There’s an Ayleid ruin up at the top of the cliff, because of course there is. You can’t take a stroll in Valenwood… this part of Tamriel? Half of Tamriel? …without tripping over something the Ayleids shat out.

A wayshrine stands by the rough road, and after I light it, a Bosmer woman approaches us. She introduces herself as Mariel the Ironhand (a considerably more badass and memorable name than most mer) and mentions something about Sea Elves and some weird magic weather control ball, because that’s exactly the sort of nonsense I was expecting when I walked up to a random Ayleid ruin. And here I’d been hoping to get away from Sea Elves for a bit, but as it turns out, if you’re near water anywhere in southern Tamriel, you run the risk of it raining Maormer on you.

Anyway, Ironhand here wants us to go up into the ruins (Ilayas, she informs us they’re called) and find some sort of key to the sky. I wasn’t really paying attention, to be perfectly honest. I have faith in my companions to remember what we were doing and which way to go. I just have to imagine an arrow pointing at my target and follow it, and hit everything that attacks me in between here and there.

We search the camp once all the Maormer in the immediate vicinity are dead, and Eran finds the “Sky-Key” in a chest, which is actually a blue crystal because Ayleids.

The Ironhand is hiding behind some big roots next to the entrance to the underground, having taken an arrow in the gut from a Sea Elf archer. Gelur quickly gets to work on dealing with that. Ironhand tells us about how there’s a constellation puzzle to get further into the ruins because Ayleids.

Not far inside the ruins, we find the journal of someone named Firras, who the Ironhand had mentioned as having been a former stormwarden who stormed off in a huff about a week ago and apparently was able to quite quickly find some Sea Elves which tells me I’m going to need to scour Malabal Tor’s beaches. Firras’ journal makes excuses about why he betrayed the Dominion, which primarily involve him not trusting the Dominion to have their best interests at heart (understandable) and being racist (less understandable).

Cutting a path through the Sea Elves, we come to a library full of bodies with small clouds flickering above them. Great, this can’t just be ordinary weather control magic, it has to be weird weather control magic, too.

The “constellation puzzle” is on a pillar in the middle of the room. The Ironhand had told us the solution, but that doesn’t matter, since the solution is on the freaking wall. How is this even a puzzle!?

The stormwardens are on the other side of the door, who lower their weapons when they see it’s not Sea Elves coming through the door. In the middle of the room, a glowing blue light ball hovers in the air above some more Ayleid crystals. Gelur takes a moment to ensure they’re all in good health. They’re not doing too badly under the circumstances, but some of them are more beaten up than others.

The stormwardens want to recharge their magic ball with some storm atronach cores. I cheerfully agree to go hit some atronachs, and we head downstairs.

The first thing we encounter in the undercroft is not a sparkly atronach, but an Ayleid ghost! How wonderful! And she’s a complete bitch. She doesn’t attack us, but every sentence out of her mouth contains at least three insults in our general direction, casting aspirations upon our ancestry, choice of vocation, and overall competence. I feel like the only reason she learned modern Tamrielic was to be able to insult people and there’s only so much entertainment to be had in insulting people who don’t understand what you’re saying.

“Right, sure, whatever,” I say. “I have a few questions for you, though.”

“Such impertinence,” the bitchy Ayleid says. “Fine, ask your questions, slave.”

“What’s up with all the blue crystals Ayleids seem to like so much?” I ask, jumping straight to the important details. “Why are the constellations for that so-called puzzle right on the wall next to it?” Eran elbows me and the Ayleid looks at me impatiently. “Okay, that probably wasn’t actually important.”

“Ugh,” the Ayleid says, putting transparent hand to transparent face. “These cretins disturbed this place badly enough to wake me up, and the insolent dog who might be able to fix this can only think to ask stupid questions.”

“I’d ask you why anyone would want to work with the Sea Elves, but you probably don’t know the answer to that any more than I do,” I say.

Eran clears his throat and addresses the ghost. “Master Stormwarden Faranwe, we’re heading in to collect cores from the storm atronachs below in order to recharge the Sphere of Storms. Is there advice or assistance that you could render us?”

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“Well, at least one of you is polite,” the Ayleid ghost says.

She’s a ghost of the incorporeal type and can’t actually stab the Sea Elves no matter how much she wants to, but she can make the other ghosts not harass us, which is at least an improvement because they’re the ‘just corporeal enough to be annoying’ type and I wasn’t planning on hitting Ayleid ghosts today no matter how satisfying it might be. Damn, when I put it that way, I almost regret the ‘assistance’.

Nanwen appears from the sword next to her. “Does it ever get less annoying to be able to watch events but not do anything about them?”

“Nope,” the Ayleid says. “I’d dearly love to be able to stick a sword through these watery wastrels. These—are you taking notes!?”

I look up from my writing. “What? These are great ideas for things to say to the next Sea Elf I run into.”

The Ayleid sighs and puts her face in her palm. “If you go and clear them out, I would be happy to expand your vocabulary, you barely-literate slave.”

“I’ll get right on that.”

We head downstairs and kill some atronachs, and shove the sparkly cores we get from them into receptacles to power up the magic ball. I’d grabbed a few extras because we wound up needing to kill way more atronachs than strictly necessary for the task. I absently toss a couple of them into the air and catch them awkwardly as we’re walking.

“Neri, I appreciate your attempt at finding a new hobby,” Merry says slowly, warily watching my act as he puts up shielding spells. “But perhaps if you intend to start juggling, you could choose a beginner subject other than storm atronach cores.”

“Tingly,” I say, then toss them into my pack. “You probably have a point, though.”

The Ayleid ghost appears in front of us, taking full advantage of her incorporealness to pass us. She wants us to kill the idiot who betrayed the stormwardens and the Dominion to the Sea Elves. It’s not like we weren’t going to do that anyway, though, especially considering he’s in the very next room.

“I take orders from the Sea Vipers now!” exclaims the traitor.

I just laugh uncontrollably, almost forgetting to dodge. “That is the absolute most pathetic thing I have heard this past… I don’t even know. Why would you even brag about that!?”

The Ayleid ghost lady, suitably impressed by us failing to die to the atronachs, Sea Elves, or traitor, is leaning against a wall sounding slightly less annoyed than she was before. I mean, she’s still being condescending and all, but her estimation of us seems to have risen from ‘useless slaves’ to ‘useful slaves’. She informs us of a hidden passage leading out of the ruins, while insulting me further and thereby expanding my vocabulary, and I’m cheerfully going to assume she’s just being nice and not that she just wants us to leave. Yep yep. I cheerfully shoot back a few insults in (rather rusty) Ayleidoon on the way out, and the look on her transparent face is priceless.

We escape from the ruins before they’re sealed through the secret passage and meet up with the Ironhand and a few Thalmor who have shown up in the meantime near the wayshrine. (It’s not like we’re far from Velyn Harbor, I suppose, and there were plenty of Thalmor there who no longer have Orcs and Redguards attacking them. They might even get a chance to hit a few Sea Elves. If there’s any left.)

All that done and I still haven’t stumbled upon that Skyshard that led me up here in the first place. I head back over the exterior area of Ilayas to look for it, hoping that it didn’t just get sealed inside while I’d forgotten about it. This results in us cutting right through the large group of Maormer the ghost thought we might not want to all fight at once. When they see what we’re doing, the Thalmor follow to back us up and help clear out the ruins, apparently thinking that was my intent rather than just trying to find a shiny rock on a cliff that only happened to be behind several squads of Sea Elves.

Once the remaining aquatic miscreants have been removed from the ruins, I take a look around to find anything interesting. A book titled Valenwood: A Study sits on a barrel by a desk. Summary: Altmer is trying not to be too racist but really doesn’t get Bosmer. And there, perched precariously on an altar way up at the edge of an overhanging cliff, a Skyshard shines blue against the misty sea.

“Right, a rope isn’t going to help with that drop,” Eran says. “But we’ve already killed everything dangerous at the bottom and between here and the wayshrine, so it should be fine even if you do fall and get yourself killed somehow.” He pauses. “Not that I’m encouraging you to jump off this cliff or anything here. It would still be annoying to walk all the way around again.”

“I can see all the way to Anvil from here,” Gelur says. “Least, I think that’s Anvil. There’s the lighthouse and the keep.”

“Have you been to Anvil, Gelur?” Ilara asks.

“Nah,” Gelur says. “I hear the place is a real shithole these days, full of thieves and pirates and murderers. Though it’d be nice if the Sea Elves would attack that side of the bay for a change.”

I approach and absorb the Skyshard without falling off the cliff, avoiding looking at the ocean far below. I don’t have a problem with heights when I can see what’s below me, and I can see the beach where we’d just rescued the bearded lady, super-intelligent monkey and the other performers quite clearly. The ocean, however, is… fine, just fine, no problems whatsoever. It’s not like I thought for a moment that Anvil was surrounded by a pool of azure plasm or anything.

We head back toward the wayshrine and one of the Thalmor salutes me, calls me “sir”, and reports that the area has been secured and no signs of further Sea Elves remain.

“Good work, all,” I say, remembering for one moment to at least pretend that I’m not a deranged lunatic.

A Khajiit approaches me. “Neralion, sir. Our runner returned from Deepwoods with news of possible trouble there, although they were light on the details.”

“My party is heading that way once we’re done here,” I say, trying not to sound too cheerful about the prospect. “We’ll look into it.”