Fairspell Meadow form a salt, sprinkle it around me
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His ascension to leadership comes at a cost — he'd expected nothing less, but the manner of it is a shock to his system.

Voices.

Whispers, thousands of them bearing down on him from all sides; a maddening cacophony with no hope of being drowned out. It's in his head. He's experienced it before, of course, but nothing like this. It's almost unbearable. It drives him from the woods, ears pinned, limbs quaking — into the meadow to the south, where he hopes he might find solitude.
Instead he finds a man. Old, grizzled, ragged thing, with a knowing gaze. Murgash, he introduces himself, while Zephyr struggles to remember how the conversation had started. He doesn't remember approaching the man. He doesn't remember confessing his plight.

What he remembers as he comes away from the encounter stumbling, head full of fog, is that Murgash had held the solution. Knowledge. The only defense against the plague of whispers swarming his mind, thin little tendrils of thought wrapping around him. He can't truly escape the way the Daedra are ensnaring him — but he can understand it. He can make it a part of himself, make the chaos feel like home. The names turn over and over in his mind as he returns to the woods in a haze.

Azura, Queen of Dawn and Dusk... Boethiah, He-Who-Destroys and She-Who-Erases... Clavicus Vile, Prince of Trickery... Hermaeus Mora, Master of the Tides of Fate...
Too much to remember, he thinks, but he can hear the whispers again; coherent this time, finishing his thoughts for him, reminding him of who he is meant to be.
Hircine, Master of the Great Hunt... Malacath the Oathbreaker, Lord of Ash and Bone... Mehrunes Dagon, Father of Cataclysm... Mephala the Webspinner, the Androgyne...
He thinks of @Rowan, then, and wonders what he might think of this new information. The rest of the Daedra; the full pantheon of Blackfeather Woods.
Meridia the Sunfire, Lady of Infinite Energies... Molag Bal, the Lord of Brutality... Namira, Lady of Decay... Nocturnal, Empress of Murk...
He'll have to visit the tree. Convene with the gods he now knows by name, and find out what it is they wish of him.
Peryite, Prince of Pestilence... Sanguine, Lord of Revelry... Vaermina, the Dreamweaver...
And perhaps, among the vast pantheon, he can find the voice that calls the loudest among them; the one that most yearns to be heard by him in particular. His patron, perhaps. He thinks of the last of the Daedra he'd learned of, two sides of the same coin —
Sheogorath, Prince of Madness... Jyggalag, Lord of Order...

Finally, it all makes sense; the missing puzzle pieces click neatly into place. The picture Rowan had painted had been incomplete, but now that Murgash has filled in the blanks, Zephyr can clearly see the path forward. The Woods must be dedicated to the Daedra. There is no other way.
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