Then she draws her sword, and raises her voice to call through the door again.

"Defilement? You're too good of a necromancer to have botched the job. So what went wrong?"

With her left hand, she begins counting down from five on her fingers.

"They burned his body before I could raise him... it should have been returned to me...!"

And then the count of five is up, and the door is slammed open to reveal the main burial chamber beyond.

There is, as promised, a necromancer. Along with half a dozen undead archers.

He hates archers, with a lot of fondness what with how he's one.

It doesn't take another second for him to be through the door and letting arrows fly, one after another in a fluid spiral motion from the arrows in his quiver to getting nocked then pulled back again then released then the next arrow goes. He doesn't stop the motions even when he himself has to move or dodge, it's second-nature by now.

His mage companion is beside him, and if there was still any lingering doubt that she's on his side, there isn't any now. He doesn't need to dodge. Several arrows are knocked off course with a breeze that leaves all of his untouched. His arrows strike true, before the necromancer even really knows what's hit her. Gasping for air, she has enough focus to form and throw a deadly looking spear of ice at her killer. But that's stopped, too, by his mage defender. Their attacker doesn't last much longer than that. The magic on the dead starts to come apart as their master dies, and all archers but the living one disintegrate into dust.

Three corpses remain, though. Two still in their graves, glowing faintly with magic, and one cooling on the floor in front of them.

Well that's ominous. "So, her boyfriend dies, she comes to Fjori and Holgeir's tomb to, what, how does that help, it seems like it's important that Fjori and Holgeir were also a couple?"

"Husband," corrects Ivethene, absently, as she steps towards the glowing corpses. "... Anchor points for their souls, looks like. To live again together, in their bodies. Their... very extremely mummified bodies." She makes a face as she gets closer, and her tone turns darker. "And use Fjori and Holgeir's souls as power to do it."

She reaches out to grasp something invisible and intangible between the dead couple, and crushes it in her fist. Something not quite there cracks between her fingers, and the glow on the corpses fades.

"Thank you for freeing us from her spell," whispers a voice, from behind them both.

He blinks at the ghosts and purses his lips. "You're welcome."

And ghosts they are, spectral and intangible, but there all the same.

        "Now we can rest in peace once again. Come, Fjori, my love..."

Fjori nods, then says, "Take this, with our gratitude."

The ghosts return to Oblivion, and both of their bodies disintegrate into dust, leaving... some kind of spectral sword behind. Fjori's, it looks like. It's the same pale color of blue the ghosts were, and just as transparent.

"... The ghosts I was expecting, but the sword? How..."

And then his mage companion is immediately inspecting the spirit sword with clear scholarly fascination.

He whistles low and long and approaches cautiously. "Well that looks fancy. If a bit macabre."

"It's sort of like something conjured, but it's... more physical and stable than that, and it's... attached to me? My... soul. Oh."

If he'd had concerns about the strange mage woman not understanding the gravity of the gift... well, those are as gone as his lingering doubts about her allegiance. Clearly, she understands. She has been given some portion of the spirit's soul, willingly and knowingly. To assist her for the rest of her life. She swallows heavily, and looks moved to near tears.

"I-I mean, thank you, I just, you didn't need to, um." Sniffle. "Shit, I really can't turn it down now, can I. Don't you backtalk my pretty ghost sword, I can and will stab you with it," she snorts, through another sniffle.

"Hey, you got Fjori's sword, that's badass. I suppose it was too much to hope for that I'd be the one to take the crazy necromancer out and get all the loot but that's life." He starts walking around the main tomb area to look for anything of interest. He should probably search the necromancer but he can do that at the end. "So what's your story?"

"I bet I can make you some fancy arrows to make up for the loss. Oh, I haven't introduced myself, have I, hold on." She carefully wraps her new sword with a cloth from her bag, stows it, and then turns towards him to bow extravagantly.

"Ivethene Velanand, of the College of Winterhold, a pleasure to make your acquaintance."

He is very good at not showing emotion so he doesn't even hesitate when he responds with, "Sverre Swiftsteel, at your service," despite his misgivings about... the College.

"... High King Torygg's son? From Solitude?"

"The very same."

"And to think, I thought I'd never meet Skyrim's elite running around in tombs chasing after necromancers. Well. I assume you got pointed this way on account of.... my questioning of the locals, probably?"

"Yup. Although to be perfectly honest I, uh, thought you were the mage I would be having to fight; seems like I stumbled upon something rather a lot bigger than I'd expected to. How'd you hear of this person?"

"She was a former member of my College, and quit after her husband's death, in a very... implicating way. We'd thought she'd returned to Hammerfell, but I'd wanted to check on that, maybe talk her out of doing anything stupid. Down the winding trail of investigation I ended up here."

"And from what she said, her husband was killed?"

"In the Great War. He was a legionnaire." She gives a sad shrug. "So you could say I was a bit late to the tragedy, but. There's been rather a lot of those to clean up."

"...that was before I was born, she's been trying to avenge her husband for that long?"

"Yes and no. It hadn't started as avenging, I think, but then she kept delving into darker magics without any peers to keep her in check, and... Well. That can lead to focusing on one goal above all others, and mages tend to live long lives and have long memories." Her mouth twitches. "If we make it that long, anyway."

Yeahhhhhh.

"I see. Well, uh. I'm... sorry she's been through all of that." Mages mages maaaaaages.