Day Keeper, Night Reaper

by Metatron Alastor

Eons pass, and Serana still sleeps. She feels only cold, hears only silence and sees nothing but darkness. On the surface, her kin are starting to get restless. The Vampire menace isn't a tale. Fear spreads like a ghastly blight, carried on the dark wings of mortal feebleness. The Godsplitter rides once more into the unknown, knowing a sole thing: The Winds of Change are blowing.

10. Chapter IX: Embrace Death

A/N: For those who want to start from where they left off on the preview, simply search "drifting back into the current" in the page and continue from there.

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Chapter IX: Embrace Death

The washing of the oars in the thick sea water were of a hypnotizing regularity. A little more than a second went by before from their emergence to the plunging and the time they spent underwater was roughly the same. Two splashes, following another two and yet another two. The rhythmic movement was also fixing that cadence into her mind. She supposed that, hadn't it been for the preternatural strength allowing her to row so intensely, the fatigue would also come and go at the same pace. And if the effort required had been bigger, the mind might have been numbed completely by the tiredness. If I were a mortal, I wouldn't have the strength to think right now.

The boat moved against the wind, ramming the waves one after the other as they collided with the thin keel of the tender. They all split in two, grazing the sides of the small boat and sometimes pouring some water in. There weren't any holes and the wood was in good conditions, which was a clear enough sign of regular use. It was amazing how they had managed to keep any of those boats in such good state. Of course, none of the wood she saw was the one used for the original construction, but the boat itself was one of the same old tenders kept to transport things and people from the castle to the shores. They only had a pair of oars and no mast for a sail. She had suggested to create one on the spot, but Azrael reminded her of the wind. It was blowing strongly from the open sea, in the opposite direction. The sail needed to use adverse wind was too complex to build and couldn't, in any way, be improvised.

'You take the helm, I'm taking the oars…' he had said, but the way he had trailed off had left an imprint on her mind that would fade away only with an enormous effort. He had turned towards her and locked eyes with her for a moment. By now she knew when he was looking at her in the eyes. She felt the shiver down her spine as he gazed. 'Actually, we will do the opposite.' A definite decision. Of course it was. The normal thing was that the man would do the task that required the most strength, but tradition didn't look like his strong suit. Logic was, though. Serana was the strongest between the two of them, she wouldn't tire and she would have brought both of them to the castle in one piece quicker than he ever could.

Being there rowing while he sat calmly at the end of the tender with the helm in his hand, doing nothing except for holding the rudder and keeping it in place, was a very strange situation for her to be in. It felt so wrong and so painfully unusual that she almost felt uneasy, but if there was something on which Azrael could never be attacked was his reasoning. He had his own perspective, which was radical and extreme in its creativity and open-mindedness. He challenged the very opinion that open-mindedness was something completely good and without fault. It had its faults. To people holding to certain habits, it went from being startling to being traumatizing. But, as far as rationality was concerned, there was nothing to fight him on. There wasn't a single angle at which she could approach the problem to criticize his decision. But as long as I have my breath, I can maybe try to approach this at another angle. I can't attack his decision, but the concept behind it.

She didn't do it out of annoyance, but something else. Probably curiosity, or perhaps for the simple search of conversation. During those days of travel, the silence was probably the thing that had burdened her the most. She almost envied Azrael's complete comfort in silence. Despite the mixed feelings she still had about the stop in Dragon Bridge, she couldn't deny that she felt eager after spending some time with other people. In absence of others, Azrael was the only person she could talk to, and they had silently found a sort of rule. They could talk, that was her win, but never about light or useless topics, which was his.

The term useless seemed to come up quite a lot in her thoughts regarding him. He was one for useful things. He filtered everything wondering if it worked, while she approached most things asking herself if it would be fine for everyone. A utilitarian view versus a conciliating one. She had encountered some people in the past that were like this, but he brought the concept to a whole new level. Nothing was safe from the razor-sharp lucidity he cast over everything. She considered it presumptions, if not arrogant. He didn't think of it that way, or simply didn't care. He was extremely confident in his means, and above all his own mind.

'Azrael,' she said, raising her head and looking towards him. At one point he would lock eyes with her, but for now he was looking away. 'Back in Dragon Bridge, I read about the Dunmer. How they came to be and how they live. But if you truly are one, then I can't really understand your distance from your roots. You're completely different from the people I read of in those books.'

He was truly a Dunmer, there were no two ways about it. The overlap between him and the Dragonborn proved it without any possibility of failure, but she wondered why and how he had come to stray so far from the path of his people and his Ancestors. He had reached a point where he didn't seem to belong to them anymore. He doesn't seem to belong anywhere at all, honestly, she thought, thinking about how she had transformed her thoughts into words. The concept of belonging is absent from his description. He doesn't belong to anything or anywhere that I know. I don't even understand where he became like this. Nobody comes from nothing, but then again he challenged even that. He truly didn't belong anywhere she knew.

'The reasons are few, but complex,' he said, slowly.

He didn't turn her way. She took it as a good sign. It meant he was thinking about it. She expected to hit a soft spot, but that was unexpected. Of course, there was always the possibility he'd just tell her he didn't want to talk about it, or worse still he would redirect the question her way. She had come to realized how well he actually knew her. She held on to that thought, because there was nothing wrong with it, but that was the way it looked. She'd come back to it later. For the time being, she merely moved her gaze away. She had no proof it worked with him, but most people as secluded as he was typically disliked pressure more than anything. She suspected it worked on him, but couldn't be too sure. You could never be too sure when dealing with him, because of his radically different thought patterns.

'I didn't fit,' he continued, after a couple of seconds. 'For my whole life, I've felt adrift. It seemed to me no one in this world would welcome me. Not even my own kin.' She expected sorrow and suffering to accompany those words, but to her surprise she heard a distant note of something different. Only forbearance and reflection. 'Everyone approaches the world in a different way, and I felt I needed to build my own sanctuary before rejoining others. Only recently I have realized that there is no such thing as a safe haven in this world. When I was young, I felt like I needed something more to approach tradition. And when I woke up from my sleep I was beyond tradition, and in a way my convictions have been confirmed. The values of my people help them shape themselves into something they learn to appreciate. I have done that on my own. I have done what all of my blood siblings do, but in my own way.'

'But why?' She still had her doubts. Doubts were hard for her to dismiss. 'Everyone around you followed them, why didn't you?' Where did you find the strength and the will to stray so far from others? was what she should and truly wanted to ask, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. The rationale was that she feared his answer, but in truth she didn't want to admit her weakness. 'I just can't understand why, of all nations, you were born in the least likely to favor freedom of thought.'

'That's precisely why,' he said, and the emotionless note took a cryptic vibe for a moment. 'What other culture could?' This time he turned towards her, locking her eyes into his in a grip of an unknown kind of power. 'Only us. The fire-borne, but cold-blooded Dunmer. We like to think of ourselves as the truest of traditionalists, but look at our history. What mark do we bear?'

She was taken aback. She didn't expect a question coming. She might have, but wasn't ready. 'I don't know… You're marked as secluded, mainly because of the distrust you show others. You're different. Not…' she hesitated, fumbling over her words a little. She would have liked to have more mouths than just one, to say everything that went through her mind. 'Yours isn't the superiority you impose onto others, like you Altmer cousins. You keep to yourselves and don't meddle in others' affairs, as long as they don't meddle in yours.'

'We bear the mark of the rebel,' Azrael said, catching the lapse between two phrases to intervene. She ha more to say, and didn't guess what he was thinking. Still, getting him talking again was her goal, which she had achieved. She listened intently. 'We escaped the Summerset Isles, we began worshipping the Daedra instead of the Aedra, three of us defied a Lady of Oblivion herself. They lost, but that's beyond, if not pivotal, to the point.' In that brief talk, he had shown a trait typical of his people, for a change. Pride. The pride to be born a Dunmer. It was the Chimer's before them, and it had been passed on. he was proud of being born a Dark Elf, even if he hadn't lived as one. 'We hold to tradition,' he said, and that was the conclusion, 'to keep our rebellious minds in check.'

And when it's not enough, people like Sotha Sil, Vivec and yourself come to walk this plane. She couldn't know what he had truly done. However, from what the bookkeeper had told her, she knew it was something titanic. Even the name, Dragonborn, involved the Dragons. And when they were involved, it was something big. Those beasts left the other races alone, mostly, but the fights that ensued between two of their kind were something spectacular. They could last for hours, and for the entire timespan fire and ice thundered in the sky. In fact, now that she remembered she could understand better what Azrael had done in the cave. He had used the language of Dragons to replicate the magic they used, if it could be considered magic at all. The thing was, she had never known anyone that wasn't a Dragon to be able to use that power. Not even the Nords, who revered Alduin as their deity. For a Chimer to have that power, something big must have happened.

Upon dropping that train of thought, she noticed that the waves had become somewhat weaker. They didn't hit the tender as hard and no more water spilled inside. The split waves ran just under the reinforced sides of the little boat and, when reforming after its passage, they were lower than they were before they started their conversation. She looked at Azrael, who was keenly looking at a higher spot behind her back. Merely seeing him made her think about his examinations of nearly everything they came in contact with. She knew the individual pieces, mainly what she told her, but she had learned to use those little fragments of his mind structure to her advantage. For instance, she thought about the waves. The waves form thanks to the wind. One option was that the wind had lost some strength. The sky was still grey with clouds, but she noticed something. The gale… It's not hitting my back anymore.

'Has the wind gone down?' she asked, not understanding where Azrael was looking that seemed so interesting. It could have been just a bird or a particular interesting frame formed by the clouds, but it looked something more real. He's observing, not imagining.

'No,' he said, calmly. 'If anything, it has increased.'

She was confused for a moment. Just as she thought she had got it right, she had made a mistake. But how could that be? 'But I don't feel anything coming from behind me anymore.' It was interesting to think that, had he been someone else, she would have laughed and mocked him. If she was in the wrong, her mistake could have been the basis for a ironic joke. Not with him, though. She just waited for an answer.

He briefly shifted his head in her direction. 'Turn around,' he said, shifting again.

She drew the oars inside the tender and laid them beside her to prevent them from being carried into the water by the waves. Casting a last glance his way, trying to deduce something she was currently missing, she grabbed the side of the boat and turned around. She stopped so suddenly she felt as though she had been turned to ice on the spot.

Twenty meters ahead of the boat's head, a rocky shore emerged and reentered the water at the rhythm of the weak waves. There was a wooden wharf build on one of the more even rocks, emerging from the water by a foot and with a rope knotted to one of its sticks. Its end had collapsed into the sea. Not very far from said shore, there was a stone tower that was sixty feet high at the very least. The Watchtower. Continuing from there, a roadway build with stone slabs led up the hill, forming an arch that loomed over an expanse of black sand. On the sides of the island, as far as her eyes could see, the waters broke against the black jagged coastline. The higher waves frothed as they shattered and the foam hit the walls of the colossal fortress standing atop of the island.

Serana looked up. The stone road led to a portal, the entrance to the ancient stronghold overlooking the sea. Its walls were build with smooth stone, dark as slate, that with water dripping from it looked lucid, casting ghastly reflections of the grim light hitting its surface. The towers rose high up, splitting the sky with their massive size and towering height. One of them, the one that stood the furthest back, was crooked and looked like it could crumbled into the water at any moment. The rest of the shapes were shrouded by a rising mist, coiling around the castle and rising into the sky. It rose from the walls, like smoke from a fire, and gave the place an even gloomier appearance.

Castle Volkihar, lo and behold, she thought, once again pushing the humor in as a shield. My home, but perhaps because it's the only one I ever had. The very thing she had suspected might happened was occurring with a precision she herself found astounding. For all that time, she had mused over how the arrival home would clear her head and give her some peace, but something had told her repeatedly that it wouldn't. Home brings as many assurances as it does insecurities. I'll be better there because someone will look after me, but I'll not feel any different. She was receiving proof of those words precisely in that moment.

She had forgotten about everything she had in mind just before. The shock brought by the sudden apparition of the castle had wiped away everything and clouded her mind with new worries and thoughts. She didn't care about the wind, or the waves, or how stupid she must have looked in Azrael's eyes for not noticing the titanic things standing right behind her. Nothing of that remained. Instead, the doubt of returning there, the fear of what might happen and the hundreds of simultaneous playing of the reunion with her parents going on inside her head. No one of those will happen. Not even one, she told herself, but her imagination simply acknowledged it and kept creating new ones.

She was looking towards the gates, and those alone were filling her head with memories. The last time she had seen those, she was fleeing away along with her mother. She hadn't had the time to look at them, because they were in such a hurry. She had always found the carving on the portals very interesting, but that once there was no time. They had to flee, go as far away from Harkon as possible. The mere fact that she was walking in again, possibly wiping away years of her mothers work to keep her away from her father, gave her a headache. She saw no other way to catch up to the events, but it was risky. What if neither of her parents was there, waiting for her? What if only her father was there? What if her mother had died?

'Serana.' Azrael's voice was calm and detatched, but the snap into reality she felt was so strong it barely left her the presence required to pay attention to his words. 'Row. We're drifting back into the current.'

She quickly picked up the oars again and recommenced what was an all too familiar movement by that point. The tender stopped gliding backwards, floating idly, and after a couple of splashes made by the strong rows it started moving forward once again. Slowly at first, then more swiftly. She looked down, at her own feet, but the image of the castle was imprinted in her view, as if drawn with black ink over her eyes. It wouldn't go away. On the fourth circular movement of her hands, the motion started to become automatic once again, and once again she drifted into fearful thinking.

She heard a noise and raised her head. Azrael had gotten up from the rear of the boat and had moved to its center, closer to her. He was looking beyond her, most probably at the wooden wharf. He leaned out, but the boat immediately followed and threatened to overturn. Serana gripped the oars tighter and felt the urge to cry something, warning him to be more careful. She repressed the impulse, noticing how much of a mindless reaction it was, rather than the rational thought she had always believed it to be. Azrael backed away, glancing around slowly and following a pattern not clear to her. The black void hiding his face turned towards the wharf once more, and this time he raised a hand.

A bleeding wound opened in the veil separating Aetherius and their plane. Magicka seeped from it, she could feel it. A dusty auburn light flashed in his hand and he pointed it forward immediately after. The magicka didn't stop flowing, and continued to empower the incantation. She couldn't see anything of what the spell was doing, but she heard something wallowing. After two more plops, the wet rope attached to the quay appeared in front of her. The auburn light extinguished rapidly and the rift in Aetherius closed just as quickly while Azrael made a very quick movement, grabbing the line with both hands.

'Help me,' he told her, giving the rope a strong pull and dragging the boat closer to the wharf. He then moved one hand in front of the other, tugging the line.

She drew the oars out of the water and placed them inside of the tender, where she had put them already to look at the castle. Rising to her feet, she felt if the boat would turn on itself. It wouldn't. A long while had gone past since her last feeding, almost a whole week, and all the water in her body had dried. The thing that weights the most in a body, she learned by experience, was the water it contained. So far from feeding and with her relatively light armor on herself, she weighted very little. Little enough that the boat didn't overturn when instead it could have under Azrael's weight.

She stepped forward carefully, putting her foot down against the boat's side and hopping to a crouching position, from which she could easily grab and pull the rope. The other effect of being a week's away since her last feeding was that her primeval instinct were not only stronger than ever, but clearly perceivable even when not needed. Her strength, usually coming to her aid when required, seemed to always linger in her limbs. It was a good sensation, but it was also really tiring. Using it for something felt extremely good. Her vampiric swiftness too was constantly trying to emerge. Thanks to that, she found it really easy to put her hands in between Azrael's and start to tug the line.

One pull from her managed to draw the boat over a distance he would achieve in five or more seconds of struggling with the current and the rope. He didn't say a thing. One of her last contacts in the mortal world before she was locked away continually repeated how he would never get tired of noticing how insanely strong she was. She was flattered by that, but after a while it had become tiring. Azrael didn't comment though. He was completely unsentimental about her capabilities, as well as all her other vampiric abilities. For the first few days, she considered he was acting tough, but the more she spent time with him the more that seemed like a hurried misconception. He truly was unsentimental, if not utterly unfeeling. That was the question, probably. To what extent he noticed things and to what he didn't externally react to them. She couldn't rightfully deny that she had never tried to impress him, and if not for her knowledge of his cold demeanor she would have been sorely disappointed by his lack of appreciation. Again, that came down to the emotional reactions she was used to get from people.

Many times she wondered, or had caught herself wondering, if he was as unemotional about her as he was for most other things in the world. Her story, her appearance, her character. Her story alone, one she still couldn't fully believe even though it had happened to her, was quite something. She had no idea of what opinion, if any, he had of her. And that scared her terribly. Where do we stand, you and me?

In her thinking, she had given free reign to her strength. She had started pulling the line way faster than Azrael could ever do. When she came to it, she noticed he was retracting his hands very quickly to avoid slowing her down. Efficient as ever, she said to herself, noticing it, but while noticing it, she also became more aware of what was going on around her. In sensing the hands moving, she felt something else around her, coming from her right. It was him, but she couldn't tell what it was for a moment. It seeped from him. Energy of some kind, both hurtful and pleasurable. Both material and immaterial.

She understood the material part of it fairly quickly. They were close enough and the air was cold enough for her to feel the heat of his body seeping though the armor. It wasn't the most welcome of feelings while her bloodthirst was growing, but concept of someone giving off heat was somewhat poetic. Of course, he would say that the Chimer and the Dunmer after them naturally produced more heat than others… He's the least romantic person I've known, now that I think of it. He made everything into a science, and every science into a set of opinions that he could systematically annihilate with just a moment to think about it. But, back to that strange energy he was irradiating, there was something that only her instinctual core could perceive, and still wasn't too clear. The mere vicinity was upsetting her a little, and she couldn't figure if in a positive or negative way. It was just making it difficult for her to keep focused.

Not that she needed to keep her focus for a long time, since before she could fully return to the present moment the tender's side hit one of the hidden sticks making up the submerged part of the wharf. The boat shook slightly, but Azrael, who had kept a clearer mind, grabbed the pole and drew the boat forward enough for him to reach one of the poles still out of the water. Serana moved back towards the head of the tender, preparing to get down and drag the boat onto dry land while the Dunmer tied the wet line back around the stick, where it was supposed to be. Normally, there wouldn't be the need to do it but storms frequently hit the island. That wouldn't have been the first rope to come loose and the first boat to wreck somewhere in the frigid waters of the Northern Coast. He seemed to have understood it.

Serana jumped off the onto the wharf and crouched, grabbing the side of the boat with both hands and pulling it closer to the rocks, while Azrael finished tying the line. She saw him grab the quay's flat wooden plank and drag himself up as she hauled the tender onto the rocks. 'We arrived quite quickly, didn't we?' she said, scrubbing away the brackishness that had encrusted on her breastplate.

'For me,' Azrael said, looking at his left gauntlet and grazing it with his other hand. He was trying to take it off. 'You could have simply flied here.'

She was still scratching away the salt and examining the rest of her armor, but as soon as she understood what he had just said she jarred to a halt. Her hands rested for a few moments on her armor without moving, her mind racing so fast it was taking away every bit of energy she had. He shouldn't know. He hasn't seen anyone transform, unless it was before me. Maybe Lokil… No. The main problem was another, however. Has he said that just because, or is that meant to be a warning? He had done something like this before intentionally, as in leaking information to produce a certain reaction in her. She had tried once to ask him if he had done it to see the consequences on her or for the sake of sharing the knowledge, and of course, she had gotten no answer. It was better not to ask.

But she could ask something else. 'How…' She fumbled on her words. A vampire afraid of a mortal… Near her own lair. A sign of the times, maybe. Or the fact that said mortal was less ordinary than the common meaning of that word implied, but that was beyond the point. 'How do you know?'

The Dunmer remained silent. But it wasn't one of his usual silences. He slowed his every movement and slowly removed the gauntlet, shifting his head enough for her to guess he was looking at her sideways. 'Nevermind,' he said, dismissively but with subtle irony, his motions resuming to their normal speed. 'I haven't told you that story.'

'What story?'

'One that isn't for today,' he cleared out. His forearm and hand were exposed now, and he was gazing at his index and middle finger.

Serana soon lost interest for what he was doing by itself, which wasn't that interesting, and as soon as she did she noticed something that was almost too obvious to be noticed immediately. She had read of the Dark Elves having grey skin, but it was her first time laying eyes on it. Furthermore, it was the first bit of Azrael's skin she had seen since they met, which was quite a while now. She always did judge a little by appearance, but it had never been possible with him. Nor was it now, after all it was only his hand. Her sight allowed to see clearly despite the distance and the fine mist between them.

The forearm itself was vigorous. Not too big, because there didn't seem to be a bit of flesh on it. It was all fiber and sinew. Its very shape coincided with the one of the muscle. Well… she thought, if he always uses the sword like he's done at Dimhollow, the wristwork would be enough. The wrist and his hand looked strong too, but she knew that. He had shown it in plenty of occasions. Although, pretty much every warrior using the blade in the way he did would have an arm built like that. The interesting thing, the unusual thing, was the color of the skin. When she had read of the grey color of the Dark Elves' skin, she expected a greyish pink or just a darker color. Like the skin of the Altmer, which in spite of being referred to as yellow isn't actually vividly so. His was. It was the same as the hue of ash. Completely colorless.

'Are all the Dunmer of that exact same color?' she asked, full of wonder. She felt like a child for a moment.

'No,' he answered, grazing his middle finger with the end of the other gauntlet's index finger. 'Most of my kin have a darker tonality. I've always been quite pale.' He raised his bare hand, saying nothing but acting as if there was something else. Serana noticed the exposed middle finger was wounded. A recent injury, maybe a week or so, which he had reopened it with the gauntlet's sharp part. A drop of blood was creeping down his finger. His head rose. 'Come closer.'

She involuntarily stepped backward. 'I hope you're not asking me to—'

'Precisely that,' he cut her off, keeping his wounded hand close to his chest and looked at her. She could feel his gaze, hard as stone. 'It will only be a moment,' he added, shifting to a more, but still very far from, soothing tone.

'A moment?' she asked. The mere scent of the blood was marking her temples pulse and her head spin. The outlines of the objects around her were fading and the color becoming more vivid. She had failed to realize that until that very moment, but she was incredibly thirsty. A week has passed. 'Do you have any idea what will happen once I drink just a drop?' she pressed on, but she was venting and externalizing her fears more than informing him of anything. 'I could lose control, jump to your neck and drink the rest of your blood dry. Cover that injury…' Her voice failed her, as she felt a sting coming from her throat. 'The scent of blood's affecting me.'

'You won't lose control,' he said, his tone slightly cryptic. He didn't lower his hand. 'If everything goes correctly, you won't want to taste it again. If not, some fire will do.' He bent his head to the left. 'Come closer.'

He had said those same words when he had summoned her before, and although she couldn't explain why, that proved effective. Her mind ceased its resistance, and as a result, her instincts diminished in strength all of a sudden. It was maybe true that the greatest efforts were the battles fought between the instinctual core and the disciplined part of her mind, and not her instincts alone. If the spinning head and the tingling at the end of her digits did continue, she felt it less. Lowering her head, she walked towards him, who looked at her at every step. She looked at him and somehow failed to put him in the situation wholly. The dark sky behind him was interrupted by his darker, almost black figure. He is something from the future, in a sense, she thought, in an attempt to justify her feeling, I'm probably still living four thousand years ago, and he is my only link. That's why he seems so out of place, like an outsider. The black void hiding his face seemed more sinister than ever before. As she got closer, she actually felt a paralyzing fear gripping her limbs.

She kept moving nonetheless. She felt many things, too many it seemed to her, but she always revealed very little. In her younger years, before understanding how to build her own imagine, she had come off as passionate but also quite suspicious and skeptic, sometimes indifferent. The reality of it was that she hid her inner world from the world. Not to the extent that Azrael did, but still. There was a point of similarity. In that particular moment, for instance, she felt inferior, but nobody in the world other than a very few people wound have ever noticed. For better or worse, Azrael probably counted among the ones who could. He seemed to play around with the aura that followed him, which was remarkably strong. Somehow, he seemed to be so aware of his options in the case of conflict that one didn't simply bother to engage in that conflict. It was the case for her as well. She was stronger, faster and without a doubt more quick-minded than he could ever be, if a fight were to break out. A false move on his part and he would be dead, and she could have returned to her father alone and undisturbed. But she didn't want to play with fire. I have my plan, but every plan includes the enemy's predicted reaction. How will you react, Azrael? I don't know. I can't know. His apparent invincibility lied partly, if not wholly, in his unpredictability.

What does he want from me now, for a start? she wondered. She was close, enough for her to smell his blood very clearly. Azrael scratched the wound with one of the other hand's armored fingers, leaving a single drop of blood on the talon-like extension of the gauntlet. He moved that finger towards her, while silently pointing with the other hand's index at her own hand. She raised it, and he softly touched her palm, leaving that drop of blood on it. She looked up. What now? was the question her eyes were asking mutely. Did he want her to drink it? She didn't know if she wanted to. That single droplet emitted a strange scent. One that was piercing and venomous, and she asked how that was even possible. Something was starting to link in her mind, trying and partially succeeding to understand certain things that had remained a mystery to her until that very moment. But for the time being, only she existed. And Azrael's commanding authority alongside her.

'Taste it,' he said.

She wanted to ask, but didn't want to. Probably, she simply didn't have the strength to do it. The simpler way out of it was doing as he said, and she didn't see him betraying her when so close to their destination. Maybe now that I led him here he might want to rid himself or me… No, no, why are you even thinking about it? But despite her silencing every such thought, they kept coming back with even more force than before, hammering on her mind constantly, as if the world didn't had enough problems on its own. She looked towards the black void in the Dunmer's face and brought her palm to her mouth, feeling her eyes locked in his invisible ones.

She pressed her lips against the drop, locking every muscle up tight and trying to keep every coming from her feral side in check. He seemed quite sure of himself, but she couldn't know how her body would react to a dose so small. She could have hungered more, lost control over herself and demanded more. She planned to lick it away with her tongue and ingest it as quickly as possible, avoiding the inevitable surge of power that would have followed. She was so ready to take the hit that she didn't spot the other threat in time.

The red, warm liquid didn't taste at all like blood. It didn't have the sapid, metallic taste of life blood. It did have the strange flavor of elven blood, a difference that didn't really have a correspondent on a mortal's palate, but something else was shadowing and deleting pretty much every trace of that savor from it. It was sharp, acrid taste that soured her lips and wiped away every other thing she felt in her mouth, almost as if it had been cauterized. She realized something. It's not that every other flavor has disappeared, but this thing has render me unable to sense anything. The acrid tang kept burning away, until it grew scorching and painful. She thought her lips were catching fire.

She spit what she could, coughing so hard she thought her lifeless bowels would come out of her belly. This is like what vomiting felt like, she remembered. The vampiric essence tried to rid itself of the blood, like… Something sparkled, and she finally completed the first piece of the puzzle. The one that had been tormenting her with its incompletion ever since they had escaped the cave. Like what happened to the bald vampire. The imaged flashed all too clearly in front of her, and she saw again the quarter-breed drinking its fill from Azrael's throat, staggering back and coughing, expelling all the ingested fluid on the floor as its body seemed to deteriorate and his strength to fade. The way the blood had dripped out of his mouth, without him being able to swallow it down. If he felt the same thing I felt, but having drank several mouthfuls of it, I'd say he handled it quite well. As usual, the humor pushed away the gloomy terror taking hold.

'What…' she trailed off, coughing again. The motion itself had little sense, because she hadn't breathed any air she could expel. That went to show how unnatural the thing that just happened was.

'Keep it together.' She was looking away, but she felt Azrael's armored hands slowly grasping her shoulder and keeping it straight. 'It'll soon pass.'

She started back at him, turning her head around and conscious that her eyes were wide with surprise and fear. She felt like quaking, but it wasn't a way the vampire expresses its fear. 'Azrael…' she muttered, still feeling the acrid taste in her mouth. 'What did you…?'

'In due course,' he said, using her pause to interrupt her. 'Are you well?'

'Slightly better might be the right words.'

He let go of her shoulder. He had slid the gauntlet right back when she was coughing, or even before while she was still nearing her palm to her mouth. 'Let's go.'

She followed, but she was somewhere else with her head. Azrael walked along the rocks, towards the dry sand and the stone bridge leaning up to the castle's entrance. She followed him, distractedly, with the real images of the drizzle, the mist rising from the castle black walls and the dim sky flashing and melding with her memories. The ones so close to her awakening were clear and vivid, rendered even more clear by the strong charge of fear and feeling of disorientation that was tied to them. He hadn't drank any potion, or at least not something that acted on short periods of time. It's him, his blood is venomous. She had guessed by looking at the bald quarter-breed, in the cavern, a week back. That vampire coughing and spitting blood all around. As if his body was rejecting it, she remembered herself thinking, and it seemed to be turning out that she had been right after all.

Azrael stepped first on the stone bridge, and she followed. Great, mystery solved. But I don't see him solving a mystery for me, so why has he done that? Even giving me the clues to do it would be out of character. It was unbelievable, she couldn't think of herself making that reasoning, but she could assume with relative confidence that what Azrael had done, had been done with an ulterior motive. She could safely assume he was playing her. At what game, though? That's what I'm curious about. She tried to understand, squeeze out everything she could from her stormy mind. He probably wanted me to test something… Honestly, there's little other reason that could explain this. He clearly, or somewhat clearly, knew about the effect his lifeblood had on vampires. That could be discarded. Maybe he had asked her about the distance of the bald vampire from the blood patron to see if that trick worked on purebloods as well. Or maybe…

Her mind halted for a moment, in a single spark of absolute wonder and surprise. She cast a glance at Azrael's back, walking ahead of her and making strides that were so long she needed to walk faster than normal to keep up with him. He bends the world around him. He molds it, controls it and ultimately causes it to stay still or to destroy itself from within. But aside from that, what truly impressed her was the effect that he was sorting on her. One week with him and I'm thinking exactly like him. I'm lost speculating, planning, deciphering, decrypting. I'm probably getting a glimpse of what's like being him. But that, she thought, casting another glance in his direction, is an enormous shortfall. I don't know the what and the why, but I know the how. The very formulation of that thought, the way she had given it shape and the way she'd have worded it had she been forced to say it out loud, were more his than hers. She felt his very his way of thinking and seeing changing her. His perception and viewpoint, a utilitarian and pragmatic perspective, gave her a hint. What if what he said is really true, that everything is a weapon if held the right way? What I have on my hands is a great knowledge, a knowledge I might use to my own end. In his, and his own, strategic and calculating way of behaving.

And something sparked. You wanted to scare me, did you not? Did you not. She'd have said: Didn't you? But she thought: Did you not? It was the way he'd have said it.

They were halfway along the bridge. The sound of their steps was drowned in the hissing howl of the wind hitting and blowing along the castle walls. The gusts varied in intensity, causing the noise to go up and down erratically, sometimes taking on higher timbres and sometimes lower ones, condensing into a haunting resonance. A harrowing wail. Once every few moments, the splash of the waves shattering against the rock resounded alongside, creating a steady cadence in conjunction with the gale. She remembered times when she was young and the castle would echo with such sounds, conjuring grim thoughts about evil things. The mind of children… she thought, feeling a grin almost making its way on her lips. Back then, she dreaded the day evil things might have overcome and taken control of the place. Only a few years later something akin to those evil things had indeed taken hold of the place, but from within. That place wasn't safe, not for her and for anyone. She knew Azrael was planning something, and she knew a little bit of how he planned now. He worked on the context, on the sidelines, on the frame of the situation. If he had an idea of what could happen inside, then what he did could have been immensely dangerous. If he hadn't, that everything would be immensely dangerous all the same, but for him alone.

She had to do something, but not in that moment. She knew too little. She'd have waited, but not idly. 'Hey,' she called, halting to a stop. 'Before we go in there…'

Azrael moved another step forward, but then he turned around. He readjusted the cloak with one hand before directing the hidden face at her. No need for words.

She pondered her words. They were certainly not a lie, but they were probably not the truth, either. 'I wanted to thank you for… well, for bringing me this far.' Several courtesies came to her mind and almost flowed right on her tongue, but she stopped them in time. None of those meant anything and they would have all been detrimental. 'After we get in there however, I'm going to go my own way for a while.'

'Why don't take the lead instead?'

The moment of surprise clearly showed on her face. There wasn't any blood left in the vessels to make her blush or bleach, but the muscles worked and they contracted at the same moment. 'Why…' She decided to redirect. 'I didn't even think you'd allow me,' she said with a grin.

Before saying a word, be turned halfway in the gate's direction and gestured at the front gate. 'The world I know ends on that doorstep. I value knowledge when making decisions, and I have none of what lies beyond that threshold.'

Rational as ever, of course, she thought while nodding automatically and keeping the smile on her lips. It wasn't forced, but while it looked like a normal grin it was a nervous one mainly. 'You certainly live up to that principle,' she said, trying to force her way into something by using that simple thing he had told about himself. It was a rare occasion, almost non-existent, and it was too good to pass on. There were moments when he could look like an arrogant narcissist, but he lacked the main characteristic of those belonging to that group, which is never talking about anything other than themselves. 'You don't look like a scholar, but you know enough to be called one,' she continued.

'Scholars live to know, while I know to live. It's quite different.' He bent his head toward the gate, but that was all. 'After you.'

She gave him a nod, a slightly playful one, and she forged onward. She was amazed by how the whole situation had changed. She had noticed it shifting slowly, bit by bit, during the conversation, but his last two words had changed it completely. It's arguable that I had never understood how much he shapes the space around him until now, she mused. It was most strange, but the air felt different ever since he had told her to take the lead. She didn't feel his presence the same way anymore. In his own mind, he had changed his perception. He had stepped down from the role of forerunner to the one of protector. The cold feeling he always managed to irradiate had changed too. When before she felt bound, controlled, with him as the central figure standing over her and having complete power over anything around, she now felt observed rather than coerced. It's no wonder Laegiine and her partners, whoever they might be, value him as a leader. At the same time, the feeling she had was reshaping. It went from a fear of disobeying to a sense of charge and the tension that arises from responsibility. Whether before he compelled her to follow his every order, he now looked after her. Just in case she did anything stupid. It was a completely different kind of power, but he was exactly the same person. The tone hadn't changed. It was as if his mind alone shaped the world. How do you even do that? Many would give everything they have for something like that. She knew they would have. Although only indirectly related, her father might be counted among the ones who did give everything he held dear. His own family, among other things.

Before the gates, there was also the grated metal threshold. Trying to get rid of the sea of thoughts clouding her mind, she tried to remember everything that could help her. They kept a watchman out usually, but only a thrall, never a vampire. In times past, some unlucky merchant would shipwreck on those shores and they couldn't afford to keep someone who was either a hooded brute or visibly a vampire standing guard. They needed someone unassuming. The only problem with that was that Isteir, the last guardian she'd seen, had probably died more than four thousand years ago. It was very difficult to influence another vampire's thrall, but there was a specific circumstance in which none of that would have been necessary. Now that my enigmatic redeemer has turned into an enigmatic keeper as well, she thought, stinging hard at her own feeling of wonder by undermining the situation with her wit, I have someone to take counsel from. I guess I'm proper princess now. I even have an advisor. A not quite trusted one, but still.

'A couple of days ago, in the Reach,' she said, turning around, 'you told me my father could be expecting me.' She had taken that information for granted, since there was no way to verify it, and she had no idea of what was its background. Namely, why Azrael had mentioned that. On a side note, he had never explained to her why the bald vampire could be on her trail. That was superfluous, however.

'He is,' he said, looking forward, away from her face. There was a nearly imperceivable irony hidden in the emotionless tone. 'So keenly, in fact, that the man in front of us might even recognize you.'

She turned immediately, noticing once again how differently she perceived him. She felt him less, in a way, which however allowed him to not project his thoughts so strongly. He was in a position to immerse himself in reasoning without her noticing. Maybe it was his normal attitude when concocting even bigger plans than the ones she knew of. That thought was violently cut down by the image her eyes brought to her. That of an elderly man with white hair in an armor made of leather. He was thin and underfed, the face lost and the gaze absent.

She slowed to a halt, feeling Azrael stopped very close to her. His vicinity continued to give her the mixed feelings of being warm and cold, safe and threatened. She tried to ignore it as she looked at the new watchman, presumably one captured half a century ago or so, when he was still in his prime. Now he was only good as long as he could be kept standing, after which he would have probably been thrown into the sea. He's too old to produce tasteful blood any longer, she reasoned, amazed at how such a gruesome thought could come so natural. After all, it's my food. I can treat him like a human or like food. And when it's the latter it's the latter. We're just different. Meanwhile, the man had bulged his empty eyes forward, taking a look at what was nearing.

He put a hand on his waist, very close to the sword hilt. 'Begone, vagrants!' he yelled in a chocked voice. 'You're not allowed in here.' Serana saw, even through the thinning mist, his features contract in a way that was unnatural for a man free of bonds.

She felt the urge to breathe deeply, but what good would that do? Only the motion would have played out and none of the benefits would have arisen, aside from the calm induced by the habit. It was a waste of time. She motioned her hands, which crept to her waistline and gripped the armor tight, releasing some stress while giving her a more authorities look. Or so I've always been told. She flashed a weak smile, one of the fabricated ones that wasn't fake anymore, and stood firm. 'I'm Serana of Clan Volkihar, daughter of Lord Harkon and Lady Valerica.' She fixed her eyes in the black ones of the watchman, drawing what little power she could muster in case it was needed. 'Let me in.'

'Lady Serana?' asked the watchman, in a mix of euphoria and confusion. 'You've returned, at last. Just like the master said you would.' She focused so much on her own emotional reaction of surprise that she had forgotten the words half a second after, despite her wish to tuck them away for later examinations. The man didn't give her time to think, either. He shifted his gaze on Azrael. 'And who's this accompanying you? No one like him left these walls.'

'He didn't,' she replied, coming back fully to her own senses and flashing a smile again. 'He's the one who found me and brought me here, of his own free will.' Is that the truth? I don't know myself. 'I insisted he'd come to present me to my father in person.'

'Hmm…' the watchman hummed, his face losing some of its rigidness and relaxing. He turned to the wall by his side and wrapped his hands around a long rope. He then pulled it down, an action followed by a creaking and squealing sound of cogs moving. The grated gate quaked and then rose from the ground. 'Wise thing you did, my lady,' said the thrall in between the noise, 'the Lord is sure to reward him.'

The squeaking of the mechanisms went in the same rhythm as the irregular rising movement of the grated threshold. It was now high enough for a man to pass, but she waited a little longer. Actually, she considered waiting until it was fully raised. It could give her time think things through, in case there was anything else simple enough to ask the watchman. She let her hands fall by her side and letting her shoulders sink lower, without tension keeping them raised. They had just finished settling in their relaxed position when Azrael's cold hand touched them lightly.

She turned abruptly. He was calm as ever though. 'What exactly' he asked, his voice low but sonorous enough to be heard above the squealing iron, 'is as valuable as his only daughter's life and an Elder Scroll, to your father?'

She spoke quickly enough to prevent the river of painful feelings from swallowing her whole. 'He's a powerful man. Even now he might have various things he could offer you.'

He retracted the hand, brining it to his hidden face. 'But I'm a mortal. What could he offer to the ones who are already vampires?'

'His blood, primarily. Every quarter-breed of this court probably dreams of become a half-breed every day. The difference can be felt,' she concluded, turning around.

The gate was almost completely raised. Not for the reason she had thought of, but she had waited for it to raise fully. As she turned she caught a glimpse of Azrael giving her a nod. A knowing nod, one that smelt like irony. He knew a quarter-breed was different from a half-breed, but in what way and how and when she had no idea and probably wasn't allowed to know. There was so much to know and so much to be suspicious, when it came to him. He could have been a vampire himself, although she doubted it. She'd have recognized someone of her kind by their scent, not counting the fact that vampires feel one another through senses unused in common mortals. That seemed improbable, but he could have been someone hired by her father. He was already a man quite fond of schemes, and anything could have happened in four millennia. She feared she would have troubles recognizing him, even. However, if she was really to examine all of those options one by one, she knew she would have completely lost it. It was better to leave some things unexplored.

The squeaking stopped. 'Go in, my lady,' said the watchman as the noise stopped. He was now in the exact position they had first seen him in. His hands by his side, left dangling, that absent look on his face and the two feet of distance from him and the rope. 'They're surely awaiting for you.'

I do wonder, she thought, and was about to say it too. She thought it through and decided against it. Even though that man was rendered completely witless by the long-lasting control, there was Azrael listening. He knew her feelings about the castle and the court, both from what she revealed and something that he had understood on his own, most likely by reading the emotions on her face when certain topics came up. She did make an effort to conceal them, and most of the time it worked, but not with him.

'Serana?'

Azrael's voice, neutral and cool, conveyed the meaning extremely well. She turned, only half-way, and gave him a nod. It was yet another habit directly influenced by him. He was the one always nodding. Nevertheless, he had called her because, in spite of the gate being opened, she had stood still without moving an inch.

She stepped forward, casting a glance at the watchman and coming right up to the main gate. They were out of the mist now. When she had turned back to look at Azrael, she had noticed that the boat was barely visible from there. The sky was getting darker and darker, and under the shadow of the castle everything seemed more dim. Putting both her hands on one wing on the gate, she pushed. The vampiric strength awoke, making her arm pulse powerfully for a moment and causing red flashes to come and go from her field of vision. Her canine teeth seemed to gain a sense of touch of their own for a moment, but then everything vanished back into the red. She was used to it and there was nothing unusual about it. She hadn't fed for over a week now, which made it even more normal. There's bound to be some prisoner inside on which I can feed on, she mused.

'How dare you trespass here!' The voice, that of an Altmer, made her snap right back to reality. She knew it, remembered it, but she couldn't have given a name at once to the person speaking. 'Watchman! You were supposed to—'

The speaker went silent all of a sudden. Serana stepped inside the castle to get a better look, especially annoyed by the fact that the difference in light had caused her sight to adapt and in turn had made everything on the outside appear terribly bright. They were in the ante-chamber, a small hall that was only a raised and small taste of the architecture of the castle's interior. The high ceiling, black walls and the gargoyle crouching on the left side, just below the lonely window through which a ludicrously low amount of light came through, gave the small hall a personality nonetheless. She actually remembered quite a few times playing on the gargoyle, riding it like it was a Dragon. It wasn't a magically activated one, just a statue. Her attention shifted, from the room directly to the speaker. Now, free of tension, everything came to mind. Vingalmo, she thought, you conceited fool. The Altmer wore a very formal robe, a red and black one, with decorations resembling scales on the fabric. There was an upside to that encounter, which was that she had never seen an expression so stunned on that Elf, who took great pride in maintaining his cool in every situation. Wait until you meet the one behind me, she thought.

'Serana…' the High Elf whispered, staring fixedly at her. His eyes kept searching, looking for something in her face that could probably prove his realization wrong. Where someone directs his or her attention is one of the more vital tells of the nature of the said person's thoughts, and he was looking just at her. The strange thing about that was that Azrael was behind her, and he wasn't giving him a sliver of his attention. He wasn't ignoring him, he didn't seem to have noticed. Azrael was with her, she could feel his deep breathing, his heart beating strongly and slowly, the warmth coming from his skin and the unsettling scent of his blood. He was there, and the Altmer didn't seem to care. There was something about her, and only her, that was terribly frightening to him. 'Is that really you? I cannot believe my eyes…' he murmured, voicing his disbelief more clearly.

On her part there was the grim recognition that some of those awful people were still around, but there wasn't any doubt about the state of things. The things she had already seen that is. 'Why shouldn't it be me?' she answered, beaming her best smile. She was the one coming home, but she tried to make him feel like he was the one having the honor of being welcomed. It seemed to work, thanks to his momentary confusion.

The Altmer stepped backwards twice and then turned, not uttering another word. As he quickened his pace walked towards the doorway separating the ante-chamber from the main hall, she came to the conclusion that her homecoming would have undoubtedly caused some chaos. Her mood sank deeper into discomfort and melancholy, but there was no time to listen to those feelings. 'My Lord!' Vingalmo was calling, even before he'd reached the doorway. 'Everyone! Serana has returned!'

She turned towards Azrael, only to find him looking back at her. They were exchanging a glance, in a way. 'I guess I'm expected after all,' she said, letting the simulated part of her smile fade away and starting to walk ahead.

'That Mer, Vingalmo,' Azrael said, following right behind, 'is he the only Altmer here?'

Yet another one of his questions that came out of nowhere. She had learned to answer them directly and then ask back why he had inquired in the first place. There was a slim chance of him answering then. 'To my knowledge,' she thus said. 'Why do you ask? Something wrong with him?'

'No,' he replied, bringing his eyes away from her own. 'Something wrong with another one of his kind.'

There was no time to explain because, as he finished speaking, she stepped in the doorway. Vingalmo had stepped aside, making way and keeping his gaze lowered. Not enough to prevent him from casting inexpressive but insistent glances at Azrael, who he had only now noticed, but still. He showed some respect even now, after all those years. She couldn't keep her attention onto it for too long and looked ahead. The sudden change in light, from the dim and grey of the previous the entryway to the golden one cast down by the chandelier hanging high from the ceiling. The shadows cast behind her by the bright was dense and solid, and the bright coming from above was so strong that her eyes needed to readjust. There was no more need for the magic-fueled light to persist.

When her sight was perfectly realigned, she swept her gaze across the hall. It hadn't changed a bit. Four millennia and it hasn't changed a bit. The tables were positioned in the same way, two on the sides and one, her family's place of honor, on the opposite end of the hall, just below the balcony. There was another balcony on the left side, overlooking the table, whereas on the other flank the rocks underneath went down, and with it the level of the rooms' floor. Large, white carpets adorned the center as well as the extreme sides of the hall, which had otherwise dim colors. The golden light gave the stone of the walls and ceiling a lighter tone, but a far more grandiose one. A very distorted idea of grandiose, that was to be said. The other thing was immediately apparent was that the banners carrying the insignia of her family had been taken down to the last one. After her father had ordered the windows barred, those had been the only remaining reminders of how the castle looked back when everything was normal, if anything had ever been normal in her family. The tables at which the court members sat down were wooden, so they were bound to have been replaced at one point, just like the tender had, but they were still in the exact same position and even the chairs were in the exact same spots as she remembered. I guess mine was the exception, she mused, looking at her family's table and its seats in the back of the hall. Those were made of stone and couldn't be moved.

One thing was irritating her deeply about that table, though. There were three chairs, there had always been. The one in the middle for his father, the one on the right for her mother and the one on the left for her. Her mother's seat was empty, and in hers sat someone she remembered well, and not so fondly at that. Orthjolf was a direct, outspoken man with a reputation for inflating every cause he represented, as she had been witness to far too many times. Now that man sat at her place, in her very chair, beside her father, in the same physical position she had been countless times. Her first memories of the court were of her father telling of her first attempts at reading or mastering magic to the court, while she grinned and enjoyed herself. That place was taken now. She swept her gaze again, this time on the portion closer to her, recognizing some faces along the way. Fura Bloodmouth, for one. To her immense surprise, she came across at least a couple of pale-skinned individuals with elven features. Their visage were light grey, only slightly lighter than the color of Azrael's skin. Dark Elves… she thought.

A voice tore her away from her musing. 'My long lost daughter returns at last.'

A sudden compulsion ran through her limbs, forcing her to turn and look into her father's eyes. It was automatic. He had always been her only firm point in her world, it was natural for her to act that way. Even her mother, who underneath her cold demeanor still cared for her and aimed to be a firm point too, had always admitted quite freely that she was and had always been her father's girl. That bond had endured everything and no matter its contents, whether love or hatred, it had undergone the test of so many years it was beyond hope of being broken or dispelled. The fact that four millennia hadn't been able to destabilize it was proof enough. Right now, she looked in her father's face and felt so many things, good and bad, and understood that the mere fact that she felt something for him was enough to make the bond endure. Unlike the hall though, he had changed. She had too, but she had grown accustomed to what was new in herself. Her father's face was still regal and stern, but the cheeks had grown even bonier and his features even gaunter than the last time she had seen him. That is, she didn't remember that too clearly. The last she remembered of him, was more like it. On the contrary, she remembered the last encounter with her mother very well. But her mother was nowhere to be seen.

Lord Harkon stood in front of the stone table, in the same position but on the opposite side of his seat behind it. He grasped a grey goblet filled to the brim with fresh blood which he kept close to his chest. He donned a martial attire, namely the armor he had had ordered designed for the members of Volkihar royalty after the three of them had turned. It was the same one Serana wore now, coming back to her home. The black, overlapping pieces making up the chestpiece, the vambraces of studded leather, the thick but light red fabric of the sleeves and the cape and the belt, which she didn't weak, with the family heraldry on it. He was extremely pale and his eyes glowed blood red, the small pupils stretched and thin in those bloodshot irises. His hair were dark brown, not too long and tucked behind the ears. The beard styled in the same way she remembered, with bushy mustaches and a slightly less hairy chin, with the sunken cheeks shaved to perfection.

'Ah,' Lord Harkon continued, 'i trusted you'd have brought my Elder Scroll with you.' His eyes wondered on the shape of the Scroll coming out of the folds of Azrael's cloak. The corners of his lips raised, but it couldn't be called a smile. 'I see you did not disappoint.'

Serana wanted to grab the parapet of the balcony where she and Azrael stood, grab it and rip it into splinters. That was the rage flowing through for a brief moment when she heard those words. 'After all these years,' she said, her voice hard and low, 'that is really all you have to say?' She turned left and began to go down the short set of stairs, down into the hall and among the other vampires.

Azrael followed her closely. Very. As if he was preparing to defend her from something.

'I merely expressed my appreciation regarding your dutifulness,' her father objected, as he always did. She found it difficult not to look at him in the eyes. 'Of course I'm delighted to see you, my dearest daughter. Must I really say the words aloud?' he asked with a tired tone, as if talking about something wholly unimportant. The strange thing was that, immediately after, his eyes immediately sparked with new energy. 'If only your traitor mother were here, I would let her watch this reunion before putting her head on a spike.'

The simple information that her mother wasn't dead, for one, and that he didn't know where she was were almost drowned in a river of different feelings. Yet more rage, fear, uneasiness, uncertainty. She felt as if concurring with him was right, but the voice of reason screamed otherwise. Her mother had tried to conceal her from her father, and she had come back to him. Now her father was saying something like that. She turned slightly towards Azrael, almost without thinking about it. I wonder how would have things gone down if I asked him to lock me there again, or to help me escape my father or to help me find my mother. He knows my father would reward him, but… Did he really do all this for something so trivial? If I know anything about him, it was something more. The part of him that was seemingly thinking inside her mind suggested her something, something that looked like an obvious truth. He's probably weaving his schemes as me and my father speak. This is a delicate situation. I need to be on the winning side, whatever that may be. Now, before her father, she felt foolish about going there and being in that room. She had never thought about that before.

'Now, tell me,' Harkon said, turning towards Azrael himself. He had probably noticed Serana's gaze shifting towards him. 'Who is this stranger you have brought into our home?'

Something flashed in her mind. With a little bit of skill, that was her change to slip away from the conversation and leave that burden to Azrael. My father will have someone on his level then, she thought. Something else warned her against it. Leave him space, and he will have more control on the situation. In the end though, she preferred to put her own sanity in front of keeping away a menace that was so distant and possibly unreal that is might have not been worth her strength.

She turned towards Azrael and gestured at him with her left hand, stepping simultaneously out of the way. 'I believe it'd be best if he introduced himself.'

Her father gave her a solemn nod and then turned towards the Dunmer, locking eyes in the black void hiding the face. 'Very well, then. Who are you, stranger?'

Azrael moved his hand slowly down the side of his cuirass with the right hand. 'They call me Azrael,' he said, glacially. The hand finally stopped at the height of the belt, leaving his chest open and exposed. He stood straight and cool, but she knew something more. His hand was resting on the hilt of the dagger, hiding it from her father. 'I happened on the trail your subjects left behind while looking for your daughter and found her before they could. She asked me to be brought somewhere safe, in her family's home, and I obliged. I was especially convinced by what I've heard of the Volkihar Court,' he continued, but Serana needed to keep herself from turning tersely at him. There was a sly tone in his voice now that she had never heard before. 'They said Lord Harkon would be generous with the one who brought his daughter back, safe and sound.'

'You heard well, and a generous reward is due those who worked hard to deserve it,' her father said, and his voice sounded pleased. 'I see you know who I am. I supposed my daughter will have told by now who she, and we all,' he said as he swept his arm across the hall, 'are.'

'Vampires,' Azrael said, still in that tone. 'But not just any run at he mill vampire, am I not right?'

'You are indeed,' her father concurred. 'We are the oldest and among the most powerful vampires in Skyrim. For decades we lived here, far from the cares of the world. All that ended when my wife betrayed me and stole away that which I valued most. But,' he said, waving his hand as if signaling to drop the subject, 'this is not the time to dwell on such memories. Now you know what we are, what I am, and there is but one gift I can give you that is equal in value to the Elder Scroll and my daughter.' Her father stepped forward, opening his arms. 'I offer you my blood. Take it, and you will walk as a wolf among sheep. Men will tremble at your approach and you will never fear death again.'

'The Elder Scroll and your only daughter's life?' Azrael asked. He had dropped the sly tone now and there was a skeptic note in his voice, but it even more strange. It was too marked. His tone was expressive, even more so if compared to his usual one. It wasn't normal. 'How does your blood fare against what I brought you? Show me.'

'You do not know what you ask, weakling,' grinned her father, exposing his canine teeth. 'Very well, I shall grant your wish. Behold the power!'

No, damn you… So soon. She had hoped not to see such a thing never again, but she was also resigned that it could happen. She hadn't envisioned, or hadn't wished to envision it happening so quickly however. She turned her gaze away, hearing all too clearly the sound of the otherworldly energies consuming her father's figure and ripping out his darkest nature from within. The black mist surrounded him as he bent forward, then he threw his hands backwards in an almost glorious fashion. The metallic screech of the transformed vampire echoed in the hall as the blackness dispersed and vanished, but Serana had still no wish to look. To gaze at that monstrosity was to gaze upon an evil omen, of which she didn't know the exact nature. Ever since she knew there was a prophecy involved in their family matters, that form had taken the shape on the evil omen. It was a warning, perhaps direction to her and only to her. It was too much to bear, and she always wished never to lay eyes upon it again. Personally, she had transformed one time only, and it had been horrid. It had been like reliving the entire ritual, only in a shortened and less intense version. The pure similarity, however, made her recall the rite. Something she had no wish to remember.

Although in the middle of the conversation she had had little time where she could think clearly, she could sense without any thinking required that control over the situation was slipping quicker than ever from her hands. She cursed her moment of weakness when she had so simply given up the direction of the conversation's flow just to have a moment of peace. She cursed herself for having been so blind. There was very little she could do now without risking everything, especially with Azrael having that sudden change. She was looking for chances to intervene, maybe diminish the size of the mistake she had done, but now she had something else absorbing her resolve. Her father's figure still stood on the side of her field of vision, as if trying constantly to enter it and force her to look upon it.

'This is the power that I offer,' Lord Harkon said, his voice ghoulish and smothered but pulsating with energy. Dark energy. 'Now, make your choice.'

Serana looked at Azrael, a couple feet away from her and around a hand-breath higher than her. She had counted on her father's support, but he had turned into that thing. For a moment, she had also counted on Azrael's support, but the Dunmer seemed to have turned her in. She still couldn't believe it. How could all of these eight past days been part of an act? How did he manage to be so cold, if really he's nothing like it? The passing thought that, in truth, Azrael was just like her father made her feel incredibly sad. The two certainly seemed to understand one another. If that was like it all looked, she had been played for a fool from the very start. Maybe Azrael was indeed her father's man, and what they were doing now was just a little game to prevent her from knowing. Ever since the ritual, her father had always discounted her for being less smart than she was. What she lacked was decisiveness, certainly not craftiness. Now he believed to be playing her once again. That was probably it. Maybe it had all been a lie.

'Well, well…' Azrael said, back to the sly tone. 'That is something.'

Even the way he had talked to her, so peculiar and elaborate to the point of being sophisticated at times, had melted in the light of that simpler, banal structuring. There was disgust mingling in her thoughts. She knew, deep down, that there was nothing wrong. It was the contrast. That was clear, but her thoughts were not her feelings and were not her beliefs. Her thoughts held very little say in the present situation. She looked at the Dunmer, dismayed inside but trying to remain cool on the outside, as he brought the hand positioned on the dagger's hilt further back. Not to the Scroll, though.

'Before I communicate my decision to you,' he continued, bringing his hand forward again, 'I'd like to offer something first.' He finally showed the object he was holding in the light of the chandelier. Serana looked at it keenly. It was a bottle, a rather large one, full of a substance that was slightly darker and slightly denser than mortal blood. 'I'm sure,' Azrael continued, turning for a moment and showing the flagon to the whole court, 'you've heard the rumors from the outside. A Dragonborn, someone with the blood of a Dragon flowing through his veins, has come to Skyrim. Well, this…' He raised the bottle. 'This is his blood. The blood of a hero mixed with the one of those fire-breathing lizards. And I'm sure it will be delightful. I admit,' he continued, turning towards her father, 'I did not count on such a generous treatment, so I had this as a token of trust. Do you accept it?'

Serana was too confused to understand, but something stirred powerfully inside her.

'Accept it, Lord Harkon!' she heard a lesser vampire scream from the table.

She felt herself sink deeper and deeper into her mind, as if unable to react in any way to what was happening. She didn't even want to control the situation any longer. Control what? Everything was confused. The ice was gripping her again. It crept up her legs, holding them still, flowed in her chest and halting her every movement. Her limbs were frozen still, one of her hands motionless right in front of her mouth, tormenting her lips in an attempt to control her nervousness. Now there was very little left. She looked around, and realized time had flown by so quickly. The vampire at the tables were each pouring down the substance in their goblets, ripping it from hand to hand. They were screaming confusedly. Her father was behind, not in the range of her eyesight. Good thing, too.

Then, without any premonition, something tore through the ice. It reached for her, shattering every veil until it caught up to her confused reasoning. She recognized it at once. It was that little sliver of Azrael she had with her, that had found just a few minutes before. She waited for it to suggest something, utter one of its verdicts of shed some light on the situation. Nothing came of it. It was there, almost shimmering, lucid. It seemed alive, but it didn't say anything. And yet it was there, everywhere and nowhere, somehow hovering around her thoughts, giving them order, while at the same time spreading a new kind of ice, an ice that cooled everything that was too hot to be handled.

She waited a moment, and then it shattered. Tersely. Idiot, she said to herself, you stupid, naive girl. Is it not obvious? Isn't this all terribly obvious? There was one detail, one insignificant piece of the puzzle, that indicated more clearly than ever what was really going on. There was a piece of Azrael inside her, true enough. It was a piece of the Azrael she knew; the cold, calculating and pitiless progeny of a race that had failed to pass along the values of tradition and custom, breeding something that was cynical to its very roots. The clarity of his mind, the indomitable presence he had on the world and the deadly chill that such two things combined produced. It was so real, so tangible, she could feel that freezing cold taking over her mind and fueling her with new and previously hidden strength. Everything was clear. That isn't you, she thought, it's a lying mask. She brought her hand down by her side. Azrael, you're planning something.

'And for you, my Lord' the lying mask said to her father, 'I accept your gift. You will drink my blood and grant me your power.'

I don't know why you gave me a taste of your blood before, she was thinking, but there was a reason. There's always a reason and there's never a feeling. Isn't that true, my own redeemer? You plan to kill us, to kill us all. You fooled everyone. It's your blood in the bottle, and it will enfeeble us all enough for you to cut us down like cattle. You will slaughter us to the man. The hunters, fallen into a trap laid by their prey. Poetic, maybe. But you won't. After you've dealt with my family, you will dispatch of me because I'll no longer be useful to you. You think I won't be able to react, and maybe you were right. But you showed me something. You showed me that in convention there's skepticism, in faith there's contempt, and in belief there's cynicism. But in fear, there's also courage. For once, you will be outplayed at your game. Whatever happened, you gave me your best weapon. You gave me your mind. I know what you're planning. And I'll stop you. You won't forget about me. As I said it, so it shall be.

Her legs tensed and her hands seeped with energy. Her sense of touch extended again to all of her teeth as a dark, repellent force flooded her entire body, flowing unstoppable. She almost thought there would be fear, since those were the exact sensation that came before the complete loss of control, but she wasn't afraid. She knew she wouldn't have gone mad. She knew doing what she was intentioned to do would hurt, a lot, and possibly kill her, but it didn't scare her. Considering her normal conditions, when she did almost everything because she felt she had to, now there was a sense of freedom, of true free will. She could choose to risk or not to, but something that wasn't worth dying for was something not worth doing in the first place, given the circumstances. The acrid scent of Azrael's blood reached her and the pulse caused shook her violently. Now she was ready, and there was nothing to stop her. A clear mind was being combined with an active, pure body that followed its instincts with precision. Azrael was in front of her.

She leapt, right at him, landing with absolute accuracy with her hands on his shoulders. Her feet struck his lower back and she felt him stumbling forward, locking one of the two legs and pivoting on it in an attempt to turn around. Despite not expecting an attack, he was still reacting strongly and quickly to the unseen threat. There wasn't a lot of time that remained. She closed one arm around his neck, trying to choke him. He didn't disappoint, and very quickly turned his head around to his side to prevent her from pressing directly on his larynx. A clear thought struck Serana, but that one wasn't like the others. It was clear, crystalline, and it didn't force her to stop to be followed. It came and went away. If catching him off guard is this difficult, he's probably impossible to beat when warned. She had caught him off guard however. Her other hand reached for the edge of the hood, ripping it away from his head and lowering it. Wavy black hair touched her face and she moved them away nimbly, until there was nothing left underneath if not a pale grey skin.

She rose her head for the last time. 'Don't drink!' she screamed, before darting her open mouth downward.

Her teeth sank and she drank. She ingested a gulp of the caustic fluid, feeling her whole body revolting and warning her to spit it all out. You won't forget about me. I swear it. And as more and more of that acrid, scorching lymph rushed down her throat she felt that little sliver of Azrael's mind abandoning her, disappearing back into the chaos it had come from. As she began to lose consciousness and her muscles started to obey her less and less, she felt the Dunmer beneath her ceasing all resistance. He fell down, perhaps on his knees, right as she tore the fangs out of his flesh. They fell down, her hands around his chest. She fainted and he probably fainted too, in her deadly embrace.

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A/N: A lot of twists and turns and whatnot in this one. I realized that for the sake of conveying the exact pace and atmosphere I had to change the style slightly as well. I'm not commenting on anything, because I'd be spoiling your feelings and thoughts alongside my own fun.

On a separate note, Day Keeper, Night Reaper has reached two of its milestones in one go: getting to this point in the story, and reaching fifty followers. You could argue that it's not a lot, and it isn't, but I'm still very much content with it.

So, quite a celebration for quite a chapter. This won't be taken down, so post anything you want without threat. As I already said, there will probably be one or two more chapters before the end of the year, after which the rhythm should stabilize at a chapter every two weeks.

Be seeing you, dear readers.