And just then, the sounds of fighting begin to be heard from upstairs.

"—seems like some of your erstwhile colleagues and orcs have woken up," says Ruby. "Let's go check on them."

And without waiting for Erandur, he starts making his way back up and towards one of the doors to the side rooms. The closest one seems to be barred from the other side but the next one opens.

Erandur follows, of course. He is not, in fact, still a priest of Vaermina, and he does wish to help Ruby.

The door they walk through seems to lead to a set of suspended walkways which rest atop stone pillars in what used to be a library and is now the ruins of one. The central pillar hosts a large circular platform that seems to have a mystic altar of some sort, and a mage and an orc are having a fight there.

Downstairs, small groups of fighters are duking it out. It seems that the main reason why the orcs haven't entirely lost is that they do have some mages of their own who are kitting the physical combatants out with magical shields and conjured arms. A few corpses are also visible—some looking like they just never woke from their slumbers while others look more recent.

"A feast!" declares the Dremora before immediately jumping into the fray.

"I should have predicted this. Dremora, please don't kill the Orsimer fighting cultists unless they attack you first!" Ruby calls.

"...I will obey," it calls back sounding disgruntled, its greatsword making short work of the surprised mage. Thankfully for it, the Orsimer the mage had been fighting does attack it so it can have its fun.

Ruby sighs and starts using Vaermina cultists as target practice for his archery skills.

(Is it better for him to think about it this way? Is he nudging along his journey towards becoming inured to murder?)

Erandur... doesn't help. Not with the "taking out people" part. But when some of the cultists realise what's happening and start trying to take Ruby out, Erandur casts protections and heals on him to keep him alive.

Ruby's pain tolerance really is getting trained up, here though honestly after the giant he thinks nothing can faze him again. Still, the fight ends quickly enough; none of the orc raiders seems to have kept their mind, and they all attack indiscriminately—sometimes even their own people.

And when it's done, Erandur stops, closes his eyes, and murmurs, "Mother Mara, please forgive us for the violence that was necessary, and please forgive your children their sins. We are small and mortal, and we know not the extent of the consequences of our actions." Then he opens his eyes again and looks at Ruby. "There are some more rooms farther down that aren't blocked off by the forcefield and which probably have more people in them."

He's probably really a priest of Mara. It's only that, if Ruby is wrong about that and Erandur releases the Skull of Corruption the problem will be much worse than just Ruby's death or whatever the terrible worse-than-death fate is that Vaermina can inflict on him. There's a whole city being affected by all of this and that's while the Skull is sealed.

Anywho, they can explore the parts of the tower that aren't sealed off by that one energy field.

They run into more fighters. The majority of them seem to have had their minds deteriorated beyond reason, with only a handful of exceptions amongst some of the Vaermina devotees, who are nevertheless incredibly angry about the invading orcs and about how all of their friends are dead and are also fighting to the death. Erandur doesn't cast any magic that harms the people there, only buffs and protects and heals Ruby, and when Ruby asks he says that he made a holy vow to Mara to never use magic to harm another again.

The library spans two rooms, and then beyond it is an alchemy lab and a store room for alchemical ingredients. And yes, they can in fact find vials of Vaermina's Torpor there.

"No. I'm sorry, I know this must be frustrating, but it is too much of a risk. And besides, we don't even know whether I would count as sufficiently unaffiliated, given Sanguine."

He sighs. "I understand. Then I would ask you to watch my back while I work on this barrier. It will take a while."

"That I can do."

It does, in fact, take a while. It's pretty impressive, actually, that Erandur can remain concentrated on one thing for this long, but Ruby supposes that it must be interesting, actually; from what he can see, the barrier is deviously built, with lots of traps Erandur is having to work around or disable. Ruby thinks that the battering ram approach just would not work, here, and might kill you to boot.

It does, in fact, take a while. It akes an hour. Two hours. At hour three Erandur is sagging. At four he releases the magic and stumbles over to lean against a wall.

And the barrier is still up.

"...no good?"

"I'm—I'm sorry. 'Tis beyond me." He shakes his head. "Perhaps this is Mara's trial for me. If I renounce her, I might be able to drink the Torpor myself."

"Mara's trial?"

"What is important here is not following a god, it is following her precepts. If the path of love and compassion is one in which I am no longer Mara's, then... I believe she would forgive me, and I believe she would want me to do it. The innocents who are being affected by the nightmares and those who might yet suffer at the hands of the cultists are worth more than my devotion or the salvation of my own soul."

...Ruby's tired of holding onto the suspicious frame of mind. He thinks, he really thinks, that Erandur has had enough opportunities to get rid of him, or work against him. Hells, if he had taken the side of his more lucid erstwhile companions during the earlier fight, Ruby doesn't think he would've been able to overcome them.

"I'll do it."

"No. Your suspicions are warranted, and I would not ask that you betray your principles for this. This is my project, and it is my sin to atone for. Your help has been invaluable, but I will not have you shoulder this burden."

"You've... proven yourself. I think it would be just as much a betrayal of my principles, to not believe the evidence of my senses.

"I... trust you."

"...very well. I will do my best to be worthy of your trust."