Zudarra watched Saraven wearily, ready to knock the stone out of the fire if he wasn't going to, but then he did and explosions sounded from deep within the earth as the tower shook and crumbled all around them. One second she was falling from the broken balcony, and the next she was landing in the rubble of the black pillars outside the smoking ruins of Western Leyawiin. It was early morning, a thick fog rolling in from the river and obscuring the sun. Even if Magnus had shone on them with full power, neither of them would have felt it now.
The blackened field before the city was littered with mortal bodies several days into decay. Here and there the weapons of daedra had been dropped and left behind, but any corpses had returned to their own realm days ago. Zudarra inhaled deeply, appreciating the cool, moist air of Nirn, the scent of wood and smoke and the sea carried on a gentle breeze. Even the stink of death didn't trouble her, after a lifetime spent in the festering hellhole of Dagon's dungeon. Her relief was short lived when her eyes landed on Saraven, and she knew something would have to be done about him.
He couldn't live off dremora forever. He would have to feed from a mortal, sometime soon. Zudarra had not given any thought to anything past their escape, and now the horror of what she'd done revived itself. She suppressed it, and began rooting through the discarded weapons to find something bigger than the war axe without a word to him.
Saraven landed on bare dirt, rolling to his feet quickly as he looked around. Cool air rose around him like water, a gentle relief against his naked upper body. Mist obscured some of the carnage before them, but he was more strongly aware of the scents and sounds than he had ever been. Even this abandoned battlefield was still more pleasant than the Deadlands. That had not changed with his undeath.
He was in Nirn now. Saraven thrust the tip of his sword into the earth and leaned on the hilt with one arm, looking at the ground. How long until I meet my first living mortal? Will I be able to keep from attacking them on sight? He grieved the dying souls they had left behind in the prison, now lost forever. He was still not completely sure that leaving the portal alive had been the right decision. Once they were in the portal room, Zudarra's escape had been assured. And now here he was, an animate undead with a terrible thirst, a danger to everyone he met.
He sought for some distraction, any distraction at all. Zudarra was searching the bodies for weapons. He should try to find a baldric for himself. Maybe a mail shirt. Some of the dead were men of medium size, and he was still unclad from the waist up. For that matter, he'd be glad to throw away everything he was wearing now. He regretted the loss of his mithral chain – it had been with him many years – but it was not irreplaceable. If he was going to survive he would be able to find mithral again.
As he moved to a corpse that had already de-bloated and was starting to leak – he wasn't putting on that pair of pants, but the chainmail shirt under the guard tabard might serve – his mind hunted back over things she had said.
"Who is Cania?" he asked after a moment, as he worked at wrestling the chain shirt off the stiff limbs.
"Hm?" Zudarra asked, wondering how he knew that name before she remembered her mad rambling in the cell. She welcomed the conversation, anything to distract from her other thoughts. "Oh. She's just my landlord in the Imperial City. Nobody important to me." Zudarra stopped, narrowing her eyes. "I wonder if she's given my room away by now. Probably expects I died in Kvatch, since I never returned from it. Ugh."
She picked up a battle axe covered in dried blood and dew, the largest thing she could find. She wiped moisture off the blade with her own filthy sleeve.
"We should go to the river and wash. I don't think it's a good idea to venture into town right now," she said carefully, watching Saraven's face. "Wonder if Galmir took off yet."
Galmir. Saraven did not look forward to his first sight – and scent – of the Bosmer, whom he had always pitied and whom he must now carnally desire to harm. He did not want to ratify the death of that part of himself, the birth of this monstrosity that he now was. He shut his eyes for a second, gathering himself, fist full of dirty chainmail. Then he stood up with mail shirt in one hand, the belt wadded up around it, and his new longsword in the other. The links would chafe his bare skin. Maybe it would distract him.
"He won't have. You're his only reason to stay alive," Saraven said. He turned toward the river, fighting to keep his tone level. "You may have to hit me again when we see him. I don't know."
"I'll meet you at the river with the horses," Zudarra said, choosing to ignore his morbid comment. He'd be fine left alone for a few minutes, and Zudarra needed to get away from him. Guilt was an entirely new emotion for her, and it was overwhelming. She knew she had made the wrong choice. She should have killed him when he asked. Now she was burdened with the shame, and with him. He was like a child she had to care for and she didn't want the responsibility. Dragging along a mindless thrall was already an annoyance to her, let alone a depressed fledgling vampire.
Saraven was right: Galmir hadn't run off. He had unsaddled all of the horses and built a sad little lean-to out of sticks against a low branch and covered it with leaves. He was asleep underneath it when she approached. A sharpened stick lay beside him, and the bones of fish were strewn in the remains of the fire.
"Galmir," she said, standing outside his little shelter. She was impressed that he'd been able to think for himself enough to build it. Instantly he jolted awake with a surprised cry and scrabbled out, mouth slack with wonder.
"Zudarra!" he cried, eyes welling with happy tears. He almost threw himself at her, but she stepped back, frowning. His face was pink and healthy, having had four long days of rest to build up his strength.
"I'm so sorry," he gibbered, "But I got into Saraven's bag and ate some of his food! Gods, I was wondering if the two of you had died. I was so distraught, thinking about-"
"It's fine," Zudarra said impatiently. "Help me saddle the horses and pack up the gear. And listen. Saraven is like me now, a vampire, do you understand? You'll feed him if he asks, but only in my presence." As if the Bosmer could stop him otherwise, she thought.
"Oh dear," Galmir said, and scurried around to clean up the camp. He had drug their bags under the trees to protect them from rain.
As she saddled Shadow, who for once seemed eager to see her and snuffled happily at her ears, Zudarra seriously considered riding away. She could leave Galmir, Saraven, and her guilty conscience behind in this place. Go back to Anvil. Forget these people ever existed. Saraven would go on a rampage and kill himself out of guilt afterward, and then he'd be dead like he wanted and not her problem anymore. Molag Bal could scarcely hold her responsible for what Saraven did to himself.
Instead she closed her eyes for a long moment, listening to Galmir puttering around behind her and the absence of her heartbeat. She opened her eyes with reluctant resolve and continued her work. Then she led Shadow and Ves down to the the river while Galmir followed with the necromancer's horses, walking comically fast to keep up with their long-legged stride.
Saraven stuck the sword into the mud, draped the chainmail around the hilt, and waded into the water up to his chest. It was cold, but the cold did not cause him to shiver, did not cause his flesh to recoil. Hypothermia would never be a danger to him again. Unless his body literally froze to the point of being unable to move, to the point of crystals forming and damaging the tissue, cold could not harm a dead body. The current tugging at him was a mild annoyance, nothing more.
He washed himself as best he could first, using a handful of sand from the bottom to scrape away the filth that had crusted on his arms while he lay in the cell. He would never sweat again, unless he overfed to the point of sweating blood, and that was almost impossible for a young one. Things that he had learned over a lifetime of hunting kept recurring to his mind, and every fact remembered was a new horror as he realized anew that he had been learning what he would become.
He took off his padding trousers and soft shoes and washed those out as best he could. There was no one to see, no boat traffic up the bay, no one out here doing laundry. He could see the masts of a couple of boats off in the misty distance, people risking fishing because they lived near the river and could not imagine fleeing even though the city was under attack.
When he had put his wet pants and shoes back on he went to get the chainmail and wash that out, too. He could not change what he now was. All he could do was get rid of the stink of putrescence as much as possible. It would tarnish as it dried, might eventually rust if it didn't dry fast enough, but it was at best a stopgap. If he was going to go on he would have to find real armor.
The weight of it seemed insignificant. He tugged at his own sleeve in puzzlement, wondering why it felt as though he were wearing nothing, until he remembered. Then he set about belting it on. It was not tremendously modest, and it did chafe as he had expected, a cilice for his entire torso; but it would turn a sword or blunt an axe at the right angle, and that was the important thing.
Oh yes. That was the important thing. Having something that needed doing had kept him going for thirty years. It would have to keep him going for – he crumpled around himself, arms tightly hugging his own body as he sank to his knees on the grassy bank.
Forever. If I am not killed I will live forever. Like this.
He would grow colder still, and amused by other people's discomfort, and at last would commit atrocities just because he was bored.
Get up, damn you. You become what you choose to become. Zudarra is not what you thought she was when you met. You don't have to become one of the old monsters you have slain. Get up. Get up.
Saraven hauled himself to his feet, plucked the sword from the bank, and cleaned it with a handful of grass. Somewhere in Leyawiin there was a dremora with a baldric and a beating heart.
He heard hoofbeats, and not long after that he heard a heart beating. It was small, weak, not the furious assault on the entire concept of circulation that was a dremora. It awakened his lust, but he found that he did not run after it against his will. He was able to stand and wait. It was a small, pathetic victory, but it gave him a germ of hope.
Zudarra spotted the lone figure on the shore and eyed him carefully as she approached. He didn't move, and her fists relaxed their tense grip on the reigns. Galmir was oblivious to the danger he might have been in, sternly reprimanding the horses as they dragged him to the water to drink. He said hello to the Dunmer as he passed.
"Morning, Galmir," he said back quite calmly. He watched the appaloosa snorfle the Bosmer's ear as they went past. At least the change in his scent did not bolt the horses. They had become accustomed to Zudarra.
He was dimly aware that the horses were there and alive, but their blood did not attract his attention in the same way, as he had expected. He had a backup set of linens, but that was all, and he saw no use in changing now. Wearing wet clothes was not exactly comfortable, and certainly the unpadded chain shirt was not, but he was starting to feel grateful for that. Every time he started to feel twitchy or focus too closely on the Bosmer he had only to shift position slightly and a hundred small discomforts drew his attention away.
Zudarra was desperate to be out of her stinking clothes and scrub the dried crap out of her fur, but she couldn't completely trust Saraven alone with Galmir despite his show of restraint. That meant she wasn't going to be able to bathe in privacy.
"Don't look if you don't want to see," she said, releasing the horses to let them take themselves to the river. She yanked her bag of spare clothes off Shadow's back as he trotted alongside and tossed her battle axe onto the grass. She threw her bag on the shore and, once submerged in the cold water with her back turned to the others, ripped the crusty padding over her head and flung it as far down the river as she could. She never wanted to see it again. She shucked off her pants, flinging that away also, and scrubbed herself feverishly with sand.
Galmir reddened when he realized the vampire was disrobing in the water in front of him. He stammered an apology and raced back up the bank, where he stopped bent over with his hands on his knees, wheezing as he fought to catch his breath. It was the most exercise he'd had that week. At length he stood up, hands on his back, and stretched back to look at the sky. The rising sun was a pale blotch beyond the mist.
"You two were, uh, sure gone for a long while this time," he said to the Dunmer, breathlessly.
"We were ambushed," Saraven explained to the Bosmer. "Trapped in a cell. It took the strength of two vampires to get the bars apart, and it takes three days for porphyric hemophilia to run its course." And in short sentences he had summarized the entire disaster. He still could not fault her logic even if he was not sure he would ever be able to forgive her.
Saraven was aware of Zudarra from the corner of his eye, but he was indifferent to the Khajiit's body, as he had always been; beyond glancing over there to make sure she was doing all right he paid no attention. She had the expected scars over her muscular arms and legs, and her fur was a slightly different pattern than he had thought it would be, that was -
He felt a thrill of something strange and different. For an instant he was strongly aware of her in a way he had not been before, the silence of her heart, the size and shape of her, the glint of the sun on her sharp teeth. He knew when she had fed last and how much, and not only from memory, he could sense daedric blood in her veins and knew she had not tasted Galmir while she was gone. Something in his mind whispered strength, and approved, was ready to follow her straight into another gate that minute if it meant a chance at feeding from her kill.
What is happening to me?
Was this what drew vampires back to their sires, to cluster in a lonely cavern and herd their thralls together in a pack? In all his years he had never understood it. The few he had talked with had never brought it up.
He realized he was staring at her, eyes wide, and looked quickly away. Zudarra glanced back at the shore at that moment and thought she saw his head whip away. She narrowed her eyes at him and returned to bathing.
"Did anything happen while we were gone?" Saraven asked. Galmir shook his head.
"It was awfully quiet out here, just me and the horses. The first day, some people in a wagon came up the road, but they turned straight around when they saw the gate in front of the city. The second day a boat full of Khajiits-"
Zudarra listened to Galmir's chatter. His personality was beginning to assert itself again; If they had been away for any longer, he might really have left. She slogged up to the shore to grab her fresh clothes - they would have to go on wet - and Saraven allowed himself to glance that way again as she emerged from the water.
Strength. Would that impulse fade if she showed weakness, he wondered, if she were injured and unable to defend herself? He'd seen vampires turn on each other readily enough.
She came up behind them a minute later, clean wet fur plastered to her body. She looked eighty pounds lighter without her fluff. Her armor padding was thick enough that it didn't soak all the way through, but she moved stiffly with the discomfort of wearing wet clothes. Zudarra shook her head, flinging droplets of water at the men and stopped between them, picking one of her ears with a claw.
"I don't know what I'll do about armor," Zudarra said. "The gold gifted us by the Count isn't nearly enough to replace the set I lost, if I could even find someone left alive to forge it. Good thing you found that mail. Maybe I ought to have picked some up, too."
"West Leyawiin is full of corpses," he said. "We might find some fallen fighter or mercenary in heavy iron that's big enough and hammer it 'til it fits. There should've been several between the Guild and the Blackwood company."
Zudarra would have rather kept out of the town altogether. They closed the gate; let the people of Leyawiin retake their own damn city. It's not as if any reinforcements would come from the Deadlands. But she supposed Saraven would not share her opinion.
"All right," she said, fetching her axe from the ground. The horses had ambled away from the water to graze nearby, more or less sticking together. "Galmir, take care of the horses. We're going to see what's happened inside the city." Saraven had been chatting peacefully with her thrall long enough that she was convinced he could control himself around any survivors.
Zudarra no longer had to restrain herself for Saraven's sake. She zipped across the field toward the Western gate, light as a feather without her armor. They slowed at the burned front gate, moving more cautiously through the empty streets. As they moved East, they saw fewer burned houses and fresher bodies dispersed among the old. Some were daedric. Zudarra was able to scavenge a harness for her battle axe. She wasn't having much luck with anything else.
Over time it got easier for Saraven to control how fast or slow he moved. Keeping up with Zudarra was not even a challenge. He found a baldric and scabbard for his sword on a dremora with his throat cut from ear to ear. The body was near one of the city's many little canals, blood dripping away into the water and forming a crimson cloud. He collected a couple of scrolls of Silence and Fatigue Drain from different bodies as they passed. With a little practice he could stop, go through a corpse's pockets and run to catch up with Zudarra without ever prompting her to slow down.
Black smoke rose a few blocks away from the river that cut through town, and Zudarra could make out the roar of metallic voices. She exchanged a quick glance with Saraven before sprinting after the sounds. Rounding a corner, they saw that a squad of dremora at least ten strong had encircled a two-story building. It had been a tavern, as evidenced by the hanging sign bearing the emblem of a pitcher of ale. The door had been barricaded with broken furniture but now a fire raged in the lower level. The windows of the upper floor were all smashed and Zudarra thought she saw a flash of movement from inside. Broken arrows and a few daedric bodies littered the street outside, but it didn't seem anyone in the tavern was retaliating now.
Most of the dremora were warriors; Zudarra only picked out two mages. None of them had noticed the newcomers yet, and the vampires shrank back around the corner of a house before the dremora could turn to see. The daedra were mostly clustered together, jeering at the high windows with their weapons raised to the sky.
It was too loud and the hearts of the dremora were too many to tell if there were surviving mortals inside. Saraven twisted his hand into the hem of the chainmail, grinding flesh against metal. Sprinting straight up to them to drink without even getting out his weapon would result in his death, but that was exactly what he had to fight the urge to do. The sky overhead was gray, but it had not begun to rain, not even that little respite for the people trapped in the burning tavern.
"Mages first," Saraven said. "One each. Then we lead the others away in different directions so they have to split up. Then we pick them off as fast as we can. At least that'll leave it clear for them to climb out the upper windows, hang by their arms and jump."
Zudarra nodded.
"I've got the one on the right," she said, raising the battle axe to her chest and leaning round the corner with crimson eyes trained on her prey. She added, without looking at Saraven, "Don't let the power go to your head. Run if you're overwhelmed."
"Right," he sighed.
She sprinted for the small crowd, nearly silent without her armor. Too late the dremora began to turn to them, but the black steel of her axe was already slicing through the back of her mage's neck with a meaty thwack. He hadn't turned in time to see what killed him, but others had. She yanked the blade from the half-severed neck and danced back to avoid a toothed sword sailing down toward her head.
Saraven put on a burst of speed as he drew his sword, catching up at just about the time he heard the distinctive sound of an axe chopping through a spinal cord. He danced behind the mage on the left and spitted her through the chest, producing a scream indicative of rage as much as pain before she went limp and he shoved the corpse off the blade with one foot, lust twisting in his gut as he listened to the thundering heart give out and fall silent. Dremora around them turned with balletic slowness at the noise, and he kicked the back of one armored male's knee as he headed off down the street, deliberately slowing down so that they could see where he was going. He had to bite his tongue to stop himself from pausing to feed. He had never wanted anything physical this badly. He shouldn't even be very hungry and he ached for it, he hurt for it in every cell.
There was a brief discussion in the Kyntongue which mostly consisted of furious screaming, and then he heard the tramp of running feet behind him as the dremora split off, some after Zudarra, some after him. A throwing knife whistled past his head at about a normal running speed, and he plucked it out of the air and turned to throw it back. It clanged off a gorget, striking sparks and producing a flood of what he assumed were probably insults.
Split them up, split them up. The Chapel up ahead was barricaded, and they'd presumably left it to pursue easier targets; there were a few dead clannfear and scamps scattered around outside. A large cemetery sprawled out to one side of the building, full of individual headstones of many sizes, obelisks, and a couple of mausoleums. Perfect. He sped up as he darted in among the stones, so that they could see roughly where he had gone but not his specific hiding place. There was a brief discussion in the dremoras' guttural tongue, and then they split up, fanning out to move between the tombstones. He could hear their beating hearts move apart from one another in space. He ran as fast as he could to the far fence, then around the corner to stand behind an obelisk, facing the one on the far end. He counted softly to himself as he watched that solitary dremora, waiting for him to pass behind a taller monument, hidden from the others.
In that moment he sprinted forward, darting from tall tombstone to fat column as he circled around. They were aware of the wind of his passing, but they could not see him. Finally he came up behind his chosen target, his empty left hand reaching out from behind as he let the lightning go. The light flared, alerting the others, but he couldn't care about that because the dremora was on his knees screaming and twitching and now was a perfect time to -
Saraven jerked his lips away from the dremora's throat, listening to the sound of running feet approaching, and dove and rolled away from the corpse just in time to avoid having a war-axe buried in his skull. Alien ecstasy still bloomed in every nerve for a half-second after he had detached, slowing him down, but then he was on his feet and running again. He loosed another lightning bolt at one of the others, and they converged on the source of the spell even as Saraven came to a stop behind a mausoleum some yards away and behind them again. The power was intoxicating. He could almost forget his rage and despair in the sheer pleasure of being able to run faster, hit harder, do the unexpected. He had lived his life as a medium-sized mer of no unusual strength, dependent for his survival on speed and discipline and always thinking ahead. Vampires had it so easy.
And that was why he had been able to kill them, he reminded himself. It made you stupid if you let it. He didn't have to risk a glance around the mausoleum; he could hear the four survivors splitting into two pairs this time, so that none was completely isolated. Saraven grinned ferally to himself until he realized what he was doing.
Imagine having to take advice from Zudarra, who was less than a third his age and as subtle as a short stack of bricks. Imagine being so stupid that she had to tell him not to let the power go to his head, and damnation, imagine her being right. He squinted in revulsion at himself.
One thing at a time. He hooked an arm around a decoration on the edge of the mausoleum's roof, hauled himself up onto the sloping surface, and lay there to wait for the next two. At this angle he might be able to kill one before the other even saw him, feed on the survivor before the others pinpointed his location.
"The prey moves too quickly to be mortal," one dremora said to the other in their own language. He held his mace at the ready, slowly stalking through the graves and looking each way as he passed every row with a caution uncharacteristic of his race.
"Mortal or not, it will break as they do," the other growled. A gray shape caught his eye, and he pointed to the mausoleum roof with his sword. "There!"
Saraven was on the opposite slope from them. He didn't understand how they'd seen him until he realized one foot was sticking up over the edge of the roof's peak. Stupid, stupid, he should know better than this! Saraven swore under his breath as he rolled off and fell to the ground, landing easily on his feet. A dremora was already coming around the corner of the building sword-first, forcing him to flatten himself against the door to avoid being impaled, and then he heard the other one coming up from behind him, around the other side of the building. He dropped to one knee in time for the spiked mace to splinter the wooden door above his head, and then he raised his arm barely in time to prevent himself being decapitated. The blade gouged into the chainmail links over his arm. It bruised him, smashing metal into muscle, a sharp reminder that his flesh was still as fragile as it had ever been.
He dove and rolled forward as the second dremora was freeing the mace from the broken door. He twisted around to stab upward at the seam of the blade-wielder's cuirass, and that was a stroke that failed half the time, and he knew it; but he was so much stronger than he had been that the glancing blow damaged one of the catches. The cuirass did not come off, but its side seam was now gaping open. Saraven had time to realize that before he had to roll away again, dodging another blow aimed at his neck.
The noise had attracted the attention of the remaining two. From the corner of his eye he could see them running toward him. He dared not let himself be surrounded. Saraven got to his feet, parrying another bruising blow with his forearm, and spun away from the one with the mace to sprint straight at the mausoleum. He was moving so fast that he had only to jump a little and he was running up and along the surface of the building, and then he flipped forward off past the mace-wielder and cut at his neck as he flew past. Blood fountained from the dremora's throat and he was running, already yards away when the irresistible smell of it dragged him to a halt.
No. No. No. Saraven was turning back toward the dremora against his will, lips peeled back from his fangs. There were three left, the one with the sword and two others with war axes, and he could not fight all three of them face to face. He had to get away. He couldn't get away. He slapped the palm of his left hand against the jagged blade of his sword, and the pain and the bitter stink of his own blood snapped him out of it. He turned and ran.
There was a square to the East surrounded by the smoking remains of buildings, arranged around the charred skeleton of a tree still standing in a round little patch of dead grass that had once been a landscaping feature. As he skidded around the corner of what had once been a book store – a small storm of pages blew above the collapsed stones as he passed – he recognized the tattered crimson banner ahead of him. Fighters Guild. Now that he was looking for it, the broken glass window on the building next to that was probably the stylized eye of the Mages Guild. Both buildings were half-collapsed, formerly multi-story, now thrusting jagged and burnt beams toward the gray sky. The body of a woman in a blue robe was draped over the front stoop of the Mages Guild, eyes completely gone, face sunken and shriveled. A clannfear lay half-across the body. Other dead daedra littered the square, mingled with bodies in armor. He recognized the insignia of the Blackwood Company on some, but it looked like some of the mercenaries had survived. At least they hadn't all died here.
He could not tell how many of his guildmates lay among the fallen, and some of the bodies were dismembered, rotten, or otherwise unrecognizable, but with a pang he recognized Glarius Vellen, an Imperial he had known off and on for some years. He had been torn nearly in half, his decaying face fixed in a terrible grimace above his trailing intestines. He had died with a mace in his hand, as a Fighter should. The shriveled claw was still clenched around the hilt.
Zudarra took off for the river, hanging back just enough for the dremora to believe they might catch her. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw an Argonian emerge from the tavern window and four dremora on her tail. The bulk of them had followed Saraven, for whatever reason. Not good. Once on the bridge she slowed and spun, axe smashing through the unprotected face of the dremora directly behind her. She waited for the plodding dremora to catch up, two side by side with the last behind them, trying to decide if she should risk taking two at once without her armor.
The choice was made for her. One of the dremora screamed as a crimson beam of magicka struck his body. He stumbled forward, still intent on charging her with his companion, but the deadly thread did not break contact and he sagged to his knees just as the other reached Zudarra. She easily blocked the slow sweeping hammer and jumped back to steal a glance at the water, where the magical attack had come from. Ripples drew her attention to a grey-green crocodilian shape in the water and then it was gone, dipping below the surface, and she was blocking another slow swing and shoving the dremora back with the haft of her axe. He staggered back and Zudarra kicked at his knee, knocking him off balance and onto his back just as the last dremora reached her.
This one charged with his sword but Zudarra spun aside and around, raising her axe, his blade scraping her arm as he barreled past. His back was to her now and Zudarra slammed down her axe, burying the blade in the back of his skull with a furious roar. She heard the clanking of the dremora behind her rising and turned to face him, grinning. This one would be food. She kicked him in the chest to send him down again, shifted her axe in her hands and brought down the hilt on his skull, and descended to feed.
Zudarra's ear twitched to a sloshing sound behind her, followed by footsteps on the bridge. She didn't care. The corpse was drained before she released it, and Zudarra turned on her heels, still crouching, to see the gray-green Argonian that had helped her standing several feet away, eyeing her wearily. His torso was naked, but he carried a shoulder bag and the hilt of a dagger protruded from the waistband of his pants. Behind him was a smaller female in wet leather armor, her scales a vibrant, glittering emerald. She had drawn her shortsword as they approached, but stopped when he did.
"A vampire," the male observed evenly. Zudarra wiped blood from her chin with the back of her hand and stood.
"I don't have time to talk. I need to find my.. ally," she said. "If that's your companion in the tavern back there, they may need help."
"Wait!" the female said as Zudarra turned away. "I'll help you. Jarwaasi, check on the others." The male nodded, and both jogged toward her.
"You can't keep up with me and I'm in a hurry," Zudarra said and zipped away before she could hear a reply. As she passed the blazing tavern she saw two more Argonians lying on the yard outside. A third was dragging them away from fire, which was roaring in the upper level now - maybe they hurt themselves jumping, maybe they were weak from smoke inhalation. She didn't stop to check, but ran past them in a blur for where she thought Saraven had gone: the church.
She found fresh corpses in the graveyard. One smelled of Saraven; he had briefly fed. She followed his changed scent back into town. He had bled very slightly. The remaining dremora had followed, but they seemed to have lost him when he turned down a side street. Zudarra followed his trail rather than theirs.
Finally she saw him, standing in a square surrounded by ruined buildings and corpses. She slowed to a halt beside him, following his gaze to the mangled corpse of an Imperial laying near the rubble that had been the Fighters Guild.
"Are you okay?" she asked, gently.
Voice. Zudarra. He looked at her – he had not heard her coming, and that was a serious matter, that was a lethal mistake. She had bloodied her weapon, and she had drunk; he had only a merish sense of smell when it came to anything but blood, but blood he could scent, and she had fed from a dremora. Strength. He pushed away that confusing urge toward subservience, knowing it was not out of his own mind. Before she had changed him he had felt toward her almost paternally, a species of affectionate exasperation.
He registered after a moment what she had asked. He shook his head, opening and closing his bleeding left hand as he spared the pittance of magicka to heal himself. He hated to do it. He needed the pain. "He died fighting," he said. "There are three of them left. They're not far behind."
Zudarra eyed the wound on his palm as he healed it, realizing it had to be self-inflicted. He wouldn't have blocked with his bare hand. She frowned and shifted uncomfortably.
"I think you lost them. They may have circled back to the tavern. There's a group of Argonians there now. Might need a healer," she said, turning to head back that way. They had to keep moving. Saraven needed the distraction.
Saraven went after her silently. His feet wanted to follow even if he had wished otherwise. They were halfway back to the church when Zudarra slowed, holding up a hand to Saraven. She heard the clank of daedric boots around the corner, fast approaching.
"They're near," she whispered, forgetting his vampiric senses most likely told him that already.
Saraven was aware of hearts beating and he flicked the blade to clean it of blood as he side-stepped away from her. One came around the corner slightly ahead of the others, and he waited, bouncing on his toes, until he saw them all. The one in front, the one with the sword, saw him then and snarled as he charged, his ragged black hair flying out behind him.
"BREAK!"
Saraven slid forward, kicking at one of his ankles, then rolled away and darted behind the other two without stopping to see if his attack had been successful; the sword whistled over his head without coming close to hitting him.
The dremora stumbled back and Zudarra slammed into him with her shoulder, knocking him down. She bashed his gauntlets with her axe to knock the weapon out of his hands, following the swing over her head and back down at his. The dremora had time to throw his weight to the side in a roll just before her axe slammed down and rebounded from the cobblestone street, sparks flying. The dremora had rolled onto his elbows and kicked back at her, catching her unarmored leg with his hard boot.
She staggered back, fighting to catch her balance as the dremora scrambled up.
The two dremora with war axes whirled and ran for the Dunmer in arcs, closing in on either side of him, weapons drawn back and ready to strike at his unprotected head.
He backed up for a half-second, running over maneuvers in his head, resisting the urge to just lunge at the nearest with his teeth. No magicka. People need healing. He took two quick steps toward the one on his right, ducked under the swing of the axe – it blew his stubble of hair to one side with the wind of its passage – and slashed at the dremora's throat with the sword. The daedra ducked his head enough to deflect the blade from one short horn, though the impact was jarring, throwing bone fragments into the air. The other one hissed at his fellow in the Kyntongue, trying to get around him to get at Saraven, but the second one was staggering, shaking his head as he flailed blindly with the axe. The Dunmer ran the sword blade economically into and out of his throat on the right side, like a seamstress sewing.
Blood jetted out into the air, its scent intoxicating. Saraven froze as the body fell, fighting with himself, fangs bared as he stared wide-eyed at the dying daedra. The second one strode forward, grinning triumphantly as he raised the axe.
The dremora before Zudarra wouldn't have time to retrieve his weapon if she acted now. But beyond him Saraven was standing still, staring stupidly at the bleeding creature on the ground. The blood in the air gripped her senses, worked Zudarra into her usual frenzy, but her recent feeding and a year of experience allowed her to shelve her ever-persistent need.
"Saraven!" she shouted, lunging past her dremora with axe raised. The other daedra turned to her a fraction of a second too late and her axe smashed into his face, crushing eye and socket beneath the heavy blade. He dropped like a puppet with strings snipped, yanking Zudarra down with him, axe still wedged in his shattered skull.
Saraven jerked his head up at the voice just in time to be splattered with the blood of the creature that had been about to slaughter him. The first dremora's sword was in his hands now and he sprinted the few short steps for them, blade angled to slice through Zudarra's back. Saraven sped past Zudarra in a near-invisible blur, dropped his shoulder, and ploughed into the other dremora going as fast as he could travel. It felt like running into a building, but he felt something give and give again. He was smaller, and his armor was lighter, but he was traveling at an uncanny speed; the creature grunted as one heel dug into the ground, sliding backward over the dirt. He sought purchase with the other, his momentum lost, and then Saraven whirled away as he stabbed him in the throat. This time he could not even restrain himself to the point of standing and staring. He caught at the falling body and fastened his mouth over the wound, drinking greedily.
Zudarra heard a bang and a grunt behind her, and when she yanked free her axe and turned Saraven was feeding yet again. She watched him with a pang of jealousy and briefly considered shoving him aside, but it wasn't so hard to resist the temptation. She had fed better that day than probably any other day in her life; might not feel hunger if not for the blood saturating the air. She wiped her axe on the grass nearby and slung it onto her back, and searched the dead dremora for anything useful while she waited, rather than watch him. They had nothing worth taking.
I wish I had known what hunger I would face, she thought bitterly as the daedra became a desiccated shell, her ears sagging and tail hanging limp. I might not have known what voracious need I would suffer, but I knew when I turned you.
He was feeding. Pleasure subsumed him for what seemed hours but was in fact seconds. He realized it as he let the body go and watched it drop, but he did not remember how he had begun. Saraven wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, staring blankly down at the new corpse. He had dropped his sword. He had not dropped his sword carelessly since he was in his thirties. He caught it up now to clean it, glancing at Zudarra. She looked half-wilted as she watched him.
My kill. Strength. Weakness? He was calculating how much stronger she was and whether he could get a hit in before the first blow knocked him over before he realized what he was doing. He jerked his head away, face convulsed with horror for a second. He would much rather die than hurt Zudarra. This was a choice he had already made without hesitation. He sheathed his sword as he stood up and went over to stand beside her, to look up at her face. She was the same Cathay-raht he had met on the road to Kvatch, the same one he had fought beside for two weeks now. She had not changed.
"I don't mind you pushing me off if you're hungry, you know," he said quietly. "I can't – I can't stop it. I hate that, but it is the truth."
"I fed on two dremora this morning and another just now," she said. She'd been aware of him staring at her with an odd expression, no doubt wrestling the demon she had unleashed in him. "I don't need more. You don't either. You'll learn to control it. I... I promise it gets easier." He was looking at her. Zudarra glanced quickly over his face, but she couldn't meet his eyes. She turned away, waving a hand as if to dispel the awkwardness between them, and dropped into a quick trot back toward the burning tavern. "Come on."
"Thank you," he said quietly. He fell in beside her again. He now understood more clearly than ever what torture being near him must have been for her. It was not shocking that she had fed on him when he was unconscious. It was shocking that she had let him live.
They found the five Argonians across the street from the blaze, including the ones Zudarra had met on the bridge. One that Zudarra had seen lying on the ground was sitting upright now, leaning back on his palms, panting in shallow breaths with the others clustered around him. Zudarra could smell pain and fear over the smoke as they approached, dropping to a mortal speed.
At least the Argonians were easy enough for Saraven to resist, for now. Their hearts were quiet and their blood was slow and cool compared to the daedra. He realized it with relief. I might still be able to save someone else's spouse. Someone else's child. That thought had kept him going when he was in complete exhaustion and despair, after Zudarra had fed on him the first time. It would have to sustain him now.
"I can heal," he said as he moved forward, slowly, showing his empty hands.
The crowd parted around the injured man and the mage, Jarwaasi, looked carefully from Zudarra to Saraven, then nodded.
"I used the last of my magicka helping your friend, and my potions were used up days ago. He thinks his ankle broke when he jumped from the window," Jarwaasi said.
"Did these two really kill all those dremora?" A yellow and red-scaled woman asked, the one Zudarra had seen dragging the others. She seemed light and nimble, a steel bow slung over her back. She was holding a quiver in her hands, apparently having been salvaging what arrows she could from the ground.
"It would seem so," the emerald Argonian in leathers responded, looking at Zudarra with what she supposed was a smile. None of them appeared to be afraid of her. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, she thought.
Saraven sank to one knee beside the injured Argonian. He could hear the man's fast, irregular heartbeat – pain, alarm – as he held out a hand, but he was in control. He released power and watched it spiral around the Argonian's body. There were a couple of soft click-click noises as bones in his ankle realigned and healed, the swelling smoothing out.
"Don't worry," he said as he stood up. "Daedric blood is a lot more potent than ours – than yours. You're safe."
Zudarra frowned. She hated to hear him speak as if they were wild animals to be feared. If Saraven would move at a normal speed, he'd probably pass for a regular mortal. It was not so hard for a Dunmer. But the world was ending around them. Maybe it didn't matter if anyone knew.
The Argonian rotated his foot to test it and one of the others held out a hand to help haul him to his feet.
"Thank you, friend. After the things I've seen, a vampire is the least of my worries," he said. "We were scouring the city for potions or anything useful when that group ambushed us. We've been holding the river for days, picking daedra off when we can, but our supplies are exhausted."
"The portal to the Deadlands is closed and the city looks abandoned, from what we saw," Zudarra said. She felt no need to inform them that she and Saraven has closed it. She didn't want praise. She didn't want to think about the tower and its dungeon.
"If that's true, we should start the hunt for survivors," Jarwaasi said.
The emerald Argonian eyed Zudarra up and down.
"What happened to your armor?" she asked.
"We were captured by dremora but escaped. It was taken and I never got it back."
"This is going to sound awful, but I saw an Orc about your size get taken down by a pack of clannfear when all this started. I can take you to his body, if you want his armor. Looked like adamantium. No one's going to judge you for robbing a corpse under these circumstances."
"I know the castle smith is still alive," one of the others added.
Zudarra readily assented to finding the armor. The Argonians divided themselves up, one of them for the river to collect the rest of their group and then Castle Leyawiin to inform the people there of the gate's closing and the others to begin the hunt for any survivors still trapped in the city. The emerald Argonian introduced herself as Daydreams-Under-Shade, and lead Zudarra and Saraven to a street not very far away. She kept a watchful eye on the vampires with her hand on the sheathed hilt of her sword, never walking ahead of them, clearly out of pragmatism rather than fear. Saraven did not blame her. He scarcely trusted himself. He could not rationally urge that proceeding on others.
The Orc was lying outside a collapsed forge near other mortal corpses. His armor was finer than anything Zudarra would have been able to afford while supporting her mother, gleaming adamantium with golden filigree vines on the rounded pauldrons and on the gauntlets. The thighs were protected by faulds and a chainmail skirt with greaves on the lower leg. The pointy metal shoes would not fit her paws, so Zudarra left them. He wore an open-faced helm, and his face had been torn away by the jaws of clannfear and now the rest of the Orc's decomposing body was slowly trickling through the gaps of the armor. Zudarra inwardly groaned at the prospect of touching it, but it had to be done.
They dragged together several bodies afterward, including his, and burned them in the nearest square before Daydreams and Saraven helped her to carry the slime-dripping pieces back to the castle, where they passed hoards of weary citizens camped out in the front courtyard and inside the halls.
Saraven carried on with the necessary work with alacrity, feeling a deep sense of relief. The adamantium armor was a bright spot; clad in that heavy, bright metal Zudarra would be a magnificent juggernaut, splendid and unstoppable. He smiled occasionally as they hauled it back to the castle.
He caught a glimpse of himself in the water as they crossed the thin bridge of land to the castle gates. Well-fed, he was no longer pale. His face looked younger than it ought, still weary but smoother and less lined. Vampirism did not completely de-age a person, but it did roll back some of the ravages of time, even as it had smoothed away the clicks and aches in his joints. It seemed like yet another insult piled on top of his new need for Zudarra's help and advice. At least his scars were still there. Nothing would take those away.
He had not seen things that weren't there since he was changed, he realized as they went. Whatever had been done to his mind, there was no more room for the confusion of intrusive memories. Instead he had the constant push-pull of the alternate desire to follow or attack Zudarra, the insidious background of roiling bloodlust tweaked this way and that by every person they met. He felt that he scarcely knew himself. It was hard to escape the creeping feeling that the mer he had been was truly dead.
The castle smith was a heavy-set Nord called Frida, her face and arms flecked with white battle scars and burn marks, shining blue eyes full of light and good humor in spite of the circumstances. She took Zudarra's measurements and informed them that the armor would be cleaned and fitted by tomorrow - anything for a hero who had helped defend the city - and gave Saraven a layered cotton shirt to go on under his mail. It had been taken from another corpse and laundered enough to get rid of the smell. It was stained and there was a hole in the right side that had been crudely stitched up.
He accepted it with polite thanks and hid his reluctance. He would have to find another way to distract himself. As they walked he worked on prying a steel link loose from the sleeve of his mail shirt. It should just about fit around his smallest finger. Zudarra watched him fiddling with his mail from the corner of her eye, unable to imagine what in the world he was doing and ultimately deciding it wasn't her business to care.
Outside in the hall of Castle Leyawiin, Daydreams-Under-Shade bowed deeply to both of them.
"I have to be getting back to help the others, now. Our allies owe their lives to the two of you, and I thank you. If you ever need anything of me, I'd have said inquire for me at the Fighter's Guild, but it's been destroyed along with my house. I suppose I'll be around the castle for a while, when I'm not out there assisting with cleanup." She looked from one to the other. "Please let me know if I can do anything for either of you."
Saraven bowed deeply to the Argonian in return, tapping his fist to his chest in the Guild salute.
"Thank you," he said quietly. "May you live to see better days than these."
He felt no need for sleep, he realized. He turned to look at Zudarra again when the Argonian had departed. That mortal need had left him with all of the others.
"I need to ask you something," he said.
She turned to Saraven with her usual mask, secretly wishing the Argonian would come back and not leave her alone with him.
"Yes?" she answered evenly.
"D'you feel like the same person?" he asked. "As before you changed?" He flicked the link free of his sleeve and began absently working it with his left hand, prying the links apart slightly to expose an unsmoothed end where it had been cut originally.
Zudarra's gaze shifted from his face to his hand, watching the shifting of the bones under the skin as his fingers worked the link while she considered the question.
In those first days, the need had been all-consuming, and then came the fear of losing herself to it. During the day she threw herself into her training outside the city, away from the army of pounding hearts within those white stone walls, drunk with the ecstasy of her newfound power. At night an animalistic fervor gripped her and she drained beggars to dead husks. It was a week before her first victim survived, and a month before she returned to the arena, finally confident that she could restrain her movements well enough to pass as a mortal and prevent herself from feeding on a fallen opponent. All the while, only one thought sustained her.
It's the only way. I have to be this. I have to do this. I couldn't have gone another day in that fragile, decaying body! Her mantra allowed her to drown out the disgust toward her cold corpse of a body, toward the mindless actions of a raging beast. When the silence in her breast disturbed her, she need only listen to the beating of another to remind herself how easily that heart could stop and its owner would be dead and gone forever while she would live on.
Then her wins started to rack up, the gold was rolling in, and the hunger was easier to weather. Vandalion's arrival made it even easier. Zudarra forgot the horror of those first days as her fame and self-control grew. She was different, yes; but she was better.
"I don't know," she said slowly, her eyes returning to his to search for any clue as to what he might be thinking. "My personality hasn't changed, if that's what you mean. I guess the answer is no. But it took a while to adjust to my new nature," she added quickly.
"Never been ruled by my appetites," Saraven said. His face was tight-lipped, tight-jawed, much as she had always seen him; but his eyes were wider, fighting to contain an excess of emotions that had been strange to him a week ago. He worked the link around into a tight C shape, then slid it onto the smallest finger on his left hand, the exposed rough ends turned inward toward his palm. "Never been without control." It was what had always separated him from the ones he hunted. "I don't know myself. How long until you could feed without killing?"
Zudarra's hands clenched beside her. She didn't want to answer that. She didn't want to throw him into deeper despair.
Why do you care so damn much? she asked herself. Any answer she might have found within herself was shrouded in the swirling mists of confusion. Zudarra suddenly felt so very lost and alone, unsure of herself in a way she'd never been before. She had to take responsibility for what she had made of Saraven, but didn't know where to begin. She didn't want to care.
"About a week," she said stiffly, finally admitting to him that she had been the mindless killer he accused her of being.
Saraven shut his eyes, exhaling through his nostrils. It had been less than two days. A week of this sounded eternal. It took him several seconds of processing through the abject, hopeless despair he felt before it occurred to him to think about how she had said it.
The Dunmer opened his eyes and looked up again at her, forcing his shoulders straight. She had been different since he woke up in the cell. He had always thought of her as arrogant, very young, not really ready to acknowledge responsibility for herself and one thrall at a time, let alone anyone else. And here she was with a new fledgling raging and whinging and stealing her kills.
Both of them had it in their nature to tell, not ask. That, at least, had not changed. He was bleakly amused by that, and that at least lightened his mood.
"Thank you for your honesty," he said. "All right. If we leave here tomorrow we can be in Bravil in a couple of days. Another gate, I hope to gods, another batch of dremora. Galmir has always been yours. I won't touch him. When we've survived Bravil I should be through the worst of it and I can find my own thrall."
He hated that thought, he quailed at it. But just because having a living food source to travel with him was the most logical and efficient way did not mean he had to treat them as Zudarra did. Here at the end of all things it would not be hard to find a lost soul who, that devil's bargain explained, would say yes anyway. That was important. They had to know what they were agreeing to before the first drink, before they fell into that fog and never came out.
Zudarra stared at him in shock at the mention of a thrall.
"You're really going to - never mind." She scowled at herself and started down the hall. What else was he supposed to do? They had to feed, and Galmir could barely keep up with one vampire let alone two. Saraven seemed to be taking this awfully well, considering. It brought her no relief.
She could hear the echo of voices further down in the main hall of the castle. She stopped and turned to him again. This was not a conversation to let others overhear.
"There won't be any dremora available for several days, then. I.. I think you should look for a thrall now. You don't have much time left before the thirst is back in full force, and then you'll be stupid and wild." The words were so hard to say. Zudarra felt she was prying them out of her mouth with pliers. "No offense, but I'm stronger than you. I won't let you kill anyone. I'll pull you off."
His mouth folded down grimly, but he nodded. At her last statement he could have kissed her. She understood. The look he gave her was deeply relieved. "Whatever results in the least harm to the greatest number of people. How did you learn the mind control? I don't want them to suffer."
She shrugged, feeling a bit better that he was not disgusted by her suggestion.
"I don't know. It's.. an instinct, I guess. I wanted them to be calm, so they were. Dremora are different. You can't feel anything from them but rage and they don't react to your thoughts. With a mortal, you'll notice their thoughts and feelings when you feed, and you can substitute theirs with whatever you want. I couldn't do this right away - too focused on my thirst to notice or care. But I learned pretty fast. I guess none of that really answers the question, does it?"
"It does answer the question," he said. "I'll be back before your armor is done."
"All right," she said slowly. It was obvious by his choice of words that Saraven meant to go thrall-hunting alone. Fat chance of that happening, she thought, flicking her tail irritably. But she said, "I'd better tell Galmir what's going on; I'll meet you here later."
He turned to continue down the hall, toward the doorway that opened into the main hall and thence the outside. The great room towered up into the darkness of the ceiling, upheld by high pillars. It was busy now, occupied by rows of small tents holding refugees from the rest of the city. They were noisy, some weeping, some arguing, some soothing weeping children. The thunder of their hearts was deafening. Saraven was relieved to find that the children tempted him vastly less than their parents – there was so much less blood in their bodies that they barely registered.
That confirmed what he knew, if he was willing to remember the most horrible of his experiences. Children almost always died with their parents, because they had been there rather than because they were sought on their own account. Even Dorova had probably died because the vampire came in after Velaru. He was able to think of that now without the images of their bodies flashing in front of his eyes, a strange relief in this new torment.
He held himself to a normal walking speed as he went, not wishing to attract unnecessary attention. These were people who had families, friends, relationships with the clustered survivors around them. Those with no reason to live would be out in the city, indifferent to their own fate. The dremora could not have found every soul huddled hopelessly in a ruined house, in a basement, in an outbuilding; but he could. No beating heart would elude him.
He walked out across the land bridge unchallenged, nodding to a tired guard wearing the town's heraldic symbol, a rampant horse on a field vert. The guard nodded back and returned to scanning the open area in front of the castle for foes or refugees who might be injured or in need of help.
Saraven walked for some minutes, pausing occasionally to listen when he thought he heard anything that might be a dim and distant pulse. Once he passed what he was sure was an Argonian swimming, faint beat smothered by the water as the ripples glided past on the surface, but they kept on without stopping.
Eventually he found himself in the ruined square again, among the remains of the Guilds. He went to set fire to the body of Glarius Vellen and waited there to watch it burn, standing beside it to look into the flames. It stank, but not worse than it had unburnt and almost a week rotten. There were many others around him, but he had only tonight for his search, and he could not spend it laying all of them to rest in the fire.
A vampire would go up like a puddle of hard liquor in a flame as hot as that, he thought to himself. It would be incredibly painful but very brief.
The least harm to the greatest number. There may be other gates.
Someone was approaching. He heard a faint, distant pulse before anything else. He looked around slowly.
"Come on out," he said. "If you're not a daedra, I won't hurt you."
"I'm not a daedra," said a tired voice. A woman limped out of the alley between the Fighters Guild and the Blackwood Company. She was a tall, muscular Nord, brown hair tied loosely back at the nape of her neck, eyes pale blue. Part of a suit of iron armor was buckled on over her bloody, stained padding – one pauldron, the opposite vambrace and gauntlet, one poleyn, two boots. Her cuirass was completely gone. She had no weapons that he could see. She stopped to look at him indifferently, eyes dull, and then turned to fall heavily to one knee beside the fire, looking down at the body of Glarius.
"Did you know him?" her voice was rough and her eyes were red. She was not weeping now. She had run out of tears. He had seen the look before.
"A little," Saraven said. "We cleared a couple of caves of necromancers together about two years back. He was a brave man. I'm Saraven Gol."
"Brithe Aglasdottir," she said. "Yes. The best there was. Thank you for giving him a pyre. My strength is gone. I would have watched by him, but that is all that I would be able to do." She had a thick accent, like many Nords born in Skyrim.
"You ought to come with me to the castle," he said. "Get healed up. Regain your strength."
She shook her head. "Glarius is dead," she said. "Haraven is dead. Gelb gro-Vadak is dead. They're all dead. Some escaped, I suppose, but not the ones that I knew."
"I'm sorry," Saraven said.
Brithe shook her head again. "Glarius and I were going to buy a house here in town," she said softly. "It's a pile of rocks now. Not even that is left."
Saraven nodded silently. He loathed himself for what he was about to do. The least harm.
"I can take the pain away," he said. "At first just for a little while, and then more and more over time. You will live, and you won't care."
"What are you talking of, Dunmer?" she looked up at him dully.
Saraven pulled his lips back from his teeth for a moment, showing his sharp fangs. She was not shocked. She was beyond that sort of emotion.
"That seems like it would just hurt more," she said.
He shook his head. "Try it once. It won't."
The Nord laughed once, looking at the burning body of her lover. "All right, do it. I do not care."
Saraven moved to kneel beside her, reaching out a hand to her shoulder as he let the power go. Blue magicka spiraled up around her, and he heard a couple of soft clicks that were probably from broken ribs and a small fracture in her lower leg. Iron armor would hold a broken calf together for a long time. She sighed, heaving her one pauldron up and down. She felt so warm under his fingers, flesh insulated from his touch only by cloth, not by dremora armor; he felt all the fragility and strength of her, paradoxical, weak and strong.
And he felt the pain, he realized suddenly. He was aware of the dull, constant agony that she felt, the thing that blotted out everything else. He was aware of the pictures playing over and over through her mind in a way that was achingly familiar to him.
Everything is all right. Calm. Forget. See only me. He didn't know if there was some special procedure, so he just thought that at her a few times, listening to the feedback. Somewhat to his surprise it actually started to work. He felt her fall into the rhythm of his thoughts, the tortuous images gently fading into a tranquil silence. She was ready for the pain to stop.
Feel no pain. He gathered her in against his chest, nudging her head to one side as he sank his fangs into her throat. She did not resist him. And then he began to feed, hot blood over his tongue, pleasure less intense than he had known from dremora, but real, vivid. He fed that back to her and felt as much as heard her moan, arms suddenly tight around his body. She had been strong. She would be again, if he was careful. It was uniquely pleasurable to feed on someone who enjoyed it with him, who did not struggle and fight him every second. He drank more slowly than he ever had before, but he was not sure how to stop even as Brithe's head sank forward onto his shoulder and her arms started to weaken and then grow limp.
"Yes," she whispered in his ear. "Let it end."