04-13-2019, 12:45 PM
[align=center][div style="text-align: left; font-family: helvetica; font-size: 8.3pt; letter-spacing: .3px; line-height: 1.35; padding: 4px;"]It had been very quickly established that so long as he remained in the Badlands, stress would be a perpetual, ever-permeating emotion. It was less a feeling and more a looming presence, lingering at his shoulder and breathing down his neck. One person lashed out at another; two more were killed. Santos regarded him with the same nostalgic horror as though he'd seen him die; Mike was impossible to read, an odd mix between approving and disdainful; Cat was even more logically ambiguous than they were morally; and Sheogorath had, Link now accepted, truly gone insane.
Still, it felt like two steps backwards rather than two steps off the rails and into the waiting, yawning maw of the pit below. Sheogorath hadn't flung himself off a well-trodden path into the abyss; he'd returned to a ditch from which he'd been trying to climb out of. Such a homecoming, it seemed, was announced by laughter. First the ranting, then the murders, now this  Link wasn't even certain Sheogorath was capable of reason. If he'd ever been.
Given Sheo's recent propensity for violence, Link opted for silence, hand clenching and unclenching around a particularly smooth pebble. The dog at his heels  a stray that often wandered after him, curious and happy for the company  nosed at it insistently, tail wagging, until he threw it. Not for the first time in Sheogorath's presence, he contemplated speaking and failed to come up with anything worth saying; instead, he crouched in the sand and waited for the dog to return. For Sheo to stop laughing. For something to make some goddamn sense.
Still, it felt like two steps backwards rather than two steps off the rails and into the waiting, yawning maw of the pit below. Sheogorath hadn't flung himself off a well-trodden path into the abyss; he'd returned to a ditch from which he'd been trying to climb out of. Such a homecoming, it seemed, was announced by laughter. First the ranting, then the murders, now this  Link wasn't even certain Sheogorath was capable of reason. If he'd ever been.
Given Sheo's recent propensity for violence, Link opted for silence, hand clenching and unclenching around a particularly smooth pebble. The dog at his heels  a stray that often wandered after him, curious and happy for the company  nosed at it insistently, tail wagging, until he threw it. Not for the first time in Sheogorath's presence, he contemplated speaking and failed to come up with anything worth saying; instead, he crouched in the sand and waited for the dog to return. For Sheo to stop laughing. For something to make some goddamn sense.