Silence fell in the room, and a strange stillness fell over me. Strangely enough I didn't seem to feel fear of injury or death. From the burning, crawling sensation making its way up my spine I knew that the fear of Viconia's wrath was entirely another matter.

  The first sign of the fight commencing was the sound of metal on tiles, and the scraping of a blade against a sheath from right and behind me. I moved like quicksilver, my eyes narrowing slightly even as I turned on my heel and sliced out with Sunchild in a blindingly quick arc that made the sound of tearing silk. One of the knights, armed in his ghostly chainmail and surcoat lashed out with his long sword that seemed to be no more solid than he was. Instinct fuelled me even as I cut outwards with the turn, glancing out with my blade one handed and a tremor running through my arm as I feared the ghostly blade would merely ignore my own and cut into my flesh despite my parry. Instead there was a clash of metal on metal, my ancient Ayleid blade impacting against the knight's and jarring my entire arm from the sudden, unexpected nature of the hit.

  The ancient knight looked out from under his chainmail cowl had all the expression and emotion of a stone as he parried my cuts and attacked with his own. We locked eyes, barely even glancing at the flashing of our blades as we parried, dodged and cut at each other. Time and again I would strike out at a weakness that I perceived in his guard, only to find it had been nothing more than a feint to catch me out or to counter strike with either his sword or shield. I took a glancing strike off the edge of his shield across the back of my arm, and within moments I could feel it beginning to swell painfully.

  Ducking under a sweeping strike of a shield, I lashed out with my fist in a move that took him by surprise and punched him in the inside of a thigh. There was a tiny intake of breath as he staggered slightly from my punch, and although it was short lived I used it to my advantage, stepped inside his guard and lashing out with Sunchild. The slice took the ghostly knight under the right armpit, cutting deeply through his fog-like chain link and causing him to seize up in convulsions as the blade came to rest where his heart once used to beat.

  Shoving the long dead knight off my blade in a way that left a sticky trail of ectoplasm up its length as his ghostly form clattered to the floor. There was no cry of pain, no sound from his lips other than the strange murmur of my blade entering his ethereal form. Even despite the mortal injury he was none worse for wear as the wound sealed itself up as though it had never existed.

  "Sir Gregory, you are defeated." Amiel said in a voice as deep as barrows dirt. "Sir Casimir, step forward."

  And so the duel continued, barely even giving me any time to rest before the next knight stepped forward and drew his own blades. Sir Casimir, similarly clad in chainmail rushed me with a curved sabre of Redguard origin and sparks flickered through the air as it and Sunchild locked together. This fight was surprisingly over quickly, lasting mere seconds even after trading dozens of blows. Somehow I managed to slip my blade in past his guard and sink it into his ghostly flesh, punching the tip into his chest and leaving his eyes boggling out of his skull as I forced the point deeper until it jutted between his shoulder blades. With a rattling sigh he slipped to the ground like Sir Gregory, his wounds healing even as he rose defeated.

  One after another the Knights were called forward to fight me in honourable combat, and one by one I somehow managed to defeat them in turn. Every tale and story I had read or heard about them had done them no justice and each and every one of these men had been champions like no other. They were as varied as their backgrounds and between them they hailed from almost every corner of Tamriel that worshipped the Divines.

  Both Sir Gregory Arcio and Sir Juncan Nirtke fought with sword and shield, but their techniques were polar opposites. Sir Juncan fought in the style of the legion with his heater shield, using it to fend off almost every attack I made until I managed to kick his legs out and cut his throat. Sir Gregory; the knight who's tomb I had gazed upon when we first entered the under croft used his shield as much as a weapon as his sword, deflecting and swinging it at me in powerful blows that could have broken bones if they had struck.

  Sir Ralvas Ulento had once been the famed weapon master of House Redoran and fought with a pair of perfectly matched rapiers. His attacks were a flurry of movement, the dual swords transforming into gleaming streams of silver that rippled and flowed through the air like water. Sir Henrik Fenrahrson managed to fend me off with a bladed polearm that was longer than I was tall, swinging it about and using the steel reinforced haft as much as the blade to defect Sunchild. His glaive; the signature weapon of the Knights Mentor proved difficult to best until I managed to take one of his hands off at the wrist before slashing his throat, and Sir Ralvas only fell when I managed a lucky strike that chopped deep into a thigh through his ghostly bonemold armour.

  One by one I managed to fight and best them, not receiving any respite between bouts for as soon as one would fall, he would rise again, his flesh reknitting and a brother stepping forward to continue the duel unabated. My lungs were on fire, my arms becoming increasingly leaden as fatigue and the ringing impacts began to take their toll. They all fell eventually. Sir Caius Fulberia dropped as I cut his calf muscle and was unable to rise as I pirouetted and stabbed his through the back of the head. Sir Torolf Asanderssen finally being defeated as I ducked aside an enormous blow of his sword, spinning away from the attack that would have bisected me from shoulder to hip and hacking his head away, great helm and all.

  As the Nordic knight rose again, his decapitated head dissipated from the floor and reformed itself on his shoulders without even the slightest hindrance from such an injury. At that point I was becoming envious of their deathless natures, as I was staggering and struggling to keep myself upright from fatigue and injuries I had sustained during the duels. Although I had beaten seven of the greatest warriors in the Third Era, I had undoubtedly paid the price for it. The blow from Sir Gregory's shield had bruised my arm, as had the several strikes I had parried from Sir Ralvas' dual rapiers on my forearm's vambraces. The impacts had been so jarring that I somehow knew that even the bone was bruised as well as my flesh. At some point two fingers of my left hand had been broken despite the fact I couldn't remember when or how, and each step I took was agony from the wounds I had received from Sirs Henik and Juncan. The enormous glaive of Sir Henrik's had managed to catch me across the shin with the steel plated haft and nearly broke the bone, and Sir Juncan's sword had sliced up and under the protection of my armoured faulds to cut into my hip. Judging by the warmth seeping into my underclothing and pant leg it had been a considerably deep cut, but thankfully not too deep otherwise I would have been dead already.

  It wasn't the physical injuries that I had sustained that were worrying me the most. I had fought with every skill, trick and technique that I had every taught or seen before, using skills that I never knew I had but there was no doubt that I would not have had survived if not for my vampiric nature. As much as it was assisting me, my darker nature was killing me quicker than the ghostly weapons seeking my vitals. Even before I had defeated Sir Gregory I was beginning to cough and feel a growing tickle in the back of my throat that was spreading into my lungs.

  By the time that my third opponent had been struck down I knew that I was in serious trouble. Either the magical aura, the very nature of the priory's under croft or the proximity of the Curiass was ripping me apart. When the vampire leant its strength and speed to my sword arm or its agility to allow me to duck and weave away from blows, the wards hammered down hard. There was a strange tingling chill growing in my chest the more I used my darker abilities and halfway through the bout the cough had worsened.

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  "You show strength of will that I had not thought possible." Sir Amiel said as I staggered to my feet with ectoplasm dripping from my blade. "You have stood against the Knights of the Nine and lived. However, the final test is upon you. Ready yourself... and face me."

  There was a pressurised roaring behind me and I had gone to great efforts not to look back at Viconia throughout the fight. If I was going to be honest with myself I knew that if I had looked at her I would have struggled to fight as well as I had, and the way the very priory itself seemed to be groaning from her magical onslaught was enough to know her feelings during the fights. She was exerting every bit of her considerable willpower and magical knowledge into breaking the magical barriers separating us even as I used all my will not to fall flat on my face.

  As I staggered to my feet, staring down Sir Amiel the latest bout of coughing left me with a mouthful of blood that I spat onto the white tiles. It was not the first of my blood to have stained the under croft. "Ready when you are."

  Sir Amiel's broadsword found its way into his hands with a rasping of metal on leather, and he held it loosely in both hands high above his head. There was no fancy swordplay or twirling movements for distracting his opponent, just a casual professionalism and skill as he lightly gripped his sword's hilt.

  There was no warning for his attack, no subtle tells or twitches of a muscle or eye to announce where or how the blow was to fall. Like a coiled spring he moved quickly and precisely, transforming from the relaxed and patient swordsman into a whirling storm of steel and violence. Without my vampiric nature I knew that it would have been over in the first blow, and even as it was my reflexes were only just adequate to stop his sword from taking my head clean off my shoulders. His broadsword sung through the air with the sound of tearing silk, stopping only briefly as Sunchild caught it in mid-air before he used the recoil to twist the blade into its next attack.

  In the first second I knew that there was no chance for me to win against such an opponent. I may have been skilled enough to contend with some of the greatest swordsmen in the Empire and had been a minor champion in the Legion, but the Knights of the Nine had been led by a true master. Even if I had been fully rested and healed, and Sir Amiel had not been my eighth opponent in less than twenty minutes there had been no hope to beat him. I narrowly managed to parry three separate blows in just the first second of our bout and I knew that even if I was able to use my full vampiric abilities Sir Amiel would have won nonetheless.

  Belarsarius and Alexi may have been able to contend with him but even those two unparalleled swordsmen would have proven unequal to the task. Even before his name had become a legend and known throughout the Empire he had been a prodigy and there had been a reason why he had been deemed worthy enough to wear the Cuirass of Akatosh during his time.

  A neat slice opened a smile across my wrist above my gloves and below the protection of my daedroth scale shirt. Only my quick reaction saved me from having a deeper cut or potentially losing my master hand and Sunchild with it. In the first ten seconds of the fight we had managed to exchange two dozen blows, leaving my clothing and armour battered and gashed in several places while I hadn't even come close to touching him.

  During life and now in death, Sir Amiel was without peer in both worlds. He fought with moves that flowed into one another until he became a whirlwind of steel and blades, fighting with a seemingly untiring ferocity but never overexerting himself. There was a strange economy of movement with his strikes and parries and despite being close enough to death to feel it's cold breath on my face I couldn't help but marvel at his skill.

  Every strike that I managed to dodge or parry he never seemed to repeat, constantly changing his guard and attacks with a frightening regularity and I found it impossible to predict his moves. His bastard sword was perfectly designed for his fighting style, being fully capable of being wielded by one or both hands in a dizzying array of strikes, parries and counters and Amiel was almost fully ambidextrous, changing his grip and shifting his master hand from the left and right without any effort or pause. I struggled to even keep up, fighting with both hands purely out of exhaustion but I had reached the end of my limits.

  My left vambrace, battered and dented from the past months and recent bouts against the Knights of the Nine suddenly came free of my arm as he somehow managed to slip the length of his sword between my forearm and the leather straps. With a simple flick of the wrist he cut them away, flicking the entire vambrace off to the side in a show of extreme skill that made me appear to be nothing more than rank amateur.

  I was slowing, my fatigue total and I could do nothing to stop the flat of his blade slapping down again and cracking something in my forearm. Another downwards slice barely missed taking an eye from my skull that was more luck than skill on my part but there was nothing I could do to stop the way he twisted, gripping the blade itself with a mailed hand and ramming the pommel into my face.

  Something broke beneath my eye and the world went partially dark, the sensation of splinters being dragged through muscle and flesh leaving me unable to defend myself. In the seconds I staggered backwards he had managed to close the distance between us, making me fall to a knee as he cut a tendon in my leg almost as an afterthought.

  As quickly as the fight had begun it was suddenly over, and I was on my knees in front of him, looking through one eye with the other swollen closed, blood streaming from several deep gashes and the coldness in my chest growing more noticeable as the holy wards continued to make me bleed internally. I had nothing left to fight with, the last of my stamina from battling eight of the greatest warriors to have lived and everyone, especially Viconia judging by the howling vortex of magicka knew it.

  The broadsword in Sir Amiel's hand punched towards me, twisting in the air as he thrust it at my throat. Whether it was desperation or determination that possessed me to throw my left hand forward I didn't know, but the point of the blade speared me through the centre of my palm without even any hindrance. The four-centimetre-wide blade sliced through my palm, travelling through and coating the entire ghostly edge with more of my blood before thudding into my ebony-mithril breastplate.

  For the briefest of moments Sir Amiel finally showed some emotion, his eyes moving from mine to the way that my hand had been effectively pinned to my chest by the length of his sword. Almost the entire eighty centimetre length had punched through my palm until I was almost able to hold his hand with my own impaled one. If I hadn't caught the blade in such a way he would have killed me, but instead it had struck the incredible protection offered by the ebony-mithril breastplate and the underlying daedroth scale-mail.

  Sunchild flickered in my own hand, lashing out with the last reserves of my failing strength in a riposte of my own. It's curved edge and wicked point reaching up high and slashing across Sir Amiel's throat in a mirrored technique of his own with unfortunately just as much effectiveness. I no longer had the strength or stamina to remain upright, falling backwards and pulling him just out of reach of Sunchild's caress.

  He was left standing as the tiled floor seemingly rose up and tackled me from behind and the very last of the air was driven from my lungs from the impact. My hand pulled itself free from the full length of his sword and I knew that the lack of pain wasn't a good sign. Sir Amiel was left standing, his sword still held in same position and a look of shock on his face after feeling Sunchild's point lightly caress the chainmail protecting his throat. If it had been a one or two centimetres closer, it would have very well opened a smile under his jaw but instead had barely left a mark on the ghostly mithril he wore.

  I no longer had the strength to rise, let alone defend myself as he twitched out of his surprise at how close he had come to defeat, and instead my blurred vision was blocked out by the sight of the ghostly knight standing over me.

  "Do you yield?"

  "Fuck... No..." I rasped, trying and failing to laugh as a blood filled cough made the froth drip from the corners of my mouth.

  Of the reactions I was expecting, a nod was not one of them and the pressure in my chest lifted as something magicka related shifted. The stabbing sensation in the back of my mind also released its hold and before I know what was happening Viconia had come to a skidding halt by my side.

  Both my sight and hearing was fading and I looked up at her expression of horror and terror as her eyes roaming up and down my body. Her lips were moving, lips twisting as she forced what appeared to be a combination of questions and forceful curses that was somewhat thankful I couldn't hear. The coldness in my chest was still growing and I tried my best to smile at her even as my vision went dark and all light and sensation left my body in a rush.