The splash of oars carving through seawater echoed with a shallow rhythm within his helm. His arms obeyed its stunted pace as though it were a thrumming hymn, each contraction of the synthetic myofiber beneath his pauldrons almost escaping conscious thought. The creaking of the wooden vessel beneath him droned, melding into the back of his skull with the cogitated sting of the breach in his breastplate.
A gust of wind blew by, its wail piercing through the web of manufactured sensors and nerves of steel that enveloped him.
His fingers twitched, grip tightening ever so slightly. As though that helped to stifle the chill that tingled over his flesh.
The gold-trimmed pair of red eyes across from him snapped over to meet the cold lenses of his helm. His arms drew back, in the midst of an oar stroke, the motion doing little to dispel the tension he felt coiling in his hands.
The vampire's gaze lingered, shining in the dark like the alien stars that stretched over the night's abyssal expanse behind its head. Inscrutable, inescapable.
The quiet groan of warping wood drew his vigil down to the oars grasped in his hands. Newly-sprung, hair-thin fissures were highlighted along the surface of their flimsy handles.
His grip relaxed, flesh obeying the impulses of the Black Carapace.
But the cracks in the oar handles remained, printed into his lenses. Irreparable.
From the edge of his vision, he saw a glimmer of stony silver lying on the floor of the boat.
…
His cold lensed glare refocused onto the blood-shaded irises that were fixed in his direction. The vampire's eyes blinked away for a moment, snow-dotted eyelashes eclipsing them. He saw its lips purse, the edges of its mouth creasing, as though it were preparing to say something.
His own jaw braced beneath his vox grill in response. Braced for what – impact? As though he were in the quaking confines of a drop pod plummeting through the atmosphere?
…
No. At least he knew what to expect from planetfall.
Another oar stroke passed by. The words that seemed to be pooling in the vampire's mouth did not spill out.
His attention shifted to its body, hunched over with the rim of that scroll it carried poking over its shoulder. Its rowing arm churned along, the micro-tears in the sleeve that clung to it opening and closing with each cycle made by the heatless flesh beneath its skin.
Its wounded arm braced awkwardly against its thigh, the fabric of its trousers stained with the same dark splotches that trailed down the length of its sleeve and the lump of tatters wrapped over the wound. Where he had struck it.
…
The bristle of chain links rattled against wood as his and the vampire's arms completed another stroke, whatever words it may have considered speaking lost to churn of oars in the sea.
So why did he still feel his fingers straining against the rigid glove of ceramite encasing them?
Do you remember the first directive I gave you, Neophyte?
'Yes', he had answered to back then.
Perched atop a craggy cliff, overlooking a steppe of sprawling white grass.
What did I say?
'Know your enemy.'
A faintly indigo moon in the sky, the Oriflamme's silhouette barely a speck on its monolithic expanse.
And what is your enemy?
A small pair of beady blue eyes glimmering back at him from between the long grass stalks.
The crimson glare on Brother Guillame's helm shone more vividly than they did in his near photographic recollection of that memory, the vox-snarled monotone of his voice ringing louder than all else.
What do you see before you now?
The sheath of rubbery muscle beneath his gorget obeyed, nudging his helm upwards, obeying an order given long before it had become part of his body.
The vampire's pale visage had turned away already, its lips having settled back into a flat line as it looked off somewhere into the distant sea. Its eyes held… something, in their deep pools of red. A subtle anomaly that the streams of data in the back of his skull did not recognize, but that his own eyes, organic lenses and nerve fiber, had seen in its gaze once before.
When it had been perched inside the boat just before cast-off, peering after the funeral pyre of the human.
'I don't know.' He mouthed the words silently, unable to remember how they had sounded without the metal bellow of his helm's vox grill.
His hands suddenly felt heavier, as though the weight of the smoking boltgun he'd held when first admitting that had manifested in the place of the oar handles.
I did not say to know your enemy.
I said to learn who your enemy is.
0-0-0
You never taught me how.
The words sprung to his mind, breaching the bubble of cogitated data running around it. They washed down to his tongue, eliciting an instinctive twitch from his flesh. As though the dual-heartbeat drumming in the confines of his plated ribs was a sensation that was still an alien one, as much as the moonlight bathing the plains of grass before him…
His eyes blinked, behind his helm, as the boarded floor of the boat sharpened back into his sight. The dark silver hue of the inert blade laying next to the glossy obsidian metal of the vampire's weapon struck a gleaming contrast beneath the moonlight.
A distant echo of his heartbeats thumped in his skull as the flesh of his neck pushed his gaze up towards the sky.
Two moons glared back at him from a cloudless canvas of dark blue. Pale white light emanated from one, and the other shone dimly with maroon. The Oriflamme's silhouette was nowhere to be found amongst either them.
His tongue slackened, words that were eighty years too late weighing upon it.
The stars twinkled on the backdrop behind the pair of nameless moons, myriad hues coalescing together in indiscernible constellations. He traced aimless shapes amongst them, scratching over the spastic feed of pattern-matching routines that scrolled down his helmet lenses. As though something would've suddenly changed, sprung out at him, since the first night he'd gazed upon the frigid sky.
The chronometer in the back of his skull ticked on for another 34 minutes and 24.67 seconds. Something didchange, but it came not from the sky.
He felt the boat drag more heavily beneath him as his arms cycled through another oar stroke, felt its plodding momentum sputter in the shallow rift it carved through the sea.
"Wait a moment."
The vampire's words cracked against his ears, husky tones tempered by a sharpness that nicked at the nerves bridging his flesh to armor. His gaze snapped down towards it. His arms stopped mid-stroke, synthetic muscle coiling instinctually.
The boat rocked gently to a halt as the vampire ceased its rowing as well, oar handle grasped loosely in bony fingers. It blinked a few times, eyelids shuttering. When they came back, they narrowed, focusing their piercing gaze on something past him.
"There's the College of Winterhold… but where in Oblivion are the docks?"
Its brow creased.
"Or half the city for that matter?"
His vox grill remained silent, red lenses still fixed firmly in its direction- for what purpose, he wasn't certain anymore. He didn't need his eyes to remain vigilant for signs of potential treachery. There was no possibility it could reach the weapons in the boat, no possibility it could summon forth its foul sorceries while escaping the sightless gaze of his armor's autosenses.
It had been that way for the entire duration of the crossing so far.
So why had his attention always wandered back to it?
Loose strands of hair, still bearing the marks of where his sword strike had cleaved into them, billowed in front of those blazing amber and red eyes.
He watched those locks, raven-hued under the light of the moons, dangle there, tracing over the jagged path that he had carved. Watched them bob in tune with the ragged breathing of the dead body that propped them up, the hunched-over back that he had nearly crushed beneath his sabatons.
The limp arm that he had nearly sheared off from its body.
"It'll heal," it had told him.
Its flesh was dead. What was there to heal?
His mind flashed back to the eight-pointed sigil he had glimpsed upon the thing's neck. The memory of its fingers casting aside that wretched symbol flared up in response. As though it mattered.
…
It shouldn't have mattered.
Just as the dying human- Cedric-'s words should not have mattered.
And yet, when he saw its head turn, blazing eyes pivoting back over to him, he broke from his stillness. His helm turned downwards, as though the garble of data he was still trying to process within its confines was heavy enough to drag it down. The bottom of his vox grill sank behind the cracked confines of his gorget.
There was a noticeable stretch of silence, quiet enough for him to hear the wordless whisper of the wind above the creaking of the boat. From the top edge of his lenses, he could still see the vampire's boots, also shod in dry blood.
"You awake?"
A jolt raced through the Black Carapace at the sound of the vampire's prodding voice. This time, he did not obey the impulse that travelled into his nerves. His posture remained unbroken, frosted plates of ceramite quelling the tremors in his flesh beneath.
"Hey."
He felt the boat shift ever so slightly, heard the boards creaking under the vampire. It was enough to shake off the weight pressing down on his tongue, if only briefly enough to allow one word. He prayed it was enough.
"Affirmative."
The quiet roil left in the wake of unseen waves rolling across the wooden hull of the boat filled his helm. He could feel the weight of the boat shifting, seeing a faceless shade of the vampire relax back into its seat in his mind's eye.
"So… regardless of its state, it looks like the city isn't completely abandoned at least. Might be able to pick up some things for the journey down south," it said, a disturbing… evenness to its tone, a nonchalant quality that seemed to transcend the bone-deep wounds that wracked its body. "We won't stay long. Between the two of us, we're bound to draw some unwanted attention."
"We."
His eyes blinked beneath his helm, focusing on the ribbed floorboards of the boat. He might've offered a slight nod in response to the vampire's words, the gesture subtle enough that it could've been lost in the gentle bobbing of the boat.
From the stony silver of Sword Brother Mortis' former blade, a snarling reflection glared at him with seething metal teeth and blood-steeped lenses. Pitiless. Remorseless.
The chain bound to the weapon's handle jingled against the wood as he felt the boat begin to lurch forth once more. Synthetic muscle uncoiled as his arms joined the vampire's unseen rowing motions.
He didn't look up for the rest of the crossing.