When Saraven breathed his last, Zudarra left his side to pace the room, tightly fisting the fur of her head and wallowing in the horror of what she had done. She could not face him when he awoke. Three days without any mental stimulation other than her own thoughts and raging thirst had stretched into something that felt like years. Whatever endless torture Bal promised could not have lasted so long or been as painful as what she'd endured at the hands of her own conscience that feebly asserted itself after a lifetime of dormancy. What little composure she normally commanded had eroded to dust under the wind of constant grief and shame.
She felt her sanity slipping when Saraven finally spoke.
"What – what have you done?"
"Don't you know?" Zudarra bitterly half-laughed, grasping the bars in one hand and looking out, not at him. "I made you into the thing you hate most of all. You can hear them, can't you? I could hear Cania's heart beating, all the way upstairs."
He stood up and almost shot forward onto his face again. Something was wrong with his body. Gravity seemed light. He turned to pace to the other side of the room and was suddenly there, raising an arm to avoid smashing into the wall.
"Of course I hear them. You bit me, and you kept me alive three days," he whispered harshly. He felt that his heart should be beating faster as fear and self-loathing subsumed him, but it did not. It did not respond at all. "Three days with porphyric hemophilia. Good gods, Zudarra, what did I do to you that you should do such a thing to me?" He turned to regard her, still leaning on the wall. His face was twisted with horror, crimson eyes wide.
She turned to look at him, not moving from her place at the bars. Her face crumpled into the bestial snarl of a wild animal, forehead wrinkling above hateful crimson eyes and fangs bared.
"You trusted a vampire and let her live when you should have followed your instincts, that's what you did," she hissed. The barbs she flung at him struck her own heart instead. She didn't know how to be calm or gentle, so Zudarra returned to her comfortable rage. She hated him for trusting her. She hated herself for what she had done. She told herself over and over again that she was doing him a favor; he was strong, he would live to close more gates and do the heroic deeds he wished to do. It brought her no comfort, so she hated him all the more so Zudarra could hate herself less.
"You should thank me," she continued, more evenly than before. "I saved your life."
"This is not life!" Saraven automatically bared his sharp teeth in return, face contorted in a territorial self-defense reflex, and then he realized what he had done and jerked around to face away from her, covering his mouth with the back of one hand. No. I am not this thing. No. No.
Get hold of yourself. He was very still as he stood there, without the need to breathe, in a body no longer able to react to emotions by raising his temperature, pumping adrenaline into his blood to prepare him to fight or flee.
Think, mer. Vampires were ruled by thirst or by mind, and otherwise no bodily thing mattered. The new ones had little control. He had killed them easily because they fed stupidly, killing their victims and not bothering to cover their tracks. So don't be stupid.
But gods, the thirst. The roots of his fangs itched, and his flesh felt shriveled over his bones, and he wanted blood, he needed it. It assumed an importance he had never given it in all his life.
You have wanted other things in your life just as badly, and not had them, and survived. Think.
Zudarra is angry. Of course she is. She worked for three days alone in this stinking hell to keep you alive. She did not take your life when she desperately needed to and now she is going mad with thirst and what do you say to her?
"You did what you thought was best," he said, more calmly. "And you paid a high price, Zudarra. I understand that. But I can't thank you for this." He turned to walk over to the bars – slowly, working to keep his feet moving at a normal speed – and raised a hand to two of them to stare out up and down the hallway. He was much more aware of the smell of blood than he had been before. There was no getting used to it, no ignoring it now.
He tugged at the bars, testing. They did not give. He transferred the grip of both hands to one and braced his feet, hauling sideways away from the Khajiit. Nothing moved, but from far above the metal complained.
Yes. Only the very oldest are as strong as the very newest. That burst of hysterical strength, meant to carry a fledgling through to finding their first drink, would only last a few hours before he started to shrivel into a gibbering corpse.
"Well, come on," he snapped at her. "We have no time to waste."
Zudarra stared uncomprehending at him - hours she had wasted yanking on the bars to no avail - but now she realized they had the strength of two vampires instead of one. She quickly moved behind Saraven, grabbing the bar from over his head with both hands. They pulled in unison, metal creaking under the strain, and just when Zudarra thought her muscles would give out the bar snapped off from the ceiling at the top. It was easier to break the bar at the bottom now that they could lever their weight on it.
Hysterical joy surged in Zudarra as they threw down the bar and moved to the next. Saraven might fit through the hole that they made, but she wouldn't. The second bar seemed more difficult. Zudarra was tired and thirsty and beginning to wish she had followed his advice about conserving her strength. With a maniacal roar from Zudarra the second bar finally snapped free at the top, and then from the bottom. Zudarra held onto it. These were better than nothing until she had a proper weapon again. Saraven took up the other bar. Polearms were not his usual weapon, but it would do until he could get his hands on another one. He was surprised at how light it felt.
Zudarra followed Saraven into the long hall. Cell upon cell stretched in either direction, but at the end of the hall to their left was a ramp leading up, keys on a peg hanging near the exit. There were no guards. Most of the noises from the other prisoners had ceased over the course of their stay as one by one they succumbed to dehydration or their wounds. A few were still alive, presumably thanks to whatever supplies they might have had on their person that the dremora did not confiscate. No one stirred and came to the bars to look for the source of the racket they had made. Probably they were too weak or barely conscious.
Saraven went directly to the key and took it down. He wasn't going to leave anyone in here alive to suffer further, one way or another. Maybe some of them could be saved. The slightest concentration told him that his pool of magicka had expanded startlingly, a fact of vampirism of which he had been unaware. It probably explained why Zudarra, who was subtle as a brick, could heal so effectively.
"All right, listen," he growled. "Anyone that can be healed and walk out of here, I'm taking them with us. Anyone that can't, we're not leaving them here in torment. Understand? I'm not going to argue with you about this."
Zudarra looked at him darkly.
"No, Saraven," she said slowly, firmly, as if talking to a child. In a way, she was. She shoved in front of him, blocking the path with her considerable bulk. "No one is coming with us. You'll kill the first person you come to and probably the second and third. These people are dying of thirst and can't defend themselves. They probably can't even stand. Think of yourself for once, and you'll be around to save the people who can be saved."
Zudarra remembered it had taken every ounce of her willpower to get out the front door with Cania sleeping upstairs and hunt for her first victim. She was lucky that she awoke from her fever in a dark city full of homeless who would never be missed. She killed three that night. She couldn't even remember their faces; unthinking frenzy and instinct carried her through her first feedings, and in the morning she could scarcely believe what she'd done.
If Saraven killed an innocent in that way, she knew he would never forgive himself. Zudarra didn't especially like it, but it didn't weigh on her conscience as it would his.
He clenched his fist around the keys, baring his teeth at her again. Impossible, ridiculous that he would leave cells full of dying people here inside a hell of daedric evil where they would be tormented forever, would become the walls, the floor, the railings -
Is it better or worse to die of dehydration than of being savaged to death by a vampire?
There are two answers to that. How much mind control do you think you will be capable of in your first few feedings, Saraven Gol? How much have you seen new vampires exercise in their first rampage after they are changed? Their victims do not die in ecstasy. They die in confusion and in pain.
"Damn you," he said. He should be shaking with rage, but he did not have that reflex any more. It had gone with everything about him that had been mortal. He could feel moisture in his eyes, the first time he had wept in longer than he could remember. At least that was not gone forever. "I am the monster you have made me."
He hung the keys back up with great care. He would not give her the satisfaction of the kind of physical outburst she would have succumbed to in the same situation. Then he turned to walk up the ramp, toward the roar of blood in daedric veins.
Zudarra had much to say to that, but her own shame clamped down on any retort before it could leave her mouth. She clenched her fists, staring at the back of Saraven's head as she followed quietly, trying not to think of her thirst and failing. She wanted to shove him aside and fly up the ramp to steal the prey from him, but he needed it more than she did. She repeated this fact over and over in her mind.
The room at the top of the ramp was very much like the entry to the other towers they had seen, with another ramp spiraling up, but without any pillar of fire in the center. Instead a large fountain of blood dominated the room, surrounded by stone benches. A dremora clad in armor was standing guard at the single door, presumably the exit to the Deadlands. There were bloodstains upon the floor where some prisoner had been dragged across toward the dungeon. The dremora did not notice them immediately without the clank of armor to alert him; the fountain was between them, and he was staring dully at it.
The scent and sound and color of the fountain exploded across Saraven's senses in such a way as to obliterate all thought, and he was halfway across the room without the bar in his hand – it was on the floor near the doorway - when he had enough control of himself to know what he was doing. He changed course, whipping around the pillar even as the dremora started to turn toward the noise of the dropped bar. The daedra seemed to move with dreamlike slowness. Saraven Gol had been fast when he was mortal. As a vampire he was bottled lightning. He was behind the taller creature yanking his helmet off before the guard had even spotted Zudarra on the ramp. His grunt of surprise seemed to stretch out into a basso roar, slow and elongated in the quarter second that it took for Saraven to kick him in the back of the knee – bones in his foot shattered and he did not feel it in the slightest – and then lace his fingers into the dremora's hair so he could yank his head to the side and plant his fangs in the great artery in his throat.
Everything seemed to explode.
He was not a complete stranger to pleasures of the flesh. He had spent his share of long afternoons in the Guild bunk hall with a mate he would see once and never again. All of that paled in comparison to the fireworks that went off throughout his entire body as he fed for the first time. It was not like orgasm, it was better, and it went on for longer, and he never wanted it to end. He was only dimly aware of sound behind him, the roar of the daedra's blood in his veins rushing around and back up and into Saraven as he thirstily drank drowned out all. Blood had no taste but pleasure until he was forced to stop because it stopped coming. The furious heart had given out for lack of blood. He tore his mouth away, snarling, fangs dripping.
Slowly he came to himself. He was standing bent over the shriveled corpse of a dremora on its knees. He let go and stepped back, hand to his mouth, and tears formed in his eyes again as he realized what he had done and how easily, with how little resistance he had done it. He had not noticed the bones of his foot healing, but it had happened.
No. I am not this thing! He looked around for Zudarra, for the source of his horror and torment.
She had gone three days without drinking and he had not offered her a single drop, he realized belatedly. Conflicting emotions warred across his mind, across his face.
Zudarra had run after him and stopped a few feet away, watching as Saraven fed while a mixture of unpleasant emotions twisted in her guts. Paramount among them was bitter envy. Her eyes were glued to the dremora's neck where Saraven had attached himself. He looked a mindless monster now, and in the back of her mind Zudarra realized this is what Saraven saw as she fed, but she was too preoccupied with hunger to be disgusted with herself. She licked her fangs as the body lost its color, imagining the hot rush of pleasure she might have experienced instead of Saraven. Slowly her eyes tracked back to his face when he stood, where the deepest pain was clearly written in his eyes. She quickly averted her gaze to the corpse.
"It's a dremora," Zudarra said coldly. Even as she spoke she knew she should not be so harsh to him, but it was too late. "He deserved to die. You've done nothing wrong."
He found his voice with difficulty. Forward. Worry about the rest later.
"You take the next one," he said. He lowered the body as he knelt to search it. He had a war-axe, an unfamiliar potion, and a belt knife, a jagged-edged wicked little thing with a handle that seemed of one piece with the black-and-red blade. Saraven took the knife and slid the axe across the floor toward Zudarra, listening to it strike sparks from the black floor. The dremora's armor would never fit him. The creature had been a good foot taller and bulkier in proportion.
He went to the door to pry it open – it was so easy now. He still felt thirst, was still strongly aware of the blood fountain bubbling and giving off its fragrance behind him, but it was less. He felt stronger than he could ever remember being even when he was a young mer.
A blast of hot air hit him in the face as the twin halves of the door crackled and slid apart.
Zudarra winced at the light of the outside world, the first time in at least four days her pupils had any reason to constrict. Saraven had to throw up an arm to protect his eyes as well, until they adjusted. Another tower was nearby, a walkway high above them connecting it with its neighbor. The towers were situated on an island crawling with metallic red grass that glinted in the light, an ocean of lava bubbling all around them. They were at the top of a hill, and far away down the slope they could see the gate they had come from, surrounded by a mob of dremora. From this distance they could see a writhing black mass more than they could pick out individuals.
Zudarra took care to avoid the sharp-looking grass, keeping to the walkway trampled free of life by daedric boots, and pulled open the door to the second tower. This time the familiar humming pillar greeted them, along with an empty room.
He followed Zudarra into the second tower and stopped dead. The pillar rose in front of them from a small well of what looked like liquid flame, yellow-white and brilliant and swirling in the dark. Its throbbing hum seemed to seep into his bones. Once he had found it tooth-settingly wrong, a constant irritation. Now it insinuated itself into his consciousness as a seductive sound, the coherent power of the flame.
If I fell into that I would immediately be ashes. There would hardly be time to know what was happening.
The thirst would end. The rage and grief would end. And he would end, as he should have ended in the cell surrounded by people he could not save.
But Zudarra was already moving. He forced himself to turn and follow her, keeping his eyes away from the pillar as they climbed.
They made their way up, encountering silence and emptiness, and Zudarra began to regret not drinking from the fountain. The blood of the dead, no matter how freshly deceased was never quite appealing to her, nor was blood outside of the arteries. It was some deeply ingrained instinct, just as she would not to eat spoiled food as a mortal unless her life depended on it.
Saraven hoped for some distraction, at least for them to find another dremora for her to feed on. It would be hard to watch, but he needed that exercise in discipline, needed desperately to know that he could do it. No remedy came, and then she turned aside in front of him to peer into an empty room and he was left facing the pillar across a railing again.
"The people of Leyawiin must really be giving them hell," Zudarra muttered, leaning inside the doorway and finding nothing of interest inside. They were about halfway up the tower now, the glistening red membrane drawing ever closer above their heads. "Or maybe every available man is out guarding the portal."
He did not hear the words she said. He was staring silently into the light.
She backed out of the doorway and turned to see him staring at the pillar, and instantly knew exactly what he was thinking. A funny look came over her face as she slowly approached him, confusion and pity and guilt all rolled together. Her tongue fluttered against her teeth, then stopped, and she remained silent.
"I'm sorry," she finally said. The phrase weighed more than the moons, and she struggled to drag it from her throat.
He jerked as if she had struck him, shutting his eyes. He had been someone who would have been very proud of her for saying those words. In the moment when he believed he was dying he had been that mer. It had been the best moment in thirty years of self-denial and misery, to be so sure he was dying in a way that would mean something to someone.
But falling into the pillar would not help anyone. No lives would be saved. And she would have to go on and close the gate alone, and her three days of agony would have been for nothing.
Don't tell yourself she would not suffer. You know that she would. She's not less able to feel pain than you are no matter how much you hate what she has done, Saraven Gol.
"Thank you," he said quietly. His thanks only made her feel worse. A normal person would be mad at her still. A normal person would argue and accuse, would tell Zudarra all the awful truths about herself that both of them knew. Saraven was far from a normal person. She wished that she could understand, but now was not the time to dwell on his inexplicable nature or her misdeeds.
He turned away, opening his eyes, and laid a hand on her arm as he started up the ramp again. "It can't be for nothing. Come on."
Zudarra twitched at the hand on her arm, but then it was gone and he was walking away. The pressure and warmth remained - a false warmth. His hands were cold, lifeless, artificially warmed by the sweltering air around them. She wished that she had met him years ago before both their bodies had grown cold, that she might have known a friendly touch before letting herself turn into a monster and dragging him down with her. The thought shocked her, and Zudarra's nose stung.
She followed silently.
It was a few minutes later that they heard a heart in the distance, then soft footsteps. The roots of Saraven's fangs itched again, and the thirst he had thought sated woke. He fought with himself not to break into a run. No. This one is hers. He told himself so then, and when he saw the robed dremora emerging on the walkway from below the red dome, and when he flattened himself to the wall to avoid the fireball whizzing past -
Zudarra dodged aside with ease. When the dremora saw how quickly she moved, he turned to run back up the slope. It was a mistake on his part, because Zudarra was on him in a flash, claws closing around his face as she yanked him back to her mouth.
- and then Saraven sprinted after her when he saw her move. He could taste it on the air, as if there were tiny drops of blood emulsing into the atmosphere around the creature and just begging to be drunk, it was completely irresistible. He literally tried to grab the dremora away from her, fangs bared, seizing the creature's shoulder in his hands.
Zudarra snarled, backhanding Saraven across the face and tearing the struggling mage away even as her fangs sunk into his neck. She caught the dremora's wrists, yanking his arms up and away from her just as fire shot out to explode against the ceiling, then jerked them down with enough force to wrench arms from socket and crush the bones of his wrists. She watched Saraven from the corner of an eye rolled back in ecstasy. The dremora was screaming and thrashing, trying to kick at her, but she dug in with her claws and didn't let go. His kicking feet would leave no bruises on her unarmored legs; they healed as she drank, any small pain unnoticed as liquid pleasure gushed down her throat.
The blow stunned Saraven for a second, turned him halfway around as he fell against the wall. Pain restored his sanity and he leaned on one upraised arm, fighting with himself, lips peeled back from his teeth. He fought down the obscene need, but only because he knew she had a good grip now and the dremora would be dead before he could get anything. Tears formed in his eyes again, the third time today, the third time in twenty years and more.
This is not who I am! She needs it more than I do! Before I changed into this thing I would have fetched her one with my own hands and hit it in the head first if that helped. I did, once. Oh gods. I can't live this way.
No god answered him. Why should they? Only Molag and the Vile paid close attention to vampires as anything but monsters for the righteous to strike down. And that was good and right, damn it. The thing that he was now should not be allowed to exist. What if this had happened in a town?
Calm yourself. It would not have happened in a town. She only did it because it was the only way for her to escape the cell. The fact is that you were selfish, Saraven Gol. If she had just killed you, she would have starved alone until she was mad and then shriveled into a mummy. Is that what you wanted?
He looked away until the noise and tumult finally subsided and the creature's gnarled corpse was falling to the floor.
"I'm not like this," he said, voice harsh and desperate as he walked past her. He flicked the knife out of his waistband. There should be at least two more, and one should be in armor, and he didn't care. They were about to die.
A thrill of power shuddered through Zudarra's body; she barely registered that Saraven had spoken. Nothing mattered but blood, power, pleasure. She had ached for this sensation during those four days of starvation that had seemed to last a lifetime. She needed more! She almost sprinted past Saraven before he could steal the next prey when she remembered her dropped axe. It was in her hand and she was by Saraven's side in a blur. The thinking part of her reasserted itself and she slowed to match his pace. There would be enough dremora for them to share, Zudarra knew this, but still the presence of another vampire made her anxious. How could they stand to live in colonies as they did? Did it ever get easier?
An armored dremora, drawn by the screams of the mage, emerged from the dome and clattered toward them on the walkway, longsword already drawn. The crimson runes scrawled across the black metal blazed maliciously in the firelight of the pillar as she charged them.
Longsword. Saraven's eyes narrowed, and he became an indistinguishable blur of movement as he darted forward and past the armored dremora, one hand rising to snatch at the helmet. It was so easy now. He had gone years with faint aches and creaks in his joints that were so familiar he had just forgotten they were there, a normal background to his days. Now they were gone and every muscle and tendon behaved as if he were thirty again. Now he bashed at the back of the creature's skull with the hilt of the knife. He had to literally bite his own tongue to keep control, his own blood dribbling down his throat; the taste of it was dull and dead and awful and most importantly distracting.
Mine! Zudarra stifled a possessive hiss. It was his turn to feed, not hers. She hung back to let him do it without fear that she would snatch the dremora away, as he had tried. Zudarra was proud of the restraint she had cultivated. He may not believe it now, with the first thirst still raging, but he would learn that it was possible.
The harsh crack of skull caving in brought her to the present. The dremora sagged, sword dropping to the ground. Zudarra caught it with her foot before it could slide down the ramp.
Saraven swore viciously under his breath. He'd hit the thing too hard, forgetting how much stronger he was now than he had been mortal. He snatched at the falling dremora to fasten his teeth to its throat, snarling as he drank. He sucked in a few mouthfuls before the heart finally decided the brain had died and quit, but it was too little, over too fast. He dropped the body with a snarl and went after the sword.
"Get the other one," he growled as he bent to scoop it off the ramp. "I'll get the stone. I don't want to see you, damn it. Hurry."
He shoved the dagger into the back of his pants and started for the stairs to the upper level at a fast walk, trying to hold down his speed so that he would be a visible target and distract the mage from Zudarra – there it was, a lightning bolt crackled past some three feet from his elbow, raising the hairs on his arm. They had no prayer of hitting him as he was now. None at all.
Zudarra sprinted toward the second set of steps at the further end of the dome, hoping the mage was too focused on the Dunmer to notice her. She heard lightning boom against the ground far behind her and then she was on the balcony, circling around behind the daedra. The mage had heard the patter of her feet too late over the roar of the pillar. He turned far too slowly to react before the blunt side of her axe came swinging down at his head with the perfect level of restraint, born of countless hours of practice to appear mortal for the arena spectators.
She caught him before he hit the floor, fangs sinking deep into his neck. Zudarra had already resolved to share this one, despite Saraven's directions to the contrary. She was exceptionally hungry from her days of starvation, but she really didn't need more. Saraven might actually need it. It might save him from attacking an innocent mortal after the gate closed.
Zudarra tore herself away from the dremora just as Saraven cleared the top of the steps. Fresh blood dripped from the fur of her chin. She held him out by the collar, an offering to the Dunmer. The dremora moaned, head lolling to the side.
The rich smell of daedric blood exposed to the air hit his nostrils and stopped Saraven in his tracks. He turned entirely against his will to see Zudarra holding a dremora by the collar of his robe, holding him out. It took all of his will not to drop the longsword completely as he lunged forward, but he managed to keep his grip as he seized the creature around the waist and bit and drank. He couldn't drink from the existing punctures. He didn't know why.
"Ngh." His eyes rolled upward as the blood poured into his mouth. It was just as good as it had been the first time. He was helpless in the face of that crushing wave of pleasure. No wonder they were always so easy to kill while they were feeding. He had wondered many times at their stupidity.
It didn't last long before the heart gave out. He dropped the desiccated body and let it slide away down the stairs as he wiped his mouth, gasping even though he didn't need air.
Last chance. The pillar still stood in front of him, singing its promise of fiery annihilation. He stared at it for a long moment. Then he turned to invert the longsword and thrust the hilt at the sigil stone. It hit with a resounding crack, and he watched as the stone bounced away down toward the floor. He looked up to watch the ceiling start to subside with unbelievable majesty, and then everything dropped away below his feet and he fell.