"No more following, vampire. This is warning."
Tall and golden even despite the grim pallor of undeath, the woman kept following her, swirling around a bloodied dagger as if it were a toy. It came from the body of one of the mages, just like the dark robes that hung messily on her wiry frame, too short and too wide, and still sprinkled here and there with tiny ice shards. Nonchalant, she hummed to herself, dry lips tugged upwards in a smile that had probably been charming while she was still alive, but now was nothing short of eerie. Falanu gritted her teeth, the air condensing in brief frozen bursts around her fingers as she walked, a quiet threat that the Altmer looming behind her insisted on ignoring.
"Lysilwe. That is my name, and, yes, you are allowed to use it." Lysilwe said; there was a feral quality to her voice, despite her singsong tone. She raised the dagger to her eyes, staring with a fascinated sigh at the dark liquid that dripped from it – Falanu's own blood, drawn by the vicious slash of a young apprentice whom she'd backed against the wall. The Dunmer, who had just turned to look at her, hurriedly turned back and saw no more, grimacing in disgust.
She had watched her feed. As soon as Falanu let her out of her cage, her chest tightening with revulsion, the vampire had shoved her to the side with a growl, to throw herself upon a dying man: the same man who'd been engulfing her in flames only seconds before, chuckling with a ferocity that was no less beastly than the grin she was now sporting.
The half frozen mage had gurgled and paled as the vampire's burnt flesh healed, but did not fully regain its color, tightening, then regenerating in a golden craquelure over taut, milky white skin: scars over scars, and none too old. For a few moments, Falanu had found herself fascinated by the blossoming pattern as it flowed right in front of her eyes: the damage had been massive on her back, chest and arms, while the scarring was sparse, but still visible, over thighs, neck and chin. At the same time, a sense of nausea and impending danger had urged her to flee from the immortal, an understandable instinct, and much wiser than just observing in rapture the quickly healing skin. Perhaps she should've done just that: leave behind the vampire to fend for herself and forget she existed. At least she wouldn't be pushing the creature away like a stubborn dog, now.
No, instead she'd stayed, only to be showered with thanks, as Lysilwe held her hands in her own cold ones, her voice cracking with gratitude and disbelief. And then, the vampire had insisted on following her, despite the Dunmer's initial refusal, and the threats that had followed. True, she had saved her life, but she had no intention to travel with an undead: an idea distasteful at best, and suicidal at worst.
"So, where have you lived until now? You speak so oddly", the Altmer chanted, still at her heels, still far too close, "so oddly, indeed. I had no idea there still were some of your kind who don't speak Tamrielic as if it was their own language. You'd think that with what happened to your land, you'd mingle more… Oh, don't go away mad…"
"I asked not to follow", Falanu snapped, turning around; displeased by her sudden loss of control, she breathed in and repeated what she'd just said, slowly, as it talking to a particularly willful child. "I asked… you… not to follow me. I know you understood."
"Well, now. There's no need to be so flustered, I was just trying to…"
"Not flustered! Not flustered. Sore! Are all vampires mind-sick as you? I freed you. Go in cavern, where you live, anywhere", Falanu said, and as she noticed that the other had no intention of leaving, she grew stiff, attempting to look and sound threatening, her head raised in a defiant stance. "I will attack if there is need."
Much to her dismay, Lysilwe simply chuckled, and leaned against the wall, stretching her long limbs, while Falanu struggled to regain her usual composure, fists clenched at her side as her frown grew only slightly less vexed. The more she barked at her, the more her unwelcome follower seemed to pull at her ropes, in an attempt to elicit a reaction. It was maddening.
"You've saved my life, little fool. I am saving yours, in return. How do you think you're going to fare against the rest of this lot?" Lysilwe finally deigned herself to reply, staring down at her with amber eyes gleaming in amusement. They had burnt red as the fire that tortured her, but after feeding they had settled to a softer hue, though still somewhat unnatural in its vibrancy.
Falanu let out a deep sigh, donning a stern, unconvinced look, and raising her chin in an attempt to match her debasing stare – though the way the vampire towered over her made it quite difficult. The way her voice flowed, though, lukewarm despite the occasional stammer over the softest sounds, made up for the lack in height. "Hard to believe you. You are half starved, surely. And you were taken – no better than I, is it so? I still walked free, and you were caged. Maybe I will fare…"
"Shhh", whispered Lysilwe, interrupting the other by delicately placing one finger over her lips. She ignored the way the Dunmer jerked away from her touch, raising hands upon which the glimmer of a spell flickered nervously, and gently pushed her aside, preceding her along the stone corridor. Behind the door, a dull chanting echoed. Another spellcaster, no doubts about that.
As her fingers twitched in anticipation, now the only sign of tension on her body, Falanu found herself pondering what had dragged her inside that fort, clearly inhabited, and so unlike the lonely ruins she often stalked in search of knowledge. A nagging feeling of curiosity mixed with a considerate amount of boredom, flimsily disguised underneath the pretense of escaping the cold rain. Was that worth all that trouble?
Unseen, she had managed to enter the lower levels, only to be presented with the unseemly sight of the experiments – if one could call them that. Employing living subjects in magical studies was not unheard of, but the sheer glee those wretched souls displayed in causing them pain was particularly vile, and the victims were certainly not there willingly. And there were undead scattered around, both caged and conjured. The piles of corpses in the cells, the stench of the living, the dead and the undead alike… all of that was offensive enough to her eyes that she would happily go out of her way to attempt to stop it. But that was a job suited for mercenaries and adventurers: and the diminutive Dunmer wasn't built for playing heroine, at least not on her own. Opening a couple cages and spreading chaos before leaving had seemed like an acceptable compromise.
But she wasn't alone now, was she? Despite her natural mistrust for what she could hardly think of as anything other than an abomination, the Altmer looked sure of herself, and overjoyed to strike back at her captors. She could allow her to go ahead – strike first, get all the attention, and then operate from the background, hopefully unseen. Then, they'd part ways, of course. The Dunmer frowned, deep in thought, and then nodded at the woman, stepping aside in order to slip through the door a few seconds after her: Lysilwe was all too happy to oblige, taut, scarred lips stretching to reveal sharp fangs.
Inside, things didn't look too grim. Only one mage was there, and a single skeleton, barely standing on its wobbling bones, kept together by nothing more than magic. The blue swirls that danced between its bones intensified as the vampire charged in, impossibly fast, and the necromancer stood at attention, his hands glowing with unrestrained magicka. More bones, lying about in the sarcophagi that lined the room, started floating together, lifted by the same kind of tendrils that kept the other skeleton moving – or had kept, as it shattered in a flurry of bone shards when Lysilwe crashed into it, headfirst. Which was an impressive display of enthusiasm, but would not do against half a dozen of undead. Falanu hoped the other had a better strategy in mind for the enemies that now surrounded her.
In the meantime, she made her way to the back of the room, keeping to the walls as she observed her surroundings. The mage still hadn't noticed her, angrily growling a cantrip as he allowed the power in his hands to build up, and then to be released upon him, a shimmering barrier. Not an ideal situation, but one she could still work with, moving quick as a shadow upon the stone ground, until she was behind him, working her own magicka to the freezing point before releasing a single spike, to slam into his skull. Much to her frustration, it shattered, but she could see blood where it hit, and a dazed look in the necromancer's eyes as he turned around, only to be met with another viciously sharp ice shard; it immediately lodged into his left shoulder, eliciting a pleased murmur from the Dunmer. Good enough for a start.
She allowed herself to stop paying attention to the undead fighting in the corridor, concentrating on the man in front of her, who released a vein of electricity, as flimsy as it was painful. Her arm, lifted hurriedly to raise a ward, moved one moment too late, and the bite of lightning burrowed into her, sapping the magicka from her body as it gnawed upon her clenched muscles; she reacted quickly, teeth grinding against each other in an attempt to ignore the pain, and grabbed a book from the pedestal separating them, to slam it into his face, a gesture as simple as it was effective. The surprise forced the mage to lose his concentration, and allowed her to step up to him and release a single attack, aimed to his chest, strong enough to force him to the ground, where she finished him off clumsily.
The sound of clattering bone echoed as she finally looked up, to see Lysilwe as she delivered the final blows to a lone skeleton, with a dented sword not dissimilar from the ones that now littered the pavement. The creature's skull rolled on the ground, and the vampire looked up, smirking smugly, before kicking it to the side.
They did make a good team. Perhaps sticking her nose into the business of that coven hadn't been such a bad idea after all…
Lysilwe had to drag the other kicking and yelling, away from the rooms littered with necromancers and their foul experiments. The sounds of combat from the lower levels had travelled fast, to where the masters resided: cunning and threatening in couples, they were a force to be reckoned with now that they assembled in little groups, the ground around them patterned with runes and crowded with unholy creatures. The two mer had given as good as they had taken, but they had soon found themselves forced to fall back and barricade themselves in the lower levels.
As the assaults continued in well-timed streams from who knew what secret passages and mazes, the vampire had decided that she valued her cold hide far more than revenge, and had taken the insults and threats from the other with far more grace that what Falanu would've expected from an undead monster. Though perhaps the worst, snarled in Dunmeri, had fallen on deaf ears. And perhaps she was relieved that her unlikely companion had chosen to drag her away before her pride caused her any serious harm, but the same pride that she knew could've killed her prevented her from admitting it. Defeat was always humiliating.
Now they sat under the roof of a half destroyed cabin, peppered with holes from which the rain poured endlessly and frozen in the blue glimmer of magelights, with Falanu glaring sternly from one side of the room as she healed her own wounds, and the other, just as bloodied, sitting at the opposite side: she was calmly singing to herself as she etched geometric patterns on a thick leather scrap, torn from a discarded cuirass and fashioned into a face covering mask. For protection, but not from blows: the sun would soon shine, even in that lousy weather, and the hooded cloak she had snatched from the keep at some point would not be enough to prevent her skin from burning once again.
"You think I can't battle those", muttered at one point the Dunmer, searching through her backpack for nothing in particular, and eyeing the other cautiously, an eyebrow raised ever so slightly.
"Defeat. No, I'm positive we can't. Not soon, at least. There's a lot of them, and they know the field well. You are no battlemage, and I am no army." Lysilwe sounded light hearted and sultry: the dark breaking in her voice had faded with the thirst after feeding again, it seemed.
Falanu's frown deepened, vermillion eyes weighting the other like an alchemist's apprentice as he studies his concoctions, no longer alarmed by her presence, but wary nonetheless: not so differently from how she would behave with any other individual, so easily absorbed by the inner workings of the world, and just as easily exhausted by the dizzying spectacle of the crowds, from which she shied away. A healthy touch of mistrust remained, though, in the physical distance she put between them.
"We were mistaken, took them up front. Right in face. Together we are loud, too, they hear us. I amconfident we can, if prepared", she said, a patchwork of sentences she had heard here and there tied together haphazardly, but well enough to get her point across, chin raised in a proud stance. The vampire, from her spot, just smiled, without lifting her eyes from the leather she was working on.
"Oh? Let me know if you manage, then. I think I'd rather avoid getting caught again, you see, it ruins my poor skin."
"No revenge?"
"I've had more than my share. Let the wretched bastards turn on each other."
Falanu didn't fail to notice the utter despise in her voice, and a touch of fear, seeping even behind the barrier of a tight, sweet smile. For a while there was silence, only broken by the rain's continuous pitter-patter. She settled down on the cold bed, giving up on the wounds the necromancers and their creatures had inflicted on her: with what little Magicka she had left after the battle, she had done all she possibly could, and now the body needed time to heal on its own. The lightning, especially, had left her skin patterned with deceptive, subtle burns, but the flesh underneath ached, and she felt twitchy, dizzy: by focusing on the hidden damage, for the burns she'd had to resort to non-magical means, poultices and bandages, which took far more time to be effective. Fixing a bandage she'd drawn too tight, she looked up once more, to observe the silent Altmer sitting at the other side of the room for a few seconds, before speaking again.
"You were caught how?" Falanu said, a curious glimmer in her eyes, though her voice was as dispassionate as ever. The other raised an eyebrow, finally looking up from the leather scraps, and grinned without mirth, setting the tools aside and shifting on her seat.
"Why, aren't you a nosy one. Do you truly want to know?" A brisk shrug was all the answer she got from the Dunmer, and so Lysilwe sighed, weighing words carefully, as if balancing her steps while treading through mud. "Fine. I'll tell you. But you need to promise me you'll let me finish." Receiving a stiff nod in response, the vampire stood up from the chair, looming restlessly in the cabin, which was too small to allow for the nervous pacing she no doubt was yearning for. "I was an apprentice mage…"
"Lousy apprentice mage, as I see", chimed in Falanu, without managing to hold back. "Better with blades in hand than a spell on lips. No offense?"
"I never said I was good", said Lysilwe, an annoyed frown on her face, finally showing a certain degree of nervousness. "And you said you'd let me finish!" She stared at Falanu, whose nonchalant shrug did nothing to hide her little grin; frowning, she resumed her story, briskly at first, but soon finding her pacing again. "I was a lousy apprentice mage. Better now? I met an old Nord, well versed in destruction magic, and knowledgeable in many other fields. I thought I might be able to learn something from him, and asked him to tutor me in exchange for my help in his travels. Uhm, mostly I carried tomes and fetched ingredients."
"Before or after you die?" said Falanu, with a little frown: she sat on the bed with her legs crossed, her head tilted to a side, braids swaying whenever she squirmed in impatience.
"Before I wh… oh. No, I wasn't a vampire yet. Don't be so impatient, I'm getting there", the vampire said, and started talking again before Falanu could interrupt her. "My teacher was to meet with other mages, to trade knowledge. I was still green, but they needed someone to… keep the subjects at bay. Someone strong. Needless to say, the dungeons weren't quite what I expected…"
Falanu's eyes were narrowed in suspicion, now, her lips thinning to a line. "You were in tower… no, keep, you were in keep before. With them. One of them." Very little shock emerged from her voice, but she stiffened, unconsciously putting a little more distance between them.
"I was. I had no idea what to expect, mind you", replied the golden haired one, in a hurried manner. "I knew there would be necromancers, they're like wild mushrooms, here in Skyrim, thriving in the darkness, where the common people don't tread. Just… I hadn't anticipated the torture chambers. Oh, drop the stern look, now, would you?"
"You speak of necromancy like mushron. Mah-shroom. Not fitting. More like bad weeds." Falanu muttered something to herself in Dunmeris, shaking her head as she held the other's gaze. "I know how story ends. You put vampire in cages. Fighting back, they infect you. And you are taken."
"No. No, that's not how it went… I tried to free them before running away, but… I hadn't thought it through. Those poor creatures were half crazed from the thirst, you see… first one I let out of her cage threw herself on me and tried to suck me dry, and the fight attracted attention. After that I had to lie. The others had grown suspicious. It took me three days to realize it, far too late to do anything… but it all went black, and when I woke up, I was already in a cage." Lysilwe allowed herself to fall back on the chair, her eyes distant and unfocused. "And that's where I stayed. I'm not sure how long it was. That's where you found me. If you hadn't come, that's where I'd still be. Do you see, now, why I had to make sure you made it out alive?"
A long silence followed those words. The Dunmer lied down on the bed, far less stiff than before, and yet she kept her gaze on the other, weighing her confession with utter detachment. Lysilwe, instead, seemed uncharacteristically nervous, her eyes still lost on the creaks of the walls, impatiently wringing her hands. It took a while before Falanu finally spoke, brisk sarcasm well hidden under the guise of a reprimand.
"Foolish. Vampire could kill you. It starved, needed blood."
"Aren't we a lovely pair of fools, then? Sitting together under the rain, licking our own wounds?"
The hint of a smile floated over Falanu's lips, only to be replaced by a thoughtful frown, as she massaged her aching wrist. "I helped you. Would help again. You helped me, we both live. Debt is paid, is it so?"
"Is it? I was thinking I might stick around for a while. Maybe be your sword arm, and your apprentice. What is it that you were doing there, anyway?" With the weight of that confession lifted from her chest, Lysilwe's voice sounded far less shaky: a chanteuse's voice, dark but mellow. It was of little help to her cause, though.
"Pfah… I am no teacher. Not of magic. You are better to look elsewhere." She avoided a straight reply, a completely unreadable look on her face, head still tilted to stare at the blonde mer. "Very charming, well spoken, appreciate the attempt. But. Blood crave is not what I need of. You still drink blood. Still undead. I will not commend." She seemed to be paying a little more attention to her pronunciation now, though the accent was still there, giving every word a somewhat harsher sound, and making her stumble on the less common ones.
"Afraid I might want your blood, little one?"
This was like a shot of electricity to Falanu: they might've sounded like harmless words to anyone else, but the taunt spoke a language she knew far too well, bearing a clear challenge, and caused her to sit up, a little more briskly than she normally would've, though she did her best not to show any big change in demeanor.
"As if golden, newly dead vampire can take my blood. Of course not. See, I will prove that, too. Name city in Skyrim, and I will ah-come-pany there. No further."
And she named Solitude, of course, at days and days of travel from there. That smug s'wit…
"I can't believe you've placed runes around your bedroll!"
"I am merciful, not foolish. Blasted s'wit…"
The first few days had been bearable. They had encountered a small pack of highwaymen on their way, violent and hungry as the wolves they shared those woods with, and a chance for Lysilwe to feed as Falanu sat on the knotty branch of a tree, unnerved, observing the scene with a look of vague distaste on her face. That was a sight she had no intention to get used to, despite her efforts to look bored the whole time.
Lysilwe was talkative, which was a pleasant change after several days spent alone. Even with the Altmer rambling on about her dull childhood spent in a plantation, Falanu was glad to listen, and absorb whatever information the other gave her. They both seemed to enjoy asking each other questions, though the Dunmer was a little less eager about sharing when compared to the exhaustingly extroverted undead, which often prompted a hurricane of vague replies and loud protests. It usually ended with a couple sharp, witty exchanges, and the topic was promptly dropped in favor of the new, entertaining activity. In a way, the vampire was very much like a child, eager and easily swayed, which made Falanu suspect that she was far younger than she looked like. No matter how much she enjoyed calling her "little one" and posing as a consumed adventurer.
Now, the Dunmer rubbed her aching head with a surprisingly nonchalant look on her face, still dazed, as the sound of the explosion had left a dull ringing planted in her ears. Lysilwe sat on the floor across from her bedroll, her skin only a little scorched, unlike her pride. She knew it would happen sooner or later, even more considering how the vampire seemed to have attuned to her new day and night cycles, and was filled with energy after dark. That knowledge, and the fact that she was prepared, though, didn't make it any less annoying.
"No. Blood. From me. Keep away", she grumbled, her voice still dripping with sleep. "Floor has many runes still. Maybe not so lucky next time."
"You're bluffing. You can't cast runes that well, I was probably just unlucky."
"Try it."
The Altmer let out a defeated sigh, crossing her legs. "I didn't come to take your blood, alright? I just… don't want you to get the wrong idea. I was bored… wanted to talk."
"Go sleep", Falanu muttered, dropping back on the bed without even looking at the vampire, her tone firm enough not to admit any replies, but not brisk. She didn't fully believe the other, but what she'd said was likely enough, knowing her: perhaps her plan was to sweet-talk her into giving up some of her blood willingly. On the next night, she would have to put a locked door between them, in addition to the cleverly placed runes. Just to be sure.
"… yes, ma'am…" The blonde woman scoffed, then crawled off to reach her own bedroll, and Falanu sighed, staring at the ceiling, by now regretfully awake. The sooner they reached Solitude, the happier she would be.