We teleport back to the last wayshrine in the morning and move on. There’s a Skyshard in a nook by some rocks near the wayshrine that I hadn’t noticed before.

Along the way to the Moonlight Clearing or wherever it was we were supposed to be going, we come across a number of Khajiit-style tents standing outside of an Ayleid ruin. Dominion soldiers, judging by the uniforms, and judging by the injured we heal on the way by, they’ve encountered trouble. Because Ayleid ruins are always trouble.

“Ah, you must be Neri,” says a Khajiit woman who introduces herself as Centurion Burry. No, Burri. “Razum-dar described your group and said you might be coming this way.”

“Is he here?” Ilara asks.

“Yes.”

“He must have teleported here ahead of us after we left him at Dra’bul,” I say.

“I’ll admit, you make quite the group,” Burri says. “An Orc, two Altmer, a Bosmer, and a Khajiit, and dressed in adventurers’ motley rather than proper uniforms. I’m almost surprised you don’t have a Goblin with you.”

“I will be quite miffed if I am replaced by a Goblin,” Merry comments.

“Ah, so you do enjoy adventuring with me,” I say with a grin.

According to Centurion Burry, the Colovians are here and her troops are dying to hold a ruin with no significance or strategic value. She doesn’t sound terribly happy about that.

“It’s an Ayleid ruin,” I say. “Most likely, knowing the Ayleids, there’s something dangerous down there. Your troops aren’t dying for rubble.”

“You have a good point,” Burri admits. “Raz would not have come here for no reason. Keep an eye out for him. He will probably have information.”

She also asks us to find her missing scouts, although what she should really be asking is if we’ll leave any of the Colovians to kill or if we’re just going to wipe them all out singlehandedly again. I mean, I’d cheerfully take over all of Tamriel if everyone just came at me two or three at a time. Just line up, all contenders.

… I really shouldn’t have been surprised anyone wanted me to be King of the Wood Orcs.

We find the first of the missing scouts, heal him up, and receive his report about how the Colovians are here looking for some dangerous Ayleid relic.

“Called it,” I say.

The next scout tells us about how an Ayleid ward came up after the Colovians stole a few magic rocks, and they collapsed the other entrance. She says that we’d need to find the stolen rocks if we wanted to get inside.

“Would any of those magic blue rocks work?” I ask. “I have like a dozen of the things in my bag.”

“Why are you carrying around that many welkynd stones?” the Khajiit scout asks.

“In case I need to power any random Ayleid shit in order to stop people from fucking with dangerous Ayleid relics. Also potentially to open a portal to Pyandonea to deforest it, but that’s less relevant right now.”

“…Right,” the Khajiit scout says dubiously. “They might, yes.”

“Although why would the ward turn on rather than off if the magic rocks were removed?” I wonder.

“A safeguard against theft?” Merry suggests. “They’d have to be being powered by something else inside, but if the ward were to come up from welkynd stones on the outside being removed, that would allow anyone leaving the ruin to be able to seal it up behind them.”

The third scout tells us where the Colovians are keeping their magic rocks. We probably don’t need them but we might as well grab them anyway, because you can never have too many magic rocks.

With that taken care of, we get inside the ruins and head down. I stop to stare hypnotically down a corridor with more fire traps than I have ever seen crammed into such a short stretch of hallway. The Ayleids were serious about setting intruders on fire here.

I’m so busy staring at the traps that I almost don’t notice the wounded Colovian soldier leaning against one wall.

Too weak to stand, she just mocks us about how we’re obviously going to die to the traps and never get to the “circlet”. “The Grand Circlet of Elven Authority,” she explains, gloating. “Every descendant of the Aldmer must bend the knee to the wearer of the circlet!” Also according to her gloating, Raz is here, trapped. Ilara bristles at the soldier’s talk about “lopping off the Queen’s paw”.

“Good to know,” I say cheerfully. “Alright, let’s see about these traps.”

My friends all take two steps back simultaneously.

“There’s probably a switch to turn them off at the end of the corridor,” I say. “I think I can see it from here, actually. Unless that’s a door opener. Whatever, I’m just gonna cross over there and push it.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“I know I shouldn’t doubt your ability to cross quite a lot of fire traps, but how?” Eran wonders.

“I’ve been working on something at your suggestion that I’m dying to try out in practice,” I say. “Possibly literally, but that’s okay! Here, watch this!”

I call upon my light powers, focusing my Aedric light into a shield around me rather than a spear or a cluster of javelins, and go to test it against the edge of the fire. It holds, for long enough that I could just keep casting it at least.

“Sun Shield,” Merry decides to call it.

“Oh come on, I was gonna call it ‘Blinky Barrier’,” I say.

Merry sighs. “As you say. I believe I would prefer a sort of barrier that does not blink, but you may do as you wish.”

“In case it’s not enough, can I get a healing-over-time spell, Gelur?”

“Right-o!” Gelur says, casting.

I recast my Blinky Barrier and charge through the traps, and emerge on the other side unscathed. I hit the button. The traps continue to whoosh.

“Well… crap,” I say.

“What else is ahead?” Eran calls across.

I take a peek into the next hallway. “Lots more traps!”

“Right… we’ll leave that to you!” Eran replies. “We’ll go back outside and kill some more Colovians.”

“Sure thing!”

“Save Raz!” Ilara calls. “Promise this one!”

“I promise!” I tell her.

I cross the next room full of traps, and honestly, Blinky Barrier almost feels like cheating. The spikes make me stumble but don’t penetrate. It’s not terribly fun, and definitely not as fun as self-immolation, but I suppose sometimes actually getting done what needs to be done trumps having fun doing stupid things.

At the end, I find Raz, but there’s a fancy metal grate between us. He starts babbling about how I can get the circlet and destroy it, but doing so will for some reason make the complex collapse on top of him. Which also seems like an incredibly stupid design decision on the part of the Ayleids if that’s even true. And I can poke a constellation next to the door to open it and free him and his compatriots, but it would power down the furnace for some reason and that would prevent the circlet from being destroyed here.

I sigh and give the Khajiit a long look. “Raz, you’ve asked me to do some pretty stupid things, but this is by far the stupidest.”

“The circlet is dangerous and must be destroyed!” Raz insists. “Its existence is an abomination!”

“Raz, I highly doubt that this trinket does what the Colovians told us it does,” I say. “Any ordinary crown, scepter, or throne could be said to confer dominion over people, but it’s generally strictly symbolic. If the Ayleids were somehow capable of making such a thing, why did they not use it? Why did the Tribunal not use it? Or the Daedric Princes? Why have none of the books I’ve read on Ayleids and artifacts ever even mentioned it?”

“Raz does not know, but it is not worth the risk.”

“In any case, even if it doesn’t magically turn every Altmer, Bosmer, Dunmer, Orc, Khajiit, Breton, and Chimer alive into a slave hive mind, it very possibly does have some sort of enchantment for suggestion or speechcraft or the like. And once again, I highly doubt that it can only be destroyed here. If I were to strap to my body every object I’ve run across that was supposedly indestructible barring specific means, I’d be invulnerable. And also incapable of moving.”

“Raz does not know of any other means to do so, but he admits he is not a mage.”

“And,” I go on. “And! Considering the Colovian I spoke to seemed more interested in making sure you died than in making sure they got their hands on it, I feel like this was a deliberate trap for you.”

Raz is quiet at this.

“I assume there’s some reason you didn’t simply portal out of there?” I ask.

“Interference from the ruins,” Raz says, shaking his head.

“Sorry, Raz,” I say. “I promised your sister I would save you. And this whole situation is unspeakably stupid.”

The grand circlet of overblown doominess gets shoved into my pack, and I poke the star symbol to release Raz and company. He’s still upset about this all, but doesn’t hesitate to take the opportunity to escape while he can.

I head out the way I came in. Whatever I just pushed must have been the “off” button to the entire facility, since all the traps are off now. I meet up with Raz and my friends outside of the ruins, and they’ve managed to get the Colovians on the run in the meantime.

“You should have destroyed it!” Raz berates me.

“Oh for fuck’s sake, we went over this,” I say with a sigh. “Not only do I think this was a trap, but I doubt the Ayleids would have used the word ‘elven’, either.”

“Give it to Raz and he will have to find a way to destroy it himself,” Raz says sourly.

“I’m going to have someone I trust identify it and see what can be done with it,” I say. “Even if it is some artifact of doom, it’s safer at the bottom of my pack than anywhere else.”

Raz continues to grumble.

“You are welcome to come with me if you want,” I say.

“You can do that now?” Eran asks.

“I’m fairly certain at this point that I’ve figured out the trick to it,” I say. “But Raz implied that they do have a portal mage on hand, considering he got here ahead of us and they couldn’t portal out of the ruins.”

“True,” Raz says. “Fine. Let us go see your friend.”

Raz’s portal mage hasn’t been to Vastarie’s tower or the Ayleid ruin near it, unsurprisingly, but is able to get us to the Elden Root temple nearby. We’re able to get to the tower from there expediently enough.

Introductions and debriefing take much longer than Vastarie’s examination of the object, but fortunately I’m able to pass it off to her first before the Five Minus One Companions can start any stupid arguments about absolutely anything.

“This circlet has nothing more than a light enchantment on it,” Vastarie declares.

“But what of the incantations to unlock its powers Raz saw mention of in the ruins?” Raz wonders, working up his muzzle into a puzzled expression.

“I do hope you didn’t risk anything too important to retrieve this trinket,” Vastarie says. “Because its only power is to make a rather impressive spotlight or halo. It might make a lovely harmless addition to a museum.”

Raz glances aside at me as if silently asking how reliable this is, then sighs. “Raz was so sure… Dark Moons, those wily Colovians. How could they have set up something like this?”

“What did they do?” Abnur asks.

“Abnur, are you terribly attached to your nephew, Javad?”

Abnur sighs. “Have you killed him? I always thought that idiot would come to a bloody end.”

“Not yet,” I say. “But seeing as he has decided to challenge the Aldmeri Dominion, I don’t give him a good life expectancy.”

We briefly outline the situation at Senalana and what the Colovians claimed the circlet could do.

“That’s ridiculous,” Vastarie says. “Not even the gods could do something like that.”

Abnur muses, “Still, setting up a trap like that would have required someone with more competence and knowledge of Ayleid magic than your average Colovian soldier. With Neri’s question, I suspect that my wayward nephew had his hand in it. He is petty and cruel, and it would not surprise me to hear that he set up such a thing and sacrificed many of his troops just to take revenge upon one single enemy.”

Raz wasn’t happy about me refusing to sacrifice him over something so stupid, and now he’s on the verge of snarling in anger something about “that dull-clawed shaveskin” something or other.