Skin tingling, I felt her everywhere at once, erogenous areas more sensitive than ever. Lips upon nipples, yet pulling at earlobes; tongue exploring, darting into ear and between toes; fingers probing cleft, brushing nape of neck. How was this possible? I had no senses to ponder, only to revel. When she bit me, it was indescribable: as though I climaxed a half-hundred times at once.
Serana’s father defeated, we at last journeyed to Solstheim to find Vilja.
She was not there.
XIX The Cure
I felt ill, and I missed Vilja. I missed her banter, her healing; the light she provided deep underground and in murkiest night; her modest battle prowess; her funny accent and mispronunciations; her humour; even her cooking. I missed her complaints of sore feet; frequent demands to have a say in what we were doing and whence we travelled. How I longed to be able to massage her tiny feet just now; let her cook me something; lead us wherever she wanted to go; play-fight with her (even though I avoided it, like swimming and massaging her feet, because it was too erotic). But I had lost her.
All I knew about her home was that her family lived in Solstheim. Even so, although I had now explored its depth and breadth with Serana – completing several quests, including resolving the issue of my dragon blood heritage – I found no trace of her or her family; she seemed unknown there. Mayhap if I had known her family name…?
Further befouling my mood, Serana began to test my patience. If the insufferable vampiress was not complaining of the weather, she was raising dead bodies. Wolves and skeevers were disquieting enow, but humankind was rather something else; I found it more than unsettling, beyond eerie; it disturbed me greatly, even when she used former enemies thusly. The grain of wheat that burst the sack was when she raised an innocent miner, a victim of draugr in an archeological dig I had financed.
I skewered the zombie that had ‘slain’ the miner’s corpse, which disintegrated into a pile of dust just as had the corpses we animated not long ago. “Stop it!” I snapped, whirling on my undead companion. Still brandishing my dragonbone greatsword, sullied with draugr ichor, I wrenched it free, kicking the draugr off it. Sweat stung my eyes behind my new daedric helm (I needs must improve the lining’s absorbency). I had meant to be threatening, but the perspiration slicking my palms and invading my eyes obliged me to stow my weapon after cursorily dragging it across the zombie carcass in a feeble attempt to clean it. The dry air of the crypt wrenched from me a succession of hacking coughs. I removed my helm and gauntlets, wiped at sweat ineffectually with an equally damp hand. I was exhausted; I refused to feed, as a vampire needs must, thus I was weakening.
“I told thee before, Shrelle: I am what I am, and I do what I do.”
Despite lowered voices, our words resonated off the largely empty stone biers set regularly into the walls of the tomb, down through the dusty stone corridors.
I felt the barb; she was telling me I needed to feed – which she did, without compunction, upon enemy or ‘innocent’ alike. Yet, I would not poke my nose into that trap. “And I have asked you before: Must you raise innocent victims? Leave them alone!”
“Need I repeat myself once again? I am not thy thrall; do not speak to me as though I were. What is more, they are dead; they feel naught. And thou wert not so reluctant when lust was upon thee.” The vampiress held my gaze, something to which I was no longer accustomed; I could intimidate most others with that stare.
I sagged against a wall. “Serana, this is no longer working out.”
“If thou sayeth so.”
“Methinks we must part ways.” I found it difficult to say; I still felt something for the thousands-of-years-old, lonely undead woman. Was it merely lust? Yet, I was too sick and tired lately even for sex.
“If thou sayeth so,” she reiterated, maddeningly.
“You will not seek a cure along with me?”
“Shrelle, we have discussed this. Speak not to me of it again.”
I made up my mind. “Very well. When we are done here, I travel back to Fort Dawnguard to seek a cure for myself.” I relented somewhat. “You are… welcome to accompany me till then, Serana. But if you choose not to accept it as well, then we must part ways.”
“If thou sayeth so.” Did I detect smugness, as though she did not believe me? She added, “Thou dost not wish to find your lady love as thou art.”
My ‘lady love’? Why would she say that, in quite that way? I found myself demanding to know what she meant.
The vampiress’ red-orange eyes did not change whilst her tone became almost patronising, as though she instructed a simple child. “Thou wert once a werewolf; Vilja left thee because she could not abide thee thus.” My innards twisted as Serana went on, “Believeth thee that she will be any more accepting of thy being a vampire? I endeavoured to tell thee this ere we came hence.”
I did not answer, instead tried to swallow bile past an iron ingot lodged in my throat. I knew she was right; why was I here, now, like this? Perhaps it was just as well we had not found Vilja.
Withal, I yet felt my mind was not wholly my own; I knew, albeit subconsciously, that I was still obsessed with feeding and fucking, no different than when I had been a werewolf. Moreover, my guilt at being Dragonborn and yet a slayer of dragons – Vilja estimated some time ago that I must have despatched more than fifty – had begun to gnaw at me. I had added two to that number since arriving in Solstheim, and I now began to question whether I could follow through upon my presumed ultimate destiny if it meant slaying yet another dragon, even if he was ‘evil’.
All this, added to my longing for Vilja, only exacerbated my illness. Thus, I do not remember the voyage back to Skyrim from Solstheim, or the trip to Fort Dawnguard from Winterhold harbour. Later, Serana told me that I spent the entire journey essentially unconscious below decks in our cabin and then in a hired carriage. Nor was I aware of the uproar I caused, arriving at Dawnguard in this condition; it was only much later I learned that Serana had come even closer to being killed than she had when she first arrived, for supposedly being responsible for my illness. However, as she reasoned, why would she bring me back to the fortress if she had been trying to keep me thus? She would have taken me to Castle Volkihar instead. Not to mention it was my own fault for refusing… sustenance.
Regardless, Florentius Baenius, Dawnguard’s resident alchemist, tended me and brought me back to relative health, despite his inability to do anything about my primary affliction. Thus, although still sick, I asked Ingjard to accompany me to seek the cure and then find Vilja. I longed to invite Serana, but stubbornly clung to my threat to part ways with her, though she surely would be shunned, having chosen, somewhat inexplicably, to stay at Dawnguard instead of going home to Volkihar. So, I left with Ingjard, the only member of the Dawnguard who would have aught to do with me withal.
Setting out, I equivocated for a time as I considered calling upon Aela, and perhaps… But no.
Withal, I was unaware how much I owed Serana ere I left her by herself.
On the road to whence I would find a remedy for my present condition, Ingjard and I met a band of itinerant Khajiit merchants. Their mercenary guard, named Kharjo, told us of his Moon Amulet, stolen by bandits. We traced them to their hideout and recovered it, and the grateful Kharjo offered to accompany me. I was intrigued, as I had never seen a naked Khajiit, either male or female.
By this time, I had learned to control myself and not fuck my mortal partners to death – though I had to admit that I was likely yet too weak to perform up to my ‘usual’ standard anyway. Serana and I had experimented with a few, including myself having ‘sampled’ Ingjard a time or two on this trip, despite my finding the rather slightly built, stern Nord not particularly appealing. However, I found mortal partners generally unfulfilling, as they simply could not keep pace; normally, I was just getting started as they spent themselves. Still, I was determined to try a Khajiit for size, as it were…
That first night, Kharjo began to set up his own tent as Ingjard and I pitched ours.
“Kharjo,” I interjected, “what are you doing?”
“Ehh…? I am zetting up my tent, my lady.” The Khajiit’s low, buzzing accent milled ‘s’ sounds into ‘z’.
“We do not need two.” I tried to infuse a promise into my tone. “Build a fire instead.”
He hesitated only a moment, long striped tail switching, feline whiskers and ears waggling, as he no doubt contemplated the implications of sharing a tent with two human women. “Az you weesh, my lady.”
“And you can dispose of the ‘my lady’ nonsense.”
“Yez, my— Az you weesh.”
Ingjard paused as well, eyed me, a rust-coloured eyebrow raised; turned back to her task. The stiff redhead had not been an enthusiastic lover, as I suspected she was either not attracted to me – perhaps not to women – else was simply afraid of me. Thus, I could not guess how she might feel about our new situation. We would find out anon.
Supper concluded, conversation waned with the remaining daylight. Gratefully, I removed my helmet without feeling as though my brains were cooking whilst my skin reddened and blistered. Ingjard idly poked the fire as I rose, pretending to yawn and stretch. “Well, I am for bed. Will anyone join me?” Of course, Ingjard would not be fooled, but I sensed our newest follower knew not yet what I was.
The tall Nord glanced up – not at me, but at Kharjo.
The Khajiit was staring at me, yellow feline eyes glowing in the firelight. “I am… feeling a beet tired myzelf.”
“Not too tired, I trow.” Surely, he could not fail to catch my intent now, as, smiling, I held open the tent flap.
“Khajiit need only a catnap to rise again, ready for… anytheeng.”
“You can nap later. You will need it. And I will see about getting you to rise.”
He began, actually, to purr. Which brought Vilja abruptly to my lust-filled mind, recalling when she had once threatened a Khajiit bandit with something like thrashing him so badly he would be unable to purr. With some difficulty, I thrust thoughts of her aside.
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