Nnnnope. He'll just jump onto his horse and get the fuck away.

Then to Morvunskar. It's another day's ride, but he has pattern recognition and realises that there's absolutely going to be shenanigans there so instead of going straight there he stops when he sees it in the distance and decides to set up camp, sleep, and wake up early to go scout and see if he can't figure out what shenanigans await him in the fort.

Mages. It's mages that await him in the fort.

...oh fucking shit.

Seriously? Why the fuck. How was he going to get married here. If it's infested. With mages.

Okay, no, actually, objectively speaking he's been able to overcome every obstacle so far and it's not necessarily the case that this will be a battle. Maybe they're the wedding guests.

...haha.

"Mages take over a fort" is, like, a whole trope, in Skyrim, for some reason, and from what he can tell it's mostly the mages that go off the deep end that do it. Which in itself might actually be an advantage, depending on how being cuckoo interacts with being at all tactical?

What he wants to do is figure out how powerful, exactly, they are. Another impression he has, this one from the College itself, is that it's mostly Apprentices that drop out and haunt forts and the like, or people who never got any instruction at all; sure, occasionally there's a powerful wizard that does it, but those tend to just be solitary and take over a mage tower or something, while groups of wandering mages tend to be individually reasonably weak.

He's probably going to have to spend the whole day scouting, to figure this out, and even then it'll be chancy. It's not like powerful wizards just spend all day casting their most potent spells.

...he considers the past several days in which he has cast many of his most potent spells every day.

.......maybe they do, in fact, do exactly that.

A little bit of scouting does bring up an excellent point, though: flesh spells. They're all keeping near-permanent Oakfleshes, which probably places an upper bound in how powerful they can be. Of course, that doesn't help much when Ruby himself couldn't cast Stoneflesh until yesterday, but still, it's informative.

What's even more informative is the time he catches a peek of someone casting Oakflesh from a Scroll. That places an even sharper upper bound in how powerful they can be.

And many of them—though not all—have dog and cat familiars, while not a single Atronach* can be seen.

If they're playing some sort of complex game of predicting that they're being spied on and pretending to be weak while actually being much more powerful than that, then, well...

...Ruby will just run away, in that case.

But he doesn't think so.

(* Atronachs are a weak type of Daedroth from elemental planes in Oblivion; basically just elementals.)

He approaches the fort, visibly unarmed, but Stonefleshed and with a weak passive ward. Anyone who has ever fought a mage knows that this means next-to-nothing, a mage is a threat for as long as they are awake and not magicka-depleted, but hopefully it'll still be good enough as an indication of good faith.

They don't even try to communicate first. As soon as he's close enough there's a firebolt thrown at him.

That makes some things easier, if not others.

"I don't want to fight!" he calls, after dodging the firebolt, because it would be terrible manners if this were enough to dispel hostilities and he didn't even try it.

It's not enough, no.

Figures.

He runs, then, and they don't try very hard to chase him. Seems like they're content to be alone in their tower.

He's back the next morning, before the sun is up, with a minor illusion muffling any sounds he's making and a major illusion turning him transparent. He's not great at illusions, this one doesn't even disguise his magical signature and a single hit will dispel it, but he's counting on most of the mages either being asleep or not being actively looking for magic.

He finds one of the mages who are asleep, casts a muffling spell and a disorienting illusion, ties them up, then grabs them and runs like hell.

The mage doesn't resist the illusion, and even half-convinces herself that it's a nightmare before she realises that she's too awake for it to be a nightmare.

She's too far from the camp by then, though, and by the time she thinks to use magic she's tied to a tree, surrounded by a silencing illusion, and there are floating conjured blades pressed against her throat, her stomach, and her inner thigh.

"If you try to cast any spells or call for help I'm going to kill you," Ruby says, presenting a calm front he does not feel.

He's... never actually killed anyone.

He doesn't want to.

"I will feast on your heart," she growls.

"Wow, that's, uh. Graphic."

"You are not of us, so you are against us."

"Can I instead be neutral?"

"No. No such thing. Not safe. Never safe. All outsiders want us dead, so we want them dead."

"...that's... false, but at least a coherent enough world model that explains why you just attacked me."

"Kill outsiders."

"Seriously, I just want to talk. Actually not even that, I just want to figure out why I was sent to Morvunskar without being instantly mobbed."