Inside Irkngthand, we find bodies of looters that came before. Judging from the placement of the bodies, their deaths came swiftly, and unexpectedly. Brynjolf confirms that the kills are recent. Mercer Frey is here.
We hope to catch Mercer Frey before he can make off with his prize - the Eyes of the Falmer. Caution is still needed however, for he had left many traps and pockets of Falmer behind him. Irkngthand is certainly an important place for the Falmers - there were elite soldiers better equipped than the usual rabble, and a great number of their poison-spitting insectoid Chaurus pets.
Still, we eventually find our way to the final chamber. Within a large cavern sat a gigantic statue of someone I pressume to be a Falmer (Dwemers love their beards) before their fall. And on that statue's face like an ugly stain hangs Mercer Frey, prying the jewelled eyes off it.
Wee’ everyone caught up just in time. Mercer Frey knows that he must now fight his way past us. He decided to come at me first. Poor choice.
Mercer Frey may be an accomplished thief, but he cannot hope to face the Harbinger and Arch Mage (and some say Dragonborn) of Skyrim in a one-to-one contest. The traitor got what he deserved and we looted everything of value from his corpse. The chamber now rapidly flooding (probably a mechanism triggered by losing the eye?), the Nightingales find an exit behind the statue.
Amongst the items recovered from Mercer Frey is the Skeleton Key. Karliah insists that we return the key to the Sepulchre as soon as possible - so we headed there without tarry.
At the Sepulchre, the ghost of Gallus explains the trials ahead - the normal entrance to the Sepulchre is closed with the loss of the key, but there is another path for supplicants we can now take to return the Key. Naturally, the Sepulchre had drawn the spirits of past Nightingales to it, but the loss of the connection to Nocturnal had driven some of the spirits besides themselves - they will attack anyone that enter. Great.
The path itself is a test of observation and stealth - fitting for anyone seeking Noctunal, in fact. There were areas lit by an unnatural light, where stepping out from the inky shadows meant instant death. And in the darkness lurk deadly traps for the inattentive. And the final puzzle - a dead end, at the bottom of a hole. I jumped into the pit at the end and saw no further way onward. A skeleton at the base tells me as much... am I to starve after coming all this way? There’s no way out - or is there?
I use the Key on the floor of the pit and it faded to reveal the fabled connection to the Ebonmere - Nocturnal's realm.
There, we summoned Nocturnal and restored the Key to her. She's not particularly impressed (Karliah says this has always been her way) but at least acknowledges that the Nightingale's powers are to be restored to them with this deed.
The triad that form the Nightingale each hold an aspect of Nocturnal’s power. The Agent of Stealth turns invisible when entering stealth - making him particularly untraceable at range, the Agent of Subterfuge (Mercer Frey might be holding this power when he influenced everyone to turn against Karliah) can cloud the judgement of others with his words. And the Agent of Strife absorbs the enemy's health for his or her own. I decided the Agent of Stealth best fits my abilities and so chose accordingly. The others having chosen their power, we leave the Sepulchre to start the rebuild of the Guild.
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