There was a soft creaking noise as the rowboat nudged against the dock at the back of Castle Volkihar.
I saw Serana's head tilt in the faint light provided by the moon shining through the clouds. Then she turned and touched a finger to my lips as another creak sounded... not from the boat, but from somewhere above us. The sound of leather creaking across something hard.
My eyes widened and I nodded, then reached out to put my hand on the dock, steadying our meager vessel. Serana rose and stepped onto the docks, moving quickly and soundlessly. For the first time since I met her, Serana was moving like the predator she was, and with deadly purpose. I was barely able to make out the shape of her as she flowed up a set of stone steps to a higher level. I tried to disembark with the same silence. I was… not as graceful, but did manage the same silence.
It took a few precious seconds to get out of the boat. Something clattered above me, and I was showered with… bones. I stared at a skeletal hand. Skeletons! I wanted to slap my forehead. Of course, the back of the castle would be guarded by something! And what better guards than the raised corpses of the castle's victims? No need to eat, sleep, or even come in out of the cold. Skeletons were primitive undead, but capable of using weapons to skewer unsuspecting trespassers.
I drew my bow and turned slowly, eyeing the upper levels. Something white moved, above me and to my right, and the faint light revealed a skeleton wearing the loose remains of leather armor. The undead creature was drawing a bow of its own, and sighting somewhere above me. Another clatter revealed the demise of a second skeleton, and with a twang of my bow, I ended the third as it tried to draw on my companion above me.
There was a moment of silence, and then Serana called softly to me, "Lasirah?"
"Here," I called back, just as softly. I would trust that her superior eyesight in the dark and the fact that she dared to call out to me, meant that it was safe for the moment.
I made my way up the stairs and joined the dim figure with glowing amber eyes on the top level of the docks.
"Good," she said, "From here on out, we're going to want to be quiet until we can secure a room. There's no knowing what's lurking around in the unused areas of the castle, and I'd rather not find out by having it leap down on us."
I nodded, concealing a smile. These were common sense lessons I had learned long ago, but I didn't want to make Serana feel bad by mentioning that. It was also very sweet of her to care enough about my safety to warn me of the risks involved… especially since any vampires we ran into would likely be vampires she had once known.
Serana gazed up at the massive castle that loomed above us, "The castle looks so big from down here. I mean, it is big, but, well, even bigger."
"I get you," I agreed. "It seems smaller when you're stuck living inside it. It takes on a whole new scale when you realize we have to go hunting through all its nooks and crannies looking for a clue."
"Yes, exactly." She let out a breath as we approached a door leading into the bowels of the castle. She gestured me through before closing it silently behind us.
This place was definitely ignored by the castle, but that did not mean it was uninhabited. Following a hallway to the left, we came across a skeever the size of a husky. The beast snarled, baring snaggled, yellow teeth, and launched itself at me.
I lashed out with Dawnbreaker, managing to cleave into its skull. "Ugh," I hissed in an undertone as warm rodent blood sprayed across my face and chest. The rat-like creature landed with a thud before me. Hairless legs kicked spasmodically for a few seconds, then went still. The thing was filthy; it was missing patches of fur and even had a few lesions on its skin that spoke of a distinctly unhealthy animal.
I washed off my face with water from my canteen, hoping that I hadn't gotten any infected blood in my eyes or mouth. Then decided to pull a Potion of Cure Disease out of my pack and down it immediately, just in case.
Serana moved ahead for a moment to check for any more of the damned things, before returning to stand guard next to me. She shook her head to reassure me that this had been the only one. Once I was ready, we continued down a staircase and through a door into a large undercroft.
The place was lit at one end, and only by a few candles. Clusters of icicles hung down from the ceiling, some long enough to reach halfway to the floor. I could count at least four pairs of glowing red eyes scattered across the frigid room. One pair was moving, and as they approached the candles, they resolved into a death hound. An emaciated figure reached out a claw-like hand and caressed the beast briefly on the head.
They had been an Altmer once, though now they were nearly a skeleton with jaundiced yellow skin stretched taut over their frame. Emaciated and practically feral, I couldn't even tell if they were male or female anymore. The vampire was hairless, and dressed only in the tattered remains of what had once been clothes; unbothered by the frigid air.
Muttering to themselves in a hissing whisper, the feral vampire paced back and forth. "Not good enough to live in their stupid keep, am I? Stupid sods don't realize I'm still here! I'll get my revenge. Their death hounds do my bidding, obey my will! When we return, fangs will meet their necks!"
I gave Serana an inquiring glance, and she gave a sad shake of her head; she didn't recognize the vampire. I drew an arrow and the creak of the bowstring made the feral vampire whip around.
"Who's there?! Who's there?!" they screamed. "Death hounds! To me!"
I loosed the arrow and it punched into the vampire's left shoulder, just above the collarbone. They gave an agonized shriek. Damn. Missed the kill shot.
There was a crackle of ice magic, and a death hound that had been charging me fell back with a spear of ice through its skull. Blue-white frost magic crackled around Serana's left hand as she welded her dagger in her right.
The sunstone in Dawnbreaker's crossguard blazed as I drew it and sprinted for the vampire. A death hound tried to intercept me, and I barely even paused to deal with it. Flames erupted from the howling beast, but I was already past. The vampire struggled to deflect the holy blade with their dagger, snarling in pain as the holy light fell on their face. I gave a hard shove, and the slender figure fell backward, off balance.
Freed from the dagger, the blade lanced through the vampire's flesh like a heated knife through butter. The vampire was reduced to ash in seconds. I whipped around and brought the blade down on one of the two remaining death hounds trying to harry Serana from opposite sides.
The beast began yelping as it erupted into flame, flailing helplessly before collapsing. With a wet squelch, Serana's dagger sank into the final beast's throat as it tried to rear up at her face.
Silence fell as we listened carefully for any further hue and cry. There was nothing save for the soft moan of the ice-cold breezes that wove their way through the place.
"Take a right at the candles," Serana instructed, when we had caught our breath. "This is one of those weird double-barred security measures that my father put in when he got more paranoid. If we follow that path around, we can find the other switch."
We made our way to the right, up a few short flights of stairs, and around a corner. There we found the first switch, which dropped the first bridge. Crossing it, we found ourselves at a T-shaped crosspoint. The bridge connected to a narrow stone walkway with no railings, stretching over a deep drop.
"Take a left up here," Serana whispered. "Welcome to the old cistern. When we were... well, human... water would be diverted through here to carry away our refuse. On some days, this would smell... blech. Just be glad you weren't here back then."
I made a face. Four millennia had left the place cold, empty, and only faintly musty from trapped air. There was nothing left to fuel any foul smells after all this time. But I had no doubt a castle full of humans doing their business had to mean that this place would have been downright nasty.
As I approached the crossroads, a creak to my right brought up Dawnguard in defense. The light from the sunstone illuminated a short tunnel to my right, and an angry hiss came from a walking skeleton wearing the tattered remains of a mage's clothes. Its empty eye sockets glowed with the blue light that kept its bones together and animated. It raised its hand and a spear of ice shot across the distance between us.
I grunted as I brought up my blade to deflect the spear, and it hit the flat of my blade with enough force to stagger me. The blade sang softly from the impact, and another spear was sent my way.
"By Satakal, you bastards sure like kebabs," I growled, knocking that one away as well.
"Get down!" Serana shouted, and I threw myself down without hesitation.
My skin tingled unpleasantly as a bolt of lightning danced across the distance between my companion and the skeleton. The bolt hit the creature's torso and blasted the skeleton into individual bones.
Something moved in the tunnel where the skeleton had come from and I saw two glowing blue eye sockets before a second mage skeleton cast Flames. Serana cried out in pain, and scrambled back from the onslaught.
Immune to cold so, of course, she would be weak against fire. Damn it! I lurched halfway to my feet, seized my bow, and fired an arrow into the stream of fire. There was a dry crunching noise and the flames guttered out; a few bones bouncing out of the shadows to join the remains of their companion.
I hauled myself to my feet and hurried to her side, "Serana? You okay?"
Wearing a scowl and slapping at the sleeves of her shirt to extinguish a few remaining sparks, Serana nodded curtly. "Thankfully, yes. Gotta love those vampiric reflexes." But there was a little bite in her tone that said she was hurting.
"Let me see," I held out a hand in the direction of her arm.
"It's okay; just a small burn. I'll heal quickly," she protested.
"Okay. Let me see anyway," I persisted.
Flushing a little, she extended her arm and I was relieved to see that though she had lost some of her sleeve, the burn itself was superficial. Though it looked painful, I could also see that she was telling the truth; the burn was healing from the outside edges inward. In a few minutes, it would be gone.
"Good?" she asked wryly, raising an eyebrow, though there was a softness to her tone.
I nodded, "Good."
Serana took the lead at my request; her night vision was better than mine, and this damned place was uncomfortably dark. Not to mention full of unpleasant surprises.
She led me through the correct tunnel, guiding me past a few ropes that dangled from the ceiling. The ropes were woven around bones that had been sharpened into spikes; bone chimes. At walking speed, they weren't worth much more than a painful poke, damage-wise. A careless explorer could lose an eye walking into them, but their greatest danger was that brushing against one would make the bones clatter against one another. Who knew what kinds of things the bone chimes would alert? I grimaced. Likely we would find out just a bit farther on.
Sure enough, the tunnel opened out into a sizable room, half-lit by natural phosphorescent fungi. Serana stopped short at the exit to the tunnel, eyeballing the room with the same misgivings I had. I eased up next to her and peered in. Ice-cold water dripped and trickled into the room to flood the floor with ankle-deep water. I couldn't see where the water was flowing off to, but the floor had a solid carpet of waterlogged bones. Thoroughly stripped of flesh, they still managed to conceal an exit point. On the plus side, the chill air and the steadily flowing water seemed to be taking care of any remaining smell of decay.
I had an ugly feeling that we found the castle's cast-offs; I didn't even try to count the skulls of what could only be thousands of poor thralls. Every one of them had been a person who had succumbed to Harkon's court and then dumped down here.
As though to confirm, there was a metallic clatter, and a large hinged grate in the ceiling swung open. The bloodied bones of at least three unfortunate people came tumbling into the pool below. The bones hit with muffled splashes, sending a spreading stain of dark red into the water.
The shadows came alive, and three death hounds bounded forward to fall upon the remains. the beasts were snarling among themselves as they fought for a bone with something left on it. I swallowed, took aim with my bow, and downed one of the beasts. It collapsed with a sound between a moan and a wail. The other two turned toward us, dropping the femur they had been quarreling over. Two pairs of glowing red eyes found us almost immediately and they charged. Their fanged jaws parted into throaty, desperate snarls, and were starving. Serana and I were the biggest meals they had seen in a long time.
Dawnbreaker flashed, and Serana's ice spears shot through the air. A few minutes later, we were out the other end of the room, sporting arcs of red death hound blood across our armor. I stared at archways blocked with thick webbing.
There was a soft buzzing sound, coupled with a clicking noise that made the hair on my neck stand up. A frostbite spider... Because why limit this crap to only one kind of monster? I asked myself in silent disgust.
Both of us shared a look and took deep breaths; once we steeled ourselves, we tore through the barrier of webbing.
By the time we threw the second switch, we were both decorated with horrific, if artistic, splatter patterns. Green spider ichor competed with the red of death hound blood. The damn spider had been the size of a carriage, and I had nearly stumbled over not one, but two gray, desiccated humanoid corpses in the battle. Knowing how all spiders fed, I didn't want to think about how these two people had died. Add to that, the thick, sticky feel of webbing clinging to my legs and back was going to haunt my nightmares; I just knew it.
"I want a freaking bath so badly right now," I told Serana in disgust, passing her a square of linen for her own face. "Can this place even get any more disgusting?"
She accepted it with a grimace, cleaning her face off with a resigned air, "Please Lasirah... I beg of you… don't give all Tamriel the idea that you want that challenge to be accepted."
"Right…. Sorry." Returning to the t-shaped intersection where we had fought the skeletons. We crossed the newly dropped bridge and climbed two flights of stairs before coming to a door that led out of the undercroft.
"We've made it to the courtyard." There was a fondness in Serana's voice that dropped to dismay as she got a full look around. "Oh no... What happened to this place?"