Together, Viconia and I walked back through the camp, leaving the wounded Knights to the care of the followers of Kynareth and their Squires. Viconia's mood was dark, as she knew already what was going through my mind and what I intended. It didn't stop her from asking though.
"What do we do now?" She asked as we moved back to our steeds.
"We take this opportunity to rest up for the evening, and come tomorrow morning we try to retrieve the boots." I replied, meaning every word. "Then, no matter the outcome we leave tomorrow by lunchtime for Leyawiin."
"And what is stopping you from ending up like those two knights back there?" she asked angrily. "Just what makes you think that we won't get injured or even killed from this? You're not exactly at your peak."
With I nod I began to unstrap my travel bags from Trygve's side. "We have to try. I got these wounds from not being able to use my full strength and those two knights were injured by an animal. An obviously powerful animal maybe, but an animal nonetheless."
"So you are just going to revert back to being a vampire?" She said with a lowered voice lest anyone nearby heard us talking. "Even after what great pains you went through to prove that you are human?"
I nodded, groaning with pain as the wound in my hip flared angrily at the way I twisted with a saddlebag over a shoulder. "When I spoke to the Knights before we left the priory they have been leaving me thinking differently about who and what I am. I'm going to be a vampire for the rest of my life whether I die in my sleep tonight or a thousand years from now. There's no point trying to resist the very things that are making me strong."
"So you're going to go out biting everyone's throats and satisfying your carnal desires with every whore in a dress who catches your eye?"
My grimace twisted the bruising of my face and I could feel my embarrassment growing even as she moved closer. "I didn't mean it like that."
"I know you didn't Mrimmd'ssinss." She pulled in close and my arm wrapped around her for a moment. "You are however still as gullible and foolish as we first met and so, so easy to bait."
The wolf yellow eyes gazed at me for a moment before she turned and began unstrapping her saddlebags and saddle from Ultrin. "I know that no matter what you will always have some core within you that you will never release and that is comforting... Especially after seeing what that core really is. Just... think before you decide to leap into an abyss. I'm not going to always blindly follow you."
We made camp for the evening, along the edge of the collection of pilgrim shacks and lean-tos where we both would not be disturbed. Each night it appeared, those staying within the area around the shrine seemed to come together around the large firepit near the priory, and both Viconia and I found ourselves sharing spaces around the crackling flames with them. Everyone, ourselves included shared with each other our meagre collections of food and one of the pilgrims was an accomplished hunter and had managed to bring back a considerably sized boar that soon found itself on a spit. Those there with us were in awe of our presence and Viconia and I found ourselves the centre of attention as night fell.
The mood however was extremely sombre. One of the knights had died of his injuries and his death had been announced by his squire who looked as though his world had come to an abrupt end. In some ways it had, and the other two squires had also come to the realisation that their master would not live through the night. The injuries were too deep, too terrible to live through even if they had a master healer at hand.
The young squire, only just out of his teens had sat heavily by the fire as silence descended from a combination of sorrow and the fact that many present were eating. It took everyone by surprise when he started singing, a deep mournful chant accompanied by the rhythmic thudding of his hand on his chainmailed knee and most of us realised very quickly that he was singing the eulogy of his fallen master.
It was a tradition that I had seen several variations of amongst the Dumner, especially the Ashlanders when one of their number fell. They would recount the tale of the deceased's life and accomplishments with their tribe and remember who they were. The young squire did just that, telling the tale of his master's victories and home in faraway Highrock and the honours and glories he had achieved in the name of the Nine and his Order.
After the squire had finished, it seemed to have broken the measure of calm among the pilgrims and travellers who had also travelled so far to find themselves in the depths of Cyrodiil's heartlands. Some had journeyed from as close by as the nearest village, others had come from every corner of Tamriel on a journey that had taken them months. Using the young squire as an example, some of them began to sing or tell tales of their homelands, of families and friends that they had left behind. Others spoke of old comrades both living and dead, and it wasn't long before the tales changed and became jovial and humorous. Jokes were shared freely, some of the stories left many of us, myself and surprisingly enough Viconia laughing out loud.
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One of the travellers pulled out a well-worn flute seemingly from nowhere, and another was a poor troubadour who returned to his tent and retrieved his lute. Their songs uplifted the spirits of all those present, but it wasn't long before Viconia and I found ourselves pressed for tales of our exploits and journeys.
Viconia spoke of a land deep within the bowels of the earth, of deep caverns devoid of light and filled and danger. She told of great battles between the Drow cities and while her stories were infinitely darker than of any surfacer bard or poet I knew that she was toning them down for the benefit of the audience. In one such story she weaved a tale of how the great houses of Menzoberranzan banded together in a rare moment of unity to hold out against the illithid army threatening them, only to fall upon one another before their last foes were slain. Unlike some of the others she had little poise or embellishment to her tales, but everyone present listened intently even as some of them paled the stories of blood and death.
When my turn came I spoke of my time in the Legion, the skirmishes against Nordic Pirate bands and Ashlander insurgent parties, some of the more notable patrols I had been on before talking about some of the famous victories of the Legions during their long and colourful histories. I also spoke of our recent adventures from the siege of Kvatch, the daedric assault on Anvil, our encounter with the Vampires of Glenvar castle and even the way I retrieved the Light of Dawn. Neither Viconia nor I exaggerated with any of our stories but in many cases we purposely left out the full truth of our abilities and obviously my true nature. This did little to change the effect on our group of listeners, as they hung onto our every word, our own tales matching many of the stories that they had heard during one of the inevitable retellings and cementing their own ideas of our individual heroism.
The evening drew on as the fire began to dim and the wood turned into glowing coals our audience left, one by one or a few at a time until Viconia and I too left to sleep. Viconia soon curled into my side with an arm over me and while I was bone wearingly exhausted from the journey and my injuries I suffered through a night of troubled sleep.
When it did come, my sleep was filled with strange and alien dreams, filled with visions of the wild and of nature. Waterfalls cascaded down cliffs thousands of kilometres high and vanished within the rolling cloudbanks hiding their peaks from view. Grass swayed in the gentle breeze, refusing to be bent under the heavy tread of my armoured boots and caressing my armoured thighs as I walked. Despite the strange springtime like chill in the air, I could feel warm and comfortable under the sun but there was a darkness growing within this world of greenery and life.
A tremble rolled through the ground, as though a giant had taken his first step of an age and the land seemed to recoil from the impact. The strange sensation of sickness seemed to swirl through the land, being mirrored by my own feelings as the land itself seemed to lose its lustre and vibrancy to the growing sensation of wrongness. Something indescribably sinister was coming and even as I reached to the empty scabbard at my hip I knew that whatever it was I could not escape it.
Thundering through the air and ground, I could only watch helplessly as animals of all kinds and descriptions ran from the growing threat on the horizon, crushing dozens of their own kind in their panic and trampling the greenery into the ground. The growing sensation of wrongness had now reached the point of turning into a sickening level of fear as the wave of stampeding beasts vanished behind me in the growing cloud of dust in their wake. Around me the land was changing, dying at the surge of dark power that gripped and consumed it. My fingers ran through strands of grass that withered and turned to ash under my touch, the soil cracking and losing all moisture as the trees shrivelled under the corrupting influence and were dragged down into the earth by metallic tendrils of black obsidian and glass.
As the sky paled and turned into darkness so foul that I could not bring myself to gaze upon it, I could feel the growing presence behind all the desecration looming within my sight. There was nothing before me other than blackness and doom, but I could feel the eyes of the being watching and tearing my soul to shreds as a cat would toy with its prey. Through the timeless ages this being had waited to finish what it had begun so long ago, and now there was almost nothing between it and its goal.
I caught the flash of gold metal, seeing the ridged and spiked plate of a being using one of the most holy of colours and lustres to announce its sins and evil nature. A howling helm of golden blades and spear points consumed all light entering its soulless eye sockets, hiding the entity that wore it from view. I growled a challenge through a maw filled with vampiric fangs, tightening my fists even as I knew that there was no hope against such a being. This was an entity of hatred and desecration, of corruption and malice and such beings could not be defeated by others sharing their traits. As a vampire I could and had faced down countless beings that could slaughter through normal men and mer but this being could only be stopped by something of purity. Evil does not, and cannot truly defeat evil.
Just as the serrated gauntlet reached out to crush me whole, I found myself jolted awake and sweating profusely in the early dawn air. It was dark but the sun was slowly rising to the east and leaving the seemingly eternal twilight of predawn to light up my surroundings.
Bloodtide Rising and quickly approaching the next volume "Crusader".
Bloodtide Rising has surpassed the views, favorites, followers and comments of all 26 Elder Scrolls stories combined on my Ao3 profile. And most of them have been on there for 7 or so years...
