Come morning, I teleport my party back to Marbruk. We’ve had enough diversions and I hope the Wilderking was accurate in saying that we had as much time as we wanted because we still need to go see that spinner he told us to go see for… some reason. I don’t remember and it’s probably not important and the spinner in question will already know more than I do anyway. At least the music stopped.

We travel past Bramblebreach and come upon another wayshrine which I light on the way. While looking around to find one cottage in the middle of the forest, we run across another Ayleid ruin and I take a peek inside to see if there’s anything interesting. Aside from a couple of pissy tigers whose den I disturb, though, there’s nothing in here but a bunch of workbenches. Merry thinks there’s some sort of lingering energy in the place that would make things crafted here special, which I’m sure we’d find a lot more thrilling if any of us were crafters.

After wandering further through the forest, we come upon a half-ruined Altmer-style building overlooking what looks like a walled garden of some sort, with walls covered in vines and ringing the area in rings. Maybe less of a garden and more of a shitty maze.

Inside the building, we find a Bosmer sitting on the floor who seems to have been expecting us, but I can’t resist the urge to take a closer look around the building before spending too much time talking to him. It’s a ruined building, there has to be something interesting here. Upstairs, I find a book titled Visions of the Green Pact Bosmer. The spinner patiently waits sitting on the floor while I explore the building, somewhat amused at my antics.

“Don’t mind him,” Eran says. “Are you the spinner the Wilderking sent us to find?”

“Yes,” he says. “I am Spinner Maruin. I have been waiting for a while now.”

“Sorry, there were a few errands that needed to be done first,” Eran says. “We had to rescue someone from Coldharbour.”

“I understand,” Spinner Maruin graciously says. “Not your fault! It’s quite alright. I have already begun the story and Aranias is inside.”

“That makes as much sense as anything,” I say, tossing the book in my pack after skimming it a little.

“Were you all looking to join her in there?” the spinner says. “Andur wanted to go in as well, but he did not ask politely.”

“Would it be helpful if we were to do so?” Merry asks.

“Perhaps!” the spinner says. “It’s difficult to say what may come of it before the story has been told. More characters can support the narrative, or they can clutter it up.”

“I suppose we’ll go check out that maze garden we saw while you’re doing that, then,” Eran says.

“Is that the Labyrinth?” Gelur says. “I’ve always wanted to see it!”

“You do that,” I say with a grin. “Alright, Spinner, what do I need to do?”

As my friends file out of the building and head toward the maze garden, the spinner explains about how Aranias—fuck it, I’m just calling her Ari—is inside a story reliving her own past but thinks she’s living it for the first time. And I’m supposed to go in and trick her into thinking I’m an old friend she trusts in order to alter her memories.

“It sounds sinister when you word it like that,” the spinner says, although he seems more amused than insulted.

“Well, considering the alternative is violence, I’ll not complain,” I say. “No one but her will remember me, though?”

“What is the past but a collection of stories?” the spinner asks. “Once it has passed by, only people’s memories and the marks it has made on the world are left behind. You cannot change the marks on the world from this. If you were to attempt to go on a killing spree, for instance, it would not cause those people to die in the present.”

“Understood,” I say. “Alright, can we do this, then? Will you send me in, please?”

“Of course, since you asked nicely,” the spinner says.

He bids me to sit next to the fire and begins to tell a story, setting a scene so vivid I can see it forming around me. A small, pristine island near Summerset, called Silatar. Like Auridon, it seems safe and peaceful, and I can see why the spinner chose this building to tell his story from, as it resembles another building on Silatar that is not ruined, at least at this point in the past. I don’t know what might have happened to Silatar in the present.

Silatar has a lovely, soothing soundtrack that nobody but me seems to notice. I wonder what the spinner thinks of that, and this is sort of all in our heads, isn’t it? I’m sure it makes sense to a spinner. (It’s more pleasant than a trip through Varen’s head, at least.) Before going to speak with Ari, I spend a little time poking around and come across a recipe for mint chai. That sounds nice, but I’m sure I won’t be able to keep any physical objects with me once I exit the story, so I just memorize it. It’s not complicated and sounds delicious. Even if it doesn’t include any insect excretions.

I find Ari smiling and looking far less ‘racist bandit’. “Hey, Ari, my old friend!” I exclaim. “It’s me, Neri! I’m here! Did you miss me?”

She greets me as a friend and thinks we grew up together, and that I’m the only one she can trust. It seems the spinner has already been making some adjustments before I got here. And from what she says, she has some incredible earth magic that lets her raise rocks out of the ocean and grow plants (which I quickly discover when she challenges me to a race, and cheats.) A talented mage, destined to become a weapon to do battle with the forest itself. Well, fuck destiny.

She also seems to be able to sense things happening on Silatar. Her voice raises in alarm when she senses the farm on fire and invaders stomping around with boots. Vineyards and haystacks are on fire and I charge in to do battle with these bandits.

“There’s no one I’d rather have at my side in a fight than you, Neri,” Ari says as we cut them down.

Once the farm is quiet again, Ari starts ranting. She’s upset, understandably so. She thinks everyone just wants to either hurt her or use her, and doesn’t care to deeply investigate where these bandits came from or how they got to this obscure little island.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be here for you,” I say. “I was imprisoned and only recently got free again. I wish I’d been able to come sooner.”

Ari sighs. “I didn’t realize. I’m sorry, too. I know you would have been there if you could. My parents are afraid of me. I can’t believe my own parents are afraid of me. But not you.”

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I kick a corpse. “At least I got here in time for a fight, though I wasn’t really expecting one here of all places. Something about that seems awfully suspicious. Do you see any ships nearby? We need to make sure there aren’t anymore where those came from.”

“You’re right,” Ari says. “That’s what I always liked about you. You cut straight to the heart of the matter to get things done.”

Once we’ve made sure nothing is going to immediately burn down if we turn our backs to it, we search the shores for signs of a vessel, but it looks like whoever brought these bandits here already scarpered. Ari runs off to start cleaning things up.

An image of the spinner appears before me and tells me that I’m going to see another scene from Ari’s past. The scene in question involves her trying to show off her magic to her parents, proud of what she could accomplish and hoping to win their pride in turn, but in response she only receives scorn and fear.

And then the next scene he sends me into? Her parents brought in the Veiled Heritance. Because of course they fucking did.

“Can I smack her parents for this?” I ask the spinner. “This is about the closest I’m going to get to going back in time and smacking them for what they did. Although if they’re still alive it would be nice to go smack them in the present too.”

The spinner chuckles. “Do you think it would help? In any case, she should not have to face this alone, as she did when she lived through these events the first time.”

“Without any close friends, and family who only feared her and wanted to use her,” I say with a sigh.

He shows me another scene, where she accidentally caused a shipwreck with her earth magic and her parents only sought to punish her for it. I’m going to be perfectly honest here that I like this sort of magic more than most magic I’ve been exposed to over the millennia. It’s not summoning Daedra or binding souls. It’s just moving plants and rocks. Certainly it could be destructive, as seen with that ship over there, but so can a battle axe. And I’ve probably killed far more beings with a battle axe than Ari ever did with plants and rocks.

And in another scene, I see her parents leave her behind while she cries and begs, saying they would return with people who could give her training and help her control her temper. That doesn’t sound so terrible on the face of things, but I get a sinking feeling about this and I don’t mean that in the sense of the island sinking although that seems to be a distinct possibility here, too.

I meet up with her again, and it seems that her parents did indeed return and they’re having what sounds like a party of some sort?

“What’s going on here, Ari?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” Ari says. “I thought they’d bring a teacher, but maybe they just want me to show off my powers? Look, even High Kinlady Estre is here! Why is she here?”

I make a forced grin and would really like to smack the Veiled Bitch again.

“I know that look, Neri,” Ari says. “Try to avoid hitting anyone, please? Unless they really deserve it.”

“I promise I won’t hit anyone unless they deserve it,” I say sincerely.

“Can you find out what’s really going on here?” Ari asks. “Mingle a bit? Eavesdrop? You’ve always been better at sneaking and persuasion than I am.”

“Will do,” I say.

I explore the manor grounds and proceed to listen in on the conversations of people I would dearly like to smack but am holding off on for the sake of gathering information. Estre, in the midst of degrading this beautiful island as being a midden heap, tells a group of racist bandits that Ari will be undergoing a test of character today, probably to make sure she’s sufficiently racist.

Estre notices me and turns up her nose. “How did you get an invitation to this event? Are you even a full-blooded Altmer?”

“Nah, I’ve got a Bosmer grandfather,” I lie. “Does it matter? I’m Ari’s best friend.”

“Well of course it matters!” Estre says. “The Bosmer are lesser creatures, although at least they’re not humans. I can’t imagine all the wood elf nonsense you’ve been filling the girl’s head with. It’s a good thing we’re here to fix that.”

“One day, Kinlady, you are going to overstep your bounds and I will see you in hell,” I say evenly.

“Why, I never!” Estre exclaims as I walk away.

Vicereeve Pelidil, another of my favorite people, is also at the party. From what he’s saying, it sounds like the racist bandits have captured something or someone more likely to make Ari demonstrate her powers against. Or her racism, more likely. Why did nobody notice this guy was pond scum sooner? He doesn’t want to talk to me.

“Quite alright,” I say blithely. “I don’t want to talk to you either, but here we are.”

Being rude to self-important people is a reasonable alternative if smacking them is not an option. I decide to go investigate and see just what they’ve captured. Outside of the manor gardens, I spot that fellow who was with her at Bramblebreach. I think Andy was his name? Something like that.

Andy has captured a Bosmer couple and the husband is near death while the wife is going to be the ‘demonstration’. I’ve had just about enough of these fetchers and there are no witnesses nearby, so I smack him. Hard. With an axe. Seven times.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you,” I say to the Bosmer man as he expires.

The image of the spinner appears again, amused at this turn of events. “Well, that obviously didn’t happen that way.”

“Yeah, I know,” I say. “Felt good though. I’m going to have to do that again later anyway. Hope I didn’t disrupt your story too badly.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” the spinner says. “It shouldn’t have much affect on what’s to come. They wouldn’t discover the body for a while yet, with all of them in the manor garden.”

Back in the manor garden, the racist bandits have the Bosmer woman tied up and are encouraging Ari to kill her. They’re trying to convince her that she’s an animal, and just like the ones who attacked her farm.

“This is what I have to do to prove myself,” Ari says unsteadily. “To show that sacrifices are sometimes necessary.”

Becoming an officer of the Veiled Heritance requires killing someone, as I’ve never forgotten. And this was that point for Ari, was it? Through pressure, coercion, and lies from everyone around her? And not a single voice to speak up for her.

“Ari, you don’t have to do this,” I say. “This is just racism… they want you to see races, and not people. Regardless of who their ancestors were, people make their own choices, for good or for ill. These people, the Veiled Heritance, High Kinlady Estre, they’ve made their choices, and they’ve chosen hatred and death. Your choices, however, are still yours to make, and you do not need to follow that path if you do not wish to. You can be so much more than this.”

I almost have to wonder if the bandit attack wasn’t staged by the Veiled Heritance too just to try to make her hate Bosmer. Where these fetchers are concerned, I’m not going to dismiss any possible conspiracy theories.

Ari looks back toward the terrified Bosmer woman on the ground and says, “You’re right. This isn’t me. And I don’t want to be a murderer.”

“You always wanted your parents to be proud of you,” I say quietly. “I don’t know if your parents truly have your best interests at heart, but I’m proud of you, Ari. And not for what you can do, but for your heart.”

High Kinlady Estre and the racist bandits aren’t going to take her rejection quietly, but they don’t have a chance to do much about it. Vines burst out of the ground to entangle all of them. I take the opportunity to dislocate Estre’s jaw before the scene ends.

In a rush of white, I find myself back in the ruined house on the hill with the spinner again.

“Is the story over?” I ask. “Where’s Ari?”

“Not over, but another chapter is unfolding as we speak,” the spinner replies. “She’s making her way to the Wilderking’s throne, along with Andur. Thanks to our bit of mischief, I think she might just betray her masters.”

“She’ll remember that version of events instead of what really happened?” I ask. “There’s a bit of a logical inconsistency that if she attacked High Kinlady Estre at the party, there would have been consequences. Either in the form of being arrested or killed, or a lot of racist bandit muckety-mucks being dead.”

“Never mind the plot holes,” the spinner assures me. “No one remembers everything perfectly and people have a tendency to fill in the blanks themselves.”

“I’ll take your word on that, spinner,” I say, and sigh. “I’m still not sure if it’s right to mess with someone’s backstory like that, but it definitely wasn’t right how she was treated, either.”

“I don’t normally like changing a story so much, either,” the spinner says. “It’s usually best to let things play out and see where things go on their own.” He looks off toward the Labyrinth. “You’d best go meet up with your friends and follow the trail of destruction left by Andur and Aranias to Greenheart. You may yet be able to change where this story is going.”

“I was going to ask for a map, but…”