Now that I’m not rushing around from one emergency situation to the next, time to make sure I haven’t missed any interesting caves full of treasure, bandits, racist bandits, gratuitous undead, traps, Daedra, Skyshards, or idiots that need rescuing from their own stupidity. And take some time to practice alchemy while I’m at it, too, once I find some equipment for it. I’d hoped to brew some potions in Firsthold, but the Mages Guild doesn’t have any suitable equipment for it and whichever building might have contained an alchemy shop apparently got burned down.

“You know, Eran, you could just run ahead and meet me at Skywatch or something,” I say. “I’m probably just going to be spending a bit of time taking a breather, picking some fl—alchemical ingredients, and poking my head into every cave in Auridon.”

“No, I think I’d better keep following you around,” Eran says. “Somebody might decide I’m a traitor after all, and aside from that, you have absolutely no common sense or rational priorities.”

“What if you disagree with how I handle something?” I say. “I’m probably considerably more annoyed with racism than you.”

Eran shrugs. “Far be it from me to argue with the guy with a battle axe who can probably single-handedly destroy the Ebonheart Pact with it if he felt like it. Besides,” he gestures back toward Firsthold with a sigh. “Look at what racism has bought us. Cities left in ruins by the very people who claimed they would keep our islands ‘pure’ and protect us from the influences of the ‘lesser races’. If this is the direction that sort of attitude is taking us toward, then I’ll just have to get used to hugging Khajiit.”

We’re heading back to the main road after smashing another Dark Anchor when I spot a light up ahead and find a priestess kneeling inside a protective circle. We approach and she tells us about how the holy site of Torinaan (she patiently spells that for me) has been overrun with Daedra. Naturally, we agree to help. She directs us to speak to the Aldarch (whatever an Aldarch is) who, of course, is on the opposite side of the Daedra-infested ruins.

The ruins are crawling with scamps and clannfears, not the toughest or brightest Daedra around but still fun to fight. Along the way, we find another terrified priest hiding inside of a protective circle, who tells us something about relics that need to be retrieved from the ruins before anything bad happens to them. We assure him that we’ll locate them for him and try to convince him to get to safety, but he refuses to budge without those relics, so we move on.

The Aldarch, a woman by the name of Colaste, paints a lovely picture of how all this trouble started after High Kinlady Estre came through here. Ugh.

“Estre’s a Daedra worshipper,” I say. “Also dead now. She invaded Firsthold, opened a bunch of Oblivion gates, and subsequently got killed for it.”

“By us,” Eran adds. “I guess she set the Daedra on Torinaan as a distraction to slow us down? Too bad it didn’t work.”

“Because you dragged me there and ignored everything else between Dawnbreak and there,” I say.

Aldarch Colaste is taken aback at that news. “Oh dear. I’m glad you were able to stop her, even if it did mean delaying assistance for us.”

“Hopefully we can cleanse these shrines for you now like we cleansed the world of Estre,” I say.

We head back into the ruins, where we’d at least thinned out the Daedra a bit on our first pass through. The first shrine we come upon is lit by those glowing yellow crystals and contains a statue of that god with the book, sword, and his foot on a skull, whoever that is.

“Eran, what god does that statue depict?” I ask.

“I’m a fighter, not a priest,” Eran replies. “But I think this was the shrine of Anu and Y’ffre, so it’s probably one of those. Or neither. I don’t know.”

There’s a fancy cup next to a dead priest, along with a note saying something about a sacred chalice, blessed waters, or whatever. I shrug, and pick up the cup, fill it in the pool, and splash it onto the altar, which promptly stops glowing red and starts glowing yellow. That’s probably a good thing? (Is there something inherently evil about the color red, anyway?)

The next shrine has a statue of a guy with a book and a sword again, but this time he’s standing and the sword is sticking through the skull at his feet.

“Is this the same guy, or a different one?” I wonder.

“I’m afraid I never really thought too much about who the statues depict,” Eran says.

I take the chalice to the next pool and splash water on the altar, but this has no effect beyond getting the stone and tablecloth wet. “Did I miss something here?”

Eran finds a note. “You’re supposed to use fire for these ones, apparently.”

“What, burn the tablecloth?” I pick up the rod he’s pointed at.

“I don’t know,” Eran says. “Maybe just try waving it in the air?”

“Well, I’m happy to have someone along who is just as clueless about this as me,” I say. “It makes me feel less silly when I have no idea what I’m doing.”

Eran chuckles. “There is that.”

I light the rod in the brazier and wave it over the altar, which proceeds to start glowing yellow instead of red as well. The next room has one of its braziers unlit, so I light it with the rod and repeat the waving thing, to success.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” I say. “Next shrine…”

“You say it wasn’t so bad, but we had to kill four clannfears, six scamps, and two angry ghosts to get this far,” Eran points out.

“You were keeping count?”

The next shrine wants more fires light. I don’t know what Mara wants things set on fire. Burning love in the heart? No, it’s probably the hearth thing. That would make more sense. I wind up having to light Stendarr’s fires a couple times because they keep going out after being lit for less than a minute, stupid thing. And of course Eranamo isn’t helping and is just snickering at me, the fetcher.

If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

We return the relics to the scared monk and enter the last shrine, which he’s standing next to. As I’m wondering what I’m going to need to moisten or ignite this time, that weird voice I’ve been hearing (and ignoring) tells me to destroy the interlopers. Or at least I think it’s telling me that, and not telling the interlopers to destroy me. In any case, there’s dremora in this shrine who need their asses kicked. Alas for them that it’s a bad day to be a dremora attempting to corrupt Aedric shrines, as a Chimer warrior and his battle axe (and sidekick) are here to send them back to Oblivion.

Okay, so that wasn’t actually the last shrine. There’s another one in the middle that we need to cleanse. The way these things go, it’s probably going to contain whichever of the Daedra is in charge here who will be stronger than the others.

We go inside and head down the stairs and around the corner. The large room at the bottom is illuminated by the swirling red disc of an Oblivion gate. Another dremora stands in front of it.

“I really hope we’re not going to need to go in there to shut that gate down,” Eran whispers.

“What, you’re not looking forward to a return to the giant toasty furnace?” I say lightly. “It’s fine. I’ll do it if it’s necessary.”

I charge in and attack the dremora, who starts taunting us but I’m honestly not paying attention to what he’s blustering about. It probably wasn’t anything important anyway. Fortunately for us, the gate dissipates upon his death, sparing us the hassle of going inside and smashing a sigil stone.

Once the dremora is down, we meet up with Aldarch Colaste again on the way out, who has relocated to a corridor outside the big chamber. She, of course, thinks we were sent by the Divines, because religious people always seem to think anything that happens by chance or for completely unrelated reasons is clearly because of divine providence and not just because someone happened to be in the right place. I don’t bother arguing with her about it.

The Aldarch goes on to say that the Divines have a vision to show me, and directs me to an altar. In a flash of light, I witness High Kinlady Estre praying to Mehrunes Dagon, begging for power and claiming that her family has been faithful. Her family has been faithful? Who else besides her? Troublesome. If the Divines have a reason for showing this to me, it’s not for proving that Estre is a traitor, which I already knew, but that the trouble hasn’t ended simply with her death. I’m going to need to look into who her parents were, if she has any siblings or children, and track them down, aren’t I. Ugh. I just know high elf genealogy is going to be annoying.

We’re on our way back to the College of Aldmeri Propriety and I’m lost in my own musings when Eran speaks up.

“Why don’t we have a little talk about who are you, Neri?” Eran says. “I’m sure people you’ve only met briefly wouldn’t have noticed, but I’ve been travelling with you for a bit now and have been taking notice of a few slightly odd things about you. And I don’t mean the fact that you’re a reckless idiot who can get away with being a reckless idiot because he’s has weird powers that aren’t quite magic and is very good at hitting things?”

“I’m an Eye of the Queen and I’m very good at hitting things,” I say with a shrug.

“You are completely unfamiliar with basic facts about the Summerset Isles and you’ve got an accent I can’t quite place,” Eran says. “So I’m quite sure you’re foreign-born. Plus you seem entirely too disdainful of Altmer in general. I keep hearing you grumbling about them when you think nobody’s listening.”

“More like I don’t care if anyone’s listening,” I say.

“So, foreign-born, likely adopted by another race,” Eran goes on. “Definitely not any of the human races, though, and the beastfolk are unlikely too. Accent is… Dunmer? I think it’s Dunmer. The ones I spoke with briefly in Quendeluun sounded kind of like you.”

I grin widely. “You’re doing very well. You’re almost there.”

“Can I add that you seem to be ignorant of basic facts about modern-day Tamriel in general and not just Auridon?” Eran continues. “That’s even weirder than just being a foreign-born Altmer adopted by Dunmer in Morrowind who decided to come back to your ancestral homeland. Were you living in a cave on top of being from the other side of Tamriel?”

“I’m pretty sure I would have gotten more information about current events from a cave,” I say. “I’ve seen some very fancy caves around here.”

“And that’s not even getting into just how you got in with Queen Ayrenn!” Eran exclaims.

“Oh, that’s easy,” I say. “I dropped out of the sky in front of her spymaster.”

Eran stares at me for a long moment. “Teleport accident?”

I pause. “Sort of.”

“Right… I can understand why you didn’t trust me before, given… circumstances and everything… but have I proven myself yet? Will you tell me the truth?”

“How about you keep guessing and I’ll tell you whether you’re hot or cold?” I say with a grin. “That sounds like more fun to pass the trip.”

Eran sighs. “You’re insane.”

“I won’t dispute that.”

“Fine, I’ll play along, then,” Eran says. “Are you from Morrowind?”

I pause thoughtfully. “Warm.”

“Were you raised by Dunmer?”

“Mm, cool,” I say.

“I’m sure it can’t be humans,” Eran says. “You don’t sound anything like a Nord.”

“Nope, that would be ice cold,” I say. “Icy cold enough that they’d jump naked into it because Nords are insane.”

“Fine, if you’re not from Morrowind, you must have spent a good bit of time there?”

“Warmish,” I say. “To be fair and throw you a bone, I don’t actually remember where I was born, but it wasn’t Morrowind.”

The world looked very different then. Whatever might have been my original birthplace has been lost in space and time.

“That’s still less than helpful.”

“What’s your next guess?” I ask.

Eran stares off at the sky. “Have you been… away from events in Tamriel for a while?”

I grin. “Blazing hot.”

“Hah! I knew it! Nobody is that clueless!”

“Eh, I’m sure some could manage,” I say. “You greatly overestimate the general cluefulness of people.”

“Were you… in magical suspension in a cave or something somewhere?”

“Cold.”

“In Oblivion?”

“Hot!” I laugh. “Or also cold? It was Coldharbour. Also, fuck Molag Bal.”

“So, was you appearing in thin air in front of the Queen’s spymaster you escaping from Coldharbour?”

“Volcanically hot.”

“How long were you there?” Eran asks.

“Take a guess, Eran,” I say. “Take a wild guess.”

“Well, it has to have been longer than the Three Banners War has been going on,” Eran says.

“That’s so hot it’s burning with obviousness.”

“And you have my sympathies for being stuck in that sort of hell for years,” Eran says. “No wonder you were so flippant about going into the Deadlands back in Firsthold.”

“The Deadlands was really rather pleasant,” I say.

“Because it reminded you of Morrowind?”

“Hot,” I say with a chuckle.

“So, you were trapped in Coldharbour for over a decade. Over a century? Over a millennium??”

“Hot, hot, and hot,” I say.

“Sweet Mara’s mercy,” Eran whispers. “No wonder you’re batshit.” He frowns. “Wait, are you even an Altmer?”

“Nope,” I say lightly.

“… A Chimer?” Eran says. “Divines, you’re a fucking Chimer, aren’t you?”

I grin widely. “Now you’re molten.”

“Now it all makes sense!” Eran exclaims, throwing his arms wide.

“I trust you’ll keep that to yourself, though,” I say. “Like I’m keeping to myself the fact that you were trying to betray the Dominion.”

“Of course,” Eran says. “Why do you even care about the Dominion if you’re a Chimer, though?”

“Because Ayrenn is awesome.”

“Fair enough,” Eran says with a chuckle. “You’re basing your loyalty to the Dominion primarily off of whether you think the Queen is hot.”

“Well…” I raise my hands. “Hot.”

“What happens if she dies?”

“After making sure to thoroughly avenge her by slaughtering anyone even remotely connected to her death?” I say. “I’d likely head to Daggerfall with some fake tusks and green face paint and see if I can convince anyone I’m an orc. Or maybe just go hang out with the Khajiit. They seem like alright sorts and I’m sure they wouldn’t mind the lack of fur and tail.”

“You wouldn’t go back to Morrowind?”

“I technically have never been to Morrowind,” I say. “I’ve been to Resdayn. And no. Fuck no. My ex-wife is still there. I’d rather pretend to be an orc.”

“Ex-wife?” Eran says. “You know what? I think I’m quite done guessing. I’m not sure I want to know anymore.”

“Probably for the best,” I say.