“Neri, how are you feeling?” Eran asks.

“Absolutely splendid let’s go,” I say quickly, barely putting any space between the words.

“Are you sure?” Eran presses. “You seemed rather—”

“Don’t want to talk about it right now,” I say. “Don’t want to think about it, either.”

“Alright then,” Eran says.

I retrieve Nanwen’s sword from the sergeant and make for the wayshrine straight away. I’m not ready to tell any spinners about my latest adventure and I have a few errands to run to distract me. I drop off Eran, Merry, and Gelur at Elden Root, and they send Ilara along as usual to keep an eye on me and make sure that I actually am okay. And to that, I don’t know, and I’m not going to analyze it too hard right now.

Our first stop is Cormount, to check in with the jeweler and hoping that he’s either done with my artifact or he has a request for an exotic material that will require going somewhere and beating up some ridiculous monster or another. Keep moving and don’t think too much about things.

“Ah, Neri!” the jeweler says when the two of us enter his tree-pod workshop/dwelling. “Good, you’re here!”

“You have good news?” I ask.

The jeweler gestures me inside and goes over to his workbench, and brings a gold ring out of a small box to show me.

“I’ve infused the ring with the finest enchantments,” the jeweler says. “Now, I don’t think I have the sheer power to ward off a god, so I went with a chameleon effect as the first layer of defense. Like a senche hiding in tall grass, no one should be able to find you unless they know where to look if they don’t have some sort of connection to you. If you want a more powerful effect than that, you will need help from a more powerful individual than I for it. If you want to ward off a god, you may need the blessing of another god.”

“Would I be able to travel to Oblivion without alerting the Daedra?” I wonder.

“I don’t really recommend it, but if that’s what you need to do in order to stop the Dark Anchors, it’ll at least give you a better chance to slip in unnoticed and get out again with your mind and soul intact.”

I vainly wish I’d come back here a week ago, if the ring had even been ready by that point. Unfortunately, you can’t really predict an emergency. It’s not like I knew ahead of time this particular Ayleid ruin was going to be… more problematic than Ayleid ruins usually are. And not the bit about abuse of slaves. At this point I’d welcome an Ayleid ruin full of asshole Ayleids abusing their slaves, suspended in time or whatever. They’d at least be fun to hit. Instead I have to deal with fucking Daedra. I’m still going to blame the Ayleids. At least the Ayleids who worshipped the Bad Daedra. The Meridia worshippers seemed okay.

I slip the ring on my finger. A tingly, warm feeling runs down my skin, like a fine silken shroud. I just hope I can get it to stay with me when I die. It would be annoying (more than just annoying) to be even more vulnerable than usual after respawning.

I stop in at the Cliffshade Library to drop off some books. Sahira-daro isn’t in at the moment so I had them off to her assistant, a Bosmer who seems to be one of their recruits for rebuilding the Wooded Eye. I also take the opportunity to stock up on important supplies, like moon sugar, fire salts, kindlepitch (you never know when you might need to blow something up), and brew up a few potions (and poisons).

I gather up my friends again and we head for Vastarie’s Tower. No sense in putting this off any longer. This is the most defense I’m going to get at the moment, I think.

Sai Sahan is feeling a lot better now and is pretty sure that we’re not another elaborate hallucination. He’s been champing at the bit ready to go for longer than I’ve wanted to deal with this. We need to accompany him to someplace called the Valley of Blades, which sounds like a fun place to visit. Varen calls it a ‘trading hub’ in Hammerfell, but really now, it’s called the Valley of Blades, not the Valley of Coins.

Varen opens a portal for the nine of us to head through. We’re no sooner on the other side than the three of the Five Minus One Companions start bickering amongst themselves. Vastarie just quietly tuts something about children. I have no idea how this dysfunctional group ever got anything done. Even my own old group got along most of the time, up until the point where they betrayed and murdered me.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

My own musings are interrupted by the smell of smoke and the sight of the aftermath of an attack. Someone attacked the Abbey of Blades while I was busily procrastinating. Fortunately, they didn’t run out of enemies before we got there. Cultists, Daedra, including a huge Daedric Titan which dies just as I’m getting a good rhythm going.

Sai’s friend, Kasura, shows us to a hidden entrance to the crypt where a ring I’m not sure why we need has been hidden. I’m on edge the entire way through the crypt, not because we’re being attacked by undead, but because we’re not being attacked by undead. There’s no way that this trip is going to not end in undead.

The ring in question is quite well hidden, sitting in a chest in a prominent location at the end of the crypt, on a dais at the top of a set of stairs. The Redguards could really use some lessons in hiding things.

A projection of Manny appears in the middle of the tomb to taunt us. Blah blah blah, defy me, blah blah blah, take it from your corpses. The usual sort of blather. I just have my axe ready for when he stops talking, and my friends follow my lead. When he starts raising Sai Sahan’s honored ancestors as undead minions, the only ones here who seem to be shocked are Sai and Lyris.

I’m very glad that we decided to bring nine people here, because as it turns out, undead legendary swordsmen are still legendary swordsmen. It’s a damned good fight and I very nearly die several times.

“I am impressed that he can raise them remotely like this,” Merry comments in between Sai cursing Manny for defiling his honored ancestors.

“He was already powerful when I knew him and he has only grown in strength since then,” Vastarie says with a frown.

“Perhaps next time you seek to hide something from a necromancer, you should reconsider putting it in a tomb,” Abnur says acidly.

It takes some doing, but we return Sai’s ancestors to their honored rest again, their bones slightly more beaten up than they had been before.

“Return to Varen and give him the ring,” Sai says. “I will remain with Kasura for the moment. I must assist in cleaning up and rebuilding, and re-inter my ancestors properly again.”

I look around the tomb at the mixed up bones scattered all over the floor. It’s going to take some doing to sort those out again. Chimer bone pits were so much easier to deal with. Just dump the bones and ashes of all your ancestors into one big hole in the middle of the shrine and be done with it. And remember to visit them occasionally or they’ll get pissy and start attacking visitors on their own.

I wish him luck with that, and Vastarie opens a portal for us to return to her tower. It seems we’re not going to get the amulet of doom today after all. I’m not going to complain. If Sai wants to procrastinate by trying to find his great-great-great-grandfather’s knuckle bones that got knocked behind a statue, that’s just excellent so far as I’m concerned.

Once back in the tower, I remember to show Nanwen’s sword to Vastarie and explain what happened with him. As a very incorporeal sort of ghost, there wasn’t exactly much danger of Manny doing anything with him, anyway. What would be the point of controlling the ghost of a digger who can’t even touch anything when there’s perfectly good, intact skeletons of legendary swordsmen right there? Cutting us with some sharp remarks?

“Incompetent cultist got me stuck to this sword,” Nanwen says. “I mean, it could be worse. Watching Neri hit things is pretty entertaining.”

“I am certain that I could sever your binding to the blade and allow you to return to Aetherius if you wish,” Vastarie says.

“Maybe later,” Nanwen says. “It’s terrible seeing only part of a story! I got dragged into the middle of this all and now I’m aware again and things are happening around me. I’ve got to see what happens with the Worm Cult first.”

Vastarie chuckles. “That’s one way of looking at it. The offer is open whenever you wish to go. Otherwise, we will certainly be dealing with Mannimarco and his followers in due order.”

“Great. It’s a pity I’m no help in a fight, though, especially against necromancers.”

“You could distract people,” I suggest. “Pop up behind them and say ‘Boo!’ See if they look.”

“Hmm, maybe,” Nanwen muses.

“So what’s next on the agenda?” Eran asks. “Now that we’re not having to deal with one crisis after another, although at the rate we’re going, I’m sure it won’t be too long until the next crisis comes up. Are we continuing along the route we were traveling on north into Malabal Tor, now that we’ve run out of Greenshade?”

I say, “We might as well. Valenwood is nice but I want to see more of it and not just sit in Elden Root getting drunk and/or high until someone asks us to do something. I’m sure we can find another crisis or three to keep us occupied until Calm Indy gets married to a lady he probably hasn’t even met yet. I hope she’s as badass as the last one.”

“Arranging marriages when you don’t even know who it is that’s going to be getting married must be tough,” Eran says.

“Y’ffre will sort it out,” Gelur says brightly. “He wouldn’t tap a Silvenar and Green Lady he thought would hate one another.”

“Do you think he goes to Mara for advice on that?” Ilara asks innocently.

I turn back to Vastarie, as Varen had done little more than listen to our report and take the ring before going back to meditating or whatever it is he does while staring off into space quietly.

“Let me know whenever Sai gets done reassembling his ancestors and putting them back in their boxes,” I say. “I’m quite eager to locate this amulet of doom and hope he hid it in another tomb that will lead to Manny reanimating more of Tamriel’s greatest heroes to attempt to kill us.”

“Don’t you mean ‘hope he didn’t’?” Nanwen says, his transparent blue face looking toward my friends for confirmation, but they’re just smirking. “Right, you’re insane. Silly me, it must have momentarily slipped my mind.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” I say. “It’ll be good to have someone around who isn’t so used to my shit that he’s not shocked when I say or do something ridiculous. Sometimes it’s hard to keep things in perspective.”

“Happy to… help?”