“So you shortened my three-syllable name to two syllables,” Merry says. “But you lengthened her three-syllable name to five syllables?”

“That’s different,” I say. “‘Daro’ is an honorific. Kind of like a title.”

“Could I be Merormo-daro, then, too?” Merry asks with a smirk.

“Don’t be silly,” I say. “That’s the female version of the clever, sleek, definitely not a thief Khajiit sort. The one for a male wizard would be… ‘jo’, I think?”

Ilara nods. “You could be Merry-jo!”

Merry puts his face in his palm and sighs.

We take the crate of kwama back to the Treeshade Exports guy (says the name on the box), who is alarmed and sends us to deliver it directly to the client who is located near Goldfolly. Did he really not know what he was importing? (He thought he was importing ‘kwama jelly’, but that would have been scrib jelly, technically speaking. Perhaps he missed a comma in there. A kwama comma.)

Anyway, we pop back over there via wayshrine and locate the woman’s hut. It’s a rugged leather tent like many in Valenwood, although unlike the Bosmer’s tents, her crude bed is made of wood. A wooden post hung with several skulls sits out front, along with a large cooking pot. While I find the smell delicious, Merry turns up his nose and makes a ‘ew’ sound as he pauses several feet back.

The client in question is a withered old woman who doesn’t quite look human. A hag, Gelur calls her, and from Gelur I assume that it’s a technical term and not just an insult. The hag (Alyxe) is grateful for the delivery and offers us some of her delicious stew, but Gelur and I are the only ones who partake. She even tips me a book on history/mythology (hard to tell which) when she realizes I’m interested in weird books. (I’ve started reading them while high. They’re much better that way.)

“Oh, you’re good kids,” Alyxe says. “Nobody’s stayed to chat and have dinner with old Granny Alyxe in a long time!”

“We’ll have to be sure to visit now and then!” I say.

Merry groans, and politely doesn’t say aloud the obvious retort that he’d prefer to stay upwind of her stew.

When we get back to the wayshrine, Eran says, “We really ought to go deal with that amulet, but it would probably be best to find the enchanter in question before digging it up and hauling it around. We could probably just convince them to come back there rather than carrying it.”

“Or ‘convince’ with threats if necessary,” Gelur adds.

“You are definitely not the sweet, innocent healer,” I say with a smirk. “Alright, that sounds like a good idea, actually. Let’s go.”

I use the wayshrine to teleport us to the temple north of Elden Root. We pray at the nearby Brackenleaf shrine and head north along the road Gelur says leads to Cormount. It’ll be a bit of a trip, but Eran also reminds me that one of the things the Queen wanted is not too far away from Cormount. I’m glad someone is keeping track of that. It’s probably somewhere in my journal.

Along the way, my mood brightens when I spot the blue shaft of a Skyshard beside a bridge, and I jump off to go absorb it.

“There he goes again,” Eran comments.

Gelur leans over the side of the bridge. “Is there something down there we need to see?”

“Just a Skyshard!” I yell up. “I’ll be back up in a minute.”

Upon finding a way to climb out of the ravine, I spot a ladder leading up to a treehouse, and head up to check it out. There’s an excellent view of Vastarie’s tower in the distance from here, still visible between the large trees. Two humans seem to be living up here. The Nord is asleep, and the Redguard greets me.

“Sorry, am I intruding?”

“Nah,” the Redguard (who introduces himself as Afwa) says. “Good to have company for a moment.”

“It’s a fine view of Vastarie’s tower, at any rate,” I say.

“What do you know of Vastarie?” Afwa asks. “We were her apprentices once. But then the disaster came, and Daedra killed everyone but me and Tholor here.”

“Really?” I say. “She’ll be thrilled to hear you’re still alive! But it was almost a hundred years ago. I didn’t think humans lived that long.”

“We had a bit of magic to help with that,” Afwa says. “Have you met Vastarie? Is she alright?”

I nod. “My friends and I dealt with the Daedra and freed her not too long ago. You should go down and say hi! She’s gotten embroiled in a scheme to stick it to the Prince of Schemes.”

Afwa goes over and shakes the Nord awake. “Tholor! Tholor, wake up. Our new friend here says he freed Vastarie and stopped the Daedra.”

The two of them quickly start packing their belongings (Tholor slightly more groggily) and climb down the ladder. A squirrel (named Rinses) rides on Tholor’s shoulder. I briefly get distracted by a dropped book titled Reality and Other Falsehoods that sounds like an excellent thing to read while high, which they let me take. We meet back up with my friends and give a round of introductions before we part ways and the two of them head off in the direction of Vastarie’s tower.

Before we can circle back around to the main road, a wood elf woman runs up to us, yelling to us to wait. “Thank Y’ffre! Maybe you can help. I was afraid I might have to run all the way to Cormount before I saw anyone.”

“Helping people is what we do,” I say. “What’s the problem?”

She explains how she’s from the village of Karthdar, located a good ways up the side road from here, and that spriggans suddenly attacked the village. Everyone went to hole up in a nearby cave while she went out to find help.

Gelur frowns deeply. “Did someone violate the Green Pact?”

“The treethane said as much,” the Bosmer woman (whose name I failed to catch) says. “He said some terrible crime has been committed. Can you go speak with him? Maybe you can find some way to appease the forest.”

“Of course,” I say.

“I’ll run on ahead and let Treethane Rolon know help is on the way.” She turns and runs back up the road.

“This definitely sounds urgent,” Eran says. “Don’t you sometimes find it weird how you just keep stumbling upon things like this, though?”

“Maybe the forest is guiding us,” I say with a wild grin.

“Could be,” Gelur says, grinning back.

“Ugh, don’t you encourage him,” Merry grumbles.

“How do we know it’s not true?” Ilara asks.

“Because this sort of thing happened on Auridon, too,” Eran says. “So unless it’s the Divines or Nirn or something guiding him to places to fix shit…”

“It’s just coincidence,” Merry insists. “It means nothing.”

When we reach Karthdar, we quickly discover that the angry spriggans are not particularly discriminate about attacking only the party they believe responsible for whatever great crime was committed here. We wind up having to hit a few of them before discovering a way to get around the bulk of them and to the cave, which is fortunately not too hard to find since it had a stone bridge leading to it and it’s surrounded by decorations of bone and leather.

Inside the ritual cave, a number of Bosmer are holed up, and a Khajiit sits tied up on a platform in the middle of the room. We locate the treethane in question to find out what’s going on.

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“You’ve come at a grave time, travelers,” Treethane Rolon says. “I hope you can help.”

“We’re Brackenleaf’s Briars,” Gelur tells him. “One of your scouts found us out on the road to Cormount.”

“Brackenleaf’s Briars?” Rolon looks over us. “Altmer and Khajiit are joining the Briars now? Perhaps it’s a sign.”

“Can you explain the situation here?” I ask.

Rolon tells us about how a sacred blossom was found cut and the forest rose up to attack them in retaliation. They narrowed down the suspects to a Khajiit merchant (Aranak), an alchemist (Spinner Eranas), and the alchemist’s wife (Gathiel). I diligently find a blank sheet of journal paper to start writing down the names of everyone in the village and all relevant information.

“Hold on a moment,” I say. “Khajiit. Aranak, your name is? Did you ever swear to the Green Pact?”

“No, of course not,” Aranak says. “I am a Khajiit, not a wood elf. The Green Pact is for wood elves.”

I look to Rolon. “Technically speaking, even if this Khajiit had gone tearing up every flower in sight with his bare claws, it would not have been a violation of the Green Pact because he never swore to the Green Pact. Was tying him up really necessary?”

“Well, we wanted to make sure he didn’t get away…” Rolon says. “But I see your point.” He goes over to untie the Khajiit. “I’ll request that you remain for your testimony, if you would please.”

“Of course,” Aranak says, stretching his now-free arms. “Thank you.”

I speak to the people in the cave first, hearing their opinions on the matter, but it’s all hearsay. Some are undecided, while others firmly believe one of the three is guilty, and one person thinks it’s all a conspiracy. I feel like something else is going on here. Interesting note: Gathiel was very ill and suddenly recovered.

Once we’ve gathered everyone’s testimonies, we head into town to gather evidence. While I’d like to split up to cover more ground, there’s too many dangerous plant things. Best stick together to deal with them as we go from building to building.

“I hate to see this place like this,” Gelur says. “I just have to imagine, what if this had been Brackenleaf? Would something like this happen if we offended the tree in some way?”

After thoroughly investigating a brewery that contains no useful information, we head into the Spinner’s house to look around. Cuttings from a plant lay on an alchemy table, and Gathiel, like many other idiots I’ve run across in my travels, left an incriminating diary just laying around.

“Seems pretty clear to me,” Gelur says, looking up from the diary. “Gathiel had someone cut the sacred blossom to cure her illness.”

“Is it that simple, though?” I muse, shoving the diary in my pack.

We investigate the Khajiit merchant’s tent and find among his paperwork an invoice for the flower in question.

“So it was him that cut it,” Ilara says. “He might not follow the Green Pact but he should know well enough that it might offend the forest anyway.”

“Tell you a secret, Ilara,” Gelur says with a smirk. “We Bosmer often do hire Khajiit to cut plants for us. The forest would likely not have done anything had this not been a specifically sacred flower. Aranak has probably done similar plenty of times before without consequence, so it’s no wonder he’s shocked that this time was different.”

“This should be more than enough evidence for a conviction, shouldn’t it?” Eran asks.

Gelur shakes her head. “We still need a mystical sign of some sort. Like how lightning struck that rock near the merchant tent, or the Spinner’s sign got blown down in a storm.” She indicates the objects in question. “Neither of those would point to Gathiel, though. Let’s check the rest of the buildings.”

In the treethane’s house, we find an astrology chart that Gelur insists is a mystical sign implicating Gathiel somehow. Because Gathiel’s sign is the Lady, which is a sign of good health or something, and it has been ‘ascendant’ lately? What does that even mean? You’d think when the stars rise and set is a pretty fixed and predictable thing. The Dwemer tracked the movements of the Serpent constellation as it wandered across the sky and could tell you centuries in advance when an eclipse of the moons and sun was going to happen, provided nothing weird happened in the intervening time. (Weird things tend to happen pretty regularly, though. The Dwemer preferred a world that was neat and orderly, but the world… isn’t so much. Maybe that’s where they really went. To another world where shit makes some damned sense.)

“Mystical signs,” Merry mumbles. “If the forest is trying to say who it’s annoyed at rather than who actually did anything, it’s clearly annoyed at everyone. I’m sure if we looked hard enough, we could find ‘evidence’ against the brewer and the butcher, too, but we know what happened here.”

“The only question is, who should bear the guilt for it?” Gelur asks.

“What will happen to whoever is found guilty?” I ask.

“They’ll probably be killed,” Gelur says. “Gathiel must have realized there was the risk of that, but I don’t think she realized the forest would attack the entire village.”

“It seems a bit extreme,” Ilara says.

“Something still seems not right here,” I say. “Firstly, how did Gathiel wind up becoming ill with such a deadly disease in the first place? It doesn’t seem natural. And there was a book that conveniently mentioned that this particular sacred flower could cure it, just left lying around? I think there’s more going on here than the obvious answer.”

“So, do you want to keep digging, then?” Merry taps the astrology chart. “I don’t trust this sort of ‘mystical evidence’ one bit. How do we know the treethane himself didn’t write this up to make her sound guilty because he knew he’d be asking for mystical evidence later? The stars were shining brightly, pfah!”

“You think the treethane was responsible for this somehow?” Gelur asks.

“Ilara-daro stole a diary from one of the others, one Neronnir,” Ilara says with a sly grin, pulling out a book. “It says the treethane was replaced by a doppelganger.”

“Was that the guy who believed this all to be a conspiracy?” I ask, taking the book and opening it. “Because it’s looking a bit like a conspiracy to me.”

The journal details suspicions about how Treethane Rolon went away to meditate for a few days and an imposter returned in his place. If he were secretly a cultist of some sort, he could have certainly cast a spell to bring an unnatural disease down upon the poor woman and then left the information about the restorative properties of the flower somewhere that the alchemist would have found it. He could also certainly have cast a damned lightning spell on the rock in front of the Khajiit’s tent and blown down the Spinner’s sign for good measure. There’s even a book on destruction magic in his house.

“One woman having a flower, no matter how sacred, cut to save her life is less likely to have brought down the wrath of the forest on the entire village than its own treethane conspiring against its people,” Gelur says. “But do we have anymore evidence than Neronnir’s rantings?”

“Merry, can you analyze that lightning-charred stone?” I ask. “Can you detect whether magic was used or if it was natural?”

Merry goes and takes a close look at the stone in question. “It’s definitely not normal for lightning to ignore all the trees and buildings and hit a rock on the ground. Not natural at all.”

Having found all we could in the village itself, we decide to search the surrounding area. Down by the river a short ways, past an Ayleid well, we come upon a Skyshard on a cliff beside a waterfall. When I go up to absorb it, the skies grow dark in the distance directly ahead as a Dark Anchor drops.

“Is this a mystical sign from the heavens?” I ask.

“This is absolutely a mystical sign from the heavens, and one the treethane could not have possibly interfered with,” Gelur says.

When we return to the cave, everyone has gathered in a back chamber, and Treethane Rolon stands behind a table. Before bringing out the evidence, I stop to ask a few questions around the room first. Like asking the alchemist where he got the book on rare plants that suggested someone turn the sacred flower into a potion in the first place. (He doesn’t remember.)

I go up to the table in the middle of the room. “I hereby accuse… Treethane Rolon.”

“What?!” Rolon says, taken aback. “That’s preposterous.”

“Stand down, Rolon,” says one of the others. “If the Pact Advocate has found evidence, I want to hear this.” She looks to me. “And I hope you’ve brought evidence for such an accusation.”

We bring out all the evidence — the destruction magic book, the manipulation of the three suspects, the easily-falsified signs pointing everywhere but at him, the omen of the Skyshard overlooking the dolmen, and we call Nerunnor to testify against him. Neronnir. His name was Neronnir. That was definitely what I wrote down.

“You would seriously believe the word of this madmen over me?” Rolon says incredulously.

“Oh, I’m not mad,” Neronnir says. “That’s just what I wanted you to believe. You thought I wasn’t paying attention and that nobody would notice you were acting differently.”

“The Dark Anchors are the doing of the Worm Cult, a group of foul necromancers in the employ of Molag Bal,” I say. “They could certainly have been the source of a rare, unnatural wasting disease.”

“To what purpose?” Rolon demands.

“Chaos,” I say. “I saw it across Auridon, when canonreeves set their own towns on fire. Accomplishing nothing but death and destruction. And what do we have here? Nothing but pointless chaos.”

“This is ridiculous,” Rolon sputters. “It’s obvious who is really at fault here, based on the evidence you’ve uncovered.”

“You had to arrange things to point at all of them because you couldn’t be sure who would take the bait to go after the flower,” I say. “You even had the Khajiit tied up before we even got here, on nothing but blind suspicion and possibly racism.” I look about the room. “Is there a tree somewhere I can have a chat with about this?”

I don’t get a chance to try to talk to a tree first, as the minute my back is turned, Treethane Rolon tries to make a break for it. He doesn’t get very far before Merry freezes him in place. Rolon breaks the paralysis spell in seconds, but it’s enough time for quick Ilara-daro to catch up to him and trip him up.

“You’re not taking me down there!” Rolon cries, and casts a spell that fills the room with choking smoke as he scrambles to his feet again.

The battle is vicious but brief, especially when the guards join in on restraining him. (One of them knew a spell that causes claws of stone to rise up out of the ground to grab someone. That’s impressive, and he had a hard time breaking free of that.) Would the three suspects have quietly accepted their fate if I’d accused them?

“I don’t know who you are, but the real treethane didn’t know magic,” one of them says.

“I am your treethane!” Rolon insists. “Release me at once!”

We wind up having to drag him, still struggling, into the lower chamber for judgment. There’s a face on a tree trunk down there, and a strangler vine sitting in front of it. Rolon is reduced to begging at this point, but the vine lashes out and drains him of his blood. “Blood for blood,” says the tree. “It is done.”

“Sorry about the mess,” I say.

“You were not the one that started this chain of events,” the tree says. “You merely finished it.”