It was as if Red Mountain knew we were coming. The ash storm was even stronger now, slowing us down as we fought against the wind and dust.

I went ahead, with a spell ready for the first creature that dared to cross our path.

The first creature that dared was an Ogrim Titan, larger than normal, and as strong as 10 men. As soon as I saw this huge, lumbering beast make its way towards us, it met with an unfortunate accident involving God's Fire.

The beast fell within 10 seconds. Laurenna was upset that she only got off one spark arrow before the Ogrim fell.

We continued up the mountainside, fighting the howling wind every step of the way.

There was a stench in the air as well, probably blight. I was hoping that Laurenna didn't catch anything.

A look over my shoulder let me see the sun, barely able to fight it's way through the dust and ash.

A short way up the road, yet another creature tried attacking us. This time, a summoned Frost Antroch and a Golden Saint saved the day. In the past, I always had trouble summoning a Golden Saint, but with these new potions helping my magicka and intelligence, every spell seemed to perform flawlessly.

A few more beasts attacked, and a few more summoned creatures came to my aid, including a Flame Antroch.

Naturally, my side won.

Suddenly, we were attacked by a furious ash ghoul. I summoned a hunger, but this ghoul ignored my summoned assistant, as well as Laurenna's arrows.

It attacked me with one paralyze spell after another. Each one of those spells fell on deaf ears, as my willpower was now well beyond what was needed to resist this thing's spell.

When it's spells wouldn't work, it just thrashed out at me with it's nasty old claws.

My response with just to punch it in the face, knocking it back a bit.

The punch in it's face was just the thing - in the few seconds the ghoul was thrown back by my hitting it on the nose, I summoned a bound battle axe.

The rest is history.  Two swings later, and the ghoul was no more.

Laurenna came up to survey the damage done to this ash ghoul.

"What happened to all those spells?" she asked, jokingly.

"Summoned creatures and ancient spells are no match for a good battle axe by your side." I said.

She gave me a puzzled look. "Who said that?" she asked.

"Not sure." I replied, "Must have heard it from somewhere."

With that, the spell faded and the axe disappeared, back into Oblivion, to be called upon again when needed.

We continued on up the path, rounding a corner, and finding an old rope bridge we hadn't used before. Since we knew where the other direction went, we decided to take this path instead.

It wasn't long before we came upon a Daedric shrine, typically, a place of evil, with those who are up to no good usually hanging around, both inside and out.

We both activated chameleon spells to hide ourselves, and walked up to investigate.

As expected, bad people, and creatures resistant to spells were in abundance.

We walked right past them to the front door of the shrine.

Inside, there wasn't much of a shrine, but there was a large hole in the wall up ahead.

Rather than fight it out with one of those nasty things that tends to reflect spells back at me, I decided to use the Wall of Fire. Allowing the chameleon spell to wear off, I started the Wall spell, and as expected, the stupid creature was blind to it, bashing into it, killing itself in the fire.

I allowed the spell to give out.

"Wait here," I told Laurenna, "I will only be a minute."

My arrival across the lava pit was greeted with a shower of sparks from a Storm Antroch. Using one of my potions, a shield formed around me, resisting the effect of the spell.

I called forth a Golden Saint, as well as a few other creatures, and in short order, the battle was over.

After making my way down a very dark path, I came to the other end of the cave, and the location of this place's shrine.

I didn't even know the name of the deity these people were worshipping, but as soon as they saw me, they attacked!

Naturally, with enough God's Fire spells, none of them survived. Unfortunately, I never did get the name of the thing they were making whoopie for, and didn't really care, either.