I’m still trying to find my way to Dawnbreak. It doesn’t help that these high elves don’t seem to believe in signs. It’s like they assume everyone is carrying around a map with a ‘You Are Here’ marker on it.

I wonder if I can buy a map somewhere that has a ‘You Are Here’ marker on it.

There’s a wayshrine not too far from Telenger’s camp, with a Skyshard near it, which I grab. By which I mean absorb, as I don’t feel like filling up my inventory with large chunks of magic sky rock.

Leaning up against the wayshrine is an injured mer with a corpse at his feet. He’s a member of the First Auridon Marines and has a very long name starting with R, so let’s call him Rolly. (Perhaps it’s just as well he’s too weak to protest.) The corpse is a former racist bandit, who have apparently taken his daughter, Palith. I silently commend Rolly for having greater naming sense with his child than his parents did with him.

I’ve absorbed a number of Skyshards, and decide to try turning some of that Aetherial energy into healing power, with some success! It’s a much stronger healing ability than my normal magic, and Rolly looks considerably better after I’ve hit him with it, although it’s hell on my meager magicka reserves. I can only cast it once before having to rest, but that’s fine. I’m not going to be any mighty combat healer, but maybe I can help a few people stay on Tamriel for one more day. If there’s a way to make that cast from my (much stronger) physical stamina, like my Aedric Spear does, I don’t know how it might be done. I’m still just experimenting blind with this power.

“These Veiled Heritance bastards killed my wife in Silsailen,” Rolly says. “I won’t let them take my daughter from me, too.”

I grimace. “Yeah, Silsailen was bad. And there’s way too many treasonous canonreeves on this island, but at least I put a stop to that one. You should know, it turns out High Kinlady Estre is actually the ‘Veiled Queen’. Be wary should you encounter her.”

“Estre,” Rolly spits. “Lorkhan take that woman for all the death and chaos she’s caused. Can you save my daughter? I have a potion of invisibility to help her slip away, if you can get it to her.”

This will be a slight detour, but stopping the racist bandits is what I’m out here to do. I agree, and toss the potion in my pack. Rolly directs me to a nearby tunnel. I readily kill the racist bandit sentries that had been stationed in the tunnel and make my way through.

The situation on the other side turns out to be a little more complicated than just racist bandits, as I discover when I encounter an Argonian of all things in a tent near the tunnel. Her name is Delves-Deeply (do female Argonians really have boobs or do they just stuff their shirts so us silly mammals don’t misgender them?) and she’s not particularly happy with the situation. The Ebonheart Pact is here, and while she should be treated as a free ally now, instead her magicka is bound and she’s still treated like a slave.

(Was I born a slave? Memory of my childhood is very foggy, but I could swear my dislike of slavery had some basis in experience.)

“You’re not with the Veiled Heritance, yes?” Delves-Deeply says. “And you’re certainly not with the Ebonheart Pact.”

“Well, maybe I’m secretly a long-lost Chimer who avoided being turned into a Dunmer due to being in Oblivion at the time,” I say lightly. “Though even if I hypothetically were, I’m still not exactly a huge fan of slavery. The Chimer enslaved their own kind before they ever encountered yours.”

“Will you help me?” Delves asks.

I hadn’t really planned on tangling with the Ebonheart Pact, but that was more due to not wanting to draw the attention of my former friends than having any particular sentimentality to the Dunmer from purely common ancestry. It’s not like I don’t also technically have common ancestry with the Altmer, too, and most of them are fetchers too. A beachhead deep in Dominion territory being uprooted by a perfectly ordinary Altmer warrior? No one is going to bat an eye at that.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I say. “I’m here to kill racist bandits, and if there happen to be gray racists as well as gold ones around here, I’ll deal with them too. The gold ones are bad enough without colluding with the gray ones too.”

Delves-Deeply hands me a crystal that can blow up the Pact’s magic supplies if it gets close, and also might hurt me. No problem. Even if it spectacularly blows up in my face, there’s a wayshrine just outside the tunnel leading into this valley.

“This arcane cargo,” I say. “Did the Pact bring it here for the Veiled Heritance?”

“Yes,” Delves says. “I’m not sure what they’re getting out of it, but they’ve brought many crates of cargo and have been offloading them here.”

“Right, that definitely needs to be stopped.”

I head into the valley, destroying cargo as I go while looking for where they’ve taken Palith. The crates of arcane goods burn with a lovely blue fire that makes it highly unlikely either group of racist bandits is going to be getting any use out of them. The first large ruin I go in and explore contains undead rather than racist bandits, although judging by a note near the entrance, they were wanting to take over the place. Seems they failed. Some of the Pact have managed to hole up inside, though.

I find Palith tied up in a room inside another part of the ruins. She asks me to rescue her brother as well, who has a long name starting with E, which immediately makes me revise my assessment of Rolly’s naming sensibility. I agree, especially considering I’m still going to be killing them and blowing up their shit anyway. She takes the potion and escapes.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

When I do find her brother, it turns out he’s not just an innocent victim in all this, either. He’s been giving military intelligence to the racist bandits.

I sigh. “Dammit, Eran. This is the sort of cause you’d commit treason over? Seriously? Do you have any idea what the racist bandits have been doing to this island? They killed your mother!”

Eranamo frowns and looks at the floor. “I didn’t know they were in league with the Pact. We can still get the information I gave them back.”

“The Pact nothing,” I say. “Auridon has been split down the middle and set on fire because of the Veiled Heritance before the Pact even became involved. Sea elves raid the shores using information the Heritance gave them, canonreeves turn against their people and set their own towns ablaze, and family members betray one another.” I pin him with a glare.

“I didn’t know,” Eran says. “I didn’t know any of that. I thought I was doing something good for my people.”

“We’ll discuss your poor judgment later,” I say. “I’m going to go get that intelligence and indiscriminately kill every racist in between here and there. It’s a pity I don’t have any kindlepitch left or I’d set their ship ablaze for good measure.”

“I have some of their uniforms that I hid,” Eran says. “We could sneak by.”

“No, I’m just going to kill them all. You are welcome to hide behind me and pretend you’re not with me. Also I still have some arcane cargo to destroy that I think I saw along the beach.”

Eran trails along after me as I cut a swath of destruction through the camp and make it to the ship. It doesn’t take him long to decide whose side he’d rather be on, and takes up a weapon and joins me. Once the last of the arcane supplies have been destroyed, we get to the ship. Below decks, the leaders of the gold-skinned racists and gray-skinned racists are meeting. Good to make sure their leaders have been wiped out at once. They die pretty quickly between us. The intelligence on the desk that Eran gave them looks like it had been a message to his father.

“So you stole your father’s post and handed it to these fetchers… why exactly?” I ask. “I’m still not clear on this.”

“What do you want me to tell you?” Eran asks.

“You probably don’t want to tell me the sort of racist guar shit any number of Veiled Heritance members have spouted at me right before I hit them with an axe,” I say as I head back up on deck. “You probably don’t want to tell me how Ayrenn is a false Queen and has betrayed her people by throwing in with tree-hugging short mer and flea-bitten beast mer. So yes, think long and hard about what you want to tell me here.”

Delves-Deeply has caught up with us and is waiting out on deck. Eran warily goes for his weapon upon seeing her, but I raise a hand and stop him.

“You are certainly thorough, my new friend,” Delves says. “It was not difficult to walk over the corpses you left to get here.”

“Who’s the lizard?” Eran wonders.

I elbow him hard. “Don’t call them lizards, Eran. What did I just tell you about racism is bad?”

“Sorry,” Eran mumbles half-heartedly.

“Delves, we killed the Pact captain,” I say. “Is there anything else we need to do to unbind you?”

“There’s a crystal in the aft cabin,” Delves-Deeply says. “Once it’s destroyed, then I will be free.”

The three of us destroy the crystal. Delves bids us farewell and casts a weird sparkly spell and disappears. Can’t say I’ve seen a teleport spell that looks like that before. Like stars in a cloud of mist.

“Eran, does your father know you stole his post?” I ask as we head out through the valley, which is now pretty peaceful aside from a couple stragglers I missed (and now take care of).

“It’s… entirely likely,” Eran says. “He’s not here, is he?”

“He’s waiting outside the tunnel,” I say. “And what am I to tell him, then? That his son is a traitor who deserves to be executed? Or shall I lie? You could hide out here until he’s gone, or slip around along the coast to make it to Skywatch, though you’d probably have to swim in a few places.”

Eran sighs. “You can tell him how helpful I’ve been? Surely I’ve made up for my mistakes.”

I give him a look. “You might be better off disappearing, changing your name, and moving to Skyrim.”

“How about Elsweyr?” he says meekly. “At least it’s warmer there.”

I grunt. “Look, I can speak up in your favor, but considering you’d likely be facing execution otherwise, I will consider it a life debt and will expect to be able to call on you later if I need you.”

“That’s definitely better than dying,” Eran says.

We head outside, where Rolly and Palith are waiting by the wayshrine. Rolly does not appear to be happy to see his ‘no-good son’.

“Sir, your son here successfully infiltrated the Veiled Heritance in order to put a stop to their activities in… what was the name of this place again?”

“Quendeluun,” Palith supplies helpfully.

“Quendeluun,” I repeat. “The Veiled Heritance were in collusion with the Ebonheart Pact and receiving shipments of arcane supplies. Thanks to Eran’s brave actions, we were able to destroy the shipments and kill two high-ranking members of both groups.”

Rolly and Palith are both silent for a long moment. Palith’s expression is unconvinced but realizing what I’m trying to do. Rolly seems like he wants to believe me.

“Who’s word is this on?” Rolly asks quietly.

“Neralion,” I say. “I’m one of the Eyes of the Queen.”

“I’ve heard of you,” Rolly says. “I’ve heard what you’ve been doing across the island. Fine. If that is what you will vouch for, then I am forced to believe you.”

Honestly, I’m not sure why I keep sparing these fools. Pity only goes so far. If this were Coldharbour, I’d just kill them and accept their contrition next time they emerge from the waters of Oblivion, but we’re not in Coldharbour and people don’t return from Aetherius quite so easily. Having an ally later who will do some stupid thing I need to ask of them might be worth a conditional pardon, though. I feel like I’m going to need allies more than examples.

Once out of earshot of her father, Palith thanks me for speaking up for her brother, bless her merciful soul. Rolly and Palith stay by the wayshrine to rest for a bit longer, but Eran follows me as I make my way back in the general direction of the main road.

“Where do you want me?” Eran asks. “Sir, I think? Should I call you sir?”

I shrug. “Would it make you more likely to listen to me?” I gauge the look on his face and smirk. “Probably not.”

“I guess I didn’t really follow the chain of command there, did I.”

“You most certainly did not,” I say. “Can I count on you at my back against more of these racist bandits? Or shall I just ship you off to Elsweyr?”

“I think I need to see for myself what you say they’ve been doing,” Eran says. “I’m willing to fight them.”

“Great,” I say. “I was on my way to deal with a potential situation in Dawnbreak when I took a detour that was totally not getting lost. I don’t suppose you can tell me how to get there? Because I’m still lost.”

Eran chuckles. “That I can definitely help with.”