Well then, it's been a few months. A whole lot has happened, but none of it needs to be talked about right now. At least I can give y'all this new chapter before the year ends, right? A thanks to xTRESTWHOx NaanContributor and everyone who has helped us along these past few months.
Chapter 89: Poor, Unfortunate Souls
27th of Morning Star
"So, did your mother put all these gargoyles in here?" Yang asked as she shook out some rocky debris from her hair, courtesy of their last opponent jumping out from its stone shell right on top of her.
"Not that I ever saw," Serana admitted, crossing her arms over her chest while raising one of her hands, its palm facing upward. "My mother had a bit of a thing for magical constructs. Not... not what you're thinking," she quickly added upon seeing the blonde's growing smirk. "She just found them fascinating."
"Wait, what were we not thinking?" Ruby asked her housecarl.
"I have no idea," Lydia replied, although part of her didn't want to know. Briiviing then glided into the next room, landing on a table and jumping from it to a half-carved gargoyle. The dragonling perched on its head and made a warble while adjusting herself to a more comfortable position.
"I can concur that these things are marvelously interesting," Weiss admitted as she looked over the unfinished statue. "I had thought that they were some strange sort of Daedra, but seeing this, I'm almost certain they're actually an advanced golem. With some time and effort...and maybe some money to hire someone else to do the carving for me, I could replicate these results, but get whatever form of creature one could desire."
"That'd be cool," Ruby mused while thinking up possibilities, tapping her finger against her chin as her mind worked. "You could make stone guard dogs for the Refuge."
"I...don't think we need guard dogs for a pocket dimension, Ruby," Blake spoke up.
"But the aesthetic!" the younger girl objected while looking around the room for any signs of the vampire mother. As Blake sighed and shook her head in exasperation, Ruby murmured, "Hm, she might've left something here…"
"You guys feel that?" Yang asked, taking off a gauntlet then quickly sticking a finger in her mouth. "I swear there's… Yeah, a bit of air movement. Wait, is that a fireplace?"
"Yes, it is," Weiss answered while walking over to the corner of the room featuring an old, unused fireplace and mantle.
"I haven't exactly been able to keep track, but aren't we, like, deep underground or in the middle of a tower? ...Or both?" Yang asked, and the other members of their party paused to think. They quickly realized she was right, so the presence of an air current, no matter how faint, was puzzling to say the least.
Weiss blinked and looked back at the structure with a more analytical eye. While signs of wear were there, mostly rusted tools and soil that may have once been wood, there were no signs of burning anything within. At the same time, Ruby went over to a bookshelf and began pulling out tomes and placing them back.
"Ruby," Serana flatly began, "what are you doing?"
"Obviously, there's a secret door," she explained. "So that means there's a secret way to open it. A latch disguised as a normal book is a classic way to hide a door switch."
While Weiss felt like that might have been too simple, this was another world, a place designed centuries ago, and just one layer of security behind several others. Her eyes then passed over the enchanted candle holders on the walls, and she immediately noticed something was off about one of them. Its base was a little larger and more ovaloid than the other, with what looked like paint covering something where it was connected to the wall. Figuring it was worth a try, she reached over and tugged at it a little, finding it to be loose, but only in two directions. It was a lever, Weiss realized. She pulled, and then the false fireplace began to slide away behind the wall, revealing a hidden hallway behind it.
"Candle sconce," Ruby noted, setting the last book she grabbed back where she found it as she slowly nodded approvingly. "Also a classic."
"Leave it to mother," Serana said in slight amusement as she shook her head. "Always smarter than I gave her credit for."
"She really didn't want just anyone finding her," Blake noted as they filed into the twice-secret hallway and up the stairs, turning a sharp left after every eight steps.
"Wherever we're headed now, it's narrow," Weiss pointed out. "As old as this place is, I feel like it might have been set up like this by someone long before her, but was restructured for her own means."
"I probably had a forefather or two with something to hide," Serana admitted as they came to a door. "We'll probably never know."
The group of women entered the room and stopped for a moment to take it in. All were taken aback by the apparent age of everything, from the woodwork that had rotted despite treatments mundane and magical, to the cobwebs so ancient they were becoming dust. In the center was a ringed, tiered basin-like structure surrounded by candles. A spell from Serana lit most of them, helping to illuminate the room better.
"This has to be it," the vampire said to everyone, circling around the basin and looking over at a table covered in all manner of bones and other desiccated animal parts alongside preservation jars and vials with things that none of them could hope to identify with a glance, all next to a set of ancient but complex alchemical devices that looked like it might outdo most of what the College of Winterhold boasted.
"I knew she was deep in the magic arts. I mean, she taught me everything I know. But I had no idea she had a setup like this." She held up something that looked like a pickled root to most of the others. "Look at all this. She must have spent years collecting these components." Her attention then returned to the candle-ringed basin. "And what's this thing? I'm not sure about this circle, but it's obviously...something."
"Oh, wow!" Ruby marveled, picking up a couple of bones. "I think these are dragon knuckles."
"Ruby, don't just go rummaging," Weiss chastised her partner, sidling up next to her and beginning to read the extremely faded labels. "We don't want to mess up anything."
"Actually, we should look around," Serana countered, shifting some jars around. "There has to be something here that tells us where she's gone."
"What should we be looking for?" Blake asked, already eying a bookshelf across from the alchemy lab.
"My mother was meticulous about her research," the vampire princess explained while stroking her chin. "If we can find her notes, there might be some hints in there."
"Would they still be around?" Yang asked, nudging a chair which crumbled into pieces at the touch. "It's been...a while."
"They'd have the best preservation enchantments she could craft. Daedra would die of old age before time takes them. Trust me, she was serious about that stuff."
"All right. I'll look over here then. Blake, got the books?"
"Covered."
The girls began combing the laboratory, looking for anything that might be the notes Serana mentioned. Blake paused a few times while looking through the collection of tomes in the shelves, more than a couple catching her eye.
"Some of these might be the only volumes left," she muttered when she recalled reading about a handful of 'knowledge purges' throughout the ages where one side or another decided to destroy almost everything about the written histories of themselves and/or their enemies. It angered her, and she knew more than a few people who would be similarly enraged (in Dr. Oobleck's case, absolutely incensed) if they heard about the destruction of something so important. After looking over a few books, she decided to set them aside and planned to take them back to the Refuge later where she could safely keep them until she could find a way to copy or better preserve the knowledge within.
"Your mother maintained quite a laboratory," Weiss said as she looked over the vials and tubing of the alchemy station. "She would have been able to mix and brew practically anything here."
"I had no idea that her laboratory even existed," Serana admitted. "She had an alchemy setup in her drawing room, but nothing that even comes close to what's here."
"What was she doing here, then?" Ruby asked while moving jars around, checking under each one as though there might be something hidden underneath them.
"Looking at the equipment and materials, it looks like she was trying to advance her necromancy."
"Necromancy," Weiss muttered, her hand hovering over the Necromancer's Amulet. "Why would she be studying that?"
"I don't know. Certainly not longevity," Serana replied. "Kind of a waste of time for a vampire."
"Isn't necromancy, like, really bad?" Ruby asked, placing the two jars in her grip down. Serana raised an eyebrow at that, then made a quick 'ah' of realization.
"They made Necromancy illegal again?" Serana asked, her tone of voice suggesting that such an act had been done numerous times before.
"Actually...I'm not so sure," Weiss confessed. "It was legal back during the Oblivion Crisis. I remember reading that tidbit in the book."
"Oh yeah. It was kinda weird how the guy brought it up," Ruby recalled. "But...isn't it all about messing with souls and stuff? I mean, other people's souls?"
"Hard to answer that," Serana conceded, "but if any magic that messes with souls could be called necromancy, then most enchanted items are the results of necromancy."
Weiss groaned. "I barely came to terms with that before."
"Necromancy is less to do with souls and more to do with the dead and death specifically, as it literally means 'death divination'. So yeah, messing with the souls of the dead is necromancy, but so is just harmlessly harnessing a corpse or skeleton," Serana explained. "Good and bad is all about how you use it. After all, murders are so much easier to solve when you can bring up the soul of the victim and ask them who killed them."
Ruby silently contemplated that while Weiss wondered if that would have actually worked in the investigation she undertook back in Windhelm. At the other side of the room, Yang was gracelessly looking under and over a bunch of ancient items that might have been cleaning tools once upon a time, and Blake continued her search through the books. After pausing to sift through a few old but well-preserved pages of a short collection of stories, specifically the one titled Minotaurs, Morthal, and Me, a leather-bound loose-leaf notebook caught Blake's eye and she went for it next. Immediately, the way things were written set it apart, but a small entry confirmed her suspicion.
27th Last Seed
Harkon's shortsightedness is becoming a serious problem. I've warned him time and time again that his foolish prophecy would cast far too much light on our people and yet he refuses to so much as listen to a word I say. I've become less a wife and more of an annoyance in his eyes. Devoting attention to my work is the only solace I can find while enduring his ridiculous crusade.
"I think I found it," the Faunus announced as she headed back over to the vampires, housecarl, and team leader.
"You did? Let me see." Serana took the notebook in hand and looked where Blake had the pages open, Weiss and Ruby looking over her shoulders.
"What's a Soul Cairn?" Ruby asked after a minute, having caught up and moved back with Weiss.
"I only know what my mother told me," Serana began. "She had a theory about Soul Gems. That the souls inside of them don't just vanish when they're used. They end up in the Soul Cairn."
"I read a bit about it when researching past...heroes." At Serana's curious gaze, Weiss crossed her arms. "I was simply trying to see if any others might have been from our world."
"Right."
"Exactly right. Well, during the Imperial Simulacrum of Jagar Tharn, Mehrunes Dagon tried invading through the Battlespire, but both his forces and the Heroes of the Battlespire, Josian Kaid and Vatasha Trenelle, had to pass through several realms of Oblivion, including the Soul Cairn." Weiss searched her pack, but came up empty. "Must be in one of the houses. Well, anyways, I know souls end up there, but I'm not sure how. It's a realm ruled by powerful beings that aren't quite Daedra, but are certainly not mortal creatures."
She looked back at Serana with a pensive expression. "You're sure that...it has something to do with Soul Gems?"
"Well, that was my mother's theory. And we may...get to figure it out ourselves." She pointed over at the mystery basin. "That circle in the center of the room is definitely some type of portal. If I'm reading this right, there's a formula here that should give us safe passage into the Soul Cairn."
"Ooh, you mean we get to go to Oblivion?" Ruby asked excitedly with a smile on her face.
"That's not something to be happy about," Blake said while placing a hand on her shoulder. "At best it's an exotic plane with interesting sights. At worst, it's Hell on acid."
"Don't be such a bummer, Blake," Ruby dismissed and waved her hand. "If those two people went through it, then so can we."
"Ruby, Josian and Vatasha were trained Battlemages being readied for the Black Legion," Weiss pointed out, "even if they were apprentices."
"And they managed to kill Mehrunes Dagon," the Faunus added.
"Hey, spoilers!" Yang yelled as she rejoined the crowd.
"It's rather obvious that that's where the story was going from the second half forward," Lydia said. "The best part of it is the journey along the way."
"You're all losing me," Serana re-interjected. "Look, if we just find these ingredients, we can get to the Soul Cairn ourselves. Let's see, a handful of Soul Gem shards, some finely-ground bone meal, a good bit of purified void salts... Oh... Damn it!" she cursed through her teeth.
"What? What's wrong?" Weiss asked in growing concern.
"We're also going to need a sample of her blood. Which...if we could get that, we wouldn't even be trying to do this in the first place."
"Ah crap!" Yang bit out.
"You don't think there-" Weiss started.
"No," the other vampire stopped her. "Even if my father had some of her blood stored away somewhere, it's been so long I can guarantee you that whatever's in there isn't blood anymore."
"You're right. It was a rather dumb question, anyways."
"What of your own?" Lydia asked. "You are her daughter, after all."
Serana hummed and nodded in consideration. "Hm, not bad. We'd better hope that's good enough. Mistakes with these kinds of portals can be...gruesome."
Weiss and Ruby recalled reading about what happened to the four students that got themselves killed trying to summon a single, powerful Daedra. After a moment, they both shivered.
"Yeah, we'll be careful," the youngest said.
"Anyway, enough of that. Let's get started. Most of this stuff should be around here, somewhere."
The next phase of searching was quick, with most of the items having already been spotted during the earlier search. The bone meal took the longest, mostly due to a short debate on what constituted 'finely-ground' bone meal, but it was put to rest and the correct ingredients were given over to Serana, who took them up onto a dais and set them into the silver vessel.
"All right. Last part is up to me. Are you all ready to go? I'm not entirely sure what this thing is going to-" Serana looked back and paused when she saw the group all hunkered down behind Lydia's Adamant Aegis.
"We're ready," Ruby squeaked out.
"...Well, at least they take lab safety seriously," the vampire muttered before drawing her dagger and making an incision on her palm. "All right, here goes."
After the drops of blood fell into the vessel, there was a sudden release of magic, and indigo fire consumed everything within while the circle below them began to glow the same shade as the fire.
"By the blood of my ancestors…" Serana muttered as she watched the ritual unfold. "She actually did it."
The stone circles began to spin and part, revealing violet and indigo energies behind them. The pieces of stone sorted themselves, some floating up and some dropping below the floor, creating a stairway from the dais and down into the eerily glowing portal.
"Whoa," Ruby muttered as she looked down into the other dimension. She then began heading down the magically induced stairs, saying, "Well, let's go find- Aaaaaarrrgghh!"
Ruby jumped away after stepping a foot through. Her boot was steaming and part of her legging was ripped, but she was otherwise unharmed.
"Ruby!" Yang yelled as she came to her sister's aide, Lydia right beside her.
"Are you all right, my thane?" Lydia asked in concern.
"It's okay. Just...shocked me? Burned? It just hurt, that's all."
"Sorry. Now that I think about it, I should have expected this," Serana said as she stepped down and went ankle-deep into the portal, seemingly with no ill side effects like what happened to Ruby. She put her fists to her waist and shook her head. "It's hard to describe. The Soul Cairn is, well, hungry, for lack of a better term. It was trying to take your life essence as payment."
"Okay, while I'm not one-hundred percent sure what 'life essence' is supposed to be," Yang started, "I'm pretty sure what you're saying is that living people can't go in."
"Yep. That's what it looks like. Vampires aren't counted among the living. As of now, only Weiss and I can enter this place safely."
"Wait, but what about the rest of us?" Ruby asked. "You guys can't go all alone."
Serana paused for a moment, shifting her gaze down and to the side. She frowned as an idea came to mind, then she began, "Well, there might be a way, but I don't think you're going to like it."
"Absolutely not!" Weiss immediately objected, her eyes briefly flashing orange.
"Weiss, we don't even know what she was going to suggest," Ruby pointed out.
"It's...kinda obvious," Blake added, calmly looking at Serana. "You were going to say becoming vampires would...let us go through."
"That's one option, yes," Serana admitted. "But there's another possibility. We could 'pay the toll' another way. It wants a soul, we give it a soul. Yours."
Everyone went silent for a long moment after that, barely daring to move as the information was absorbed by all the other members of the sextet.
"What?" Ruby finally asked.
"Wouldn't that kill us?" Yang asked.
"My mother taught me a trick or two," Serana explained. "I could partially soul trap you, and offer that gem to the Ideal Masters. It might be enough to satisfy them. It would make you a bit weaker when we travel through the Soul Cairn, but we might be able to fix that once we're inside. Maybe," she muttered the last part.
"Okay, not selling our souls then. Just tearing them in half," the werewolf sarcastically summarized. "Yeah, that'll work."
"It's only a suggestion. If you don't want-"
"I can do it!" Ruby volunteered.
"Ruby!"
"No!"
"You can't just-" The rest of her team and Lydia began objecting.
"Guys!" Ruby shouted above them, making the women quiet for a moment. "Look, I get it. It sounds bad, but the other option is to let Weiss and Serana go alone into an unknown dimension all on their own, with no backup, or to become vampires."
"Which none of you are doing!" Weiss said adamantly.
"Yeah, but splitting your soul apart can't be much better," Yang pointed out.
"I'll be fine," Ruby reassured her older sister.
"If you're going to do this," Lydia began, "then I-"
"No, Lydia. I appreciate it, but there's a reason I'm volunteering for this," Ruby explained. "I've...absorbed a bunch of dragon souls. I'm not sure about the full extent of the mechanics behind that, but we have scientific data showing that I've got way more soul than I used to."
"Aura capacity is not the same as 'amount of soul,'" Weiss reminded her.
"Maybe not, but I've definitely got something aside from my original one in here," Ruby said while tapping her chest. "If anyone can have a piece of their soul missing and be okay, it's me. Plus, Serana said we can get it back." Before anyone could object any further, she continued, "Besides, this will increase our chances of success. Three people in the Soul Cairn, looking for Serana's mom, and three people standing guard here at the entrance."
"What are we standing guard against?" Yang asked, mildly irritated.
"Don't forget that we're still in what's effectively enemy territory," Blake reminded her. "All it can take is one vampire getting curious about the abandoned garden for someone to stumble upon the entrance."
"And then we'll have a real problem," Weiss finished. "At the very least, we need someone to warn us if we're found out, that way we can make a quick exit if you can't stop them from reporting back."
"And that should be avoided at all costs," Serana added. "If my father learns about this portal, then he'll send in a task force, and they won't have the sort of problem we're facing right now. We have to beat him to my mother."
"I'm still not comfortable with this," Yang grumbled. "I mean, we're talking about… Back me up here, Lyd."
"I agree that I don't want Ruby too far away from where I can help, especially if there's bound to be danger."
"Lydia, I'll be fine," Ruby tried to reassure the Nord woman. "We have our comms, and if it does get too dangerous for a living person, I'll come straight back. I promise."
The two women didn't look too certain, but Weiss spoke up before either of them could find another reason to object.
"We'll try to call in every hour after we make sure communications will hold. Don't call us, as we could be in any sort of situation at any given moment. Send messages, but don't expect immediate responses. And yes, I'll make sure Ruby comes straight back if the world is too much for a living body."
"Hey, you're coming back if it's too much for you, too," Ruby told her before looking at Serana. "Uh, you too. Nobody's getting hurt on this mission."
"Thanks. So...I suppose we should try this, then?"
Ruby nodded. "Yeah. Let's."
"All right." Serana searched through her pack, finding a Black Soul Gem after a moment. "Just be careful. You're going to find yourself weakened after this."
"I figured as much," Ruby replied, then took a deep breath, smiled, and nodded towards Serana. "It's okay. I trust you."
"Thank you. Let's not waste any more time then. I promise to try and make this as painless as possible. Hold still."
Ruby braced herself as the vampire cast a spell about the Soul Gem and then towards her. It took most of her concentration to hold down her Aura as the blue wisps of energy hit her and pulled in a way that felt cold and wrong. When they drew away from her and toward the Black Soul Gem, Ruby doubled over and gasped, hands on her knees.
"Ruby?!"
"Fine," she gasped out. "I'm fine." A terrible sort of fatigue settled onto her, making her feel like weights had been attached to every part of her body. "I just...feel like I ran a few miles and went five rounds with Yang, without a break."
"Are you sure you're fine?" Lydia asked as Ruby sat at the top of the mystical stairs.
"Yeah. Just give me a minute to catch my breath." Briiviing wormed her way between Ruby's arm and side, looking up at her with worry. "Vofaas, Briiviing. Vofaas." The dragonling let out a few chirps, but seemed to settle with that.
"Well, I'm ready when you are," Serana said to the Dragonborn.
Ruby nodded and offered her a light smile. After a minute of rest, Ruby took one last deep breath, stood up, then declared, "I'm ready."
Within the Soul Cairn, the vampires and Dragonborn were treated to an apocalyptic visage, gray earth, dead trees, and storm-like clouds hanging over it all. At the bottom of the stairs below their portal, there were boulders that resembled charred wood alongside standing stones polished until they were thinner than a man. To their surprise, a single pale-blue ghost was sitting among them, his head pointed down at his feet while his hands were clasped together, propped up on his knees.
"He- hello," Ruby greeted the soul, who looked up at them as if just seeing them for the first time. At first, he didn't say anything, merely staring at them and into their souls. Finally, after a few moments, he narrowed his eyes ever so slightly and began to speak.
"Get out while you still can," he ominously warned them before dropping his face back down, refusing to elaborate any further.
Ruby groaned and toed at some blackened grass, which crumbled at her touch. "Not a fun world."
"You'd think a vampire would be right at home in this place," Weiss commented, her focus taken across the horizon toward what looked like a warped castle.
"You'd be wrong," Serana added. "Let's just find my mother and get out of here, quickly."
Both stopped at the sound of something crunching and looked to see Ruby with a new soul, this one from an older woman, and the Dragonborn munching on some gray thing.
"Ruby!" Weiss said while rushing to her side and taking the strange object away.
"It's cool, Weiss," Ruby said around a mouthful before swallowing. "This lady was telling me that these things could help. She was right. That weird...emptiness doesn't feel as empty as before."
"Tried and true for… Oh dear, how long have I been here?" the old soul muttered with growing melancholy. "I wonder if my family misses me. I wonder...if they're still alive."
The soul then grabbed a piece of the gray thing from what Weiss had taken and bit into it herself.
"Ah well, can't change it, now. You young beauties don't get stuck here, and make sure to keep your souls safe up there. Don't be afraid to eat some Soul Husk whenever you're feeling the Cairn weigh on you, either."
With that, the little old dead lady started to wander away. While Weiss contemplated what she said and looked at the strange object, she saw Ruby walk over to some strange, cone-shaped plant, the texture of which matched the weird edible item, and pluck it.
"Don't know why, but it is helping me feel better," Ruby told her before taking another bite. "And it's kinda halfway between popcorn and cotton candy."
"Ruby, don't eat strange things just because strangers tell you to," Weiss chastised, her eyes narrowing while she fought back a groan.
"It's fine," Ruby dismissed with a wave of her hand. "I magi-scanned it."
"That's not a term," Weiss countered, "and giving something a once-over with some magical sensing doesn't rule out all the dangers."
"She's right about it being fine, though," Serana interjected, holding a piece of the extradimensional flora. "It's effectively made out of soul energy, so it probably really is fueling her missing piece."
Ruby's munching slowed down and she looked down at the Soul Husk she was holding.
"You mean...I'm eating a soul?"
"Not really," Serana quickly clarified, and Ruby openly sighed in relief. "It's more akin to the energy that comes off of souls, like with enchanted items. Closer to solidified magicka, but not exactly."
"Oh, okay," Ruby said and nodded, then she continued eating.
"While you're filling up, though, where do you think we should go?" Serana asked, looking around them. Ruby also cast her gaze about, but not much seemed to stand out against the dread setting.
"Well, there's a lot of monolith thingies," Ruby pointed out, using her finger to direct her partner's attention while continuing to chew on the strange, otherworldly plant. "There's a...path? Weird building thing. Maybe that bright violet light over there?"
"Anyways, seeing as communications are fine and these...spotlights aren't really indicative of anything at the moment, we'll continue our search and give you hourly updates," Weiss finished up her report.
"All right. Keep safe, you guys," Blake responded.
"We will. Goodbye for now."
"Goodbye."
Blake then hung up, satisfied that everything was going well so far. Yang was still a bit antsy and was currently pacing back and forth, which Blake could understand given that not twenty minutes ago her sister had decided to tear off a piece of her soul in order to venture into a life-eating hellworld. She wasn't exactly thrilled about it either, and her brain was still coming up with more arguments on why doing it was a bad idea and really should not be done.
But Ruby had that look in her eyes that told Blake she was settled on her course of action, and she had a sinking suspicion on why exactly she insisted on being at Weiss' side as the two undead members of their party went where the living could not follow. She just wondered if Yang noticed it herself.
Blake's thoughts were thankfully broken when Lydia reappeared from the Refuge, bedrolls under her left arm and the charm in her right hand, the latter of which she passed to Yang.
"Man, this thing really is a lot," the blonde muttered while rubbing the amulet, taking in just how much power was within it again. "Little spitfire put up a fuss?"
"I'll need to learn more dragonspeak to calm her down," Lydia confided, "but she listened to what Ruby told her, mostly."
"That's good. Here's hoping half the place isn't on fire or frozen when we get back."
Yang kicked her legs out and leaned back on the roll Lydia gave her, her eyes on the door leading into the room. Blake had placed a few Alarm runes on the path leading in, along with Yang's more deadly, fiery runes more sparsely set between. Blake also had her Nightingale Armor activated and was keeping her cowl on. Still, there was no such thing as being too prepared, especially in their current location.
"You know, I don't think we've ever hung out that much, now that I think about it," Yang suddenly stated, turning her eyes back to Lydia.
"Hung out?" Lydia repeated, raising an eyebrow. "Is that one of your people's confusing phrases?"
"You know, just walked around, talked, had a drink or two together," Yang clarified. "Whenever we're around each other, you're always guarding my sister. And most of the time, I'm busy with something as well."
"Guess I haven't gotten to know you that well, either," Blake added, nodding towards her partner before turning to face the housecarl.
"Yeah, we should connect more," Yang doubled down, slightly smiling and nodding.
"...You think so?" Lydia asked after a momentary pause, to which Yang nodded.
"Yeah, of course. I mean, you're not just part of the team. You're charged with serving and protecting my sister with your life, right?" Yang pushed while turning onto her side and resting her head into her palm.
"Absolutely, and it is a duty I treat with the seriousness my station demands," Lydia stated proudly, puffing up her chest in emphasis.
"Awesome. See, we're already off to a great start." Yang smiled brightly at that while throwing her arm to the side. "So yeah, you know about me. Greatest Huntress between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, dragon-punching brawler, and newly crowned king, but tell me a bit about yourself."
"Well, I suppose…" Lydia began, then paused a moment to think. Idly rubbing her fingers along her chin, she then nodded to herself and continued, "I'll start with when I joined the Whiterun Guard. I was a little younger than you at the time, but my father was growing ill, and I needed to take care of him. Things were calm and uneventful at first. The most action I had was breaking up a few tavern brawls. After a while, however, I got a tip about some suspicious activity in the sewers."
Weiss was beginning to feel like this search was going to take a lot longer than they were originally anticipating. They hadn't gone out much, but so far, this realm seemed empty of anything useful to their quest. The obelisks didn't seem to do anything. The buildings were often just places where miscellaneous, useless items were gathered. And most of the souls they tried to question either couldn't recall most of their memories or hadn't been around long enough to remember Valerica passing through.
The best they got was a Court Wizard of Reman, who just heard rumors. Nothing substantial, like directions, were forthcoming.
"On our four!" Ruby called out as she drew Crescent Rose.
Then there were the interruptions.
Weiss spun around, Strahlendjewel in her left and the Staff of Magnus in her right. Two black, skeletal spirits she knew to be Bonemen were attacking. Ruby swiped at and through one of them, its semi-corporeal body seemingly unaffected by the attacks, until it began to fall apart. Weiss aimed her godly staff at the other and sent a mental command to undo its creation, which the staff obliged. As the pieces settled into obsidian-black embers, the two turned towards the sound of nearby thunderclaps to see Serana frying a Mistman pinned to a stone with her magic.
"Done and done," the vampire said as the floating version of the Boneman collapsed into similar embers. She walked up to the pile and searched through it for a moment, pulling out a Lesser Soul Gem before standing back up.
"Glad these things aren't exactly like ghosts," Ruby mused while kicking through another pile of soul embers. "It'd be annoying if I had to- What…the…hell?"
Weiss' mind came to an immediate halt and refocused on her partner, then to what she was staring at. Between a large boulder and a dead, blackened tree was a large, horned dragon's skull. At first, Weiss didn't understand what was so significant, as bones seemed to be everywhere in this plane, but then it clicked.
"Seems the Ideal Masters got some of every kind of bone," she said, though the intensity of Ruby's stare did not decrease. Instead, the young Huntress kneeled down near the skull, a frown forming on her features as she reached out and touched it.
"It's not…real," she muttered. Weiss was about to ask her to clarify when Ruby reared back a fist and then punched down and through the skull, leaving a fist-sized hole at the top and cracks running across most of the remainder.
"Wha-?" Weiss sputtered, surprised at both the act itself and the ferocity Ruby did it with.
"Dragon bone is…strong," Ruby declared, breathing heavily through her flaring nostrils. "Stronger than steel. I haven't been able to compare them, but it might actually be stronger than almost any other natural material except for maybe ebony. This is just a forgery…regular bones in the shape of a dragon."
"Why would something like that be down here?" Serana asked, now looking over the broken faux skull.
"I don't know, but I don't like it." Ruby grumbled while rubbing her head before taking out some Soul Husk and munching on it. "Mm, let's go."
The trio then continued on their search following a worn path some ways before it seemed to be consumed by the ground. Near the end, though, they heard one of the souls calling out in an almost frantic voice.
"Arvak! Arvak!" the man's soul called while approaching them. "Arvak, where are you?! Please," he directed towards them, "you must help me find my Arvak. He doesn't deserve to be in a place like this."
Weiss was a little stunned. They had yet to come across a soul so lively or desperate. She was thinking of how exactly to talk the man down or perhaps explain that his Arvak was likely lost forever when Ruby spoke first.
"Slow down a sec. Who's Arvak?" she asked, voice filled with concern.
"Arvak. My horse," the soul clarified. "We came to this horrible place together. We were attacked by monsters, so I told him to run."
Weiss blinked and looked over to Serana, wondering if a horse could even end up in the Soul Cairn. All they had seen so far were men, mer, and maybe a couple Khajiit at a distance. All Black-Souled beings without even the first hint of a common animal in the realm. Her fellow vampire seemed to have no answer to her silent query.
"Please, he's such a loyal creature," the man continued to beseech them, "and he's been running for so long. You have to save him! A place like this will change you…"
"All right then," Ruby said with a nod. "How can we help?"
"Arvak! Arvak, where are you?" the man called out, seemingly completely forgetting about the people in front of him and what they were talking about before running off to search for his horse again. "Arvak, please come back! Come back!"
After he disappeared, Weiss looked at Ruby questioningly.
"Are we…actually going to look for his horse?" Weiss questioned while simultaneously begging Ruby to say no, given what was at stake.
"Well, to be honest, I'm not even sure where to begin with that," the Dragonborn admitted. "Though, I did notice something."
The other two looked to where Ruby was pointing and saw the charcoal black walls just ahead of them. Before, the structure had felt impossibly distant and more a part of the background than the environment. Now, up close, they could see its smooth stones stretch up and to either side. While scaling wouldn't be impossible, merely difficult, it was thankfully unnecessary with the inclusion of an opening near where they were.
"You think she's through there?" Serana asked.
"Closest thing to a lead that we have," Ruby told her. "Everywhere else has been…a bunch of nothing."
"Well, worth a shot," Weiss supposed as they made their way through. The other side wasn't much different from where they came. One glaring exception that they quickly noticed was a tower to their right from which a dense violet light shone and many of its stones at the top floated in an odd array.
"Definitely got to look into that," Ruby said while walking down from the gate dais and towards a soul leaned up against some sort of building.
"Must stay away from the Keepers…" the elven spirit muttered. "Must stay away…from the Keepers."
"Hey, are you-" Ruby started before seeing a horse walking by. Or rather, a skeletal horse with purple flames leaking from its eyes, mouth, tail, and mane. She was a little dazed by the sight as the horse trotted on, but then immediately went after it.
"Wait up! Are you Arvak?" Ruby called out, chasing after the flaming, spectral horse.
"Ruby, don't chase strange, demonic horses!" Weiss complained, both her and Serana hot on Ruby's heels.
Ruby decidedly ignored that chastisement and continued chasing the horse that looked like it belonged in a heavy metal album cover. It picked up speed as it went through another pointless gate and towards a strange building. Ruby was about to use her Semblance, and perhaps even her Thu'um to catch the beast, but then it disappeared into motes of light at the front of the structure.
"Ruby!" Weiss continued to admonish her as she caught up.
"Sorry guys, he got away," Ruby sadly admitted while looking around the building the horse spirit had led her to. She could probably bust her way in, or maybe use whatever hidden mechanism there was to open the way, but neither were high on her list of things to do at the moment. "Maybe if we have time after getting Serana's mom, we can look into this more."
"Well, maybe," Weiss said as they began to go around the structure.
"We should head over there," Ruby declared while pointing at the building that had undoubtedly caught all their attention earlier. "At the very least, something important should be there. Might even be a clue."
"Good point," Serana agreed, leading them toward a nearby dais. "Let's see if we can get a good path from this vantage point."
As the vampires looked over the desolate landscape, hoping to find a relatively clear route to the glowing tower, Ruby found herself looking at a strange rod at the head of the platform that reminded her of lightning rods from back home. More curious was the small receptacle in front of it, one she realized was almost identical to the ones she had seen across much of Skyrim used to hold Soul Gems.
Curiosity getting a hold of her, Ruby decided to take out a Soul Gem and set it in the holder. Lightning grew more intense around them for a moment, and several bolts struck the rod. The Soul Gem contorted and almost shriveled, becoming black before Ruby's very eyes.
"Oh…" she quietly let out, before the sounds of Bonemen made her turn to face the spirits apparently attracted by her activity.
After quickly striking down a Boneman and helping Weiss to finish off the first Wrathman they had the displeasure of running into, Serana found the results of Ruby's curiosity.
"Well, I suppose that's something to this place." She stowed away the Black Soul Gem and looked around again. "At least now we have some more points of interest that we can investigate if this doesn't pan out."
"Shall we continue, then?" Weiss asked as Ruby eyed the infernal device that was starting to sink into the floor, presumably to reset after its use. Her hands tightened on her scythe as she thought of all the people whose souls were now doomed to wander this desolate purgatory because of Black Soul Gems, like those it apparently produced. There was a metallic ring as Ruby suddenly swept away and turned her back on the Lightning Attractor, Crescent Rose already folded away on her lower back.
"Yeah, let's go," the Dragonborn answered as, after a short pause, the top half of the rod slowly slid down the diagonal slice through its middle before toppling over behind her. Her companions looked from the snapping cloak covering Ruby's departing form to the fitfully sparking remains of the arcane machine as it finished receding into the platform, before hurrying after her.
The three went off again, heading down one of the clearer ways to the tower in their sights. Ruby walked briskly, only deviating from the trail to nab a bit of Soul Husk. As she came back, however, Arvak reappeared next to the women and began heading down another path.
"Ruby, we…"
The younger girl was already off, catching up to the horse spirit in a burst of petals.
"Arvak, hey!" Ruby shouted. "Come on, buddy! Your owner's really worried about you!"
The horse paid her no heed as she ran alongside him and the two vampires ran after them both. As they rounded a tower, he disappeared again, leaving Ruby empty-handed and all of them a little short of breath.
"Okay, I'm actually a little annoyed at this horse," Weiss griped. "If we could catch and ride it, that'd be one thing…"
"Weiss, we can't all sit on one horse. Besides, we have to take him back to…" Ruby paused, then scratched her head and admitted, "Actually, I have no idea where that guy would be now."
"I can summon an atronach in the shape of a horse," Weiss reminded her. "Just one at a time. And I'm sure he wouldn't mind you riding his dead horse. But right now we- What?"
Weiss had looked in the direction of their goal, and it was somehow much closer than before.
"How?"
"It's Oblivion," Serana reminded her. "Things like distance are suggestions to a realm like this. Looks like our dead horse led us to a shortcut."
"Huh, if I had a diem for every time a magical animal led me through mystic wormholes, I'd have two diems. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it's happened twice," Ruby mused to herself. For a moment, Weiss was lost as to what she meant, but then recalled the debacle with Barbas and Clavicus.
"That was a strange scroll-call," Weiss said after a moment, and Ruby nodded knowingly while Serana was just confused.
"Well, let's go see what's waiting for us," Serana said while leading the way again, eager to change the subject.
The trio soon came upon the tower and went around to what they assumed was the front of it. Several souls were gathered there, almost as though in a trance of some kind, while at the center was a Giant-sized amalgamation of bones and dark mist. Where its head would be was a cloud of the mist with a pair of tenebrous yet bright points of violet light, and in its bone-covered hands was a battleaxe carved out of bone.
"Starting to notice a trend," Ruby said as they stopped a distance from the being.
"Okay, now what?" Weiss asked.
"Well, it doesn't look like the most talkative sort," Serana observed. "Not sure how it'll respond to us. Might come out swinging. But on the off-chance-"
"Excuse me," Ruby called out while approaching the large creature, causing it to turn toward her.
"Well, all right then, we're going about this with arms open, I suppose," Serana flatly stated, prepared to cast a spell just in case.
"We're looking for someone," Ruby continued. "She would've come in maybe a thousand or two years ago. Vampire. Good with magic. Looks kinda like her," Ruby described while thumbing towards Serana.
The bone-covered creature gave no reply except to hold up its battleaxe at the ready and stomp towards them.
"Well, I tried," Ruby said while drawing out Crescent Rose.
As the creature came at her, swinging its massive axe, Ruby swung at it in an attempt to counter. As blade met blade, however, Crescent Rose bounced back, sending painful vibrations up Ruby's arms as she stumbled back, crying out in shock. The axe then came up in an underhanded strike, forcing Ruby to block with the shaft of her weapon, only to be sent flying up and through the air.
"Aaaaagggghhhh!"
"Ruby!"
The Dragonborn burst into petals and landed safely a few feet away from her partner.
"I'm okay. I'm okay. Just…tougher than I expected."
The creature then focused on Weiss and swung its axe over and down at her. The heiress dodged with a small application of her glyphs and struck at the knee joint with Strahlendjewel, causing it to buckle for a moment, but then it was back up and bringing its blade around. Weiss leaped over the swing with a backflip, stabbing towards the 'head' as she came back down.
A hiss went out after her stab landed and the creature stepped back. Serana began pelting it with ice, moving away from spikes when she saw how they wouldn't penetrate the bone armor the being was encased in, and instead relying on the blunt impact of ice spheres. The creature mostly ignored her, simply shifting its arm to protect its head and body better while going after Weiss.
Ruby then sprang into action, her scythe carving against the being's torso as she sped by. The younger girl's eyes widened in surprise as she came to a stop, and she looked at the scratch she had gouged into the armor.
"That's…"
"This guy's made of tough stuff," Serana said as she switched to lightning-based spells, hoping to get some kind of sign that she was doing damage to their foe.
"I think that's dragon bone," Ruby called out as she leaped away from the being's strike. "There's no way regular bones wouldn't have gotten chopped up."
"Let's worry about that when this thing isn't trying to murder us," Weiss replied, once again trying to take the twelve-foot creature down by piercing the knees. She jumped away from a kick and then summoned a glyph to hold it in place, tripping up the monster. Ruby charged in, stepping on the axe handle while bringing her scythe around and attempting to stab down into its 'neck'. The hit landed, but the creature seemed unperturbed by it, and instead quickly reached out and grasped Ruby by her head. The girl screamed while trying to push her way out of its grasp.
"Ruby!" Weiss aimed and commanded the Staff of Magnus, trying to get it to loosen its grip or, better yet, cease to be in some form or fashion. Her mind received error messages about time solidification as it did its best to simply drain the monster, but it didn't seem to be doing enough.
Suddenly, Ruby disappeared in a cloud of rose petals that slipped out of the being's hands, swirling around and then behind it before reforming into an angered Ruby, who drew a katana from her back and swung it as she came down. The creature let out a hiss as her unassuming blade managed to actually cut through the bone armor, even if only a little bit. It stumbled away, and Ruby grabbed her beloved scythe from where it was still hanging from its neck hole and replaced it at her back.
"Guys, you're going to want to back up for this," Ruby warned them as she drew another sword in her left hand. Weiss felt her teeth bare at the sight of the Dawnbreaker and immediately began backing away.
"I don't like the look of this!" Serana said as she followed Weiss's cue, leaving the being -Keeper, the Staff had labeled it- to whatever Ruby had planned for it.
"You won't like it at all."
With Dragonsbane in one hand and the Dawnbreaker in the other, Ruby kept light on her feet as she circled the Keeper, using Dragonsbane to attack and Dawnbreaker to defend. As she expected, the spirit within couldn't do much against the light of the sword of Meridia, and Dragonsbane was far more capable of cutting through the dragon bone surrounding it. With it on the backfoot, Ruby was able to finally get it where she wanted it and strike.
This time, the Dawnbreaker came for the attack, striking into a point on the armor Ruby had weakened with three cuts from Dragonsbane. The Daedric artifact punched through weakened dragonbone and into the spirit beneath. It shrieked as otherworldly flames consumed it, magnified as Ruby stepped back and let loose a gout of flame.
"Yol Toor Shul!"
The Keeper shrieked even more as it was consumed, flailing about with its axe. When the stream of fire stopped, Ruby was in the air and drawing Crescent Rose once more, this time aiming above the torso of the dark creature. A ball of dark mist fell one way as the smoldering body fell the other.
"Phew," Ruby sighed in relief before pulling the Dawnbreaker free from the dragon bone armor and sheathing it along with her other weapons. Weiss and Serana returned, the latter stopping to pick up the Black Soul Gem that appeared where the 'head' had landed, the light indicating there was currently a soul housed within.
"Like I thought," Ruby muttered as she picked up the oversized axe and looked it over, especially the bone blade. "This thing… It was all made out of dragonbone."
"And powered by souls," Serana added, holding up the gem. "It wasn't just this. I noticed a siphoning going on here, but I didn't think much of it until it stopped with that thing's death. It was absorbing the nearby souls' energy to further fuel it."
"So, dragon bones and black souls," Weiss wondered aloud.
"They had to get the bones from somewhere," Ruby realized. "That fake skull… I thought I saw others, but now, I think I know what it was. These guys were trying to make dragon bones."
"But why?"
Ruby gestured around them. "Bones are kinda their thing, Weiss. And dragon bones are maybe the toughest in existence. If they wanted to make some superstrong bone golem, I can't think of anything better than dragon bone for the job."
"Well, we managed to defeat it," Serana pointed out.
"We did, but depending on the size of the dragon," Ruby went back to looking over the empty husk, "there might be a whole lot more bones."
The three women looked back behind them, now seeing what looked like a castle where they once thought was another wall, and a couple more towers like the one this Keeper had been stationed at between them.
"Well," Ruby said as she straightened her back and took a bite of Soul Husk. "Let's go."
She set forth, and the vampires followed her.