Fangs split my lips in a smile and suddenly death by drowning appeared as inconsequential as a mosquito bite. Just like it had when I had fallen into Lake Arrius the vampire simply ignored such fragile mortal concerns and concentrated on surviving instead. Bubbles billowed out of my mouth as I turned to Viconia as she began to thrash in desperation to reach the air pocket. Turning on the spot and moving towards her, my hands snaked out and gripped hers tightly even as she began to panic. The submerged tunnel was too far to have swum easily, but it didn't stop the vampire within me as it simply ignored the issue, and dragged Viconia's increasingly slack weight behind like she weighed nothing at all. Where the tunnel angled up a short collection of marble steps where the water lapped peacefully I practically exploded into the air, wrenching Viconia from the water onto a somewhat dry surface and ignoring the scampering forms of rats and amphibians as I rolled her over onto her side.

  Coughing and spluttering she began to vomit up a considerable amount of water, alternating between her uncontrollable heaving to try to stare at me murderously. In between the sound of her retching I could her a staccato of curses and epithets in Drow, only pausing to throw up until there was nothing left to expel.

  Her eyes glowed blood red in the darkness as they picked up all sources of heat and warmth within the small antechamber that we had found ourselves in, but there was just enough light for us to see the faintest of shapes. Small chunks of Welkynd Stones glowed faintly in their sockets embedded in the walls, showing the squirming traces of movement as vermin and other tiny scavengers scattered into the darkest recesses within the walls and deeper into the shrine.

  "Are you all right?" My words came out as deep and terrible growls and I flinched as she twisted away from me instinctively. Between my changed throat and appearance, she pushed herself away slightly before I crushed the vampire away with my will.

  The silence that fell between us was broken only by the soft crunches of bone as my face returned to normal. "Sorry."

  Viconia turned her eyes away, running her hands over her scalp and pressing the water out of her long blonde hair. "It's okay. You... You just startled me."

  It was obvious that she was doing everything in her power not to look me in the face. "I didn't mean to. Are you alright?"

  "I'll be fine. Next time we really need to check how far we have to swim."

  Nodding in reply, I turned and gazed off into the depths of the shrine with my eyes peeling the darkness away. "We can rest here for a little while if need be."

  "I said, I'll be fine..." She rose to her feet, checking that Dragonbane was still within its scabbard and continuing to cough. "Let's go see what surprises this ruin has in store for us."

  With no available reply, I turned and began moving softly into the darkness. We moved with the utmost care, following the paths of the ancient halls carefully as we had little idea what we were venturing into. It was cold, especially with how both of us were soaked to the skin and for the first dozen metres at least, moisture seemed to seep out of the walls. Our stealthy progress was only marked only by the scattering sounds of rats and other vermin hiding from our passage, and the steady drip...drip...drip... as beads of water rolled over the stalactites and stalagmites that had grown in the thousands of years before.

  "It's a curse." I said suddenly, surprising Viconia enough for her to jump.

  "What?" the pair of ruby red glows turned and faced me in the shadows. The handful of welkynd stones scattered about the ruins were enough to show her outline but not much more.

  "Vampirism. It's a curse."

  After several long, pregnant seconds she turned and attempted to concentrate on the passage before us. "Is this really the best time to be talking about this?"

  "I have said that I would eventually tell you more about how it is to be a vampire, and this seems to be as a good a time as any."

  "Why now?"

  "Because of how you reacted. I don't want you to be afraid of me."

  She sighed, very softly that it was almost impossible to hear. "I'm more afraid of the unknown than you Mrannd'ssinss. We have faced them together, killed them together and while I mightn't truly understand the curse I know that you would never hurt me. You have proven this several times already."

  "I don't think I could ever harm you, vampire or not." I said, stooping under a fallen marble support where it had taken part of the ceiling away as it fell. Roots and creepers hung down from the soil and rocks above our heads, a sign that we were under the beach at least. "Most of the time I am... well... me. But the other times I am... something else and my thoughts and my mind changes accordingly.

  "Something else?" Ducking down, she took my offered hand as I helped lift her up from under the fallen column. "How do you mean?"

  "I revel in bloodshed, and inflicting pain. When I let the beast take control there is nothing more thrilling than the taking of lives. I relish the agony and there have been several times where despite the overwhelming thirst to feed on someone's blood has been sated by the mere act of torturing them."

  "Such as that, woman... you dealt with near Anvil those months ago."

  I couldn't help but grimace and feel ice grow in the depths of my stomach at the memory. "Yes."

  "You should do it more then."

  She watched my reaction as I stopped in place, turned and looked at her in shock. "What?"

  "You should do it more. I've been watching you and your changes these past months and while you might think you are being careful I can tell when you satisfy your urges."

  Despite the darkness of the ruins where only a handful of faint welkynd stones lit our path, I knew that she saw the flush that spread up from my neck and across my face. It wasn't the first time that I had cursed her unusual ability to see heat in darkness. "Satisfying those urges for the most part simply involves drinking blood."

  "What would happen if you were to not drink?"

  "I would lose myself to the darkness, become more and more like an animal until I fed."

  "And when you do you become stronger, both in body and mind." There was steel in her tone and I could feel the burning embers of her eyes resting on me. "I have seen you become something far greater than a mere surfacer during our travels and I believe the longer you live and the more you feed the more you will continue to grow."

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  "I realise this, and I told you of what Volmyr spoke of before we fought. Blood is the key to the strength of the vampire."

  Stopping in place I held a hand up in front of me, concentrating as I stared at the palm of my hand. A small ball of fire sprung to life for an instant, casting flickering shadows through the passage and illuminating Viconia's ebony features.

  "What..." She hissed, confused and trying to understand what she had just seen. "You have never shown me that you can cast elge faer..."

  "Destruction Magicka? Until recently I thought I couldn't."

  "How recent is recently?"

  It took me everything not to meet her gaze. "The past weeks. I discovered I can conjure fire in the days after my run-in with the Rangers. But even for the weeks before that I have noticed that my restoration has markedly improved."

  "It appears to be more proof that the more you feed the greater your strength and power becomes."

  "Yes. But I also know that my ability with magicka has markedly increased since I fed on the vampire matriarch in Glenvar."

  "You... You fed on that elg'caress?" The steel in her tone was increasing with every second. "I thought you had simply killed her..."

  "Well, technically I did when I broke her spine and threw her outside."

  "But you still fed on her. Is feeding on your own kind even possible?"

  I shrugged. "I don't know. I suppose it is as I'm living proof but I'm also able to exist in sunlight and I've never heard of my other abilities."

  "Whether it is or it isn't, it is useful." A gleam was building in her eyes that was uncomfortably reminding me of how power was intoxicating to her.

  "It is. I can move faster than almost anything alive, I'm strong enough to meet werewolves and minotaurs head on and can simply ignore injuries that would leave veteran legionaries screaming on the ground. Although it comes at a cost. The more I call upon the vampire's strength and abilities, the more I lose myself. If I don't keep a tight rein on my darker nature and urges then there would be a repeat of Glenvar, and next time I mightn't be as lucky to find myself surrounded by enemies."

  "Is this why you prayed at those shrines? For nelgetha... forgiveness?"

  "I don't think that what I have become can be cured or forgiven and I don't think there's any repentance available from the gods. The only thing that truly awaits me is a daily struggle not to give in to this... curse..."

  Awkwardly, Viconia's hand ran down my arm, pressing the soaked fabric against my flesh and making us even more aware of how cold it was in the darkness. For the briefest of moments our fingers brushed together, but we both pulled away as I came to a halt and stared at the long corridor in front of us.

  "You see that?"

  "I can't see much of anything mrannd'ssinss." She replied simply. "It's far too cold and there's not enough light."

  "Wait here." I said to her as I snapped off one of the many tree roots dangling from the ceiling that appeared drier than the others. We may have been above the waterline but there was a permanent dampness to the ruin despite the dust and soil that had fallen through the cracked masonry over the centuries. The cracks had grown large in places due to the persistence of tree roots and the cracks had allowed more than just roots passage. Spiders, skeevers and other assorted insects and vermin had managed to burrow into the ruins and I spent a minute or two binding other roots to mine before collecting an impressive amount of webs to the end. A moment's concentration and I had managed to light my makeshift torch and watching as the small collection of creatures fled from the burning glow.

  "Traps... We must be getting close."

  "How can you tell?" Viconia's eyes were positively glowing now with the heat of the torch, giving her an intimidating, daedric appearance in the gloom.

  Kneeling down I lowered my head almost to the floor until my breath stirred up the dust. "This place has almost been reclaimed by nature, but this section is almost untouched."

  My gloved hands ran lightly through the collection of dust and soil that had built up over the centuries and scraped the tiles clear. "My guess is either the walls are much, much thicker, there's some kind of enchantment on the stones or both."

  "But how can you tell that there are traps?"

  I gestured to the pile resting up against the wall and as she moved closer, the feeble light from the torch allowed her to see that it wasn't a pile of loose soil but in fact a body of someone who had died a long time before. Like us, whoever they are had been wearing clothes rather than armour but of what make or design was impossible to tell. Between the skeevers and other vermin and the march of time, there was little left except for the few metallic pieces like buckles and the rough pile of bones that were only a few years from being reduced to powder.

  Handing the burning torch to Viconia I motioned for her to step back slightly, picking up a stone from where it had fallen from the ceiling and gently tossing it underarm down the passage. The effect was immediate and as it bounced awkwardly a few metres in front of us it triggered a series of blade traps that swung from finger wide slits in the walls, and even a collection of metallic spears that snapped out faster than the eye could see. The blades swung back and forth a couple of times before disappearing into the walls again with a barely audible click, and there was a groan as the spears were drawn back as well.

  "Vith..." Was all Viconia was able to mutter as the last of the spears snapped back into place and their trigger mechanisms reset. "Well, that explains the magicka I can sense."

  "Yep. Still operational even after thousands of years and just as deadly as the day they were made." Taking in several deep breaths and looking down over the dusty floor I motioned for her stay where she was. "Let me get a few metres ahead, and step exactly where I do."

  Carefully, metre by metre I moved forward past the threshold into the collection of traps. My nerves were quickly strained but we were both still making good progress. Viconia looked just as stressed as I did, perhaps more so as she ensured that she stepped precisely into the indentations of my larger footprints.

  "You'd only have this sort of defences near something that you really want looked after." I said to her as we continued and skirted around a portion of floor that looked as though it fell away into a pit. "There is definitely something down here."

  "Traps or not, I'm expecting to find this place picked clean of anything of value."

  "I believe that few, if any have made it this far."

  I couldn't spare a glance back at her with how much I had to concentrate on my surroundings but I could hear her tiny breath as she scoffed at me. "You sound very sure of yourself."

  "I have reason to be. There have been plenty before us who didn't make it." There were mushrooms growing out of the accumulated layers of dust all around us. Some as small as those we had made stews with on the roads, others easily the size of a mudcrab. "All of these are Cairn Bolete and only grow where someone has died."

  "How do you know all this?"

  "In Morrowind there are dozens of ancient Dwemer ruins and every single one is filled with dozens of traps and other sorts of nasty forms of death to guard against intruders. I'm not entirely sure of what sort of magicka they utilised but like this place their ruins are still incredibly dangerous even after three millennia."

  "What interest would the Legion have with a long dead race?"

  "The artefact trade. Every bit of their equipment, furniture or even pieces of scrap metal are considered to belong to the Empire. No one is allowed to trade anything of dwemer make without a contract or the correct licences. The Legion is usually called into various ruins to either hunt down artefact hunters or in some cases protect archaeological teams as many of their old devices still work. Foresters are responsible for identifying or disabling the traps, and the Legionaries are usually tasked with hunting down any Animunculi that might still work within the ruins."

  "Animunculi?"

  "They're like golems, but made of the dwemer's strange brass-steel and filled with cogs and steam. I don't know if they are alive because they somehow act like they are and not at the same time. The smallest ones I have ever seen were about the size of a cat, and the largest was almost twice my height. I've heard stories of ones that are much, much bigger though..."

  The traps suddenly stopped along the passage and even those few that I had half expected to trick the unwary failed to materialise. Instead we found ourselves in a single, rectangular room approximately a dozen metres wide and two dozen long. First appearances gave the impressive of a complete lack of ornamentation, but closer inspection allowed Viconia and I to realise that the marble carvings and statues imbedded into the walls had actually been smoothed with age or consumed by centimetres of caked dust. No plants, fungus or roots could be seen and the walls, floor and ceiling was completely intact. Other than the layers of dust that covered everything there was no sign that the room had existed for thousands of years.