“The moon priests said they’d take care of Ezreba,” Ilara says. “Assuming you haven’t already forgotten about her.”

“I remember!” I insist, and quote, “Anchorite Gaius, our spies determined that a couple of Khajiit named Ezreba and Hizurrdo are the closest bonded pair in Greenhill…”

“Ah, yes, your new blessing,” Ilara says. “Does it require you to write things down first before you will remember them?”

“I think so,” I say, thoughtful as I head for the wayshrine. “Huh. His name was Hizurrdo. Poor fetcher.”

I plan to spend the night back at Dra’bul, with time enough to rest after dealing with everything. The wayshrine in the middle of Rawl’kha gives no excuse for not visiting. First, though, I teleport to Marbruk and visit Sahira-daro. I need to drop off some books and I’m quite sure she’ll be thrilled to hear about the blessing Shalidor gave me.

“Fascinating!” Sahira-daro says. “That would be quite the useful thing to have. And Shalidor himself gave it to you and only you personally?”

“I have to wonder how much of it was thanks for getting his stupid island back, and how much was getting frustrated about me constantly forgetting things. Probably equal parts both.” I frown faintly. “The results from trying to remember anything before I went to Coldharbour, however, were muddled. I didn’t do much reading in Coldharbour but what scraps I could remember from there were fine.”

Sahira-daro nods. “That may not be the only problem you have. Or we have.”

I raise an eyebrow. “We can never get enough problems, I suppose. Did you learn something in your studies?”

“When Sahira-daro read the book you brought back from Reaper’s March, the Discourse Amaranthine, she received knowledge from it. The research she has been doing and consultations with experts around Tamriel would support it as well. Sahira-daro believes we may still be in a Dragon Break.”

“How do you think?” I ask.

“There is something wrong with Time,” Sahira-daro goes on. “Books appear that have yet to be written. Events as you see them playing out may not be quite what they will be once the Dragon Break is resolved.”

I pause, frowning, and think back through all the books I’ve read with Shalidor’s memory spell. Even the ones where I was high off my arse when I read them.

… been there a long time, yet the printer’s sigil notes its publication date as “4E 195.” This is obviously a transcription error. I think.

“Does that mean everything I’m doing is for nothing?” I wonder.

Sahira-daro shakes her head. “Not necessarily.” Her whiskers droop. “Sahira-daro wishes to contact the Psijic Order regarding the matter, but expects no success. They are… reclusive, but they are the only ones who may be experts in this field, if anyone is. Neri, should you run across them in your travels…”

I nod. “I’ll keep an eye open, although if they’re that reclusive, I have a feeling that it would more be a matter of them contacting us than the other way around. Probably if they need me to kill or find something for them.”

“Sahira-daro believes we are still in the Red Moment,” she says softly. “You are still at Red Mountain.”

My blood goes cold and I hear the backbeat of the Doom Drum in my mind along with a familiar song. I squelch it as well as I can with the tune the Rawl’kha priest taught me. The last thing I need is Sahira-daro turning mathra on me.

“How do I ensure that this version of reality is the one that prevails?” I ask.

“Do you wish to do so?” Sahira asks. “In this version of reality, you were trapped in Coldharbour for thousands of years.”

“Yes,” I say. “I was, and I do. Yes, it was bad, but I emerged from it stronger, and I’m happy now. I’d like to keep being myself.”

“All yourselves are yourself, of course,” she says with a chuckle. “But this one understands. She does not relish the thought of the other possibility, the one in which the Vestige gave her the books on Khenarthi’s Roost and they consumed her. But one thing is clear from what she has learned: You might not have been meant to be the Vestige who escaped from Coldharbour.”

I frown deeply. “Then who was? Theryn Teldras? Tom Gautier? Someone else entirely?”

“Perhaps. A wound in Time called for a Hero to fill a hole,” Sahira-daro explains. “A blank, letting light through from beyond, faceless and nameless. It could have been anyone of any race, any gender, any skillset.”

“So it still could have been me?”

“Perhaps,” she purrs. “This one saw only the light-filled gap. She will do more research. If she can learn how to ensure that we remain us before she goes mad from the revelations or causes herself to cease to exist, she will let you know.”

“Good luck,” I say with a sigh, wondering if I ought to have accepted the mad book Sheogorath offered me or whether it would have helped anything at all.

If we are still in the Red Moment, then not only am I in danger should my ex-friends discover that I have escaped from Coldharbour, but they might still be able to do something to ensure this entire timeline doesn’t happen. And I hate them so fucking much for forcing me to think about timey-wimey bullshit.

…

“Are you leaving the town by the west bridge intentionally?” Eran asks.

“Yep!” I say cheerfully, quite well-rested from my break in Dra’bul and very firmly not thinking about time shit. “I even have a good excuse! Someone at the Mages Guild mentioned that an expedition led by Telenger had run into problems with cultists at the Falinesti Autumn Site. I love/hate cultists!”

“By which you mean you enjoy hitting them,” Eran says. “Sounds very important. Let’s do it.”

Merry sighs. “Hopefully we won’t have to deal with Telenger personally.”

Heading due west from Rawl’kha, we come to a basin that’s decidedly lacking a giant walking tree city. I can sense a Skyshard at the bottom of the cliff and go straight to it, ignoring a Bosmer man sitting on the ledge yelling to me “Look out!”

“Don’t worry, he does this all the time,” Eran says, laughing softly.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

“I’m fine!” I yell up, healing myself and going to absorb the Skyshard.

“We’ll go around,” Eran says.

We meet up at the camp, although it’s more like there are two camps set up next to one another. On the near side of the road, leather tents house the Falinesti Faithful, who are mostly Bosmer. (And one Nord, who, when he notices me looking at him, asks if I’ve never seen a Nord waiting around for a magic tree to show up.) One of the tents has a book titled The Legendary Scourge. (Summary: It’s a mace.)

On the far side of the road, a cluster of fancy Altmer-style tents comprises the Mages Guild expedition. I recognize Andewen, at least, from the expeditions in Auridon and Grahtwood, and she’s quite glad to see me even if it takes her a moment to realize it’s me under the Orc armor after I take off my helmet.

“I’m glad to see a team of competent people,” Andewen says.

“Someone in Rawl’kha mentioned you were having cultist problems?” I say.

She explains about how the Falinesti Faithful have vomited out a splinter group of lunatics who want to conduct some sort of unpleasant ritual or something to try to forcefully bring the tree city back to Nirn. Whatever it is they’re trying to do, they’ve made some magic rocks that are corrupting shit and keeping people out of the tunnels. Hopefully the situation here will be as easy to solve as breaking some evil rocks and smacking anyone that tries to stop me from doing so.

“Do you think these cultists know what they’re doing?” I wonder. “Could they be being mind-controlled, possessed, coerced, or stuff of that nature?”

“Hard to say,” Andewen says. “Usually the Falinesti Faithful been so reasonable, if a bit… spiritual. The sudden change in behavior of some of them is worrisome, though.”

“Merry can turn them to stone so they don’t hurt themselves,” I say. “We can figure out what to do with them after we get to the bottom of what’s going on here.”

“I suppose it beats stoning trolls for arena transport,” Merry drawls.

We bid Andewen farewell and head for the basin. A Bosmer hiding behind a rock wants samples from the caves below. Easy enough to do as we’re heading in there anyway. I delegate the task to Gelur and Ilara.

The corruption stones we’re looking for are located in small caves around the basin, and not the big caves that they’re blocking off the entrance to. These particular evil rocks are the size of my forearm, swirling with purple-black energy, and sitting atop tripods with cultists praying over them. They smash easily, and fortunately don’t keep swirling once they’re in tiny shards.

Once the corruption stones are destroyed and any cultists who might have bothered us have become rocky in a different manner, we’re able to gain access to the Halls of Ichor, which is a beautiful name for sap-filled tunnels Falinesti would take root in if it were here.

A note from Telenger indicates that he apparently turned many of the cultists into bantam guar.

“Guar,” Merry says with a shake of his head. “I could have done that, too. Fools are easier to deal with when they’re immobile, however.”

I cock my head at one of the small lizards. “They’re much cuter this way, though.”

When we meet up with Telenger himself, it appears that he’d also turned the leader of the Arbordawn cult into a guar. He doesn’t seem the least bit concerned about them. I don’t terribly blame him on that, though. It’s not like they’re a great threat to us either, aside from whatever trouble they’re causing with evil magic rocks.

“Merormo,” Telenger says flatly upon recognizing my companion.

“Telenger,” Merry replies.

“I take it you have been avoiding ill-advised experiments of late?” Telenger says.

“I have been quite busy providing magical assistance to these fine, upstanding adventurers,” Merry says. “I have, admittedly, been attacked by Daedra far more frequently than I ever was when conducting ill-advised experiments.”

I wave a hand. “Merry has saved quite a lot of lives.”

“… Merry?” Telenger repeats.

Merry groans and sighs. “It is just as well that I have gotten used to that silly nickname by now. Yes, Neri has difficulties with pronouncing names sometimes.”

Telenger explains how they’d discovered some Daedric ruins. And by “discovered” I mean that Telenger accidentally uncovered them with earth-moving spells when trying to excavate these tunnels. (No idea what they wanted in the tunnels in the first place.)

“Telenger, if I’ve learned anything in my travels, it’s that if you dig in any random location on the entire surface of Tamriel, you’re likely to hit ruins of something. Ayleid, Daedric, Dwemer, Khajiit, whatever.”

“Quite often true, yes,” Telenger says.

“What were you even hoping to find down here?” Eran wonders.

Telenger shows us where he’d found the ruins, past some large vines and down a tunnel. Across a ditch stands the entrance to a building with very familiar architecture.

“Yep, definitely Daedric,” I say. “Ooh, is that one of those hanging lamps in the archway there? I love those things! Let me see if I can get it down.”

Telenger rolls his eyes. “Here.” With a twitch of a finger, the chain snaps and the lamp falls to the ground. “Let us waste no more time. I will dispel this ward and we can go inside and investigate.”

When Telenger starts trying to break the ward, Daedra appear and attack us. It was completely expected, though, so I can’t exactly say it was an ambush or even slightly a surprise. We fight off the Daedra while Telenger breaks the ward. I scoop up the lamp and toss it into my pack once we’re not being attacked.

“Those were Spider Daedra,” I muse aloud as we head inside. “Is this a temple of Mephala?”

“Welcome to my web, little mortals,” says a feminine voice echoing through the halls.

“Ah, yep,” I say. “Hi, Mephala!”

The echoing voice bids me to come and speak with her. She appears in a room a bit further in, in the form of a transparent purple Spider Daedra. Everything she says is cryptic and useless, although it’s clear that she’s been manipulating these cultists who don’t actually seem to realize they’re working for a Daedric Prince and not just being overenthusiastic about getting their walking tree back.

(Although for all I know, Falinesti is in the Webspinner herself’s realm of Oblivion, the Spiral Skein. I don’t expect a straight answer out of her, so I don’t bother asking.)

Telenger is neither impressed nor even slightly respectful toward the Daedric Prince of Murder. I usually prefer not to be outright rude to Daedric Princes no matter how annoying they’re being. It doesn’t pay to antagonize them, even if they’re doing something bad. Usually, they’re not even terribly upset when you upset their schemes and some of them even respect when you slaughter their followers. Telenger seals up the temple again.

“Sorry about this rude Altmer, Mephala!” I yell right before we’re teleported back to camp.

I probably shouldn’t worry too much about pissing off another Daedric Prince. It’s not like she even knows who I am. Still. At least without her influence, the cultists may or may not come to their senses, once they’re de-stoned.

“You transformed the cultists into statuary, ‘Merry’?” Telenger says, looking down into the basin.

Merry winces at the nickname and clears his throat. “At Neri’s request, yes.”

“Hmph,” Telenger says. “Uncreative, but effective.”

“Yes, the bantam guar were quite creative,” Merry allows generously.

Telenger waves a hand and all the cultists revert to flesh. “I will need to leave some students behind to observe how they react now that they are free of Daedric influence.”

The cultists look quite puzzled over what just happened, although I don’t know how much of that is time suddenly passing and no longer fighting some adventurers and how much is the lack of Mephala’s webs over their minds.

Telenger is rambling something about planning for his next expedition and wanting to visit the planes of Oblivion again.

“Some friends of mine are planning an excursion to Coldharbour,” I say. “While I don’t really recommend the place as a vacation spot, I’m certain that they would appreciate having the great Artificer himself along.”

Telenger grunts. “I may consider it. Who are these friends of yours?”

“Let’s see,” I say. “There’s Vastarie and her apprentices, of course. Telacar’s around sometimes but he usually keeps to himself, since their relationship is still a little rocky.”

“You are friends with Vastarie?” Telenger says.

“We did free her from the Ayleid ruin where she’d been trapped for a century,” I say.

“I heard that Telacar had donated some minor trinkets to the Guild and Andewen said you were involved the matter,” Telenger says.

“There’s also Abnur Tharn, who is less of a dick than many of his relatives, Varen A…” I think back to the ‘chronicles’ they’ve been writing out. “Varen Aquilarios, who became a Moth Priest after Manny betrayed him and screwed over the world, some human warriors you probably haven’t heard of…”

Telenger ignores most of my rambling. He probably hasn’t heard of or doesn’t care about most of those anyway.

“I am intrigued,” Telenger says, perhaps just to shut me up. “Very well. I believe I shall take up your suggestion and contact Vastarie.”

We bring the dirt and water samples we’d collected to the man at the Falinesti Faithful camp who had requested them. I had expected that he might perform some tests or experiments on them, as he would if he were with the Mages Guild most likely, but instead he sets up a ritual of some sort that summons a transparent blue tree spirit. Well, Bosmer gotta Bosmer, I guess.