Torin stood in silence, the weight of the Prince's words settling over him.
He thought of the people he'd met over the year. The ones whose paths he'd crossed, whose lives he'd touched, whose fates he'd influenced without ever meaning to.
He'd never thought of it as making waves. He'd just been... living.
But to a being who watched the tides of fate across all of Nirn, even small ripples would stand out.
"So you noticed me," Torin said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "But that doesn't explain how you figured out I'm from a different world."
Hermaeus Mora's tentacles writhed slowly, the eye-shaped indents blinking in an unsettling rhythm. The central eye—huge, unblinking, its double pupils fixed on Torin—seemed to gleam with something that might have been satisfaction.
"It is... in your soul... mortal." The voice echoed, slow and deliberate. "The threads of your fate... do not begin... where they should. They begin... elsewhere. Elsewhen."
Torin's frown deepened. The Prince continued.
"Asides... from the Inevitable Custodian... and the dragon of time... amongst the Aedra.... only myself... and perhaps the Lady of Night... amongst the Daedra... are privy... to such knowings."
Torin hummed low in his throat. He definitely didn't like the fact that his deepest, darkest secret had been exposed because of some divine power he couldn't counter or take precautions against.
However, there was literally nothing he could do about it. You didn't argue with a Daedric Prince about the contents of your own soul.
Still, this wasn't the worst possible scenario. Hermaeus Mora was patient—famously so. He'd schemed for thousands of years to get the knowledge of the Skaal, waiting generation after generation for the right moment.
But unlike that long, slow hunt, he seemed almost impatient for what Torin carried in his head. Salivating, even.
Maybe it was a good thing Torin had opened that damned book when he did. Even if it had been an impulse—a desperate act fueled by grief and rage—it had put him in a position to negotiate. The Daedric Prince of Forbidden Knowledge might not be so keen on negotiations once he'd lost his patience.
Torin shuddered just thinking about the means Hermaeus Mora might employ to get what he wanted.
He took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and looked directly at the single eye at the center of the writhing tentacles.
"Alright. We've established what you want." He crossed his arms. "Now let's talk about what you're willing to give for it."
The tentacles stirred, disturbing the ink-black water as Hermaeus Mora spoke. The surface rippled outward from the colossal mass, waves lapping against the small stone islet where Torin stood.
"I offer... the only thing... of equal... value." The voice was slow, ponderous, as if each word required immense effort. "Knowledge... for knowledge."
Torin waited. The Prince continued.
"The value of what... I offer... and what is offered... and received... will be determined... by me." A pause. The central eye blinked. "Additionally... I demand... sole possession... of your... knowledge."
Torin just looked at the eldritch monstrosity before him with a bemused expression. He let the silence stretch, letting the Prince's words hang in the air.
"So let me get this straight." He uncrossed his arms, gesturing vaguely. "Not only will you get to demand valuable knowledge from me and offer whatever scraps you feel like in exchange—scraps whose value you get to determine—but you also want me to forget whatever I give you permanently. No memory. No record. Nothing."
He scoffed.
"Now why in Oblivion would I agree to that?"
Hermaeus Mora's voice remained calm, unhurried, as if explaining something obvious to a particularly slow student.
"I take the role... of evaluator... because no one... knows the value... of knowledge... as I do. I have watched... civilizations rise... and fall. I have collected... the secrets of gods... and mortals alike. I have seen... the birth of concepts... and their death."
The Daedric Prince's physical manifestation began to emerge fully from the water. What had been half-submerged now rose—higher and higher, tentacles unfurling, the central eye rising until it loomed over Torin like a moon. The creature's true size became apparent, towering above the islet, casting the stone and the single mortal upon it in shadow.
"I take sole possession... of the knowledge... because I am... a Daedric Prince." The voice echoed from everywhere and nowhere. "And you are... nothing more... than a trifling... mortal. Equal exchanges... are for equals. Our stations are... fundamentally... different."
Torin gave him a dismissive wave, the gesture casual, almost bored.
"Our stations are different, sure." He pointed at the writhing mass of tentacles. "But so is the value of our knowledge. Can you say for certain that whatever knowledge I may require in the future can only come from you?"
The central eye narrowed. The tentacles went still. Hermaeus Mora said nothing.
Torin cleared his throat and went on.
"No. You can't. I, on the other hand, can say with almost full certainty that only I possess the knowledge you want. Not you. Not anyone else in this realm or any other. Just me."
He gestured to the side, toward the endless ink sea, toward the green sky, toward nothing in particular.
"In the first place, you wouldn't know the value of knowledge from my original world because you're not familiar with it. You have no frame of reference. No context. No way to distinguish between something trivial and something that could reshape the very foundations of your understanding."
"I, on the other hand am familiar with both worlds, so I should be the evaluator. Not to mention that the quantity of knowledge you possess is much higher than mine, which means my knowledge is more valuable and so..."
...
...
The single eye of Hermaeus Mora's manifestation blinked as it watched Torin disappear from the islet—his consciousness returning to his body, his presence fading from the realm of Apocrypha like a candle flame snuffed by wind. The tentacles slowly settled back into the ink-black water, their writhing growing languid, almost contemplative.
They had been negotiating. Back and forth, they argued over terms, haggling like merchants in a market stall. For an entire week—or what felt like a week, here, where time flowed according to the Prince's whims rather than any mortal measure.
It should have been no more than a few seconds in Mundus.
In all his eternity of existence—all the centuries, all the millennia, all the endless cycles of knowledge gathered and cataloged and forgotten—Hermaeus Mora had never been as tired of hearing a mortal's voice as he was now.
The damned mortal kept going and on. About Supply and demand. About how scarcity increases value. About the distinction between intrinsic worth and perceived worth. About the concept of leverage—of holding something someone else wanted and using that desire as a tool.
The Nord had spoken of trade routes and market fluctuations, of monopolies and competitive advantages, of all manner of warped concepts that only someone who had spent his entire life managing a trading company would think to apply to a negotiation with a Daedric Prince.
It had been exhausting.
And yet... it pleased the Daedric Prince greatly.
Because this extent of knowledge, this fluency in the language of commerce, meant one of two things.
Either Torin had been a merchant in his original world—someone who bought and sold, who negotiated and haggled, who understood the flow of goods and wealth—and if that were the case, he would possess unique knowledge and insights that people in other occupations wouldn't have.
He'd possess trade secrets. Market strategies. The accumulated wisdom of an entire world's worth of commerce.
Alternatively... the mortal might not have been a trader. This level of knowledge might be commonplace in his original world, discussed openly in marketplaces, considered basic education rather than specialized expertise.
If that were true...
The central eye blinked slowly.
Then he could gain much more than he had imagined.
Still, Hermaeus Mora couldn't help but be amused.
He knew that mortal was different from the regular Nords—the ones who swung axes first and asked questions never, who saw magic as something to be feared rather than understood, who measured a man's worth by the thickness of his arms rather than the sharpness of his mind. But he hadn't expected to negotiate for an entire week.
Miraak had been different from other Nords as well, but he was more sly than anything else—always scheming under that prideful face he liked to put on, always plotting escapes and betrayals even as he served.
Torin, on the other hand, didn't even try to hide his intentions. He simply laid out his logic—supply, demand, scarcity, leverage—and used it to secure better terms. No deception. No manipulation. Just cold, rational argument.
And the terms they reached were surprisingly simple.
If Torin ever wanted or needed to know something—some piece of knowledge, some hidden truth, some secret that would otherwise remain beyond his reach—and he couldn't acquire it within a specific timeframe and amount of effort, then he would have to ask Hermaeus Mora for help.
The Prince would provide the required knowledge, and Torin would, in exchange, choose an appropriate piece of knowledge from his original world and offer it in return.
Simple. Elegant. Binding.
The terms thus far—which had taken them three days to even get this far—greatly favored Torin. The mortal had secured the right to determine the value of his own knowledge, to decide which pieces to offer and when, to set the timeframe and effort threshold for his own questions.
It was unbalanced. Inequitable.
Which was why Hermaeus Mora had demanded that Torin forget any knowledge he offered.
If you receive my wisdom, the Prince had argued, and I receive yours, but you retain yours afterward... then you have lost nothing, and I have gained nothing of lasting value. The exchange is not equal.
Torin had scoffed at that.
Then you should also forfeit the knowledge you offer, he'd countered. If you want me to forget what I give you, then you should forget what you give me. Fair's fair.
The negotiation had continued for another two days.
In the end, they had reached a compromise. Torin would forfeit the knowledge he offered—he would forget it, permanently, as if it had never been in his mind—but not if it would compromise other knowledge in his mind.
The Prince had been confused by this distinction at first, but Torin had explained it patiently.
Suppose I offer you this piece of knowledge, the mortal had said. 'In my world, the sky is green.' I wouldn't forget that before, through other exchanges, I had explained what 'sky' even is, and why the sky being green would be significant. The knowledge needs context. If you strip away the context, the fact becomes meaningless.
The negotiations had been a frustrating endeavor—unlike anything the Daedric Prince had experienced in a millennium. Mortals usually cowered before him, or groveled, or offered their secrets freely in exchange for a scrap of his favor. They did not argue. They did not haggle. They did not spend days debating the finer points of supply and demand.
But even so, Hermaeus Mora was satisfied.
That mortal was more than likely pleased with himself. He was probably sitting somewhere in Mundus right now, smug and self-congratulatory, thinking that if he rationed his exchanges carefully, if he offered bits and pieces of inconsequential knowledge, he could avoid using up even a fraction of what he possessed.
He earned a lifetime of questions, answered with crumbs. A bargain that would cost him nothing.
And Hermaeus Mora had to admit: that was true. It was quite clever. The mortal had created a flaw in their bargain, a loophole that he intended to exploit mercilessly.
But what that mortal failed to take into account—what he could not possibly have expected, because he was young and blinded by his own cleverness—was that there were many ways a Daedric Prince could extend a mortal's life.
A century. A millennium. Ten thousand years. He'd give the mortal enough time to answer every question, to exhaust every excuse, to squeeze every last drop of knowledge from that stubborn Nordic mind.
However long it took, Hermaeus Mora would wait. He was a Prince of Oblivion. A conceptual force of nature. He had been old when the first stars kindled in the sky, and he would be young when the last of them guttered out.
He had nothing but time.
And patience.
The physical manifestation began to settle back into the ink-black waters of Apocrypha—tentacles slowly writhing, the central eye slowly closing, the colossal mass of bark-green flesh sinking inch by inch into the depths.
The pages stopped floating. The ripples smoothed. The green sky dimmed.
Hermaeus Mora could not help but look forward to the first exchange.
Let the mortal have his victory, the Prince mused as consciousness faded into the endless dark of his realm. Let him think he has won.
He will learn.
In time.
...
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