"Well, we can't find out how it'll go until after we've got this heart delivered."

"True enough. The Sacellum, then."

Onward!

The ceremony is grand and definitely a ceremony. Sheogorath is in attendance.

And then the Duke of Mania storms in, berating Sheogorath for letting this happen and declaring that the Fringe has fallen, and Sheogorath's not doing enough to protect the realm...

Glint starts whispering with the priest.

Well, it would be nice if they could just sort of tack an extra ascension onto this ceremony instead of going through a whole other one.

Glint slides in behind the Duke, cutting the back of his neck with a poisoned dagger.

"That was hardly traditional!" the priest complains, as the Duke goes down. "Poisons are not made the same!"

Glint shrugs, turning to Sheogorath. "Your call, I guess."

"In these hard times I'll allow it," Sheogorath says. "He was threatening to defect, anyways. The ascension must go on!"

And so it does.

It's so nice when things work out neatly.

Their next few tasks are mostly military related. Retaking this or that lost position, rebuilding the Gatekeepers, defending the capitals of each half of the Shivering Isles... It turns out the Dark Seducers and Golden Saints can be returned to life automatically (by a process they have to re-enable after Order gums it up), so Glint will be able to continue delegating to whichever generals she feels most capable, without risking permanently losing them.

Sheogorath grows more somber, more distant as the invasion progresses, increasingly having his right hand man, Haskill, direct the team.

Something is definitely fucky. One hopes it's not brewing betrayal.

He summons them directly, after the latest round of tasks.

His expression is... Wistful, almost.

A hopeful sign on the not-betrayal front. Not so much on the 'keep things relatively boring' front, if she's any judge.

"Well. You've all been doing quite well. Better than anyone else has. Maybe it'll be enough..."

"Enough for what?"

"There's a secret I've kept, and no one here's been alive long enough to remember the last time it came out. The last time it was even relevant - the end of the Third Era."

"You see."

"Jyggalag is my enemy, yes."

"But he's me, as well."

"I become him, whenever the time of the world grows short. The defenders I summon are never enough, and I destroy my own realm, and then I shrivel back up into my madness, and rebuild once more. Pointless. Wasteful. I'm trying to stop it, but, well. Futility is the name of the game."

Sigh. Heartfelt sigh.

"Perhaps you can change it, though. My time's short, now, but Jyggalag can be defeated in a way I can't. Order breaks. Madness just becomes more mad."

He looks up.

"Well."

"Good luck. I'll be doing my best to stop you, of course."

He disappears, and his staff, left behind, shatters into crystalline shards.

"...Welp."

"I really hate it when the vital information is left to the end. Trying to stop one person from turning into a different person is an entirely separate problem from routing an invasion."

She nods. "Though the invasion stuff might be linked, I don't know. But, yeah, he should've just told us."

"And now we have to kill a god."

"Yeah. Let's go talk to the steward guy. Maybe he'll have advice."

"Sounds a worthy plan."

Steward guy gives a long, unimpressed sigh. "So much for being the only sane one here," he grouches, then: "I suspect we might be able to give Glint some of the - signifiers of office, such that she'd have some fraction at least of my Lord Sheogorath's power. It might help. It might not. But, quite frankly, she's expressed far more concern for the people of this realm than my Lord Sheogorath ever did."

"That feels like a really low bar for some reason," Glint says, sighing as well.

"I suspect her taking up some of his mantle was at least part of his intent."