Cackle lingered for a moment longer than was strictly necessary upon the threshold of the cave. Phoebe looked back at him and spoke up. "What, don't tell me you'll miss that dark place."
Cackle sighed, his curls hiding his eyes. "Alright, I won't."
Phoebe cocked her head. "Wait, really?"
Cackle turned away from the cave and started after Phoebe, shrugging. "Yes, really."
They started walking off together, Cackle slightly in the lead. Phoebe asked, "Why?"
Cackle laughed bitterly. "I guess I have a lot of things to explain to you about the world, huh?"
Cackle sighed and continued. "Well, to answer your question, I liked that cave because it's one of the few places a Madness like me can just... forget they exist. If they want."
"A Madness?"
Cackle nodded. "A Madness. There's not a lot of us, and it would be a stretch to call us the same species. Each one of us is unique and has different abilities. Last I was about the world, a few centuries ago I'd guess, there weren't a lot of stories about any of us that painted us very kindly. Except Glaoru, the Bright Madness. Or at least, that's how the rest of us know him. Last I knew, he was going as Luminus, the God of the Sun. Jerk.
"Anyways, each of us is really good at one or two things. Glaoru, for example, is really good at playing with light and has some sort of weird relationship with inspiring mortals to do legendary deeds. We all have our own titles and legends. We're not usually necessarily as powerful as say, a dragon, but we are notoriously hard to kill and even harder to control or predict, and that kind of makes us the bad guy pretty often, even if we don't want to be."
Phoebe looked confused. "Wait, why would you be the bad guy if you didn't want to be?"
Cackle laughed uproariously. "Well, powerful people don't usually like having powerful creatures in the area, you see. Makes it hard to justify things sometimes. Especially if they're not always completely responsible with their power. And if that powerful creature is an unknowable and unpredictable being that can talk and reason, then it's usually just way more convenient to paint them as a bad guy so that people don't go looking to it for help. "
Phoebe thought about that. "Is power really all that great?"
Cackle laughed again. "It seems to be for humans! For me, it's been a mixed bag."
"So, if Madnesses have powers, what are yours?"
Cackle grunted. "I'd hoped you wouldn't ask so directly."
Phoebe suddenly remembered her conditions for travel with Cackle, specifically about always answering questions asked. "I'm sorry, I-"
Cackle cut her off. "No. It's fine. Smart, really. To answer your question, I, like all Madnesses, can shapeshift, tap into contractual magic, and live forever unless killed somehow. Though I'm a bit better at the shapeshifting than most, I think. I, specifically, can smell secrets and emotions, as well as read minds. Sometimes whether I want to or not. Makes me the bad guy pretty much always in any story told about me. At best, I think, I'm a dangerous trickster the protagonist turns to for a source of power in a moment of desperation. More commonly, I think I'm just straight up the antagonist."
Phoebe hesitated. "...do you resent that?"
Cackle shrugged. "I'd be lying if I said it didn't bother me. But I'm pretty used to it at this point. I figure that if I've got to be the bad guy, I might as well be good at it."
Cackle made a show of slowly shapeshifting his form. He slowly sprouted long, corkscrewing horns, and began to walk in a hunched forward position. He let his human feet morph into digitigrade hooves. He had his brown shift morph into a ragged dark robe, and imbued his skin with shades of red and black. He grew his nails into blackened claws, elongated his teeth into a mouthful of fangs, and turned his eyes from human eyes into slit-pupiled ones.
His transformation completed over the course of about a score of paces. When it was complete, he showed off to Phoebe, overdramatically bearing his fangs and waving his arms.
Now it was Phoebe's turn to laugh. "Is that what bad guys look like?"
Between one step and the next, Cackle was back to an olive-skinned human male in a brown shift. "Hells if I know. I thought it was funny, though!"
"It was! I mean, what kind of monster would look like that?"
Cackle suddenly grew deadly quiet. "Phoebe."
Surprised by the sudden shift in tone of voice, Phoebe responded with a hesitant, "Yeah?"
"Make no mistake. Monsters are real. Most of them look like people. And yes, some people actually look kind of like less exaggerated versions of what I just turned into. You must always be careful to judge any being who can talk by what they say and how they act, rather than how they look. Do you understand?"
"I... I think so."
"Mmh." Cackle walked forward in silence, sniffing the air deeply before making a slight course correction.
Phoebe, uncomfortable with the silence, tried to fill it. "So... what else should I know about?"
Cackle grunted. "Can't say."
"What?"
"I mean I can't say. I wouldn't know what is common sense anymore. You already know more about Madnesses than most mortals ever learn, and the fact that it's most of what you know is dangerous. Means you might slip up."
"And that would be bad?"
"Hard to say. But again, most mortals don't tell kind stories of Madnesses. Making it known you travel in one's company isn't likely, by my accounting, to go over well."
"So what do we do?"
"Well, I did have an idea..."
A little later, Cackle and Phoebe walked into an inn with a tavern for the first floor.