I don’t dream of Coldharbour anymore. The nightmares had been tapering off during my travels on Auridon, but they’ve completely stopped since I started spending my nights in Valenwood. I don’t know if it’s something that’s happened or simply where I am, but I’m not about to complain. Most nights we’re either camped out in the forest or back in Brackenleaf, depending on how far from a wayshrine we’ve wound up.

“Do you have any children, Gelur?” Merry asks.

“Oh, yes,” Gelur says. “Two of them, a son and a daughter. They’re grown and have their own lives now, though. We might run across them in our travels at some point.”

“You didn’t keep track of them?” Merry asks.

“Why?” Gelur wonders. “I don’t own them. I love them very much but I don’t see much need to tell them what they ought to do.” She gives a small grin. “I’m not an Altmer.”

Not far from Elden Root, we come across a Bosmer named Enthoras who I vaguely recall having read a mention of in an advertisement looking for couriers. That he immediately tries to hire us for a job would seem to corroborate that. He wants us to travel to someplace called Redfur Trading Post and speak with a customs clerk who has a very long name starting with A. I ask him to spell that, and still can’t manage to write it properly.

“She’s got to be a high elf,” I mumble. “Only high elves insist on naming their children like that.”

“I’d take pity on you and write it down for you, but… what in Oblivion language are you writing your notes in?” Eran says.

“Dwemeris,” I reply with a smirk.

Another group comes by on the road, and I overhear a Bosmer tour guide describing a nearby ruin (with a long name starting with L) to a couple of Altmer and a Khajiit. “Daedra have been seen in the area,” he says.

“Hey, guys!” I call to my companions. “Want to go kill some Daedra?”

“But what about my shipment?” Enthoras protests.

“What?” I say innocently. “The ruin is right there. We can deal with the Daedra problem and be on our way in no time.”

Eran shrugs broadly. “There’s not much sense in trying to talk him out of it. And besides, your shipment is already late and does not seem more important than a Daedric incursion.”

“Well… that’s a good point,” Enthoras admits. “Y’ffre guide you, then.”

We head up the road to the ruins of L-name. (“Laeloria,” Merry supplies in exasperation.) I get so distracted at the shiny golden wisps drifting about that I almost don’t notice I’m being attacked by little, annoying banekin.

Then, as we get a bit further in, a female voice echoes from nowhere, “Approach, mortals.” A very familiar feminine voice.

“Oh fuck,” I whisper.

“What is it, Neri?” Eran asks. “Who was that?”

I point toward a shrine, with banners depicting a star with eight points, and a statue of a woman holding two staves topped with a moon and a star. My hands are shaking. I don’t know why I’m surprised, though. I knew well enough that sooner or later, I would run across one of the Lady of Twilight’s shrines or worshippers. I just don’t think I was quite mentally prepared to deal with it yet.

“A Daedric shrine?” Eran says. “That’s…”

“Azura,” I say, the name hanging heavily in the air.

“Is she responsible for the Daedra roaming around here?” Merry wonders.

I take a deep breath and steel myself, and step up into the shrine. I can’t bring myself to kneel or bow, not now, not after everything.

“Ah, so my champion has indeed returned to the world, just as I foretold,” Azura’s voice speaks from the statue.

“I am not your champion, Lady Azura,” I say evenly. “You left me to rot in Coldharbour for an era.”

“You were beyond my reach,” Azura says. “In that one red moment when events converged, I was to foretell that you’d return to throw down the cursed false gods, and so they sought to ensure that I would not be able to send you back into the world. They attempted to disrupt the thread of prophecy. And yet I knew you would return. So I had foreseen, regardless of their trickery.”

I stare at the statue. I want to be angry. I really do. I want to hate her for the callousness, for the carelessness, for all the torments the Daedra subjected me to. But I don’t really have any anger left in me for her. I spent it all in my first century of imprisonment. It’s not like she’s even saying anything I wouldn’t have expected her to say. Still, that doesn’t mean I’m happy with her, or that I’m about to forgive her and start worshipping her again.

“Yes, I’m sure you did,” I say. “And I don’t care. I’m still not your champion. I am not bending the knee to you ever again.”

“I will graciously let your insolence slide,” Azura says. “There is something I need done in the ruins that are now called Laeloria, and if you will not do it for me, then do it to strike back at Molag Bal.”

I sigh. “What’s going on here, then?”

The voice from the statue tells me about how some priestess (whose name I immediately forget) is being tormented by Molag Bal and that the pain caused a hole to Coldharbour to form. That can happen? Clearly everyone else getting tormented in Coldharbour isn’t worth sugared ash yams if this one priestess’s screams are enough to do that. The annoying bitch god goes on, talking about how somebody else tried to help the priestess a long time ago and screwed it up somehow, so now I have to find out what she did wrong and fix everything.

“Fine,” I say once she’s finally stopped talking. “Poke Molag Bal in the eye, save somebody, and make Valenwood a little safer in the process hopefully. But don’t think distracting me with a quest is going to make me stop being miffed at you. And your damned prophecies. Did you prophesy that someone would eventually show up and fix everything here? Prophecies are such guar shit anyway.”

The statue has no further words for me and does not respond to my ranting.

I short softly and turn back to my companions. “Did everyone hear that? Great. Let’s go find that wizard tower the bitch god mentioned.”

“It’s probably the intact building that looks like it was built by Altmer, and not the crumbling ruins that look like they were built by Ayleids,” Merry points out, pointing it out to me.

“Hah, that takes some balls,” Gelur says as we head off. “You told off a god to her… face, sort of.”

While the exterior of the building is undamaged, the interior is a mess. Furniture lays overturned and broken, books are strewn across the floor, and the room is lit by those blue glowing crystals the ancient elves loved so much as well as the flicker of firelight. There’s a fire burning on the hearth, with the pieces of a broken crate feeding it. Is someone still living here?

We split up and search the building thoroughly, sifting through trash to piece together useful information, and running across no squatters in the process. A rather peculiar mirror stands out, but we can’t figure out anything to do with it offhand. Some scattered notes mention a strange tablet and the name ‘Irrai’. When we find the tablet and speak the name, a small winged twilight appears before us, fluttering upon dusky purple bat wings. She says that she works for Azura and tells us that to get inside, we’ll need to charge up a magic rock by killing Daedra. Also she’s rather annoying and has a grating voice like nails on a slate.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Ilara does not trust this Daedra,” my Khajiit friend whispers. “Ilara thinks she smells wrong.”

One of the notes we found mentions that the wizard in question assumes winged twilights all work for Azura, but I’ve spent enough time in Coldharbour to know that’s a deadly assumption. There were winged twilights there too, plenty of them, servants of Molag Bal who would cheerfully pull out your entrails for fun when they were done having fun with you. Honestly, though, I wouldn’t trust her no matter who she works for. Maybe a younger Nerevar would have been blindly eager to do Azura’s bidding here. A younger Nerevar who hadn’t been betrayed by his best friends, his wife, and his own god.

We don’t have any better options, though, so we charge up the magic rock and use it on the glowing thing to open the door into the ruins. Irrai seems really, really happy about it. Something called the ‘Twilit Heart’ might just be the heart of a winged twilight and we powered her up or something. I’m not sure and don’t actually care, but her saying she wants us to see her Prince’s glorious domain is a little ominous considering we were going to be dealing with Coldharbour here, not Moonshadow.

As we descend into the ruins, Irrai runs across something ahead and shrieks in surprise. The wizard, Vastarie (not to be confused with Valaste, a completely different female high elf mage), is apparently still alive down here. Or undead? Her eyes are glowing blue and that’s definitely not a normal trait for Altmer. From what they’re saying, I can infer that Irrai is indeed a servant of Molag Bal and betrayed Vastarie.

“You know, I’d be more upset about this if I hadn’t expected it,” I say lightly. “Kill that winged s’wit!”

Upon realizing that she’s outnumbered and outmatched, Irrai tries to flee, but there’s really nowhere for her to go. We catch up with her soon enough, and Vastarie freezes her with a spell and asks me to stick her in the magic rock. I don’t quite understand why but I’m hardly one to argue considering the creature was just trying (badly) to kill us. Irrai takes a moment to taunt us about how we’re going to be trapped in Coldharbour forever.

“You know, ‘forever’ is kind of a silly word considering how much of a revolving door Oblivion can be sometimes,” I say.

“What’s a… revolving door?” Eran wonders.

“A… Dwemer thing,” I say. “Never mind. Anyway, I’m well-familiar with Coldharbour and it’s not like I can’t get out of there again.”

“Fool!” Irrai exclaims. “If you escaped from Coldharbour, it was because my Prince allowed it in order to fulfill his schemes!”

“Oh, yes, very cunning,” I say. “You have no idea, otherwise Molag Bal would be quite annoyed with you for tipping his hand. Anyway, your voice is really starting to annoy me and I’d like to stop hearing it now, so into the rock you go.” I absorb Irrai into the geode like I’d done with the banekin outside.

Before moving on, we make a round of introductions so that we’re not having to yell ‘hey, you with the stick’ in combat. The lich (I think she’s a lich) had apparently decided that sitting trapped in a library beat being trapped in Coldharbour, and the gateway to Coldharbour was the only way out of the library. I’m guessing at this point she’d be really happy to see some new books.

“Can anyone perhaps explain why one person being tortured caused a gateway to Coldharbour to appear?” I ask as we start down the stairs.

“Oh yeah, I found her journal,” Gelur puts in. “She’s got some sort of voice powers. I guess this is because of her screaming.”

“Voice powers?” I ask. “Like the Nord Tongues?”

Gelur shrugs. “I dunno, maybe? The journal didn’t really go into detail on that part.”

We make our way into the misty ruin full of Daedra, and come to the portal. I’m still leery about voluntarily going into Coldharbour, even after having successfully been there and back to save Lyris. But Vastarie assures us that she can get us back out again, so I’ll take her at her word on that. (Honestly, I think the Prophet’s probably on top of things and might just open a portal for me eventually.)

The portal opens into a small cavern where we kill more Daedra and break a couple of crystals. Up a set of stairs, a skeleton lays on a table, with a translucent figure hovering over it, contorted in pain. I hadn’t expected her ghost to be separated from what’s left of her body, but I guess the ghost will follow if I move the body, maybe? I gather up the bones, and the ghost whispers her thanks.

Vastarie uses the magic rock I’d stuck Irrai in to open a portal back to not-Coldharbour, and I carry the skeleton out and lay it in the shrine. A pillar of blue light shines down upon the old bones, and rose petals fall from nowhere upon it. The statue starts talking about how much she appreciates her beloved priestess being laid to rest.

I sigh. “I wouldn’t wish Coldharbour upon my worst enemy. Though I’m not quite sure who my worst enemy is right now; there’s several options. Anyway, I’ve done what you asked, and I hope she likes it in Moonshadow.”

She left her beloved priestess to rot in Coldharbour for… however long this was, but it sounded like a long time. And here I walked in and solved the problem in under an hour. Is it really a matter of Azura being callous, or her servants being incompetent? Though I should give Vastarie at least a bit of slack, in that she was betrayed.

We decide to hang around for a while and help Vastarie clear out the remaining Daedra and start getting her house in order again. Cleaning up this building is going to be a long-term project, but she’s determined to reclaim her house because it’s her house. I can’t exactly blame her for that. She’s been trapped in that ruin for almost a century and lost all her friends, so I feel the least we can do is keep her company for a while before continuing on our travels, and catch her up on current events a little.

“So, you’re Vastarie,” Merry says. “I’m familiar with your work.”

“Well, at least someone still remembers my name,” Vastarie says with a sigh. “I do hope you’re not with that judgmental Mages Guild, though.”

“Technically I think I’m still a member,” Merry says. “One of them disliked my… ah… experiments with atronachs and told me off, but I don’t think anyone in the Guild ever bothers to check anyone’s credentials. It was quite rude even if some of those experiments had been ill-advised.”

“They are overly cautious sometimes, but some caution is warranted nonetheless,” Vastarie says. “There are still some lines you do not cross.”

“Oh, certainly,” he agrees. “And Neri over there spared my life after I did something particularly stupid, so I’ve been helping him and I doubt I’m going to be getting back to experimenting on anything anytime soon. I’d probably be looking into a different field, anyway, perhaps delving instead into the field of Alteration rather than Conjuration. I think traveling has been good for me, though. I’ve been experiencing things and seeing perspectives that I never would have considered, and I find myself gaining a great deal of respect for the Bosmer.”

We rest that night at Vastarie’s tower in Laeloria after having made the place slightly less of a disaster area and triple-checked to make sure there’s no more Daedra lurking about. This particular part of Valenwood has been made considerably safer.

I take the opportunity to reorganize my notes a bit, and I’m copying passages out into a fresh journal when Eran comes and looks over my shoulder.

“Is it really necessary to write your journals in Dwemeris?” Eran wonders.

“I am bound and determined not to be leaving incriminating journals everywhere, unlike many of the people we’ve encountered.”

“Are we doing anything incriminating?” Merry wonders.

“Not at the moment, I don’t think?” I say. “We might, I mean, I haven’t bothered to figure any of the local laws aside from ‘don’t pick the flowers’.”

“That’s not so much a law as a pact,” Gelur pipes up. “And the Green Pact mainly only applies to Bosmer.”

“It’s still rude, isn’t it?”

…

I get up in the middle of the night and go out to Azura’s shrine. I don’t care if she responds, but I know she’ll be listening.

“Lady Azura,” I say quietly, then pause for a long moment as I search for the words. “I don’t know how a god can be so helpless that you can’t help your followers. You couldn’t help me. You couldn’t help your priestess. You couldn’t even help Vastarie. I know you couldn’t reach into Coldharbour itself to save us, but Vastarie was on Nirn.”

She’s listening, alright, and she feels the need to defend herself, too. “Ah, Nerevar… a compact with your sometime friend and betrayer, Sotha Sil, binds my hands, as well as those of several other of the mightiest Princes.”

“Wait, Seht did what?”

“I do not wish to go into the details, but know that our influence on Nirn is limited and we must act through intermediaries.”

“What in the fuck did he promise you or threaten you with that anyone agreed to that!?” I exclaim.

“You would not understand,” the smug bitch god says.

“Did Molag Bal agree to this, too?” I ask. “Because he’s certainly not being shy about making a mess of Nirn.”

“He did,” she replies.

“So it’s okay for him to launch a large-scale invasion of Tamriel, but not for you to help a single one of your followers in such a way no one else would even know about it?”

Smug bitch god doesn’t respond for a long moment and I sigh in exasperation before she finally replies, “Plans are in motion. More than that, I cannot say. Know that the fate of the world hinges upon your actions. You have been put into play to avert this impending doom.”

I stare at the statue, expressionless and imagining expression upon that stone face. “So, I’m still nothing more than a tool, as I always was. Honestly, though, I don’t expect anything else and I don’t even care anymore. And if you’re just going to start in about destiny then I’m going back to bed, and don’t you dare show up in my dreams.”