On leaving the Soul Cairn, it occurs to me that all this time in other dimensions might be messing with my head.
Or maybe it's just the weather.
In any case, Serana and I now have all the Scrolls we need to find this "Auriel's Bow" that Harkon's been going on about. But after talking to Valerica, neither of us is quite sure we want to go along with Harkon's plan--he wants to submit the whole world to the rule of vampires. I don't really want that. I like my friends safe and my enemies safer, and it strikes me that an empire of vampires could be very unsafe indeed. So I'll find this Bow, but only to keep it from falling into Harkon's hands.
We head inside to get the Moth Priest to do some reading, only to discover a small glitch.
Well, they always said that Elder Scrolls cause blindness. There, but for the grace of a sharp pain reflex, go I.
Fortunately, all is not lost--Serana says there's a cave filled with bugs who do the Priests' translating...or something. I don't follow but it's a beautiful day for a ride south, sunlight aside.
Typically, the weather turns friendly a few minutes after I find the cave entrance and wait for Serana to catch up.
The cave's a special sort of thing, and reminds me more than a bit of the Eldergleam cave, minus the skooma'd lackadaisies lounging about the front entrance.
In their place are some shiny moths, who get a bit too close to my head, mocking me with their powers of flight. I try to shoo them away and they only get more persistent. Serana tells me not to hurt them and I tell her I just don't like having bugs in my face, and she gives me kind of a weird look.
And then she explains--the moths can actually "read" the Scroll, but we'll need lots of them for their collective powers to work. So I'm going to be dealing with a lot more of these things. I scrape a piece of bark off a tree to attract them and run around the cave, very aware of Serana's calm eyes following me everywhere I go.
Frankly, I don't see how she can see me. Rotten things.
But hey, I've learned to trust the intuition and ancient wisdom of ancient vampires, and it works. There's some sort of vision, like a map, with a passage marked north of Karthspire. I'm so glad the moths have the same concept of spacial presence as us normal folk.
I don't have time to discuss the vision, though, before the Dawnguard show up.
I'm becoming genuinely angry at them now--don't they realize what they're dealing with here? I'm not just some vampire. I'm the Dragonborn. I killed the World-Eater, my own brother, walked into the afterlife and killed him. What makes these people think it's going to go any better for them? And them I'd let live--they seem mostly like hired hands, ordinary men trying to be part of something bigger. A lot like the Stormcloaks, really, but minus the jingoistic overtones.
Well, Serana seems to have an inkling of exactly where we're going, so we take the road back north. We stay over at an inn but the innkeeper isn't around. I don't want to steal, so I go behind the counter and search for the register to get us a room while Serana ducks the stunned gazes of the patrons.
The patrons are getting nervous, I can tell, but finally the innkeeper shows up and averts what could have turned into something very ugly. It's not every day two heavily armed vampires show up to check in, after all.
We leave at dawn. I know Serana's not keen on spending so much time in the sunlight, but I've become so used to it since getting cured that even after going back to vampirism, I'm willing to deal. It's not like a bit of strong tingling makes my work any harder.
Besides, the passage is where Serana said it would be, so it's back into the shade. And this time, I suspect, for a very long time.
