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Chapter Text

When she had first entered Dimhollow, the only things she'd been expecting to find were death, dismay, and pain. Back then, she'd had no idea how right that initial premonition would turn out to be in the end. How she would find Death, tucked away safely, look right into her eyes and find her… strangely human.

And how she would long for Death to stay by her side for all eternity.

In the forgotten backwater of a cave, after trudging through hordes of spiders, draugr and rabid vampires out for her blood, she had found Serana. Well, found might have been too generous for the way she had stumbled upon a random stone monolith, managed to open it through the sheer stupidity of pressing on randomly appearing latches in the middle of nowhere, getting her arm ran-through with a spike and subsequently catching the vampire woman hidden inside with her bloodied arms.

She had been ready to fight Death till her last breath, reaching with her uninjured hand for the blade she'd dropped in surprise when the chambered'd opened. That was until she had looked Death in the eyes. And Death stared right back, with persimmon eyes full of life, hidden behind a veil of sorrow and deep slumber. Strange. She'd never thought Death could be described as sleepy and desperate to go home.

A tentative alliance had been formed, more out of necessity than anything else. Neither woman could bear to attack the other after finding themselves surrounded by walls and stones and doors that hid everything that would soon come and try to claim their lives. After successfully fighting through the waves of draugr appearing from within the surrounding shadows, they couldn't find the strength nor will to lift their weapon and finish what so many others could not.

Serana had not felt the need to ask about what happened to the other woman's hand. After all, she'd still felt the feint taste of her blood lingering in the back of her throat.

She will always remember the other woman's, Ren's, attempt at shield her from the sun after they'd finally stumbled out of the foul-smelling, never-ending cave. She'd been seemingly lost in her thoughts, most likely mulling over the credibility of Serana's claims about vampires and death and the sun going out permanently, and when the first rays of sunlight Serana'd felt in centuries landed upon her hand, she didn't even get a second to enjoy it before the body of the other woman gently but urgently pushed her back underneath the stone arch they'd just left. Bodies close, Serana's nose landing perfectly in the crevice between Ren's shoulder and neck, her body in front of the vampire cloaking her in the shadows once more. Strange. She'd never imagined shadows could feel so warm.

Twigs cracked underfoot under their heavy steps after crossing a particularly obstinate fallen tree. There had been countless others, along with ridges, crevices, mountain springs and gods know what else. The woman, exhausted after traveling in sunlight – even despite her initial fondness for it – stumbled, boots squelching in the mud, preparing herself for the pain and subsequent embarrassment of landing in the wet, slippery puddles the locals swear is soil. Instead, an arm shot out in a split second, almost faster than she could process, catching her just before her knees landed in the sludge.

Thank you.

Be careful.

Two sets of heavy footsteps trudged on, following the off-beat one, three, two of their hearts.

When they'd settled down for the night, Serana had taken the downtime to study her… companion. The first night they'd spent together, huddled into their thick coats underneath the mountain when night caught up to them unaware, neither of the women had slept. Serana'd assumed that the warrior did not trust her and deemed sleeping around her too dangerous. A chink in her theory appeared as soon as she'd taken an another sneaky look at the woman about an hour into their rest, noticing the deep shadows smeared underneath the bright ocean eyes, dimming their unexpected sparkle with what was clearly exhaustion that could not be caused solely by only one sleepless night, however endless it had actually felt. To Serana, it seemed like the woman had trouble sleeping by herself as well.

Instead, they'd traded stories. Inconsequential ones that had nothing to do with what they were doing, where they were going or who they were as people. And yet, they'd revealed more than Serana had initially realized. She would often remember these moments fondly, how clueless and dismissive she had been in face of the greatest adventure of her life, one she had so long craved even as a little girl hiding behind the thick castle walls.

Even later, when all the birds had sung their last songs and only the sounds of beetles and swishing grass had remained, the other woman's head had lolled painfully to the side, rousing her from the light slumber her body had almost subconsciously floated into – despite all her efforts at remaining awake. Serana remembered that her light, sun-kissed hair had looked almost silvery in the moonlight. She'd noted that while the woman seemed destined for the sunlight, walking confidently through the days they passed together on the way to their destination, she truly flourished in the muted, foggy light of the moon. It had not been the only frustrating contradiction Serana would notice about her companion in the upcoming days and weeks.

She, once more, had not asked about the shadows still present underneath Ren's eyes in the morning, while they'd packed their meagre belongings and moved on.

They had said their goodbyes underneath the mountain, Ren heading to the Fortress and Serana aiming to find her way back home. Serana'd assured the other woman that it would be safer this way and Ren had been smart enough to not question for whom.

She'd desperately tried to squash the feeling of utter… wrongness blooming in her chest with every step she'd taken with her back turned to the blonde woman slowly walking away in the opposite direction.

This was the way home.

Refusing her father and slipping away from the castle, her own home - in the middle of the night and with the comforting and damning weight of the scroll on her back no less - had been simpler than Serana could have ever imagined. The once esteemed court – according to some, anyway – had fallen into complete disarray without her and her mother's presence. The gaping wound left by the disappearance of Valerica left a sour taste in Serana's mouth, forcing her to accept that even if the estate had ever been a home to their family, it for sure hadn’t been one for a very long time now. Despite knowing better, she'd foolishly hoped that after almost three thousand years she'd spent in that tomb, her father would change is mind, or at least miss her presence. She'd been proven wrong in the first few minutes spent in her father's company, when he'd only inquired about the Scroll and any information pertaining to Valerica's daring and unexplained escape from Castle Volkihar before she even had a chance to settle down after a who knows how long absence.

It had been even easier to find the footsteps still visible in the snow even during the heavy snowfall that still prevailed in the North and follow them all the way down to the small road curving around the hill of Solitude. Not many people would come this far north during the heaviest Skyrim winters, even fewer that carry the contrasting scent of cherry blossoms doused in flames.

She'd caught up to Ren on a vastly sprawling plane filled to the brim with wildflowers that stubbornly refused to succumb to the air's rapidly declining temperatures, just south-west of Rorikstead, wondering why the other woman had decided to take the longer route to Riften and head this far south. Serana'd found her, or rather stumbled upon her, sleeping under a makeshift tent branches and leaves, the mellow and strangely soothing heartbeat almost ringing in Serana's ears amongst all the valiantly blooming flowers. It had been the sole warning to quiet her footsteps in order to not tear the woman from her dreams. Ren seemed to have an uncanny ability to know when unwanted company was near, even in her sleep. After reluctantly falling asleep sometime in the early morning hours, Ren would wake immediately when Serana'd moved even slightly from her position on the other side of the small clearing that they'd found for themselves during their only night spent together.

It had been a small miracle that Ren hadn't woken up that time, which had not surprised Serana that much, considering the impressive pace the woman had set for herself after leaving Serana behind, most likely travelling through the nights for some reason as well.

Serana'd watched over her until the sun had come up, before slipping her hood on and joining Ren once she'd been fully awake. The other woman hadn't seemed the least bit surprised to see her and Serana'd even dared to say that Ren hadn't looked too disappointed at the prospect of having company again, if only for the remainder of the journey to the fort. Neither of them had dared to think beyond that at the time.

She'd pointedly ignored Ren looking further south longingly, as if searching for something the vampire couldn’t have seen, before they'd made the turn at a crossroads that would lead them through the Whiterun planes and the mountain pass straight to Riften. They hadn't talked about it, but Serana'd vowed to ask the other woman about her solemn expression some other time, if they ever got the chance to talk.

As it was, they'd simply walked, side by side, their footsteps just a hint lighter than they had been during their first mutual journey. Maybe the rain had let up in the following couple of days, because their footsteps had no longer felt hindered by the heavy mud intent on tripping them up.

They'd never built campfires wherever they happened to spend the night. At least not anymore. The light had proven to be too much of an attraction to Skyrim's wildlife, something they'd learned the hard way after an unfortunate encounter with a bear and a mountain lion. The encounter had been especially harrowing for Ren, who had been unfortunately in the process of putting her clothes on after a bath in a nearby stream when the beast had attacked.

Serana'd decided to pretend that her eyes unwillingly straying to the other woman's body had been accidental and purely out of concern for the safety of the sole source of information and help. Ren hadn't been too visibly bothered by it, but thinking back on it, Serana had concluded that the other woman simply hadn’t realized how well the vampire could see even under the stars just shy off midnight.

Another thing she'd noticed was that Ren was not a particularly talkative person. Not in the way that suggested lack of thought, but rather that she had too many to put it into words. On top of that, they'd still been basically strangers, even despite the few mostly light-hearted conversations they'd held while watching the sun set behind the western mountaintops. The other woman had remained an enigma that Serana longed to decipher, if only for not having anything better to do throughout the nights the woman had deigned to sleep fitfully.

They'd been travelling for a quite a while, trudging slowly but surely to the eastern borders of Skyrim, where Ren had claimed the fortress to be. Their progress had been significantly hindered by their mutual paranoia about being followed and the possibility of someone discovering who Serana was whenever they'd walked closer to any larger settlements. The same reason'd forced the mutual decision of not using any of the carriages they'd encountered, although Serana'd felt like Ren hadn't been too worried about anyone noticing Serana's vampiric nature and running for the hills. Or worse, to the nearest guard post.

The clouds suddenly rolling above their heads and the promise of - yet another - relentless storm had forced them to find shelter in one of the holes masquerading as caves on the mountain paths between Ivarstead and Riften. The atmosphere had been quite heavy despite the unexpected lack of malicious intent between the two, amplified by their still remaining mutual distrust toward one another. Both women had laid their worn-out bodies on the uncomfortable stone floor just as the first drops of rain'd spattered on the parched soil, trying to find at least a semblance of relief from the harsh reality rapidly taking place outside of the makeshift shelter. The rain had quickly gained on intensity, the storm rolling around the mountains looming above their heads, surely ravaging the blooming crops Serana had seen just moments prior near one of the roads.

That day, it seemed, multiple enemies would spring up from the inside to catch the two women unaware.

The space they'd secured for themselves had been relatively small, barely fitting the two women and all their gear. Serana considered herself to be on the taller side, courtesy of her Nordic heritage, often looming over most of her father's court. She took no small pleasure in the thinly veiled looks of frustration and even anger whenever her father's underling had to physically look up to her whenever they would talk down on her. Ren was not too far behind in this regard, only maybe an inch or two shorter than Serana herself – not that they had been physically close enough to make an accurate comparison – making the space feel even more cramped.

When the rain had shown no signs of stopping, forced to make a decision they'd chosen to wait it out in the sorry excuse of a cave. Serana had – quite foolishly, in retrospect – opted to try and get some sleep. A terrible decision, considering that the only person around at the time had been a vampire hunter who, on one hand, had begrudgingly promised to help Serana – or rather, agreed to look into the things that Serana had told her about the prophecy preaching an eternal night for all the vampires to enjoy. On the other hand, a stranger, with an agenda that she'd at the time believed included – among other things – eradicating all of her kind from the land of Skyrim. She'd not foolish enough to assume that just because the woman hadn't killed her the moment she'd seen her, that she wouldn't want to rid the world of things she perceived as evil. She was a vampire hunter for heaven's sake. Someone Serana couldn’t even be sure would not just try to kill her as soon as her usefulness had ran out, should the vampire have shown even a hint of vulnerability. Especially since Serana'd been aware that Ren has respected - if not been outright afraid of - Serana's magical and other combat abilities, having seen glimpses of them whenever a fight had ensued

How far they had come in such a short amount of time, she reminisced fondly.

She vividly remembered waking up in the middle of the night, rain still valiantly pelting the stone walls of their hideout, the deep humming almost strong enough to drown out the muffled scream dying in her throat. Almost.

She remembered Ren springing out of her bedroll as if burned before she'd even been able to blink, a dagger glinting in her hand even in the sparse lighting ocassionally coming from the raging storm outside. She'd always found that particular habit of Ren, sleeping with a dagger underneath her pillow that is, quite endearing – however, only after she'd learned that the other woman had no intention of running her through with it. During that night though, she'd felt an unexpected pang of sorrow for the woman not being afforded a moment of peace even in her sleep. The sensation of shared grief had been so sudden that she hadn't even had the time to recollect herself after being abruptly pulled from a nightmare before Ren approached her quickly, dagger in hand.

Serana had been convinced that she was going to die in that cave, with an unwilling body only affording her the strength to pray to whoever was willing to listen in that moment that her death would be swift and final enough to silence the unrelenting screaming still echoing inside her head, with foul voices relentlessly spewing foul words meant to cut her down, weaveing through with blurry images of Coldharbour to make a grotesque tapestry of a vengeful artist in her mind.

She would also come to learn that Ren had been determined to prove every one of Serana's assumptions about her wrong, regardless of whether she'd been aware of them at the time or not.

Instead of attacking the vampire right away, which Serana had wholeheartedly expected, Ren's eyes had roamed wildly over her body, as if searching for any wounds, injuries, or hidden attackers to drive away with the gleaming obsidian weapon firmly clutched in her left hand. I haven't noticed that she also uder her left hand in combat.

(Later, Serana could have smacked herself. If her truly last thought on Nirn had been the hand preference of her would-be killer, the ghosts of her afterlife would never let her live that down. Figuratively.

Even later, much later, she would often wish that her wounds would be as easily addressed as a cut or even a broken bone and her demons easily driven away with a weapon held firmly in capable hands. That, at least sometimes, she wouldn't feel like more things inside her were broken than not.)

What she had not expected, however, was for the other woman to try and overpower the deafening sounds of rain and clapping thunder and lightning streaking across the sullen night sky with her own voice. Serana's first thought had been that she'd surely only misheard the other woman among all the noise and memories mixing and swirling in her mind.

Are you okay?

There'd been so many answers for Serana to choose from that the sheer number of possibilities had overwhelmed her, mind jumping between one thought to the other without taking even a split of a second to consider each of them before moving on. All completely unnecessary in the end. When Ren had determined no immediate danger to Serana or herself, she'd turned her back to the vampire, crouching in front of her protectively and squinting into the violent night, trying to identify potential intruders lurking beyond the veil of pouring rain.

“What happened?” Her voice could barely be heard over the sound of rain pelting relentlessly on the unmoving stone walls.

“Nothing.” Serana muttered shakily, after finally finding at least a semblance of her voice. “Nothing happened.” Her laughable attempt at convincing herself hadn't been nearly as successful as she’d have wanted. It had convinced Ren even less, although she hadn't said anything about it, saving Serana at least a little bit of embarrassment. She’d returned the dagger into its original resting place underneath the spare tunic currently serving as a pillow and then… reached out.

Slowly, with one hand.

The same one that held the dagger before, Serana's helpful mind had supplied.

Hesitant, as if approaching a scared kitten that might have run away at a moment’s notice. Or a wild sabre cat ready to snag the approaching arm and rip it straight off without hesitation. A fair assumption in Serana's humble opinion.

A gentle finger had brushed over her cold cheek, so warm to the touch that she'd almost recoiled reflexively, collecting the moisture gathered there and-

Well.

So much for not showing vulnerability.

She couldn't recall all the details of that particular night, most likely due to the immense emotional turmoil, crippling fear and complete and utter exhaustion in the face of their unavoidable fate. However, one thing had stuck with her throughout the following weeks and months, like a ray of light shining brightly in an otherwise bleak night. A few simple words, woven together gently to make Serana fall, entranced, straight into the net of the impossibly alluring warrior in front of her.

I promise you are safe with me.

It seems that Ren had formed a habit of catching Serana whenever she fell very early on.

When they'd finally gotten to the fort, stumbling about like a pair of wet dogs, covered from head to toe in mud, leaves, fallen twigs and whatever else they'd picked up along their trek through the woods and up the canyon, the two of them had looked so unrecognizable that the Dawnguard members standing watch at the massive wooden gate had frozen completely, too shocked at the two forest monsters emerging from behind the trees to pick up the strange weapons hanging limply in their arms. Serana had never seen such weapons before, looking like miniature bows with the arrow sitting firmly on top, but despite her lack of knowledge she'd known even then that ending up on the wrong side of them would not end too well for her.

The image of frozen stupor had only lasted until Serana's unmissable, unmasked eyes had fixed upon the two guards, fangs glinting even in the muted sunlight.

They'd come to a conclusion that attempting to trick the people trained at seeing through them would not win the two women - Serana in particular - any points with the Dawnguard. The only thing standing between Serana and certain, painful death had been the woman confidently walking in front of her amongst the stunned and fearful silence, her calm yet powerful voice carrying through the humid afternoon and berating the guards for being quote bumbling band of bufoons and advising them rather firmly to put what she'd called crossbows away before she'd caught up to them and showed them all the creative uses of her favourite dagger.

Isran was not happy to see them.

Serana got the feeling it was not solely due to the mud they have tracked all along the foyer and into the main room.

“Care to explain why a living-” Questionable. “Breathing-” Again. “Vampire waltzes up to my fort alongside the best vampire hunter we have, with an elder scroll no less, its head still sitting firmly on its shoulders and looking like a drowned rat?”

“Well, it was raining-”

“I'm not asking about the gods damned rain.”

Serana, sensing the inevitability of the upcoming conversation and wanting to get it over with as quickly as possible, stepped out from behind Ren, who had tried to valiantly shield her from the worst of Isran's wrath with her jokes and admittedly well-build body, Serana's unimpressed face peeking just over her woman's shoulder. Better get this over with.

“You're all going to die unless you do exactly as I say.”

“Okay. Now, one more time. What the hell is this?”

They had moved deeper inside the fortress, far enough from prying eyes to have at least a semblance of privacy. Serana still felt like the walls were watching her every move, listening to every hushed word spoken between the tall stone walls. She'd been in some uncomfortable situations in her unnaturally long life, which came with the territory of being the only child, and a woman at that, of a power-hungry, ruthless and more than slightly deranged self-proclaimed lord of all vampires in Skyrim. She had seen emissaries of rivalling clans murdered in front of her without batting an eye, had even done her fair share of maiming and murdering herself if the situation called for it – not something she was terribly proud of, but trying to please her father no matter the cost had seemed like the right choice at the time. She could still sometimes hear the cries of poor unfortunate souls trapped forever within the castle, their voices echoing amongst the rocks even after all these centuries.

However, Serana had - against all logic - never felt more like the shy and nervous, barely of age fledgling seeking the approval of a less-than-impressed father to court his child. Which was an inappropriate on so many levels, considering the current company of vampire hunters notwithstanding. She banished the thought immediately.

Lovers. As if.

Ren's voice pulled her out of the musing she didn't realize she'd fallen into. “-sked for my help with recovering Auriel's bow. I agreed.”

“Why?” Neither Isran's face, nor his voice showed any emotion indicating what he thought of the whole thing and for some reason that obviously fake disinterest made Serana's blood boil in an irrational bout of anger. Turns out she wasn't the only one.

“Were you not listening to me these past few minutes? I just told you that the vampires are planning to put out the gods damned sun-”

“Language.”

Ren seemed rightfully taken aback that that was the only part Isran seemed to have taken seriously. Serana's own frustration was only multiplied by the fact that she wasn't even actively included in the conversation, feeling like she had only been given half the script of it and her only option to figure out the words said in between the lines was watching the other woman's also rather ambiguous facial expressions. Apart from the moment of frustration at not being taken seriously, Ren's emotions remained in check, at least on the surface, leaving Serana completely in the dark.

“What are you, my father?”

No need to read that. Seems like her first impression of the situation had been more or less accurate. The father part, not the lov-

“I'm just saying, this whole thing sounds rather,” he paused, eyes flickering momentarily to Serana before continuing. “Suspicious. I know she has a pretty face, but this is idea is so monumentally stupid that I don’t even know where to start.” He completely ignored the rather heated retort mumbled under Ren's breath and continued. “One, you know absolutely nothing about this woman. Two, she is a vampire willingly waltzing into the fortress of professional vampire hunters. Doesn't that seem strange to you? Either she's got a death wish or...”

“Or she doesn't consider us a threat.” Ren finished quietly.

Isran bulldozed on. “Three, the prophecy might not even be real and four, even if it was, the bow might not be. Since when did the fanatic ravings of who-knows-who become trustworthy sources of information anyway?” The last part was very pointedly aimed at Serana. Instead of reacting, she took it as an invitation to finally join the rather one-sided conversation.

“We-“ Seeing the almost instant murderous expression in the dark man's so far impassive eyes, she relented. For now, anyways. “I intend to look for the bow.”

“Congratulations, I am truly thrilled for you. Why have you decided to grace us with your presence then, princess?”

She fought the urge to lash out at the man and show him exactly just how underprepared he was to tussle with any of her kind in close quarters. “I need help.”

Isran's facial expression did not change.

So she continued, reluctantly. This felt more and more like pulling teeth with a fork after a wild night of hunting mudcrabs. Felt about as useful, too.

“I am being followed by my father's men.” That knowledge came as a courtesy of the two run-ins she'd had with them before she'd even reached Ren about two weeks ago. Things have been suspiciously quiet ever since, but Serana knew that it was only a matter of time before her father's cronies had shown their presence again. Who better to help her with that, than vampire hunters? Or rather, a particular vampire hunter, with silvery hair and stormy blue eyes. Her father had surely already learned of her betrayal, the Elder scroll on Serana's back a heavy reminder of her questionable choice to entrust what the vampires believed to be the truth of their eternal power to the people hell-bent on stopping them from ever reaching it.

“I repeat, how do we know the damn bow is even real?”

It was a harsh truth. Good thing she held one even harsher.

“We don’t. But my father believes it wholeheartedly. And he will not stop until he finds it, he has an eternity at his disposal after all. That’s not a risk I'm willing to take.” She delivered the blow slowly and meticulously, making sure every word made it into Isran's clearly prejudiced mind. At the same time, she'd noticed Ren stepping closer, now standing just behind and slightly to the right of the vampire. Silently showing Isran that she agreed with what Serana had said. “Are you?”

Isran actually took a moment to ponder her words and had to reluctantly admit their more-or-less sound reasoning. Although, something clearly still didn’t add up for him.

Rightfully so.

“Where does the bow even come into play? So far all I've heard is vampires trying to put out the sun and you, one of them, asking us for help with looking for some mythical bow no one has ever seen. which is magically supposed to stop them. Excuse me if I fail to see the connection here.” He briefly looked over to Ren, who had relented the conversation into Serana's annoyingly convincing hands. She had been on the receiving end of Serana's conversation skills numerous times over the course of the short amount of time that they'd spent together so far. To be fair, the topics of their conversations had been decidedly lighter, ranging anywhere between their favourite kinds of alcohol to whether strawberry jam belonged onto sweet rolls. Ren had been bored enough one evening to humour the vampire. Serana had the feeling that she'd immediately regretted it, seeing as Serana had with utter delight started attributing her superficial answers to Ren's more personal and significant qualities. “I have a feeling you're leaving some critical information out. And I can't tell if you are stupid enough to think that I wouldn't figure it out, or even more stupid to think that Ren wouldn't share it with the rest of us if you deigned not to.”

A tense silence followed.

Isran expected Ren to break it.

She did not.

“You don't know either.” The icy realisation filled Isran's voice, followed by a much more heated I knew you were an idiot, I just didn’t think you would do something this stupid only because the bloodsucking fiend asking you to looks like a little more than average human girl. That was the second time that Isran had implied that Serana's appearance had influenced Ren's decision to help in the matter. Serana was not sure it was entirely inaccurate, since even by her account, the woman seemed to trust her an awful lot from their very first meeting, even when she rationally had absolutely no reason to do so.

Also, a little more than average?

“You can't tell me that something doesn't add up here.” Isran said, looking at Ren, clearly finished with presenting his opinion.

Ren didn’t answer right away, but she did move her slightly distant gaze to Serana. Effectively putting the vampire on the spot while also giving her the chance to explain herself before she made up her mind. Even after such a short time spent together, that felt like such a Ren thing to do.

The vampire knew she had no other choice now. She needed the Dawnguard's help in stopping the prophecy from unfolding, and they will certainly not afford it to her if she withheld important, maybe even vital information. Certainly not if they ever found out the whole truth some other way. Serana had a feeling that Isran would not kindly differentiate between omitting information and outright lying in their faces. Her voice took on a raspy quality, barely carrying over the quiet part of the fortress that Isran had herded them off to. She had been trying to avoid giving out this particular piece of information for more than a few reasons, but the time for that had officially run out. “The bow is necessary to complete the ritual.” Defeated, she continued without prompting. “I don’t know how yet, but the ritual cannot be completed without it.”

She would have wanted to wipe the smug look off Isran's face if she had not been completely aware of just how justified it was. She had just given him ammunition, a very good reason to just disregard her altogether, neatly make her disappear somewhere in the deep of the old stone walls surrounding them and keep the scroll for himself.

The realization that she might have traded one stone prison for another hit her like a swift kick from a horse. Prison, or worse, her helpful mind supplied. After all, what was one more dead vampire to a group of vampire hunters other than a successful day of fighting the bloodsucking fiends. She had even heard the phrase vampire menace floating around the cities that she'd braved getting close to when she had been tracking the blonde still standing quietly next to her. But alas, she had no choice. She had done some objectively terrible things in the past, but she could never live with herself if she let literal hell unfold on Skyrim without at least trying to prevent it.

“All I hear is one more reason to not go frolic in a meadow somewhere looking for the blasted bow.”

Apparently frustrated enough with how long the conversation had been going on with no results in sight, Ren finally stepped in. “Listen Isran, I don't like this whole thing either, but what Serana said is right. We can't just assume that it's not true, especially considering the vampire attacks have almost tripled over the past couple of months. It means that something big is going on.” They could both see gears slowly turning in Isran's head. “The sooner we get to the bottom of this, the better. Right now, finding that bow might give us a chance to figure out exactly what's been going on with the vampires. The bow might not be real, but they are certainly planning their next course of action as if it is and we have no choice but to follow Serana's plan. For now, at least.”

Isran did not seem thrilled at the involvement of Ren in this entire plan. “I still don't understand why the presence of my best hunter is necessary when she could be doing something more productive with her time.” His next words carried something akin to a barbed wire. “Like hunting your kind.”

Serana did not take the bait. “While that is certainly a noble intention on your part, it will be completely useless if the prophecy is completed. I… I hate to say this, trust me I truly do, but I need help. Ren's help specifically.” Seeing the protest once again rising in Isran's eyes, she quickly added. “Like you've just mentioned, she is the best. Father's underlings are surely not going to just let us do whatever we want while searching for the bow.”

“They could just let you recover the damn thing and then take it from you when you're no longer useful.”

Serana tilted her head, considering. “They could, but I don’t think they will.” She knew that neither's curiosity would be sated with just that, but she was reluctant to part with her clan's secrets, even if they and she herself no longer considered her a part of it after her betrayal. “They… have their ways. They don't need us. Their ways might not be as effective as the scroll – me bringing it here will have slowed them down significantly. But they have all the time in the world. We- I am more of a nuisance to them than anything else.”

“I can identify with the feeling well. Still, I have yet to hear a valid argument.”

Ren piped up from when she was standing beside Serana. “You seem to forget that I've already agreed.” The woman had an uncanny ability to make everyone forget that she was present in the room, up until the moment it suited her to remind them of her powerful presence and keep them from rebalancing with the abrupt change in the direction of the conversation. Like an unassuming, overlooked mountain stream changing into a raging river at a moment's notice.

She would make a great vampire.

Not that Serana was going to tell her that. Ever.

“I still think it's a stupid and more than pointless idea. If she is more powerful as all the other vampires – according to her claims anyway, which we have no way of double-checking – she can go look for the damn bow herself.”

Serana gritted her teeth, biting her tongue to keep from snapping. She still needed his support, no matter how grating his personality had shown itself to be so far. She also had to reluctantly admit that her thought process would most likely be the same if their roles had been reversed. That thought was also going straight to the part of her brain labelled never to see the light of day.

“I can easily overpower the lesser of father's vampires. Mere underlings are no problem to me. However,” she continued before Isran could interrupt her, again. “I cannot be sure that father will not send some of the higher-ranking vampires. Their abilities would almost compare to mine. And…” She not parting with the next information willingly, seeing as it exposed another chink in her armour and only made her seem more vulnerable. Not a great thing in the presence of vampire hunters, majority of whom wanted to already kill her anyway. She wasn’t completely sure where Ren stood, but the woman seemed to believe her, at least to a point of not actively trying to kill her just for existing. “Besides, the locals don’t like me.”

“Can't imagine why.”

Ignoring Isran's interjection, Serana went on. “I can make myself appear more or less human with some illusion magic, but human minds can still… tell.” She struggled to explain the foreign sensation, since she'd never experienced it  for herself. Or maybe she had, but the memory was as gone as the millennia that had passed while she was entombed. It's been a while since she had felt… human. “It's like a subconscious defence mechanism, telling them that something is wrong even when they can't see it for themselves.”

“Is that the reason vampires mostly stay away for humans?”

The question was too interested in the topic to have come from Isran. Serana turned to face Ren, smiling lightly for the first time in what felt like an eternity, a feat for a one of vampiric nature. “Yes. Constant fear that something is inherently wrong makes for pretty bad neighbours.”

Ren did not leave her hanging. “The garden parties really must suck.”

Before Serana could say anything to that, or just straight up laugh at the absurdity, Isran's oh so pleasant deadpan voice brought them crashing back down to reality after the brief reprieve. ”Hilarious, truly, but can we get back to the topic at hand? I am not interested in your idea of forepl-”

“Isran I swear to gods, father figure or not, if you finish that sentence I will not hesitate to pull out my sword.” It seemed that Isran's (very) thinly veiled comments about Serana's appearance had finally gotten to Ren as well. Her face did not seem angry, but rather determined. Her hand was lightly, almost leisurely resting on the scabbard, just underneath the sword's handle.

A threat. Not a terribly serious one, but a threat, nonetheless. Enough to be taken seriously even by Isran, but without any resulting repercussions. “Why did you come to talk to me anyway if you've clearly already made up your mind long before crossing my doorstep?”

Ren looked him straight in the eyes, unflinching. “Because we're going to need your help.”

It seemed like Isran had no more to say in the face of the woman's logic. Serana almost felt like she could breathe again, unnecessary as it was, but the sentiment remained the same. It seemed like the worst had been avoided, that the sole reason she has kept the importance of the bow to herself might not even come into play at all. That they might actually-

It seems like her hope might have been a little pre-mature.

Isran has made up his mind. “What if we use the bow?”

It seemed like Ren was also taken aback by the suggestion. As if it had not even been an option in her mind up until this moment. “What?”

“Like you both had said, the bow might not even be real. But if what you've said about your father,” he aimed his words at Serana next. “If this endeavour doesn’t work out for him, he will certainly find a different excuse to wage a war on mortals, which is something that we will have to consider if the time comes.” He paused, organising his thoughts before he continued. “But if, and that's a big if, the bow is real and indeed necessary for this so-called prophecy to come to pass, simply keeping it hidden from the vampires forever is not a viable option. Especially since their forever is slightly longer than ours, as you had kindly pointed out.” He gathered himself, before delivering the final blow to Serana's already worn heart. “If the bow is real, we use it to get rid of the vampire threat. For good.”

It was the last thing Serana wanted to do, but she recognized when no other options were available. The decision to eradicate her clan was something that she'd have to deal on her own, with all the adjacent repercussions. She just hoped that the war the Dawnguard intended to wage against the vampires did not include her as well.

Serana was itching to get back on the road, or at least away from all the distrusting eyes she could feel on her back ever since she'd walked through the main hall with most if not all the hunters present. She was already on the way to the entrance hall, about to reach out to Ren's hand to pull her along with, when Isran's voice made them both stop in their tracks.

“Not so fast, you two. Or more specifically, one of you.” His eyes fell on the blonde. “Can we talk for a moment?” When Ren showed no intention of humbling the request, he continued. “In private.”

Unimpressed, Ren crossed her arms over, left hip jutting out slightly. “Why? We should get going as soon as possible.”

Isran was clearly reluctant to talk about the thing ailing him in front of Serana, but whatever it was, it seemed more to the man than keeping it safe from what he perceived as prying eyes. His voice took on a warmer quality than Serana had heard through out their entire conversation. “Ren, I understand that… you see this as an adventure after being stuck in the fortress for so long, but please do not take the first opportunity to go out there that stumbles your way. You have no idea what you're getting into.”

Ren's face did something it also had not done so far, the expression slowly but surely settling on her face seemed completely undecipherable to Serana. She was scrambling in order to connect it with something she already knew about the woman while Isran, completely oblivious to it, continued.

“In my opinion-”

“Yes, Isran, spare me the details, please. I already know your opinion.” Ren ground out, surprising Serana with the not insignificant amount of malice in her voice for a moment. The complete control that Isran had held since the conversation had started vanished in the summer breeze. Something had changed and Serana didn't know what is was. But she could now finally give name to the emotion so visible to everyone who dared to look at Ren.

Rage.

Quiet. Bubbling, Like one of the volcanoes she'd read about in Solstheim when she had been a little girl.

Moments from exploding.

“In your opinion, I should just sit around and wait for the day that skies decide to collapse on my head.”

Isran looked at the woman like she had slapped him and Serana almost felt sympathy for him. He seemed to recover quickly enough, smoothing his face into a semblance of an understanding expression, pretending that whatever was hidden in the subtext of this conversation did not bother him, which had clearly been Ren's intention. It was almost believable.

It was painfully clear to Serana that there was an aspect to the conversation that she hadn't yet been privy to and that it was causing quite the number of conflicting feelings for the other two people in the room. It made her wonder what it was that managed to make the otherwise relaxed, if not quite stoic, woman standing by her side tick this quickly.

Seeing no other option than de-escalating the situation, lest he becomes the target of an another clearly well-aimed attack – as much as he tried to pretend otherwise – Isran stepped forward, his hand landing on the blonde woman's shoulder gently, for a second looking like a father trying to soothe the whims of his less-than-rationally thinking child.

“You know that I don't want to limit you or tell you what to do.” Ren stepped from one foot from the other, clearly feeling uncomfortable with how quickly the mood has changed once more, looking almost chagrined, as if she had been gearing up for a fight and didn't know quite what to do with herself when the challenge she'd blindly put out had not been met. “I just don't want to see you hurt.” He paused for a second before continuing, the short moment of quiet lending his words more weight. “Regardless of what awaits you in the future.” Ren's eyes had momentarily taken on a misty quality, as if she had been about to tear up at the words, but the moment was gone as soon as she blinked.

Isran repeated his words, quietly. Clearly only meant for the woman who obviously meant the world to him. Serana could see that even from the short and less-than-pleasant interaction. Serana's vampiric ears picked up on it anyway. “I just do not wish to see you hurt. Injured or... otherwise.”

Serana had not realized at the time what the man had been implying. The realization would come later, much later, earning the poor blonde woman a teasing whenever Serana happened to recall this specific moment. It had been, however, the first time that Serana had seen redness rise to the cheeks of the woman standing right beside her.

“Isran,” Ren rushed out, clearly flustered, “that's not-”

“Relax, I know.” Deciding not to torment her anymore, he added lightly. “I just want you to be safe.”

Ren's voice lost any of the warmth it naturally carried and had been restored in their short fight – if one could even call it that, Serana still wasn't sure what to make of it – in a fraction of the moment it took the vampire to blink. “We both know that is not an option.”

Serana was completely lost. The conversation had taken so many rapid turns in such a short ammount of time, leaving them all reeling. A sudden quiet in the room enveloped the three of them, heavy, as if begging them to break it and deny the pointed grave statement.

No one did.

Without another word, Ren spun on her heels and headed directly for the giant door, as if she suddenly could not bear to be inside it a moment more. Serana followed hurriedly, but not before throwing a last glance at Isran. His eyes looked lost somewhere very far away.

They stayed long enough to wash the grime of their previous journey off in the Dawnguard's meagre designated bathing areas. The rest of the hunters were less than thrilled to hear that a vampire was allowed to wander the fort freely (although not without an escort, which didn’t bother Serana too much, since the escort was not decidedly not unpleasant company), but Isran had reluctantly given her a free pass, at least for now. Serana washed quickly in the chilly water, not wanting to leave her still quietly fuming companion for too long.

Ren had sat in front of the closed bathroom door the entire time.

Serana wasn’t sure for whose safety.

On the way out, they had briefly stopped by a tall man dressed in ceremonial robes, carrying numerous herbs on a shining platter, clearly rushing somewhere.

“Oh, hello Florentius. Isran didn't mention you were here. How are you doing?”

“Look out for the dragon.”

“Kay.”

Very briefly.

They continued onward.

The voice followed them.

“Arkay sends his greetings.”

“Thank you, Florentius.”

Serana couldn’t be happier about finally getting out of the dusty old fortress, even with the prospect of walking in direct sunlight for hours, since it was only morning. At least the canyon was in still in full bloom at this time of year, the weather warmer this far south. If Skyrim's weather could ever be called warm, that is.

As it was, the humming waterfall created a beautiful backdrop for the two women departing quietly, in cleaner clothing and without the Scroll. They'd deemed it safer in the hands of the Dawnguard, at least until they could find a way to read it. Isran had muttered something about priests before leaving abruptly, without even saying his goodbyes, but not before tasking them with retrieving two of his former colleagues since they had nothing better to do in the meantime. Serana had the feeling that he just wanted to get rid of her for a while, even at the price of Ren leaving as well.

As their feet gently crunched on the soft ground, already a good distance from the fortress, Ren said in a hushed tone, as if to not disturb the life going on around them. “Why didn’t you tell me?” About the bow was loud enough even without being spoken out loud. Serana often wondered how much of what was truly going on in the woman's head was truly voiced and, to her surprise, how much she herself could gather even from the parts that had not been out loud.

Even knowing that the question was a long time coming, Serana still struggled with her answer. She would actually surprised it had taken that long to arrive in the first place, if it had been anyone but Ren. She had gotten quite good at reading her silences, especially when they happened to be particularly loud.

“I-“ She took one more moment to gather her thoughts. “I didn’t lie, strictly speaking.” That would be the easy way out. But she continued, however unwillingly, after Ren's unimpressed blink. “I didn’t know who I could trust, especially after I had found out that my father'd only sent his men to the crypt to retrieve the damn Scroll. The Court was… in shambles, for lack of a better word, when I'd finally returned. Everybody was scrambling to solidify their place after my father had turned it upside down in his attempts to decipher the prophecy without knowing what exactly the Scroll contained.”

Ren didn’t say anything.

She was waiting to see if Serana would continue even without prompting.

“Other than that, my only option had been a bunch of vampire hunters that I wasn’t sure would not just cut me down if I made an appearance in their vicinity.”

“I wouldn't hurt you.”

Serana took a moment to ponder the words and the sentiment behind them. “I know.” She was surprised at how easily the statement came out and how truthful it was. When she'd left the castle in a hurry, the only certainty on her mind at the time had been the thought of the blonde-haired warrior, who had the chance to end her life numerous times and had chosen not to, although for reasons still unknown. “I know it might sound horrible, and if you tell Isran I will gouge your eyes out, but… I have no illusions of my father. I had wished and pleaded with him to let go of the prophecy and just be… normal, but at this point, I know that is no longer the option, seeing as he had never been what you would consider normal in the first place.” She hesitated, but honesty had always been the correct choice with the other woman so far, no matter how ugly the truth. “But as horrible as he is, he is still my father.”

Serana would truly prefer her father to still be alive after their… exchange. She was not, however, that spoiled to not recognize when a situation was completely hopeless. Her father had always been obsessed with power, even a semblance of it presented by the court of people willing to do his bidding in exchange for eternal life – if it could even be called such. But as soon as the prophecy had entered their lives, it seemed that whatever had been left of the person she'd once adored was completely obliterated. Serana had been trying to force herself to accept the cold hard truth ever since she'd quietly slipped away from the castle into the deep night. Still, even despite her best efforts, it had so far turned out to be an exercise in futility. She had no true desire to kill her father, while accepting that the person she'd thought of as such had truly died a long time ago. The irony was not lost to her.

Ren didn’t say anything further, only moved her unnervingly piercing gaze forward again, continuing down the gravel path towards the canyon's opening into the dirt path heading towards Riften. Serana had taken that as the end of their conversation, happy that the woman had not simply turned around and thrown her to the hunters for what they would surely see as utter betrayal.

The answer came after a moment so long enough that it almost made Serana forget the topic if their previoius conversation. “Just don’t do it again.”

Ren's voice was soft, almost monotone and anyone else would have trouble reading it. Serana was not anyone else though, clearly hearing the relief at the explanation of dishonesty. Perhaps, even if the other woman did not agree with Serana's reasoning, she could at least understand where it, and the urge to hide it from others, had come from.

The burden of things to come, things that would most likely end with either herself or her father dead, was now Serana's own to carry. But in that moment, she made a promise – to Ren and to herself – that she would never lie to the other woman.

After all, it was the least she could do for the warrior in return for saving her life twice.

Chapter Text

Finding Gunmar had been easy enough, if one could ignore all the rabid wolves, senseless bandits and a whole pack of overgrown grizzly bears itching for a fight.

And trolls. Three of them.

And a hive of particularly disgusting spiders that had Ren's skin breaking out in goosebumps, visible even to the naked eye with how close she'd been standing to the vampire. Serana had elected to not say anything, seeing as the woman had been extraordinarily conciliatory throughout their journey so far. Actually, the vampire was surprised that the fellow Nord woman had not – at some point – whacked her over the head with a rock after all the incessant complaining about the weather.

Serana had been testing Ren.

The weather had been testing Serana.

Their time spent on the road could've been a little shorter, had they not been forced to backtrack over significant distance after they'd inadvertently entered the giants' territory. Serana might've been entombed for who even knows how long, therefore her knowledge of all the creatures roaming the lands leaving much to be desired, but even she felt marginally better when they had left the scraggly stones of the encampment well behind them.

The journey further north had taken them a little more than a week as they scampered and fought and trudged through the plains and mountains surrounding Whiterun. It was almost as exhausting as their previous conversation with Isran, that had Serana feeling like she would take one wrong step and tumble down a staircase the entire time. But, in the end, they had managed. In both instances.

Barely.

In both instances.

Finding Sorine, on the other hand, would turn out to not be that simple. Isran had been less than thrilled to work with a vampire, much less an heir of the Volkihar clan, but had eventually relented on the base of them not having any other options in stopping the potentially unfolding apocalypse. Not that he believed her in the slightest, trusted her even less, but even he had been forced to admit that involving the vampire woman was – at least for the time being – the correct course of action.

Serana imagined the angry scowl would remain etched permanently into his face when he told them about the missing woman's last known whereabouts, somewhere in mountains north of Markarth. When the vampire had learned how long the journey there would take them, she could for a moment relate to Isran's incessant feelings.

They'd decided to find Gunmar first, sending him on his way to the fortress without any major difficulties, before they'd hitched a carriage all the way to Markarth.

The road had been… long.

And bumpy.

And sunny of all things. Where were storm clouds when you needed them?

The only saving grace of their little trip had been the woman sitting beside Serana the whole time. Ren didn’t talk much, opting instead to watch her surroundings, soak in the comfortable silence and chirping of birds, pitching into Serana's conversations with the carriage driver whenever she wanted to share something with them. These moments felt inexplicably precious to Serana, who could finally get a bit of insight into her closed-off companion's thoughts. Although she couldn’t really blame Ren, she was not exactly an open book herself either, despite her talkative disposition. She had no issues talking about unimportant topics and could hold even the most tedious of conversations longer than most. As such, she was an expert at gently steering the conversation into safer waters and leaving her opponent none the wiser.

The driver was young, barely of age even by ancient Nordic standards, with sandy hair and blue eyes. Not her usual type in the least, but Serana had been desperate for entertainment throughout the arduous journey, and he turned out to be incredibly talkative when he finally overcame his elated and utterly starstruck expression at the idea of being alone with two objectively beautiful women for an extended period of time. The vampire had tried to not let the emptiness of his words sour her mood, chalking it up to his still naïve and innocent expectations of the world. He'd provided… adequate entertainment.

She'd actually felt a little saddened at his untimely death about three days into their eternal ride, courtesy of a stray arrow – the carriage had steered a little too close to one of the bandit camps scattered throughout the forests of Falkreath. Serana couldn't say she'd been expecting exactly that, but she'd long learned her lesson in attaching any sentimental feelings to any fleeting mortal beings, bound to disappear one day, whether it be by a stray arrow, an illness, or simply of old age.

Afterwards, they'd decided to ditch the bulky carriage, opting instead to continue on the horses they'd somehow managed to free from the wooden and leather contraption after a brief struggle.

Looking up from her saddle, Serana could just barely see the gates of Markarth looming before them on the fifth day of their journey. For some reason, she couldn't shake the ominous feeling of being watched all the way in her bones, even looking over her shoulder multiple times as they passed the stone archways welcoming them into the city. She felt anything but welcome, half expecting the heavy gates to slam shut and refuse to let them out ever again.

Perhaps she shouldn't have disregarded the feeling so easily. She would, however, fully blame it on the comforting hand landing softly on her lower back and remaining there throughout the entire conversation with a stable hand, leaving only when Ren needed both her arms to pay the inn-keep for the night, Serana's mind blissfully empty of any potential threats.

The room they'd managed to get in such a short amount of time was nice, if only a bit on the smaller side, with a single bed standing in the middle. A major oversight on Serana's part, souring any of the contentment she had felt at the prospect of sleeping in an actual bed. She had not laid with somebody else since-

Goosebumps erupted all over her skin and she could almost see the walls inching closer towards them out of the corner of her eye, just on the edges of her vision, as if waiting for the moment she lets her guard down before they ground her to dust. The only thing reminding Serana that this was most likely not real was her companion's complete lack of reaction and unbothered behaviour. Even so, she felt uneasy, feeling a strong urge to just get out of the room and leave, despite the tiredness seeping into her body with every single step.

It felt as if ants were crawling all over her skin.

Suddenly she couldn't get out of the room fast enough. However, leaving Ren behind to her potential demise also seemed like a pretty terrible thing to do, especially since the woman had been nothing but helpful, even outright protective of Serana at multiple occasions. She couldn’t explain the feeling to the other woman, when she herself didn’t understand it. But she could just… get them out of there and hope that the feeling would subside by the time they return.

The words left Serana's mouth before she could stop and re-think them. “I am going to head out, do you want to come with?”

Ren, who had taken the time during Serana's internal monologue to unceremoniously drop their belongings onto the floor in the corner – even giving away a notion like she considered joining them for a second – looked up at the vampire in surprise. Serana felt momentarily guilty after seeing the dark circles sitting firmly underneath the blonde's eyes, dusting her cheeks with deep shadows. She'd realized about three days into their shared proximity that Ren barely slept in general, but she'd chalked it up to the woman simply being uncomfortable in the carriage considering her stature and the rather small size of the blasted thing. Not that the vampire had faired any better.

Serana often wondered if Ren simply didn’t believe in sleeping, or she was that uncomfortable at the thought of what she might see. To be fair, Serana herself did not sleep very often either, albeit thanks to her vampiric nature. However, she could understand the reluctance to give one's mind away for all the demons to feast on overnight. That thought was immediately followed by the question of what could be daunting enough for Ren to refuse to succumb to them at all. She vowed to ask the other woman if there was something she could do for her, feeling like she had a favour to return.

Definitely not because it tugged at her long dead heart's strings to see Ren clearly struggle with her own mind at times, as much as she had tried to hide it from everyone around her. But Serana was nothing if not perceptive and she could clearly see how jittery, yet exhausted Ren had seemed to be throughout the short amount of time they'd spent together. The fact that she'd passed an inordinate amount of time just silently observing her companion – her sight often landing on the blonde almost subconsciously, regardless of their company – to arrive to said conclusion was not important.

Maybe they both could use an outlet for their nervous energy. Maybe they could just take the little downtime they'd unexpectedly found themselves with to stroll around the town, get lost together while leisurely discovering it like in so many of the trashy romance novels she'd had the pleasure of reading. Maybe it would help clear both of their minds.

“Are you not tired, Serana?” Ever the caring one.

She decided to go with the truth, even if it was a fairly watered-down version of it. “I've actually been itching to explore from the moment I've finally gotten out of that damned crypt. I know we have things – important things – to do, but I have only seen all the cities that we have passed through from the carriage.” Serana supplied, trying to keep the uncomfortable inner tension out of her voice. “I've never been this far west and there is not much reading material about Markarth, since the dwemer recollections have all mysteriously disappeared.” Sweetening the deal, she added. “This could be our only chance, Ren.”

Using the woman's name in such a borderline flirtatious manner had definitely been a low blow, but Serana felt like she would combust if she didn't do something with the anxious energy still surging through her body quickly. It still felt like the walls around them had ears. Or eyes.  She needed some air, away from them.

Now.

“We would not even be wasting any time, anyway. We'd both agreed to set out for Sorine in the morning, so really, there is nothing else to do for now.”

Or we could sleep like normal people usually do. Tell me I'm just being paranoid and stupid. Please.

The two of them were anything but normal.

“Alright.”

Maybe they truly were a bad influence on each other.

Walking around Markarth was certainly an interesting experience. The architecture was like nowhere else in Skyrim, even considering Serana's very limited experience of seeing the ever-charming Riften streets and the Whiterun stables. There was stone everywhere their curious eyes could see, people were milling about, the guards were patrolling the main streets and yet… Something about the city was different. Maybe it was the less-than-human design of the ancient dwemer society, with the tall buildings carved into stone towering over them at every step and casting long shadows. As a vampire – creature born and thriving in the darkness – Serana would surely find a unique beauty to that, were the circumstances different. Now, she just tried to focus all her attention on all the different smells and sounds surrounding her, letting her usually tightly leashed vampire senses reach out to anything and everything surrounding the two women.

Speaking of.

Serana found that Ren was a pleasantly entertaining companion when the premise of their adventure was not a torturously long carriage ride in the middle of nowhere. She was walking next to Serana, looking around as if trying to soak everything in herself and commenting on the few things that caught her attention, all the while adjusting her tempo to Serana seamlessly. Yet the vampire couldn’t help but notice how different their points of view were and chalked it up mostly to their different experiences in life. While she noticed the impressing architecture beautifully casting playful shadows in the low evening light, Ren's sight had momentarily fallen on the sun setting somewhere to their left, leaving a perfect painting of colours and shapes on the sprawling sky. Where she would point out the flowers stubbornly blooming amongst all the stone, Ren would comment on the song spilling through the pleasantly warm air from a nearby tavern.

Serana had, over the past couple of days, picked up the habit of watching the other woman simply move. There was a certain grace to her, despite of – or maybe thanks to – her lean but muscular body of a warrior. She hesitated to call it grace, because it sounded way too soft to describe the woman clearly hardened by life itself. She had once read about a book trying to define the concept of what the author described as a force that apparently held everything and everyone together, safely anchored to the soil, preventing them from simply floating above in the nothingness. The theory was too complicated for Serana to recall fully, but she would bet all her money that – if such thing truly existed – Ren was definitely less affected by it than others, allowing her to float and weave naturally where everyone else trudged along. Effortlessly weaving in between the people filling the streets for the evening market, even with a sword at her side, a constant companion and the only piece of weaponry that she had brought for their outing. Her armour was still on, each individual leather piece covering the most vulnerable points of her body over her tunic and simple pants, all coming together to make Ren out as an unassuming, yet formidable opponent.

They’ve been walking around for a while when the natural flow of the people brought them to the marketplace in the city centre. Serana almost wanted to turn around after seeing the sheer amount of people milling about, but the excited gleam in her companion's tired eyes snuffed out her suggestion before it had the chance to come out. It was the least she could do, after dragging the poor, clearly exhausted woman outside to keep her company. And so they walked through the throngs of people, checking out each stall and commenting on some of the more unusual offerings. Ren seemed to really enjoy the food stalls and Serana was more than happy to let her munch on whatever it was that she'd managed to get her hands on.

Meanwhile, her eyes wandered to one of the stalls towards the northern end of the designated marketspace, partially hidden behind a stall offering a large amount of animal furs. It was so small that Serana had almost missed it, but there was just something about it that she couldn’t quite figure out drewing her eye. Briefly stepping away from Ren, she went to have a closer look.

It was jewellery.

Serana could not smother her disappointment. There was nothing inherently wrong with jewellery, but the vampire had never had the luxury of wearing anything other than pieces bearing the Volkihar clan emblem or some more or less accurate likeness of… him.

The pieces were made of precious metals, weaving intricately into various shapes of animals, flowers and other things connected to nature. The one that really caught Serana's attention though was unassuming and she almost missed it among the bigger and gaudier pieces. It was a sun, forged from delicate silver stems that weaved around the small obsidian stone sitting in the middle. The piece was very contradictory, especially since the sun usually represented everything bright and light about the world, which was normally reflected in the choice of metals and stones it was made from. But this sun was darker and Serana would most likely compare it to what she imagined a cold fire would feel like. It reminded her of some parts of Skyrim that she'd recently traversed with Ren, when the warm summer rays left behind air that was a little crispy, emphasising the knowledge that the almost never-ending winter would soon arrive again. Ren had mentioned offhandedly how it was her favourite part of the summer, although Serana was left to deduce her own reasoning since she'd refused to elaborate any further. Serana had a feeling that no matter where they might end up when this was all over, she would always think about a certain pair of blue eyes and a soft, yet mischievous smile whenever the sun went down after a hot day, leaving the air pleasantly refreshing.

And now, the medallion on a simple dark leather string embodied the exact swooping feeling that she'd felt in her stomach whenever Ren would focus her attention solely on Serana. Something about it just called out to her, which was quite ironic on numerous levels, especially considering her vampiric nature.

A vampire drawn to the sun.

Swathed in shadow and frost as it may be.

Perhaps that is exactly what had been drawing her in, ever since she'd first laid her eyes on the warrior inadvertently freeing her from her stone prison in the tomb.

“A pretty piece for a pretty lady?” A drawn-out voice startled Serana, who – from an outsider's perspective – had been wordlessly staring at the offerings intently for far longer than was probably polite.

“Hm- No, I- um..” She cleared her throat, regaining her composure. “They are all lovely, but I am… allergic to silver.” It seemed like the easier explanation of the two. Even if she ignored the fact that the silver pieces would undoubtedly leave nasty burns on her skin, it would only serve as another noose around her neck, burning and tightening until she felt like every breath was her last. And she already had one of those.

“What a shame.” The old woman looked at her for a moment, as if scanning her from head to toe, before she smiled warmly, bowed her head for a moment and disappeared somewhere into the back of the stall. Completely out of sight in a matter of moments, as if she had never been there in the first place.

Serana sighed as she stepped away, her eyes flickering to the tantalizing necklace one more time, before she set out to find her companion, who had no doubt found even more food to satisfy her voracious appetite.

She was not aware of the pair of blue eyes following her intently across the street.

When they'd finally managed to free themselves from the crowd and the market's enticing offerings as it was winding down, the sun was just barely peeking over some of the shorter buildings surrounding them in the southern part of the city. The throngs upon throngs of people thinned out gradually, and before they had even noticed the change, the two of them found themselves on a completely deserted street. Serana couldn’t even remember how they'd gotten there, their feet just casually carrying them through the sprawling city.

Well, almost completely deserted.

“Hey, you there!” A man in striking yellow robes called out, appearing in front of them suddenly as if he'd swum out of the shadows on the other side of what they now could see was a dead-end street.

Serana felt the air's temperature take a sharp dive, like all the warmth had suddenly been sucked out of the place, even though the sharp rays of dying sunlight had been stinging in her eyes only a moment prior. She'd calmed down considerably during their little stroll, completely enamoured by the liveliness of the city and the woman now standing stoically beside her, but the feeling of complete and utter wrongness had returned tenfold just as they had taken the turn into the street surrounded by old, run-down houses on either side. She was about to grab Ren and just walk back out of the alley when the man's clearly desperate voice reached them.

“You have to help me, please.”

Well, now you've done it.

Even though they had only met scant few weeks ago, Serana had gotten to know Ren well enough to realize that the woman was incapable of refusing when people asked for help, no matter how tired or otherwise occupied she might be. She was just like that. Serana admittedly respected that quality, going even as far to say that she liked it about the other woman, but it had an annoying way of interfering with their plans for one relaxing evening in the middle of a giant disaster that had been their lives recently.

“Who are you?” Judging by the quick look Ren had flashed her before focusing on the man in front of them again, Serana had been unsuccessful in keeping the frustration out of her voice.

Thinking that the vampire's question was an indication of interest in his problem, rather than an attempt at trying to get rid of him as quickly as humanly – or inhumanely – possible, the man took a moment to catch his breath before answering, relief ringing loud and clear in his voice. What he'd been running from to be this distraught, Serana didn’t want to know. “My name is Tyranus, I am a Vigilant of Stendarr.”

Of course he was a Vigilant. The eye-catching yellow robes and the horn hanging on a chain around his neck would have been dead giveaways, even if he wasn’t outright reeking of otherworldly influence.

Ren contemplated the man for a moment longer, before sighing. “What happened?”

And there we go. There was no way Ren would ever walk away from someone sounding that desperate.

Maybe it wouldn’t be that terrible. Worst case scenario, Serana would get to release the pent-up anxious energy still simmering in her body. She'd always enjoyed a good fight, especially alongside a swordfighter as skilled as Ren had turned out to be when they'd dispatched numerous groups of bandits unlucky enough to prey on the two women alongside the main roads. The vampire was certain that she had not seen the full extent of what Ren could do, probably had barely even scratched the surface of the woman's qualities and abilities, in battle or otherwise.

“It's that house.” He had said the last word with a brief pause and so much venom that it made even Serana recoil slightly. “There is something wrong with it.” When he saw both women listening, albeit one more intently than the other, he continued. “Many of Markarth's citizens in the area had reported strange things happening there over the past couple of weeks. Doors opening and closing on a whim, creaky windowsills making a ruckus overnight, a few of them even claimed that they'd seen shadows moving behind the curtains. We disregarded the sightings at first, writing them down to the imagination of people or the building simply degrading over time.”

Serana felt the need to pipe in. “What about the owners? Could it have been them simply… living in their home?”

“No one had dared to step foot into the house since the family previously living there had disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Rumours started carrying around after they had gone missing and some of the folk had chalked their disappearance up to them sticking their noses where they do not belong and dabbling in dark magic.”

Serana resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Necromancy. Why the Nords insisted on calling it anything but that was beyond her. After all, the qualities of the caster and their intentions were the determining factors for the nature of the magic cast, whether it be necromancy, destruction, or any of the other schools of magic. Serana had even seen some creative uses of restoration magic during her brief… mentorship with a certain healer long gone with the ages. There had been a disproportionate number of specifically necromancers using their knowledge of magic for evil, at least in Serana's time, but it's not like a well-placed fireball did not have the same effect or wreak as much havoc, if not more.

Even through her annoyance she'd felt, more than heard, Ren tense up beside her, boots crackling over the gravel on the ground as she stepped from one foot or the other. A sign of what Serana had had come to learn to be restlessness or anxiety. She, too, was anxious for this whole to be over so the two women could go on with their evening and finally get some well-needed rest. She did not place particular faith in ghost stories, but even she had to admit that belief sometimes lost its power in the face of the damning reality.

She decided to speed the conversation along.

“Why are the Vigilants even involved though? If I remember correctly, they only ever bother themselves when Daedra are involved. What do they have to do with a missing people?” Serana tried to not let her disdain for the man show in her voice. Based on his expression, she had not been particularly successful this time either. He graced her with a sneer, before turning his attention back to Ren, clearly determining her as the person more like to give him a helping hand. Well, he wasn't wrong there.

“It has been implied that they may have had, intentionally or on accident, summoned a lesser Daedra.” A silence followed, which neither of the three seemed too inclined to break.

Surprisingly, Ren tired of it first. “So, what does that have to do with us? We are no Vigilants.” Finally asking the right questions, Ren.

Tyranus grew weary, his eyes flicking around the ally to make sure that nobody was within hearing distance, before continuing in a stilted voice. “For the past couple of days, multiple people have claimed to hear a voice coming from within the house. The Jarl's court does not want us to make a fuss about the situation, seeing as the rumours spreading about this place have already been affecting their business in the area. Just look around, this place is deserted.”

Serana felt the urge to disagree when goosebumps raced down her spine. She didn’t believe for a second that no one was lurking in the deep shadows where the sunlight would never reach.

Despite the heavy atmosphere, the man continued. “Look. The people believe what they want to believe anyway. There is clearly somebody in the house having a great laugh at the expense of everyone and it is causing problems for the citizens and for the Jarl. I want to go inside and resolve the issue once and for all. If it is a summoned lesser Daedra like we expect, I can take care of it myself. But… it is entirely possible that some unwanted visitor had snuck in unnoticed and taken up residence. I cannot ask any of the soldiers or warriors from within the city, the rumours spreading would do more damage than a Daedra could. But you…” He paused, clearly trying to drive his point across without seeming like an insensitive asshole implying that their lives are worth risking to cover up simple incompetence of the ones in charge.

Serana and Ren looked at each other, beyond disinterested in cleaning up Jarl's dirty political messes and trying to come up with an excuse to leave as soon as possible. Seeing the unimpressed expressions on both of their faces, Tyranus quickly added. “I am no warrior. If it's not a problem of magical nature, I can do nothing about it. I simply need someone, preferably one capable of swinging a sword, to come with me in case the issue requires… battling aptitude. It will be quick, we shall only check the rooms, remove the unwanted presence and dispel the rumours, so that the life in this place may go on.” His voice was getting more and more desperate by the end of his tirade. “Please.”

Serana knew that – despite their reluctance and Ren adamantly trying to convince the man that they are not hands for hire and therefore have no interest in doing his errands – they would not be leaving.

Deciding that she'd had enough, she stomped down the gravely street, going unnoticed by the two still arguing in hushed voices and headed straight towards the door. Her hand was already misting from the ice magic that she'd summoned, the frost forming into a solid spike ready to break down the locked door and take care of this visitor unknowingly infringing on her and Ren's only time for resting.

She had not expected the doors to open on their own.

She had expected the inexplicable urge to enter the fully blacked out room even less.

It had taken her so off-guard that she didn't even notice her feet carrying her over the threshold, Ren's inquisitive voice calling out her name repeatedly mingling with the sudden cacophony of sounds in her head and drowning out any thoughts that have struggled to run through her jumbled mind. Just when she started thinking her head would simply explode from the volume the voices have reached, a sudden and complete silence engulfed her. There was no sound, no voices arguing outside, no steps falling on the ground, no Ren, not even the sound of her own breathing. The silence was more deafening than the voices had been just moments before.

A whole stage, properly prepared and laid out, just waiting for the sole actor to enter.

And when he did, the voice ringing through her mind would've surely made her heart stop, had she been still human. Ironic, since the owner of the voice had been the one to rob Serana of her heartbeat a long eternity ago.

She'd foolishly hoped that she would never have to hear it again.

Seraaaana .

It was him.

She couldn't move.

She had been talking, or rather quietly arguing so as to not draw any attention of who exactly she doesn’t know to themselves, when a sudden wave of contempt washed over her. She couldn’t find where it originated, but it felt like tingling in her fingertips, simmering for a bit and then spreading out through her whole body. The feeling was so intense it took her breath away for a moment, changing and shaping and forming underneath her skin. She'd barely managed to recover her breath – the priest's words of worry breaching the fog that had enveloped her mind for a moment – when it got knocked out of her chest again as soon as she identified the feeling to be profound and utter wrongness.

She looks around frenetically as her muscles tensed up, readying themselves for a fight. She reached for the sword at her hip, sweaty hand wrapping securely around the handle while she looked for any sources of danger. The mouth of the street that they had come from minutes before was clear and there was nobody behind them either. There was nobody bes-

There was nobody beside her.

There should have been somebody beside her.

“Serana?” Her voice was quiet, as if she was trying to pretend that the other was indeed still standing right next to her and she'd just overlooked her, somehow. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the eyes of the already distraught Tyranus widen – also looking like he was preparing for a fight – before she whipped around completely, half expecting to see Serana under the attack of a wild monster, sorcerer or a daedra, judging solely by the poor Vigilant's expression.

The reality was much worse.

Serana was standing in the damned house, just a step beyond the dusty wooden threshold, staring into the darkness inside without moving a muscle, as if she could neither bring herself to move further inside, nor return. Stuck, somewhere in the middle.

Serana was standing in the house.

Her feet were already moving before her exhausted mind could even command them to do so, carrying her closer to the door, to Serana, as alarms blared loudly inside her head. Cold sweat broke out all over her body, running in rivulets down her spine. She didn’t know why, but it rallied within her mind, clamoring, imploring to save the vampire woman before it was too late. Her stomach swooped with the indescribable feeling of an unseen danger that Serana was bravely – stupidly – facing alone.

She would later ponder her visceral reaction to a situation that – at the time – did not seem the least bit threatening, apart from a few words of distraught citizens. Even then, it seems, Ren had felt the overwhelming need to shield Serana from any harm, even if she didn’t quite know what it presented as. She had very unwillingly developed strong, protective instincts when it came to the vampire woman over the couple of weeks that they had been keeping each other company on Skyrim's vast roads and sprawling caverns. Despite her best efforts at remaining neutral, the surprisingly warm woman had managed to worm her way into Ren's good graces with her sharp wit, teasing humour, unwavering confidence in the face of danger, as well as their many comfortable silences, filled to the brim with things unsaid.

Their easy camaraderie had shifted from mere acquittances, united in their similar goal of keeping Skyrim somewhat safe from apocalyptic threats, to travellers sharing their stories over long nights around the campfire, to something… more. Something decidedly warmer, spilling into their every interaction and leaving behind a very feint scent of honey and strawberries, rain and wildflowers.

Ren had manged to learn Serana's body language fairly quickly and could easily pick up different inflections in her voice, giving insight into the vampire woman's thoughts to whoever was willing to take their time to learn their language. There were many things Serana said willingly, to Ren or others. There were even more that she could say with her body, with a simple movement or touch.

And right now, Serana was standing incredibly still, body frozen in an unnaturally stiff upright position. Ren was sure she wasn't breathing either. The vampire had revealed during one of the colder nights they had spent huddled together that she didn’t necessarily need to breath, but the almost reflexive action made her feel a little more normal.

Something was very, very wrong.

Whatever it was, Ren had vowed to herself in the moment that she would not let Serana face it on her own.

She managed to reach the other woman in a matter of moments that had simultaneously felt like an eternity, struggling to force air into her lungs even despite the short distance she'd ran to the doorway. Her hand snatched the loose fabric at Serana's elbow, intent on dragging her out and away from the house as quickly as possible. Something in her mind urged her to leave immediately, to take them both away from the darkness winking at them from the cold and seemingly empty room. Knowing it was anything but that, Ren's arm trembled with nervous energy as she pulled firmly on Serana's, desperation in her chest clamouring even louder when the walls around them began to tremble – faintly, almost imperceptibly at first – before gradually raising in intensity with every passing moment.

The sudden onslaught caused Ren to stumble and she fought to stay on her feet. She couldn't see Serana's face from this angle, but even the dire circumstances akin to a small earthquake randomly breaking out in the middle of an ancient city could not compare to the tremors currently running through the body of the woman now enveloped in Ren's arms.

She huffed in exertion after a particularly vicious rumble, accompanied by the sounds of glass breaking somewhere further inside. “Serana.” She said, desperately trying to snap her friend out of whatever trance had taken place in her mind.

The shaking was getting worse.

Plates and other utensils falling off the counters where they had been haphazardly left by the house's previous occupants. A chair creaked somewhere in the distance, sounds of wood splintering only adding to all the chaos.

Flashes of light streamed in through the open door, dancing before Ren's eyes that were struggling to see anything beyond the destruction and the windows that had been barred a long time ago.

Something heavy landed on the rotting wooden flooring with a distinct thud, a metallic sound cutting through all the noise, as if completely unbothered by it. It rolled conveniently all the way to their feet and stopping just a scant few inches from where the two women were barely standing.

It was a statue.

Made of obsidian stone and gleaming menacingly even in the scant lighting.

“Serana, come on.” Ren gave up trying to convince the still unresponsive woman, wrapping her arms more firmly around Serana's stomach as she heaved, pulling them bodily to the open door even before her mind had properly recognized the likeness etched into the statue lying in the dust at their feet.

No.

The door slammed shut just a moment before they could reach it, as if toying with them, taunting, dangling the way out in their faces before cruelly cutting it off along with the priest's alarmed yelling, successfully trapping them inside the house. The resounding crack then drowned out any of the remaining sunrays that had wormed their way in through the planks and sheets covering the small windows.

They were enveloped by complete darkness, only Ren's ragged breathing filling the now utterly quiet and still room. The temperature seemed to drop even further and she would bet all the gold in her satchel that her breath would be visible if she could see even an inch in front of her face.

The house had stopped shaking.

Serana had not.

“Serana?” She called tentatively into darkness, hoping beyond hope that whatever had just happened was over and they could simply look for a different way out. It seemed so long ago that she had heard the woman speak, her loud voice and endlessly – adorably – curious personality that usually made her a big presence in any situation. However, it was not Serana's lovely timbre voice spilling into her mind among all the darkness.

She cannot hear you.

Screaming.

All that she could hear.

It was everywhere, permeating every fibre of her being.

There was nothing else.

No room, no house. No arms wrapping around her, no warmth. No Ren.

No air, no light.

No darkness.

Only screaming.

The sudden night seemed to dance around her, sweeping close and retreating before she could fully grasp its tingling presence. She tightened her arms, desperately holding onto Serana's heavy body, unwilling to let her go even for a moment, worried that the woman would simply mingle with the shadows worming their way through the room and disappear. “What did you do to her?” She demanded from the darkness.

The darkness answered.

Nothing.

Yet .

The voices were gone.

Serana almost wished they would come back. She could take all the voices of the world yelling in her mind instead of this silence. Silence that she knew would soon be broken.

She could feel him, sneaking over her skin like a foul, slimy shadow.

She heard a desperate scream that would send shivers down her spine if she could still tell where exactly her spine even was. It took a moment, longer than it should have, to realize that it had been her own.

The two women hit the filthy flooring while the echoes of a scream still reverberated around the four surrounding walls that had seemingly gotten closer and closer with each passing moment. Serana's body folded in half, desperately trying to protect itself from an attack only she could see. The pain and utter terror emitting from the poor woman in her arms hit Ren like a tidal wave, cutting straight into her heart and rendering her unable to hold them upright anymore. Serana's legs buckled like a marionette that had its strings cut and they tumbled heavily onto the hardwood flooring; the garbage strewn everywhere sending tiny pinpricks along Ren's knees harshly in her futile attempt to break their fall.

If she had an inkling about who they were dealing with as soon as she'd spotted the statue, Serana's visceral reaction had all but confirmed it.

Molag Bal.

Ren had always been a little rusty about her daedric princess, something Isran had not failed to berate her for every single time the situation called for it – or even if it decidedly did not. She had always given a rather wide berth to any of their twisted practices and even more twisted followers, but even the limited knowledge she possessed and her less than unimpressive experience as a vampire hunter had unfailingly pointed Ren in the right direction. She could not recall all the details from the books Florentius had showed into her face every time they had seen each other from memory, but the more obscure whispers about this particular Lord's connection to the existence of vampires, specifically about a ritual involved in creating the pure-blooded ones, had reached her ears.

But how was it even possible for a Daedric prince, even as vile and foul as this one, to manifest on Nirn in a form strong enough to torment the woman now raggedly crying in her arms this deeply? The realization hit her like a stray spell, almost bringing her down to the ground again from where she had managed to crawl to her knees.

There must be a shrine somewhere nearby. Ren, apparently a betting woman today, was willing to offer her life's savings that it was somewhere in this gods forsaken house, safely hidden from the eyes of unsuspecting visitors who had been blissfully unaware of the darkness hiding within.

Mind running miles in every moment since the door had slammed shut, she got so lost that her body was completely unprepared for the strong gust of wind sweeping through the already dishevelled room. She failed to realize that, while struggling to get back to her feet without an ounce of light, she'd let go of the one thing she had sworn to never abandon during one stormy night few weeks ago.

Just as she had feared, the moment she'd let go of the vampire woman, just for a moment when she'd lost her balance, arms shooting out instinctively to catch herself and prevent her face from hitting the ground, Serana had disappeared. The one person that had managed to somehow make her place in Ren's heart, no matter how hard she had tried to keep it locked, unwilling to open up, knowing her every thought and feeling could – and would – be snatched away at a whim of a very vengeful god.

She reached her arms out in a futile attempt at rectifying her mistake, knocking around some of the things strewn across the floor as she desperately tried to find the other woman again, not just for her own safety, but for Serana's as well. She didn’t know the daedra wanted with the vampire, but she was very unwilling to let the raven-haired woman find out for herself.

But Serana was gone.

After taking a deep breath to at least attempt calming her racing heart, she tried to focus on her surroundings, empty and oppressingly full as they were.

Focus.

She had to find the shrine. Destroy it.

She needed to find Serana.

Good luck with that.

Ren didn't even have a moment to form a response, before blinding pain radiated sharply from the back of her head, echoed dimly by her face slamming into the dusty floorboards as her arms lay uselessly by her sides.

Then darkness enveloped her.

Please stop.

You did that .

No. You did.

She doesn’t know that . What do you think she’s going to do when she wakes up? When she runs down here to help you like a fucking knight in shining armour, expecting you to pathetically cry like a baby on the floor, unable to even stand up on your own.

She will leave me behind.

She can’t. She won’t.

Please.

What will the poor woman do, when she sees the filthy little vampire girl that she'd been cozying up to this entire time doing the one thing everybody in their right mind had warned her she would do. I wonder how she will feel when she watches, helpless, injured by your own hand, as you bring me into this world?

I don’t know.

Do you think she will even hesitate to cut you down like an animal that you truly are? I certainly hope not. Maybe I shall even reward her. Show her the same… hospitality I have shown you in the past.

She would never accept that willingly.

Even better.

Leave her alone.

No. Now, I tire of this conversation. You will do as I say.

No.

I had hoped, deliciously wished that you would fight me, it makes this entire ordeal a whole lot more… delightful. But you seem to forget, my dear Serana, that you are a Daughter of Coldharbour, my daughter. I may not have enough influence to control the puny people of Nirn without being summoned anymore, but you belong to me. You cannot refuse me.

Opening her eyes, she'd panicked for a moment, thinking that she'd somehow gone blind. But as memories rushed back, so did the realization that the room was still completely blacked out. And she was still alone. It wasn’t like she could see well enough to check anyway, but failure hung heavily around her shoulders.

Ren fought against the desperate tears misting in her eyes, wanting to call out into the darkness for her friend regardless of how terrible of an idea it was. It would do nothing but give her away, assuming that the lord of the house had not been aware of her every breath before she'd even taken one step inside. She just hoped that whatever it is that he'd busied himself with would leave him distracted long enough for Ren find Serana and the shrine to destroy it. Unlikely on all fronts, but all Ren could do right now was hope.

She finally rose from the floor, splinters and shards of broken glass digging into her bare palms.

She couldn't leave Serana behind. Even if her only way of escape had not been blocked, she thought after pulling on the mangled door handle with no results just to make sure. The door didn’t budge.

Stumbling across the room she managed to find the remains of what once was a surely functioning kitchen.

Light. I need some light.

She sifted through all the wreckage on and around what she'd assumed to be one of the kitchen counters, hand snagging on some of the broken knives and other utensils before she finally found what she'd been looking for.

A candle. In a bronze holder that she'd caught a glimpse off just before the door slammed shut. Realizing that as lucky as she had been with finding a candle in this mess, finding anything to light it with would be incredibly time consuming, if not entirely impossible.

Seeing no other option, she braced herself, calling out any vestiges of magic floating around in her body. She was no mage – Florentius had been adamant about that, claiming that she did not have enough mana to produce a sneeze – but fire magic had always come to her in a time of need. Some would say too easily, Isran especially who'd had the honour of walking too close to the training ground that Florentius had dragged her to one morning during his twelfth attempt at teaching her the basic spell-repellent ward.  She'd spent the reminder of that day – and a good few days afterward – fixing all the wooden structures that had been caught in the destructive path of her reflected fireball spell, all done under the watchfull eyes of a pissed off Isran.

Ren hadn’t understood his ire. His eyebrow grew back.

Eventually.

As a small flame struggled to form, flickering briefly before the wick finally caught on, another memory of the priest of Arkay floated up from somewhere of the recesses of Ren's mind. It was an unassuming evening in the Fortress last winter, where most of the higher-ranking Dawnguard members had converged around a fire pit and some stew after a long day of training. They were laughing, sharing stories and mead like the happiest people in the world, at least for the night, before the horrors emerged again and they were forced to meet them in a fight. She'd found Florentius staring deeply into the crackling flames. She remembered asking him something meaningless and he'd ignored it, as usual. But in turn – completely unrelated to her question – he'd pondered on the power of light. How it could dispel shadows or make them appear even darker. She hadn't put too much weight on those words back then, but now she was forced to seriously reconsider them. She didn’t like the house any more now then when it was enveloped by darkness, the light of her candle dancing and mingling with the shadows around her, making them seem alive.

The light, tiny and leaving much to be desired, at least showed her the way forward. She dragged her body to the only other door in the vast room, providing a fairly believable estimate of wherever it was that Serana had disappeared to. She had a feeling that he would not simply let them leave the house. On the positive side, that only confirmed that the shrine she needed to destroy was somewhere in the building. The pounding headache slowed her down significantly, only amplified by the realisation that it must've been Serana that had struck her, most likely with that damned obsidian statue of all things.

She didn’t even need to try the handle to realize that the door was unlocked. Although, unlocked might have been too nice of a word to describe the mangled, vaguely lock-shaped remains hanging pathetically off the dusty wooden planks.

She crossed the threshold cautiously, looking intently into the darkness in front of her, barely lit by the small flame clutched in her bloody hand and immediately almost sending the less-than-probable covertness of this entire situation straight to Coldharbour. She caught herself at the last possible second before almost unceremoniously tumbling down the stairs that dropped sharply downward just past the threshold.

One crisis subverted, she headed down into the darkness, armed only with a lone candle and the sword she was now glad she insisted on bringing on their evening stroll, despite all of Serana's thinly veiled teasing.

The staircase unfolded into a spiral, making Ren dizzy and unable to pinpoint how long she'd been walking, before the walls shuddered once more, making the dust flare up and pieces of dirt and small stones rain on her, forcing Ren to quickly cover her head with both arms.

The candle fell out of her left hand and she reached for it blindly, but could only listen to the loud clanging noises as the brass parts rolled down the staircase before she was plunged into utter darkness again.

Great.

She willed herself to go forward even when she couldn’t see anything in front of her own nose, putting one foot in front of the other carefully as she descended further.

The leather of her right boot snagged on something, probably a stone or an uneven surface of the stairs – and she managed to save herself from a painful tumble down a second time by grasping the wall on her left.

The stone was damp. She must be deep underground.

By the time she finally reached what she assumed to be the bottom, clued in only by the stale and heavy air smelling of mould, her legs were burning. Ren had entertained the thought that she would just be walking down the stairs for all eternity, trapped somewhere between the realms and unable to ever find her way out, when the stairs abruptly ended just as they had started, and she was engulfed in unexpected light. Eyes burning, she reached blindly for the walls around her.

The next step forward brought her over the threshold and onto more cold slabs of stone. When her eyes stopped feeling like someone had poured acid into them, she blinked multiple times, trying to get her bearings while squinting into what turned out to be the room about three or four times as wide as the room upstairs had been. She couldn’t even begin to guess how high the ceiling was due to the burning light stubbornly streaming through the planks that the windows somewhere high up had been boarded with.

Just as it hadn't upstairs, this light didn’t fill her with any positive feelings either. It felt dangerous, volatile, as if it was waiting for her to walk to close to lash out and burn her to a crisp.

Maybe even more importantly, it was utterly impossible for light to be streaming in from the outside, considering how deep in the mountain this room must have been carved in. And why would there even be windows, when there was nothing outside but stone?

And yet.

Somebody had clearly tried to prevent the light from coming in and was only marginally successful. The wooden boards caused the light to spill unevenly across the entirety of the wide room, diving in into areas of pure light and everlasting shadow. There were no grey areas, no in-betweens.

She chose to walk in the darkness, for now at least.

Serana was nowhere to be seen.

Which of course didn’t mean that she wasn’t there.

Deciding that she'd wasted enough time standing around, Ren – after a short deliberation – moved to the left side of the room, her steps echoing lightly as she weaved in-between the rays of light. Finding anything, much less Serana, in a room filled with darkness her eyes could not penetrate was like looking for a needle in a haystack, but she didn’t have much choice in this matter either, if she didn’t want to turn around and head back upstairs.

Which she most definitely did. Just not without Serana.

After a while of nonchanging scenery – Did time even flow down here? – she spotted something in the distance. From her current vantage point, it looked like a large, nondescript dark lump, that had revealed itself as an altar of some sort upon further inspection. She wouldn't even have noticed it if it wasn’t for the six candles burning around the ragged and uneven edges of the boulder that made up its surface.

Ren approached it carefully, wary that traps – magical or otherwise – could have been put into place to protect it from intruders. Since she considered herself the be the only possible one, the uncomfortable knowledge coupled with her fairly compromised eyesight made the rest of her senses go into overdrive. The only source of natural light in this cavern shined upon the objects lying on the top.

Ren really wished it hadn't.

It was a woman. At least she assumed so, based on the tattered remains of what probably used to be a dress. She wouldn’t have known just from looking at the body.

Calling it a body was very generous though. A better description would be parts of what vaguely resembled and probably at some point used to be parts of a human body that were strewn across the altar's uneven expanse. Some of them bore deep and angry gashes, while the appendages that Ren assumed were too big to be turned into ash, rivulets of blood that were once streaming from them now completely dried up. The rest was charred beyond recognition.

The only untouched body part was laid out in the middle of what she now recognizes as obsidian. It was an arm, clenched as if in pain even after it had been separated from the body with what Ren could only assume was some sort of a knife, considering the jagged edges. Based on the blood fully coating them, the arm had been severed when the victim had still been alive.

Very unwillingly, Ren stepped closer to the black altar and, after a brief moment of hesitation, lightly put her palm on one of the cleaner parts of the slab.

The surface was cold to the touch.

Whatever happened, it had been a while.

And if she could at least somewhat rely on her perception of time, assuming that the laws of the universe had not ceased to exist as she descended the depths, this… body was not Serana's. That was one positive. The other was that whatever she was seeing in front of her was most likely the shrine dedicated to Molag Bal. But that was exactly where the positives ended.

Even disregarding the disturbing imagery in front of her, there were no obvious details discernible that would indicate a way to destroy the anchor between the remnant Daedra and his influence in the house and Nirn itself.

She had no doubt that Molag Bal was still here, waiting for an opportune moment. After all, she could feel his very presence in her bones, her own footsteps unnaturally heavy as she'd walked across the room, spines of the numerous books strewn haphazardly across the room creaking ominously for no apparent reason, even the very air that she was breathing burned so cold in her lungs. The feeling made her insides curl in disgust.

She wondered what Serana felt.

Upon closer inspection, she realized that there were three visible points rising from the altar, just behind the remains of the woman's head. It seemed as if they'd grown from the stone itself, rather than attached at some point. She would've missed them, had the candles not flickered in a sudden gust of wind.

Surrounding them were flowers, random as far as she could tell, coins and a big silver chain. A book was peeking in from underneath the previously attached hand. Ren picked it up gingerly, immediately trying to force the image of the aforementioned hand falling apart into dust from her mind as she quickly flipped through the blood-soaked pages. The writing was almost illegible, made even worse by the blood still dripping from every page, warm even after however long it had been spilled.

She flinched, hard, when a hand suddenly reached out of it, unnaturally black and blue, grasping at Ren's hands that were holding what turned out to be a diary, leaving streaks of black residue on her skin. It made her recoil and slam the book shut purely on instinct. She threw it back on the altar in disgust, almost feeling sorry when it snagged on one of the blood covered chains wrapped around the altar, bringing both the book and the sadistic adornment to the ground with a metallic clank.

She'd read enough.

Aina – the woman now supposedly lying in pieces in front of her – had stumbled upon an obscure text, written down on a scrap of parchment and hidden in a book she'd purchased at the city market some time ago. It had spoken of infallible power and immortality just within reach, offered by a benevolent Lord aiming to expand his sphere of influence into the ancient city of Markarth. In exchange for a brief service, of course. The lord had asked to perform a long-forgotten ritual involving a little bit of silver, a few mountain flowers and – strange as it may sound – genuine tears of the summoner, which the lord'd specified must be a woman. This woman, Aina, had not considered the implications of making a deal with a daedric lord, or even repercussions directly towards herself, should the text – or the author – be lying. She desired power to hold over her husband, which she'd felt slighted by because he seemed to be really close with her own sister. The text didn’t even mention their two kids, the existence of which Ren knew only from Tyranus. There were no traces left of them in what she'd seen from the house.

Even if Ren could never understand Aina's reasoning, she had to admit that whatever the woman had been through had been a wildly disproportionate punishment for letting herself fall into the pit of anger and vengeance.

A single thud, leather scratching on stone somewhere behind her, was her only warning.

Moving purely on instinct, she threw her body to the left, ducking down and tucking her shoulder as much as the limited amount of time and space she'd been granted allowed. She'd barely dodged the attack aimed at her jugular, something she knew only based on the cold rush of air as a dagger swished just a hair shy of her skin. A very familiar dagger, that she'd seen hanging on the hip of her recently acquired… friend.

“Serana? What are you-”

The next strike was aimed at Ren's stomach, considered a foul hit by any warrior worth their salt. She'd only managed to block it because Serana's arm was slightly shorter, catching the vampire's hand just an inch from the part of her torso not covered by leather. Serana knew exactly where the weak points of Ren's armour were, because it was apparently an interesting topic that had come up during one of their campfire conversations, about a week ago.

Great.

She pulled Serana's wrist across her body to quickly push her away, buying herself a few precious moments in the process that allowed her to take a few steps back into the darkness, still barely able to see the other woman in the mix of light and darkness swirling around them. The split-second, instinctive reaction resulted in Ren putting slightly more power into the move than she'd wanted, something she immediately regretted as Serana's tunic started smoking, just beneath the elbow, where it had briefly crossed one of the light streams pouring in from the ceiling.

The vampire did not recoil, showed absolutely no reaction even after the burning light had to have reached her skin. She simply stalked forward, swallowed by the darkness once more.

Ren could barely see her outline, eyesight blurry and unable to adjust due to the powerful light slicing through the shadows. She felt, more than saw Serana approaching again, this time from the right, getting rained on with a flurry of strikes that she had barely managed to block even with the sword still tightly clutched in her right hand. Each strike echoed through the vast room with a metallic zing, the vampiric strength behind it making Ren's arms tremble with exertion after the first couple of hits. However impressed she'd been with Serana's inherent strength on the few occasions that she'd had the opportunity to witness it, it had become painfully clear that the raven-haired woman had been holding back. She had to think of something quickly, or she'd be in serious trouble.

One thing that she could possibly change was her battle strategy. So far, Ren had mostly been defending herself, backing further into the room blindly, reluctant to use the openings presented by the vampire woman fully engulfed in silent rage and therefore relying on pure strength more than finesse. Not that it was a bad tactic on Serana's part, because she was definitely more than strong enough to brute strength her way through any of Ren's, albeit half-hearted, counter-attacks.

The blonde had no idea what was going on, but she was reluctant to believe that Serana would attack her like this of her own volition. Based purely on that belief, stupid and naïve as it may be, she tried a different approach. If successful, she wouldn’t have to resort to physically hurting her friend.

“Serana, listen to me.” She ground out between her parries, catching Serana by the wrist again after a successful feint of her own, pulling the other woman forward. The vampire's cold back collided with her chest, trapping Serana's arm – still holding the dagger – with her own, locking them in a brief stalemate. She struggled to hold the wildly squirming woman in place with only one hand, the sword still gripped firmly in her right. “It’s alrig-”

Stars exploded in her vision, pain blooming and then spreading from her nose onwards. Her eyes watered, obscuring even the limited amount of vision she'd had until that point. In her surprise, Ren let go of the woman who'd just headbutted her, along with her only weapon as well. Realizing what was about to happen, she dropped on the floor in the direction that she'd her the sword clatter just a moment before, searching desperately.

She couldn’t find it in the dark.

She dodged the first hit, aimed straight at her head, by throwing herself forward across the stones, scraping her knees in the process.

She turned on her back quickly, scrambling backwards by her hands and feet, until her back hit the solid obsidian altar behind her.

She had nowhere to go.

She did not dodge the second hit.

The knife glanced off of the arm she'd raised in a futile attempt at stopping it, sneaking just beneath the pauldron sitting on her shoulder and cutting almost vertically across her collarbone. Momentarily overwhelmed by the stinging pain now adding to the myriad of other injuries that she'd already sustained, it took her a moment to register the subsequent pulling motion, followed by another wave of searing pain. It bloomed all the way to her fingers in tingles and Ren feared the following loss of sensation for a moment.

The knife got stuck in one of the clasps of her armour.

With a speed she wasn’t sure she still possessed, Ren grabbed Serana's hand from where it had been trying to pull the offending blade loose, ignoring the way it made the metal grind on the injured tendons and skin, willing her body to push forward through the pain for a little longer. They stumbled together off the small dais surrounding the altar, both struggling to stay on their feet while pushing each other among all the clutter strewn across the floor, each woman trying to regain the upper hand.

At least some luck shined on Ren, if only for a moment, because Serana's foot caught on a stray piece of broken furniture and she landed harshly on her back, taking Ren – whose hands were tightly fisted in Serana's tunic – down with her. The blonde landed heavily on top of Serana, panting, her superior body weight holding the vampire down for the moment, their arms still weaved together even through the struggle. The dagger had dislodged during the scuffle, making warm blood spill from the wound, trailing down Ren's torso and dripping all over Serana and the ground with a wet squelch. The raven-haired woman didn’t look the least bit winded, while Ren struggled to force some air into her heaving lungs. That little shit.

Serana's hand – even in her unfavourable position – slammed into her jaw with the strength of a giant before Ren managed to catch it again, her head snapping to the side with the force of the blow and leaving screaks of red across her left cheek. The dull pain from what she hoped was not a broken nose turned into an inferno.

Ren was getting desperate. “Serana, please. I'm not trying to hurt you.” She squeezed out, all the air whooshing out of her lungs after a knee slammed roughly into her stomach. Even despite the pain spreading through her body Ren finally noticed that they'd landed close enough to one of the beams for her to finally see Serana's eyes. Her usual warm persimmon had been replaced by black, spilling from her retinas like obsidian blood and taking over all the lighter areas.

Just as cold sweat broke along Ren's skin at the seriousness of the situation, she noticed something behind the fury aimed her way, flickering just for a moment.

It was pain.

And fear. Coupled with quiet desperation.

Her muscles, still trying to hold the struggling vampire in place, slackened briefly. “Serana?”

Her moment of hesitation earned her another swift knee to the gut, forcing a pained whimper out of her before Serana threw her off completely. Ren landed on her back a good few feet from the vampire already back on her feet.

Just when she'd thought that was done for, that she had squandered all the opportunities to save her own skin and her friend from whatever had possessed her, something changed.

Serana… changed.

She was looking down at Ren, who was sprawled on the cold floor, seemingly conflicted.

If Ren had been looking at Serana's body, she would have noticed the arm raised in the air, ready to strike the killing blow, struggle. She would have seen the vampire's legs tremble momentarily, as if trying to make herself run and freeze in place at the same time. She would have noticed the sweat she never thought her capable of dripping down Serana's pale face.

But Ren didn’t see any of those things.

Her focus was locked in solely on Serana's heavy, tearful and darkened eyes.

And she saw the light flickering in them.

She still had a chance.

She gathered all her remaining strength, her muscles screaming for respite, managing to get to her knees even with the room spinning wildly around the edges of her vision. “Serana, it's okay.” She heaved, forcing enough air into her battered lungs to continue. “I know you are in there, somewhere.” Please, be right.

Serana did not answer, but she also made no move to attack her again. In fact, she didn’t move at all.

Ren painfully stumbled to her feet.

“Serana?”

No reaction.

She stepped a little closer.

“It's okay.”

She was now standing only two or three steps from the still vampire.

“It's going to be okay.” She reached out a hand. “I promise.”

Well, somebody should have taught you to never make promises you cannot keep .

The precious few moments to react were robbed from Ren by the sudden re-appearance of the daedric prince inside her own head. She only had enough time to take a breath that was immediately knocked out of her by a fist landing under her chin, snapping her head back and making her crumple to the ground once again.

She braced herself, expected the final blow to come right away, defenceless as she was.

But it didn’t.

When she looked at Serana again through the blood and sweat dripping into her eyes, the vampire woman was looking at her with contempt.

You really thought that would work? You may be even stupider than I thought.

It was strange. The booming voice was echoing in her own mind, and yet she heard Serana's cold, emotional voice repeating the same words out loud. The confusing dichotomy worsened Ren's headache considerably, making her eyes swim.

I don’t know what Serana even sees in you.

He was in her mind, entering it as if she'd left the door wide open. Yet he was still speaking through Serana as well, making a mockery of them both. It was clearly meant to be a show of power, the complete control he had over their fate, as well as the vampire's mind and body.

She needed time. Time to make her battered body gather the last vestiges of its strength and find a way out for both of them. Seeing as the Daedric lord'd had ample opportunity to kill her a just moment before and had not done so, she decided to capitalize on what was most likely his ego forcing him to show off before he killed her and try to use it to distract him long enough to form a plan.

“What happened to Aina?”

Who?

She detected genuine confusion in his voice. It made her sick, but she continued regardless, playing into his own entitlement for the moment. “The woman on the altar.”

Ah, yes. That.

Deciding to risk it, Ren didn’t say anything else, hoping that his attention had been peaked enough to fill the silence on his own. She didn’t really want to know what happened. In fact, she'd actively tried to ignore it when she'd been inspecting the altar before. But she needed time.

Her mind raced miles a minute.

Can you believe it? That unworthy… wench really tried to summon me. Me. As if her undignified, filthy vessel could hold the greatness of a prince.

“So, what happened?” She needed him to keep talking. At least it wasn’t all that difficult.

She invited me, for the promised reward.

How a voice could sound lecherous even while ringing through her head, Ren didn’t know. The disturbing imagery was only amplified by the echoes of Serana's voice repeating words she knew the vampire woman would never choose to speak for herself.

Unfortunately for the both of us, her puny body turned out to be too weak to withstand even my… astral presence. The summoning ritual had been ruined.

She needed to get Serana enough time to regain at least some of the control. It was her only hope. Their only hope.

At least it wasn’t a complete waste of time. She'd served me well in other ways. Before her mind could even attempt to fill in the gaps, he continued. You should have heard the screams when I forced her to cut off her own hand. Truly exquisite endeavour, but I shall not bore you with the details. All you need to know is that in the end, she'd proven to be… adequate entertainment.

The tone of his voice suggested that he'd spoken about yesterday's weather.

“What happened to the rest of the family?”

The answer was immediate, final.

You'll never find them. No one will.

Ren took a moment to gather her thoughts, slowly but surely running out of semi-believable conversation topics. She decided to put a little pressure on him. “What's the ritual anyway? The book didn’t mention it.”

Silence.

She'd stepped too far. He saw through her.

She got desperate.

“I mean, you're going to kill me anyway. What's the harm in telling me?”

I tire of this conversation. Serana, you know what to do.

He didn’t have to say the last part out loud. Yet again, he chose to do so.

They were out of time.

But Serana didn’t disappear into the shadows this time. Boldly and full of confidence she walked towards Ren, who was struggling to get to her own two feet, again. If she were to die, she wanted to go with dignity and sword in hand, slippery as it was due to the blood still lazily trickling down her shoulder in rivulets.

The vampire no longer bothered with concealing her footsteps, the sound of her leather feet hitting the damp stone underneath ringing through the empty room. Ren stood no chance against a pure-blooded vampire and a Daedric Lord and they all knew it. The dagger Ren remembered admiring not so long ago now reflected the bright light for a moment, as if shining on the defeated woman to properly show her demise to a non-existent audience.

Stop.

No.

Please.

No. Stop whining, it's making me sick.

I will do anything.

You will, but I do not need the swivelling mortal for that. You will kill her.

No.

What did you say?

No, I refuse.

It is honestly sickening how you still think that makes a difference. You already know better, my dear.

You are a monster.

So are you. But unlike yourself, I have not been deluded by fairy tales and pointless dreams, never believing myself to be anything else. Unlike you. You are a pathetic excuse of a vampire. I do not know why I ever thought you worthy of my gift. Although… I cannot say that I have not enjoyed every second of giving it to you.

No reaction to that?

Let her go.

No.

Go fuck yourself then.

A dagger clanged against the cold, hard stone.

Ren opened her eyes, not knowing when they had even fallen closed. Perhaps she didn’t want to subject her friend to having front row seats for seeing the light snuff out behind her eyes.

“Serana?” This felt like an eerily familiar deja vu. Serana was looking directly at her, eyes now gently flickering with gold in the muted lighting. Ren shot to her feet, surprised at the vigour her body was still capable of.

The vampire took stumbled back a few steps.

“No, stay-” The person in front of her sounded so much like her Serana in that moment that Ren had to fight the tears springing into her eyes. It had been so long, the time they'd spent in this sorry excuse of a cellar feeling like it had dragged on for all eternity. “I… He, I canno-” was all Serana managed to choke out before audibly snapping her mouth shut, hands balled into tight fists, while her partially frozen body was trembling with the effort of not moving from its current spot.

Kill her.

No.

Everything that you refuse to do to her, I will do to you.

Do it then.

Kill. Her. Now.

No.

Are you truly deluding yourself so badly that you believe that anyone, that she could ever care about you? You are a monster, under the eternal control of someone you had willingly given yourself to in search of power. You are a filthy, pathetic little girl, refusing to accept that everyone sees you for what you really are. A whore willing to spread her legs for power and eternal life.

Stop.

She will never accept you. I am the only one who understands because I have made you into what you are today. Maybe she has not yet seen the full extent of the power that I have granted you.

No, please.

Serana was crying again.

Back there, at the doorstep which had been so close to their salvation, Serana had been outright sobbing, with big, swelling cries and heaving breaths. She'd been terrified, and rightfully so. But this, this was so much worse.

Like a woman accepting an unacceptable fate, unable to do anything else but let crystalline tears stream silently down her pale marble cheeks. The sight was enough to break Ren's previously impenetrable heart.

Serana's muscles were still locked up, but it looked as if no longer by her own volition. Ren was almost positive that if it had been solely up to the vampire rigidly standing in front of her, her knees would have – for a reason Ren didn’t know – given up and buckled.

Something snapped, and it took her muddled brain too long to realize that the sound had come from Serana's direction. The woman in question flinched, feet shifting momentarily on the gravel, but did not show any outward reaction otherwise.

Another snap rang out, followed closely by a third. At the fourth one, Serana whimpered.

What's wrong? You were standing there for so long I had feared you had suddenly grown roots, and now you want to leave? I don’t think so. Let her watch you in full glory. Isn't that what you wanted?

How do you-

You act as if I am not literally in your head right now.

Please.

Give her a good show.

Ren didn’t know what it was, but something changed again. This time, instead of hope, she only felt inexplicable dread. The woman in front of her changed. It was as if the immense amount of pain that she was clearly in started taking a physical form. Serana's skin turned even paler than usual, fading and blurring right in front of her eyes before it settled into a combination of a washed-out blue and grey, making the vampire almost look like she was made of the same stone underneath their feet. There were multiple painful-sounding snaps in a quick succession, and Serana's body gave a full body flinch before folding in half. The woman was still terrifyingly quiet.

Ren assumed that her tired eyes were playing tricks on her in the swirling darkness when what she'd previously assumed to be Serana's completely normal – if inhumanely strong – arms turned into claws. But her suspicion was confirmed correct when her eyes flickered downward at the sound of ripping leather, and saw one set. These claws were significantly bigger, leaner and slightly raised at the haunches, clearly meant for walking.

Or sprinting.

Something cracked again, this in a spot hidden from her direct eyeline, and Ren quickly figured out it must have originated somewhere behind Serana, because the woman's torso suddenly sprung up, leaning slightly backwards, as if pulled by an invisible string.

Ren she wouldn’t have believed it possible for a person to grow right in front of one's eyes if it wasn’t for the vampire's clothing – now in tatters – hanging limply onto her body, barely covering her. A few more painful-sounding snaps followed before Serana finally straightened, now visibly towering over Ren by a few inches even with the two women still a few feet apart. Sharp horns grew on her head, short and obsidian black, and a singular sob broke out of the vampire's new body as leathery wings sprouted from her shoulders, triggering a small gust of wind in an otherwise stale atmosphere.

Serana was looking directly at Ren with tear-filled eyes, her transformation complete.

Now she sees. She sees all that you are. All that you will ever be.

She had never been so terrified in her life.

She had been aware that Serana was no ordinary vampire, having witnessed the strength beyond even what she knew vampires that she came into contact with regularly to be capable off. She'd also come to a realization that Serana had probably… contracted her vampirism directly from Molag Bal. Ren wasn’t sure how different that made Serana compared to the ones that have been infected by the sanguine vampiris disease, but she didn’t know it meant… this. She didn’t know what to think, couldn’t fathom forming a thought at all. This creature in front of her, the woman she'd-

The woman that she felt like she'd known her entire life instead of the scant few weeks that they'd spent in each other's company.

The woman she'd seen dig up a grave with her own bare hands for a farm boy that had been unfortunate enough to get selected as their carriage driver for the journey to Markarth.

The woman who would secretly sneak coins to beggars when Ren wasn’t looking, as if she could not be caught putting out a little kindness into the world.

The same woman that had entertained all the children playing at the Whiterun stables when they'd stopped there on their journey west.

The woman she-

Her voice shook, scratching at her throat as if it didn’t want to come out at all. But her hope persisted, pushing forward. It had to.

“Serana, is it… you?”

Even though her body was a lot bigger now, Serana's hunched posture ironically seemed somewhat… smaller. Afraid. Of her?

A tearful, broken yes reverberated through the otherwise deadly silent room.

Fine. I shall do it myself.

No.

I will deal with you later but believe me, you will beg me to grant you death when I am done with you. And I will. Then you will be mine to torment for all eternity. Now that I am thinking about it, maybe I shall turn your friend here as well. I had intended to kill her, but the little nuisance had proven herself to be surprisingly resilient. But she will never refuse you. How does it feel, knowing that you will have granted her the absolute pleasure of enjoying my hospitality in Coldharbour. Both of you, together. For all eternity. Is that not what you have wanted, after all?

“Ren?” Serana rasped out, still struggling with an invisible enemy. “Help me, please.” The desperation brough Ren to her faster than it took to form a single thought.

“What do I do?” Instead of answering, Serana crumpled, her body curling up on the cold ground only inches from one of the light beams, making Ren's heart lurch. “Serana, tell me what do to. How do I make it stop?” Ren was getting desperate after seeing the woman she knew to be regal even when facing the biggest of dangers in so much visible pain. She wanted to touch her, offer any comfort she possibly could, but refrained when she saw that Serana's own physical injuries had become more and more apparent when she was no longer a mindless vessel. Ren wondered what'd transpired between the vampire and the daedric lord before she'd managed to stumble down into this gods damned tomb.

She wasn’t sure she wanted to know at all.

“Come on, Serana.”

The woman lifted her head barely an inch off the ground, muscles visibly trembling from exertion evem as she struggled to form words, barely managing to breathe them into existence. Had the room not been bathed in complete silence, Ren wouldn't have heard her at all. “T- The al-” A ragged cough interrupted her, as if she had been kicked in the stomach, splashes of dark blood joining her own on the dark stone floor. “Altar.” Was all she managed to wheeze out.

Ren didn’t hesitate. She sprung up from where she'd kneeled next to Serana, willing her battered body to hold on a little longer when new hope began to bloom in her chest as she frantically stumbled towards the obsidian slab of stone they'd moved a significant distance from during their fight. It pained her to leave Serana behind, but destroying the altar – and Molag Bal's influence on the area with it – was the only way to help her right now.

She was about halfway between Serana – who wasn’t even trying to pick herself up off the cold floor – and the altar, when she was brought down to her knees again, this time by her own clumsiness. Although she could’ve sworn that the broken candelabra her foot had caught on had not been there a moment before.

Something glinted in the night, a little to her left.

It was her sword.

She snatched it with one hand, making a beeline straight to the altar.

Seeing as the strange pillars coming out of it were the easiest target, she began hacking at the bulky obsidian pieces of stone, sword firmly clutched in both hands to ensure she squeezed the biggest amount of strength possible from her worn-out body. She would've liked to remove the woman's remains first, but their lives would have to come first before the one already dead.

Nothing happened after the first hit, nor the few following ones.

Gathering all her strength and clutching the sword firmly in both palms, Ren swung them wide, the blade arcing through the air gracefully before it fell with unbelievable precision exactly where the pillar connected to one of the stones. The piece broke off completely, landing in the darkness somewhere behind the altar.

Serana wailed from her spot on the floor.

“I'm so sorry.” But I don’t have a choice. The second almost statue-like piece followed the same fate swiftly, crumbling into pieces after two strong heaves from the now panting woman.

Serana's warbled cries echoed around the walls.

Just as she gathered her strength to rid them of the final pillar, muscles locking up where she'd been preparing to strike the final blow, the salvation just at the tips of her fingers turned into dust once more.

As did the black pillar that had stood before her a moment ago.

The powder it had turned into right before her very eyes liquified, spreading all over the altar and the remains still spread atop it. Dark sludge covered the stone, almost invisible due to its inky colour. Ren didn’t see it, but she heard some of it drip to the ground over the uneven sides.

Something in the air crackled.

Before her own body could fully register it and move away from the now entirely covered altar, a form appeared from the mud, as if sculpted from obsidian clay.

A voice she never wanted to call familiar rang out in her head once again. It sounded much closer now, as if the owner had been speaking right into her ear.

I thank you for your service.

Ren was flabbergasted. “What in oblivion-”

She didn’t even realize she had spoken out loud before the voice answered.

As I've said before, the ritual had been left incomplete. The puny mortal had regrettably died just before the last step. All the ingredients had been laid out; all the incantations spelled.

The figure, now having materialised into a vaguely human shape, stepped forward and off the altar completely, looming before Ren, maybe twice her size.

She subconsciously took a few steps back.

But I knew. I knew she wouldn’t be strong enough to finish what she'd so callously started. So, I let her do all the work. However, one more thing was needed and it had to come as the final step. Unfortunately for her, she never got to see it through.

Ren's head felt like moments before explosion. She couldn’t think. None of his words made sense. Unless-

She looked beyond the dark figure standing in front of her, eyes falling on the fresh crimson droplets on the dark stone, almost invisible in the muted lighting. Then she checked her still slowly bleeding wound. The blood must've dripped on the altar when she'd tried destroying it.

Ah, you see now. So much preparation, and it had been ever so simple. Blood. Given unwillingly, of course. A delicious sacrifice for me. You may imagine why the mortal failed so miserably.

She must have been a willing… subject.

How insolent of her to not bring me a sacrifice to play with. Even so, she 'd served her purpose well. After that, all I had to do was wait until someone else showed up. When you two appeared right at my doorstep, I knew.

Her mind once again flashed to the thought of Serana spending however long it had been in Molag Bal's company when Ren had laid unconscious upstairs.

Serana cannot finish the ritual. She'd already given herself to me once, therefore any and every part of her belongs to me, including the blood coursing through her immortal body. Any… sacrifice on her behalf could hardly be called unwilling.

Ren felt like the shapeless, abyssal form was smiling at her.

It made shivers run down her back.

But she was not completely useless either. She certainly made for good company while we waited for you.

His empty eye sockets looked at her.

You’ve done me a great service, mortal. And let it be known that I reward my acolytes well.

The body moved off the small steps surrounding the altar, moving towards her with a purpose. A sword materialized in his right hand, dark as the abyss and flaring up menacingly in the dark room. Ren could barely see it, but she knew that one hit from it would send her straight to Sovngard with its sheer size.

And for that I shall give you a quick death. After all, His empty “eyes” fell behind her. I have an insolent daughter to tend to.

And then all hell broke loose.

I have to help.

Come on.

Move.

She tried to lift her arms. After such gargantuan effort, only a sole finger moved, rising an inch above the ground before it returned to its previous position.

Not enough.

You shall await your turn.

Ren managed to raise her own sword just in time to block the giant one coming down on her head with unsteady hands, shaking from all the injuries she'd sustained during the fight with Serana. Sweat dripped into her eyes, making them burn something fierce. Then the heavy weight of the sword gave away, almost toppling her over at the sudden change.

The obsidian hands wound it up again, preparing for a second, devastating blow.

She didn’t wait.

Ren could vaguely hear the menacing obsidian swishing through the air, most likely hitting one of the support beams on her right, shattering it into pieces and scattering them everywhere. She didn’t look back to check the damage, fully focused on putting one foot in front of the other as she attempted to gain some ground on the monster raging behind her.

She forced every last bit of energy from her exhausted muscles. Away from the shadow.

Away from Serana.

Perhaps she could give her enough time to slip out since the demon seemed to have his sights firmly fixed on Ren, at least for the time being.

Another dull thud sounded, followed by a screech of rubble collapsing the stone floor, showering her with little pebbles. He must be close.

She kept running. Serana's crying had turned into exhausted whimpers some time ago, echoing softly before they faded completely into the long night.

Another swish through the air, another hit, another – this time, significantly bigger – piece of stone hurling from the right. It landed just in front of Ren and she struggled to avoid it on her exhausted legs. She could barely see the light streaming in now, as it blurred and whirred around her in a nauseating display of shadow, stone, light and dust.

He was toying with her.

I will wring out every possible drop of fear and torment from your so easily broken body. Your fear, mortal, is utterly delicious.

Trying to simply keep herself upright, she almost missed the wall growing suddenly in front of her face, barely managing to twist herself right in a desperate attempt at protecting her battered sword arm, slamming into the wall with her already injured and burning left shoulder instead. The pain was overwhelming even despite the veil of adrenaline coursing through her veins.

She was trapped.

She was going to die.

Through all the pain, tiredness and despair, a voice once again echoed through her mind. She was fully prepared to ignore it, unwilling to give the daedric prince the satisfaction of taunting her one more time before he erased her from existence.

However, this voice was much lighter, carrying an almost musical as is lanced through her mind.

It wasn’t Serana either.

The light.

The words were simple, and yet she struggled to understand them through the static crackling in her mind, so feint she almost thought she'd hallucinated them in her desperation. The voice was veiled, almost whispering, as if speaking through a barrier.

Or across a great distance.

She was so distracted by it – the voice's sudden appearance and the stupidly vague quality of the instruction – that she almost missed the behemoth coming down on her from behind. She dodged to the left purely on instinct – and not a moment too soon.

The jagged sword swung, smashing into a pillar she'd just slipped behind, missing her neck by mere inches. She waited with a baited breath, barely hearing anything else beyond her harsh breathing and a thumping heartbeat.

It was quiet for a moment. Then the form behind her grunted with effort. Before she could contemplate the possibilities of incorporeal beings struggling physically, a realization struck her. The sword was stuck somewhere in the wreckage.

Now was her chance.

She bolted.

Deciding to trust the voice, whoever it belonged to, she headed to the nearest column of bright light, spotting it across the room despite all the dust swirling in the air. Like a moth drawn to the light, or a sailor desperately heading for the lighthouse among a dreary storm, she went forward, heavy footsteps following in her wake.

The sword still clutched in her hand felt immeasurably heavy. She hadn't even realized that she was still carrying it at first – her arms had gone numb with exhaustion.

The light.

It was crazy.

She had no idea if it would even work. Or why. But as it was, she was way past other options anyway. Hoping beyond hope that whoever had decided to grace them with their presence had been precise in their instruction of using the light and had not spoken in a riddle that she was supposed to figure out beforehand.

That would certainly make her look like a fool.

At least her embarassment would not last for too long.

Ren dragged her exhausted feet forward, willing them to not give out as she finally approached the closest beam of light she could still see. She hefted the sword upward, holding it tightly in both hands even as her spasming muscles screamed for a reprieve, and waited.

She was hidden – as far as she could tell anyway, her vision had stopped being reliable a while ago – shadowed by multiple rays of sunlight streaming in behind her back.

She was ready, or as ready as she could possibly be, considering the circumstances.

Now, all she needed to know was the direction he would appear from. Because Ren knew he would come for her. The room had been suspiciously quiet ever since the unknown voice had weaved itself into her mind.

Something crackled briefly, scuffing across the stone.

Time for games was over.

It was time to end this.

She did not see him.

She could not hear him either.

And yet, she knew exactly where he would appear by the shiver running down her spine, making her teeth chatter for a moment before she clenched her jaw along with the rest of her entire body.

Left.

Ren spun on her heels, sword arcing through the dark air in a wide circle with every piece of strength left in her wrung-out body behind it. Just before she finished the turn, before the shadow forming behind her became anything more than a glint in the night, the tip of her sword passed through one of the light beams on her right.

For a terrible moment she feared that nothing would happen and she'd end up cleaved in half, in some random, damp, disgusting cellar where no one will ever find her body. No one except Serana, who would be left all alone with the daedric prince.

Just as she was about to lose all hope and accept her broken fate, the blade lit up.

Gradually at first, as if soaking up all the light and warmth from the beam it had passed through, before brilliant flames burst forth, enveloping the entire blade all the way to the hilt. She had a moment of terrible realization of what would happen if the flames just continued licking down the blade, over her fingers – burning her body to a crisp. The heat was so intense that she had to fight all her instincts and not let go of the handle.

But she didn’t.

The flames stopped just at the sword's hilt and – against all odds – did not go out even with the force of her swing, instead burning even brighter as they followed the blade's movement like a brilliant tail. The bright light finally cut through the darkness surrounding them as Ren used the last vestiges of her strength and resolve to complete the wide arc and mercilessly cut straight through the unsuspecting aspect's almost corporeal neck.

The flames consumed the shadow, setting it ablaze.

Ren was standing too close, burning sweat rolling down her neck.

Just as her strength was about to give out – and the fire too hot to withstand – the flames snuffed out as rapidly as they'd appeared. The sweat turned cold on her skin, making Ren shiver at the heat's sudden disappearance. When she opened her eyes, which had closed about halfway through the firework show, the shadow was gone, only it's rumbling scream still echoing around the walls and the high ceiling.

The only evidence of his presence was the pile of ashes blowing across the stones momentarily before they disappeared altogether, as he had never been there. As if this nightmare had been just a bad dream.

It was as if fog had lifted from the room. The darkness seemed to take on a more natural shade, the beams of light now emitting a comforting warmth that no longer felt like it would reduce her to nothing if she hovered too close.

Ren felt like she could breathe for the first time in ages.

Finally, it was quiet.

Too quiet.

Serana.

She rushed through the room back towards the direction of what used to be the altar, having found herself in the furthest part of it in the now dim light. The fight had carried away from the vampire previously sprawled on the ground so Ren had hoped that she had at least been be safe from the flying debris.

But when she finally returned to the spot she'd previously left Serana at, the woman was nowhere to be seen. Panic overwhelmed her briefly, before she spotted a form to her left out of the corner of her eye.

It was… Serana. Still in her winged, ashen form.

As the danger around them finally subsided, Ren only now started to realize that whatever had happened with Serana during the battle was not exactly common, even by higher vampire standards. Her body warned her, instincts going haywire at the realization that she might even be in danger, considering how strong and fast Serana was even on a regular basis.

She chased the thought out of her mind, knowing that the vampire'd had ample opportunity to kill her while she was busy with Molag Bal, not counting all the other times that Ren had allowed herself – or the circumstances had forced her – to be in a vulnerable position in Serana's presence. Ren had no illusion that vampire could kill her at a moment's notice, should she choose to do so. Vampire hunter or not, Ren was sure that she didn’t stand a chance against anyone in her current state.

But Serana didn’t attack her.

She wasn’t moving at all.

She was standing in the middle of the room, beams of warm light to her right and left. And she was looking directly at Ren, eyes brighter that she'd ever remember seeing them.

She wanted to speak, to move closer, but the intensity in the vampire's eyes rooted her feet to the spot. It was clear that Serana was distraught, tears still silently streaming down her face. Her body, powerful as it was, seemed almost fragile. Too vulnerable for Ren's liking.

She finally made herself move, seeing as the other women seemed to have no intention to do so. She'd barely covered half the distance between them, when her foot caught on some fallen piece of metal with a distinct clang.

Serana flinched.

She didn’t move besides that, continuing to burn her gaze straight into Ren's tired eyes. It was as if she was waiting for something.

When Ren finally approached the vampire, stopping close enough to touch if she reached out her hand, she froze as well.

Serana was trembling.

It took a moment, but the weight of realization almost made Ren's knees buckle.

Serana was afraid.

Serana was afraid of her.

And yet she still hasn’t moved away.

She didn’t know what to do with the knowledge that – despite her apparent fear – Serana was willing to put her fate into Ren's exhausted hands. She wanted to say something, at least try to reassure the vampire, to say… anything, really, but the words just wouldn’t form.

None of them mattered anyway, none of them seemed important enough to voice into the quiet space between them, which had decreased significantly over the last few moments without neither woman's notice.

Ren raised her hand, slowly, without a sound, giving the other woman ample time to move away. Serana's barely-focused eyes flickered to it briefly, but she made no other move. The hand continued upwards at an unhurried pace, until her fingers touched the vampire's marble skin, spreading slowly across the expanse of Serana's cheek and gently cradling her face in with one hand. The other one had remained firmly at her own side.

She half expected the sensation to be different. After all, Serana looked quite different, but she was exactly as unexpectedly warm as she'd been the few times her skin had come into contact with Ren's.

Her thumb started moving almost absentmindedly, the initial unsteady touch turning into a very slow and tender caress. The pad of her finger snagged on Serana's lip, briefly revealing the prominent fang hiding underneath the grey skin.

Serana still didn’t move, eyes boring into hers. Her bottom lip trembled, breath shuddering audibly in her lungs.

Ren took a deep breath, decision made.

“I'm still taller than you.”

The bewilderment on Serana's face was almost worth the entire ordeal.

She turned around then, deciding to give the other woman a moment to collect herself, eyes zeroing on the sword that she'd dropped when her fingers were no longer capable of holding on to it. She'd probably dropped it more times this afternoon alone than her entire life beforehand. Isran would have an aneurism if he knew.

When she turned back around, Serana was gone, the last of her footsteps bleeding gently into the night.