After returning by wayshrine to Cormount and updating the jeweler about his potion, my friends and I head to the Ayleid ruin pretentiously called the Reliquary of Stars. We’re supposed to obtain something I’ve completely forgotten about. Something Ayleid, presumably. Eran reminds me that we are, indeed, after something Ayleid and that the person who sent us wasn’t sure what we’d be looking for, either. It’s good to know that we’re all clueless.
A group of researchers from the Mages Guild had been researching the ruins, and of course they ran into problems. They’ve got a small camp set up at the edge of the ruins. One eager high elf at the camp by the name of Nondor speaks of how the place seems to have recently ‘woken up’ somehow. He hasn’t heard from his associates inside the ruin in a while, but he’s clearly too busy writing reports to go check in on them. He sends us in to speak with a researcher by the name of Lara and a few more syllables I know I’d forget if I tried. Nondor thinks his guildmates back in Elden Root are ‘chomping at the bit’ for his reports. I politely don’t point out that the phrase is ‘champing’ (he probably hasn’t spent a lot of time around any animal with a bit in its mouth).
More tents have been set up inside the huge gallery at the bottom of the stairs, and dark objects flutter through the air that I take to be bats for a moment until I realize they’re moving all wrong.
“Flying books,” I mutter. “Yep, something weird’s going on here.”
Eran smacks a book with his shield when it tries to fly into his face. “And annoying.”
I spot a woman in the camp who might be Lara, and I approach her saying, “Are you Lara? I brought a butterfly net. Do we need to recapture these books?”
She snorts in amusement. “I’m Laranalda, yes. And they’re getting obnoxious, to be sure, but they’re not the most pressing concern at the moment.” She tells us about how her assistants are missing in the ruins and protocol said she should stay put until aid arrived. Yep, that’s totally us.
We head in to look for the assistants in question, and quickly discover that the Ayleid ruin is full of dead Ayleids. The slightly transparent, angry, purple sort. We wind up having to convince a number of them to get back to resting in peace on the way through. We also run across some notes from some ancient lovers that my friends are wondering why I’m bothering to stop and read.
The first of Lara’s assistants, a wood elf named Belehir or something, is standing screaming in the midst of some glowing things and bound by purple chains. Because of course he stumbled right into some sort of trap. He sends us off to go kill something that sounds like a Watcher by his be-tentacled description, in order to get an eyeball to wave at the glowing things in hopes of it freeing him. Okay then.
After finding and killing a Watcher, I also locate a chest with a lock of hair that leads me to a ghost who doesn’t attack us and is very confused that we’re not her long-dead lover. I can only suggest that she search for him in Aetherius or wherever he would have wound up after he died, and she fades away. From what it sounded like, she was going to kill them both so they could be together in eternity, which sounds all well and romantic until you’re stuck alone as a ghost in a ruin for thousands of years. Hopefully they at least wound up in the same afterlife. (By the way, Ayleids were even more racist than Altmer, apparently. Maybe there’s a good reason why there’s not a lot of Ayleids around these days. The Altmer might take note.)
With the squishy Daedric eye in hand (Merry’s hand, technically), we return to the room where the assistant was stuck in the trap. Fortunately for the Bosmer, his dubious idea involving the Watcher eye works, and he’s freed from the trap.
“Are you feeling okay?” I ask. “You’re still glowing purple-black.”
“Ugh,” he mumbles, looking down at himself. “Hopefully it’s only cosmetic and will wear off, or I’ll need to get my guildmates to look at it. In any case, I’m getting back to the camp now. I’ve had quite enough excitement for one day.”
We then head off toward the gardens in the center of the complex to see if we can find the other assistant, whose name I already forgot. (“Tedryni,” Eran reminds me helpfully.) This broad area is open to the sky, although shrouded in purple haze, lending a vaguely pinkish cast to the sky and distant trees. When we climb down the stairs into the garden, we come face to face with a number of statues in improbable positions, frozen in gestures of worship surrounding what appears to be a Daedric spirit of some sort. She calls me a ‘fine specimen’ and doesn’t think she has one of my kind in her garden.
“I don’t imagine you would,” I say dryly. “I’m guessing you mostly have Ayleids and one… Dunmer was it?”
“Tedryni did sound like a Dunmer name,” Eran says.
“Oh, yes, I just finished with one such specimen,” the spirit says. “It’s been so long since I’ve had fresh materials to work with.”
She calls herself the caretaker and introduces herself by a mess of a name that sounds like a hacking cough, like many Dremora. I won’t bother trying to repeat it. From what I gather, the Ayleids summoned her in order to preserve their libraries, but she apparently decided that their orders were vague enough to imply that she ought to ‘preserve’ the Ayleids as well. By turning them all to stone. Well, that would explain why there’s no more Ayleids in this particular part of Valenwood.
The Dremora spirit proceeds to send us on a game around the garden to try to find where she stashed Tedryni’s soul while the undead try to kill us. So, typical really.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Merry says to me quietly, “I could restore him from stone to flesh, but without his soul it would do no good.”
I’d say we find Tedryni’s soul in the last place we look but that’s silly since we wouldn’t keep looking once we found it. For his part, Tedryni winds up being extremely grateful that he’s only been in here for days at most rather than centuries. I feel that, brother. I feel that.
Back at the base camp, we settle in to rest and eat. Come morning (at least I think it’s morning, given that we’re underground), Lara takes me aside to speak in private. Something about the heart of someone named Annie or something. Some dead Ayleid, I don’t know. At least I hope it’s a dead Ayleid and not a dead god. Dead Ayleids are considerably less volatile, even when they’re trying to kill you. Also, she’s not happy to hear that there’s a Dremora with a difficult to pronounce name in there. (I couldn’t remember it, but could give a ‘probably’ when she asks if it’s a specific name. I don’t ask her to spell it.)
“I was afraid of that,” Lara says softly. “I read a mention of her by name in one of these books. She can apparently control people’s minds and even the Ayleids were wary of her. I don’t like the idea of my assistants or any of your party being mind controlled, but Tedryni has been uncharacteristically quiet since his return. He’s normally so enthusiastic, but now he’s withdrawn and it’s depressing to see him like that.”
“He had his soul ripped out and was turned into a statue,” I remind her. “Most people would be a bit shaken by that. I’d be concerned about him if he wasn’t.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Lara says. “But Behelir is still energetic and eager to get back to researching.”
“Okay, he’s probably the one being mind controlled,” I say. “He was stuck in a weird Ayleid light trap for half a day and soundly declared that he’d had quite enough excitement for a while.”
“I want to run some tests for Daedric influence on Tedryni,” Lara says. “While I’m doing that, could take Behelir with you and search the Hall of Might for the Heart of Anumaril?”
I stare at her and sigh. “Well. If you want us to keep an eye on him and make sure that there’s five people around to keep him from causing trouble, I suppose that would do. Or would you prefer I leave someone behind to guard the camp, too?”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine, but if you can spare someone, an extra guard would be appreciated,” Lara says.
Eran isn’t too unhappy about being assigned to guard duty. Under the circumstances, the necessity is understandable. “Be careful down there and don’t do anything too stupid.”
I grin at him. “Would I?”
I’m not quite sure where this ‘Hall of Might’ is, but Bellihar knows the way. To say that the library contains a lot of books is a bit of an understatement. We could be scouring the place for the next century trying to index every scrap of knowledge here, but we’re actually looking for something specific even if we have not the faintest clue what that specific thing is.
“Ilara-daro feels a draft from this corner of the room.” She shuffles in front of one large bookcase. “Here, she thinks.”
“There’s three books missing,” Merry observes.
“They’re probably the ones scattered around the room and not on other bookcases,” I muse. “Although if this is a secret door and I were trying to lock it, I’d put the missing keys somewhere a little less obvious.”
“Complain about it being obvious once it turns out that it’s obvious,” Merry says, putting the books back into the bookcase in chronological order. It clicks and opens. “It turns out it was obvious.”
The Bosmer rushes in ahead of us. He even rushes, completely undeterred, across a room full of active spike traps. Something red and ominous-looking is glowing on a pedestal in the center of the room. He reaches out for it, cackling in a voice that isn’t his own, only to find that Merry has frozen him in place.
“Yep,” I say, casually approaching the edge of the traps. “Called it.”
“You could be a little less smug about being proven right and a little more concerned about a powerful Daedra getting her hands on a dangerous artifact,” Merry says. “That spell won’t hold him for long. Or her. Whichever.”
“Long enough,” I say, dancing around the spikes. I casually toss the mysterious artifact into my pack without taking a second glance at it.
“Noooo!” the Bosmer yells with the voice of the Dremora woman, eyes glowing red. “I will be free! I must restore my body!”
“How about we just send you back to Oblivion?” I ask.
She’s quiet for a moment. “I was bound deep into the foundations of this library. They made sure I would be trapped here long after the place crumbled into ruins. Then they separated my spirit from my body since I was causing too much trouble for them. Ugh! If I’m to be trapped here forever, I’d rather it be in my own body.”
“Merry, do you know of any way to locate the exact stones this Daedra was bound to?” I ask.
“It might be doable,” Merry says thoughtfully. “And with the use of the Heart of Anumaril, it might even be possible to destroy them so that she can be banished back to Oblivion.”
Once I’ve convinced the Daedra to leave the Bosmer alone, on the promise of severing her bindings and sending her back to Oblivion, we head out of the ruins. She might still be watching through his eyes or something, but it hardly matters at this point. He’s dazed and unsettled but otherwise unharmed. She was very good at puppeting him across those spike traps. We drop him off at the tents and go to find Lara.
Ilara leans close and says to me quietly, “She’s done bad things. Shouldn’t she be punished for them?”
“Daedra are immortal,” I say. “They can only be banished or imprisoned, never truly destroyed. If they’re killed, they’ll simply reform from the waters of Oblivion. The Ayleids binding her here was already punishment, but she’s too much trouble to leave on Nirn. Best to just get rid of her.”
Ilara frowns, then nods. “How do you ever deal with Daedra, never mind a Prince?”
“Usually, the Dremora at least respect strength, if nothing else,” I say. “Or courage, wit, or sheer brass balls. They’re more complicated than, say, an atronach, but manageable once you understand what motivates them.”
“This one thinks you might find anything manageable if you understand what motivates them,” Ilara suggests slyly.
“True,” I say with a chuckle. “How about I now go convince some mages to free a Dremora because it would be an offense to their professional pride otherwise? They won’t stand for a mere dabbler like myself challenging their arcane skill.”
“Just tell me you’re not letting Ealcil near the Heart of Anumaril,” Merry says. “I’ve heard about Khenarthi’s Roost.”
I make a face. “Yeah, definitely not. Ah, there’s Lara now. Just who we were looking for.”
We fill Lara in on what happened and what will be necessary to get rid of the dangerous, powerful Daedra trapped in the ruin so that they’d be able to study the place properly. The Dremora in question had only agreed to leave them be so long as we were actually trying to break her bonds, after all. I turn over the creepy red glowing rock to her, as well. I don’t want that thing in my pack. I’d really rather not be messing with it at all, but best not leave it laying around until the Daedra situation has been dealt with.