CHAPTER EIGHT – BLOOD POWER

It was some time before Ozan spoke again. That was fine. Sissel didn't mind. He wouldn't be himself if he found it easy to speak. She watched him grasp the hem of one of his sleeves between his fingers, twisting it restlessly, until at last he dropped it, sighed deeply, and spoke at last.

'It's always… so hard for me to speak about myself. But I can tell stories. I'll tell this like a story, so I can speak freely. Pretend it happened to someone else. Sometimes… I wish it did.'

Sissel bit her lip and waited. Jenassa reached out and took hold of Ozan's hand in hers. He gripped it tight, as if it were a lifeline.

'I'll tell you,' Ozan said. 'Where I came from. Who I am. What I do. What I am. And why you're here with me. You won't like most of it. Neither do I.'

He closed his eyes and bowed his head, as he so often did when he started a story. His voice was soft and heavy when he finally began.

'Once, the city of Taneth in Hammerfell stood proudly on the edge of the Abecean Sea. Boats and sand and the calls of merchants were the way of life for those who lived there, whether they dwelt in palace or dock or shadowed backstreet. Even the beggars and the alley thieves felt the tiniest glimmer of pride stir within them when they heard the name of their home said aloud. Even the two street children, a brother and his sister, who were left to fend for themselves after the day the guards came for their parents and took them away.'

'Why did they take your parents?' Sissel never normally interrupted Ozan's tales, but this was different. This might be his the same poetic, musical manner of speaking he used for his stories, but it was his story, and she needed to know everything. Every last thing.

'They were skooma dealers,' Jenassa explained. 'And dealers in other illegal products.'

Ozan nodded in confirmation, and went on. 'The boy was only three. His sister was ten, old enough to care for both herself and her brother. Perhaps, if things had gone differently, they would have lived out their lives on the streets, perhaps they would have died before either of them saw adulthood. But as it was, it never came to that. For after three years of their life alone, a man from a warrior guild happened to be standing near when the girl fought away a boy older and stronger than herself, after he tried to steal from her. The watching warrior saw her potential, and since she would not accept the offer he made unless her brother accompanied her, the guild took them both in.'

He sucked in a breath and carried on. 'That offer was to join his guild, the Alik'r. They were warriors for hire, mercenaries with a code of honour, who served Taneth's ruling house. Their leader – a man named Kematu – looked fondly upon his two young recruits. He saw that their days on the streets had made them quick and clever, skilled at avoiding the eyes of others. The boy in particular was judged young enough to learn a specialised set of fighting skills. Kematu took him under his wing, treated him as both son and apprentice, teaching him to strike from shadow, walk with a cat's silent footsteps, to poison a drink, to vanish into darkness. He raised him as an assassin.'

Ozan stopped, and sent a quick look Sissel's way, as if to see how she would take this.

Sissel swallowed hard, thinking it through. An assassin… it made so much sense. Hadn't he appeared like a ghost from the night, that first time they'd met? He'd struck that Imperial bandit from behind, without the man ever seeing him, and he'd struck a clean blow through the neck. He knew the best places to strike to end a life, be it a mortal's or a dragon's. Of course he was an assassin.

An assassin. Like the one that had killed Grelod the Kind who had once run the Honourhall. Like the one who had killed her father.

Sissel felt her lips part slightly. A new suspicion had awoken in her heart, a cold glimmer of an idea that it was painful to consider. She forced it away. She wouldn't assume anything about the way Ozan's tale was going to end. She couldn't judge him before she knew the whole story.

Ozan was speaking again. 'He was raised in this way, always aware of the value of silence, always aware that death was a part of life. He was taught to have no qualms about killing. Often he worked alongside his sister, who knew him so well they barely needed to speak to each other, and so he learned to speak little, only to expose the truth of his thoughts when necessary. He was contented in this life. Until they day they were all betrayed.'

He breathed in deeply, shuddering slightly, and Jenassa's grip on his hand tightened.

'A young noble woman - Iman of House Suda - betrayed Taneth to the Aldmeri Dominion. She sold them secrets that told them how to take the city. Soon the streets swarmed with gold-clad soldiers. The boy and his sister were returning from a night-time mission when the attack came. He escaped with his life. His sister did not. She died at the elves' hands, the life ripped from her by their spells, while he watched.'

Sissel's throat grew tight. She felt a sudden urge to hug him, the way Constance had sometimes hugged her at the orphanage. To hold him close and somehow draw out the pain.

'I'm sorry,' she whispered.

He gave a tiny shake of his head and went on. 'He learned that his sister's death had come about from the noble woman's treachery. He swore he would have vengeance. She had fled, fearing the retribution of her house, and he followed after. Across Tamriel he hunted down rumours of her, until at last he learned that she had come to Skyrim. As he crossed the border over the Jerall mountains, he stumbled upon patrols of the Dominion. He... gave in to his anger. He had never, and would never, forgiven them for his sister's death. He attacked them, but they were too many. They captured him, threw him in with a band of Imperial prisoners scheduled for execution at Helgen. But then Alduin himself, the World-Eater, razed the place to the ground, and he escaped in the chaos, only to find that he was Dragonborn.'

He sighed softly. 'He had come to Skyrim to find the traitor. And he found her, hiding in Whiterun under a false name– and in finding her, he had the aid of a Dunmer mercenary who he soon found he did not want to leave his service.' Ozan cast one of his rare smiles in Jenassa's direction. 'The story of how he brought the traitor to justice… that is another tale, and one too long to be part of this one. Let it be enough to know that he fulfilled that purpose, and was left with another: fighting the World-Eater, and saving Tamriel from destruction. It wasn't a duty he wanted.'

'Why?' Sissel inched closer to him. 'What was wrong with being Dragonborn?'

He gave her a sad smile. 'How can a child raised as an assassin live in the eyes of the world, always judged, always forced to speak, knowing that his name would be written forever in the histories? None of that was what he wanted. And so, once he had defeated Alduin, he retreated. He had to find a new purpose, a new calling. There were warrior guilds in Skyrim, but they walked in the open and were hailed as heroes. He did not know how to live such a life. The only life he truly knew was an assassin's, and so an assassin's life he returned to. The Dark Brotherhood of Skyrim might not have the same nobility of the Alik'r, but they had a code. They were a family, but a family that asked for nothing he was not prepared to give. With them, he had a purpose. He knew he was not a good man, living a life of killing, but it was all he knew how to do.'

The cold suspicion was waking again, and this time, Sissel had to voice it. 'I've heard of the Dark Brotherhood. I was told they killed the woman who ran the Honourhall before Constance. And… they killed my father.'

Ozan was silent for a moment. Then he said, 'Yes, that's true.'

Sissel decided not to ask the thing she wanted to ask. If the answer was yes, then Ozan would tell her when he saw fit. She trusted him to tell her. Instead she asked, 'So how did you learn to become a… thingy with wings?'

He gave a small, amused snort. 'That was… not something I would have chosen, if there'd been a choice. But there wasn't.' He lowered his head again, indicating that the story was about to recommence. 'Even though he had fulfilled his destiny, the assassin, the Dragonborn, still felt the dragon rage within him. Still he had to fight dragons, and with every soul he took, the stronger the inner flame became. He already had too much anger of his own… and too little respect for life. Dragons do not respect mortal life. Neither do assassins. The darkness of his dragon soul fed on the darkness of his mortal soul, and began to devour it.'

'Devour it?'

He was back to fiddling with his sleeve. 'He was losing his mortality, losing his mind. In battle, his mind would cloud, until all he knew was a dragon's fury. Again and again, even when out of battle, the dragon within him would rise up and try to seize his thoughts. It was too strong to be resisted. And then, one day, while he and the woman he loved were travelling through the wilderness, returning from a mission, a simple battle with a bandit clan brought the dragon to the fore. He lost control, lost it completely. He… I almost killed her.'

His voice trembled on the final words, and faded.

'He got his control back, once I hit him extremely hard on the head,' Jenassa said quietly. Her face was expressionless, but Sissel heard the slight tremor in her voice, and she well understood why. She had grown so used to thinking of Ozan and Jenassa as a couple, a matching pair, something that always went together. Imagining him attacking her, trying to hurt her… that was a terrifying thought. A blasphemous thought. Something that should never, never happen.

It must have torn both of them apart inside.

Ozan kept speaking, still telling the story as if it had happened to someone else. 'Though his love assured him that she had faith in him to overcome the dragon, he did not have that faith in himself. He had tried meditating with the Greybeards, to no avail. It was hopeless. He could feel the rage burning, constantly. And so he decided the only way to escape it was to end his own life.'

Sissel couldn't bite back a gasp.

'I woke up and he was gone.' Jenassa gave Ozan a small nudge. 'I still haven't quite forgiven you.'

He gave a sad smile. 'I know.'

'But what –' Sissel had to pause to gather her thoughts before she could even get the question out. 'I mean, you didn't kill yourself, so what happened?'

Ozan's face closed off again. 'The Dragonborn slipped away in the night, hating himself even as he did it, and wandered through the wilderness until he found one of the dungeons that are so common in Skyrim. He planned to lock himself inside somewhere, and take a poison he had prepared, which would kill him quickly and quietly. Locked in the bowels of an underground keep, he thought, his body would be safe from any necromancers who might find him elsewhere. If the dragon soul were somehow able to… reanimate… what was left of him, it would, hopefully, be trapped. And finally, he wanted to die somewhere quiet and dark. For in darkness and silence he had always felt safest. But what he found in that particular dungeon was not oblivion, but salvation.'

Sissel frowned. 'What's salvation?'

An amused snort came from Jenassa. 'I think you somewhat ruined the poetry there, Sissel. It means… rescue. Deliverance from danger.'

'The dungeon was filled with vampires, and hunters seeking them out,' Ozan explained. 'The Dragonborn was intrigued enough to watch them, to try to find what it was they sought. And eventually he discovered that they were searching for a person. He found her in the heart of the dungeon, imprisoned and asleep in the dark. Her name was Serana.'

Sissel snapped her fingers. 'You've talked about her before. She's a friend of yours.'

'One of the few and the closest I have, yes.' Ozan nodded. 'But the Dragonborn did not expect, then, to trust this woman. She was not mortal. She was a vampire.'

Another realisation was beginning to form in Sissel's mind, but she kept silent. Ozan had promised to explain, and she knew he would.

'She asked for the Dragonborn to aid her in travelling back to her home. And when they arrived, Serana's father made him an offer. To share in his power. To become a pure-blooded vampire. What he offered was power and immortality, but those were not what the Dragonborn sought. What intrigued him was the idea of a different kind of blood power within his veins. Vampire blood, cold blood, blood that is as much of the ice as the dragon blood is of the flame… could that calm his dragon soul? Could it at least lessen its power? And so he accepted. Not for the sake of power, or because he wished to prey on mortals, but because it gave him a chance to live.'

Sissel breathed in deeply. 'So that was a really roundabout way of saying that you're a vampire.'

His only response was a single nod.

Sucking her lip, Sissel closed her eyes and tried to work out how she felt about that. She had to admit to herself that she knew very, very little about vampires. She knew that they feared sunlight, and that they fed on mortal blood, and that they could live without aging, never dying unless they were wounded fatally in battle. But that was about it. They'd always sounded evil in the stories and histories – but Ozan wasn't evil.

'Did it work?' she asked.

He nodded again. 'The two different types of blood power… they keep each other in balance. The dragon blood's fire is lessened.'

'Is that why you always wear a hood?'

Another nod. 'Dragon blood means I am more resistant to daylight than other vampires. Can still hurt, though.'

'And is that the… condition that means you can't have your own kids? Erandur said something about it.'

'Yes. It is.'

'So you… drink people's blood and stuff?'

'Define, 'and stuff,'' Jenassa murmured.

Ozan gave a small shake of his head. 'Not if I can help it. A vampire craves mortal blood above anything else, but that of animals can sate for short periods of time. I get by. The Volkihar Court – Serana's clan – they make potions that act as a substitute for blood. I've cut most ties with them, except for my friendship with Serana, but I visit to purchase those potions. If I'm forced to prey on a mortal, I try to limit myself to bandits and the like. I always leave a note explaining. A cure disease potion in case I infected them. And some Septims, to… apologise.'

'To pay for your meal, you mean.' Jenassa chuckled. 'I sometimes wonder if there are bandits across Skyrim telling stories to their friends about the time they were attacked by the most gentlemanly vampire in history.'

Sissel couldn't help but laugh. She decided that she didn't mind Ozan being a vampire. Not if he took such pains to make sure he caused no harm. Not if he'd only become one so he didn't go mad, or have to kill himself. Not when by becoming a vampire thing with wings, he'd saved her life. She didn't know enough about vampirs, really, to judge him. He was the only vampire he'd met, and he was a good person. So there couldn't be much wrong with vampires.

'So you went back to Jenassa after that?' she asked.

'Yes.'

Sissel glanced at the Dunmer. 'What did you say?'

Jenassa slowly lifted a hand and rubbed the back of her neck. 'I was relieved to have him back, of course. But… some rules were set out after that. I wasn't impressed that he snuck off to die like that. I made it very clear that we had to come to an understanding about what he was and was not allowed to do.'

'So what's he not allowed to do?'

'Die, for one thing,' Jenassa said simply. 'And he's not allowed to do anything so utterly stupid again. Not when he knows it would hurt me.'

Ozan swallowed. 'It won't happen again.'

She dipped her head slightly. 'I know.'

'And you don't mind that he's a vampire?'

'No, not really. I worked with some peculiar employers throughout my career. It wasn't too great a stretch to add a vampire to them, especially when I knew him so well. And besides… it had always been a fear of mine, that I'd see him live out his years and then have to lose him. Human lives are so very short, compared to those of elves. I could have lived for centuries, while he would have aged and died so soon. Now… that's not something I need to worry about any more.'

It was such an honest statement, such an emotional one, such a – well, Sissel could only describe it as romantic – thing to say, especially coming from the reserved Dunmer, that it was impossible not to smile.

'And what about you?' Ozan raised his eyebrows. 'Do you mind?'

There was another short silence, as Sissel ran everything she'd been told through her mind, trying to work out the answer to that question. 'I don't think so,' she said slowly. 'I don't think I mind the vampire thing. The assassin thing...' She shook her head slightly and fell silent.

'You see why we didn't want you to know any of this,' Jenassa said. 'Though I did think you needed to be told at some point, to avoid you finding out at some other time, and feeling that we'd lied to you.'

'So when you go off to work, while I'm with Erandur, you're…'

'Doing the only thing I know how to do.'

Sissel bit her lip. 'You just ride off and… kill people?'

'It's a lot more sophisticated than that.' Jenassa was shaking her head. 'There is a way of summoning the Dark Brotherhood, attracting their attention. Ozan and I meet with the people who perform this ritual. They direct us towards the person they want dead. And then, yes, we eliminate them.'

'You kill them.'

Ozan fixed his gaze onto hers. 'Yes. As another assassin would, if we did not. And you might be surprised. Yes, some of the people I've killed were innocent. But many were not. Vampires – the kind who do prey on mortals. Traitors. Thieves. Bandits. People who, perhaps, this world is better without.' He let out a long sigh. 'I'm not a man who can bring light into this world, Sissel. That's not something I've ever known how to do. What I can do is destroy spots of darkness.'

'Like my father?'

The words came out. No warning. She had been holding them back, trying to wait for Ozan to reach this part of the story on his own – but now the question had been spoken. It had slipped from her mouth as if it were tried of waiting.

Silence again. Jenassa clenched her jaw, closed her eyes, and turned her head away. Ozan's gaze became distant, as if he were no longer looking at her, but through her.

And at last, he gave the tiniest nod. 'Yes, Sissel. Like your father. I was the one who killed him.'

He inched a little way away from her, as if giving her space, room to think and decide what to say. And all she could say was, 'I know.'

Maybe she'd always known. Maybe some part of her mind, a quiet part that refused to speak up, had already made the connections. The silent-walking stranger who'd just happened to be visiting Rorikstead the night her father never came back from the inn. His skill with the dagger, the very weapon that had pierced the back of Lemkil's neck. His refusal to speak about his work. A door with a skull symbol, a symbol of death.

Her father's killer let out a long, heavy sigh. 'It was a contract. A man asked for his death. I don't remember anything about the contractor, before you ask. I rarely do. There are too many, usually one every day of my life. It was just one more contract. I didn't think there would be any reason for that job to be special. Could have been anyone. A merchant, a guard, a villager. But he asked for Lemkil of Rorikstead to be killed. And I killed.'

She could picture it. She could picture it so clearly. Lemkil staggering home in the dark, drunk and defenceless. Ozan melting from the shadows, dagger in hand. The blade striking without sound, a quick, clean blow, through the neck. Lemkil falling, dead before he hit the ground. Ozan catching him with practised ease, dragging his body behind the inn, so that it would be some time before he was found. Time for Ozan to put plenty of distance between himself and the village.

Again, Sissel breathed in deeply. 'If you killed my father, why did you adopt me?'

'That's the final part of the story.'

Sissel turned her head towards him, so that he knew she was listening.

He flexed and curled his fingers a few times before speaking. 'So. The Dragonborn, the assassin, the vampire, was sent to kill a man, and he killed. But before he struck that blow, he encountered a child by the roadside. She reminded him of his younger self, a child with the odds stacked against her. A family who left her to work after dark in the cold. It was… soothing, to speak to someone who didn't know to judge him, who didn't know of the darkness in him. And this girl – she had dreamed of a grey dragon. She piqued his interest. She… made him regret that he could not have children of his own.'

He let out another sigh, his breath thickening into clouds as it entered the frosty air.

'The next time he passed through Rorikstead, he kept an eye out for the girl. He didn't find her, and he… he was worried. There had been a dragon close to the village. Perhaps it had paid a visit. He stopped in the inn to ask those who lived there and he found that the girl was gone. Because an assassin had killed her father.'

His hands stirred restlessly in his lap. 'So often, he had killed without thinking. No remorse. He was just the weapon that those who wished to see someone dead used to fulfil those wishes. Why should he feel any guilt, when he was just a tool? But now he felt regret of a kind he was unused to. He had orphaned a child. The death of that farmer suddenly became personal to him. And he felt… he had to atone.'

'Atone?' Sissel echoed.

'Make amends,' Jenassa explained. 'Make up for what he'd done.'

Sissel nodded. 'So you adopted me.'

'The Dragonborn, when he was next in Riften, visited the Honourhall. He did not intend, at first, to take the child into his own care.' The ghost of a smile flickered at the corners of Ozan's mouth. 'But on seeing her again, he was reminded of why she'd impressed him so much before. Life had been cruel to her, and yet… she had not let it break her. There was no darkness in her. He… admired that.'

He stood suddenly, clasping his hands behind his back. 'Was it selfish of him? He wanted to lessen his own feelings of guilt, so he had some way to tell himself he was not an entirely bad person. But to lie, to let her think he was just a kindly stranger when he was the reason she was an orphan… how can that have been the right thing to do? Or maybe it was a good action, done for the wrong reasons.' He bowed his head. 'I don't know.'

For a few more moments, he stood motionless. Then he let out a long sigh, turned around, and sat back down. When he spoke again, his voice was as it normally was; clipped and quiet, missing out the unnecessary words wherever possible.

'Now you know. That's who I am. Everything. Now, your choice.'

Sissel frowned. 'Choice?'

'Stay. Return to Honourhall.' He closed his eyes. 'Forgive or not.'

'Do you want me to stay?'

His eyes opened again, and he nodded. A simple movement, but from the look on his face, Sissel knew how much meaning was behind it. How much truth.

'Whatever his original reasons for taking you in, I can tell you that he's come to care for ou as if he were your own,' Jenassa said softly. 'That goes for both of us.'

'Understand if you don't feel safe,' Ozan added. 'But… I'm sorry. For killing your father. For lying.' He turned his head to look her in the eye. 'Sissel… I would never do anything to hurt you.'

A rare complete sentence, one that wasn't even part of one of his stories. Sissel bit her lip. She believed him.

She closed her eyes and thought about how odd it was that her father, who was her flesh and blood, who had been an honest farmer, if an unpleasant man, had hated her and hurt her and wished she had never been born. How she'd never felt safe around him and had never trusted anything he said. And it was equally strange that Ozan, who was an assassin and a vampire and had no reason to care about her, who had killed her father in cold blood, cared about her and had risked his life to save her. How he could tell her that he was a monster, a murderer, all of that – and she could still utterly believe him when he told her he would never hurt her.

Family is more than shared blood. Jouane's words sounded again in her head, and she knew for certain that this was what he had meant. But this something more, this whatever it was that bound them – was it strong enough? Ozan killed people. For a living. That… that was a bad thing.

He must know that. He'd kept it secret because he'd known that. Why did he do it if he knew it was bad?

He never told me this because he knew I'd be upset, Sissel thought. And I am. Still, I'm glad he told me. I think it's better to know things than to be left to wonder.

A thought occurred to her suddenly. The one thing Ozan hadn't explained. 'Why was it so important to you that I dreamed about a grey dragon?'

Ozan stared at her; Sissel could tell this wasn't what he'd been expecting her to say. For a few moments, he kept looking blankly in her direction. Then his brow furrowed, a thoughtful expression coming over his face. He glanced at Jenassa, his brows raised. She shrugged and tilted her head slightly.

Nodding, Ozan turned back to Sissel. 'I've a friend. You'd like him. Want you to meet him.' He rose to his feet. 'Choose after you speak.'

Sissel stood up, frowning. 'Why do I need to speak to him?'

'I don't know who I am sometimes. He always seems to.'

'And… you think he can tell me whether or not I should stay?'

'Better than me.'

Sissel tipped her head on one side. 'Who is he?'

Ozan twisted around, his gaze flicking up and over the tops of the pines, towards the distant row of mountains that stood thick and grey against the horizon, their peaks punching through the clouds.

'His name is Paarthurnax.'

And so a rare event happens which has rarely been experienced before in my writing, nor ever will be again, most likely... Ozan. Talking. Freely.

A more skilful writer than I would probably have found a candidate to be confirmed as Lemkil's killer. I did have a few people in mind when I started writing, but I couldn't choose between them, and in the end I decided it wasn't really an important element of the story - and nor would Ozan realistically be likely to remember, what with how many people have hired him over the years. I apologise for the unanswered question - but feel free to come up with your own theories!

If anyone's wondering about why Ozan's eyes have been described as brown throughout the story even though he's a vampire, there are a few reasons. The out-of-story reason, of course, is that if he did have glowy vampire eyes, Sissel would probably have worked it out herself, which would have thrown a spanner into the works of the plot slightly. In-universe, it's because his dragon blood counteracts that particular effect of the vampire blood. Ozan gets the benefit of not looking really evil and vampire-y, but pays for it with having slightly weaker vampiric abilities overall. Of course everything about his dragon and vampire blood problems is my headcanon, not official part of the game lore, so I hope no one minds this.

The next chapter will be the final one of this story. I really hope you enjoy it - because I'm very much looking forward to writing it. Thanks for reading!