Walking into the entry hall the next day, I find that neither Dexion nor Isran seem to have moved from where I left them the night before. People are strange. I approach Isran first.
"I'm impressed you could find a Moth Priest so quickly." He says.
"Does he have the Scroll? Is everything ready?" Why am I nervous? I'm not the one reading, this time.
"For the reading? Yeah, just let the old man know when you're ready."
I head across the pinkish tiles towards the robed man.
"Ah, hello there!" He says to a Dawnguard passing behind us.
"Glad to see you made it here safely, Dexion." I say to the fellow.
"Ah, my rescuer! It's good to see you again." The priest replies enthusiastically.
"Have my companions made you feel welcome?" I ask, as though I'm the one who runs the place.
"It's not exactly the hospitality I'm used to, but your man Isran has seen to my needs well enough. And might I add, this is a remarkable fortress. I have colleagues back home that would love to study this place in detail."
"Are you prepared to read the Elder Scroll?"
"Oh, most certainly! Let's find out what secrets the scroll can tell." Dexion draws out the scroll in its ornate case, and I take a step backwards. "Now, if everyone will please be quiet, I must concentrate." Dexion opens the scroll and peers at the contents.
"I see a vision before me, an image of a great bow. I know this weapon. It is Auriel's Bow! Now a voice whispers, saying 'Among the night's children a dread lord will rise. In an age of strife, when dragons return to the realm of men, darkness will mingle with light and the night and day will be as one.' The voice fades, and the words begin to shimmer and distort. But wait, there is more here. The secret of the bow's power is written elsewhere. I think there is more to the prophecy, recorded in other scrolls. Yes, I see them now… One contains the ancient secrets of the dragons, and the other speaks of the potency of ancient blood. My vision darkens, and I see no more. To know the complete prophecy, we must have the other two scrolls. I must rest now. The reading has made me weary." Dexion sighs, finally folding the scroll back into its casing.
"Come on, old man." Says Isran. "You should get some rest."
"Do you have a moment to talk?" Serana catches my attention.
Turning to her, I ask "What's on your mind?"
"That Moth Priest, Dexion. He said we needed two other Elder Scrolls. I think I know where we can start looking."
"Why didn't you say anything earlier?" I ask, before realising – when earlier am I talking about?
"Half the people in your little crew would just as soon kill me as talk to me. That doesn't exactly make me want to open up. I got a warmer welcome from my father, and that's saying something."
"Does Harkon even care about you anymore?"
"You know, I've asked myself the same thing." Serana sighs, putting a hand on her hip and leaning on the opposite leg. "I hoped that if he saw me, he might feel something again. But I guess I don't really factor in at this point. I don't think he even sees me as his daughter anymore. I'm just a… a means to an end."
"So where is this Elder Scroll?"
"We need to find my mother, Valerica. She'll definitely know where it is, and if we're lucky, she actually has it herself."
"You said you didn't know where she went." I'm confused.
"The last time I saw her, she said she'd go somewhere safe… somewhere that my father would never search. Other than that, she wouldn't tell me anything. But the way she said it… 'Someplace he would never search'… it was cryptic, yet she called attention to it."
"Sounds like she was being cautious."
"Maybe. What I can't figure out is why she said it that way. Besides, I can't imagine a single place my father would avoid looking. And he's had all this time too. Any ideas?"
I think for a little while, then something hits me. Whenever I couldn't find anything at home, I always found it right under my nose. "In Castle Volkihar?" I suggest.
"Wait… that almost makes sense! There's a courtyard in the castle; I used to help her tend a garden there. All of the ingredients for our potions came from there. She used to say that my father couldn't stand the place. Too… peaceful."
"Isn't that pretty risky, staying around the castle?" I wouldn't want to stay very near someone who possibly meant harm to me.
"Oh, absolutely. But my mother's not a coward. That is, I don't think we'll actually trip over her there; but it's worth a look."
"They aren't going to let us use the front door." I muse.
"True, but I know a way we can get to the courtyard without arousing suspicion. There's an unused inlet on the northern side of the island that was used by the previous owners to bring supplies into the castle. An old escape tunnel from the castle exits there. I think that's our way in."
"Let's go to the castle's secret entrance." I say, more cheerfully than I actually feel.
"It's around the side of the castle. Let's move." Serana dons her hood and heads towards the great doors.
Outside, the birds are singing and the sun is casting its brilliant light into the canyon, shining off of the metal head of the warhammer the Dawnguard ahead of us is wearing slung across her back. Heading through the gate in the wooden wall – making sure to close it behind us – we jog along the track, sending a lone elk scampering into the sloping wilderness, and pass through the crevice to find that the skies on the other side are not so clear. How can the weather be so different in such a short distance?
On the other side, we're greeted by a giggling Breton, who casts a fireball at us. We of course fight back, and the poor woman dies with her insane smile still on her lips. Heading north around Riften, we're stopped by another fireball careening across our path, this one sent by a flame Atronach. It is too easy to deal with it, but dodging its fiery explosion upon its death isn't. I managed to escape unharmed, but Serana gets caught in the tail end of one of the arms of the flames.
Finally we reach the road, and we begin to jog along it, down the steep slope past the three watchtowers. The road is very quiet; we pass through Fort Greenwall and Shor's Stone without meeting anything or anyone. At the bottom of the next slope, I instead lead Serana down the right hand turn along the road towards Windhelm – it's too difficult to get to the jetty on foot, so we'll instead take the boat from the Windhelm docks. It's still cloudy, and it looks like it's threatening rain.
We haven't left the rocky cliffs far behind when we encounter a bear just standing in the middle of the road, which of course takes offence at our approach and attacks. With Serana's icy attacks, and my sharp blade, the bear lasts as long as the average Nord's mead.
We're soon surrounded by the volcanic hot springs of Eastmarch. The road is lined by Dragon's Tongue, Jazbay Grape-vines, and Creep Clusters, most of which I harvest ingredients from – I'm beginning to enjoy alchemy and would like to get better at it.
Just as I pluck a flower off of another Dragon's Tongue plant, I hear a scream from the hot springs and look up just in time to miss being beheaded by an assassin. I use my Unrelenting Force shout on her to give me some time to draw my blade, throwing her back towards one of the nearby geyser pools. Serana casts icicles at her the whole time the foolish lizard is stumbling to her feet, and she barely has the energy left to lift her blade when I finish her off. The force of my swing sends her careening across the road to collide with a large rock. I find on her body the usual note and a couple of gems. I straighten as a Skeever catches up with us – it must have run quite a distance to try to get us – and with one simple swing of my sword I slay the rodent.
Further north, we pass a giant's camp, with a notice pinned to a nearby pole by a dagger. Pulling out the dagger so I can easily read the note, I smooth out the creases from the wind.
Attention citizenry. The giant here has been given leave to keep his camp. Please do NOT attempt to make trade, disrupt the mammoths, gawk at or otherwise disturb the giant. Resting here is not advised. Obviously someone had either ignored the sign or it had been posted afterwards, because behind the pole is a crushed cart, wares scattered all around it. I can see no bodies, though, so the owners must have escaped unharmed, but I'm not going to approach just in case the giant, who is standing nearby, takes offense. I try unsuccessfully to reattach the notice, so I instead pocket the dagger and the notice, mentally making a note to tell someone about it when I reach the city.
After killing a wolf that attempts to surprise us, we continue along the road, past the wandering bard and across the bridge into Windhelm. There are no guards nearby, not even one on the gate, so I head for the docks – I'm not going to search out a guard especially. I think the crushed cart should be warning enough for now, anyway.
Renting the boat at the dock, I doze off, letting the waves rock me, and I end up falling asleep sitting up.
I wake when the boat bumps against the toppled timbers of the ancient jetty, and like the last one, the boatman rushes away as soon as we disembark. We hop straight into the other boat and row it across the water to the lonely island with its imposing castle.
Once the boat is safely beyond the tide-mark, I lead Serana around the left-hand side of the castle.
"Yeah, just around this bend." Serana says as we reach a rocky spur. Clambering over it, we find a dark dirt beach, the castle towering above.
"The castle looks so big from down here." My vampire companion mentions. "I mean, it is big, but, well… even bigger."
Across another stony pile, I find an abandoned dock, patrolled by about four skeletons. Drawing my enchanted bow, I manage to slay two of them before being spotted, and even then the remaining two focus on Serana, allowing me to focus on my aim, though it is quite difficult when Serana has chosen to use her dagger. The skeletons are soon scattered across the docks, and I climb up the several sets of stairs and we slip through the door to the undercroft.
Waiting to greet us is a starved-looking skeever. It says hello in the traditional skeever manner, and we respond in kind. Past its corpse, we enter a large sewer-like room, with three of what Serana called death hounds wandering around it. One shot each and they are dead.
"The old water cistern." Serana says, quiet enough that her words don't echo yet still loud enough to hear. "On some days, this would smell just… be glad you weren't here then."
Crossing a bridge, I rummage through a stack of rotted coffins, finding nothing and feeling guilty afterwards, then carefully loot a trapped chest – since I was standing to the side I managed to avoid the sharp spear that shot out of the grate in front of the chest.
Working our way around the room, we encounter a vampire wearing rags lurking in a smallish area decorated with a couple of small wardrobes, an alchemy table and a lever, which must lower the wooden bridge I'd seen through another doorway nearby. The vampire sees us, and attacks us, hissing. Serana deals with the creature, and it drops a scrap of parchment, which I pick up to read the scruffy writing on it.
Not good enough to live in their stupid keep, am I? Stupid sods don't realise I've moved into the undercroft and started taking control of their own death hounds. I'll get my revenge.
Proof that some just don't take to 'the turn' as well as others, I guess. I suppose there are some who lose their grip on sanity in the process of becoming a vampire. I tuck the note in my bag, loot the area of all the valuable items, then pull the lever, hearing with satisfaction the slamming of the wooden bridge on the stone floor beyond.
Running around the balcony and scrambling down the stairs, I find that the bridge only goes across to a walkway through the middle of the tall room. On one side, a skeleton lurks in the room, which I kill with one shot. I've become quite the master archer since I arrived in Skyrim.
"Take a left up here. This is one of those weird double-barred security measures that my father put in when he got more paranoid."
Following her instructions, I take the left turn into the rooms on that side of the walkway. There are rusty spiked chains hanging from the ceiling, but we avoid them dextrously, making our way into a room with three death hounds and piles of gnawed bones covering the ground. The death hounds stand no chance against my arrows, and they make no sound as they die, which might explain the grate in the ceiling opening, allowing more bloody bones to topple into the chamber. Across the room is a raised area, upon which I can see a chest and a skeleton lying as though trying to reach the contents of a backpack. Using a convenient pile of bones to give me a leg up, I climb onto the raised area to loot the chest and the bag, also picking up a healing potion and a purse clutched in the unfortunate hands of the skeleton.
I need a bit of a rest, so I sit on the edge of the balcony where the rail has broken away and beckon Serana to come closer. I want to learn more about her, now I have the chance for a proper conversation where we're unlikely to be interrupted by something or someone.
"Yes? What did you need?" She asks, leaning against the wall of the balcony.
"Just to chat. Were you and Valerica close?" I ask her.
"Before my father became obsessed with the prophecy, mother and I spent quite a bit of time together. She was very fond of her alchemical garden in the castle courtyard. She taught me quite a bit about cultivating quality reagents."
"So you always got along?"
"Like the best of friends. I would never hesitate to share anything with her."
"But then it all changed."
"It was very sudden." Serana sighs. "It was almost like one day we were a normal family, and then the next I didn't know who they were. I'd try to visit my mother in the garden, and she'd quickly shoo me away saying she was much too busy."
"That's why we're headed there?" I ask her. There must be something important there.
"She had to be up to something in that garden. I'm hoping it's a clue that will tell us where she went."
"Did you spend a lot of time down here?" I change the subject.
"I liked to explore. My parents almost never let me off the island, so yeah, I poked around down here a lot. It was a little quieter back then. Guess a little vampire girl was enough to scare off the rats."
That confuses me. I thought once you become a vampire, you stop aging, so if you become a vampire as a child, you stay a child…
"That sounds pretty lonely." I say instead.
"It was. But I got used to it."
"Tell me about your family." I ask, then wish I'd phrased it differently – it came out sounding like a demand.
"There's not a whole lot to tell. You've already seen my father's obsession. My mother's not a whole lot better, but you'll see that soon enough."
"It sounds like you don't like either of them very much." I point out.
"It's not that simple. I guess it never is with families, is it? What about you? What were your parents like?"
It's actually rather hard to remember them. Father died when he volunteered as a member of a group who wanted to try to close the Oblivion Gate that opened outside Balmora – he never even made it inside, cut down by a clannfear that came out in front of him – and Mother disappeared when the Red Mountain erupted. I still don't know whether she lives or not.
"They were good people. I miss them." I reply.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring up a bad memory." I must look bleaker than I thought.
"It's fine."
"Let's uh… let's just keep going." Suggests Serana, and I hop down from my perch and continue down into a corridor with archways smothered in spider-web. Oh no.
Hacking through one reveals a chest, with some good loot in it, and through the other is a room dominated by the giant spider that wove the web.
It must have been weakened by something before us, because it only takes two arrows to slay. The wall of the other side of the room is made up of iron grid-work with a great view of the bridge room. I'm guessing the other lever is in this room somewhere. Knowing my luck, it's under the corpse of the spider. I shove the body out of the way, and I discover I was right. Pulling the lever, I head back towards the exit of the room as behind me, the crash of the other bridge echoes through the chamber.
Back in the bridge room, I head across the other bridge and up the stairs behind it.
"This leads out to the courtyard. Just head for the door." My vampire friends says behind me, and at the top of the stairs, I push open the mentioned door and into the bright daylight beyond.
"We've made it to the courtyard." Serana sighs behind me, then pushes past me, a look of horror on her face. "Oh no… What happened to this place?" She climbs the short staircase and pauses at the top. "Everything's been torn down… the whole place looks… well, dead. It's like we're the first to set foot here in centuries." Serana runs towards a broken doorway, with me trotting behind. "This used to least into the castle's great hall. It looks like my father had it sealed up. I used to walk through here after evening meals." Ok, that's un-nerving. "It was beautiful once." She then dashes towards a walled area of overgrowth. "This was my mother's garden. It… do you know how beautiful something can be when it's tended by a master for hundreds of years? She would have hated to see it like this." She turns. "Wait…"
Following Serana again, she runs to the great centrepiece of the courtyard. It looks like a giant sundial, but the markings around the dial are all wrong…
"Something's wrong with the moondial here." Of course – what use would a vampire have for a sundial? "Some of the crests are missing and the dial is askew. I didn't even know the crests could be removed. Maybe my mother's trying to tell us something?"
I glance around the courtyard. If I wanted to hide, I'd still need a way of returning… with a small spark of an idea burning in my mind, I start thoroughly searching the courtyard, taking samples of all the plants as I go, and soon enough I find the first of the missing crests. Looks like I was right – after about half an hour's search, I have found the rest of the crests, so I return to the moondial and replace the crests. With a scraping sound, the dial returns to its proper position and a spiral of steps appears in the inside of the moondial.
"Very clever, Mother. Very clever." Serana says thoughtfully. "I've never been in those tunnels before, but I'd bet they run right under the courtyard and into the tower ruins. Well, at least we're getting closer. Let's go." She indicates for me to go first, so I trot down the steps and through the old wooden door at the bottom.
The door leads into a small room, with a couple of shelves inside and a pull chain in the corner. One tug on the chain pulls up the opposite wall, allowing us to climb through a fireplace into a large, abandoned kitchen. I wander around, gathering the remaining good ingredients from the counters.
"I've never even seen this part of the castle before. Be careful; I don't know what might be around." Serana warns me, and I open the next door into a large banquet hall, the long table broken and the chairs occupied by skeletons; all of which have the air of merely waiting for a victim, unlike the one in the hound's room that was merely dead. I take the precaution of shooting each one, and the way they slump after the arrow hits instead of scattering merely proves my suspicions correct.
In the next room, a stone gargoyle sits staring at the doorway, but as I step into the room, the braziers on either side of it burst into life, and the statue explodes, revealing itself to be a real, living creature. For some reason though, it doesn't notice us – until my first arrow slams into its chest. Then it spots us, and it begins rushing towards us. Serana is constantly casting her icicles at it, and I am shooting it, so it barely gets within five feet of us before it crashes to the ground, defeated and dead.
Passing through another door into the next room, I don't spot the two skeletal occupants until they rise from their thrones and give a dusty groan. An arrow each does for them, knocking them back and destroying them, and when I climb the steps to their seats to retrieve my arrows I find a locked door at the end of the raised area. Picking it open reveals a closet full of goodies, so I don't proceed into the next area without looting it completely.
Up a flight of stairs, lined with more self-lighting braziers, we find the top occupied by another gargoyle, which of course is more than a mere sculpture. It's rather difficult using a bow in such a short distance, but I daren't take the time to switch to my sword in case it knocks me down the stairs into Serana. Besides, every arrow I send driving into its grey hide staggers it back a little further until it lies dead near the entry to the next part of the ruin, where a skeleton waits. It doesn't see us, though, so I take the time to loot the gargoyle's body before attacking the bony figure.
As the skeleton topples, I hear the slamming noise that always accompanies the raising of a corpse, and sure enough, when I turn around I find that Serana has raised the gargoyle as an assistant. No matter – it might actually help at some point, though I doubt it. At least it won't groan all the time like the humans she raises.
The next room has a good amount of stuff in it that catches my eye, and there is a locked door nearby, so both out of curiosity and a want to improve my skills, I open it to find it opens onto a balcony over the previous room with a chest on it. The only contents are a couple of potions and some gold, but I take it anyway then return to a waiting Serana – and the ash pile which was the gargoyle – and continue our journey through the ruined rooms.
The next set of stairs is almost blocked by rubble, but we manage to weave our way through, shooting the skeleton that lurks at the top, and sneak through the door behind it. In the next room, there is a raised area opposite and three skeletons patrolling both the lower half and the raised half. Shooting them, we pick our way across their scattered bones and make our way into the next part. There, we find a largely empty room with an alcove at the end dominated by the gargoyle crouched in front of the chain that must be what opens the portcullis to our left.
Gingerly, I edge around the stationary creature – maybe this one is just a statue – and give the chain a tug.
Of course, now the gargoyle springs to life, but it doesn't see me where I am hidden behinds its wing, and it heads straight for Serana, who is casting for all her worth. I join in the fight with my bow, and the monster is soon dead. I'm getting rather tired now – I'm pretty sure it was getting dark when we entered the Undercroft, so for all I know we – well, I – have been awake for two days straight. Serana must have been awake for longer than that. We'll have to stop for rest soon.
Up the stairs beyond the portcullis, yet another gargoyle bursts to life before us, and it takes three of my arrows to fell it, like with the others, but this time, I cannot retrieve them as they are buried too deep in the beast.
I open the door opposite for practice, then ignore the revealed corridor to pull the chain to open another portcullis into a large chamber, occupied by more skeletons. Once they've been dealt with, we'll rest, I think.
Bam. Bam. Bam. Bam. Dead, all of them. This is not going to be an easy night, if night it is. I decide to use the chance to get a little more out of Serana. Gods, it sounds like I want to interrogate her.
"We're getting close, I'm sure of it." She says.
"What happened to the castle courtyard?" I ask.
"If I had to guess, I'd say that the moment my mother fled the castle, Father went on a rampage. Knowing him, anything at all that reminded him of her was just destroyed."
"Then he just walled it off."
"It appears that way. I suppose he wanted to put the past behind him. Perhaps if he had spent more time with us, he would have recognised the beauty for himself."
"Do you know this place?"
"I had always just assumed that the other tower was completely destroyed inside. My mother kept this a secret, even from me. She must have been up to something she thought was dangerous."
"Did your mother keep gargoyles here?" That can be the only reason those monsters are here.
"Not that I ever saw." Serana replies. "My mother had a bit of a thing for magical constructs. Not… Not what you're thinking. She just found them fascinating." I wasn't thinking anything!
"Were you always a vampire?" I get out of my bag as many soft things as I have, which, it turns out, isn't that much. I pile them into as large a nest as I can make with them.
"That's… a long story." Serana hesitates.
"I want to hear it." I encourage her, sitting down on the cold stone and wishing I'd picked up more clothes from the cabinets and wardrobes we'd passed on the way here.
"I guess… we kind of have to go way back. To the very beginning. Do you know where vampirism came from?"
"I would guess it came from a Daedric Lord."
"Exactly! The first vampire came from Molag Bal. She… was not a willing subject. But she was still the first. Molag Bal is a powerful Daedric Lord, and his will is made reality. For those willing to subjugate themselves, he will still bestow the gift, but they must be powerful in their own right before earning his trust."
"How did you actually become a vampire, then?" I've gotten even more curious now.
"The ceremony was… degrading. Let's not revisit that." Serana's face darkens, but she continues to talk anyway. "But we all took part in it. Not really a wholesome family activity, but I guess it's something you do when you give yourselves to a Daedric Lord."
"How has it affected your family?" I'm guessing not in a good way, from what I've heard, but I still want to hear her assessment of things.
"Well, you've met most of us. My father's not exactly the most stable, and eventually he drove my mother crazy with him. And it all ended with me being locked underground for who knows how long. It's definitely been a bad thing, on the whole."
"Are you alright?" I'm a bit worried about her now; she looks rather melancholy.
"I will be." She replies, settling herself down as best she can in one of the remaining intact chairs. "Just give me a little time."
Leaving her to it, I curl up in the tiny nest I had made and try to sleep.