If we had thought that the ashstorm was bad before, inside the Ghostgate, it was even worse.

It took us several seconds to get our bearings before we could take a few stops north towards Red Mountain itself. The sky was a bloody red, with dust and ash whipping around us from nearly every direction.

From just a few steps from the inside of the Ghostgate entrance, Laurenna first noticed something moving behind a rock.

It was an Ascended Sleeper, poised and ready to attack with poison spells.

Before I even had a chance to react, all I could hear was "You will die where you stand!" from Laurenna. She already had her bow out, and was giving some of those enchanted arrows I had manufactured a work-out.

The Ascended Sleeper was stunned by the shock effect of the arrows, giving me a moment to give him a real cold spell.

I hit him with a soul-trap spell, while Laurenna continued firing one spark arrow after another.

Undaunted, the Sleeper slowly crept closer and closer to us, shooting off poison spells, which we dodged easily.

I warned Laurenna to back up a few feet, then let the sleeper have it with a spell of God's Frost.

Seconds later, the sleeper was nothing more than a bad memory and a pile of bones on the ground.

AND, I had trapped it's soul in a grand soulgem.

That was just the first of many creatures that we encountered.

And it seemed like such a long way to travel. This place would truly tax my abilities.

We made our way up the trail, encountering one or two blighted animals along the way. The air was thick with blight, and I was worried that Laurenna might catch something. Yet, I wasn't too worried, since I had been taught a spell to heal blight disease on others.

A little way up the trail, we were attacked by a huge Hunger. These creatures resist spells, but are quite capable of casting a paralyzing spell of their own. I was caught in it's spell while it attacked me. Laurenna shot it with one spark arrow after another. It ignored the spell effect of the arrows, but it couldn't ignore the arrows sticking out of its own body. I used a potion to cure paralysis on myself, and getting that Ring of Weapons out, managed to put the beast down before it killed me.

"Are you ok?" I asked Laurenna.

"Just a scratch, no problem." she replied, "However, you might want to do a healing spell on your old self - you don't look so good."

She was right, I was badly injured. I did a healing spell on myself, and we continued on.

A short distance ahead, we could see the outline of another section, the western part of the Ghostfence. To right, it looked as if there was a Dwemer stronghold on a mountain top.

Suddenly, I could see something moving in my direction.

It was another Hunger. Laurenna shouted "Eldorf, watch out!"

I activated a Wall of Fire spell. The Hunger ran closer and closer to us. Laurenna got out her bow and began shooting the beast.

Seconds passed by. Two, three, four seconds, then finally, the Wall of Fire spell burst into being directly in the path of the Hunger.

The creature didn't waver one inch from its course. It ran into the wall of fire, and in seconds, it was dead

Once the Hunger had been disposed of, we continued on the path. The structure was definitely of Dwemer origin, but there were so many of these strongholds that I wasn't sure which one this would be.

We made our way to the structure, and sure enough, something was moving in the dust ahead of us. I conjured up my trust bow, figuring to give a few sun arrows a test.

They got the test, alright, an Ascended Sleeper was waiting for us.

It didn't like the sun arrows, and between mine and Laurenna's spark arrows, we finished off yet another one of Dagoth Ur's minions.

In checking around, we found that we had arrived at the Dwemer stronghold Endusal, Kagrenac's study.

There was no telling what we'd find here, other than one of the Dagoth brothers.

I had Laurenna get out one of the torches and we headed inside to see what could be done about cleaning this place out.