Ena is extremely efficient when her opponent is standing in brightly lit surroundings and she isn't. Even once she moves into the light, she's able to stay mostly unseen - one of the servants gets a glimpse of her, but no chance to yell before he's dead and she's easing him to the ground.

The tower itself has a small crowd in its entrance hall, mostly slaves sitting around a table. Ena downs two before combat begins, but the one eyeless creature in the room is no threat, and the slaves are even less of one.

The problem comes when it's time to ascend - the only way up is a lift, and a creature is standing right in the doorway at the top. It shrieks when it sees them, and cries of alarm raise from elsewhere in the tower.

Ena curses, drops a flame atronach, and backs up enough to shift into her vampire lord form.

She hates having to fight her way out of places.

On the other hand, sometimes it's nice to cut loose.

One of the creatures is far more powerful than the others, dressed more heavily in engraved chitin, wielding bolts of lightning, but even that one still goes down.

Once the dust settles, the platform itself can be explored. There's a throne overlooking the orb and city. The orb is tantalizingly close, the detail in the metal cage surrounding it readily apparent. It's bright, up here, almost painfully so after the gloom of Blackreach.

Most interesting. She's not seen anything like this before. What of the throne?

Ornate and metallic, though much of the detail's been covered by layers of grime.

Any connections to the orb?

They're clearly both made by the same people, sharing details in the design, but nothing magical it seems.

That's a little disappointing. She'd hoped the throne would be some sort of control.

Ena, meanwhile, is using the new vantage to scope out enemies - and their path going forward.

She glances uneasily at the sun. "Is it me, or is something moving in there?"

Elana takes a closer look.

There is definitely something moving in there. It's hard to tell if it's the slow swirl of a liquid or something sinuous and coiling.

The sun almost pulses softly.

"Something tells me we would prefer not to find out."

"Yeah. Do you still want a closer look?"

"No. Let us move on."

Nod. She glances around again, says, "I don't think there's anything else between us and that tower we spotted earlier, too, so it shouldn't be too hard from here on out."

"Good."

And back down the lift, across the plaza, and down the road they go. Ena is indeed able to trace a path without any opposition.

There's a lift up from the base of the tower when they get there, and Ena's on high alert as it rises after what happened last time, but the room at the top's entirely empty.

Is it indeed where they want to go?

So far seems like it.

There's a fairly thoroughly picked over room, with a long dead fire and an old satchel set up in the middle.

Past that is another door, leading to a room that's almost entirely taken up by what seems to be an enormous sphere, leaving only a narrow walkway around it - and now faintly they can hear voices above them.

"I'm telling you, we tried that combination. I don't want to keep just random guessing, we don't know if it'll set off a trap or lock us out."

"Hrngh. There's no clues, though, usually the dwemer left behind something hinting at it. I don't know we have another path than going through every combination."

She looks at Ena.

Who has her head tilted back and her eyes closed, and appears to be counting down from a very large number. She does sigh soundlessly, then glance over at Elana, shrug, and nod her head towards the ramp up.

Up the ramp it is.

"Lianda!" Ena calls out when they reach the top, dropping all pretense of stealth. "Fancy seeing you here. How're the munchkins?"