“I know it’s called Coldharbour and all, but why does azure plasm freeze like this?” Eran wonders, looking over a ledge with a nice view of a trickling plasmfall.

  “Dunno,” I say brightly.

  “I… never wondered,” Farry admits.

  “I would assume it is because it has a similar freezing point to water,” Merry says.

  “Sure, take the boring answer,” Ilara says.

  “At least the Frost Atronachs are easy to sneak around,” Gelur says.

  “Wait, are those ice patches just Frost Atronachs in the process of respawning?” Eran wonders.

  “Could be,” I say. “Wanna poke them and find out?”

  “No, I think I’ll pass,” Eran says. “Like you’ve said, there’s not much point in fighting Daedra that aren’t specifically in our way. Let’s keep moving. Vanus Galerion has to be out here somewhere.”

  “You think he’s still alive?” Farry asks.

  “We might stumble upon his corpse if nothing else,” Ilara says. “And there might still be more lost expedition members somewhere.”

  In the distance, the distinct shape of a pyramid looks out of place amid this part of Coldharbour, by which I mean it actually looks like it belongs in Coldharbour. It doesn’t look like anything from Nirn, unlike much of the terrain in this region. Beneath it, pools of lava stand out starkly against the blueness around them, giving off waves of visible heat. As we approach, a projection appears before us with a message from “the great and powerful Vanus Galerion”.

  Ilara snorts softly. “Guess we found the fetcher.”

  “He does seem a bit full of himself,” Theryn says. “I didn’t realize Khajiit said ‘fetcher’ too.”

  Ilara probably picked that up from me. Oops. “It’s a fine word,” Ilara says.

  I’ve made an effort to talk like an Orc rather than a Chimer, and I seem to have succeeded for the most part since Theryn either hasn’t noticed or hasn’t said anything.

  According to the projection, this place is (rather unimaginatively) called the Black Forge. I suppose forging stuff in cold still doesn’t work as well as heat. There’s also something here (also unimaginatively) called the Great Shackle. Vanus thinks breaking this will be enough to end the Planemeld and that he can do this by himself.

  Ilara snorts. “This one thinks he’s trying to do this by himself because nobody can stand to be around him.”

  Last I checked, the Planemeld has not ended, and Vanus has had plenty of time to do this if he could manage it, but since he hasn’t, I’m guessing he probably got himself captured and needs to be rescued like everyone else.

  It takes a bit to find a way inside, and of course it will require crossing the lava. Fortunately, we have shielding and healing spells.

  Vanus has somehow been split into his health, stamina, and magicka, which is so unspeakably stupid that I will not speak of it further.

  When he got captured, the Daedra decided they could use him as a living magicka battery to do the Planemeld faster. Well done, muthsera “great and powerful”, for making things worse by trying to do everything by yourself without even contacting anyone else first so they’d know to come and pull your shiny golden ass out of the fire if you didn’t come back in a reasonable time period.

  One of the rooms has glowing blue Daedric writing in diagonals and curves along the walls and ceiling. I helpfully read it aloud for Eran’s sake. “Torture,” I point to one row, then the next, “Oblivion.”

  “That’s it?” Eran says. “Just ‘torture’ and ‘Oblivion’ over and over?”

  “Yep.”

  “I… don’t even know what I was hoping for,” Eran says. “But I feel like this is the opposite of enlightenment. It was kind of cool-looking and mysterious, and now it just seems tacky.”

  “Yeeeeep.”

  We rescue Vanus from the ridiculous situation he’d found himself in, and even he has to admit that maybe he shouldn’t have tried this on his own. I’ll admit that I probably wouldn’t try half the things I try if I didn’t have backup (and didn’t respawn nigh-instantly if I die, that definitely helps too).

  And his great plan is if they were trying to use him as a magicka battery, this means the Great Shackle must require some form of energy, which means that there’s something that can probably be blown up. Fortunately, between us, we’re probably pretty good at blowing things up.

  We make our way through the facility and beat up quite a lot of Daedra. We recruit a couple of more lucid Soul-Shriven along the way. Nords both of them, by the names of Tirora and Treva.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  “Sage Tirora! I didn’t think I’d see you here,” Theryn says for the first one, and for the second, “Treva! How did you wind up here? I thought I’d freed your soul to go to Sovngarde!”

  It’s the Worm Cult’s fault, of course. I think most of the recent arrivals to Coldharbour have been the Worm Cult’s fault, when they weren’t the fault of people making stupid deals with Daedra.

  Finally, we reach our destination. The Great Shackle just looks like a Dark Anchor of extreme proportions with massive chains. The round gate above is huge, but I still don’t know how it’s supposed to drag in all of Nirn. Probably by tearing it apart and sucking it in piece by piece. I don’t know. What a mess. I prefer Nirn to be in one piece rather than in broken chunks in the skies of Oblivion. Vanus starts working a spell to blow it up and asks us to defend him while he’s doing that, because the Daedra are pissed.

  Vanus Galerion is a powerful mage with an equally powerful ego. Even while doing something important that requires concentration, he still has to remind us how awesome he is every two minutes.

  “For Y’ffre’s sake, Vanus,” Gelur says. “Would you shut your trap about how amazing you are and just cast the spell?”

  Vanus seems mildly offended but too busy to really retort. He finishes his spell and the Great Shackle shatters into pieces like any other Dark Anchor, just exploding considerably more impressively than usual.

  The Great Shackle has been destroyed and the Black Forge shut down, but we’re not done yet. Cadwell (who showed up at some point) mentions a “planar vortex” that he explains like a straw sucking Nirn out into Coldharbour. I groan aloud when he describes it.

  “This is weird and stupid and annoying,” I grate out. “Okay, what do we need to break to stop this nonsense?”

  Cadwell’s following explanation does little to calm me down. We’re going to need to cross the chasm north of the Hollow City and break into an even more annoying place to get to the portal to the planar vortex. And even when we get there, I have no idea where to even begin to stop this thing. Fortunately, we have the great and powerful Vanus Galerion to figure this out. We decide to wait until we’re back at the Hollow City to discuss it, however, and Vanus opens a portal out before even more pissy Daedra show up.

  We stop first at the Mages Guild in the Hollow City to regroup with the surviving mages who made it back. Now that there is an actual Mages Guild in the Hollow City. They’ve picked out a large building at the southwest side of the city and moved in.

  As we head inside, a High Elf woman refers to Vanus as “Vanny”, and he’s not even annoyed about it. (I’d imagine he’d be more annoyed if I were to call him that.) There’s an emotional reunion and I stay back by the door to give them some space. (I mean, I might be a member of the Mages Guild purely on a technicality due to their extremely lax recruitment standards, but nobody’s actually going to expect me to do anything magey.)

  There’s a big meeting in the temple and everyone important (or at least, everyone important who is currently in the Hollow City) is present. The temple has stained glass windows depicting the Eight Divines, but the red banners hanging on the pillars are marked with Meridia’s many-rayed sigil. Sees-All-Colors is organizing the battle push, while the mages are going to be figuring out a way to magic everything right again. And Cadwell is here to help “preserve the natural beauty of Coldharbour” which is getting sullied by disgusting bits of Nirn.

  King Dynar keeps trying to give inspiring speeches that probably don’t really go as well as he’d hoped. He’s still a bit out of touch with modern language and society, much like I was to start off with, and… probably isn’t as adaptable as me, but we’ll see. If he survived past the fall of the general Ayleid empire, he’s probably more adaptable than most. At least he isn’t being blatantly racist, so points for that.

  The Groundskeeper keeps being weird and mysterious. Estre has stepped up for logistics and defense of the city. The Daedra haven’t really bothered the Hollow City thus far, but it’s not good to get complacent about that sort of thing and assume the city really is completely untouchable, regardless of what the Groundskeeper insists.

  She’s hiding something. There’s definitely something here she’s not telling us. It itches. But there’s nothing I can do about it right now. We needed this beachhead, and were going to have to make one if one didn’t already exist anyway, and this place is still considerably more pleasant both for myself and the rest of the expedition than some Daedra-infested ruin we took over.

  If nothing else, I can at least trust that Meridia wants to give Molag Bal a black eye as much as anyone else here.

  While people get things set up for the next push, I return to Dra’bul via wayshrine to get some rest and check in on my clan, not that I really need an excuse since I check in on them constantly. And this time…

  Roku is pregnant. It’s been confirmed. And I feel… I don’t know what I feel. A joy that hurts. I can stand near my longhouse and watch Dark Anchors fall on the beach. The destruction of the Great Shackle and disrupting the Black Forge hasn’t stopped that. Maybe they won’t be making anymore of these damned things for a while, but they still had a ton stockpiled.

  “Will there ever be an end to these?” Roku says wistfully.

  “I’ll make certain of it, one way or another,” I say. “I’ll just keep hitting things until the world makes sense again.”

  Roku gives a faint grin. “That implies that the world ever made sense to begin with.”

  “We’ll be making the final push tomorrow,” I say. “I… don’t know what will happen after that. I trust the great Vanus Galerion will figure something out, because he’s the most great and powerful mer ever or something.”

  “Does it ever get tough to say things like that with a straight face?” Roku says, stifling a giggle.

  I shrug. “Flattery is easy. At least he seems competent.”

  “We’ll keep holding the fort here,” Roku says. “So far, nothing has come down the Dark Anchor that we can’t handle. I just wish we could get rid of that cursed thing. We’ve been getting refugees, you know. From the north. And Orcs hate having to be refugees, so they’ve been looking for work. Fortunately, you’ve given us an eclectic mix of projects to put them to.”

  “Oh? Did you go through with the road sign project?” I ask. “I thought Orcs might complain about having to do something like that.”

  Roku chuckles. “Not everyone is cut out to be a warrior. And some of the people who have come in from the Daggerfall Covenant and Cyrodiil were city Orcs who thought their chances better with us than the High Elves.”

  “Fair.”

  “We’re building the road markers in stone,” Roku goes on. “More durable and the Wood Elves will like them too.”

  I wonder if I might ever come across road signs pointing to villages that were taken to Coldharbour. Not that there’s a lot of road signs. But with how much stuff Coldharbour has “eaten”, you’d expect there to be at least one.