On the way to the Nord tavern Gelur spotted before, we run across what appears to be an ancient Nord tomb. When we head inside, we find that it even has Draugr inside! Did some dumb Nords die and have Molag Bal wind up with their souls?

  “Aren’t Draugr already dead?” Eran says once we’ve knocked down the first group of undead Nords. “If we kill these Draugr and incinerate their bodies, will they respawn as Draugr?”

  “Are their souls even here, or just their bodies?” Merry wonders.

  “If their souls are here, they’re fucked no matter what we do to them,” I say.

  There’s a book conveniently located near the entrance titled The Legend of Haman Forgefire. (Summary: Nord blacksmith jealousy.) While I’m busy reading it, the Draugr stand up again and attack me, so Merry incinerates them.

  “I hope you manage to get to Sovngarde or wherever,” Gelur says over the ashes. “Assuming you were here in the first place.”

  The place turns out to be full of lava, which is really unusual for Coldharbour. There’s a Skyshard next to one of the lava pools, leaving me wondering how long that’s been down here and why none of the Draugr ever absorbed it.

  Skyshards are one of those things I haven’t really taken much time to think or ask questions about. Considering how many of them I’ve absorbed, I really should have. I’ve just been using them to gain powers, in hopes of being strong enough to do what I need to do. Maybe once I have my soul back and this whole Planemeld thing is settled, I should take some time to do some research, or at least get some trustworthy mages to do some research.

  In the last room in which the floor is also lava, we wind up with no option but to carefully jump down in order to reach the nasty-looking Draugr over by the stone platform in the middle of the room with a fancy sarcophagus flanked by statues and braziers. The sort of setup that positively screams “Look at me, I’m important!” (I should really get some sort of throne room set up to make impressions on people but my usual first impression on people is my axe in the heads of whatever was bothering them, which probably works better than fancy throne rooms.)

  Once Haman Forgefire has been reduced to ashes, we fortunately find another way out of the room that doesn’t require climbing equipment or teleportation.

  “Why did we come in here?” Farry wonders.

  “There might have been expedition members trapped inside?” I say. “Knowing what I’ve seen some of them do, I’d imagine they’d think poking their heads into a random Nord ruin that’s in Coldharbour for some reason would be an excellent idea.”

  “I wish you were wrong,” Merry grouses.

  “Well, we went into it thinking it was a good idea to go in…” Farry says.

  “Sure,” I say. “And I also know that I’m more than capable of handling anything that could have reasonably been in here by myself, never mind with the four of you at my side.”

  “I worry that your overconfidence will run your luck out eventually,” Farry says.

  I shrug. “Would you prefer to return to the Hollow City? Or Valenwood?”

  Farry shakes her head. “No, no. I promised I’d stick with you until the Planemeld has been stopped. But after that? I’m definitely looking forward to walking beneath the graht-oaks and feeling warm sunlight on my skin.”

  Not far from the barrow, a hanging lamp and a low wall mark the edge of a cluster of Nord-style buildings making up what might have once been a village, but the place is in ruins and full of hostiles. Scamps and mad Soul-Shriven, for the most part. In the middle of it, a large building stands mostly intact, likely the inn Gelur mentioned. A broad deck surrounds the building covered in broken bottles and overturned furniture. Once, I imagine some inebriated Nords must have enjoyed the view of whatever part of Skyrim they were from.

  On the path leading up to the tavern lies the body of a dead Nord, clutching a letter that quite clearly indicates the Nords here have some enchanted mind-controlling mead. Fantastic.

  “Does it really count as you guessing correctly when this has been nearly everyplace we’ve visited lately?” Eran says. “Somebody makes a bad deal, winds up in hell.”

  Merry sighs. “Neri, you do not need to steal a Nord tavern from Molag Bal as well.”

  “Let’s see if anyone we know is trapped inside, first off,” I say. “And then we’ll attempt to un-damn these people if we can.”

  “Whatever stupid shit they did in life isn’t worth this,” Gelur says.

  Once inside, a suspicious “thane” with an all-concealing helmet and a Daedra-like voice tries to peddle mead at us. These Nords must be really far gone not to have noticed that their “thane” is obviously not a Nord. It’s like a perpetual party in here, and many of them don’t even seem to realize where they are.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  “Of course!” I say enthusiastically. “Get us a bottle of your best mead!”

  Once I’ve got a bottle, I pretend to open it and pour it into some mugs, and pass out the empty mugs to my friends before tossing the still-full bottle into my bag. The Nords are too far gone to notice we’re walking around with empty mugs putting on a swagger. Aside from one man, who tries to warn me in a low voice not to drink the mead.

  One woman upstairs (Nelhilda) is the betrothed of the guy whose corpse we found outside. Seems for all the parties going on here, they never found time to be sober enough to actually finish tying the knot. They’d been working on a way to break the enchantment, but it would require going outside and collecting some alchemy reagents and they’re afraid to die here because the Daedra have their souls and they’d just be stuck here instead of moving on to Sovngarde.

  “It’s disturbing seeing so many people damned for the actions of others,” Eran says as we exit the tavern. “Most of the people we’ve seen here weren’t the ones who made bad deals, just bystanders who got caught up in them.”

  “Yep,” I say.

  “Right, sorry, sometimes I forget.”

  The tavern owner admits to having made a deal for better mead, but didn’t even realize what he was dealing with.

  “So you thought you were making a deal with Sanguine and it turns out you were making a deal with Molag Bal instead?” I say. “There’s an important lesson here.”

  “Don’t make deals with Daedra?” Eran says.

  “No, I was thinking more along the lines of being sure which Daedra you’re making deals with,” I say.

  “Wouldn’t actually making a deal with Sanguine have just had the same result?” Eran says.

  “Probably, but I’d imagine the Myriad Realms of Revelry are a more pleasant place to be damned in.”

  “I wasn’t trying to make a deal with Daedra at all,” the innkeeper protests. “I just thought he was a wizard. What does the common Nord know about wizards and Daedra?”

  “I’ll distribute pamphlets,” I say, then pause. “Provided they can read. But really, even my Orcs can read, there’s not much excuse.”

  The most frustrating thing about dealing with Ashlanders isn’t that they’re not big on writing, but that they seem to have taken illiteracy as a defining trait and actively refuse to learn either the Tamrielic or Daedric alphabets. (I’ll reserve judgment just in case they’ve decided at some point in the last few thousand years that books are awesome, but I’m not likely to find out anytime soon. Spending half an hour in Mournhold to drink a mead with a king was already more than I wanted to do.)

  Following Nelhilda’s directions, we come upon an ancient shrine to Kyne (what the Nords call Kynareth/Khenarthi/etc) that got swept up into Coldharbour along with their village. After inconveniencing a moderately large Spider Daedra with the pretentious title of “The Spinner of Lies” (so she announces in the middle of taunting us), we start collecting red flowers called Kyne’s Tears. I make sure to collect plenty of extra to experiment with my own alchemy and try to transplant them, because it’s not like these things ought to be in Coldharbour in the first place. Many of them are growing near the icy plasm pools and would probably be much happier to be in Valenwood instead.

  We return the flowers to Nelhilda, who makes a potion we need to pour into the three casks to break the enchantment on them. I pass out doses to my friends and we slip them inside while pretending to refill our still-empty mugs. We’re not nearly as subtle as we thought we were, though.

  “Are you enjoying the party?” the Daedra thane says, standing much too close behind me.

  “Having a blast!” I say.

  “So much that your mug is still empty,” the Dremora? Xivilai? says.

  “Absolutely!” I say. “You know what would make this all better? Skooma.” I pull out a vial from my bag with a wild grin. “Who wants some skooma? I’ve got plenty to go around!”

  The Nords aren’t terribly interested in consuming skooma, but the magic potion seems to have neutralized the enchantment even if they didn’t specifically drink it. Weird. The enchantment was tied to the kegs, apparently. They’re slowly becoming coherent enough to refuse skooma. The thane throws a bit of a tantrum and storms off in a huff while gloating something about having their souls.

  The innkeeper says something about needing to retrieve some items belonging to some of his friends for some reason, which can be done all the more easily after I’ve taken care of their small soul problem. By which I mean a small problem involving souls, not a problem with small souls, even though that would indeed be a problem. Not having a soul isn’t really a small problem, but since the souls are being kept somewhere nearby in an easily accessible location, it will be one easily rectified with concentrated application of violence.

  I find the “thane” in the basement of a nearby house, and beat the shit out of him. The crystal he was keeping everyone’s souls in is on a nearby table. I smash it, and little wisps of light float out and vanish.

  “Are you sure breaking that was the right thing to do?” Farry wonders with a frown. “Will they be alright?”

  “Probably,” I say. “Souls aren’t so easily destroyed. Just breaking a magic rock won’t do it. Let’s go back and check on them.”

  Back at the Everfull Flagon, the Nords here are starting to return to their senses. Hungover with little to no idea what even happened during the intervening period. However long they’ve been trapped here. (I ask, but nobody can even remember what the date is supposed to be or even who they think the current king of Skyrim is to try to narrow it down. They’ll figure it out soon enough, I suppose.)

  Which leaves confessions. The innkeeper has to tell his daughter that this is all his fault, even though he had no idea what he was getting himself into, never mind anyone else. Nelhilda, understandably, is rather upset about the entire thing and runs off. I head over to give her a pep talk.

  “Hey,” I say. “Are you alright?”

  “No,” Nelhilda says. “Yes. I don’t know. I’m fine, better than ever now that I have my soul back, but I’m so angry. I can’t believe my father would do something like this!”

  “I’m pretty sure it was ignorance and not malice,” I say. “No offense, but you guys were bumpkins who knew nothing about Daedra.”

  “I wish we could have continued knowing nothing about Daedra,” Nelhilda says, deflating. “I miss my betrothed but my mind is clear for the first time in I don’t know how long. I don’t know if I can even bear to look at my father after this.”

  “You should forgive him,” I say.

  “Because he’s all I have left and I shouldn’t hold grudges?” Nelhilda says.

  “No, no,” I say. “Because love and forgiveness really annoys Molag Bal.”