“I’m just saying, Merry, that maybe if the wildlife around here were normally more aggressive, people might be less of assholes to one another.”

“I really don’t see how that follows,” Merry says.

“Or at the very least it would give me something to fight other than racist bandits, angry dead people, and the occasional Daedric incursion,” I say.

“Occasional?” Eran says. “Those Dark Anchors fall every time we walk by.”

“Where’s the entrance to these Banished Cells or whatever they were, anyway?” I wonder. “There’s some stairs leading down over here… and hey, there’s a ghost here! One that’s not attacking me!”

The ghost introduces himself as Lissy (or something) and explains that he dared to criticize the court jester of the previous Lord Rilis and wound up being tortured to death and soultrapped for good measure. He seems shocked that I immediately agree to help, even after realizing that this isn’t the entrance to the Banished Cells.

The ruin is full of some absolutely delightful fire traps. I stand and watch them hiss-spark-whoosh a couple times until Eran and Merry mistake my fascination with me trying to time jumping over them.

“Come on, Neri,” Eran says, bashing a skeleton to pieces. “Let’s find this soul and get out of here. I’m surprised you were so willing to jump to help this guy.”

“Why not?” I ask, hopping over a fire trap. “We’re here. We’re capable of helping. There’s no reason he should be stuck here for eternity. Let him get to Aetherius and be done with it. I’ve heard it’s nice there.” I pause thoughtfully. “Admittedly, beating up a clown was not what I’d anticipated doing today, but I can work with this.”

This section of the ruin isn’t large, and in a moment we run across a ghost with a jester hat on his head. Fortunately he’s a very solid ghost, because listening to a fool tell bad jokes without being able to hit him would be just obnoxious. We liberate Lissy’s soul, and return to him.

The next door we try actually manages to be the correct entrance to the Banished Cells. Around the corner come sounds of fighting from what turns out to be an armored Altmer doing battle with a group of banekin and in something of a stalemate.

“Do you need help here?” I ask from the doorway, although Eran charges in to render aid before he can answer.

“It would be appreciated,” the armored mer yells back.

Once the banekin are dead, he introduces himself as Keeper Cirion, and explains how Daedra have freed a dead previous Rilis from his prison and scattered his fellow Keepers. He urges us to flee this place and warn Tamriel of the danger.

“This sounds like it needs immediate attention,” I say. “Sorry and his mom haven’t left yet, have they?” I ask my companions. “We can have them get a message to Firsthold while we investigate the situation here. If it proves too much for us, we’ll wait for reinforcements, but we should be able to clear a path through the Daedra and rescue the Keepers you mentioned at least.”

“Who’s Sorry?” Cirion asks.

“The, ah, illegitimate son of the guy you have imprisoned here,” I say. “Long story and most of it was stupid. We’ll be right back.”

Sorry and his mother are camped on the opposite side of the bridge leading into the ruins, having been planning to set out for Firsthold in the morning. They’re both quite alarmed when I explain the situation to them. They agree to set off immediately, and also warn me of how powerful this particular Rilis is and that I shouldn’t try to take him on until reinforcements have arrived.

We return to the dungeon and start fighting our way in. Even if we can’t take on Rilis ourselves, we can at least make sure whatever reinforcements arrive don’t have as many skeletons to kill. And these skeletons are tougher and more numerous than usual, so we thoroughly scatter their bones after every fight to make sure it takes them longer to put themselves back together.

“So, what’s your story?” Eran asks Merry.

“I did something stupid and Neri made sure I wasn’t executed for it,” Merry says.

“Same here,” Eran says. “And now we’re following around a lunatic into insanely dangerous situations.”

“Divines help us both.”

We find the first Keeper trapped behind one particularly nasty specter that takes the three of us quite the concerted effort to kill. Unfortunately, according to Merry, transfiguration is much more difficult to work on undead and Daedra than it is on beings made from living flesh and blood. I reluctantly give Merry permission to summon atronachs to help us in combat if he thinks he can make sure they’re more likely to hurt our enemies than us.

Once the specter is dead, Cirion catches up to us (possibly having been tailing us as we killed undead) and checks on the other Keeper. They confer with one another on the situation and agree that they will need to trap Rilis in a better prison to keep him contained.

The next large room is lit by the incredibly disconcerting view of blue clouds and unearthly motes of light, with a corner of the room knocked apart into floating rubble to give a view of a spiky black floating island reminiscent of Coldharbour.

“Shit,” Eran breathes once the latest batch of skeletons are down. “That’s not good.”

“Not good at all,” Merry agrees.

We press a couple of switches to try to get the gate into the next hallway open. A ghostly voice taunts us, and a black clannfear appears in the middle of the room. So far as clannfears go, this one is incredibly powerful, and it has an ability that lets it summon shadow copies of itself. Eran and Merry are finding the fighting less entertaining than me.

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“It really gets your blood pumping, doesn’t it?” I say with a wild grin.

“That was harrowing,” Eran says, bending over panting next to the corpse of the clannfear.

“We should really wait for reinforcements before continuing further,” Merry says and he starts slowly healing our injuries.

I shake my head. “We should be able to make it to next Keeper at least, provided they’re not being held by Rilis himself.”

The two of them reluctantly follow me down the next corridor. In the room at the end, I’m pretty sure one of the Keepers is being held behind another group of dead people. I charge in headlong into battle.

My vision erupts in flames and every time I manage to roll out of the way of another fire spell, the mages cast more flames on top of me. Arrows rain down upon me, piercing my body.

…

I find myself naked next to a wayshrine indoors. I quickly conjure a pair of purple shorts and look around to figure out where I am. I seem to have appeared at a wayshrine just inside the entrance to the dungeon. Conveniently close to where I died; inconveniently nowhere near my closet. Inconveniently, even though my ‘inventory’ is probably safe, I have no way of accessing it without my pack, either. Strange, though. I don’t remember lighting this wayshrine, or even noticing this wayshrine when we came in.

This means Eran and Merry are probably dead, though, and my heart sinks. I’d actually started to like those fools, and now I’m likely never going to see them again. Sometimes I forget that this isn’t Coldharbour, where you and your companions can do stupidly risky things secure in the knowledge that you’ll still be in hell when you respawn.

I’m surprised and relieved when Eran and Merry climb up out of the dungeon.

“You guys are alive!” I exclaim cheerfully.

“Merormo blocked the corridor with a rock barrier and we ran away after we saw you die,” Eran says. “Also? I’m quite sure we saw you die.”

“Oh yeah, that,” I say. “Uh, long story short, but I’m sort of immortal and respawn at a wayshrine when I die.”

Eran and Merry exchange a look. “And you didn’t think to inform us of that before you dragged us into an insanely dangerous situation in which we could get killed in?” Eran says.

“I know we should be grateful to you for the stay of execution,” Merry says. “But perhaps you could have us pay penance in a less insanely dangerous situation? We really need to wait for backup here.”

“Alright, alright,” I say with a groan. “Does anyone have any spare pants?”

“I’m sure the Keepers have some laundry,” Eran says. “But you’re going to unshorten your long story while we wait for reinforcements.”

“They’ll already be sending reinforcements to retake North Beacon,” I say. “I don’t know how long it might take them to get here, too, but I’m sure we can hold the line in the meantime. Why does everything on this island go wrong all at once? Oh, right, it’s probably the Daedra’s fault.”

“They’ll get here eventually,” Eran says. “You can’t do this by yourself and I refuse to go back down there without more backup. Anyway, don’t evade the question. I’d like an explanation.”

“I don’t even dare speculate,” Merry mumbles.

“There we were, feeling bad about your reckless ass getting yourself killed, and it turns out you were fine the whole time, and you knew you’d be fine?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry, alright?” I say, holding up my hands. “It wasn’t really something I wanted to get out. I’m sure you can understand that, right?”

“I understand why you didn’t trust us,” Merry says. “But you still knowingly dragged us into great danger.”

“I got impatient and overconfident,” I say. “I haven’t encountered anything on this island that posed a serious challenge aside from what’s-his-name at the racist bandit camp by the school.”

“And you waited for reinforcements for that,” Eran points out. “Fine. You were stupid and reckless, like usual. I don’t know why I should be surprised at that and clearly you need someone at your back who has some common fucking sense, or you’d be just throwing yourself in there and dying repeatedly because you’re an idiot, wouldn’t you? Now how about starting with why you didn’t die.”

“Ah, well, that’s because I’m dead, sort of,” I say. “It’s complicated and it doesn’t make much sense to me, either. Anyway, as you know, I’m a Chimer—”

“You’re a Chimer?” Merry asks.

“Okay, Merry didn’t know that,” I say with a chuckle, and go into an explanation of my long-story-short-but-not-too-short. Which eventually leads to Merry figuring out who exactly I am.

“You’re Indoril Nerevar,” Merry says quietly.

“Well, to be technical, ‘Indoril’ was my married name,” I say. “My birth name was Nerevar Mora. I was a commoner and my wife was noble-born, so I joined her House rather than the other way around. I’m pretty sure ritually sacrificing your husband to a Daedric Prince counts as a divorce under most jurisdictions, though.”

“You are amazingly cheerful about having been ritually sacrificed,” Eran says.

I shrug. “It’s difficult to stay enraged for millennia. In any case, my former friends would probably murder me again if they knew I was out walking around on Nirn, so please keep this to yourselves. Enough people already know about this.”

“I’m not exactly on speaking terms with any false gods,” Eran says. “At any rate, I understand. My lips are sealed, ‘Neralion’.”

“The reaction of a Vestige to Skyshards and wayshrines sounds fascinating,” Merry says. “I could—”

“No,” I say flatly.

“But I didn’t even finish making my suggestion!” Merry protests.

“I am not letting you experiment with this,” I say with a smirk.

Merry sighs. “Fine, but could I at least make some hypotheses and suggestions?”

“I’ll listen, as I’m not going anywhere, but I can’t guarantee I’ll understand or want to take you up on them.”

I’d acquired some pants in the meantime, but my real equipment is still down in the dungeon and I won’t be able to reach it without reinforcements.

“That’s fine,” Merry says. “The issue of winding up naked at the wayshrine after dying…”

“It’s somewhat irritating, yes,” I say. “Not that I want to sound ungrateful about not-dying or anything.”

“There may be a method to ensure you can take items along with you,” Merry says. “Soulbinding. It’s usually used to keep a Daedra or spirit bound to Nirn by attaching them to a soul gem or runestone or similar, like that poor ghost we just freed, but it may be possible to modify the technique to bind an object to you. Needless to say, this sort of thing is utterly useless to normal mortals.”

“That sounds like an absolutely splendid thing to not let you experiment with,” I say. “In any case, would that even work? My soul is still in Coldharbour.”

“Your soul is in Coldharbour, your essence infused with Aetherial energy and linked to wayshrines. There’s no way gluing a pair of pants to you would make you actually stay in the location of the pants when you die somehow.”

“You’ll forgive me if I want to get a second opinion first,” I say.

“Oh, of course,” Merry says. “I’d like to confer with another mage on the technique as well.”

“Rurelion knows who I am and I was hoping to speak with him about my,” I wave a hand, “weirdness.”

“Rurelion?” Merry asks. “Hmm, yes, I don’t believe he hates me. Very well. I will confer with him on my speculation and observations when we see him next.”

“We?” I say. “You’re still wanting to travel with me? I’d thought you’d rather pay your penance in service to the Queen in a less insanely dangerous manner.”

“Yes, well, as Eranamo says, you seem to be lacking in the common sense the Divines gave an alit. While it’s hardly your fault that Oblivion rattled your brain…”

“You think I need a nanny,” I infer.

“You absolutely need a nanny,” Eran says with a smirk.

“And I am certain that you could also use magical backup,” Merry says. “I am, at that, available and in your debt. I would imagine you’d also want to keep an eye on me to make sure I haven’t wandered off and started experimenting with Daedra again.”

“You were doing what?” Eran says.

“I know, it was a terrible idea and if Neri hadn’t come along when he did, I would have likely been eaten or executed.”

“Well, I’d say you’re right on all accounts there,” I say. “Very well. Welcome to the party! I’ll try not to get you killed.”

Merry sighs. “I am brimming with confidence.”