fast for you to see! Your plagues may spread like wildfire, but the madness that spreads because of your plagues is like sound. Every time you infected more people, you made the others go mad at the possibility of dying or catching the sickness.

“But,” Peryite said with a hiss. “We said we would spread the disease itself!”

“And we did,” Sheogorath said with happiness. “Should’ve been more careful with your words. You spread it with flesh, and I spread it with thoughts. You say that I was clearly cheating Taskmaster, but you were the one helping me cheat. You let me win!”

And with that, Sheogorath took the title of the fastest Prince and the sickness back to his realm where Peryite would not be able to take them, and left the Prince of Order standing there in his failure of not realizing that madness was the worst disease of all.