"Because everyone is having nightmares, yeah?"

"Indeed. If you can, you should deal with whatever business you have in Dawnstar quickly."

...Erandur knows more about this than he's letting on.

"And I don't suppose whatever problem is happening here is one that would benefit from the help of a mage from Winterhold?" he says, lowering his voice.

Not enough that Adara doesn't hear it, though, and she perks right up and huddles closer.

"...perhaps," says Erandur, also lowering his voice. "If you would come with me?"

Ruby and Adara follow him to the room Erandur is renting and he closes the door behind them and then casts a muffling charm on the door.

"The dreams are caused by the Daedric Lord of Nightmares and Torment, Vaermina."

Okay this is in fact getting ridiculous. Three? How many Daedric Lords even are there. How are so many of them doing things around Ruby.

Maybe it isn't weird. Maybe Daedric Lords are just doing things to everyone all over everywhere and this is a normal sample.

...Myrvana seemed to disagree.

Yeah, he has no idea, what the fuck.

Okay, he shouldn't be so self-centered, Vaermina was doing its thing to Dawnstar long before Ruby arrived, it just so happened that Ruby ran into it.

"She feeds on the memories of mortals, and leaves these nightmares in her wake. It has not been so long that she has damaged the people, but it soon will be, if nothing is done about it."

    "Why is she doing that here?" wonders Adara.

"Because of an old temple close to the city that was devoted to her—Nightcaller Temple. It has long since been abandoned, but I suspect it houses an ancient artefact of hers and that it has grown hungry over the years."

"So, go to temple, destroy artefact, sounds easy, which it must not be or you would have done it already."

"Indeed. The temple has... protections, which are not easily overcome. I have set up a shrine to Mara in the entrance hall, and beseeched her for her aid; perhaps the two of you are that aid."

"Adara is not coming."

    "Yes I am!"

"You are not."

    "You're not my mother."

"No, but I promised to deliver you safely to the College, and I cannot fulfill that promise if you die fighting whatever protections a temple to a Daedric Lord will have."

    "Well, what if you die?"

"I can protect myself better than I can protect the both of us, and I have more experience with these matters. Besides, you've seen what happens when you get agitated; that Frost Atronach did not, particularly, seem to consider me an ally."

    "But..." But she doesn't have a rebuttal, and after a while of chewing her lip she looks away. "...fine."

"You'll have plenty of opportunities to become the mage adventuress of your dreams. After you can make sure your magic won't hurt your allies."

"So you do wish to help?"

"Yes. You'll need to tell me whatever it is you're still hiding for me to help effectively but that can wait until the morning."

"...very well."

So the next morning they can make their way to the temple, Ruby on a conjured horse and Erandur on a real one that he owns.

"So, what were the missing details?"

He sighs.

"The temple hasn't been abandoned. Its members started stealing the memories of a group of orc raiders, decades ago, and they invaded it in retaliation; when it became clear to the cultists they would lose, they released a powerful magic gas called the Miasma, which put everyone in the tower to sleep and magically sealed most of it off. I expect that once we unseal it, the Miasma will dissipate, and all of them will wake up."

"Wait, decades? I guess if all of them were elves, but then wouldn't they die of hunger?"

"The Miasma prevents aging—or rather, it keeps the people affected in a state of near-stasis, immune to most of the ravages of time."

"'Most'."

"Yes. The soul isn't meant to be in stasis for decades, and unless one's soul is unusually resilient, they can become severely damaged, sometimes entirely losing their mind. Sometimes even dying."

"...ah. So, not unlike the types of mages that tend to take over forts."

"—indeed not. You have experience with that?"

"Some. There was a fort near Windhelm called Morvunskar which I, ah, liberated from a group of necromancers."