She didn't pause to think over how lucky they were that the tunnel had surfaced inside a cave. Didn't pause to wonder where the horkers that they'd followed in had gone.
All she could afford to do was keep moving forward- wherever forward led now.
Cedric's breathing grew more ragged against her cheek with each step they took, the frantic heat of it dripping down her clammy white skin like molten metal. Her own breaths, husky and panting, echoed down the icy tunnel in tune with his failing heartbeat. She tried to ignore the ebbing vitality in the pulses of his skin against hers, the increasing millimeters she had to drag him forwards by with each step. Tried to ignore the stake of ice embedded in his weakly heaving chest, jabbing into her periphery.
Voices rang out from behind them, twisting down to Serana's ears around water-slicked corners and between translucent icicles. Her arm tightened around Cedric, pulling his sagging body closer to hers as she powered forth into longer strides.
She rounded a corner, hearing those voices twisting into undulating taunts, bellowing all around her from the garbled reflections in the grimy sheets of ice that ran down rock.
She caught a glimpse of herself in there- her hair drooping like a wet mop, salt-streaked strands warping in with the frozen contortions stretching over the wall.
It fell away as she rounded a corner.
Her breath hitched as she came face-to-tusk with a massive horker, the shriveled hide of its lumpy body nearly scraping up to the stalagmites hanging from the ceiling.
Cedric audibly shuddered, a slur of incomprehensible noises spilling out from his frosted lips.
The only thing that kept Serana's frayed nerves from driving her back was the realization that its jowls dangled loosely from its sagging face, unable to obscure the dry gash that split down between its eyes.
"Come on," she murmured, instinctively pulling Cedric's body closer to hers as she led them past, a renewed echo of warped shouts on her ears driving her past the bizarre sight.
The horker wasn't one of the ones they'd followed in. The blood streaked over the thin stretch of stone left between it and the wall flaked against her boots, her footsteps.
Somehow, that was even more disconcerting.
She braced Cedric against her as she dug into the slick stone of the slope winding down before them. A shroud of dimness enveloped the open cavern that lay at the bottom of it.
Serana snaked her free hand around her front and grasped one of his, the flowing warmth in his palm trickling away like the water droplets that dripped down from the stalactites above.
"You're gonna be okay," she whispered into his ear, strands of his sweat and salt crusted black hair grazing against her face. A low moan was all he managed in response. She gave his hand a weak squeeze, quietly perturbed at how her fingers pressed through mere millimeters of tautly stretched flesh before touching on bone.
They ground their way down the rest of the slope. A drop of water from above beaded down her forehead before striking down on her brow. The cold sensation on that peculiar patch of flesh sent shivers running down her spine, vibrating against the Elder Scroll drawn over her back.
She drew in a cold breath, finding the frigidness somehow still comforting to her. Even though she knew it was killing Cedric.
That breath caught in her throat when she took Cedric down the last step on the slope. She froze mid-stride, Cedric rocking against her body at the sudden halt. He managed a blurred murmur of confusion before falling into shocked silence, his limp gaze aligning with Serana's at the array of figures standing in their way.
Yellow eyes, tinged with red irises, peered at them through the dimness. Sharp-toothed grins lined the visages of the half-dozen vampires before them- a grotesque conglomeration of the dregs of her father's court. Their drab red and grey garments hung loosely from their lithe bodies, the strips of deathly pale skin they left exposed stretching over thickly corded muscles.
One stood above them all, leaning against a craggy pillar in the center of the cavern. Combed black hair veiled his face, leaving only one gimlet eye visible.
He pushed off of the rock structure he'd been leaning against, striding out onto a small plateau which rose over the eyes before her. She could've sworn she heard the sound of claws scraping against stone underneath his feet.
Her ears prickled with the sound of more footsteps behind her, sliding over moist rock. She glanced back over her shoulder, over the drooping head of Cedric, and found with a sinking feeling in her chest that four more vampires were there now, blocking the ramp leading out.
"You know, Lady Serana," Sarpa called out, "I think I understand your fascination with this mortal now."
She held her silence, but freed one of her hands from Cedric, her other arm pulling him closer. The sensation of his fading breath on her neck, swirling with Sarpa's mocking words, bubbled at her nerves.
"There's something just intoxicating about the fear he emanates, isn't there? A surge in his blood, a pounding vigor that even other wildling mortals lack. I can practically hear it throbbing in the air."
She tried to ignore how those words seemed to resonate with the rhythm of Cedric's heartbeat. Tried to ignore how sharp it suddenly made her teeth feel against her own tongue.
"Could only imagine what it would feel like to sink my fangs into that."
"You won't touch him," she shot back, only all too aware of the growl that rumbled at the back of her throat.
"Ah. Keeping him all to yourself then? Such a shame. Like daughter like father though, I suppose."
"You don't know the first thing about me or my father." Her voice came out just above a snarl this time.
A chorus of chuckles rumbled around her. Sarpa's grin grew wider, but she could see his lithe hands clenching into fists. "I can say with certainty one thing about your father. He was right- empty bravado doesn't do you much credit," he said, voice dripping with venom. "But I do so love a good fight. Perhaps you'd be willing to entertain me in that regard at least? I would imagine Lady Hestla did not gift you a blade for mere decoration."
Sarpa did not move, but she could see the congregation of vampires beneath him and feel the four behind her inching forwards.
The blade Sarpa spoke of stayed sheathed and impotent at Serana's waist, her ability to wield it crippled by Cedric. A fact that Sarpa and his retinue seemed only all too aware of.
Fingers flexed around wicked weapons, deft hands brandishing them with playful flourishes. One vampire slid the edge of her sabre down her own bare arm, the blade running across dead white flesh. When the first drop of her blood snaked into the ghastly mouth carved into her weapon's handle, a wispy sheen of frost enveloped the curved length of her blade. The glassy green that naturally imbued the malachite and moonstone alloy was washed out, veins of icy white hardening the edge.
Another vampire hefted his hammer, the skin-wrapped shaft standing taller than he was. The bronze talon adorning the end of his weapon pierced through the jaws of a wolf's head, its cast iron visage sculpted into an expression of agony.
"These are fine examples of Lady Hestla's older works. I remember watching her toil in the smithy, right up until the hours before sunrise, every hammer strike she wrought upon the anvil punctuated by a zealous fire in her veins. Her weapons had such… expression to them. Such life."
Just as Sarpa finished, another vampire cracked a whip. The black leather tongue was crudely infused with iron barbs, its entire length steeped in a rusty dry red. Its wielder's eyes lit up at the sharp sound of it snapping against the air.
"They rivaled the twisted wonders crafted by the Dremora- yet when given the opportunity to work with the same metal they did, commissioned by Lord Harkon himself to smith a weapon worthy of his daughter's return, she made something so… pedestrian. I always wondered why. Perhaps we'll find out once you've returned."
Serana inhaled a steadying breath, blotting out Sarpa's ramblings, the sight of his followers advancing on her, even the pulse of Cedric's heartbeat against her own skin.
"We could discuss it over a nice cup of tea and blood. Perhaps the tray I brought up to your room hasn't even grown cold yet."
She couldn't use her blade, perhaps- but mere metal had never been her strongest weapon.
She flexed her free hand, letting magicka course through to her fingertips. Heat, like the fading blood rushing through Cedric's veins, flowing into embers, embers into sparks-
A plume of orange sprang to life in her palm, the illuminating tongues of fire giving the vampires around her brief pause.
The smile disappeared from Sarpa's boyish visage. "Do what you will with the mortal. But exercise some restraint with the Lady. We wouldn't want to send our Lord's daughter back to him in pieces."
The small, fluttering flame in her palm swelled with magickal energy at a surging pace, bubbling against the orb her fingers tried to shape it in with a white-hot fervor that threatened to consume her own flesh. A panicked, stray thought in the back of her mind envisioned just that for a moment; it was crushed by a steely coldness that clamped down on her tingling skin.
"You'll be the ones returning in pieces."
Her arm thrust forward, stagnant muscle straining against bone. Her eyes stung with the influx of incandescence that her fireball cast. The undulating tails of flame streaking behind it as it lanced out of her hand painted violent shadows across the walls.
Sarpa's retinue scattered, their bodies moving at a frenzied pace. Feet left the ground entirely as they leapt to the side.
One vampire, however, continued his lunging advance on her, a smirk twitching over his craggy lips as he slipped underneath the oncoming fireball like water around a rock. Not a second later, it impacted behind him, ravenous waves of searing white heat blowing past his figure and swallowing him whole. While his comrades hissed and jerked around the lashing tongues of flame left behind from the blinding luminescence, he danced with the fire. A shrill scream rang out from his melting lungs, shrieking echoes reverberating off the strobing walls. Scorching sludge peeled away from the clots of flame clinging to his bones.
Pivoting around as fast as she could with the limp form of Cedric grasped firmly in her other arm, she sucked in a deep breath, the scent of liquefying meat flooding her nostrils and searing through her deadened nerves. She suppressed a shudder, letting a fresh tide of magicka wash through her veins.
She righted herself in time to see a curved blade raised high, at the peak of its murderous arc down towards her. Its wielder's eyes glinted madly in the light dancing upon his fallen brethren.
Too close, too quick for her to even think, she acted.
Her palm shot up at the savage creature's sword arm, stopping just short of his elbow as the embers in her hand burst into a blossoming cloud of orange. The force of the explosion sent quivers through her bones, the backwash from the uncontrolled blast drowning her in a nauseating heat. She nearly choked, errant sparks flying back against her, burning bright dots catching onto her clothing.
But the oncoming swordsman had been checked, flame-shaped blade now bearing actual flames as it clattered to the ground. Scorched remnants of its wielder's fingers still clung to its smoking handle. A dry retch bubbled out from the blackened rags clinging to the swordsman's skull as his charred corpse sunk to its buckling knees.
From behind the crumbling black flakes peeling off his arm, another vampire stepped out, the ends of her short hair faintly charred, the skin around her left eye raw and shriveled.
Hand still extended, Serana willed a concentrated stream of fire to her fingertips, flooding it out towards the vampire. Predictably, she leapt to the side- but Serana followed her darting trajectory with her arm, still spewing luminescent death. The flames washed over the vampire mid-flight. A blood-curdling shriek echoed through the cave.
Serana gasped, black spots flashing in her vision. Her casting arm fell limp, sputtering convulsions gently rippling through her fingers as the entire world seemed to tumble around for a moment.
The remains of her latest assailant splashed against the ground in a fleshy comet, molten bones slathering the stone in a black tar.
Fire swelled in Serana's own lungs as her body began to sag with the weight of Cedric clinging to her, and the tidal currents of magicka flushing out of her veins too quickly. She heard the crack of a whip, and yanked herself upright, bracing her quivering legs against naught but the moist stone beneath her.
She saw the barbed lash coming down towards her.
Too close, too quick.
She threw herself to the side, pushing Cedric with her slumping shoulder, but ground her teeth together in anticipation of the inevitable strike.
A savage force tore through her bicep, black iron puncturing skin, a hard, leathery tongue splitting muscle fibres. The aftershock of the impact ripped through her nerves in a pulsating wave. She didn't realize she'd been screaming until her voice grew hoarse enough for her to discern Cedric's whimpering. "Ser…a…"
She yanked him with her as she retreated, further into the openness of the cave. Wine-thin blood cascaded out of the jagged fissure carved into her arm, soaking her already red sleeve and washing down the length of her entire body. Shadowy tendrils clawed at the edge of her vision as she dragged her legs across stone, skin tingling with the sensation of millennia old blood trickling over it.
Perhaps out of wariness, or perhaps to toy with her, the remaining vampires still advanced on her slowly, eerie smiles enduring despite the screams of their fallen comrades. Throaty breaths seethed out from her lips.
"Stay with me," she stuttered through a mouthful of saliva to Cedric, leaning him against her shoulder as she let go of him with her good arm and ripped the cape off her shoulder. Keeping her eyes swivelling all around her, she wrapped it around the wicked wound in her arm in a haphazard bandage.
She choked back another scream as she tightened the knot around it, teeth biting into her tongue. Needles of pain shot through her nerves as a few black thorns that had sloughed off from the whip hooked deeper into her arm. She grabbed hold of Cedric again, sparing a glance at him as she did so. She wished that she didn't. Thin lines of viscous drip trickled from his nostrils, and specks of ash smeared into his cheeks with the tears that streamed from his eyes.
All she could do now was backpedal. Her chest heaved in a frantic counterpoint with Cedric's. One of his hands grasped weakly at hers, the one which could still feel anything, which could feel the transient frenzy in his pulse over the slick coating of blood between their skin.
Her own legs trembled with each backward step she took. Agonizing waves, from both the whip strike and overexpenditure of magicka reserves that had remained dormant for eons, pulsed through her nerves.
It wasn't long before she had to stop moving, lest she find herself backing right into the other vampires behind her. Lazily, they dispersed around her into a circle. A whip cracked again, and she hated how she could see their leering smiles widening at the convulsing flinch that travelled uncontrollably through her body at that mere sound.
She glanced up at Sarpa, finding him still watching on from behind, his own fingers flexing hungrily.
With the sensation of blood trickling through her fingers no longer registering- whether it was because she had managed to stem the bleeding or because she'd lost so much she couldn't feel it anymore she didn't care- she clenched and unclenched her free hand, trying to summon forth some dregs of energy from the sapped veins in her body.
Perhaps it was her very perception beginning to fail her, with her vision blurring more each passing second, but there seemed to be something elseout there now. She could hear something else amongst the cacophony of tapering screams, a muted rhythm of heavy thumps running underneath the noise ringing in her ears- she could feel something else over the numbness settling in her skin, weighty vibrations from the stone beneath her trembling knees.
And then she saw it.
It began as a pair of inconspicuous red dots in the shadows, a surefire trick of the light. But not even a second passed before they drew closer, hardening into baleful teardrop shapes.
A reedy gasp brushed against her neck, Cedric tightening his grip on her hand.
He saw it too. A bared maw of teeth beneath the red.
Two of the vampires seemed to sense the disturbance- one of them turned around, twirling a serrated axe around his hand. The other snapped her whip up towards her open mouth, the barbs snaking tantalizingly close to her body before ever so slightly snagging on her tongue. Serana could see the leather still damp with blood- her blood.
It was drowned out by a cascade of fresh viscera. The axeman- or his upper half, rather- sailed through the air. His severed arm remained anchored to his weapon, porcelain fingers still taut around the slick handle. Above the elbow, stringy fibres of muscle fluttered with jagged ribbons of splintered bone. The rest of his torso, flesh practically unravelling around the tear ripping down its abdomen, landed meters away from his legs with a moist smack. His innards splattered across the stone, still engorged with the rich crimson blood of fresh cattle.
The whipbearer beside him lashed out with inhuman speed, the bloodstained tongue of her weapon slithering out at the unseen assailant before the axeman's unsupported legs even began to topple over. There was a crack in the darkness, but those red eyes in the shadows remained unblinking.
This time, Serana saw the thing'sblade before it cleaved the whipbearer in twain- wrought from a dark silver hue and stained with streaks of fresh vitae, nearly as long as the body it bisected.
The details branded into her eyes, the split seconds it took for the muscle in the whipbearer's abdomen to peel apart passing like hours. The boneshaking wound in her own arm seemed to numb in comparison.
It was perhaps good that was the case, for it gave her enough focus to shove herself and Cedric out of the way of the blade, still shrouded in a spray of crimson mist and reaching out far longer than seemed possible, arcing down towards them.
Too close, too quick- for anything she'd known short of another vampire, at least.
The tip of the weapon swung by close enough to send ripples through her hair. She didn't stop moving. Didn't stop to fathom just how close it had come to striking her- to striking Cedric. She tugged at the still form of Cedric, limp from dumbfounded shock or fading vitality, she couldn't tell. Couldn't afford to tell.
She looked back, eyes darting around for the telltale glint of a follow-up stroke – she found the wielder's gaze again first. Fleshless, crystalline lenses, frozen into a chilling glare that cast faint rays of blood light towards her fleeing form.
Suddenly, the creature lurched in the shadows, otherworldly visage dipping away from an oncoming hammer strike. The hammer's wailing wolf maw drew sparks across the slab of hard flesh that it struck. They flashed bright enough, for just a moment, to illuminate the craggy rent that had been hewn out in its wake.
The creature's blade swung out in reprisal, from the midst of an arc that was meant to cut her down barely a second earlier. This time, it only sheared off some errant strands of a wild mane of hair. Before those silky black clippings, cut from the now-cackling hammer-bearing vampire, could even touch the ground, another vampire came at the creature from behind. Her ice-swathed sabre cleaved down towards its red eyes, the magickal light cast by the pale frost washing over the smirk painted over her lips.
Faster than seemingly possible, the creature's eyes lurched away. The vampire's blade sheared into a veritable wall, ice-honed malachite edge burying into the same fissure that the hammer from before had cracked open. The screech that echoed throughout the cave was wrought from metal ripping through metal. The cascade that poured out of the wound was one of sparks, one that tapered off as quickly as it had spewed forth. The graceful arc of the swordswoman's strike ground to a violent halt, lodged in a bloodless wound.
Serana caught the creature's gaze again.
There was no pain to be seen in the faint luminescence of its crystal red eyes, no scream breaking over the gleaming metallic snarl of its teeth.
It lasted for barely even a split second, but in that moment alone the thin blood that remained in her draining body flooded with a buzzing urgency.
The remaining vampires swarmed around the creature, bodies lunging towards it from different angles. The swordswoman, still anchored to its flesh by her weapon, found herself yanked off her feet by its reaction.
A bloodied arc of silver flashed, and she was flung away from it in two halves.
Visceral debris flew past Serana and Cedric, dragging a jellied trail across the wet stone ground. The crack of heavy metal slamming into flesh and bone reverberated in her ears as, not a moment later, she saw a spurt of pulp fly out the fractured skull of the hammer bearer.
She turned away, a chill quaking down her spine. Water slid down the stalactites above her like blood down teeth.
Cedric's heartbeat pulsed languidly against her skin, his ragged breaths running thin in her ears. Thunderous footsteps rumbled behind them, in furious counterpoint with shuffling cloth and snarling hisses. A wet snap rang out, a yelp cracking out over the sound of marrow spilling from broken bones. Not a second later, a squelching crunch silenced that bat-like cry.
Cedric's grip around her hand tightened, but he was lurching further down into the ground, as though melting in with the heaps of meat and skin strewn about the stone-
"Stay with me," she whispered with a trembling voice, body driven by dregs of energy that would not let him fall now, after all she'd already dragged him through.
Another shriek bellowed out from behind them, wrought from metal splitting muscle.
Her own breathing pounded in a muffled reverb within her ears, suffocated by the din of violence swirling around the cave. Dark tendrils crept at the periphery of her vision, their shadowy silhouettes stretching around her.
A babbling groan rumbled out from beside her, incomprehensible murmurs rumbling forth from Cedric's shuddering lips. She winced, fighting through the pain racing through her wounded arm as she brought her free hand up to his chin. When she raised his face up, sliding the water-slick clumps of hair dragging down his forehead aside, she saw flickering white in his eyes.
His blue irises were plugged up against the top of his eyelids, straining to hold their gaze on her.
A skull cracked against the stone behind her, pounded into the ground by a heavy footfall.
Cedric's legs finally gave out.
Grinding her teeth into her tongue, splaying her eyes open in spite of the tear-stained black clawing at her consciousness, she caught his limp form with her wounded arm. Muscle fibres that had barely began to mend splintered under his collapsing weight, black thorns still lodged in her flesh driving down towards bone.
A muffled cry, spurting out from her bloodstained tongue, entwined with Cedric's helpless moans. She shifted his weight, trying to move it towards her uninjured arm without letting his quivering body slip out of her grasp entirely. His eyes had gone milky and translucent, red veins carving into the white.
She couldn't bear to look at them any longer. She could only trust that the heartbeat she still felt pulsing against her ravaged arm wasn't just a hopeful mirage swimming out of the dark.
One step after another, the open mouth of the tunnel leading out drew closer to her. Opened wider. The stones hanging over the ramp just beyond it dangled like tonsils. Shivering, as the waves of another scream rippled throughout the cave. She was only faintly aware of the meaty crack that preceded it this time.
A flash of bright violet illuminated their craggy surface. The clap of thunder drowned out the rumble of heavy footfalls. A split second passed, the blinding influx of light fading away as quickly as it had assaulted her.
They were nearly out now, stone lips barely five strides away from swallowing her and Cedric. The sound of her boot smacking down on the ground echoed in the void behind her.
She looked back.
She looked back, in time to catch the gaze of those cold red eyes again, that metal maw, still holding its chrome teeth in a tight clench. It zipped through the air, acrid smoke trailing out of a smoldering crater that split open its chest, ember-dotted tatters of white fluttering around the black flesh.
That was the last she saw of it before it disappeared into a thunderous plume of debris. The central pillar in the cave, no longer supporting Sarpa's lithe figure, almost seemed to teeter in the lingering aftershock.
…
No longer supporting Sarpa.
Her eyes darted over the bloody mire, a spike of panic catching her in the throat at the sudden realization that there was now nothing else standing between her, Cedric, and whatever had managed to stop that creature.
She didn't have to look far.
Sarpa stood alone, amongst the bloody mire that his retinue had been reduced to - limbs bent out from the sticky red film on the ground, immaculately manicured fingers frozen in unnatural contortions, shattered bones stripped of flesh stood propped up on lumps of offal. His bare feet stepped over a clump of moist entrails without hesitation, his toothy grin illuminated by the fulgurous coils flashing in his hand.
Too close. Too quick.
Time seemed to slow to a crawl around her. Sarpa's eyes dug into hers, crackles of luminescent purple reflecting off of amber and crimson.
His other foot drew forward, soles grazing over the splintered spinal column that trailed out the bloody remains of somebody's stomach. His toes touched down on the blank eyes of the hammer-bearing vampire, the hammer in question lost in the stew of blood, the bearer's skull split open by… something.
An odd cylindrical object, just smaller than a fist, was lodged neatly inside his forehead. Square ridges lined the surface, the shaping of whatever material constituted it unnaturally precise. Uniform, amongst the stringy mess it stood in. It stuck out like a sore thumb, if sore thumbs sprouted from pulpy head cavities.
That was, up until it exploded.
The blast tore at her ears with an incomparable magnitude, a wild sonic violence loud enough to leave behind only ringing to her barren senses.
Sarpa was flung away like a ragdoll, the flesh of his limbs visibly rippling from a skin-stripping impact before being swallowed up by fire. A storm of razor debris tore through corpses that were already mangled, pulverizing bone that had already been shattered.
The weakened remnants of the pillar in the back of the cave crumpled, bringing a rain of loosened debris down.
The entire cave lurched, the roar of crumbling rock sounding like a great beast's stomach howling with hunger to her deafened ears. Rows of falling stalactites streaked down like gnashing teeth.
Only then did the enduring shockwave of that initial explosion slam into Serana. Her neck snapped forward, a half-conjured breath blown out of her lungs. Her feet left the ground, and the next thing she knew, she was flying. Torrents of dust battered past her fluttering hair, carrying with them shards of rock and bone in an unspeakable hail of carnage. The ramp- the threshold between this surreal hell and the world outside rushed up towards her.
Towards Cedric.
Without a second thought, she looped both her arms around him, grasping the collar of his tattered and soaked coat with her non-wounded one. In one violent motion, she lurched to the side, yanking Cedric's body on top of her own.
A scream bellowed uncontrollably out from her lips when the stone surface met her in a boneshaking embrace. The metal rim of the Elder Scroll, still secured on her back, dug into the ridges of her spine as it scraped across the ground. Tears flowed freely down her grime crusted cheeks as, not a second later, she was silenced by Cedric's hip punching into her stomach.
The downpour of rubble reached a booming crescendo, just beyond the smeared soles of her boots. The mouth which separated that cave from her and Cedric slammed shut, sending a tremble through the walls which yet stood around them.
And then the stone fell silent.
She laid there, unmoving for a while with Cedric still in her arms, slick with blood and sweat. The streams of tears running across her face slowed and stagnated into muddy streaks as she eventually found her breath again, wheezing through bones that felt as though they'd been pulverized and then molded back together.
Cedric's body continued to heave against her, his pulse, still throbbing against her fingers. She looked down at him, the blue of his eyes having been restored at last.
"We did it," she whispered.
If he did respond, Serana was already at the point where she couldn't tell if it was real or if she was just imagining it.
0-0-0
By the time they limped into open air, she couldn't hear his breaths anymore in the howling wind. All of the precious effort that she had spent to stand him upright again seemed to rip right out of her shaking hands with one gust of blinding snow.
"Cedri-" her cry for his name, vain as it was to think that the mere sound of her voice could help him keep going, tapered off into a retch as frigid air surged into her open mouth.
She took one step forward, her boots crunching on ice. A whole second passed by before Cedric followed, the blackened and waterlogged tatters around his feet scraping over the snow. The ice spike lodged in his chest seemed almost indiscernible from the shingles of frost dangling from the dry flesh surrounding that wound now.
He's not going to make it.
A wince broke over the serene visage she'd meant to prepare as she grasped Cedric's shoulder with her wounded arm, the bloodstained threads of her cape fluttering in the wind. Her other hand reached for his chin, the skin now cold enough to send a tingle through her fingertips. His pulse dribbled like water from a stalactite. Blood from a fang.
"Cedric," she murmured, nose nearly touching his with how close she had to bring herself to be heard over the storm. There was a flicker of focus in those glassy blue eyes, a moment when they met hers and the strained ripples in his irises smoothed into a frozen stillness. She could feel her own brow softening at the sight, a tranquility finally gracing her still-frayed nerves. "We're going to make it."
It was only a moment, but at that split second, peaceful in the midst of the storm, she really did believe her own words. She really did believe that she saw the faintest of crescent smiles creep over Cedric's frost-shingled lips.
It was no trick of the mind, however, to hear his feet crunching over the ice alongside hers. To feel his fingers wrapped around her palm. To feel his breath, faint as it was, touching upon her cheek.
She tightened her grasp around him. Ignored the cold truth that she could feel her own pace sagging already. Blotted out the mental map drawn in her mind, the windswept miles that yet still laid between them and the docks of Winterhold- if they could even find the boats that their pursuers had rode in on in the midst of the storm.
Even when she heard a mangled cry pierce through the veil of snow from behind them, there was naught but steely determination driving her to glance back and assess what threat yet remained.
Her eyes narrowed, her vision sharpened, and plucked out the shuffling horror from the drifts of snow. Sarpa dragged his clawed feet across the ice, his twisted figure caught in a hideous stasis between lordly ascendancy and his mortal trappings. His face was frozen in lashing contortions, a mere scrap of scraggly black hair flailing in the wind from his tattered scalp. He screamed a wordless shriek at her, malformed lips snapping over broken bones that would not mend. Thrashed in wild gestures with a twisted arm, cords of grey muscle bursting through snow white skin that was half-torn, half-shed. Pointed at her with three wicked black talons that crushed the lithe fingers bending awkwardly underneath their weight.
She kept moving forward. Cedric did not falter by a single step.
But Sarpa drew ever closer. Close enough for her to discern his other arm, pale white grated by ribbons of raw gashes, dangling by a few sinewy threads from a twisted black hole into his shoulder. Close enough for her to see the stumpy wings protruding from his back, the stillborn membranes run through with streaking gashes, the bony limbs twitching with his shuffling convulsions.
Crippled as he was, he would still catch up with them. And unlike her, he still had an arm to fight with.
…
The wind gusted by, shaking the sword sheathed on her waist. The weight of the ebony finally seemed to register, tugging at the fabric of her breeches.
She glanced over at Cedric. His expression had not changed from when she had last looked into his eyes, the serenity frozen on his face almost eerie.
Sarpa howled behind her again.
It was hard, pulling her fingers away from his. Harder still to see the pale smile on his lips break ever so slightly when his fingers reached out again and brushed against naught but the snow.
Gently, balancing him on her good arm, she eased him down to the ice, holding his gaze all the way down.
"Stay here," she said. "I'll be right back."
She waited for a moment, watching for a glimmer of acknowledgement, a nod, a whisper of good luck- but there was nothing. Nothing more than a blank daze of icy blue eyes that would not break from her gaze.
"I promise."
Her heart, still as it was, seemed to swell with a weight unknown to her as she tore herself away, and grasped the cold, black handle of the longsword sheathed at her side. It slid out from its leather sleeve with nary a whisper in the howling wind, balancing itself perfectly in her subtly trembling hand as she steadied her breathing against the currents whipping at her face.
A spark of recognition glimmered in Sarpa's beady black eyes. His claws curled, and the tatters of skin around his mouth stretched up against the jagged remnants of his jaw.
The crossguard of her weapon rested firmly against her thumb and curled index finger as she drew her arm out, aiming the tapered edge of the blade at Sarpa.
He had been right- the design of the weapon was exceedingly plain, solid black and without a hint of embroidery. The ebony was all-encompassing, unblemished, symmetrical. Spotless perfection.
She strode forward evenly, the distance between them closing at a pace she could only describe as natural. Every step she took brought a greater surge of clarity to her snow-blotted vision. A stalwart firmness to her arm, rigid as a bulwark in the wind, at the same time tensile and poised.
She saw Sarpa's wings twitch. Saw those leathery membranes mend, thread-thin fibres bridging fissures. Saw the bony limbs that they were anchored to coil behind his hunched back, saw his shredded lips retract behind his teeth, snarling in anticipation.
Her legs were already planted into the ice, coiled against the ground by the time Sarpa snapped his wings downwards.
He lunged over the ten or so footstrides that remained between them, the talons which dangled from his gnarled feet gliding over the ice and shearing up a veil of glassy shards in the wind. His clawed arm stretched out in front of him like a grotesque lance, black talons curling towards her.
She caught them on the edge of her blade, with barely even the slightest of motions to aim it as such. Sparks splashed against the ice as ebony clashed against claw. She let her arm bend with the impact, let herself be carried along with Sarpa's bulldozing momentum. Let his tattered face come within an inch of her own, slowed at the crux of his lunge, before she stepped to the side and released the tension that had been coiling in her arm with one swift stroke.
Sarpa lurched away, his feet stabbing for purchase in the ice with frantic motions. She could feel him shudder as her sword bit into the bone of his jaw, feel the fibres crack and split around its honed edge as though the blade were a part of her own arm.
The flesh dragging at the bottom of his face fell to the ice in a blood-spewing heap, torrents of gargling rage following in its wake.
He came at her again, claw raised high above his head.
Swiftly, she sidestepped, cleaving down towards his shoulder and catching the joint of one of his wings as he lunged right past her.
A wordless howl joined that of the wind, Sarpa's clawed feet audibly stomping into the ice as he righted himself and pivoted around again. Fingers and talons both flexed within his deformed hand, their motions jerky, the sound of bones that did not fit the monstrous profile of his digits creaking and popping. She met his bloodied half-snarl with a smirk, the faintest of breaks in her tranquil visage, goading him to come at her again.
Scream as he did, he seemed to know better than to take the bait.
Ploddingly, they circled each other in the wind, the obscuring drifts of snow mercifully shielding them from the rays of the sun.
Rivulets of blood coated the ice with every step Sarpa took. Serana's lame arm remained still at her side, comfortably wrapped in the blood-soaked remains of her cape.
But she still had Cedric to worry about.
She didn't let that thought break the poised stance she held herself in however, didn't let it push her into the disastrously reckless strike that Sarpa no doubt wanted her to take. If she died- Cedric would die for certain.
Come on, you bastard.
Her fingers tightened when she saw Sarpa stop- freeze mid-stride, his left foot hovering just above the ground. He was open. He was vulnerable, like a deer caught in her sights in the tundra- she could end it now, if she just took the lunge.
"You never had a clear shot to begin with."
She drew in a breath, stopping in her circling strides and angling herself in preparation for another snap-strike from Sarpa.
But even then, he didn't move. In fact, his eyes seemed to go elsewhere entirely, the muted irises that laid beneath the inky lenses darting around in the snow.
Serana didn't break from her posture. She flexed her fingers, readjusting her grip on her weapon. It was becoming harder to keep it stable- inexplicable tremors ran from her legs straight up to her arms, rippling through her bones.
The tremors grew stronger, and she found her own steely demeanor faltering as well.
Footsteps.
Rumbling footsteps.
A queer chill ripped through the blizzard around her and dug right into her spine.
This time, she knew what the incandescent droplets of red were before they could take shape within the deluge of snow. Peering at her over Sarpa's gnarled shoulders. Fleshless lenses, still burning with embers of crimson.
Sarpa whirled straight around, his arm outstretched, his legs propelling him towards the beast behind him before it even burst out of the howling snow-winds. No longer shrouded in shadow, Serana could almost discern its figure now- it was wreathed in a stony black carapace, the shaping of it, warped from countless impacts as it was, too uniform to be formed from natural growth.
Tatters of white cloth were drawn over its breast, a few malformed streaks of black inked into the rags that remained. Sarpa ripped through those remnants and sunk his claws into the black shell beyond. His talons twisted and tore, carving great craters into the unspeakable mass, one of his talons digging into the flaking cavity that his lightning sorcery had blasted open.
It could not stop the dull silver blade that was arcing down towards him. And he, lodged firmly into the creature's chest, could not pull himself free.
The creature's blade sheared into the thick cords of muscle around his neck, silencing his roar before it could even leave the tattered remains of his throat. It ripped down diagonally, cleaving through his other wing and sawing into the shoulder anchoring his claws to the creature's chest.
Shards of bone spewed out with thick streams of blood, the veritable burst of vitae erupting from the rags of flesh which unraveled around Sarpa's bones drowning out the splashes that Serana's blade had drawn out onto the ice.
The creature's foot, cast from a pillar-like mass of the black armor suffocating the rest of its form, slammed into Sarpa's warped torso. What remained of Sarpa following that impact rocketed down into the ice, his head and arm splattering down into the slick film of blood pouring from his weeping wounds.
And then Serana felt the creature's gaze fall upon her.
Its blade, still stained in same blazing shade that burned within those alien eyes, lashed out towards her.
It clashed against her own sword, gnashing against the ebony in an ear-piercing shriek. Fiery strain enveloped her muscles, her bones quaking under her assailant's relentless momentum. She winced, but held her ground, coiling her legs against the blood-slick ice. Balancing in the storm that assailed her senses.
With a swift movement, she stepped to the side, exhaling a breath she did not realize she'd been holding in. Her arm curved outwards and guided the creature's blade through the rest of its arc harmlessly.
Frigid cold flooded her lungs as she gathered herself for a lunge, stepping forwards in the same movement that she righted her weapon again to close the sizeable distance that still lay between her and the creature.
Before she could so much as assess where to strike, she saw the metallic gleam of its blade already swinging back at her. It came from the side, its arc too wide for her to sidestep, too low for her to duck under. Too close. Too quick.
Its blade smashed into hers, her arm more crumpling with the blow than coiling. The strike drove her sword close enough to graze against the tip of her nose, sparks raining down on her hair as a roar bellowed out uncontrollably from her throat. Her knees bent, her boots nearly slipping on the red ice beneath her.
Pushing at the crux of the swing, her bones crackling with agony, her muscles feeling as though they were splintering on their own, she nonetheless turned the creature's blade away again, a stream of sparks tapering off from the point where its edge and her weapon's edge parted.
Her legs, feeling lighter than the rest of her body, all but thrust her into a leap away from the thing.
But it followed.
Her eyes widened when she saw the tip of its sword stretched out towards her, lunging for her chest even before her boots touched the ice again.
Too close. Too quick.
She twisted her body, at the point where she could almost feel the air parting around the oncoming blade's razor tip against her cheeks. It speared right past her face, grazing close enough to scrape against the eight-pointed star clasped to her garments, inches away from her neck.
The creature's visage bore down on her, driven forth by its unstoppable momentum. Its chrome teeth glinted in the frosty white, drawn together into a soundless, alien snarl. Its crystalline eyes bored into hers, the faint rays of red they cast now searing into her jellied cornea.
She found herself raising the point of her sword towards that light, the unblinking lenses that it refracted through. Fragments of seconds seemed to pass as hours in the red haze that it bathed her in, her fingers straining to maintain their grip on the handle of her weapon.
She felt something cool rush across her left shoulder. Soothing, almost, slicing through the chafing, soaked cloth of her coat, stripping away the thin layer of embroidered leather laid over it.
And then she saw the splash of blood from the corner of her eye. Felt the catastrophic scrape of metal against bone.
Serana gasped as a quaking shudder rippled through her body, snapping her sword arm off course.
The rounded plate of the creature's right shoulder, smeared over in stark bone white, was already crumpling. Battered to the point that sections of it looked as though they were blossoming from the wicked fissure cleaving down the middle of it, crystals of magickal hoarfrost still lingering around that gash.
It was there that her ebony sword lodged itself, spearing through layers of metal in a shower of sparks before blunting against another wall of the same.
Stuck. Caught in a deadly trap, just like the ice-sabre that struck it before her own weapon. Just like Sarpa, striking into the creature's chest.
She released her grasp, faintly aware of the sharpness leaking out of her vision with the renewed spray of blood pouring from the fresh gash hewn into her left arm. She didn't dare glance over to see how deep it cut. Pure instinct drove her diving downwards, and it perhaps did save her from the creature's follow-up swing. Bloodstained metal grazed by the top of her hair, cleaving apart the braids that sat in a crown on top of her head.
And then the breath was crushed out of her lungs. The ground rushed up to meet her, a colossal weight grinding against her spine and the Elder Scroll drawn over it.
Her now empty sword arm shot out, elbow smashing against the ice in a fresh spike of coursing agony. A breathless rasp escaped her lips along with a spray of blood-tinged spittle, smearing over her muddled reflection.
Her arm, having strained so much already, now fought desperately to keep her aloft, keep the entirety of her body from driving right into the cold ground. Her vision swam, alight with blinking dots that seemed to glimmer like stars across the snow.
Something cracked, and it wasn't the ice.
She became faintly aware of a flash of murderous silver reflecting off the bloodied mirage beneath her.
Shadows swarmed at her periphery, reaching into the splotches of black that were blossoming out from the fuzzy centre of her vision, coalescing with them.
Something grazed against the back of her neck, icy and metallic, tapered to a hair-point.
"Please… don't hurt her…"
Maddening whispers snaked into her ringing ears, the jingle of a metal chain. Was it the void of death embracing her that caused the sensation of the creature's blade on her neck to recede? That eased the crushing force pressing down upon her spine?
"…don't hurt her…"
Her eyesight cleared just long enough for her to look up, to see Cedric dragging himself over, the spear of ice in his chest scraping against the ground.
"Cedric!" She cried, ice and grime flaking off of her cheeks. "Run!"
Her words fell on deaf ears, lost to the wind. Cedric's gaze was cast upwards, pale and glimmering, swimming with the glassy blue of skies above. Chained wrist outstretched pleadingly.
She opened her mouth again, this time only a gnarled seethe scraping out as her quivering teeth gnashed down on her tongue.
"She's all I have left…"
A cataclysmic shiver raced through her body as snow touched on the raw bone of her ravaged left arm. Her right arm buckled, and she plunged downwards.
Her cheek slammed against the ice, pushing a phlegm stridden line of blood out between her teeth. The shadowy numbness that had been enveloping her shattered against the wall of agony that coursed through her nerves, her drooping eyelids snapping wide open.
That crushing force which had been pinning her down had drawn away fully now. Her tongue, speared through by her teeth and running with wetness, somehow found the strength to untangle itself from the roof of her mouth.
Wine-thin blood pooled beneath her, seeping into frost-matted strands of hair, slipping against the skin of her chin.
It stung, colder than even the ice she laid upon.
Hastily conjured breaths puffed out in clouds of white before her eyes, every heave of her chest seeming to stab at her ribs. The creature's shadow fell over her- and then passed by just as quickly as it eclipsed her blaring vision.
The ground beneath her trembled with a thunderous march, the resounding rhythm of what seemed like an entire legion carried by one pair of feet.
Cedric. Cedric!
Her right arm flailed in minute convulsions, trapped underneath the limp weight of her body. The world spun and crackled with spiderwebs of pain as she rocked her splintering shoulders side to side, agonizingly trying to roll over onto her back.
Come on… come on!
The Elder Scroll rolled off from its bloodstained perch along her spine, clattering against the ground. The rest of her body followed suit shortly after, her right shoulder smacking down next to the scroll's metal rim.
The sky swam with clouds of snow, streaking drifts flowing like bedsheets in the hands of Marian.
"Let me… see her… one last time…"
She sucked in a throbbing breath, the influx of chilled air pressing against the walls of her lungs as though it was going to burst out of her chest. She dug her palms into the ground. A searing sting jabbed her through the weightless numbness that had settled around her left shoulder as she pressed down with both hands, her torso slowly, agonizingly pivoting up from the bloody ice.
She squeezed her eyes shut. There was a distinct feeling of the cloth of her coat, the frayed strands of her hair, peeling off from the bloody film beneath her.
The footsteps had halted now, leaving only the muffled wind and the creak of her bones swirling in her ears. Her arms straightened out at the crux of her ascent. The raw strain racing through her joints and down into her fingers, splayed out against the ice, left her certain that her arms would snap off entirely. She didn't care.
She gasped, one last push finally putting her over to the point where her arms could fall limp and sag forwards into her lap. The tatters of the cape that had been wrapped around her left arm slipped off, exposing the wounded flesh beneath entirely to the wind. She didn't care.
"Sera…"
"Cedric," she whispered, wondering if he could hear her back.
She did everything she could to face him- her waist twisted, her neck strained, her blood-dripping chin scraping over the weeping fissure gouged into her left shoulder to bring her eyes over to him.
He met her with a warm smile, his tear-coated irises pale with their icy dull blue- just as they had always been.
Just as her father's had been.
"You're beautiful."
His gaze flickered, for but a moment, those eyes of his- beautiful in their own right- snapping shut. His chest sagged down, the ice spike driven into it shattering into glassy shards.
Her lip trembled.
His face fell limp against the ice, blood seeping out from the open wound in his chest. It blossomed over the ground, painting his smile in rosy red. Sliding up the surface of his now-bare arm, tatters of furs soaking in the red.
His fingers, splayed out as though reaching towards her, did not move.
Her chest heaved, heavy with a pain that stung harder than the aches lacing her lungs. A hitch lodged itself into her breath, stabbing deeper than the blade that was now chained to the armored creature standing inches away from Cedric's body. From his corpse.
A flood of tears welled in her eyes, more blinding than the cold red rays that the creature's eyes cast upon her shaking body.
There was nothing left between them now, no miraculous surge of energy gracing her broken limbs with the strength to fight back, no trump card spell up her sleeve to turn the murderous black-clad thing into dust, no dregs of magicka left in her dry veins to channel such a spell if she even knew one.
But she didn't care.
Her head slumped down fully, bobbing limply in tune with her chest.