Elayne was not so unwise as to walk into a Nordic crypt unprepared. Before she dared to enter, and whilst Hector was coating his blade, she made sure to ready a few basic offensive spells in her mind, preparing to channel the flaming might of Aetherius at a moment's whim. It was always possible, and therefore always needed to be accounted for, that a small army of Draugr would walk out of their coffins the second Hector disturbed the tomb's entrance. Waiting with bated breath and fires burning away at her fingertips, Elayne waited for Hector to push open the door, and caught a lump in her throat: total darkness and absolute silence met her eyes, and naught else. Breathing a deep sigh of relief, Elayne followed closely behind the Imperial  the multitude of possibilities of what might lay waiting for her and her partners on the other side of the doors. Once inside the tomb, the helpful illumination offered by her fellow Breton awakened Elayne's eyes to her first sight of treasure; the crypt's ancient stone walls were decorated with a multitude of inscribed symbols, each of which Elayne examined as closely as she could in the short time frame offered to her. By the time the group began their long decline down the steps that lay at the opposite end of the entrance, Elayne was already sure of the crypt's age and purpose. It was built in the time of, dedicated to, and could potentially contain a Dragon Priest. Her initial fear quickly quenched by academic curiosity, the young Breton mage trudged on eagerly down the timeworn passageway leading, assuredly, to the tomb's heart.

Memories immediately flooded into Elayne's mind of her excursion to the tomb along the Shivering Sea, long past. She had been so young, then. Barely a novice of magic, capable of casting only the most basic of incantations, and with considerable difficultly and exhaustion. It was in a tomb like this, in the same darkness that Merci was now fighting, that Elayne had first been taught to magically produce light. It was especially useful then; even more useful than it was now for this group of adventurers. It was needed now primarily to identify threats, and therefore its thoroughness was unimportant. To the students of Winterhold on that first expedition, however, the light was needed for reading, for writing, for assessing architectural styles, and even for outdoing classmates with brighter and less tiring light spells. On the day of her visit to the Shivering Sea, unable at first to produce any light at all, Elayne had been by far the least experienced mage present. Her present experience flavoured by the memories of her past, Elayne cast her eyes to Merci, and acknowledged the woman's nervousness and blush. She must have looked like that to her classmates, those many years ago, when her thoughts were plagued by feelings of inferiority, as the Daggerfall denizen's were now. She considered trying to help Merci—to share what she knew and perhaps improve her acquaintance's form—but quickly cast the thought aside. If she was embarrassed of her abilities already, surely another mage stepping in to help were would make things all the worse. She might even learn better this way. More fluidly. 

Several minutes after she had begun descending the stairs, though only a few moments in Elayne's intrigued and nostalgic mind, she reached their end, and breathed an inaudible sigh, unused to such an exercise. The thought occurred to Elayne, with a chuckle, that this foreboding tomb had been quite calm thus far for a staircase to have been the most arguing task yet, and that perhaps her earlier apprehension when first the tomb's door opened was entirely unfounded. This idea was immediately thrown aside and shuttered to pieces when deathly silence of the Nordic relic was broken first by a 'click', and then by what Elayne identified as a Dwemer curse. The Elvish alchemist had triggered a trap. Her mind immediately brought down to Nirn, Elayne once again readied her spells, the flickers of flame burning once more at her finger-tips helping ever-so-slightly to illuminate the open room. What little Elayne could sense in the darkness and the rattles of sarcophagi she did not particularly enjoy; perhaps twenty Draugr, long deceased servants of the Dovah, were awoken and ready to fight.

Taking a few moments to channel her casting, Elayne struck the foes last, her mind and body bolstered by Aenyarin's call to arms and her confidence bolstered by the rest of her allies more instinctual defences. Elayne's assault was a powerful one: a firestorm, conjured towards the back of the pack of Draugr to avoid damaging any allies. The stagnant air around four or five Draugr was set ablaze, and their entire bodies burst into flames, their decayed bones burning ever brighter the closer they stood to the blast's epicentre. The spell lingered, even as Elayne's attention faded from it, and turned to Ungimros. The Bosmer had downed one of the undead abominations, but injured himself slightly in the process. Nothing a quick spell couldn't fix! Pressing her hands together, Elayne approached Ungimros from behind and cast an orangish ball of light and energy in the direction of his bleeding hand. The cut, small as it was, healed immediately, the blood seeming to glow in the second it took for the Bosmer's flesh to mend itself. Elayne smiled, pleased, on a internal level, with her restoration of her ally's full health and ability even more so than she'd been with harming the handful of Draugr. There was something innately satisfying in Restoration to the Breton mage that Destruction, no matter for how righteous a cause, could not replicate.