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Chapter 3

Saraven seldom dreamed now. There had been nightmares for the first ten years or so, and then they had gradually tapered off over time. Now sleep brought him only black silence, readily dissipated by the slightest noise or touch. He supposed he probably still dreamt. Everyone did, didn't they? But he did not remember it.

And yet that day he awoke from a nightmare. This time it was a little family of Argonians, mother, father and child, clinging to the smiling corpse of a Khajiit in the tattered clothes of a beggar. They were gnawing at the dead woman's flesh, sucking and lapping at every last drop of blood, and they did not even see him before he set them all on fire. They went on screaming for what seemed an impossibly long time. He beat them back from the door, denying them the water outside, because this was Leyawiin and shallow water was never more than a few steps away. He cut them to pieces, to ribbons, he burned them until only ashes were left; but the screaming went on.

It was still going on when he opened his eyes. The bed shook under him, and as he sat up, groping for his sword, he realized the entire building was shaking. Pictures fell from the walls, candles from the night stands. The light that came through the diamond-shaped windowpanes was red. Saraven's hand finally closed around the baldric on the floor beside the bed, and he hauled up the sword and dagger and ran for the window to see what the Hells was going on.

The sky was red. Red and yellow, swirling like lava, bathing the city in a brilliant and unnatural light. Some of the buildings around the Guild were on fire, and people were running through the street in panic, being pursued by -

Saraven shook his head once and again, in case he was still dreaming. But no, his nightmare had been about vampires, not about daedra running the streets of Kvatch. As he watched, a clannfear overtook a running Bosmer, pouncing from almost two yards away to slam him to the ground under its clawed, birdlike feet. It tore at his throat with its beak, and blood the color of the sky overhead fountained and splattered its tan scales.

"Vakh naela." He swore and hurried to get into his armor. The room was oddly empty, and the floor kept shaking. When he went out onto the landing, armed and armored, there was nobody there either. The Guild was completely empty. Even the porter was gone. He went carefully down the stairs, not touching the railing - half of it had fallen over from the sheer force of the ground shaking - and looked into the dining and training areas, but they were empty as well. The front doors swung on their hinges, slapping against the walls.

A figure in heavy armor stalked into his view, the helm and pauldrons cruelly spined, the metal black with inlays that glowed crimson. The creature had a shield on his arm and a mace in his hand.

"What's going on?" Saraven shouted at him. Slowly the armored man turned, and the voice that answered sounded as though it came from the bottom of a well, metallic and echoing:

"BREAK! BLEED!" The creature began to run toward him, heavy boots striking sparks on the cobbles at every step, and Saraven realized he was looking at something he had never seen: a dremora in armor forged in the fires of another plane.

There was no time to be shocked. He shifted his weight to one knee, dropping his shoulder as if ready to meet the charge. He heard the dremora laugh, breath that stank of blood and brimstone washing over him even through the helm's grille, and then he spun aside. Even supernatural armor must be put on and taken off somehow, and his silver longsword sought the cuirass seam under the uplifted arm automatically, without thought. The dremora screamed and continued to charge forward, black-red blood spraying Saraven's mail shirt as the Dunmer withdrew the sword and danced back. For a moment Saraven thought he must have missed the heart, but then the creature's knees gave and he threw himself straight into the ground. He kept kicking as if running for a good two seconds after he was dead.

A pair of clannfear as big as large dogs were walking up the street, beaks and claws dripping with blood. One of the scaly bipeds opened its beak and let out a sound like the squeak of a rusty door, a long creaky rattle.

Saraven loosed a ball of fire at them both. They turned as one at the soft whomph, heads darting like snakes, but did not even attempt to move away from the spreading fireball. When it had cleared they were running toward him, scales only slightly singed, showing no real signs of injury.

Five minutes later both clannfear were dead, and Saraven stood over their twitching corpses with bloodied blades. The street seemed empty now, everyone dead or fled, no more screaming nearby. There were bodies, the reek of blood and shit mingling with the stench of burning. They lay in doorways and in the street. In the building next door half of a woman lay in a doorway, intestines trailing what seemed an impossible length out into the street, eyes and mouth wide and horrified.

It was too late to do anything for them. Somewhere in this Hell-in-Nirn there was someone still alive who knew what was going on, or who needed help, or both. Saraven Gol raised his eyes to the towering Chapel of Akatosh across the broad street. There were signs of life there, pews piled as a barricade around the wooden doors. He thought he could see men behind them, the gleam of chainmail that probably meant city guards. He started that way with purposeful tread.

"Halt there!" said a voice from behind a stack of chairs and pews. It quavered only slightly.

"I'm not a demon," he said, stopping a few yards off. "I'm Saraven Gol. I'm with the Fighters Guild. What's happening here?"

"We don't know! There are daedra in the streets! There's probably someone alive at the palace if they dropped the portcullis fast enough, but the mechanism is old - I wouldn't bet on it." It was a young voice, male, strained.

"Nobody in there knows why the sky's red?" he asked.

"No!" There was a hasty conference from behind the barricade. There must be at least four people back there talking.

"Terra says they came from the direction of the city gate first," the voice said presently. "I wouldn't go looking if I were you, though. Wherever they're coming from, it's happening in waves, and they haven't stopped yet."

"Somebody has to find out," Saraven said. "Thanks for the information." He turned toward the South and the gate and started off at a run. There would always be more vampires. Whatever was happening here was harming more innocent people in one day than the Cathay-raht had probably killed in all of her undeath, and he did not have the time to worry about her now.

It didn't take long for Saraven to reach the gate proper, but it was thronged with a screaming horde of people all trying to get out of Kvatch. Demons in their black-red armor formed a hemicircle at the back of the crowd, shouting jubilantly to one another in their own language as they peppered the throng with lightning and fire. Some wore armor. Some wore robes of black fabric, a thing he had not yet seen. Here and there citizens tried to fight back. As he watched, a man and woman with billhooks yanked a dremora in armor into the crowd, and the creature was trampled underfoot, his helmet yanked off and his head crushed under heavy boots. In the next instant the rebels disappeared in a fiery inferno as the other daedra retaliated.

He glimpsed the shining mail of a city guard near the gate itself. The man was laying about him with his sword indiscriminately, trying to keep from being stabbed by daedra or trampled by the crowd itself. The corpses of both mortals and dremoras lay on the ground, some killed in the fighting, some trampled in the rush. The air stank of excrement, blood, sweat, and overall there was a new and terrifying smell of brimstone and burning. Small fires burned all around.

Beyond the open gates, crude barricades were being erected, made of fences, chairs, sharpened stakes, whatever anyone could find. The stakes were aimed toward the city. The chainmail of Kvatch city guards reflected the crimson sky, staining them red. It was hard to see from here, but it looked like they were trying to get people past the barricades and off down the hill, those few who made it past the gauntlet of fire and lightning that was the gate.

Very much to his own surprise, Saraven felt the dull burn of rising anger, something he had not known in a decade and more. He had given thirty years of his life to making the world a safer place for people with families - well, twenty, he couldn't argue the first ten had been about anything but revenge. But that twenty years had been spent in a righteous cause, a labor toward the day when no one need fear that they would come home and find their loved ones missing or dead in their beds or drawn across the walls with hand and blade and claw. That fragile peace was shattered, burnt on a pyre of fire and blood beneath the red sky. Even for those few who might survive this day, things would never be the same again.

No one was paying the slightest mind to one figure in mithral chain approaching the crowd from the city. He walked directly up behind a dremora in a black robe and ran him through - her, the creature had breasts, he realized as she crumpled with a snarl. Those on either side turned to look, and another one sprouted a silver dagger from his eye in the moment before Saraven turned to deal with the nearest demon in armor. He took a glancing blow from a mace on one pauldron, jabbed at the armpit, kicked at the knee, and then the others noticed him and it was a frenzied melee. More people escaped ahead as their tormentors were distracted by the Dunmer in the pale chain armor, creating a space in the crowd through which people could spread out and avoid trampling as they continued their desperate run on the gate.

Saraven's world became a blur of red-black armor, maces, spiny helmets, snarling voices. He knew that as soon as he was surrounded it would be over. Earlier in the day he might have faced that possibility with dull resignation. Now he was furious. It lent him new strength as he spun aside from a fireball, dropped to one knee, stabbed up at the seam of a cuirass. The body fell and he took a blow from a mace on his upraised arm, bruising but not deadly. The spell impacted on a demon behind him, and he heard the creature laugh, unharmed.

He rolled forward between two of the spellcasters and slashed behind him as he rose to his feet, producing a pair of harsh screams, and he turned to cut at them again without seeing the demon looming behind him with upraised mace. He half turned in time to take it on the shoulder instead of the skull, but it drove him to his knees again, and then he was surrounded by a forest of sharp, kicking boots. Agony erupted in his back, his ribs, his legs as blows impacted on his mail.

He caught at a boot, pulled the owner down, and then he felt a jarring impact to the back of his head and pain exploded into silence.

Pain was still with him when he awoke. Saraven's eyes snapped open as he realized he felt no weight of mithral chain on his head, no snug fit of the gorget on his throat. He hissed between his teeth, swallowing a groan as black metal swam into view overhead - converging bars. A cage. Beyond lay only blackness, the ceiling too far away to be made out even as his eyes struggled to make clear shape out of formless darkness.

He still wore his cuirass, greaves and boots, he realized after a moment. They'd taken away his hood, his gorget, and his bracers, baring his throat and wrists. Well, he'd known the vampires were going to get him one day. The important thing was that he died doing Meridia's good work. Nothing they did to him would change that.

But that wasn't right. He had been in Kvatch, he remembered now. Saraven twitched one hand as he healed himself, and his head grew clearer, memory swimming into focus. He had been swarmed under at the city gate. So why was he alive now? He sat up slowly, looking around. This was no cave. The cage was pointed at its summit, secured with a lock of spiny, bizarre design, and the room around him was made of some slick black marble or stone. Channels carved into the floor converged on a drain in the center of the room, and they ran with sticky crimson residue - the air stank with blood and smoke and something else, something furious and alien. Thin panels in the walls glowed yellow-orange without source. Their weak light did not extend to the ceiling above. A couple of pillars - they seemed to grow directly from the floor, without a carven edge that would suggest being built and placed - flanked a pair of doors on the opposite wall. At least, they should be doors. There was a vertical crack between them, and they converged to a point at the top, like a dreadful parody of church doors. But they glowed orange-yellow with the same strange light as the walls, and he saw neither knob nor handle.

There was another cage nearby, he realized after a moment. A bench of the same black stone stood between his cage and it, as if someone might want to come and have a seat and relax while they looked at the prisoners. A hook hung from a pillar behind it. From the hook hung a ring of black metal keys.

---

Zudarra awoke to a horrible throbbing pain in her tail and head, a probable concussion. Her fingers curled into a fist to quickly heal the damage before it could become permanent. The stink of death and decay reached her senses first, and then another scent, something delicious and inviting that stoked her bestial hunger even as it triggered a memory.

"You!" she snarled, grabbing the bars that enclosed her and yanking herself to her knees with them. The cage was too small to stand at her full height, her large frame packed tightly in the narrow space as it was. Her rage towards the Dunmer subsided as Zudarra realized that Saraven had nothing at all to do with her current predicament. She'd been captured by dremora, hadn't she? She found every last detail of this room alien and bizarre, while the air smelled of things she had never encountered in her life.

_You're not in Tamriel anymore,_she realized with a growing horror. Her eyes widened in panic, twin moons glowing red in the dim.

Zudarra's next realization was the absence of the weight on her back; they had taken her weapon, but left her armor.

Saraven turned at the noise and movement from the next cage, one hand rising to rest against the bars. It was the Cathay-raht vampire, eyes glowing crimson in the dim room. He grunted a laugh, hardly more than an exhalation through his nostrils.

"How d'you like those odds?" he said. "I wonder if they even know a current mortal from a former one?" He looked around the room, eyes narrow. "I would wonder if they were planning to feed me to you, but the cages are too small."

Zudarra did not feel very immortal in that moment, knowing she was completely helpless if a dremora came back and decided to roast her alive in the cage while she screamed. It was a terrible feeling that twisted through her guts and fogged her mind. She had to get out, she had to get away! She wrenched violently at the bars in her hands, growling with the exertion. They rattled but didn't budge, the cage swinging slightly under her furious jerking.

It was useless. Zudarra realized she was heaving and tried to slow her breathing. Panicking made her stupid. She had to regain control of herself and think. She looked down at the old bloodstains in which she kneeled. There were a couple of broken teeth on the floor of the cage.

She glared back at the Dunmer, just sitting there watching her. Why was he so calm about this?!

Saraven watched her, head slightly on one side. The daedra had built them sturdy enough to resist an undead's tremendous strength, which was surprising. It was a new experience seeing a vampire in a cage, raging, panicked. He had seen their cattle penned in fences, of course. Some of them preferred terrified, struggling prey instead of docile and hypnotized. One of the best days of his life had been letting a family of Bretons out of one of those pens, still alive, carrying their two children out into the daylight and life and healing.

"Your problem is that you're afraid to die," he said. The bottom of his own cage was also above the floor by a couple of feet, he noticed. He looked from that to the keys and back. "When you get a little older you'll forget that it can happen to you. They always do."

He opened and closed his left hand. The fire was still with him, or he had been unconscious long enough to get it back. He began to shift his weight from right to left of the cage, one foot braced against each side. The thing was tremendously heavy, resisting his weight, but it gradually began to swing very slightly toward and away from the bench and the keys.

"Don't tell me what I fear," she snapped. "No one wants to die; it's got nothing to do with being afraid." She watched him swinging his cage and followed his line of sight towards the key on the wall.

"Are you skilled in telekinesis?" she asked, anger replaced with curiosity.

"No." He leaned harder, increasing the rate of the cage's progress. "And I don't much care, but you might want to back up." As he spoke he freed one hand from the bars, a light beginning to gather above the palm. On the next swing toward the bench he leaned out as far as he could, shoving his arm between the bars, and cast a fireball straight up at the keys. It rose as a streak of golden flame, startlingly bright in the darkness for one instant of soft hissing progress. Zudarra quickly pressed her back against the bars when she realized what he meant to do, just in time for the hot blast of fire to blow past her face. Then it hit the bottom of the hook and exploded. The room filled with light, imprinting Saraven's retinas with the sphere of fire.

There was a furious clatter as the keys were blown upward. They bounced off the pillar, vanished into the darkness above for a second and then smashed back down into the blood channel about two feet from the bars of the vampire's cage - Zudarra, she had said her name was. Zudarra the Bloody.

Saraven watched this with the same dull disinterest she had seen throughout most of their encounter on the road.

Zudarra blinked at the blinding light and looked with incredulity from the keys that landed nearby up to the Dunmer's impassive face. Then she moved, lightning quick, unfastening the pauldron from her right shoulder and throwing herself to the floor of the cage with her arm through the bars. She pressed her bare shoulder to the bars as hard as she could, claws straining painfully to reach. Finally a claw hooked around the ring and she dragged it up, grinning.

The Khajiit's hands shook as she hurried to unlock the cage. The first key wasn't right. She fumbled and dropped the set on the floor of the cage. The echoing clack was distressingly loud to her anxious mind, but she snatched them up and tried again. The strange lock clicked on her second try and the door wheezed rustily as it swung open.

She climbed from the cage with her pauldron in hand, making sure to stay well out of reach of the caged Dunmer, and held the keys in her mouth as she refastened her pauldron. She could only secure the top to her cuirass. Without Vandalion it would take too long to fasten the straps on her upper arm. Zudarra looked expectantly at Saraven when she had finished.

"Aren't you going to beg me to free you?" she asked, truly puzzled by his apparent resignation.

Saraven shook his head. "You'll open the cage because you're hungry, in which case I'm dead. Or you'll leave me here, in which case I'm dead. I don't care which it is. Dremoras are blood-drinkers, and you can't get into my mind, so it'll feel exactly the same either way. Pain, then weakness, then silence." He rested a shoulder against the cage bars, feeling the heavy thing slowly swing to a halt under its own weight.

"They might torture me first," he amended after a moment's thought. "I suppose that would be slightly worse."

Zudarra huffed in annoyance, tattered ears flicking to the sides.

"You've got me and the entire world_all_figured out, don't you?" she asked, pacing over to the knobless door and pressing an ear against it. The material seemed to be very thick, but she could faintly make out heavy footsteps, perhaps two rooms away. There was no telling how large of a building they were held in or how many dremora were inside, let alone what other horrors might await them.

Her relief at being released from the cage was fading now as Zudarra realized they were still imprisoned in a daedric plane. Most likely dragged through that portal she had seen in the plaza, or another like it.

"I'm not particularly hungry. I fed just before all this happened," she continued. It was a bit of a lie. Saraven's oddly alluring scent seemed to draw her in like no mortal she'd ever encountered, but she could resist. It was true that nothing would make her happier than to drain him right now, both to taste the sweet blood that called to her and to finally put an end to his aggravating drivel. But walking through these halls alone could mean nothing but certain death to either one of them. He was making a big show of not caring if he lived or died, but Zudarra was sure that_no one_could truly not care. He needed her as much as she needed him, as infuriating as that was to admit.

_You can't get into my mind,_he'd said. Another thinly-veiled lie meant to reinforce his stoic facade. Zudarra turned back towards his cage, gazing into his tired eyes as she reached out to touch his mind with her own. It was slightly harder to do without feeding, without some sort of physical connection already established, but not impossible. Zudarra would bend his will to her own, make him docile and subservient to ensure her survival when she released him.

She had succeeded in surprising him. He half-expected her to walk away. There were victims enough in these halls if she could stand to drink the blood of daedra. Saraven did not look away, did not shut his eyes, did not move in the slightest.

Gods, but she was young, he had not realized how young. A powerful mind groped after his, seeking to engulf and drown him, swallow his will. It did not feel like an attack, that was the power of it. The first assault was like being wrapped in warm cotton. But he recognized all of it, the smothering weight, the sweet alluring urge to surrender - it was not subtle. An ancient had ways of creeping in around your defenses with just their voice. Even they could be resisted if you didn't look them in the eye. Zudarra found the loud echo of each and every vampire who had touched his mind, brutal and bestial or terrifyingly aware. He could no more stop himself from experiencing every one than he could turn back the ocean's tide. He felt breath on his throat, heard their voices, saw their eyes gleaming from the darkness, so clearly that she could probably have recognized them if she met them on the street.

_Thirst thirst thirst ardent desire brief satiation - _

I will have you, darling, you just don't know it yet -

Fall to your knees and worship me, mortal -

You think you're a hunter. Isn't that adorable.

Around those echoes was woven a web of fatigue, pain, old, sullen anger, and a sad little thread of worship, a sense of the self already lost to something greater than mortal need or immortal thirst. The pressure of her mind rebounded from that barrier without making an impression, like a ball from a rubber sheet. It did not even tire him to maintain it. He had been tired since the 11th of Sun's Height of 3E 403 (the date burned like a sullen brand in his mind, like flaming letters carved into a tombstone).

"No," he said aloud, quite calmly. "For a drink from me you will fight tooth and claw." He could not pretend that she would not win. Without his weapons and leathers, and without full magicka, his physical chances were poor. "If you really think you can't get out of here on your own, you open this cage door and you take your chances."

Zudarra's jaw slackened at the sudden storm of memory and emotion that bounced through her mind. Vampires far,_far_more powerful than she had been slain by this man. All of them had been stupid to underestimate him, as she had almost done herself. She must avoid their careless mistakes if she planned to survive.

Zudarra wrenched her mind from his, severing the failed link and hiding her chagrin behind a scowl.

"I already told you I don't wish to feed, you blind idiot!" she hissed, keys digging into the palm of her hand as they clenched at her sides. "I want to get out of this gods-forsaken place and needed insurance that you wouldn't do anything foolish if I open this door. Your single-minded hatred of my kind might have you lobbing around fireballs when we could be working together." Her ear turned to a heavy stomp beyond the door. There was no time to argue further or plead for his cooperation.

She lurched forward , hackles rising wit h the expectation that he might attack and the furious blood lust that stirred from being so close to him. The key turned in the lock with a click just as the doors behind slid open with a slow crack, revealing long jagged teeth that had held them together and a dremora in gleaming black armor and mace in hand.

He grunted skeptically, mouth open to tell her he didn't believe her, but then she actually unlocked the cage just as the doors to the room ground open. Saraven shoved the door away from him and dove to his right, away from the vampire, as the daedra snarled in puzzlement at finding them both free. The Dunmer rolled to his feet in a crouch and -

Fire would not hurt them. He remembered it quite clearly. He was unarmed. They had taken his hood, his gorget, his bracers. What did that leave?

He had a body covered in mithral chain.

Well, this is going to hurt.

Saraven shook his right mail sleeve down over his fist and waded in to strike a short, hard punch at the creature's neck. The dremora stepped forward and hunched up his shoulder, picking off the blow on his pauldron. Behind him, the door began to rumble its way closed.

"Kneel, caitiff," he sneered, as Saraven spun away to regain his balance; he felt wetness on his stinging knuckles under the sleeve.

Zudarra moved left to better flank the dremora, smiling inwardly at Saraven's failed strike.

Not so ready to give up and die, after all. She edged further to the door. Perhaps if the dremora struck at the Dunmer, she could make a run for it. Pry open the door and escape.

No, that was idiotic. Zudarra would need backup out there.

She launched herself at the demon like a cannonball, right arm over her head for protection and leading with her left shoulder. Caught off guard by the vampire's speed, the dremora grunted as three hundred pounds of Khajiit and steel slammed him back, head bouncing forward after his skull smacked against the wall. He raised his weapon, a heavy black cudgel inlaid with bloody runes like that of his daedric armor and edged with three dull blades, and slammed down at the Khajiit's head. The bladed mace glanced from her gauntlet with a loud bang.

She jumped back before he could strike again. His heavy armor had protected him from being crushed, but he also seemed completely unfazed by the blow to his head. The dremora grinned, revealing a row of white teeth filed to sharp points. He darted forward, mace held high.

Oh, for that level of furious energy. Saraven watched her with blank amazement, white eyebrows raised. Then he ducked behind the dremora and kicked him in the back of the knee. He perforce went down on that side, snarling, and Saraven had to dodge back to avoid the nearly automatic backhand with the mace. He stepped forward and trapped the creature's armored arm between his own hip and elbow, grunting at the impact.

"Gorget fastener's on the left," he said. The dremora twisted around, swinging his armored gauntlet, but could get little leverage. Saraven kicked it away.

Zudarra didn't need a second invitation. She dropped to her knees in front of them, grabbing the dremora's free arm and quickly working to unfasten the armor with her left hand while he thrashed to break free, snarling and gnashing his teeth. As soon as the gorget fell from his throat he dipped his head to stab Zudarra with his short horns, but she grabbed the demon by the chin and had her fangs in his throat in the next instant.

Ba-Bump

Long fangs sliced effortlessly through alien flesh, her nose centimeters away from sweating skin that smelled sharply of sulfur and rage.

Ba-Bump

Her fangs raised from the punctures and hot blood poured into her mouth. So much hotter than mortal blood, it threatened to scald her tongue.

Ba-Bump

The first swallow, so warm in her throat and belly! Her limbs tingled with a vitality she had never known. Pure hatred, pure rage, and pure unbridled power burned inside him! She could taste it, could feel it as it flowed through every artery and capillary of her own body. Her muscles bulged beneath her armor as if they might explode from her skin.

Ba-Bump

More, more MORE! She had to have more! A tiny voice somewhere in the back of her mind told Zudarra that she was not safe. The vampire hunter was inches away. Even as her body swelled with a godlike power her brain clouded with the immensity of it. She was prone and defenseless before him and didn't care.

There had been no time to properly mesmerize the dremora, and the natural calming effect that mortals experienced when being fed upon apparently did not extend to daedra. The creature continued to thrash as she sucked, his movements eventually slowing to tiny kicks and jerks as he died in her arms.

Saraven let go as soon as she had a grip, backing away. He should run, or he should smash her in the head and set her on fire as soon as the dremora was weak enough not to be a threat. He grabbed up the mace as the daedra lost his grip. His first roar of pain and outrage became a confused whimper, and Saraven was already raising the weapon when his eyes met the dying demon's. They were curious eyes, swirling with little bits of color outside the blackness of the pupil, not quite an iris -

Velaru lay with her eyes open toward the window, dead skin shrunken against her bones, expression quite peaceful - there had been no struggle...

He almost dropped the mace, staggering back a step. Saraven shook his head, trying to clear an image he thought he had forgotten years ago.

The cave was so dark that you could almost mistake the bodies for logs, for piles of rocks, for anything but dismembered corpses, open mouths silently screaming, limbs far separated from the torsos to which they properly belonged. The air was thick with the stench -

The dremora's eyes were glazed, body twitching as he went on fighting well past the point of life becoming extinct. Saraven looked away, hand clenched convulsively around the handle of the weapon. He had not the strength to raise his arm. He could hear his heart thundering in his own ears again, as it had on the road to Kvatch. His eyes were wide as he shook his head, fighting to clear it.

What is happening to me?

Zudarra gasped, shuddering in pleasure as her head raised from the dremora's neck. Its armor thunked against the floor as she released him. Dead, sunken eyes stared up at them from deep hollows in the daedra's face, his armor now seeming far too big for the shriveled gray body. She heaved herself to her feet, blackish blood dribbling from the snowy fur of her chin, and grinned widely at the Dunmer. He was looking a bit pale.

Zudarra threw back her head and cackled with joy. She couldn't help it. She felt so alive! The dremora's blood was unlike anything she could ever conceive of, and now her earlier fears were suddenly preposterous. Nothing would stand in her way, least of all this weary little man!

She stepped over the desiccated corpse and came to the door, not even stopping to listen for footsteps before she pried it open with her hands. It offered little resistance and slid open to reveal a large room beyond, the center lined with rows of pillars just like the ones in the dungeon. These had long black spikes growing from them that arched upwards. Blood slowly trickled from the tips, dripping down the curved protrusions and staining the floor below. Red glass windows lined the wall to the left, filling the room with an eerie light. Zudarra stalked over to one but the glass was thick and frosted, and she could only make out vague shapes beyond it. At the opposite end of the room a dark tunnel lead up at a steep incline, and to the right was a single door identical to the one she had come from. She could smell countless dremora and scamp that had passed through recently, and could hear the metallic voices of dremora far above them.

Something truly curious caught her eye then: a fleshy, rounded tube hanging from one of the spikes on a pillar. It was tan, with the same sort of blemishes, nicks and spots that a human might acquire over a long lifetime. It was secured to the pillar by several thick tendrils and hung just below Zudarra's eye level. She ducked her head and saw a tightly clenched sphincter on the bottom. The entire thing pulsed faintly as if it were alive and was slick with mucous, but she could make out no sensory organs at all. It_smelled_like it was alive... not quite a human smell, but similar and overlaid with something musky that she couldn't identify.

Her nose wrinkled in disgust and she turned to look back at Saraven, wondering if he had his wits about him yet.

Abruptly he realized that the vampire had moved. Saraven stiffened his spine, forcing his face calm as he looked her over. She almost seemed taller, muscles fuller, brimming with power and life. Whatever chance had might have had before was certainly gone now, he acknowledged, and felt the sensation of grieving horror gradually recede as he reached for an accustomed fatalism. She was not attacking him yet. He bent to search the dead dremora's body. There were two potions in pockets of the armor's padding, marked by symbols he did not understand, and a scroll whose lettering he did: Silence. It must have been taken from a dead prisoner. He took the scroll and left the bottles.

She was looking at him, he realized as he straightened. He walked out into the larger room with his new mace in hand, taking it all in.

"The dremora are associated with Mehrunes Dagon," he said. "We must be in the Deadlands." It was a safe enough guess. It seemed unlikely they'd had time to erect a fortification with stone that looked this heavy and old in Kvatch, and the thing that hung anchored to the pillar was so alien that he could not imagine it growing in Nirn. He felt no urge to examine it closely. Instead he turned to stalk over to the other door and haul at its edges. It yielded reluctantly, growling open as the teeth separated - Zudarra had done it easily.

There were two cages in the other room as well. They were not empty, but what was inside them could no longer properly be called people. The drains on the floor ran red. Saraven stood quite still, looking at them, until the doors slowly ground shut in front of him. Images fought behind his eyes, but this time he was master of himself, able to push them firmly away as he turned back into the room. His face was a grim mask, red-on-red eyes narrow.

"Only way to go is up," he said. He turned toward the upward ramp, mace in his hand. A creature that could do what he had just seen deserved every moment of the painful death the dremora had suffered under Zudarra's fangs. He was troubled by no dram of pity.

As he regained full mastery of his thoughts he noted, as he had expected, that the claim that she was not hungry had been a lie. It would always be a lie. A vampire was never sated.

Up certainly seemed the wrong way to go if they wanted to escape, but Saraven was correct. They had no other choice. She followed him, restraining herself from running past. The Dunmer's pace was excruciatingly slow to her. Zudarra felt that she could fly through these halls like lightning, crushing every daedra in her path with the slightest touch. She realized, in the back of her mind, that such thoughts were idiotic and she ought to be cautious. But it was hard to think rationally with the lifeblood of an immortal churning in her belly, imbuing her own blood with its essence. She yearned for that taste of power again.

"I don't know how good you elves can hear, but there's at least two people moving in the room at the top," she whispered. In front of her, he nodded. The answer was probably not as well as a vampire who is also a Khajiit, but there was no benefit to explaining that. The ramp spiraled up and up and was annoyingly steep. Nothing in this place seemed designed for comfort, but Zudarra found the claws that wept blood to be a pleasant touch. She wondered whose blood, exactly, dripped from those spikes.

Zudarra moved slowly, but nothing could stop the faint clattering of her plates. The daedra above would most likely hear before she reached the top, but perhaps they would assume that Zudarra was the dremora she had killed.

They didn't. Heavy boots thudded against the ground and a pair of snarling black faces appeared over the top of the slope.

"Bleed, churls!" the foremost cried, charging at Saraven with a war axe already dripping with another's blood.

Saraven had been concentrating on keeping purchase on the slick black floor. There was so much blood everywhere, weeping from the very architecture. Surely they could not possibly have killed this many people and stuffed them into the walls already?

Horrid speculation was interrupted by the charging dremora. Saraven lifted an impassive face to the demon, hefting the mace. Then he whirled to one side, dodging around a hanging spike in the wall, and attempted to club the demon in the head while his own weight and the force of the missed swing were still dragging him down-slope. The mace impacted on the back of his neck. He roared as he pitched forward off-balance, tumbling head over heels.

Saraven could not stop to check what Zudarra was doing. The second demon was clad in a robe, and he realized what that meant about a second before the lightning hit him. His back arched as he contorted in agony, flesh burning where it touched and burning again as it earthed itself through his feet. Through the ringing in his ears he heard the dremora's echoing laughter as he staggered, rebounded from the wall - the spike bruised his arm through his mail - and fell to his knees.

The first dremora came tumbling to the ground beside her and Zudarra stomped down on the back of its head with both feet. She heard and felt the skull crushing under her broad pads at the same time ozone and burning flesh reached her nose, and looked up in time to see Saraven go down.

With a furious roar she launched forward, black claws outstretched and fangs gleaming. The mage shrieked as the vampire's claws sunk into his shoulders and fangs into his unprotected neck. She hadn't been able to drink a single drop before white-hot agony ripped from Zudarra's stomach, out through her limbs and down through her blood-stained footpads. Steam rose from the gaps in her armor as fur and flesh burned. The dremora had loosed its lightning underhand, hitting her cuirass. Without thinking Zudarra jerked back, fangs ripping through flesh as she moved. Jets of dark blood pulsed from the exposed artery, spraying Zudarra's face and armor. Her mouth hung open as she fell to the ground with the dremora, lamenting the loss of blood even more than the pain of electrocution.

Saraven rested a fist against the ground, struggling to remain conscious, as he listened to the sound of Zudarra wreaking havok. By the time he was able to concentrate enough to heal himself - soft blue light in the black hall, out of place as a butterfly in an abattoir - both dremora were dead. He climbed to his feet, looking at the movement of one steel-pauldroned shoulder as she breathed. They didn't really have to breathe, vampires. They couldn't drown or suffocate. It was just a habit that hung on from life. Some of the older ones would forget to try, and that was how you caught them even when their imitation of life was otherwise very convincing.

"You are strong," he said harshly. "Get up." Then he turned to climb down the slope to get his mace. He found the dropped war axe at the very bottom of the hallway and picked it up with his other hand to carry back up and drop at the top threshold, in front of her and the corpse.

Zudarra growled at the command -- she didn't need to be told the obvious -- but clambered to her feet, a spiral of blue enveloping her body. The spell was effortless and twice as powerful as it ever had been, she noted. She barely felt a dip in her reserve. She flexed her limbs, testing her movement. She was completely healed of her burns. The scent of blood that gushed out onto the floor was maddening, but drinking from a corpse had always been unappealing no matter how fresh it was.

She snatched up the axe, twirling the heavy thing in her palm as she examined it.

"Still bloody," she remarked. Perhaps the troops were just returning from Kvatch. If so, it didn't bode well for them.

At the top of the slope was a room very similar to the one below, but smaller and with only one door. Zudarra pried it open easily, a blast of oppressively hot air hitting her in the face as it slammed open. The door lead to_outside_, but the world beyond was nothing mortal eyes had ever known.

Red lightning flashed in heavy black clouds that churned far too close, as if they sky weren't as far away from the ground here as it was on Nirn. Beyond them stretched an impossibly long and narrow walkway with no guardrails other than a line of short claws that would do nothing to stop one's fall. It lead to a black tower that must be very much like the one they had come from, tall and thick with a flat top and edged with wicked spikes that curved towards the sky. To Zudarra it looked like the gauntlet of Dagon himself rising up from ground. The door at the end of the walkway was at the midpoint of the tower.

Below them lay a dead brown wasteland, an island surrounded by oceans of lava that stretched as far as the eye could see. She saw other towers rising on the horizon, but couldn't make out the land they must have stood on. The ground was cracked and dry, completely devoid of life other than strange red roots that crawled across the land like demonic fingers and the same fleshy pods they had seen down below clustered on rocks or hanging from crooked stone pillars.

On a large tract of dusty land below stood the same portal Zudarra had seen in Kvatch. She knew it to be the same from the deep claw marks in the ground leading up to it, the same type of tracks those iron caterpillar legs would have made if they walked over dry dirt. Swarms of dremora, clannfear and scamp marched down below, all of them keeping formation with others of their own species. Most were arriving from the gate, some of the dremora dragging thrashing prisoners along with them.

"Kvatch is destroyed," Zudarra finally breathed after what seemed like an eternity, staring at the scene before them in awe. "I saw some type of giant machine come through there earlier." She did not sound particularly concerned. It all seemed like a dream she would wake from at any moment.

Saraven stood behind her, leaning to one side to look out at the scene of hellish alienness. This was the Deadlands indeed, a place of fire and blood and stone. There would be no water here, no food, no way for a mortal to survive once their body ran out of reserves. Zudarra could live here forever, of course. That was a privilege of undeath, if you didn't find the price high.

He was already hot and thirsty. He had been packing that away in the place where all mortal discomforts belonged, shoring up his inner fortifications.

Why now? The blood of Akatosh has always defended the Empire from daedric invasion. Mehrunes Dagon knows this.

It wouldn't matter to him of course. He would be dead.

"Walk out or move, please," he said now, quite calmly. "Day and a half isn't long to try and accomplish anything, so I'd better get moving."

A pillar of yellow-orange light speared the sky above the tower opposite, the black clouds boiling around it. He could not see the hole in the roof where it emerged, but he did notice that it was the same color as the membrane at the center of the great gate below. That had to mean something.

Zudarra snorted. What an impertinent mortal, to be ordering around a vampire twice his size! The walkway was too narrow for her to let him pass, so she walked out ahead of him.

"What is there to 'accomplish'?" she asked derisively, keeping her eyes on the walkway in front of her. Even a fall from this high would not kill a vampire, but the mob of daedra below them certainly would. "Kvatch is gone and those screaming sods down there don't stand a chance. You can't take on a whole army. We have to find someplace to hide, wait for the troops to disperse, and get down to that gate."

"When the mob's dispersed, the gate'll close," Saraven said. "And then there will be no getting back into Nirn at all. Something's holding it open. I'm going to find it and break it. You want to build a life for yourself here in the Deadlands, be my guest." The thought amused him as he stepped out onto the walkway, eyes on the vampire's back.

"Maybe that's the best solution," he said. "You're fed forever, and as my last act I bring death and torment to scores of dremora." It was not how he had wanted it all to end, but it was better than dying while accomplishing nothing at all.

Zudarra frowned as she listened to the Dunmer talk, anxiety mounting as she realized he was serious. She could not build a life in a world full of daedra who would try to kill her on sight, and even if she could... what was there to do here? The arena, her mother, everything she'd ever known was back in Cyrodiil. Merely surviving wasn't enough.

But Saraven viewed her like a mindless animal, so he assumed that was enough. For all the time he had spent around vampires, she found it odd that their personhood was so invisible to him. Saraven kept making references to her status as undead, but if either of them were walking dead, it was_him._

The mer was little better than a mindless automaton, following a joyless path because he felt he ought to, not because he really wanted to. Zudarra had dreams and hopes and ambitions! She wasn't going to let him throw both of their lives away.

The Khajiit whirled on him then, glowering down at Saraven with her lips curled back over her fangs.

"You'll help me get out of here or you'll die a meaningless death," she snarled. "After we leave you can run right back in if you wish, but I'm not going to lay down and die just because you've given up on life!"

He stopped moving forward, but he didn't step back, patiently waiting for her to finish speaking. Saraven considered his options. Under normal circumstances he might be able to prevent her from throwing him off the bridge. Now she was even faster and stronger than normal, and he was plagued by whatever malaise had clung to him since the road to Kvatch. He didn't like his chances. And that would be a waste of his day and a half. If what he wanted was to harm the invaders, he would do more harm alive and chasing Zudarra through the gate than dead on the ground below.

"I can't stop you," he said. "And I'd rather not waste my time arguing." There was no fear in his voice, only a dull admission of the facts.

"Glad we cleared that up," Zudarra said sharply, smiling in self-satisfaction as she turned away. She strode purposefully forward, head below her hunched shoulders and ears trained behind her for any sign of dissent. He might still blast her with fire or try to shove her off the ledge, but if Saraven did either of those things he'd be coming down with her.

Even from so far away they could hear the screams of the lucid prisoners below. A lot of them were unconscious or so badly damaged that they probably wouldn't live much longer, anyway. Zudarra's stomach twisted in knots as she imagined the torture they would experience, that Zudarra herself had so narrowly escaped. She may be a monster, but she didn't delight in prolonged suffering. To win a battle was her own triumph. The feelings of her opponent were unimportant.

The troops had reached the doors at the base of the tower. Zudarra stopped and looked behind her. They were at the midway point between the towers, so she could see the bottom of the tower from which they had come. Dremora soldiers clustered around the base of that one, too.

Shit.

"We need to hurry!" she said, breaking into a run. At the end of the walkway she ripped aside the door, and looked over her shoulder for Saraven. She always forgot how much faster she was. It was a constant annoyance. In the arena, Zudarra had to scale back her supernatural speed to keep from arousing suspicion.

The interior of this tower was much like the other, all black walls and high pillars and spikes. If not for the mounting fear at being surrounded by dremora on all sides, Zudarra might have rolled her eyes. There was actually a fountain mounted in the center of this room, a tall jet of blood bubbling up out of a basin lined with claws. It was surrounded by benches. Again she was curious about whose blood it might be and how it had come to be in a fountain, but there wasn't the time for speculation.

A hall on the right lead downslope, and a hall on the left led up. Directly in front lay of them lay another door. They couldn't go down and meet the dremora, but to go up would be to trap themselves. In a blur Zudarra stood in front of the door, leaning forward to listen. There weren't any voices on the other side, but there was a strange vibrating hum.

Saraven could not keep up with her, running, but he wasn't far behind. He had worn mithral for so many years that it did not weigh him down (being without it felt as if he were floating in deep water, buoyant, weightless). He was glad enough to be off the bridge. He did not look at the scene of horror below above once, mouth folded grimly down. A flare of anger quickened him, piercing the lead vest of despair. Whatever he and Zudarra did, they could not save the ones below who still lived; whatever they tried, it was too late for Kvatch.

He looked around the tower room as he approached her, mace in hand. Corridor up, corridor down. Down was hordes of dremora. Up was probably more dremora yet. He did not hear anything from the door she was leaning against; but then, he did not have a Khajiit's ears. He felt mildly curious about what the third option could possibly be. Another torture room, perhaps. The place where the horrible flesh-cocoons were made. It would not be something pleasant in Dagon's domain.

Zudarra pried this door open more carefully, hoping to find something innocuous that they could hide within. Instead she found a blinding pillar of light that sliced through the center of the tower, thrumming with energy. It warmed Zudarra's face, the oppressive weight of the ancient power pressing against her as soon as the door had opened. A veiny, blood-colored skin stretched across the ceiling far above them, with only a pinprick of a hole for the pillar to pass through.

The space was ringed by a walkway, this one more comfortably wide and with handrails to keep the observer from pitching over the side. The handrail seemed to be home grown, the bars made from black, bony protrusions of varied height. The ancient stone of the towers all seemed so organic. Zudarra couldn't decide if it were truly alive or merely carved to appear that way. There were multiple doors all around the ring.

Harsh laughter and a chorus of voices echoed from the bottom. Zudarra walked forward cautiously and peered over the rail, then quickly pulled back. The bottom floor was swarming with dremora, the crimson inlay of their armor glowing vibrant in the light of the fiery well that the pillar rose from. Somethin g within belly her clenched.

Saraven followed her out, leaning his back to the wall as he looked up and down. The sheer height of the thing didn't seem real. He'd never been up White Gold Tower, but this had to be close to it in size. Power thrummed against his skin, power, heat, the vicious uncontainable force of an alien life and light.

"Meridia," he whispered. His head swam for a moment, one hand raised to the wall, but now was not the time, too soon, too soon! It was hard enough to keep up with Zudarra as it was!

He breathed deeply, willing his head to clear. After a moment it did. He turned to start up the walkway, mace clutched in his hand. He tugged the scroll of Silence free from his belt with the other. He did not wish to roll all the way back down the ramp if they encountered another caster, and it seemed unlikely that the upper levels were empty -

A dremora was on his way out of one of the clawed doors up ahead, the portal making a now-familiar grinding sound as it shut behind him. The daedra was armored, but he had not yet seen them, turned away as he started up the walkway toward a higher level. Saraven sprinted up behind him - his thighs burned, forcing his legs up the steep walkway - and swung the mace just as the creature turned. The dremora made a startled, annoyed sound, grabbed at the hand-rail, and pitched over the side. Saraven leaned over to watch him fall into the yellow-orange shaft. The dremora's scream was terrifyingly high-pitched in the instant before it cut off, armor and body vanishing in a puff of sparks as they disintegrated in the fervent heat. No one below seemed to have noticed. Screams were probably very commonplace here.

Zudarra watched the dremora fall with raised brows, mildly impressed. Saraven was trying his best to act strong and pull his weight, but she could smell his weakness. He would run out of steam soon if he did not conserve his energy. What could posses a man so, to care so little for his own life?

No sounds stirred from the room the dremora had come from, so Zudarra shoved open the door and stepped inside. She knew Saraven would just love to get to the top and find out where that pillar was leading, but it was more sensible to look for a hiding place. He'd benefit from a rest, too.

She had been wrong -- the room wasn't empty, although it's sole occupant had been standing very still. A long and flat crocodilian muzzle thrust out from the upwards sloping hallway at the end of the room, followed by a huge head that turned to look straight at Zudarra, yellow eye blinking.

"Hrissskaar aas aaa!" the creature growled, stepping into the red light of the narrow windows. She assumed it to be a daedroth, although even Zudarra had never seen one in person before. They had a penchant for turning on their conjurers and were rarely seen in Cyrodiil because of it. Like Argonians, it was reptilian and bipedal, although the similarities ended there. Four-fingered, heavy-clawed hands tipped the ends of long arms that nearly grazed the ground as it lumbered forward. The body was covered in thick grayish scales, its own natural plate armor. A monstrous tail as thick as her thigh at the base followed as the demon emerged from the corridor. It was covered in a line spikes from nose to tail tip.

The daedroth's maw opened wide, displaying long crooked teeth in the second before it belched a fireball at Zudarra. She darted behind a pillar and the blast roared by to explode against the wall. The door was beginning its slow grind shut.

Saraven opened his mouth to object. Time was short, and he was about to urge that they continue upward. Then he heard the voice, hairs standing up on the back of his neck. Zudarra vanished inside and he heard the roar of fire before he had even reached the door. He slid between the two halves as they began to shut, stepping to one side of the portal. He could not see the vampire, but he saw the daedra, a spike-backed saurian that must weigh as much as two dremora in armor. He flipped the scroll open as the glitter of light on his mithril mail attracted the creature's attention. It hissed something else in a tongue he did not understand, and then he pointed at it and shouted,

"Sa'av!" The scroll evaporated, disintegrating even as the magicka shot forth. The creature tried to dodge, but it was too big and heavy to readily skip to one side. The green spiral of power impacted on its shoulder. It gaped its jaws at him, but no fire emerged.

"Thirty seconds," he said, for Zudarra's benefit, and then the daedroth charged him. He stood quite still for seconds, watching the thing thundering down on him across the black stone floor, and at the last moment he dove forward between its legs, rolling between its right leg and tail. He slammed the mace into its groin as hard as he could from behind - there was no point in trying to hit it in the spine when it was covered with bony plates. It roared and tried to smash him with the tail. He jumped over it and dodged behind one of the pillars that supported the distant roof, a silver flash in and out of the dim red light.

Zudarra whirled around the corner of the pillar, axe slamming into the side of its plated neck. Her eyes widened as the axe glanced off the dull scales, leaving a deep scratch on the surface. The daedroth's flesh was not cut. A clawed hand shot out to club Zudarra's head, but she easily danced away from its reach. The daedroth thudded after her, more sibilant curses hissing from its mouth.

She was too big and cumbersome in her armor to get under its belly, but Saraven was not.

"Trade!" she shouted, tossing her axe over the creature's head in a wide arc.

The daedroth snarled and snapped at the flying axe, but it was too late, the thing had already passed. Saraven stepped from behind the pillar and snatched the weapon out of the air, then sent the mace skidding across the floor behind the creature, striking sparks that sputtered and died as they struck. There was no time to think or consider it, only time to act. The daedroth spun to try and bat away the mace, but again, it was too late. Its swinging tail actually flicked the weapon toward Zudarra. She scooped up the mace as she ran forward.

The Dunmer took a running start and flung himself forward feet-first, sliding across the floor with a horrid grind of mithril boots against stone floor. The daedroth's jaws closed belatedly above his head as he slid under its belly with the axe upraised. Momentum threw his entire weight into the contact of axe with belly scales, and he heard the wet sklush of the wound opening behind him as he slid. He had to roll frantically sideways to get out from under the tail before it slammed down. The daedroth staggered, intestines hanging from the new gash in its belly as what seemed like gallons of blood gushed out. Saraven had cut deep enough to sever the abdominal aorta.

The monster screamed at them both, claws spread wide, and then fell forward with almost dreamlike majesty. The floor shook with the impact of its weight.

Saraven rested his elbow on one knee as he looked across the giant carcass at Zudarra. His shoulders heaved as he tried to get his breath back.

"Can't believe you did that," he said. His white eyebrows were upraised with genuine surprise.

The intoxicating perfume of daedric blood hit Zudarra hard; she raised her head, lips parted as she scented the air. It was nearly painful to leave it without having a taste. Saraven's words shook her back to reality.

"You can't believe I saved both our lives?" she asked with her usual arrogance. "I do not hate you the way you hate me. I'd rather live than let us both die just to spite you." She rested the mace against her shoulder. There was no pressing need to trade again; she was proficient in both. Neither had the reach she preferred, but now was not the time to be picky.

Saraven rose to his feet, flexing his shoulders wearily. "I don't hate you." He was surprised to realize that it was true. He had talked with a fair number of vampires over the last ten years of his - he had to call it service, even if there was no church that gave him orders. They would talk, and then they would attack him at the predictable moment, and then he would kill them. This time he had frozen up and she had escaped, and then she had come back to haunt him through the Hell into which they were both now delivered. And she had saved him. And he had saved her.

_Where does that leave me?_he wondered. Would Meridia damn him for not trying to kill her the instant he was out of his cage? Or were those moments of entrapment in his own mind an indictment, that he had done so much violence that he was losing his capacity for it?

He had not been ambushed by evil memory while fighting the dremoras or the daedroth, he realized suddenly. It was only when he tried to raise his hand to Zudarra that it happened. Only her. He looked over at her again, thunderstruck.

"I couldn't hurt you," he said slowly. "Every time I've tried I started seeing things."

Nothing changed on the vampire's face to indicate her thoughts. Why would Saraven admit weakness to her? He was tired and probably stupid from hunger and thirst, she reasoned. He might start to see her as an ally and not a threat if Zudarra played her cards right.

At his weakest moment she would enthrall him. He was strong, but not invulnerable to mortal needs. He would be the perfect slave, full of that delectable blood that must put Vandalion's to shame and able to help defend her if ever another hunter should bother her. That was all assuming she ever managed to get out of this place alive, of course.

"You probably shouldn't tell me that," Zudarra said wryly after a moment of thought. Her head tilted to the side. "What things, exactly?"

"Probably shouldn't." He turned toward the upward ramp, whirling the axe in his hand once to fling blood from the blade. "Things that I remember. Dead vampires. Dead victims of vampires. My - people I knew."

He knew it was stupid. If even Zudarra suggested he stop, it had to be very stupid indeed. But she was the closest thing to an ally that he had in this place, and it was a day and a half - closer to a day, now? - until he would be dead from dehydration in any case. He wouldn't be more dead from having spoken to the vampire.

His armor was starting to feel heavy. He'd worn it for twelve to fourteen hours a day for most of his adult life now. That was probably a bad sign. He still moved well, not yet gone clumsy and slow, but it was a matter of time.

There was an increasingly loud hum from above them. He felt it in the bases of his teeth, up and down the length of his spine. They were approaching the membranous dome from beneath. As he climbed the ramp, thighs aching, he tried to pick out the sound of movement or voices from above, but the growing noise drowned everything out. There was no warning at all before a dremora in a black robe - another visibly female creature, he hadn't seen many of those today - rounded the corner. She was taken by surprise as well, mouth open in a snarl, raising her hands as she prepared to unleash flame or lightning.