"Colette has a quest," Ruby says one day after unceremoniously walking into Onmund's room and flopping onto his bed.

"A quest," Onmund repeats, not looking up from where he's sitting at his desk, reading a book and eating an apple. Restoration is one of the lectures he himself is no longer attending, so he hasn't seen Colette Marence in a while.

"Remember how I mentioned she seems to have some neuroses about people dismissing Restoration as useless?"

"Gee, I don't know, do I remember the thing you complain about every other time you see her?" He turns the page of his book telekinetically and takes another bite of his apple.

"Fine, yes, har har. Well, she wants us to go into the Midden and help cull the draugar there under the pretext of practising anti-zombie spells."

He does turn around and look up from his book at Ruby, at that. "...that's dangerous."

"Sure is. I'm not going on my own but Brelyna agrees that if we can get you and J'zargo to come with it might work alright."

"Seems like if it's really a problem they could instead send in a proper wizard instead of four Apprentices."

"If it were really a problem they could, yeah. Mirabelle agrees that it's not, really, though; I asked her and she said that we've been here long enough we should probably be able to hold our own against the minor draugar we're likely to find in there."

"How did draugar even get there."

"Unclear, Colette thinks they've been buried under the College for ages and just kinda slowly shamble their way up. She says it's not the first time they've shown up there."

"Mm."

"You in?"

"I don't have any anti-zombie spells."

"You have fire, it's nearly the same thing."

"I do have fire," he agrees. "Fine. Convince J'zargo and I'll come."

It's really not hard to convince J'zargo, once the other three are in. He would not want to be left behind.

And thus do the four Apprentices find themselves before the heavy oaken door in the basement level of the Hall of Elements.

"I'm having second thoughts," says Brelyna, watching nervously as Onmund lifts the wooden bar blocking the door.

"I'll go first, if anything kills me you know to run."

"Not funny."

He smiles but doesn't say anything. Instead, he raises a ward in front of him, summons a floating mage light, and pushes the door open.

On the other side of the door is a spiral staircase leading further down. It's not exactly narrow—it's more than wide enough for a person to walk comfortably—but it is not wide enough for two people to walk comfortably side-by-side. So Ruby does, in fact, lead the way. As soon as he steps through the doorway, though, he has to stop and cast a Foxskin and a Soothe because apparently the College's wards against the cold do not apply in the Midden at all.

The bare stone of the floor and walls isn't damp but that's mostly because of the cold, and the steps are aged and narrow, making the descent awkward and uncomfortable.

They proceed in silence, their footsteps and their breathing the only sounds breaking it. The minutes stretch on, and the oppressive quiet starts slowly seeping into their skin, making them jump whenever one of them accidentally makes an unexpected noise, drowning them in a pervasive feeling of being watched.

Or that's what Ruby feels initially inclined to believe, but after a while of this he starts to suspect something less mundane than that is happening. "Why does it feel like we're being watched?" he whispers.

"Dibella's tits," Brelyna exclaims, jumping.

"J'zargo feels the same."

"Necromancy?" Onmund suggests, also in a whisper. "I've never encountered draugar, myself, but maybe this is the aura of the magic animating them..."

"Maybe," Ruby says, sounding dubious.

They continue to walk mostly in silence, until a few minutes later the stairs finally spit them out into a circular chamber with a low ceiling. An unlit stone kiln can be found in the center, and there are three ways out of the room other than the one they just came in through: one barred by a locked door, one by a half-open metal grate, and one unobstructed.

There are no signs of draugar.

"J'zargo suggests we split up to cover more ground."

"No!"

"Absolutely not, that's how you get ambushed by five draugar."

"J'zargo can—"

"J'zargo cannot. We stick together and help each other."

Onmund summons a flame in one hand and casts Ironflesh on himself then leads the way into the doorway without a door.

And immediately takes a step back, grimacing.

The small side room is mostly filled with crumbled debris out of which sticks out the upper half of a desiccated corpse, looking old enough it should have been reduced to just bones by now were they in a less cold area.

Ruby pokes the corpse with Telekinesis, then throws a bolt of Lesser Turn Undead at it for good measure. Nothing happens, so he steps up to it and crouches down to take a closer look at it. Then he shrugs and turns around, standing back up.

The wooden door seems to be locked, so J'zargo leads the way into the half open gate, pulling it all the way open with Telekinesis.

"Should I use one of the scrolls of Detect Dead Colette gave us?"

"How does it work?"

"It makes the caster able to see all corpses and undead of any creature that has or used to recently have a soul or another form of animating magic. Uh, through walls, and within a certain maximum distance that usually depends on the caster's strength, but I'm not sure how the scroll works."

"It depends on the strength of the one reading the scroll. J'zargo should be the one to do it."

No one wants to argue with J'zargo about who the strongest of the four is so Brelyna just grabs one of the scrolls inside her expanded pouch and offers him it.

J'zargo sends a pulse of magicka into the scroll, causing it to crumble to dust. He looks around, then up, then down, then starts to lead the way.

Before they run into a draugr¹, however, they find a nest of ice wraiths², which Onmund in particular can help the most with via judicious and intense applications of fire.

(¹ Singular form of "draugar".)
(² Ice wraiths are ice elementals typically in the form of flying serpentine multi-segmented creatures.)

Ice wraiths can only survive around, well, ice, and the reason there's a nest of them there is that apparently there's a narrow hole in the ceiling that goes all the way up to the surface and which has allowed some snow to find its way there. Combined with the high amounts of ambient magic in and around the College, it's no wonder they formed here.

The first knot of draugar is sufficiently close-by, however that the noises of the fight attract them to this room.

Three of them, desiccated just like the corpse from earlier but with animating magic within that imbues them with inherent hostility. One is unarmed and tries to attack them with its bare hands, but the other two have old, rusted weapons, one a sword and one an axe. The one with the axe also wears a helmet, but the rest of its clothes are in tatters.

Brelyna starts sending bolt after bolt of Lesser Turn Undead at them, and the effects are immediate and obvious.

Turn Undead is an interesting spell family, and a more specialised version of a wider class of spells that stand out from most others: rather than attempting to use one's will to impose changes on reality from what it would otherwise be, these spells align one's will with reality. Dead creatures should be inanimate, and their souls should be in Aetherius*, so what these spells do is try to reassert these truths. Draugar killed using these spells typically cannot be reanimated with their souls, as the combined will of the mage casting the spells and of the souls themselves are typically enough to overwhelm any further attempts to call them back to the material plane.

(* Aetherius is the realm that surrounds Oblivion (which, itself, surrounds Mundus), and is where most souls that did not worship or work with Daedra go after death.)

But also: zombies are flammable. Burn.

Once the three draugar have been dealt with, J'zargo continues to lead the way towards more draugar, as the battles were quick enough his Detect Dead spell is still up.

"I kind of expected draugar to be... scarier than this."

"They vary a lot in power, depending on how they were animated and by whom, how powerful they were in life, and how long they've been dead for," Brelyna says, paraphrasing a book she's read on the topic. "The best way for a draugr to remain powerful is for it to be inside an enchanted tomb; since these are meant to have come from the ruins below the city, they've probably been out of their tomb for years, maybe hundreds of years."

"That'd explain why the teachers thought we wouldn't have trouble with them."

"And also why they themselves didn't bother, if most of the work is just finding the draugar. It's probably just tedious, to them, while we can use it as proper practice."

"J'zargo has mixed feelings about being used for pest control."

"If J'zargo wants to become the most powerful wizard then J'zargo needs to survive that long and practice with easier tasks is how J'zargo learns how to deal with harder ones."

As usual J'zargo doesn't have a counter to that so instead he just leads on.

The accessible areas of the Midden seem to all only host dangers the four of them are equal to; other than the draugar, the only hostiles they face are giant spiders. Creepy and terrifying, yes, but not very dangerous, especially not after Ruby summons a fire elemental to serve as a tank and distract them.

The inaccessible areas of the Midden, however, are much more mysterious. The layout of these catacombs is confusing, and made worse by the state of disrepair of the architecture, with hallways entirely blocked off by piles of dirt and debris that could in theory be dug through, if one were willing to spend the time needed for it. None of them are, though, especially given that since the draugar aren't going to do it either, the problem they've come here to solve does not require them to.

But more interesting still are the areas that look like they've seen recent activity.

There aren't that many of them, but enough to pique their curiosity: doors that have been reinforced or replaced, locked gates with magical protections, and the like. They run into a large pair of wooden doors, over twice as tall as a man, and though Detect Dead suggests many corpses or undead on the other side of it it does not budge. They run into a thick metal gate on the other side of which is a circular room with a mysterious altar occupying most of it.

Mysterious Altar

And they find a room that looks like it should have been inaccessible but whose gate seems to have been forcibly opened, recently. A few skeletons litter the floor, and in the center stands a black metal gauntlet on a pedestal, the Daedric letter oht inscribed on its palm. 

Daedric Gauntlet

"I think we probably should not be here."

"No, but aren't you curious?"

"...well, yes."

Ruby and J'zargo step into the room, Oakflesh and Lesser Wards up, ready for a trap, but after a few seconds of nothing happening they relax. Ruby walks up to the gauntlet and inspects it from up close, frowning.

Brelyna walks over to a table by a wall and notices something that looks like a journal. After verifying it doesn't seem to be magical she picks it up and starts skimming it.

"Tolfdir says it is not common for people to die of being incautious about magic but I think he might just be miscalibrated about how common it is to die of anything else," Ruby says, walking around and poking the skeletons with Telekinesis.

"...yeah, that tracks," says Onmund, inspecting a little alcove dug into the wall.

"...uh, guys, I think you'll want to see this," says Brelyna, not looking up from her journal.

J'zargo walks up to her and peers at it. "What is it?"

She hands him the journal and looks at Ruby. "Did you say one of the missing students was called Yisra?"

"Yeah?"

"I think I know what happened to her." She looks at the gauntlet and shudders. "It seems like the gauntlet is a Daedric artefact and there's an entity trapped inside."

"That was on the journal?"

"It's a report to an Archmage, but not our current one."

J'zargo offers Ruby the report and he skims over it.

The part of this journal that is a report to a previous Archmage explains that this gauntlet houses some kind of Daedroth*, and after it killed some students the College tried to destroy it and failed, so they sealed it here instead. Somehow Yisra and the other Apprentices managed to sneak into this room—Ruby suspects the artefact wore away at the enchantments sealing it—and the entity convinced them to run some rituals out in the wilderness to somehow gain more power. Yisra wrote about it at the end of the report, which she stole from the Arcanaeum, and she left it here so that in case something happened to her people would know what caused it. Smart, but not smart enough not to fall for the obvious trap by the Daedroth.

...well, Ruby shouldn't make assumptions, maybe the Daedroth used some mind-affecting magic to convince them to go along with the plan. Regardless, it's most likely that the other three also died performing these "rituals" that the Daedroth taught them.

(* Singular form of "Daedra".)

"The journal says the gauntlet is activated by four rings, but I do not see them."

"Maybe they took the rings with them when they went to do the rituals?"

"I didn't see any rings on or around Yisra's body. ...unless." Ruby's been taken to wearing Yisra's amulet, as it seems to be able to serve as a small external magicka battery and doesn't seem to be cursed. He takes it off then brings it close to the gauntlet, and his suspicion is confirmed as it starts to glow and then suddenly turns into a ring. "Interesting."

"...you should probably not wear that."

"Yeah, I won't. Should we report this to—" And he almost says "Phinis Gestor" but the thought of ever bringing anything up with Gestor again makes his stomach churn. "—Mirabelle?"

"Yes."

(Onmund reaches for the journal and Ruby hands it to him.)

"J'zargo suspects the gauntlet will be destroyed if the entity inside it is."

"—probably but we shouldn't be the ones to try it. It's probably way more powerful than us."

"J'zargo was not going to suggest that."

"There must be some reason why the school didn't try that, it's the obvious next thought."

"We can ask Mirabelle about it."

"You should ask Urag gro-Shub," is what she says, once they're done with their quest and have returned to the surface. "He is the only staff member that was alive while Sedoth was Archmage, other than our current Archmage, who is not to be disturbed by matters such as these."

"Isn't he just a librarian?"

"He is over six hundred years old and has been a fundamental part of this College for most of his life. He takes care of the library as his official job but he has the highest clearance out of anyone other than the Archmage here. Higher than mine, even."

Six hundred years old.

Ruby wants that.

Urag listens to their tale seriously, then wordlessly stands up from his chair and starts making his way upstairs to the Arcanaeum.

"Should we follow him?"

"Yes."

The orc actually climbs past the Arcanaeum proper to the restricted section. He places a hand on the gate, which opens for him, then makes a beeline for a specific cabinet. He Telekinetically opens it, frowns at its contents, pulls a specific box out of it, stares at its contents, then puts it back, closes the cabinet, and walks back out of the restricted section.

He continues not to say anything until he's back at the front desk and then he says, "The ring?"

The Apprentices have been following him as he does that, half bewildered half spooked by how serious the orc looks. When he asks for the ring, Ruby fetches it from his expanded satchel and hands it to him.

"Thank you." He sighs. "Archmage Sedoth was... somewhat less safety-minded than Archmage Savos. He thought the College could maybe find a way to make use of the gauntlet. I objected, of course, but in the end he decided against destroying it.

"I shall bring this matter to Archmage Savos and he'll decide what to do."

The orc leans forward to rest his chin on his thumbs, using his index and middle fingers to massage his temples. "I thank you for taking this to me rather than trying to solve everything yourselves. This speaks to your maturity and responsibility. I can see you going far in your career as wizards, if you keep your heads screwed on right."

Oh good, hopefully this praise will get J'zargo to stop trying to do everything in his power to go up in flames. They're dismissed, and decide in unspoken unanimity to head to the communal bath. They're all feeling kind of grimy after their adventures in the catacombs.

"Well, that... didn't go as I expected it would. The whole thing, I mean."

"I know what you mean. It all feels a bit surreal."

"Honestly that's on us for expecting some grand adventure. If we want those we will probably need to go farther afield than the school basement."

"I don't know, I bet those parts of the Midden we couldn't get to are a lot more exciting."

"Well, count me out of that, I've had enough dungeon delving for my tastes."

"Oh? No big dreams of adventure for you?"

"I'd rather just study and do research on my own."

"Fair enough.

"Let's go get supper after this and then fuck?"

Belinda hums thoughtfully. "Sure, why not."

To J'zargo and Onmund: "You guys want to join?"

"Sure, why not," Onmund echoes, amused.

"J'zargo will spend the evening studying."

"J'zargo needs to learn to relax sometimes."

"J'zargo relaxes as much as J'zargo feels the need to."

"As you say."

A few days later Sergius Turrianus, the Enchantment Instructor, asks the Apprentices if any of them would be willing to make a delivery for him, to a village a few days away by horse. Or rather, he loudly complains about how busy he is and how he doesn't have time for this and how he'd be willing to pay someone to do it for him, while the Apprentices are around, which cashes out to the same thing.

"I think I'll do it for him," Ruby says, lying on Onmund's bed while practising multitasking by trying to hold a shifting illusion in one hand while Telekinetically twirling various small objects around each other in a complex pattern.

Onmund takes a couple of seconds to guess the referent. "Sergius's delivery?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Three reasons. One, he's paying for it, and it would be nice to have literally any money to my name. Two, I've never left Winterhold and I want to see more of Skyrim. And three, it might help shake loose some more memories."

"...hm. Those are better reasons than I'd expected."

"I like to think I usually have good reasons to do things!"

"I'm sure you do."

Ruby flicks one of the objects he's playing with—a small wooden marble—at Onmund's head.

It bounces harmlessly off an invisible ward. He grins at Ruby.

"Ass."

"Cock. Oh, sorry, were we not just randomly saying the names of our favourite body parts?"

He throws another small object at Onmund, but he's grinning, too.

Sergius is delighted by Ruby volunteering, which is to say he expresses relief that he won't have to do the tedious time-consuming thing himself and can instead grumble replies to Ruby's practical questions. Yes, Ruby will have enough money to buy food and stay at inns, he can grab a few scrolls of Conjure Ethereal Horse so he doesn't have to walk, now shoo and stop bothering Sergius, he's busy.

...Conjure Ethereal Horse sounds like a useful spell. He'll get the Scrolls but he'll also check out the actual Spell Tome from the Arcanaeum so he can learn the spell proper. He lets Tolfdir, J'zargo, and Brelyna know where he's going (and J'zargo looks bewildered by that, like, why should he care) and he sets off.

He decides to stop at The Frozen Hearth*, first, to get some food that'll last longer than what he can get at the College. The banquets there are all very nice but they're not optimised for being carried in a bag and remaining edible over several weeks. The inn, serving as a place travellers stop at, is much more likely to be able to supply him thus.

He considers summoning an Ethereal Horse for the trek there—the inn is right by the main gate of the city, so a fair walk away from the College—but decides to walk. He has twenty Scrolls, which should cover the whole trip to the little mining village of Stonehills and back, depending on the path he takes, and he shouldn't be wasting them on short trips.

If he only follows main roads, it should take approximately ten to twelve days to get there: south towards Windhelm, then West into the Pale and north towards Dawnstar then back west and south into Hjaalmarch. That'd be cutting it close, and assuming he doesn't learn the spell by then he'll be in a bit of a bind. If he cuts through Winterhold proper directly west then south it should be about a week. A more dangerous proposition, but with an ethereal steed it should hopefully not be much of a problem; the horse won't get tired or hurt, and it can probably outrun any threats.

Map of the Trip

That decided, he grabs the Spell Tome on Conjure Ethereal Horse and starts to read, trusting his feet to carry him through the now-familiar streets of Winterhold to the inn.

(* The Winterhold inn, where Ruby was first taken to after passing out by the gates of the city.)

The spell isn't that difficult. He'll need to study it for a while, but not that long a while; it's basically a modification to the Conjure Familiar spell—which by default summons a dog—to instead summon a horse. There are a few other differences, such as the fact that the horse doesn't need to be as resilient but needs to be faster, or that its behaviour should be biased towards not engaging in combat where the original spell summons a very protective spirit, but the kernel of it is the same.

Ruby almost walks past the entrance to The Frozen Hearth, so distracted is he by the book, but when he notices he's walking through the gate he turns on his heels and makes a beeline to the inn.

"Evening, Nelacar. Evening, Enthir. Evening, Dagur." The two mages are at a table together; Enthir ignores Ruby, but Nelacar smiles at him and lifts a mug filled with mead as way of greeting.

    "Evening, Ruby," says the innkeep. "You're having the usual?"

"Yes, please, though I'm going on a little quest so I'll also be having whatever you have that can keep for a few weeks."

    "Can do. Make yourself comfortable."

So he walks to his usual table, puts his bags down, takes a seat, and resumes reading the book.

Dagur brings Ruby his food and his mulled wine in short order, and he decides he'll just spend the night here and leave in the morning. He could probably have stayed in the College, but what can he say, he got excited by the prospect of a quest and forgot to check the time.

When he's done with his supper and into his second cup of wine someone pulls the chair across the table from him and unceremoniously drops themself onto it. Ruby looks up from his book with a raised eyebrow and says, "Can I help you?"

"Maybe!" says the human woman, grinning at Ruby, eyes slightly glazed over in a way that looks... not not inebriated. "M'name is Sam. Sam Guevenne."

"Ruby. A pleasure to meet you." He puts his book down and focuses more fully on Sam.

"I'm lookin' to have some fun. Are you fun, Ruby?"

"I am."

"I thought so. You looked fun."

"What kind of fun are we talking about, here, then?"

"I wanna make a bet. I bet I can drink you under the table."

"You know, for some reason I thought you were flirting with me."

"I am. If you win the bet..." She looks around then leans forward conspiratorially. "You get one kiss."

"Ah huh. And if you win?"

"I get one kiss!"

She's clearly incredibly drunk, but she's kind of endearing.

"I think that's not that good a bet, you see, because if one of us is under the table then kissing becomes a lot harder."

She spends a while considering this, her eyebrows furrowing deeply.

"Fine. No bet. Let's just get drunk and make out."

Ruby laughs. "Sure, why not? Hey, Dagur! Give us some strong Nord mead."

    "On the way."

He's already decided he's staying the night here, might as well have some fun with a cute girl while he does it.

Dagur brings them a whole flagon, and Sam immediately fills her mug and downs it all.

"You're a mage," she observes.

Not wanting to be outdone, Ruby downs his own mug as well.

"What gave me away?"

"You're—" She hiccups and clears her throat. "'Scuse me. You're naked."

Ruby tugs on the hood resting around his shoulder. "Not naked."

"Fine, you's got a bunch of stuff on your skin that's like clothes and your cock's still out." Hiccup. "Nice cock, by the by."

"Thank you," he says, laughing again. "Alright, you caught me, I'm a mage."

She fills her mug with more mead then asks Dagur for more.

"Zzit true? That mages are all..." And she makes a rude gesture with her hands, index finger of one hand going into a ring formed by the index finger and thumb of the other. "Pervs?"

"From what I can tell, kind of!" Sure, more mead. "No nudity taboo, no sexuality taboo to speak of, people do kinda fuck each other all the time like it's nothing."

"...sounds hot. Hey, hey, can I be a mage?"

"I don't think the College's accepting p-people who just want to get laid."

Oof, he's starting to feel the buzz. He doesn't like the way it makes him feel kind of tired, and he always has to watch his words not to slur which makes him start to speak a lot more slowly, but he doesn't get any less inhibited. Probably because he's not a very inhibited person in the first place.

"Aww man."

He leans forward. "What would you want to... do... if you could?"

"I'd get fucked a lot, duh." She looks over her shoulder at Enthir and Nelacar, very obviously checking them out, before turning to look at Ruby again. "'F mages are all hot like this... lots of mages... all just for me..." she says, dreamily.

Okay he has to admit the idea of having a cute girl like her looking to get passed around and fucked by a bunch of mages is pretty hot, and it's definitely making him react. Dagur brings two more flagons of mead to them, and Ruby drinks more.

"I hear," he says, then he stops and blinks out some stars from his eyes as he tries to remember what he was about to say. Right. "I hear being this forward is f-frowned upon. Outside the College. E-especially by women."

Sam giggles and shakes her head. "Can I tell ya a secret?" she says, leaning forward even closer. "'M not a girl."

"No? Are you a boy, then? I'm f-fine with either, to be clear."

"Not that either!" she says, and she giggles again. "Nnnnneither!"

"...is that so. Now I'm curious."

"Drink more! Maybe I'll show ya."

He downs another whole mug, all at once. "This, ah... this enough?"

"No!"

"Mm." Then he Telekinetically grabs her chair and pulls it around the table until she's sitting right next to him.

"Wooooo!" she says, grinning, and when the motion stops she sways on the spot. "Cheater. Cheatin' mage. Mmhm."

He leans close to her until his breath is tickling her ear. "Show me."

She shivers but then she grabs Ruby's mug and presses it to him. "Fine! I'll show you. But not," hiccup, "here."

He accepts the mug, fills it again, and takes a swig. "But what if I want to see it here?" he whispers to her. As he says that, he starts Telekinetically untying her travel leathers and the string keeping her breeches up. He lowers his face so his lips press against the corner of her jaw and then down her neck, and one of his hands start trailing down her chest and stomach and into her trousers.

She shivers a bit and Ruby will quite easily find out what she meant by "not a boy nor a girl". The first thing he finds when his hand slips into her pants is a penis, but when he continues to explore he finds that rather than balls she has a vagina.

...huh. That's novel. He knew some orcs had anatomy that could go that way but not humans, and he personally has not been with such an orc.

"I want to suck your cock," he whispers. "And I want to finger fuck you while I do it."

She shivers again. "I have a room—"

He downs the rest of his drink then (with some Telekinetic aid) lifts her up, holding her body against his as he stands up and having her wrap her legs and arms around him. "Where?"

She points, breathlessly.

He follows the instructions, Telekinetically opens and shuts the door, then throws her onto the bed and immediately climbs over to her, pulling her pants off and her legs open. "You're so beautiful," he breathes.

"Liar," she says, flushed with more than just the alcohol.

He doesn't respond to that, and instead proceeds to make good on his word. She's really extremely wet, and while he does fancy flattering himself he's pretty sure it's mostly the alcohol. Regardless, he's making good use of it, taking her whole shaft in and sliding his index and middle fingers in and out of her in sync.

"Oh, oh, oh, oh," she moans, getting louder and arching her back. "Keep going, keep doing that, oh, oh—"

He does. He's good at this.

She doesn't come quietly, at all.

And after the last pulses of her pleasure have spent themselves he pulls himself up to her so he's lying next to her. "Did I please milady?"

...giggle. "'M no milady. And yesss... you diiiiid..." She then wraps her arms around his neck and pulls him in for a sloppy, wet, inebriated kiss.

Then she pulls away and grins. "I want more wine," she says, sitting up immediately and then trying to jump back to her feet and nearly falling flat on her face.

He prevents her from falling with Telekinesis and just shakes her head. "Whatever you say. I'm sure Dagur has more mead."

She beams at him then pauses thoughtfully and says, "I know a place where wine flows like water and the merryment never ends. Would you like to see it?"

"That sounds like a fun place. I'd love to visit it someday."

The first thing he notices when he wakes up is the headache, sharp enough it feels like it's splitting his skull in two. He immediately casts a heal on himself but of course that doesn't help, he's severely dehydrated.

    "You're finally awake!" someone calls, causing Ruby to immediately try to sit up and open his eyes. That proves to be a mistake; the light makes his headache worsen and the sudden movement makes him grey out for a few seconds. When he comes to again, the voice is still speaking. "...not an inn, get up, you blasphemer."

"...blasphemer?" is the first part of that his mind grabs onto.

    "Oh, of course you don't remember the way you fondled the statuary."

He did what.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," he says, trying to push himself back up, slowly this time, without opening his eyes. Then he pats himself and notices he's still wearing his stuff and thankfully grabs a water skin and drains it empty.

"...you really don't remember," she says, more gently this time.

"I'm afraid I don't." With some water in him the healing spell helps more. What he needs is a Potion of Cure Poison, he doesn't know the spell for it and it's a pretty hard one anyway. When he opens his eyes his head throbs just a little bit, and it's not enough to prevent him from finally looking around and trying to figure out where he is.

It seems to be... a temple? The tallest statue by a wall with the offerings looks closest to Dibella, goddess of beauty, love, art, and music, and a table across the room from it has an altar with her holy symbol on it which confirms that it's her.

Winterhold doesn't have a temple to Dibella. It doesn't have a temple to anyone, all of the temples were sacked and their priests left over the years since the Great Collapse.

"You were deep in your cups when you got here," says the presumably-priestess.

He pushes himself to his feet, slowly, and turns to look at her.

She could honestly be a mage, with how little her gold and red outfit covers. Which makes sense, Dibella is also the goddess of the erotic arts.

"You were blabbing something about a marriage and a goat, and you said something about Rorikstead, but your speech was so slurred it was hard to make anything out." She looks disapproving but not without sympathy for how clearly he's already suffering the consequences of his actions.

He has no idea where Rorikstead is.

"...did I do this?" he asks in lieu of responding to that, gesturing at the mess. There are offerings strewn about, a puddle of what looks like wine, two of the tapestries that should've been hanging from a wall aren't, there's something that looks like a giant's toe—gods, what happened yesterday?

"Yes," she says, some of her earlier irritation seeping back into her voice.

"I am truly sorry. I can clean and tidy everything up."

And without waiting for a reply he gets to it. The headache is still pounding inside his skull, and as he moves he realises everything aches. What happened last night?

And where is he?

That melts away the last of her annoyance. After all, who hasn't gotten so drunk they trashed a temple and forgot everything about it? And she can respect the decency of immediately offering to help with that.

"I have a Potion of Cure Poison," she says after a while, sighing.

"—I appreciate it, ma'am, but I shouldn't like to impose any more than I already gave. I can procure one on my own and not cost your order any more than I already did."

"Don't worry about that, it's not expensive. Dibella teaches us forgiveness and kindness, and you clearly mean well."

She goes into a side door and returns with a vial filled with a transparent purplish liquid.

"...my thanks." He accepts it and drinks it all, then casts another heal to make it settle. It helps a lot.

The priestess decides to help, and from then it doesn't take very long to clean everything up.

"I'm Senna, priestess of Dibella," she says, when they're finally done with everything.

"Ruby, mage of Winterhold."

"...Winterhold? You're a far trek from home indeed."

"Am I? Where, ah, exactly are we?"

"...Markarth."

"What's the date?"

"The 22nd of Last Seed."

What the fuck.

What the actual fuck. What the shit. Holy crap. What??????

How is he in Markarth. How did he get to Markarth overnight. It's three weeks away by horse! What in Dibella's name is going on.

"Was a woman named Sam with me, last night, when I arrived?" he asks, a little bit unsteadily.

She frowns. "No, you were on your own. Oh! And I found this note, I assume it's yours?"

He takes it and reads it.

We need the following to repair the broken staff:

- One giant's toe

- Holy water

- One Hagraven feather

 

Sam

...the broken staff? What broken staff?

What in the name of the Eight and One happened here.

"That, uh, that toe. The big one. Where is it?"

"...it's in the pile of organic trash. Why?"

"Apparently I need it. For, uh, magic reasons."

Mages.

"Well, you're free to take it." Sigh. "Now pray excuse me, I need to attend to my duties."

Ruby puts it away inside one of his expandable pouches and then...

"One last thing, if I may? Where, ah, is Rorikstead?"

She marks it on his map: about five days' ride away from Markarth, to the east.

Map of the Trip

He thanks her, then steps out into the city.

...Markarth is gorgeous. It's an extremely vertical city, beautiful stone architecture carved into the side of the mountains, a river cutting and winding through the city. For some reason he was instinctively expecting something austere and, uh, ugly, just like Winterhold, but no.

He climbs down the steps from the temple to a ground level road and starts looking for a guard.

It's not hard to find one. "Hail, citizen," she says when he walks up to her. "How can I help you?"

...huh. Her uniform is—it would not be out of place in the College, just like the priestess's wouldn't. She's not naked but there's a lot more skin showing than nonmages ever do, there.

It's probably the weather? Markarth isn't a tropical city but he doesn't need Wolfskin here.

"Hi! I'm afraid I'm not a citizen of Markarth, I'm visiting. Could you give me a five-minute overview of the main places of interest in the city? Inns and shops and the like."

"—sure."

The verticality of the city works well, here: she can just straightforwardly point to the places she mentions. There's the jarl's keep, there's the market, there's the inn, there's the blacksmith, there's the communal baths.

Ruby thanks her and makes his way to the market. In his drunken stupour he ended up never grabbing the food he was meant to bring with him on this trip so he needs to restock.

(Other people in the city are also dressed in immodest ways, he observes. He wonders if Onmund generalised from his local experience too much, when he said Nords have nudity taboos? He does come from a small farm in northern Skyrim, perhaps that by itself would explain it.)

And then he needs to... think.

The trip was meant to be about three weeks long, tops, but more like two if he had been at all smart about it, which he had in fact wanted to be. Now he's three weeks away from Winterhold if he rides back at a trot and runs into no trouble on the way, and that's not counting trying to figure out whatever the fuck happened with Sam and... a broken staff? He really has no idea what this is all about.

So, what he's going to do is hire a courier to go to Stonehills and inform the customer that the sword's delivery will be delayed (a note of confusion: why does someone in a small mining town want an enchanted sword?) and then to Winterhold to let them know he's run into some trouble and will take longer to get back. Not that they really care, probably, they seemed pretty nonchalant about the Apprentices that actually died to a Daedroth, but it's the principle of the thing.

That decided, then, he asks a guard for the local courier office and hires someone.

And then it's time to ride. He definitely doesn't have enough Scrolls of Conjure Ethereal Horse to last him the whole journey, now, so he'll need to actually learn the spell, but he was planning on doing that anyway. He leaves Markarth, summons his ghostly mount, and sets off.

He follows the main road southeast and rides for most of the day. When the sun is setting he slows down and looks for somewhere to set up camp for the night. He spots a shrine to Dibella, which seems as good a spot as any, so he grabs a tent from his satchel and sets it up. Then he steps into the tent, grabs the Ethereal Horse book, and gets back to studying.

(Man, what the fuck happened, he rode all day and hasn't even gotten to Rorikstead yet, how did he get to Markarth from Winterhold in one night. Something real funky is going on, here, and he bets Sam Guevenne is at the heart of it.)

The following two days are spent on horseback, and when he gets to Rorikstead it's already dark, so rather than investigate he just goes to the inn to spend the night.

Fortunately(?) that, itself, turns out to be the right move investigation-wise.

"You!" exclaims a man as soon as he walks into the inn.

"...me," he agrees, sending a prayer up to whichever gods may hear it and wondering what the hell his drunk self did, here.

"You've got a whole lotta nerve showing your face here, after what you did."

"...I'm afraid I have no idea what it was that I did, but I am for what it's worth truly sorry."

The apology, more than anything, breaks the man's stride. He recovers quickly enough, though. "Sorry won't cut it, not while my Gleda is still out there, alone and afraid. You kidnapped her and sold her to a giant."

"—that sounds awful!" He did what. "I'm sorry, who's Gleda and where's this giant? I'm sure I can fix this."

Stride broken, again. "...well, you'd better fix it! Gleda's a prize-winning goat, she was my pride and joy, and now she's gone because of you."

A goat.

Why the fuck did he steal a goat and sell it to a giant.

......maybe the giant sold, uh, their toe? Some other toe they had lying around? For the goat?

"It's late, but if you give me directions in the morning to this giant I can get your goat back."

That... sufficiently mollifies him. He still looks annoyed but Ruby's reaction was, approximately, the best it could've been. "Fine. My farm's by the southeastern gate, be there at sun up." And that said, he turns back to his table and the people he's drinking with.

He's like 80% sure Sam laid some sort of enchantment on him or something. And also has terrifying time-travelling powers or something.

Regardless, he'll rent a room, study the Ethereal Horse spell some, then try to sleep early so he can be ready to... rescue a goat... at sun up.

The next morning the farmer, a man called Ennis, tells Ruby that he was blabbing incoherently about a staff and how he needed the giant's help with something and the giant wanted a goat. That accords with Ruby's hypothesis that he got the toe from the giant to fix the staff, but still, stealing a goat.

Anywho, the giant lives an about three hours' ride away from the village to the southeast, and he's lived there for years and never bothered anyone who didn't bother him back. If Ruby reads between the lines of what Ennis is saying, though, it seems like the giant is... known for certain proclivities. To put it bluntly, it seems to Ruby that Ennis thinks the giant probably wanted to fuck the goat.

Can a goat survive being fucked by a giant? Genuine question, Ruby actually has no idea how "giant" a giant is, but he doesn't want to bring the subject up; Ennis seems upset enough without him bringing up the possibility that the giant might've killed Gleda.

Well, nothing to it. He's gonna have to burn an Ethereal Horse on that because there is absolutely no way he is going to walk, especially if he might have to flee with a goat depending on what happens.

It's an uneventful ride, countryside vistas abound and nothing more. His ethereal steed doesn't tire, and can run at a steady trot without stopping to rest so he makes good time, and he can soon find the giant's lair—which turns out to be little more than a camp with a large tent, a permanent campfire, and a pen where he has three goats, a pile of firewood, and some other odds and ends. Gleda is easily recognisable as the goat with a bell around her neck, or so Ruby surmises.

The giant himself is about 11 or 12 feet tall—which isn't that gigantic, really, certainly not the mountainous creature Ruby had been fearing—and otherwise looks like a grey-skinned elf, with decorative scars and markings all over his body, which is visible because he is entirely nude. But there is absolutely no way a goat would survive a hard fuck with that. It's not even that big, relative to the giant's size, it's just that "not that big relative to 12 feet" is still most of Ruby's forearm, and thicker besides.

Ruby would be lying if he said there wasn't a part of him that was morbidly curious. He supposes it's fair to say by now that he has a size kink.

"Excuse me!" Ruby calls to the giant.

He looks up at Ruby and gives him a toothy grin, standing up to walk to him. "Ruby back! Ruby decide?"

"—I'm sorry?"

"Ruby visit! Ruby say need toe." It doesn't seem like the giant himself is missing any toes so presumably the toe is someone else's. Grisly. "Grok have toe, Grok say fuck Ruby for toe. Ruby say no time, other day maybe. Grok say find goat, Ruby bring goat. Grok no fuck goat yet, Grok hope Ruby. And Ruby back!"

...drunk Ruby seems to have been similarly tempted, apparently. Also, Grok wants to fuck him and he's—not not into the idea, not when Grok seems to enthusiastic about it, troubles with Cyrodilic* notwithstanding.

A solution presents itself.

It is perhaps not a smart solution. He's not gonna die of being fucked by a giant, unlike Gleda, but it's most certainly going to hurt like hell. The thought for some reason seems to be doing the opposite of dissuading him.

He's a masochist too, it turns out. At least when the pain comes from a double-digit long cock.

He now has an erection.

"Will Grok agree to return Gleda if Grok is allowed to fuck Ruby?" he says before he can chicken out.

(* The language of the Empire.)

He furrows his eyebrows then looks at his goats. "Gleda goat?" Back at Ruby. "Grok fuck Ruby, Ruby take goat?"

Whaaaat is he dooooooing this is a bad ideeeeeea his healing spell can absolutely cover any damage from being fucked by a giant or he wouldn't even be considering this but why is he in fact considering it this is a terrible idea.

He can't seem to bring himself to change his mind.

This is all Sam's fault.

"Y-yeah," Ruby tells Grok's dick.

Ruby isn't the only one who got hard from this conversation, although Grok is visibly a lot less self-conscious about it, and seems just happy to be there, entirely naked, massive erection pointing forward, dripping precum on the grass, and cheerful about fucking a hot guy. "Grok be careful. Grok no hurt Ruby!" he says, walking over to him and offering his—arms? Hands?

Ruby doesn't really trust Grok will be careful and he does trust he could deal even if Grok were being extremely rough, but it's reassuring nonetheless. He's not sure what Grok is reaching for, though, so he just... walks up to him?

Grok was reaching for Ruby himself, it seems, as he wraps both hands around Ruby's torso and lifts him up with ease.

...um.

He's starting to rethink his choices.

Haha who is he kidding he's absolutely not rethinking anything being manhandled by a giant who's about to use him as a cock sleeve is incredibly hot.

Grok doesn't seem to be familiar with the concept of "lubrication", though, so Ruby has to think very quickly about how to do it magically before Grok goes in raw. Um. Um??? Uhhhh okay elemental magic is a wash, water is a terrible lubricant, probably Alteration, oh gods oh gods Grok is angling his cock in ahhhh Ruby has no idea he'll just pull on some intuition and Conjure something and holy shit

ow

It worked, he's not sure what he did but it worked, Grok's cock slides into him very easily all the way to the hilt, which surprises the giant and has the unfortunate side effect that now Ruby's brain has been filled with the kind of white noise one can only experience when having one's insides rearranged.

Eventually, several days later, probably more like a couple of seconds later, Ruby is capable of conscious thought again, and the conscious thoughts he's having are all related to the fact that he's in an ungodly amount of pain and his cock is twitching like crazy and leaking more precum than he thought he could produce. The next conscious thought is that he should definitely maintain some passive regeneration here because that much pain can't possibly be good for him.

The third conscious thought is him noticing that Grok is in fact going at it with gusto, which realisation makes the pain even starker and almost makes him come right there.

Almost.

Not quite.

He doesn't want to come yet, he wants Grok to come first, he wants to hold onto this—this—whatever this feeling is, if he comes the post-nut clarity is gonna wreck his ability to enjoy being used like this and he does not want his ability to enjoy being used like this to be wrecked.

So he holds back, focuses on the unpleasant parts of the pain just enough that they run counter to the pleasure and temper it...

...and his next conscious thought is that he's been continuously moaning since Grok started, followed by the thought that he needs to not fall unconscious because he was moaning too much to remember to breathe.

Grok speeds up, and Ruby wonders what Grok would have been like if he weren't being careful. Would he have just, what—Ruby's not sure. He legitimately, honestly, is not sure. Because right this moment Grok is holding onto Ruby's ribs hard enough to bruise, holding him like he doesn't weigh anything, like he's just a fuckdoll, and he's moving his hips at the same time as he's moving Ruby, and he's going faster—

—he accidentally pulls all the way out of Ruby, and Ruby knows that he's just going to ram it back in again immediately and even knowing that's what's going to happen he still screams loudly enough to scare the goats, and he can't find it in himself to care. He just can't.

And he can't hold back anymore, either, he's seeing stars and he's fully lost control of himself and he comes comes comes and he just keeps coming, this is the best orgasm of his life (technically he doesn't know what his life before the amnesia was like but, you know) and by the time he's done he's covered in cum and precum and he's dimly aware that Grok is coming too, now.

Post-nut clarity is not happening. His brain is just full of noise, even as he feels himself get filled up with giant cum he can't think about it, or if he does think about it all he thinks is that this is good and correct, it's right that he's a giant's cum dumpster and nothing more, no more rational thought or feeling, just him and giant dick.

Things happen. His head is full of cotton and noise, and he doesn't quite notice things happening, and if he'd known he'd get this debilitated from that he probably wouldn't have suggested it, this is an amount of vulnerable one should never be. Thankfully, however, the giant is fond of him, and doesn't want to hurt him, so as his consciousness slowly seeps back into him he finds himself lying down on a bedroll in a tent, covered in sweat and cum, filled with more cum and feeling like it'll be a sennight before he'll be able to walk again, being cuddled by a giant who's humming tunelessly and cheerfully to himself.

...so. That happened.

What does he. Do. Now. Is it going to be awkward if he just wants to get up. He wasn't planning on spending the rest of his day cuddling a giant, even if the giant is very cute.

...nah, the giant is probably fine. "Hey Grok? I think I should get going, now. I kinda stole Gleda from someone and they're anxious to have her back."

"Grok give Ruby goat. Ruby good fuck! Grok happy Ruby back. Ruby back any time!"

...he thinks he followed all of that. "I'll keep that in mind, Grok. It was—" Horribly painful. Incredibly hot. The most intense experience he's ever had. "—fun."

"Ruby fun! Ruby good fuck. Grok happy."

And he cheerfully pushes himself up then goes to the pen to grab Gleda for Ruby.

Right, then. That's that.

...how did he bring Gleda all the way here? Gleda isn't as fast as a horse, there's no way he just... walked... is there?

Well, he could always ride the horse and Telekinesis Gleda. He might need to stop a few times to let his Magicka regenerate, but that'll still be faster than walking. Yeah, sure, he'll do that. He can study the horse spell while he does, he think he's nearing the point where he'll be able to start experimenting with casts.

Ennis is absolutely ecstatic to see Gleda again—and relieved by no small measure. It seems that regardless of whether Ruby himself brought it up, the possibility that Gleda could've died had in fact crossed his mind.

He also, uh, notices that Ruby is very sticky, and draws some inferences.

"I hope you, uh, had fun with the giant. I still don't understand why you stole her. Here—you left a note, but it's gibberish."

"It's complicated. And my drunk self wasn't at his smartest." He accepts the note and tries to make sense of it, but it is in fact mostly gibberish.

But what little he can read... "Whiterun. I went to Whiterun?" And who's Ysolda?

The farmer has absolutely stopped paying attention and is making cooing noises at Gleda.

That's fair enough, honestly. He's probably not going to figure out what this is all about by staying here, so he tells Ennis goodbye and gets on his horse. At least Whiterun is a major hold capital and he won't need to consult his map too often to know where to go.

...also he stops at a nearby stream to clean himself because, uh, yeah, he doesn't want to be sticky anymore. He doesn't have any more reason to rush, so he doesn't.

Map of the Trip

When people tell him how long it'll take him to ride somewhere, they're most definitely not accounting for the magic horse. And how could they? It's not just that the ethereal horse can keep galloping without rest; it's that it can just keep riding. You can't ride a regular horse more than about ten hours a day, and even that much is only horses built for endurance.

The ethereal horse's limitations are that of its caster: both the duration of a cast and how often they need to sleep. Even the terrain isn't an issue, for the most part. It can just keep going.

The main problem Ruby faces when it comes to riding for almost sixteen hours a day is the sheer boredom, but on the bright side he has plenty of Spell Tomes to occupy his mind while riding. Hold the book Telekinetically next to his face, make sure to pay a modicum of attention to the road, and he's good. By the time he finally gets to the cluster of farms and other buildings that surround the Whiterun city walls, he's pretty sure he's got a good grasp of the ethereal horse spell, and the next one he'll try to cast will be his own and not from a Scroll.

Whiterun is not as beautiful as Markarth—nor, actually, as Winterhold, now that he's here he's getting an appreciation for the way even the crumbling ruins have an austere, melancholic aesthetic. Which is not too say Whiterun is ugly. It's not ugly.

It's just... kind of... there.

It's a city, It has buildings, and roads. It has a plaza and a market. It has a jarl's hold. The aesthetic is even coherent, there aren't fifteen architecture styles warring with each other. But it's not, actually, trying to do anything whatsoever along the dimensions of beauty. Its existence is orthogonal to that.

Anyway. He asks a guard if he would happen to know a woman named Ysolda; he says he doesn't, but that Ruby might have better luck checking out the inn. Mikael, their local bard, has probably hit on ninety percent of the women in the city, and would most likely know her.

"Ahh, beautiful Ysolda, what wonderfully sharp tongue she has," sighs the bard. "Never paid me any mind, but I can appreciate her beauty even without being able to have it."

...o...kay.

"And do you know where I could find her?"

"She is often in the market, making money off money." At Ruby's inquisitive look he elaborates: "She's a moneylender and reseller of goods. She will always buy anything you want to sell, and she often sells whatever you want to buy."

Huh. That's an interesting sort of person to exist. And not, it seems, a very hard-to-find one: she's in the market, as expected, though she's peddling her goods somewhat less enthusiastically than the other merchants.

"Excuse me?"

"—oh, Ruby! I didn't expect to see you again this soon."

Oh gods.

"Things... happened," he says, lamely.

She narrows her eyes. "This is not a prelude I like."

"Can you tell me, um, what happened. When we met."

"...you don't remember? I suppose you did sound pretty drunk, but..." Sigh. "You were desperate for a wedding ring on short notice, but you didn't have coin to pay for it right then. Now, I don't usually sell things on credit, but you were clearly so in love, telling stories of how you wanted to propose to her where you met her, in Witchmist Grove..." She narrows her eyes again and continues, more sharply, "But it seems to me something about that story was lacking, wasn't it?"

What in Magnus's name.

"...the engagement fell through," he says, which is... not... not true. Or it will be not not true when he goes to Witchmist Grove to figure out what in Magnus's name.

She immediately softens. "Oh no! Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, what happened?"

"It's... complicated." That's the rhyme of this story isn't it. "I... found out some things... It feels as if I don't even know her anymore." Understatement.

"...oh. Oh dear. That... I'm really, truly sorry."

"Yeah." Sigh. "So... no wedding, I guess. I'm sorry for wasting your time, I'll return with the ring as soon as I can."

"I suppose it can't be helped. I was truly looking forward to it, I've never been to Morvunskar but from what you've told me it sounds like a lovely place to have a wedding at. And I have to admit I was curious about this mysterious staff you mentioned which would be able to take care of all the guests, you said I wouldn't need to worry about the trek there at all."

Did he, now.

"I confess I'm surprised that you're so nonchalant about magic."

"Oh, well, not all Nords are like that, you know. It's hypocritical, really, when you think about it, how much Nords rely on enchanted equipment and potions which come from mages but then condescend so much. Me, I see magic as a tool; a powerful one, yes, but only as bad as whoever wields it."

He smiles. "A sensible philosophy.

"Anyway, I'll get going but I promise I'll come back with your ring. If I don't, uh..." He fetches his book of Conjure Ethereal Horse from his pouch. "This should sell for quite a penny. It's the College's, but the only situation I can see myself not coming back here is if something happens to me so you can use it as insurance."

"...that's very generous of you. Well, thank you, and, um, good luck with whatever it is you're going through."

"Yeah, thanks."

He goes to find someone else who can tell him where the fuck Witchmist Grove and Morvunskar, and he once again has to boggle at the distance he somehow covered overnight.

Map of the Trip

Eastmarch!!! How did he go to Eastmarch and fall in love and plan a wedding—no, you know what, fuck it. He's done freaking out about this. There's some crazy shit happening, he knows this already, he'll just... deal. He'll deal.

To fucking Witchmist Grove that's like a whole goddamn week away—less, with his magic horse, but still—and then Morvunskar, which apparently is a fort, why did he want to get married in a fort, what did he tell Ysolda Morvunskar was, certainly not a fort, unless it's a very very pretty fort.

"Hey, Ruby," Ysolda calls him as she spots him while he's making his way out of the city.

"—hi."

"I meant to ask and forgot, how did you deal with the Valtheim Towers?"

"...the who now."

"Oh, maybe you detoured around them? The Towers are a fort between Whiterun and Eastmarch and they were taken by bandits recently."

"...where, exactly, are these Towers?"

She points them out on his map.

Map

"...there's a fort right in the middle of the main road between Whiterun and Eastmarch and it was taken by bandits? Isn't that... absolutely terrible for travelers and trade?"

"Yeah, it's why I asked. I think most people detour around it or just pay the exorbitant toll."

"How did that happen?"

Shrug. "My guess is, it's not obviously either Whiterun's or Windhelm's responsibility, and with the civil war they've sort of withdrawn their guard and now..."

"The... civil war."

She gives him a funny look. "Have you been living under a rock?"

"Assume I have."

"...alright. Uh... Wow, I have no idea how to explain the war. Ulfric Stormcloak, jarl of Windhelm¹, killed the High King in Solitude², which the Empire—how deep under a rock do you live, you do know about the Empire?—alright, the Empire considered high treason but Ulfric wants to fight it and free Skyrim from it. So now half the holds of Skyrim favour Ulfric and the other half favour the Empire."

(¹ Capital of Eastmarch.)
(² Capital of Haafingar, the northwestern hold of Skyrim.)

"I... see." He's gonna need to ask someone at the College about it. "And Whiterun is with the Empire?"

"Whiterun is neutral, so far, which—I am really not the best person to tell you about this. Maybe you could go ask about it in Dragonreach*? The court wizard would probably tell you if you asked, since you're a mage, too."

(* The hold of the jarl of Whiterun.)

"...later, maybe. I should go fetch your ring, now. And—thank you for the warning."

"No problem."

Time to ride.

The ethereal horse spell is somewhat finnicky, and he doesn't get it right away. The first couple of horses he summons aren't as good as the ones he got from the Scrolls, and he has to dismiss them and tweak the spell a few times to get it right. Eventually he does, though, and he can enjoy the ride in the same mostly-absent-minded way as before, and get to studying more spells. In particular, he wants to study conjured weapons because he is really mad about the Valtheim Towers actually.

He... probably can't do anything about it right now. He shouldn't do anything about it right now. He's barely field-tested, and going up against a whole bandit camp would be a bad idea, even if he's a mage and mages are bullshit. But he's burning with righteous anger and learning how to fight will help him do something about it.

Skyrim really is beautiful.

He hasn't had the conscious thought before but now that he's confident enough in his riding that he can mostly not pay attention to it (he probably would have to with a real horse but haha mages are bullshit) it really is stark how pretty the landscape is. The mountains are breathtaking, the roads wind through woods and valleys that could be paintings, even the ruins are beautiful. He thinks...

Well, he doesn't know why he had the strong feeling he should go to the College, but he hasn't had any other similarly strong feelings about anything else, nor is he feeling some inexorable pull towards the College again, so.

He thinks he wants to travel, sometime. See all of Skyrim, and maybe eventually all of Tamriel. He wasn't feeling it, before, but now he thinks if he were just to be back at the College and study he'd get stir-crazy and claustrophobic. There's just so much more.

The Valtheim Towers are beautiful, too. Somewhat ruined, it seems, but even with the bandits having taken over they're still a monument to human ingenuity and craft.

The Valtheim Towers

Well. Ruby can't take them, and he doesn't want to detour. So he supposes what he's going to do instead is...

...run like hell.

He casts Oakflesh, then summons a ward around himself, then readies a heal, and he rides.

Someone tries to stop him. The have to jump out of the way of his horse.

Multiple someones try to shoot arrows at him. Most of them bounce off his wards.

Two people try to chase him on their horses. Their horses aren't conjured creatures that can gallop nonstop.

Ruby can outrun them.

Wow that was intensely unpleasant. Most arrows missed him but three did not, though at least they mostly didn't penetrate him very deeply because of the wards and Oakflesh, and only one is still embedded in his arm by the time he loses his pursures.

Fucking, ow.

He pulls it off and sets his heal on to fix the wounds, and he is really extremely fucking mad.

Ruby's kind of surprised by how mad he feels? For some reason he didn't expect it. But it's very easy to determine why: he's outraged on behalf of the common people. He's angry at the jarls for withdrawing their patrols from a major chokepoint on a major road, hes angry at Ulfric Stormcloak for sparking a civil war (he's not yet sure whether it's justified, but he's angry anyway), and he's angry at the bandits for preying on the vulnerable.

He's going to fix it. He's not sure how, just clearing the fort would help but it wouldn't fix it, but he is, nevertheless, going to fix it.

The best way to get to Witchmist Grove, according to the person he consulted about it, is to get to Mixwater Mill and then cross the river there; there's a waterfall a little bit past the mill and the river is shallow there, so if he's quick and sure with his horse he can easily do it.

He has a magic horse, so of course he can do it.

And from there it's a day's ride to the grove.

Without the benefit of roads, Ruby will have to rely on landmarks. There's a cave he has to ride past, and a small sulfurous lake, and if he keeps riding west he'll soon see the grove in the distance, standing out from the salt flats easily enough. And once he gets there, his destination isn't hard to find, either: a wooden shack surrounded by sharp stakes, with the heads of various animals impaled in some of them.

Wooden Shack

...wow, he must've lied through his teeth about this place to Ysolda, what the fuck.

He stops before the aperture between the stakes and calls, "Hello? Is anyone there?"

Someone is, in fact, there. "Darling! I've been waiting for you to return, to consummate our love!"

A little bell sounds in his head as he recognises the species of this person: a hagraven, someone who went through a dark ritual and fused with a sacrificed bird in order to acquire dread powers.

"Hagraven feather" was one of the items Sam said were needed to fix the staff.

"Um... I'm afraid there's been a terrible misunderstanding."

"What's wrong, my love?"

Ughhhhh.

Honesty it is.

"I, uh. I was really drunk," he admits, "and I don't actually remember you, and don't think we should get married."

She screeches, a sound like a crow in horrible pain.

...yeah. He might be breaking her heart here.

"And, um, do you have Ysolda's ring?" He'll understand if the hagraven doesn't want to give it back, honestly, and he'll have to figure something out if so. He's not gonna force her.

"No!" she screeches again. "Liar! You just want the ring to give it to Esmerelda, with the dark feathers, don't you? I won't let her have you!"

And she pounces.

—woah what the fuck lady. He barely dodges in time, and then he has to dodge again and again while he casts an Oakflesh and a Ward because those talons look terrifyingly sharp.

"You don't need to give it back! It's fine! We can just talk about it!"

She does not seem inclined to talk, and continues trying to gut him.

Aaagh okay, he'll... freeze the ground under her so she'll slip and fall, how about that.

It works, a bit, but she quickly recovers her momentum and charges again.

"Lady I don't want to hurt you!"

"Die!"

Wow, that's an extreme reaction to being rejected, um.

...he still doesn't want to hurt her, though.

Okay, ice again, then he'll Telekinetically pull on one of the stakes and try to use it as a blunt weapon. He really doesn't want to hurt her.

She's not making this easy for him, and though she lacks any kind of tactics, she carries a lot more momentum than he does, and she has very sharp talons.