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I Changed My Name to Avoid My Ex and Accidentally Saved the World
Chapter 63: In Which the Worm King Talks to Himself

Chapter 63: In Which the Worm King Talks to Himself

After spending a night in my own house back in Brackenleaf Village, a banekin wakes me up much too early and I’m reaching for Dumzy to bisect it, wondering how it got this far into the village, when it babbles out in terror that his master Abnur Tharn sent him with a message.

“Then I believe I’ll make a note in my journal to get Abnur Tharn a clock,” I say dryly in between yawns. “Assuming I can find one. It’s got to be past midnight but it’s definitely not dawn yet. Is this urgent, or does he just have poor timing?”

The banekin is insistent that I must be quick and meet Abnur at the Elden Root Mages Guildhall, so I make sure my friends are awake (they already were, with the amount of noise the banekin was making) and get dressed and ready to go. I hadn’t expected to find him there in unassuming Mages Guild robes, but I suppose he can’t swan about Valenwood dressed as an Imperial nobleman.

Abnur explains how there’s a place where Manny keeps some information about stuff, so we should go to Wormroot Depths and root around deep to find out if he’s got anything about Sai Sahan. As it turns out, this is more of grasping at potential leads and less of an immediate Daedric incursion.

“Did that banekin really make it sound like there was an attack in progress?” Abnur says. “They’re such children, always inclined to interpret any instructions you give them in their own way.”

“Well, we’re awake now, so we might as well go check out this cave,” I say. “Where is it?”

“To the northwest, near the settlement called Redfur Trading Post,” Abnur replies.

“Redfur? Hmm. I think I ran across an advertisement looking for mercenaries to help in excavating a ruin. Could be the same place?”

“Very likely,” Abnur says. “The place is Ayleid in construction, although its original name has been lost.”

“We’ll get some breakfast and meet you there, then,” I say.

While I’m there, I retrieve my alchemy journal from… Edrasi? The Mages Guild alchemist in Elden Root. I’d already forgotten the name of the one I’d lent it to. Fortunately, she wrote her name (It’s actually Edrisi. I was close.) in the journal as well as a few helpful tips in the margins as thanks.

“I’ll get in touch with your jeweler in Cormount so I can test my concoctions with him,” Edrisi says. “Fortunately, I am not a Bosmer, and am free to make potions out of anything I wish. I’ve found it’s best to simply not tell my wood elven customers what goes into my potions and they don’t ask. Makes it easier for everyone that way.”

We head over to Redfur via wayshrine and take the road leading west out of town. Some ways out of town, we spot a small camp by the side of the road, but there’s no sign of whoever might have stopped here. A rough path leads down to a small river, its banks lined by stranglers and hoarvor, with a couple of nereids dancing under a waterfall. Very picturesque surroundings full of things that might try to kill us if we get too close. I love Valenwood.

The first sign that there might be trouble unrelated to the local highly aggressive flora and fauna is the skull totems at the mouth of a large cave on the far side of the stream. Of course we go inside, what do you take me for, a sensible person? That’s where we find the bodies, or the skeletons of them at least, which still might not mean they’ve been in here for a particularly long time.

“Probably weren’t killed by a predator,” Gelur says quietly. “The bones weren’t cracked and gnawed on. Place smells weird as fuck, too. Whatever’s back here prolly ain’t natural.”

At the back of the cave, the sight of a large flesh atronach explains what might have happened here, and an ominous brazier marked with Molag Bal’s symbol indicates who the necromancer responsible for this probably worshipped. This clearly wasn’t what Abnur wanted us to come out here for, but it’s still a problem connected to the God of Schemes, so we ought to take care of it while we’re here.

“Alright, let’s go tear this thing apart before anyone else stumbles upon the place,” I say.

Flesh atronachs might be big and tough, but they have one glaring weakness in that they’re stitched together from whatever flesh is available. Those stitches make for easy targets to aim for to make them just fall apart, and they can’t just easily pull themselves back together when you do that like skeletons do. We take him down in swift order and move on after making sure there’s nothing else in here.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Finally, we run across a small camp where an aging human is sitting across the road from a ruin, who introduces himself as Bert. (Longer name not necessary. Bert is fine.)

“A party of adventurers might be just what I need,” he says, then explains about how he wants to catch light in a crystal. (There’s a bit more arcane jargon than that, but I don’t care.)

“Okay, so wave this magic rock over the Ayleid well inside the ruins?” I ask.

Bert chuckles. “You could look at it that way, I suppose. Be careful in there. When I tried to get in there when I first got here, I spotted what I took to be cultists, and they were summoning Daedra. I didn’t want any part in that and didn’t want to take my chances just walking up to them and politely asking if I could explore the ruins. I’m just an old scholar. But you five look like you can handle yourself. There’s pay in it for you if you want to take the chance.”

“We’re heading in there anyway on a separate mission,” I say. “So we can just stop at the Ayleid well while we’re there.”

We cross the road and climb the hill, and find Abnur Tharn waiting just inside the ruins, no longer wearing humble guild robes. Getting changed into something more dignified to do battle in was clearly the most important part of his preparations. (Hopefully it was because they’re enchanted or something.)

“About time you lot got here,” Abnur says. “I took a portal straight here to avoid being seen in town in these clothes. Although given how unspecific I was about when we should meet up here, perhaps I should be glad that you even showed up here today.”

“Sorry, we got delayed taking apart a flesh atronach one of Molag Bal’s worshippers left down by the river,” I explain, blithely omitting the part where I just wandered into the cave because it was there.

Abnur grunts. “Well, that’s a better excuse than I was expecting. Are you ready to head in yet, ‘The Black Wolf’, with your ‘wolf pack’ here?”

I snort softly. “You use a stupid alias one time… I mean, technically, the wolf is our totem, but I wasn’t even slightly thinking of that when I came up with that name. I mean, I’d never even heard of Brackenleaf’s Briars at the time.”

“Maybe it was meant to be,” Gelur says with a grin.

“Anyway, hopefully the information we’re looking for is actually in here,” I say.

Whatever cultists were in these ruins must have cleared out before we got here, leaving only Daedra of various types guarding the place. We scour the austere stone halls under blue crystal lighting searching for various magical recordings, and I also stop to an absorb a Skyshard sitting in a corner underneath a crack in the ceiling.

Ilara’s starting to get good about dodging clannfear jumps, which is more than the Altmer in our party can say. Eran’s reaction times are still too slow in heavy armor and Merry always winds up stumbling gracelessly.

These recordings we’re looking for display illusions of Manny speaking and I just have to wonder why he bothered with using so much magic on something that could be more easily accomplished by simply writing it down. Does he enjoy listening to himself talk that much? Who does he even think is listening to this shit?

One of the recordings talks about the Amulet of Kings. I don’t know what precisely Manny plans to do with the thing, or how he intends to try to make himself a god with it, and I don’t want to find out. We need to make sure that thing stays somewhere he will never be able to get his hands on it. The last of the recordings indicates that Sai Sahan was moved to the Halls of Torment for further torment. Poor fetcher.

“This is what we’ve been looking for,” Abnur says. “We must inform Varen and begin our search.”

“You’d think it would be easier to get into someplace with a name like ‘Halls of Torment’ than get out again, no?” Ilara says with a chuckle. “But then we do have people who can make portals.”

“Your Khajiit is correct,” Abnur says. “Finding the Halls of Torment and locating Sai Sahan within them is likely to prove more difficult than getting inside. I have confidence that your party is capable of administering sufficient violence to combat anything that might be standing between you and him, but there is likely to also be traps and tricks in place as well.”

Abnur, having decided that we’re done here, opens up a swirling red portal for himself to leave. We don’t take it, since we’re not done here yet, and it closes behind him in moments.

“Mite rude of him,” Gelur says. “Stuffy-pants Imperial’s got places to be. He could have at least asked.”

Bert’s idea with the light works, too, by the way. I don’t know what he’s planning on doing with it, but he seems like an alright sort and I hope he’s not a powerful necromancer in disguise attempting to use a glowing rock to attain godhood. (A powerful necromancer could have probably just walked in and gotten his own light.)

When we return to Redfur Trading Post, I overhear someone talking about how some Dominion soldiers had run into trouble with frost trolls.

“Something got your attention?” Eran asks when he sees me perk up.

“I hear the call to adventure!” I say, and go over to the random people I’d overheard to shake them down for details.

“Been a while since I hunted a troll,” Gelur says.

The Bosmer who’d been spreading the rumor helpfully informs me that they’re at the Falinesti Winter Site, whatever that is, and that he’d also appreciate us making sure his sister is alright, if we’re heading that way.

“I know where that is,” Gelur says. “It’s to the south.”

“It’s… actually where we were supposed to be going anyway,” Eran adds. “Eventually.”

“Of course they ran into trouble,” Merry mutters. “This whole country is trouble.” He pauses. “No, no, that’s not fair to Valenwood, considering how much trouble we ran into on Auridon, too. All of Tamriel is trouble these days. But frost trolls? Really?”