Chapter Text
After a short discussion in the biting cold, it was decided that Solen, Irileth and Illia would remain within the Glade to await Gendolin’s arrival. Agmaer would be sent down the mountain with the horses to hide them and keep watch for the awaited foe, while Fiirnaraan and Aela worked on luring them into the trap.
Their remaining rations would last a week, sparingly. Solen hoped it wouldn’t be that long. He wasn’t sure how long he could stand the waiting.
The Ancestor Glade was comfortable, and beautiful, and when dawn arrived the whole chamber filled with radiance as the light from the oculus shifted from blue to silver to gold – but an ageless cavern could only amuse anyone for so long. Having combed its every corner – and confirming beyond any doubt that there was no treasure chest or primeval guardian – Solen permanently subsided to the ledge from which he and Irileth planned to ambush. Overgrown in swathes of bracken and flowers whose scents disguised their own, it offered a perfect vantage of the dais below, where one presumably conducted the Ritual within the rather obnoxious pillar of light.
“It’s almost a shame, isn’t it?” Solen asked, as they watched the last of the evening light diminish from the tranquil chamber. “This corner of Skyrim has probably never known a fight.”
“All things are born in blood and fire, Solen.” Irileth watched an Ancestor Moth settle on the tip of her crossbow. “But I know what you mean.”
Solen thought for a moment. “Socks.”
“…What?”
“Socks aren’t born in blood and fire. Nor are cloaks. Or good boots.”
“It’s… I… Damn it, Solen, I meant this cavern, before the trees and the moths! I meant us! Animals! People!”
“I know, but still. Not all things, right?”
“Just shut up.”
“Aye, Housecarl.”
The second night passed, the second morning dawned. Solen whiled away the hours largely in thought. He wondered if Rayya would have liked this place. She enjoyed a nice forest well enough, but she didn’t really find the same joy in it that he did, in trees and ferns and growing things. No, she loved the lure of the open road, the expanse of plain and the vastness of the sky. She loved mountains and deserts, the vast things that daunted most others. She loved the sun on her back and the feel of a perfectly balanced blade.
And me, Solen supposed, which seemed an acceptable assumption to make as her lawfully wedded husband. It was still sometimes a bit of a dream to him, that such a woman as she had chosen to give her heart to him.
His smile wandered away. And I’ve gone and stuck her in Whiterun. Where she’d be safe, sure, but apart from him with a maybe-baby in her belly. Guiltily Solen realized that he hadn’t written to Rayya or even thought about sending word to her. He ought to have after that council in Fort Dawnguard – start up a line of communication, send them with the travelling Dawnguard operatives for safety – and then the messenger had come from Gendolin, and everything had changed. How long had it been since that night in Fort Kastav? One month? Two? Had she kept it? Had she already returned to the field? Was she looking for him?
He ran his hands across his face and heaved a sigh through his fingers. I wonder if my own parents ever worried like this when they had me and Cennion. He scoffed at such a notion almost immediately. Yeah, right. My existence was probably never even anticipated. I doubt any parent expects twins.
Oh, Morwha. What if Rayya has twins?
“Solen, are you all right? Do you have a cold?”
“Hm? Oh, no, I’m fine.” Solen glanced over at Illia, who’d wandered over from her own ambush point, stretching her limbs. “Just disobeying Aela a little bit.”
Irileth sighed sharply and rolled over. “Haven’t you been over this half a hundred times already?”
“It’s not exactly the sort of thing you just set aside – maybe being a father.”
Irileth considered him. “No, I suppose not. Not a mer your age, anyway.”
“Er,” said Illia, looking as cautious as all humans did when approaching the topic of elves and aging, “When do your kind… usually, erm, consider?”
“Well, with Altmer, usually no earlier than a hundred or so –” Illia made an odd noise. “– and I’m still well under that mark.” Here it came again, the crises of mortality. Solen grimaced and ran his fingers through his ridge of hair. “But I never intended to. Neither of us did, and then the unthinkable happened and we both hesitated to say no… Frankly I wasn’t even sure I could. Being the ‘Last’ Dragonborn and all sort of suggested…”
“Oh, since when have you ever been what anyone expected?” said Irileth impatiently. “It’s pointless distracting yourself with what you don’t know, man.”
“Easy for you to say. You can’t just wake up one day realizing you put a bun in someone else’s oven.”
“I’m not exactly in a position to do that, no.”
“But if she’s kept it – if I will be a father –”
“Then you’ll be a father, and a good one,” said Illia earnestly. “Seriously, you knew what my mother was like, and you can’t turn out worse than her.”
“Can’t I? She raised you, and you turned out decent.”
“Take it as a compliment, then. If a homicidal old hag can raise a kid then I’m certain the bane of the World-Eater can manage it.”
Well, put that way… Solen dropped his arms back down beside him. “That’s oddly encouraging. Thanks, Illia.”
Irileth looked curiously between them, and Illia shrugged sheepishly. “It’s, er, a bit of a long story. Then again, I guess we have time for it… Or maybe not,” she finished, as the rattle of brushed bracken and running feet suddenly reached their ears. Solen and Irileth sat up sharply, all their idle cares forgotten. Aela had returned.
The Huntress was breathless – she must’ve sprinted up the mountain, snow still clung to her armour and hair as she staggered to a halt below the ledge. “They’re on their way,” she gasped, when she’d snared a few gulps of air. “Four of them. Gendolin too. And don’t ask me where he found the third one, I don’t know.”
“The third one?” Solen echoed, as Illia hurried back to her position. “The third what?”
“Scroll, Solen.” Aela held his dumbfounded gaze. “He’s bringing three of them.”
~
For an hour the Companions and Dawnguard lying in ambush strained their eyes and ears upon the singular entrance into the Ancestor Glade. Despite their anticipation, the vampires arrived so quietly that the sudden pulses of their voices was almost a shock.
Solen tensed as Gendolin’s voice, crisp and slimily courteous as ever, resonated gently from the entrance into the Glade. “Watch the exit. I don’t want any interruptions.”
An assent was murmured, and the bright-eyed shadows in the doorway shifted. Into the Glade, hued serenely in the blues of night, stepped Gendolin, almost indistinguishable from the shadows until he lowered his cowl. His pale face and silver hair glowed like the moth wings, strangely beautiful, his lambent eyes ablaze. Two Elder Scrolls hung under his cloak, and Solen silently tightened his grip on his bow. It would be so easy to draw the arrow to his cheek, to loose it, to end it all right now…
Yet Gendolin wasn’t alone. Suddenly a woman manifested beside him, black-haired and pale as ice, swathed in red and black raiment, and the third Elder Scroll across her back.
Solen’s eyes widened in a peculiar mingling of astonishment and recognition. The woman. In all the excitement and dread of learning the vampires had attained an Elder Scroll from under their noses, he’d quite forgotten who had been the one to ferry it to their lair at all. Two had left Dimhollow Crypt, Fiirnaraan had reported all those months ago…
“Look at this place.” Her amazement was unhidden as she led the way along the path. “No one’s been here in centuries. I doubt there’s any other place like it in Skyrim, Gendolin. It’s… beautiful.”
“In Skyrim, perhaps so.” Gendolin extended a hand as a moth fluttered to rest in his palm. “But this is a cold and stale land. Valenwood, now… every grove teems with life, and the trees tower as tall as these lifeless mountains.”
The woman gave a short laugh. “I suppose you’re right. There’s probably groves like this all over Tamriel. Most people just don’t even know what to look for.” She looked back – the Elder Scroll across her shoulders glinted as it caught a gleam of moonlight. “I never asked… do you miss it, Valenwood?”
“Sometimes.” Gendolin watched the moth flutter on. “Life was simpler there, before the call.” He held her gaze and smiled. “But destiny has a way of uplifting you beyond simplicity, lady Serana.”
“Don’t remind me,” she snorted, and looked down to the dais below. “Well, seems like everything in this chamber leads down to… whatever that is. I’m guessing that’s where we actually do the Ritual.”
With a silent tread they descended to the steaming pools and the skylit dais, oblivious to their watchers crouched among the cliffs. Aela growled softly beside him, the way she did when there was a complication. “There’s only two,” Solen murmured, barely above a breath. “Honestly it’s better than we could’ve hoped for.”
“Is it?” Her silver eyes flashed. “She’s no fledgling. She smells like him. Down to the bone.”
A vampire lord, she meant, and Solen grimly returned his gaze to the two vampires below. So, their ambush had become that much more dangerous.
“You can smell it?” Irileth whispered in disbelief.
Aela ran her tongue over her itching teeth. “I never forget a scent, or a taste.” She shifted imperceptibly, raising her flattened bow by a hair. “When it’s time, I’ll take the doe, Solen. You, the stag.”
“More like a yearling buck,” Solen grumbled, but returned his gaze to the dais below, his every nerve aflame with the intensity of the hunt. This was something he’d known far longer than the battlefire of the warrior, and his eyes drank in his prey’s every motion as they waded through the steaming pools and closed around the donut rock. Gendolin withdrew the Drawing Knife, turned it over in his gloved fingers, ponderously approached the Canticle Tree growing alongside the dais. Gendolin scraped a cutting of bark from the trunk, and Serana exclaimed with surprise and delight as the nearest moths sped to him, fluttering madly in a glimmering cloud. Gendolin raised his arms and seemed amused – he seemed to be glowing a little more brightly than before, as if the moths had shared some of their shimmering radiance. As more moths descended to lend to their wings to the aura, the odd glow around him brightened.
“I’m glad it’s him and not me,” Solen muttered, as Gendolin became quite lost beneath a swirling cloak of frenzied moths. “I’d have sneezed long before now.”
“Hush.” Irileth was taut as a bowstring as the glimmering crowd moved into the beam of light.
Gendolin took down the two Scrolls on his back and looked down at them, as if apprehensive. As you should be, Solen scowled resentfully. I hope your brain goes to pudding. “I think,” the vampire finally said, “it must be all three at once.”
“At once? But you have no idea what they’ll do.”
“I don’t.” Gendolin motioned for the woman to remove the Scroll on her back. “But I fancy my chances.”
Serana sounded dubious as Gendolin passed her one of the Scrolls and took up position in the beam of light. “Luck doesn’t last forever, you know. Just… be careful.”
“Ahh, my dear, whenever haven’t I been? Fear not. We will learn how to stop your lord father.”
Lord father? Solen’s brow furrowed. Stop?
There was no time left for thought – Gendolin unrolled the Elder Scroll, and the chamber suddenly flashed with light.
Solen instinctively thrust his face against the grassy soil, but it wasn’t a scorching light, nor a blinding one – just a bright and ethereal glow, as if a moon had pressed its eye into the cavern. Gendolin was barely discernible in the light; he stood immobile as a statue. Even from afar, Solen saw his eyes pulled wide, his mouth slackjawed, frozen as if spelled. Ruptga, I hope I didn’t look like that when I read it.
Gendolin’s hands fell away, and the Elder Scroll slipped from his numbed fingers, but the light remained, wavering as if underwater. Groping, he reached out for the second Scroll – Serana, grimacing, passed it into his hands. Swiftly he opened it and the light intensified, swallowing up his body entirely. The very air around him seemed to warp, as if sliding through ice, fragmenting. Like a Time-Wound. Solen shielded his eyes, every bone in his body quivering. Watching it was almost as bad as doing it.
Gendolin moved like he was half awake for the third Scroll, and he opened it as if it took every ounce of strength he had left in him. As the light swelled to finally become blinding, and Solen and the others sheltered their faces in the soothing dark of their elbows, he heard it for the first time. The music of the Ancestor Moths, fragile and beautiful as insect wings, humming into a wondrous chorus that wandered beyond the course of the sun and stars…
Gingerly Solen raised his eyes as the song went silent. The cavern’s gentle illumination had returned, and the moths had dissipated; not a single one was seen fluttering anywhere in the cavern. Gendolin stood wavering as if not all there, the Elder Scrolls closed and glinting forgotten by his feet. Serana darted forward and took his elbow. “Gendolin – can you hear me? Are you okay?”
Gendolin dazedly looked her way, blinked, and opened his mouth to answer.
A noise like stricken timber cracked through the chamber as the heavy dragonbone bow let forth. Solen’s arrow crashed into Gendolin like a thunderbolt and set him spinning to the ground.
Aela’s and Irileth’s projectiles were a second behind – by then Serana had thrown up a ward, blue magic unfolding from her fingers. Aela’s arrow went wide, but Irileth’s punched through, biting her shoulder. Then the chamber was roaring; leapt to standing, Illia’s fireball hurtled from her outstretched palms. The dais vanished in a storm of scorching light; the glittering Elder Scrolls were knocked rolling by the force.
By then Solen had thrown himself out of cover, ripping another arrow from his quiver. His roar of rage might as well have been a Shout. “GENDOLIN!” The next one definitely was. “WULD NAH KEST!”
The sloping path to the dais abruptly shortened; the stone island appeared under Solen’s boots, blasted with soot. The Canticle Tree was smouldering, its trunk blasted raw by the magefire. Serana swung around the trunk, snarling, the bolt already pulled from her shoulder, her hands aglow with ice that launched at him in a frozen spear. Solen dodged the first cast, slipped on the wet rocks and staggered – before Serana could cast her second spear, Aela’s arrow whistled through her arm, and the vampire leapt back defensively, barely avoiding Irileth’s second bolt.
The ice swirling in Serana’s hand switched to lightning – Solen flung himself behind the Canticle Tree, and the bolt shore off a chunk of the trunk. But she wasn’t his target. Gendolin sprawled below the dais half-out of a steaming pool, clutching the arrow that had landed a finger-width below his heart. I was that close? Lucky bastard.
“Looks like your prophecy came early.” Solen threw the bow aside. “Only I don’t intend to lose.”
Gendolin hissed as he ripped the barbed arrow from his body. “That’s the spirit, Dragonborn. Show me your power.”
“Seriously?” Eldródr leapt from the scabbard. “That’s why you’re doing this? Power?”
The vampire lord was on his feet before the greatsword had finished its first lunging swing. The silver blade flashed from his hip into his right hand, the dagger whirling into his left. “Come now, Solenarren. You and I know that’s such a banal reason to do anything.”
The shallow water thrashed around their boots. The first clash was a telling one – Solen’s strength was the greater, his blade the broader, and by far he was the taller, but Gendolin was like smoke and water, curling and flowing around him just as he had before. “Why, then?” Solen snarled between every sweeping strike. “Jealousy? Vengeance? Drunken dare? Bragging rights over my head? Why in the name of the Tricky God are you doing all this?”
Gendolin laughed. “You’re getting closer, Dragonborn.” Without warning he leaned into the offensive, the silvery sword neatly deflecting the bite of the dragonbone blade.
But Solen had brooded long over their first encounter; as the silver blade turned his sweep aside, and the dagger lunged into the opening to probe the joins of his armour, Solen twisted his grip, reversing the slice – Eldródr came down suddenly, averting the dagger’s path so forcefully that it spiralled from Gendolin’s grasp and clattered against one of the standing stones nearby.
The vampire disengaged and smiled. “Not bad, Solenarren.” His empty hand reached out beckoning, a rusty glow in his fingers – the disarmed dagger was pulled back into his waiting grasp. “You’re learning.”
Solen’s grin widened beneath his helmet. “Always.”
“This still will end poorly for you.”
“You sure about that?”
“Gendolin!” Serana warned, spinning a ward to catch Illia’s firebolt – Irileth and Aela were pelting down the hill.
“Don’t let him turn!” the Huntress bellowed, pulling the arrow to her cheek mid-stride. Gendolin sprang back from the shot, then again from Irileth’s bolt, leaping back onto the dais out of the water.
“Ah, so this is the reason for an unheroic ambush?” Gendolin leered. “You fear me. You fear my power. Or do you hunger for it?”
“No. We’re just not stupid.” Solen stepped up onto the island and moved Eldródr to cleaving readiness. “Unlike you, we don’t like to take chances.”
“Is that so? You let me read the Scrolls, and now you have accomplished nothing sending me a poisoned Moth Priest – I have all the knowledge I need to assure my victory.” Gendolin’s lips quirked mockingly. “Are you already so tired of playing the heroic role?”
“I’m whatever Skyrim needs me to be,” Solen growled, his promise to Dexion humming in his ears, “and right now Skyrim needs you dead. YOL TOOR SHUL!”
The plume of roiling dragonfire barrelled forward in an ever-expanding wave – Gendolin seized Serana’s arm, and both vampires plunged into mist before the inferno claimed them. They reformed a short distance from the dais, the steaming water ankle-high around them. The Canticle Tree could perform no such evasion, and the tree went up in a brilliant and tragic conflagration, and an eerie light shimmered over the hot pools.
“Well, dead-er,” Solen amended, as he, Aela and the Dawnguard operatives closed in on them from all corners of the compass.
Gendolin’s eyes wandered almost languidly between them all. “It seems we must discuss my learnings here later, my dear,” he said, as Aela and Irileth set fresh projectiles to their bows. “Depart this place, Serana. I won’t see your blood spilled to these fools.”
Serana looked at him sharply. “What about the Scrolls?”
“Leave them. I have what we need from them.”
“Don’t go getting the lady’s hopes up, now.” Solen shifted his grip on the swordhilt, the Shout poised in his throat. “There’s nowhere left to run this time, Gendolin.” Not from them. Not from me.
Gendolin bared his fangs in a ravenous smile. “Oh, I’m not going anywhere yet.”
Irileth raised her crossbow, then staggered with a curse of pain as a bolt of lightning lanced down on her back from the other end of the cavern. The two vampiric sentries in the antechamber had been drawn into the fight and were gaining ground with unnatural rapidity upon the two marksmen. Aela, sighting down Serana’s neck, switched targets as the Dunmer staggered. Her arrow sent one of the vampires tumbling, though not dead. The other vanished into mist and reformed lunging like a beast over her head, fangs and talons bared – only to be blasted out of the sky and into a tree by Illia’s well-placed lightning bolt.
Gendolin had already lunged forward as the Ancestor Glade exploded into an all-out brawl. Solen leapt back, Eldródr moving in a defensive arc as shortsword and dagger dived boldly for his neck. The vampire lord’s attacks had switched from probing strokes into a dazzling, unceasing flurry, swirling from every angle, refusing to give Solen a chance to draw breath.
But he couldn’t sustain such an assault, not like a Companion could – Solen stepped into the opening and dealt Gendolin such a hefty blow with the flat of his blade that it threw the Bosmer across the room. He landed lightly, cat-like, on the tips of his feet – the dagger suddenly vanished from his hand as Solen lunged after him.
Oh, no you don’t. “FEIM!” he barked, and the knot of emerald-green magic that had once been his undoing passed harmlessly through his chest. Solen roared as he closed the distance in three long strides, becoming corporeal as Eldródr sung over his head in an executioner’s arc –
– and into empty air. Gendolin had vanished. “Mages,” Solen snorted, then, “LAAS!” Gendolin’s red aura leapt out at him immediately – he’d sprung back onto the island, arm pulled back to cast. “WULD!” Solen shot out of the spell’s path, throwing up a plume of water under his feet as he slashed aside, heard it crash and sizzle well in his wake. “TIID!”
At once the world pulsed slightly bluish and slowed to a snail’s crawl. Solen rarely used the Slow Time Shout – mainly because it wasn’t exactly fair – but it was certainly useful for regaining his bearings in battle. Still, it was like wading through treacle as he ran doggedly forward for Gendolin, whose fingers were slowly splaying as they generated another spell – by the violent red colour amid the black swirls, the signature Drain Life cantrip of all Volkihar. Solen glanced around him as he ran – Irileth was on her feet, her face distorted with a terrifying snarl, her crossbow thrown aside, both her untarnished longsword and the broken blade brought to bear against her vampiric opponent. Across from her Illia was holding her own against the other of Gendolin’s lackeys, who judging by his frizzled state wouldn’t be much longer for the world. Serana had vanished, Aela too – in pursuit?
The roar in his ears forewarned his Shout’s collapse – time sped up, and Gendolin had the decency to look astonished as Solen’s greatsword hewed across his nightblack armour. The blow connected mightily, and he actually cried out with pain as he was sent skidding into the shattered remnant of the donut rock.
The ivory edge of Eldródr’s blade hissed with a shimmer of fire and a glitter of blood. Gendolin pressed a hand against the great rent across his chest. “Look at that,” he said. “All that for a scratch.”
“Scratches don’t open you up rib to shoulder, you twerp,” said Solen impatiently. “That’s a slice. Now shut up and look afraid.”
“Afraid?” Gendolin, panting, staggered up against the dolmen stone. “Now why should I be afraid?”
“Because you’ve made me angry, Gendolin, in ways that few ever manage to make me.” Aela and Rayya, bloody and exhausted under Fiirnaraan’s wing – Vilkas and Njada, dangling like corpses – the starving Dragon with gaunt and senseless eyes – all of it played in his mind as Solen stalked forward. “So I wouldn’t smile if I were you.”
Yet Gendolin continued to do so. “Why shouldn’t I? I’m honoured.” His smile didn’t waver a jot as Illia blasted off one vampire’s head with a hideous squeal, and Irileth disembowelled the other with a sickening squelch and a suspicious level of professionalism.
“You really don’t get it, do you? You had a good run, but now you’re out of luck.”
Gendolin’s eyes flashed. “Not if you make your own.”
The gash across Gendolin’s chest darkened like ink and seemed to flip him inside out – an unexpectedly potent sense of revulsion forced Solen back, even as urgency propelled him forward – then Gendolin was gone, and something else stood, no, hovered in his place, towering and clawed and ghastly, the true monstrous form of the vampire lord revealed. It fit Aela’s description word for word.
But it wasn’t an it – it had Gendolin’s eyes, and Gendolin’s smile, and Gendolin’s voice as the chickenbone-wings stretched over his back suddenly snapped open into three-fingered fans that pulled the bloodless membrane taut. “Now, what was it that you said, Dragonborn? To be silent, and be afraid?”
“Afraid? Of that?” Solen echoed, all incredulity. “You really got the short end of the stick with that Daedric bargain, huh? Swapping that pretty countenance for a face only a mother could love.”
Gendolin’s violently red eyes suddenly darkened. “So. You wish to speak of mothers, do you?”
It happened in an instant. Irileth’s crossbow barked, Illia’s firebolt roared; neither attack made any mark upon his skin. Gendolin’s clawed hands splayed, then curled, pulsing with burnt orange light – the two Dawnguard were wrenched writhing into Gendolin’s hands, as if attached to his fingers by string, then sent hurtling through the cavern with a pulsing blast, flung with brutal disdain from Gendolin’s grasp. Solen swung in dismay as the thuds of their bodies striking the ground hit his ears, and felt as if a noose had tightened round his neck. The first rule the Companions had ever clobbered into him – never look away from the enemy – exploded too late behind his eyes. The ground vanished under his feet as he was dragged towards the vampire lord by his neck.
He had a brief glimpse of a huge clawed hand curled back to strike, and then the world whitened with a pulse of pain. A dim sensation of soaring, and then the wind was unceremoniously exiled from his lungs as he struck ground then water in a graceless tumble. His cracked helmet shot off his head and splashed off somewhere in the shallow hot springs.
“Congratulations. You touched a nerve.” Gendolin landed noiselessly on the dais, every fang bared in his ghoulish head. “Know only that you took her from me, Solen. Perhaps I will return the favour.”
“Y’know what? Go right ahead.” Solen wiped the blood from his nose and groped for Eldródr’s hilt in the warm water. “Maybe she’ll like your eyes better than mine.”
“Perhaps your woman, then.” Gendolin’s grin returned at the stiffening of Solen’s shoulders. “Rayya. It’s why she isn’t here, isn’t it?”
Something exceptionally draconian twisted abruptly up Solen’s spine, levering him back to his feet. What pain had been inflicted was at once forgotten. “I’ll say this once, and once only. Keep her name out of your filthy mouth.”
“You can’t protect her name,” Gendolin leered. “Or her flesh.”
Solen’s eyes flashed with fire. “Watch me. MUL QAH DIIV!”
This Shout always felt like the return of an old friend as it became manifest, his very immortal soul called into the mortal world for all to see. It gilded him in a scintillating conflagration of gold and red, silver and blue, wrapping his body in a coat of ethereal scales and horns, swirling him in tendrils of brilliant light. The thunder of the Thu’um ached celebrant in his every bone, and coursing through his flesh was all the joy of wind and sunlight. It was, Solen knew, the closest he might ever become to really being a Dragon, and he couldn’t help but smile at the exhilaration – a grin that only widened as the vampire lord recoiled, his fanged visage aglow with wonder of the Dragon Aspect. You’re not the only one who gets to transform, Gendolin.
“I told you,” Solen boomed, and swung Eldródr behind him, “I don’t intend to lose. FUS RO DAH!”
Empowered by the Aspect, the wholly unbridled might of the full Unrelenting Force Shout slammed into Gendolin like a sledgehammer, and it was with no small degree of delight that Solen watched the monstrosity go flying across the cavern. Although he wondered how the vampire lord hadn’t disintegrated, to have received the Thu’um in full at such close proximity –
Without warning the batlike wings flared open and the vampire lord righted himself mid-descent. Gendolin whirled back towards the dais, very much conscious and un-concussed. “Oh, come on!” Solen exclaimed, as much indignant as alarmed. “Not even a bloody nose?”
All too suddenly Gendolin loomed over him, claws splayed. Solen lunged to meet him, his greatsword swinging – and missing. The vampire lord was blurringly fast, and Solen stumbled as those hefty claws once lunging for his face now raked hard across his back. But the Aspect held, tough as an Ancient Dragon’s hide; Solen snared his momentum and turned his stagger into a backswing. Eldródr’s tip barely missed Gendolin’s hip as the vampire lord retreated out of range.
Yet no sooner had Solen drawn breath to Shout when Gendolin abruptly flashed forward, and this time the outcome of a melee favoured Gendolin; longer-limbed, towering over Solen’s head, he showered the Altmer in a tireless and brutal flurry, talons slashing down, over and over, so fast and brutal that Solen could barely find an opening to breathe, let alone Shout or get out of his reach. He fell on the defensive, trying to snatch a window, any window to counter or disengage before the monster’s buffeting blows wore him down –
A bestial roar split the Glade in two, and Aela hurled herself into the fight with claws and fangs of her own. Gendolin leapt back into flight like a singed cat, and Aela reared onto her hind limbs and roared again in challenge. “And where in Morwha’s baskets have you been?” Solen panted behind her, gratefully seizing the reprieve to catch his breath.
“Went after the other one.” But her fangs and claws were clean, and Aela was in a roaring temper. She’d lost the prey.
Recovered, Solen moved to her burly shoulder. “I won’t tell Rayya if you won’t. We’re meant to be shield-siblings, you know.”
“Oh, are we?” Her hoarse growl was full of reproach. “Was that why you went thundering in without me earlier?”
“Er…”
Gendolin’s elegant laugh was entirely out of place in his monstrous shell. “No interruptions, Solenarren. This is between us, not your dog.” His fingers curled and splayed, aglow with burnt orange light. Aela yelped and dug in her claws as his grip closed over her fur –
But at last, Solen’s Thu’um was faster. “VEN GAAR NOS!”
There was a good reason why the Cyclone Shout was one of Solen’s all-time favourites. Not only was a towering tornado shredding leaves and branches an impressive spectacle to summon whether he was underground or over, but the absolute chaos it wreaked on the unsuspecting foe was sheerly delightful. The Thu’um launched the twister like an arrow loosed, and not even Gendolin could refuse its suction; his wings buckled like wet paper as he was sucked into the vortex, and Solen grinned. Gets ‘em every time.
Gendolin was spat out a moment later as the cyclone roared on and dissipated against the far wall; robbed of his wind, he landed gracelessly on one of his wings. Aela’s ears pricked at the snapping of bone, and she threw herself upon the downed vampire lord.
Her howl of savage glee shrilled to a whimper as Gendolin lashed out and sliced her muzzle open. Twisted red magic pulsated like a living thing around his fingers, tethering to Aela’s gashes and devouring the life it found within. Even as the broken finger of Gendolin’s wing straightened, glutted upon the stolen life force, Solen’s Thu’um carried him forward. The greatsword came down with every ounce of strength in Solen’s arms – such a strike could shear off heads and splinter bone – and yet it didn’t bite deeper than half a finger-length into Gendolin’s flesh. Was the enchantment running out?
Still, it was enough to shift Gendolin’s attention back to him, and Solen swung under another crashing blow across his Aspect-enhanced armour. Gods, he was quick! He staggered back and Gendolin stretched to his full height, arm drawn back, the repulsive knot of draining magic in his hand condensed and brightening. But the Shout was already on Solen’s tongue. “YOL TOOR SHUL!”
Somewhere in the firestorm roared a fell beast in pain. Aela shook the blood from her muzzle and snarled gladly as Gendolin fell to a knee, his skin charred, his wings stiff and smouldering over his shoulders. She refrained the temptation of approach – the wounded beast was far more dangerous than the whole, and life still flourished in the vampire’s eyes.
“It might’ve slipped your mind, in whatever schemes you’ve been brewing,” said Solen, shifting the greatsword, “that fighting winged monsters is my specialty, Gendolin. I can do this all night.”
“Of course you can.” The vampire’s voice betrayed no sense of pain. His arm moved suddenly. Solen and Aela leapt back reflexively from a spell anticipated, but the bruised purple light in his palm only slashed a rent in the air. The conjuration plunged free of the veil – a gargoyle, identical to the bat-faced counterparts Solen had seen in Dimhollow Crypt, except that this one was thoroughly alive. Its high-pitched squeal raked at their ears as it barrelled forward – not at Solen, but Aela, grappling the werewolf under its boulder-like weight. Roaring and writhing, the werewolf fought to free herself of its iron-tight grip, her fangs and claws raking deep gouges in its stony skin.
Solen swung to help her, and Gendolin flickered at the corner of his eye. He whirled around, Eldródr diving to catch the vampire’s claws; Gendolin seized the blade in one broad hand, utterly arresting its movement, even as the enchanted edges bit fierily into his own flesh. The other curled into a fist and slammed into Solen’s chest, throwing him across the dais.
The Aspect erupted, Shouting in a defence of its own – the air quaked with the echoes of Thu’um, and Gendolin exclaimed in surprise. Solen slid back on one knee and forced himself upright at once. Those iridescent spectres of horns and dragonskin had only a shadow of his Voice. They’d give him time to mount his feet and no more than.
“You have a bright soul, Dragonborn.” Gendolin’s snarling claws shattered the shades like coloured glass. “Bright as the sun. It repulses me.”
“Because you’re a neck-sucking mistwalker, I know, I know.” Solen swung Eldródr over his shoulder in preparation to strike – only, quite abruptly, he found he couldn’t. The weighty battle-blade relaxed unresponsive, along with his arms and every other muscle in his body. What’s going on?! He couldn’t move his head, and the battlefire roaring within him extinguished into unnatural tranquility. Oh, no, no, no – move, damn you, move!
Gendolin’s eyes glowed like the furnace of the Skyforge, impossibly bright and deep. His whisper was almost gentle, serene, matter-of-fact. “Darkness was my domain long before I ever turned.”
Solen couldn’t tear his eyes away, not even close them. Every rightfully urgent instinct was teased apart like pulled thread. No fear or fury spurred him into action as Gendolin seized his arms and the batlike wings closed over his back, cocooning him in darkness – and in that darkness, fangs drove into his flesh.
The world went white, then black and scarlet. His voice turned to ice in his throat, strangling his cry, and then the ice was spreading all around like the foulest poison, deadening his limbs, raking searing lines through his mind. Solen tore away from the terrible embrace, racked with an extraordinary agony; Eldródr slid from shaking hands, and he flung them to his savaged neck, oozing with the blistering heat of life, his life.
Gendolin’s charred skin sealed over until no trace of injury remained. The battle might have only been a dream. He ran his tongue over reddened teeth and smiled into Solen’s slackened face. “You will die to me, Dragonborn – but not before I drag you from the light.”
A crossbow cracked – a flash of flame followed – Gendolin vanished into mist and reformed high above all their heads, healed wings carrying him to the oculus greyed with dawn’s first light. By the time Irileth and Illia had splashed through the pools, and Aela shook herself free of the gargoyle’s disintegrating claws, Gendolin was gone and Solen was on the ground, convulsing, blood pounding from his neck.
