I take a well-deserved break. It’s back to Brackenleaf Village for a few days to rest and recuperate, and let everyone know what has gone down since we last visited. Everyone’s excited about the prospect of a new Silvenar and some of them express interest in traveling to see the wedding.

What wedding, you might ask? I forgot about that bit how the Silvenar is always married to the Green Lady. (Or Green Lord, I assume, if it’s a man.) I don’t know what Calm Indy thinks of that all, but we’ll eventually want to be going to Malabal Tor for that. That’s the northwestern part of Valenwood where I assume quite a lot more problems are going to be happening, since every patch of Tamriel I’ve visited thus far has been full of problems and I doubt that particular part is going to be any different.

In any case, I still have the Wilderqueen’s map to clear out. Sai Sahan can wait a bit longer. I need some simple problems to solve right now. Which is why my spirits lift when we approach the Falinesti Spring Site and spot Orc architecture, much to the confusion of a Bosmer man who is hiding nearby.

“I wouldn’t think you’d be so cheerful at the sight of unruly Wood Orcs,” the Bosmer says.

“I just spent several days fighting undead, trying to save feral Bosmer, and hacking apart corrupted plants and shadow shit,” I say. “I welcome a problem that’s simple and doesn’t make my skin crawl with weird magic.”

“They kidnapped my friends and I don’t know what I’m going to do. You can help, right? I’m not much of a warrior.”

“Not to worry,” I say. “I’ll convince them to stop being unruly, either with my tongue or my axe.”

We head into the settlement that the Orcs weren’t supposed to have set up. They’re less than interested in reasonable diplomacy, so I let Wobbly do the talking instead.

One of the captured Bosmer isn’t about to let bygones be bygones and wants to make the Orcs pay with blood.

“You’d best grab a weapon and hurry, then,” I say. “Otherwise you won’t get a chance because I’m going through repeatedly hitting anyone stupid enough to attack me.”

We run into one Bosmer man bemoaning about how his beloved is missing after she’d killed a bunch of Orcs and saved him, by making a pact with Hircine and turning into a terrible beast.

Gelur says, “Ah… I’m so sorry.”

“Can you track her down and find her?” the man says plaintively. “I hate the thought of having to kill my own wife…”

“We’ll find her,” I say.

We head down into the nearby cave and follow a trail left by muddy paw prints and dead Orcs, and grab a book titled Gifts of the Nereids along the way down.

“I think she might have tumbled off this cliff,” I say, going nowhere near the cliff.

“We can probably climb down these vines if we’re careful,” Eran says. “No need to go jumping.”

We climb down the vines and look around the lower caves, and come upon a not-particularly-large bear asleep in a nook.

“Is that her?” I wonder.

Merry shrugs. “I cannot tell whether this is a shapeshifted mer or merely a bear.”

“Neri, don’t go petting the bear to see if it’s friendly,” Eran says.

“I wasn’t going to,” I protest.

The bear wakes up at our not-particularly-quiet talking and attacks us. After a couple of strikes, she flees up another tunnel, and we give chase. The Bosmer man yells at us not to hurt her and runs in out of nowhere. I don’t remember noticing him following us down the vines so maybe he came in another way that didn’t involve climbing down vines.

Not content with following the Green Pact that forbids Bosmer from changing their shape, the man wants to make a pact with Hircine himself so that he might hunt with his wife for the rest of their days.

I sigh. “Well, that is your choice, but you know those days are going to be very, very short, don’t you?”

“It will be worth it all to remain at my wife’s side!” he says.

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

“You mean for the next five minutes before I have to kill you both so that you don’t hunt any other intelligent beings?”

“We’ll go deep into the forest and avoid other people,” he assures me not-particularly-reassuringly.

“Thonoras, do you really want to do this?” Gelur says, having actually paid attention when the guy introduced himself. “Your wife sacrificed herself so that you can live.”

He looks between Gelur and me, or my axe in particular, and decides not to turn himself into a bear. We all make bad decisions in the heat of the moment when colored by emotions, after all. Turning into a bear is rarely the best answer, though. I mean, really, it would be quite difficult to wield an axe with paws. And fit through doorways, and get invited to town gatherings.

We meet up with the angry Bosmer woman, Fanrel, up on a hill near the Wood Orc settlement that’s home to a much fewer number of Wood Orcs than previously. She wants to get revenge on the chief by killing his entire family and then killing him, including his torturer, his son, and his two wives. I’m not sure how someone’s torturer is a family member, but whatever.

“How old is the son?” I ask.

“Old enough to try to kill you, too, and not young enough to kidnap and let someone try to raise him to not be an asshole,” Fanrel says. “I want to send an unambiguous message here.”

“A message, huh?” I say. “Like, the severed heads of everyone the chief cares about on pikes along with a sign that says ‘TORTURE BAD’ and ‘FUCK YOU’? Hopefully he can read but I’m sure he’ll get the point. Right before he also dies.”

I find a Skyshard at the top of the lookout tower where the son is located, looking out over the dolmen. I can’t help but wonder if the Wood Orcs hadn’t been doing a better job than the Wood Elves keeping the Dark Anchors destroyed. That’s not much of an excuse for capturing and torturing people, though, regardless of what the Bosmer probably hadn’t done to them.

While I’m not really one for specifically killing someone’s family to piss them off, I’m also not really one for specifically sparing their family for no real reason when I’m already slaughtering everyone else. It’s not like these people weren’t going to die today anyway, given the state I found the captives in.

“Aaaaand he’s filling his pack up with severed heads again,” Eran says with a sigh.

“You can’t complain,” I say. “You’ve got your own now. No need to worry about my bloody books.”

“I’m sure Herma-Mora probably doesn’t care about a little blood on the covers, and we all know that’s where those books are going anyway,” Gelur says.

Once we’ve collected the heads, we meet up again with Fanrel at a ritual stone where she says Bosmer who have violated the Green Pact are confined to the Ooze to think about their sins for eternity.

“Sounds pleasant,” I say, and get odd looks from Fanrel and Gelur. “What? I’ve been to Coldharbour. At least this doesn’t involve being tortured by Daedra. Which makes it still more merciful than what these Orcs did to the Bosmer here.”

“Point,” Gelur says.

Once he notices the severed heads we’ve shoved onto pikes near the ritual table, the Orc chieftain charges at us with a battle axe, yelling in grief at horrible things we’ve done to his family.

“Fantastic,” I say dryly, meeting his axe with my axe. “Maybe you should have thought about that before you murdered and tortured people? Or did you have some terribly good reason for that, or why your people refused to speak with us when we approached and simply attacked us? Because, let me tell you, I have news for you. Normal towns don’t attack people just for walking nearby trying to talk to them. Even your sweet, innocent hearth-wife tried to stab me! Your clan is—was—nothing more than bandits!”

“Neri, you’re speaking to a corpse,” Merry points out.

“Damn, I accidentally killed him halfway through my monologue,” I say. “Oh well.”

“I’m sure he got the picture,” Eran says.

“Fanrel, I have to ask you and your own tribe to do something,” I say. “You can call it in exchange for our help here, but it’s kind of important and something you’d need to be doing anyway.”

“What is it?” Fanrel asks.

“There’s a dolmen situated not far from the Orcs’ eastern watchtower,” I explain. “You need to make sure the Dark Anchors get destroyed whenever they drop now that the Orcs aren’t keeping an eye on it anymore because they’re all dead.”

“Of course,” Fanrel says. “We’ll do our best to keep Valenwood safe, whether it’s from Orcs or Daedra. We’ll need to get reinforcements, but I won’t have it be said the Orcs did a better job of defending Valenwood than us.”

We return to the road and continue on. The problems in this particular location have been solved, but there are still more things to be done in Greenshade that Ari will be happy if we took care of.

Along the road, we run across two mer in Dominion armor, who inform us that some Ebonheart Pact spies have been sighted in the area along with a traitor from their own ranks. They offer a reward if we find them first, so we go searching for them.

Hidden in the rocks not far from the road, we find the Altmer traitor along with an Argonian and a Nord woman wearing one of those ridiculous horned helmets. They attack us on sight, saving us the trouble of figuring out whether they’re the spies we’re looking for or just a very lost, heavily armed, and impoverished merchant caravan.

“Sorderion didn’t ask for their severed heads…” Eran mumbles, and sighs. “At least you’re not likely to hand them to him inside a pristine Altmer building and drip blood everywhere. If I hadn’t already known you before we came to Valenwood, I’d think you’ve been dealing with Bosmer for too long.”

“Who wants to carry the Argonian?” I say, tossing the reptilian head in the air. Ilara catches it, blinking into the dead eyes of the spy.

We return to the Dominion patrol and I hold aloft the head of the Altmer spy toward the soldier who is probably not as Sorry as others with similar names I’ve met. His face pales upon recognition and I hope this wasn’t his former lover or something, but, well, it’s adequate proof that we got the right targets at least. He pays us and hurries on, leaving the heads.

“Let us swiftly dispose of these before Gelur gets the idea to make Argonian brain stew or something,” Merry says, calling fire to his hands.

“Hmmmmm,” Gelur says, grinning at him.

“Now you’re just messing with him,” I say with a laugh.

“Am I?” Gelur says innocently.