By the time he stepped through the portal the streets of Ben Erai were nearly deserted. He pulled his hood far down over his amber eyes and drank a blood potion, in part to dampen down the fevered, burning glow of them that had caught people’s attention back in Skyrim. He didn’t need more such attention in Hammerfell.
“Don’t like them eyes you got,” people had told him more than once this day. “They’ve got a bad hunger to them.” They probably did, even under the best conditions, vampires being the creatures they were. These were decidedly not the best conditions. He was confused and angry. Angry – and powerful. Or maybe he was angry because he was powerful. No, Tenerio’s assassinations hadn’t been difficult assignments; but he was a young assassin and an even younger vampire, and he shouldn’t have been able to accomplish all of them in just a couple of days. Before that was the ancient vampire in his ice cave. Dale definitely shouldn’t have survived that encounter, much less handled it as easily as he had. But here he was, no more than months out from leaving Cyrodiil and probably almost Agryn’s equal in strength; no longer just his sire’s contact in the Dark Brotherhood but its leader. He’d asked for none of it; he’d been led to it.
Agryn hadn’t known about Coldhaven. He hadn’t known about Tamara or any of the other Founders until Dale had shown him. That ruled Agryn out as the person who invited him to search out Tamara’s past. Agryn had no way to know.
Perhaps either Tamara or Sicara had sent the courier. Perhaps Tamara had wanted him to find her earlier research outposts so that he would admire her great sacrifices in bringing safety and weaponry to her people, and would then help convince the city of her magnanimity. Sicara might have sent him searching for that same history for opposite reasons, suspecting that Tamara had removed anyone else who knew the truth about her and hoping that Dale, an uninterested party, would bring proof of Tamara’s crimes back to the city. He rejected those possibilities as well. Neither of the former Sovrenas of Coldhaven could reasonably have expected him to survive an ancient Vampire Lord, which would have made his journey completely moot. It made no sense.
After that? What of Lucya? Tenerio clearly sent Lucya to wait near Dawnstar, but who alerted Tenerio that there was a new Listener in Skyrim? None of the vampires had any reason to know that there was a Sanctuary being revived in Hammerfell. Only Babette knew that he was not simply a vampire and not simply a low-ranking, uninteresting grunt in the Dark Brotherhood, but the newly-chosen, vampiric, Listener.
Furthermore, he had been chosen as Listener in a place neither the Coldhaven vampires nor the Dawnstar Sanctuary knew about. If Babette had known about the Coldhaven Sanctuary she surely would have told him of it; it was to her advantage to have an informed leader. Tamara hadn’t known about the Sanctuary right under her nose or she would have said something once he’d whispered in her doomed ears that he was an assassin. Neither Camryn nor any of his subordinates had any idea that he even existed before he stumbled into the Sanctuary – and they still didn’t know he was Listener.
So who was it? Am I just paranoid? Does knowing who sent me here even matter?
He nodded to the two gate guards and stepped out into the desert night, his head continuing to spin, teetering on the edge of… something. Maybe it was the madness. He remembered that terrifying moment when Agryn had lost control of himself in anger and transformed in front of him and Brynjolf, when Vyctyna had needed to talk him down from “the crazy,” as she put it.
Harkon was mad at the end, they all say. Edwyn Wickham lost his grip on reality so badly that they needed to remove him from the world. And Agryn has moments like that. Vyctyna is really what keeps him grounded.
So how deep does the crazy go? Am I crazy? Does a sane vampire just suddenly turn a completely innocent Initiate for no reason whatsoever?
He shook his head and forced his thoughts back to the sands before him. He needed to get his bearings and find the cave Lucya had pointed out. If finding the Crimson Eviscerator had been important enough to get Lucya killed it was important enough for him to finish the job.
He ran due north for a bit, down through the scoured valley beyond the sand dunes just outside Ben Erai’s gates. He passed, on his right, a natural arch carved from the sandstone in eons past; on his left, outcroppings of older, harder stone had stood against the relentless onslaught of wind and time even as dunes and valleys formed on either side. His destination was slightly northeast, toward the finger of mountains that pointed across the desert from the Halls of the West toward the Oasis of Mora Sul. As fast as Dale could run it wasn’t long at all until he spotted the dark, vertical line in the cliff face that revealed itself as a cave opening once he got close enough.
He dropped into a crouch and crept through the opening, staying as close against the walls as possible simply because he had no idea what to expect. It was pitch black inside the tunnel, but when he reached its end he gasped in surprise. It was light, at the end of the tunnel. But the light was… purple. The tunnel emptied into a tall, empty cavern, at the far side of which was a wall of regular, carved sandstone temple blocks. A shimmering curtain of purple filled the hallway in its center, beyond which was a shining figure: a spirit, no doubt a guardian.
Magic. It’s like the barriers at the edges of the Soul Cairn.
The vampires who had tracked Lucya had been looking for a dagger – the Crimson Eviscerator. They had seemingly missed the significance of the soul gem near her in the so-called “warehouse” where they’d run her to ground.
This gem was the only thing out of place in that room aside from her body and all the blood. But even if they had taken this stone they’d have had no way to know that they could use it to track her to the Soul Cairn and back here. Neither did I, until I picked it up.
You’d think they might have taken it.
The vampires searching for the Crimson Eviscerator were either unobservant and careless, or worse, simply stupid. It was disappointing, really, when he stopped to think about it. Regardless, though, he was here. Planted firmly into the stone floor just before the barrier was an empty soul gem stand. It would have been vividly obvious what he needed to do with Lucya’s soul gem even if she hadn’t already told him. Indeed, as soon as he placed the gem into the stand it absorbed the magical barrier, drawing the energy into itself and opening the way through the hall.
Beyond the next chamber, an archway led to a cupola bathed in magical light. Between him and it, though, was the spirit he’d seen before. After a long moment, the spirit moved into action, running back and forth. It hadn’t seen him, yet, but it was clearly on high alert. Dale slipped along the rough-carved hallway toward the skylit chamber, gathering magic as he went. Only one guard? She was likely to be a very strong one. The situation called for a distraction, and his gargoyle was the best one he knew of.
She reacted to the gargoyle instantly. “Never should have come here!” It roared. She raised her hands.
But instead of firing the ultra-powerful bolt of lightning at the gargoyle, she turned at the last moment and fired it directly at Dale. The bolt slammed into him, staggering him and leaving him gasping, breathless with pain; only the fact that he had twice the life force Agryn had gifted him kept him from turning to ash right there in the hallway. As the gargoyle leapt at her, snarling and slashing, she turned her attention to it and fought back, an axe in her right hand and the familiar, sickly red of the life-drain concentration spell in the left.
Dale caught his breath and drew his blades. The spirit hadn’t already dispatched the gargoyle with another of the massive lightning bolts; that told him that she hadn’t enough magicka. That bolt was meant to kill a normal human or vampire with one strike, but he was neither. He drew his blades and ran forward just as the gargoyle, shredding the spirit with its claws, fell to one last burst of blood magic from her hands. Dale barreled into her, slashing with grim, deliberate strokes, and while she landed one axe blow it was only enough to draw a small hiss from him. A moment later she groaned and fell backward into the wall, disintegrating into a pile of glowing ectoplasm. Dale cast one healing spell and sighed in relief.
This space was a long rectangle, open to the night skies, empty but for a pillar at either end. He took a moment to check for hidden latches or buried storage, but there was nothing aside from the stairs leading up to the glimmering cupola beyond.
And glimmer it did. He trotted up the steps and checked for enemies but it was empty, identical to the lower chamber save for the cupola. Suspended in the middle of the sphere of magic centered over a pentagram in the cupola’s floor was a dagger, Daedric-make from the looks of it. Dale reached into the energy, somehow confident that the soul gem he had used to open the gate also rendered this magic safe. He grasped the dagger and drew it out.
It was, truly, a beautiful blade. Pulsing with deep red energies, and with a black and scarlet grip, its dramatic spiked shape made it seem a far more wicked thing than it actually was, as far as he could tell. Yes, it was razor-sharp and could deal a lethal wound. Yes, the enchantment on it would drain its victim – of everything, to the best of his ability to sense. As a weapon, though, it was no more powerful than either of the blades he’d taken from the crazed Argonian vampire in Coldhaven’s sewers, and no more than half as powerful as either of his short swords.
But it’s the Crimson Eviscerator. Just look at it. Beautiful, powerful in its own right, and most of all, symbolic.
He gripped the blade for a moment and held it as though ready for battle, and he could feel a sense of rightness flowing through him. Yes, this was the blade. “Rightness” was undoubtedly not what Lucya would have felt, wielding this dagger. She had wanted Dale to fetch it only so that the Crimson Scars – or at least the vampires who were tracking her movements – wouldn’t have it.
He smiled and slipped the blade deep into his pack. He wouldn’t wield it himself, any more than he intended to ever wield that Argonian’s twin blades. But neither would anyone else. It was a symbol of power that rightfully now belonged to him.
Yes.
The trek back across the desert to Tenerio’s sanctuary seemed to take only moments, lost in thought as he was. He now had the item that Tenerio had wanted and had, presumably, directed Lucya to find. Tenerio’s reaction to the news that she’d died had showed Dale that Tenerio feared the future. What Dale couldn’t decide was whether Tenerio feared losing the power he might have gained as holder of the blade – for he most definitely was not, himself, a vampire – or that the vampires who were also searching for the blade would find it first. Or perhaps he feared that those vampires would come after the sanctuary next, looking for it.
I shall find out, shortly. Tenerio strikes me as a weak man. He’s terrified of something. He’s next going to send me out on some mission he is afraid to do himself and I will go, willingly, just to find out where the truth lies.
Tenerio looked up as Dale entered, and raised an eyebrow. “Listener?”
Dale nodded. “Yes. I found Lucya’s soul. She told me how to locate the artifact she was searching for, and I’ve just secured it.”
There was a pause, then. Dale stayed silent, purposefully waiting for Tenerio to display surprise, curiosity, a sense of satisfaction that they’d succeeded where Lucya had failed. Or perhaps annoyance that Dale didn’t immediately show him the artifact. Some sign of superior intelligence would have been warranted from the leader of a Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary under these circumstances. But there was nothing. The man simply nodded.
“And I managed to figure out where the vampires are,” he said. “You might want to pay them a little visit.”
“Really. A visit to, what, show them the artifact and ask them nicely to leave us alone? Or…” Dale regretted his sarcastic remark almost immediately, but it was simply stunning that Tenerio was actually asking him to do such a thing at all.
“Perhaps. That might be a good idea, actually! I’m not sure they will cooperate, though. There’s no cooperation even among vampires.”
Dale smirked, thinking of Coldhaven. “Apparently there is enough, since they were mounting a coordinated effort to hunt down Lucya and the artifact she was looking for.”
Tenerio’s expression didn’t change an iota. “That is true, I suppose. They didn’t find it, though. We did. But let’s not talk too much. It’s time to kill.”
Dale took a moment to compose himself before speaking. “Indeed. Now please show me where these vampires are located.”
As I expected. He’s sending me out to die. He’s afraid of the vampires, and he’s sending me out to do his dirty work, the same way Sovrena Tamara sent me to the sewers to do hers.
As he watched Tenerio mark a spot very nearby the sanctuary, Dale fought to retain composure. He would absolutely go to find these vampires. He would deal with them, one way or another. And then he would return, to demand an accounting from this man.
He left the sanctuary and made the alarmingly short trip to the mouth of another cave, just around another face of the very same mountain that held the sanctuary. If Tenerio had set his new recruits to work with pickaxes, he might have broken through to this cave in a few days at most, it was so close. Dale stopped just before the entrance and took several long, deep breaths, wishing that he could consult the Night Mother before he moved forward.
There was something enticing about the notion of there being a group of potential allies here in the desert. They wanted to revive the Crimson Scars – or at least they wanted the Crimson Eviscerator in order to unite the various vampire houses. Tenerio’s recent recruits wanted to revive the Dark Brotherhood in Hammerfell. These were not necessarily mutually exclusive goals. It might be possible, somehow, for him to meld these two groups together and create something real, something worthy of the name and worthy of the Night Mother. It would be a challenge, of course, to get them all to accept his word as Listener and to understand that the Night Mother led both groups of assassins. But he had the Crimson Eviscerator now, and he had the support of the Keeper in Skyrim. Surely something could happen to convince all of them to put down their animosities and follow him.
Couldn’t it?
With that glimmer of hope, and real anticipation for meeting others of his kind, Dale stepped through the cave opening. His eyes registered the presence of five coffins, neatly arranged atop a raised stone platform on the far side of a large, smoothly-carved chamber. Another platform held a table with what might be a corpse; not surprising in a vampire den, really. He cleared his throat.
“Hello?”
A deep voice off to the side growled “We may feed again today!”
Dale was about to cry out No, wait, I’m one of you! but he never got the chance because chaos erupted. Powerful blasts of lightning crackled across the far side of the cavern and before he could do anything but react, everyone in the space was attacking everyone else. One of the vampires backed toward him and, in a panic, he raised his blades.
“Behind you!” he yelped.
The woman before him turned, and snarled, baring her fangs. He gasped, awestruck by the power of the being before him. This one was ancient, Agryn’s equal at the very least – a Nightlord, but far more powerful than he was himself, and one bent on his destruction.
“I’ll kill you!” she shrieked, slashing at him with a scimitar and catching him completely by surprise. Dale howled in pain as a rush of red-hued rage flooded his consciousness and eyes, and his blades began flashing; the next thing he was aware of was landing the finishing blow on the vampire while bleeding profusely from what felt like a million wounds. Once more he’d been saved from death only by the gift of life essences from Coldhaven’s Dwemer laboratory. He raised one hand to his lips and licked it clean, grimacing in pain and trembling as he turned to face the platform.
While he’d been engaged with the Nightlord one of the remaining vampires, a Dunmer, had taken down all the others for reasons Dale could not begin to fathom and was now raising one of the corpses to do his bidding. The third vampire, a blonde woman, slumped lifelessly across the lid of one of the coffins.
“Stop!” Dale cried. “Wait! I’m here to…” But the vampire sneered at him, dropping the resurrection and raising both hands to gather different magic into them. A Nightmaster, this one was, nearly but not quite as strong as the woman Dale had killed but also not wounded nearly to Oblivion and thus greatly to be feared. The only thing Dale knew to do was to gather his own vampiric drain spell in both hands.
“To die?” the vampire sneered. “Yes, you are. Take down our leader and expect to leave alive? Ha!”
A blast of painful, scorching lighting caught Dale face-on, sending him staggering backward in gasping disbelief. He looked up and saw the vampire prepare his own life drain and begin casting it in Dale’s direction, and more on instinct than anything else he drew his blades and threw himself, screaming, at the creature. He landed blows, too; he could feel the vampire’s leathery skin ripping as he did so and heard him grunt and hiss, but he himself was weakening rapidly. He’d bled so much of the precious little lifeblood he still had that even the strength the ancient Dwemer had gifted him was nearly gone. There was only one way he could possibly survive and that was to take some of this mer’s energy for his own.
He raised both hands, cupped them together, and fired his vampiric drain spell in a brilliant, expanding ball of explosive power. It was little enough, his own magic being far weaker than that of the being before him, but the vampire seemed confused to discover that Dale was also a vampire and didn’t react quickly enough. Dale fired his spell over and over, and little though it may have been with each attack he regained some strength, some health, some energy, stealing it from the powerful Dunmer.
“Don’t you see, you idiot?” he screamed. “I’m one of you! Stop attacking!” But the vampire, his mouth agape in confusion, lifted his hands once more. Dale saw the lightning spell begin to crackle in the cupped palms and, shrieking in rage, fired another doubled vampiric drain at his foe.
The mer screamed. Then he crumpled to the ground.
Dale threw his head up toward the ceiling and howled in utter frustration. This was not how this was supposed to have happened. He had intended… something else. Something better. Something that did not involve instantly turning on anything that moved. But now it was over. Now there were powerful vampires dead on the floor before him and he needed the thing only they could provide right now: blood. He moved from body to body, taking what little stale sustenance they could give him and, as had happened before, the two most powerful of them gave him healing and something more besides. He could feel himself increased, enhanced, as he completed his rounds and slowly, slowly his anger returned to calm, his inferno to ice. He looked at the coffins lined up so neatly and, exhausted, stepped into one of them to lose himself in sweet oblivion for awhile.
When he emerged, maybe an hour later, he felt like himself again. He moved somberly around the room, taking the stored blood potions and few coins the vampires had put away, and stood for a moment looking down at them.
“All dead. And for what? You two were so strong. We could have made something important here, but I guess you were too…”
Too what? Too crazy? Is this always what happens when a vampire lives this long, and becomes too powerful? Does it have to be this way?
Dale didn’t hurry, returning to the sanctuary, but it didn’t take long anyway. When he stepped through the door and looked at Tenerio he thought he saw a flash – the merest of moments – of shock on the man’s face.
He hadn’t expected me to return.
Tenerio’s face remained stoic, though, and his voice didn’t betray his surprise. “Yes?”
“I’ve dealt with your neighbors. And I’m sorry to say that you were right about them. They were neither willing to cooperate with me nor willing to cooperate with each other. None of them will be interfering with the Dark Brotherhood again.”
Tenerio broke into the nearest thing to a smile that Dale had seen. “And let’s hope it remains that way for a very long time!” He heaved a sigh. “Thank you, Listener. You can keep the Crimson Eviscerator as your reward for this… non-contractual target. May you spread the glory of the Dark Brotherhood all across Tamriel, Listener!”
As Dale weighed his response, the man handed him a truly substantial sack of coin. There was so much in what he’d just said that needed a response. So much of it that was the height of arrogance, and ignorance, and that was truly insulting to the position of the Listener in general and to him, Dale, personally. It was breathtaking in the reach of its temerity. So Dale simply nodded, took the coins, and quietly left for his private chamber beneath this so-called sanctuary.
He sat down cross-legged, on the floor, closed his eyes, and thought. He opened his mind as best he could, trying to find the sensations he felt when the Night Mother or even Shadowmere communicated with him wordlessly.
I need to understand. I need to be certain. I was led to Coldhaven and to its Sanctuary. I was guided, somehow, to learn the truth about Tamara, and to be given power far beyond what I had gathered for myself in fewer than thirty years. I was led here to find the Crimson Eviscerator and, given that it is the symbol of unification of the Crimson Scars I can only come to one conclusion about all of this. Am I right?
He listened, closely, hoping for the dry, rattling “yes” he had heard in his mind before. He didn’t hear a sound.
Alright. Let me set that assumption aside. There are still only a handful of us who are definitely, legitimately Dark Brotherhood and all of us live in Skyrim. None of us knew about these people. But if Tenerio knew enough about the Brotherhood, and heard of its near demise in Falkreath two decades ago… and if he knew somehow that the Night Mother’s coffin had been removed from Cyrodiil… It would be easy to set himself up as a Sanctuary leader once he stumbled over an old, inactive, inert Black Door. He’s illegitimate. He doesn’t even recognize how badly he’s stumbled in his interactions with me.
He quieted himself again, for a moment, but once again had no guidance from beyond the confines of his own skull.
I can’t involve anyone else in this. I can’t ask Agryn for guidance. But I do know one thing: our goal always was to spread the Dark Brotherhood’s influence throughout Tamriel again. I can’t directly recruit people for the Brotherhood; that’s not my duty. But I can recruit them indirectly, through the one avenue I have.
He reached for his pack and pulled out the Crimson Eviscerator, feeling the rightness of the blade, and tucked it into his boot. He climbed the ladder to the sanctuary, smiling a grim smile as the woman he had turned crept out toward the main chamber where Tenerio slept. She was hungry; she would feed. And as to the other three sleeping initiates Dale moved quietly from one to the next, using the Crimson Eviscerator to slice open his own palm and feed them his own enhanced vampire blood, creating three more vampires here in the “sanctuary” of Ben Erai.
He spoke to them quietly, telling them how to exist, telling them how they must feed sparingly so as not to arouse suspicion and how they must wait for instructions from him, the Listener, before moving out of this space. It is not a real Sanctuary, he told them. I will speak with the Night Mother and once I know how we will proceed, we will proceed. But now, he told them, you must all rest. And, to his great surprise, they all returned to their cots and fell deeply asleep.
Dale walked out to the main room and found Tenerio back at his post.
“Tenerio,” he said, strolling casually over to a spot that completely blocked the man’s access to freedom.
“Yeah?”
“Who am I?”
Tenerio looked confused. “You are the Listener,” he said. “Why are you asking me this?”
“And what does the Listener do?”
“He, uh…” Tenerio’s eyes shifted slightly. “Listens.”
“Um-hmm,” Dale said, nodding. “And that means…”
“I don’t know what you want me to say!” Tenerio sputtered.
Dale smiled. “Exactly. The organization of the Brotherhood begins with murderers and assassins, of which we have few. As you know.”
Tenerio nodded, clearly seeing an opening. “As I know. That is why I sent for you.”
“Yes. And above the assassins and murders are, of course, the…”
Tenerio looked nervous again. “The…”
“The Silencers, Tenerio. The higher-level assassins. And how do they get their assignments? From the…”
Tenerio sputtered. “Just spit it out already! What do you want from me? I paid you plenty of coin!”
Dale smiled again, this time drawing his upper lip up just enough that he could feel the tips of his fangs showing. He wasn’t certain Tenerio would notice. “The Silencers get their assignments from the Speakers.” He leaned forward and poked Tenerio’s chest with a fingertip. “Currently there is only one Speaker, Tenerio, and he is in Skyrim. I would tell you his name, but then I would be violating the Tenets, as you of course are aware. The important bit is that he does not currently reside in Hammerfell, even though he probably did at some point in his life. Now then. Given that, would you care to tell me how a Speaker knows what contracts to give to his Silencers and so on? From whom does he receive these contracts?”
Tenerio gulped.
Dale nodded. “I thought so. He gets those contracts from the Listener, who receives them directly from the Night Mother. Only one person in the world is Listener, Tenerio, and you do of course know who that is. And I am one hundred percent certain that the Night Mother has never asked me to send someone out after a roaming priest visiting the Lucky Lantern in a godsforsaken corner of the Hammerfell desert.”
Tenerio, it seemed to him, was trembling.
“Another interesting thing about your presence here, Tenerio, is your door. What is the password to get through that Black Door?” He grinned at the man, one eyebrow raised. “Oh, that’s right. There is no password because that is not a legitimate Black Door and this is not a legitimate Sanctuary. I know of three. One was burned, twenty years ago. There are two others in Skyrim. I lead both.”
He shook his head and reached for the Crimson Eviscerator. “This is a wonderful blade. I am certain that the vampire Brothers and Sisters will be happy to have it back in their safekeeping. But,” he said, returning the blade to his boot and drawing his own, “I will not sully it with your blood.”
“You see,” he told the increasingly wide-eyed man, “you are a fraud. You are a cheat. And while I appreciate the payments you gave me you understand nothing of our organization and cannot be allowed to continue pretending to be a part of it. Consider this your ‘sanctuary’s’ Purification. Oh, and by the way,” he added, baring his fangs entirely, “I am a vampire. And so are all of your initiates.”
He leapt forward with the inhuman speed of a vampire and sliced the man nearly to the point of death. Then he made sure to pierce his throat while he was still alive, just to be certain Tenerio knew exactly what was sending his soul to Sithis.