She nods. "Start whenever you feel is good, then," she says, giving Elana a quick kiss.

Lifedrain and-

She begins summoning as quickly as she can. Scamps and spiderlings and clannfear and hungers, she attempts to point them so the direction of mayhem is toward the dwemer city and not Elana and Lace.

Lace leans against her, wriggling a bit, breathless.

The summons are perfectly happy to go wreck havoc on all the glowing, moving things, and not the boring invisible still things. Some scamps even swarm the base of the Tower, attacking the guards and breaking their formation - most pour towards the city - there's enough going on that Elana and Lace might make it through, especially if they move fast.

One more, and- "Let's go," she says, tugging Lace along.

Lace follows, swiftly, knocking aside one of the guards who'd been getting his footing against the scamps - he gets dog piled - and then the door is heavy metal but unlocked, easy enough for someone with Lace's strength to force open just enough for her and Elana to slip through.

This is so much better than doing it by herself.

They should be able to operate the elevator themselves by now.

The mechanism is simple enough to figure out.

It sounds like there's both dwemer and automatons moving around the upper floors.

"Invisibility again or come out swinging?"

"We'll probably need to fight our way out either way - might as well clear them now, when they have less warning."

"All right." She nods and stretches.

Grin and stretch, and then she draws both sword and dagger. "Ready when you are, darling."

Heh.

As the door opens, she starts up the lifedrain on Lace again.

She smiles and darts through - the people past are on alert, but not expecting invaders so soon, so Lace is able to get through them with relative ease. The automatons are a worse enemy for her, poor opponents for Lace's blades.

Magic is not the best thing to fight them with either, but as with many other problems, a sufficient quantity of fire can approximate a solution.

That indeed solutions well enough!

The upper floors have organized a hair more resistance by the time they reach them; still, Lace and Elana can dance through the defenders, until they reach what seems to be the highest level - the Oculory. Still within the earth - they'll have to head back down to get out.

The Oculory is a massive tangle of gears and activated soul gems and lenses, oriented around a raised viewing platform with several buttons. There's no Elder Scroll in sight, but there's some cases attached to the Oculory that might contain one.

"Interesting construction," Elana says as she goes to investigate the cases.

Lace climbs up to the platform. "It looks like a viewing apparatus of some kind..."

The cases don't seem conventionally able to be opened.

"For the scroll, do you think?"

"That'd make sense with what we heard. Some way to more than just read it..."

Elana abandons the cases and joins Lace on the platform. "Perhaps they have it already in the mechanism."

She squints at the buttons. "Absolutely nothing's labeled, though..."

"Of course, that would be too easy."

"Maybe I can also sell them the concept of 'a user-friendly interface'..." she murmurs, peering at the buttons. "I'm not seeing any signs of 'this button gets pressed a lot,' either."

"We will have to be experimental, then."

"Sounds fun!" she says, cheerfully. "Press buttons at random, or actually do this methodically, do you think?"