Time, as Avari had said, became meaningless in the room without windows. Ra'Zhag counted his days by the times he slept, and many times he didn't sleep so much as faint. But going by his lapses in and out of consciousness, it had been near a fortnight. In his waking hours, Avari sang (when he was able to) and brought him some semblance of comfort, but this never lasted long before the mages came in and silenced him, beating him every time so he was black and blue and swollen by the end of the week. Or the month, or the day, it was difficult to judge solely on the times he awoke and fell asleep. After berating the Imperial, they would set to work on Ra'Zhag's torture for the day. It was only once a day, and sometimes Ra'Zhag wished they would carry out their torments all at once and be done with it. The mage with the injured arm made it clear he wanted this to last as long as he could, relishing each time he split open the Khajiit or lashed him to a rack and turned the crank. The stone slab underneath him was a frozen hell when he slept or laid awake listening to Avari, but was a godsend after they came for him, the cold and smooth stone kissing the raging heat from his wounds. These were the times Avari sang especially softly, even after they'd busted his bottom lip and his songs sounded funny. In between, they would talk to one another, regale stories from childhood or adolescence, sometimes even laugh, though the laughter came out as wheezes or was cut short by a flash of pain.
Over the next few nights, Avari told Ra'Zhag many stories he wasn't entirely sure were true, but some sounded plausible. He was a sailor before he came to Skyrim, many of the songs he learned were shanties and work songs he'd picked up on his travels or drinking songs he'd heard in taverns, and he had been the one to keep the men of the ship in tandem with their work, admitting that he was more a bard on a boat than a sailor of any kind. After docking in Solitude, Avari found some inexplicable charm in the country and left the ship for the Bard's College. But finding enrollment consisted more of delving into dark dungeons than he'd have liked, he left there as well and found himself in a foreign country with no job, no skills, and no boats to board and resume his work as a seafarer. He roamed rather aimlessly for a few years until he had mapped nearly every corner of Skyrim, before returning to the north to Winterhold. This was where he had been when the mages caught him, trading in the local market with meat and blubber from horkers, along with some work in scrimshawing the tusks and selling those as well.
Ra'Zhag wasn't as forthcoming with his past as Avari, but it helped to have another voice in the small cell; one that didn't come from the black robes that filed in and out of the keep each day.
And at night, his dreams stole into his mind, the oddest dreams he'd ever experienced. More than once he had the dream of the hallway, of the eyes in the shadows and the marble columns. On other nights he dreamed of dragons. He'd only ever seen one; a great, leathery-winged thing with a thick plate of scales. Ri'sien snatched one when the city guards felled it, Ra'Zhag was only ever allowed to hold it once, and he was marveled by how it flashed rainbows in certain lights. In his dream, the dragon was larger than the one he saw, big enough it could snatch a mammoth in its teeth and the wooly beast looked like a mouse in a cat's jaws. Its scales were slick and smooth, and scattered prisms of light when the sun hit its back. It towered over him, beady black eyes burning, and roared its scorn, lashing its tail at the ground. Crystals burst from the ground where its tail smashed in the earth. A Spriggan -or what he thought was a Spriggan- danced in his peripheral, whispering with a voice like a hive of bees. They sounded more like words than he'd ever heard from a Spriggan, but he couldn't quite make them out. Soft pink petals billowed around her and pale moths nested in the hollow space of her ribcage, where the decaying branches that made up her body closed around them in twisting roots. The Spriggan only came into full view when she fluttered to stand by the gargantuan dragon, and the creature smashed its fangs into her shoulder. She stood still and allowed him to shred her fragile body. He could recall the especially loud noise of the moths battering themselves in panic against the hollow wood. It seemed louder than even the dragon's roar when he woke.
Sometimes the dreams were less fantastic, but these were the most reassuring. He dreamed of his parents before they broke apart in Elsweyr, when he was just a cub, but carried the memories of his adulthood. The memories of the many years he spent apart from his Mother. He found himself in their tiny shack, the one that was constantly buffeted by sandstorms, his litter mates running excitedly around behind him. They were shrieking about one thing or another and the sound made his ears ring. But he was focused on their Mother. He went and sat by her while she was cooking and listened to her humming. There were so many things he wanted to say, things he wanted to tell her since his Father died, things he lamented not being able to put to paper, having never been taught to read or write. All he could say to her was, "I love you Mama." And she'd smiled at him. A smile with the warmth and familiarity and love of a Mother. He closed his eyes when she kissed him on the cheek and replied, but she was gone when he opened them again. The cold of the keep was all that greeted him.
Avari sometimes told of him of his own dreams when Ra'Zhag brought up the topic, but they mostly consisted of a steam room where he was surrounded by busty wenches that brought him fruit and wine. Although once he did mention having had a dream about his own Mother, only she was a Hagraven nursing a wolf-baby, and he didn't care to describe the rest.
It was one night, after the mages had strung Ra'Zhag up against the wall and robbed him of his cold comfort, that Avari went quiet. Ra'Zhag would request he sing, but he hadn't a memory of the last drop of water he'd tasted, and he could barely speak for the burning in his throat, so this was far beyond him. He peeked up at the bard from the disheveled dreads. Jovial, mirthful Avari sat with his head hung, with not a smart remark or a smile or a song, his tangled tresses falling to cover his face. He'd grown quiet and quieter in the last few days.
"Avari," Ra'Zhag croaked. "You know that Stormcloak song?...Could you..."
"Not tonight, friend." His voice was weak. Ra'Zhag glanced at the Imperial's arm, where bones stuck close to his skin. He'd been in here twice as long as the Khajiit, how long had he gone without eating? Ra'Zhag glanced down at himself, having not thought before to take stock of his own state. Muscles still rolled under his skin, as scarred and scabbed and bloody as it was beneath his fur, but his ribs were beginning to show, made more obvious by the way his arms had been trained up behind him, straining his chest further out. He was about to offer some small condolence to Avari, though he had none in mind, when the familiar sound of hinges swinging sent him back up against the wall. It had become a reflex now.
Four robes came down the stairs this time, the two leading the group in holding between them a young girl of straw colored hair and a fair face. She looked maybe even younger than the cub with the torn away chest, and her head lolled limply backwards to reveal the base of her throat. Thin red lines ran across her skin where fingers had dug into her neck. Her eyes were glassy as the dead, but he could hear her ragged struggles for air. She was alive, only barely. They held her completely off the ground, slung across their shoulders, as they pattered down the steps into the chamber, and the girl gave a whisper of a groan. They let her knees buckle, now holding her aloft by her mess of gold hair.
One broke away from the group to Avari's cage. The emaciated bard came crashing easily out when they gripped him by his tunic, throwing him to his hands and knees before the young woman.
"We've brought you dinner," one remarked calmly. "Eat."
Avari sat up, albeit weakly, and observed the whimpering woman. "...I'm not hungry just now, but... thanks for the thought."
Ra'Zhag swallowed hard. They weren't really trying to turn Avari to... cannibalism, were they? He growled softly, fingers twitching in his binds.
"Doesn't tantalize you, does it?" The mage holding the woman tipped her head up, bearing the tip of a dagger into her exposed throat, and a thick rivulet of blood lazily trickled down her paling skin.
There was a pause. Ra'Zhag clambered noisily in his chains, hoping to remind Avari he was watching. He couldn't do anything to her. He wasn't an animal, no matter how they treated him. He wasn't seriously considering...
"I fear I've filled up on dust and cobwebs, I could scarce eat another bite. Rude as it is to turn down such a gracious offer." The one nearest him kicked him hard in the ribs, and he went down to the cold stone, choking for air as it rushed out of him.
"This isn't an offer you will refuse, leech-" Another mage stilled the one that struck him with a hand on the shoulder. Ra'Zhag could see her fingers were ghostly white and skeletal, peeking out from threadbare robes.
"Some petulant children need to be forced to finish their dinner. He ought to be thankful for it." Her voice was deep and husky. "Break his jaw. Teach him to be thankful for our gifts."
Before Avari could scramble back to his knees, they had taken him by the thicket of hair, holding him in place even as he kicked chaotically and nearly sent himself and the mage sprawling with his wild thrashing. Another came to kneel in front of him.
"Come near me and you'll draw back a bloody stump!" Ra'Zhag had never heard the Imperial's voice ringing with such rage, but he could hear the fear in it, see it as he tried to find the leverage to kick again. Even as he squirmed and snapped and shouted, the mage's fingers jammed in between his teeth, hooked the front teeth on the top and bottom rows, and pried them apart. For a moment it looked like he might clamp them back down on the hands jammed roughly into his mouth. Ra'Zhag could see, even at this distance, that the muscles in his jaws were working, straining to close around the steely grip that forced them open, and Avari was gagging defiantly in what vaguely resembled obscenities. But they only lasted a moment, until a noisome crack made him cry out and his struggles lessened. Ra'Zhag's stomach dropped. Tears brimmed in the Imperial's eyes, open wide in disbelief and a pain he couldn't find the strength to scream about.
The mage holding him wound up his thick hair around their fist and threw him against the woman. His shattered jaw hung open wide, tongue spilling over his bottom teeth, as they pressed his mouth against her opened jugular. While one held him in place, another held his chin so his teeth clinched into her skin, working his throat so he swallowed the blood that came rushing from the wound. He batted weakly at the mage's face, but they easily brushed aside his hand and kept his lips sealed around her wound.
"You're mad! You're all mad!" Ra'Zhag shouted, rattling his chains in frustration.
The woman of the group stepped towards, black cloth swaying around her with the movement. It made the inky black material seem alive, moving independently of her.
"Mad?" Her tone was light, airy as she came to stand in front of him. Cloth rippled when she gestured to Avari. "We've given it what it needs to survive. Surely you would not fault us for feeding you."
"I would if you would force me into cannibalism," Ra'Zhag rumbled, eyes dangerously sharp on the mage. Only by torchlight could he see she had eyes of her own, a dull shade of blue like rainclouds, the light from the sconces lancing worms of light along her irises. The rest of her face was still in the shade of her hood.
"We force it into nothing. We no more force it to drink of blood and eat of flesh than we would force a dog to gnaw the marrow of animal bones. A Vampire, even one as careful and...conservative as this one, lusts for the life force of others. It would be crueler to deny it."
"He isn't...H-He..." Ra'Zhag head swam with visions of great wild bats, of humans with turned up noses and beastly features carved into a dead face, of malicious smiles shining through a smattering of blood. But he still saw only Avari. He saw the bard weeping into the young woman's wound and saying something his broken jaw couldn't articulate, struggling in futility to push himself away from the dying girl, as red and clear waters mingled into a pink stream that flooded into the cuts on his cheek. This wasn't what a Vampire looked like. It couldn't be.
"Pit," she called to the mages forcing Avari to keep still and drink. "Why is this one still alive?"
"M-Manvil, my lady. He wants revenge for the ones this house cat killed on his way in, says we're not supposed to touch him until he's had his..."
"His fun. Hmph. Typical. Thinks he has any say about what we do with my prisoners. Well, once you're done with that one, I want you to ensure Manvil can take no pleasure in his experiments on this Khajiit."
"My lady? You mean for us to..."
Ra'Zhag's innards clenched. For us to kill him, was what the mage nearly said.
Come let them try, was what Ra'Zhag thought in return, even as his heart plummeted and his eyes flashed horror.
"No. But Manvil appreciates screams more than any man I've ever met. Make sure he gets none from our little friend here the next he tries." Another of the mages broke away from the girl and Avari, taking his place by the woman's side.
"I understand, my lady," he said flatly. This was his duty. Ra'Zhag almost wished he had said it with a crooked grin and a maleficent lapping of his chops, so he could blame the mage's action on a pure sickness of the mind.
But there was a startling clarity in his face when he approached Ra'Zhag, and bashed him aside the head with something hard and rounded, hurtling him into darkness and a black sleep he feared would be his last sleep.