“That Tolan fellow wasn’t kidding, was he?” Brynjolf muttered.
Andante gazed about himself with an odd mix of emotions. On the one hand, he couldn’t abide the Vigilants of Stendarr, who hunted people like him – at least in the form he’d had till just recently – for no other reason than that they were different. On the other hand, nobody deserved to be burned alive. Not humans, not vampires, not werewolves. And there were many corpses here in the ruins of what had been the Hall of the Vigilants. Everything was grey with ash and smoke; part of the roof had collapsed into the Hall and taken out part of a wall. There were pockets of embers still smoldering.
“He certainly wasn’t. I’m impressed that vampires were able to do this, with fire no less.”
“Well,” Brynjolf sighed, looking down and poking one of the bodies with his foot, “not all of them could, it seems. This one must have died before the flames got to her.” There was a woman in vampire armor lying on the floor. Andante gazed down at her, saw the thin, distorted facial features that marked her as a vampire, and thought that once she must have been very beautiful. A shudder ran down his spine.
When did I start feeling sorry for people when they died? I must be getting soft.
He tried to make light of it.
“Free lunch, Bryn. If you’re hungry.”
“No, lad,” came the soft answer. “She didn’t do anything to me. I’ll let her rest.”
Andante looked at Brynjolf’s sad expression for a moment, thoughtful. I looked at her and saw lunch. He looked at her and saw a person. Yes. She deserves to rest. He nodded. “Let’s go. It’s a long hike yet up to the top of this hill.”
“Aye.”
The path they were on led up the mountain in a series of switchbacks. Cairns marked the way at strategic points, and there were stone stairs built into the steepest parts of the trail. This part of Skyrim was cold to begin with, but the higher they went the colder and snowier it got. Andante was almost grateful for being human right then, because warm human blood pumped through all parts of him with the exertion. It almost made up for the cold-induced ache in his lungs and the frozen nostrils. That’s all I’m grateful for, about this experience. This had best be worth it.
They rounded another corner, higher up.
This doesn’t seem right. It’s too high up. And it looks… vaguely familiar.
He was just about to stop and look around when he heard a familiar growling and a snort. He had just about enough time to register the fact that ahead of them was an angry frost troll – the most aggressive and tough-to-kill type in Skyrim – when Brynjolf rushed past him with his wicked sword drawn. Andante drew his axe but hesitated; surely Brynjolf would be able to take down the troll by himself. But Brynjolf stood there, bashing at it with his shield, taking a swing here and there, seeming to do very little damage.
Andante rushed forward and took out the beast with a couple of quick slashes, then turned to grimace at Brynjolf, panting.
“What were you doing, playing with it?”
“I needed a little practice,” he answered with a smirk.
“Ugh. Let’s go.”
Andante headed further up the hill. He’d only been running for a few moments when the landscape was simply too familiar to continue.
“I’ve been here before,” he called back to Brynjolf. “We’re going the wrong way.”
“What?”
“When I came here to get this dagger.” He waved his off-hand weapon in the air. “Mehrunes’ Razor.”
“Cavorting with Daedric princes, are ye?” Brynjolf grinned.
“You’re a fine one to talk, dear, selling your soul to Nocturnal. And put your hood back on before you die.” It was a bright, sunny day and in spite of how much Andante enjoyed the sight of Brynjolf’s hair reflecting fiery red in the sunlight, it was too bright for a vampire. Brynjolf nodded and slipped his hood up over his head.
“At least I’m not sworn to this one. I just came to steal his weapon, like a proper thief. Had to have him put it back together, first.” He craned his neck and peered up at the top of the mountain. Sure enough, he could just make out the very top of the gigantic, threatening statue of Mehrunes Dagon that perched atop the door to his shrine. That was where the Daedric prince had spoken to him, had reassembled the shards of the deadly dagger into a whole weapon, and had told him to slay the man who’d led him there. Andante had done as ordered, grabbed the dagger, and fled.
He turned back down the hill; facing this way he could see the snow-covered staircase he had missed, stairs that led up to the shrine from the lowest point in a bowl-shaped portion of the trail they were walking.
“Yes. This is the place. We’ve missed the entrance to the Crypt. But there’s a problem. When I got the Razor, Mehrunes Dagon summoned two of his minions to take me out. I… fear that I ran away.”
Brynjolf, following along behind him, laughed. “You ran? You?”
“Yes, dear. Straight down the side of the mountain, and a miracle I didn’t break my neck doing it. I ran to save my sorry hide. I was still trying to regain my strength after whatever it was that happened to me, before.”
“You lived. It was the right thing to have done.”
“Yes, but there’s a problem I left behind by having done that,” Andante said, breaking into a trot as they neared the lowest part of the bowl.
“I honor my lord by destroying you!” came the gurgling, hollow, eerie shout of one of a pair of Dremora who had clearly been waiting for him ever since their first encounter. These creatures of Oblivion were huge, nearly a head taller than Andante; they were terrifying, and very strong. Andante sprinted past the first, wove a path between them and attacked the second with everything he had – his human strength, a Daedric war axe and Mehrune’s Razor. He blocked, and whirled, and slashed, all to the tune of Brynjolf’s bashing and taunting the second. The first Dremora dropped when Andante struck a lucky blow with the Razor; he whirled and ran to help polish off the second.
It was clear which of the two men was stronger, very quickly. Andante was an expert with his axe but Brynjolf, as a vampire, was better and faster.
“Fall, damn you!” Brynjolf shouted, leaping forward and skewering the Dremora.
Andante nearly fell over the corpse, trying to stop. He pulled off his hood to get air, and grinned up at Brynjolf, who was looking smug. He laughed.
“Nice job, loverboy.”
“Thank you.”
Andante rolled his eyes and started running along the path.
Brynjolf’s voice called out from behind him. “Andante. That’s still the wrong way, lad.”
He stopped and looked around, then sighed. By the gods, it is. Exactly the wrong way. What is the matter with me?
He turned and ran back down the trail.
The entrance to Dimhollow Crypt was about halfway back down the mountain, well-marked with short pillars, a stone ramp and a brazier, just beside the main trail. He shook his head.
“How did I manage to miss this?” he muttered. “Becoming human again seems to have muddled my head.”
“You were in a hurry, that’s all. Don’t worry about it.”
Andante turned and smiled at him. “Thanks, Bryn.”
Brynjolf shrugged. “It’s only temporary. You’re letting it get to you.”
Yes I am. It’s true. But everything in my life has been just temporary, as far as I can remember. I hope I’m strong enough to do this. I’m only human.
They hadn’t gotten far into the cavern before he heard a man’s voice, an Altmer by the accent. Even without being able to see the man, Andante could tell he was sneering just by his tone.
Damn superior Altmer. The Thalmor are the worst. A shudder rippled through him from his core outward. But they all need to learn a bit of humility.
“These Vigilants never know when to give up. I thought we’d taught them enough of a lesson at their hall.”
“To come here on his own,” a woman answered. “A fool, like all the rest of them.”
“He fought well, though. They were no match for him.”
“Ha. Those two deserved what they got.”
So Tolan is dead. At least he gave as good as he got. Better, even – he took out two of them before he died. Good for him.
There was a gated tunnel at the far end of this cave; and near one of the archways before it Andante could see the male vampire he’d been hearing. He pulled his bow from his back, slowly, carefully.
Wouldn’t do to have it scrape the ground and make a noise. Sure way to alert them.
He took careful aim and loosed his arrow. It flew straight and strong across the cavern and into the vampire’s heart. The man dropped with a loud exhalation and was still.
Andante caught movement from just in front of the gate. Up the ramp flew a small figure; a small, snarling figure – a Death Hound, its glowing eyes and exposed fangs making it all the more terrifying. It nipped Andante as it ran past him to attack Brynjolf.
Brynjolf was having no real problem with the dog but Andante saw red.
Leave. Him. Alone!
“No!” he spat. He swapped his bow for his axe and dagger and tore the hound apart in a few swipes.
He heard a soft chuckle from behind him.
“You were worried about me, lad?” Brynjolf whispered.
Andante would have laughed but it seemed more important to focus on the remaining vampire and the corpse she was reanimating. He knelt, took aim at the corpse and dropped it with one shot. The vampire was wearing a full set of hardened chitin armor, though, and it took three arrows to fell her.
He grinned at Brynjolf.
“And if I had been? Worried about you, that is? Would that be a bad thing, necessarily?”
Brynjolf simply chuckled.
The chain that opened the gate was in a small antechamber, across the musty cavern and up a short flight of stairs. Andante pulled the chain and found himself sneezing at the dust.
“You know,” he muttered, “I could do without having human allergies again.”
“Stop whining, lad. Hold on for a while longer. Once we find out what’s going on here, I’ll turn you again if that’s what needs to happen.”
Andante stopped and stared at Brynjolf, who was smiling at him. A strange surge of emotion welled up in him. He had to fight the overpowering desire to wrap himself around Brynjolf, to hold him and be held in return.
He really is ready and willing to do that for me. I wonder if I’ve ever had anyone for whom I’d have done anything. Before this, that is. Gods. I love this man. Is this always what it’s like, for normal people?
Through a narrow tunnel and around a corner, the path past the gate opened into a larger cavern full of tall, ornate pillars and closed sarcophagi. Water had seeped in over the centuries, forming a stream that ran through the lowest part of the space. Andante couldn’t see anything moving, or hear any sounds, and with his nose full of dust all he could smell was the damp dirt nearby; but he didn’t trust his diminished human senses to tell him true. Andante, though, was one of those fortunate souls like Ulfric Stormcloak, able to learn and use some of the dragon language in spite of having no dragon blood in him as Dardeh had. He knew a few shouts; and for the fullness of the time he could remember, he’d had the nagging sensation that he had known more and would be able to use them if he could only find reference to the words again. He gathered his breath, leaned forward, and Shouted, a hoarse whisper that travelled no farther than the end of his face but had an intense effect.
“LAAS – YAH!”
Aura Whisper lit the place up with the red-tinged shapes of at least five living creatures. Andante smiled grimly and motioned for Brynjolf to move forward.
“I’m right behind you,” he whispered.
Ordinarily I would have some smart retort to make about how much he likes being right behind me, but right now I think I’ll take out this vampire who is trying to kill us.
There were three skeletons and a female vampire in this room. The skeletons were a quick pop, pop, pop with the bow to disintegrate but the vampire was tough. He fired three more times, as quickly as he could because she had run past him and his arrows, and was trying her best to drain Brynjolf’s life force.
I won’t have it. I don’t care that he’s not truly alive. He is mine, damn it all to Oblivion, and you can’t have him.
Finally she crumpled to the ground and they moved forward, to a slope at the far side of the cavern and up to their left. There was another gate, this time opened by a lever close at hand. It opened into a more intact section of the barrow, a room containing an enchanting station that appeared to be in good working order. Andante scooped the empty soul gems he found there into his pocket and then continued into the next doorway. Around a corner it led him, down stairs, and into a long corridor lined with the niches that held the remains of ancient Nords.
A draugr Shouted: “Fus-Ro-Dah!” in the harshly distorted, aspirated tones of a long-dead voice. At the far end of the corridor, a magic-wielding vampire and her death hound backed into view, staggered by the shout, threatened by not just a simple member of the walking dead but a Deathlord crowned as they all were with a wicked-looking horned helmet. Andante looked back at Brynjolf and nodded toward the far end.
And then everything erupted into a cacophony of Shouts, and clashing of swords on shield, barking and snarling and the distinctive sizzling of the vampire’s shock magic as Brynjolf ran headlong into the battle. There was not just one Deathlord but two as well as a common Draugr, and the vampire reanimated the hound to her advantage after Andante took it with an arrow, to keep on fighting.
Andante knew he wasn’t going to last long against the shock magic, not as a human, so he hung back and peppered the woman with arrows until suddenly he saw Brynjolf down on one knee, knocked off-kilter by one of the draugr’s blows.
“NO!”
He hurtled into the midst of the battle and Shouted.
“IIZ-SLEN!”
One of the Draugr fell, frozen solid, and he whirled into it slashing like a madman. A part of his mind, somehow calmly observing himself as though from above, murmured Perhaps you are a madman, after all. The Deathlord fell; Andante turned and made for the common draugr, and cried out in mid-slash as a shock spell hit him from behind. He gritted his teeth and hacked, grateful for the Daedric axe he carried, then turned to his left to look behind.
Either the vampire, or Brynjolf, or both had taken down the other Deathlord and were now locked in a grim battle with each other.
“I… will… kill you!” Brynjolf shouted between sword strikes and bashes.
“Is that your best? Huh?” the woman snarled at him.
Andante hurled himself at her, slashing wildly. She was enough injured already that she dropped almost immediately. Andante stood, panting, and frowned at Brynjolf.
“What were you thinking?”
“I was thinking that right now I’m stronger than you are.”
Andante grimaced, but nodded. “It’s true. And I saw you nearly lose. Don’t do that again, dear. You have people counting on you. I don’t.”
“You surprised me, lad. I didn’t know you could Shout.”
“I am full of surprises. It surprised me, as well, you know? Apparently I must have been a scholar of some sort before … whatever happened to me. I just know these words. Only a few of them, and not to the extent our friend the Dragonborn can use them, but they’re handy. I know some of Ice Form, some of Aura Whisper, and part of what those draugr shout. Ice Form is something I’ve been known to use fairly often but that other one, well… I can’t see any more, Bryn. Not as a human. I had to do something.”
“You could have asked me to look, lad. I can do that. You know as well as I do.”
He sighed. He’s right. I’m not used to being the weak link.
“Yes. Well let’s go see what all the hoopla is about. It must be important for them to have put people in here all along the way.”
Yet another gate led them down and through a narrow passage that emptied into a large cavern half filled with a pool of water. He could see the exit, above and ahead on the far side of the space. He could also see a vampire, three skeletons and a frostbite spider between them and their destination.
It should have been an easy battle but it wasn’t; one of the skeletons refused to go down for the longest time, and the vampire was an expert in frost magic. She froze Andante almost solid and then turned her vampiric life-draining spell on him while he fought to move.
“And you thought I was just a pretty face,” she snarled at him.
Brynjolf barreled into her, breaking her focus for just long enough that Andante was able to Shout at her – “IIZ-SLEN!” — and then attack while she was frozen herself. Even slowed as she was it took both of them hammering on her as hard as they could to finally bite through her finely-woven Redguard mail and take her down. She disintegrated into a pile of shimmering ash on the ground, and Andante shuddered.
That will be us, one of these days.
“Are you alright, Andante?” Brynjolf asked as he rubbed his arms. He’d been hit with an ice spike and slowed nearly to a crawl himself.
Andante shrugged. “I… think so. Let’s continue.”
Their route took them into a nearly-intact barrow. The first chamber held a single vampire, taken by surprise, from behind, with no problem. But around the corner was another woman, muttering about the hunger gnawing at her.
I know that hunger. I’m sorry.
She came at them with tooth and claw, ice and vampiric drain spells. The frostbite spider they’d seen had retreated down this corridor and spat poison at them. Worst of all, though, was the pair of Death Hounds that latched onto Andante, snarling and biting, while Brynjolf attacked the vampire. Andante struggled, slashed with his dagger and tried to pull his axe as the dogs ripped at him. He managed to take one down when the second turned to rush at Brynjolf’s back, but his heart was pounding and he was bleeding from a dozen wounds to his arms and legs when he stumbled forward to slash the hound. He’d done enough damage to it already that one solid blow from the axe killed it. He stepped to the side, to Brynjolf’s right. Brynjolf had the vampire cornered and was trying to sneak in sword blows around his shield, but she had switched to shock spells and it was too dangerous for him to lower the shield for long. Andante took a deep breath and stabbed at her with Mehrunes’ Razor. The vampire had time to cast one painful shock at him, a spell that had him gasping for breath as he brought the axe down on her neck.
Andante immediately fired off as many healing spells as he had energy for, both on himself and on Brynjolf.
“That was a little too close for comfort.”
“Aye. I’ll try to do a better job of keeping my ears peeled next time. Sorry about that.”
“It wasn’t your fault. I knew she was there but those hounds came out of nowhere.”
Around the next curve was yet another gate, this one huge and heavy. Behind it a lone vampire was fighting a truly enormous spider. He had just about taken it down when Brynjolf rushed forward again, after Andante threw the lever that lifted the gate.
“No, don’t… Arrgh!” Andante fired his bow as quickly as he could draw, over and over, at the vampire, but it became clear that even the ebony arrows weren’t doing enough damage to kill the man. He ran forward just in time to hear the vampire growl, “I’ll drain you dry, mortal!”
“Ha!” he snorted, and began hacking.
Brynjolf swung his sword, shouting “You’re…dead!”
The man’s head rolled into the corner.
Andante stood and looked at the body in silence, and then up at Brynjolf.
“Well then. I thought I was the one in the Brotherhood.”
Brynjolf gave him a sheepish grin. “I do a lot of practicing in my spare time, lad. Straw dummies are really good for that. So are Falmer. Have I ever told you that I hate Falmer? Damn things smell so bad. You know it’s bad when it bothers a guy like me.”
Andante laughed.
“I think we’re getting close.” He was checking the corners of the room for anything of value when he heard Brynjolf behind him.
“Aye, lad. But we’ll do it together. I’m right behind you.”
Andante smiled as he opened the wooden door next to the vampire’s head. He could tell by the flow of air that brushed past his face that the space into which he was moving was enormous, and cold.
The door opened into an antechamber beyond which was a high balcony. Stone gargoyles sat on either side of the arched doorway. Voices drifted up from below Andante’s line of sight.
“I’ll never tell you anything, vampire. My oath to Stendarr is stronger than any suffering you can infli…” The voice cut off in mid word.
A woman spoke. “Are you sure that was wise, Lokil? He still might have told us something.”
Andante slunk to the edge of the balcony and looked down. The bottom of this huge cavern was full of water, with stone bridges crossing to a circular island in the center. There were concentric rings, deep channels of some kind, carved into the stone surface of the island, and the whole structure was surrounded with pointed arches, almost as though it was a gargantuan crown. He couldn’t make out what was on the far side for the mist; but below him, on the stone bridge, were the several figures who were speaking to each other. He moved quietly to the right, along the balcony, to where he thought he saw stairs.
“Shor’s beard! Have you ever seen anything like it in your life, lad?” Brynjolf breathed behind him. Andante simply shook his head and held his finger up to his mouth.
Shh. No, I haven’t, and I don’t want them to know about it, either.
The deep growl of the man who had been addressed as Lokil floated up toward them.
“He knew nothing. He served his purpose by leading us to this place. Now, it is up to us to bring Harkon the prize. And we will not return without it.”
Andante drew his bow and took aim as the vampire continued to speak.
“Vingalmo and Orth…”
Andante’s arrow flew downward and across the stone bridge, striking the vampire with a resounding crack. He watched as one of the figures reanimated a skeleton that was lying nearby; another arrow from his bow dropped one of the vampires now rushing toward them. He turned and moved back up the stairs behind him, hissing “Get ready!” to Brynjolf as he turned to aim back at where the opponents would most likely emerge.
He and Brynjolf were both expert thieves, however. As soon as they dropped into crouches and slunk away from the edges of the platform, they nearly evaporated into the darkness. The vampires lost sight of them. He could hear them calling out to each other in the darkness as they searched for their assailants, but he held his position, as well as his breath, for several beats. Then he moved back to the stairs and began firing down into the massed vampires.
His first shot missed the man’s heart, but struck him in the arm. All of them rushed the stairwell, and Andante acted out of instinct.
“IIZ-SLEN!”
He and Brynjolf ran forward and down the first half-flight, and finished them off one at a time. Then they made their way down the second half-flight of steps and across the bridge to the circular platform.
The circles were, in fact, channels, as were the deeper channels that radiated from a stone pentagon in the center of the platform. They were all narrow, and carved deeply into the stone. The channels radiating out from each of the pentagon’s points were slightly wider and contained circular depressions where they intersected with the circles. Each of these channels held a small brazier atop a stone column, at varying distances from the center. A small pentagonal column topped with a strange, circular symbol, almost an inverted cup, stood in the very center of the platform.
It made no sense.
Andante sighed, looked around trying to puzzle out what he was seeing, and then turned to Brynjolf.
“Alright, now what? It can’t ever be simple, can it?”
“Is there anything you can do with that piece on the top? Does it move somehow?”
Andante reached out, to try to manipulate the round piece, and then cried out in pain as a stone spike shot up from its center, piercing his hand. He sank down against the pillar, nearly fainting as his blood ran down into the grooves and crevices, and the closest to him of the concentric rings began to emit a purple roaring glow.
“Damn it! Of course it’s blood. Of course it is.”
Slowly and painfully he stood and forced his hand back up from the stone spike, then started fumbling to find something with which to wrap it. The spike had, almost miraculously, managed to miss the bones of his hand, but it would still take some time to heal, and it hurt like Oblivion.
He surveyed the area. It seemed to him that the braziers were vibrating, just slightly, as the purple energy pulsed. I’ll bet these move. He turned and walked past Brynjolf, toward the nearest of them.
“What’s on your mind?” Brynjolf asked.
He chuckled. “What is ever on my mind, loverboy?” he said as he walked to the brazier. “Need you really ask? In truth, though,” he said as he pushed the brazier and watched it slide along the channel to click into position at the next circular stop, “I think these need to be aligned somehow.”
He spent the next few minutes experimenting with the braziers, Brynjolf giving him quiet suggestions as he went. It was frustrating. It seemed that no matter in which direction he pushed them, it was the wrong direction.
I’m sure there is some sort of pattern to this but I don’t have the patience to figure it out.
Eventually, each of them clicked into its correct position, and each of them began to burn and glow with the same purple energy as had first emerged near the center. It did form a pattern, almost a spiral, leading from the outer ring into the middle.
As he pushed the last brazier into position, the floor shook, there was a rumble, and the area within the innermost circle turned a swirling purple. With the deepest complaint of stone grinding against stone, a large pentagonal block, man-height, slid up from beneath the surface and clicked into place. The purplish energy from the channels and the braziers died away as Andante walked around the block, staring at it.
“What in Oblivion is this?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never seen anything like it. Can you open it?”
“I’m… not sure.” Andante ran his hands along each edge, pressed on the flat surfaces, and frowned as nothing happened. As he was about to give up he tapped on one of the block’s faces, one with a large central groove. He flinched, startled, as the whole surface moved outward and then, with a groan, sank into the floor.
There was a woman inside. An attractive woman, with medium-length dark hair.
Clearly a vampire, by her armor.
“What the…” Andante said.
“Shor’s bones!”
“And other bits, as well!”
The woman fell forward onto the floor. Andante moved to help her but she waved him off and rose, slowly. Her eyes fluttered open, and she looked around, then turned to face Andante.
“Where is… who sent you here?”
Look at those eyes. She’s a vampire, and a very old one. Powerful. This is what – or who – they were looking for.
“Who were you expecting?”
“Well,” she said, crossing her arms, “I was expecting someone like me, at least.”
She began talking, and talking, and talking about her father, and their home, and what was going to happen next. And Andante saw nothing aside from Brynjolf, who was smiling at him in a way that brought his heart into his throat.
We did it, Bryn. We found her.
“Thank you,” he whispered, smiling back at Brynjolf.
“Yes lad,” Brynjolf said quietly, his eyes glittering. “It’s like I told you. We’ll do it together. Whatever comes next.”
Andante tried to stop smiling at him, but couldn’t.
“By the way, my name’s Serana. Nice to meet you,” the woman said.