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"Kill the interloper." The woman screamed, pointing at me with an accusing finger.
Rushing forward the ranks of cultists mobbed me with their numbers, suicidally determined to protect their master. Most were new inductees into the order and didn’t know the rites of conjuration required to summon their daedric armour or weapons. Instead they charged, swinging fists or kicking with their feet however they could. Those more senior were suddenly encased into their black armoured robes and wielding a collection of maces and swords as they moved to surround me.
I didn’t give them a chance, as soon as woman had started screaming I had moved, tearing the throat from one of the nearest cultists and backhanding Sunchild across another’s face that left a strip of flesh hanging. There were over thirty of them in the shrine, most unarmoured and unarmed but their numbers allowing them to contend with my vampiric nature.
Ripping and tearing through the mass I killed until my arms were coated to the elbows in blood. My face was a blackened maw of fangs dripping blood and chunks of flesh and I roared into horrified faces as punches and blows were wasted on the metal plates of my armour or simply ducked away from. Using every skill and ability at my disposal, including the weeks of training with the Blades I cut, weaved, ducked and parried the mass of red robed cultists, cutting and slicing and punching Sunchild through flesh. I hacked off limbs, broke bones under my fists or Sunchild’s pommel and bit throats out in an orgy of destruction. Blows rang off my armour or sent spikes of pain into my mind as fists, feet and weapons struck home despite my best efforts to avoid the encroaching mass. Soon, I suddenly found myself outmatched by the sheer weight of numbers.
Two levels above me, Mankar Camoran stood watching the bloodshed with the first traces of fear eroding his outward layer of calm. My unnatural appearance and the way I was slaughtering my way one pace at a time through his followers was filling him with enough fear that I could smell it over the coppery stink of blood and offal that I scattered about the melee. Still holding the Amulet of Kings a muscle in his cheek twitched and he turned and started muttering such words of extreme power that his lips split and began to bleed.
Terrible and gut-wrenching, the words that he spoke were not those intended for mortal throats or for mortal ears. A few of the lesser willed cultists fell back shrieking as their ears began to bleed from the power of the incantation. Despite the damage that it was doing to his own body as he coughed and wept blood not once did he falter or mispronounce a word. In a crackle of discharged energies, a tear in reality exploded into life before him, a glowing maw of fire and devastation kin to the towering portal outside the walls of Kvatch.
Roaring wordlessly at the sight of the leader of the cult backing away from the raging melee with the Amulet of Kings in hand I threw off the pair of cultists trying to tackle me to the ground and ripped a dagger from its sheath. Even with my enhanced speed and strength there was no way that I could cross the distance between us and stop him from getting away, so instead I reached back and threw the dagger with all of my vampiric strength behind it.
The dagger crossed the space between us in a flicker of movement that was almost too fast for the eye to see. He stood before the portal and had turned briefly to gloat just as ten centimetres of steel punched into his blue robe and impaled a lung. The sudden look of extreme surprise and agony that crossed his features was almost enough to remove the sense of failure as he fell back with a sharp cry of pain, twisting through the burning portal and disappearing from sight. With a muted thunderclap the portal imploded, disappearing without a trace and taking not only the leader of the Mythic Dawn but the Amulet of Kings with it.
At the disappearance of Mankar Camoran the rest of the cultists blindly surged forward once more, seeing the opportunity to stop me in the split second that my guard was down. I felt the solid thump of a body into my spine as one tackled me, another wrapping her arms around my legs from her position on the ground after losing a leg to Sunchild. Within a second I was on the ground, slipping in the viscera of a disembowelled cultist and feeling the full weight of half a dozen land on me in their unthinking ferocity.
Punches and kicks rained down, and I tried desperately to fend them off. My right eye suddenly went dark as one punched me in the face and one of the screaming cultists had both hands around my throat as he attempted to throttle me to death. Sunchild was lost to grasping hands, and soon the constant battering was finding the softer portions of my armour and were being made felt despite the chainmail and padding covering my body.
Using my vampiric strength and taloned hands I fought and struggled, writhing under the mass and doing everything I could to break free. A clawed digit sunk to the knuckle in an eye socket that left its owner writhing and shrieking with jelly sliding down his cheek, and another stumbled away clutching at a ruined hand while I spat out fingers. The cultist straddling my chest and attempting to strangle me screamed as I reached up with both hands and pulled down hard, clutching both sides of his head in clawed hands and sinking my teeth into his throat. With hot blood pulsating down my throat I lost all sense of the blows becoming more and more pronounced and targeted, simply digging my teeth in deeper and sucking greedily. Even when the combined efforts of the group managed to break my hold on their shrieking comrade and pry him away from my thirsting mouth I continued drinking.
The blows kept on coming and I cowered behind my armoured forearms, attempting to protect my face from the flurry of attacks. Another cultist slammed down hard onto my chest, wailing as she threw punch after punch at my face that for the most part harmlessly bounced off my armoured vambraces. I was losing and as my vampiric strength was taxed to the breaking point I suddenly I felt my body shift and change my body in ways I never knew possible.
Similarly to how I had wreathed myself in shadows, I felt my a strange sensation flood my limbs and torso from my core to my skin. The sensations of skin breaking under fists and feet and the gripping and pulling of those trying to grasp at my clothing suddenly fell away and I lost all sense of pressure at being trapped under a baying mob. Instead my body, clothing and armour was sucked away into itself before exploding into a mist like off a waterfall. The crowding cultists fell over themselves with surprise and confusion as I suddenly became incorporeal, travelling around and through them as a cloud before condensing into my true form at their backs and outside of the press.
Their surprise, while short lived allowed me to regain the offensive and I tore into them with wild abandon. Arms broke, legs snapped and faces were crushed as I punched and battered my way through them with my vampiric strength. One of the armoured acolytes was thrown backwards as I kicked him in the chest with enough force that I could feel his heart explode from the power of the blow. Another dropped shrieking as I snapped a knee, before grasping her by the face and shoulder and pulling her head off with a roar of effort.
Their numbers were dwindling now and a handful of the lesser willed individuals fled screaming into the darkness of the shrine, deeper and further away from the entrance. Those who remained fell to my assault, dying horribly as I killed and ripped souls screaming from their bodies and gorging myself on opened throats.
Several times I exploded into mist, my strange new ability proving exceedingly useful but being joined by a second one as I found my body shift again. This time I found myself transforming into a mass of bats that chittered and squawked in the darkness, the horde of their furred bodies bearing down a pair of shrieking cultists and leaving them drained of blood. I flitted between forms, turning aside blades and attacks or shifting into mist or furred bodies that allowed killing blows to be wasted on nothing.
It was not without a price however, and as the last of the robed and armoured cultists slid to the ground with bloody runnels for a face I was even more badly battered and wounded than before. My legs shook, arms trembling and all my strength was being thrown into not falling onto my knees or lapsing into unconsciousness. The paste on my gums had long lost its potency since being washed away in mouthfuls of blood, and pain was brought thundering back into my mind with all of its lost strength. Every bone felt cracked, bruising had erupted across my skin and there was not a part of me that wouldn’t be red-black from the haemorrhaging. A rib or two were broken, some teeth cracked and my right eye was fully swollen shut and blinded. What I had soon realised was when my body shifted into bats, any of those that were struck down or injured would transform into open, weeping wounds or other various stigmata upon returning to my true form.
Bleeding from my injuries and caked in the blood, gore and viscera of the cult I staggered my way up the sloping stairs to the top of the ziggurat where the one of the last of them stood.
"Where did he go?" I growled, looking into the uneasy eyes of the Altmer woman who had given the Amulet of Kings to Mankar Camoran.
She paused for a moment, while not afraid of my unnatural appearance it was impossible not to feel some form of fear or unease after so many were left dead by my hand.
"My father has gone to Paradise." She said arrogantly, not letting her nervousness of my widening snarl or increasing proximity show anywhere but in her eyes. The smell of her fear though was almost intoxicating as the call of the blood in her veins.
"Then how do I get there?"
Her laugh was honest and completely at odd at the situation she found herself in, the sheer level of her arrogance digging away at me like a needle under a fingernail. "A beast such as you will never enter Paradise. My father, and the Amulet are far from your reach."
Quicker than she could react I grasped her around the throat, picking her from the floor in one hand and drawing her in close enough that I could smell the lavender perfume of her flesh. "I’ll find a way. When you see him, tell him that I’m coming for him."
There was a moment of hope flash across her face as my grip lessened around her neck and I placed her back on her feet. Rubbing absently at the reddening mark around her porcelain neck she stared at me confusingly for a second, trying to contemplate what was going on even as I grabbed her with both hands and bit her face off.
Still clothed in the flesh of a vampire my face was still elongated, strengthened and filled with teeth sharp enough to cut through leather. My jaw was impossibly strong and could open far wider than normal which made it simple to bite down hard enough that I sheared away a considerable portion of her cheeks, nose and lips before she could react.
Gurgling and screaming through a ruined face all that was left was her chin and lower lip and she fell away grasping at my armoured legs in agony. Her wide open eyes jutted from a face that suddenly lacked all flesh and muscle where the bones of her skull had been scoured by the passage of my teeth. Blood sprayed and bubbled from the horrific injury, flooding her mouth even as she went about dying a drawn-out and painful death.
Chewing slightly and swallowing I turned and walked away from Camoran’s Daughter as she died messily on the top of the ziggurat, ignoring how she tried crawling after me in desperation. For the next few short minutes I hunted down the last of the cultists where they tried to hide in the depths of the shrine. With nowhere else to go and unable to escape with me between them and the entrance they all ended up meeting their ends on the stone floor with their life-force spreading out in pools about them.
By the time I had returned, Camoran’s daughter was well and truly dead where she had attempted to pull herself up the side of the stone dais. There was no one else left alive except for me and the unmoving body of Viconia where she lay at the statue’s feet. Only the sounds of bodily fluids leaking out of shattered corpses broke the silence as I moved over to her, kicking the dead Altmer off the edge and listening to the body smack wetly with a sick sense of satisfaction.
Viconia was semi-conscious. The bolts having punched into her and flooding her veins with the paralytic that had left her comatose and barely awake. The shafts had been cut away but at least one that I could see still had its head lodged into her ebony flesh. I couldn’t risk trying to heal her or pulling the head out in my current state, and after such a fight I doubted I had enough mental strength to be able to control whatever restoration magicka I could draw upon. Her wounds weren’t bleeding however, which meant that the only chance that we both truly had was to get to Cheydinhal or to anyone who could help us.
I careful bundled Viconia into my arms and began to carry her out of the death-strewn caverns and into the sun. Her weight was almost enough to topple me, and without what little vampiric strength I still had I would have easily fallen face first into the gravel road and not woken.
Instead I concentrated solely on placing one foot in front of the other, staggering and swaying and refusing all of my body’s desires to simply lay down and sleep. For most part I strode on with heavy footfalls, dragging the bottoms of my boots in the dirt and only opening my good eye every few dozen paces to ensure I wasn’t going to stagger into a rut or off into the forests. Every step was agony and for what felt like years I plodded on aimlessly, following the track and moving towards the city a dozen kilometres away.
After what was easily an hour of slow travel I came across a group of figures ambling down the road. From what I could see through the blurriness of my left eye there were nearly twenty of them, all clad in mismatched armour and clothing and not a single one appearing to have anything in common with the others. As they turned towards us I despaired at the thought of facing bandits, as such numbers and in my current state meant that I was incapable of offering any form of resistance.
A towering brute of an orc, clad in heavy plate armour from the depths of his homeland strode forward with a mace over a shoulder and a collection of goblin heads hanging from his belt. Motioning for the others to stay back he strutted over, raising a hand in greeting and an eyebrow at our appearances.
"Hi friend." He grunted, casting an appraising eye over the two of us and appearing genuinely concerned. "You look as though you need a bit of help."
My laugh turned into a cough and I shrugged slightly despite Viconia’s unconscious body pressed to my chest. "You could say that."
Turning he gazed over the group at his back and began snapping orders. "Keld, Elidor. Get some ropes and make a pair of litters. I want some volunteers to carry them as well."
He gestured to a handful of individuals who signed wearily and handed over their weapons to their comrades as the Orc "volunteered" them to help us. Soon I was able to place Viconia onto a stretcher made from a collection of ropes, a cloak off someone’s back and a small collection of spears and polearms that made the frame. Another appeared and a powerfully built Nord with a braided beard helped place me onto it.
"We’ll get you two the Cheydinhal, don’t you worry." The orc followed alongside my stretcher, giving a sharp whistle to the group to continue on. The stretcher-bearers grunted under our weight but soon the group of us had set off down the road.
His tusked grin seemed massive and reminded me of a closed bear trap. "I’m Burz."
From my position on the makeshift stretcher I weakly shook his hand with a grip barely capable of crushing a flower. "Kaius."
"Good to meet you. Don’t worry about anything for now; the Fighters Guild will get you back to town."
We found ourselves receiving the hospitality of the Cheydinhal chapter of the Fighters Guild, being carried in through the gates of the city and hustled into the guild house without ceremony. I slipped in and out of unconsciousness for the entire journey back; the jostling, swaying motion of the stretchers both calming and painful in equal measures. By the time the sun set across the city the two of us were placed in separate rooms while the guild members sent for healers from the local Mages Guild and temples. We had been lucky in how I had staggered across the party of fighters on a goblin patrol, as that region of Cheydinhal county was apparently rarely travelled and home to all sorts of unpleasant inhabitants. The greatest threat was the greenskins flooding up from the southern marshlands which had provided ample sport and contracts for the local guild who routinely received contracts to exterminate or den or another of the creatures. Burz gro-Khash was the leader of the Cheydinhal Chapter and had led the latest hunt personally which had put them in the perfect place to render Viconia and I assistance on their way back to the city.
After he and the others left us in the capable hands of the temple priests they went about collecting their pay for the several dozen severed goblin heads they carried. Count Indarys had personally put bounties on the creatures who had been responsible for dozens of raids against farms and homesteads. This was a situation that presented the Fighters Guild excellent opportunities for coin.
I spent the first evening blearily being assisted in undressing and removing my armour for a pair of temple acolytes to carefully wash the copious amounts of blood from my flesh. What was mine and what was from the dozens I had killed was impossible to discern but I had gained a significant amount of fresh injuries, and a new array of scars to add to the collection I seemed intent on expanding. Between the bruising, the cracked bones, broken ribs, bolt wound in my shoulder, busted eye socket and sprained wrist I was a complete mess and I felt every inch of my battered body as I was finally allowed to lay down and rest while they did they best to repair the damage.
When morning finally broke and I was forced back into awareness I felt strong enough to stand and eat unassisted despite the best attempts from the temple healers to keep me in bed. Between the bursts of restoration magicka from the aged Altmer healer and the various salves and poultices applied liberally and almost at random across my body I was beginning to feel my usual strength and vitality again. I knew however, in the back of my mind at least that I had less to thank from the careful ministrations of healers and more from my darker nature for my faster-than-normal recovery. Even as I spooned down hot mouthfuls of porridge I could feel my bloated stomach filled with the enormous amount of blood and flesh I had consumed from the cultists in the shrine.
Ohtesse; the healer who had been assigned to me tutted and muttered seemingly to herself as she applied a fresh layer of stinking salves to my back. Soon the vivid red-black bruising would slow begin to dull and turn yellow but for the coming days at least it would be hidden beneath a mass of bandages and poultices. Ohtesse herself was closer to her sixtieth year than her fiftieth and had spent nearly her entire life as a healer in the Cheydinhal Cathederal of Arkay. Judging by her reactions and conversations with Burz Gro-Khash she was extremely well known around the guild.
"Mara wept!" she spluttered as she smeared another layer over my shoulder where the bolt had punched through to the other side. "Did you really think it was a good idea to rip the arrow back through with the head intact?"
"It was a crossbow bolt, and I wasn’t in the position to be delicate."
"You’re lucky not to have severed any of the major nerves," She replied, gently probing the raised scar tissues with her fingers. "or at the very least not tearing the main artery and bleeding to death."
"Guess I was born under the sign of the Thief." I replied, wincing as she applied another warm bolt of restoration magicka deep into the wound.
"I doubt it. Otherwise you wouldn’t have found yourself in this situation in the first place."
Heavy footfalls announced the plate armoured bulk of Burz in his orcish armour that he never seemed to take off. He walked in stuffing his face with some hunk of roasted meat and despite my lack of appetite for flesh it still smelt tantalising.
"So doc, is he going to live?"
"I wish you wouldn’t call me that. I’m a healer, not a surgeon." She sighed at the obviously well-used joke. "They will both be fine but will need days of healing. Kaius here might have a few twinges and a bit of muscular atrophy but otherwise will be fine."
"And Viconia?" I asked, peering over my shoulder at her. The surge of unease was heavy and made itself felt in my guts.
"She’ll sleep for the better part of today and tomorrow but once the toxins are flushed from her body and her humours are rebalanced she’ll be in better condition than what you’ll be."
"That’s comforting."
She quickly wrapped another layer of moistened bandages around my torso to ensure the salve remained damp enough to infuse with my skin and ease the bruising. "You really need to take better care of your fighters Burz. One day you aren’t going to have any left."
"You’d like that." The towering orc chuckled and forced his words around a hunk of meat he had been gnawing on. "It’d make your life a lot quieter."
She sighed and smiled slightly. "Unfortunately too quiet. I’d be left treating sprains and the sore legs of pilgrims." Sparing me a glance she rose to her feet and walked from the room. "Keep those bandages on for the duration of the day but once they have fully dried you can take them off and bathe. Otherwise there is little more that I can do."
Shifting my muscles slightly to feel the way the bandages clung to me I wrinkled my nose at the smell. "Thanks Ohtesse."
"Maybe you should think about a career change," she motioned to the brute form of Burz darkening the doorway and smiled with humour. "Before this one leaves you little more than a rolled up ball of scars."
"Your care for your patients is commendable." Burz was filled with humour as the two of them verbally sparred in what was obviously a long standing tradition. "Thanks for your help again."
"A pleasure as always."
As she disappeared out the door Burz closed it behind her before sitting down in the chair opposite. Grunting, he leaned back, pulling a scrap of parchment out from where he had stuffed it into his belt and handed it to me.
"I think I’d like an explanation on why I have suddenly found myself host to the heroes of Kvatch." He said, all traces of his humorous demeanour vanishing like a sunny sky before a storm. "Especially how they both look like they got drunk and thought it would be fun to punch Malacath in the balls."
The sheet of parchment was an issue of the Black Horse Courier, and the single page contained not only our names and the events at Kvatch and our closure of the Oblivion gate but also an inked image of both of our appearances. Taken by the mage I had glimpsed outside the main gate the mass-produced images had portrayed our likenesses quite accurately and providing my name to Burz when they had found us had merely confirmed our identities.
He watched me intently as I scanned over the page, quickly reading its contents while he finished off the last of his meal. "Well?"
I breathed heavily, looking over to him as he wiped grease off his hands onto the front of his orichalcum breastplate. "We’re both members of the Blades."
"Pull the other one." He response was more humorous than disbelieving.
"We were sent here to hunt down the group responsible for the assassination of the Emperor. Things didn’t go according to plan and we’re the only two that managed to survive."
"Judging by your appearances I’d use the term survive lightly." He wiped his mouth on the back of an enormous paw of a hand. "You especially should be dead I reckon. Even I wouldn’t have been able to be up and about the day after getting the shit beaten out of me like what you have. You sure you don’t have orc blood in you somewhere?"
For a moment I involuntarily thought back to the carnage in the shrine and one of the orc cultists I had bitten the throat out of. "Not that I’m aware of." I chuckled in an attempt of humour I didn’t feel.
"Well I don’t see the harm in both of you staying here for the next few days at least. When word gets out that the Fighter’s Guild rescued the heroes of Kvatch we’re bound to get more contracts." He smacked me on the shoulder with a friendly tap that with his strength rattled the teeth in my head. "So you can consider your debts with us for rescuing you and paying for healing covered at least."
"Spoken like a true mercenary." I joked back, and I saw in his grin that he had decided that he liked me.
"An orc’s gotta eat." His grin was massive around the broken tusks and flattened nose from being broken far too many times. "Feel free to wander around and make yourself at home. Both of your armours are downstairs with the smiths, at least what bits were worth repairing and we’ve got the tailors fixing up your clothes. Should be a day or two before it’s all ready but otherwise I reckon it’ll be a week before you’re going to be able to travel further than to take a piss."
"We’ll try not to intrude too much. I appreciate the help, and Viconia might once she wakes up."
"You’re both a lot tougher than you look. Ohtesse pulled three bolts out of your friend’s chest with enough poison in her to knock me on my arse and you look like you got into a wrestling match with an ogre clan. You’ll have to explain just what you were doing around here to result in such a state."
I rubbed at the stubble on my jaw absently, thinking hard for a moment. "I’ll have to send a message back to the boss first and find out what to do from here. What I can tell you will be up to him."
"Fair enough I suppose. If I find him first, I’ll send our porter up to you. He might be a tad ugly with the whole missing-a-nose thing but he’ll get you sorted. Just track me down if you need anything but otherwise your friend is in the next room down the hall."
With that and his curiosity satisfied for the moment he left me to finish the rest of my meal. For a while I simply sat and stared at the congealing mass of oats in the bowl with my conflicting thoughts running through my head. The last day had left me feeling shaken and I couldn’t keep the memories of what had happened in the shrine away. The sights of blood, death and such overwhelming violence made me shake with a terror that made it impossible to stand. It wasn’t the death or even how close I had come to dying myself several times during the battle but the way I had revelled in the bloodshed. There was no way for me to deny the fact that I had enjoyed every second of it, even when I was nearly dead or severely injured. The throats I had torn out, the bodies I had hacked into pieces and even Camoran’s daughter, who’s face I had eaten didn’t even create the slightest remorse or pity for anything or anyone other than myself. The vampire had taken over my soul, but what concerned me more was maybe it hadn’t corrupted me but instead had released a darker side that I never knew existed.
The Guild Porter, a grizzled veteran of many years and the wounds and scars to show for it came within minutes of Burz leaving. His face permanently disfigured from a massive gash that had claimed an eye and the hole in his face where his nose should’ve been was hidden behind a leather patch, he was terrifying enough to stop all but the most determined of thieves trying their luck on the guild coffers. Barely even saying a word to me he simply came in, handed me a few sheets of parchment, an inkwell with its wax stopper and quill and simply left again.
Carefully, and as neatly as I could I wrote out a short missive to Jauffre, thankful that the legion ensured at everyone in its ranks knew more than just killing.
Currently staying at Cheydinhal Fighter’s Guild. Viconia and myself severely injured and receiving treatment for coming days.
All others believed dead.
MC escaped with Amulet, unable to follow. Will return once fit to travel.
With one of our last gold septims I gave the wax sealed letter to the porter and found myself seated in the room next to Viconia’s bed. There was nothing for me to do while she was still unconscious and my current health meant that I had struggled to walk the handful of metres between our rooms with a body that had since given up trying to ignore the pain. So I busied myself with reading from the handful of books in the guild and dozing in the chair next to her bed.
She was terribly pale, skin a sickly grey that left her looking more like a Dunmer than a Drow even with her white hair. Wrapped in bandages and showing signs of the poison that had been pumped through her veins she looked strangely fragile and nothing like the tough, hard bitten companion who had travelled by my side for the past month. But she was healing, slowly compared to my unnatural nature but the collections of salves and medicines that Ohtesse and the other healers had used were soaking up the last traces of the poisons and ensuring that her wounds wouldn’t become infected.
And so I waited, resting lightly and occasional looking over her prone body and contemplating everything that had happened. The more I thought of it the more I came to believe that it wasn’t entirely the vampire’s instincts to survive and to inflict revenge that had led me into the tunnels and caverns near Lake Arrius. I had gone in there seeking Viconia and I knew that there would have been nothing that would’ve stopped me short of death itself from getting to her.
There was also the question of the abilities that I had used within the caverns, the ability to transform into mist and a flock of bats made me feel uneasy as I remembered the sensations. The untold power of the vampire was one thing; the ability to merge with the darkness, to explode into multitudes of separate entities and change into a cloud was quite something else entirely. I had never heard of such a thing before, even within the realms of alteration and illusion magicka and it was definitely something I had never heard of a Vampire being able to do. But as I supposed, such abilities had never been witnessed by mortals before or if they had it was likely that they were never believed or simply never survived the encounter.
I decided that the first chance I got I would have to go and try to learn how to use my new abilities and try to gain some form of control over the beast that was consuming my soul. While effective, I didn’t want to go into a situation again where I would lose control as there would be no telling what carnage I would inflict on innocents or more especially; Viconia.
Viconia slept for nearly the entire day, waking on occasion but never regaining full consciousness until later in the evening. She would open her eyes from time to time, look around the room confused for a few seconds before falling unconscious again. I stayed in the room for the whole day, looking over her and watching the few occasions that someone from the temple would come to check on her and change dressings.
Dozing lightly as the afternoon deepened I leaned back in my chair, tilting it back until my shoulders were pressed into the wall and my feet were up on the table between me and the door. I had been sitting there for hours but for the moment I simply sat with my eyes closed, arms crossed across my chest and concentrating on listening to my surroundings. With a significant amount of control that left my jaws tingling I called on my new abilities and felt my hearing improve until I could hear the movement of rats in the basement, the sounds of the Fighters outside going about their practice and the multitudes of people walking the streets. I could smell baking goods from several city blocks away, and I knew that if I had opened my eyes at that point I would’ve been able to see the pair of flies buzzing around the doorframe and count their legs from my position five metres away.
"Sleeping on the job are we?"
The soft voice next to me broke my concentration and I felt my face relax and the tingling of my jaws and teeth fade away in an instant.
"Just taking a nap." I replied, turning and looking over to where Viconia still lay with her head on the pillow. She still looked distinctly unhealthy but there was no hiding the vitality that was making its way back into her features as she lay there. "It’s good to see you awake again."
She pushed herself up weakly, bracing her forearms under herself and groaning with the effort and pain from the wounds in her chest. Anticipating her request, I held out a mug full of fresh water which she took from my hand with the tiniest nod of gratitude.
"How long was I asleep?"
"The better part of two days. We were found yesterday on the way back to the city by some of the local Guildsmen and they brought us back here and sent for healers."

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