The bow goes off with a distinct creak, the old wood in the skeleton's hand visibly straining – but the shot is wildly off course, at least if you were the target. There's a slight chance that Lanessa would be hit but… no, the shimmering ward she off-handedly tosses up as she pokes in one corner of the cave completely negates the arrow, the projectile dropping harmlessly to the ground. That leaves the archer completely defenceless to being carved apart, the fine sword cleaving through with only the slightest hint of resistance. It doesn't take much for it to collapse utterly, and the pair you rushed through show a similar degree of threat.

That only leaves, as it turns out, a single undead in this portion of the cave, at first nearly indistinguishable from the half-prepared bodies laid out on slabs of rock or tables. A zombie so rotted that its race is barely determinate, its legs wasted away just to stumps.

Not much of a threat.

"Of course a necromancer would fall in with such a foul cult…" the mage says bitterly, waving you over. The alcove contains a small statuette of something vaguely crocodilian, surrounded with trinkets, various herbs and fungi, even a few fragments of unfamiliar crystal. All surrounded by a steadily brightening magical circle. "Molag Bal. Prince of Murder. Lord of Corruption. The Dunmer Tribunal referred to him as the King of Rape on occasion, aptly. As a Daedric Prince, [i]his[/i] sphere is domination and enslavement, and as the creator of vampires, he unsurprisingly enjoys some [i]popularity[/i] amongst necromancers."

She clenches her fist, and the circle erupts into a pillar of blinding flame, burning brightly for several long seconds before dying out and leaving only a glowing pile of slag. "I say this as a warning. The Princes are [i]not[/i] as blindly evil as the Imperial Cult would have you believe, but [i]his[/i] followers come close. The Dark One's sphere is wholly inimical to civilisation or even [i]joy[/i], and his plots have been as much a threat to the world as anything else.

"Now, come; the cave's necromancer awaits. I'm sure she's expecting us, her remaining [i]creations[/i] await."

Lanessa points to a small curtain, a passage into another room.