We did stop for a while to rest, but it only lasted a few hours and neither Valindor nor I truly slept. The winged beast had torn through the armor on my leggings, leaving a gaping slash that stung as if a burning brand had been placed there. Something on the thing's claws seemed to prevent clotting, and it took most of our respite for the blood to finally slow to a thick ooze. Serana watched me carefully stitch the wound closed with wide eyes. Her lips and hands twitched minutely until she turned with a snarl and waited in the previous room. Dismally, I realized the salve I used so often to prevent infection was gone, and the only useful substance around was a well-aged bottle of wine stored in a nearby larder. Still, that was mostly vinegar that left our eyes watering and noses running.
There was nothing more to be done, and in the end, my drive to keep moving had me on my feet and limping forward. Eventually, I stopped noticing the stinging pull of the stitches as we walked down a new corridor, this one slightly less abandoned than the last. A turn revealed another small staircase bathed in early morning light How can it be dawn already?
Nevertheless, the sunlight was soothing and did wonders to clear my mind. "How much further?" I asked.
"Not far now." was all she said in reply.
Val draped my arm over his shoulder as I hopped down the hall extending from the top of the steps. Here, the hallway twisted and turned in a labyrinth that shifted steadily upward. Collapsed doorways and empty rooms flanked the passages, though Serana ventured into none of these. There were closets filled with moldy brooms and congealed buckets of birch tar. Alcoves housing ancient commemorations to Daedra: bodies of men and women in various shameful positions crawled before Molag Bal the Cruel. Rooms meant to be studies and parlors were partially caved in or choked with spider webs. Every once in a while, entities with many legs scuffled just beyond our field of vision, keeping well clear of the vampire only to shuffle closer as Valindor and I hobbled by.
Eventually, my leg numbed and burned dully as we approached a ballroom with a ceiling several stories high. As we were coming from a side passage, we entered the room from a long walkway positioned on top of a great arch. Tables and chairs leaned on their last breaths against the walls, the wood sagging with years of rot and neglect. A chandelier bathed the room in a faint, oily light that seemed to make the floor and walls appear slick and sweaty.
"I can stand on my own, Val."
"You sure?" With a nod, I tenderly placed my foot to the floor, feeling the stitches strain in protest. "Who would hold dances in a place like this?" my friend sneered.
I shrugged, turning to Serana who stood on a balcony several feet below. "Looks like your mother held quite a few private parties here."
"This was not for dancing. Mother wanted to be more...civilized. I heard she hired a priest long ago. I never saw him after he entered our house."
"A priest?"
The vampire silently pointed toward a desecrated statue of Mara framed by a doorway on top of a dais. Her ecstatic face was smudged with something dark that looked vaguely like letters, and a strange shape lay in the offering plate at her feet. Climbing down to the floor level, we ascended the dais in growing horror. My blood ran cold when we neared the icon, and I heard Valindor bite down on a gasp.
"Who did this?" he spat. Mara's face was streaked not with stone tears, but blood. On her dress, the amulet that hung to her groin had been repainted into crude genitalia. Dark smears of something like wet charcoal scrawled inane words in a language I didn't understand, but left Serana with a bleak, pale expression. At the Divine's feet lay the body of a man, his flesh destroyed and abused in an unspeakable fashion and his fingers blackened and bloody.
"She has been experimenting again..."
"What do you mean 'experimenting'?" But the vampire refused to answer, plunging down the hall and leaving us to trail lamely after her. She stormed into what looked like a bedroom where a table littered with sharp chisels and small hammers squatted before a partially finished winged beast. In the corner leaned a coffin. More gruesome statues clung to the walls like waiting vultures. Serana stalked around the room, feeling the walls like a blind man.
"Ah! Here it is. She must be inside..." With a click, she yanked a small lever hidden in a fold in the stone and the fireplace ground slowly backward, lowering with a dusty crush to reveal a stout opening. Tugging Valindor along, I followed the vampire inside.
"Mother?" she called. The Bosmer and I stiffened as we awaited a reply, imagining some insane being waiting beyond the doorway. However, after several moments, the only sound was that of our clothes shifting restlessly. "Mother, where have you gone." The whisper mingled with a draft coming from the upper floor, stirring cobwebs and dust alike.
Thinking some evidence remained of where she went, we separated and searched the room for anything "out of the ordinary". The trouble was, to me, everything was unusual. Bones and skulls from all sorts of creatures littered a table, each specimen ground into a fine dust in a labeled bowl. At least two dozen candles were placed in a ring around a miniature, inverted dais in the floor. Books all relating to Daedric Princes and necromancy lined the walls. Unfortunately, the latter reminded me all too well of my own bookshelf at home. I noticed several tomes relating to Azura and Molag Bal--more than one referencing Azura's Star and soul gems in general.
It was then that I began to wonder if Serana's mother and I had been searching for the same place. What if she found it? I felt giddy and afraid just thinking about the idea that the Soul Cairn was here, right in the room somewhere. That Derkeethus was only a hand's breadth away from where I stood.
"Henny! Come look!" Valindor waved me over to a table littered with crushed soulgems. "It's like those braziers where we found Serana. These aren't filled, though."
"You think she used these to hide herself somewhere?"
"Knowing how her family seems to value other life, definitely. I bet it was that priest that was used to...do whatever it is she did."
Suddenly, we were thrown off balance as the room shook violently and a sickening violet light snuffed out the comforting glow of candles. "The Soul Cairn..." Serana whispered, and I spun to find her standing on the second floor next to a brightly burning brazier.
"Oh..." was all Valindor managed as his face paled and we watched as the inverted dais broke into a series of steps, floating on nothing but magic. His face continued to turn a deathly white as if he were witnessing an act so horrible his mind refused to process it.
"Val?" My friend's mouth only gaped and flopped in a useless utterance of vowels and terrified moans. I gazed at the swirling black portal below, knowing it led somewhere incredibly dangerous and blighted. And Derkeethus is down there.
"Mother is hiding here. I found her journal. That is the door to the Soul Cairn. Wait here. I will come back." Delicately, she held the Elder Scroll in her hands as if it were the most fragile thing in existence. "Make sure door stays open. Do not let fire go out. Feed soul gems." With slow, slightly hesitating steps, she almost floated down toward the darkness that seemed to reach out for her hungrily.
"Wait!" I grabbed her arm, nearly tripping in my haste to catch up to her. "I'm going with you."
"No, you can't! That place is evil!"
"Your friend is right. You cannot go. You must be dead. It was a place made for the dead."
"Please! I have to find someone in there. That's why I've come all this way. I knew you were connected to this place somehow. Serana, I'm begging you. There has to be a way to let me go in! ...Without dying, of course."
The vampire stared at me skeptically, seeming to weigh options before nodding and wandering about the room to look for some kind of remedy. As soon as she walked out of sight, Valindor rounded on me, pushing me against the pillar angrily.
"How dare you think of going into that horrible place! What's wrong with you! Do you want to get yourself killed?"
"No, Val. I told you I meant to find Derkeethus and save him."
"I don't give a rat's ass about that damn lizard! You're selling your soul to--who knows what! This is prostitution! Don't you care about that?" Valindor spat venomously, his eyes looking strangely close tears as they bulged in their sockets.
"So, that's all he is to you then? Just a lizard? He did a lot more than you've ever done! And that's all I am? A common prostitute? Well, I suppose I should be asking for my payment then."
"That's not what I meant. I...I...meant..."
"Oh? What did you mean? All you've done this entire journey is complain and needle me on insignificant matters as well as insult me and my friend. I told you what I intended to do. If my goal bothered you, then why the hell did you tag along!"
"Insignificant!" The Bosmer blustered, his face turning a vibrant shade of red as he tried to remember how to arrange words into intelligible sentences. Serana came back holding a black soulgem, looking at us nervously before deciding to ignore the argument completely.
"I have found a way for you to enter. But you will not like it. I must soul trap you while you still live and breathe."
"Will I be trapped in there?"
"I do not know. But it will let you enter, I think."
I glanced at Valindor in askance, not wanting to leave while he was still angry at me. "Go. Sell your soul to the Daedra. Lie with beasts. I care not." With a sneer, he glared at me as if daring me to back down and admit he was right. Instead, my chest tightened in pain, knowing this might be the last time I saw him.
When Serana cast the spell on me, magic brushing the inside of my head in a very invasive, but gentle manner, I watched energy transfer from me to the gem. It glowed gently with a rapid pulse that followed my heartbeat. She handed me the soulgem before descending into the Soul Cairn and disappearing from sight. Lamely, I offered the gem to Valindor, wanting to make amends somehow. Instead, he chucked it across the room, barely registering where it went or whether or not it remained intact. Then, without another word, he left the room.
Heart broken, I remembered our kiss in Dragon Bridge and knew that whatever that had meant would probably never come to pass. There was nothing left, then, if Val was going to throw my so called "precious soul" across the room like that. There was only Derkeethus and the Soul Cairn now. So, holding my breath without really knowing why, I stepped down into the portal and left the world of the living behind me. Inside, part of me died.
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