Once our reinforcements show up, we head back down into the Banished Cells, with me borrowing an axe off of someone. There’s some faces in this lot familiar from the siege of Firsthold, Lariole and Kira-do of the Fighters Guild among them, who presumably had been promised pay for this. While the rank and file had gone to retake North Beacon, the elites had come here, which fortunately included some mages capable of warding and healing us.

There’s some epic battles in which I distinguish myself greatly and avoid getting killed stupidly again, and I manage to retrieve my pack and Khenarthi’s Storm in the process. The leather armor I was wearing had taken more damage than my shitty spells were capable of dealing with, so I suppose I’ll need to see an armorer or something. In any case, enough of that, it’s not worth talking about. I mean, it’s not like I’m terribly embarrassed by the entire mess or anything.

“Okay, that’s taken care of,” I say confidently. “I’m sure this will never be a problem ever again. Let’s go.”

“Where are we heading next?” Eran asks.

“Eh, that way,” I point vaguely. “Whatever’s that way.”

“We’re doomed,” Merry mumbles.

“You’ll get used to the aimless wandering and running off after anything that sounds interesting,” Eran says. “You know he tried to have us investigate Veiled Heritance connections at the college while we were rushing to Firsthold to stop a Daedric incursion?”

“I missed a Daedric incursion?” Merry says. “Oh, thank Mara.”

“There isn’t even a road this way, Neri,” Eran says.

“No, but there’s, what did you call these, water hyacinths?” I stop by the water to pick some.

“Now he’s picking flowers?” Merry mutters.

“They’re for healing potions,” Eran says generously.

“I like the glowing plants, too,” I say. “I love the way they hum.” I pause thoughtfully. “Hopefully listening to their hum doesn’t do anything bad.”

“No, nirnroots are completely harmless,” Merry says. “Unless you eat them. Don’t eat them.”

I come to the edge of a waterfall. “Lovely view from up here.” Before either of them can protest, I leap off into the pool below.

“Neri!” Eran yells in annoyance.

“I’m alright!” I call back up. “Although this pool was shallower than I thought… It’s okay, I can heal myself!”

If I could see him right now, I’ll bet Eran is rolling his eyes. “We’re going around, for fuck’s sake.”

As I reach the end of this stretch of river, I come upon a Skyshard perched atop the next fall, and absorb it. Of course, the only way off of this ledge is jumping, too, so I leap down off the waterfall again. Fortunately, the water at the bottom is deeper this time. Oh, hey, this is the lake where we killed the fishing traitor.

Eran and Merry, looking somewhat irritated, meet back up with me coming down from the stairs leading up to a ruin (probably the one where we killed the Daedra that Estre had left).

“Will you quit doing that?” Eran says.

“Oh, you’d have been fine,” I say. “In any case, there was a Skyshard up there I probably couldn’t have gotten short of jumping or sliding down something.” I pause thoughtfully. “You don’t suppose those things are addictive, are they?”

“I have only speculation,” Merry says. “But it’s doubtful that you’d become addicted in the manner of, say, skooma. Either your body requires a steady influx of them to remain cohesive on Nirn, in which case you should get as many of them as you can, or they simply grant additional power and the effect is purely psychological, in which case getting as many of them as possible to become more powerful is a perfectly reasonable reaction so long as you do not let it overwhelm whatever you have that passes for common sense.”

“We’re what he has that passes for common sense,” Eran says with a sigh.

We stop in at Dawnbreak for the night. They’ve gotten the dead buried and are starting to rebuild, and they’re quite grateful to hear that Firsthold was saved and Estre is dead. Come morning, we take the road leading west.

“Greenwater Cove?” Eran asks. “What’s there?”

“Dunno!” I say brightly. “Maybe Skyshards, or rare books, or things to hit!”

I’ve also found several other books in various places I didn’t feel like specifically mentioning. There’s only so many times I can mock the high elves for their proclivity toward literary litter.

“Yeah, sure, why not,” Eran says. “Lead on, so long as this involves no more cliffs.”

“Oh look, a cave!”

We go into a cave full of giant snakes and kill several of them, including one very tough one and I’m really glad these are the sorts of snakes that probably crush their prey or eat it whole and not the kind that bite and poison. The fight’s rough enough as it is, but at least it’s just a snake, albeit a quite large one, and not a small horde of undead archers and mages plus some Daedra.

“Ah, that was fun,” I say.

“You almost got eaten by a giant snake,” Merry deadpans.

“Yeah!” I exclaim cheerfully.

“Getting your pack out of the belly of a giant snake might have been tricky,” Eran adds.

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“Ah, come on, we totally had that,” I say.

“I feel that we are likely to be getting more practice with running away from things, Eranamo,” Merry says.

Eran sighs. “It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s all fine. Let’s just go find something else stupidly dangerous to do, why don’t we? I might still get horribly killed but at least I’ll go down fighting and not being executed by my own father for treason.”

“You did what?” Merry says.

“Never mind,” Eran says. “It was a terrible idea and if it weren’t for Neri’s smooth tongue and connections I’d be a goner.”

When we get to the village of Greenwater Cove, we discover that it’s under attack by sea elves. “Oh look, it’s these fetchers again,” I say.

“You’re not my scouts,” the captain says as we approach the barricade at the edge of town. “Identify yourselves.”

I attempt to introduce us, but Eran interrupts with the names that aren’t the stupid nicknames I keep giving people. “We’re adventurers who work with the Eyes of the Queen and solve problems.”

“Neralion?” the captain (Cirenwe) says. “Were you at South Beacon?”

“That’s me,” I say. “I was hoping that would be the end of it for Maormer on Auridon, but I don’t mind putting my axe through a few more of their faces.”

“Captain Ciranya is my sister,” she says. “She told me about how you saved them. I’m glad you’re here to help.”

She tells us about how the town had some sort of ancient device that protects the harbor but that it’s currently powered down, and directs us in to figure out why it wasn’t activated and get it working again. Any of their people we can rescue in the process would also be helpful.

We find a wounded scout inside the stable, and Merry and I work on healing her up a bit while she tells us about where to find the magic rocks that power the device. (Because it clearly would have been entirely too sensible to keep them in the same place.)

Inside the manse, we kill the Maormer captain (who briefly tries to taunt us until I clip him in the shoulder with Blinky, knocking him to the floor) and retrieve one of the magic rocks. The captain’s log sits on a nearby table, and I quickly flip through it for incriminating evidence.

“Do we really have time to read right now?” Eran mutters.

I toss the book in my pack. “It seems they had an agent in town who prevented the beam from being activated. There is always time to find incriminating evidence. Unfortunately it doesn’t mention a name or we’d know whose ass needs kicking.”

We retrieve the other two magic rocks (“Welkynd stones,” Merry insists on calling them) from the dead mage’s house and from the inn. With those in hand, we make for the cliff where the ancient device is located, perched high above the water and overlooking a lovely pair of extremely flammable Maormer ships.

I carefully slot the rocks in the slots where they glow (through a bit of trial and error), and a beam of light beams out of the top, into another stone, and then beamed down to another spot below the cliff. Nothing is immediately blowing up and there’s no indication here of a switch or lever to activate it.

“I think this will need to be done from down there,” I say, pointing at something I can spot from here. “Do you guys terribly mind if I jump off this cliff to go press the button?”

“Thank you so much for asking this time,” Eran says. “Yes, go ahead. You may jump off this cliff.”

I hop down from rock to rock and land in front of the crystal with the beam, and activate it. The lovely beam of golden light turns into a lovely ray of golden fire that sets both Maormer ships ablaze.

As I’m watching the gleeful view of burning ships, Eran and Merry catch up with me after having gone around. “The marines are here and we’re retaking the town,” Eran says. “If you care to split a few more sea elf skulls before we run out of them, at least.”

“Absolutely!” I pull out Stormy and join them.

Once the town is secure and we’ve rested up a bit, we leave town by the north this time. We’d informed Captain Cirenwe that we’d found evidence of a traitor in town, but no indication as to who it was, so we leave that matter in her capable hands.

“Are we heading back to Firsthold?” Merry asks.

“Well, we’ll get there,” I say. “But I’m really just looking to see what’s over here, as I haven’t had a chance to look around in this corner of the island yet.”

“Oh, yes, by all means let’s explore every last corner of Auridon,” Eran says. “Why not explore every last corner of Tamriel while we’re at it?”

“We can skip the northeast part of Tamriel,” I say. “Anyway, I do want to head down to the beach and make sure there’s no more Maormer loitering about between here and Firsthold. They’re sneaky like that.”

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Eran asks.

I point. “Oh look, a wayshrine!” I run up to light it.

“I’m happier to see wayshrines than caves full of giant snakes,” Merry says. “You can ‘oh look’ at those anytime you want.”

There are no more sea elves on the beach, but there is a spooky cave by a waterfall. It appears to contain an old Daedric ruin, full of Daedra, with red banners hanging from the walls depicting a few wiggles above a couple of wavy lines. A little like a stylized sunset over water, maybe.

“Great, a Daedric temple,” Eran says. “Totally my favorite. Which Daedric Prince does that symbol represent?”

“Mehrunes Dagon,” Merry replies. “This must be Mehrunes’ Spite. I’ve heard of it, but it was never really a place any sane person goes intentionally.” He and Eran give me twin looks as I charge forward to hit a clannfear with a battle axe. “At least we can be sure that this lunatic is just here to kill things and not offer worship to dark powers.”

The best part of this particular Daedric temple? A bunch of racist bandits have holed up inside, doubtless hiding out following the deaths of their Veiled Queen and so many of their comrades. I also find a number of pieces of incriminating correspondence between Estre and the King of Worms, that guy who has a long name starting with M.

“Mannimarco,” Merry says, reading over the letters. “So there was some point in coming in here after all.”

The King of Worms would probably try to kill me if I started referring to him as ‘Manny’.

“Neri stumbles upon the strangest things completely by accident,” Eran says. “Did I mention how he only saved my ass because he got lost?”

“This explains so, so much,” Merry says.

After killing one Dremora, I notice a scamp following us around, not attacking and just looking up at us with big black eyes. According to his collar, he belongs to someone at the Mages Guild in Skywatch.

“Oh, this must be the missing scamp Gaireth mentioned,” Merry says. “I don’t know why she was so attached to it. It’s not like you can’t just summon another. But I suppose it was some sort of pet.”

“People keep these things as pets?” Eran asks. “I guess it takes all kinds.”

When I touch the collar, the scamp gets sucked inside, and I shove the collar into my pack. “We’ll be back at Skywatch sooner or later.”

The old temple contains a sizable library, and I help myself to a few choice books that sound interesting and not evil. The Veiled Heritance have even set up a small kitchen, and I help myself to their freshly-baked venison pies. No sense in letting them go to waste. Up around the bend, a Skyshard rests in a shaft of sunlight, and I help myself to that, too.

“Aha!” I exclaim. “I knew there’d be a Skyshard in here!”

“In a cave?” Merry says, examining the small hole in the ceiling. “How likely is that really?”

“Dunno, but you’d be amazed just how many Skyshards I’ve encountered in caves like this,” I say. “It’s like they find those holes in the ceiling attractive or something, although my personal theory is that the Divines are practicing their aim on them.”

“I suppose that’s as good a hypothesis as any,” Merry graciously allows.

And then we find the Heritance’s slaughterhouse, where a dead Altmer is laying on the counter next to a butcher’s knife.

“Oh gods, we already ate those pies,” Eran says, retching.

“I’m sure it was just venison,” I say uncertainly. “Anyway, how was I to know they’re cannibals on top of being treasonous Daedra worshippers? It’s like they’re trying way too hard to be obviously evil here.”

Merry makes a disgusted face. “Let’s just add the mer pies to the list of things we are never telling anyone.”