As a rule Isran didn't walk. He physically couldn't and not as a result of an injury that had rendered him crippled. He stalked or prowled and those times where he moved at what others would consider a 'typical' pace it was because he was taking the time to be more aware of his surroundings. Walking for him was merely the motions that his body underwent as he moved from A, to B. Anything else was merely a waste of time and effort.
There was no other way to describe the way that he was currently moving through Fort Dawnguard but prowling and he did it extremely well. At a moment's notice and without any conscious effort he would be able to move as stealthily as a shadow, or surge into activity like a righteous bolt of lightning. Fully armoured and armed with his hammer and the Light of Dawn there was nothing that walked, crawled, swum or flew throughout Nirn that would take him unawares.
The Fort was busy, as it had been over the previous weeks and the numbers of the Dawnguard were steadily growing. The increasing attacks throughout Skyrim were rallying more and more to their cause and every week a dozen or more pledged themselves to combat the vampiric threat. Even with the numbers who had already fallen in this dark conflict they were almost a hundred strong, some of which were already considerably experienced and able fighters.
Isran was still troubled though, especially as he moved closer to the halls that were those not attending to other duties were training. It was hard not to be troubled as a vampire hunter when two of the fiends shared the same roof as yourself. As he had consistently done so, Kaius had spent most waking hours training the order in the ways of combatting vampires. As much as the creature's presence and unnatural abilities, even for a vampire churned his stomach and soured his mood Isran could see very clearly that the training was proving highly effective. For fresh recruits and the inexperienced, the first encounter with a vampire was very heavily weighed against them. The terror and unnatural horror that the foul creatures infected any who fought them proved time and time again to be the undoing of the inexperienced and as the previous months had shown it was the first timers that got slaughtered by the droves.
It was an issue shared with any other organisation specialising in fighting the horrors that plagued Tamriel. Isran had seen it numerous times during his time with the Vigilants. The only way to truly cross daedric terrors and unnatural beings was to overcome your fear of them, but this was something that only survivors could learn.
Kaius, like Isran knew this all too well and had almost focussed on this to the exclusion to everything else. He did not hide what he truly was, nor hold back in terrifying and frightening the Dawnguard. During training he was an elemental fury and there had been more than one of his students lose all control over their bodily functions as a result. There was no doubt in Isran's mind what Kaius was accomplishing in nearly scaring the vampire hunters to death. He was desensitising and immunising them to the full horrors and fears that vampires injected into the veins of mortals and while many hadn't been tested against a creature seeking their lives it was proving enough to temper their minds and spirits.
Moving past the training hall he heard what was undoubtedly the unconscious shriek from one of the newer recruits. He could also hear the overwhelming fluttering of leathery wings as Kaius shifted into one of his more incredible forms during the 'lesson'. Whoever the hapless recruit was, they were spoken to directly by their vampiric instructor who used the opportunity to discuss with him and the rest of his fellow trainees how to combat some of the more esoteric abilities of the damned.
What was truly niggling away at him though, like a stone caught inside a gauntlet was the way that Kaius wasn't trying to pretend to be nice or try to convince any of the Dawnguard that not all vampires were evil. Kaius may have done many things but he had never once tried to describe himself as human or good. He freely admitted what he had done as a vampire through his long life, his desires and bloodthirsty nature and he constantly reminded everyone of that simple fact.
It didn't stop Isran wondering whether he would have been happier if Kaius at least tried to get them to like him. That's what he would have expected from every other vampire.
Most other vampires, he corrected himself as he rounded and corner and came across the other undead resident of Fort Dawnguard. Compared to Kaius, Serana was much easier to understand in many ways. While he didn't try to understand her reasoning for coming to the very organisation pledged to destroy her and the rest of her kind he at least understood the way she was acting around them. She was a prisoner, and while allowed to travel freely outside of her cell there were always a minimum of two hunters shadowing her at all times. He had put it very simply after he and Kaius had that initial argument when she had first arrived the fortnight before. She was an asset. A resource much like the Elder Scroll that she had brought with her.
It did concern him greatly that he and Kaius had actually agreed on what to do with her. Both had initially considered simply killing her but it was obvious that she and the scroll were important to the vampires and that provided a unique opportunity for the Dawnguard. Bait didn't come so easily, or acted as passively as she did.
In many ways she was the perfect prisoner. She didn't fight or argue and other than the odd sarcastic quips directed at himself and whoever were her minders at the time she didn't cause any trouble. Isran had experienced greater issues from little old women during his time as Serana would mostly remain in her room under armed guard with an armful of books, or would wander the ramparts, the halls or watch Kaius and his thralls train the others. They had briefly tried interrogating her for information, but while she gave answers to anything and everything she could it was obvious that Kaius hadn't been entirely lying about how long she had been locked away for. Her knowledge of the world was woefully out of date and entirely useless.
The Elder Scroll had been a slightly different matter. It provided the opportunity for countless information and power but they had no means of reading or gleaning anything from it. Isran had sent a handful of hunters out seeking one of the province's Moth Priests but between the civil war, returning dragons and the fact that many of their kind were out seeking the lost Scrolls he wasn't sure how long it would take to retrieve one.
Some of the groups he had sent out had been successful in their endeavours and moving past the vampiress and her pair of armed guards he moved in the direction of the sound of dogs barking. Gunmar Bear-Breaker and Sorine Jurard had been two of his closest allies in the days when they had served the Vigilants. They all may have gone their separate ways over the years but they both had been found by messengers he had sent, and had both agreed to come to help.
Gunmar had wasted no time acquiring hunting and guard dogs from Riften after he had arrived, and while his other 'project' was an enormous cause for alarm for everyone in the fort, Isran was not going to tell him to stop. The experiment the Nordic animal trainer was working on did concern him too if he was being honest, but it also concerned Kaius and that was good enough for him. Although, knowing Gunmar and his way with animals it might very well work and pay off in the end.
Out of all of them it was Sorine that truly had a way with experimenting. Experimenting, engineering, tinkering, researching all came naturally to the petite Breton woman and while she didn't look like much there had been many a daedra and undead that had been caught off guard from her contraptions. Everything from the solar crystal in Isran's room to the hand crossbow at his hip had been of her making, and when she had arrived she had done so on a cart overloaded to the point of broken axels with the quantity of scraps, bits, odds and ends and gizmos from years of pillaging every dwemer ruin from Red Mountain to Stros M'kai.
Gunmar's animal experiments may have been disconcerting but Sorine's were a whole different matter. He could remember all too well the way one of her experiments had gone when they had been Vigilants that had left a stone hut nothing more than a smouldering crater and Sorine clambering down a tree forty metres away. She may have been left lacking her eyebrows and most of her hair and smelt like charcoal, firesalts and copper for the days to follow but nothing was capable of dampening her spirit.
Some of her recent designs had born fruit, especially her improved crossbows. He didn't even try to understand how she did it, or where she had managed to acquire the majority of a dwarven sphere but she had managed to engineer a design for a crossbow that was quicker and easier to reload than the ones that had managed to scrounge together. He paused only for the briefest of moments outside of her workshop to see that a small number of Dawnguard were present with her being taught the rudimentary operation of her new weapons.
All in all, establishing the Dawnguard was going surprisingly well. They had suffered casualties in the months previous but they were now beginning to show signs of being able to combat the vampire threat with fire, faith and steel. Turning on his heel and moving back the way he came Isran smiled in his own way, the frown he customarily wore relaxing for a second so brief it barely existed at all.