Castle Volkihar, the Sea of Ghosts
Skyrim, Nirn
The 15th of Frostfall, 4E202
So, due to the freak storm likely caused by two or more Dragons having a very dangerous verbal debate, the roads north and east of the Throat of the World were impassable. It would have taken too long to travel back the way they came just to get to the south road (and even then it might also be blocked by the storm), the group decided to take a ship to Dawnstar and then Solitude and then they were go from there. Still, it was an inconvenience and still took time to get around the ice fields, especially around Winterhold, and into Dawnstar's small port. They were holed up in Dawnstar for a day due to a thick fog. No one sailed out of Dawnstar when a fog settled in. After the fog lifted and the night passed, they sailed to Solitude and tried to arrange for someone to sail them into the inlet on the far side of Volkihar Castle's island. An Argonian sailor and his people that knew the waters well were willing to take, for a price. Of course, once they made it to the inlet, they were attacked by Draugr.
Skeletons, Belinda thought irritably. Because of course there are. Gods forbid anyone be fucking original for once. She drew her sword and used Unrelenting Force on the first few Skeletons that came charging at them. The Skeletons went flying into the walls and a couple into the water. I'm starting to wish we had brought Dione, she thought, charging in and blocking a Skeleton's sword. She got behind it and cut it down. Serena used magic to make it stand back up and join them in the fight. Lucien found loose stones and used them to shatter a number of the Skeletons. Karr took out his scythe and cleaved through a group of Skeletons. The inlet was easy to clear of the things. Skeletons weren't exactly hard to kill.
Karr consulted his crystals. "More Skeletons inside. I also see Death Hounds, a giant spider, and I think a vampire. Likely feral."
Belinda groaned. "Just once, I'd like to delve into a dungeon and have it be filled with butterflies," she said.
Karr chuckled. "That would be nice, wouldn't it?"
Belinda looked to the sailors. "Anyway we can convince you to wait here?" she asked them.
"Ye serious, Lass?" one of the sailors asked. "Place is clearly cursed. "All we can really hope fer is ta not carry the curse back to port."
Belinda groaned and tossed them a few gems she hadn't really planned on using. "Now?" she demanded.
"We'll only wait a day," the sailor answered, picking up a sapphire. "Yer on yer own after that."
"A day is all we'll need," Belinda assured, and she and the others climbed the stairs.
Dust covered everything, with cobwebs aplenty. There were bones strewn about and a quick sniff of the air revealed the scent of fresh blood. The place was surprisingly well lit, despite the prospect of a feral vampire. Serena drew her steel dagger and charged a lightning spell, making Belinda draw her sword. Lucien reached out with his mind and found several Death Hounds.
"Barghests," he hissed, fur standing up.
A pack of snarling Death Hounds came out of the shadows, like little demon. Behind them was an Altmer woman, hair shaved and her skin a pale gold. Her eyes were black instead of gold. She was utterly feral, but still moved with grace.
"This is all the Barghests," Lucien pointed out.
"Should've brought the others," Belinda sighed, and the first hounds leapt at them.
The rest and their vampire mistress attacked then, the Death Hounds snarling and baying horribly. Belinda used her fire breath Shout on the charging hounds, wiping out the weaker members of the pack and making the vampire screech in pain. Serena went after the vampire, attacking her with her lightning spell. Lucien lunged at Death Hound, jumping around it and swiping at its hind legs. Belinda jumped and rolled out of the way, swinging her Dragonbane to leave a deep, lethal cut in one of the hounds. Karr swung his scythe in arc, killing the few that made it to him. Belinda was tackled to the ground, hold the hilt and blade of her sword to keep the hound from biting her face off. Her throat wasn't ready for another Shout and this beast was heavy.
Note to self: More arm workouts after this, she thought irritably. She took a deep breath and manage a simple: "YOL!" The fire exploded past her lips, hitting the hound right in the face. The Death Hound got off, howling in pain. It was scratching and pawing at its face. Belinda went and ran her sword through it. Serena managed to weaken the vampire enough to finish her off and Lucien controlled a small, sharp stone during his fight go through his opponent's head.
"Okay, anything else nasty?" Lucien asked.
Karr checked. "Still the spider and a few rats to contend with," he confirmed.
Belinda sighed. She looked to Serena, who was looking around. She, too, looked around. The place was a mess of blood and bones. They started walking, Serena occasionally telling them which direction to go and where the levers were.
"Did you come down here often?" Belinda asked.
"Yeah," Serena answered, rubbing her arm. "When I was younger and had nothing better to do. There weren't any rats or spider in here back then. Guess a little vampire girl running around would discourage them."
"'Little vampire girl?' You were a vampire when you were a child?" Belinda asked, raising a brow.
"Yeah," Serena answered. "I still grew up though."
"That much is clear," Belinda said, pulling a lever to lower the first half of a bridge.
They took a left to where the second lever was, killed a few Skeevers, and then faced a giant spider, one that had grown too big, standing taller than Karr, to leave the room and had been relying on the occasional Skeever. It guarded the lever. Belinda cringed visibly at the sight of the thing. She tapped the carnelian containing pyromancy and brought fire to her hands.
"Fuck this thing," she huffed. She did not like spiders. She blasted the spider in the face, making it screech. "Lu, get the lever."
"On it." Lucien moved so the lever was in sight and his eyes glowed teal. Teal magic formed around the lever and he pulled it. Outside, the second half of the bridge lowered.
Belinda backed the spider into a corner where it died. "Gods, I hate spiders."
"We know."
Serena led them back to the bridge and out into the courtyard. "By the blood…" She ran ahead into a dead and destroyed courtyard. Some plants still grew, but otherwise, the place was dead and grey. The pond was stagnant and overgrown with weeds and algae. No doubt any fish within died long ago. Juniper trees were uprooted and lay on their sides. There was no grass, just dry dirt. There entrance to the rest of the castle had been collapsed, the wooden furniture and planters were smashed and thrown about. Belinda walked up to the giant sun dial in the center of the courtyard and looked at it. Except, there two set of lunar cycles.
"A moon dial?" she wondered.
Serena looked to her, kind of in a daze. "What?" she asked.
"This is a moon dial, correct?" Belinda responded.
Serena went over to it. "Yeah; after becoming vampires, it seemed kind of pointless to have a sun dial," she explained. "So she had someone come in and convert it into a moon dial, which I though odd. I wondered why she didn't just have the dial removed com-. Pleat…ly…" She was staring at some spaces around the dial. "Some of the moon crests are missing."
Belinda looked at the empty spaces. "Three of them," she added.
"I didn't know they could even be removed," Serena pointed out. She walked around the moon dial. "Mother, what are you trying to tell us…?"
"That most of the castle is in disrepair and completely filthy and gross?" Belinda suggested.
Serena buried her face in one hand, giggle-snorting. "That is painfully true," she responded.
Karr and Lucien chuckled.
"But in all seriousness, the moon dial appears to contain a secret," Belinda pointed out. "Serena, by any chance, were the architects Dwarves?"
"Yes."
"Then this will be interesting." They searched for the missing crests and put them back in place. The moon dial shifted, stairs sliding into place around it.
"Very clever, Mother," Serena commented, leading the way down into a part of the castle she had never seen before. They arrived into a dusty old kitchen. "We should be careful; I've never been to this part of the castle. I don't know what to expect."
Belinda started opening the door on the far side of the castle. "Well, if I had to guess…" she started, leading the others into a dining hall. The fireplace and braziers roared to life. Skeletons rose from their seats around a broken table, drawing weapons. "…it would be exactly what I expected." She drew her sword and charged in, slicing across and chipping bones off the first skeleton. The skeleton raised its sword, but Belinda stabbed her sword between rib bones and grabbed the blade close to the guard and swung the skeleton over her head. She then stomped on its skull, shattering it.
Serena attacked two others with ice spears until they finally collapsed into piles of bone. Lucien just collapsed an unstable pillar on the last few, both of which were archers. Karr turned his eyes toward Belinda and asked, "Who has been teaching you to fight?"
"The Companions and Stormcloaks mostly," she answered. "Other than that, Dione and Brynjolf have taught me a few tricks as well. Including how to fight dirty."
Karr nodded. "Good."
They had to fight their way through skeletons, and when they saw gargoyles, Belinda tensed. "I STILL DON'T LIKE THEM!" She was right to be nervous, for they came to life and attacked. If anything irritated her, it was statues that didn't stay statues.
"Does your mother like gargoyles or something?" Belinda asked.
"She always found them fascinating," Serena answered, looking around the room they were now in. Belinda followed her gaze. "This can't be it. There might be a secret passage around here somewhere…"
"Oh no, where could that be?" Belinda mock-exclaimed, walking over to the fireplace and inspected. Soon, she pulled a candlestick holder on the wall and the fireplace slid away.
"However did you even know?" Serena asked.
"It was really obvious," Belinda answered, slipping through. "Seriously, your mother could give the Blades and the Thalmor a lesson in paranoia."
Eventually, they made it to the top of a tower. Inside was a large room, covered in dusted and cobwebs, and set up like a laboratory. The center of the room was odd. Circles, all looking like they could be moved. Alchemical ingredients were contained in jar and bottles, all in good condition. Some were in small, labelled box and others were in planters, though they were drooping. Many of the books were ruined and destroyed, but the few that survived were about alchemy, necromancy, enchanting, and theorems on something called the Ideal Masters. There was a platform that had more books, ingredients, tables, and an enchanter's table. There, they noticed some of the stone railing had been removed where one could oversee the circles in the center of the room, and a bowl on it stand. Belinda tilted her head to the side, and then looked back to the circles.
They could be moved, she thought. Did Valerica create some sort of portal?
"My mother had an alchemy lab in her drawing room, but it was nothing like this," Serena commented, looking to the circles. "Is this some sort of portal?"
"I was thinking that, to be honest," Belinda told her, standing next to the bowl. "I think the thing I'm standing next to might be what activates it, or at least, needs the right stuff to activate it."
"We need her journal then," Serena sighed.
"For all we know, she could have taken that with her," Belinda pointed out. "Unless…She hid that in plain sight because she guessed your father would never find this place and if he did, he'd be too busy with the destruction of this place to even realize he would be making sure Valerica is never found ever again because she thinks he's really that stupid. And given this stupid prophecy that would destroy the world, he really is that dumb."
Lucien was already checking the bookcases from Valerica's journal as Serena said, "That sounds about right." Lucien finally pulled a red, leather bound journal from a bookcase and brought it to her.
"Is this it?" he asked.
Serena took the journal and read it. A bit of time passed before she said, "Looks like this is a portal after all and the bowl next to is meant to hold the ingredients to activate the portal." She looked to the others. "It will take us to the Soul Cairn, the home of the Ideal Masters where those who have been soul trapped go after a soul gem is used. We need finely ground bone meal, soul gem shards, purified void salts, and-. Oh, damn it."
"What is it?" Belinda asked, dropping down to the floor. She had been sitting on the ledge of the balcony.
"We need my mother's blood," Serena answered, looking to her. "Which, if we had, we wouldn't be doing this in the first place."
"Looking around, she clearly left the rest of the ingredients around here," Belinda pointed out. "So, she either left a small vial of her own blood as well, or we could use your blood, since she's your mother."
Serena nodded. "You're right. Now, let's find the rest of the ingredients…"
They were particularly hard to find, seeing as how the ingredients were in elegant bowls. The bone meal were on the table under the skull of a mammoth, the soul gem fragments were by the stairs to the platform, and the void salts were on a bookcase on the platform. They went to the bowl and poured them in. Serena removed a bracer and rolled up her sleeve. With the care of a master surgeon, she made a cut along her arm and watched the blood drip over the ingredients. The soul gem fragments shimmered with violet light, and the blood liquefied the dry ingredients. The soul gems turned to dust then liquid. The circles in the floor moved, breaking apart and revealing a violet portal. The circled became stairs that descended into the violet light.
"Sh-she actually did it," Serena gasped, looking at the portal in awe. "She actually found a way into the Soul Cairn."
Belinda looked in wonder. "Well, let's get down there." She went down the stairs, but as soon as she was about to step through, lightning coiled around her, sucking her life force. She let out a scream of agony. Serena ran forward and pulled her away. Belinda ended up curled up into a ball, shivering in pain.
"What the Hell?!" Lucien exclaimed.
Karr pulled Belinda close, holding her tight and trying to warm her up. She was icy-cold.
Serena was thinking. After a moment, she groaned. "Stupid, stupid, stupid! The Soul Cairn isn't meant for the living," she finally stated. "Only the dead, soul trap victims, and vampires can enter."
"And as Planeswalkers, any of those would mean losing our Sparks," Karr pointed out.
Belinda groaned. "Fan-fucking-tastic," she grumbled. "This literally cannot be how this trip ends." She looked to Serena. "Is there any way we can get in without, you know, dying?"
Serena was silent for a moment, thinking. "I think so," she finally answered. "My mother taught me a trick to partially soul trap someone. I wonder if this was why…"
"Any side effects to that?" Belinda asked.
"You'd be a lot weaker, especially in the Soul Cairn," Serena answered, "but, once inside the Soul Cairn, we can solve that problem. After you spend a considerable amount of time there, you likely won't have any more problems."
Belinda nodded. "Karr and Lu: You two are staying here," she ordered, finally unfurling.
"What?" Karr asked, standing also.
"We need someone to cover us," Belinda pointed out.
"And I only have one soul gem," Serena added.
Karr sighed. "I don't like this."
"And we do?" Belinda asked. "Harkon is a vampire who is thousands of years old pursuing a bullshit prophecy. If he somehow finds the bow first, he'll corrupt it and life on Nirn will die. Granted, it will be harder to find the bow without the elder scrolls, but he has time the rest of us don't, and a year ago, I made a promise to Dione that she would never lose her home. I aim to keep that promise. Well, here comes an asshole who will kill Nirn, and we're going to need Auriel's Bow to stop him. And it just so happens the Elder Scroll that can show us the way to Auriel's Bow is in the stupid Soul Cairn because Valerica slinked away there with her tail between her legs instead of killing Harkon like a smart person would, and I'm just insane enough to go into the Soul Cairn so we can kick Harkon's sociopathic ass."
Lucien looked to Serena. "You realize she's insulting your parents, right?" he asked.
"At this point, I want to throw them both off a cliff," Serena pointed out. "Mostly my mother for making us go through all this nonsense." She turned back to Belinda. "Are you sure you're okay with the partial soul trap?" she asked.
"Hell no; but being a Planeswalker is part of who I am," Belinda answered. "It wouldn't feel right to be without my Spark."
Serena nodded, and took out a black soul gem…