Split (1)

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They initially remained unaware of my presence, so intent on their consumption of their corpse that it took more than me becoming visible for them to realise the threat. Only when I hissed with white hot rage did their heads snap around with the speed of a releasing bowstring, stopping them in mid meal as their black, soulless eyes appearing as though they were startled deer. The lack of comprehension was their undoing as I strode across the gore flecked marble, growling with vampiric hatred as I beheld the way the shredded remains of their meals clung to their faces and chins.
Almost as a single entity they realised that although I was one of their kind, I was not one of them. Some form of instinct, or unnatural awareness either by my scent or vampiric nature alerted them to the danger. Hissing and growling incoherently at my breach of their territory they initially acted as though I was an animal from a different pack, acting more concerned with the fact that I threatened their meal more than my intent as I redrew my dagger in my spare hand.
A flash of silver rippled through the darkness and the skinning dagger thockked to the hilt in an eye socket. There was a moment of silence as they watched one of their number suddenly slump forward hard onto its face, flesh burning from within even before it came fully to rest.
Bursting into forms of pure animalistic fury the remaining three vampire ancients rushed me, dropping the last vestiges of their meals to the blood-soaked floor. They moved as shadows, exploding with powerful strength and energies as they charged. I met their hatred with my own, but I still had enough sanity in my mind to see how that two of them drew weapons of their own despite the darkness of their souls.
Unlike the others I had killed in their crypts, these three were not decrepit or frail creatures to be cut down while they slumbered. They were unfathomably old, powerful from their natures and the time that they had existed and between the three of them they would have been more of a match for me if not for my daedric fuelled corruption.
The first exploded into ash and bones as it ran shrieking onto Sunchild. For a second I had to wrench the suddenly heated blade from where it had been trapped in a smouldering spine, kicking the burning remains away to meet the pair of weapon wielding fiends head on.
All forms of finesse may have been lost from whatever portions of their minds remained intact in the depths of bloodlust, but their very natures ensured they were capable adversaries. Even before Sunchild was freed from the burning remains I had to twist aside from a downwards swing of a crudely forged mace. The wind coming off the heavy lead and iron lump of metal fluttered my cloak and mask with its passage, giving a fraction of a second for the other vampire to attack me from the other side.
Dancing my way between the two of them I dodged and weaved through their blows, shrugging off hits and grasping hands and parrying what strikes I could with Sunchild. They were hissing with rage and frustration while I merely used my anger and disgust to fuel me on, busting my knuckles in the throat and mouth of one of the Vampires with a pair of bone crunching blows that sent it reeling.
Spitting fangs and choking horribly on its ruined teeth, it rushed back into the fray. Both were suffering wounds while I had remained untouched, the corroded shortsword that one of them wielded with questionable ability failing to do anything more than bounce off the protection of my incredible armour. One lost a hand to a deadly backswing of my sword, squealing like a goblin even as I rammed the full length of Sunchild into its sternum until the point erupted from between its shoulders.
Hurling the combusting corpse into the path of the vampire spitting bone fragments, I forced it to back away for just long enough to retrieve my Ayleid blade. The creature had to twist away to stop from being tangled in the tumbling ruin of its kin, suddenly finding itself facing me with in the ash strewn hall surrounded by its fellows that I had slew with an almost casual ease.
The moment of hesitation seemed to last for an hour as the creature paused in mid pounce, glancing between me, my sword and the remains of its kin with a growing need to survive. What I had never expected from a vampire was fear, and it did little but galvanise my will to slay every and all of the creatures responsible for such death and pain. It quivered for a moment, hissing in distress as it turned to flee further into the ruins.
It managed to get half a dozen metres from the shredded remains of the child it had been consuming before I caught it. Roaring with anger I hurled myself forward with incredible speed, I took it in the lower spine with Sunchild and left it mewling and grasping at its suddenly nerveless legs. With its spine severed, and feeling every centimetre of cold metal twisting in its lower back it struggled to crawl away from me, even as I strode closer to it and pushed it into the gore streaked floor with a plated boot.
Whatever pleas or curses it may have had for me were cut off as I pulled Sunchild out of its flesh, kicking it over so it could look up at my darkened form. It knew that I shared its taint as we mutually stared into the pits of corruption that we had for eyes, but the knowledge brought no benefit as I pushed the toe of my boot into its throat. The crackle of its trachea shivered up my leg as I pressed down hard, ignoring the way that it began scrabbling on my armoured calves before beginning the drawn out and painful process of suffocating to death.
While the creature gargled and choked on the floor, grasping at its throat with razored fingernails I walked over to one of its dead fellows, stomping on an ash coated skull before pulling my singed dagger from where it had been trapped. The creature behind me began burning in places as it clawed at its throat, shredding away strips of flesh in its attempts to clear its crushed airways. Every chunk of skin and sinew that splattered to the floor sparked and flamed in the darkness like cooling embers lifted up from a campfire. Ignoring its desperate plight I simply turned and walked through the towering portal and into the throne room.
Built in a facsimile of Nonungalo; the throne room of Nornalhorst was smaller in scale but would have been no less grand during the height of the Ayleid Empire. Similar statues of long dead elves lined the walls, engravings proclaiming their deeds and triumphs carved into every available centimetre of stone and metres above my head a flowing mosaic depicting gods and long dead kings had been painstakingly made with pieces of stone smaller than a fingernail. It would have been a glorious sight before falling into decay, but the darkness infusing the ruins had changed it into something far darker.
Where Nonungalo had been mostly clean and abandoned despite the minotaurs living within its depths, the throne room of Nornalhorst was a vision of the worst depths of Oblivion. Created in the horrific honour of the Daedric Prince responsible for siring the first vampires, the Throne Room had been transformed. Forty metres long, nearly thirty wide and home to two dozen statues it no longer resembled a hall where the powerful and influential of the Ayleids had gathered before their kings. Instead it appeared as a combination of a sacrificial chamber, crypt and slaughterhouse with various implements of torture and pain scattered about at random. The far wall behind the granite throne had been covered in banners of tanned skin, spliced together with bone needles that linking the leathery curtains with white spears of human remains. The statues themselves had been similarly draped in skin in insane mockeries of noblemen and warriors clad in furs.
The alcoves along the walls had long since been ransacked for their treasures and like many of the rooms within the undercity had been filled with the decaying corpses of dozens of beasts and creatures. Men and Mer were mixed with goblins and every beast imaginable, and within the stacks I even saw a maggot-writing corpse of a land dreugh.
Every step suctioned to the floor momentarily as the layers of blood congealed and puckered under the soles of my boots. Blackened crests of gore were frozen in time where they had solidified, the never-ending lake of blood and viscera covering every centimetre of the floor in a horrid carpet of faded lifeforce. Every step I took threatened to trip or slide my boots in a thickened puddle, leaving feet covered to the ankles in dried flakes and horrid spurts when I broke through the dried crust into the paste underneath.
I made my way through the rows of tortured statues, their eyes seemingly weeping blood from the skinned remnants of pain and torture that clad them in their foul coverings. Blood daubed runes covered the surfaces of the skin-cloaks, hurting my eyes while somehow feeling alluring to the darkness dwelling in my soul and corrupting my flesh. The further I stepped forward the more I could see that deeper into the room the bodies became less fresh and decaying and more ragged collections of bones. The raised platform that the ancient throne had been built upon had been lifted even higher as the vampiric coven had spent untold years and undertaken countless murders to construct a new platform made entirely out of humanoid skulls. In a square five metres wide and the throne in the centre, it spoke of horrific power and will, drawing my eyes to the desiccated body lounging on the throne that appeared to not have moved in decades, if not centuries.
"You have the stink of daedra about you."
A few short paces before the skulled platform and throne I stopped cold, feeling my guts cramp at the echoing hiss as it resounded throughout the room. For a moment I could feel the ages pressing down on the voice's owner, the decades of experience and the sheer level of power at his command.
Sunchild returned to my hand unconsciously as my eyes narrowed and peered closer at the figure on the throne. Resting with a single leg dangling over the armrest and a lengthy sword of incredible make clasped firmly in a mailed fist, it appeared little more than a corpse placed into the throne in a relaxed position of power and arrogance. When the head lifted slightly, and the reddened cores of its eyes glared at me through the darkness I couldn’t help but stagger backwards with an oath of revulsion on my lips.
The vampire seated on the throne had been sitting there, watching my entrance to his hall with supreme confidence and an arrogance born of the immeasurable years he had strode Tamriel. The sheer vampiric power that throbbed through his veins thudded against my skull, and each of his limbs hummed with tension like a strung two-hundred-pound bow. This was no animalistic creature lost to the depths of its own depravity, but a monster from the worst of nightmares with the experience and will to match.
Skin stretched taut over quivering muscles and bones, paled from centuries since experiencing its last caress of light, there was little to show of the being that he once was. With a jolt of horror, I realised that this pale skinned being had once been a dunmer, long since stripped of the ebony coloured hue and its humanity from the curse.
Eyes hidden in the sunken depths of their sockets gazed over me as the ancient vampire carefully sat up, staring down on me from its skulled platformed throne with something approaching amusement. Unlike me there was no sign that the beast within its soul had ever been restrained, instead every bone was tight under the skin, jaws pressing slightly forward to allow for the throat rending bite.
"Volmyr." I stated simply, making an educated guess to the creatures identity.
Like dying lanterns trapped in the depths of a well, the eyes burned into mine and the slight grimace of annoyance was not lost on me. "That’s Lord Volmyr to you, youngblood."
Scraping of metal echoed through the room as he drew himself to his full height, rising from the chair with flakes of dried blood floating through the air from his armour. It was a terrible, fluted steel plate of an archaic design long since fallen out of fashion in the empire. Rust may have been enacting the long campaign to reduce its effectiveness but the day where it crumbled into ruin was still far in the future. Blood had been rubbed onto every plate and crease, smearing deep into the burnished metal and into his desiccated features. His eyes had been turned into dark pools with layers of blood surrounding them, only seemed to make the gaze even deeper in his skull.
"Who sent you whelp?" he murmured, sniffing the air like a bloodhound as he took a couple of steps towards me. "The daedra stink of your flesh is hiding your sire."
"No one sent me." I replied after a moment of hesitation, causing Volmyr to tilt his head inquisitively and sniffing the air once more.
"Oh?" there was a series of crackles and pops of breaking skulls as he took further steps forward until less than a dozen metres separated us. His armour had once been a work of art, but age and blood had corrupted its elven elegance. Some of the blood were little more than discoloured patches of rust, while others appeared livid and red as if only freshly spewed from gushing arteries.
"I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Alarissa isn’t one for sending an assassin, and that Skingradian bastard doesn’t have the balls for it. In that case, who are you to come into my home with such suicidal stupidity?"
"I’m Kaius."
There was a flicker of amusement. "Just Kaius?" the baritone cackle sent chills up my spine and I found myself struggling against the growing fear of the creature’s power. "Who is your sire? He must be an interesting member of our kind to have fathered such a creature."
"I wouldn’t know. I stabbed him to death long before I fully turned."
The crestfallen expression darkened the pits of shadow of the vampire’s eyes and I found myself gripping Sunchild ever tighter. "Ah. Of course. You’re nothing more than a mistaken abortion instead of a gifted creature of the night. That explains how one such as you ended up reeking of the creatures of Oblivion."
Squelching into the morass of gore and rot he walked around me, holding an enormous scabbard and curved sword by the centre like a sceptre or Legion drill cane. For several moments he was silent, intent on merely studying me as sweat began sticking my hood, mask and coif to my skin.
"You are every inch of a champion like all those others who have proceeded you, but being one of my kin isn’t something I’ve come to expect."
"I might be a vampire." I hissed, turning slowly and keeping him in front of me. "But I am not one of your kin."
My reply seemed to amuse him and he stopped in place, boots sinking into the blood and grinning through a pair of fangs that were so long that they reached his chin. "Ah, but you are. Even now, especially in this place you can feel that thirst within you. Even moments after you have lifted your lips from a throat and the sweet taste permeates your mouth you crave for more. You can drain the arteries of dozens in a single gluttonous feasting or until your stomach bursts but you will continue yearning for more."
Gesturing to me with the lengthy scabbard he pointed it to my chest and cocked his head to the side. "You are nothing but the thirst. You are not a vampire. The vampire is you."
Rising to the surface with the first echoes of the beast, my choler rose red hot at his words. "I am never going to be an animal." I spat, staring him down. "I will not be a creature like you or any of the others I have slain in this pit. I have far greater control."
"Do you really believe that?"
Once more the chilling laugh raised the hairs on body. "I have lived for centuries, travelling the bounds of Tamriel and beyond and fed on so many that even Molag Bal would struggle to guess how many lives I have consumed. But I do know this; the thirst will always win."
Slowly he lifted his head to the altar at my back, the hideous, tainted thing shaped in representation to the daedric prince responsible for the birth of such a curse. "Other’s mightn’t be able to tell, but I know that you have done something that none of us ever considered possible, let alone achieved. You have drunk from the fountain of immeasurable power, and in doing so you have learned something that takes others of our kind decades, if not centuries to understand.
My mouth went as dry as the deserts of Elsweyr, and I knew exactly what he meant. "Blood. Blood is our greatest strength, but it is also our greatest weakness."
With solid clangs of metal that echoed like an anvil being hit with a smithing hammer, he leant the sword up against him and clapped his gauntleted hands together.
"Exactly." His approval was like maggots across my skin and I felt like I was going to be violently sick. "The blood is the key to our very nature. Each drop sustains and strengthens us. You know this! You know this more than the few of my pathetic followers that you have slain. In four hundred years I have drunk from every creature in the world! When we feed, we consume part of what makes our meal what they are. If you drink from a bear, you will gain a portion of its strength. Blood from a mage will increase your skill with the magical arts. A mighty warrior will infuse you with the hint of their martial prowess and the more you drink over time, the greater your powers will become!"
"But you-" He said, jabbing his finger at me as though it was a dagger. "You have drunk from the font of oblivion. From the very veins of a creature not of this world, and have gained something greater in doing so."
Like an excited child waking on the day of the New Life Festival he almost appeared to jump in place with a boundless energy, staring at me unblinkingly as he did so.
"Tell me," his voice churned and hissed around his fangs. "How did it taste, becoming one with the daedra? Did it taste of power? Did it taste whole and filling as the blood of a unsullied virgin? Or sickly and watered down as from an old crone?"
At his words I stepped back, feeling my stomach turn in on itself. I couldn't help but think back to when I had torn open the throat of the Dremora and felt the hot black tang of corruption spurt into my throat. If I concentrated I could still feel the power it had contained circling my body deep within my veins, forcing memories of the destruction I had wreaked after feeding and in the depths of the Mythic Dawn’s lair back into the forefront of my mind.
"Yessssss..." he hissed, his body twitching as he beheld my reaction. "You remember all too well. You recognise the power that it has within you. Everyone you have drank from, and anyone that you will consume will remain part of you. Their strength will be yours. Their weakness will be yours also."
"Enough." Recoiling I stepped away from the twitching vampire lord, seeing the look of surprise and annoyance overwhelming the alien emotion it had been experiencing. "I did not come here to talk or listen to the words of a crypt worm. I came here to avenge the deaths and pain you monsters have inflicted and retrieve the Light of Dawn."
There was a chuckle once more from the creature as he hunched slightly lower, drawing the scabbarded sword from where it rested against him. "Monsters? That’s rich coming from one such as yourself. And the sword you seek is no longer here."
Carefully. Slowly, he drew the immense, curved blade from its ebony and palladium sheath, the edge of the blade humming with an unsurpassed keenness.
With an expert’s skill he twisted his wrist until the blade was facing vertically, rising nearly a full metre above his head with its claymore like length. He stared at it, running a caressing hand up the blunt edge as though it was a lover’s thigh and seeming enraptured by the weapon.
"It’s beautiful, is it not?"
I stared at the weapon, seeing the forging of such a weapon in its curved length that showed it ancient birth at the hands of the Ayleids. Like the sword in my hand it was gracefully curved, a hilt seemingly fashioned from liquid emeralds and malachite but there was something foul and unnerving about the weapon. With dawning realisation, I stepped away from the grinning vampire lord, seeing how the darkness of the throne room increased even further as the void that was the metal drank from the last vestiges of light.
"In the hands of the Maegalla, the Light of Dawn was responsible for slaying hundreds, if not thousands of our brothers and sisters. Now? Now it is a mockery of everything it once stood for!"
Twirling the blade,almost experimentally the predatory gleam in his eyes grew even more apparent, and with it so did my foreboding.
"Where once we strode through the light of the sun, and now are confined to darkness; so too is the bane of all vampires. The Light of Dawn is now a symbol of the very changes were all go through when gifted with our Lord’s blessings. While it cost dozens of my brood and all my pet warlocks, the Nightkiss is far more than a collection of hammered metal."
"So... You did corrupt the sword." My words were a simple statement, not a question. The sheer levels of revulsion and hatred at what he had done was tightening my jaws and restructuring my face under the concealing hood and mask. While sharing the same taint of the soul as the vampire lord, the beast within been seemed to share my loathing at the creature’s actions.
Volmyr laughed, a sound that plucked at my very soul with horror. Insanity brought on by the long years of his curse flickered in the soulless pits of his eyes and I knew that he could sense my growing fear.
"Well youngblood. I think I will eschew the part where I offer one capable of killing my minions the chance to share my blood. Anyone who has already stabbed one sire to death is certainly not to be trusted."
I leapt first, cutting outwards with a vicious slice that on a mortal or lesser being would’ve left them scooping up their intestines. Instead, with terrifying ease Volmyr simply leant backwards as though shying away from an unwanted kiss, not even concerned at my feeble attempt at ending the fight before it could begin.
Ducking aside from another strike he threw the scabbard aside, the skin of his face tightening perceptibly before roaring with hatred borne of centuries of corruption. I quailed under his overwhelming rage, even as he cut downwards with a strike meant to hew me from forehead to groin.
Without thinking I flicked Sunchild upwards, blocking the strike with a clash of metal that briefly left sparks floating in the air before the soul-consuming blackness of the blade drained them dry. The impact of the blades ran through my arm as the light consuming edge of the Nightkiss slid down the full length of Sunchild’s downward facing blade. Suddenly thrown off guard, Volmyr grunted in surprise as his sword suddenly fell away from where he had aimed it, sinking three quarters of its length into the marble floor as though the stone was made of nothing more than heat softened wax.
For a moment we stared in shock; I at the impossible cutting power of the weapon that could cut through a metre of solid rock, and he at the sword in my hands that seemed capable of withstanding such an edge.
"A child of the dawn?" He murmured, gripping the deadly night-black blade with both hands and heaving it out of the floor. "You are just full of surprises... Aren’t you whelp?"
I didn’t answer, suddenly realising that this was a fight unlike anything that I had ever encountered and trying desperately to ignore the fact that my body had gone prickly with cold sweat. With a chilling roar that was almost consumed by even worse laughter he finished ripping the sword from the floor before hurling himself at me with inhuman speed.
The Nightkiss sung as it was swiped through the air, the whip-cracks of the deadly blade feeling like hammer blows to my gut as I struggled to hold my own against the creature. Months of practicing against the incredible skill of Belisarius and Viconia’s Drowish reflexes had turned me from a middling swordsman to one capable of holding his own in nearly any tournament in the Empire, but in the nightmarish depths of the corrupted ruin I found myself little more than an insect. Volmyr had lived for so long, and had grown in power with every feeding that even men such as Belisarius would have been nothing more than a mewling babe. Only through unleashing my control on my vampiric side and receiving its enhanced reflexes and speed was I capable of keeping such a foe at bay.
I was strong enough to wrestle a juvenile minotaur and tear off limbs, but Volmyr was stronger by a considerable margin. I was fast enough to cross a hundred meters in seconds, and yet he was able to leap behind me in the space of a blink and within a dozen blows I was convinced he was merely taunting and toying with me. I was saved by one strike by the unnatural substance of the daedroth scales that resisted the haunting edge of the Nigthkiss just long enough for me to instinctively swipe it away and deliver a riposte that hit nothing but air.
The whole time the vampire ancient taunted me, his laugher ringing mockingly in my ears as he ducked and weaved around my strikes made pathetic by his nature.
Roaring with the full strength of my vampiric and daedric nature my face split in a series of sickening cracks that only just registered as pain to my tortured mind. For a moment he stopped, once more surprised as my mask was pushed down by my shifting features to reveal a face of a daedra staring into his blackened soul. My following attack was even faster than before, forcing him to stagger backwards and flip backwards with an impossible swiftness unmatched by anything short than a falling star.
"Impossible." He grunted from his position on top of a desecrated statue, jutting forward like a hideous gargoyle of blood and depravity. By now his words were so animalistic that I could barely understand them, his speech little more than a collection of strung together hisses and snarls.
"You wanted to know what it is like." I snarled, every tooth in my lengthening maw sliding further out and sharpening before his eyes. "Let me show you."
"Daedra blood or not, you are no match for me!"
We hurled ourselves at each other once more, our forms becoming little more than blurs as we slammed together and crossed blades. Leaping from the top of the statue he swung the corrupted Light of Dawn in another arc that left one of the statues to quiver as half a finger width of stone was sliced into nothingness. The blade was incredible, and had been fashioned in such a way that despite its ninety centimetre blade, it was capable of being wielded with one or both hands. Sunchild, while peerless and capable of withstanding the corrupted sword was significantly shorter and left me with a considerable disadvantage in reach. This was something that Volmyr used to its full potential, swinging wildly and leaving more than one statue to teeter precariously before sliding into destruction after being entirely cut through.
As I danced and parried with Sunchild, somehow my dagger had found its way into my other hand as I relied more and more on the burgeoning strength of the daedra infused corruption of my body to keep his superior strength and blows at bay. More and more I found myself stepping closer to him to enter inside the incredible reach of his tainted blade, slowly forcing him to give ground through superior footwork from several hours of training with Viconia and the blades.
The daedra in my vampiric soul turned my heart and mind into ice, consuming and banishing my fears until I was an empty core, void of all emotions. Volmyr however was becoming more and more bestial with every blow that I parried or that narrowly missed me; his building rage creating tiny chinks in his defences that I was slowly able to take advantage of.
For the first time in months I was tiring, even as his attacks became more and more identifiable with his building rage. While I was finding it easier to dodge, parry and counter his every blow, the power and speed that he put into every single one was another story entirely. Soon my arms and body were burning with exertion while he seemed to be as fresh as he was when we started.
Within minutes we had traded blows and strikes that would've taken half an hour to conduct. Every strike could and did shatter marble with their power, moved faster than the eye could see and without my enhanced reflexes I wouldn’t have had a hope against such a being. I understood how an experienced, well equipped vampire hunter like Threnodir could have been captured and killed by such a foe. He was stronger than a minotaur, faster than lightning and had the stamina of a mountain.
Volmyr finally managed to pin me in place, forcing our swords together and pushing hard that my boots skidded through the muck and gore on the floor. Growling and forcing my weakening muscles to lock tight, our blades were crossed, snarling visages less than a hands breadth apart until he slammed my back into the wall. With nothing more than our swords between us I could feel his rank, rotten breath on my face and feel the spray of saliva as he snapped and bit at me. Splattering across my armoured breastplate, the strands of drool from his blackened jaws soaked everything above my sternum as he attempted to sink his fangs into the flesh of my skull. I tried to lever him off, pressing upwards with all my strength but it was all to no avail, it was almost like he weighed more than a minotaur titan. Grimacing with sheer effort I only just kept the light-consuming edge of his blade from the flesh of my shoulder, feeling the pressure of the blade as it came to rest against my armour.
With the maniacal gleam in his eye, and still snapping and biting Lord Volmyr pressed down harder and I found myself crying out as I slid down the wall. My armour was creaking and groaning under the strain, the pressure of Nightkiss making itself felt as it began to slide through my steel pauldron with all the resistance of a knife through butter. There was a sensation of weight against my shoulder as it cut through the steel plate and found the unnatural protection of the daedroth scales, but there was less than a second before the light consuming blade defeated the scales protection to find the meat underneath.
For a second I locked eyes with Volmyr, realising with a start that if I remained within this position I was dead, and realising that I still had more than one trick left up my sleeve. With a savage headbutt right into his snarling mouth, I felt his front two teeth shatter and a fang punch into the skin of my forehead. There was satisfaction from the impact, which was almost enough to drown out the flare of pain from the blow and the hint of a headache that would follow. Despite the brief, short lived respite, it gave me enough time to concentrate and shape-change my form to escape.
Tingling with the customary wave of nausea and pins and needles I faded into mist that broke and flowed around him, the pressure of the sword at my shoulder fading into nothingness. Shrieking with rage and surprise Volmyr suddenly lurched forward, smashing face first into the wall with a sickening crack of breaking bone. I floated around him, condensing back into my human form even before he had impacted into the solid marble, cutting out with Sunchild into his now undefended back.
Yet again I underestimated his speed and strength, my blade somehow parried millimetres from his spine even as he twisted around and roared with a face even more gruesome with his nose now smeared across his face. Nightkiss once more flickered up through the space between us, batting Sunchild away with the clash of metal and the sound of tearing silk. Short lived and momentary, the surprise at my other ability faded away as he launched himself into another blistering series of slicing and cutting blows.
Using everything I had I twisted and turned, relying on my recent training and ability with a sword to fend him off, and becoming mist every few seconds to effortlessly bypass blows that should have bisected me where I stood. The surprise was wearing off, but the transformations allowed me to take advantage of his overreaching blows and increasing rage to come to grips with me. The infinitely sharp blade of the Nightkiss had left me bleeding from several wounds up my arms and down my legs outside of the protection of the daedroth scales but now Volmyr too was suffering. With every gash on my person I had repaid him with a worse one.
Where a slice had been carved into the side of my jaw, barely enough to register I had managed to cleave away a great hunk of his cheek that left him bereft of an ear and revealing the darkened hole of his mouth. Where he had gashed my arm just below the elbow, I had hacked down on his own, buckling the elven armour and opening a smile in his forearm had severed some of the minor tendons. He was missing a finger from a strike that had only narrowly missed disarming him, and part of his thigh jetted corrupted ichor down his armoured leg.
The Nightkiss was incredible, and several of the minor injuries I had sustained had remained closed for several seconds after being suffered, the keenness of the edge not making itself felt until I moved or twisted a certain way that would open the wounds in slivers of agony. Continuing to push through the pain of dozens of close calls I could feel my confidence build as I looked into his ruined face.
Blood streamed from his mashed nose, front teeth between his incisors nothing more than broken pegs and his whole face was slowly blooming into a terrible bruise from the impact into the marble wall. At some point during the fight after I managed a lucky slash he had cast off a damaged sleeve of his armour from the bicep down, leaving his heavily muscled arm open to the air. The slash had cut deeply into his rerebrace, slicing through skin, muscle and scouring bone. Wet meat glistened in the faint light of the overhead welkynd stones stuck in the ceiling and I could see the whiteness of bone through the opened gash in his arm. Despite suffering a wound that would've debilitated a lesser being, he continued like it was nothing more than an insect bite, forcing his ruined arm to obey his commands with nothing more than ferocious will.
My blood was pounding in my ears, my breaths ragged and short as I struggled to quell the burning in my limbs. Pain flared in almost every part of my flesh as the dozens of minor cuts and wounds mixed together until my body was screaming at me in its torment. My dagger skittered across the congealed bodily fluids, Sunchild was knocked aside with a sweeping blow as I futilely slashed at his wounded arm once more, and as time slowed down he twisted like a fencer, wielding the enormous curved blade like a rapier as he punched it through my armour, my shoulder and pinned me to the wall like a fly.
Erupting into flames of agony, my left shoulder first burned with cold fire, before numbness flooded the limb and most of my torso. I roared with my anger, feeling the vampire lord twist the peerless blade in my arm with utter contempt before ripping it out of the wall and me and leaving me to slump to the floor utterly spent. A fresh layer of gore sprayed across the mass on the floors surface, my own lifeforce being added to the layers and the history of torture and death that had stained every surface of the hall.
"I haven’t had a fight like that in centuries." He gasped, standing over me and finally showing weakness as I knelt defeated before him. My shoulder throbbed with a dull agony and I swore and cursed at how he had stabbed me in the same place where the crossbow bolt had imbedded itself. The ruined mess of scar tissue hurt even more than if he had stabbed me in a healthy portion of my arm.
Sorrow and defeat clawed at my mind and I couldn’t help but think of Viconia as the vampire lord stood gloating over me. The realisation of how I wasn’t going to be coming back to her hurt more than the fresh hole in my arm or the gashes across my body, and a mixture of anger and sadness tore my guts apart.
"But you manage to hurt me." The stinging blow across my face loosened teeth in my jaws and I spat blood, looking up at him through a face that was all daedra. "That was annoying."
I struggled to rise but he simply swapped the Nightkiss over to his bared right arm, pushing his boot into my chest and forcing me against the wall. "You ruined my armour, killed my coven and actually managed to draw my blood. For that I’m going to make this slow and painful."
A wad of blood struck him in the eyes and I grinned with a mouthful of fangs at his rising anger. Swiping out the Nightkiss to flick my blood clear of its blade he held it up to me, almost pressing the edge of it across my face.
"I think you can keep your eyes. To begin with at least. Once I’m finished with the rest of you I’ll stuff them down your throat."

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