It was a long ride to Leyawiin, but it was largely uneventful crossing the West Weald. For a long stretch you could almost believe everything was fine, and the only real dangers were the necromancers and the bears. Rolling hills stretched out in front of them covered in long grass and varicolored flax blossoms, red and yellow and blue. The second night they slept in a small cave that Saraven had used before. Vampires had lived there, but he had cleared them out so many years ago that not the slightest smell of blood or ashes remained.
They eventually turned North toward the river. The city of Leyawiin was built on the mouth of the Niben at the opening of Topal Bay. The city actually straddled the estuary, wallowing in the swampy water. It was full of little ponds, canals, and waterways, ruled as much by cattails and dragonflies as by the Count and the Guard. Sited on the trans-Niben, a little Imperial strip of land between Elsweyr and Black Marsh, it was home to sizable populations of both Argonians and Khajiit, though the one might prefer the damper real estate and the other the drier. The walls were covered with moss, looking black halfway from ground to sky when seen from a distance.
The sky began to go red as they drew nearer. They rode up from the South, and the city's main gate was on the West, but as they moved that way they could see the distant spires of the open gate to the Deadlands. Black billows of smoke rose from the Western half of the city. Saraven knew from memory that much of East Leyawiin was underwater, with homes and businesses clustered along the shores of the lakelets that divided the from the internal walls of Castle Leyawiin.
"Time to go to work," Saraven said quietly, reigning up Ves in a copse of trees. There weren't a lot of hills overlooking Leyawiin, but at least the dremora had no reason to hunt far from the walls if they were still trying to complete their conquest of the city.
Zudarra tied the other horses near Ves. Galmir could barely stand immediately following Zudarra's desperate draining after the necromancer attack, although he was happy and compliant and rarely spoke. By now he was strong enough to disembark from the much smaller appaloosa on his own, so Zudarra left him to it with her usual instructions. With a powerful ward against her single greatest weakness glittering red and gold on her finger, Zudarra was in high spirits as the two warriors set off on foot for the city. She did not fear the dremora. The prospect of a proper meal stirred her passions, and she could barely keep the cruel, expectant grin from her face.
The gate appeared unguarded. Some war tents had been erected nearby, but were unpopulated. The broken bodies of guards lay strewn around the Leyawiin gate, which had burned through, but the carnage was much less than that seen in Skingrad.
"Seems like Leyawiin might have offered decent resistance," Zudarra remarked as they approached. She kept her voice low, just in case.
"The city's half-filled with water," he said. "I wouldn't go wading in heavy armor. Not with a lot of very angry Argonians about." He looked up. "You can still see smoke. They must be fighting house to house." Maybe there weren't even prisoners in the gate yet. Saraven felt a surge of unaccustomed hope. "Come on. Let's get through the gate and get this done."
He turned toward the crimson membrane. It hummed loudly in the stillness, deep and just slightly off, a teeth-setting whine behind the basso vibration. By now he knew exactly what to expect as he drew his sword and stepped into the portal: the sensation of incredible speed and the sudden stop as he burst through into the searing heat of the Deadlands.
The sudden forest of clubs and maces was not something he had been expecting. One hit him in the head in the instant it took him to register that he was completely surrounded. He spun, trying to bring his sword to bear, but he'd taken a blow to the head; the world tilted and spun as the butts of other weapons slammed into his chest, his abdomen, his legs.
"Zudarra, run - !"
Another hilt hit him in the temple, and that was all for some time.
Zudarra was a step behind him through the fiery portal, greatsword resting against her shoulder. When the queasy sensation of movement had ended she balked at the army of sneering black faces. She tried to backpedal through the gate but they were on her, shoving against her from all sides as blows rained against her head and her sword, knocking it from her hands. She snarled and screamed, clawing through the crowd as it engulfed her and beat her into submission and then blackness.
Zudarra slowly came to, a painful throbbing in her skull permeating her senses before anything else. Then, the putrid stench of death and decay, followed by wetness. Her fur was matted with her own blood, her head having played pincushion to the barbs of their cudgels. She moaned, eyes fluttering open to painful light and twitched a finger. Healing light spiraled out from her hand and the mind-numbing pain finally ebbed, and Zudarra pushed herself up on her elbows. She was lying down on warm, sticky stone. Sticky from things aside from her own blood, she realized with disgust, sitting up.
She was in her woolen under-armor padding. Zudarra's eyes snapped down to her hand; the bastards had taken her rings as well. She growled, hands clenching into fists.
They were in a cage, but not one like those they had seen so far. It was more of a large dungeon cell, solid black stone on three sides with the fourth wall a grated door of alien black metal, the same that the tall cages had been made from. Across from their cell was another, where a red Argonian was lying with his back turned to them. His breaths were a ragged, rattling hiss and deep lacerations crisscrossed his body. His clothes were bloody rags that hung loosely from him, baring most of his back. She could hear more moaning and crying from further down the row of cells.
The worst was in the cell with them. The week-old corpse of a Khajiit lay heaped in the corner, crawling with spiny maggots. He had been an orange tiger Suthay, now bloated and terribly mangled with deep gashes exposing bone and limbs twisted in unnatural angles. Liquid feces and other fluids had leaked from the body and ran through the cracks in the floor. At one time his clothes had been fine, a handsome silk vest over his high-collared tunic, but now they were ripped and caked with dried blood. A leather shoulder bag was twisted around his body.
Yellow liquid leaked from his shriveled eyes. One of them jiggled with the movement of a maggot inside. Zudarra had to look away. She did not know if a vampire could vomit, but didn't want to find out.
Now that her eyes had adjusted, the room was actually quite dim. A fire Zudarra could not see from her vantage point burned somewhere down the hall that ran between the cells.
Saraven lay slumped against a wall near the bars, head sagging onto one shoulder. He was also clad in just his armor padding, the shirt torn at the neck and halfway down the front where a mace had caught and hooked the material. It had gouged his flesh as well, leaving behind a long cut that had bled into the fabric. His visible face and hands were almost black with bruises. His left eye was swollen and the eyebrow was matted with blood from a cut on his forehead.
Just pain was not enough to drag him back to awareness. Pain seemed eternal, without beginning or end. It was the tightness in his throat and chest, making it hard to breathe, that finally hauled him back toward wanting to move; wanting to move required him to acknowledge what he was leaning on; feeling dragged him toward sound. He could hear himself breathing, air rasping in and out of his throat. Eventually he tried to open his eyes. The right one opened on a blur of color, black and cream and red. The left one would not open.
"Ngh." Saraven straightened his neck slowly, stifling a groan. Squinting and blinking finally cleared the blood and sweat from his right eye, and he was aware that he was looking at a dead Khajiit. His heart jerked painfully against his ribs for a second, until he recognized that the corpse was smaller, and orange, and had been dead a long time. His eye moved to and fro as he sought Zudarra. She had to be here. Nothing else would ever make sense.
"Heal yourself," Zudarra hissed under her breath, not hoping to draw their jailer until he had done so. She pushed herself to her feet and came over to the bars near him, grasping the warm metal in her hands and peering down the hall as far as she was able. She could see nothing but more cells in either direction, filled with people in much worse condition than themselves. They had probably been lying for a long time with their wounds left to fester.
She flopped herself down against the wall opposite Saraven, also by the bars, careful not to touch the floor with her hands. From here she could keep watch, and it was as far away from the rotting corpse as she could possibly get. It wasn't far enough.
There you are. For the first time in almost twenty years Saraven grinned out of something other than feral rage. It was a fleeting expression, there and gone, but it was real. He opened and closed his left hand as he drew on the power. The soft blue light seemed inappropriately bright in the darkness, glinting on the dreck that covered the floor. It was a relief to feel the swelling in his left eye smooth away more than anything else, and he squinted and blinked as his vision adjusted to the use of both eyes.
She was there across from him, stripped down to her padding. So was he, he realized as he looked down at himself and up again. Of course. They'd left them both in their armor the first time, and look how that had gone.
The Cathay-raht was dirty and her fur was matted with blood, but he could see pink flesh in a couple of spots; she'd already healed herself. Saraven got slowly to his feet, trying to keep as quiet as possible, and leaned over to rest his head against the bars, peering out into the hallway. It was a grim and dreadful scene, not so very unlike what they had run into inside the gate at Skingrad except for the different structure of the building.
They hadn't been stupid enough to leave a hanging key near the cage bars. He'd had to check.
He didn't see an obvious guard, either. There must be a post out of sight in one direction or other. His eyes traveled back to the corpse in the corner.
Or there isn't, because they only come down here to throw people in the cells and then leave. Well, that left a best-case scenario of three days for him, a mad eternity of agonizing thirst for Zudarra.
"They ambushed us," he rasped quietly. "I wonder if they got him, too." Maybe the Argonian had been more wary. He had to hope.
"We won't be here long," Zudarra growled irritably, not so much at Saraven but more at the entire situation they'd been thrown into. "If someone comes, perhaps you should lie down and play injured so their guard is down. I'll drain them and we'll be home free. Our equipment has to be in here somewhere." She spoke with authority to mask her fear, but a large part of Zudarra believed her own words. They'd come too far, survived too many impossible situations for her life to end in this stinking dungeon.
The Argonian across from them seemed to finally register their presence; he shifted slowly, turning over onto his other side to face them. His face was as heavily decorated with cuts as the rest of him, and Zudarra could see that the softer scales of his belly were bruised purple and black in the places where his clothes were torn. His face was streaked with twin stripes of green from his eyes to his nose. His orange eyes opened to slits to watch them. A crown of bony spikes ringed his skull, and some of the spikes that lined his jaw had been chipped. He sucked in a wheezy breath before speaking.
"You seem... sure of... yourself," he hissed weakly, barely audible.
"I am," Zudarra said. "We've closed three gates by ourselves so far. Do you have any useful skills?" The Argonian's chest heaved in a short, rasping cough that she thought might be a chuckle.
"As if it... matters," he responded.
Saraven turned fully to face him, leaning one arm on the bars. The metal was warm enough that he felt it through his sleeve.
"No reason to bandy harsh words. We're all in the same place," he said. "I'm Saraven Gol. This is Zudarra the Bloody."
He reached a hand out through the bars toward the opposite cage, flaring the fingers. A burst of blue light traveled toward the Argonian, opening out into a pair of helices that passed through the bars without slowing.
The gashes on the Argonian's face and body pulled shut, leaving behind distortions in his coloration where it scarred. The wounds had been too old to heal cleanly. He winced momentarily as ribs shifted in his chest and the puncture in his lung closed, and finally pushed himself up to sit cross-legged.
"Thank you, friend," he said after a deep breath. His voice had become louder, but still raspy and dry. "The name is Cliff-Diver. No harshness was intended. To answer the big one's question, yes, I was fighting when I was taken. Imperial Legion, but I wasn't on duty when they came, and it's a good thing, too. I'd be just as dead as the rest of them who attacked head on. We'd been holding the Eastern half of the city with guerrilla tactics - still are, I'd presume, as I haven't seen any other Argonians hauled down here since I was captured... Hours blend together here, I don't know how long ago. Feels like weeks, but must have been yesterday. You say you closed three gates?"
Zudarra nodded.
"Kvatch, Anvil, Skingrad. But they were waiting for us this time," She looked down at her clenched fists, scowling. "Even if we get out of here alive, we might never be able to get inside a gate like that again."
"One thing at a time," Saraven said. "When we approached the city smoke was still rising only from the Western half, Cliff-Diver. Don't think they've taken the East yet. Meanwhile, here we are. No point in worrying about the next gate 'til we're out of this one."
Conversation between the cells petered out soon. Cliff-Diver was curious to know about their past victories, but he was obviously dehydrated and tired, and his voice seemed to be giving out. He finally retreated to lean against a wall of his cell, closing his eyes.
"Don't know if I'll make it till they come back," he croaked. "But hope you softskins find your way."
"Perhaps we'll meet again," Saraven said quietly.
Hours passed. It was impossible to say how long; even if there had been windows, there were no celestial bodies to mark the time in this place. Zudarra grew restless, at times flying to her feet and pacing, and at others yanking on the bars. Whatever material they were made from, she could not budge them. They didn't even rattle. Sometimes she shouted insults and challenges to the dremora guard who must have been within earshot, but no one ever came.
She never grew accustom to the heat and the stench, to the sight of the corpse in the corner. With nothing else to occupy her mind, she wondered who that man had been. What did his last hour on Nirn entail? Who did he think of when he died? Did he have a mother who would miss him?
Zudarra growled through clenched teeth and slammed her arm against the bars as if to shatter her own morbid thoughts, but she succeeded only in bruising herself. She'd been pacing again, and finally came to a halt. Her tail continued to lash behind her as her irritation grew. The Argonian had complained about her outbursts a few times and told her to save her strength, but now he was silent, without the energy to care.
Saraven walked quietly back and forth along the wall of the cell when he felt he had to move. Otherwise he sat near the bars to conserve his energy, knees up so he could rest his arms on them. He was sorry to hear Cliff-Diver's voice give out. He hated to have used the last of his magicka for nothing; but he could not imagine a world where he would have left the Argonian dying slowly of his wounds. Was dehydration a more or less painful way to go than a punctured lung?
I've had a punctured lung. It hurt like hell. I guess I'm going to find out the other thing.
Sometimes he dozed, head resting on his folded arms and arms atop his knees. It was not entirely comfortable, it wasn't real rest, but it was impossible to imagine sleeping in the filth on the floor. He jerked awake as he heard the echoing impact of flesh with bars, but it was only Zudarra expressing her frustration.
"Save your strength," he said wearily. "If they come back you'll need it."
"I don't tire as you do," she said curtly, and instantly regretted the unnecessary rudeness. She may not tire as easily, but she would. Zudarra's scowl softened and she slid to the ground against the wall opposite Saraven, arm threaded through and grasping the bars from the outside. She curled her twitching tail over her thigh to avoid the floor. The moisture that soaked through the seat of her pants was revolting.
So far, Zudarra hadn't given any real thought to what would happen if no one came for them. No one took prisoners and then did nothing with them. But she looked at Saraven now, sitting there defenseless and weary and wondered how long she could control herself if she weren't able to feed. She pitied the thirst the Dunmer must feel already. He was already practically defenseless against her, and he would grow weaker by the hour.
She stared quietly at the floor, then the Argonian. Voices moaned or sobbed softly in the distance, but no one spoke. Finally she looked back to her cell mate, remembering a time when she hated him. Gods, it had only been a week since they met, but it felt like a lifetime. Zudarra couldn't call Saraven a friend, but she respected him as a worthy ally. He didn't deserve to die here any more than that Khajiit did.
Zudarra did not want to be the one to kill him.
"If we ever survive, and Mehrunes Dagon is defeated, and life goes on as normal... What will you do?" she asked suddenly, quietly.
He shrugged and laid his head on his arms again. He was parched, his tongue painfully fat and dry in his mouth. Speaking was an effort, and his voice was rougher than usual, hard to master clear words. Had it been a day and a half? It was impossible to suppose. How long had they been unconscious?
"If that should happen, rebuilding will take years. The kind of vampires I've given my life to fighting thrive in chaos and ruin, where people can easily go missing without notice." He paused to try and swallow. "You are fundamentally honest, forthright, not an eater of children. Someone will have to go after the ones that are not like you."
He felt that things had come strangely full circle. He had begun his acquaintance with Zudarra trapped together in a gate, waiting out the time until his own death, trying to accomplish something before then. And here he was again. But there was nothing to accomplish in here; he had not even really saved Cliff-Diver.
But perhaps I can make it last long enough for her to escape.
"That won't happen," he said. "I have maybe another thirty-six hours if I don't move much. You could still last long enough to escape. You should feed while I'm alive. Make it last until they come to throw someone else in here, kill the guard, and get out."
Zudarra stared at him dumbfounded, as if he'd struck her across the face. She'd plucked Vandalion and Galmir out of their own ruined lives. He knew that. Zudarra told herself time and again that she wasn't like those monsters. For some reason, hearing Saraven put her in another class forced Zudarra to admit that she was barely any better. She followed the law to hide herself from hunters like him, not because she cared about her victims.
She wished that she cared. Zudarra was acutely aware of her deficiency, that she was callous and cruel while everyone else seemed to have an innate affinity for their fellow mer. People like Saraven could throw away their own lives in the service of others. After finally having earned his respect, Zudarra found that it left a sour taste in her mouth.
"I'll consider it," Zudarra said slowly, although that was a lie. She smiled bitterly. "Would be a shame to weaken you now and have them come for us an hour later."
He nodded. He wasn't sure how he'd surprised her. Perhaps after all this time she really had not understood that he did respect her as other than the monsters of his waking memories. At least he'd gotten that out between them before the end. That was worth something. She was selfish, but so were many people. It didn't take a vampire, and most people that were that way didn't fight it. And he'd seen her fight it, fight her own nature again and again. That was harder than just doing what came naturally to someone like Got-No-Home, or her mother, or presumably the priests in the temples.
Time passed. He got up and walked less and less as the heat seemed to leech his strength. Eventually he found himself propped in the corner between bars and wall because it was easier than trying to support his head on his arms. It would be so easy to just lapse into a haze and not try to come out of it again, but...
"Zudarra?" he forced his eyes open to look around for the Cathay-raht again.
Zudarra had been dozing as best she could. After her brain had run through a million regrets, a million unpleasant fantasies of their bleak future, there had been nothing left to do. Cliff-Diver was slumped over now, and didn't respond when she'd called to him many hours ago. He was breathing, but probably on his way out.
She lifted her head from the wall she'd been leaning it on and looked to Saraven, more pathetic than she'd ever seen him yet. His lips were dry and cracked, eyes sunken and skin beginning to shrivel. Pretty soon he would resemble the desiccated corpse of one of her earlier victims.
They had to have been in the cell for at least a day now, maybe longer. Her thirst was rising. Even with air clouded by rotting corpse and feces she could smell Saraven. She would be able to hold off until he died, she knew; but meanwhile it was beginning to torture her. Her thoughts had become a constant battle. Should I feed on him or not? What will Molag Bal do to me if I kill my strongest ally against Dagon?
How will I live with myself if I kill this man who said he trusted me?
"Still here," she said tiredly.
"Soon, please," he said. He could not raise his voice above a rough whisper. "Let me die doing something for someone. Give me that gift."
Something tightened inside Zudarra's cold chest. Another horrible and new and utterly unwanted emotion was bleeding out now. Sorrow. For someone other than herself. It was different and deeper than anything she could have possibly felt for herself.
"Why do you have to be this way?" Zudarra snarled, voice cracking. "Why are you so fucking selfless to the very last!"
"Not," he murmured. "My life ended in 3E 403. What happens to me... Doesn't matter... Never has."
Raged suffused her. She yanked herself to her feet by the bars and screamed with her muzzle against them, banging and yanking and roaring unintelligibly to no reward. When she exhausted herself, realizing what a fool she'd made of herself if anyone were conscious enough to watch, she knocked her head against the bars and closed her eyes against the stinging wetness. She had never felt more powerless in her entire life.
He listened to her futile noises of protest – that was his Zudarra, defiant to the last. It warmed him even as he felt himself continue to grow weaker, letting his eyes shut again. Here at the end, where there were no illusions, he acknowledged silently that he loved her. It was not a romantic series of sensations. He was without physical desire for her. But he wished ardently for her to survive, to prosper, to go on spitting in Dagon's face with every drop of dremora blood she spilt or drank, to have that life of which she had spoken in a world free of the taint of daedric invasion. He had never let himself have a friend after the end of all that he had cared for, but she had sort of crept up on him. Not wanting or offering friendship, not really sure of what she felt herself, brave and insecure and incredibly self-centered and trying so hard not to be.
There was no way he could tell her. Even if he had the strength, it would only make her feel worse.
Zudarra allowed herself only a few moments more to bask in her sorrow before her fists tightened around the bars. No! I won't let them win! Her eyes snapped open and she whirled, eyes darting desperately around the cell for something, anything she had missed. A weakness in the walls not previously seen, something to be fashioned into a weapon or tool - her eyes landed on the leather bag, its strap twisted around the decaying Khajiit. She stepped forward, her eyes locked on his dead ones as if waiting for the creature to spring up and grab her.
She picked up the bag and tugged at the strap. It had fallen from his shoulder so that the strap was around his midsection, a twisted arm holding it down. Zudarra picked up the arm by the sleeve; the rigor had passed, but the movement caused the mushy skin to open up. A clump of fur and skin shed from the limp hand, blobs of coagulated blood and muscle plopping to the ground after it along with a cluster of writhing maggots. Something inside gave way, and yellow-brown liquid oozed around her feet. Zudarra quickly worked the strap over his head, trying her best not to jostle the body any further, and retreated back to her corner with her prize.
She tried not to touch the areas on the leather that were stained with gore as she searched. Inside were more little bags filled with gold, and Zudarra nearly laughed at the absurdity of it. But beneath the gold were potion vials, nine in all. They were unmarked. Zudarra uncorked one to smell it, and recoiled at the bitter scent. Saraven might survive a few more days with these to drink, but he'd still be utterly useless if they ever got out of the cell. No telling how sick they might make him, too.
If only he were like me, we might have a chance.
If he were like me...
She looked up at the Dunmer, leaning against the corner with his eyes closed again.
"You awake, Saraven?" she asked, a lump rising in her throat. His pulse was very weak.
He wondered distantly what she'd been doing to cause so much squelching and clinking around the corpse. With great effort he parsed meaning out of her words.
"Only just," he managed, his voice barely audible.
There was a long pause while Zudarra thought. To respond would be to acknowledge the ever forward march of time, and to be forced into action or inaction. She desperately needed for that not to happen. She did not want to make this choice.
My life ended in 3E 403. That must be the date his family had been killed. That was about eight years before Zudarra was even born; a lifetime ago, and still the horror of whatever Saraven had faced that day was burned into his soul, refusing to release him from its hold. She didn't blame him for his hatred of her kind. In that moment, Zudarra hated them as well.
Zudarra set aside the bag and came to sit at Saraven's side. She was about to do something to this man that he would find abhorrent. Zudarra didn't understand his way of thinking; she could not view death as a gift, but she did not need to understand his views to respect his wishes. What Zudarra was going to do was a completely selfish act, without regard to Saraven's own feelings. She told herself she was protecting herself from the rage of Molag Bal, but Zudarra wasn't really sure if that were true.
"All right. I'm doing it now," she said stiffly, awkwardly, and reached out to pick up his arm. It was so warm and light in her hand. "I'll just drink a little." She really wasn't planning to take much, but she hoped that the blood loss would be enough to knock him out.
Gingerly she poised her fangs over the artery, the weak throb rousing her animalistic thirst. She plunged through flesh and the gush of warmth in her mouth that followed almost made her lose her resolve. It would have been so easy to do as he asked, to suck him dry, to give him the death he sought, to use his strength to save herself.
"Thank you," Saraven whispered. He felt the pinpricks of her fangs on his arm, and he was honestly grateful in that moment that he was still able to feel. He did not mind it. He raised the other hand to run over her hair once, with the last of his strength, and then let it fall limp beside him. He was quickly dizzy, but it was not unpleasant. He felt detached, floating, moving away from pain and scorching thirst and into a deep, velvet darkness. His head sagged forward as he lost consciousness.
His pulse slowed under her lips. Zudarra forced her mouth away, but she didn't pull up her head. She bit her tongue - not an easy thing to do at all, it hurt terribly, tears sprang to her eyes and she stifled a grunt - and let the blood dribble into his wound before quickly healing herself with a flash of blue, and then him. Still holding his limp arm, she gently wiped away the drops of blood with her thumb. When she looked up his face was slack, relaxed, even peaceful. He did not know what she had done.
Zudarra put Saraven's hand in his lap and stared at his lax face for a long while. Her guts seemed to be twisting around themselves inside her. He thanked her even as she betrayed him. Zudarra wanted to bury her face in her hands, but there were still things to be done.
She went back to the bag and shook everything out onto the ground, then laid the bag with the cleanest side facing up in the middle of the floor. Then she came back to Saraven and began the shameful work of removing the armor padding from his torso and laying it down beside the bag for him to lie on. Thankfully, he didn't stir as she carefully manipulated him like a rag doll. He would face a horrible fever soon, in an already sweltering environment. She remembered her own miserable transformation. It was the worst sickness Zudarra had ever felt. Like dying.
Zudarra gently laid the Dunmer down on his clothes, using the leather bag as a pillow. She couldn't help that some of the liquid from the floor touched his arms, but that was the least of his concerns now. She hesitated for a moment, examining the lean body bespeckled with old scars that lay before her. Zudarra had a few of her own, but they weren't very visible beneath her fur, and their number was nothing compared to his. All from vampires, she assumed. Just how much had they taken from him? His family, his blood, and now his dying wish and last shred of dignity. She screwed shut her eyes and turned to grab a vial from the floor. Saraven would remain mortal for three days yet, with all the needs that entailed.
She sat beside him in the filth, raising his head in her palm and slowly tipping a vial into his mouth. Luckily, he swallowed without trouble and without waking despite the disagreeable taste of spoiled potion.
There were so many uncertainties now. The spoiled potions might kill him. They might be disease cures. What little water they contained might not be enough to keep him alive, and he still might die of dehydration while facing the additional agony of Porphyric Hemophilia. Her selfish action might cause him needless suffering, and there was no way for Zudarra to know how it would end until it did.
Zudarra did not pray or beg the gods. No god cared for her, and Saraven's would be turning her back on him soon.
He would not even stir for many hours, kept unconscious by blood loss and weakness. After that the exhaustion of the disease's creeping progress would render him weak and mostly unaware of his surroundings. His cheeks darkened almost to black, the dragon-wing markings rendered all but invisible as the fever rose. He did not sweat much. There wasn't much fluid in his body.
The second time that she fed him a potion he frowned as he swallowed it, apparently aware of the bitter taste. His eyes fluttered open and his lips tried to shape words, but he lacked the strength. At last he sighed and shut his eyes again as he lapsed into a heavy sleep that went on for hours more.
By the third potion he had become restless, his head twitching as he dreamed uneasily of blood and fire and darkness. Daedra chased him through black halls and into the rainy streets of Kvatch, and the eyes of the dead watched him in grim accusation that he had not saved them. He walked out of the city gate and onto the farm outside Cheydinhal. Velaru was working in the front garden, pulling weeds, but he could not see their son anywhere. He went up to speak with her, but she didn't seem to hear him.
Saraven grabbed weakly at Zudarra's arm and spoke to her urgently in Dunmeris, sunken eyes wide and unseeing:
"Velaru, nes vha'an Dorova? Nasha so relha!"
Zudarra almost yanked her arm away from the unexpected touch but instead she stopped, looking down tiredly at the mer beside her. She recognized two names and nothing else. Female and male. Sister and brother? Wife and son? Saraven was terrified. It was the first time since their meeting he had shown any strong emotion, let alone fear.
She hesitated, and took the hand on her arm into her palm. She didn't know how to comfort someone, but holding their hand was basic enough.
"You're dreaming, Saraven." If she knew Dunmeris she might have answered in it, she might have said "We're all fine, we're all here," to give him a pleasant dream. But she did not know the language and she didn't know what else to do. His scent was beginning to change and he was no longer appealing to her. He began to smell of death, although his skin still burned against her pads.
Zudarra had no way to mark the time other than her own hunger, and it seemed that at least a day had passed. Having liquid again might make him feel better, but she had to make the potions last. She released her heal against his flesh to mend any possible brain damage from the extraordinary heat. Zudarra had lain in her cool basement apartment when she suffered the disease. The cool tingle of magicka might offer brief relief, in some small way, but Zudarra had to conserve this as well.
His hand trembled briefly in hers, and as the magicka hit his eyes fluttered as he struggled toward clarity. He was burning, every inch of his flesh was on fire, and for a moment he felt relief. He was lying on his back, hot air against the skin of his chest and arms, and the hand that held his was covered in fur. Disorientation coalesced into brief understanding, and he opened his eyes to look up at Zudarra. He could feel something happening in his mouth, gums shrinking around his teeth as some strange rearrangement went on inside.
"I know you," he said, and sighed. "Zudarra, why am I alive?"
Through the haze of her pleasure and the dread knotting her innards when she drank, Zudarra had been vaguely aware of his hand on her head. The pressure and warmth of that soft, weak touch was burned into her memory. Sometimes when she looked down at him, she could still feel it. It was the only time in her adult life that Zudarra could remember receiving any sort of friendly touch that wasn't from her mother.
She never wanted friendship, love, kindness - least of all from him. Least of all now.
Zudarra was forced to remember it again, looking down at him pityingly. Someone older and wiser, or just more empathetic and self-aware might have masked that emotion, but Zudarra was none of these things.
"The dead Khajiit had potions in his bag. I'm keeping you alive with them," she said stiffly, ears held very still, too much a coward to tell him the truth. She wished he would go back to sleep so she wouldn't have to face his questions.
He sighed and shut his eyes. His voice was proud and exasperated. "Stubborn... Stubborn girl..." His grip on her hand loosed as he drifted again. He did not fully wake for a long time. He swallowed when she poured a vial down his throat, sometimes twitching at the bitter taste. Sometimes he shook when the fever was hottest, but he had not much energy for that. He held tight to her hand as often as she let him, too weak to deny his need for her. It was an anchor to a lesser horror. While his hand touched fur he would wake for long enough to know where he was, and the ghosts would evaporate.
That went on for almost two days. Dreams of fire blended into dreams of blood. So much blood. Waterfalls and rains of blood, soaking his hair and clothes, coating him in red. It ran down his throat and choked him. It filled his eyes and ears and nose. At first it horrified him, repulsed him. And then he became used to it. And then he wanted it, desperately thirsted for it.
Outwardly his flesh grew paler. His gray gums paled to almost white and shrank back from his teeth as his canines lengthened. His eyes had always been red-on-red, like every Dunmer, but they grew richer and more saturated in color as time went on, the irises becoming faintly luminous in the dark room in the rare moments when his eyes were open.
At the last he dreamed that he knelt looking into a red lake, staring at his own strangely gaunt reflection. He was thirsty, so thirsty, could not get the awful bitter taste of spoiled herbs out of his mouth. Then his reflection reached out its arms and seized him and dragged him in, and his world was blood.
Outwardly his breath caught in his chest, rattling like a dried seed in a box. His last exhalation was a long, drawn-out hiss between his dry lips.
When he had not breathed in five minutes, Saraven Gol opened his eyes on a changed world. He was aware of Zudarra, strange scent of her that he had never noticed before, he was aware of the slosh of blood in her peripheral vessels and the silence of her heart. Hearts. He could hear hearts beating in the distance, blood passing through the vessels in ardent song. There was nothing from the cell across the way. Cliff-Diver had died quietly some time ago. That grieved him to realize, but it was not a surprise.
He opened his mouth to speak and pricked his tongue on one of his own teeth. He stopped, running his tongue over canines that seemed bizarrely sharp. The fever had left him, and he felt stronger, ready to rise and run, though he was still dreadfully thirsty.
I was sick. Probably for days. I'm alive, and my teeth are sharp, and – I'm not breathing. I do not hear my own heart beating.
He jerked upright, grasping at his own wrist to try to find a pulse. There was nothing. He tried at the neck. Nothing. He looked around wildly for Zudarra.
"What – what have you done?"