I don’t know what Vicereeve Pelidil promised her, but Harrani signed a treaty with the Aldmeri Dominion in due order. I’ve returned Mizibir’s ledger to him and let him know he can come out of hiding. I hope the Dominion can live up to their promises. I’m putting a lot of faith into an organization I know little about, aside from the fact that they seem to be a better prospect than the Maormer. I like Razum-dar. I liked the Silvenar. I just hope they’re good representatives of what I can expect of the Dominion.

I, for one, am glad for a chance to eat, rest, and maybe read a book or two, before the next disaster rolls in. Because I’m quite sure we haven’t heard the last of the Maormer, and don’t consider their subsequent disappearance to be a good sign. This feels like the calm before the storm.

“The Maormer are attacking Cat’s Eye Quay!” says a frantic Khajiit. “Commander Karinith needs everyone who can fight. Grab your gear and get over there. Zaeri must find more fighters.” She runs off before I have a chance to say anything.

Completely unsurprised, I grab my battle axe, Headache, and make my way to the docks posthaste. It’ll be good to get a chance to hit these fetchers. When I meet up with the commander at the entrance to the quay (what’s a quay, anyway? is that another word for dock, pier, and wharf?) she tells me to go find survivors in the trade district.

Reports from survivors indicate that the sea elves are carving runes into people’s skin, which sounds like it’s going to result in quite a bit of trouble. More ritual sacrifices? Another storm? Oh, and they have giant snakes with them, because of course they have giant snakes, why wouldn’t they have giant snakes?

I find the Dominion marines I’d rescued from the beach planning a counterattack along with the mages from the Temple of the Mourning Springs, and it’s good to see them here too. I’m already feeling better about our chances here.

“I fear they’re planning on some sort of ritual, possibly conjuring another hurricane, or worse,” I say. “Like… a bigger hurricane. I don’t know.”

“They’ve brought dire sorcery to bear on Mistral,” Rurelion says.

“This sort of magic is beyond me,” I say. “I can cut a swath through the attacking forces, but I’ll need someone at my back who knows about ritual magic and how to counter it. Rurelion, are you up to a fight?”

“I’m skilled in battle magic and healing, and not just laboratory work and rituals,” Rurelion says. “I can handle myself. Lead on. I have your back. Gathwen and Sergeant Firion can guard the gate behind us and make sure none of those pirates get through.”

“Unless they can levitate, in which case we have bigger problems than a bunch of sea elf pirates,” I say. “But I’m betting any of their mages capable of levitating are busy with their ritual. We’d best hurry.”

Rurelion and I head into Cat’s Eye Quay. I’ve been itching for a chance to split some of these sea elves’ smug faces, after seeing what they did to the Silvenar. I spear a few of them with Blinky as well, which gets some odd looks out of Rurelion.

“What sort of magic is that?” Rurelion wonders. “It doesn’t look like any sort I’m familiar with, and that’s saying something.”

“Dunno,” I say. “I got it after absorbing several Skyshards.” I hurl another spear of light at a sea elf charging at us with a sword. “It seems to be Aedric in nature, but beyond that, I couldn’t tell you. We can experiment with it once we’re done here if you like. The Maormer are a bit more of a pressing matter.”

“Yes, of course,” Rurelion says.

Along the way, we locate a few survivors and send them back toward town, but there’s a lot of dead, and many of them are covered in ritual carvings. Also the sea elves have put up more of those stupid snake statues for some reason. I hurl an Aedric spear at one of them and knock off a good chip. That probably won’t help anything any, but it felt good.

We run across a Khajiit with a concussion, and I let Rurelion heal him a bit as I question him. He’s complaining about how his group that totally wasn’t skooma smugglers had paid protection and even let them put weird totems in the cave, but the Maormer had come in and slaughtered them anyway.

“What’s the point of signing bad treaties and paying protection if they’re just going to kill people anyway?” I say.

“Yes, indeed. Never again! You can’t trust them at all.”

“Has the ringing subsided?” Rurelion asks.

“The head feels much better now,” the Khajiit says. “Listen, there was a high elf wizard trying to get into the caves, so they collapsed the entrance. He gave me this note.” He passes it to Rurelion.

“Is there another way inside?” I ask.

“I think there’s a secret door by the cliffs. I’m going to run for safety now. Good luck! You’ll need it.” He absconds.

After a bit of searching, we find a tunnel under one of the buildings. Inside, we run into everyone’s favorite mage, Ealcil. I’d really been hoping that the Khajiit had been talking about a different high elf mage. I feel like Ealcil is as likely to make things worse as better. Unfortunately, we’re out of options at the moment. And of course, he appears to be experimenting with some snake statues that have lightning running up and down them.

“Ealcil, what are you doing?” Rurelion asks.

“Oh, hello, Rurelion,” Ealcil says. “I am studying what the Maormer are doing here. A combination of wind and spirit magic, blood sacrifices on a massive scale. That hurricane that destroyed our fleet was but a puff of wind compared to what they are doing now.”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“I hope you’ve also figured out a way to stop it, too,” I say. “I shudder to think what they could possibly need this many blood sacrifices for.”

He starts going on about how the Maormer use magic rocks to direct the energy through their snake totems and I don’t even slightly understand half of what he’s saying but it’s also looking like I’m the only one here dumb enough to actually test out whether his hypothesis is accurate or whether it’s just likely to fry whoever tries it to a crisp. The worst that could happen is that I need to find a way to escape Coldharbour again, and that’s worth it for a chance to help these nice cat people.

Fortunately, waving the magic rock at the snake statue turns off the lightning just like it did the ones on the beached ship at Shattered Shoals. Ealcil seems smug that it worked but I refrain from comment. Rurelion is more skeptical, not that I can blame him. We have no better options right now, however, than to fight our way through the cave and deactivate totems as we go.

Once out of earshot, Rurelion mumbles, “Ealcil means well, but he can be rather… ah…”

“Smug? Arrogant? Reckless? Careless? Self-centered? Obsessive? Guar-headed? Annoying?”

Rurelion chuckles softly. “One or more of those, perhaps.”

The entire cave is flooded enough that we’re trudging through ankle-deep water, and a chill wind swirls about the tunnels bringing with it enough energy to make the airs on my arms stand on end.

There’s a lot of storm totems, and once we’ve deactivated them all, we receive a telepathic message from Ealcil and gods-damn but I didn’t want that mer in my head. Apparently he’d used a magic projection spell thing to find out what they were planning, and it’s incredibly stupid. The Maormer have summoned a storm atronach, a dangerous enough creature by itself, and are dumping all the energy from the ritual sacrifices into it until it explodes in a blast that would destroy half the island and everything on it except the thunderbugs, which would probably be fine.

“Won’t that kill any of the Maormer that are still nearby, too?” I wonder.

“Probably, but I never claimed they were sane,” Ealcil’s projection says. “Maybe they have some way of protecting themselves, but it doesn’t matter.”

He goes on to say something about how I can use the magic rock to unbind the storm atronach, which will make the energies dissipate in a slightly less explosive manner that still probably wouldn’t be a good idea to be near, but wouldn’t destroy the island and kill everyone. And then before he dispels the projection, he mentions how he’s going to teleport himself into open ocean a safe distance away and tread water until it’s safe.

“That guy would make a terrible Nord,” I mutter as we hurry to the exit.

“Not the most courageous of choices, yes, but at least he got us some important information,” Rurelion says.

“Yes, helpful, in a way that keeps him a safe distance away from anything dangerous. Ugh. Let’s deal with this storm thing.”

Ritual platforms, horns spewing lightning, oh, and giant snakes, lots of giant snakes.

“I’m really starting to hate snakes,” I say. “Rurelion, watch my back but I want you to be able to get to cover before I disrupt the last binding. Don’t worry about me.” As he starts to protest, I remind him, “I got out of Coldharbour once. I can do it again. Keep yourself safe. Gathwen would be heartbroken.”

“But—” he begins, then thinks better of it. “Very well. But be careful.”

As the bindings break one by one, the winds become increasingly chaotic and it’s hard to keep my footing, never mind fight fucking giant snakes and crazed sea elf mages at the same time. Once I’m sure Rurelion is safely out of the way, I unleash the final binding. The storm atronach yells something about how people were idiots to try to bind it and I can’t argue with that sentiment.

A blast of powerful wind knocks me off my feet and lightning surges through me.

…

I wake up next to a wayshrine, look about and realize I’m back in Mistral. I check to make sure I’m not naked.

Nope, totally naked. Every time one of the Soul Shriven died in Coldharbour, we woke up naked, because of course Molag Bal wouldn’t award us with the dignity of clothing. I’m quite sure that I had to have died back there on the beach, but this clearly is not Coldharbour. And why the wayshrine?

Speculation can wait. Rurelion might have an idea on what happened. However, clothes first. Fortunately, people are too busy panicking and hiding from the Maormer attack to care about the naked not-Altmer running through the streets. Fortunately, one of the trader carts near the wayshrine is peddling clothing and the vendor is nowhere in sight, and I consider a pair of pants to be fair repayment for having saved all their tails.

I make my way back to Cat’s Eye Quay, fulling prepared to punch teeth out of any Maormer that are left alive here, but the fighting has ended and survivors are gathered about the beach resting and tending to the wounded.

“This one has searched the whole beach and found no sign of him,” Razum-dar is saying.

“He was right behind me but insisted I get to cover first,” Rurelion says. “You didn’t even find a body?”

“Not even his axe,” Razum-dar says. “He must have been blown straight out into the water by the blast.”

Gathwen spots me first. “Neralion!”

“Ah!” Razum-dar says. “The conquering hero returns unscathed!”

“Rurelion,” I say quietly. “Would you cast that spell to prevent eavesdropping? There’s something important I need to ask about and I don’t think it can wait. You three can hear this, though.”

“Of course, Neralion,” Rurelion says, waving a hand. “Done.”

“Gathwen, I’m not sure what you’ve inferred by now, but I was sacrificed to Molag Bal a few thousand years ago and have been trapped in Coldharbour ever since, but managed to make an escape with the help of an old mage and a Skyshard.”

Gathwen seems suitably amazed and impressed by all that, but Rurelion is just going on thoughtfully about the puzzle.

“Skyshards contain Aetherial energy,” Rurelion says. “Aedric in nature. That sort of essence would have allowed you to manifest outside of Oblivion.”

“I didn’t just get blown into the water when I unbound that storm atronach,” I say. “Well, maybe I did but it wasn’t for long. I wound up at the wayshrine. Somehow. I’m pretty sure I died and didn’t wind up in Coldharbour for some reason. Not that I’m complaining, mind you.”

“Hmm,” Rurelion says. “Perhaps the Aedric energy in the Skyshards that now infuses you drew you back to the wayshrine rather than let you return to Coldharbour? They are shrines to the Aedra, after all. If you lit them with your own magic, you may have forged a connection with them, or perhaps you were simply drawn to the closest one.”

“If that’s the case, I’m definitely not going to argue,” I say.

“Wouldn’t that make you effectively immortal?” Gathwen asks.

“Don’t tell me that,” I say. “I might start doing incredibly stupid things. Do you have any idea how many stupid things I did in Coldharbour because I knew I’d just come back anyway?”

“I would imagine,” Gathwen says. “Or maybe I’d rather not.”

“You’d really rather not,” I assure her.

“So, what Raz is getting out of this is that he should be asking you to do incredibly dangerous things?” Razum-dar asks with a feline smirk.

I grin wildly. “Yes, that would be absolutely fantastic. However, is there a spell to conjure pants? And has anyone seen my axe?”

“It must have fallen in the water,” Raz says. “But not to worry! Raz is certain that a reward is due you from Mistral’s armory in gratitude for saving us all.”

“There is likely a variant of bound object spells that would do what you want,” Rurelion says. “It is not my specialty, but you should ask at a mages guild when you get a chance. That might help to avoid embarrassing situations.”

“Okay, great,” I say. “Well. Now that that is cleared up, or something, I notice somebody has opened up a keg of something probably alcoholic. I’m going to celebrate never going back to Coldharbour.”

“Definitely something to celebrate,” Raz agrees.