The Throat of the World

  Winter, 4E202

  Present day

  The hour was late as Kaius opened his eyes and looked into the flames crackling softly before him. As it seemed to do so his mind had been wandering through the depths of his thoughts. Every year that he lived weighed heavily on him, and the deaths of friends and family were fresh as the day they had passed onto Aetherius. Baurus, Jauffre, Belisarius, Alexi, three emperors, several counts, innumerable acquaintances from the lowliest beggar to kings and queens and beyond had come and gone, and yet he remained. Viconia was far away despite her proximity to his waking thoughts, and he knew that if it hadn’t been for her, he would no longer be… lingering in the world.

  A branch snapped as its flame weakened mass broke in two, and a storm of embers rose into the sky, only to be snatched away by the wind. It was howling around the tiny alcove in the cliff face, threatening and promising death and hypothermia, but such concerns didn’t even enter his mind. The cold of the mountain was nothing to the cold of his own thoughts, and the frozen core of his soul. For so long he had crushed his emotions and thoughts that it was only through battle that seemed to bring him any joy anymore.

  Within the recesses of his mind and soul, he felt a familiar presence coil around, the burning rage and anger of the presence somehow pleading with him. It was a presence he had felt ever since that fateful day that he stepped through the burning Oblivion portal to meet his destiny head-on, and had been part of him for over two hundred years. Since the Great War though, it was much, much more insistent and audible, if such a thing could even be described as such.

  A vampire is a devourer of the soul, and the hundreds, if not thousands of throats he had drunk from had filled him with tiny fragments of lifeforce that had merged with his own. Some had faded into nothing, consumed and dominated by his variation of the Rape-God's curse to empower him. A handful however remained, the hints of their personalities and strength remaining where he could call upon them. He could feel the draconic and the daedric presences, coiling and scratching at his mind and sanity, but after so long dominating the first soul-fragment he could ignore them easily enough.

  Scaled and as ancient as the bones of the mountain he sat upon, the pair slithered within him, coiling about themselves and whispering half-heard phrases in a language older than time itself. Spindly and corrupt, the arachnid presence kept its own company, choosing instead to rail against the confines of its soul-prison and howl its wordless outrage and despair.

  Promising power and ruin upon his foes, the ever present daedric presence spoke to him directly as it had done so for centuries. What he had once known only as, the ‘beast’ was far more vocal these past years after more of its soul had been consumed. A being that had once been general to a Daedric Prince, and champion to a Thalmor, was now reduced to a pathetic mewling in the back of a vampire's mind. A mewling that was easily ignored from years of practice, and a will stronger than steel.

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  The cold seeped into his flesh and he put another log on the fire, pulling his thick fur coat tighter, before leaning over and doing the same to the lithe figure slumbering nearby. As she had for the past four months, Sofia was following him on this latest journey, this ‘pilgrimage’… It had taken a lot of preparation, considerable coin gained from working with the Companions for what they needed for the journey, but they were close to their objective now. For two days they had climbed the greatest mountain in Tamriel in Kaius's attempt to respond to the Greybeards’ summons, braving the slopes, and climbing the Seven Thousand Steps. Normally such a pilgrimage to the Greybeard’s monastery in winter would have been impossible or supremely dangerous, but the inadvertent stripping of the mountain’s slopes of snow and ice from the summons had provided an opportunity.

  Despite everything, and the darkness of his memories, Kaius couldn't help but smile, despite the fact that there was as much warmth in his expression as the howling winds outside their stone walled campsite. Beside him, Sofia sighed softly in her sleep, wriggling deeper under the thick furs of her traveller’s bedroll and cloak, to cover herself further from the wind's embrace.

  Daemones et mortui non plorant. The Daedra and the Dead do not weep; an ancient Cyrodiilic saying, born from the dark days of the Alessian Rebellion. The meaning though was just as relevant as it had been almost four thousand years before. The dead; whose suffering is now over and whose souls have moved onto Aetherius, no longer have cause or need to cry. And the Daedra, the creatures and children of Oblivion are simply incapable of doing so. It had once been a phrase spoken in the darkest moments of his life intended to give hope and purpose to him, to provide confidence and comfort in the face of so much loss.

  But now, almost thirty years later the truth of the phrase was much more personal. When all sorrow, and suffering, and loss, strips away a person's humanity there is nothing left but raw emotion but that too is to be stripped away. Their soul is scraped and ripped and worn thin until all that is left is a being hollowed and empty, or consumed with hate and anger.

  Two… Centuries… Two hundred years of vampirism. The loss of all of his friends. The deaths of his children. His wife, his love, his mrimmd'ssinss, deep within the dark unknown caverns of the world. All hope, love, and pleasure had been taken from him, until he couldn't remember the last time he had cried.

  The daedric presence in his soul coiled forward at his roiling emotions and he could feel his muscles tensing with the promise of untold power, the teeth in his skull tingling with potential change. It whispered a wordless question to him; a formless query framed in scraps of emotion, and he could feel what had once been Dremora's half plea, half promise, swirling in his mind.

  "Shut up, Reive." Kaius whispered to himself, the soft words stolen by the wind as he turned the coals over with his broadsword, his hand gently squeezing the Amulet of Talos as it hung from his neck on its handmade, leather loop.

  Blood of Dragons Volume 6 - The Dead don't Weep