Over a week since our battle against the minotaurs Viconia and I were in the training yard outside the back of the chapterhouse. Skingrad was one of the most densely built cities in Cyrodiil; houses, taverns, workshops, chapels and all other types of buildings built up against each other with narrow alleys splitting them. There was no sense of an overgrown slum; every building had been erected to exacting specifications and every city street had been placed in the most economical of positions. In recent years the Count had governed with extreme adeptness, ensuring that no space was wasted in the city and that gardens and trees were placed in every conceivable position.

  The chapterhouse's twenty-metre-wide training yard was bordered by several gardens of nearby houses and a tall, steel barred fence. For the few times that we had trained outside we had gained something of a following from a handful of locals who would stop for a few minutes to watch us. They would stand, leaning against the fence or in the case of the handful of curious children; pressing their faces between the bars to stare in amazement as we fought in a way that few could match.

  Viconia was lightning fast, each attack snaking out and only barely blocked or parried by my own blade. Whichever way, it was never an easy win for either of us for any of our sessions. From time to time I would find the tip or edge of her blade resting up against my throat, under an arm or lightly tapping against the inside of my thigh. The rare few occasions I would win she would find herself swept off her feet literally as I used my larger size and mass to take her down, or tap the point of Sunchild against her chest or throat.

  "Nicely done." She said, as she allowed me to pick her up from where once again I had managed to grapple her and sweep her legs out from under her. "You have at least some form of skill."

  "Do you think I would have survived this long if I didn't have some ability?"

  "Ha. For the surface you have been a combination of skilful and exceedingly lucky." She held Dragonbane out in front of her with a somewhat low guard, appearing deceptively open to attack. "But for the Underdark I would give you a life expectancy measured in days. Maybe a week at the most."

  I swung Sunchild in a somewhat deceptive feint for her throat, watching as she simply swayed aside and didn't even bother blocking or parrying. Instead she snaked out her own blade, forcing me to twist the slice into a sweeping downward strike that left both blades ringing. "Vvardenfell was not a walk through meadows."

  "That I have no doubt." The blade flashed again and again I found myself stepping back from her attacks that were always perfect at gaining the initiative. "But the Underdark was not for the weak, and although you are resourceful and strong you would be like a child to the followers of Lloth."

  "I seem to be capable of holding my own against you." With a grunt of effort, I forced her back with an ungentle punch to her stomach that left her briefly winded. The first time we had sparred I had pulled my punches and attacks in fear of hurting her. After the way she had beaten me bloody as 'punishment' I had soon realised that she saw it as a grave insult if we didn't fight to the best of our abilities. Neither of us pulled punches and after our more serious of training sessions it was not unusual for us to be left bleeding from minor injuries such as cuts and gashes.

  "That you can." She returned my punch with a spinning kick that used the momentum of her twisting away from my blade to smash me across the jaw. "But I am far from a trained drow warrior."

  Spitting blood and shaking my head I looked over to her, feeling the worn cobblestones under my palms and knees. "You could've fooled me."

  With a sinuous grace she strode over to where I knelt and watched as I staggered to my feet. "I am... I was a priestess of the Spider Queen. While receiving some form of training in the martial arts it was not what we specialised in."

  Sunchild gave birth to a handful of sparks as I dragged it from where it had lain. "I've seen the things you can do, and between both of us we have achieved things that should have been impossible."

  With a twist of the wrist she flicked the humming edge of Sunchild away with a deft parry. "But you have your nature, I am just what I am."

  Another series of blows filled the air with the sounds of clashing metal and ringing blades. "My nature is the only way that I can even contend with your skill and abilities. I am faster, stronger and more resilient than most mortals. Hell, it's even letting me regrow lost teeth." We staggered apart and I found myself idly I poking the space where the cultist had knocked out the tooth with the tip of my tongue, feeling the sharpness of a new one pushing through the gum. "It frightens me somewhat knowing that not only do your kind exist, but there is a way that they can reach the surface."

  Her silence was deafening and for a moment she hesitated, her sword suddenly having the tiniest of trembles course through it. "The way I came here is not a path that others can follow."

  Both of our guards lowered as we mutually ended the bout. Sunchild was returned to its scabbard as I handed her a waterskin filled from the city fountains and silence filled the air as we quenched our mutual thirsts. For several minutes we stood still, feeling the autumn breeze cooling the sweat on our skin and our hearts slowing their thunderous charges in our chests.

  My breathing returned to normal, and I wiped at the sweat trickling down my forehead as I watched her carefully stretch out her arms and legs. In the previous months it was rare that I would be left feeling the pain and exertion from the training sessions, and since my corruption it was only Viconia and Belisarius who were able to make me sweat. After drinking my fill I wandered near the edge of the training area, lazily swinging my arms and stretching out the tiny aches that heralded training cramps and concentrating on controlling my breathing. Some of our sessions had been lasting for a couple of hours at least the previous weeks, but as I prepared for another bout she sheathed Dragonbane and sat on the stairs, looking dangerously lost and frail for the first real time since meeting her. Unbidden I walked over to her, sitting close enough for support but not too close to make it uncomfortable for either of us.

  "I was a priestess of Lloth in Menzoberranzan, one of the few allowed in the Temple for the primary rites." She said simply, looking down at the cracked cobblestones in between her feet while hunching over slightly. "Each house was represented with a single priestess and their matron, and only us few were allowed to perform the necessary sacrifices that Lloth demanded. I was house DeVir's priestess. My mother was the house Matron."

  All thoughts and queries that I had were put aside for the moment as Viconia began speaking of her home and family. This was not something that she had even mentioned or hinted at during our time together.

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  "Our duties were surprisingly simple compared to the complex rituals that the acolytes of the Nine perform. There were no sermons, no hymns and no overly complicated steps that they had to follow. We would simply choose from the slave stocks or any recent prisoners taken by the soldiers, drag them into the temple and sacrifice them on the altar. Depending on what was demanded it could be as simple as cutting their throat or cutting their heart from their chest, or as difficult and as drawn out as slowly cutting them apart while keeping them alive for days."

  The almost hidden tremor began to grow and I saw how she began to fret and fidget with her fingers as though she was pulling apart a piece of fabric one strand at a time. "One day, House DeVir was chosen for the daily sacrifice, a responsibility that fell to me to complete. The sacrifice this time was a young infant, weeks old at the most and for the first time I could not bring myself to do it. It wouldn't have been the first time that I had killed the very young but there was something in me that simply refused to stab down with my dagger. I found myself frozen there, fighting against myself and being the first Drow in living memory to fail to complete Lloth's bidding."

  She sighed sharply and I was more chilled to the core not at her words but the way that she portrayed no emotion other than the tremble running through her. "Mother stepped forward, snatching the dagger from my hand and finished what I could not. Her rage was so terrible at me but it paled in comparison to Lloth's indignation and wrath. The other houses present sensed my weakness, and the weakness of my House and over the coming days their plays for power would become ever present. Lloth withdrew her favour, and soon it was all out war between us and the dozens of minor houses within the city. Our slaves were captured or killed, our holdings burned and almost every drow in a position of power was killed or simply disappeared. My mother and I tried everything, using the last of the house's influence and dwindling finances to undertake sacrifice after sacrifice but it was all for nought. Mobs were baying outside when mother decided that it was only my blood that would appease the Spider Goddess and she decided that only by sacrificing me would House DeVir survive."

  "She obviously didn't succeed then." I added as humorously as I could manage.

  I was rewarded with a brief, short lived smile. "Yes. She failed. But not because of incompetence or through any actions of my own. At that moment I had given in to what I believed was my fate, and went willingly to the altar. Valas however, had different ideas."

  "Valas?"

  Glistening with the tiniest amount of tears, her eyes glanced over to me before she suppressed her emotions once more. "Valas was my brother. He came for me right before the end, choosing to stand with me and against our mother and Lloth. He used what magic he could to free me, and even slew mother when she resisted. It was all for nothing however."

  "What happened to him?"

  She leaned back on the stairs, looking up over the tiled rooftops of the buildings surrounding the training square. I knew that at that moment she was imagining how it would have looked if the sky was a towering ceiling of stone instead of a white-streaked ocean of blue. "Lloth happened. Her displeasure was so great that she came as House DeVir fell to the hordes. As he tried to protect me she cursed him without as much as a glance. Death is too little of a punishment to those who displease her, he was turned into a drider; cursed to live for the rest of his existence as a half-spider, half-drow aberration. He will live out the rest of his days trapped in a physical shell of a monster, unable to control himself and witness to all the horrors that he will wrought in Lloth's name."

  "And you?"

  Somehow her hand found my own and despite the darkness of her story I couldn't help but feel pleasure at the sensation of her fingers intertwining with my own. Even when her grip made my knuckles creak from the vicing pressure.

  "They captured me. I do not know which house finally took me as their spoils but it was by Lloth's decree that I was not to die. My punishment was to be kept alive for the whims of the goddess until she grew tired of me. I don't remember or even know how long I was trapped in the slave pits, but the pain still remains fresh in the mind."

  My mouth felt as though it was filled with cotton and I squeezed her hand in an awkward display of support. "In Cheydinhal I was told that there would be few within Tamriel who has suffered as you have."

  "I doubt that even in the Underdark there are many who have experienced what I have. Beaten, branded, whipped, cut and broken. Each night I would be dropped into the slave pens as a toy for their desires, and every morning and evening my body would be made anew so that I was prepared for more hours of punishment. I do not know how long it went on for, it could have been years for all I know. I tried fighting back, begging for mercy, hiding and even letting them do to me whatever they wanted. Every day was some new creative means of punishing me and time no longer held any meaning."

  "How did you escape?"

  She laughed for a second, before choking back a sob of pure emotion. The diamond hard personality was struggling for control now and emotions bubbled to the surface. "I didn't."

  Breathing out heavily she composed herself again, staring up into the sky and releasing the bear-trap like grip on my hand as she smoothed her hair back under her headband. "Lloth came to me one evening as I was left in a latrine pit. She was taunting, gloating. Telling me how she was no longer amused at my captors' poor attempts to break me and had decided that a more suitable punishment was called for. She would gift me with my freedom, far from Menzoberranzan and far beyond the borders of the Drow city-states. I was to be set loose, exiled and cast far from anything and everything I knew."

  "And so you found yourself on the surface."

  "Indeed. This was to be my punishment, my unending curse to be trapped on the surface and cast adrift on the whims of those who believe to be my betters. To find myself burned during the day and hunted during the night. An unwanted stranger in a society inconceivably different to anything I had known. Everything that has happened to me since finding myself on the surface had been intended to be further punishment and torture of a subtler kind. Lloth intended on this being a cruel penance never before experienced by any of my kind. Since finding myself in that cell and being released into your care it has left me confused and unsure."

  "Because I don't beat and torture you?"

  Her eyes were serious again, no trace of the turmoil of emotions that had been here moments previously. "Because you treat me as an equal and are always fair in your dealings with me. There is nothing that you ask of me without providing something equal in return, and for that I thank you."

  We had gravitated closer together as she told me her story and she was now almost as close to me as when I had carried her from the Mythic Dawn's shrine. Hesitantly I had somehow found my hand resting on her shoulders, feeling the interwoven links of chainmail and the slight quiver coursing through the flesh underneath. The smell of her sweat, her hair and her flesh was intoxicating and I found myself being lost in her eyes as she looked at me. For a moment it felt like we were drawing closer together, our mutual heat beginning to merge in the evening sun until a voice called out the doorway of the chapterhouse.

  "Hello? Anyone here?"

  Both Viconia and I pulled apart as though struck, twisting around and there was the look of annoyance on Viconia's face that matched my own.

  Opening the chapterhouse door from the inside a tall Breton came out into the courtyard and glanced between us. Seeing our expressions and the sudden haste as we moved apart he suddenly looked horrified, raising his hands in apology and giving a smile.

  "I'm sorry for interrupting. I was looking to see if anyone was at home."

  "Well, we are." Viconia stated with venom and a hint of indignation filling her voice.

  "I'm not intruding am I?" he stood there hesitantly, neither moving closer or further away while giving both of us equal amounts of his attention.

  "It's fine." I replied, suddenly feeling weary and rubbing at my temple and the soreness of my jaw where Viconia had kicked me earlier. "How can we help?"

  "I was just looking for someone to let them know that I had arrived and that I was going to stay the night. I'm an associate of sorts to the guild and I've found that it doesn't pay to be rude."

  I raised an eyebrow and he flushed slightly, looking at me directly "Speaking of which, introductions are in order. I'm Threnodir Melainis."

  He grinned at us both, performing an elegant bow of a highborn noble from Highrock. "Adventurer, mercenary and Vampire Hunter."