Come morning, Eran, Ilara and I are on the road for Firsthold again, wondering if that’s the last of the racist bandits in the area aside from the one I’m trying to find and kill. Hopefully they’re still where the note I got quite some time ago about their last known location. I decide to head up along the beach rather than down the main road in order to scout out the area and make sure no one else is hiding around here.

Turns out my instinct on that was good. We run across an Altmer woman hiding underneath a rock outcropping. When she spots us, she declares her love for concealing facial accessories and proceeds to attempt to electrocute us. The three of us are able to take her out, although not without being zapped a few times.

“Ilara hopes this is the last of these Veiled Heritance she has to deal with,” the Khajiit spits.

“There’s probably still more of them,” I say lightly. “I haven’t had time yet to overturn every rock on Auridon. But this is the last of the officers I was given the names of. Well, assuming this one’s name was ‘Calanyese’ or however you say that. Let’s head back for the main road.”

We head up the slope by a waterfall and pass a small ruin full of workbenches that have an odd magical feel to them. Wonder what’s up with that.

A book sits on a stool at a fishing spot. An anonymous journal by a mer who wound up joining the Veiled Heritance after an unfortunate series of circumstances. No idea how it got out here, unless it belonged to the one we’d just killed. Still, I don’t have much sympathy.

We make it back to the road next to a bridge, where an injured high elf woman in filthy scout’s garb is leaning against a rock. A couple of corpses lay before her, in unfamiliar armor. They look human. I go up and give the Altmer a touch of healing.

“Stars bless you, traveler,” the woman says.

She introduces herself as a long name starting with E. I’m going to call her ‘Endy’. According to her, they’d been bringing an orc defector from the Daggerfall Covenant back to Auridon, but the Daggers followed them back and are now attacking North Beacon.

“Damn, I wondered what that ship I saw out in the water was,” I say. “Ilara, you should run ahead to Firsthold.”

Ilara pauses. “Ilara thinks she might be able to help here. If you’ll let her.”

“We can probably handle the combat so long as we don’t get overwhelmed,” I say.

“The combat, certainly,” Ilara says hesitantly. “But you are two big Altmer stomping around making a lot of noise. What if you need arrows and sneakiness too?”

Endy climbs to her feet. “With your healing, I think I can make it to Firsthold in good time, but I don’t think I’m up for fighting again unless I really have to. Your Khajiit friend here looks to be in good shape still.”

“Alright,” I say. “Ilara, hand her the letter from the College and then we’re heading in.”

The Daggerfall contingent appears to be primarily comprised of small, pale humans I assume are Bretons and slightly taller, dark-skinned humans that are probably Redguards. (While I’ve seen a few humans about, particularly in the Fighters and Mages Guilds, I haven’t felt it particularly important to pry into their genealogy.)

Ilara keeps behind us and covers us with her bow as we make our way into the town. (Or fortress, or whatever it’s supposed to be.) She hisses to get our attention as we come inside the main walls.

“There is an Altmer hiding behind those trees,” Ilara whispers. “No, do not look that way. Tsss! Ilara thinks he wishes to avoid attention, yes?”

“And we’d draw attention right toward him if the three of us noisily stomped up to his hiding spot,” I say. “Good eye, Ilara. Can you sneak in there and see if he’s alright while we noisily stomp over in this direction?”

Ilara nods, and slips over toward the rocks while we provide a distraction.

“I hope we don’t bring down the attention of the entire damned battalion,” Eran mutters.

“Well, I’m sure we can kill them all if they obligingly come at us two or three at a time,” I say lightly.

Ilara returns to us momentarily, and we slip inside a nearby building to talk without distractions. “His name is Arfanel. He noticed you and knows you by reputation, apparently. It would seem you have made quite the name for yourself, Neri.”

“Hopefully in a good way,” I say.

“He told Ilara some of his people were trapped behind enemy lines and… wanted her to steal some uniforms and distribute to them to help them escape,” Ilara says slowly. “Do you think Ilara can do it? There are so many Covenant soldiers about and Ilara was never good at tucking her tail in.”

“You don’t need to tuck your tail in, Ilara,” I say. “He didn’t say anything bad to you, did he?”

Ilara shakes her head. “No. No, he was fine. Just… sometimes when Ilara talks to Altmer she can’t help but hear the… the voices of the teachers. Those awful teachers. The nightmares might stop eventually, but Ilara does not wish to be like them. Ilara does not wish to hate people just because of what they are.”

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“I have faith in you, Ilara,” I say. “You can do this. You’re a sleek Khajiit, light on your paws and quick as a shadow. You can slip in and find their hiding spots without us drawing attention to them.”

“Ilara can do this,” she tells herself insistently, then starts searching the building. “Yes. Here are some uniforms, too. Ilara will gather them up and find our missing people.”

We split up, and Eran and I head for the ship to find this orc defector. We find her in the hold, tied up but still wearing armor made of some weird greenish material. Her name is a mouthful of consonants starting with L, so I’m going to call her Lakh, which is preferable to dislodging my larynx trying to say her full name. Orcs seem to be almost as bad as Dwemer about that.

“Lakh?” she says with a smirk. “Getting awfully familiar with me, are you? Or are orc names just too much for you to handle?”

“Don’t take it personally, Lakhazga,” Eran says. “Neri’s just bad with names in general. He can’t say Altmer names properly either. You know how many times he messed up my name before finally figuring out that it’s ‘Eranamo’?”

Lakh snickers softly. “Well enough.”

She tells us about her husband, Moroth, who was an advisor to some orc king whose name I don’t catch and is the one the Covenant are really after here, not a line soldier like her. Which segues neatly into her explaining that we need to go blow some shit up good.

“Yes! I love blowing shit up,” I exclaim.

“Oh yeah,” Eran deadpans. “They’ll all be looking at us, and at least not at our Khajiit friend sneaking about.”

The shore is peppered with several siege engines poised to start bombarding the lighthouse. That shortly becomes several flaming piles of sticks poised to be bonfires for a short while. You’d think with how common fire salts are, people would make the slightest attempt at making things fireproof. Lakh is eager to fight, and between her warhammer, my battle axe, and Eran’s sword, we wind up making a number of humans regret their decision to enlist in the Covenant military. (Although they’ll mostly be doing their regretting from wherever it is Bretons and Redguards go when they die.)

Once the trebuchets are all burning, Lakh directs us toward the barracks where the Covenant leader probably is. Eerily, there is no one else inside the large building at the moment. I guess they must all be outside. The only one inside is the commander (whose name is Bernardine, not that this is ever going to matter) and he’s in an office with a desk covered in maps and a fancy bed. I’d give a blow by blow of the fight, but the outcome is probably obvious.

I jump off the a second story balcony in the barracks, Lakh looking on in alarm and Eran in exasperation. Both of them do the boring, slow thing and just go back down around the stairs.

“Balconies aren’t just there to jump off of, Neri,” Eran says with a sigh.

“What else is the point of them?” I spot Ilara waving to us from the nearby gate. “Ah, good, looks like Ilara’s okay.”

“You made bright fires and big noises!” Ilara exclaims when we catch up to her. “They were all looking in every direction but at Ilara.”

“Did you find all the missing soldiers?” I ask.

Ilara nods. “And she got to set fire to a building, too!”

“Excellent,” I say. “Sleek work there. I didn’t even spot you sneaking about myself. You ever dreamed of being ‘Ilara-daro’?” I grin.

Ilara’s eyes widen at me. “You think she could be?”

“Absolutely,” I say. “Let’s go. I think I see the First Auridon Marines up on the bluff ahead.”

The marines are holding the next (wooden) bridge leading up to the lighthouse, which is perched precariously high atop a huge rock formation jutting out into the air over the shore. I’m not jumping off of this one.

Ilara goes up to the scout she’d spoken to before and a wood elf woman with hair so red it’s almost magenta, and reports in about her success.

“Well done,” the scout says. “Keep up the work like that and you might have a future in the Eyes of the Queen ahead of you.”

“Neri made a good pick in bringing you,” says the red-haired wood elf, smirking in my direction. “For all Raz has crowed about how effective he is, he’s not very good at subtlety.”

Ilara is swaying under the praise.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” I say.

“Cariel. I’m sure we’ll meet again. Although I’m more likely to notice you before you notice me.”

“Fair,” I say.

Inside the lighthouse, an orc man with a smooth head and a massive beard is waiting. His eyes light up when he sees Lakh, and they embrace and say some very sweet things to one another that I pretend not to hear.

I clear my throat after a minute. “We’re happy to have been able to help.”

“I’m glad you could help,” Moroth says. “I don’t know what I’d have done without my Lakh.”

“Roaring rampage of revenge?” I suggest.

“Yes, probably that,” Moroth says with a faint curl of a lip.

“Why did you decide to defect to the Dominion, Morothmash?” Eran asks.

I’m glad at least one of us here is good at names.

Moroth gives a grim description of how the orcs are treated by the humans of the Daggerfall Covenant. It sounds like the orcs were bribed with land in order to support their war, as the orcs had been ancient enemies with the Bretons and Redguards.

“I’ve heard good things about your Queen Ayrenn, though,” Moroth goes on. “Tales of her good heart and strong arm have reached even Orsinium.”

“Yeah, Ayrenn is awesome,” I say. “She wouldn’t have treated the orcs that way. She’s embraced and welcomed the Bosmer and Khajiit with open arms.”

“Not everyone agreed with her decision,” Eran says. “But the faction who disagreed most vehemently turned out to be led by a Daedra-worshipping bitch who is now dead, so there’s that.”

“She probably didn’t expect us to have the balls to follow her into the fucking Deadlands just to kick her ass,” I say.

Moroth laughs heartily. “You’ll have to tell me the rest of that war story sometime.”

Another marine comes in and cordially welcomes the two orcs, and opens a portal to Skywatch for them.

Eran looks to me. “Should we take the portal and save ourselves the walk back south?”

“Nah, there’s still things in the north half of the island I want to poke into,” I say. “There was this place the Undaunted mentioned to me…”

Eran groans. “Trinimac preserve us.”

“And I bet there’s an amazing view from the top of this.” I head for the top of the lighthouse.

“Please tell me you’re not planning on jumping off the cliff,” Eran says, following me up.

“No, no, you can relax.” I smirk.

At the top of the lighthouse, sitting right next to its beacon, a Skyshard gleams in a vivid blue shaft. That had to have taken some good aim to hit the top of the lighthouse like that. I absorb it, and then absorb the view, which would probably have been a much better view had it not suddenly decided to start raining.

“What’s up with you and these crystals, anyway?” Eran asks, poking it.

“Dunno,” I say. “I touch them, glowy stuff goes into me, and then I turn it into spears and healing. I haven’t exactly had time to sit down with a mage and figure it out. Or at least a mage I felt like telling about some of the weirder bits. I met one on Khenarthi’s Roost who was going to work with me on that but I don’t know where he wound up. Maybe he went to Elden Root. I’ll have to ask, I guess.”