“It doesn’t really seem to like being conjured when not being used to murder someone,” I say, summoning the Blade of Woe one more time. “I’m just kind of–” The dagger vanishes again a second later. “–convincing it that I’m trying to kill flies. So, anything?”


    “Hmm,” Merry says, rubbing his chin.


    “Hmm?” I ask. “Don’t tell me this is just a fancy Bound Dagger spell.”


    “No,” Merry says. “It is basically a Bound Dagger spell, but there’s more to it than that. It isn’t summoning a dagger from Oblivion. I can recognize normal conjuration spells. This is not a normal conjuration spell. It’s more like a microscopic Void rift being opened briefly. Again, please.”


    I repeat the ability, the black dagger appearing in my hand again before disappearing.


    “Hmmm,” Merry says.


    “Hmmmm?” I reply with a smirk.


    “There is also something similar to a Soul Trap effect on it,” Merry says. “Although I would need to actually witness you killing something that isn’t a fly with it to be certain, I speculate that it draws the soul of someone killed while it is active into the Void.”


    “Hmmmmm…” I say.


    “I know that look,” Merry says. “You have just had an idea that will likely cause someone, somewhere to have a very bad day.”


    I chuckle darkly. “You could say that.”


    “How serious are you about this whole Dark Brotherhood business?” Merry wonders. “Assassination contracts aside, I would not expect someone who is married with a child on the way to be interested in an incarnation of the Void, even casually.”


    “You have to understand, it’s not like Sithis is against marriage and childbirth,” I say.


    “I would have thought he would not be in favor of adding more lives to the world.”


    I shake my head. “Here, let me show you a diagram.” There’s some colored chalk in the cave office, which I make good use of.


    Merry groans. “If you must.”


    I draw a green marking on the closest smooth wall. “This is Tamriel.”


    “That blob is hardly a good rendition of Tamriel.”


    “I’m drawing a diagram here, not a map,” I say, and encircle the dot with a blue circle. “This is Nirn. There’s also Pyandonea and Akavir and whatever else on Nirn but I don’t feel like drawing them right now. Also I’m not sure what they look like. Never saw a map of them. Anyway.”


    I draw a purple circle around Nirn and dot in some red marks, although not taking much care in them, either.


    “This is Oblivion, and the various realms in it,” I say.


    “Neri, are you high?” Merry wonders.


    “Just a biiiit,” I say, drawing a white circle around Oblivion. “This is Aetherius. If there’s stuff in here, I have no idea what it is. Sovngarde, I think? Not important, anyway.”


    I draw black around Aetherius.


    “And this is the Void. Alright, I’m about to make this messy.”


    I draw a few yellow lines leading in from Aetherius to Tamriel, ending them in little dots.


    “Souls come into the world from Aetherius. I think. Look, that book I read was very confusing and metaphorical, but this should be close enough for my own metaphor. Anyway.”


    I draw a pink line from one of the yellow spots toward Aetherius.


    “When souls worshipping the Aedra die, they go back to Aetherius.” Another line to Oblivion. “And Daedra worshippers go to their own god’s realm in Oblivion, unless someone fucks around with imprisoning people in places they’re not supposed to be. But Oblivion is still inside the sheath of the Aurbis here, so they haven’t been entirely removed from the cycle. They’re still there, and can still come back like I did. But…”


    I draw another pink line from another spot out to the Void.


    “Souls that go to Sithis are removed from the Aurbis,” I say. “One tiny piece at a time, the essence of reality leaks away. But they need to continue to be born into Nirn to remove them.”


    “So… wait.” Merry frowns. “If sending souls to Sithis is slowly destroying the Aurbis one tiny piece at a time, why do people do it?” He pauses thoughtfully. “I would imagine that what few Dark Brotherhood members realize this are nihilistic death cultists and consider that to be a desirable thing.”


    I lean back with a wild grin on my face. “It will admittedly take many kalpas for the slow trickle of souls out of the Aurbis for it to have a serious impact, of course. But do you know what else it means? It means people whose souls are sent to the Void aren’t going to come back and fucking bother me again.”


    “… Good point.” Merry smirks. “The sorts of people you kill generally do not deserve eternal paradise. They should be grateful to be sent somewhere that they will not experience suffering.”


    “As I’m a good indication, just sacrificing someone to a Daedric Prince and leaving them imprisoned in Oblivion is not a guarantee that they won’t bust out and be annoyed at you later.”


    Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.


    Merry looks at me in realization. “You mean to take down the Three and send them to the Void.”


    I cackle. “This might not be enough to do it by itself. But it’s a weapon that might just work against them, given the right opportunity.”


    …


    Ilara and I head out the north gate of Anvil, past the stables where the Dunmer siblings are no longer loitering. While in town, I’d heard a rumor regarding some missing people and suspicions of vampiric activity. Like the pirates and assassins weren’t enough for this town. There’s also a bounty on a wispmother who has claimed a nearby cave and may or may not have anything to do with the vampires.


    “Monster extermination” quests are just socially acceptable assassination missions. Especially when the monster in question is an intelligent being like a wispmother. At least in this case, she’s a murderous undead who has been killing people.


    Hrota Cave isn’t far from the Anvil stables and we find it after a bit of searching in the hills. A vaguely familiar Dunmer man is kneeling not far inside. He warns us to leave because it’s dangerous.


    “That’s why we’re here,” I say. “Khajiit saw bounty for wispmother. We came to kill her and get paid.”


    “And pauldrons,” Ilara adds. “Don’t forget the pauldrons.”


    “And collect some pauldrons for some reason.”


    “There is worse in these forsaken caves than a mere wispmother,” the Dunmer says. “My name is Mel Adrys.”


    Oh, hey, I do know this mer. “The famous vampire hunter?” I say. “We’re Vara-do and Kisha.”


    “You’ve heard of me?” Mel says. “I did not realize I was that famous, though I suppose word of me has gotten around in certain circles. But yes. I have come here stalking a terrible vampire lord named Zalar-do. She kidnapped two innocents from Anvil and I hope they are still alive.”


    I sure hope they haven’t been drained to death by vampires while Mel was busy praying.


    “We can help hit her too so long as we’re here,” I say. “Really, we were probably just going to clear the cave of anything more dangerous than a skeever while we were here anyway. And probably any skeevers we ran across, for good measure.”


    “The vampire can enthrall those with weak minds,” Mel says. “Should you fall, I shall be forced to slay you as well.”


    I snort softly. “Vara-do has resisted Daedra before. He is not worried. Let us go kill things!”


    The misty cave is seemingly empty of anything but wisps at first glance, but as we walk through its tunnels, zombies emerge from the ankle-deep water to spew at us. We kill them quickly, but we still wind up covered in head to toe with foul-smelling fluid.


    “Eugh. This one is glad she learned that cleaning spell,” Ilara says, casting it. “This would take forever to get out of fur and smells awful.”


    Poison isn’t going to be helpful here, so I just hack them apart with a sword (that I named Butterknife). I haven’t done much swordfighting lately, and it just reminds me of those wedding gifts we got during my unfortunate marriage to a crazy bitch. Trueflame and Hopesfire. Still, I wouldn’t mind having a flaming sword again. It would at least be useful against undead, Frost Atronachs, and Sea Elves.


    The cave is large and confusing, but we make sure to explore the place thoroughly and kill everything inside in due order. And pick up the pauldrons. I wasn’t paying much attention to why we needed the pauldrons, but whatever.


    I’m not used to fighting with a sword, but it’s just as well since my body is still weak from lingering effects of the potions I’d abused during the last few battles in Coldharbour. I don’t feel like deliberately getting killed in order to see if that resets those effects, since I’m not sure where I might respawn and how easy it might be to get back to where I was, so I’ll just suffer with it. Let’s be honest, I could have killed these zombies naked, unarmed, and sedated. The wispmother and vampire Khajiit would have been a lot easier without this handicap, but with it they’re actually fun fights.


    “Did you find the vampire’s victims?” Mel asks once the vampire Khajiit is down.


    “We didn’t run across anyone who didn’t yell ‘BLEH!’ and try to kill us,” I say. “But we made sure to cause everything moving to stop moving.”


    “That is unfortunate,” Mel says. “At least they have been put out of their misery, then.”


    “Assuming their souls wound up somewhere that would be an improvement over shambling around yelling ‘BLEH!’” I say. “But that’s probably most places.”


    “Yes… assuming that…” Mel says.


    There isn’t much point in bringing the looting crew in here. The zombies might stand up again (unless I have Merry cleanse the place in fire) and there isn’t any significant loot.


    “So, Mel,” I say. “Surely you must have some interesting stories, yes? Vara-do heard rumor of you when he was traveling in Valenwood. Something about Longhaven?”


    “Ah. Yes.” Mel steps out into the sunlight, looking grateful to be out under the open sky again and not a moist cave full of rotting stench. “There was a problem with some vampires in the Shademist Moors. I received assistance from a surprisingly competent group of adventurers. Strong-willed, though a bit soft-hearted as well. They insisted on sparing vampires who had surrendered and weren’t attacking us. Fortunately, I have not heard word that the vampires they permitted to escape have been causing trouble, so perhaps their compassion was not unwarranted.”


    “Vara-do prefers sparing people when possible as well,” I say. “This one uses sleeping poisons whenever he has to get through other sellswords who made poor choices in who to get coin from.”


    “Commendable,” Mel says. “I do not kill the living, even if there are some who the world would likely be better off without.”


    “We’re heading back to Anvil to report the death of the wispmother and get our reward,” I say. “Vara-do would love to hear more stories if you’re heading that way.”


    Mel nods. “Of course. Now that Zalar-do has been taken care of, I will need to ensure that there are no further vampire problems in the Gold Coast, and arrange for transportation to wherever I will be heading next. Vampires are a problem across all of Tamriel, and where there’s one, there’s liable to be others.”


    Along the way, he tells us a bit about a few other hunts, including a time he met the Wilderqueen while stalking a different vampire in Greenshade. She even told him to thank me for it, though he doesn’t realize that’s who he’s talking to. I ought to go say hi to Ari sometime.


    We return to Anvil to report the wispmother dead and get our reward. The bounty posting made note to speak with one Cleric Arvina, a priest of Arkay who can be found in the Mages Guild. I find him upstairs, and begin removing pauldrons from my pack once I confirm he’s the right robed guy.


    “You have my gratitude, and the blessing of Arkay upon you,” the priest says. “It is good that you were able to succeed where my brethren failed.”


    “Vara-do is very good at hitting things, yes?” I say as I receive our due payment. “This one is curious. Why are you in the Mages Guildhall instead of the temple, if you are a priest?”


    “Ah, well,” the priest says, clearing his throat. “The local temple is dedicated to Dibella, you see. While I respect the Lady of Love’s place in the pantheon as much as anyone, the dancers can be a bit… distracting. I can focus better here, without attractive young men and women showing off their assets for all who come by.”


    Not far from where we found the priest of Arkay, Raynor is working at sorting through books and greets us. There’s another familiar face here as well. Gabrielle Benele, who was also part of the Coldharbour expedition and was at my side during the final assault. Gabrielle is here to do research in hopes of locating and retrieving Darien Gautier, who still hasn’t reappeared after we destroyed the planar vortex.


    Vara-do doesn’t know anything about any of that, of course, and merely wishes them good luck. They’re going to need it, considering the state of the library here. It might be even more of a mess than Molag Bal’s one was, and that one had infinite pits into nothingness and gratuitous puzzles.