I wind up falling asleep in the library, and my friends later join me there. I guess I did make it pretty obvious where I went.

Eran has a new set of armor on, and strikes a heroic pose to show it off. “I found this at a good price in town and figured it was time to get an upgrade while valiantly ignoring the fact that most of our money came from rewards for killing things and fencing stolen goods, some of which was taken from things we’d just gotten paid to kill.”

“I helped catch a thief,” Gelur says brightly. “That is, one who isn’t us, at least. An undercover watchman realized I work with a guy who works for the Queen, and had me investigate since the people didn’t want to talk to an Altmer terribly much.”

“And I assisted some mages with an experiment,” Merry says.

“Is that what you were doing collecting dead rats?” Gelur asks. “I thought you were planning on making a stew.”

Merry grimaces. “No. And I would have preferred fresh rats if I were to do that. I don’t know why Marbruk had so many dead rats in it.”

Bramblebreach is a typical Bosmer village, with tree pod dwellings and living branches woven into lattice work. Our contact is a frustrated Khajiit by the name of Hazazi. He’s quite unhappy with his assignment and does not hesitate to complain at us about it, especially once he finds out the Queen sent us to help.

“Hazazi hopes you have better luck than he did. Maybe you can even figure out who in Oblivion this Wilderking is. Hopefully not actually from Oblivion.”

“Some Daedra are worse than others,” I say. “Gelur, you’re with me. We’re going to speak with their treethane. The rest of you, take a look around town and talk to people and get a feel for the place.”

“You got it,” Gelur says.

I expect the treethane’s place to be at the highest point in town, and climb to the top of one of the tree-ramps to one of the pods. My guess turns out to be correct. A bard softly plays music on a lute, and an old Bosmer woman sits on a chair of flowering lattice.

“Greetings, treethane,” I say, giving a polite bow. “We are Neri and Gelur, of Brackenleaf’s Briars. We’ve been traveling the Valenwood solving problems. Frequently by hitting things. The world is a dangerous place these days, what with cultists, Daedra, undead, racist bandits…”

“How do you feel about Wood Orcs?” asks the treethane, whose name I forgot to get.

“They’re people,” I say with a shrug. “Sometimes stupid, annoying, violent people. We had to deal with a group of them east of Marbruk who were doing something so stupid I cannot begin to describe it in a way that makes sense.”

The treethane gives an amused ‘heh’ sound. “I can believe that. There’s another group of them near here who has been causing problems for us for a long time. There’s a reward in it for you if you can drive them off.”

“We can do it,” I say.

The treethane gives us some seeds to plant inside the Orcs’ camp with the explanation that they’ll grow into those big plant things and smash anything nearby and greatly discourage anyone hostile to the village to loiter in the area. The chief will need to be killed because he’s a stubborn jerk.

Back outside, Gelur says to me quietly with a touch of amusement, “You didn’t even mention the Dominion.”

I chuckle. “Those Dominion idiots sounded like they’ve been stomping around going ‘Bow to us, high elves are awesome’ and not impressing anyone.”

Eran approaches us with a serious look in his eyes, or so I imagine because I can barely see his face. “I spotted Aranias. Apparently she did make it to Greenshade after all.”

“Who?” I ask.

“That Veiled Heritance officer who left Auridon before we could get to her,” Eran reminds me helpfully. “She probably didn’t recognize me with my new helmet on.”

“Oh right, her!” I say. “What was she doing here?”

Eran shakes his head. “I don’t know, but she was complaining loudly about the treethane having been rude to her. I have a hunch that it was more of the other way around. I didn’t talk to her since she might have recognized my voice, so I sent Merry to do it instead. And Ilara to keep an eye on them discreetly.”

“Good work,” I say. “The treethane gave us a job to drive off some Wood Orcs.” I pause thoughtfully, having been audibly attempting to capitalize that. “Why do we capitalize ‘Orc’ but not ‘elf’ or ‘mer’? Should I be capitalizing ‘Wood Elves’ and ‘High Elves’ too?”

Eran blithely ignores my orthographical rambling. “Great, where are these unruly miscreants, and should they be glad that the Bosmer asked you for help first instead of them?”

I shrug. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“She said they were on the other side of a tunnel at the edge of the village,” Gelur says.

“Great,” I say. “Let’s go collect Merry and Ilara and see you can spot it.”

We find Merry on the edge of the village speaking with an Altmer man and woman, presumably one of them being the racist bandit Eran mentioned.

“Ah, there you are,” Merry says. “How did your meeting with the treethane go?”

“Great!” I say. “We got work. Who’re our new friends?”

“Their names are Andur and Aranias,” Merry says, impressing me that a high elf might give a child a name with two syllables before figuring that it’s probably short for Anduralion or something like that.

“She completely brushed us off,” secret racist bandit says. “How was she so much more receptive to you? All I asked was to see the Wilderking.”

“Probably because I didn’t go in there acting like a finely-bred Altmer,” I say. “Dressed like this, people have mistaken me for being a tall half-breed. I’m reasonably certain that none of my ancestors were Bosmer.” Admittedly, none of my ancestors were Altmer, either. Aldmer, technically. “I also didn’t say anything about the Wilderking, the Dominion, or how superior high elves are.”

Secret racist bandit doesn’t even seem to realize I’m making fun of her.

“What sort of work did she give us?” Merry asks.

“She sent us to deal with some Wood Orcs,” I say.

“Really?” secret racist bandit says. “We offered to wipe them out too but she still refused.”

“Most likely whatever you did just rubbed her the wrong way,” I say. “Even if it was just your posture or the way you speak. Anyway, what are you doing out here? What do you want to see the Wilderking for?”

“Oh, it’s a purely scholarly interest!” secret racist bandit lies in a blatantly lying tone of voice. “I’m doing research into nature magic, you see. And Andur here is my bodyguard, because Valenwood is dangerous.”

You know, if I could remember any Veiled Heritance code phrases (or even knew any in the first place, for that matter) I might say one here just to fuck with her. Actually, I’m more than a little tempted to make something up. Still, I decide to keep quiet and not tip my hand that I know what she is. (Even if I don’t particularly remember who she is.)

Ilara comes up to us once we’re out of immediate line of sight of the two probably-racist-bandits.

“Gelur, can you tail the racist bandits and keep an eye on what they’re up to?” I ask.

“I know the forest,” Gelur says. “They’ll never see me.”

“Ilara-daro, can you sneak into the Wood Orc camp and plant these seeds?” I ask, handing them to her. “And stand back when you do because I’m told they’ll quickly grow into those big plant creatures.”

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Ilara gives a terse nod. “This one will be sleek as the wind and silent as a shadow.”

“Eran and Merry, you’re with me,” I say. “We’ll be dealing with the chief.”

We head off to do our separate tasks.

The Orc chief is in a cave in the cliffs at the edge of the camp. He relishes a fight, so we cheerfully give him one. Or at least, I’m cheerful about it. Eran is determined and Merry is just resigned.

“We’re here to discuss the merits of joining the Aldmeri Dominion!” I cry with a wild grin, brandishing my axe.

“With a battle axe?” the chief replies. “Now that’s my sort of discussion! Fight me!”

“Queen Ayrenn is totally awesome!” I declare, dancing out of the way of an attack.

“Orcs don’t bow to pretty elves with crowns!” the chief retorts, taking another swing.

“She’s not just a pretty face!” I leap over his axe and do an amazing twist in mid-air, which would be even more amazing if I’d actually hit anything. “She treats everyone equally! She even admitted goblins into the Dominion!”

“What!?” the chief exclaims, avoiding an attack. “Goblins? And they didn’t ask us?”

“They didn’t even ask you to join?” I ask, nimbly tumbling out of the way of a swipe.

“We’d have told them no anyway!”

He takes a swing at me, but overreaches and almost gets his weapon stuck in the floor. I take advantage of the opening to knock him aside with my axe. Grievously wounded, he starts laughing.

“Have I established the merits of my argument?” I ask.

“Ah, you’re alright, for an elf,” the chief says, apparently not remembering Orcs are also technically elves. “Maybe your Queen will go far. But I’d rather see the Ashpit than a Tamriel ruled peacefully and benevolently by high elves. So go ahead and just kill me already.” He grabs another weapon and comes at me again, determined to die fighting.

“As you wish,” I say. “I aim to please.” I sidestep his attack and finish him off. Only then do I notice that my friends, having finished making sure nobody else was attacking us, are just sitting there watching. And eating cheese. “What are you guys doing?”

“Oh, we didn’t want to interrupt your riveting discussion,” Merry says.

“You made several excellent points,” Ilara says.

“Pity about the irreconcilable political views, though,” Eran says lightly.

“I mean, you guys are eating cheese without me?” I grab a slice, and check around the cave for anything interesting. “I take it you were successful in your mission to plant plants, Ilara-daro?”

“They were highly impressive plants, yes,” Ilara replies.

I run across a note in the cave ordering all Orcs to stay away from a nearby mine that’s full of undead. That sounds like a splendid thing to look into on the way back to town. And by ‘look into’ I mean ‘smash in the face’.

The surviving Orcs have decided that standing within arm’s reach of the big plant creatures is a bad idea and have vacated the area. Since the plant things don’t seem to consider my party to be enemies, I decide to poke around in the tents to see if there’s anything worth swiping that they left behind in a hurry. Inside one of the Orc tents, I find another piece of Marobar Sul’s dubious Dwemer fanfiction. I grab it. They’re always good for a laugh. Strange reading material for Orcs, though. Maybe I’m just stereotyping.

We head for the mine, of which there was helpfully a map of the immediate area. One of those Orcs was a surprisingly good cartographer.

“Do I need to even ask why we’re voluntarily going into a mine full of undead?” Merry asks.

“Probably not,” Eran says. “Although knowing Neri, he’s less likely to voluntarily go into a mine that’s operating normally.”

“This close to Bramblebreach, the undead could become a threat to the village,” I say. “This is what I’m going to tell people, and not that I really just wanted to hit something nobody minds if I hit.”

“Yes, you’re not fooling us,” Merry says with a smirk.

The mine is full of corpses that I expect to rise up as undead and attack us. I didn’t expect their skeletons, and only their skeletons, to bloodily burst out of the corpses and attack us. This seems like an inefficient form of necromancy.

There’s a Skyshard inside of a crate. That certainly didn’t fall there. By all the gods, how many Skyshards have I missed just because I wasn’t looking inside of every crate and barrel?

While scouring the place for every bit of loot worth the space in our packs, I run across a pack containing a glowing axe marked as belonging to someone in the Mages Guild. I’ll need to remember to return it when we get back to Marbruk. (By which I mean, I write it down.) People are always eager to follow me into hell because I performed trivial errands for them. (Trivial for me, at least, I suppose. Most people probably wouldn’t have been up to killing the slightly-tougher-than-usual pissy ghost who was hovering near the pack.)

By the time we head back to Bramblebreach, a few Bosmer have shown up claiming to be the Bramblebreach militia here to secure the area. Either the treethane had supreme confidence in our competence or she just had some people watch from a safe distance to see if we got ourselves horribly killed or not.

When we reach the other side of the short tunnel, Gelur is there waiting for us. “I lost them. Sorry. I think it was less me than that something didn’t want me following them. Valenwood can be odd like that sometimes.”

“No worries,” I say. “Let’s get back to the treethane and tell her we convinced some Orcs to see our point of view.”

The treethane is thrilled when we arrive back in town, having already received word back from her scouts on our success. She hands me a generous reward, and for all their shying away from harming plants directly whenever possible, they aren’t shy about using the same coins as everyone else.

“Thank you,” I say. “One more thing before we go. I wish to confer with the Wilderking on activity from Molag Bal and the Worm Cult. How may I go about getting an audience?”

“Well, you’ve rid us of those Orcs who kept chopping down our trees. You’ve certainly earned the right to petition for an audience and your cause seems a worthy one. Just touch the Petitioning Stone. If he wants to, he’ll answer, but I can make no guarantees about whether or not he will answer. I wish you luck.”

“Where’s the Petitioning Stone?” I wonder, then glance aside at Gelur, who is smirking broadly. “… yeah, just give the directions to Gelur. I get lost in small caves.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t say ‘south of the village, you can’t miss it’, then,” the treethane replies, equally amused.

The Petitioning Stone turns out to be a boulder that would otherwise be unremarkable aside from the fact that it’s got stairs leading up to it and it’s surrounded by living vine railings. I probably would have still missed it.

I go up and touch it. In a whoosh of green light, a figure appears before me. A mer made of bark and leaves, floating two feet above the ground.

“Ah… hello,” I say. “The Wilderking, I presume?”

“Yes,” he says. “I have been watching you since you arrived in this part of the forest. You have helped my people, and so I have appeared to you, but I sense that there is something you did not tell them. Are you with this… Aldmeri Dominion I have heard of?”

“We are,” I say. “I told them nothing that was untrue. I’ve generally found it better to help people than to make demands and empty promises.”

“A wise approach,” floaty leaf man says. “But it is not enough to convince me that joining your Dominion would be beneficial to my people. It would only make enemies of your own enemies.”

“The Dominion’s enemies aren’t going to care whether or not one group of Bosmer joined them or not,” I point out. “All they see is trees and mer, not politics. And the Worm Cult doesn’t care what faction you belong to. The Dark Anchors have been falling all across Tamriel. Have you seen them here?”

He sighs. “Yes, these cultists have managed to build one of their foul devices deep within my domain. They are being held off, but the matter is concerning. A Daedric Prince is a dark enemy, and yet this is not the only enemy you face.”

“Not even slightly, yes,” I say. “The Veiled Heritance is also a problem that keeps cropping up despite the death of their Veiled Queen, and at least one of their operatives has been seen in the area.”

“Yes, I have heard this name, and I have seen the one of which you speak,” floaty leaf man says. “But I would hesitate to call her an enemy.”

“The Veiled Heritance murdered a lot of people, left several towns on fire, and opened Oblivion gates to invade a city with Daedra. Whatever their intentions here can’t be anything good.”

Then he shows me a vision of racist bandits including Wannabe Queen, giving orders to the woman in question who Eran keeps trying to remind me is named Aranias. Maybe if he says it enough times I will remember. Maybe I’ll even feel polite enough not to keep calling her ‘secret racist bandit’. In any case, Andur, Estre, and some other guy are telling her to go to Valenwood and kill the Wilderking.

“You don’t want to call her your enemy when she’s coming to try to kill you?” I wonder, raising an eyebrow. “Man, you sound like me.”

“She may play a different role in this story than you realize,” the Wilderking says. “And so may you.”

I sigh. “Maybe so, but it’s not very reassuring. Gelur couldn’t even keep their trail to find out where they were going.”

“Do not concern yourself with that,” floaty leaf man says. “They are strangers to the Valenwood, and they may wander its paths for many, many days before they find what they seek.”

I could swear his wooden face looks a bit smug as he says it. I get the impression that they’re not going to find him until he’s good and ready for them. And then he tells me that I need to go speak with a spinner at some cottage somewhere to find out where I fit in the story or something that doesn’t quite make sense. In any case, he’s assuring me that I have all the time in the world.

Since we have all the time in the world, I decide to head back to Marbruk to perform a few errands and return this axe. We run across Hazazi on the way back who I have to greatly assure that the situation is under control (more or less) and he doesn’t need to freak out about dancing elves or talking plants.

The mage who enchanted the axe turns out to be a Bosmer man, who is quite alarmed that we brought the thing into the Guildhall. Apparently he’d cursed the axe to draw spirits and undead and gave it to the Orcs in hopes of it killing them and making them go away.

“How could you be sure that the axe would only hurt the Orcs?” I ask. “Although I suppose it would be racist to make it only work when close to an Orc. Which would make it… axe of racism.”

Eran groans and puts palm against his helmet.

“Anyway, what is it with people being irresponsible with cursed items?” I ask with a sigh. “Will simply breaking this thing suffice or do I need to find a volcano to throw it into?”

“That won’t be necessary!” he says cheerfully, unfazed by my criticism. “I’ll just remove the curse right now, since it’s already done its job. And then you can keep it as a souvenir!”

“Alright then,” I say with a shrug. “It’s a bit smaller than I usually use, but it never hurts to have a spare axe. Or at least, it never hurts me. It usually greatly hurts whoever I’m trying to hurt.”

The Bosmer performs a bit of magic over the newly-dubbed Souvenir, and gives it to me to toss in my pack.

“If I write a pamphlet on responsible use of cursed items, will the Mages Guild distribute it for me?” I ask.