Chapter 9 - Things Going Bump In The Night


"What do you think happened here?" Jaune asked Yang, as they approached the burning building. "Do you think it was another dragon attack?"

"Could be..." Yang murmured, as she quickly appraised the unfamiliar location. "Hard to tell without studying the scene. Doesn't look the same as Helgen and the Watchtower, though..."

Jaune deferred to her memory of the attacks, instead choosing to scan the wreckage for any signs of life. A growing part of him, hardened by the ten days he'd spent in Skyrim, felt that the effort was futile. Too many times, they'd only gotten there in time to bury the bodies; he'd dug enough graves since Ivarstead.

A hand gripped his shoulder firmly, and he turned to look at Yang's concerned face. He didn't shrug it off or lean into it, but just remained still, enjoying the comfort of the contact. Yang, of course, couldn't let the moment be without saying something: "Hey, you're the reason we couldn't just take a carriage from Windhelm to Solitude, Vomit Boy."

Jaune glared back at her, face flushed with embarrassment at the memory. They'd travelled from Ivarstead to Windhelm, initially planning on investigating the ship mentioned in the masked men's note, but as soon as they'd entered the city, they'd seen two drunken Nords harassing a Dark Elf. Jaune could only see Team CRDL and Velvet, and had intervened. The only reason the guards had let them go was because they'd been awed by Yang's name and deeds, but even so most of the local shopkeepers (including the carriage driver) had refused to serve Jaune. Yang had not taken it well.

"If I hadn't dragged you away from the marketplace, you would've ripped someone's head off!" Jaune protested, feebly trying to defend himself.

"We could still have just gone to Solstheim." Yang pointed out, no heat in her gaze or voice. "Think about it! A nice desert island..."

Jaune fought down a fond smile, finally understanding that she was just trying to keep his mind occupied. After all, they'd both agreed, after finding the captain of the Northern Maiden, that heading to Ustengrav was their best bet. Judging by the man's ramblings, it seemed that the Lord "Miraak" had solidified his power base in Solstheim, to say nothing of his personal ability, if he could control the minds of an entire island. Much safer to get the horn, bring it back to the Greybeards, and then try to learn everything they knew about Dragonborns in general and "Miraak" in particular. And so they'd disguised their identities, not knowing if Miraak had sent any other assassins, and left Windhelm.

"Do you really want to risk getting me on a boat?" Jaune shot back, with as much heat in his voice. Yang barked out a laugh as he grasped her hand, letting her know he was fine now, and the pair separated. As Yang moved into the building to inspect the smoldering wreckage, hoping to find any clues, Jaune gave up on looking for any movement, and instead moved to examine the bodies (and prepare to dig a few more graves).

A dark four-legged figure caught his eye, and as he moved towards the big dog, he found himself thinking of Zwei. He hadn't seen Ruby's dog during the Fall, but for some reason he couldn't envision anything happening to Zwei, and not just because Ruby would've cried if anything did. Then he turned the body over, and his heart turned to ice.

Yang, meanwhile, turned over a few bodies in the wrecked interior of the hall, and paused as she noticed a glint of brass, reflecting the orange glow. Kneeling down, she pulled it out, and studied it's horned shape, before looking back at the body. The robes and the gauntlets and leggings should have been a dead giveaway, but the Amulet of Stendarr in her hand was the final confirmation that she was looking at the corpses of Vigilants of Stendarr.

Well, some of them, anyway. The rest were in a dark leather armor that she didn't recognize.

Yang wondered if this had been a Vigilant raid gone wrong (or right), or if this second group had attacked a Hall of the Vigilants. Either way, this was much bigger than she'd anticipated, and she turned back outside, to call Jaune in.

A body came sailing in through the doorway, interrupting her.

She blinked, confused.

Jaune sprinted in, following the body she'd just seen him kick, before he swiftly decapitated the canine corpse with a single stroke.

She blinked again, staring at the uncharacteristic display of brutality, before her mouth finally caught up to her brain, and she asked: "What in Oblivion was that?!"

Jaune focused on the corpse, instead, and when it didn't dissipate into smoke, he finally calmed down. Then he noticed Yang glaring at him, and sheepishly answered: "Well, it reminded me of a Grimm..."

"A Grimm? Really?" Yang asked, eyebrow raised.

"It was pitch black with glowing red eyes and a shadowy aura!" Jaune protested, pointing to the corpse, and Yang's words died as she studied it. Indeed, the dead hound looked sinister, and though she hadn't seen a Grimm before, she could say for certain that she had never seen a creature like that.

Fearing a sudden invasion of interdimensional shadowy daedra, she quietly asked: "So, is it a Grimm?"

"No... Grimm bodies dissolve when they die." Jaune explained, as he sheathed his sword. "Reminded me of a Beowolf, though..."

"It certainly looks like it was a dog of some sort..." Yang murmured, studying it. The fact that it had a collar implied it was domesticated, and she found herself torn between relief that it wasn't a Grimm, and concern at the fact that somebody was apparently breeding and taming these things. Then she looked around, at the tattered banners on the walls. Most were defaced and burned, but she could barely make out a sign of Stendarr...

"Yang? What's wrong?" Jaune asked, concerned at how Yang had suddenly stiffened.

"Jaune... do you know what the Vigilants of Stendarr are?" Yang began, as she knelt by the robed figure.

"Nope."

"They're a religious, founded in the aftermath of the Oblivion Crisis..." Yang continued her explanation, even as she placed the Amulet of Stendarr on the body.

"The demon invasion, right? So, they hunt demons?"

"Close enough." Yang confirmed, before getting up, and gesturing around the interior of the destroyed building. "This... was a Hall of the Vigilants. Somebody attacked them, with enough force to wipe out their headquarters."

Jaune thought of Beacon, of Ozpin, of the attack. He'd never met the Vigilants, but Yang's description reminded him of Huntmen and Huntresses (except religious); men and women who volunteered to risk their lives fighting enemies of humanity. He could respect that.

"So, what do we do now?" Jaune asked, already guessing the answer

"We look for tracks, any signs of where their attackers came from, and where they went." Yang answered, as if it were the most obvious thing. "Then we find out who did this, and we get the word out, warn Skyrim that the Vigilants have been attacked."

They didn't have to look far, as it turned out. The trail led to a worn path up the mountain behind the hall, and upon closer examination the signs were obvious. Even if Jaune hadn't learned his survival skills in Beacon, and Yang hadn't been taught by members of Cyrodiil's Fighter's Guild, the larger a group was, the more evidence they left behind. And, by the looks of things, the group that had attacked the Hall and then gone up the mountain was large enough to be a small army, even after the losses they'd surely taken from the Vigilants.

Following the trail took them up stairs carved into a mountain, before leading to a cave in the mountain. They couldn't tell if the noise they heard from within was the wind of faints echoes of voices.

"... we're going in, aren't we?" Jaune asked rhetorically, having the weirdest sense of deja vu.

"We don't know how much longer whoever did this is going to be in there." Yang pointed out. "Might be our only chance to catch a glimpse of the people behind the attack."

"Do you want me to fashion a torch?"

"Nope. The light could give us away."

"... Skyrim doesn't have Deathstalkers, right?"

"What are those?"

"Giant bugs with pincers and a stinger on a tail."

"Oh, you mean a giant scorpion? We have those, but they're native to Hammerfell."

Jaune didn't know where Hammerfell was, but he didn't feel as reassured by Yang's statement as she'd have liked. After all, that's what they said about the Emerald Forest. His suspicions only grew as he noted a warm orange glow ahead, as the narrow passage widened into a massive opening.

Yang held out a hand suddenly, and Jaune stopped, trusting her instincts. Peering deeper into the opening, he noted two figures standing over a third, by a fallen torch. Snippets of a conversation slowly became audible to him, as he focused.

"... I thought we'd taught them enough of a lesson at their hall..."

"To come in here alone... a fool like all the rest of them."

"He fought well though. Jeron and Bresoth were no match for him."

"Ha. Those two deserved what they got. Their arrogance had become insufferable."

"All this talk is making me thirsty. Perhaps another Vigilant will wander in soon..."

Yang stiffened, as she watched two pairs of orange orbs flick towards the cave's passageway, where she and Jaune had halted, and clenched her fist tightly. This was bad; she didn't want to bet against their senses in this environment, not if her suspicions about their true identities proved correct. Not for the first time, she found herself wishing that she'd simply listened to her first instincts and ignored Vomit Boy when he'd suggested they check out the burning building.

He really was a bad influence on her, she reflected ruefully, but to be fair even she couldn't have imagined the situation was this bad. Well, in such a situation, there was only one thing to do...

"WULD!" Yang Shouted, leaping out of the passage, and as the Whirlwind Sprint Shout shot her body forward, she quickly channeled magicka into her hands, focusing on the image of flames surrounding her body. As she landed between the two figures, she released the spell, and flames shot up around her, eliciting twin screeches of pain.

She had the advantage of surprise, for now, but she knew she couldn't risk letting them get their bearings. Quickly spinning to face the bigger one, she delivered a quick uppercut to his jaw, being careful to avoid his teeth, before quickly kicking his knee in, forcing him down. A jab to his face had him reeling back, before she Shouted him into a nearby wall.

Jaune, to his credit, hadn't let himself be surprised for too long. After all, he'd known Yang Xiao-Long for almost a year, and he'd known Yang for over a week now. In the time it'd taken for her to neutralize the bigger of the pair, he'd gathered his wits, drawn his sword, and charged at the other figure just as she'd begun recovering from the shock. She drew her sword swiftly, faster than anyone Jaune had ever seen in Beacon, but he was already in motion.

Yang turned to see the other creature's sword blocked by Jaune's own sword as it swung towards her back, and she drew the axe Jarl Balgruuf had given her from her back, before decapitating the creature.

Howls echoed around the cave, as a black blur shot at them. Yang trusted that Jaune would deal with it, moving instead to quickly finish off the first creature. She could not allow the creature time to recover, not when she knew from the tracks that there were more ahead. As Jaune's shield intercepted fifty kilos of muscle and teeth, and his sword stabbed into the creature's red eye (Port would have been so proud), Yang split the creature's skull open with a swift chop.

"Was that really necessary?" Jaune spoke first, not bothering to hide his surprise, as he switched his shield into a sheath and watched the fire die around Yang. He'd seen her fight and kill bandits, sure, but she'd never been this ruthless and brutal, and certainly never this quiet. For a moment he wondered if the destruction of the Hall had gotten to her more than she realized.

Then she marched over to the decapitated head of the woman that he'd defended her from, and held it up, letting gravity pull it's jaw down.

"Fangs." Yang spat like a curse word, as they saw the sharp teeth within. "My suspicions were correct. We're dealing with vampires."

"Vampires?!" Jaune repeated, incredulously. "What, like undead blood-sucking creatures of the night?"

"They have them in your world?" Yang asked, intrigued.

"They're stories, just like werewolves..." Jaune began, before pausing and groaning. Of course Skyrim would also have vampires. Why not?

"Look at the fallen Vigilant, too." Yang told him, as she beckoned towards the corpse the two vampires had been standing over. Jaune froze as he saw the desiccated body. "They must have drank him dry."

"So... an army of vampires attacked the hall?" Jaune tried to piece together the information they had. "Why? And how could there be that many vampires? Entire villages would be disappearing, if they drink like this!"

"I don't know, Jaune, but whatever the reason is, it can't be good. Now let's go; the rest must be deeper within, along with whatever they're looking for."

For a moment, Jaune was tempted to pull Yang back. After all, they were in way over their heads, and this shouldn't have been their problem.

But then reason reasserted itself. Who would they ask, the guards? The Companions, who were days away in Whiterun? The Vigilants, who'd been all but wiped out? No, by the time anybody who could deal with it got here, the vampires would probably be long gone. And Yang was right; if they'd just been looking to attack the Hall, they'd have left after killing everyone and burning it to the ground, not stick around just a few hundred metres from the scene of the crime. They were here for something, and he and Yang were the only ones who could actually thwart their plans.

Jaune sighed, wondering when his life had gotten so crazy. He couldn't decide if he should blame his situation on running away from home to Beacon, or from charging up the tower. But still, he grabbed the torch by the body, guessing that the vampires had night vision, and followed Yang.

After all, he'd always wanted to be a hero.

-ONE DUNGEON LATER-

"What do you think this is?" Jaune asked, as he sheathed his sword, and studied the stone monolith in the center of the massive chamber they were in. The pentagonal prismic stone slab betrayed nothing, nor did the curved triangular arches that ringed the chamber give any hint as to their purpose, their significance.

"I've got no clue, Vomit Boy." Yang admitted, as she kicked the headless vampire's body into the water below them, and finally breathed a sigh of relief. They hadn't had a chance to relax, the dungeon having been crawling with draugr, spiders, the weird hounds, and vampires, and the only reason why they'd survived (besides their skill, of course) was because the draugr had been busy defending the tomb from the vampires and hounds, and the spiders had been attempting to feast upon the sudden influx of prey. Coupled with the element of surprise, the pair had been able to clear out the tomb without sustaining any injuries, but it had been close at times.

Too close.

Yang shuddered, wondering what she'd have done if Jaune had gotten infected with Sanguinare Vampiris. Fortunately, with the cave free of vampires (as far as she could tell, at any rate), she'd never have to find out.

"Well, whatever this is, it must have been important..." Jaune replied, unaware of her internal dilemma. "The entire tomb looks like it was created to house this stone chamber."

"It certainly looks like its significant..." Yang agreed. She didn't know how old the ancient tomb was, but a massive stone structure, on a small island floating high over a deep pool of water, suspended by two land bridges on opposite sides, in a massive cavernous chamber? That would have been Oblivion to build, even in the modern day.

"Think this is what the vampires were here for?" Jaune asked, as he began to take a closer look at it. The smooth carvings disappointed him; he'd been hoping for some obvious pressure plate, some compartment or button to press.

"Well, the two vampires and their thrall were moving these braziers around it for a reason, and it probably had something to do with the cavern shaking just now and this rock rising out of the ground." Yang answered. "Well, either way, we should get out of here. Get out, report this to... someone, and get an armed guard to stop the vampires from coming back."

"Yeah, you're right. We still need to get to Ustengrav, anyway." Jaune relented, pressing against the slab as he pushed himself up.

Two sides of the monolith slid neatly downwards, as pressure was applied, revealing a girl within the hollow of the monolith, who promptly collapsed to her knees on the floor in front of Jaune.

Jaune and Yang blinked, dumbfounded, before instinct kicked in, and Jaune automatically knelt down by her side, ready to check if she was okay.

The woman slowly opened her bright orange eyes, and slowly and unsteadily tried to get to her feet.

Jaune reached for her before Yang could stop him, and supported the mysterious girl as she staggered. She looked at him gratefully, before blinking in surprise, and hesitantly asked: "Unh... where is... who sent you here?"

"Who were you expecting?" Jaune asked kindly, remembering what Beacon had taught him about civilians undergoing shock. Best thing to do was to keep them talking, keep them conscious and focused, and he tried playing along with the poor girl while he tried checking her vitals.

"I was expecting someone... like me, at least." The girl slowly admitted, as she noticed the blonde woman behind the man helping her drawing an axe.

""Like you"?" Jaune echoed, oblivious as ever. "What do you mean?"

"Get away from her, Jaune." Yang ordered, brandishing her axe. "She's a vampire!"

Jaune balked, and started to scramble away, but she gripped his arm tightly, shouting: "Wait! Please, listen to me!"

"Why should we listen to you, bloodsucker?" Yang demanded, not lowering her weapon for a second.

"Well, look. Kill me, you've killed one vampire." She replied matter-of-factly. "But if people are after me, there's something bigger going on. I can help you find out what that is."

Jaune looked at the vampire, at her expression, and at where she still gripped his hand. He looked at his tense companion. Finally, he sighed, and said: "Yang..."

"Really, Vomit Boy?! Just like that?!" Yang snarled, still keeping her weapon up.

"She could've hurt me at any time, Yang." Jaune pointed out. "I can feel her grip strength; she could have taken me hostage, or pulled me down and tried to rip my neck out."

"No, she really couldn't." Yang replied bluntly, remembering his Aura.

"... okay, fair enough, but she doesn't know that." Jaune conceded the point, but refused back down. "But she's right. We know the vampires were searching this tomb for something; now, we know it's her. And if she can help us find out why they were searching for her..."

"..." Yang looked like she'd bitten into a lemon, with how scrunched up her face was as she thought over his words.

"Yang..." Jaune wheedled.

"..."

"Yang..."

"Alright, fine!" Yang roared at him, violently sheathing her axe. "We'll do it your way, but if I catch even a hint of treachery..."

Jaune grinned at a fuming Yang, and ignored her glare as he turned to a relieved vampire, asking: "Well, you heard her. Where do you want us to take you?"

"My family used to live on an island to the west of Solitude. I would guess they still do." She answered him quickly, before Yang could change her mind about the whole thing. Then, she smiled at him, and added: "By the way... my name is Serana. Good to meet you."

"As long as you don't get in the way." Yang sniped at her, before Jaune could return the greeting.

"I was going to say the same thing to you." Serana shot back.

"All right, that's enough." Jaune said, quickly interposing himself between the pair. Before either of them could say anything more, he quickly introduced them: "I'm Jaune Arc, and that's Yang."

"Charmed." Serana replied with a warm voice, looking at him with a twinkle in her eye.

"Hmph." Yang turned her nose up at Serana, refusing to acknowledge her presence any further, a gesture which Serana returned with equal venom.

Jaune had to fight down a smile and a chuckle. Their interactions just reminded him too much of Ruby and Weiss when they'd first met, and he found himself fervently praying to any gods who were listening that the two would remind him of Ruby and Weiss after a semester at Beacon.

Eventually. Even miracles had some limits.

Either way, he figured it'd probably be best to keep them separated from the time being, and as he pushed Yang towards the direction they came from, he whispered: "Look, Yang, just bear with it until we're out of here. Then, you can head to Ustengrav to grab the horn while I bring her to her family castle-"

"You're not getting rid of me that easily, Vomit Boy." Yang turned and snarled at him, teeth bared.

"Get rid of... why would you think I'm getting rid of you?" Jaune exclaimed, wondering where in the world Yang had gotten that idea. "Miraak's still out there, and so you need to get it back to the Greybeards as soon as possible, right?"

"And what, leave you to wander into a nest of vampires by yourself?" Yang pointed out the flaw in his plan with barely-suppressed skepticism.

"I won't be alone!" Jaune protested. "Serana will be with me!"

Yang's eyes flashed red, and Jaune immediately knew he'd said the wrong thing. Spinning around, she firmly jabbed her finger into his chest, and with finality declared: "I'm going with you."

Knowing there would be no arguing, Jaune instead tried to change the subject to safer grounds, and asked Serana: "Hey, Serana, what's your home like?"

"It's... on an island near Solitude." Serana began hesitantly, not knowing where exactly to start. "Hopefully we can find a boat to take us there. Not the most welcoming place, but depending on who's around, I'll be safe there."

Jaune recognized the tone of voice. Sympathetically, he asked: "Someone you don't want to see?"

"My father and I don't really get along." Serana explained to him, before groaning good-naturedly, and adding: "Ugh, saying it out loud makes it sound so... common. "Little girl who doesn't get along with her father." Read that story a hundred times."

Jaune chuckled at the joke, not least because the resemblance between her and Weiss was stronger than ever in his mind. Then, he continued: "By the way, what's that on your back? Some sort of scroll?"

"It's... it's an Elder Scroll." Serana admitted hesitantly, before defensively adding: "And it's mine."

"Bullshit." Yang interrupted, before Jaune could ask what in Oum's name an Elder Scroll was. "Why would a vampire have an Elder Scroll?"

"Hey, not my problem if you don't believe me." Serana retorted. "As for why I have one... it's... complicated. I can't really talk about it."

"Does it have to do with why you were locked up?" Jaune asked quickly, trying to calm the pair down before Yang could reach for her axe.

"I'm sorry." Serana apologized, even as she nodded in confirmation. Jaune fought down the pang of nostalgia, as he was suddenly reminded his overly-polite partner, and pulled himself together to hear her explain: "It's not that... it's just that I don't know who I can trust yet. Let's get to my home, and I'll have a better sense of where we all stand."

"How do you know your family's still there, anyway?" Jaune asked, curious.

""...""

"I'm not asking how you know if they're still alive!" Jaune elaborated, face flushing with embarrassment as the two girls wordlessly stared at him, before reflecting that "alive" was probably a poor choice of words. "I meant, how do you know that they're still there, on the family island, after... how long were you in there, actually?"

"Good question. Hard to say." Serana replied, after some thought. "I... I can't really tell. I feel like it was a long time. Who is Skyrim's High King?"

Jaune elbowed Yang, since he knew basically nothing about politics in Skyrim. Hell, for all he knew a cabbage was the High King, with a rock for a consort! Yang sighed, and reluctantly answered: "That's... actually a matter of debate, right now."

"Oh, wonderful. A war of succession. Good to know the world didn't get boring while I was gone." Serana replied easily, as she recalled all the different lines of successors she'd read about in her studies, as part of her upbringing. "Who are the contenders?"

"The Empire supports Ellisif, but there are many in Skyrim loyal to Ulfric." Yang answered for Jaune again, still refusing to look at Serana.

Serana blinked, not having expected that answer, and she asked: "Empire? What... what empire?"

Yang blinked in surprise, and stared at Serana, studying her expression to make sure she wasn't playing some elaborate and subtle joke on her. But Serana's expression was one of genuine confusion, which only puzzled her further. She looked at Jaune, who shrugged back, clearly having no idea what was going on. Finally, she slowly answered her: "The... Empire. From Cyrodiil."

"Cyrodiil is the seat of an empire?" Serana asked, as if she was unable to comprehend the very notion. Yang, meanwhile couldn't imagine a world where Cyrodiil wasn't the seat of the Empire, even after the Great War. "I must have been gone longer than I thought. Definitely longer than we planned. Please, let's hurry. I need to get home so I can figure out what's happened."

As Serana sped up, taking the lead, Yang held back slightly, so that she was next to Jaune. Eyeing Serana's back suspiciously, she murmured: "I don't trust her. Cyrodiil's been the heart of the empire for over half a thousand years..."

"Maybe she's been there for over half a thousand years?" Jaune asked easily, even though he could scarcely comprehend the concept himself. Even the Great War, less than a hundred years before he'd been born, felt like ancient history to him. "Look, Yang, the vampires clearly already knew where she was. At least this way, with us bringing her to where she wants to go, we can still learn more about what exactly is going on, right?"

"I don't like this..." Yang admitted softly.

"Hey, what's the worst that could happen?" Jaune asked, rubbing her back soothingly.

-CASTLE VOLKIHAR, ONE DAY LATER-

"My long-lost daughter returns at last." The Vampire Lord at the head of the dining hall boomed in delight, as he got up to see who had interrupted his feast. "I trust you have my Elder Scroll?"

"After all these years, that's the first thing you ask me?" Serana spat back, rolling her eyes, before answering with clear disinterest: "Yes, I have the scroll."

"Of course I'm delighted to see you, my daughter. Must I really say the words aloud?" The Lord asked, and Serana and her companions fought the urge to answer with a resounding affirmation. "Ah, if only your traitor mother were here, I would let her watch this reunion before putting her head on a spike. Now tell me, who are these strangers you have brought into our hall?"

As the entire room of vampires and death hounds looked up past Serana towards her guests, Jaune and Yang fought to keep their composure, in the face of so many hungry gazes.


Author's Note: And we're back, with your friendly neighborhood vampire!

Firstly, to those that fairly pointed out in the last chapter that they were probably channeling their Aura into their food during the Food Fight, I will freely admit that yes, I did overlook that. But I'm still keeping it, just for the sake of humor. Totally not because I was planning on having him bite a dragon or anything...

I decided to do a quick time skip because, well... this story may be more detailed than TWOA, but there's a limit to how interesting I could make a quiet and routine journey. Rolling random encounters breaks monotony in-game, but in writing, there's only so many variations of "Yang and Jaune beat up bandits and wildlife". Sure, I could have made the Windhelm bit into it's own chapter, but it'd have been a short chapter.

I have no idea where Death Hounds come from; there is absolutely nothing in lore, save for a throwaway line (how they came to be is unknown), which isn't really that helpful. But enough similarities between them and Grimm, I'd say, that Jaune can be suspicious. The idea of Grimm invading Skyrim would also scare Yang, since everybody remembers the last major interdimensional invasion.

Yang uses the Flame Cloak despite not wanting to use it in caves because, well... she has the suspicion that she's fighting vampires, vampires powerful enough to destroy the Hall of the Vigilants. And the potential threat is big enough that the real danger of suffocation is a calculated risk; she doesn't want to risk infection, she doesn't want to get bottled up in the mouth of the passageway (neither of them have ranged weapons), and she doesn't want to tango with vampires in the dark. Also, everyone knows that vampires (and undead in general) are weak to fire. Jaune doesn't really call her out on her brutality since, by this point, he's already killed someone before, and he trusts her instincts. He's shocked by it, to be sure, since he knows Yang enjoys fighting, taunting, etc., but he's not so naive that he won't give her the benefit of the doubt.

And yes, I also skipped through most of the dungeon because... well... once again, I only have so many ways of describing killing a vampire. It'd become gratuitous if I kept at it for too long, and I do still have more chapters to go through.

Pentagonal prism, in this case, refers to the shape of the object, and not any light-related properties. I know how it's commonly used in science-fiction, but the prism is also the name of a geometric shape.

While, in the base game, you have to solve the brazier puzzle yourself... in this story, why would Yang and Jaune bother moving braziers around? They were just investigating the vampire attack, not searching for treasure. Also, I doubt the vampires were really so incompetent they couldn't figure out the puzzle themselves. Hence why I changed it so that the vampires solved it before they were attacked from behind by Jaune and Yang.

And no, I also don't know why the person who put Serana in there in the first place didn't put any defences around the sarcophagus. My personal theory (that I came up with when writing this chapter; I didn't think too hard about it when I wrote my original Skyrim story, I must admit) is that a) she knew that setting up more powerful defences would mean the defences would be more easily detected, and Harkon would certainly have no qualms about throwing away his minions to get to Serana, b) she figured that it just being any old Skyrim tomb, complete with the usual draugr and traps, would be more than enough to deter most people who got curious or lucky , and c) she probably didn't intend on getting locked away herself for as long as she did. Of course, I haven't found anything to support or shoot down my theory in the five minutes since I've thought of it, so I'm just going write this story with that in mind. Not like it changes anything, admittedly.

As for why Yang so heavily mistrusts Serana... why would anyone in Skyrim trust a vampire? Sure, vampires are the tragic result of a disease that gives them an unquenchable thirst for blood, perhaps, but from the viewpoint of the average person they're monsters in the night who've given up on their humanity to prey on humanity. An ancient vampire, though? Imagine the atrocities he must have committed, to survive that long. And now you've got a vampire, sealed in an ancient tomb for gods-know-how-long, a vampire so important that an army of vampires came out of hiding and stormed the Hall of the Vigilants just to get to. The safer and more pragmatic option would be to simply kill the vampire, rather than risk letting the others get their hands on her.

From Serana's perspective, of course she's going to warm up to Jaune faster than Yang (or anybody she's ever met)! He's probably the only person in 700 years to treat her like an actual person, rather than a tool, a bargaining chip, or an undead blood-sucking monster. He's naive and idealistic, but also honest and earnest enough that she probably can't help but relax around him.

Which, of course, only pisses Yang off, since she's already suspicious of Serana to begin with (and vampires are known to be excellent in the art of seduction). Jealous? Her? Why would she be jealous? It's not like Jaune didn't react to her casual flirting during their journey or anything.

As for Jaune? He does point out, pretty fairly, that she could have tried to kill him when she had the chance, but didn't, and she is their best bet in finding out the reason behind the vampire attack. Also, once he hears her out, he does want to give her a chance, if only because he's trying to be a hero and a gentleman as anything else. How many men, in that scenario, wouldn't do the same?