Adriana leaps down from the cart as it halts near the Markarth stables then tries to pull her robe tighter around herself. Skyrim is colder than she'd expected and even someone with her disease still feels the cold.
"Alright, then!" the cart driver, Kibell says.
Adriana looks to him, then walks to the front of the cart to look up at him still sitting in the driver's seat.
"Alright, then, what?" she quietly demands of him. She stands with her hands on her hips, allowing the skirt of her small robe to ruffle titillatingly in the wind as she wears nothing beneath.
"We're here?" he offers, "Um... Our business is concluded! Uh... I was just sayin'... you know..." he becomes nervous of the look she is giving him, or rather, through him, despite the free show and her indifference to it, which only seems menacing right now.
"You were just saying what?"
"I... I, I, I, I mean..."
Her grey blue eyes narrow into darkness and he flinches with his hands coming up to his face.
"Hm." she gives a wry smile and brushes the skirt of her robe back into place with a few strokes to little effect, then turns to walk casually and provocatively up the path and stone steps to the massive Dwemer gates into the city of Markarth, now enjoying the cool night air prickling her body.
"My, my, my, now there's a sight." the hostler, Cedran comments of Adriana as he approaches Kibell's cart from his stable house.
"Don't even." Kibell says. "I'm pretty sure she's one of them... vampires or what'cha call it."
"Oh..." Cedran responds to this news continuing to look on at the beautiful sight, but with a tone suggesting that while it may be an inconvenience, her vampirism might not be a total obstacle. "You not going to uh... hm..." he gesticulates to the guardsmen milling around the entrance, making it clear that he won't be getting involved himself by leaving it at that.
"I've enough to contend with driving this damn cart during dragon attacks, a civil war, the Thalmor pokin' around, and whatever else the Aedra and Daedra see fit to inflict on us. And that's on top of the bandits, bears, wolves, giants, and everything else usually trying to kill me on my rounds."
"Oh yes..." Cedran philosophically agrees but with little interest, "I quite see your point, of course."
Adriana reaches the gates and tosses her short black bobbed hair to one side with a flick of a hand. One of the guardsmen immediately steps up to politely open it for her.
"Still..." Cedran watches her give a small, girlish curtsey in thanks before she enters, accentuating her womanly curves momentarily, "There's worse ways to go..." then he gives a dirty laugh.
...
Using the night as cover, Adriana picks the lock of the old abandoned house in Markarth, slips in and slowly shuts the door, checking through the narrowing doorway that no-one has seen her.
"Adriana." a deep dark voice fills the air. "It has been some time since we convened."
"My Lord." she acknowledges and continues deeper into the damp and unkempt stone house.
Reaching the basement, Adriana sees an excavation deeper into the rock bed.
"Come. Deeper. Into... the bowels..." her master beckons, never tiring of the amusement at this choice of wording and indeed, causes a slight frown and pause in Adriana, and her master laughs.
She continues on down a narrow passage cut into the softer earth and remnants of Dwemer structures to see the shrine to her master, the Daedric Lord Molag Bal.
"Come..." he beckons once more.
Adriana strides up to his altar, his carved visage gurning at her from the dark, bloodied font and she kneels prostate in submission.
"And what would you have of me, my Dreg?"
"I had word of the emergence of Daughters of Coldharbour in Skyrim, my Lord. Our Lady Serana."
"And you came to pay homage, like a good little Dreg?"
"Yes, my Lord." she agrees but his tone evidently irks her.
"And I presume you also had word of my little shrine here somehow. How resourceful of one so weak."
"Yes, my Lord." she says through gritted teeth.
"Yes I sense you are still not happy with our arrangements?"
"I performed the ritual." she begins angrily, "I..." she doesn't complete. "The whole family!" she shouts, "For nothing! To be just another of the herd."
"None go into the ritual knowing for certain that they will be gifted as a Daughter of Cold Harbour."
"Then why? Why not me? Why Serana?"
"Oh Adriana. Still motivated by courtly rivalry after all this time? Serana has something you've never learned: a sense of duty."
"But-"
"What do you think I might want of my higher vampires and the Daughters of Cold Harbour? Hm? Those who I gift are responsible for ensuring equilibrium. I thought that my Dregs understood this?"
"I cull the herd when they become unruly! I know duty!"
"You know that duty. But not the duty to all of the diseased, the Daughters of Cold Harbour and the herd alike."
"Yes, my Lord..." she give submission.
The Dregs of Cold Harbour, those who suffered the humiliating and degrading ritual only to be refused the dark lord's highest gifts, instead being cast into the herd and charged with policing the baser ones.
...
Adriana has headed to the Rift and the Redwater Den seeking further answers, still in her meagre attire. Adriana has lived long enough to know that her figure is striking and uses that against her foes. To those who would lust after dark mysterious women, there is always a shocked, hesitant moment of pause when she steps out of the darkness to quietly bring about their demise.
"If you're here for skooma head on down, otherwise, piss off!" a Bosmer in furs seated at the entrance to the skooma den shouts towards Adriana as she approaches the decrepit hut.
"Don't ever speak to me like that again." Adriana says coldly as she passes the elf to use the ladder down to the den itself.
"Hm..." the lookout says once Adrian is out of hearing range, "I hate those hoity-toity ones."
"What?" her companion asks, coming round from his watch post at the front.
"The stuck up ones, they really get on my wick. I mean, what's the problem? They're pretty much immortal, aren't they? Why bother being an ass as well?"
"I don't know. I don't even want to be here. You do remember that you're a thrall, right?"
"Oh, I just try to make the best of a bad situation."
"Tsk." he returns to his post. "Bosmer..."
Adriana descends the stairs she finds at the base of the ladder to be confronted by a further watchman, this one in full armour.
"We're closed." he says, holding up his two handed hammer in defence.
Adriana puts a leggy foot forward to bring up her hand and show a ring on her finger. His face registers half relief and half panic when he sees it and he lets down his guard.
"Oh... Oh! Well we've had a little trouble, you see. Sorry about all that with the hammer, heh."
"Well at least your master has taught you well to know what I am, now explain."
"Well... some of the Volkihar vampires turned up here, I assumed just to check we're not out of control here, and we're not! I can assure you!"
"Just tell me what happened."
"Well, they checked on the red skooma production and headed deeper into the caves. Then this... this... well, she just tore the place up! Killed all the vampires she could find."
"She?"
"Yea, some of the other thralls think it was that Dragonborn everyone's talking about but well... I'm not sure the one who defeated Alduin the World Eater would be involved in such things."
"Dragonborn?" she queries.
"You not heard of the Dragonborn? Where've you been? Stuck in a cave? Ha! I mean, oh. No. I didn't mean because you're a vampire that... well I didn't mean..."
"Just be quiet and only speak when spoken to from now on. So who is this Dragonborn and where might I find her?"
"You really don't know?"
"Assume I don't."
"She's some kind of master of the voice, used it to defeat Alduin so I hear. Whiterun's probably a good place to start. I'm pretty sure she has a base there."
"Good." Adrian says then steps in towards him. "Now. I'm hungry. Be a good thrall."
He smiles nervously and fearfully but offers his neck regardless. She moves in, piercing his neck with her teeth and his face turns to terror as she bites deeper and harder until she pulls away taking veins and sinew with her. She spits the flesh back at his face and the thrall drops to the floor in spasms clutching his neck, blood gushing from his gargling open throat. Adrian straddles him to lap up the oozing blood in long strokes, grinding a little as she does, utilising the death throws of her victim until he lies still, but she grabs around his body to grind harder now that he no longer does it for her. Adriana's hips writhe until she lets out a long satisfied breathe with a shudder, then stands and straightens her clothing.
"I decide which of the herd are unruly." she states to the corpse as she stands then wipes with her fingers under her skirt and brings them up to taste herself for a perverse but delicious dessert. Her work done, Adrian heads back up to the ladder.
"Good day." the Bosmer greets Adriana this time, before she is met with Adrianas open palm against her nose, pushing the bone up into her skull cavity. Death is almost instantaneous. The other thrall is already sprinting into the forest. She considers giving chase but why bother; a thrall without a master is nothing and she's just satisfied her tastes and desires.
Adriana considers this new information. Is this Dragonborn a threat to all vampires? Are the Daughters of Cold Harbour safe? Only finding out more about the mysterious saviour of Skyrim will give her the answers she seeks.
...
"I used to be an adventure like you-"
"What?"
"...then I took an arrow to the knee." the Whiterun gate guard delivers his 'punchline' with a knowing wink.
"Why are you telling me this?" Adriana demands.
"Oh. You know, we just like to make all our visitors feel welcome."
"By jabbering nonsense at them?"
"Well. If you didn't like that one. Umm... Heard about you and your honeyed words!"
"Just shut up and open the gate before I slit your throat."
"Now. Killing people is definitely one of the things we discourage, and I'd hate to have to drag a pretty girl like you into the Dragonsreach dungeon."
"You can't if you're dead."
"Oh. Well. Someone will then."
"Not if they don't see me."
"Ah. Now. That's where you're wrong. The court mage uses clairvoyance to find out who committed crimes, so we always know. Hmm!" he says smugly.
"You want to test that theory?"
"Ummm... I'll open the gate now."