A Near Miss

Desmond frowned through the window of the little house on the hill, his nose pressed against the glass. "He's definitely been here."

"How can you tell?" Serana asked.

"Walls are straighter." He stepped back, shaking his head. "We probably just missed him."

"That doesn't help us."

"We can come back later. We'll have to, it's on the way back to the fort anyway." Desmond gave the door one final, lazy knock. "We'll talk to your mother first, that should give him enough time to get back here."

"What makes you think he'll come back?"

"It's his house, he lives here."

Serana rolled her eyes. "Obviously not, or he'd be here."

"It's gonna be fine, relax. These things always work out," Desmond said confidently.

"Do all your adventures run on luck?" Serana asked.

"Most of 'em. Served me well so far."

They headed off to the west, where Castle Volkihar waited.

"What do we do if she's not there?" Desmond asked, rowing the little boat towards the castle. "If this falls through, we're more than just sunk. We'll probably be dead. Or worse—"

"Shut up. It'll work," Serana said. "She's got to be here. I can't think of a single other place she would be."

"I hate it here," Desmond grumbled, jumping out into the shallows to drag the boat ashore. "Too many... weird things."

"I don't like it any more than you do," she reminded him. "We just have to be careful. Besides, I thought you'd seen worse than a castle full of vampires."

"Ever seen a dragon up close?" Desmond asked. Serana shook her head. "That's probably as bad as it can get."

"How'd you get out of that?"

Desmond snickered. "Punched it."

"Right."

"You should try it, dragon hunting's fun."

Serana shook her head, grinning. "I can't believe you."

The way to Serana's secret exit was snowy and cold, the narrow path lined with skeletons that creaked and clicked as they approached.

"Think they'll tell your dad we're here?" Desmond asked, his back against the wall.

Serana raised a handful of fire. "Not if we put them down."

Desmond laughed, watching a skeleton explode in several different directions as the flames connected. "My kind of adventure." He shot off a bolt, pinning a death hound to the door as they entered the castle.

"You're actually not bad. Who taught you how to shoot?" Serana asked. "Sorine?"

"Nah. Had this long before I joined the Dawnguard," Desmond said, reloading his crossbow. "Old colleague of mine."

"Sometimes you talk and you sound twice as old as you are. What kind of colleagues did you keep?"

"Funny story. They were terrible so we split," he said. "I don't think I'll be seeing them again."

"Fair enough. Take a left up here," Serana directed. "This is one of those weird double-barred security measures my father put in when he got more paranoid."

"Your dad is nuts."

They came upon a room, ankle-deep with foul-smelling water and filled with piles of bones. Skulls littered the walls, some bloodier than others. Desmond shook his head violently, refusing to think of why so many bones could be down here. As more fell down from a hatch far above, he began to feel sick. "Where to?" he asked.

"Further up." Serana guided him through, avoiding the deeper patches of blood and water to a den. "I've never really been in this part of the castle before."

"Great."

Inside the den was a giant frostbite spider, its web spun all around the room. Desmond loosed a shot at the same time as Serana sent an icicle through its abdomen. The spider's pincers clicked together as it sank down to the ground, sticky venom leaking onto the floor.

"Gods, I hate spiders. Are we through here?" Desmond asked, throwing his weight behind the switch until it moved. Somewhere below, the sound of metal on stone told them a gate had opened.

"Yeah. That should do it, come on."

Serana took him back through the room of bones and the stone paths beneath the castle, up to a door. "This should lead out to the courtyard."

Desmond pushed it open, expecting fresh air. Instead, the air hung thick with more dust and the smell of rotting plants. The courtyard was a mess, destroyed and deserted.

"Oh no..."

"What happened?" Desmond asked, hanging up his crossbow. "There's no one here."

"Everything's been torn down. The whole place looks... well, dead." Serana broke a blackened, dead flower off a similarly shriveled bush. "It's like we're the first to set foot here in centuries."

She led the way up a small flight of stairs, where a stone doorway had been blocked by a massive pile of stones. More dead plants lined the walkways, the fading sunlight giving the entire courtyard the eerie feel of a cemetery.

"This used to lead to the castle's main hall. Looks like my father had it sealed up," Serana guessed.

"Good ol' dad." Desmond asked, following her back down the stairs and across the courtyard. "What do you think happened here?"

"If I had to guess, I'd say the moment mother fled the castle, Father went on a rampage," Serana said. "Knowing him, anything at all that reminded him of her was just destroyed."

"And then he just walled it off?"

"It appears that way. I suppose he wanted to put the past behind him. Perhaps if he'd spent more time with us, he would have recognized the beauty for himself." She shook her head, walking around the big dial sunk into the floor. "I used to walk through here after evening meals. It was beautiful, once."

"I'll bet."

Serana stopped by a fenced-in area of even more dead plants, a heartbroken look on her face as a leaf turned to dust in her hand. "This was my mother's garden. Do you know how beautiful something can be when it's tended by a master for hundreds of years?"

Desmond shook his head. "I'm sorry."

"She would have hated to see it like this. Wait..."

"Hm?"

Serana returned to the dial in the center of the room. "Something's wrong with the moondial here. Some of the crests are missing and the dial is askew," she said, kneeling down to look at an indentation in the ground. "I didn't even know the crests COULD be removed. Maybe my mother's trying to tell us something?"

"Or maybe some birds took 'em," Desmond said, shrugging. "It has been hundreds of years, Sera."

She shook her head. "No, I'm telling you, there's something strange with the moondial."

"What's so special about this thing, anyway?"

"As far as I'm aware, it's the only one in existence," Serana told him. "The previous owners of the castle had a sundial in the courtyard, and obviously that didn't appeal to my mother. She persuaded an Elven artisan to make some improvements. You can see the plates that show the phases of the moons, Masser and Secunda." She pointed to the crests, and to the indentations where they were missing.

"So does it work?" Desmond asked, wiping the dust away from the face of one of the crests still on the dial. It was a brilliant, glassy half moon that shone in the fading light.

"That's the thing... what's the point of a moondial?" Serana shrugged. "I always wondered why she didn't have the whole thing ripped out. I don't know, I guess it's like having a piece of art, if you're into that sort of thing."

"So... do we fix it?" Desmond stood up, looking around. "I mean, if we even can. What do we do to it?"

"Hard to say. Maybe if we found the missing crests, we could figure it out."

"They can't have gone too far, right?"

Desmond hopped back up the stairs to the blocked in door, scanning the courtyard for anything that gleamed or looked remotely shinier than the rest of the dead landscape. Serana searched in the garden, digging into the soil with her hands.

"So. Tell me about your family," Desmond said conversationally, yanking aside a dead potted plant in his search.

"There's not a whole lot to tell," Serana replied, raising her voice to carry over the courtyard. "You've already seen my father's obsession. My mother's not a whole lot better, but you'll see that soon enough."

"Were you ever close with them? I mean, I know you were tight with your mother, but what about your father?"

"No, not really. I did spend a lot of time with my mother, but she saw me more like a protégé than a daughter," Serana said. "What about you? What were your parents like?"

Desmond gave a hollow laugh. "I grew up in an orphanage, mostly," he said. "Run-down little place in Riften. Mom died when I was little, Dad didn't have time for me and shipped me off there. I never really knew them, I was mostly alone."

"I know how that feels." She quickly shook her head. "I mean, I know it isn't the same thing, but I was a pretty lonely child myself."

Desmond picked up a round, gleaming thing that looked more like a mirror than a crest. "Do you still feel lonely?"

"Not as much."

"Good. No one should." He held up the crest, waving it at her with a grin on his face. "Got one."

"Great. Let's, uh... let's just keep looking."

Desmond picked up another just as Serana found the last one. "What do we do with them?"

"Give 'em here." Serana took his two and studied the dial for a moment, deciding where they ought to go. When the crests were properly replaced, the moondial moved on its own. Desmond and Serana took a few steps back as it spun around, the stone floor of the courtyard dropping to reveal stairs. Desmond laughed, jumping down to the door the stairs were leading to.

"Very clever, Mother. Very clever." Serana followed him down as he pushed open the door. "I've never been in those tunnels before, but I'd bet they run right under the courtyard and into the tower ruins."

"And you think she'll be there?"

Serana did not answer immediately. "Well, at least we're getting closer. Let's go."

"Right."

The tunnel led them on a winding journey to what appeared to be a kitchen. More piles of bloody bones and spices sat around a cooking fire and pot. Desmond paused at the door, his teeth on edge.

Serana, meanwhile, ventured fearlessly on. "I've never even seen this part of the castle before. Be careful. I don't know what might be around."

"Great. That's comforting," Desmond grumbled, following. "Excellent."

"How do you have friends?" Serana asked. "Are you always like this? Do people just tolerate you?"

"Put me in front of a dragon and I'm an absolute joy," he promised. Serana snickered, shaking her head.

They headed up a bloodstained set of stairs to a dining table set with more bones. The skeletons sitting at the chairs rose to life slowly enough to be picked off by icicles and crossbow bolts.

"How big is this castle?" Desmond asked. "I knew it was big, but I'm pretty sure we're far underground at this point."

"There used to be a lot more people here," she said. "Servants and such, you know. I guess they all had to be somewhere when they weren't watching over us."

An explosion of rock from the wall to their right announced the arrival of another statue with sharp wings and obsidian eyes. The gargoyle let out a screeching roar, lunging at them with broken stone claws.

Serana let loose with palms full of fire. Desmond stumbled backwards against a wooden table, firing a bolt into its wing. The gargoyle bellowed and stomped forward, swinging its claws at him. Desmond slammed back against the table, dishes and cups clattering to the floor.

A burst of flames collided with the gargoyle's head, sending it reeling to one side. Desmond rolled off the table, lobbing a heavy pitcher at it. Serana sent an icicle through its neck, sending it down to the ground at last.

They were silent for a moment, listening. The noise of grinding stone was gone, but the creaking sound of bone still echoed through the underground chambers. Desmond shivered, unsettled.

"I can hear it too," Serana said. "But they're not close by."

"I hate it." Desmond brushed dust and splinters off his chest and back, continuing on through the doors. "The first time I saw a fully necromanced body was terrifying."

"Did you shoot it?"

Desmond stifled a laugh. "No. That would have been rude, but that's another story."

"For some reason, I got the impression you and yours have something against necromancy," Serana pointed out. "How'd you see a thrall?"

"Funny story. Except it's not so much funny as soul-crushing, and also the reason you should never use necromancy when we meet with Martin," Desmond said. "Ever."

Serana shrugged. "Whatever you say."

The room they came to was empty, save for a motionless stone gargoyle in front of a pull chain. Even a well-placed bolt between the eyes failed to wake it.

"I don't like it."

"We don't have to like it, we just have to pull it," Serana said.

"I think its eyes are following me." Desmond inched away from the gargoyle, watching it cautiously.

Serana kicked him. "Go pull it."

"You pull it!"

"Come on, be a man!"

"Age before beauty!"

She punched him as he shied away from her, immediately and rightly mortified. "Did you just call me old AND ugly, you—"

"I'm sorry—"

"Go pull it, you owe me that!"

Desmond shoved her aside and crept behind the gargoyle. It stood silent and still as he gripped the chain. With a deep breath, he yanked it until the gears behind the wall began to turn.

Stony shrapnel exploded against the wall as the gargoyle burst to life. Desmond flattened himself against the wall and shrank into the corner as Serana came full-force at them with fire and ice. The gargoyle shrieked and turned, lumbering towards her and freeing Desmond enough to fire a bolt into its back. The gargoyle fell flat to the ground, its wing breaking off into pieces as it crashed.

Serana stepped over the stone remains to help Desmond up. "You ok?"

"Yeah." Desmond kicked the gargoyle aside, looking for whatever the chain had opened. "What now?"

Serana twisted a candlestick by the fireplace. The wall opened up, revealing another passageway. "Leave it to my mother. Always smarter than I gave her credit for," she said. "This has to be it."

They followed a trail of burned and ruined books, empty inkwells and crushed quills leading up a long set of winding stairs. Desmond threw his shoulder into the door, finally succeeding in getting it open.

A big, circular patch of stone surrounded by candles in the center of the floor drew their attention first. Shelves full of books and ingredients lined the walls, tables cluttered with dust and more concoctions were scattered around the laboratory. The faintly acrid smell of an alchemy lab's fire burned in the corner.

"What's all this?" Desmond asked, picking up a troll skull from one of the tables.

"I knew she was deep into necromancy. I mean, she taught me everything I know," Serana said. "But I had no idea she had a setup like this. Look at all this!" She held up a bowl full of some sort of dust. "She must have spent years collecting all these components."

"Right." Desmond carefully set the troll skull back down as Serana came over to see. "I don't... really want anything to do with this."

"And what's this thing?" Serana looked over her shoulder, back at the circle of candles in the center of the room. "It's obviously... something."

"Well put."

"Let's take a look around," Serana said, kicking the door shut and dropping her bag off by the wall. "There has to be something here that tells us where she's gone."

"What might that be, exactly?" Desmond set down his crossbow and bag on the table, looking around the room. On the opposite end of the lab was a raised section, filled with even more bookshelves and tables. An enchanter's table stood near the wall. "This could take a while."

"My mother was meticulous about her research. If we can find her notes, there might be some hints in there."

"She didn't keep gargoyles in here, did she?" Desmond asked. "Or any other weird pets?"

"Not that I ever saw. My mother had a bit of a thing for magical constructs. Not what you're thinking," she added quickly. Desmond stared back at her, clueless. "...Never mind."

"This is quite the lab," Desmond said, going through some of the books on one side of the room. None of them were remotely close to the early levels of magic he could understand. "This is impressive stuff."

"I had no idea this place even existed." Serana mounted the stairs to the other end of the room, looking through the other bookshelves. "She had an alchemy setup in her drawing room, but that doesn't even come close to what's here."

"What did she research?" Desmond flipped through a book, finding nothing useful.

"Looking at the equipment and materials, it looks like she was trying to advance her necromancy."

"Why?"

"I don't know." Serana tossed aside a book, picking up a new one. "Certainly not longevity. Bit of a waste of time for a vampire."

"Heh. Right." Desmond turned over a tattered red journal in his hands, flipping through the handwritten pages. Much of it made no sense. "Hey, I think I've got something."

"Yeah?"

"Found her notes." Desmond climbed up the stairs to show her the book.

"You did? Let me see them!" Serana all but snatched the book from him, excitedly flipping through them as Desmond read over her shoulder.

"What's the Soul Cairn?" he asked, frowning.

"I only know what she told me. She had a theory about soul gems," Serana explained, still reading. "She thought the souls inside of them don't just vanish when they're used, they end up in the Soul Cairn."

Desmond blinked. "I don't really understand any of that stuff. Why would she care where used souls went?"

"The Soul Cairn is home to very powerful beings. Necromancers send them souls, and receive powers of their own in return," Serana explained. "My mother spent a lot of time trying to contact them directly, to travel to the Soul Cairn itself."

"So... if she made it, that's where we'll find her?" he guessed.

"That thing is definitely some type of portal," Serana said, pointing back to the circle in the center of the room. "If I'm reading this right, there's a formula here that should give us safe passage into the Soul Cairn."

"Neat. What do we need?"

Serana opened the journal again, skipping back a few pages. "A handful of soul gem shards," she read off, "some finely ground bonemeal, a good bit of purified void salts... oh... dammit."

"What?"

"We're also going to need a sample of her blood." Serana snapped the book shut again, eyes squeezed shut. "Which... if we could get that, we wouldn't even be trying to do this in the first place."

"Do you think it would work with your blood?" Desmond asked. "I mean... you are her daughter."

"Hmm. Not bad. We'd better hope that's good enough, mistakes with these kind of portals can be gruesome."

Desmond felt his heart drop. "Don't talk me out of this."

"Right. Let's get started." Serana set the book down on the enchanter, scanning the shelves.

"Will everything be here?"

"Oh, definitely. Mother would have plenty of those materials in her laboratory, we just need to find them."

Desmond vaulted back down the stairs to search the downstairs shelves as Serana worked through the upstairs.

"What can you tell me about the Soul Cairn?" Desmond asked, looking over the different kinds of dust on the shelf and wondering how on earth anyone was supposed to tell the difference.

"The Soul Cairn is a tiny sliver of Oblivion," Serana said. "Its ruled by unseen beings known as the Ideal Masters."

"Are they daedra?"

"Nobody really knows. As far as I've heard, no one's seen them and returned to Tamriel to tell about it."

Desmond nearly knocked over a bowl of some sort of fungus. "Great. Why was your mother so fascinated by it?"

"Honestly? I don't know. Necromancers are always interested in souls, though, so that probably has some kind of interest."

"And she got you into necromancy, right?"

"Yeah. She taught me everything I know." A gentle clattering of bowls from above as Serana went through the shelves. "It's all thanks to her."

"The vampire thing, too?"

"Huh?"

"I mean... were you always a vampire?" Desmond asked.

"That's a long story."

"I've got long stories, too."

Serana laughed. "No you don't. Not like this one."

"Lemme hear it."

There was a heavy sigh from above the stairs. "I guess we kind of have to go way back, to the very beginning. You know where vampires came from?"

"Not... really."

"The first vampire came from Molag Bal. She... was not a willing subject, but she was still the first."

Desmond's stomach turned unpleasantly. "Whoa, are you saying—"

"Molag Bal is a powerful Daedric lord," Serana went on quickly. "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."

Desmond paused, adding Molag Bal to the ever-growing list of lords never to tangle with. "So... that's how it happened?" he asked tentatively.

"The ceremony was... degrading," Serana said slowly. "Let's not revisit that."

"Fair."

"But we all took part in it. Not really wholesome family activity, but it's one of the things you do when you give yourselves to a Daedric lord."

Desmond pulled a few bottles off the shelves, dust falling to the floor as he did. "Do you ever regret it?"

"Huh?"

"Do you regret becoming a vampire?" he asked.

Silence for a moment, then the scratching of wooden chair legs on stone. "Nobody's ever asked me that before. I... I don't know," she said. "I think mostly I hate what it's done to my family."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, you've met most of us. My father's not exactly the most stable, and eventually he drove my mother crazy with him," Serana said. "And it all ended with me being locked underground for whoe knows how long. It's definitely been a bad thing, on the whole."

Desmond picked up a little silver bowl, full of crystalline slivers of soul gems. He held it up so Serana could see it. "Soul gem shards?"

She gave a halting nod. "Yeah. Nice."

"What's left?"

"Bonemeal and void salts."

"...What do those look like?"

"You're so useless." Serana pushed back her chair to resume her search. "Go throw the soul gems in the vessel up there and give me a minute."

Desmond passed her on the stairs, the little bowl in hand. "You ok?"

She nodded. "I will be. Just, just give me a little time."

He thought better of pressing the subject, and tossed the little violet slivers into a tall bowl on top of a pedestal. After a few quiet moments, Serana joined him at the top of the stairs, dumping in two little bowls of powders.

"Now what?" he asked.

"Are you ready to go? I'm not entirely sure what this thing is going to do when I add my blood." Serana pulled her dagger out of her belt, looking to him.

"Can I ask you something?"

She nodded. "Sure."

"What are you going to do when we find her?"

Serana sighed. "I've been asking myself the same thing since we came back to the castle. She was so sure of what we did to my father... I couldn't help but go along with her. I never thought of the cost."

"Well... if it hadn't been me that found you, or if someone else had been with me, it would have cost her you," Desmond pointed out. "I don't really know what she was thinking."

"Neither do I."

"We won't know until we find her," Desmond added.

"Yes. You're right, I'm sorry." Serana shook her head. "I just didn't expect anyone to care how I felt about her."

"Love 'em or hate 'em, your parents are still your parents."

"Do you think I'm wrong?" she asked. "To be upset with her?"

"Wha—no," he said. "That's not what I mean, just—I think both of your parents are dreadful, but my opinion isn't the one that matters. They're your parents, you can feel whatever you want about them."

"Yeah... I guess."

Desmond gestured dramatically to the bowl full of powder and soul gems. "Are we ready then?"

"All right, here goes."

Serana sliced open her palm, letting the blood trickle down into the bowl. The circle below lit up with purple light, the bricks spinning as the whole room shook.

"By the gods!"

"She actually did it," Serana breathed, watching the rings of stone come up to form a stairway down into the pit of light. "She created a portal to the Soul Cairn. Incredible."

"So..." Desmond looked down the stairway. The stones disappeared into the light. "Do we just...?"

"I guess?"

Desmond shrugged, jumping down onto the stairs. The portal gave off a wave of cool air as he descended with Serana right behind him. Once his feet dipped beneath the threshold of light a deathly chill came over him. Some unseen force tore at him, as if trying to reach something just underneath his skin.

He yelled, hastily retreating back up the stairs. Serana stopped, confused.

"Are you all right?" She followed him back to the high ground. "That looked painful."

"What happened?" Desmond sat down by the pedestal holding the powders and blood, panting. "That hurt."

"Now that I think about it, I should have expected that. Sorry."

"What gives?" he demanded.

"It's hard to describe. The Soul Cairn is..." She sat down beside him, frowning. "...well, hungry. For lack of a better word. It's trying to take your soul essence as payment."

Desmond hugged his arms over his chest, as if that might help stave off the Soul Cairn. "I need my soul, though!"

"No one's gonna make you give it up," Serana assured him.

"Is there another way in, then?"

Serana paused a split-second too long for his liking. "Maybe—"

"Maybe?"

"There might be," she said. "But I don't think you're going to like it."

"What's worse than getting my soul ripped out?" Desmond scoffed.

Serana fidgeted uncomfortably. "Well... vampires aren't counted among the living. I could go through there without a problem."

Desmond felt the color run out of his face. "Are you saying I have to be a vampire to get through?"

"Not your first choice, I'd guess?" she asked wryly.

"There has to be another way." Desmond shook his head, terrified. "Sera, please, there has to be."

"Maybe. Let me think... we could just pay the toll another way," she suggested. "It wants a soul, so we give it a soul. Yours."

Desmond scowled at her. "What, no, it's MY soul! You just said no one would make me give it up!"

"Not the whole thing!" Serana tapped her fingers against her knees, thinking. "My mother taught me a trick or two. I could partially soul trap you and offer the gem to the Ideal Masters," she explained. "It might be enough to satisfy them. It would make you a bit weaker while we travel inside the Soul Cairn, but there might be a way to fix that once we're inside."

"Might be?"

"Maybe."

Desmond chewed on his tongue, thinking hard. "Are these my only two options?"

"I'm sorry." Serana pushed herself back up, offering Desmond her hand. "I wish I knew a better way, something that would be easier for you."

"Yeah, yeah," Desmond grumbled, letting her pull him up. "Lemme think."

"Just know that... whatever path you choose, I won't think any less of you," Serana told him firmly. "Sometimes things just have to be done. I know that better than anybody."