Chapter 8 – Aiding the Light

The ignorant will tell you that all vampires are the same, while those with a little knowledge would declare that vampires in Skyrim are called the Volkihar. Neither is true, and believing either can get you killed. Centuries ago, a coven of vampires from Clan Cyrodiil, the bloodline that dominates the province of the same name, migrated to Skyrim and wormed its way into the cities of our beloved home. While other clans skulk at the corners of the world, it is Clan Cyrodiil that will most concern the aspiring hunter. They are not to be underestimated, but also not to be feared by the well-prepared hunter; their greatest weapon is concealment, and once brought into the light they can be destroyed by any of the accepted methods. The first part of this book will deal with revealing these creatures as they hide among us, and the second with exterminating them once they have been unmasked.

However, every hunter in Skyrim must be aware of one other threat that lurks always in the night. I speak of the once-mighty Clan Volkihar, who can move undetected through ice and mist; warp the minds of mortals so that their prey walk willingly into a deadly embrace; and even, it is whispered, transform their very bodies into hideous and bestial forms that confer upon them a host of unholy powers. Once, these horrors terrorized all of Skyrim and the eastern extremities of High Rock, but time and the tireless work of brave hunters have all but ended their rule of the night. Today, they are a shadow of their former selves, and while numerous diluted strains of the Volkihar bloodline can be found in remote caves and holdfasts, they are rarely seen hunting amongst the populace of Skyrim. However, they should not be disregarded, and cleansing a Volkihar den should only be undertaken by an experienced and well-equipped hunter. The third part of this book will deal with what we know about this clan, and how best to combat it.

Isran at-Elinhir, Vigilant of Stendarr, Introduction, On the Hunting of Skyrim's Vampires, 4E 188

Lydia grunted as she drove her sword through the wolf's neck into the ground. Its final whine trailed off and she turned to see how her thane had fared with the final foe. The last of the wolves was running full-tilt for the rocky hill from which the pack had ambushed them. Velandryn's eyes were intense and his bow sang as it loosed; the arrow punched into the wolf's flank and sent it staggering to one side. The wolf continued to limp away until her thane loosed one final shot and brought it to the ground. She followed him as he closed with the fallen beast to finish it off, but it had expired by the time they got to it.

"Did they give you any trouble, my thane?" They had been watering their horses in the gathering twilight when six of the lean black wolves had rushed from the thicket surrounding a craggy hill jutting out of the plain. Fortunately Lydia's bellowed taunts and swift movement had let her draw four of them; two had managed to engage her thane, though it appeared neither had landed a blow. She had watched him set one ablaze, but had been forced to engage her own enemies and had not seen the fight transpire.

He shrugged. "Wolves don't like fire, it seems. A taste of my magic, and they panicked. After that, it was easy."

Lydia frowned. "You seem very calm about it, for someone with so little experience in battle."

"The beasts I've seen since arriving in Skyrim are, with a couple of exceptions," His lips twitched and he raised a finger to gesture briefly skyward, "more hunting than battle. Compared to the things living in the wilderness back home, these wolves are nothing. I grew up on stories of blight-maddened nix hounds rampaging through homesteads and herds of gravid netches menacing whole towns. I'll take these wolves any day."

"In Skyrim, there's a good rule to live by. The further north or higher up something lives, the more dangerous it is. Mountain wolves are fiercer, and ice wolves are nastier still and twice the size of the tundra wolves on top of it. So, keep your eyes peeled." She had no desire for overconfidence to get her thane killed.

"Lydia, you do know you are something of a spoilsport, right?" He approached the hill without waiting for her reply and regarded a cozy-looking cave that looked to have been where the wolves had made their home. "What about here for the night?"

It was a good location, save for the danger of any surviving wolves from the pack. When she voiced her qualm, however, he pulled out a soul gem and grinned. He is getting better at it. His smile still looked forced, but was no longer frightening. "That first wolf was kind enough to donate its soul to guard us tonight. I can set up a barrier that will hide the entrance from any eyes, and more importantly, noses. Any wolves will be confused, but even if they find us, we will have plenty of warning."

"My thane, did you pick this location so you would have a chance to practice this…sorcery?" She knew that soul gems were not truly necromancy, but the idea of using a soul's energy to fuel magic still made her uncomfortable.

He gave no answer as he worked on the spell, or ritual, or whatever it was; his finger passed over the rock walls and the stone blackened as he scribed intricate designs around the entrance. He held the soul gem in his left hand, and light pulsed from within. As she watched Velandryn work, she noticed their horse had come up, and felt a brief flush of shame for forgetting about them. Fortunately, they were as well-trained as had been promised. Her thane was clearly unused to being around horses, but made for a fair enough rider, all things considered. That being said, she was grateful that they had not been attacked while mounted. That could have ended badly. As it was, the cave was large enough to hold them and the horses, and even had a few plants rooted in the cave floor that would give them something to graze overnight. Not the worst place, all things considered.

She left the cave briefly to gather wood for a fire, and returned to find Velandryn standing within a ring of symbols around the cave mouth, tossing the soul gem from hand to hand as he stared out into what was now nearly full night. As she passed him, she heard him muttering under his breath in what she assumed was the Dunmer tongue. "My thane? Is anything amiss?"

He stopped his mutters and held the soul gem up. "Just waiting on you. Let's see if this works."

That did not sound as certain as she would like. "Is it in doubt?"

His focus returned to his work. "It's only Illusion, so worst case scenario is that we see, hear, or smell something very odd." He gazed at the array, and his next words seemed as much to himself as to her. "I wasn't able to layer tactile input into the array, as the sigils to fool the mind are significantly more complex than the ones already laid down and would be haphazard at best given the crudity of the construction. So, that won't work, and using Alteration sigils would also prevent smoke from escaping unless integrated on a piecemeal basis. And I'm not nearly confident enough in using integrated ritual arrays to trigger cross-disciplinary effects to try my first one under these conditions. So, we hope nothing touches the barrier tonight, or we have a guest."

Lydia thought she could follow the basics of what he was saying, even if the precise principles and a few of the terms eluded her. However, she remembered that ritual and conjured sword, and could not help but make one final remark. "Be careful, my thane."

"Always, housecarl." His hand glowed with violet light, and he held the soul gem above the center of a spiral pattern on one wall. When he released it, it stayed in place, rotating slowly. Purple light flared out along the symbols above and below the gem, and Velandryn moved his hands gently over the symbols above him as they flared into life. He spoke softly in his own tongue, and she was unsure if he was activating them, guiding the magic from the soul gem, or merely praying over them as they worked on their own. When the final symbol, directly opposite the soul gem, glowed, Velandryn sagged against the cave wall and turned to his audience. The horses looked somewhat spooked, and as Lydia looked at both a rock wall and the view beyond it, she could not help but feel a tremor of unease. My thane uses magic. I knew this. I will become comfortable with it. It was easier said than done, however, so she began setting up the fire to prepare dinner. They had pouches of dried meat and hardtack, but earlier in the day Velandryn had brought down a pheasant with a well-aimed burst of flame, and that sounded far more appetizing.

As she plucked the bird and her thane inexpertly shed the horses of their saddles, she got to thinking about what they were going to do. Killing vampires was no easy task, and while she had done so in the past, it was usually just a single bloodsucker holed up in some damp cave or the basement of an abandoned home. Besides which, she had had a full contingent of the guard to assist her. Here, they would have only whatever Vigilants and Dawnguard were there, and she knew little of one group, and nothing at all of the other. The Vigil hunted Daedra worshippers, she knew, but other than that and how to recognize them by their garb, she was at a loss. "My thane? What do you know of the Vigil and the Dawnguard?"

He had finished with the horses by then, and moved to sit across from her. He thrust one hand into the unlit wood and the whole thing flared to life. She had to admit, it was nice to have someone who could do that on the road. "The Dawnguard, only what the ones in Whiterun told me. They hunt vampires, and think the Vigilants are fools. So, I agree with them on their core tenets." She finished cleaning the bird as Velandryn looked into the fire thoughtfully. "The Vigilants, I have to say I don't care for them one bit. They are not…nuanced in their views on Daedra, and I have heard unpleasant stories about what happens to Dunmer who practice our faith too openly in Cyrodiil. In Cheydinhal, I had the chance to see the Vigilants bring down a 'dangerous Daedric cult,'" his voice dripped sarcasm, "that numbered four in all, one of them so old she had to be dragged bodily out of the house. They worshipped Azura, and prayed for guidance in troubled times. The Mythic Dawn of old was dangerous, to be sure, but the Vigilants have gone too far in the other direction. They are overzealous thugs, and I'll shed no tears for them." He accepted his half of the bird, tore off a chunk, and held it above the flame with a bare hand. The meat cooked, and his flesh did not.

Not for the first time, Lydia was left to wonder about how odd it must be to be able to stick your hand in fire. "My thane, I must say that it still strikes me as very strange to see you do that."

"The fire, you mean?" He gestured at their bedrolls, where his thick furs took up nearly twice as much space as her thin fur-lined hides. "That first night on the road, I thought you might be playing a joke on me with that bedroll. Every time you think it odd what I do with fire, I feel just the same about you and cold. I've taken to just adding frost resistance potions to my water skins when the winds start howling." A smile danced through his eyes, a momentary light that she would not have caught even a week ago. "You Nords, though. In the farmer's house, there you truly surprised me. I knew you were strong. I didn't know you were that fast."

"Did you think I was going all-out on you in training, my thane?" The old mutt had only wanted to lie down before the hearth, the farmer said afterword, and must have thought the guests occupying its favored place would not mind some company. When Lydia had been awakened by a cold nose in her ear, though, years of restive sleep and midnight drills led to the poor mutt cowering in the corner as her half-conscious battle cry brought the farmer, his wife, and their children thundering into the room to see what had happened. She knew her face was reddening now, though it would be difficult to see in the cave, and prayed to all the Divines that he hadn't figured out what that meant for humans. He might display dignity around those who knew him only as the Dragonborn, but the real Velandryn Savani had shown that he enjoyed poking holes in his housecarl's professional demeanor, and would be entirely too pleased with himself for the rest of the evening should he figure out how easily he had embarrassed her. The best way to counter that, she had found, was to put him on the defensive. "You yourself seemed none too pleased, my thane. Disappointed that it was not someone else in your bedroll, someone more…amorous…that woke you?"

Lydia noted with interest that while he apparently did not blush red, the darkening of the skin around his eyes shouted out his embarrassment to the world. Useful. The farmer's daughter had been a woman only by the most generous definition of the word, but she had flirted relentlessly with Velandryn from the moment she laid eyes on him. Lydia would have wagered good gold that only a few years before, if that, the girl had been playing with dolls and wooden swords, but now she seemed intent on seducing the Dark Elf. She had not even known he was Dragonborn at first, though learning that only intensified her advances. To her thane's credit, he had been both unfailingly polite and unflinchingly proper, though the girl could not seem to take the hint. When she had entered the room after Lydia had encountered the dog, it almost seemed that she had taken the time to rumple her sleeping shift in as titillating a manner as she could manage. She had not managed to attract Velandryn's interest, but did at least succeed in raising her parents' ire. When they left the next morning, the girl had not been there to see them off. Lydia was getting better at seeing through her thane's dispassionate façade now, though, and his discomfort with the whole ridiculous situation made it a potent weapon.

"Housecarl, you should not be lecturing me, given how her brothers were with you." Velandryn's voice was light, but she had no idea what he was talking about. The two had been good solid lads, twin brothers a few years older than the girl, but nothing they did had been inappropriate in the least.

"They were very kind, my thane, but nothing compared to that girl."

"Lydia. Are you going to sit there with a straight face and tell me they were not trying to impress you? That they were not acting like f'ghan to make you notice them?"

Putting the Dark Elf word aside for the moment, Lydia tried to cast her mind back to that night and focus on the twins. One was dark and one fair, but both had been the soul of courtesy. They had been perfect hosts, offering the choicest cuts of meat and making sure her cup was always full. One had shown her a woodcarving he was working on, and the other had asked her to spar with him, though she had not had the time. They had even had a good-natured competition going to see which one could make her laugh more—

Oh, gods. Oh, Mara save me. She could console herself for her blindness by knowing it was due to the camaraderie and casual affection of the Whiterun Guard that she had missed the signs. Besides which, Nords valued playing host to guests as a sacred tradition, and it was not unheard of for wanderers to receive treatment far beyond what even a family member could expect. Or, as was now looking increasingly obvious, sheltered children living dull lives on a farm had tried for a bit of excitement.

She ran her free hand through her hair, hiding her face from her thane. When she glanced at him, his eyes were burning with a cheery light. "Enjoying yourself, my thane?"

"You have no idea." He tore a chunk of the bird with his teeth and chewed thoughtfully, eyes still alight with that laughing gleam. "You would have done well to take advantage. Make them fight for your favor, or just take them both. Nords are open about these kinds of things, I've heard."

"We are, but bedding your host's children is frowned upon in Whiterun, as in all decent places. Besides which, they were…" No sense in hiding it; he find out sooner or later. He had never expressed any interest in her that way, so it shouldn't change anything. "They were men, so I had no interest in them." There.

He nodded. "A good policy, I've always found. Men are far more trouble than they are worth."

She was confused. What in Oblivion was he talking about? "My thane, I do not understand…"

"I don't care for Men in a great variety of ways. Philosophically, religiously, culturally…just can't stand you lot. I think it's the ears. All rounded and short."

The hint of laughter in his eyes kept her from growing angry, and she suppressed annoyance that it had taken her until the end of his little joke to catch on. She had noticed that he had seemingly taken her words after the feast to heart, and was making an attempt to give and take humans and elves in a lighter humor. Besides which it seemed that of the two Dunmer she had ever known, neither gave much of a damn who she chose to bed. It was better than the handful of Nords who had grown angry when they learned she would never be interested. Of course, she could not let his jibe about humans pass… "You are not half as funny as you think, my thane, but I know that you deeply admire humans, and your words are merely an attempt to hide your elven jealousy."

"It eats me up at night, Lydia." He leaned forward and fixed her with an intense gaze. "I wake myself weeping when my dreams end and I am Dunmer once more." He traced lines on his cheeks, mimicking tears. "I try slathering rancid cheese on myself and hitting myself in the head with rocks, but it just isn't the same as truly being a Nord."

Lydia did not smile. There was no need to encourage him, but she felt a twitch of her lips that might have given her away. "And I tried shoving a stick up my ass, but my ears won't go all pointy. Any advice on that?"

Her thane snorted. "You speak of matters beyond your mettle, human." His voice took an air of mystery. "First you must go to the hidden isle of Artaeum, and harvest wood from the Silver Hist to forge your stick—"

Lydia threw an apple at him. He tried to catch it, but wound up losing his balance, the apple, and half his roast fowl. The rest of the meal was spent in companionable silence.

After washing his dishes, her thane stood and moved over to their gear. "A quick bout so you don't break your record of pummeling me strange colors every night, and then I'm for sleep. Wouldn't want to deprive you of a nice long watch."

Lydia had learned much about her thane since meeting him, but his sleep habits still seemed at odds with his heroic destiny. No ballad she had ever heard made mention of the hero going to sleep early, or growing unfocused if kept awake through the night. Her thane preferred to be making camp by sundown, and asleep well before the moons climbed high; if he could accomplish that he would be rested and restored by the time he woke for the second watch. Lydia had no such problems with remaining awake and generally associated going to bed early with disobedient children, but as someone who despised the predawn hours with a burning passion she was just happy another was willing to take the morning watch. She had to give him credit for a kind of discipline, however; even when there was no watch to be had, he always rose early and was alert by the time she dragged herself out of her bedroll. She had a suspicion that rising before the dawn had something to do with his religion, but being neither especially religious herself nor knowledgeable about the Dunmer faith, she decided to leave it be.

That evening, they sparred unarmored, a single blade each, one hand, live steel. Her thane was showing constant improvement at swordplay, and though he would always be smaller than any Nord foe, his strength was improving and his agility was impressive for a novice. His decision to sacrifice a shield for magic ran counter to her every belief about melee combat, but she supposed that it was her job to stand as his shield should one be required. She knew that he considered this training at best of secondary concern and largely did it to keep her happy, but he was already improving, and she had noted with satisfaction that his body was beginning to show the results of his training. He would never have the musculature of a Nord, but the visible changes meant her regime was having an effect. Whatever it takes to keep him alive. At the end of the day, a housecarl's duty was to protect their thane, and Lydia took her oaths deadly serious.

After they had concluded their sparring and Velandryn had healed his bruises, she settled in to keep watch from the cave side of the illusion. Behind her, she heard a faint scratching sound and turned to see Velandryn working rather than sleeping. He had a mortar and pestle he had gotten in Whiterun, and the small leather-bound journal where he recorded his discoveries and mistakes was open on his lap. The pack in which he stored his various alchemical ingredients lay at his side.

"Try not to poison yourself again, my thane."

"It was a very potent magicka restoration potion, and if not for that side effect, would have been quite useful." He finished whatever he was writing and put the journal away. "I found an interesting insect today and wanted to see how its various parts would respond when introduced into a solution containing extract from tundra cotton. Only the wings reacted, if you were wondering."

"I wasn't, but thank you for sharing your discovery. Get some sleep, my thane." He settled into his bedroll with a grunt, and she resumed her position watching for any danger that would chance upon them in the night. Let it come. She would be ready.

While following the map had proved fairly doable for the most part, one they got into the mountains where Dimhollow Crypt was located their progress slowed considerably. They had sheltered last night in a tiny settlement called Heljarchen nestled in a valley at the end of a winding mountain road, left their horses there early this morning, and spent most of the day clambering over rocks trying to find the crypt itself. They had encountered neither Imperial nor Stormcloak patrols, as the area they were searching was far too remote and inhospitable to be of much interest to either side. The Dawnguard member who had given Velandryn the map had done a good job of copying what he had, but it quickly became apparent that whoever had made the original was exceedingly optimistic about what qualified as a 'road' or 'landmark.' The mountain slopes were littered with goat-paths and false ends, and more than once they found themselves returning to areas that looked depressingly familiar. Finally, as the shadows began to lengthen, it looked as though they had succeeded. Six horses were tied up before what Velandryn assumed to be Dimhollow Crypt. Two were barded with Dawnguard colors, and the others with the blue and gray of the Vigil. Of the riders, there was no sign.

He had never actually fought a vampire before, but he knew the theory, and had a general idea about their strengths and weaknesses. He had heard that there was a particularly deadly clan in the far north of Skyrim living beneath the ice. The…Volkar or something, I think. Most likely, though, those in Dimhollow were nothing more than some degenerate offshoot of a real clan. Just freakishly fast and strong bloodsuckers cursed by the Lord of Rape with immortality and an insatiable hunger. Simple really. He had a brace of potions in traveler's vials on his belt, and a dozen doses for curing disease stashed were throughout his gear and in his saddlebags. He had given Lydia plenty as well, and hoped it would be enough. He silently recited the first line of the Litany of Azura, and felt the magicka within him roil in response. Lydia had shown him the proper way to hone his blades, and he had oiled his bow and strung it with new gut. Within him, his eagerness at the chance to best a new foe warred with dread over facing it. Dov drives me forward, Joor keeps me safe. They weren't separate, not really, his dragon and mortal halves, but it helped to think of it like that. Hopefully the Greybeards could help him reconcile this imbalance. "Are you ready to do this, Lydia?"

"I am, my thane." They were both fully armored, but she wore heavy steel where he had the fine leathers gifted to him by the jarl. Her helmet hid most of her head, and the spaces between the steel plates were hard boiled hides over leather and wool. Any vampire that wanted to sink its fangs into her would have to carve open a hole first, possibly with a battleaxe. Her shield had a steel boss and rim over some dark wood, round in the Nord style and painted in the gold of Whiterun. She had asked him if there was some symbol or color he would prefer, but it had made him uncomfortable to tell someone else what to do with their own things, and he had demurred. This shield was also a gift from the jarl; the one Lydia had carried into battle against Mirmulnir, and that Velandryn had used to save her life, was hanging above her bed in their chambers in Dragonsreach. This new shield was so heavy that it took him two hands to carry it more than a few paces, but Lydia was deceptively quick with it, and a part of him looked forward to getting a chance to see her use it in a real battle. All in all, she made a formidable sight, and he felt more than a little grateful to have her as his housecarl as he followed her into the cave.

The cave entrance opened up into a cavern that Velandryn would ordinarily have liked quite well. Water ran through it in several small streams, and light from cracks in the ceiling speckled both the ground and the few small plants that had made their home here. One side of the cavern was dominated by ruined stonework of some sort, likely part of the crypt that gave this place its name. The scene was marred, however, by the corpses sprawled at the far end of the cavern, before a tunnel leading down.

"My thane, come and see!" Lydia was standing over the bodies, and as he approached, he saw what had drawn her interest. Five bodies lay there, two in the robes and armor of the Vigilants, and two more that looked to be bandits or mercenaries. The fifth, though, was unusual. As first glance, it looked to be a man of middling age. It lay sprawled on its back with half of its torso blackened and burned and three crossbow bolts sticking out of its chest. It was the face, though, that was so very wrong. The eyes were open, and glinted dully in the half-light. They glinted with golden light, and the face around them looked almost animalistic in its aspect. The nose was distorted, with slit-like nostrils, and a pronounced crease ran down to the mouth. One hand had fallen into a patch of sunlight, and now only a pile of ash dirtied an empty sleeve. Another pile of ash and clothing lay in a pool of light nearby, enough volume to account for an entire corpse.

"Vampires, but different." Lydia seemed torn between interest and disgust.

"How?"

"The face. As far as I know, we only have the Cyrodiil Clan in Skyrim. They…blend. They look like us, though their eyes glow red when they get hungry. I've killed those, but never seen something like this."

"So, what is it? Another clan?"

"Maybe. There was some old clan way up north in the distant past, a clan or two that came over from High Rock back in the Third Era, and I've heard that some will sneak in from Morrowind every now and then."

"Likely true. The Vvardenfell clans were all wiped out during the Red Year, as far as I know, and the Temple does a fairly good job of keeping decent folk well-educated and safe from those that have avoided our hunters. Some might have looked for easier prey in Skyrim."

"Well, whatever these are, at least they die. Let's press on, my thane. It looks like the Dawnguard could use our help."

He left the bodies there; he noticed with some amusement that that someone had already stripped them of their potions and valuables. He would return after and collect some of the dust from the vampires, however. It was a procedure he had only ever read of, but one that yielded a potent and valuable alchemical reagent. "Let's go then. And Lydia, eyes open. I don't want these things getting the drop on us." He marched towards the tunnel down, roughly hewn out of the stone.

"Of course, my thane."

He saw no need to tell her about the inert array that covered the wall around the tunnel, scribed in a magical language that was wholly unfamiliar to him. A large chunk of it was missing, likely smashed through with brute force. Someone hid this place. On top of that, he knew enough about magical theory to feel very uneasy from that array's implications. He knew at least a little about most of the major elven and human schools of thought with regards to magic, and this array belonged to none of them. The closest parallels would be…Daedric. That was all wrong, though. This looked like a Daedric array from a certain point of view, but it was lacking key unifying concepts, which should have rendered it very weak. The fact that he could still detect it after its destruction, however, meant that it was anything but. Clearly it belonged to a school of magic unknown to him, and the idea that there was something so significant that he did not know ate at him like a hunger. Without the central component, though, he could not tell anything more, but it was a mystery that weighed heavily on him as they moved deeper into the crypt.

As they exited the tunnel into a burial chamber lined with alcoves, Lydia was scanning the walls and ceiling, hoping to get a glimpse of any foe before it could ambush them. She had not needed her thane's advice to be on her guard when dealing with vampires. Even in houses and common basements, vampires were tricky; in a tomb such as this, she had no doubt they could work even worse trouble. However, it seemed that the battle had already moved on. In one corner was a pile of corpses, though they looked far too old and dried to have been recent kills, and the doorway leading further in had another pair of corpses before it. One was another of the strange vampires and the other one of the mercenaries or bandits in their ragged hides and leathers. She nudged the corpse of the non-vampire with her boot. "My thane, be on your guard. Some vampires use thralls to serve them, and I think these might be some such."

He nodded, but his attention was on the desiccated corpses in one corner. "Aye, I'll do that, but I'm more worried about those." He gestured, and one of the corpses rose jerkily to its feet. Blessed Talos!

"Down, my thane!" Lydia rushed forward, and removed the thing's sword arm at the elbow with a single strike and its head with three quick blows. The torso stood there, swaying, slightly, and Lydia recalled stories of undead that kept coming even with limbs hacked off. She bull rushed the abomination, slamming her shield into its chest and driving it to the ground. As it crumpled onto itself, its body dissolved into ash and scattered around them. She readied her shield, and waited for something else to come from the pile. Behind her, she heard Velandryn sigh.

"Lydia, in the future I will warn you before reanimating a body, and you will do me the courtesy of not destroying my reanimations. Do we have a deal?"

"Ah, yes, my thane." She had known that the Dark Elves practiced necromancy, but she still considered it a revolting practice, and the sight of her thane performing such spells coiled in her gut like a poisonous worm. "My thane, about your—"

"Later. I am relatively unskilled at reanimating dead flesh; if these had been dead for very long, the memory of life would have been gone, and it would not have risen. Someone killed these, and within the last few hours." He adjusted his leather helmet to scratch at his scalp. "What do you know about draugr?"

"They are the walking dead. Is that what you think these are? I'd heard stories, but never had reason to disturb any tombs before this." She emphasized those last two words, just to drive home the point that her life had been relatively normal less than a month ago.

"They aren't just walking dead. Any necromancer can do what I just did and innervate a fresh corpse. These are guardians, bound to their resting place, like the ones I encountered in Bleak Falls Barrow. And they aren't dead. Not truly, at least."

"Wait, what does that mean, and how is it you know this? You've killed them before at Bleak Falls, no?"

"Some, but not cleanly." He sat on his heels and cut into one of the corpses with his dagger. He had insisted on keeping the crude iron weapon with the scorched hilt for some reason, though she had insisted he have it well-honed at the very least. "Farengar had a report from some scholar who made a study of them. Supposedly they served the ancient Dragon Cult priests, and were…gifted…with eternal servitude. They roam their burial chambers and attack any who disturb them. Look." He held up the dagger, and she studied the dark smear on the blade. "This is their blood, or what is left of it. The blood of a dead thing. They are bone-dry, and burn easily, but this scholar thought they had some hint of life left in them. Supposedly they fed the priests with their unlife. Have you heard anything about this? I'd like to know more about this Dragon Cult, and what magics their leaders used to bind the draugr as they did."

"I would imagine the Greybeards know, my thane." Occasionally, the Dragonborn would descend into a sort of reverie, engrossed in whatever oddity had caught his interest. When this happened, it was best to humor him and encourage him to move on. Right now, she did not want him dwelling on how best to bind someone to an eternity of service. She knew, or at least hoped, that his interest was just academic, but she had seen that he burned with curiosity for the strangest things, and her scant knowledge of the mythical cult was unlikely to be enough to sate his appetite.

At any rate, he pulled himself away from the corpses, and took the lead for the next tunnel. "Draugr are deceptively fast, and single-minded. They won't stop until one or both of us are dead." He loosened his sword, and fire surrounded his hands for a single moment as he flexed his fingers beneath his thick leather gloves. "Downward we go."

They heard the fight before they saw it. They were descending yet another gradually sloping tunnel when they heard the clash of steel and raised voices ahead. Lydia stopped, hand raised in a fist, before motioning them forward. They moved slowly onward, and Velandryn was finally able to see not only the Dawnguard in action, but vampires as well.

The cavern was low where they entered it, and rose to a bluff overlooking them at the opposite end. Directly in front of them, two warriors in Dawnguard armor and one in the armored robes of the Vigilants were locked in melee with a brute in tattered leather armor, a yellow-eyed swordswoman who moved like a striking snake, and another Vigilant. This second Vigilant's puppet-like movements and gaping wounds revealed it as the automaton servant of some spellcaster. The culprit was fairly obvious, perched on the bluff above. This vampire was male, heavily bearded, and flanked by three skeletons. Two of the skeletal minions were firing into the battle below, while the third simply stood there with a huge axe, guarding its master. The Dawnguard and Vigilant were heavily pressed, and they were giving ground even as Velandryn watched.

Velandryn met Lydia's eyes, and gestured upward. "I'll distract the caster, I want you to break those three down there, then close with the spellcaster if he's still up. Hit the vampire first, you'd likely have to chop that dead Vigilant to pieces to slow it down. I'll try to keep the archers occupied." He focused, and the air around his hands ignited. "Ready?"

"On your attack, my thane."

He opened with a pair of fire bolts; he intentionally made them very weak, only barely strong enough to maintain cohesion and speed. One went slightly wide, barely missing both the skeletal archers and the vampire, but the other found its mark and impacted the vampire, who gave a shriek of pain and unleashed a torrent of lightning into the air. Lydia's bellowed battle cry followed his housecarl as she charged towards the melee fighters. Shield braced before her, she did not slow down as she passed within half a span of one of the Dawnguard members and slammed full tilt into the vampire woman. The bloodsucker hissed as she staggered back, and the thrall immediately broke off its assault on the sole surviving Vigilant to flank Lydia instead. She met its mace with her shield, and scored a hit under the thrall's guard before pushing it back and spinning to face the vampire again. By this point, the Dawnguard member who had been engaging the vampire moved up and crushed the thrall's skull with a swing of her warhammer. Velandryn discerned this through glimpses while firing at the vampire on the ledge and ducking from the arrows loosed in retaliation. Almost. He popped out from a fold in the cave wall and hurled two more fireballs, as weak as the ones before had been. This time, instead of hitting the vampire they fizzled out on his ward. Now. He gathered magicka in both his hands, draining himself all but dry. He placed the tips of his fingers together before him, and the air between his hands first turned to red flames, then blue. Pain lanced through his hands, and he knew that neither his natural resistance to fire nor the magicka wreathing the flames was sufficient to protect him for long. He rose, and released the final bolt of flame, feeling the familiar emptiness that signaled his magicka reserves were depleted. He watched, fascinated, as his missile streaked towards the vampire. The blue fire had reverted to a reddish hue as soon as the magicka sheath from his hands had dispersed, leading to a projectile that was larger than those previous and misshapen with magical flame seething within. The heat it radiated caused the surrounding air to shimmer and deformed his view of the vampire and his minions. By Azura, quite the fireball…

It was a cardinal rule of battle magic that any counterspell should be just stronger than the spell against which it was deployed. There was no sense, for instance, in making a ward of monumental strength to resist a Dunmer who was clearly only capable of conjuring meager fire bolts. In Farengar's library, there had been spell tomes detailing the use of wards. It was very Nord-like, he had thought, to focus on a spell that functioned the same as a traditional shield. The tome also insisted that this class of spell belonged to the School of Restoration, when any half-wit could see that it belonged in Alteration, though that was a semantic argument if anything. While the Dunmer traditions generally emphasized the use of shields that completely surrounded the caster, Velandryn was willing to accept that concentrating protection in a single direction had its uses. More interesting, though, had been the fact that the amount of magicka put into a ward had to remain constant. Too little, and it would fail to retain its form; too much, and it could overload and cause backlash. To adjust the strength of a ward, it was necessary to either be using a specialized ward spell which required significantly more finesse and magicka to activate, or to dispel the ward and summon another. Velandryn's gamble was twofold, but if this vampire was anything other than a skilled battlemage, his shield should be utterly annihilated by Velandryn's feint and strike. It was foolish to rely entirely on that though, so Velandryn readied his bow and nocked an arrow tipped with a rather nasty poison he had been working on for the past few days. I may whip up ten potions to inure myself against the cold for every other one I create, but the poisons are the most satisfying.

The fireball arced in, and the vampire extended his hand, and the ward with it, to meet this newest attack. Whether he had seen the difference in this bolt, Velandryn did not know. He could only wait, arrow drawn to his cheek and tip trained on the bearded vampire, breath held both in anticipation and to steady the long shot. Half a second before the fireball would impact, he loosed. Better to spend an arrow needlessly than regret the shot not taken, said Tuthon Kall. He had no idea why it was the words of a Breton four hundred years dead that came to mind, but he saw no way that taking the shot could hurt.

He never saw the moment of impact, only the eruption that billowed from it. His arrow vanished into the conflagration, and he thought that surely his ploy had succeeded. Nothing could emerge unscathed from that maelstrom of fire; the vampire's ward must have collapsed. As the flames cleared, he saw no sign of his foe. Where the vampire had stood was nothing but bare earth. The back blast had destroyed two of the skeletons; only one archer remained, once again firing unhurriedly at the battle below it. Firing…There was no skeletal binding he had ever heard of that allowed survival past the caster's death. Ice ran down his spine, and his stomach began a descent to the floor. He was suddenly aware of the shadows in the corners of the cave and of the darkness shrouding the ceiling. Stories of how vampires could vanish entirely in anything besides full sunlight raced to the forefront of his mind. A whisper came from somewhere, a noise that might have been a flutter of cloth or nothing at all. He saw no trace of any foe. Before him, the battle was going in their favor; the reanimated Vigilant had crumbled away, and the vampire was fighting fiercely but futilely against four foes. Perhaps that skeleton belonged to her. Perhaps it was bound by ritual to this place. Perhaps he was worrying for nothing—

A hand clamped down on his shoulder from behind, hard and cold and painful. Nails bit into his skin, and another hand gripped his head, wrenching loose his helmet and pushing his face down, baring his neck. He tried to twist away, but the strength in those cold hands was beyond his ability to overcome. He was pushed down, and something wet and cold pressed itself against his neck. A soft, slithering thing swept over his skin, and he thrashed, yelling incoherently, trying to break free from the creature's probing tongue. He heard Lydia's cry of alarm as though from a great distance, and saw through hazy eyes his housecarl racing towards him. Twin pains pierced through him, and nausea filled him as he realized what was happening. Panic rose, and as the vampire began to feed, his vision blurred and darkness crept in. No! I will not become—I will not! The magicka available to him for spells had been drained from using his fiery barrage and was not yet fully recovered, but he had one final card to play. He had burned another foe, the bandit from his first battle in Skyrim, in a similar manner. It would take every ounce of his magicka; he would need to pull even the latent power from his blood and combust it in a single stroke. My blood…Through the pain, he grinned. Then, the flames came.

He rode the fire, feeling it course out of him. He shivered as his last drops of magicka ebbed away, and thrust the burning ruin of what had once been a vampire off of him once the flame had run its course. To call Red Mountain's wrath and burn the magicka from one's blood in a cloak of flame was a technique of last resort, immensely powerful but leaving the user drained. Common knowledge held that it took a full day and night to restore the body's magical balance to the point where it could be used again, though some mages could recuperate more efficiently. It was also damned exhilarating, feeling yourself on fire without any pain or danger. Velandryn stood there, swaying gently, letting the peace that came after a battle suffuse him. On the ledge, the skeleton collapsed in a clatter of bones while closer to hand Lydia and the three she had aided rushed to him.

"My thane!" His housecarl's face was drawn, and her eyes were wide and bright. "Velandryn, speak to me! Are you okay?" She pulled him around and inspected his exposed skin, focusing on his head and neck. Under different circumstances, it might have been amusing how easily she handled him, her overbearing strength when compared to her ostensible master. Not these.

"I've been bitten." As he spoke, his hand was in one of his belt pouches, rummaging around for a potion. He had specifically put it in a special bottle, smaller, leather-lined, and distinctive to the touch—

There. He raised it to his lips and downed it eagerly. It tasted foul, likely because a key ingredient was mudcrab innards, but heat ran through his body, and relief followed soon after. He had no idea if he had contracted the vampiric disease from the bite, but he didn't want to find out the hard way.

Eventually, Lydia determined that he had no further injuries, and let him go. "How do you feel, my thane?"

"Fairly good, circumstances considered." He became aware of the others around them, the Vigilant bleeding from a few cuts, and the pair of Dawnguard looking surprisingly collected given where they were and what they had just been doing. "Greetings. I am Velandryn Savani, this is my…partner, Lydia of Whiterun, and we are offering aid in cleansing this place of vampires." He made an effort to stand straight and project confidence in his voice. He had found in Whiterun that the tone he had used for sermons back home was also very useful in making Nords listen.

"How did you find us?" The speaker was the Dawnguard who had been wielding the hammer, a Nord woman of a height with Lydia. "Who sent you?"

"Your associates in Whiterun. An Orc, Durak, and a Nord whose name escapes me. They mentioned the activity in Dimhollow Crypt, and we worked out an arrangement."

"And why are you doing this?" Clearly, this woman had no issue with checking a gift guar's belly. "What's in it for you?"

"Crossbows. I want crossbows, The Dawnguard wants aid, so we both win." He noticed that both members had the aforementioned weapon slung across their backs.

Lydia stepped forward. "We saved you, so why don't you show some courtesy? Your name, for one."

"Injard, for what it's worth. That there's Lynoit," She indicate the other Nord, an undistinguished-looking man carrying a war axe in a similar style to the hammer, "and the Vigilant is Tolan." She clapped the man on the shoulder. "He brought us word about the Hall of the Vigilant being sacked, then came back with us to clean these monsters out!" The man looked uneasy, and Velandryn reflected that the Vigilant corpses they had passed had performed similar acts of heroism yet were not here to bask in praise. Perhaps Tolan is wondering how long he'll make it down here in this crypt. He could not, however, quite find it in himself to feel sympathy for a Vigilant of Stendarr.

Injard continued. "We've been down here nearly a day, or maybe not, it's hard to keep track of time in the dark."

"Less than a day." That was Tolan.

"The vampires are moving slowly, but it looks like they've been here for a week or more. We know they're searching for something. Tombs smashed, every door either opened or broken, and dozens of bodies lying around. Some recently dead, some those undead freaks."

"Draugr," Velandryn supplied.

"Yeah, them. They fight the bloodsuckers and us, but the vampires have been cracking open everything, so they've had to wade through the things. We just put them down if they get up to hit us. Side halls are filled with them. They don't go down easy, I can tell you that.

"Anyway, it looks like they work their thralls half to death then feed on them." She shuddered. "Sickening. We clear them out, thralls and all, as we go. It's slow, but we make sure we aren't leaving any behind us."

Velandryn considered this. When he and Lydia had entered Dimhollow they had simply followed the most obvious route downward, as they were neither searching for any artifact nor trying to cleanse this place of vampires. Clearly, this group had been doing the hard work for them. "You have no idea what they are looking for down here?"

Tolan spoke then. "One of my order, Brother Adalvald, he thought there was some long-lost artifact down here. He found markings of some sort that indicated as much, and told us that vampires might looking for it, but none of us paid him much heed. He, he was at the Hall when…" He trailed off, and Velandryn nodded.

So, the vampires got the information from him? Or did they already know? There was no way to find out without talking to one of them, and he very much doubted that would happen. "How did the Dawnguard in Whiterun know about Dimhollow then?"

"They came from Fort Dawnguard with us." It was a bit of a shock when Lynoit spoke; Velandryn had nearly forgotten he was there. "Durak wanted to check Whiterun Hold for likely recruits. With the Hold neutral, might be more boys want to sign up."

Lydia snorted. "Not likely. They just go marching off to Solitude or Windhelm."

"Ah, right. Well, it seems to have worked well enough at any rate if it brought us you two." Injard was poking through the remains of the vampire. Much of the body had gone to ash from Velandryn's flames, but the grisly chunks of flesh and bone that remained fazed her no more than did the clothes and strange that lay around them. He wondered what she had been, before the Dawnguard. "Help us out, grab anything of value, especially notes or whatnot. Information is power when fighting these things."

They found nothing of any real interest on any of the bodies, though Velandryn did take a scorched amulet that thrummed with magic from the corpse of the vampire mage. The expression on Tolan's face when Velandryn offered to perform a funereal ritual for his fallen comrade was priceless, however, and it almost made him wish he had the equipment to perform a full consecration of a corpse to the Three. The Vigilant would probably die of shock and outrage. As they pushed deeper in, Velandryn noticed his arrow, sticking out of a patch of dirt. Seems I missed. All in all, this had not been a successful fight. They had won, but his plan had failed completely, he had underestimated his foe, and he had been forced to use his final line of defense, a power that was now impossible until long after they left. I live, I learn, I live some more. Hopefully.

They had found more vampires and thralls on the way down, and Velandryn had finally had a chance to see the Dawnguard at work. They moved well together, Injard smashing through lines of defense while Lynoit exploited openings and kept thralls occupied. With Tolan's aid, Lydia's bulwark presence on the front line, and Velandryn dropping fireballs on the bloodsuckers every chance he got, they were making good time. He was particularly impressed with the Dawnguard's ability to cancel out the abilities of the vampires they faced. Their weapons were silvered steel, and wounds inflicted on vampiric flesh smoked and burned. The crossbows they carried did not share these properties, but they parted armor and undead flesh as easily as paper, and dropped thralls in a single shot when fired at close range. It was no coincidence that the only time they had been caught in a losing situation was when facing an opponent who not only had superior position, but was also a powerful mage. Velandryn consoled himself with the fact of that mage's obvious power, though in hindsight he realized that it had been utter foolery to rely so heavily on a gambit like that when he had no real knowledge of his foe's capabilities. As they made their way further into the tomb, it was sobering to watch a skilled tactician, which Injard undoubtedly was, at work, and he reflected that while he might be Dragonborn, he was far from invincible.

The Dov had been quiet within him, but he could feel himself itching to prove something, to demonstrate his might before these Nords. However, he also recognized that that could well end with the Dragonborn bleeding out in some forgotten crypt, so he waited. If there was a chance to shine, he would take it, but not until then.

Velandryn heard the battle before he saw it, as seemed very common in these tombs with their limited lines of sight. They had entered the chamber from above, creeping along a low-walled balcony overlooking the ruined hall below, where a pair of vampires and their servants were locked in combat with a veritable horde of draugr, fifteen or more at a glance. One of the vampires was slashing about with a pair of swords, while the second directed icy blasts out of one hand and gestured at six or seven skeletons with the other. The skeletons, in turn, were funneling the draugr into chokepoints and killzones, where a pair of hulking thralls the vampires had brought engaged them.

Vigilant Tolan's eyes opened wide, and Velandryn suddenly noticed that two of the thralls were holding a man in Vigilant armor. He reached out to stop what he knew was coming even as Injard did the same, but both of them were too late.

"Brother! Adalvald! Fight them!" Velandryn pulled the idiot down behind the wall, hard, but it was too late. The vampire mage spun, yellow eyes blazing, and sent a cascade of lightning in their direction. Injard, cursing, unslung her crossbow and leaned out from behind a pillar to loose a shaft at the vampires. Lydia unslung her sword and shield, face grim, and Velandryn flexed his fingers, feeling the magicka hum under his skin. Lynoit was firing as well, though judging by the panic on his face he was falling back on training rather than using any sort of tactical thought. Velandryn chanced a glance over the wall; the vampire mage had directed a pair of skeletons towards the steps leading up to the level the mortals occupied, and a few draugr were heading their way, seemingly to investigate the disturbance. The thralls who had Adalvald were dragging him towards a gate on the far side of the room while several more cut a path through the undead, and both vampires were moving towards the gate as well. The remaining skeletons, it seemed, we acceptable sacrifices to keep the draugr occupied.

They mean to leave the draugr to finish us off as they head deeper. They have Adalvald, whatever they are after must be down there! Velandryn let loose a pair of fire bolts, and one impacted the sword-wielding vampire, causing him to hiss and gesture at a thrall, who in turn began shooting arrows at the Dunmer; the second shot sliced through his armor and left a thin red line of pain along his side. At the stairway up from the main level, Lydia smashed her shield into the ribcage of one of the skeletons; its bones cascaded down onto the draugr below.

The vampire without a sword, who was clearly the senior of the two, reached the heavy iron gate. He ripped the head off of a draugr that managed to push its way past his thralls, and hurled it away contemptuously. He raised his gaze to look at their embattled party, and Velandryn met his eyes. Even across the distance, he could feel the malice, the overwhelming contempt for mortalkind, contained in that glowing yellow look. He found himself unable to move, to turn his head. Something, a presence, surrounded him. His vision grew dim and he had to grip the wall to stay upright. Inside him, a seductive voice whispered, hinting at pleasures unimaginable and power undreamed of, and it could all be his if he just let go. All he had to do was let the Master in, and he would be free.

Then, within him, Dov awoke. Rage at the impudence of this creature consumed him. A vampire, a wretched undead worm, trying to bind him? From the depths of his soul, flame roared out, and his fury was echoed in both his people's ancestral speech and another, a tongue he had never learned. He knew that this battle would not leave the inside of his mind, but the words and the power echoed there, and the vampire's shadow fled.

Staggering, he returned to himself. Across the hall, two of the thralls were heaving on huge levers, winching the gate higher. The vampire with the sword and the rest of the skeletons were engaged with more of the draugr, though the crypt guardians had broken most of the skeletal minions. Lydia was lashing out with her shield as a hulking draugr wound up for an overhead strike. His allies were firing, Tolan was praying, and the entire situation was getting wildly out of hand. The master vampire, however, was icy calm. His gaze held Velandryn's for one long moment more before he turned away. He lifted the Vigilant bodily, heaved him over one shoulder, and strode towards the gate.

Velandryn grabbed Injard by the shoulder. "The gate! Two levers, vampire going in!"

She understood instantly. She hit Lynoit and Tolan to get their attention, and moved over towards Lydia during a lull in the assault up the stairs. The draugr she had been facing had tumbled down to the floor, and was laboriously finding its feet again, but they would have time before it reached them. Injard pointed at the gate. "Tolan, is there another way out of the crypt?"

The Vigilant shook his head. "Adalvald never said, only that the ruins keep going down."

Injard grimaced. "Some of these crypts have a second exit. Usually hidden, like an escape route." Once more Velandryn wondered what she had been in her previous life. A mercenary or an adventurer? Or was she a bandit holed up in a place like this? She looked at Velandryn. "We need to get through the gate, and quickly." A crash punctuated her words, and the guttural battle cries of the draugr swelled.

Velandryn chanced another look. Down below, a draugr in a horned helm buried his sword in a thrall's chest, and hurled the corpse aside. Another thrall cleaved off the draugr's arm, but the ancient undead Nord paid the ensorcelled slave no mind, and trudged towards the nearer of the two thralls working the levers. The specimen that Lydia had knocked down earlier was almost upon them again; his housecarl readied her shield as Velandryn shot out a spurt of fire that caught on the desiccated flesh and soon had the monstrosity burning and moaning. Lydia slammed her shield into it again, and the creature tumbled down again, this time shedding flakes of smoking skin and chunks of charred flesh. It crashed to the floor at the bottom of the steps and laid still.

Velandryn scanned the little group. Injard looked prepared and nearly calm at the thought of battle, but Lynoit and Tolan were both clearly rattled, and would not last much longer. "We need to bring them down, and we need to go now. Far too many draugr for us to clear this room."

Injard glanced down at the carnage below. "Can you clear a path with your flames?"

"I can turn it into a horde of burning draugr if you would like, but it will not kill them. We must move quickly."

Suddenly, a crash. The gate had been raised, and the vampires began leading their macabre procession through. The two thralls who held the levers were left behind, but the three remaining thralls, both bloodsuckers, and the unfortunate Vigilant Adalvald passed beneath the heavy gate and were soon lost to view. The thralls lasted less than ten heartbeats after that; literally torn to pieces by the frenzied draugr. One of them, larger than the others, heavily armored, and wielding a mighty black spear, pointed its weapon at them and let loose a stream of guttural speech, punctuated with pounding words that could be nothing else but Thu'um. Velandryn felt it in his bones, and wanted desperately to respond. No, we don't need that kind of trouble right now. He quashed the impulse ruthlessly.

"Change of plans. Go now, and go fast!" Injard charged down the stairs, warhammer in hand, sending the first draugr in her path flying back with a swing that used her momentum to its fullest. From above, Velandryn could see the tide as the draugr shifted to attack her, to surround and overwhelm.

All at once, everything was clear. The draugr commander with his spear, the dozen or more underlings moving together, the crash as another sarcophagus burst open to reveal a passage teeming with the undead. They defended the tomb, responded to the greatest threat. He knew how to get to the gate. "Lydia." He did not speak loudly, but his housecarl arrested her movement to join Injard and was at his side instantly. "Move to the edges, then to the gate when I attack. Do not attack the draugr, and don't stop until you are through." She began to protest, but he held up his hand. He gestured at Lynoit. "Fire at the commander when I make my move. Keep up the pressure." He gripped the front of the Vigilant's robes and fixed the Nord with a glare. "Defend him. Both of you fall back once we are through." He pushed a scroll into Tolan's hands and turned to Lydia once again. "Go help Injard, get her moving when I go. I'll see you at the gate."

She saluted, hand on chest, though her face was grim. "I am your sword and shield, my thane. I serve."

Injard was embattled, but Lydia's assistance gave the Dawnguard some breathing room. Velandryn stood on an old bench of some sort, in full view of the draugr below. He inhaled.

"FUS!"

The Dov roared silent approval, and the draugr lord roared defiance. His underlings surged forward, and Velandryn saw them converge on his housecarl. Now. He leapt.

Four things happened in the time between Velandryn Savani leaping from the ledge and crashing inelegantly to the ground. First, Lynoit overcame his fear and fired a bolt from his crossbow. It punched through the ancient armor of the draugr commander and lodged in his chest. Second, Lydia grabbed Injard and pulled her to the side, avoiding the press of draugr up the stairs. Third, Tolan opened the scroll and read the words within; the Vigilants, for all of their many, many flaws, at least made sure to train all members in the use of rudimentary magical items. The frost storm turned the steps into a treacherous blizzard as it moved down, and transformed the draugr upon it first into statues, and then into shards as they toppled down the slick slope. Finally, Velandryn downed a potion; he had been forced to purchase this one from an apothecary in Whiterun, as ingredients that granted invisibility were few and far between. It had come dearly, even with the discount that his being Dragonborn afforded. It was worth it, however, as he landed and was not set upon by the draugr all around. Some looked at his location in what he almost fancied was puzzlement, while others were already moving to strike down the foes above. He kept as quiet as he could, and in a short time reached both the gate and Lydia and Injard beyond.

"We should go now, while they are distracted." The invisibility broke as he started talking, and Lydia jumped.

Injard spun on him. "You left them!"

He shrugged. "They have a path up, and a good defensive position. I told them to fall back when we were through. Hopefully they will listen. They have done us more good as a distraction than they could have against the vampires down there in any case. They might even live, if they run now."

Through the gate, the commander bellowed, and the floor shook. Injard just looked at him. "You're the Dragonborn. You Shouted."

There was no sense in denying it. "I am, and right now I am helping you." He began walking into the gloom. "We must go. The draugr are single-minded to a fault, but one of them might remember that three of us are gone."

Injard did not move. "Go." She turned back to the hall. "That's my underling up there. I don't leave people behind, Dragonborn."

He wondered if that was meant to shame him. "Your underling would be best served by running. He should know this. I did not kill him."

"Dragonborn, you might be clever, but you have a lot to learn about leadership." She unslung her crossbow and bolts and handed them to Lydia. Readying her hammer, she stepped through the gate, grabbed one of the levers, and dislodged it. The bars slammed down with a crash, and some of the draugr turned. "Go! Kill those vampire bastards! I've got these ugly bastards! Lots of bastards today!" She grinned. "You'd better live, Dragonborn, I've got to beat your ass for this! These are mine, now get moving!" The last they heard of her as they descended was her maniacal laughter and the battle cries of her foes.

"My thane?"

"Mhm?" He no longer felt the need to speak nobly, trudging down through the darkness.

"Would you abandon me, if it were required?" He twisted the magicka in his eyes, and the gloom became bright as day. Lydia, walking beside him, looked as troubled as he had ever seen her.

"I did not abandon them. We needed a distraction, they provided it; they have a superior position and a clear line of retreat. If they are too stubborn to take it, I cannot be blamed."

"So you leave your allies when it is convenient for you?"

Is it really that difficult to understand? "We parted ways, and they get to avoid this. If anything, you should be angry with me for bringing you with me past the gate."

"I see." By her tone, she did not, not truly, but there was no use for it. We are each tested in our way, and we struggle that we may succeed. He had given them a fine test, and now he had one of his own ahead.

"Lydia."

"My thane?"

"Be ready."

"Always."

His night-eye faded, and he cast it again, silently, as he had learned to do while sneaking out of his room to procure sweetrolls from the dormitory kitchens as a child. Ahead, a thrall waited in inky blackness, no doubt thinking himself concealed. By the way the Nord stood, he could not see in the darkness, and was listening to judge when they got close enough to strike. Another spell from his childhood muffled his footsteps, and he raced ahead of Lydia. As the thrall stepped out into the pathway, blissfully unaware of the Dunmer behind him, Velandryn's dagger slid into the unarmored flesh of his throat. He drew the blade sideways, and the bandit slumped down with a gurgle as hot blood poured over Velandryn's hands.

Lydia heard the noise, and was only partially mollified by Velandryn's hurried explanation. "Next time, my thane, let me know when I'm your bait. A tap would suffice."

"Of course, Lydia. Next time I won't keep you in the dark." There was no immediate response; the problem with Lydia was that her missing a joke, her ignoring it, and her playing it straight were nigh indistinguishable. Forget what those Imperials say about Dunmer, it's Nords who need a sense of humor.

"Don't be. It was well done. I just want to know beforehand next time. I will work with you, my thane, but I am not some tool who only exists to be used as you see fit."

"Deal." Now, hopefully they could do it again. Two thralls and two vampires remained. Or more. There could always be more. After all, who knew what was lurking down here in the timeless dark?

A/N This is part 1 of what was originally intended to be one big chapter, but morphed into something significantly longer to the extent where I felt the need to go for two. It happens, and I assure you that part 2 will be coming soon. I'm not going to rush to or through Serana's introduction though, and I would rather do something right than do something fast. I did spare you a few thousand words I had written of Velandryn and Lydia's roadtrip shenanigans, so count your blessings. Serana will show up next chapter, you have my word (for what it's worth).

Things to note: I will be adding small settlements and numerous farms to this story; there is no way that a province with four and a half Eras of continuous human habitation doesn't have more hamlets. If it shows up the game, it is of some importance to Skyrim at large, while little hamlets like Heljarchen that exist simply because some people live there may not have any major significance. Skyrim needs more people though. All of those Stormcloaks and bandits have to come from somewhere.

About magic. It may rub some people the wrong way that I am emphasizing ritual magic when it is only vaguely mentioned in lore, and never really covered as a player mechanic, but much of the stuff that we see done with magic is clearly designed as long-term installation, and Velandryn is exactly the sort of person who would prefer the intricate elegance of a ritual to a sloppy casting should the opportunity to use the former arise.

I tweaked vampires a bit, and while I think I made it rather clear in context, here is the explanation again, with some out-of-character information. There are numerous clans of vampires, and each has abilities of their own. Skyrim is largely dominated by the vampire clan that originated in Cyrodiil, they of the red eyes and human faces. They blend, seduce, and feed in secret, and hold concealment as the highest goal. They would rather go hungry than risk exposure. The Volkihar are native to Skyrim, and their particular strain generally deforms the face but gives greater advantages in magic and combat than those enjoyed by the Cyrodiil strain, except when very hungry. Their eyes are yellow, and they would rather risk a hunt than hide and go hungry. All Volkihar are descended from Harkon and his family, who are the only 'vampire lords' known. Harkon guards his immense power as a 'lord' jealously, and his court is filled with those who are either one, two, or three generations removed from him. He considers anything more, or any vampire not of his court, little more than a savage beast, barely higher than a mortal. There may be a few appearances by members of clans from other provinces, but vampires tend to be territorial, and going to a place where you have no network is extremely unwise.

About the conversation at the end of Chapter 7, all I will say is that it is not going to be central to the plot for a while yet, but it is important to remember that there are forces watching the events unfolding, and they have abilities and fight wars on scales that Velandryn Savani and the people of Whiterun can scarcely comprehend. Morrowind was nearly as much sci-fi as fantasy, and I am not going to abandon those themes simply because that stuff was put on the back burner for Skyrim.

One final thing, if you have anything to say, please leave a review. I like hearing from people, even if you don't think it is substantive, or I don't respond (I am really bad about responding. I'm sorry), I have read it. I guarantee it means more to me than simply another pageview. Also, if something is bothering you about the story or you want to tell me I am a hack fraud, I promise you will never get an answer if you don't make your opinion known.

Reviews:

Revan, sixth grade king, Guests: thank you for the kind words! I value the lore, so I'm going to be bringing in quite a bit of the crazy stuff.

Mangahero18: Thanks for the blow-by-blow, I like seeing people's thoughts as they progress through the story.

tylerbamafan34, Guest: Elisif is going to be very central, despite the cursory glance that she gets as a character, both in-game and in too much FF. She is in an interesting situation to say the least, and I am really looking forward to bringing her to the forefront.

Clockwise02: Yup, there was a lot overlooked about the implications of an elf Dragonborn. Admittedly, any elf that wasn't a Dunmer would led to even more philosophical strife, but I like my Dunmer, so they get to be the heroes. About time something went right for them...And yeah, Ulfric is not going to be having the greatest time of it. I find him very interesting, but he gets a lot of undeserved hero-worship in the community. He is far too complex to be reduced like that, so expect interesting things from him.

firelordzuko: No critiques? I'll have to try harder to mess something up. Keep me honest! Interesting theory about that computer...

Perpetual Dreaming: I laid on a lot of reactions this chapter, but they will taper off in the immediate future. I will be showing snippets of others' plans and actions, but for now word needs to disseminate a bit. Lydia and Velandryn are going to be a very important relationship, and I'm doing my best to lay groundwork to show the evolution of that.