Chapter Text
Leaving the castle had been more of an adjustment for Elayn than she would have liked. Those months in Harkon's grasp haunted her dreams like a fever, leaving her to wake from them gasping, but like a fever dream the memories were confusing and fleeting-- a blur. Despite that, she had grown used to the walls around her, and it was a good thing Serana's needs had them traveling at night, and that the sky in this part of the world stayed so cloudy. On nights with a clear, starlit sky, or worse, days when the sky was a vast expanse of blue, she felt her pulse quicken with every moment she spent looking up at it, which was difficult to keep herself from doing.
She tried to keep her distress from Serana, but the vampire could hear the thrill in her blood quite well, and Elayn knew she worried. Still she kept to herself, quiet while they rode together down forest roads, fighting herself when the foliage broke to show the sky, free of clouds and daunting.
She and Serana weren't the only ones with keen senses in their company, and Elayn's horse was picking up on its riders distress. Its ears flicked back and forth, it shied to and fro, pulling at its reins, and Elayn cursed as she pulled back only to make the situation worse.
"Elayn?"
Her back went stiff at the soft voice behind her. She willed her hackles not to rise, Serana meant well damn it, but she couldn't help reacting to someone observing her weakness. Even someone she cared for. She bowed her head, shoulders hunching under the strain of it all. "
Elayn?" Serana persisted, nudging her own steed up to stand beside the werewolf. "Are you okay?" She reached out and--
Before she could touch her, Elayn was jerking away, urging her horse onward with a light kick. "I'm fine," she snapped, not looking over her shoulder. "We should keep moving. I smell humans." She sniffed again. "And blood."
The scents turned out to be connected, as Serana and Elayn found when they rounded a bend and discovered the broken, burning remains of a cart. The horses that pulled it were slain, as were the people it carried, and she heard Elayn start growling when she found one of the dead was a child.
"Whatever did this can't get away with it," she said roughly, still not looking at Serana. She was hurt, a little, but her werewolf was right. The injustice was too great to be set aside.
"If it was bandits--" she started to say, only to be cut off when Elayn dropped down from her horse and strode closer to the wreckage, nostrils flared as she sniffed the air.
"I don't think it was bandits," she said, coming to a stop. "I think I smell... Goblins."
"Goblins?" Serana repeated, surprised. "There weren't any goblins around my father's castle. He wiped them out."
"Damn shame he couldn't do it with this lot too," Elayn muttered, but Serana caught it easily, and nodded her agreement.
"Should we bury the dead?"
"Burying them would take too much time." She glanced up at the sky, and Serana wondered if she didn't know she was being so obvious about the nervousness on her face when she did. "We should burn them, then hunt down the bastards that did this."
Her command of elemental magic was shaky compared to her skill in necromantic arts, but Serana set the bodies piled up on the remains of the cart ablaze. The two of them watched the fire for a few moments, before Elayn went sniffing for a scent trail to follow. Serana followed her, leading the horses.
The trail led them to a cave tuced behind a fallen tree. Elayn saw it before the creatures guarding it saw her, so she was able to stop short in time to signal a warning to Serana, who tied the horses to a low hanging branch and crept over to where Elayn now crouched.
"I see three guarding the front," her werewolf whispered, pointing them out. Serana's eyes were keen, but not well-trained. "If we take them quickly and quietly, we can sneak into the cave without a pack of goblins coming down around our heads."
"Will you change shape?"
Elayn shook her head, and drew her short sword from its scabbard. "Goblins fight with weapons, crude but capable of killing. A wolf wouldn't fare well if she got surrounded."
"A pity," Serana drawled. Elayn looked at her, for the first time in many hours, and saw her eyes were sparkling.
Her lips pulled into a smile, and she darted forward for a quick kiss before slipping through the brush to get closer to the goblins.
Being startled, and stupid by nature, the goblins were easy to dispatch. It was venturing further into the cave that proved challenging. Elayn nearly tripped on a taut line stretched across the path leading down, only saved by Serana's quick movement to grab her by the back of her tunic and pull her back.
Then, as they went on, they started to hear shouting, that of an angry man giving orders.
"Go! Go! Put that-- no, not there, there you ignorant little--"
When Elayn's eyes caught torchlight, she tugged Serana to the side, pulling her flush against her torso so they both hid in the shadows as a group of goblins came past bearing large crates. She waited a beat once they were past, then two, before letting Serana go, missing the softness pressed against her as soon as it was gone.
The two of them crept on through the tunnel until they came upon a large chamber, full of goblins hustling to and fro, while a man with a wild black beard and purple robes stood shouting orders at them. He was the one she had heard echoing through the cave. She sniffed the air, and wrinkled her nose at the foulness she could nearly taste on her tongue.
"Warlock," Serana said, moving her lips silently. Elayn nodded.
Only a few months had passed of the two of them traveling together, but it had been enough that they had no need to vocalize a strategy to follow. Elayn would tear down as many as she could, while Serana brought them back to fight their living friends, all the while wielding cold fire that stripped vitality like pine spirits stripped paint. They leapt as one into the fray, and the goblins stood no chance.
At least, not at first. "Intruders!" the warlock howled, spit flying from his mouth. "You will pay for this!"
Elayn rolled her eyes, and barely registered a stinging in her side, until she cut a goblin down and saw the warlock lower a hollow pipe from his mouth with an evil cackle. She looked down, and saw a feathered dart sticking out of the skin just under her ribs.
"Like hell," she spat, knocked a goblin aside, and charged at him. When his head rolled to the floor, his jaw still worked with mad laughter.
Their leader gone, the few remaining goblins fled, leaving Elayn standing surrounded by bodies, spattered in blood. Serana looked cleaner, since she didn't get as close to the fighting.
A wave of... something hit her as the vampire drew close. She staggered, falling to a knee as she was struck with the sensation that her entire being was about to fall apart. She looked at Serana, her mouth failing to make words, and she reached out--
Only for darkness to well up in her vision and drag her under.