The battle, if it could be called as such, was over almost before any of those within the enormous cavern realised it had begun. Attacking from the shadows, the trio had charged into the midst of the larger group and had begun killing, even before weapons could be raised against them. Swords flashed and an axe hacked down hard into meat and bone, taking lives and leaving the ancient stones covered with gore, viscera and the bodies of the fallen.

  Ancient stones and carved pillars were coated in blood, but it wasn’t just gore that covered the crypt’s interior. Wafting on the breeze and lifted up by the very flames that had picked the bones clean, the ash and dust of the four slain vampires clung to the trio's clothing, adhering, and mixing with the blood of the mortals to form a black-red paste.

  "You know what's the worst part about killing vampires?"

  Kneeling over one of the unburnt corpses, Kaius looked over to Sofia while using the dead thrall's hair to wipe his sword clean of blood, watching as she complained and attempted to brush away the dust of a vampire she had slain.

  “There’s a ‘worst’ part?”

  "Oh course. The worst part is that no matter what I do, I can never get the dust out of my armour." Stopping in mid stride, Sofia reached down, tugging on her belt and pants with one hand while she returned her blade to its scabbard with the other. "Or my underwear."

  "Limestone powder mixed with water for cloth." Despite wearing several dozen kilograms of armour and equipment Kaius moved as softly as a cloud as he rose to his feet. "And for armour; nothing beats a barrel filled with sand."

  "I know, I know, but no matter how well we wash and clean, I always feel so… ick. I think you just need to buy me new clothes."

  Choosing to ignore Sofia's comment and the way she framed it, Kaius turned and looked over to Lydia, who was in the process of removing her spectacle helm.

  "Lydia? Are you okay?"

  Shaking her hair free as she removed her helmet, the huskarl nodded, a short, sharp motion that made some of her carefully maintained braids shake loose. Sometime during the fight a dagger’s strike had scored a long, silvery scratch from the right temple across the helmet's side. Only through a combination of superb reflexes and luck, had she managed to turn her head at the last second, instead of taking the dagger into an eye.

  "I'm fine my Thane. Nothing a few day's polishing won't fix."

  "Did you have to kill them like that though?"

  Lydia looked between Sofia, and the last two thralls she had slain. Both of the corrupted individuals were emaciated and thin, dressed in rags and cobbled together remains of clothes clinging to their gaunt frames. What they lacked in equipment however, was almost made up for in their insane devotion to their vampiric masters, which resulted in them throwing themselves at the huskarl with nothing more than a pair of daggers and a rock. The first thrall; a woman with a throat covered in scar tissue from repeated feedings, had died after Lydia had broken her leg with a powerful kick and buried her axe Hahkunstun between her eyes. As for the other; a thin and anemic man responsible for the scratch on her helmet, he, had been punched in the mouth, and then slammed, face first into the pedestal in the centre of the room.

  "I don't see the problem." Heavy, metallic footsteps echoed after Lydia finished donning her helmet, walking over and planting a boot on the chest of the dead woman before wrenching her axe free of skull and brain. The sheer force of her blow, combined with the incredible craftsmanship of her family’s heirloom axe, had practically split the woman’s head in half, all the way down to the bottom jaw.

  With an exasperated expression on her face, Sofia gestured between the huskarl shaking blood and the contents of a thrall’s skull from her axe, to the way that the man was still kneeling on the pedestal, his head transfixed with a thirty centimetre long spike.

  “That wasn’t me. The spike came out when the top was pushed down.” There was a muffled clinking of chainmail, as Lydia shrugged. "It must have been some kind of trap."

  "Good thing we didn't use our hands then." Completely undisturbed at the sight of the impalement, Kaius was moving about the room, looking at the large, swirling series of grooves on the floor and the remains of their foes scattered about. “What’s our tally so far?”

  “Seventeen thralls, eight vampires.” Lydia spoke without hesitation, not even glancing around at the latest bodies scattered about the room and Kaius nodded, satisfied with her count.

  “Quite a few of the bastards in here.”

  “Indeed. This isn’t usual vampire behaviour.” Kaius was moving around as he replied to Sofia, looking over the faint glows from the dim, pedestal mounted braziers, burning with purplish flames. There were four of them situated between the central pedestal and the outer ring of pillars, all filling the air with the taint of magicka and energy. “The reports the Dawnguard got about this place were accurate as to their number, but not what they were doing. This isn’t a coven, and it's too far away from any villages to be a hunting outpost.”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Hiding from the authorities perhaps?”

  “Not in these numbers. This lot would be a serious threat to any of the nearest towns. Sofia, what do you think?”

  “Whatever they were doing, this room is a big part of it.” It had taken them a full two weeks to travel to this backwater, long disused crypt built thousands of years before in search of the vampires that were now nothing more than bones and ash on the stone floor. Sofia had picked up one of the lanterns the thralls were using to illuminate the interior and was studying the curved pillars and their arches arranged in a circle around the braziers and central pedestal. “This whole room doesn’t look anything like what Bleak Falls Barrow did.”

  “That’s what I was thinking too.” A pickaxe, one of the several impromptu weapons wielded by the thralls, rattled on the floor as Kaius nudged it with a boot. “They have been here digging for quite some time now, and it took a lot of effort on their part to dig into here. Obviously it’s something important.”

  “Like… Loot?” The gleam in Sofia’s eyes, almost matched that of her appetite for alcohol and sex.

  “Not sure. There’s magicka here. Subtle, but present. Maybe an artefact or something.”

  “So in other words… Loot?”

  Kaius ignored her this time, seeing the way that Lydia was moving around the central pedestal and the still-impaled corpse.

  "My Thane, the blood is seeping into the floor."

  Casting, and flinging a fresh magelight to replace one of those he had used to aid them in their fight against the vampires and thralls, Kaius strode over to Lydia. One of the magelights stuck to the bottom of a pillar and revealed the remains of what had once been a corrupted human, reduced to a smear. Little more than a broken, ruptured mess of broken limbs and jellified organs, the thrall had been one of the first to die as Kaius had used his thu’um to devastating effect. He called the shout, ‘Unrelenting Force,’ but how the words ‘Fus ro Dah,’ inflicted such devastating effects when Kaius shouted them, Sofia had no clue. Besides their volume, they were less migraine inducing than normal magicka so she almost preferred them.

  “Must be some sort of ritual chamber. Scarification or something?” The blood from the man and woman Lydia killed was sluggishly pouring and collecting around the base of the central pedestal, and flowing into a hexagonal series of grates in the cold, stone floor. “Perhaps even…”

  Whatever words Kaius had was lost as there was a grinding clunk that they all felt more than heard as it ran through the floor, before a tremble ran through the soles of their feet. In hissing spurts of dust the circular grooves erupted, and began sliding apart, the concentric designs revealing themselves to be a series of stairs that slid and thudded into place even as the trio scrambled up and out of the way.

  The bodies of those they had slain trembled and jerked as though they were alive once more, their blood splattering and bubbling as each of the newly formed steps locked into position one after another. Bones and ashes rattled and flowed like the blood of the thralls, as the remains of the vampires were shaken further apart, tumbling down several of the steps in turn until the rumbling vibrations and echoes died away.

  "Well... That was different."

  Thirty metres in diameter, the circular chamber had been transformed, the floor dropping away into a deep set of stairs that partially resembled an amphitheater of sorts. Only a two metre tall, hexagonal pillar capped by the central pedestal with its macabre, fleshy impaled decoration remained.

  “I guess we have discovered what the vampires were trying to accomplish with moving the braziers around. Some kind of locking mechanism.”

  “Dwemer?” Lydia asked curiously in her usual deadpan tone.

  “No. This is too crude, and there’s none of their metal here. This feels… Nordic? Somehow?” Stepping down the stairs, with Sofia and Lydia close behind, Kaius approached the central, hexagonal pillar, looking over its perfectly smoothed exterior and running his fingers over the cold, black granite. “I don’t have the slightest idea what this is.”

  “Our great and masterful hero has discovered something he doesn’t know. Maybe I should run off and have it announced in the Black Horse Courier?”

  “Ha-ha... Very funny, Sofia.”

  “My Thane, there is a seam here.”

  “It’s also partially enchanted.” Kaius added, looking over to where Lydia was running her fingers over the tiny seam in one of the pillar’s corners. “It might be hollow. Let's see if we can open it and see what’s inside.”

  Without hesitation, Lydia’s axe returned to her hand and she pressed it into the seam, attempting to gain some form of purchase to leverage it open. Grunting, and heaving back on her weapon there wasn’t even the slightest movement from any part of the wide pillar.

  “It…” She pulled back on it again to the same lack of effect. “It feels like it’s caught on something.”

  "Um.... Guys?"

  "What is it Sofia?" Not even looking at Sofia, Kaius had pressed the point of his Skyforged-steel broadsword slightly below Lydia’s axe in an attempt to assist.

  There was a sudden, and audible click and the resistance on their axe and sword vanished as the heavy stone shifted in its position. It was unhinging, yawning open slowly and lowering itself down onto the tiered floor like a castle drawbridge, leaving Kaius and Lydia to turn and stare at Sofia.

  "What did you do?"

  "I pushed the button." Sofia shrugged, from her position on the opposite side of the pillar.