"Cheese? CHEESE?! I hate cheese!" The platter bounced off the wooden table and collided with the floor below. Sheogorath is in quite a mood today, judging by the way he spikes the Fork of Horripilation into his other hand, not seeming to notice.

"What?" Shiver asks, appearing through one wall as if she'd phased right through it. The truth is, she'd teleported from the next room, but she liked how this looked. Appearances matter, after all. She's peering owlishly at her father, who is also not her father, who is also the successor to a man who was her father but was not actually her father, but instead was Jyggalag - her father. The only thing that mattered is that they both liked cheese, so frankly, this was very confusing. "You love cheese." He did love cheese. She had it on good authority, thanks to all the cheese he was going on about.

"No, I love talking about cheese," Sheogorath insisted. "I love putting cheese inside people, then having it explode. I love cheese-shaped weapons to bludgeon with. I don't actually much care for cheese itself." Around him, the walls began to melt. Shiver scowled at that. She was fond of this place! Wait. Fond, melting - Oh.

"Fondue," she says suddenly. She gets it! Sheogorath smiles in approval. "Yes! Good. Glad you're here. I need you to do something."

"Done," Shiver replies, teetering back and forth on her flat shoes. Sheogorath watches her for a moment, furrowing his brow at the way her cropped top barely covers her mostly flat chest.

"And cover up! Then cover down. Then cover sideways. Wrap it in layers. It's unsettling," he declares. "It's not done at all. You haven't even started! You aren't even dressed the part!" Brushing a hand back against his slicked hair, he nods in approval as she's suddenly wearing a mummy's wrappings, looking like a particularly colorful Draugr. "Perfect."

"Not perfect." It's not perfect, and she's not wearing it. She elects to compromise, a rainbow gown with billowing ribbons falling from her arms making her look absolutely gracious.

"Yes, fine, whatever sends the message. Mummies and gowns are the same anyways." Shiver agreed. "I need you to speak to the damned Dementia lords. Dizzy darkness-damaged dummies don't dare drench my druthers again."

"Alliteration's abhorrent," Shiver replies, turning her nose up at her father-not-father-father. "What did they do this time?"

"They refuse to meet with the Manic lords! The ritual is in four days, and none of them have even decided what to wear. Tell them if they don't decide, I'll decide for them. Spoiler: It will be their entrails! As my lapels!"

"Alright, Dad Squared," Shiver says. "Hold your horses."

"My horses run free," Sheogorath snaps, angrily smashing a fist into the table. "And stop giving me weird names! It makes me self-conscious."

"Sure thing, HyPOPStenuse."

"Stop it! You know how I feel about math!"

His outrage follows her out the door, but the joke's on it, because she used a window. Leaving his outrage behind, fooled by her clever escape, she focuses on her next step - and just like that, she's passed into Dementia, the darker half of the Shivering Isles that she had been named after. It was a decrepit land at first glance, all twisted grey spires and purple crystals threatening to burst from the earth, but there was life here, too.

At least, there was for now. Whether or not there would be at the end of the day depended greatly on the Duchess of Mania, and the kind of impression she made on Shiver.

The estate of the Duchess could best be described as disappointingly coherent. Unlike the more creatively, often drug-fueled architecture of Mania, the Dementia Palace is fortified, the very image of Sheogorath's paranoia and political-mindedness. For all of his insanity, her father-simulacrum is a brilliant tactician and warrior; it shows here, with spiked walls and heavily fortified gates.

Shiver doesn't much care for it. As she passes, ignoring the salutes of the drably clad Dementia guards, the spikes on the walls become colorful toucans, flying up in circles above her head. Better. It wasn't even a conscious thought, not really - it's just something that happens based on her mood, at times.

The flowers and fungi growing in her wake betray her presence as surely as the sight of her gorgeously wrapped gown trailing with each step. "Duchess," she says softly, regarding the courtyard all around her.

The Duchess looks up from her throne, startling slightly as Shiver appears before her. Shiver isn't much one for walking. She'd forgotten that on her way inside, but now she remembers, so she's here. "You were supposed to see to the contracts," Shiver says.

"Sheogorath sends the brat now?! He can't even face me himself, the coward!" The Duchess snaps, outraged.

The Duchess snaps, outraged.

The Duchess snaps, outraged.

Shiver peers at the throne as the Duchess lays across it, her back broken in half. "Huh." Was that her fault?

Thinking nothing of it, she turns to make her way out of the throne room, prodding a guard in the shoulder. He turns to look, but Shiver's on his other side. "Hey! Who's the next in succession?"

"Er...the Lady Dema," the guard nervously replies. "W-why?"

"No reason. Every reason, but no reason that concerns you. Well, it might concern you, but the point is, the concern of you is no concern of me, for I'm concerned with the line of succession, which doesn't concern you."

"...I'm concerned," the guard replies, looking concerned.

"Well, that's no concern of mine," Shiver says, looking anything but.

"She's - she's in the prison tower. The Duchess had her locked up, my - er. Princess? What do I call you?"

"You don't, for I don't come when summoned." Shiver preens for a moment, inspecting her nails with one hand while wrapping the other arm across his shoulders. "Where is she?"

"Er - the Prison Tower," he repeats.

"No," Shiver growls, petulant. "She was there, then I decided she's not. I decided she's here - but she's not here. So where is she?"

The guard frowns in concentration, then nods. "Oh! The Duchess told us that she found a way to insulate her tower from you and your father's powers," he replies. "She said that it was to keep the Lady within, for she knows a terrible secret."

"Aaaaand you didn't think to, I don't know, report that the Duchess was doing that? To me? Or to my Jygganot Father?" She is upset. He can tell, judging by the widening of his eyes.

"Oh shi-"

He doesn't get to finish the curse before his head becomes another toucan. She was one short. It has very wide eyes.

Her own eyes? Not so wide. Narrowed with a rare sense of purpose, they turn to the prison tower above. "I suppose I'd best get to the bottom of this."