I’m itching to kill some more racist bandits and re-kill some more undead, and fortunately this sort of itching is not due to getting fleas from sleeping with Khajiit or something.

I go up to a Bosmer woman near the wayshrine and ask her, “Have you seen Calm Indy around here?”

“Indaenir,” Eran puts in helpfully.

“Ah! You’re the group he mentioned. He said that you’d be pretty obvious when you showed up. We’ve been having some problems with undead here and we’ve got our hands full. It’ll be good to have ten more hands to fight back with.”

Calm Indy, as if hearing he’s being talked about, appears from nowhere. He tells us a little about the undead here, and that they’re specifically Bosmer who belonged to some tribe called Blackroot. I’m not sure why it matters since we’re going to smack them back into the ground anyway, but he seems to care about it at least, so I humor him. He wants us to go through and watch some scenes from the past, which more like means I’m going to go hit some undead while Calm Indy and my friends watch some scenes from the past.

In between killing groups of undead, while they’re watching these memories, I of course poke my nose into every abandoned tree-pod house in the village. They’re mostly trashed and overgrown (though how something that was grown in the first place could be overgrown is amusing to me), but I find some interesting books along the way. Khajiit mythology; I’m sure Sahira-daro will either like this or be offended about it. (More likely she already knows it anyway.)

According to the scenes from the past that my friends fill me in on while I’m not paying attention, the people who lived in this village before the Blackroots came poisoned themselves so that the Blackroots would die when they ate their corpses. (Because cannibalism is thing Bosmer do sometimes.) They kind of sound like sore losers to me.

More recently, someone stole the Blackroot general’s bow and commanded him to fight the Dominion by the Right of Theft. Calm Indy sends us to a nereid cave for some reason while he splits off from us to go do something else.

From what my friends and Calm Indy were able to piece together while I was hitting undead and trying to find things to loot, the water bitches very likely manipulated both the villagers and the Blackroots for their own amusement.

We haven’t even made it halfway through the cave before I start really hating the sound of nereids. When you injure them, they tend to make this grating high-pitched warbling sound. And of course they’re not feeling like chatting, so we just kill them all.

The remains of the Blackwood general lie deep within the cave. Or high up in it, considering the cave goes up to the top of a waterfall. When we approach it, the air darkens and the annoying taunting voice of Estre’s shadowy toady taunts us annoyingly again.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I mutter. “How does he keep doing this?”

I walk up toward the top of the waterfall. A lovely view of the night sky stretches out before us, although I’m fairly certain that it wasn’t night when we came in here. It’s quite a long way down, too.

“Neri, please don’t jump off the waterfall,” Eran says with a sigh.

“No?” I say. “How about I—”

I fall off the waterfall. Rather than gracefully diving into the pool at the bottom of the falls, I tumble and crack my head open on the rocks and die instantly.

I reappear naked at the wayshrine. Actually, looking around and noticing that the wayshrine is Altmer-style rather than Bosmer-style, I think it’s the wayshrine for Seaside Sanctuary, not the one at the V town. Between the two V towns. And I’m still in the misty dark wood. I start trying to find my way back up the cliffs and waterfalls before remembering that I can just use the wayshrine to teleport me back up where I was.

There isn’t anyone else around, none of the Vinedusk Rangers that were here before, in the non-shadowy wood. This is both a good thing that they can’t see I have no clothes on, and a bad thing that they can’t point me back to where I’m supposed to be.

I wonder what my friends are going to tell Calm Indy when they come out of the cave without me. “Oh, he died falling off a cliff,” I imagine Eran saying. “Don’t worry, he’ll be fine.” I’m sure Calm Indy will understand.

As I fumble my way through the dark mists of the Shadow Wood, I realize I actually have a real problem this time. I’m alone, naked, don’t know which direction to go, am surrounded by overly aggressive plant-things, and can’t see more than ten feet in front of me. At least I still have Blinky with me, since my Aedric Spear is in my … soul? No, my soul’s in Coldharbour. My essence? I don’t even know what that means. Whatever, in any case, all I’ve got is some light to try to light up the shadows with.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

I stop to calm myself, not that I was freaking out or anything. It’s not like the Shadow Wood was particularly scary until I was alone in it. The loud, ominous music definitely isn’t helping to settle my nerves, either. The sensible thing to do would be to return to the wayshrine and wait for my friends to find me. They, at least, probably know where they are. I retrace my steps as best as I can, but now I’m thoroughly lost again and not sure which way to go.

I stop walking. This is getting me nowhere aside from potentially even more lost. I’m totally and completely calm here. Calm as Indy. Not having any flashbacks to Coldharbour at all.

It’s fine. It’s all fine. I can light my way through this. If I make enough noise and flashy light, my friends are sure to find me in the darkness. Admittedly, a lot of pissy things are likely to find me too, but that’s okay. I can stab them with light, too.

I take a deep breath. “Meridia, light my way through the darkness and let me strike down the ones responsible for this corruption.”

I let all the light powers I know flow through me into a beacon. A column of light and song extends into the air, piercing right through the eerie darkness and unnatural silence. I keep it up for several seconds before letting it go and killing everything that it pissed off. I repeat this several more times, and am starting to wonder if my friends can even see it at all when I hear voices calling out to me.

“Neri!” Eran calls. “You can stop that now. It’s alright. We’re here.”

“We brought your pack and Ilara-daro bravely fished your axe out of the water,” Merry says. “You’re welcome.”

Ilara comes up and passes them to me, along with some sopping wet clothes. I bring out a dry change of clothes from my pack and put them on, and haphazardly wrap up the wet clothes but reconsider shoving them in my pack and getting my books soaked, although somehow they’re fine and don’t wind up covered in blood no matter how many severed heads I shove in there. Eh, it’ll be fine and I don’t care right now.

“Neri, you really are an idiot sometimes,” Eran says, smirking. “Okay, new rule. Instead of ‘don’t jump off cliffs’, I’m going to have to make this ‘don’t stand anywhere near cliffs’.”

“Yeah, sorry,” I say with a sigh. “I’m sorry.” I run a hand across the fuzz that’s accumulating on the top of my head again like some sort of red mold.

“We closed several shadow rifts on the way through the village,” Merry says. “We have not yet located or attempted to kill the servant of Estre who has the bow. We wished to wait until we had reunited with you in order to attempt it.”

“I assume you at least know the general direction he might be in?”

“Back this way,” Eran says.

I follow along quietly as Eran leads us back toward V-town. (I can’t even remember the name of the place, how am I to expect to be able to find my way back there?) Ilara wordlessly presses a moon sugar candy into my hand and I eat it, letting the sweetness soothe my nerves.

By the time we get back to town and find the shadowy fetcher, I’m definitely in the mood to hit something, but then, if I weren’t in the mood to hit something, you might need to check if something’s wrong with me. Even moon sugar doesn’t quell my bloodlust. And I’m definitely feeling like making this son of a guar shut up already.

Once the shadow guy is down and not immediately reappearing, I grab the bow. Upon touching it, the world whooshes around us and deposits us back in sunlight again. I breathe out an audible sigh of relief.

I turn around to find Calm Indy had appeared, along with a ghost who isn’t attacking us. The dead Bosmer whose bow I just picked up, I’m informed. General Malgoth, the most generic possible Bosmer name that I’ve heard. It’s not really a wonder I always forget names when all the ones within a race basically sound the same.

“Would someone kindly summarize what I missed?” I ask, glancing between my friends, Calm Indy, and the ghost.

“The racist bandits took his bow and told him to have his people attack us,” Eran says.

“And this is his bow?” I say, holding aloft the weapon I’d taken from the shadow. I don’t think they’ll mind the chance to get back at these fetchers that have been fucking around. I put on my best Hortator voice. “Blackthorn tribe!”

“Blackroot,” Eran interrupts quietly.

“Blackroot tribe!” I pretend that was what I just said.

“It might be ‘clan’,” Merry says.

I clear my throat. “I have your bow, General! By the Right of Theft, I command you to rise up to defend the Green against these interlopers that would threaten Valenwood!”

The dead general grins widely. “My army will follow me from the Ooze and strike down your enemies.”

I turn back to my friends. “Is there time for dinner and a nap before we march on Heck to do glorious battle with the Bitch Queen? Maybe a cup of tea with moon sugar in it? Because I could definitely do with some tea with moon sugar in it about now.”

“I believe that might be arranged,” Merry says.

We make our way down to the camp that has been set up around the gates of Heck. Everyone’s preparing for a major offensive, and the barrier has been wobbling with our bumping around in the dark place hitting stuff or mostly just getting lost in the dark. I eat food that barely registers in my mind and lay down to sleep, feeling like I could sleep for a week.

Previously, anytime I slept in Valenwood, I felt comforted and didn’t have any nightmares of Coldharbour. Now? Something is very wrong and when my eyes close, all I see is the Shadow Wood encroaching upon my dreams. I’m tired enough that my body needs the rest, but there’s no escape from the darkness in my mind. When I do manage to slip away to dream of something else, it’s Coldharbour. Somehow, there’s even a familiar comfort in that.

It’s fine. I’m fine. I totally wanted to be dreaming of Coldharbour again. Yep yep. And my favorite thing ever is for the God of Schemes to tell me that I’m already his unwitting champion.

I am so sick of gods.