Eranamo and I stop at a wayshrine up the road from Dawnbreak next to a watch tower. A nearby fancy bridge leads toward a large building which my map notes as the College of Aldmeri Propriety, and Eran confirms that. That kind of just makes me want to go in there and hit someone until they change the name of the place.

Near the bridge, a couple of Khajiit and a wood elf are talking and one of them mentions being afraid of being thrown in a cave if she’s late. Well, that sounds a bit unpleasant. I go up and ask a few questions and learn that the place basically exists for high elves to be racist toward Khajiit and wood elves. Aside from being generally detestable, this sounds like a breeding ground for the Veiled Heritance.

“We’re in a hurry to get to Firsthold to stop High Kinlady Estre from launching a full-scale invasion of the island, and you’re stopping to check out a college racism problem?” Eran says incredulously.

“It might be related,” I say weakly. “In any case, it’s not like it’s going to take more than a few hours, most likely. We need that time to slow down and rest. We’re not going to be in any shape to fight Daedra if we’ve sprinted the whole way there without sleep.”

“I doubt whatever we might wind up having to do here could be construed as ‘resting’,” Eran says.

“Besides, I only rescued you and your sister because I took a detour on the way to Dawnbreak.”

“And Dawnbreak was swarming with Daedra by the time we got there, too,” Eran points out.

I page through my journal. “Oh, wait. I’ve got a hit ordered on a Veiled Heritance officer who was last seen here. Fine, I’ll just pop in real quick to murder this guy and we can be on our way.” I pause. “Or lady? Is ‘Aranias’ a man’s name or a woman’s name?”

Eran gives me an incredulous look. “That sounds considerably sketchier than it probably is. Tell me that this is an order from the Eyes of the Queen and not the Dark Brotherhood?”

“Of course,” I say. “I’m not a member of the Dark Brotherhood yet. I wouldn’t even know how to contact them.”

“That would have been more reassuring without the ‘yet’,” Eran says. He goes up to the wood elf, Baham, and asks, “Excuse me, miss. The situation here sounds bad, but how urgent is it? We’re on our way to Firsthold to save the island from a Daedra invasion.”

Baham’s eyes widen. “By all means, go take care of that! We can handle a little unpleasantness.”

“Right, I promise we’ll be back to look into the situation here once we’re done hitting a Daedra-worshipping traitor,” I say.

The Prophet has been showing up in my dreams again wanting me to go to Vulkhel Guard to investigate something or other. Dammit, I’m on the other side of the island doing something pretty urgent. I’m sure whatever it is can wait, and in any case, Eranamo’s hardly going to let me run all the way back to Vulkhel Guard and he’s pretty insistent about me staying on task. I suppose I can’t really argue.

As we approach Firsthold, off to the left, the skies grow dark and the foghorn of doom heralds the falling of chains.

“By the Eight, what is that?” Eran breathes.

I pull out Stormy and run over that way. “So yeah, have I mentioned the bit about the Worm Cult and the Dark Anchors yet?”

“Like Estre isn’t bad enough, we have to deal with this too?”

The Fighters Guild members at the dolmen have the situation well in hand, and we barely manage to get in a few hits onto the Daedra before they break the anchor pinions and send the thing back to Coldharbour. (One of them has a weird bear with glowing blue eyes. What’s up with that?) I mention the situation in Firsthold to them and they agree that they care spare a couple people as backup if necessary.

We head up the road toward the bridge leading into Firsthold with a Khajiit archer and a petite Bosmer woman with a greatsword as big as she is (I have no idea how she even lifts it). A group of First Auridon Marines stand watch on the near side of the bridge, along with a handful of dejected refugees.

“Are we too late?” I ask.

“There’s a Daedric attack underway in the city,” one of the Marines says, taking a look at our weapons. “I hope you’re our reinforcements.”

“Yes,” I say. “I work for the Queen.”

“I work for this guy,” Eran indicates me.

“We work for the Fighters Guild,” the wood elf, Lariole, says. “I assume we’re getting paid for this, but, well, not like I won’t hit Daedra popping up where I happen to be.”

“I assure you, you will be compensated for any assistance to you can render. Battlereeve Urcelmo is trying to put together a plan to fight back these creatures. Meet up with him and he can tell you where he needs your group to be. Meet him at the Mages Guildhall. The local mages are trying to find a way to crack the ward High Kinlady Estre is hiding behind.”

We head into the city. Fighting in the streets is rampant, between clusters of Dremora and Altmer locked in deadly battle, where there aren’t bodies of Dremora and Altmer where one or another of them lost and won their battles. The four of us are able to cut a swath through the Daedra and relieve a number of marines along the way.

A fortified position has been set up at the Mages Guild. Altmer in heavy armor, but also wood elves in leather and a handful of Khajiit. And I’m pretty sure some of those are Eyes of the Queen. I recognize Battlereeve Urcelmo and approach him for his report. Needless to say, he’s glad to see me, and likewise glad that I’ve brought a few extra blades (and people wielding them).

He sends me inside to talk to someone named Sinien who has a plan involving a bunch of magic. Apparently the mages are going to stand here in the guildhall and think hard in the general direction of bad things, and she gives me a talisman to help focus what they’re thinking at in order to blow stuff up.

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We cut our way through town again (because more Daedra showed up in the five minutes our backs were turned) and I point the talisman at a pair of evil black rocks that are keeping the swirly orange barriers active and stopping us from getting into the middle of town. Once those are down, we head across one of the small bridges over the canals. Razum-dar is on the other side waiting for us, but the Oblivion gate is the main thing that draws my eyes. Not the hateful blue of Molag Bal, but the angry red of Mehrunes Dagon. Not that it particularly matters to the marines in the streets whether the Dremora fighting them came from Coldharbour or the Deadlands.

“Raz is glad to see you, my friend,” Razum-dar says. “You were the one who brought the wards down, yes?”

“I helped!” Eran pipes up. “I’ve been very helpful!”

“Raz is sure you have.” His whiskers twitch in amusement. “And he is certain you will also be helpful in bringing these gates down, yes? The gates are each maintained by a sigil stone. Your party will need to enter each gate and destroy the stone in order to close them.”

“Great, uh… how will we get back out again, though?” Eran wonders.

“Destroying them should expel you from Oblivion, Raz was told by those knowledgeable in such things. If it does not, well, you will need to take that up with the mages for giving inaccurate information, no? Once you manage to find another way out, at least. Raz is certain they can open their own portals to the Deadlands if need be.”

I snicker. “I’ll do it myself if you want to stay back and make sure nothing else comes out of the gates.”

“You know, that sounds like a wonderful idea,” Eran says. “Hold the line, and all that!”

I head into the first gate, for some reason considerably less concerned about paying a visit to the Deadlands than I was about returning to Coldharbour. Of course, compared to Coldharbour, the Deadlands is quite pleasant, but then again, I say that from the perspective of someone who used to live somewhere volcanic. I make my way through past more Daedra and locate a sigil stone, and smash it. Whiteness overcomes my vision for a moment and I find myself back outside in Firsthold. (Honestly, I have no idea why it works that way, but you know what? I’m not even going to question it.)

“Huh, I guess that did work,” Eran says. “Good to know!”

Eran and the two Fighters Guild members still opt to remain outside clearing away Daedra while I go into the second gate. There’s plenty of Daedra to be cleared out and they aren’t likely to go poof back to Oblivion just because I closed the gates.

I make my way through the next area, dancing over some fire traps and killing a huge spider Daedra. Then the next area, cleaving past a bunch of Dremora and a clannfear that’s tougher than usual for its size. Once those are done, I meet back up with the others outside.

Raz has gathered everyone for a push into the last gate, where Estre is hiding. This gate is in the middle of Firsthold’s castle, and I really don’t envy whoever has to clean up this mess after we’re done here. It’s even blocking the thrones. I hope whoever’s castle this is has a backup castle (provided they aren’t already dead).

“Let’s kick some ass!” Lariole says.

“I second the lady’s expression,” Eran says.

We head inside, and take the battle to Estre, and by all the fucking gods I cannot believe this woman takes so much work to bring down. I’m guessing her skill in protective magic has also served her well in stopping her from getting torn to tiny pieces after being hit quite so many times by swords, axes, arrows, and spells. She summons flame atronachs around us and taunts us in an incredibly annoying manner.

“Oh for love of fuck, just shut up and die already,” I mutter.

Eventually, finally, she does go down. After making sure she’s actually going to stay down, the team breathes a sigh of relief, pats one another on the back, and one of the mages opens a portal back to Nirn. Raz tells me to destroy the sigil stone on my way out.

Near the sigil stone, I spot some slightly singed paper. I don’t bother to stop and read it, but I grab it and shove it in my pack before smashing the sigil stone. Once safely back on Nirn, then I stop to read it. And it looks like Estre and Mannimarco might have been getting ready to get in bed together? I mean, figuratively. Probably not literally. Ugh, bad mental image, Nerevar, bad mental image.

“Huzzah, the bitch is dead!” Lariole exclaims. “Okay, it’s been great, but Kira-do and me are heading back to the dolmen.”

“You haven’t had enough fighting Daedra for one day?” Eran asks.

“Nah,” Lariole says. “There’s always more Daedra. No sense in saving Firsthold from Dagon only to let Bal overrun it.”

“Speak for yourself,” the Khajiit says. “Kira-do is getting a drink before returning to the dolmen, if he can find any booze in this city that has not been spilled.”

The battle over, people make sure there’s no Daedra lingering around still and tend to the wounded. Firsthold is going to be a long time in recovering. At some point, we even find the guy who this castle belongs to (High Kinlord Rilis). He expresses gratitude, but he hasn’t seen what the inside of his castle looks like yet.

Queen Ayrenn turns up, and I feel that her idea of touring her kingdom has kind of completely bollocksed up by this point. Bad things have happened everywhere she’s visited so far. Maybe she should just stay home. Though I get this feeling she’s just going to make me visit everywhere she plans to go first and un-bollocks it. And now she’s here expressing regret that Estre had to die.

“Estre made her choices,” I say. “Terrible ones, to be sure. By the way, you might want to see this.” I hand her the note addressed to Mannimarco I’d found in the Deadlands. “In case you don’t recognize the name, Mannimarco and his Worm Cult are the ones behind the Dark Anchors that keep dropping.”

Ayrenn frowns as she reads over the note that proclaims her as an enemy, then hands it back. “That is certainly a poor choice. And High Kinlady Estre may be dead, but this Worm Cult remains at large and a danger to Tamriel. With you as our spearhead, however, we can strike back at any danger that threatens us. There is yet much work to be done.”

“No kidding,” I say. “I feel that there’s still a number of things that I need to see to on Auridon that I bypassed to get to Firsthold as quickly as possible.”

Ayrenn nods. “I have much to do here as well. Explore as you will on your own time. When you are ready, I want you to meet me in Elden Root, in the Grahtwood region of Valenwood. You can take a ship there from Skywatch or Vulkhel Guard.”

A figure comes up the steps behind Ayrenn. It’s her brother, Prince Naemon. And his reaction to learning of his wife’s death is deadly sarcasm, and that he’s gotten entirely the wrong idea about the situation here.

“They tell me you declared my wife a traitor and ordered her death,” Naemon says. “And now she’s dead. But it was all for the glory of the Dominion, was it not?”

“Prince Naemon,” I say fervently, stepping forward. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed yet, given the Oblivion gates and dead Daedra around, but your wife was a Daedra worshipper. You should consider yourself fortunate that she did not ritually sacrifice you. Daedra worshippers will betray their husbands and wives, their friends and family, their Queen and country, all for the sake of some fleeting advantage for themselves.”

Naemon looks at me as if regarding a particularly loathsome scrib. “My wife would have never harmed me.”

“I didn’t think mine would, either,” I say quietly, and shake my head. I show him the note I found, too, because incriminating correspondence is the best.

Naemon reluctantly looks at the note. “This is her handwriting… Why would Estre call this Mannimarco person her lord? I suppose it is too late to ask her that now.”

“For what it’s worth, little brother, I’m sorry that it had to come to this,” Ayrenn says. “But she left a swath of blood and ruin in her wake across half the island.”

I watch him intently, examining his tone of voice, his body language, to see whether or not he might have had any idea what his wife was involved in. Was he an accomplice or a victim? It’s hard to say. I suppose I can sympathize with him at the same time as being suspicious of him. This can’t be easy for him. I just hope he doesn’t do anything stupid next. This sort of situation could make anyone irrational. Speaking from experience here.