Hello again! Sorry about the long gap in updates, we just finished putting on our school play. Anyways, If you're reading this, that means that you are reading my story! And if you're reading my story, that probably means you don't want to hear me talk about it. However before I leave, I will list my reviewers.

Reviewers: Vine SLiver

And now, we return to our feature presentation...

Deran stormed angrily across the stone floor of his hideout; those Khajiit were becoming a real problem to him. They had stopped three of his shipments now, three! He sighed; so many good slaves were lost. Deran was a Dunmer slaver, one of the best, and yet a couple of mangy Khajiit kept getting in his way! He sighed again; he missed the old days, the days when he could rampage through the edges of the Black Marsh, slaughtering the Argonians with his flaming sword. He laughed, remembering the look on that little Argonian girl's face when he had killed her mother all those years ago. His broad smile melted into a frown; she had been the one survivor from that raid. He hadn't expected a Shadowscale to have been in the Marsh at that time. The filthy lizard had stuck him in the gut, nearly killing him and giving him a nasty scar. Deran smiled; he had recognized the Argonian girl's scent on the Khajiit: old, but still there. His smile widened: soon, he would repay her for his disgrace. Soon.

Amori crawled out of bed, unconsciously rubbing his stump. He smiled a melancholy smile; Ka-Mala and Padfoot had really gone down the drain. When the Brotherhood had risen again, Ka-Mala had taken to drinking, sinking into depression, slowly wasting away. As for Padfoot… Padfoot had stopped eating or drinking, or even seeing anyone since she had first been burned by the sun. She had kept herself locked away in the cellar for months now, and he shuddered to think what he had to do. Ka-Mala was beyond his help; she would have to work her problems out on her own. But Padfoot… all she needed to do was feed, and she would be able to bear the caress of the sun again. Her dark thirst for blood would subside, at least for a time, and aside from a few particularly grisly nightmares, she would be able to return to a more or less normal existence. Once again, he shuddered. All it would take was a few pints of blood… the blood of an intelligent being.

Delchkahn crept slowly down the wooden stairs, hearing them creak beneath his weight, his heart pounding in his chest. He snarled in disgust; he was going to help a friend, not face a monster! He had to remind himself that despite the urges of vampires who hadn't fed in a long time, Padfoot was still his friend. Delchkahn grimaced; he would not kill a friend, even if it meant his life was forfeit. Suddenly, he heard a loud click, and a whoosh of air passed him, leaving a large weight deposited on his back. He smiled. "Hello, Padfoot," he said calmly. "How are you today?" Padfoot was clinging to his back, her skeletal hands wrapped around his shoulders, her clawed feet hooked in his leather armor. He heard her ragged breathing and shuddered: this was not the Padfoot he remembered.

"Delchkahn…" she whispered, her dry, ragged voice drifting into Amori's ear like sawdust. "Have you come to see Padfoot? Did you bring your sword? Can you end Padfoot?" Padfoot cackled, her voice sounding like the clack of bones echoing in the dark. Amori shuddered; it was worse than he thought. Padfoot had started referring to herself in the third person and laughing at the thought of her own death. In short, she was mad. Amori grimaced; he knew the madness all too well. It had festered in his mind when he had gone just a few weeks without blood; he could only imagine how it was for her.

"No, Padfoot, I didn't come to kill you." He smiled as he heard her sigh of disappointment. A certain measure of humanity returned to her whispering with it, and she climbed off of his back. She walked around in front of him, and Amori's heart nearly stopped. Padfoot's skin caved in along her ribs, and patches of fur had fallen off of her body in places. She was covered in dust and grime, and the bones in her arms, legs, and face were clearly visible. She looked like a mummy, like someone who should be dead but wasn't.

"Then what did you come for, 'friend'?" Padfoot said bluntly, her dry voice whispering through her teeth like a breeze through dry tree branches. She spat the last word, and Amori grimaced. "If you didn't come to end my misery, then why did you come? To laugh at me? To stare?" Amori shook his head, sighing, rubbing his temples. He had been planning on taking her on a normal jaunt, to drain a few pints and leave. It was obvious now that her victim would have to die. She was too withered to gain satisfaction from anything less than turning another into what she was now.

"Padfoot, I came to tell you that it's night out. I'm taking you to the prison. I'm taking you to feed."

Padfoot followed Delchkahn through the night, leaping across the rooftops with ease. She may have been withered beyond belief, but the same dark disease that kept her alive fueled her now. She could hear the heartbeats of everyone around her, she could hear the pounding of the muscle, the breathing, the flow of sweet, sweet blood, and it was driving her mad. The two dark figures sprang from roof to roof, their feet barely touching one building before they leaped to the next. Soon they were at the roof of the palace barracks, and just a few short bounds from the prison. Padfoot's heart pounded in her breast, and her lip pulled back, revealing her glistening fangs. Delchkahn motioned for her to follow, and jumped from the roof. Padfoot followed, and the two slowly crept along the wall, their feet silently padding along the ground. Soon, they reached the dusty hillside the palace was built on. They slid down its side, sloshing through the water, moving towards the sewer grate. Amori pulled a lockpick from his pocket, and deftly opened the grate blocking the entrance. The darkly clad duo crept into the shadows, silently slipping through the sewers. Finally, they reached the prison entrance. Delchkahn quickly knocked out the guard, and began checking the tabs on each one of the prisoners. Finally, he found one who was scheduled for execution in the morning. He was a heavily built Nord, and Amori smiled, sure that he would be sufficient to restore Padfoot to her former self. He motioned for Padfoot to come. She walked towards him, and he unlocked the cell door. Padfoot strode into the small cell, gazing hungrily at the sleeping Nord. A breeze ruffled the man's blond hair, pushing it away from his face. His face was young, and other than a single scar running down his face, unmarred. Padfoot felt a hand on her shoulder, and turned her head to meet Amori's steely gaze. "It's time," was all he said. Padfoot knelt down by the Nord's sleeping body… and plunged her fangs into his neck. The man grunted in his sleep, but didn't wake up. She began to suck, pulling the blood from his body in a steady stream. He didn't wake up. Her heartbeat quickened, and she began to drink his blood faster, pulling it from his body at a rapid pace. He didn't wake up. Lines began to appear on his face, and wrinkles formed on his body. Finally, just as he was about to die, he woke. He tried to scream… but he couldn't. His breath streamed hoarsely from his mouth, until finally, the last drop of blood was drained from his body. His body thudded dryly to the ground, and Padfoot looked at herself. She almost burst out laughing: her hands had flesh to them again, and her body was no longer skeletal. She felt her face, and she couldn't feel individual bones beneath her skin. She looked down… and screamed. Amori clamped his hand over her mouth, silencing her. Padfoot's eyes were wide in terror, tears streaming freely from them. The Nord's skin clung tightly to his bones, his skeleton clearly visible beneath his flesh. His mouth and eyes were frozen open in a silent scream, the cords in his cheeks looking like a ribbed surface. His eyes were sunken deep into their sockets, and his tongue was a tiny, shriveled thing in his mouth. His hands were clenched in half fists, and she noticed that his eyes… his eyes… he was staring straight at her. A single finger was uncurled from his hand; he was pointing at Padfoot. In the moment of his death, he had known his killer.

Soul-Swimmer woke up, pushing the covers from her body. "Delchkahn?" she said, confused. She looked around, and saw that Delchkahn was gone. She climbed out of bed, and pulled on a loose shirt and pants. She walked down the stairs to the second floor, and stopped briefly by Ka-Mala's room. She opened the door slightly, and saw Ka-Mala hunched over her desk, piles of bronze metal strewn all over the surface. Her eyes widened. "Ka-Mala?" she asked, worried. "Are you ok?" The response she got was a flying hammer.

"OUT!" Ka-Mala screamed. Soul-Swimmer shut the door.

"Sheesh, what's her problem?" she muttered to herself. She almost stopped by Dar-Ma and Dra-Shek's room, but that Dar-Ma and her family had moved back to help with the rebuilding of Chorrol some time ago. Soul-Swimmer continued down the stairs, and reached the first floor. She passed by Henantier and Kud-Ei's room, and tapped the door. Then she noticed the note on the door. "Out for a time; be back soon" It was in Henantier's handwriting, and Soul-Swimmer grinned when she saw a small heart drawn on the paper; obviously Kud-Ei had seen fit to add her own touch to the note. Suddenly, the main door burst open. Soul-Swimmer whipped around, grabbing Song from the counter as she did. When she turned around, she gasped: Amori was walking in, a sobbing and terrified Padfoot in his arm. Soul-Swimmer ran over to them worriedly, obviously distressed. "What happened?" she asked, looking at Padfoot concernedly.

"Th-the man… He just… He was like me! He just… oh, by the nine…" Padfoot stammered between terrified sobs, her eyes wide in fear, unable to form complete sentences. Amori looked up.

"I took her to feed," he said. Soul-Swimmer gasped, knowing what he meant. It was common knowledge that Padfoot was a vampire, and she knew that her current state meant she had sucked her first victim dry. "There was no other way. Blood madness was beginning to set in, and she was in the physical state of a mummy. If I hadn't taken her to feed, she soon would have gone beyond the point of recovery." Soul-Swimmer stared at him in horror, unable to believe that her lover had willingly sacrificed another, even to save a friend. Amori saw it in her eyes, and sighed. "I know what you're thinking, and don't worry; I took her to feed in the prison. The man was scheduled to be hanged in the morning anyways; regardless of us, he would have died." Slowly, Soul-Swimmer backed away, and Amori led their haunted friend back into the cellar.

Ka-Mala stared at the gleaming object in her hands, admiring the craftsmanship. It had taken her two months to get the training required to build it and to create the device, but it was finally finished. What she held was a mechanical hand. It was crafted from Elven bronze, and was a work of art in its own. Thin bands of metal formed an external skeleton, with rounded plates at the knuckles, and smooth caps adorning the fingertips. The fingers had slender, curving tubes composing their length, and tiny metal bars and wires ran inside the body, each attached to a joint. Ka-Mala laughed lightly; she felt good. She had been too preoccupied with her project for her cravings for wine to take over, too deep in concentration for anything other than what she needed. Now, the cravings were gone. By immersing her mind in this project, she had conquered her alcoholism. Ka-Mala snickered, remembering that what had made this possible were the required was the lessons on Dwemer technology she had had to take back at the University. At the end of the class, the students had been required to construct a machine using what they had learned. While Ka-Mala had all the technical knowledge, she lacked the craftsmanship skills necessary to complete the project. How ironic that her least favorite class had just helped her achieve what was, in her mind, one of her greatest accomplishments. She got up from her desk, and placed the mechanical hand in a wooden case she had bought for it. The case was custom made, and its interior was lined with velvet and carved to perfectly fit the hand. Along the bottom was a small drawer that contained delicate, finely-crafted tools for the maintenance of the hand; the very tools that had been used to create it, each in its own velvet notch. Ka-Mala smiled as she heard the soft click of the case as it closed: Amori was going to love this.

Amori led Padfoot to her bed wearily, shaking his head. She was shivering in fear at what she had done to the Nord man, and Amori could only imagine how she felt. He had never killed while feeding, and he still had nightmares about each time he had fed, dreams of the relatively innocent act made ghoulish through the lens of morality and what could have happened. He could only imagine the monsters that would plague her dreams now. Padfoot sat on her bed, shaking, and Amori took a seat beside her. The young girl pressed herself into his body, feebly trying to protect herself from the monster within her. Delchkahn thought about how young she was: at the oldest, she was nineteen, probably around eighteen. He got up, and faced the young, inexperienced vampire. There were a few things he needed to explain. "Padfoot, listen to me. I know you didn't ask for this, but you're a vampire now. Trust me, I know what I'm talking about, I was, until very recently, a vampire as well. There are a few benefits that go along with this curse. First off, you will find yourself extremely stronger than you were before, and will be able to carry about 2-3 times the weight you could before. Because of the state you allowed yourself to wither to before feeding, the blood you drained has restored you to your former state, but a most of what you have now is muscle. Your agility has been heightened as well, and you can smell a drop of blood, at times, from literally a mile away. However, if you don't feed about once every two or three days, you won't be able to go into the sun. Your body will become increasingly weak to fire, and the cravings for blood will pound in your skull, urging you to feed louder and louder the longer you go without blood. Remember: the longer you go without blood, the stronger you get, but the more dangerous and uncontrollable you become. If you feed once a day, you can lead a relatively normal life, but you will be unable to stay in one place for too long, if only for the fact that you no longer age." As he finished, Padfoot looked like she was in deep concentration.

"Wait, you said that you were once a vampire. How were you cured?" she asked, puzzled. Amori sighed, rubbing his temples.

"An old hideout was left to me by a darker relative of mine. He was a vampire, and a devout servant of Sithis. He left me an underground hideout called Deepscorn Hollow, and all of its treasures. Among them were a vampiric servant, a shrine to the Dark God, a cell for prisoners to feed on, and a flooded room. That room was a depository of rare Purgeblood salts. I used them, along with the altar in that room, to cure my vampirism." Padfoot's eyes brightened, and Amori sighed. "Unfortunately, I sealed it off months ago to prevent any other murderers or vampires from using it as a haven from which to prey on the innocent after I left." He saw Padfoot's eyes darken in sadness, and he put a hand on her shoulder. "Padfoot, that place was evil. If you had seen it, you would know. The shrine to Sithis… it had human bones incorporated into its architecture. People's skulls were being used as decorations, Padfoot. I've heard of another cure, and trust me, that path is by far the better one to take." Padfoot looked up at him, her eyes desperate.

"Is there a way to reopen it? Can you reopen it?" Amori sighed, shaking his head.

"I was afraid you would ask that. Yes, I can unseal the Hollow. The problem is… I won't." Padfoot's eyes widened in disbelief. "Padfoot… there's a reason I sealed the Hollow. I sealed it to lock in an ancient evil. The Hollow has been in my family for generations, darkening more with each passing year. I don't care the circumstances: I could be made into a vampire again, and I would not reopen the Hollow in a thousand years." Tears began to well in Padfoot's eyes, and suddenly, she slapped him across the face, hard. Her claws left long, bleeding lines on Delchkahn's flesh. He didn't flinch. Padfoot's eyes grew angry, tears spilling from their corners.

"You bastard! You have a cure, you used a cure, but you keep it locked away from the world?!" she screamed, her voice enraged. She stepped up to Amori's face, putting her face only an inch away from his. "Get out," she said. "Get out." Amori turned, and without a word, he left.

Soul-Swimmer was in her and Amori's room, looking at the paintings they of them they had commissioned that hung on the wall. She was looking at one that featured them floating in a colorful void, locked in a loving embrace, when Delchkahn burst into the room. He clutched his face with his hand, and Soul-Swimmer saw that blood was dripping from between his fingers. "Amori!" she cried, worried, rushing to his side. "Are you alright? What happened?"

"Padfoot attacked me," he replied. Soul-Swimmer's eyes widened in shock, and Amori laughed. "Don't worry, I deserved it. The truth is, I have a cure for vampirism. The problem is that to get to it, I'd have to unseal an ancient evil that has been passed down through my family for generations." Amori sighed, his eyes downcast, and Soul-Swimmer began to clean his wounds with a wet rag. "It doesn't matter what happens, I'm not reopening the Hollow." Soul-Swimmer paused for a second, looking thoughtful.

"Delchkahn, I want to help Padfoot as much as you do. And while I do believe that it's unfair that you're withholding a cure, I also know that you wouldn't do so without good reason. This is hard, but if this Hollow I as bad as you say it is, you're doing the right thing." Amori smiled, and slowly, he and Soul-Swimmer moved into a deep kiss. Suddenly, Ka-Mala entered the room, slamming the door open. Soul-Swimmer and Delchkahn jumped and broke out of the kiss, blushing slightly. Ka-Mala's tail drooped between her legs, and she was blushing a bright red.

"Oh, um, maybe I'll come back later," she said, her eyes moving towards the ceiling as she walked towards the door.

"No, it's alright, come in," said Amori. "Say, what's that you've got?" he asked, intrigued by the ornately carved case in her hands. She turned around, a beaming smile spread across her face.

"Actually, it's a little something I made for you," Ka-Mala said, handing Amori the case. He took it, stared at it for a second, and opened it. He never would have expected to see what was inside. As he opened the case, he saw a beautifully crafted hand made from Elven bronze resting in a red velvet casing, and he noticed that it was a left hand about the size of his own. "Well? What do you think?" Amori looked up, eyes wide.

"I honestly don't know," he replied, bewildered. Ka-Mala smirked, and walked over to him, taking the hand out of its case.

"Well, then let's see how it works, shall we?" She fit the hand to Amori's stump, and fastened the leather straps around his arm. "Now, this might hurt a little," she warned him. Amori nodded. Ka-Mala pressed a combination of buttons, and small spikes shot out from the base of the hand and into Delchkahn's arm, electrifying suddenly as the hand activated. Amori winced, but showed no reaction. He brought his arm up, and to his amazement, began moving his new hand. He looked up at Ka-Mala, eyes wide in disbelief.

"Ka-Mala," he whispered, tears welling in his eyes. "Thank you."

Kazaka stood at the prow of his ship, leading the fleet onwards toward Cyrodiil. He smiled as he saw the mountains on the horizon of endless sea. Soon, he would no longer be merely the Crown Prince of the Tseasci. Soon, he would be the ruler of the Akavir nation of Thamriel.

Ok! So, Padfoot fed for the first time... and drained her victim completely. Amori has a cure... but he won't give it to anyone. And on a brighter note, Ka-Mala conquered her alcoholism, Padfoot isn't mental anymore, and Amori has a hand again! However, dark clouds lie on the horizon...

What will happen next? Only time will tell...

The winds of time blow on, shifting the sands of reality into ever-changing patterns.

-Baeowulf