Bleeding Sun - Chapter 1: Beginning of the End

• Posted by Lazy August 28, 2015 - 1,037 views

  Sorine Jurard clung onto the cold stone walls of the ruined Dawnguard fortress. Battered and exhausted, she grasped her crossbow tight in preparation for the worst. Though she doubted she could gather enough focus for a true shot, the contraption was made of heavy dwarven metal and one good hit to the head could do a great deal of damage. Beyond the partly collapsed wall, she could hear them. Vampires. No doubt in search for any survivors of the initial purge of the Dawnguard.

  It had been a full four days since Lord Harkon’s plan to eliminate daylight- The Tyranny of the Sun plan, as it had been called- succeeded. The Dragonborn and his ‘partner’ Serana had both gone into the lion’s den to end the Volkihar’s ambitions once and for all. Unfortunately, all they had done was throw the game into the hunter’s hands. They had severely underestimated the true might of ancient blood and both were slain at the behest of none other than the patriarch of the Volkihar. Auriel’s Bow, the weapon intended to stop the plan from ensuing, had turned out to be the final missing piece to Harkon’s great victory. What followed was carnage. An entire army of Volkihar vampires and thralls swarmed the last bastion of vampire hunters in Tamriel, bats clouding the moonlight. She and the rest of the Dawnguard- five hundred strong, a third of that being reinforcements from the Jarl of Riften, Laila Law-Giver- knew the unspoken omen that the assault bore, ‘Your champions are dead and you will all soon follow’. Still, they frantically resisted the incoming assault. She had been proud of their overwhelming spirit and hate-fueled efficiency in battle despite their despicable odds. They held fast until dawn broke, with each second closer to the sun’s coming, their perseverance grew. But when it came, she immediately noticed something.

  The sun was red.  

  The entire battle stopped for a few gracious moments. It seemed that both sides couldn’t quite believe the gravity of the situation. Even the vampires were standing in awe at the sight of the eclipsed sun, the sure sign of their victory.

  The few moments of peace were sadly doomed to end and combat once again ensued, her enemy now striking with renewed vigor, whereas her comrades had all but lost the very notion of hope. They accepted that they would never live to see a tomorrow. What seemed like five hundred soldiers dwindled down to a miserable few. As if the death of the sun wasn’t enough, Sorine noticed a terrifying new detail in the battle.

  One by one, as they gazed at the red sun, Dawnguard warriors started to turn against their own.

  Shattered by this discovery, her fighting spirit had almost left her. Almost. Enthralled as they were, the Breton had had no choice but to cut them down. Silver met silver in a bloody struggle for survival. All around her, close friends fell like withered leaves. Agmaer, poor Agmaer, had been one of the first of her friends to die, to a volley of ice spikes to his neck. Cellan followed suit, consumed by a swarm of bats. Gunmar and his trolls were felled by gargoyles, the stone-skinned monstrosities devouring the red-haired beastmaster. Durak and Beleval had succumbed to the vampires’ illusion and she last saw them kneeling before a vampire lord. Just who the lord had been was inconsequential. Not even Bran and Sceolang were safe from the siege. The hounds fought bravely against the vampires’ own gruesome take on war dogs; the death hounds. Before she could even look away, two dead huskies now laid on the bloodied floor. Isran was, predictably, the last to die in combat and the righteous paladin was defiant to the end. It took a full force of the Volkihar invasion force to even bring him to his knees, after which the aforementioned vampire lord drained him of his blood. His corpse was horribly shriveled.  

  Sorine herself, being a specialist of ranged weapons, remained in a safe vantage point most of the time, but her true saving grace came in the form of a wall that collapsed right on top of her, just as she saw Isran’s body drop to the ground. The weight of the stone was painful, but it was that very wall that shielded her eyes from the brunt of the sunlight, thus preventing her from succumbing to the enthralling effect. The Breton didn’t know why it fell on her then, but she wasn’t complaining.

  A day and night passed. Through small gaps in the rubble, crimson rays of sunlight seeped through. Following the end of the initial fighting, she heard desperate pleading and screams of despair. The vampires were starting to purge the survivors. Beyond her control, tears filled her eyes. She silently wept for all her fallen comrades, wept for the fate of Tamriel in this infinite night. Most of all, she wept in envy. Yes, envy. She envied their fates. To just die without witnessing the worst of the bloodshed was something she would gladly accept. But her last breath had yet to leave her and the initial despair hadn’t driven her to suicide just yet. So, on the dusk of the third day, she struggled out of the pile of crushed stone. Her body was still weak and aching horribly. Sorine took a moment to recover and snuck her way through the almost deserted halls of the once-crammed Dawnguard fortress.

  At present, the Breton couldn’t risk attempting to sneak past the search party, much less attacking them. So she waited. Waited for the bloodsuckers to give up their search.

  Several minutes passed, filled only by the sounds of rustling leaves, the distant buzzing of carrion flies and the vampires’ far-off muttering. Then, she froze. Two males wearing rusted iron armor and armed with bloodied axes wandered into the room she was in. Judging by their clumsy pattern of movement and apparent lack of heightened senses, they were most likely thralls. Or drunk. That was always a possibility in Skyrim, the land of mead. Regardless, she paid close attention to their actions. Turns out they were only looting, scanning the contents of a nearby chest and hauled it off, clearly satisfied with their findings. One spoke something to the other and the two shared conspiratorial grins before finally leaving. She didn’t dare move for the next few minutes, wary for any signs of approach. Cold sweat dotted her forehead, her breathing still controlled, barely making a sound. If she had breathed just a degree louder, that would have been the end of Sorine Jurard.

  When she deemed the situation safe, she held up her hand and focused, scrounging the last of her magicka reserves to concentrate on a spell: Detect Undead. Red auras became visible through the walls, most of them gathered around the main entrance. They were apparently done with their search and ready to return to wherever the bastards came from.  Some stragglers remained on the upper floors. And there was no one on the ground floor. This was the opportunity Sorine had been waiting for. Ending the spell and strapping her crossbow to her back, she cautiously ventured out into the deserted hallway and headed for the forge area. There, nestled near the troll pens, her comrade Gunmar had told her before everything went to hell, was a hidden entrance to a cave that connected the Dawnguard fortress to a large cavern system that led to a (hopefully) safe location in the Rift. Back in the day, it was used to safely transport intel without risking an ambush near the entrance, as the vampires had proved how egregiously easy it was. Today, it would be her salvation. Stuffing what supplies she could into an ample-sized rucksack on the way, she took a deep breath in front of the admittedly not-so-hidden entrance and stepped through.

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