An eclectic group has gathered at the shimmering ward leading into the Labyrinth. Portals have been opened from the Reaver Citadel, bringing in reinforcements. Fighters and mages of all races, some Wood Orcs who are probably trying to impress me into giving them their own strongholds, vengeful Haj Uxith Argonians, some Bosmer of Brackenleaf’s Briars and Shadow Walkers, vampires, lamia, and Nords who lament this being the day they chose to give up drinking. And Cadwell, who is kind of a category of his own.


    It’s a beautiful sight. Everyone believes in us. Believes in me. Believes that even if we fail here, we’d have gone down fighting. Believes that there is still some chance to avoid disaster. And that if we fall, we’ll have gone to our respective afterlives telling our ancestors how, when the world was ending, we tried instead of cried.


    (Provided everyone’s souls manage to get to their respective afterlives and don’t wind up trapped in Coldharbour for eternity. Some of us are already trapped here and this is our only shot at freedom. But I’m not thinking about that right now. I deal with existential dread by means of self-delusion and substance abuse.)


    It’s very inspiring, looking at everyone here believing that we might not be completely fucked.


    I open the gate, and we go in.


    Canonreeve Estre meets up with me to complain about how dismal this place is. “I can’t wait until this is over and I can return to the Hollow City. I have so much work to do and I still need to find a way to return it to Nirn. Although should we fail here today, people on Nirn might wind up taking refuge in the Hollow City.”


    “Estre, you’re here for the assault?” I ask.


    “I said I would help,” Estre says. “Now, here. I have something for you. I didn’t have a chance to give it to you back at the Cliffs of Failure because you upturned the Observer’s battlefield like an Orc losing at cards.”


    “Winning,” I say with a grin. “An Orc winning at cards.”


    Estre rolls her eyes. “Right.” She gives me a creepy lavender mask. “This will summon shadows to aid you in battle.”


    “Oh, like that weird Shadow Wood thing you were trying to do in Greenshade? That makes sense. Thanks. That should be useful, even if it was weird.” I take it and pass it to Ilara. “You’re on mask duty, Ilara-daro.”


    “Why did you give it to her?” Estre wonders.


    “She’s in the back and most likely to be able to get a good view of the battlefield and know where it’s needed,” I say. “Gelur’s also in the back but she should be focusing on healing.”


    Estre gives me a look that says, “You’d trust that sort of power in the hands of a Khajiit?” but it would be impolitic for her to say it aloud. It passes quickly–she mostly seems resigned to the state of the world at this point.


    The army pushes through, fighting Daedra along the way. We close a portal that was bringing in reinforcements and meet up with Vanus, who opens a portal of his own to our location so that the physically unfit mages don’t have to walk all the way up. They accompany us into the Labyrinth.


    A library stretches before me, but it’s sadly a tentacle-free boring Coldharbour library. (Not that I was hoping for tentacles.) Libraries aren’t supposed to have quite this many chains or long drops into infinite chasms. These books aren’t meant to be read, or they wouldn’t be so hard to reach and so easy to drop and lose forever. Which means I absolutely have to read them.


    Our advance comes to a swift halt at stupid puzzle. Because of course there has to be a stupid puzzle. It takes me no time to delegate that and go check out the books tucked away in metal pillars and stacked precariously near the edge.


    Knights of the Gleaming Blade? Oh, hey, it’s about those Ayleids who went after the Mortuum Vivicus. (Shit, that’s how it’s spelled? Thanks, Library of the Mind, I didn’t actually need to know that.)


    “Neri, just bag them like you always do,” Eran says with a smirk.


    “Eh, the puzzle-solving people are busy trying to solve the stupid puzzle anyway,” I say.


    That guy from the Shivering Isles looks around at the machinery and expresses a belief that only a god could have created something so brilliant. The Dwemer could have made something so brilliant. Would that make the Dwemer a god? (Was that what they were trying to do? The Aedra effectively vanished in order to create the laws of nature. Did they seek to attain godhood as a race in order to change something fundamental about the world? Did it work?)


    While I’m busy contemplating the nature of reality, the Goblin mage, Togga, has figured out the puzzle. The other mages were overthinking it, it turns out. The solution was actually just “throw fire at it”, which is how Togga solves every other problem. Admittedly, in this case, the fire is weird and blue, but it still counts.


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


    This is only the beginning. The next room is really dark and we need to use magical light to cross. Fortunately, that’s one thing I’m good at. I mean, usually I’m using that light to stab things, but it’s light nonetheless.


    Then, a room full of statues.


    “There’s either a creature that turns people into statues, or the statues are going to try to kill us,” I say. “Let’s see if they attack.”


    “What if it’s a creature that turns people into statues that attack people?” Ilara asks.


    “I have faith in Merry being able to counter it,” I say. “Ah, they’re attacking us. Great.”


    “You’re always happy about being attacked,” Eran says wryly.


    “It’s not just that,” I say. “Look at what we’ve gone through. Puzzles. You don’t put puzzles in front of someone you mean to stop, but someone you mean to test. We can do this!”


    We work our way around through the dizzying blue landscape. Then it comes into sight. A massive portal. Just being in view of it chills me. Not just the portal, but the weird, black squirming thing above it.


    A fool’s drake (that is, a Daedric titan) flies through the air and lands in front of the portal, roaring a challenge at us. I laugh madly and roar a challenge back at it, vaulting with my axe toward the fake dragon and bringing it down in a less epic fight than I might have hoped for.


    The Groundskeeper stands before the portal, hands behind her back like a smug bitch and completely at ease. She casually tells us about how we can disrupt the planar vortex from the inside. By releasing the power of a Light of Meridia at the heart of it.


    I should have realized it myself. I should have guessed that Meridia did, indeed, have everything to do with everything here as well. I suspect that this ‘Groundskeeper’ is not just a servant, but an avatar of Meridia. A small enough sliver to evade the notice of Molag Bal.


    Before I step through the portal, I pull out my portable communication orb and send messages to my wives that I love them. I down a few potions that will enhance my physical strength and speed and probably put me into a coma or kill me after an hour or so. I never tested that far and they’re probably doubly unhealthy to quaff together. By that point, it will no longer matter.


    I don’t have long to speculate on the identity of our mysterious benefactor. We cross through the crackling portal and emerge into the terrible sight of pieces of Nirn swirling about and jamming into one another at oblique angles. Spikes of Coldharbour rip through the dirt, but the grass is still green.


    The Groundskeeper begins to glow yellow and her voice becomes echoey. Yep, Daedra. Anyone surprised by this point was clearly not paying attention. (Some of my allies behind me seem positively shocked at this stunning revelation. Vanus just seems pissed at both Daedric Princes for making a huge mess with their little spat.)


    Before we can blow this thing up with glowiness, we have to destroy some Dark Anchors that are currently linking Nirn to here, otherwise the resulting explosion would translate through the open gates. Even still, she assures us that we will not be harmed. Bullshit, but it’s not like we have any better options.


    (My friends won’t turn back. I might survive this, but they won’t. They don’t even hesitate.)


    We fight our way through the planar vortex, which fortunately isn’t vortexing so badly that we can’t walk on it, although we have to climb through and around many ruined buildings. An entire cathedral lies broken, its once-beautiful windows shattered into shards.


    Meridia follows along with us, still glowing, and she smashes two of the Anchors herself with blasts of light. Molag Bal shows up and starts throwing blue fireballs at us, but Meridia shields us with light. When we move on, he keeps simply throwing them at her shield. I suspect he was just trying to take her out of the equation rather than stop us. He could have easily stopped us if he really wanted to.


    We destroy the remaining Anchor and plant the Light. Daedra show up to challenge us. No, to challenge me. Each of the three Daedra wants to challenge me, specifically, one-on-one.


    Do they know who I am? Have they figured out my true identity? Or are they just after me because I’m the King in charge of this mission? No, if they knew my name, they would have taunted me with it. That’s how these things go. Some small mercy that I’m facing down Molag Bal himself and he doesn’t know my name.


    The three Daedric champions fall one by one. Meridia appears again, having gathered up my misplaced allies. The potions in my system are making me dizzy. Damn, I’d hoped I’d have longer, but it seems it was just long enough.


    “Everyone come close!” yells someone, their voice distorted in my blurry mind. “Get within the shield!”


    Blinding light heralds unconsciousness.


    …


    I wake with the worst headache I can ever remember having in my entire existence. A stream of restoration magic flows into me when someone sees my distress.


    I’m in a temple, and Meridia is standing before me. My friends are all around me. Safe and sound. Alive and well. I breathe a sigh of relief when I see them.


    “You’re alright,” I say weakly.


    “Not everyone made it, but yeah, we’re alright,” Eran says. “You gave us quite the scare when you wouldn’t wake up, but I figured it was probably just the potions and we let you sleep it off. I took the liberty of sending word to Dra’bul that we survived.”


    “Thanks,” I say, and turn my attention to the glowing woman. “I assume you’re responsible for getting us out of there alright?”


    Meridia. Her echoey talking is hard to follow with my head still fuzzy. She thinks I’m a valuable asset. She says a lot of things that are a little infuriating, so I tune her out a bit. I just woke up and still feel like I could sleep for a week. I don’t need to hear philosophical discussions about how only finite things have value.


    Nonetheless, I force myself to get up and see to my allies. No more fighting need be done at the moment and I just want to see who made it out. Casualties might not be as high as they could have been, but people deserve to be more than simply numbers.


    “My nephew didn’t make it back,” Tom says. “We didn’t even find a body.”


    “He might still be out there somewhere,” I say.


    “Cadwell is still trying to retrieve those who went missing in the final assault,” Tom says. “I’m not giving up on him yet. We didn’t get along terribly well, but he’s still family.”


    King Dynar was badly wounded in the battle but brought back from the brink by concerted efforts of healing magic. Also he seems to have gotten close to Sees-All-Colors while I wasn’t paying attention, so good for them, I suppose.


    I decide to head back to Dra’bul for now. I want to sleep in my own bed and not a temple.