“You know, if you’re supposed to be a secret agent of the Queen, you’re certainly not shy about telling that to random people,” Eran says.

I shrug. “I’m bad at secrecy.”

“Why did you stop at Quendeluun if you needed to be in Dawnbreak in a hurry, anyway?” Eran asks.

“I took a wrong turn on the way back to the main road from Ezduiin,” I say.

“Why did you stop in Ezduiin?” Eran wonders.

“Somebody said there was trouble there and it was right next to Skywatch,” I say. “Or at least within spitting distance, and it did sound like they’d done some spitting at some point. It was only a slight detour. I’m sure nothing terrible could have happened in Dawnbreak during whatever slight delay that might have caused.”

“You sure about that?” Eran points ahead of us, where we’re approaching the town.

Dawnbreak is swarming with Daedra. I’m going to take a wild guess that Estre has gotten here first and shown great love and support to her would-be subjects. Canonreeve Sinyon confirms that, and that she’d been here and left town just a few hours before the Daedra showed up. (Whether or not he was actually sympathetic to the Veiled Heritance, he is definitely not sympathetic to his town being wrecked by Daedra.)

At this point, I have no idea what the Veiled Heritance is trying to accomplish anymore. Upon seeing that we’re armed and not terrified of Daedra, Dawnbreak’s guard captain (by the name of Landare) sends me and Eran into town to try to find and rescue missing citizens.

“This is ridiculous,” I mutter. “What in Oblivion is Estre trying to do? It’s not bad enough just to be a traitor trying to assassinate the Queen, she’s got to burn everything down so that if she can’t have it, no one can?”

“This is the sort of thing the Veiled Heritance is doing,” Eran says hollowly as he strikes down a banekin. “You were right about them, and I want no part in trafficking with Daedra.”

“Have I told you the part about how their officers have to swear their souls on a black soul gem and then slaughter their rival candidates in combat?”

“Last week I’d have thought that just an exaggerated rumor…” Eran checks the body of an old man and shakes his head. “This one’s dead.”

We split up to cover more ground, as the Daedra still milling about town are not particularly dangerous types, and search the houses to find people. Some of them need to be persuaded to get out of here and stop looking for trinkets. I have to tell them that it’s highly unlikely that the Daedra are going to bother taking their stuff and they’ll be able to come back once it’s safe.

Once we’ve found who we can (and Eran has acquired a shield from somewhere), we head for the partially-collapsed manor house. There’s a Skyshard on top of a collapsed staircase. Eran, like most people, gives me an odd look as I absorb it but makes no comment. On the other side of the manor, we find Captain Landare and give her our report. As we’re debriefing, a frantic runner comes in with a report that the Daedra are back in force, and the building shakes and I really hope more of it isn’t going to collapse on top of our heads. Maybe this wasn’t such a great spot for the captain and her guards to hole up in. The manor is now half-collapsed and on fire.

We head out to relieve the marines. They’re fighting fire atronachs, not the toughest Daedra around but a good deal more so than the banekin we’d dealt with before. Once we’d dealt with that situation, the runner (whose name is Arti, plus some syllables nobody’s bothering with) runs up to us and tells us the captain ran off to fight the Daedra in some cave by herself.

“And is she as much of a one-mer army as me?” I ask.

“Two-mer,” Eran puts in. “I’m here too. And also awesome.”

I snicker and don’t bother arguing. It’s not like he’s bad. He just doesn’t have millennia of experience and a complete lack of fear toward the prospect of pain and death. Normal people always hold back and try to avoid hurting themselves, after all, and Eran is no exception. He acquits himself well enough with his sword-and-shield, but he’s just not crazy.

“She went in with a small group, but from the looks of things, she could really use your backup.”

We find the cave the captain went into and head inside, although I’m not particularly optimistic about her chances of survival. Little banekin dance over the bodies of dead mer. Only two of them are still alive by the time we catch up to the group, and one of those looks badly hurt. I hit the wounded mer with my new healing power. The nearby people promptly call it ‘Restoring Light’. And here I’d just been calling it Blinky. I guess Blinky can heal as well as stab things.

“Thank you, good sir, but you should save your magicka for the Daedra,” he says.

“I wasn’t going to be using magicka against the Daedra anyway,” I say. “I was going to hit them repeatedly with a battle axe until they stop being an immediate problem.”

“I overheard High Kinlady Estre speaking with the Daedra forces here by magical projection,” Captain Landare says. “They’re planning a massive summoning ritual. They have to be stopped!”

“Do you two feel up to a fight or do you want to get back to relative safety while we take care of it?” I ask.

“I believe I’m out of immediate danger thanks to your spell, but I’m far from one hundred percent,” the man says. “I can fight if I must.”

“Best stay behind me, then,” I say. “And be sure to move out of the way if a clannfear tries to leap at you.”

I charge ahead up the tunnel, plowing over several more atronachs and clannfears. There’s a pair of dremora in the last room, standing in front of a swirly red portal, and Estre’s voice is echoing from somewhere but I’m honestly not paying much attention to what any of them are saying, being entirely too busy hitting them in the face.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

Once the Daedra are down, the captain says, “They mentioned Firsthold…”

“Shit,” Eran whispers.

“We’ll need to send a runner to Skywatch to warn the Queen,” I say. “I’ll continue on north. Whatever they’re doing in Firsthold, we’re probably not going to want to let them do it.”

There’s a door in the back of the cave where I can see sunlight filtering through the cracks, and figure it must be a shortcut outside. It opens up onto a ledge five paces wide with a lovely view of town at the bottom of the cliff.

“Why would someone even put a door there?” I wonder.

“To keep out the rain?” Eran suggests with a shrug. “Maybe they really wanted a balcony.”

I’ve yet to see it actually rain in the time I’ve been in Auridon, but I suppose it must if the place is this green and lush.

“Best head out the other way,” Captain Landare says. “You cleared out all the Daedra on the way in, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, that should be safe,” I say. “I don’t feel like walking all the way around, myself.” I jump off the cliff.

“Neri!” Eran cries out in surprise.

“What?” I call back up as I heal the resulting bruises. “No big deal. Nothing’s broken.”

“You’re insane,” Eran says on the verge of laughing.

“Are you coming?”

Eran looks behind him, where the captain and the other guy (whatever his name was) have already gone out of sight, presumably to take the safe and sane way back down. He looks back to me and shrugs. “Sure, why not…” He leaps off the small cliff, although it winds up being more of a tumble and he lands face-first in the dirt. “Ow…”

“See, that wasn’t so bad.” I heal him as well. Then cast a cleaning spell on his clothes as he climbs to his feet. Man, if I learn a few more handy spells, I could call myself a wizard! Well, I could call myself a wizard now if I really wanted to, people would just find it very funny.

Eran is actually starting to laugh now. “You really are insane.”

“Never claimed I wasn’t,” I say lightly, heading off.

There’s a copy of Aedra and Daedra down by a fishing spot on the river bank (I wish I had time to fish) which I toss in my pack. At Eran’s question, I explain that I’m collecting books for a friend in the Mages Guild, although I have to wonder at the absent fishermer’s (or maybe fishercat’s) proclivity toward religion and philosophy (I assume, I didn’t actually open it and see what the book was about). I keep finding books in the strangest of places. I mean, I might not have even noticed if I weren’t specifically looking for them, but now that I’m looking for them it seems like high elves are both very literary and very careless with their reading material.

We circle the perimeter to make sure there’s no more Daedra stragglers around. While a flame atronach isn’t a particularly formidable foe to me, best that no civilians get caught by one. As it is, a number of wooden roofs and doors have suffered the inevitable consequences of flame atronachs meeting wooden roofs and doors. I feel that, deaths aside, the Veiled Heritance has been a boon to Auridon’s construction industry. It’ll probably get outsourced to Bosmer and Khajiit, though.

“How’d you get so good at fighting Daedra, anyway?” Eran wonders. “You seem to know all their tells. I’m not sure how you could be so agile with rolling out of the way of pouncing clannfears while wielding a battle axe.”

“Practice,” I say. “Lots of practice. With the way things are going, I think a lot of people are going to be getting lots of practice, too.”

Once we’ve secured the area, we meet back up with Captain Landare at the ruins of the manor house. Most of the others we’d rescued are nearby. One highly optimistic mer is sweeping with a broom, next to some collapsed masonry; I’m not sure why he bothers.

“We’ve cleared any remaining Daedra from the area,” I say. “What’s the situation here?”

“There’s been a lot of damage, and a lot of deaths,” Captain Landare says. “We’ll be rebuilding for some time, but at least there are people here to rebuild, thanks to you.”

I nod tersely. “Are there people in good enough shape for messenger duty?” I ask. “We need to send runners to Skywatch and Firsthold.”

“I’ll see to it,” Captain Landare says. “If you want to rest here for the night before getting on the road again, the two of you are welcome to sleep in one of the more intact buildings.”

“I think we’ll just sleep on the road,” I say. “I mean. Not on the road, as someone might step on us if they’re not paying attention, but beside the road. You know what I mean.”

I feel safer somewhere in the middle of not-particularly-dangerous wilderness than in buildings that may or may not be liable to collapse at any given moment, just because they look intact. The manor house is in really terrible shape at this point.

I’m probably developing some bad habits toward just laying down a bedroll anywhere I feel like it, and it will come back to bite me in the ass once I get somewhere more dangerous than fucking Auridon, whose primary danger is crazy racist bandits. Doubtful, though. I spent my life in a dangerous ash-choked wasteland full of giant bugs and my afterlife in a dangerous hellscape full of Daedra. Paranoia is pretty ingrained in my psyche about now.

I check my journal. “Before we go, have you seen someone named Karulae around here?” I ask Captain Landare. “My notes indicate they were headed for Dawnbreak.”

“Karulae? He left town shortly before the attack. Said he was going fishing up by the Isle of Contemplation. That’s not far from here.”

“Who’s Karulae?” Eran asks.

“Veiled Heritance officer,” I explain. “Probably was involved in the attack.”

“Damn, and I thought he seemed like an alright sort,” Landare says. “I hope you can catch him.”

She helpfully gives directions, and we leave town, promptly ignoring the directions to take a more direct route which only involves us getting wet. It’s a little out of the way, but best make sure this guy not be involved in any further racist bandit activity.

“Was it really necessary to swim?” Eran asks. “There’s a bridge right there.”

The Isle of Contemplation is painfully picturesque, with quaint wooden bridges and babbling brooks. Those purple water flowers are growing along the banks, and I grab a few of them real quick.

“Do we really have time to be picking flowers?” Eran asks.

“They’re for healing potions!” I protest.

“Water hyacinths can be used in healing potions?” Eran says. “Huh, I guess that’s useful.”

“They’re called water hyacinths?” I say. “Great, I’ll have to put that in my notes and cross-reference them with the ones I stole from the alchemist who was feeding people to a vampire.”

Eran stares at me. “What in Oblivion has been going on in Auridon?”

“A lot of stupid things that make me glad to have healing potions on hand,” I say. “Ah, there’s a guy fishing over there. That might be him.”

Karulae (presumably) drops his fishing rod and yells, “I was only following orders!”

I sigh. “Karulae, is it? Would you like to know how much damage was caused by you following orders? How many people did you have to kill in order to get your rank, anyway?”

He doesn’t bother to answer that, but he does fight back. He’s more skilled than I might have given him credit for, but he’s not even slightly a match for us. Once he’s dead, I head for the bridge leading back to the road.

“Are we just going to leave that here?” Eran asks.

“What?”

Eran points to the racist bandit’s remains. “The body? Or the pieces of it, at any rate. Somebody can come out here and contemplate why someone cut somebody into three pieces with a battle axe.”

“You were complaining to me about wasting time,” I say. “Auridon is already being littered with dead bodies as it is. If you really want to bury it or haul it back to town, you’re welcome to do so.”

Eran sighs. “No, not really, but we can at least tell Captain Landare. She’ll want to know the traitor is dead, in any case. And if somebody did run across it, they’d probably, you know, go to the guards. That’s one less murder for her to wonder about.”

“Granted. Fine. Back to Dawnbreak for a quick stop, then.”