Hungry.

Always hungry.

Moving to shift her weight, she breathed evenly, jaw lose and relaxed, cool air passing her lips and hot breath flowing against her armour's bevor and warming the tip of her nose.

The soft blue light emanating from the grand windows above her cast a damp shadow throughout the musty air of Solitude's New Crypts.

The Dovah readjusted the securing strap of her cuirass's back plate; the silky ebony and dragon bone having become too tight to her form. The bones of her more noble brethren echoing a rasping laugh as they shift.

Bone and metal: central threads woven into the Dohah's tapestry of claws, teeth, and mettle.

To the statues and sculptures above the urns and stone caskets lining the walls of the New Crypt, to the stone faces of the high kings and queens of Skyrim, the noble Jarls of Solitude, and the bold Emperors who passed the final days – weak and broken – within the Sapphire Keep; hers was a dull tapestry indeed.

To all save one.

Before her rested the Wolf Queen's visage, delicately inlaid, set shallow within an unremarkable granite arch. Hidden away, even here at the dead and forgotten end of the chapels New Crypt: The Traitor Queen.

A sculpted curiosity to mark the end of this tomb's deepest avenue. Something unseemly to mark the start of the deep sanctums of Solitude's Old Crypts.

A snarling smirk and exited eyes.

Dark and damp, the deep blue stone of the crypt's floor and walls – still smooth and neatly grouted despite the prestigious age of the Solitude chapel – reflected dancing shadows upon the Wolf Queen, imbuing cold furry to that snarling smirk.

Stray hairs feathered through the Traitor Queen's wolf headdress; its ears pined aggressively back and the carved remnants of its forelimbs and paws draped over her shoulders – falling to rest above her breast. Even wrapped within modest dress the Queen failed to be humble.

Or noble.

Despite the cobwebs and the layers of dust common throughout the New Crypts oldest memorials, this last corner, adjacent the Wolf Queen, lacked any sign of neglect. Three books placed on the tomb there; sagas of the gods held by the Norse and while aged they remained untouched from the damp air. Yet the tapestry above them? Spoiled by weevils and moth alike as the other threads this crypt kept.

She approached, wary, and with grip sure cleanly tore it from the wall.

Hidden behind the tapestry where old interwoven iron bars, spoiling entry to what must be the Old Crypts; not a blemish of rust freckled its form, not a dusting of red to eat at the hinges or fittings.

With one exception.

A minute, square, gate centred within the woven snakes of iron only visible at all for the ravages of rust bleeding raw and red.

Here stood she, Dovahkiin, wrapped within her tapestry of mettle and claw.

Here she pressed against this red weave to whisper wide its portal.

Beyond the stone blocks of the New Crypt's floor abruptly ended, making way for elegantly carved stair, its wood weak and hollow, leading down on dry-rotting and splintered boards into the vanishing dark.

And something in the air–a pulse. Slight paths of magicka woven low and old through the air, leading into that vanishing dark.

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Sixty-seven steps into the Old Crypts. Following the opaque-pale thread of magicka.

The seven tombs the Dovah passed were pockmarked. The ancient stone deeply scared, and their seals broken; intricately carved slabs of black-cloudy marble split so perfectly as if by a commissioned mason: a single break through the profuse cap from its base up its centre. A narrow line making grand doors into the dark.

Abandoned and ajar, the traditional authority of the quiet dead disturbed.

Then, in the air the Dragon made note, a copper-rust scent.

Blood.

She stalked after the scent, finding a room of urns, each of which, bar one, had been placed upside down next to the small remnants of local vermin. Their various tissues of liver, lung, and intestine piled together in plump stains. The ichor the colour of, and consistence of, sugared plum.

The green-rot of necromancy either too subtle or too old to scent.

Thoughtless instinct clearly at play: the Honoured Dead?

The Dragon stalked on.

A triangular room, lined with the same stone-worked granite from chambers above and lined in what were once richly dyed carpets. Their threads lose and tired. Strange alters to Debella and Arkay upturned, the tools of embalmers crudely jammed into the graceful stone effigies of the Gods, made to gouge and gash into the symbols of protection and rest.

The third and final alter of the room – dedicated to Akatosh – remained unsullied; queerly there lay a reef of freshly harvested Carnis root woven at its base.

A mockery?

Throughout the hallway from the alter room, were five largely rotten and exhausted Great Tapestries dutifully they retold the tail of Talos in their dreary wasting dyes and weak, faded, threads, littered broken shards of glass, crushed chalices, warped plates and drinking horns.

Human nails had been placed with care across the threshold and a snake nailed into the head beam above, Its lung and stomach pulled out from its jaws.

Evil, here, let itself be known with a thoughtlessness that spoke of confidence.

Yet belies only arrogance.

Still deeper she stalked.

Here now, the passages seemed to change.

Becoming… almost clean. The layers of dust less and debris oved to the corners of chambers.

Had the Jarl sent another before her? some hapless mage to scout ahead, or perhaps a priest to cleanse the filth awoken from Wolf Scull Cave. She hadn't passed any fresh bodies…

And surly… surly the Jarl would have spoken of it.

She flushed, suddenly almost warm.

The opaque-pale thread pulsed.

Something in her gut curled.

Something isn't right.

In the stale room, something pulled at a thread of memory, unravelling her concentration. A scent in the air. Almost subtle, yet not enough subtle to be well hidden, hidden as it seemed to be.

Pulling the face grad of her helm aside, she touched a hand to her face, pooling magicka to her palm to cool her forrid.

The blood and her kind. Yet it seemed two deliberate to be –

The opaque-pale thread reacts her this action. She stills. Had she become linked to this stand of magicka?

Could she influence it?

Her dulcet tones echoed about the room; a trigger word announced: "Sapphire."

A stone, once used in codes by the Wolf Queen. An anonymous stone to mark an entrance to something hidden – a hunter must know her prey.

Stone gave way.

Strange.

Curious.

Deliberate?

She sighed and pulled free her mace; the dragon bone about the top sharply fractured and cruel to behold.

The opaque-pale thread pulsed.