After smashing the nearby Dark Anchor one more time (the fighters let me break the pinions this time), I run across a broken cart with a copy of The Lunar Lorkhan. Gods, I’m never asking for library delivery on this island.

There’s an Altmer woman nearby huddled next to a small campfire, who doesn’t notice or care that I picked up the book. She introduces herself by a name that is very long and starts with an E. She tells me about how the Queen’s entourage (thankfully not including the Queen) has been kidnapped by a mad mage and taken to a nearby tower, and begs me to rescue them.

“The Queen’s not going to be happy to hear about this,” I say. “Although more so if she had to send someone else out to deal with it. Well, that’s what I’m here for.” I pull out my journal. “So who exactly am I rescuing?”

She tells me a few names. Twisty, long high elf names.

“… Could you spell those?” I ask.

“Sorry, I’m bad with names,” E-name admits.

“I can relate, hence the journal,” I say with a sigh and put it away. “Alright, I’m just going to assume I need to rescue anyone there that isn’t a mad mage.”

“I think I’ve met him before, too, but I don’t remember his name,” E-name says.

“I’m sure he’ll make it obvious which one he is,” I say. “I’m going to see about getting inside this tower.”

“If you can find it.”

“I’m going to see about locating then getting inside this tower,” I amend.

“He teleported them there, so it might even be someplace you can’t reach on foot.”

“I’m sure I can manage,” I say. “It’s not like I can’t use my hands and feet to ascend a steep slope, right?”

“Ugh, you’ll get your hands dirty,” she cringes.

I try very, very hard not to roll my eyes. Damned high elves. She does give me a handful of teleport scrolls to get them out if I find them. I wonder if I can buy these at market? They’d be very useful, although I can’t imagine wanting to pay money to go places unless I have to or I’m in a serious hurry. I seem to have been in a serious hurry a lot lately.

As it turns out, I don’t have to climb any rocks, just run through a tunnel full of giant bats. Always fun! Do you know how hard it is to hit flying creatures with a battle axe? Quite the challenge! It’s great fun!

The tunnel opens up in a high mountain valley with a small tower, an overgrown well, and far more wolves than I would have expected in such a small area. Inside the tower, I find a high elven woman who is rifling through a pile of junk mumbling to herself about rare trinkets. When I approach her, she gets wary and declares all the junk to be hers.

“Are you a mad mage?” I ask.

“What? No,” she says. “I’m not a mage, and I’m certainly not mad. Say, could you give me your battle axe? It’s probably worth a decent amount of coin.”

“No,” I tell her firmly. “Are you a member of the Queen’s entourage, then?”

“Oh, yes!” She introduces herself. Her name is very long and starts with an L. She tells me how a mage teleported them there, and his name is very long and starts with an S. I keep having to redirect her from coveting everything I’m wearing. I’m hoping that’s because of some enchantment on her mind and not because she’s normally this creepy.

“Do you know where the others are?” I press.

“I haven’t seen them since they refused to give me their pants,” L-name says. “Are you sure you won’t give me yours?”

“No,” I repeat.

“What about those scrolls?” L-name asks. “They have to be very valuable.”

“N—actually, you’ve talked me into it,” I say. “But I’m only willing to part with one of them, I’m afraid. Here you go.”

I pass her one of the teleport scrolls. She grabs it greedily, reads it and disappears, thereby becoming somebody else’s problem.

A projection of a bald elf man appears in the middle of the room. “Congratulations on distracting that accountant.”

“That’s me,” I say cheerfully. “Ruling king of distractions.”

S-name then goes on about how he ensnared the members of the entourage with their personality flaws or something, in order to… I don’t know, experiment on them? Honestly I’m not sure what he’s hoping to accomplish here and this whole setup sounds stupid, but hey, that’s why I’m not a mad mage, just a mad warrior. And as a mad warrior, hitting him in the face sounds like great idea.

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It looks like it’s going to be harder to rescue the others than it was for L-name. S-name tells me that he’ll open portals to… their minds? Pocket worlds? Whatever. I really hope I’m going to get to hit him later. He’s kind of obnoxious.

The first location (or something) that I find myself in is full of lava and fire atronachs, which apparently represents the rage of someone with a very long name that starts with an M. It’s rather pleasant, actually. It reminds me of the Ashlands, right down to the flowering trees. I don’t know why an Altmer has the Ashlands in their mind, but I guess that was the best way this mad mage could think of to represent rage for some reason. I locate M-name, and after beating the shit out of the manifestation of her rage, hand her a teleport scroll and really hope it’ll actually work wherever we are. She does disappear, so I guess it worked.

Next up, S-name opens a portal to a cave full of large mushrooms and winged imps. After looking around a bit, I locate an Altmer man who is completely enamored with a woman he has completely failed to notice is blue and transparent. Around him stands a couple of bookshelves and a bunch of alchemy equipment, and he mumbles something about recipes involving mushrooms before getting distracted with discussing his impending marriage to… whatever that thing is.

I locate his journal and pack, containing information about the properties of mushrooms and a recipe for a magic resistance potion that he believed would protect him from illusions and mental manipulations. Excellent! I quickly copy the information into my own journal because he’ll probably want his own back. And might not want to part with his secrets if he were in his right mind. Also according to the journal (since he didn’t bother to introduce himself and I forgot) his name is Merion, so at least one of these mer has a name shorter than four syllables.

Collecting the mushrooms from the cave is quite relaxing, since I get the chance to hit some imps and giant bats along the way. I return to the little alchemy lab and make the potion. Merion refuses to drink it, so I just throw it at the spirit, and for some reason that works and she dissipates like blue smoke. Well, whatever works. He seems to be much more lucid now (also remembering that he’s already married) so I give him a scroll and he disappears. S-name’s projection starts taunting me about how cruel I am to deny true love or something like that and I really want to hit him in his stupid, smug face at this point.

The final area is an ice cave that wouldn’t look out of place somewhere in northern Skyrim. The things I do for the Queen. Here I find a man with a long name that starts with an N, as if I didn’t already have an N-name to try to keep track of in the vicinity. This cave represents his despair or something, and he wants me to warm things up and my shitty fire spell isn’t good enough for him. Not that I can blame him for that.

According to a note I find while exploring the ice cave, S-name was apparently a former member of the royal inner circle and was expelled. It doesn’t clarify why but given what I have seen of the man already, I can imagine it was because he’s a fucking lunatic. I locate some suitable kindling and get a fire started in front of N-number-two (it’s something like Nuletil but I just know it’s not spelled anything close to that), and he becomes lucid enough to read a teleport scroll.

The last portal takes me to a small cave with some cages, and tools that I’d imagine might have been used as torture implements if someone were feeling particularly sadistic. S-name is here, not even bothering to taunt me anymore, not that I give him much chance.

“I have no idea what you were trying to accomplish here, but it was creepy and weird,” I say as I knock aside a summoned creature to get at him. If he were going to reply, he doesn’t manage to get anything out before I plant my axe in his stupid, smug face.

I search the area for interesting notes or journals and only then realize that this cave has no way out. Thankfully I still have one more teleport scroll, or this would have gotten really annoying. The scroll deposits me back outside next to the campfire.

“Alright, that sure was something,” I say. “Is everyone okay?”

“They seem to have gotten their wits about them again,” E-name says. “We’ll see about catching up to the Queen now. She’s got to be in Skywatch by now.”

“Probably,” I say. “I’m supposed to meet her there later myself.”

“Well, I’m glad she sent you to look for us,” E-name says. “I don’t want to think about what would have happened to them if you hadn’t found us.”

“Yep, yep, the Queen totally knew you were missing and asked me to find you,” I say.

“It’s a good thing that you weren’t affected by whatever sort of magic was placed over the tower as well.”

I snicker. “Maybe I was, and my inclination had been to solve everything by trying to hit it anyway.”

The sky crackles with dark thunder and the sound of a foghorn from hell splits the air.

“And the Dark Anchor is dropping again so I’m gonna go hit some Daedra.” I pull out my axe. “Safe travels. See you at Skywatch.”

After breaking yet another Anchor, I continue on. I find another chapter of Triumphs of a Monarch sitting outside of a cave. People are truly careless with their literature around here. I decide to take a look inside and see if there’s any of Merion’s mushrooms in there (or cultists or bandits or whatever). I didn’t think to collect extra, also I’m not sure how real half of that was but I do seem to have the notes I copied out.

The cave is full of spiders. No gleamcap mushrooms I can collect spores from, no cultists of dark gods I can hit with a battle axe, just spiders. Lots and lots of spiders. Spiders crawling in the tunnels. Spiders creeping in the corners. Spiders dropping from the ceiling. Webs covering everything. Oh, and a giant wasp nest! Now I can tell Raz I went and kicked over a giant wasp nest like he told me to. (He probably didn’t actually mean that literally.) And an insane, spider-loving Khajiit who is very annoyed at me for killing his pets, at least for the short time he remains alive after attacking me.

I’m really not one to speak for people’s sanity but it seems like today I’m proving to be the more rational one out of most of the people I’ve encountered lately who weren’t camping at a dolmen killing Daedra as they drop from the sky.

My obsession with exploring every random cave I stumble across is vindicated when I locate a Skyshard in the middle of another giant wasp nest. Next to a … tree? Growing in a cave? A shaft of sunlight streams in from overhead, so it seems like the gods have been playing ‘chuck the Skyshard in the hole’ again. I’m not going to complain. More power for me.

I’m not addicted. Really. But why would I refuse to use the Skyshards when I find them in front of me? It’s not like there’s any drawbacks. Are there?