Even knowing that there had been a massive storm, I’m still impressed at how far up from the water some of these ships wound up. One broken ship wound up grounded almost as far as the road. Unsurprisingly, there’s also salvagers picking through the wreckage. Salvagers currently taking a break after having found a keg of brandy, at any rate. One of them has a lute and fancies himself a bard. He needs a lot more practice.

“Are you here to salvage, walker?” asks a Khajiit woman.

“No,” I say. “Eagle’s Strand sent me to search for survivors.”

“Khalama thinks you do not have the look of a Dominion soldier about you.”

“Just a freelance adventurer,” I say. “Name’s Neri. Have you seen any sign of anyone?”

“There’s a wood elf sergeant by the name of Firion resting over by that rock over there.” Khalama points. “She wanted help finding her squad but the beach was swarming with alits and Khalama is no fighter.”

“Did you happen to hear any talking books, for that matter?” I ask.

“Ugh, yes,” Khalama says. “It was annoying and seemed suspicious so this one threw it into the water. Khalama’s father always told her, don’t trust anything that talks if you don’t know where it keeps its tongue.”

“Sound advice,” I say. “I’ll go find it and fish it out so I can throw it in a magic fire to destroy it along with the other two I found before anyone else fishes it out who might be more gullible than you or me.”

I pick may way through the debris on the beach until I can hear the harsh whispers talking about dark secrets and powerful knowledge or something like that. The tide has come out in the meantime, it seems, and it’s only half-buried in wet sand now. I dig it out and use a shitty fire spell to dry it off, confident in the fact that even if it somehow hurt the thing, I was intending on destroying it anyway. Into the pack with the others! I quickly close the pack again to muffle the chorus of complaints from the annoying evil books.

I locate a uniformed wood elf not far from the salvager camp. Just far enough away to dampen the sound of the poorly-played lute. She’s clutching an arm but doesn’t otherwise appear to be badly hurt.

“Are you Sergeant Firion?” I ask. “I’m Nerelion. The commander at Eagle’s Strand sent me.” Whatever her name was.

“Good to see a friendly face and not one that’s trying to eat me or kill me with bad music,” Firion says. “Did you see anyone else down on the beach?”

“No, but I only went far enough to retrieve an evil book so nobody else picks it up before I can destroy it,” I say. “Has nobody else come up from Eagle’s Strand?”

“You’re the first one I’ve seen.”

“How long have you been here?” I wonder.

“I’ve lost track of time,” Firion says.

“Yeah, me too. But I really could have sworn it has been at least a week since the hurricane…”

Admittedly some of that was because of skooma. Have I even slept? Does passing out from skooma overdose count as sleep? Is it still the same day? Coldharbour didn’t have a day and night cycle and I feel like I haven’t even been paying attention to the sky at all, but is this island really so tiny that I can walk back and forth across it several times in one day? I think I’m still a bit disoriented from being on Nirn again.

“I don’t even know anymore,” Firion mumbles. “They might be hurt. They might be unconscious. They might have been captured by pirates.”

“I’ll go see if I can find anyone, or their remains,” I say. “You’re clearly in no condition to go searching the beach or you would have done so yourself by now. You can just stay here where it’s safe. Wannabe bard or otherwise. He might be more dangerous than the alits.”

“Listen, we were carrying healing supplies in our hold,” Firion says. “The bottles have been scattered all over the shore and some of them are still intact. I spotted the glow from a few of them from here but couldn’t get close enough to grab any.”

“Glow?” I ask.

“We call it glow juice,” Firion says. “The label will say ‘Torchbug Treacle’. It’s a Bosmer remedy. Very effective. It’ll fix us right up, if you can slip in and retrieve any.”

“I’m assuming that this stuff is actually made from torchbugs,” I say. “I’ll go collect some. I’m sure it would work better than my own healing spells, which might be very useful if you’ve got a papercut or a mild headache.”

I make for the beach and search for glowing bottles. Of course, I’m immediately set upon by alits, and have to put my latest battle axe, Headache, to good use. It’s definitely not the mild sort of headache I might actually be able to cure.

Alits are a kind of reptile, but they’re basically just one huge fanged mouth on two legs. They’re also extremely stupid. They think they’re at the top of their food chain and that it’s appropriate to attack anything nearby that’s made of meat. This might not be unreasonable if there weren’t things that are bigger and meaner than an alit even if you don’t take into account the various intelligent races that have hands and can use weapons or magic.

A bright green bottle half-buried in sand catches my attention. I dig it out and bring it up to Firion. She makes a face as I hand it to her, but drinks it down. The effect is immediate, and she climbs to her feet and stretches.

“Not everyone’s favorite cocktail, but it gets the job done, alright,” Firion says.

“I’ll see if I can find anymore,” I say. “Who are these marines of yours that I’m looking for?”

Firion gives me some names.

“Sergeant, I don’t think they’ve got names floating above their heads, and I haven’t seen any names sewn into your uniforms.”

“They might answer if you call out their names,” Firion says.

“And if they’re unconscious or dying?”

“Well, just assume anyone that isn’t an alit or a Maormer is probably friendly,” Firion says. “Unless they look like a bandit and are attacking you.”

“What do these Maormer look like, anyway?” I wonder.

“The sea elves are kind of… bluish,” Firion says. “With funny shaped ears. They’ve got weird eyes too but I don’t recommend getting close enough to see what their eyes look like if you can help it.”

“Okay, weird-eyed blue elves might be unfriendly, got it. If any of them bother me, I have an axe and I’m very good at hitting things.”

I return to the beach and start collecting more glow juice, winding up tossing the extra bottles into my pack on top of the evil books and having to listen to them mumble about the forbidden secrets of the universe every time. Where in Oblivion is that shrine, anyway?

The beach is littered with more broken ships. So many of them that I feel like they must have been sailing entirely too close together in the first place. They lost an entire fleet out here, which just raises the question of why anyone was bothering to send an entire fleet to this island in the first place. There’s no way this many ships were necessary just to stop a few smugglers. I might be an old warrior who sees war in everything, but this fleet was definitely bound for war. And this has to be a war that the Aldmeri Dominion will be hurting to have lost so many ships in.

Khenarthi’s Roost may have just been a staging ground for an invasion, but an invasion of where? I realize I don’t know nearly as much about the political situation of Tamriel in this era as I need to.

I check each body as I go by for pulse and breath, but there are a lot more dead than living here. Where do wood elves go when they die, anyway? I’ll bet none of these souls here are bound for Coldharbour, at any rate, so good on them. In Coldharbour, the Soul Shriven die again and again at the lash of the Daedra, only to be reborn in the waters of Oblivion. Among the corpses on the beach, I find a handful still alive, and feed them bottles of glow juice.

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“Oh, this stuff tastes like rancid spleen, but I’m feeling better already,” says one of them.

“Have you eaten a lot of rancid spleens?” I wonder.

“Only once, and that was one time too many. Bosmer delicacy my ass.”

“You know, I’m all about sampling exotic cuisine, but I think I’ll draw the line at anything that’s actively rotting,” I say.

“Sage advice.”

“Even if they put sage on it,” I add.

One of the marines I locate tells me that an officer had gone to look for shelter in a nearby cave and they’d been waiting for him to return, but that had been a while back and they really ought to be moving by now, particularly since I’d brought them glow juice. Which was scattered all over the beach and they could have gotten themselves, at least the ones who were still even slightly able to walk. Honestly, at this point I’m not sure I have a glowing assessment of the Dominion’s military.

I search the hills by the beach to try to find the cave mentioned. When I see the stacked skulls and ominous candles, I know I’ve either found the right place or the very, very wrong place. Or both, really. Scowling, I head inside. Skeletons tied to posts, more candles, giant snakes, because of course there has to be giant snakes on top of everything else, why wouldn’t there be giant snakes?

One body here is fresher than the rest, tied up against a post and wearing a bloodstained uniform. A Dominion marine. And it looks like he’s been ritually murdered. I know ritual murder when I see it. You know, even without all the ominous candles and piles of skulls and why do the sorts of people who do ritual murder feel the need to pile skulls everywhere, anyway? I guess they just get to a point where they might as well do their best to look as evil as possible just in case someone wasn’t paying attention?

And there are really better ways to light your murder cave than five hundred dim, flickering candles, which are still lit for some reason. Wait, why are they still lit? I carefully look about the cave just to make sure nobody is sneaking up on me and that I’m not about to be the next one to be ritually murdered, because once is enough for one existence, but there’s nobody here but me and the giant snakes, and I’ve already killed the giant snakes. Okay, maybe they’re just using magical ominous candles that stay lit without consuming the candle so they don’t need to have to constantly replace five hundred stupid candles every time they do ritual murder. I put my hand over one of them to see if it’s even hot and fail to get burned. Yep, magic candles.

I seriously question the competence of the Dominion military in that on a beach strewn with healing potions, the only one of them who managed to save himself didn’t bother to heal anyone else and just went to take shelter in a cave instead. And really, the pile of skulls near the entrance should have been the first clue that this wasn’t a safe shelter. Am I really going to have to take charge here just to make sure something gets done properly?

After emerging from the cave, I come across Sergeant Firion and the others that I’d peddled glow juice to, looking much better than they were when I first encountered them.

“Did you find Lieutenant Gelin?” asks Sergeant Firion.

“I don’t know who that was,” I say. “That might have been him in that cave back there, but it didn’t say his name on his uniform and he was no longer in any condition to speak. Or do anything else, for that matter.”

“He’s dead, then?” Firion asks, leaning past me to peer into the cave.

“Yeah, don’t go in there,” I say. “I mean, you can if you want, I’ve killed all the giant snakes and I don’t think there was anything else dangerous in there, but you probably won’t find the sight to be particularly pleasant.”

“I’ve seen plenty of dead mer before,” Firion says grimly.

I shake my head. “He’s not just dead. He’s not even just murdered. He was killed in some sort of ritual. For what purpose, I couldn’t tell you, but considering the amount of skulls and candles in there, I can’t imagine it was anything good. I mean, usually people don’t conduct ritual sacrifices for good purposes, but at least there weren’t any eldritch glowing runes or anything, so I guess it could be worse. The really bad rituals tend to have copious amounts of Daedric runes all over the place. This was probably still bad, though.”

“Ugh,” Firion mutters. “Ritual sacrifices are way above my pay grade. We’ll pull him out of there and give him a proper burial at least. He deserves better than to be left to rot in there. Listen, one of my squad noticed a beached ship nearby that looked more intact than the others, and there were people moving about on deck. Could you run ahead and warn them that there’s some sort of murderous cultists running around?”

“Will do,” I say.

I head off in the direction I’m given and locate the ship in question. The people on board definitely have tails and are not elves of any sort. I approach one of them who is standing on the beach with a clipboard on hand, a tall blond male with spotted fur.

“What is your business with the Prowler?” he asks me.

“I came to warn you that there’s crazy cultists running around ritually murdering people,” I say. “You’d best be careful and not let anyone wander off by themselves.”

“Jone and Jode, that’s just what we need on top of everything else,” the Khajiit groans. “Like we don’t already have our hands full making repairs and getting the Prowler ready to set sail again.”

“I found a squad of Dominion marines who might be able to help with that,” I say. “Hopefully they’re better at using a hammer than they are at sailing.”

The Khajiit snickers. “Captain Jimila is a far more fortunate one to be sailing with. It seems only the Prowler made it through that hurricane still seaworthy.”

“Are you Captain Jimila?” I ask.

“No, I’m Quartermaster Oblan. Unlike some Khajiit, I prefer to actually say ‘I’ rather than my name.”

“Good to know!” I say. “I’m Neralian. Are you with the Dominion military?”

Oblan barks a laugh. “Hah! Does this look like a uniform to you? No, we’re privateers! The Dominion pays us to raid enemy shipping. And so long as they’re paying us, then we are loyal to the Dominion.”

Sergeant Firion and her squad catch up to me, and seem less than thrilled when they find out that these are privateers and not proper military. Beggars can’t be choosers, however, and these marines are eager to prove themselves. Oblan tells me what needs to be done to repair and restock the ship. I tell Firion. Firion sends her marines off to do their tasks. Maybe I should just steal an officer’s uniform and be done with it if people are going to need me to give them orders to get anything done. Probably not worth the trouble.

However, the appearance of these privateers has raised my spirits in another way: They’re a way off this island that won’t care who I am. And they’ll be grateful enough to me for helping them that they’re not going to ask too many questions, most likely.

Captain Jimila is a pretty, lithe Khajiit woman, and after making introductions, she informs me that a few members of her own crew are missing. Not just washed overboard and drowned when the hurricane struck, but probably kidnapped by those Sea Viper pirates. Apparently the Maormer have a thing for weather magic and are brewing up another storm. I can see it building from the prow of the Prowler.

“Thaaaat’s not good,” I say. “This is what they’re using those ritual sacrifices for?”

“So it would appear,” Jimila says. “If they cannot be stopped, then it won’t matter that we’ve repaired the Prowler. That storm will destroy us where we stand.”

“I’ll go over there and see if I can find the right person to hit to get them to knock it off, and rescue your crew members if they’re still alive.”

“You plan on taking on the entire crew of pirates by yourself?” Jimila wonders.

“I’m very good at hitting things,” I say. “Those marines are still on the mend thanks to that glow juice, and your crew aren’t up to that kind of battle or you’d have sent them already. It’s alright. I’m kind of a one-mer army.” I pull out Headache. “And their mages are probably busy doing weather magic and won’t join in the battle until they have no choice and the rest of them are already dead.”

Jimila wishes me luck, and I make for the very obvious storm brewing over another beached ship. There’s scattered elves hanging out amidst the shoals, and I get my first look at the Maormer. They’re definitely odd-looking mer, but I can hardly judge their appearance, I suppose. I’m just going to be judgy about the fact that they’re conjuring storms and killing people for no good reason. Why would they even do that? I can’t imagine how this actually benefits them in any way.

Along the way, I spot the glow of another Skyshard nestled in the rocks of a small island and rush over to absorb it, half-ignoring the fact that I’m still being attacked by pissy sea elves as I do so.

As I run up into the storm, between the rain and wading through ankle to waist deep water half of the way here, I’m completely soaked. I climb up onto the grounded Dominion flagship and find the two captured crew members bound in lightning to a couple of snake-shaped statues. The lightning won’t let me get close, but I spot a weird glowing rock on the wrist of one of the sea elves I’d killed, which lets me release them. Once the second one is set free, the winds instantly die down and the rain stops falling. That was awfully dramatic.

“Can you two walk?” I ask the Khajiit and Nord that I’ve just rescued.

“Suhr can walk,” the Khajiit says. “Suhr will claw out the eyes of any Sea Vipers who come close!”

The Nord expresses similar sentiment, minus the fact that he does not have claws, and I lead the two of them back to the Prowler. We’re not bothered on the way back, however. It seems that the Maormer have decided discretion is the better part of valor and they’ve already lost this one, and the ones I haven’t already killed have quickly withdrawn from the area.

As we get back to the ship, I realize that they hadn’t withdrawn. They’d gathered up to stage a hasty attack upon the Prowler. I don’t know what they were hoping to accomplish, but we get back only at the end of the skirmish. Despite their earlier injuries, the marines held their own and fended off the attack. That glow juice must really be something!

“You have my gratitude for your assistance,” Captain Jimila says. “Without you and your marine friends, we would have been sitting ducks here. You will always be welcome on the Prowler, friend.”

“Even if I’m… not actually a Dominion soldier?” I ask, lowering my voice.

Jimila chuckles. “You have done right by my crew, Neri. What does it matter who you are or who you work for?”

“It would be very nice to know I have a way off of this island if they try to arrest me again,” I say. “I’m not a skooma smuggler or whatever, mind you. It was all a misunderstanding.”

“Don’t worry. I know the value of discretion. My crew and I owe you our lives and our livelihood. If you need to disappear and change your name, we can help.”

“Thank you.”

They plan to sail with the tide, and hope to meet up with me in Mistral later. That gives me plenty of time to find that shrine to destroy these stupid books, but first, time enough to scour the beach again and grab every bottle of glow juice I can carry. I wonder what I can sell this stuff for?