.
ROË
Awakening
Past Volunruud
As she plodded on, Roë caught herself wishing she'd said no when Isran had asked her if she was well enough to travel. Her fever was breaking out badly, sending her into bouts of shaking and chills, cold sweat breaking out on her skin. Still it was only a fever and she'd had worse. Frostfire, she'd even walked an entire double-shift when ill with bowel wrench. As draining as this fever was, at least it didn't cause her to dash for the bushes every half hour.
She'd passed the landmark Tolan had pointed out on her map, an old Dwemer ruin called Volunruud, and now she was skirting a mountain, following its thin path upward. Higher up, on the far side of the mountain, should be Dimhollow Crypt, the place the vampires had been investigating. Tolan the Vigilant would probably already have arrived, having left a day before her. Even his stop at the Hall of the Vigilants for cremations couldn't have set him back more than half a day. Bah, cremations. What a waste. It was still thawing, so she couldn't check the snow for trails, since most of it was gone anyway. No need. The man had said he'd be there, so he'd be there.
Her thoughts briefly strayed to Solitude. She wondered what the guardchief would say when he saw her and Kunod's letters of resignation on his desk. Three squad chiefs out of six, gone. One dead, two off to join the Dawnguard.
There would be a lot of room for promotions at least.
She pushed the image of Gethor, drained as if by an enormous spider, out of her head and walked on, not intimidated by the long drop beside the path. Maybe a mouth-breathing Redguard would stumble off the path and be swallowed by the gaping crevices, but not Roë. She made good progress despite her fever, coming around the mountain in record time. Again she wondered if Durak hadn't been wrong about her fever, because come on, it was a huge coincidence that she got ill right after being attacked by vampires, but there was no point worrying about it. He'd said it wasn't sanguinare, and he probably knew what he was talking about.
Tucked away between two jutting spikes of rock was a cave mouth. That was probably it, then. Dimhollow Crypt. She unsheathed her sword and took the crossbow she'd been given before leaving Fort Dawnguard in her other hand, listening if she could hear anything inside the cave. Her keen Bosmer ears didn't let her down. Voices, two of them. Maybe Tolan had brought a friend, but somehow she doubted it. She quietly crept inside, swallowed by the darkness.
Torches flickered into a large opening at the end of the passage, and hidden behind a stalagmite, she saw two figures standing in the dim torchlight. Another figure lay prone, and Roë immediately recognized the robes.
Damn it, they'd gotten to him first.
"The Vigilant put up a fight," one of the men said to the other, his voice slightly nervous. "Jeron and Bresoth were no match for him."
"They don't seem to know when to give up," the other said, much calmer. "And now they're dead. Now be quiet, all this talk is making me hungry. We better get another one of those hardhead Vigilants wandering in soon."
They were vampires alright. Roë inaudibly shifted her balance to her other leg.
"I hope we find what we're looking for quickly. And I think we should report to Lord Harkon instead of – "
The other's voice took on a threatening edge. "Do you, fledgling? Do you? Perhaps I should tell Lokil of your disloyalty?"
Who in the blazes were Harkon and Lokil? Probably vampire high-ups, Roë made a mental note of the names.
"No, no," the fledgling quickly protested. "I was just saying – "
"Be quiet."
The fledgling followed his master's order and shut up. Roë waited for the moment when they were both looking in another direction, and then brought her crossbow to bear between two stalagmites, taking careful aim at the more confident vampire. Ignoring the shakes of her fever, she centred the iron sights on his heart and pulled the lever.
With a loud clack, the crossbow let fly, the bolt catching the vampire dead centre in the chest, impaling his heart. He staggered back several steps, then slumped down against the cave wall.
The fledgling was flat-footed by his master's slaying, and Roë took advantage of the moment to leap out from her hiding place and drop her crossbow, leaping towards him in four quick bounds, bringing the tip of her shortsword down into his chest. She felt the ribs crunch as her blade plunged into his ribcage, snapping the sternum and punching through the heart it protected. The fledgling clawed at the blade, his jaw wide open in a silent scream, the fangs clearly visible. Roë let out a grunt as she gave the blade a last push, severing the vampire's spinal column and finishing him off. He fell to the ground without a sound.
Tolan was dead, not drained like Gethor had been, but felled by a hard blow to the head, which had caved in his skull. Like the vampires had said, he'd put up a fight. As painful as his death might have been, it would be nowhere near as horrible as what they'd done to Gethor, drunk off his feet and unable to fight back.
She rifled through both of the beasts' pockets, finding a gold piece or two and some kind of spell scroll. She wasn't a fan of spell scrolls, so she just stuffed it in her bag to sell later.
But then her eye fell on her own arm. Oh crap.
The fledgling hadn't just clawed at her blade. On her forearm, she saw two red welts making a double crescent. They weren't particularly deep, but they were ragged and doubtless full of filth. Now her fever didn't matter anymore. If a vampire clawed you, you needed to get your ass to a temple or a healer as soon as possible. But, she recalled Isran telling her, you usually had a day or two before the rather easily curable sanguinare turned into full-blown vampirism. Dawnstar wasn't too far off, if she didn't linger here, she could be there within twenty-four hours. Plenty of time.
She picked up her crossbow and slung it on her back. Nothing to worry about. Nothing to worry about.
She quietly opened the door the two vampires had been guarding, sneaking inside. She wasn't all that good at sneaking, at least for a Bosmer, but by Wood Elf standards, 'not very good at sneaking' was still quiet as a mouse to other races.
"Now, brother Adalvald," a cruel voice rang out below the ledge she found herself on. She sneaked forward and looked down to see a vampire in antiquated noble garb stand over a man in the same dress as Tolan, trying to get to his feet. "I'm listening?"
The fallen Vigilant spat out a wad of blood. He'd been severely injured, looking tortured even, his nose broken and several teeth knocked out, his fingers looking like crumpled sausages even as he tried to support himself on them.
"I will tell you nothing, Lokil. My oath to Stendarr is more powerful than all the pain you can inflict on me."
The vampire standing over the Vigilant crossed his arms and said, "I believe you, Vigilant. And I don't think you could tell me even if you were inclined to." He leaned in, bringing his face closer to his victim's. "I don't think you even know what you've found here."
Before Roë could react, the vampire brought his fist down in a terrible punch, snapping Adalvald's neck with superhuman strength and sending him to the ground, this time for good. With a snarl, Roë came to her feet and leapt down to the cave floor below, landing in front of the vampire called Lokil.
But this one wasn't as easily surprised as the others had been, side-stepping her downward slash and parrying the next blow with his arm, oblivious to the fact that it bit deep into the skin of his forearm. Roë kicked out, pushing the vampire away with her foot and bringing her blade to bear again, going straight for his heart in an explosive forward thrust.
Again the vampire dodged the attack, and with a quick movement, he threw his weight against Roë, shoulder-tackling her into the wall. Roë's teeth clacked together as her back smacked against the cave wall, but she was able to roll out of the way as the vampire's fist pistoned out at her to pound her face into mush. The blow went straight into the cave wall, its sheer force sending chips of stone flying away.
Prone, Roë saw her opening and she thrust upward, the tip of her blade sliding up into the creature's abdomen, through his diaphragm and inside his ribcage, impaling him on the spear made by her sword and her arms. Lokil snarled and flailed his arms, but she'd got him in the heart, and all he had left in him were his death throes.
He fell forward, and Roë let him fall to her side, pulling her shortsword out of his body. So much for Isran thinking this place wasn't important. Whoever this Lokil character had been, he seemed to have quite a bit of clout. Well. To have had quite a bit of clout. He was dead now. Just like everyone else apart from her. She tore Lokil's cloak off his body and used it to cover Adalvald's upper body and face. Wasn't much more she could do in this cave.
But what had they found? Roë looked around the cave and saw another passage, heading deeper inside. Maybe whatever it was the Vigilant had found was in there. Had to be. This room of the cave was empty apart from two dead bodies and a few oversized mushrooms. If there had been other vampires here, they surely would have been drawn to the ruckus, but still, it never hurt to be safe. She loaded a new bolt in her crossbow, something she should have done straight away, but she wasn't used to having one at her side yet, and sneaked through the cave mouth into the next room.
This place was far bigger than the ones before, with a dome as high as six or seven men, and in the middle a ring of columns that supported stone arches, some of which had already fallen apart. The stone was a kind of purple-veined marble, and sconces burned with a strange bluish light, in a circle concentric with the pillars to form a ring of lights. In the circle formed by the pillars, the floor was white marble, with thin, shallow purple trenches pulled in it, forming some kind of pattern. All the sconces were lit, and they seemed to have been moved along those trenches, judging from the scrape marks and the prints in the dust. Had the vampires and Vigilants been fighting over this cave just to see who got to rearrange the furniture?
In the middle of the circle stood a stone pedestal, about half a man high, made of the same strange purplish marble, with a kind of stone mushroom head on top. Roë carefully approached it, on her guard for whatever kind of trap the thing might have on it. Her boots ticked quietly on the marble as she came closer. She didn't sense any traps, but that didn't mean there weren't any. These ancient ruins type places often still had wards in place to stop or even destroy intruders.
Most of the time, though, magical traps emitted a faint energy, that felt like very light static electricity when you held your hand close to them, as if tiny threads caressed your palm. Roë carefully held her hand over the demi-globe on top of the pedestal, but she felt no energies or disturbances. Slowly she came closer and closer until her hand almost touched the orb.
A clack sounded and something flashed upwards and down again, pain exploding in Roë's hand. She yelped and drew back, clutching her hand, feeling warm blood run down her fingers. As she opened her hand to see the damage, she realized the thing, the spike, whatever it was, had gone all the way through, making a slit-shaped hole about three centimetres in length. What kind of trap was this? Poison? Doubtful, since any poison would have lost its potency after so long, and people clever enough to trap their secret places would know that. What then? Just a means to scare potential thieves away?
Damn it, her hand hurt. She quickly fished a bandage from her pack with her uninjured hand, and bound the wound as well as she was able. The spike hadn't severed anything, so it'd just be a painful and bothersome wound. Now she knew why explorers always used their left hand to feel for traps if they were right-handed. Still, what was the point of this? Surely any grave robber wouldn't be scared away by a stab in the palm? Still holding her throbbing hand, she looked at the pedestal and saw a drop of her blood slowly trickle downwards until it had shed so much of its mass in its trail that it simply ceased to be subject to gravity's pull.
The ground shook, only a single little bump. "Whoa," Roë heard herself breathe as she staggered backward. There was another tremor, followed by a series of metallic bangs below the marble she was standing on. Then came the sound of stone grating on stone, and as she looked on, wide-eyed, the pedestal rose up from the ground, pushed upwards by a thick stone cylinder, higher than Roë's head. She let go of her punctured hand and used it to grab the hilt of her shortsword, painful as it was to hold it. With her left hand, she kept her crossbow aimed at the cylinder.
Wait, it wasn't really a cylinder, it was more shaped as a container... no, not a container either. As an upright sarcophagus. Was this a burial place then? Maybe an ancient noble or hero buried with an artefact that the vampires wanted... or they didn't want the Vigilants to have? Or vice versa?
Roë swallowed, her left shoulder starting to tremble from the effort of holding the crossbow up, but she didn't lower it. There was no telling what kind of things could come from a sarcophagus. She'd heard of the ancient Nord dead guarding their ruins as so-called Draugr. It was all rumours and she'd never seen them for herself, but better to be careful in a place like this. Though, did a crossbow really work against a walking dead? It wasn't like with Vampires, those could be destroyed with a heartshot because... well, probably because their heart still pumped blood, even though they were dead? She'd have to ask Isran about that when she got back to Fort Dawnguard.
There was a loud grating of stone on stone and slowly, the door of the sarcophagus swung open.
Roë gripped the handle of her crossbow tightly, even as her shoulder muscle burned, and clenched her injured hand around the grip of her sword. This time she didn't feel the pain.
What was in the sarcophagus was not a decayed long-dead body, and not a walking corpse either. The body that was entombed inside didn't look like it was long dead. In fact, it looked completely untouched by decay, or even discolouration. They must have just stuck her in there not long before Roë arrived. But who? The Vigilants? Doubtful. The vampires? Also not very likely.
The dead body slowly began falling forward, and on an impulse, Roë dropped her weapons and stepped forward, catching the body as it fell.
The eyes moved behind their closed eyelids.
With a yelp, Roë jumped backward and let the body drop onto the marble. It came down without much grace, flopping down on the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Frostfire, they'd buried her alive!
"Are you... are you alright?" Roë heard herself stammer. Oh cack, she'd dropped the poor thing. She knelt by her to see if she could help. "Hey, are you hurt?"
The woman let out a groan and turned her face to Roë. She was beautiful, there was no other word for it. Her features were delicate and noble-looking, her skin smooth and immaculate, and light as white polished marble. Her brown hair was braided and tied back on top, and flowing free down the lower part of her head. Even with her eyes closed and looking half asleep, she was clearly breathtaking.
Trickling down her forehead, past her nose, over her upper lip and into her mouth, was a single gleaming, thin, fresh streak of blood.
She opened her eyes and Roë got a good look at them. What she saw made her recoil in alarm. The sclera of her eyes were black obsidian, and her irises were bright red coals.
She sprang upright and pointed her crossbow at the woman-thing's face. "Don't move!" She'd seen how strange Vampires' eyes could be, but these looked like terrible, amplified versions of them. If she was a Vampire, she was probably very powerful. Or very ill. Or very mutated. Or very cast out.
Gah, it was pointless trying to make sense of it, every guess was as good and as bad as the other. All she could do was hold her crossbow steady and hope she hadn't made a deadly mistake by not pulling the lever.
The fallen woman-thing wearily flapped her hand at Roë. "Put that thing down, sweetheart, I'm not gonna eat you."
Well, it spoke, at least. Speaking was always better than clawing or biting. But maybe she was simply out of strength and waiting for Roë to drop her guard. "Who are you?"
The presumed vampire let her hand slap back down on the marble in tired resignation to Roë's crossbow and pushed herself up so she sat upright on her backside. Roë felt herself twitch with every of her movements, expecting her to snarl and lunge, but she didn't. "So. What year is it?" she asked casually.
"Uh... two hundred and one of the fourth era."
Her eyes of terrible beauty went wide in surprise. "Fourth era?"
"Uh... yeah."
She looked like Roë had spoken to her in Akaviri. "So was there a first and a second and a third era?"
"Well... yeah." What in Oblivion was going on here? She shifted her crossbow to the other hand, but the woman-thing didn't seem to notice or care.
She still sat there on her behind, looking puzzled. "Wow."
"Who are you?" Roë commanded again.
The woman-thing looked up at her. "Oh. You mean, you released me and you don't know who I am?"
"Obviously," Roë snapped, her nerves still taut.
"Right." Roë's hand gripped the wooden handle of the crossbow even more tightly. The whole relaxed aloofness could be just an act, meaning for her to drop her guard. "No wonder you dropped me on the head."
"Sorry 'bout that." But not really.
She rubbed the back of her head, still sitting on her rear, with her elbows on her knees. "Not really a proper way to treat a lady, is it?"
Roë pushed the crossbow a little closer to her. "I am not going to ask again."
"Ask what again?"
"Who are you?"
The woman-thing let out a little laugh, that sounded clear as spring water. "I thought you weren't gonna ask again?"
"Answer me, damn it."
The red-eyed woman cocked her head at Roë, her face intrigued. Either she considered it all pretty amusing, or she was intent on keeping up her act. "Name's Serana, dear. Now can you please put the crossbow down? It's not really something you need for a civilised conversation."
Roë hesitated.
"Come on, stop being silly. I said I wasn't gonna eat you." She had a peculiar way of speaking, abbreviating 'going to' to 'gonna'. Roë had never heard it being done before.
"You're not going to try anything, are you?" Roë asked, even though she knew the question itself was completely and utterly stupid.
"I'm hungry enough to gobble you down whole," she said, "but no. It's kinda improper to eat your liberators, isn't it?"
"You... eat people?"
She laughed. "It's a figure of speech, dear. No, I usually settle for a few mouthfuls of blood. It's a rather unpleasant affair, but it's either that or starving." When she saw Roë's crossbow going up again, she reassured, "I already said I wasn't gonna eat you, didn't I?" She elegantly let the tip of her tongue brush past her upper lip, over the thin streak of blood that had run down next to her nose. "Even though you taste real nice, it has to be said."
"But you are a Vampire?"
"Well... yeah. Obviously. Don't worry, we're not all mindless savages. Some of us are actually capable of friendly conversation, imagine that."
Roë took a breath and, even though she knew it might be the last mistake of her life, lowered the crossbow.
"There we go." She extended her hand. "Care to help a lady to her feet?"
She was pushing it now. "No funny business, okay?"
"Don't worry, I don't have enough of a crowd to start being funny."
Roë swallowed and took the woman-thing's cold, pale hand. She realized she'd never actually touched a Vampire before. Skin-to-skin, at least. She felt surprisingly normal, if ice cold. The cold fingers gently but firmly wrapped around her hand and Roë pulled the woman to her feet.
"Phew. This is a little more dignified, isn't it?"
"I suppose."
The Vampire swept the dust off her clothes even though there wasn't any on them. It was a peculiar ensemble she was wearing, somewhat anachronistic. Tall, elegant boots and a bodice with corset included, modest cleavage that looked feminine without being crass, and a short cape draped over her shoulders. The entire outfit looked made of soft burgundy leather, at least, as far as Roë could see in the yellow flickering of the sconces around her. Slung on her back, she had a long, thin white cylinder. "So, I showed you mine, you show me yours."
"Mm, what?" Roë was still nervous, ready to reach for her shortsword the second the Vampire tried anything.
"You know my name. What's yours?"
"Oh. Right." She supposed there was no harm in telling her. "It's Roë."
"Huh. Kinda fits you, I suppose."
What was that supposed to mean?
"So. What time of day is it?"
"Around dusk, I think."
"Mm. Convenient." The Vampire looked around the cave room. "Any idea how to get out of here? Come to think of it, I don't even know where 'here' is."
A fever-shake went through Roë. "This is Dimhollow Crypt, in Skyrim. About a day's walk from Dawnstar."
"Skyrim... oh yeah, up North. I have no idea what Dawnstar is though. City, I assume?"
"Uh... more like a village. But yes."
She looked around the cave one more time. "Hey look, I need to find my father. Being weak as a kitten, I probably wouldn't be able to make the journey alone. Would you mind coming with me?"
The very question was ridiculous. If she didn't know there were four eras, that meant she was insanely old. There was no chance her father would still be alive.
Serana seemed to have picked up on it. "Don't worry. He won't die of old age. He's a Vampire, like me. Well, not quite like me."
"Still. I have no idea how many years it's been since you were uh... sealed away, I suppose, but I'm guessing a lot. So your father – "
She smiled. "Don't worry. He isn't just any old Vampire. He'll still be around."
Maybe, maybe not. But she was here on behalf of the Dawnguard, and she would bring whatever she found – or whoever she found – to them first. They were Vampire killers, true, but they'd doubtless see that this one was peaceful. Who knew, maybe they could learn stuff from her. Surely they wouldn't be so fanatical as to refuse even talking to her? Still, telling her she was being brought back to a fort full of Vampire killers might make her slightly uncooperative, so Roë simply said, "Sure, but I need to make a stop first, report to the people who sent me."
"Oh. That far from here?"
"Not really. Day or two."
She shrugged. "After all these years, I'm sure a day or two won't matter."
Oh cack, she'd forgotten about something. "We uh... need to make a beeline for Dawnstar first, though."
"Sure. One more day won't matter either. What are we doing there?"
Without words, Roë showed her the claw marks on her forearm.
"I see. Would it be terribly inappropriate right now to tell you that being a Vampire isn't all that bad?" Surprisingly, there was no gloating or cruelty in her voice. She was simply asking the question.
"How can it not be that bad?"
She shrugged again. "It's what you make of it. You can be all sulky and pity yourself for being no longer a creature of the light," she gestured overdramatically, "or you can see the good in it, and adapt. It's really not that bad if you can deal with it the right way."
"Yeah, um, I still don't feel like becoming a Vampire, thanks."
"Your choice. But if you've caught porphyric haemophilia, I suggest we don't waste any time."
Wait, what did she say? "Porfi-what?"
Serana looked puzzled at the question. "Porphyric haemophilia, the disease that causes vampirism?"
"I thought that was called sanguinare vampiris?"
She made a face. "'Sanguinare vampiris'? What kinda stupid name is that. Anyway, doesn't matter." She reached out and grabbed Roë's arm, pulling it towards her with her cold, dead fingers. She looked intently at the wound, and spoke the words Roë dreaded to hear. "See the pale tendrils emanating from the wound? You've caught it alright. If you'd rather not become one of us, we should get going." She let go of Roë's arm, somewhat reluctantly. It must be strange to have dead fingers and lay them on a body warm with life.
"I uh... I was told you usually have around a day or two until the disease progresses to an untreatable stage."
"It depends."
Roë's heart beat harder in her chest. "On?"
Serana was still rather casual about the whole thing. "On who infected you, on your susceptibility to disease, things like that."
"Then... we need to get moving, right?"
She nodded.
It was twilight when they emerged from Dimhollow Crypt, and a cold wind had started blowing from the North. That meant colder weather and possibly snow, even in spring. It didn't matter. The snow wouldn't be here before tomorrow, so it wouldn't slow their progress to Dawnstar. Roë hoped to the Nine that there was a healer there. Sanguinare was supposedly a very easy disease to cure in its early stages, but that didn't make any difference if there was no one there that could brew a simple potion or cast a single Restoration spell. But this kind of thinking didn't help anyone. Even in this season, the road to Dawnstar was treacherous and slow-going, sometimes even snowed in.
"Which way?"
"Mm?"
"Which way?" Serana asked again. "To this Dawnstar place."
Roë unrolled her map with shaking fingers. Damn it, this fever was going to make everything worse. "It's uh... this path down the mountain again, and then Northeast."
"Alright, I'll follow you. Think we can get there by morning?"
"We better."
"Don't mind if I share that sentiment."
They began walking, taking the path down the mountain. Going was slower than Roë hoped, mostly because Serana looked completely and utterly exhausted and weakened. You'd be worn out for less. Because if she hadn't even heard of the division between eras, she must be – Roë quickly did the math in her head – over two thousand years old. It could be an act, but she doubted it. What would the point be, after all?
They'd reached the foot of the mountain. "It's Northeast now, across the plateau. Terrain should get easier in a bit. The weather, not so much."
"Ah yes. That beautiful Skyrim weather I've always heard so much about."
"Yeah. That beautiful Skyrim weather. Think you'll make it that far?" And fast enough?
"Don't worry about me, I'll be fine," she said fiercely. "Starving though."
"So long as you don't try anything on me," Roë told her.
She looked amused. "I already said it'd be really rude of me to feed from the one who freed me, didn't I?"
"As if manners would stop you if you're hungry enough."
"Ah, see," she said, wagging her finger, "that's the prejudices you should get over, if you don't mind my saying so." This whole thing still seemed to amuse her. Roë supposed that seeing the humour in everything came with the territory when you were crazy old and didn't have too many worries apart from catching an unexpected crossbow bolt to the heart. "Just because we drink blood, doesn't mean we can't be civilised about it."
"Tell that to the bastards who killed my friend and tried to drain me. They were more animal than man."
She put her hands in her sides. "Ah yes. Not all of us are well-mannered. From what I can remember before I was locked away, there was a disturbing increase in brutes."
"Brutes?"
"Yeah, the beastly types you described. My father would say they are defective pigs who have forgotten the nobility of their bloodline and act like savages."
It was a discussion best left alone for now, because Roë was worried that if she told Serana about the Dawnguard, she'd balk at coming back with her – and the Dawnguard would want to see her, she was pretty certain of that. Imagine the things they could learn from her. Vampires in themselves were mysterious enough, so mysterious in fact that most people doubted they even existed, so finding one they could talk with and ask questions to would be invaluable. If all the vampires had been like her, Roë suspected there wouldn't have been any need for a Dawnguard in the first place. Who knows, this woman, or woman-thing, or whatever she was, might be instrumental in finding a way to get the Vampires off everyone's backs.
As they walked on, the clouds opened up and showed a starry sky. Some people said they could make out the signs that were on some of the doomstones by looking at the stars, but Roë wasn't that interested in astronomy. Especially now.
And yet, there was something in the night sky. The stars seemed to shift and multiply and change colour until they formed the face of a young woman, of pale skin, with light brown hair and a wreath of white wildflowers in her hair. In her mind, a sibilant female voice spoke words she couldn't understand, and then a single blood red tear leaked from the face's eye.
"Roë?"
The vision was gone and the stars were once again uncaring white lights in the dark sky.
"Roë?"
"Mm? What?"
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
Her mouth completely dry, Roë asked, "Serana?"
"Mm?"
"When you... They told me you had dreams when sanguinare got bad. Like, sinister ones. Did you ever have dreams before you... turned?"
Serana's face suddenly hardened and she looked away. "No, Roë. I didn't have dreams."
She didn't? Then maybe Durak and Isran had been talking nonsense when they'd said the dreams were the best way to identify sanguinare vampiris. "Maybe... maybe it's nothing." It could have been hallucinations due to the fever. Or just the tension from the spelunking and vampire-killing. Or just her imagination.
"You sure you're alright?" Serana asked, looking genuinely worried.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine, let's move on."
She wasn't fine though. Her legs felt like whitecap stalks and her head felt stuffed full of sack cloth. She kept putting one foot in front of the other, but if this fever got worse, no way she'd make it to Dawnstar in time.
No. That wasn't an option. She had to make it to Dawnstar in time.
Setting her jaw, she walked on, trying to ignore the dizziness and numbness even as her feet slipped on the sleet that had formed during the hours they'd been walking. Serana had been asking questions mostly, about the state of affairs in the world as it was now. Roë had answered, but her answers had gotten shorter and shorter as the fever got worse. If she'd been feeling healthy, she'd have tons of questions, but right now, she simply couldn't muster up the strength to be inquisitive.
Serana seemed to understand, slowing her barrage of questions. She probably thought Roë was getting tired – she was – so they'd fallen silent in the last hour. The fever had gotten worse, chills that made cold sweat break from her pores and disorientation that made it extremely difficult to keep her footing. She was in a really bad way, but she had to keep moving at any cost. Resting would be risky. Too risky.
She stumbled and her limbs no longer responded, sending her crashing to the ground in the snow. Her breath, which had slowed during the last hours, suddenly picked up and she fell into a panting fit, gasping for breath as Serana knelt by her to support her head. "Help... help me up, I... I need to get to Dawnstar."
The young woman's face with the flower wreath flashed by her vision again. This time both her eyes wept blood.
"Easy, Roë," Serana said, brushing the hair away from her face. "Take a breather, we've been walking for hours."
"I think... I think it's not... that big a deal. But I need to... get to Dawnstar."
"You can't reach Dawnstar if you're like this. You need to take a moment to rest, maybe it'll get better if you catch your breath." Whatever this was, rest wouldn't solve it, she was sure of that. She felt herself going from bad to worse, her chest constricting and her bowels cramping. This wasn't right. This wasn't right at all. But she had to reach Dawnstar.
"It probably just... my fever."
Serana's face froze. "You have a fever?"
"Yeah, but it's... not... not bad. Just need... to rest. In Dawnstar."
"Roë. If you have a fever on top of porphyric haemophilia, then..."
Oh no. Roë's insides contracted even harder. No, this couldn't be true. "Wh... what?"
"Porphyric haemophilia spreads much, much faster when other illnesses are already present. Then both diseases, they... fortify each other."
No, no, no, no! "No, Serana, no!" She tried to get up, but all her strength had left her and she could only struggle in Serana's cold arms. "Serena. I need to get to Dawnstar. There may still be time, I – "
"You can't walk like this, Roë."
This couldn't be happening. "Serana, Dawnstar's only an hour or two away. It's just tiredness and hallucinations from the fever. We can make it, I – "
"What kind of hallucinations did you have, Roë?"
"Nothing, just... it was the fever, not – "
"What kind?"
"Some lady w... with..."
"White flowers in her hair?" Serana asked urgently.
Oh, no, she knew.
"How many times did you see her?"
"It was just... just the fever, I – "
Serana gave Roë a shake. "How many times?"
"... Twice."
"Roë." Serana hesitated for a moment, then said, "You said you didn't want to be a Vampire, but... I'm afraid the choice has been made for you."
"No, Serana, I can still walk. I can make it, I can – "
"Roë. We need to get you out of the wind and the snow. I can't carry you, I can barely walk myself."
"Wh... why get me out of the wind and snow?"
Serana said solemnly, but without any emotion, "So you can spend the last minutes of your life out of the cold."
"Serana, Ser... ana don't... don't talk like that. Don't talk like that, I can... I have to..."
Serana only smiled. "It's okay, Roë. I told you, it's not so bad."
"Yes it is. Yes it is, please I need to..."
"Look at me."
Roë managed to keep her gaze still long enough to look in Serana's black-and-red-eyes. They were terrifying and beautiful. "Do I look unhappy?"
"N-no, but – "
"It's what you make of it. That's what I said."
Tears blurred Roë's vision. "No, I don't want this."
"It's no longer about wanting. Come on, let's get you out of the wind." Serana stopped supporting her, gently lowering her head to the cold snow-covered rock, then rose and grabbed the shoulders of Roë's leather armour, pulling her in slow and laboured jerks towards a rocky overhang, sheltered from the wind. Sweat was pouring down her face now, and when Serana sat back down next to her, supporting her head, she said, "Water, pl... please. In m-my bag."
She heard the noise of her bag being turned over and a canteen being unstoppered. She felt the cold smoothness of glass on her lips and cool water poured into her mouth. She swallowed greedily, but the bottle was taken off her lips far too soon.
"Wouldn't want you to choke. Much nastier way of dying than porphyric haemophilia."
"How... how do you die from it?" Roë asked, feeling her body growing cold. She felt thin and breakable, and her skin felt as if it was stretched over her bones, in her face especially. Her eyes stung and it was difficult to keep them open.
"Usually in your sleep," Serana said gently. "If you're awake, you just slowly fall asleep. It's mostly painless, I've been told."
"This wasn't... how I thought it would go."
"It never is. But believe me, it's not that bad. It all depends on how you deal with it."
As she felt her pulse slowing and her mind going woozy, she finally accepted what was about to happen. She simply didn't have the will to fight it anymore. "This is... just stupid. Ending up dying... in a Vampire's arms."
Serana smiled. "Well, that Vampire's going to be someone of your species in a few hours."
"Will you... stay with me... until I'm..."
"Dead?" Serana asked, unsurprisingly detached from the whole thing. "Yeah, don't worry. It'll take a few hours until you're... up and about, so to speak, so I'm gonna try and find a light snack in the meantime. Don't worry, no one will find you."
Roë felt sleepy.
"Close your eyes now, and I'll see you in a few hours, alright?"
She didn't want to close her eyes, she wanted to fight, to struggle, to live, but her eyelids were inexorably pulled closed until all she perceived was Serana's hand holding hers, no longer cold compared to hers, and then that too faded.
She fell asleep and died.