Quick updates are a thing when I have no imminent test/horrific amount of schoolwork/farm chores to do!

First half of the chapter inspired by a certain friendly little chap from down under. You know who you are.

Chapter thirty-six: Everything is going well, for some

"No, no, no! You are holding the daggers like you are going to use them to chop down a tree! Softer, child. Think of the blade like a bird: if you strangle it, it will die, and if you hold it too loosely, it will escape your paw! Either way, you will be without weapon, and you kind cannot fall back on their claws!"

Louise adjusted her grip until her feline instructor was satisfied, and sighed internally. Asking Q'jaed for training might not have been the wisest idea. She was improving, but had to fight the urge to blow her instructor into small, meaty chunks on an hourly basis.

Ysmir was watching the two others from beside their tent, sitting relaxed with his back against a tree. It was nice to see a master at his craft teach his friend. Being only passingly familiar with daggers and swords, he was happy to see Louise taught by someone skilled. After all, once they cured her vampirism she would no longer be able to rely on inhuman stamina, speed and agility to compensate for lack of skill.

"Good, good! But stay calm; one who fights in wrath is easily struck down by the simplest feint!"

Louise grit her teeth and lunged toward her instructor, her blade aimed at his stomach. Q'jaed spun round, grabbing her wrist, and used his momentum to send her tumbling on the ground.

"In battle, try to keep your opponent on his toes. Surprise him, and he will make mistakes. You thought I would avoid your stab, and were surprised when I countered it. Look where that brought you."

Standing up and brushing the dirt off of her clothes, Louise started circling, which Q'jaed immediately mirrored. He continued talking as he walked, his voice remaining playful.

"The long dagger, or short sword, is an excellent weapon; decent in a straight fight, good in an ambush, with longer reach than a simple knife, and it upholds the illusion that you are one who fights fairly."

Louise dashed toward him, and tried to slice at his leg, but the attack was deflected when the instructor parried with his black longsword. Knowing from experience that a swordfight with the cat man was a very bad idea, she jumped back, and resumed circling.

"Walk with a sword, long or short, at your hip, and civilized people think you honourable. Nords, like your familiar, see the sword as a weapon of skill, whereas a mace shows brute strength and the axe a mix of both. This is not very correct, but swords do require less strength and more skill than most other weapons, bar maybe daggers."

Q'jaed struck out with the flat of his sword, hitting Louise on her right ankle and breaking her balance. As she fell, he drew back to his previous spot.

"It is hard to outright block an attack with only one hand, little one. But parrying and dodging can and should always be done. Your familiar is in heavy armour; he could walk across a battlefield with little danger to himself, unless he finds a skilled opponent who knows where to strike."

Ysmir nodded, watching as Louise got up from the ground again, as the Khajiit continued lecturing. Both instructor and trainee were moving with extreme grace and speed, from decades of practice and supernatural powers respectively.

"You and I, we use lighter and less protective armour. It is a trade-off: more speed, higher degree of movement, and greater agility, but lesser protection. Whereas he can block, we should dodge whenever possible."

Here, as Louise had gotten into her battle stance again, Q'jaed waved Ysmir forward.

"When in light armour, as a general rule it is unwise to fight a more skilled opponent in light armour, and since this one seriously doubt you are going to face anyone so skilled as Q'jaed, it would do you better to train with your familiar. Besides, should you get a lucky hit in, he can heal himself."

Backing off to give them more room, he continued.

"Now, before you start fighting, try to find the weak points in his armour. Where do you think they are?"

Louise did not need to think for long. "The joints. Arm pits. Where the different pieces meet."

The Khajiit grinned, showing off his teeth. "Very good. Try to strike there. He cannot fight very well with a hole in him, no matter where it is."

Ysmir raised his shield and mace, and Louise began circling, feinting now and again to keep him on his toes. Ysmir slowly turned, making sure to keep facing her. His helmet was imposing, true, but the field of vision in that thing was not wide.

Thinking to utilize her smaller size and vastly superior speed, Louise dashed forth, dodged the swung mace and threw herself under the blocking shield. As Ysmir turned, she jumped, her unnatural power sending her up to perch on his left pauldron. When he bent over to dislodge her, she stomped down on the back of his helmet, making him lose balance and stagger backward. Q'jaed laughed and clapped.

"Marvellous! Excellent! I think you have a talent for fighting heavy opponents, girl!"

Louise smiled, and curtsied in jest. Ysmir spoke up.

"Of course, in a real fight I would not act as I did now. You would have been caught in a Repel Undead spell almost instantly, if I had not used the Thu'um to strike you down already. Defeating common warriors with martial tactics is all well and good, but the next training session will be on the arcane."

The cat man shuddered. "I do not like magic much. You will not use me in those lessons."

Louise, on the other hand, was very pleased with herself. Her skill and knowledge pools were both increasing much more rapidly than when she attended the academy, most likely since this was magic she could actually perform.

Truly, the journey seemed to be one of excellent fortune.

Viewpoint change!

King Joseph was not happy. He was tired, his back hurt, the horrible fact that he was sleeping in the stables of all places the inn had to offer was hitting him like a charging rhino, and his travel companions had been talking nonstop for the last three hours.

It had started relatively innocently. Normal conversation, nothing pleasant to listen to, but he could tune it out like he had used to do with the incessant nagging of his advisors. Then, it got so, so much worse with a simple question.

"So, where do you come from?" When Frea decided to give him back his wand, the first thing he would do was explode the head of that Serana woman.

Their discussion had been animate, impossible to block out, and worst of all, it was slightly interesting. Not so interesting that he would want to join in, thank Founder, but enough that he could not keep himself from listening to them. Even if half the words they were speaking made no sense.

They had several theories, he got that. Apparently they were from similar places but not the same, since Frea had never heard of Serana's father, who was apparently a lord. Serana had heard of the island Frea lived on, though, but never visited it.

Neither commented on how Serana's eyes glowed in the dark, or how Frea now and then spoke in a different tone of voice with vastly increased vocabulary.

By now, they were just telling each other stories. Frea was listening intently as Serana described some place called the Soul cairn. It sounded awful. Just like their speaking.

The king of Gallia, one of the most powerful men alive and by his own reckoning quite mentally unsound, forced down his pride and stuffed his ears with some softer pieces of hay, laid down and tried to fall asleep.

Behind him, Frea paused in her explanation of her powers and their origin to look at the writhing body of her charge. "Ah, he reminds me so of Neloth, but duller."

"I heard that, you bunch-backed toad!"

"You're one to talk, you could make the Greedy man afraid of losing his title!"

Serana pinched her nose bridge, and then raised her hands to call for silence. "Please, you two. Surely you can at least act like functioning adults? Please, Frea, go back to your fascinating explanation."

Joseph grumbled, but fell asleep soon, whilst the women continued the talk.

"So, as I was saying, we had no way of defending ourselves against Miraak and his foul sorcery. Not to mention the occasional dragon attack from his pets, on short excursions from apocrypha. We were down to only myself, my father the shaman, and a little girl. Then, my father had a vision from the All-father, showing him a way to save the village and the island. For the plan to work, he needed a dragon, and a champion to fight the evil Miraak. It was me or a ten-year-old. I volunteered."

"So, what did he do?"

"We waited until the next dragon attack, where my father brought it down with magic, and I slew the beast. Just as his soul and essence were leaving the mortal plane to be resurrected by Miraak, my father manged to… redirect the soul. It took a lot of power, but he trapped the dragon's soul in my body, and fused us together."

"Why in the name of Molag Bal did you two do that?!"

"Well, Miraak was dragonborn. He had the soul of a dragon in a mortal body, and he could use his nature to absorb other dragon souls into himself, use the Thu'um, and apparently do many other things. As a… synthetic dragonborn, I can also use those abilities, but I lack his extreme strength, hardiness and so on. And, of course, I have two souls trapped inside one body. That I have not gone insane yet is a testament to my willpower."

Frea's eyes began to glow softly here, and her voice lowered an octave. "We attempt to cooperate, when possible. I have grown to accept this condition; after all, what is whatever is left of her life to one who has existed since the dawn? I am Sah-rot-aar."

Viewpoint change!

Everything was going terribly. Eight sanctuaries, cleaned out in just a single week. At least thirty of her subordinates had been slaughtered, and the enemy was getting dangerously close to Newcastle itself. Very few scouts returned alive, and those that did had wildly different reports to tell: some spoke of mage troops in plate mail, using protective magic and maces to great efficiency. Others talked of cultist-like mages, returning their companions from the brink of death within a matter of seconds, and spreading unnatural fear into their enemies. Most frightening were the accounts of what one scout claimed were called cleansers, who could apparently reduce their enemies to ash from a great distance, and wrest control of thralls.

All in all, there seemed to either be several different groups of fighters, or one with many specialized troops. Accounts on enemy strength also varied, from as few as a hundred to an unending army, spelling doom for all undead in Albion.

Lady Sheffield was not happy. She had had such a good thing going; the resistance had pulled back to the Sherwood, where they could be kept from doing any harm, and she and her children had a small country of more or less willing subjects to feed from. Now, it seemed as if she would lose it all just as quickly as she had gained it when she killed Cromwell and turned his Reconquista into her pawns. She was on edge, screaming orders at her forces and occasionally taking a few seconds to strangle the closest thrall until she had worked out a little rage.

It was on the first day of the second week of the invasion that the messenger reached her court. She was discussing the merits of escaping the country with her advisors, who suggested against it, when he burst into the room. Since he was one of her underlings, she waved to let him know to speak.

"My queen, I come from the village of Cheddar, since three months held by our forces, but no more. The enemies attacked us yesterday, and I was the only vampiric survivor."

One of her advisors scoffed. "You mean to tell us you defeated them by yourself?"

"No, sir. They took the village with barely any resistance. None of our scouts had warned us, and we were totally unprepared. They let me go, once the others were ash. To bring a message."

Sheffield was interested. Would her enemies try to get her to surrender? In that case, they would find themselves wanting. "What is this message?"

The messenger would likely have paled, had he not already been white as a sheet from undeath. He approached her throne, bowed, and handed her a sealed scroll. She broke the seal, and rolled it out to read.

You have perverted this land, vampire. We have come to make it right again. No matter your forces, you will have no chance against us. Our zeal fuels our righteous crusade. When the day is won and your hold on this land is broken, when the people are free of your terror, they will spread our name.

We keep the vigil, and we are the vigil. May his mercy be upon you, for we have none to spare.

End of chapter 36

Author's comments:

You know, there's a very well known saying in Sweden. It goes 'One who waits for something good, never waits for too long'.

I despise this saying. If whatever you're waiting on is good, you are ALWAYS waiting too long, damn it!

So here, suck on this for a little while. There are no new Easter eggs in this chapter, so ration to ones from last time.

See you guys later.

Ossa out!