So this is the long awaited Spider-man Skyrim crossover that hardly anyone asked for and probably doesn't want but you know what? Screw it I'm posting it cause I literally have nothing else to do at the moment. Sure I can be updating other stories that haven't been touched in over a year buuuuut... meh. If you've been following my crap long enough you know I'll get back to them... eventually. At some point. Before I die at the very least.
Plus I've had this bitch in reserve ever since the announcement of Elder Scrolls Six and wanted to post it sooooooo... meh.
So the start of this story begins about a few months before the beginning of Skyrim, so it'll be a while until the Dragons and what not start cropping up and even than, the events of the game are gonna go down a little differently here in some parts. The Civil War that played as a sort of backdrop to the game will be more prevalent in this story, the land of Skyrim in terms of size will be vastly greater than in the game for obvious reasons, like it'll be roughly the same size as like Canada or something, so it'll take days or even weeks to reach one city from another. The cities here will also be bigger, like they can hold up to thousands of people, even tens of thousands in the case of places like Solitude, Windhelm or even Markarth rather than have like thirty or forty NPC's roaming about and can be reached from one end to the other in like a minute if not less.
And given the nature of some of the Daedric Princes in terms of their lore, there will be some pretty dark shit in this fic. I mean if your a fan of Elder Scrolls and have read up enough on the Daedric Princes it should be obvious but there's always that one asshole that knows almost nothing about them and then bitches about how evil they seem to be or something.
Disclaimer: I don't own any Marvel or Elder Scrolls characters seen, mentioned or used.
Fredas, 9:45 PM, 19th of Sun's Dawn, 4E 201... 6 months before the Dragon Crisis.
Blizzards in Skyrim were as common as monsoons were in the southern regions of Elsweyr or Black Marsh and just every bit as deadly.
Below freezing temperatures combined with snowfall so thick that one can barely see a few meters in front of them, attempting to navigate through a snow storm was highly ill advised. It'd be even worse at night when the very, very limited visibility is all but gone and the cold is even more unforgiving. And that was before one could even begin to list the various creatures of Skyrim that would hunt during a blizzard, like Trolls or packs of Ice Wolves.
'And here I am... walking through one of the worst blizzards to hit this country in over a decade without even so much as a torch to help keep me warm or offer a bit of light' a young man thought as he struggled to make his way through the dense snowfall pine forests that made up a good percentage of the hold aptly named, the Pale.
The black leather armor the man wore had small equally dark metal plates along the arms, shoulders, chest and legs for added protection. Over this was a large black furred hooded cloak made from a black bear that was covered in various low powered flame runes to keep it's wearer warm while the hood casted his face in shadows, leaving it unidentifiable. Strung on the man's back was a small black leather bag that carried a few items ranging from a coin purse to healing herbs and a few scrolls that he picked up when he passed through Morthal a few days ago. The man carried no visible weapons like a sword, ax or even a hammer, giving the illusion he was unarmed. To most bandits, he'd be seen as an easy target while the more 'intelligent' bandits that populated the wilds of Skyrim would be more weary of the apparent lack of arms.
No person in their right mind would wander Skyrim's harsh landscape without at least a dagger... and the ones that do dare such a thing, well they were best left be.
The man suddenly stopped and reached up with a black armored glove to brush some snow off the tip of his cloak's hood, the added weight the frozen water was adding was causing it to begin dipping in front and partially obscure his already limited visibility. And the runes that he was using to keep himself warm was causing the snow on the rest of his body to melt and no amount of heating runes can keep his body from being affected by the chilling water.
'I need to find somewhere to wait this storm out, and soon' the man thought with a sigh as he continued down the snow ridden path 'Before I either die of hypothermia or frostbite'
Not for the first nor the last time, he suspected, did Petyr Parker wish he had a little bit of Nord in his blood, at least enough to not be so affected by the cold like he was now.
"Or be a Dunmer, and light myself on fire and just let that keep me warm" Petyr said with a snort of grim amusement as he saw the vaguest outline of a tree along the path he was walking and quickly took cover underneath it before he reached under his cloak for one of the small satchels that were attached to his waist and pulled out a small folded square of paper.
After unfolding the paper for a few seconds, and bringing the parchment close so that he could see it through the snow, Petyr mentally mapped out the route he'd taken and compared it to the outlined route he made earlier before he began his journey on this path. If he was right, than the Hall of Vigilant wasn't too far and if the Divines were feeling a little merciful tonight, they may allow Petyr to spend the night and wait out the storm that was beginning to roll in.
'Long as they don't start asking questions at least' Petyr thought grimly as he refolded the map and stored it back into the satchel and adjusted his fur cloak before he continued on his way down the snow covered path.
He made sure to keep an eye out for any signs of there being other people up on this mountain with him. There was a shrine to Mehrunes Dagon somewhere out here and that particular Daedric Prince's followers were less than friendly to just about anyone that wasn't a part of the Prince's cults, even each other. And Petyr really didn't feel like being possibly offered up to a Daedric Lord if he could help it. He had enough issues with some of their kind to fill several volumes and still not even make it to the halfway point of each book's prologue!
After walking another few dozen feet, and nearly tripping on a covered chunk of ice, Petyr noticed a faint glow to his right and stopped to look at it. It was a torch, obviously enchanted to remain lit even in this unforgiving weather, and it was lying on a partially frozen step.
Petyr took a quick look around to see if he could perhaps spot it's owner before he shrugged and reached down to take the torch "Well, I guess no one will mind if I take this"
Just as Petyr began to reach for the torch, he heard a howl not to far ahead of him, causing him to freeze and glance in the direction of the howl with narrowed eyes. He could feel a faint tingling at the base of his skull as he picked up the sounds of snarling and growling followed by a few heavy barks of some sort. It seemed that Ice Wolves were roaming the mountain tonight.
"Great" Petyr huffed as he picked the torch up and held it out in front of him, ready to swing it at whatever wolf emerged from the snow to attack him.
Seeing that he was possibly outnumbered and had no idea just where exactly the wolves were, Petyr scanned the area for some sort of cover he could use before he noticed that the blizzard had cleared just a enough for him to see more steps leading up and away from the path he was on. He could also see that their was a faint light in that direction, possibly a fire or another torch perhaps.
'Could be hunters maybe. Might've set up camp in a small cave to wait out the storm' Petyr thought as he spared a glance in the direction he heard the wolves howl and noticed that the growls and snarling was getting uncomfortably closer to him.
With a sigh, Petyr carefully began to climb the steps, being mindful to watch hos step less he slip and hurt himself, or even alert the wolves to his exact location. Mercifully the climb wasn't terribly long, only a dozen or so of steps before Peter was close enough to see that light he saw was coming from a small lit brazier next to the entrance to a cave. It was risky, taking up refuge in a random cave during a blizzard, but Petyr would rather deal with some unhappy cave bear or even a few bandits than spend another hour in this cold with Ice wolves running around looking for a idiot dumb enough to stay out in this weather.
'What's the worse that can happen?' Petyr thought as he adjusted his cloak and quickly climbed up the last of the ice slicked steps and stepped into the mouth of the cave.
"Who are you?" a monotonous voice demanded the very moment Petyr's foot crossed the cave's threshold.
The young man glanced around to see that the cave was much more narrow than he expected and it headed farther into the mountain, possibly towards a larger area. There was also a single man standing in the middle of the tunnel, garbed in furs and bits of leather armor with blood running down the side of his head. In his hands was a chipped iron sword that looked like it was one swing away from breaking entirely.
"Uh, hello there, I'm-" Petyr began as he slowly reached up tot slide his bag off his shoulders and set down before the man let out an almost animistic roar and charged towards him with his sword raised.
Petyr dropped his bag completely and quickly brought up his hands and took aim at the approaching bandit before a network of web like runes on his wrists began to glow white and shot off several thick lines of what appeared to be webbing. The bandit seemed unfazed by this and allowed the webbing to strike him in the chest and continued forward before he came to a stop and his roar of rage became one of pain as the webbing began to seemingly eat away at the man's chest. Petyr slowly lowered his hands and watched with a bothered expression as the man howled in pain and reached up to claw at the webbing as bright red patches began to appear and dampen as the webbing ate it's way into the man's chest cavity before he collapsed face first on to the floor.
Several tense moments passed as Petyr watched the man twitch several times before his body went slack and the coppery smell of blood filled his nostrils. With a sigh Petyr slowly approached the facedown man and gave his body an few small experimental kicks to make sure that the man was dead before kneeling down and turning him over on to his back.
"Sorry..." Petyr said with a wince as he took in the damage to the man's torso, or what was left of it.
The webbing had already begun to dissolve into this sickly looking pale much, giving Petyr a sickening view of the partially melted lungs, rib cage, stomach and intestines and all the other organs and muscle that made up the man's abdomen. The stench was suffocating but Petyr had sadly become too used to it for it to really bother him as much as it used to, nor the sight it came from. Petyr shook his head at the sight before he took a brief look around for signs of any more people, he very much doubted it was just this man alone. Based on the quality of his attire and the sword he tried to take Petyr's head off with, the man seemed to be a bandit.
"So where's the rest of you hiding?" Petyr said to himself as he stood up and scanned the narrow cavern for any signs of the dead bandit's allies rushing to investigate the less then mute screams the man made before he died.
It was entirely possible that the rest of his clan, tribe, whatever it is that bandits fancy calling themselves, had been wiped out by either the Imperial Legion or a rival gang of bandits and this fellow as simply taking shelter to wait out the storm but somehow Petyr doubted that.
"Whelp, I'm not going to get any answers just sitting here" Petyr said as he stood up and carefully stepped over the dead bandit and proceeded to make his way further into the cave.
After walking another several meters through the dimly lit tunnel, Petyr came to a large cavern with several large stone pillars scattered along it's interior that reached up to the ceiling while a small waterfall emptied it's ice cold water into a small stream that flowed towards another end of the cavern. Petyr was about to cast a detect life spell to see if there was anyone else present, be they man or beast, when he suddenly noticed several figures, one woman and three men, across the space standing before what seemed to be a old entrance to a ruin of some sort. Quickly, Petyr dropped to the ground, mindful to not hit any stone beneath the snow and ice and waited. He could just barely make out their appearances in the dim lighting, but they appeared to be dressed in some sort of grey and black leathery looking armor of sorts with steel swords hanging at their sides.
But it was the faces of one of the men and the lone woman, or more specifically, their eyes that drew Petyr's attention the most.
Even from this distance he could see that they were glowing a golden-orange hue like color...
'Vampires...' Petyr thought with dread as he scanned the darkness for signs of any more and hoped to any Daedra or Aedra listening that he didn't stumble into a Coven's lair.
Actually, some of them just might for a giggle.
"What happened?" the female Vampire demanded with a snarl as her gaze flickered between the bandits and her fellow Vampire "How could we have allowed a damned Vigilant to sneak into here and do this? I thought we killed them all when we razed their Hall to the ground a fortnight ago!"
'Guess I won't have to worry about seeing if the Vigilants will let me spend the night in their hall' Petyr thought dryly as the male vampire answered his compatriot's questions and demands.
"I suppose we either missed one or he wasn't present at the time and simply tracked us down after he discovered what was left of his allies" the Vampire said in an almost bored tone "Regardless, he's dead and I doubt we'll be seeing anymore appear any time soon. Shame, I'm getting thirsty"
"I'm sure Jeron and Bresoth would say otherwise... if they still could" the female Vampire said with a shake of her head "If they could be killed by a mere human, then they aren't worth a single thought more"
"Perhaps" the male vampire said as he turned and scanned the cavern with his glowing eyes "Hmm..."
"What is it?" the female demanded with a snarl.
"I thought I caught a whiff of blood coming from the entrance" the vampire nodded in the direction that Petyr was watching them from.
"Perhaps your smelling the sentry we left out there" the female vampire scoffed "The Vigilant must've wounded or killed him and your smelling it"
"No, I'm smelling far too much blood for that to be the case" the vampire said with a shake of his head as he took several steps forward and Peter swore he could just make out the man sniffing the sir "I would've smelt it long before now. No, this is fresh!"
"Shit..." Petyr muttered with a shake of his head.
"Than send the thralls to see what's the issue" the female vampire demanded as she turned to leave, likely to re-enter that odd ruin Petyr noticed behind them "Or the hounds, I don't care"
And with that, Petyr watched her descend back down into the ruin, leaving her male counterpart and two human thralls standing outside the ruin. The vampire turned towards the two humans and muttered something too low for Petyr to hear before he turned his gaze right back towards where Petyr was hiding. For a second he was willing to chalk the Vampire's gaze up to coincidence before he felt a faint tingling at the base of his skull.
The vampire knew he was there.
'Okay Petyr, don't panic, don't panic, you've dealt with Vampires before. Their particularly weak against fire and their power is dependent on how much blood they've drank and when. He mentioned he was thirsty so it's possible it's been a while and he won't be up to full strength' Petyr thought as he watched the two human thralls, both dressed in furs and armed with crude looking axes, heading towards his location while the Vampire stayed back and watched.
Seeing that the element of surprise was gone, Petyr quickly climbed to his feet and took aim at the two approaching humans and fired off small oval shaped web projectiles at the men's' heads. They didn't bother with trying to either dodge or block the approaching projectiles, allowing them to hit them in the face and cover them in a thick coating of webbing. Several of the runes on Peter's gloves glowed briefly before the webbing on the men's faces suddenly burst into flames, causing them to let out muffled screams as they collapsed to the floor and clawed at the burning webs in attempt to rip it off.
"Impressive human..." the Vampire spoke up from his end of the cavern as he drew his sword with his right hand while his left had some sort of dark red energy gather in it.
"Thanks, I guess" Petyr said with a small shrug as he kept an eye our for the female vampire "Not that hard to hit a moving target that's moving towards you and isn't bothering to dodge or block whatever you throw at it"
"Well how about a target that will?" the male Vampire asked with a chuckle before he suddenly leaped clear across the cavern with a hiss.
"Eeep!" Petyr sounded as he jumped to the side and landed in a roll, causing his cloak to tear off as he climbed back to his feet in time to see the vampire land where he was just seconds ago.
Without warning, the vampire lunged at Petyr again, his sword poised to impale him through the chest. Petyr quickly sidestepped the blade and watched as it flew past him before he shit his elbow up and had it connect with the vampire's chin. The force of the blow caused the vampire's head to snap upwards and expose his neck, allowing Petyr to use the same arm he used to strike the vampire with and land a quick strike to it's exposed throat.
KRKK!
The vampire let out a gargled sound as blood erupted from his mouth while he released the grip he had on his sword and reached up to his neck. The blow wasn't enough to completely crush the vampire's trachea, but it was enough to stun the undead creature long enough for Petyr to flick his wrist and have a small stinger shaped blade emerge along the underside of his wrist. He quickly stabbed it into the Vampire's chest and watched the gold-orange colored eyes widen in pain and surprise before Petyr pushed the vampire back and watched it slump to the ground.
"Thank you Frostbite venom" Peter said as he watched the vampire wither on the ground as the concentrated venom flowed through it's veins and to every part of the body that they and the arteries connected to.
Under most circumstances Frostbite venom wasn't exactly lethal so long as the Frostbite spider wasn't overly large, but when the venom is concentrated and mixed with a few crushed up imported plants from Black Marsh, it's lethality skyrockets.
The vampire let out a few more gargled sounds of pain and rage as the venom finished spreading through it's body before it stopped moving altogether and Petyr was left with a now dead vampire. Petyr didn't bother to try and see if perhaps the vampire really was dead like he did with the thrall at the cave's entrance, he lifted his foot up and brought it down on the vampire's head, hard. The result was a sickening crack as the skull cracked beneath the skin's surface and the inside was flooded with blood.
"Rise up from that" Petyr said as he stomped on the vampire's head a few more times just to be sure before he stopped and turned his attention towards the ruin's entrance just as the tingling at the base of his skull began again.
The female vampire had returned, but she wasn't alone.
At the woman's sides were two large dogs of some sort of breed that Petyr had never seen before in his life. They were large, almost as big as a Auridon Retriever but more muscular, glowing red eyes and pitch black hairless skin that looked to be rotting away in some areas, giving the canine an almost undead look.
"It's things like you that make me a cat person" Petyr said as the vampiric woman shouted in some unrecognizable language before the two hounds from Oblivion barked and rushed towards the human.
The undead looking canines were much faster than any dog that Peter's ever seen, their bodies looked like blurs as they raced across the cavern, jaws snapping and growling at the sight of their supposed meal. Petyr wasn't even going to bother trying to hit the animals with the same web projectiles he hit the bandits with, their smaller sizes, compared to a fully grown human at least, and speed would just make trying to hit them a waste.
'Unless I can get them to hold still long enough' Petyr thought as he aimed at the rocks and ground around him and quickly began to spray a heavy coating of webbing that stuck to the snow and ice and almost blended perfectly with the frozen water.
The dogs, either didn't care for the obvious trap that Petyr made or were mere constructs with no real independent thought, made no attempts to avoid the webbing as they charged towards Petyr with the intent of mauling and killing him. The webbing they stepped into briefly stretched with the dogs as they tried to power through the webbing and resist it's hold on them before the webbing went taut and the hellish looking canines let out whines of surprise as they were either pulled back or they slumped forward and found themselves even more ensnared in the webbing. Seeing the hounds were for the moment, trapped, Petyr quickly unsheathed a second stinger in his other glove and approached the two, being mindful to avoid their snapping jaws of razor like teeth and stabbed each dog through the back of the head.
Both hounds went still for a moment before they slumped into the webbing and the red glow of their eyes dimmed until it vanished entirely, leaving what seemed to be two empty black voids where their 'eyes' were.
"DIE YOU FILTHY PIG!"
Petyr turned his attention back to the vampiric woman charging towards him with two daggers in each hand, one of them had it's blades covered in dark blood red runes. It didn't take a genius to know that the blade was enchanted, likely with some sort of draining rune meant to suck the life out of a person and make them easier to kill, assuming the runes weren't powerful enough to kill a person in a single strike like some were. It was a favorite among Vampires, particularly the weaker ones that hadn't or couldn't master the types of blood magics that the more powerful Vampire Lords could.
As the vampire neared Petyr, her daggers poised to enter him though his chest, Petyr leaped over the raging woman, sending a kick to her head that caused her to stumble back in pain as her nose shattered under the force of Petyr's boot meeting with her face. Once Petyr was back on the ground, standing behind the stunned Vampire, he quietly raised one of his arms and shot a glob of webbing at the back of the blood sucking fiend's head and watched as it was quickly covered in the white sticky substance before it glowed and ignited into flames.
"You Vampires have a pretty chilling disposition, how about you lighten up" Petyr snorted as he watched the vampiric woman let out muffled shriek's of pain as she thrashed about, trying to put out the flames before she fell to the floor and slowly burnt to death.
Seeing that the vampire wouldn't be posing a threat anymore, even if she did somehow manage to survive having half of her head burnt to a cinder, Petyr turned his attention towards the ruins that he saw the undead woman emerge from and silently approached them. The entrance led to a flight of stairs which led further down into the ruins, likely where more Vampires lied, perhaps a whole Coven.
"What the hell is a Coven doing out here if that's the case?" Petyr muttered in confusion as he stared down into the dark ruins as a sense of foreboding struck him.
Ancient Nordic Ruins weren't a very popular choice of location for Vampiric Covens, chief among them being the greater risk of being discovered by a archeological team or running afoul a powerful band of Dragur. And if the reports were to believed, Falmer were also beginning to inhabit a handful of Nordic Ruins, usually ones close to the even more ancient Dwemer Ruins. And most Nordic Ruins had usually only one exit, that being the entrance to said ruin, making escape in the event of a attack next to impossible.
All in all, Nordic Ruin didn't exactly have favorable conditions for any Vampire Coven looking to make one it's home.
"And I doubt their in here to wait out the blizzard outside" Petyr muttered as he glanced back towards the tunnel he came through.
He could leave, try to make it to either Morthal or even Dawnstar and alert the Jarls to the Vampires in this cave and the ruins they may be dwelling in, but there was no guarantee that they'll even still be here when the soldiers eventually arrive to wipe them out. Hell, there wasn't even a guarantee that Petyr would even be able to make it to either city before the blizzard outside or the ice wolves roaming it killed him. And he couldn't just sit by the entrance until the storm lets up either, if this ruin was housing a Coven, their bound to notice sooner or later that two of their kin hadn't come back, nor their thralls, and will send more out to investigate.
Killing two vampires one on one and their dim witted thralls was one thing, but fighting a whole Coven that could number at another dozen, maybe more, and possibly even more capable thralls? That was a fight that Petyr didn't feel like having even if it was happening out in the open in the middle of a bright sunny day.
"Damnit, damnit, damnit!" Petyr hissed in frustration as he paced back and forth before the ruin's entrance and debated on his next course of action.
This was the last time he ever took a job that took him through The Pale!
"Enter... quickly..."
Petyr froze at the whisper and quickly looked around for the source but saw that he was the only one present. A frown formed on Petyr's face as he heard the whisper again, this time much quieter, echo around him, making it next to impossible to discern it's source. It was a woman's voice, that much he could tell, but there was no way of identifying the owner's race with it, whether they be a Human, Elf or even one of the Beastfolk. But Petyr knew whose voice it was, he's heard it more times than he cares to admit, both in his darkest nightmares and in the shadows that surround him during the day...
Mephala, the Daedric Prince of Sex, Lies, Murder, and a litany of other spheres that were too obscure or numerous to list off.
And if the Daedric Prince was telling Petyr to enter this Vampire infested tomb... well the man supposed his decision was fairly obvious at that point.
"Ahhhh, why me?" Petyr sighed in frustration as he turned and began his descent into the tomb, all the while a faint laughter could be heard.
Seriously, he doubted the others had to endure this sort of crap.
...
Twenty minutes later...
...
If Petyr was feeling any sort of regret for heading further into this Gods forsaken cave, it was now.
After wandering around the cold dimly lit halls of the unknown ruins, and encountering several Dragur, reanimated skeletons, more of those dogs and another Vampire, Petyr had finally reached what he assumed was the main chamber for this entire place. It was massive, easily a few hundred feet across in any given direction with a strange ruin at it's center. The ruins looked to be late First Era to early Second Era with strong Atmoran and Nedic influences in it's design though there seemed to be something else added to the architecture's design, something familiar but Petyr couldn't quite place it.
'Eh, I'm sure it'll come to me soon enough' Petyr thought with a shrug 'Probably at the most random of times'
"I'll never tell you anything vampire!" a man's voice echoed from below, causing Petyr to approach the edge of the balcony and glance down to see a man, shirtless with his hands bound behind him, kneeling before what seemed to be two Vampires in some sort of black and gray armor, one a man the other a woman The male was armed with a mace while the female had a ax attached to her side "My oath to Stendarr is stronger than any pain you can inflict upon me!"
The voice that responded, clearly male of the two Vampires, was filled with such grim amusement that it sent a shiver up Petyr's spine "You truly have no idea what your up against, do you Vigilant?"
"I know enough!" the man spat a glob of blood at the Vampire's feet "And I know that you won't claim victory this day!"
"Oh, and how's that?" the vampire asked with a chuckle as he crouched before the captured Vigilant and stared at him with amused but hungered eyes "Did your beloved Stendarr whisper that to you? Did he promise that the 'evil and cruel Vampires' will be beaten?"
The Vigilant offered no reply as the Vampire threw back his head and laughed while his female companion watched on with a bored look on her face before she turned on her heel and headed for a nearby stair case. Petyr watched her go for a second before he turned his attention back to the Vampire and his Vigilant captive and waited to see what would happen next.
The Vampire sighed at this before he stood back up "I tire of this game human, tell me wat you know and perhaps I'll let you live as my thrall and if you prove useful enough, I'll even change you"
"To Oblivion with your false promises fiend!" the Vigilant snapped with a glare.
"Very well" the vampire said with a sigh of frustration as he drew a dagger, elven by the looks of it.
In the blink of an eye, the vampire's blade sliced open the man's throat, causing him to let out a startled, gurgled sound as blood began to flow from the bloody tear in his neck. Petyr winced at the sight as he unconsciously reached up to rub his own throat as he watched the Vigilant slump to the floor, making a series of chocking sounds as blood continued to pour from his throat and on to the stone floor. The vampire watched the man die with a look of utter boredom before he raised the elven dagger up to his mouth and ran his tongue along the bloodied edge.
"Such a pity, you would've made an amusing servant" the vampire said as he licked his blade clean before placing it back in the sheath on his waist.
"Are you sure that was rise Lokil?" the female vampire said as she stepped back into Petyr's view and stared at the male with a frown "He still might have told us something. We haven't gotten anywhere ourselves with-"
"He knew nothing" the now identified Lokil snapped as he turned and gave the woman a annoyed glare "He served his purpose by leading us to this place. Now it is up to us to bring Harkon the prize. And we will not return without it. Vingalmo and Orthjolf will make way for me after this!"
"Yes, of course Lokil..." the female said with a small bow before she glanced up at Lokil with a glare "But do not forget who brought you news of the Vigilant s discovery"
"I never forget who my friends are" Lokil chuckled before his voice grew darker as his eyes bored into his companion's "Nor my enemies"
As the two vampires continued to make barely veiled threats and promises to one another, Petyr scanned the area for anything that could prove useful. The human thralls were all gathered around the small arena like ruin that sat in the middle of the massive chamber, doing Gods knows what. And aside from Lokil and his companion, Petyr didn't spot any other Vampires or even see those odd hounds of there's, which filled him with a sense of relief. The entire way down here he was terrified of stumbling across a entire Coven, but so far it seems that this group was only some sort of small scouting party.
'Though I doubt it'll stay that way for long' Petyr thought as he glanced behind him back towards the tunnel he emerged from 'They could've sent word about this place and whoever's the master of these people is bound to send more to ensure whatever it is their here for isn't lost'
Times like this that Petyr almost regretted being a loner, having a ally or two in this situation would've abated some of his fears of being overwhelmed.
'Oh well, can't be helped now' Petyr thought as he turned his attention back towards the two vampires and centered his sights on the female being his first target.
If the Divines were smiling on Petyr for a change, the sudden and unexpected death of Lokil's companion and Petyr's sudden appearance may shake the vampire's resolve or desire for a fight and he'll be much more open to conversing without the need of torture. Lokil struck Petyr as an ambitious but rather meek kind of guy that'll cave the moment he finds himself outpowered or out maneuvered.
"Here goes nothing..." Petyr said as he stood up and adjusted his gauntlets before he suddenly leaped off the ledge and fell towards the two vampires' below.
"Wait, what was-" the female vampire began before she was cut off by two web lines striking the floor on either side of her, causing her to look up in time to see Petyr's boots collide with her head and force it back until her neck let out a sickening 'snap'.
Petyr could hear Lokil let out a startled gasp as he landed in a roll before springing back up to his feet and holding a arm out and aimed at Lokil "Good evening, the name's Petyr. Sorry about your friend here, but I needed a cushion for my landing and she looked soft enough"
"WHAT?!" Lokil said in both shock and outrage at the sudden appearance of a human, and how quickly and easily he killed his companion "How did you get in here?!"
"Oh well you see there's an opening a bit ways back..." Petyr pointed up towards the balcony he came down from.
Lokil growled at the jest "You dare mock me human?"
"Not yet, I'm still firmly in the banter faze of our meeting" Petyr said with a shrug "Give me a few minutes and few more tongue twisters and I'll move on to that"
Lokil hissed at Petyr before he summoned a state make of ice and sent if flying towards Petyr who easily sidestepped the lethal projectile, all the while keeping his arm aimed at the Vampire.
"But if you like, I'll be more than willing to jump straight into the mocking" Petyr said with a snicker, as if he wasn't almost impaled with a shard of magical ice "We can start with your aim if you'd like-"
"Shut up!" Lokil snapped in outrage as he glared at Petyr with murder in his eyes.
"I wish I could, but in these kinds of situations, the words just keeping flowing. I'm like a Bard... only I don't sing. I can hum though" Petyr said as he spared a brief glance towards the ruins where he saw the thralls were already rushing towards them "So would you be willing to make a deal? I don't kill you, you tell me why you and your friends here are poking around a centuries old tomb like a band of bandits who've stumbled across a unoccupied merchant's cart"
"How about I rip you open and watch you bleed out on to the floor" Lokil hissed as he reached down and withdrew his mace from his belt.
"Now you see, that's just a poor deal since only one of us, namely you, are benefiting from it where's my deal, we both sorta kinda benefit from it" Petyr said with a 'tsk' sound "Clearly someone didn't study sound business strategy at the University of Aspired Merchants"
"No, I was too busy learning how to butcher you worthless dogs" Lokil hissed with glowing eyes as he raised his mace and aimed it towards Petyr before he lunged towards him with a yell.
"Something tells me you weren't exactly a good study" Petyr said as he leaped back and watched as Lokil's mace slammed into the ground that Petyr was just standing on, causing he stone to crack "Also, you missed"
Lokil let out a surprised sound as he watched Petyr move away from him with speed that seemed far above the average human's. With a shake of his head and a snarl, Lokil pursued Petyr, intending to crush his head with his mace. Petyr took several steps back, avoiding the mace by mere inches before he reached out and grabbed it at the handle just below the... well the actual mace part of the weapon. Lokil's eyes widened slightly as he tried to tear the weapon free of Petyr's grasp only to find the man's hold on it was like steel. With a yell of anger, Lokil used his other hand to try and grab Petyr's and forcibly rip it off his mace's handle when he received a painful kick to the stomach that caused him to double over in pain before a solid strike to his back, right between the shoulder blades, dropped him to the ground.
"Settle down there..." Petyr said as he held up the mace in his hand and gave it a brief once over to see if it was anything special.
Outside of a few faint runes inscribed to keep the mace from shattering easily, it looked to be your typical one of the mill Steel variant. With a shrug, Petyr tossed the weapon aside as the thralls had finally arrived to aid their vampiric master.
"K-Kill him!" Lokil stammered as he tried to rise only for his body to suddenly be pinned to the floor by a thick blanket of some sort of white silk like substance after a 'twip' sound echoed above him.
It took Lokil a few seconds of struggling for him to realize that he was pinned by webbing!
"What in the name of Molag Bal is this?!" Lokil demanded as his thralls began to slowly draw their swords and surround Petyr.
"Webs. Enchanted webs to be precise. Don't try to escape from them, it won't be pretty, trust me" Petyr answered as his gaze flickered from one thrall to another, they were all human, male, and in various states of what seemed to be starvation.
Most of them looked like they hadn't eaten in days while others looked like they had their last real meal even back in the Third Era. It was a little odd to see thralls in such a state, even the most simple minded of vampires knows that a weak thrall wasn't very useful as either a source of blood or protection.
'Guess they weren't planning to keep these guys around for very long' Petyr thought as one of the thralls lunged forward with a iron sword, intending to run it through the man's chest.
Petyr side stepped the sword easily enough and sent a bone shattering strike to the side of the man's face. The thrall went limp as his head snapped to the side and blood had already began to leak from the gash that Petyr's armored glove had left. The other thralls seemed unbothered by the fact one of their own was killed and quickly lunged towards Petyr, hoping to overwhelm him with sheer numbers if anything else. As the thralls attacked Petyr, and were quickly knocked down just as quickly, Lokil had managed to free one of his arms by cutting through the webbing around his fingers with his talon like nails before he summoned a small cloud of ice in his palm to free the webbing and make it easier to break free from.
Lokil had just managed to free the webbing around his other arm and was about to pull it free when suddenly the webbing did something he did not anticipate...
It suddenly ignited into white hot flames!
"W-WHAT! NONONONONONO!" Lokil screamed in panic as he already felt his body begin to burn under the intense flames.
Petyr briefly glanced away from the few remaining thralls before him and saw that his webbing had caught fire and was now burning Lokil alive.
'Guess he tried to escape... told him not to' Petyr thought before he sent a punch towards a thrall without even bothering to look at the man, snapping his jaw clean off and causing the startled man to stumble back and reach up to his now destroyed jaw.
Not a minute later the last of the thralls fell to the floor, dead, while Petyr slowly approached the burning form of Lokil and shook his head.
"I told you not to escape" Petyr said.
"C-Curse... y-you... m-mortal!" Lokil hissed before the last of his face was completely consumed in fire.
"Your going to have to get in line for that one" Petyr said as he watched the flesh on the vampire's head burn and peel away under the near white hot flames.
With Lokil now dead, Petyr was left free to investigate the mysterious old ruin without any further interruptions, hopefully. He didn't see anything that screamed it housed some sort of ancient and powerful weapon of some sort, but for a Coven of Vampires to go to all of this trouble, it had to have something valuable. Perhaps it wasn't even a weapon per say, it was likely that the ruin housed some sort of ancient knowledge that's been long forgotten or buried here.
'Gonna have to send word to the College about this place. I'm sure they'll love this place' Petyr thought as he made his way down the small staircase that the thralls used to reach him earlier and slowly crossed a small bridge that led to the 'island' the odd ruin made.
The water that surrounded it didn't look very deep, but it didn't look very inviting either and Petyr had no desire for a late night bath. Being mindful to stay in the middle of the bridge, Petyr hurried his pace across and stepped on to the small island. A series of dark and rather dramatic arches made up the edge of the ruin while a singular pillar rose up from the ground towards the center while a few braziers were scattered round it in a rather haphazard manner with no real pattern to them. Curious, Petyr slowly proceeded further in, mindful of any traps that may have been placed by whoever built this pace.
'Please don't have a Dragur pop out and try to stab me, please don't have a Dragur pop out and try to stab me' Petyr mentally repeated as he came to a stop at the small pillar and looked at it with narrowed eyes.
It was... pretty unremarkable all things considered, just a slab of stone with some kind of button on the very top of it.
"Well at least you don't need a key" Petyr remarked with a sigh as he slowly reached out to push the button before he felt the tingling at the base of his skull just a split second before a stake shot out and impaled him through the hand.
There was the trap...
"SWEET MOTHER OF A DAEDRA'S WHORE!" Petyr yelled in pain as he tried to pry his hand off the bloodied spike that had pierced it's way through his palm and out the back of his hand, coating the pillar and his hand in blood.
Now Petyr's endured a lot of pain over the years, from being strangled until he blacked out, to having his skull cracked open to being pushed to the brink of starvation and having his heart torn out and ripped to shreds by what he thought at the time was the love of his life. But at the moment, all that pain felt like a tickle compared to the spike that decided to make his hand it's new favorite place to be in.
As the blood leaked from Petyr's hand and into the stone, an odd purplish glow began to emerge from it before it quickly traveled down the length of the pillar and into the floor where it quickly shot out into the runes he saw inscribed earlier. A moment later, the spike retracted, allowing Petyr to pull his hand back and nurse it against his chest while he used a quick healing spell to try and stem the bleeding and close up the coin sized whole left in the middle of his palm. He'd have to pay a visit to an actual healer later to make sure that no infection will set in, Divines knows what sort of possible diseases were on that spike.
"Fuck whoever made this thing!" Petyr growled out in pain as he looked around to see certain points in the runes were glowing much brighter than the rest.
Curious, Petyr approached the nearest spot, though he made sure to keep his distance in the event the hand spike had any friends lying in wait. Sensing no danger, and seeing no obvious signs of a trap, Petyr kneeled down and examined the glowing runes with a thoughtful look on his face as he tried to decipher why they were glowing the way they were. It wasn't until Petyr ran a finger along one of the glowing paths that he realized that the path was really a sort of rail, and that the stone brazier he saw were sitting upon such rails... and appeared they could be moved.
"I wonder..." Petyr muttered as he went towards the nearest stone brazier and gave it an experimental push, pleased to see that it moved with ease.
Sparing another glance at the glowing runes, Petyr pushed the brazier towards the spot and listened as it clicked into place and the purple energy seemed to glow a little brighter as a violet flame suddenly lit itself at the top.
For the next several minutes, Petyr went from one stone brazier to another, slowly pushing them into their apparent assigned spaces. With every brazier put into place, the energy grew brighter and began to seemingly pool at the pillar that Petyr had his hand impaled on. Once the last brazier was pushed into place, the energy grew as bright as the sun and a wave of energy seemed to wash around Petyr as the pillar suddenly rose several meters out of the ground, showing that it was actually the top to a hidden sarcophagus or monolith of some sort.
The purple energy continued to glow and seemingly 'burn' around the monolith for a moment before it suddenly vanished, leaving the air cold. Petyr let out a breath he hadn't even realized he was holding as he cautiously approached the stone structure as a seam began to form on it's surface. Just when Petyr was within a few feet of the stone, the front side completely slid down into the ground, revealing a lone woman standing within, seemingly in a deep sleep of some sort.
"...That's new" Petyr said as he stared at the sleeping woman with wide eyes "Usually it's Dragur that are in these things"
To say that she was beautiful was like saying the sun was a bright ball of energy in the sky, or that the ocean was wet, biggest understatement of the Era. Her skin was a pale white, but not sickly, more of a lack of direct exposure to sin light and her neck length hair was as black as the shadows that surrounded the crypt they stood on. She seemed to be a few inches shorter than Petyr but not by much and even through the ancient looking clothing she was wearing, Petyr could tell she had a body that was built for sin, which it might've been.
For a Dargur, she was unusually attractive.
'Hmm, I think I'm starting to see the appeal of investigating dangerous ruins now...' Petyr thought with a chuckle at the thought.
Before Petyr could even take a single step towards the unknown woman, she suddenly let out a gasp before falling forward, threatening to hit the floor face first before she threw her arms out and caught herself. The mysterious woman let out a series of coughs followed by deep inhales as she slowly pushed herself back up and stared right into Petyr's face with an all to familiar golden-orange glow in her eyes. Petyr stared at the woman for what seemed like an eternity before his mouth had finally found the strength needed to speak...
"Your not a Dragur, are you?"
And he instantly wished it never did.
...
And done.
Next chapter, Not all unusually attractive women in ancient, long buried sarcophaguses are Dragur it seems...