He tumbled into the shadows with a forceful splash, darkness enveloping him. He flailed in the abyss, blackness swimming by his vision like loosely floating ashes. His vision blurred and blacked out, a formless mass of force twisting his limbs about, in directions he could not comprehend.
A scream welled in the pits of his lungs, but when he opened his lips to release it, there was nothing that came out. Nothing but the roar of the ocean in his ears.
When his soundless scream tapered off, lost to the black, he drew in a deep breath. Then released it. Again. And again. Faster, more frantic with each passing second that he was lost in the ashen veil cast over his eyes.
Dirty, sludgy water slipped over his fingers before streaming into his fading surroundings.
A gleam of silvery metal- too dull to truly be silver, too lustrous to be mere steel- caught his eye. Though it was but a passing glimpse, a sliver of color in the torrential mire, he knew what it was.
He had always known what it was.
The broken chain of a free man.
The half-conjured breath that he'd been preparing was slammed out of him, his bones resounding with the force. The whipping forces that had been swarming him tapered off into glimmering ripples, and soft streams of azure wrapped around his limbs, pulling him down… down…
Baleful red eyes bled into his sight, dots of hard crimson glaring at him from a shadowy mass of flesh. A razor maw, icy teeth gleaming like chrome, gnashed and snapped at him.
He gasped, a chill piercing through the ice water which streamed over his skin.
Wait!
He called out helplessly into the void, the death hound's gangly limbs pawing at the serene space between them. Propelling its snout, its ravenous maw, ever closer to him. To his wrist, the thin clouds of red that were floating out from beneath the furs tied over the flesh.
To the chain that bound it all together.
No. No!
It wasn't fair!
They said it hadn't been his fate to die!
His arms flailed helplessly against the grip of the sea, his legs kicked aimlessly in the void.
And then the death hound fell still. It seemed to happen in a flash, the blink of an eye- an ice spike speared through the top of the hound's head, ripping out through a seamless fissure beneath its jaw. Robbed of its vigor, it floated down past Cedric, decayed paws grazing against his wrist lamely. Touching, ever so slightly, upon the chain.
When it fell out of his sight, the figure that took its place was unmistakable. Draped in royal red, her raven locks of hair fluttering around her porcelain visage, was Sera. The sun's rays gleamed all around her, dancing through drifts of snow and rippling water both as she descended with the grace of a goddess, her hand reaching out for his.
He obliged gladly, chained wrist rising up, the metal links glimmering in the light. His fingers floating, closer, ever closer, to Sera.
But his breathing seemed to grow thinner with each passing second, and with it, his vision began blurring.
So close. So close…
His fingers grazed past hers. Quivering, as though lost in a bubble of haziness that… that wasn't-
Her hand, cold and smoothing, touched upon his lips. He gasped, and the sharpness suddenly returned to his vision. The icy water stung his skin, soaked his clothes.
But he was awake. And Sera was there, smile more radiant than the light behind her, grasping once more at his hands. Pulling him up out of the nightmare.
0-0-0
He collapsed onto the slick stone steps, the inhuman chill of the sea finally catching up to his flesh in quaking convulsions.
"Oh, shit," he heard Sera hiss as her shadow fell over him, the increasingly familiar but certainly not unwelcome sensation of her arms wrapping around him buzzing at his senses from beyond a wall of numbing pain.
Even so, it couldn't crush the swell of sheer happiness in his heart.
"I'm fine," he said shakily, his clammy hands trembling against Sera's, his teeth chattering.
"No. You're definitely not," she continued, face hard set in concern. "Gods damn it. I should've expected this."
"E-expected what?"
"The possibility of you freezing to death in the ocean. It didn't even cross my mind. Damn it."
A shaky sigh left her lips as she held her palm next to his face, embers faintly floating around the skin. The warmth washed over him, and he released a breath, eyes flickering shut in contentness.
"Cedric!"
"Mm?"
"Oh, gods, I thought I'd lost you for a second."
"Mm."
"Hold still dammit, I need to warm you up some before we head out, or you'll never make it like this. Open your eyes."
He obeyed- how could he not?
"Look at me."
He did just that, losing himself in the supple amber, and the velvety center of her iris.
You're beautiful.
Somehow though, even now, he couldn't bring himself to say the words. A part of him worried it would… ruin it all. After all this.
The thought was unbearable.
"It's finally over," he breathed.
"What?"
"The nightmares. The dreams, this chain," he said, a hearty laugh breaking through the ice streaking over his skin. "You saved me. You slew the beast."
Her brows furrowed, momentarily breaking the visage of perfection staring down at him. "It's not over until we're on that boat and back at the mainland. Even then, I don't know if we'll ever be truly safe." A tenderness seeped into her voice with those last words, her gaze turning upwards, distantly, at the castle. "I don't know if you'll be safe. If you stay with me."
He shook his head. "There's nowhere else I'd rather be."
She didn't say anything for some time.
0-0-0
He wasn't sure how long he'd laid there in Sera's warm grasp, embers dancing along his skin, but it felt like a blissful eternity. The chain remained bound around his wrist, its cold grasp no longer imprisoning him.
It didn't last.
The shivers finally seemed to catch up to him through the soaked mass of furs he still wore, his vision swimming as Sera hauled him up.
The rest of their escape passed by in a cold blur.
When he awoke again, he did so lying against the back of a wooden boat, its rocking waves lulling the nausea that lingered in his skull.
It was a bit larger than the last one he remembered, the one they arrived at the castle in- not by much, but there was enough room for his legs to be stretched out now.
Sera's unmistakable figure was poised at the front of the boat, her hair, this time free of the hood that confined it, flowing gracefully in windborne snow.
His mouth seemed to move of its own accord, before the sluggish musings in his mind could even fully process what he was about to say.
"You're… pretty amazing. Everything… you pulled off."
She didn't answer, but did look over her shoulder at him. The winds kicked up her hair, sending some errant strands streaking over her striking eyes. She smiled. He smiled back.
That was all he really cared for at the moment, wasn't it?
Yeah.
His eyelids were heavy. As though the snow falling upon his lashes were weighing them down. Easing him to rest.
He couldn't rest though, not just yet- a strange instinct at the back his mind willed him not to, to endure the pain just a while longer. It dug beneath the flesh of his eyelids, like chilling fingernails. It grasped him by the neck, turned his attention to an ominous hump which rose from the sea in the mist of snow. Breaching the surface, like… an otherworldly creature, rising from the water.
"Hey," he breathed, Sera looking back silently at him again, no smiles to be found on her lips this time. That was okay though. "What is that?"
His arm wavered, almost feeling as though it was flapping in the wind as he aimed his finger at the shadowy silhouette out there.
Sera's head turned back around to the front, silent for the moment He was about to slump back down, against the wooden board at his back, before she spoke, her soft words nearly lost in the wind. "That's just an island, Cedric."
"Oh. Mm. Mmm."
"Just hang in there."
He didn't have anything to hang on to, unfortunately.
So he kept himself preoccupied, distracted, with watching the shapes that scrolled by in the haze of snow. Calling them out when they didn't quite register to his slipping consciousness.
There were a lot that were just pieces of ice, floating on the water. Sometimes there were creatures which laid on them- great, lumbering heaps of stony grey flesh, the only thing keeping him from fully mistaking them for rocks being the trio of tusks that protruded from their front.
His eyes always seemed to turn back to that island though. Growing larger. Closer.
It grew to the point that it loomed over them, a solitary hump of rock, ice sheets floating in the shadow-cast waters beneath it. Tattered planks of wood, sheathed in frosty crusts, were sparsely strewn over the ice-sheet shore. Three of those lumpy, tusked creatures- horkers, he think Sera had called them- lounged about around them.
It felt as though their beady black eyes were following him.
"That's strange," he heard Sera whisper, her voice too soft to be meant to pierce the veil of snow around them. "I didn't think there'd be a landmass that large this deep in the ice fields."
The ice fields.
Those words reverberated in the back of his mind, echoing in a maddening voice. The wind howled by, ghostly whispers grazing by his ears.
The Sea of Ghosts.
A chill raced down his spine, rushing across his shoulder and jabbing at the wound in his wrist. He held it up, eyes narrowing on the metal links. It was almost as though there was… something inside the loops, that dangled from the knot he'd tied. Beyond them, peering at him through the thin slits in the metal where the rings conjoined.
His arm fell.
Shadowy shapes on the water, scattered across the surface in the distance.
"Hey, Sera."
She didn't answer, keeping her gaze firmly set on their surroundings, her arms churning the paddles that propelled them forward.
But that was okay.
He leaned back, shuffling his feet ever so slightly, shaking the clumped locks of his hair out of his eyes.
The shapes grew larger. Closer. Too fast to be ice on the water. He squinted again, and when that was not enough, he shuffled up to the edge of the boat, the shift in his weight eliciting a startled cry from Sera.
That wasn't okay.
And neither was the shapes he was seeing, he realized, as they drew close enough for him to see the amber and red eyes they carried.
"Sera, I think-"
0-0-0
Serana turned around in time to see the ice spike spear through Cedric's chest. His eyes were wide, a blankness flashing over those blue irises. Pale and cold.
They broke from her gaze as he fell against the back of the boat, the tapered end of the stake that impaled him scraping loudly against the wood. His arms trembled. His boots kicked weakly, the soles slapping against the back of her legs. Shivering mumbles spilled out from his lips like streams of blood.
Her teeth ground together, a whimper that had been threatening to break out from her throat instead leaving as a cold hiss. She released the oars, splashing them into the water as she all but dove over to Cedric.
Lightning flashed, striking against the hull of the boat and splintering in a crack of thunder. A searing wound burned through where Serana had been squatting just moments earlier, embers dancing over frosted wood. Embers that quickly burst into flame. Flames that spread along the inside of the listing boat, creeping ever closer to her.
To Cedric.
His pulse beat languidly against her skin now. His breath was barely noticeable on her cheek over the wind.
Fingers scrabbling for purchase in his frosted hair, she dragged him down, his head smacking limply against the wooden hull of the boat. A garbled exclamation ripped out from his lips, drowning out the apology that she whispered through trembling teeth.
Another bolt of violet strands seared at them, flashing close enough to singe the rim of the wood she pressed herself up against. Close enough to cast a spray of white-hot sparks over her cheek, the sting of them rippling over her nerves.
The hull of the boat creaked in agony, the fire crackling as it ate away at the boat's ribbed insides.
Neither of those sounds registered in her ears more than Cedric's panicked moans.
His limbs flailed, Serana having to keep an arm pressed tightly over his neck and hands to keep them from peeking over the rim of the boat.
Her eyes darted around, looking around for something, anything which could help them-
Cedric's cries rose in pitch. His feet kicked frantically against his own legs now, tinges of bright orange tracing over the sides of his boots.
-nothing.
There was nothing in the boat.
She pressed her forehead up against the side of Cedric's head. Squeezed her eyes shut. Closed a hand over Cedric's lips again, magicka glowing at her raw fingertips. She could barely find the strength to channel it forth, feeling his teeth gnash beneath her palm, her magick unable to silence his blood curdling wails.
When she finished, wincing as his cries split against her ears in their obstructed horror, she looped one arm underneath him. Her other grasped the rim of the boat above her head, the nerves at the tips of her fingers screeching in protest as her skin ground into the orange spots that still danced on the wood. And then, with all the strength she could muster, she pulled.
The boat, what remained of it, slipped out from underneath them, plunging them once more into the sea. Searing white bubbles clouded them from the blackened and splintering hull, her teeth biting down and choking back a cry of agony.
She forced her eyes to remain open, glancing over, making sure that Cedric's chest heaved away in spite of the icy spear driven through it, defying reality itself as her spell channeled air into his lungs.
That was all she could do for him.
And for the moment, all she could do for herself. She brought her hand up to her own lips.
The panicked sob that she'd been holding in eked out ahead of her first breath as her cheeks deflated. Her lungs shook as her eyes darted around, racing up, down, and around their sinking bodies.
Her legs kicked aimlessly at the water, only enough to keep them from being dragged down any lower- there was nowhere to go. If they surfaced, their pursuers- the silhouettes of two fat boats murky through the veil of water and blowing snow between them- would fry them as soon as they were spotted.
How did this happen?
She'd made sure nobody had been following them – the castle halls had been dead empty when she left! Nobody had stopped them out on the pier!
At least, nobody she'd seen…
I fucked up.
She shook her head blindly in the water, hair lashing about over her face. Cedric's arms were slipping out of hers.
Those boats had to be Volkihar. Nobody else would be so brazen as to attack at that distance, in the middle of the damned sea.
She grabbed Cedric by the shoulders, pulled him up to her as close as she could without driving the spike in his chest into herself as well. His blue eyes rippled in the water, but they held her gaze. She ran a finger down the side of his numbed cheeks, no tint of pink to be found in them now.
I'm sorry.
Her words floated out soundlessly. She wondered if he would even be able to read them off of her lips- he had no response to offer, the blink in his eyes, the faint pulse she could feel through his freezing skin, the only indications she had that he wasn't already dead.
She glanced up, only able to watch as those boats drifted closer. Their shadows entwining with that which the island cast over them all. The steaming tatters of the boat she and Cedric had taken still bubbled above them, the flicker of orange quivering fuzzily in the deluge of snow up above.
Something plunged through the ice, a muted crack rippling down to her ears. Another. And then one more.
Her eyes trailed over towards the looming, dark mass of the island, catching the sight of three horkers breaching down through the ice sheets. Glistening shards floated around the bubbly trail of their impact, their fat flippers carrying them down through the water at an alarming speed.
She gulped, gripping Cedric with one arm as her other reached down to the sword sheathed at her hip.
The magicka in her veins still flowed, but the current seemed to have numbed and tapered somewhat already. She needed it more to keep Cedric breathing.
But the horkers didn't draw any closer. The trio streamed right past them as though they weren't even there, their lumpy bodies gliding down into the shadowy rock which sloped away from the island. And then they disappeared entirely. Swallowed by the dark.
Her eyes narrowed.
The familiar mouth of a tunnel, opening out from the deep rock, sharpened into focus.
If they couldn't go up, then they had to go down.
She didn't pause to think on it any longer- her legs propelled her and Cedric towards it.