We’re standing outside another overgrown Ayleid ruin that is for some reason called Rulanyil’s Fall. Whoever that is much have slipped and fallen into a hole in the ground into an Ayleid ruin or something.

In any case, up until recently, the place has been being used as a museum for some reason (I guess they were short on space that didn’t involve walking through a dangerous forest for days), up until some Worm Cultists showed up and made a mess of everything. You have no idea how thrilled I am to be fighting Worm Cultists again for a change. Yes, this also involves fighting undead, but they’re not undead raised by racist bandits and the Worm Cult’s goals make more sense.

I feel like the Veiled Heritance did not think through their hairbrained schemes too much, whereas the Worm Cult serves the God of Schemes who just wants to take over Tamriel. Or Mannimarco, who just wants to become a god. Perfectly reasonable goals. I still have to kick their asses for it, but at least their goals make sense. Plus, this is a perfectly good excuse to put off dealing with that stupid amulet of doom.

The ‘museum’ is run by a self-important High Elf by the name of Enarwe. No, Endarwe. And definitely not Endare. And despite his name ending in ‘we’, I’m pretty sure he’s male since he has a beard. From what I can tell, although they don’t tell me this in as many words, this ‘Merethic Society’ is less of an officially accepted guild and more of a group of adventurers who needed a place to shove the historical garbage they kept winding up with. And since there’s High Elves involved, this has to sound important and fancy.

The main gist of the situation here is that the necromancers came in and killed a bunch of the society’s employees and raised them as undead. Endy is worried that they might raise the Ayleid warlord in his collection, which would probably be bad.

We head into the ruin, killing cultists and undead as we go. The place is packed with the dead and dead-lovers, leading to us having to bring out our area attack spells. Shortly, we run across a Skyshard next to a pillar leaning over against rock in a large room with a hole in the ceiling big enough for a whole platoon to fall in. Once that’s absorbed, we run across a wounded robed Khajiit in the next tunnel.

“Pah! You cultists are ruining everything,” he grumbles as he sees us approach. “Please stop. You gain nothing from destroying our collection.”

I look down at myself and aside at my friends as Gelur goes over to start healing him. “Do we really look like cultists?”

“I suppose not,” the Khajiit says. “You are here to help? Thank you, strangers. You must find the artifacts we’ve hidden and bring them safely out of the ruin!”

I blink. “You’re more concerned about the artifacts than yourself? Were there any other survivors?”

“I am not certain, but it is unlikely. We hid several valuable artifacts to keep them safe, even at the cost of our own lives.”

“You really should have just fled,” I say, not especially feeling like humoring him at the moment. “Some of you might have survived. It’s just stuff. What’s the big deal?”

“This is our life’s work!” the Khajiit protests weakly. “It must be preserved!”

“Fine, fine,” I say. “Do you at least remember where you put them? Otherwise this is going to be a considerably more annoying trip.”

“Yes. Here’s a map. I marked down the locations. Please hurry, before they burn down the temple around us.”

I look at the stone walls and ceiling. “I think you might have hit your head, too. There’s nothing flammable here but the plants. In any case, sure, we’ll find them, but it’s not like we won’t be killing everything in here anyway. The way back to the entrance from here should be clear.”

He doesn’t seem inclined to want to move just yet, so we leave him and continue on.

We get down to the big room at the bottom of the ruin, where one of those Ayleid ceiling lights has been set up as a spotlight over a platform holding some dead mer’s remains. There’s a human cultist chanting over him frustratedly as he refuses to stand up. We go over and interrupt the necromancer and cut her down before she can do anything else annoying.

From the corpse on the table emerges a very confused ghost who says his name is Nanwen and he’s definitely not an Ayleid warlord. He’s a digger that was killed in a cave-in that Endy dressed up as his prized centerpiece because apparently they couldn’t find an actual dead Ayleid around somewhere. You’d think that wouldn’t be so hard. I mean, if not an actual warlord, at least a warlord’s third cousin twice removed. I suppose most people can’t exactly tell the difference between an Ayleid’s bones and an Altmer’s (I couldn’t), or between bones that have been dead for a few years or thousands of years (I certainly could).

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“So the necromancer did succeed in calling you back?” Eran asks.

Nanwen nods. “I don’t have any memory of anything that happened since the cave-in, until suddenly this Imperial woman was chanting over me. I didn’t much feel like getting up so I just laid there hoping she would go away.”

“Playing dead,” Ilara giggles.

There’s a sword laying next to the body, which I grab and toss in my pack absently. Nanwen follows along with us as we proceed through the ruin.

For a ruin packed to the brim with undead and cultists, and the occasional Daedra, the place is surprisingly relaxing. There’s even several tough fights that really make me focus. Ilara picks up the hidden artifacts as we go and hopefully won’t get them mixed up in her bag of stolen goods.

Once we get back to the entrance of the ruin, we find the Khajiit has managed to make it back, and turn over the artifacts. It’s all well and good to get your trinkets back, but you can get your trinkets back and still be breathing too.

In the meantime, Endy has disguised himself as a cultist, as if that would actually fool anyone, not that he’s bothered to leave the sanctity of the rooms near the entrance to the ruins that the cultists hadn’t bothered securing for some reason. Not that I’m about to give cultists tactical advice or anything. Even if I hadn’t just killed all of them that we could find. I’m not exactly the sort of person to sneak in, retrieve some artifacts, and check an ‘Ayleid warlord’ when I could just kill them all and be done with it.

Endy is not thrilled to see Nanwen at all, and I’m sure the feeling is mutual. He tries to bribe us to keep his fraud quiet (instead of simply paying us for clearing the ruin) and orders Nanwen back to his corpse.

“This is worse than Oblivion,” Nanwen mutters dejectedly.

“I’ll find someone to exorcise you,” I say, and at Endy’s glare, continue, “You already have his bones. You hardly need his ghost too. Or do you want the next necromancer to come along to get a surprise confused Altmer?”

Exorcism will need to wait a bit as my best prospects are at Vastarie’s Tower and I’m not going back there until I’m ready to save the world, or at least, go pick up a piece of a dead god’s heart that will probably doom us all, which is, of course, completely the opposite of saving the world. Varen and his friends are all insane.

Endy grumbles. “I’ll need to hire some guards after we’ve assessed the situation, cleared out any remaining cultists, and determine what might still be intact.”

“You do that,” I say. “And maybe I should start my own museum, too. I’ll bet I can get better shit.”

“You are hardly seeing us at our best… pfah!”

“Although I like the Dwemer more than the Ayleids,” I go on. “The Ayleids were kind of dicks.”

We head out of the ruin and back toward the main road, absently tossing around the idea in my head although I doubt I’d actually bother. I mean, I’d love to set up a gadget workshop for myself if I had more than a Dwemer child’s understanding of their machinery. (Which is, admittedly, still probably more than most people.)

At some point when going through the junk in my pack, I pull out the sword I’d forgotten I’d picked up from inside the ruins. It would be otherwise unremarkable aside from the fact that Nanwen appears after I handle it.

“What?” Nanwen says. “Oh… I’m bound to the sword and not my body? Well, that’s a relief. I suppose that necromancer’s bumbling was good for something, at least. At least now I don’t have to deal with Endarwe on top of being dead.”

“Well, that’ll simplify getting you exorcised if you want,” I say. “Although that’ll have to wait a bit, if you don’t mind. The people most likely to be able to do so are likely not going to be happy if I keep procrastinating the dumb thing they want me to do.”

“You might want to let them know the situation with the Veiled Lich Queen has been taken care of,” Eran says.

“I only have a tiny bit more of Greenshade on the map to take care of,” I say. “I did promise I’d do it once I’d taken care of Greenshade, didn’t I? I’m sure I said something of that nature.”

“If you don’t mind hanging around for a bit, you’ll get a front row seat to the biggest event of the era,” Gelur says cheerfully. “We call it ‘Neri Travels Tamriel and Hits Everything’.”

“I was thinking ‘I Changed My Name to Avoid My Ex and Accidentally Saved the World’, but that works too,” I say.

“You might want to hold off on that title until you’ve actually saved the world, accidentally or otherwise,” Eran says. “And you might also want to remember to omit the parts you’re not supposed to tell everyone.”

I sigh. “I’m pretty sure I’ve already saved it a few dozen times, given the potential scale of some of the dumb shit we’ve had to put a stop to.”

“This sounds rather entertaining,” Nanwen says. “Given that I’m already dead, I suppose there’s no risk to me from all the risky things it sounds like you do. I mean, the worst that could happen is that you all get killed horribly and the sword I’m bound to gets left in the bottom of a dangerous, inaccessible ruin for a few millennia.”

“That… sounds pretty horrible, actually,” Ilara says.

“I’ll try not to do that,” I say.

“Are you going to tell people Endarwe is a fraud?” Nanwen wonders.

I shrug. “I’m hardly going to make any great effort to keep it a secret. I know much saucier secrets and I’m bad at keeping those too. I don’t see much need to print up and distribute newsletters about it, though.” I pause thoughtfully. “Do people even bother to print news around here? Everything always seems to travel at the speed of rumor and turns into stories by the time the spinners get their hands on it. I haven’t even seen anyone yelling news in the middle of towns, never mind newspapers.”

Merry sighs. “Do you intend to start a newspaper now, in addition to distributing pamphlets to the Mages Guild?”

“It’s probably too much effort, but I’ll give Sahira-daro the idea,” I say. “There’s nothing like secrets that everyone knows.” I pause and look to Nanwen. “By the way, one of my good friends is a worshipper of Hermaeus Mora. Don’t tell anyone.”

“So long as my soul does not wind up in Oblivion, I do not care,” Nanwen says.

“I’ll be sure to leave you behind on our next excursion, then.”

Nanwen looks aside to Merry. “He’s insane, isn’t he? I’ve been around him for five minutes and I already know he’s insane.”