Winter may have been a couple of months away, but in this frozen landscape of Skyrim's north there was no such thing as summer. The wind howled from the north year round, and blizzards were common no matter the season but on the occasions that the sky was clear the view from the towering ramparts of the College were incredible to behold.
Not on this day however, and a cold chill was passing from the desolate wastes of Atmora far to the north across the seemingly endless expanse of water and icebergs. The clouds were beginning to lower themselves to the hardened ground and the towering mountains surrounding Winterhold to the South, threatening sleet or snow from their darkened bellies as they grew fat and bloated with every passing minute. Their wordless voices moaned around the bitterly cold stonework of the college and forced everyone to the warmth offered in the enormous edifice's interior, but one lone individual remained behind.
Serana stood on the edge of the Botany's roof between the heavy stone crenulations that had long since become worn from the uncaring elements. The toes of her boots were resting with millimetres to spare between her and the sudden and dizzying drop of the College's walls but vertigo could not find a grip on her mind. If she had been mortal, the buffeting wind would have threatened to plunk her from roof like a wayward branch or at the very least would have frozen her to the core. A mortal would have succumbed to the cold over an hour previously but for the ancient vampiress it was barely more than an annoyance.
It was strangely fitting that she could find solace in the cold, even if it was somehow a different cold to that she had been used to growing up in Castle Volkihar and her initial centuries as a vampire. There had been so many changes to the world during her millennia long slumber that she still struggled to comprehend that it was indeed the same world that she had awoken to. Races, kingdoms, even entire Empires had come and gone. The Ayleids had vanished to the ravages of time and the Dwemer had simply vanished without a trace. The Nords had grown into a powerful people and a force to be reckoned with, and had waned and renewed themselves several times in her absence. To the south the bickering, quarrelling tribes of slaves of Cyrod had managed to claw themselves into rulers of the world not once, but several times. Even further to the south were even stranger sights and stranger beings and in the two months that she had been travelling with Kaius she had borne witness to things that she couldn't have even imagined.
Sofia had found it immensely hilarious when Serana had first laid eyes on a Khajiit on the road north from Riften, and the first time meeting an Argonian hadn't been much different. To think that such creatures had too formed kingdoms and had once been incorporated into the Cyrodillic Empire was staggering and it was as though all of the beings and stories she had read in her family's castle had paled in comparison to reality.
It was difficult to truly understand that things had changed, the world she had found herself in wasn't the same world that she had said goodbye to when her mother had pressed that button and the sarcophagus had ground shut. She knew that she would never know whether it had been hours, or days or even months before the enchantments woven into the Sarcophagus' interior had taken effect but to have lost the better part of three thousand years in what felt like the time taken to close her eyes and sleep was almost incomprehensible.
But some things had also survived the long march of time and were not welcome. The Ancestral enemies of the Volkihar Family and the Atmorans; the Snow Elves had mutated into unspeakable monsters. Their chance meeting was not one that she wished to repeat and that night in the caverns under the lighthouse had joined the other memories of pain and horror that she relived every night. It mightn't have been the worst experience of her surprisingly long life but it was certainly the most recent.
So she found solace in the smaller things, the familiar and unchangeable. Everything else in her world may have shifted, changed and otherwise mutated but the cold was incapable of doing so. It wrapped around her limbs like an old friend, turning her leathers and thick woollen clothing hard and chilled at temperatures that would've burned to a mortal being. She could feel it caressing over her bare face and the tiniest hints of snow brushing against her skin as the enormous drop stretched away before her.
One of the first days they had arrived and when she had discovered a way to access the various rooftops of the College had been clear and had left her stunned at the sight. It had a century or so before her entombment but she had remembered how her father had brought her to Winterhold. Solitude may have been the current capital of Skyrim but in those years long ago, Winterhold had reigned supreme over the fledging Nordic Empire. She couldn't remember why they had come but she remembered the college as it stood back then. Somehow despite being smaller, the older college was far more majestic and awe inspiring over the crumbling ruin perched atop a spire of stone that it was now.
The sights from the roof were unmatched and even without her vampiric sight and the encroaching clouds she could see everything. Stretching from horizon to horizon, the Sea of Ghosts dominated the landscape and she was left believing that with a little more height she might have been able to see far off Atmora on the other side. In the other direction she could see the expanse of Skyrim's northern coastline, curving around towards Dawnstar across the merciless glacial expanse of the Pale that they had crossed to reach the college, and to the south east were the mountains bordering Winterhold and Windhelm. The towering peaks reached into the sky as though they were taunting the elements and refusing to bow before anything, but their majesty only served to highlight the pitiful remnants of the town nestled into their roots.
Winterhold was certainly not the bustling city that Serana had remembered from so long ago. The previous seat of the High Kings of Skyrim was now little more than a mottled ruin surrounded by the broken shards of its own glory. Kaius had mentioned that the last time he had been to Winterhold had been over a century and a half before and while it wasn't the largest city in Skyrim at the time, it certainly wasn't as… abandoned as it was now. Three quarters of the city had slid into the ocean during the Great Collapse and many hadn't survived. Those that did for the most part had moved on and instead of a city numbering tens of thousands like the other hold capitals, there was only a thousand or so remaining, clinging to life like a tenacious moss at the base of the broken College.
Closing her eyes to the sights and ignoring the drop at her fur lined boots Serana simply concentrated on listening to the music of the world. The wind moaned a deep baritone around the College, the waves and crashing breakers a hundred metres below rippled through the air with their percussive impacts and only audible to her enhanced hearing were the booms of a distant storm and the haunting calls of a pod of whales several kilometres out to sea. It was peaceful, serene and calming if not for the insidious whispers worming their way into her mind.
She could feel them as though they were living things, pressing, prodding and prying away at her sanity. There were more than one and they were unfortunately all too familiar to her. The subtle strands of thought and emotion that gnawed away, millimetre by millimetre and left their venomous scars across her psyche. That tiny whisper of formless emotion that promised an end to everything if she would lean that tiny fraction towards the yawning abyss at her feet and allow it to claim her. That sensation was the most tempting of them all, the desire to experience nothing but another portion had other plans.
Promising power, strength and never to feel fear again, the older, darker portion of her mind whispered pledges that it had already fulfilled several times before. Freedom from doubt and terror and the ability to take hold of her own destiny was within her grasp and she could almost taste the flesh-changes that would come with it. It had been the sibilant crawling sensation that she knew all too well before, and had been the one that had allowed her to once again survive when confronted with being eaten alive only a few weeks before. It definitely wasn't the first time that the darker side to her being had been responsible for ensuring her continued existence. If she gave into the temptation of nothingness it wouldn't be the first time she had pitched herself off the walls of a fortress.
The loud banging noise startled her and shook the darkening hold of emotions away from her mind, as did the sudden and explosive series of expletives from the person climbing up the tiny ladder onto the roof. As the wind continued increasing in strength and the temperature decreasing rapidly it proved powerful enough to snatch the hatch out of Sofia's hand and slam it hard against the stonework.
"Aren't you cold?"
Serana shrugged and looked over her shoulder as Sofia climbed out onto the roof behind her. One hand dragged the heavy fur hood over her head as the wind whipped her ponytail about, while the other was still clutching a bottle of spirits that she continued taking mouthfuls from. Serana didn't need to look at the much younger, mortal woman walking over towards her to know that tears would be pricking at her eyes and the cold would be penetrating through her clothes with every second.
"Right, Volkihar Vampire and all that. Never thought the old legends about you lot would have been that accurate."
"Which legends are those?" Serana's voice was threatened to be snatched away from the wind as she continued standing near the edge of the precipice.
"You know; the ones about your kind laying under frozen lakes and dragging the unwary to their watery dooms? Those legends."
"Hmph. There's some truth in the tales. My father had some of his forces lay an ambush under a lake once. He couldn't stop boasting about how they drove off a Haafinger raiding party in such a way."
"Well, whaddya know." Sofia took another mouthful of eye wateringly potent alcohol as though it was water. "When was this?"
"During the first war of Succession after the death of King Borgas. Very much ancient history these days." For a moment Serana closed her eyes and felt Sofia's presence by her body heat and heartbeat alone. Already the cold was starting to seep through her clothes and chill the flesh despite Sofia's cultural tolerance of it. "Were you looking for me?"
Trying hard not to shiver, Sofia took another mouthful and smiled at the warmth seeping into her belly. "Yeah. Kaius sent me to find you. Apparently he needs some help with something."
"I'm guessing it's to do with whatever he's been working on in the midden?"
"Your guess is as good as mine. He did say that he needed all of us down there after dinner, so I guess that he's almost finished his little project."
"What are you going to do?"
Sofia grunted, tilted the bottle up and drained the rest in a handful of shuddering gulps before flinging it into the vast emptiness of broken rocks and crashing waves far below them. "Firstly, get the fuck off this roof and out of the wind. I hate heights. After that, I'm going to find something else to drink and have a read through these books Shrubby gave me. Kaius is up to something."
"I get the feeling that he's always up to something." Serana murmured to herself.
Turning away and moving back towards the opened hatch into the portion of the college containing the botany, Sofia pulled her furs in tightly and shook herself. She glanced back at the ancient vampiress who hadn't moved a muscle away from the edge of the roof and saw the way that she was staring off across the open water.
"Well? You coming?"
Serana stood for a few seconds longer, feeling the pull of the abyss and the way that the drop called to her despite the futility of what it represented. The darkness within her was not going to easily let her go.
"I'm coming." She said instead, turning and taking the first steps away from the chasm.