CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

~...BUT DO NOT WASTE A DROP~

PART ONE

Solen glimpsed the first parapets through the shredding sea-mist as the velvet sky began to pale, too straight and even to be the frozen points of icebergs. It roused him from the meditative dive within, surface thoughts pulling him sharply and at once back to the present. "That was it, right?" he muttered, as the silhouette disappeared again behind a plume of cloud.

Beside him, Adusa-daro nodded. Her hood was down, her ears pricked forward, her dark eyes steady. "No more sailing, walker. We approach."

"Good. Much more night sailing and you'd have to chip me off the wheel with an icepick." Solen shivered and dusted the frost off his mantle; even wrapped in three cloaks with a scarf around his head and ears, it was just so desperately, bone-gnawingly cold. He fumbled for the flask of grog at his hip, finding refuge in the fiery liquor. "Suppose you'd better go rouse the others."

"In a moment. Five-claw, this one has warned you already of the blood of the ancients. Ingerien, Falgravn, Essenia, Tzinghalis…"

"All names I couldn't hold in my head if I tried. Were all the old vampires so pretentious?"

"Fairly. But each were clawed in ways that distinguished them from their own. Masters of blood rite and necromancy, conjurers beyond the planes or engorged with the strength of sea giants."

"I got a taste of all that already. Gendolin was very anxious to show off in the Chantry."

"But, Solenarren –" The wisdom of millennia glinted silver in the Ravenwatch's eyes. "– stolen power is not earned power. It knows it does not belong in the threshold of his youth. Held to him by thread, not engraved into his bones. Only give it the opportunity, and it will abandon him."

Solen touched his quiver, where the single sunhallowed arrow lay snug amid a nest of vanes. If Auriel's Bow wouldn't bring that opportunity, he doubted anything would. It was difficult to forget Gendolin's fleeting agony when the Bow had empowered even a simple arrow. This would work – only give him one clean shot…

The Ravenwatch nodded at the steel in his eyes. "Zira do. The fight must be short, Dragonborn, and in sunlight, if you can. All the ancients were bound by the same great weakness. It will be your best strength."

"That and the Thu'um and a pissed off werewolf. Maybe two. We'll see where the fighting takes us." An ice sheet erupted into splinters ahead of them; the Reverent's webbed fins flashed through the ruin of bergs and down again into the velvet water. The sea-fog slipped again, a gap in the plumes, and the silhouette of Castle Volkihar briefly loomed out at them again, dark and ice-clad, high above their heads. The Bluefire steered almost in its shadow. "Satakal's eyes, that's a big spooky castle. No wonder Fiirnaraan didn't want to hang around. We're not too close to it, are we?"

"Not in this fog."

The vampire slipped away, and Solen leaned on the wheel, half adrift again in his thoughts and the quiet that was destined not to last. The fog was eerily radiant, a ghostly light of its own beneath the dwindling stars, and some luminance lay upon the sea, highlighting distant stretches of sea-ice. Beyond the Bluefire's prow, however, the sea lay dark and clear. The Reverent had subsided, and all to be heard above the waves was the creaking of the ship's timbers swollen with frost.

Letting the heavy wheel hang, Solen stepped across the quarterdeck and leaned over the port side. "Psst, hey. Spiky and Sneaky." The frigid water, black as tar, slithered back around the Dragons' heads, each attentively affixing him with blank blue eyes. "There's no more ice ahead of us?"

"Okaaz lo gahvon."

"The sea lies clear."

"Good. Great job, you two. Now stay hidden until I call. You took Lord Pretentious by surprise last time, maybe you can do it again."

"Mu hon. We hear."

"Mu thaarn. We obey."

They slid noiseless back beneath the surface as Nostibar's rough chuckle reached Solen's ears. "Still can't get over you talking to the beasts like that."

"I've always talked to the beasts, Nosti, these ones just talk back. Wheel's all yours, but we're nearly there."

"Aye, so Adusa mentioned. Aela's rousing the others, quiet-like. Assuming they slept."

"I hope so. Did you?"

"Eh. Snatched a bit. What about you, you damn insomniac? Feeling ready?"

"Give me a day, I'll come back to you." Solen mulishly set his elbows on the railing. He could hear the fighters stirring down below, and wondered yet again if he ought to have come alone. Really, chasing down the World-Eater ought to have been the pinnacle of formidable pursuits in his life – he'd followed him into the realm of the Nordic dead! – but at least the warriors who'd fought with him in Sovngarde had been dead and proud of it, and Voice Masters to boot. A hundred volunteers who'd had all of three days to train themselves to a battle with a vampire lord who'd husked over a dozen ancient predecessors, most of those being from the legendary Gray Host, just didn't hold a candle.

I could call on them, Solen thought suddenly, reminded that such a Shout existed – but the inspiration deflated as quickly as it came. Sovngarde rejected the beast; those ancient heroes would surely reject his call, and he slumped again in a gloom. They made their choice. I made mine. Stick with it and keep your eyes on the prey, dummy.

The strains of an all-too-familiar ballad intruded, hummed slyly into his ears. "Show me the true colours of the night; And I'll show you a flame that burns the brightest...!"

"Oh, get out of it, Nosti."

"What? It's catchy!" Nostibar grinned. "If there was ever an occasion for it…"

"Nostibar, please. I'd rather not." Solen exchanged the port-side railing to the one beside the helm. "None of that happened, anyway. The storm, the fires, the name-yelling… It wasn't a nobly Shouting Dragonborn that killed Movarth. It was just another monster."

Nostibar pursed his lips. "Well… the best ballads always bend the truth a bit. Sometimes a monster killing monsters is just what it takes, eh?"

"I guess. Werewolves are pretty great vampire-hunters. They're a lot harder to fool."

"To fool? What, like with magic tricks?"

"Sort of. Vampires are great illusionists, especially with their words. They know how to climb into your head. But werewolves don't think as much as mortals. Too impulsive. No room for second guessing or being charmed by our own doubts, just bloodlust and the brute strength to enforce it, limb from limb. Course, that's the weakness, too. Forget all reason, just chew arms." Solen sighed. "Gendolin's forced me back to this life. Just watch him spin it against me. He knows I can't pull a Bow and claw his arse at the same time."

Nostibar was the picture of thought. "Well," he said, "tempting you into doing something stupid's hardly a new weakness." Solen snorted, and Nostibar shook his shoulder. "But you always got yourself out of it. Always. That salty sucker's got nothing on you, Shouting Dragonborn or not."

Solen smiled a little. Gods, it was good to be with him again. He straightened briskly and shook off the doom with the frost. "Oh, there'll be Shouting, Nosti, in either skin. I hope. A friend recently taught me the secret to this neat little trick he can do with his Voice. After all those blistering nights at the helm, I think I figured it out." Oddly enough, it'd been much easier meditating here than in High Hrothgar. The soft susurrations of water and the murmuring timbers he knew far better than snow and old stone.

"It's not going to make a lick of sense to me if you tell, is it?"

"Probably not. But… remember how we used to dive for pearls off the Auridon coast? It helps when I think of it like that. Sinking down to a secret world. It was always so quiet down there…"

"Well, whatever crazy magic you're brewing up now, I'll look forward to it. Which reminds me…"

Something jangled golden across Solen's eyes, resolving into two brass hoops across his palm. He would not have been more astonished if Nostibar had given him the jewels of the Emperor's crown. "These aren't…? My old sea-hoops, Nosti! But we buried these in Sentinel!"

"And I un-buried 'em when I retired, just in case." Nostibar pulled back his swaddling scarf enough to reveal his own old corsair-hoops dangling under his ears again. "Near forgot about the whole thing, hah! Then out the wardrobe they suddenly came, tangled up in the old scarf I was looking for."

Solen thumbed the old earrings – blighted and worn in the familiar old corners, but the brass was still bright as the day he and Nostibar had pledged to adventure across the continent. He'd worn them every day aboard the Wandertern – burying them beneath the sands when they turned from the sea had felt like the right thing to do. "And what's inspired this profound nostalgia now, instead of, say, the beginning of the voyage?" he asked, wincing as he clipped the hoops in place. His lobes had long sealed up.

"Well – suppose all this reminds me of our Wandertern skirmishes. Specially that one with the damned sea-snake, hah! Call them a good luck charm, they'll see us through this storm too."

Solen cracked a wry grin. "Forget Shouts – Gendolin and all his ancient power have nothing on a sailor's superstition."

The fighters were coming topside now, in restless pairs and quiet clumps, bundled in cloaks and gripping their weapons. The fog tore again, like a curtain pulled; somehow they all grew even quieter as Castle Volkihar manifested before their eyes again, a looming spectre against the ink-black sea and the star-flecked sky just starting to pale in the east. The fog that gusted back no longer wholly concealed it.

Nostibar clapped Solen's shoulder again, more sombrely. "Get your helmet, Solen. I'll bring her in."

It seemed the castle was the island, as its size consumed most of it; it was a colossus as vast if not vaster than Castle Dour. The shore that was left to berth the Bluefire upon amounted to little more than a paltry stretch of pebbly earth dusted with sea-salt, overlooked by the lonely remnant of an old watchtower. The lights that shimmered out at them through the misted darkness eliminated the last vestiges of doubt from Solen's mind; they were expected.

The fires naturally seized the raiders' attention as they swung themselves over the railing or traipsed down the gangplanks. They were scattered everywhere across the shore, and led up towards the castle, little fires of eerie hue and eerier nature, pulled by a non-existent breeze. They weren't red or even green, but indigo, burning without noise, heat, smoke, or even, apparently, fuel; they flickered up from the very stones themselves, which couldn't mean anything good. One of the fighters cautiously tried to prod one of the clusters with the tip of his sword; Sirilla Scipiata whacked it down with her own. "Don't touch what you can't name, icebrain."

"Do not touch it even when you can." Adusa-daro's eyes flashed molten silver as they warily roamed the indigo flares. "That is soulfire, used only in the oldest and strangest of necromancies. It is a catalyst rarely seen."

"I've seen them before." Solen sprang down from the prow, his boots thumping hard on the gravelly shore. "In Dimhollow Crypt. They'd unsealed Serana's sarcophagus." For a grim moment he wondered if this was meant to be some sort of gruesome message about her fate. But they can't be. Gendolin needs her alive – so to speak.

But these ominous flares certainly meant something notorious; the chill that hung stagnant in the mist didn't only come from winter, and Adusa-daro's agitation was unhidden. "These were not here before," she growled, settling a hand on the sword at her hip. "Var, var, var… What has Gendolin done to ignite them, and why?"

"Pretty sure I've found the what." Aela had drawn ahead of them; her voice was taut.

Solen didn't see the corpses until she pointed them out. Then they were everywhere, torn apart like New Life wrapping, the gruesome torment of their demise etched grotesquely into their pinched and blood-striped faces. "They're vampires," Solen realized slowly, as his disgust became bewilderment. "They're Volkihar vampires. That's Volkihar armour, right?"

"It's their armour," Beleval confirmed, nudging a dismembered arm with the toe of her boot. "It's fresh. Days old, if not hours."

Nostibar slung himself onto the shore. "If this is some elaborate trap, they've gone a curious way about it."

"LAAS YAH NIR. No, they're definitely dead-dead," Solen muttered, as his Whisper revealed no ruddy auras, "and definitely not getting up." He paused. No, there was one aura, up towards the castle. Enormous, yet oddly faint.

"We should burn them," frowned Beleval.

"We should figure out why Gendolin killed them first." At their questioning stares, Aela added shortly, "Who else ripped them apart?" She kicked a limbless torso towards them, and it rolled to stop at Solen's feet; through the tattered folds of its armour, all saw the ghastly talon-wounds that striped through to the bloodless flesh beneath.

"Well then," said Solen, delicately stepping around it, "colour me stumped. He knew we were coming. Why kill his own thrall?"

Sirilla adjusted her shield, attached to the claw-like appendages on the end of her stump. "Did the bloodsucker know we were coming?"

"Oh, he definitely knew we were coming." A little further up the shore, highlighted by a knot of soulfire, stood a short pike with a desiccated head thrust soundly upon it, much too artfully arranged to be anything but a taunt. Solen approached the effigy gingerly, wondering if Gendolin had murdered someone else dear to him, but the head was almost too withered to recognize, slackjawed and blackened as if burned. Or husked. A scarred brooch depicting the horned skull of Molag Bal had been savagely crushed into the forehead.

Adusa-daro sniffed once and confirmed Solen's suspicion. We finally meet, Lord Harkon. Solen glared around it to the featureless visage of Castle Volkihar, looming above its arching bridge. Not in the way either of us expected, I'm sure.

Sudden impatience seized him. Whatever design the master of the Volkihar was writing in the flesh of his thrall, Solen wasn't facing it chilled and half-blind in this wretched fog. One challenge would be met with another, and he drew breath. "LOK VAH KOOR!"

In the dead quiet, his Thu'um erupted with scorching volume, and the fighters flinched behind him. What little wind tugged at their cloaks fell wholly away, and the sea-fog vanished to bare the stony island and the strange story on the shore in its whole. The macabre painting of disassembled vampires revealed itself yet more distinctly to the raiders, who cursed renewed oaths of revulsion. They hadn't been slaughtered in a senseless madness, Solen realized, staring on the scene afresh; they'd been dragged, arranged, and latticed by the faintest wisps of light, reminding him vaguely of a summoner's ring. All this for the soulfires dancing on the largest rocks? Even in the air becalmed by the Thu'um they continued to sway, tugged by that strange non-existent wind… tugged in the same direction. All towards the castle, high on its arched bridge, which had been blockaded by something immense and hulking and undusted by snow. It perplexed Solen for a moment. It looked too soft to be rubble, too vast to be a gargoyle. He couldn't quite make it out.

Until it moved.

Wings as tattered as moth-eaten curtains, the long fingers of bone showing through, unfolded jerkily in a creaking flourish; a chorus of horror rippled across the shore as the Dragon slowly uncoiled, roused to open attention at the roar of Thu'um. It can't be, Solen thought, almost numb to the clattering growl that gouged their ears, and yet it was – neither live nor dead, but undead; a living carcass, garbed in its own rotting flesh, and in places it had entirely sunken away, exposing dark cavities between the bone. Wasted tendons rolled beneath the shrivelled scales like wet rope, and its dark hide turned green with rot was cobwebbed snout to tail in threads of viridescent slime, wasting and reforming before Solen's horrified eyes in an unending cycle of decay. In the dark hollowed sockets of its skull flickered glaring pinpricks of the same soulfire that glowed across the shore.

Never had anything – anything – filled Solen with such revulsion and dismay. What have you done? Ignoring Aela's urgent hiss, he reached for Eldródr. In all the gods and daedra, Gendolin, what have you done?!

But the Dragon did not move from its perch of the bridge; it crouched there, surveying them silently, blockading their only way forward into the castle. Aela hissed his name again, and then Solen saw; a shadow had detached itself from the parapets above and paced languidly into their sights, black as the void against the snow-encrusted castle roof. His hood was down; his silver hair glowed like fire against the dying stars.

"I wondered if you'd bring company, Solenarren." Gendolin's voice carried easily across the stilled air, as frigidly courteous as ever. There was a short, contemptuous pause. "If you could call it that. Is this the mighty Dawnguard that I've been warned to fear?"

Solen felt that terrible itch on the back of his neck, and he forced that temptation down. Not now, not yet. Gendolin remained much too far for a bowshot, and the sun was yet to rise. "It was kind of you to make us a welcome mat from your own chattel," Solen barked back, sounding humourless to his own ears. It was very hard to completely tear his attention away from the abomination that faced him.

"A necessary waste." Gendolin strode further out, cat-like on the edge of the battlements. "Valerica's guardian needs a little more than a feast of the wilds and the fear of an overlord to sustain himself here. Do you like him, Dovahkiin?" As if to add insult upon the insult, he pronounced the Draconic perfectly. "Perhaps you would like a moment to introduce yourselves? He is a great believer in civility among warriors."

Solen shook his head. This was too much. Too much. "What did you do?"

"I killed him, Dragonborn, just like I'm going to kill you. But unlike Durnehviir, there's no return for you." The monstrous Dragon turned his head, and Gendolin nodded once. "Show them."

The Dragon faced Solen again, a terrible creaking breath gargling through the sagging folds of his desiccated throat as he gathered himself to Shout. Solen tensed, but the Dragon thrust the Thu'um not at him or the ones behind, but almost to the sky; a cacophonous cry whose words Solen could not distinguish; he only knew it was a Shout which he'd never heard before, that struck a dark and dreadful chord deep within his own soul.

Why became apparent immediately; the pebbles of the shore quaked, and the soulfires flared like infernos. The ground erupted in crawling shadows, and the Solitude fighters cried out and pulled at once away, amassing together shoulder to shoulder as all around them bodies pulled themselves from the earth – tens of them – hundreds of them – fleshless bodies of black bone, that ghastly indigo flame ablaze in their socketed skulls. Some crawled bare, their ebony skeletons awash in a dark purple glow; some were armoured like Draugr, their weapons suspiciously reminiscent of their summoner's own bones; some were wraith-like, their lower halves black mist and their bony fingers encrusted with ice. All of them were silent as the grave. Aela's arrow lunged forward with all its usual savage grace; it glanced off the intended skull as if it were made of solid metal. "What are these things, Solen?" she snarled, a second arrow pulled taut to her cheek. "What did it do?"

"Dragon-necromancy's sort of a first for me, Aela." Solen hefted Eldródr grimly as the horde of skeletal conjurations closed with slow certainty around them. "The last one I knew just raised his own kind, and they weren't really dead."

Gendolin vanished from the ramparts and reappeared at the base of the bridge in a swirl of bloody mist, still in his Bosmeri skin, smiling that wretched gloating smile of his. Now he was in easy bowshot, if not for the two dozen conjurations now between them. "Their souls are yours, Durnehviir. But the Dragonborn is mine."

"So it will be, qahnaarin." The ghoulish Dragon leaned forward and opened his wings.

"So that's it, then?" Solen braced himself, the great battle-blade across his centreline. "No more talk, straight to the killing? Not your usual style."

"This is my domain now, Solenarren. Here, your clamour will not avail you before the silence of the void." It seemed Gendolin had no intention of waiting until the sunrise. Magic kindled between his fingers as the Dragon Shouted another word, this one commanding. The creaking horde converged steadily on the knot of fighters, their baleful eyes numberless.

And Solen understood, strangely enough. A mass battle on the castle shores goaded his better nature to stand and fight this accursed horde with his comrades, blade to blade, with a Dragon to slay to boot. In such chaos, Gendolin could weave his surprise like a cloak, and snatch the Bow amid the madness of the fighting. He felt the other's ravenous gaze pinned to him like a knife to his neck, searching for that opportunity, devouring his every move.

Solen held that hungry gaze boldly as he lowered Eldródr's point and thrust the mighty battle-blade upright into the soil. I'm not here to play your games. Not this time.

It was dreadfully uncomfortable, standing passive and wilfully disarmed amid such mounting danger, with every learned instinct as a Companion and discovered one as a Dragonborn bellowing quite the opposite in his ears. Gendolin wasn't the only one perplexed; Aela growled his name, Adusa-daro hissed it, someone else muttered more rudely about him freezing up at a time like this. Solen ignored them all and in further violation of his instincts, closed his eyes, and sent his thoughts inward.

All those frigid nights of meditation had simplified to him what he'd never mastered on dry land. Below stringing surface thoughts and tensions, below the ever-lurking temptations of the primal spirit, he dived to the depths of his soul where all was still as glass, to that strange and secret place in his core where the Thu'um was free in the silence, though he could never long hold his breath.

Not that he needed to dwell there long. Just long enough. The power formed, unfettered and pure, and raced his opening eyes.

The world pulsed a gorgeous hue of sea-blue; the black-boned creatures before him vanished in shreds of white dust as the unsung Shout striped an aisle through them. Solen thought he glimpsed Gendolin's smugness meld into surprise before he was flung bodily off his feet. Even Durnehviir buckled on his perch, staggered out of his ascending flight with a rattling roar of astonishment.

"I beg to differ, Gendolin." Solen swung Auriel's Bow from under his cloak. "Silence has a lot to say for me too."

Arrow met string, and the Bow sang in his fingers as a dream. Gendolin was still straightening up as the strike met – there was an incandescent flash as the sunfire-ignited arrowhead impaled the darkness of his armour, and Gendolin shouted with pain and staggered almost prone again. Incensed at the cry, Solen almost reached for the sunhallowed arrow, nevermind that the sun wasn't up yet to call upon, but too late – Gendolin vanished in a blur of mist and skimmed under Durnehviir's wing in an unmistakable retreat.

The thrill of the hunt instantly ignited in Solen's veins, heady as mead. "You can handle this," he growled, snatching up the battle-blade once more. "I'm going after him."

"We're," Aela corrected sharply. "Keep your head, brother."

"You're not leaving us with that?!" Sirilla barked. Her words were near lost as Durnehviir at last ascended into flight, the ghastly ruin of his undying body made even plainer against the paled sky. "We signed up for vampires, Dragonborn!"

Ordinarily he wouldn't, Solen would've said, but the beast was clamouring in his ears – Gendolin had fled – fled like prey – back to his den, wounded and startled, a cornered hare. But he wasn't so far gone yet, and filled his lungs with his answer. "MID VUR SHAAN!"

A second brighter flash of blue illuminated the shore, and the battle-taut fear among the assembled fighters became audible awe; the iron and steel in their hands had attained a brilliant blue sheen, as if their weapons of war had been whetted from the ether itself. But the Shout of Battle Fury kindled more than weapons; a rallying roar climbed from every throat as the bristling knot of defensive steel offensively erupted into a cavalcade of battle's chaos. No menace from the ebony-boned fiends compared to the euphoric exhilaration of battle-maddened Nords, and whatever fell magic knitted them together dismantled as the empowered weapons found their marks. "Let's make a deal, Tribune Scipiata," said Solen, tucking the Bow over his shoulder. "Handle this bunch and I'll gut the other guy, aye?"

Sirilla Scipiata might've smiled. "Aye, sir."

Durnehviir suddenly dived towards them, readying himself to answer in kind with a Shout surely ominous. Solen looked up and whistled, needlessly; from either side of the narrow shore the Reverent launched from the black waves in gleeful ambush and glorious synonymity, drowning Durnehviir's bewildered cry with their challenge. The abomination outsized them, but they outnumbered him; jaws and talons each met tattered wings and almost wrestled the undead Dragon out of the sky. Together they writhed in thundering tangles, and amid the fighters' hopeful bellows rose Nostibar's bark of laughter. It made Solen grin as he lunged away from that mad mess towards the Castle Volkihar's doorstep, at last unimpeded, Eldródr humming in his hands. He thought he heard Ataf singing as he launched himself up the bridge, his shield-sister just a step behind.

The portcullis was lowered; Solen's Thu'um flattened it like wind-bent grass and bowed the grand double-doors almost off their hinges. Snatching a breath, he glanced sidelong. "Ladies first?"

"By all means," Aela replied, waving him forward. Solen winked his green eye at her and with great satisfaction bowled the doors down, as behind them the first strains of sunlight spread across the Sea of Ghosts.

Solen hadn't frequented many castles across his adventuring career, and he didn't think Yokudan ruins really counted – but the interior of Castle Volkihar was no less oppressive than those buried temples in the sand. The great hall, only a short antechamber from the door, was dimly-lit by candlelight and crushingly dark where it was not, not a shred of window to be seen in the arched stone walls. There was an undeniable courtliness about it, with three long wooden tables laden with sleek silver crockery, and elegantly carved chairs to seat, overseen by viewing balconies, with banners of regal tapestry either side of the empty throne. All of it tainted by bloodstains dried fast into every crevasse, its iron scent hanging heavy in the stagnant air.

"Well?" Aela prompted softly, her grey eyes searching every shadow.

Solen whispered, blinked, then frowned. "He's not here."

But Gendolin had been, and recently – the wolves' loathing scorched acrid against their throats, until Solen had to throttle Eldródr's hilt to stop his hands trembling. They contemplated the coldly regal hall below them, stairs unrolling at their feet. The barren shadows felt almost goading.

"You know this'll be a trap," said Aela.

"I'd be shocked if it wasn't."

"We stay together."

"Of course."

They descended from the viewing balcony and into the hall, instinctively keeping their backs to one another, treading softly on the tiled floor. Everything looked far worse closer-up; stains of blood and worse than blood were etched into every wood-grain, hints of the vile entertainments the Volkihar enjoyed here. "Somehow I thought Skyrim's most reclusive cannibal cult would be cleaner," Solen muttered, because the sheer silence of the castle was becoming unbearable. "Still, nicer than I expected, considering –"

The ground opened under his feet without warning, tinted red – for a moment Solen was suffused with a queer feeling of being strangely stretched, then pulled downward as if he'd been tied to an anchor. He heard Aela shout as the checkered floor rose past his eyes, then all became a black and crushing dark that strangled the fright in his throat. The next thing he knew, he was crumpled on all fours with the breath knocked out of him, Eldródr threatening to skitter from his fists.

And there goes that idea, Solen grimaced, reaching for his scattered wits. Wherever the magical trap had sent him, it was completely black, deathly cold, and reeked of decay. Coughing, he began to push himself upright, and baulked as the floor slid in fragments under his hands, clattering in a hideously familiar manner. The ground was covered in bones.

He shot to his feet, breathing hard, and pulled Eldródr against him. He should've seen the faint glimmer of its enchantment, but he may as well have been blinded. Had he been? His heart raced, quicker than a seasoned cairn-diver's should have. He'd fallen into tomb-traps before, wandered crypts as dark as these – but there was something unnatural about this darkness, something menacing, something almost alive. Don't think about that – think – Shouts – what Shouts –

But there was no Shout for light, and something warned him against fire breath. Was he alone in this crushing darkness? He was in a forest of heartbeats, or was it just his own, pounding a madness? Within him the beast strained at his bones, infuriated at his paralysis, urging action. Was the air getting heavier? Did things whisper in the black? Was Gendolin watching? Smiling, laughing, at the helpless Dragonborn lost and blind in the dark…

Fear suddenly mingled with anger. I'm not helpless! He'd seen battle after battle and triumphed – watched faces twist and pale on the end of his sword – splintered bones between his teeth like crackling pig –

Wait, what? Had those thoughts been his?

Calm down. You're losing it. Yet in the darkness they painted themselves with unsettling clarity across his senses, reminding him of warm things, of powerful things, of places and times when he was neither afraid nor helpless; of the exhilaration of a kill, of watching the life drain from their widened eyes; of how easily a struggling body yielded to pulp under claw and fang, and just how sweet their fear tasted on the tongue, shredding like spun sugar into his hunger –

Gods, enough! Was he going feral? Solen clutched his head, felt a weight he couldn't fight crush him to his knees. Stop it. Stop it! Yet they couldn't… yet he couldn't stop – memories paraded across his skin, tantalizingly comfortable against the crushing cold. The savage joy of a Dragon's terror; the thrill of a horrified cry as the beast revealed its glory; Rayya flashed across his eyes, reminding him too. He deserves to see that side of you.

No – not like this – it's what he wants – get out of my head! But the darkness was alive in him, pressing him down when he fought to surface. The wolf thrashed under his skin, boiling with rage against the lightless menace, clamouring for consciousness, for those pounding hearts and warm rivers – and he could taste them now, that exquisite quivering life –

Something clattered beside him with a metallic hum. An odd noise, out of place – when Solen opened his eyes, hardly aware they'd been scrunched tightly shut, he saw light. Auriel's Bow had slipped from his back and lay luminous beside him, as if the dark and all its hideous enchantment loathed to touch it, as warmly reassuring as a lantern after nightmare. "Oh," he managed, "so now you decide to be shiny." He seized it and felt at once as if something receded from him. His heart slowed, the clamour quietened, and even the malevolence that had bowed him lost its numbing hold. Not that it wasn't circling him still, seeking any chance to set him mad again.

The Bow it is, then. Awkwardly Solen scabbarded the battle-blade and staggered upright. Focus. Danger remains. I'm not alone here. Calmer now, he heard those other hearts beating with his own in this crypt – only the undead didn't have heartbeats. He revolved in place, the Bow's newfound light raised searchingly against the blackness, and nearly dropped it as a gaunt face manifested into sight.

Dead-eyed, vacant, pallid-skinned and clad in bloodstained rags; the woman gave no indication of Solen's presence. He staggered back, almost into another, a man who stood with his head tilted, the better to bare his scarred neck. They were everywhere, under every column and arched ceiling, numberless bodies living yet lifeless, raggedly clad and pale as ghosts, eerily tranquil and devoid. Solen's thoughts were numbing again, this time with a horror entirely his own. Vampire thralls he'd seen, luckless brigands and beguiled villagers, but this... this... The fate that he'd so famously rescued Morthal from lay bared and blatant in the Volkihar's undercroft. Cattle. They're cattle. And worse was that within that crowd of will-stolen slaves was a face he knew.

Emaciated in withered robes and sagging skin, scarred and encrusted with dried blood, blind eyes still as marbles and sunken deep in their sockets – Dexion Evicus showed no trace of recognition or memory. The breath froze solid in Solen's throat; he did not know whether to approach or retreat from the Moth Priest who'd so bravely sacrificed himself for a desperate gambit. I sent you to this. The guilt was nauseating. I did this to you.

"You can't save them."

And that was the last voice he wanted to hear right now, disoriented in this evil darkness – Solen seized an arrow, but there was no target to aim for. "What is this," he snarled, "hide and seek?"

Gendolin spoke again, his disembodied presence everywhere and nowhere. "Why do you fight for them, Solenarren? Why do you champion their lies?"

"I've been dying to ask you that same question." Calm down. Solen drew a slow breath, forced down the temper that had renewed, and dived. LAAS YAH NIR. The thralls' auras drowned his vision in every direction, impossible to tell one from the other, let alone Gendolin's, and his fury deepened. Still one step ahead.

He chose a direction at random and prowled warily between the will-stolen chattel, cracked skulls and gnawed femurs rolling beneath his heels, his ears straining for the other's echoes in this crypt of stone. "You just couldn't keep this a simple Sacrament. You had to take the scenic route. You've made it so painfully clear I'm your white stag, why go to all this trouble to kill off the whole herd?"

But whether through enchantment or some other natural disgrace, Gendolin's gentle voice was echoless. "You placed me here, Solenarren. The Volkihar and their prophecy is the closest anyone since my Dark Family has come to the truth."

"What truth?"

"That the world you so valiantly uphold is but an illusion. A sweet dream. A great mortal lie."

This isn't working. Solen stopped. Every raging instinct urged him after the voice, to hunt it to its hated source – and that must be exactly Gendolin wanted. A trained assassin and luck-blessed thief was going to have a far better time of fighting in the dark than he would, and no offensive Thu'um wasn't going to catch these blank-eyed bodies in its crossfire. Likely why the bastard's gotten mouthy again.

Remember the hunt, Solen. Remember his. He needs the Bow and he needs me dead. Solen set forward determinedly, seeking out a wall and the doorway it'd eventually lead to. As ill as he felt to put these languishing prisoners behind him, he could do nothing for them now; if he found his way out of these catacombs, Gendolin would follow. "Sounds like Vyrthur's crazy lure just got to you too, Gendolin – you know it was all a lure, don't you? Or did you miss that part?"

Gendolin laughed. "I know that old fool's sad tale. I learned all their stories in their unweaving verses as I spun them into mine. I have only seen how they all braid together."

"Now you're not making sense at all."

"Solenarren, Solenarren, it is simpler than you think."

No sooner did Solen round a corner, and glimpse a doorway and stairs ascending, when the floor peeled open under him and he was stretched down into it. Not again! For a sickening moment all became turbulent blackness again, and then the ground slammed up under his feet and buckled him clumsily forward. He struck clean stone this time, and the air didn't hang so heavily repugnant on his tongue, though the cobwebby staleness of ruin wasn't a pleasant replacement, and the darkness was as thick as ever.

But it wasn't absolute. As he stood, threads of light like scarlet ink painted a crimson spectacle upon the black canvas. In moments vast trees surrounded him, bigger than any he'd ever seen in Skyrim, the girths of their trunks greater than cottages and their canopies well-lost beyond the ceiling, with their roots swathed in lush grass and elegant latticed designs growing straight from their living bark. Wary and amazed in equal measure, Solen nearly missed the figure that stepped languidly across his path. He acted at once, but the arrow sliced only a bright and fruitless line; this Gendolin was as illusory as the forest he'd conjured.

"You may be a legend, but I am the storyteller, born of great storytellers. Masters of the verses that teach us our shape, singers whose words weave present, past and future into one." The shade turned his head; his brow was crowned with antlers like a yearling buck's. "Do you know of them, Dragonborn? Or did you think such power belonged to Dragons alone?"

Something inconveniently curious wormed its way through the simmering rage. "I suppose you're about to enlighten me."

Gendolin smiled and raised his hand. "When you are raised a weaver, you learn to see the patterns of the verse. In every story of Y'ffre, in every song of the Ehlnofey, the same chorus echoed; of fear and hunger, the strife of the spirit entangled in the illusion of good and evil. I never truly understood them until I learned to Listen."

The illusion altered with artistic tranquillity; a great skull took form against the interwoven boughs. "It was she, Night Mother, who showed me what the patterns made; the truth mortalkind has divided and disguised, because they fear its face. What does it look like to you, Solenarren? The sum of all limits? The Shadow that gifted the change? The serpent that devours itself in an endless cycle?"

In those pitted sockets Solen felt that dark and deathly cold reflected, and those abhorrent thoughts began again to plague his mind. He gripped the Bow, warm and safe as the morning. "I know evil where I see it, Gendolin."

"You only think you do." Gendolin stepped in front of him. His antlers were gone; he held them in his hands, crossed across his chest. "Do you condemn the wolf for its hunger, when it unearths a fox's den and devours the squealing kits inside? When something is true to itself, it is neither good nor evil. But mortalkind does not want to be the ravenous predator or the timid prey; mortalkind wants to be above them both; for mortalkind fears the great inevitability of the Void – so around them they spin an illusion of safety, where the light blinds them to the dark desires they fear to acknowledge, and shut their ears to the verse that shapes all creation.

"And they live in a lie, Solenarren, a great mortal lie. Good and evil does not exist; those instincts you so nobly revile are who you are, as you were shaped to be. All of time's great heroes like you have ever chased, ever stopped, are the shadows in between. That is why you are sparks, fated to flare and fade away when this stagnant world is safe once more."

"And maybe that isn't a bad thing." Solen pulled the Bow half-taut until sunfire kindled on the arrow's bodkin tip. "Heroes like me exist to make sure the world's a little more than hunger and fear before day's end. That's why we just keep popping up when death-zealous gits like you come along to stir the pot."

The red illusions faded behind Gendolin's shade, leaving them standing together in the crushing murk. "It's awakening inside you, and still you refuse it. I would pity you, Solenarren, if Sithis did not call for your silence."

"For someone who claims to worship death you've got a funny way of showing it, vampire."

Gendolin opened his arms, let the antlers slip from his fingers – and again Solen was dragged into the floor. He held his breath and braced himself, and when the ground rose up beneath his boots he was ready for it, and managed to keep his feet. But he didn't land in darkness; this room was lit enough to see by, if biting cold. It was almost like being in the Chantry again, complete with the ice barrier, although this time it encased him in a perfect dome – and in place of a horde of frozen Betrayed was a deeply unsettling gallery of vampires, larger than life and captured in ice. Lunging humanoids, towering wingless monstrosities, vampire lords of all shapes and sizes, each statue jaggedly postured in pretentious arrangement. Solen had a nasty suspicion that each one had a name.

How many did the Ravenwatch say? Gods, Gendolin was busy. Don't come alive, please don't come alive, he thought, knowing full well they were probably going to. An arrow loosed against the walls of his cage confirmed that this place was no illusion, but both arrowhead and the Thu'um that followed it proved the barrier was as resilient as Vyrthur's had been.

Wonderful. Solen paced on a floor as smooth and clear as polished glass, trying to jog his thoughts to a solution out of this trap. "If your new master plan is to wait for me to freeze to death, Gendolin, you must be desperate."

"Ah, Solenarren. Surely a little cold won't quell that fire and fury." This voice was different – this voice was present – yet he couldn't place where. "But what will it take for you to yield, I wonder?"

Solen squinted among the icy sculptures for a glint of amber eyes or a shadow out of place. "There's the snag, Gendolin. I don't."

Gendolin laughed delicately. "Life always yields to death. Light always yields to darkness. Yield the lie, Solenarren, and show me who you really are."

The beast was gnawing at his temper again, yearning to tear, to bite. "Oh, you'd love that, wouldn't you," Solen growled, fighting down the prickling maddening his neck. "Is that how you intend to sever me? To make me... how did you put it? Warp and wither? To lose myself is to lose, is that your angle? Keep trying. I don't voice the hunger within. I'm nothing like you."

"Aren't you?"

The voice sounded from right below – Solen looked down and baulked to discover Gendolin perfectly mirroring him beneath the ice, his long hair free and his scorching eyes aflame. The vampire paced a slow and mocking circle. "What a beautiful dance we have led together. The Last Dragonborn, and the last scion of Sithis, our fates intertwined upon the final breath of a dying world."

"I know about Fate," Solen muttered, watching his 'parallel' pad about, "and the End Times – and both of those champions got real preachy too, until I shut them up."

"Through your valour alone? Or something... else?"

There was an awful amount of hint in the leer, and Solen stiffened – for a moment the unnatural hatred and the cruelty of those Thu'um pulsed under his skin. He's bluffing, he thought at once, he doesn't know. He can't know – barely anyone in Skyrim's even seen either of those Thu'um spoken –

But Gendolin had Serana – and she'd witnessed both across the frozen lake, learned their stories and why in their weeks of company shared. A chill crept up Solen's spine as his gaze wandered the frozen gallery again. Gods, what had been done to her to learn this of him? Had she been 'unwoven', too?

She can't be, he thought again, Gendolin needs her – just as he'd needed those Shouts to see his old destined enemies to their graves. For a wavering moment he was reminded of the lengths he'd gone, he'd had to go – the powers touched to break the World-Eater's wings, the bargains he'd made to the Prince of Fate, the screams as Mora carved that final Word of Power into the flesh of a dying man –

Enough! Solen jerked his head, shuddering. There was no other way!

"You know who you are, Solenarren." Gendolin had moved; he slid up through the floor, ghostlike through the solid ice, and through the barrier he smiled at Solen's turmoil within. "That which you deem evil is only the denial of true nature. Do you see? No difference exists between the blade thrust through the heart or the dagger across the throat. Everything you think you are – everything you ever fought for – the purpose you thought you knew – nothing but a gilded lie."

He was flesh and blood, no illusion, so close yet untouchable – it was almost too much to bear. Solen grappled down the urge to throw himself at the wall between them, Thu'um, arrow, blade and fist. That's the animal talking, not you. Focus! "There is every difference," he growled.

Gendolin tutted and shook his head. "That is why you will fail."

"Enough glamours. What is your damned point?"

Gendolin stepped closer, his smile gone. "My point is that Tamriel is as condemned as you, Solenarren – I champion them because this prophecy is only the next verse in the covenant of time. You yearn to halt the change, forgetting that the empires of your fearful people have always carved their ascendance in the blood and agony of others – where all that separates the righteous from the wrongdoer, the glory from the shame, the triumph from the murder, the mighty warrior from the reviled animal, is a dwindling illusion where good contests evil, day contests night. Your great mortal lie is the tyranny of the sun – and you, champion, are its final, brightest tyrant. Until you yield to the call of my world, and all you are is silenced."

It dripped with all the venomous assurance of promise from the Chantry – and peculiarly enough, it calmed Solen. He understood. He almost smiled. It was simple.

"The scenic route," he repeated. "It doesn't matter what you dress it in, Gendolin, or what bedtime story you spin around it; it's still just you and me. Your hatred and mine. Your power and mine. Your unfinished business and mine. There's nothing illusional about our contest." He forced the beast blood back on its haunches, silenced the lurking memories of guilt, and leaned forward, glaring into the vampire's burning eyes. "For someone who prides himself on listening, brother Elf, you just can't seem to get it between your ears – that no matter how loudly Sithis calls my name, I'll always be louder. I won't yield. Not to prophecy, not to the Void, not to your fancy knife, and most certainly not to you."

Gendolin's gaze was deep and bright as a dying hearth as slowly, serenely, he slid through the barrier. "You will."

But the mesmerizing compulsion which had once held Solen spellbound failed to master the beast within; it bit him hard in the spine and jerked the Bow from Gendolin's reach with a jealous growl. Awake and furious, Solen lunged, and his knuckles just barely grazed Gendolin's jaw before the vampire lord retreated in a swirl of mist. Abruptly the dome around him shattered, and Solen flung an arm over his eyes, cursing against the lacerating shards.

A frigid wind snatched at the hem of his cloak, and his ears filled with the ominous, almost musical whine of groaning ice. The statues all around him had come alive in a symphony of hisses and creaks, their arms and talons lengthening into spears of sinister intention. Whichever way he turned, they were there and closing in, a tight and inescapable ring of lethal enchantment. Oh, Ruptga! Solen drew a frantic breath to Shout as synonymously they attacked, lancing him from all directions –

Solen gasped. There was no agony – there was no ice. His eyes opened to a grim stone floor and a long stone corridor, at the end of which were stairs ascending. The Bow was in his hands, and he was not the least bit impaled.

A dream? Illusion? Solen scrambled to his feet, suspicious and woozy. He couldn't say where the lines had blurred, it had all felt alarmingly real. Was this an illusion, too? It didn't feel like it – then again, those visions hadn't, either… Come on – pull it together, Solen. You're still no closer to tracking Gendolin down, and when you do – no more words, whatever happens, just the fighting ones. Got it?

Got it. He'd lost enough time already. A wall lay behind him – it seemed the only way to go was forward and up. Solen set a fresh arrow to his string and set off at a run. You know, Gendolin, I miss when you just kicked me in the head and called it a day.