I don't own Elder Scrolls V, only Hainin Marshal.
Also, I'm not gonna lie. I wasn't going to include this part of the Dawnguard play through, but I decided it was necessary because it sstablishes the working together that Hainin comes to terms with in regards to Serana.
Please enjoy.
"Gods, this place gives me bad memories," Hainin said with a shiver as he gazed up at Castle Volkihar. Serana finished climbing out of the boat that they had rowed across to the island, and studied the castle with him.
"Definitely not my favorite place my family lived," she admitted, "but it's beautiful, don't you think?" She started to walk away from him, off of the path and around the left side of the island. Hainin remained behind for a moment, snorting.
"Sure, if you don't mind gargoyles and black," he said under his breath.
"Hainin, come on!" Serana called. Hainin shook his head to himself and went after her. He found her a few yards up the beach on the left side of the island, pointing.
"It's just around this bend," she told him, waving her other hand. "Let's go!"
"I'm coming, I'm coming," Hainin responded, picking up his pace a little as Serana kept moving. He gazed out across the water to his left, frowning at how gray and stormy it looked. He'd never realized it before, but the ocean always looked stormy. And it was always stormy, if his experience in the Emperor's ship could be any indication.
Hainin was getting sick just thinking about it.
He was so focused on the sea that he almost ran right into Serana, who had stopped and was gazing up at the castle again.
"What?" Hainin asked, glancing up as well.
"It just looks so big from down here," Serana responded. She looked at him. "I mean, it is big, but… well… bigger." Hainin raised an eyebrow, and she sighed. "Never mind. Let's keep going."
"Gladly," Hainin said, stepping around her and continuing on up the beach. After a minute of walking, he found himself standing on the edge of an inlet, the one Serana had mentioned. A dock of sorts lined the area, and a stone creation was set in the middle of it all, a waterfall pouring out of the top of it into the inlet itself.
There were also skeletons stalking the dock back and forth, on both sides.
Hainin looked at Serana, who had paused next to him. She raised her shoulders at the look he gave her.
"My father's paranoid. What do you want me to tell you?" She curled one hand into a fist, and it started to glow with an icy blue. Serana glanced at Hainin. "You're not afraid of some skeletons, are you?"
"No, of course not," Hainin answered, pulling his bow off of his back. Serana hurried off to take care of the closest skeletons, and Hainin took aim at the one on the upper level of the dock. He tracked it with his arrow before letting it fly. The arrow hit its mark in the skeleton's exposed spine, and the creature shattered into pieces. Hainin smirked to himself and set to climbing the stairs that would take him up to the level where the skeleton had been.
"Hainin!" Serana called from down below. He glanced down and saw her pointing to a skeleton across the inlet from him, who was taking aim with its own arrow.
"Ooh," Hainin said, reaching for one. He barely rolled out of the way of the skeleton's shot before pulling back his arrow and releasing. It sailed across the inlet and into the skeleton's neck, and Hainin stood up and nodded in satisfaction.
"Nice shot, assassin," Serana said as she started up the stairs.
"Thank you, princess," Hainin replied cheekily. Serana rolled her eyes, and Hainin chuckled and gestured towards the door that led from the inlet into the castle. "That the way in?"
"Should be," Serana said, "unless things changed inside the castle in the thousands of years I've been away." She gave Hainin a look, and he chortled before leading the way towards the door.
Almost as soon as he walked in, there was a skeever making its way towards him. Hainin yelped, and Serana shot an icy dagger out of her palm into the rat's side. She then glanced at Hainin with a raised eyebrow, and he huffed in response.
"Moving on, then."
"Lead the way, assassin," Serana replied, laughing.
Hainin grumbled out an answer, and walked down the short hallway to the large wooden doors at the other end. Pushing them open, he froze when he saw the three death hounds stalking the waterway on the other side, and he glanced over at Serana.
"When was the last time someone's been down here?" he whispered.
"You think I know?" Serana retorted, her hands glowing. "They're only death hounds. They shouldn't want to attack us anyhow."
There was a feral screech from the walkway, and Hainin gestured to the hairless vampire that was suddenly sprinting towards them, the death hounds behind it. "You sure about that, princess?" he inquired, before pulling out his daggers and throwing both at the same time.
One hit it's mark in the vampire's chest, while the other got one of the hounds on the muzzle. The vampire collapsed to the floor, causing the death hounds to trip over it and go sliding across the slippery walkway. Serana took advantage of this, and hit all three with individual ice shards.
When they were all dead, she lowered her hands. "See?" she asked. "No big deal."
Hainin shook his head and retrieved his daggers before continuing on. He crossed the first bridge over the waterway, and found a set of stairs that led up to a balcony of sorts. He pulled it, and watched a walkway fall down between two stone pillars, with open archways on either side.
He retreated back down the stairs and headed in that direction. When he reached them, Serana spoke up from behind: "Take a left up here. This is one of those weird, double-barred security measures my father put in when he started to get paranoid."
"You really should have gotten him a hobby," Hainin responded, doing as she said. He rounded a corner, and found a skeleton waiting for him, with another just behind. Thankfully, they didn't notice the two of them, and Hainin was able to put them both down with two shots from his bow. After retrieving his arrows, they continued on down the hall, and found a room at the other end, full of bone piles.
"Why in the Gods' names do you need a room of bones?" Hainin asked Serana.
"For those," she replied, and then shot a spark of lightning out of her palm. Hainin turned around in time to see it hit a death hound, which whimpered as it fell to the floor. Another appeared, and Hainin swung at it with his dagger, slicing its throat open.
"These things are not natural," he informed Serana, who shrugged.
"Neither are vampires."
Hainin had to give her that.
The made their way around the piles of bones to a set of stairs, which Hainin climbed to reach a second lever. He pulled it, and Serana waved him back down.
She took the lead this time, and led the way back to the wooden bridge. She headed to the right archway this time, and gestured towards the spiderweb that blocked the way.
"Can you take care of this?" she asked him.
"Don't you have a flame spell or something?" Hainin asked her, pulling out his dagger.
"I'm a vampire, Hainin."
"So?"
Serana didn't reply, and Hainin sliced through the spiderweb. Another was waiting for him, and when he got through that one as well, he froze.
"Uh…"
"Oh, please," Serana sighed, and then blasted the giant spider in the room on the other side with a bolt of purple lightning. It wasn't enough, and Hainin quickly threw his dagger into it as well. That was enough, and the spider collapsed to the floor, revealing the lever that was behind it.
Hainin crossed the room to retrieve his dagger and pull the lever, and then he followed Serana back out into the wooden bridge room. A second bridge had fallen, and had opened up an archway on the north side of the room. The two of them crossed over it to get through. A set of stairs waited for them on the other side.
"These should lead to the courtyard door," Serana told Hainin, taking the lead. "Come on."
Hainin followed her up the stairs, and indeed, a door was waiting for them at the top of it. As soon as she opened the door, Serana's entire posture changed, and she quietly said, "Oh, no…"
She hurried out into the courtyard, and Hainin followed, closing the door behind him. He turned around to face the courtyard as well, and blinked.
It was… well, dead. It was dark and gloomy, and the plants that had once grown there were all now brown and wilted. In short, the entire courtyard was very sad and dark.
When he looked at Serana, he saw that she was sad, too.
"What happened to this place?" she asked herself, and then she glanced at Hainin. "Everything's been torn down. It looks…. Well, dead. It's like we're the first to set foot here in centuries."
"We probably are," Hainin responded, watching as Serana walked up a set of stairs to the left of the door that had led into the courtyard. The stairs she climbed led up to a balcony, and a door that had been blocked off by rubble.
"This used to lead into the castle's great hall. It looks like my father had it sealed up." Serana called down to Hainin as he stopped at the foot of the stairs. She turned around and looked out over the courtyard. "I used to walk through here after evening meals. It was beautiful, once."
She walked down the set of stairs on the other side of the balcony and hurried across the courtyard to the plot of ground that was fenced off. Aside from the nightshade growing there, all the other plants were dead.
"This was my mother's garden," Serana told Hainin, who stopped next to her. "It…" She glanced at him. "Do you know how beautiful something can be when it's tended to by a master for hundreds of years?"
"Well, no," Hainin responded. "I'm only twenty seven years myself."
Serana didn't even crack a smile. "She would have hated to see it like this," she murmured, and then turned away from the garden to face the dial in the middle of the courtyard, which she had yet to address. "Wait…"
Hainin followed her over to it, and Serana frowned, putting a hand on her hip. "Something's wrong with the moondial," she told him. "Some of the crests are missing, and the dial is askew. I didn't even know the crests could be removed." She shook her head to herself. "Maybe my mother is trying to tell us something?"
Hainin exhaled, and crossed back over to the sad garden, wondering if Babette could use more nightshade. He doubted it.
As he studied the plants, however, something glinted from the corner of the garden, and Hainin frowned. He stepped into the fenced off area, and picked up the thing that had shined into his eyes. It appeared to be one of the crests from the moondial.
"Serana!" he called, turning around and showing it to her.
Serana blinked. "Maybe there's more of them," she said, turning and crossing the courtyard to peer into more underbrush.
Hainin himself glanced up, and decided to look on the balcony over the garden. He climbed the stairs, cradling the first dial he'd found carefully in his hands, and found another one as soon as he reached the balcony.
"Got another one!" he said to Serana, who had walked over to the mossy pond Hainin had noticed before.
"Me too!" she said, sounding pleased with herself as she held it up. She returned to the moondial, glancing between the crest she was holding, and the ones on the ground. After walking around it for a moment, Serana bent down and placed the moondial she had found.
Hainin returned to her, and Serana took the two he was holding, and placed them as well. As she set down the one signifying the full moon, the moondial turned, and the stone around the dial itself started to slide away into the ground, forming a set of stairs.
"Very clever, Mother," Serana said to herself. "Very clever." She gestured to the stairs, and looked at Hainin. "I've never been down there, but I bet this runs right under the courtyard into the tower ruins. At least we're getting closer. Let's go."
Hainin rotated around as she started down the stairs. "Which tower?" he grumbled, glancing up at the many towers surrounding the courtyard.
"Hainin!" Serana called to him.
"Yeah, I'm coming," he sighed, and started down the stairs after her. "Which tower?" he asked her when he'd reached where she'd stopped in front of a door at the foot of the stairs.
"My mother must have had a secret place, just to herself," Serana explained. "I'll bet that's where we're going."
Hainin exhaled. "Sure," he said after a moment. "I'll agree with you."
He opened the door, and the two of them crammed into the small room on the other side. Hainin pressed himself against the way opposite the door they'd come through, and glared at Serana.
"Secret place, huh?" he asked her.
Serana merely glared back, and pulled a lever that was hanging on the wall to her left. Almost at once, Hainin fell backwards as the wall behind him disappeared, letting out a groan as he did so. He fell right into a pile of dried blood, and he grunted, pulling himself back to his feet.
"What in Sithis's blood is this room supposed to be?" he demanded, frowning at the pile of meat and bones on the wooden table against one wall.
Serana ignored him, and led the way around the table to the stairs on the other side.
"Be careful," she said to Hainin, who stumbled over a bucket. "I don't know what might be around."
"Thank you," Hainin muttered, following her up the stairs. "That invokes so much hope inside me."
The stairs led them up to a door, which Hainin pushed open. It revealed a dining hall of sorts, complete with a table of skeletons that were very clearly going to awaken as soon as they walked into the room.
He looked at Serana. "How would you like to deal with this, princess?" he asked her.
"Would you stop calling me that?" Serana demanded, her voice echoing around the stone walls of the room. Almost immediately, the five skeletons seated at the table began to reanimate, and she glanced at Hainin before rushing into the room to deal with them.
Hainin followed after her, shaking his head to himself, and used his daggers to take down three while Serana dealt with the other two. When they were all dead, the two companions exchanged looks.
"Don't say anything," Serana muttered, turning away and stalking up the set of stairs that helped them continue forward.
Hainin smiled to himself, and leaned down to examine one of the skeletons. Nothing but bone, and the rusty sword it had been using. Oh well.
"Hainin!" Serana's screech from the upper floor caused him to jump, and he quickly hurried up the stairs as well, finding Serana cornered against a wall in the room at the top, a gargoyle doing its best to claw at her.
Hainin immediately pulled his bow off of his back and shot the gargoyle. His arrow hit it in the shoulder, and the beast turned around with a furious growl.
"Hey, ugly," Hainin said to it, pulling back another arrow. "Come at me."
The gargoyle charged, and Hainin let his arrow fly. It sank right into the gargoyle's eye, and the beast thudded to the ground, sliding a distance to Hainin's feet. He bent down and retrieved his arrow, before looking up at Serana, who had moved away from the wall.
"Are you all right?" he asked her.
"Yes, thank you," she said to him. "I didn't expect it to come to life."
"Guess you're lucky you aren't by yourself," Hainin replied, and Serana smiled.
"I am," she agreed, and then gestured for him to follow her.
The room on the other side of the wooden door she opened led out onto some stairs, and to some more skeletons. These were much easier to deal with than a gargoyle, and Serana took them both down with a single ice shard from her hand. Waiting at the top of the stairs for them was another gargoyle.
"I got this one," Serana told Hainin, and he put up his hands and backed away a few paces to watch.
She approached the statue of the beast, which had yet to react to their presence. As soon as she got closer, however, the stone around it shattered, and the gargoyle emerged, howling. As soon as it was no longer encased in stone, Serana gave it two quick strikes with lighting. The gargoyle howled again, and collapsed.
Serana looked over at Hainin, who clapped in approval. "Very good."
"Thank you," Serana replied, bowing. She then gestured for him to follow with her head, and Hainin did so, trailing after her around the corner and up more stairs, which led to another room with skeletons on the lower section, and a few on the opposite balcony. Hainin shot those two down, while Serana took care of the ones on the lower level. The two of them crossed to the stairs that led to the second balcony, and Hainin retrieved his arrows before following Serana to the stairs on the other side.
They took those ones two at a time, and Hainin flinched when he saw the gargoyle across the room, sitting on a pedestal in front of a pull chain.
He glanced to his left, and saw the gate that was sure to open when he pulled it, as well as the pull chain that would close it when they crossed through. He gestured to the second one, and Serana frowned, but nodded, understanding.
Hainin nodded back, and slowly crept towards the gargoyle in front of the pull chain. Swallowing, he sidled up next to it, and pulled the chain down. Almost at once, the gargoyle started to awaken, and Hainin turned tail and ran back towards Serana, who quickly darted through the now open gate, and placed her hand on the second pull chain.
"Pull it!" he shouted to her, aware of the gargoyle right on his heels.
Serana did as he said, and Hainin dove underneath the gate just before it fell, rolling as he hit the ground, and coming up on his knees again. The gargoyle ran right into the gate, growling, and Hainin let out a weak laugh before staggering to his feet.
"Good teamwork," he said to Serana, setting a hand on her shoulder to support his weight, because his knees felt very weak.
"That was a nice roll," she responded, chuckling. "You all right?"
"Oh, yeah," Hainin answered, blinking a few times. "Definitely. Let's keep moving."
After climbing up another set of stairs and killing off a skeleton and another gargoyle, the two of them found themselves in what looked to Hainin like a throne room. Two skeletons waited on balconies on either side of the room, which Hainin took down with two shots of his bow. Serana helped by taking care of the three that were on the same level as them.
Together, the two of them crossed the room and went up more stairs. Stairs led to another door, which led to even more stairs and another door.
"When will this end?" Hainin asked as he threw the door open. In response, he found himself face to face with giant double doors, a sure sign they were nearing the room they were looking for. Too happy to say anything, Hainin darted over to the doors and threw them open, and regretted it almost immediately. Two gargoyles were waiting on the other side of the doors.
"Serana?" Hainin asked weakly, diving away from the doors and behind a pile of rubble, preparing an arrow as soon as he could. He listened as Serana fired some lighting, and as one of the gargoyles snarled in response. Hainin reemerged from behind the rubble and shot the gargoyle that Serana wasn't dealing with. His arrow embedded itself in the beast's shoulder, which only made the gargoyle more angry. It turned away from Serana and rushed towards Hainin instead, who rolled back behind the rubble. The gargoyle ran head first into it, and let out a weak groan. Hainin opened his eyes, which he had squeezed shut, as silence fell.
He stepped out from behind the rubble, and let out a yelp when he came face to face with… Serana.
She lifted an eyebrow and crossed her arms. "You good?" she queried, smiling.
Hainin let out a grunt and crossed his own arms. "Are you?"
Serana nodded, and held up a ruby. "The one I fought had this. Kind of pretty, don't you think?"
"Yes," Hainin replied, lowering his arms. "Let's keep going, huh?"
He turned and led the way back towards the room the two gargoyles had come out of. The room had two other statues, both that were still statues, and a set of coffins in the corner. A fireplace sat across from the door. There were no other ways out.
"Blast," Hainin sighed, glancing over at Serana as she stepped into the room. "What now?"
Serana shook her head and walked over to the coffins. "There has to be something…"
Hainin watched her for a moment, and then he went over to the fireplace. Examining it, he placed one hand on the stone and another on one of the candle holders attached to it. It seemed loose.
Frowning to himself, Hainin tilted the candle holder. Almost at once, the fireplace separated into two pieces, and one disappeared upwards while the other went into the floor. Hainin smiled to himself, and looked at Serana.
"Leave it to my mother," she sighed, "always smarter than I gave her credit for."
"Your mother?" Hainin asked as Serana started up the stairs the fireplace had been hiding. "What about me?"
"You're smarter than I give you credit for, too," she responded, not looking back.
That was good enough for Hainin. He followed her up the many different flights to a door, which Serana pushed open. Hainin stepped through first, and almost stumbled down the stairs on the other side, which lead down into a big room, complete with a second story and a giant circle in the middle of the floor. Bookshelves lined one wall to his right, and tables littered with different alchemic ingredients dotted the whole room.
"Look at this place," Serana said, walking around Hainin. "This must be it." She went over to one of the tables. "I knew she was deep into necromancy, I mean, she taught me everything I know. But I had no idea she had a setup like this." She gestured to the ingredients on the table. "Look at all this. She must have spent years collecting all these components." She turned away from the table. "And what's this thing?" She gestured to the circle on the floor. "I'm not sure what this is exactly, but it must be something."
She turned to Hainin again, who was waiting for instructions. "Let's take a look around. There has to be something here that tells us where she's gone."
"What should we be looking for?" Hainin asked her.
"My mother was meticulous about her research," Serana answered. "If we can find her notes, there might be some hints in there."
"So, a journal or something?" Hainin asked, glancing at the bookshelves.
"That might be a good place to start," Serana agreed.
Hainin nodded, and crossed over to the bookshelves to pick through them and try to find Valerica's journal. As he did so, he glanced back at Serana, who had walked over to examine another table. "So… she never let you in on this place, huh?" he queried.
"I didn't even know it existed," Serana answered. "She had an alchemy set up in her drawing room, but nothing that comes close to what's here."
"And she researched necromancy?" Hainin inquired, remembering Festus and feeling an arrow of sadness go through him.
"That's what it looks like, though I'm not sure why. Not longevity, that's for sure. Sort of a waste of time for our kind." She paused and glanced over at Hainin. "My kind."
Hainin wasn't listening. He'd found a leather-bound journal, and he opened it to the middle. The entry he found was dated as 27th Last Seed, and it mentioned Harkon and the prophecy, but nothing about where Valerica had gone. The next entry was for the following day, and it mentioned a breakthrough. She'd opened a portal into the Soul Cairn, but only for a few moments. She said that she needed to get it open for longer, if she wanted to get away from Harkon, forever if necessary.
Sighing, Hainin closed the journal, deciding the rest was for Serana's eyes only. He turned away from the bookshelves and carried the journal over to where she stood next to one of the tables.
"I found it," he told her.
"Really? Let me see," Serana said, taking the journal from him. She opened it to the same page he had, and began to read through the writing there, frowning to herself as she turned the pages.
Hainin let her read it for a minute, and then he spoke: "There's mention of a Soul Cairn."
"I only know what she told me," Serana said, glancing up from the journal. "She had a theory about soul gems, that the souls inside them don't vanish when they're used… they end up in the Soul Cairn."
"Why did she care about where the souls went?" Hainin asked, frowning.
"The Soul Cairn is home to very powerful beings. Necromancers send them souls, and receive powers of their own in return. My mother spent a lot of time trying to contact them directly, to travel to the Soul Cairn herself," Serana explained, looking back down at the journal.
"So… if she made it there, that's where we'll find her?" Hainin guessed.
Serana nodded. "The circle in the center of the room must be the portal she mentions here. If I'm reading this right, the formula here should give us safe passage into the Soul Cairn. We need some soul gem shards, some finely-ground bone meal, and a bit of purified void salts. Everything should be here in the lab…" She trailed off, and then cursed to herself. "Dammit."
"What's wrong?" Hainin asked, prepared to give up their quest entirely.
"We'll need a sample of her blood," Serana explained. "Which… if we could get that, we wouldn't be trying to do this at all."
Hainin tilted his head. "You're her daughter."
Serana thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. "Not bad. We'll have to hope it's good enough. Mistakes with portals like these can be… gruesome."
"Lovely," Hainin sighed, and then walked away to find the ingredients they needed. Together, he and Serana found the shards, the bone meal, and the void salts, and they reconvened up on the second floor, where Serana put all of the ingredients they'd found into the dish waiting there.
She then looked at him. "Are you sure you're ready to go? I'm not exactly sure what's going to happen when I add my blood."
Hainin glanced at her. "Can I ask you something first?"
"Sure, what is it?" Serana inquired, placing a hand on her hip.
"What happens when we find your mother?" The question had been bothering him since she'd first mentioned Valerica.
Serana exhaled. "I've been asking myself the same question since we came to the castle. She was so sure of what we did to my father, I couldn't help but go along with her." The vampire glanced downwards. "I never thought of the cost."
Hainin considered that, and then shook his head. "I can't say I know what she was thinking," he said.
"Neither can I," Serana responded. "She always seemed happy, before we heard the prophecy. Then it all changed. She became a different person. They both did."
"Guess we won't know anything more until we find her," Hainin said after a moment.
"Yes… yes, you're right." Serana looked up again. "Sorry. I just didn't expect anyone to care how I felt about her." She smiled. "Thank you. Are we ready now?"
Hainin glanced from the dish to the circle on the floor, and then at Serana. If he was being honest, he was afraid. The Soul Cairn must be a part of the Oblivion, and he didn't want to go there so soon. What if they couldn't return? He'd be leaving behind everything, and everyone he cared about, and they'd no longer be able to stop Harkon from completing the prophecy.
And yet, they had no other choice, did they? It was go into the Soul Cairn to find Valerica, or try to figure out what the first Elder Scroll had meant by mentioning a bow. And Hainin honestly had no ideas.
"All right," he said. "Let's get that portal open."
Serana raised her wrist. "Here goes." She bit into it, and let a few drops of blood spatter onto the ingredients in the dish before withdrawing her arm. The room started to shake, and the circle in the center of the room began to glow purple. The different sections began to rise, and slide together before the balcony, forming a set of stairs down into what was left, which was a giant, purple portal in the ground.
"By the blood of my ancestors…" Serana said, blinking. "She actually did it… created a portal to the Soul Cairn. Incredible." She then let out a laugh and glanced at Hainin. "We're lucky you're already a vampire."
"Why's that?" Hainin asked, not seeing anything lucky about it.
"Humans can't enter the Soul Cairn without getting their soul sucked out of them as a sort of… payment. We avoided that." Serana gestured to the portal. "You don't have a soul to get sucked out of you."
"Well, goody," Hainin grumbled. "What amazing luck we have."
Serana reached over and touched his shoulder, and Hainin glanced at her. "Soon, Hainin," she said quietly. "I promise."
Hainin exhaled. "Yeah, I know," he answered. "Sorry. Let's go."
He started down the stairs towards the portal, and hesitated. Glancing back at Serana, he recognized grim determination on her face, and he nodded to himself before turning back around, and stepping right into the portal.
And on Sunday we'll return to Nazir and Agmaer! See you then, friends!