Built in a facsimile of Nonungalo; the throne room of Nornalhorst was smaller in scale but would have been no less grand during the height of the Ayleid Empire. Similar statues of long dead elves lined the walls, engravings proclaiming their deeds and triumphs carved into every available centimetre of stone and metres above my head a flowing mosaic depicting gods and long dead kings had been painstakingly made with pieces of stone smaller than a fingernail. It would have been a glorious sight before falling into decay, but the darkness infusing the ruins had changed it into something far darker.

  Where Nonungalo had been mostly clean and abandoned despite the minotaurs living within its depths, the throne room of Nornalhorst was a vision of the worst depths of Oblivion. Created in the horrific honour of the Daedric Prince responsible for siring the first vampires, the Throne Room had been transformed. Forty metres long, nearly thirty wide and home to two dozen statues it no longer resembled a hall where the powerful and influential of the Ayleids had gathered before their kings. Instead it appeared as a combination of a sacrificial chamber, crypt and slaughterhouse with various implements of torture and pain scattered about at random. The far wall behind the granite throne had been covered in banners of tanned skin, spliced together with bone needles that linking the leathery curtains with white spears of human remains. The statues themselves had been similarly draped in skin in insane mockeries of noblemen and warriors clad in furs.

  The alcoves along the walls had long since been ransacked for their treasures and like many of the rooms within the undercity had been filled with the decaying corpses of dozens of beasts and creatures. Men and Mer were mixed with goblins and every beast imaginable, and within the stacks I even saw a maggot-writing corpse of a land dreugh.

  Every step suctioned to the floor momentarily as the layers of blood congealed and puckered under the soles of my boots. Blackened crests of gore were frozen in time where they had solidified, the never-ending lake of blood and viscera covering every centimetre of the floor in a horrid carpet of faded lifeforce. Every step I took threatened to trip or slide my boots in a thickened puddle, leaving feet covered to the ankles in dried flakes and horrid spurts when I broke through the dried crust into the paste underneath.

  I made my way through the rows of tortured statues, their eyes seemingly weeping blood from the skinned remnants of pain and torture that clad them in their foul coverings. Blood daubed runes covered the surfaces of the skin-cloaks, hurting my eyes while somehow feeling alluring to the darkness dwelling in my soul and corrupting my flesh. The further I stepped forward the more I could see that deeper into the room the bodies became less fresh and decaying and more ragged collections of bones. The raised platform that the ancient throne had been built upon had been lifted even higher as the vampiric coven had spent untold years and undertaken countless murders to construct a new platform made entirely out of humanoid skulls. In a square five metres wide and the throne in the centre, it spoke of horrific power and will, drawing my eyes to the desiccated body lounging on the throne that appeared to not have moved in decades, if not centuries.

  "You have the stink of daedra about you."

  A few short paces before the skulled platform and throne I stopped cold, feeling my guts cramp at the echoing hiss as it resounded throughout the room. For a moment I could feel the ages pressing down on the voice's owner, the decades of experience and the sheer level of power at his command.

  Sunchild returned to my hand unconsciously as my eyes narrowed and peered closer at the figure on the throne. Resting with a single leg dangling over the armrest and a lengthy sword of incredible make clasped firmly in a mailed fist, it appeared little more than a corpse placed into the throne in a relaxed position of power and arrogance. When the head lifted slightly, and the reddened cores of its eyes glared at me through the darkness I couldn't help but stagger backwards with an oath of revulsion on my lips.

  The vampire seated on the throne had been sitting there, watching my entrance to his hall with supreme confidence and an arrogance born of the immeasurable years he had strode Tamriel. The sheer vampiric power that throbbed through his veins thudded against my skull, and each of his limbs hummed with tension like a strung two-hundred-pound bow. This was no animalistic creature lost to the depths of its own depravity, but a monster from the worst of nightmares with the experience and will to match.

  Skin stretched taut over quivering muscles and bones, paled from centuries since experiencing its last caress of light, there was little to show of the being that he once was. With a jolt of horror, I realised that this pale skinned being had once been a dunmer, long since stripped of the ebony coloured hue and its humanity from the curse.

  Eyes hidden in the sunken depths of their sockets gazed over me as the ancient vampire carefully sat up, staring down on me from its skulled platformed throne with something approaching amusement. Unlike me there was no sign that the beast within its soul had ever been restrained, instead every bone was tight under the skin, jaws pressing slightly forward to allow for the throat rending bite.

  "Volmyr." I stated simply, making an educated guess to the creatures identity.

  Like dying lanterns trapped in the depths of a well, the eyes burned into mine and the slight grimace of annoyance was not lost on me. "That's Lord Volmyr to you, youngblood."

  Scraping of metal echoed through the room as he drew himself to his full height, rising from the chair with flakes of dried blood floating through the air from his armour. It was a terrible, fluted steel plate of an archaic design long since fallen out of fashion in the empire. Rust may have been enacting the long campaign to reduce its effectiveness but the day where it crumbled into ruin was still far in the future. Blood had been rubbed onto every plate and crease, smearing deep into the burnished metal and into his desiccated features. His eyes had been turned into dark pools with layers of blood surrounding them, only seemed to make the gaze even deeper in his skull.

  "Who sent you whelp?" he murmured, sniffing the air like a bloodhound as he took a couple of steps towards me. "The daedra stink of your flesh is hiding your sire."

  "No one sent me." I replied after a moment of hesitation, causing Volmyr to tilt his head inquisitively and sniffing the air once more.

  "Oh?" there was a series of crackles and pops of breaking skulls as he took further steps forward until less than a dozen metres separated us. His armour had once been a work of art, but age and blood had corrupted its elven elegance. Some of the blood were little more than discoloured patches of rust, while others appeared livid and red as if only freshly spewed from gushing arteries.

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  "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Alarissa isn't one for sending an assassin, and that Skingradian bastard doesn't have the balls for it. In that case, who are you to come into my home with such suicidal stupidity?"

  "I'm Kaius."

  There was a flicker of amusement. "Just Kaius?" the baritone cackle sent chills up my spine and I found myself struggling against the growing fear of the creature's power. "Who is your sire? He must be an interesting member of our kind to have fathered such a creature."

  "I wouldn't know. I stabbed him to death long before I fully turned."

  The crestfallen expression darkened the pits of shadow of the vampire's eyes and I found myself gripping Sunchild ever tighter. "Ah. Of course. You're nothing more than a mistaken abortion instead of a gifted creature of the night. That explains how one such as you ended up reeking of the creatures of Oblivion."

  Squelching into the morass of gore and rot he walked around me, holding an enormous scabbard and curved sword by the centre like a sceptre or Legion drill cane. For several moments he was silent, intent on merely studying me as sweat began sticking my hood, mask and coif to my skin.

  "You are every inch of a champion like all those others who have proceeded you, but being one of my kin isn't something I've come to expect."

  "I might be a vampire." I hissed, turning slowly and keeping him in front of me. "But I am not one of your kin."

  My reply seemed to amuse him and he stopped in place, boots sinking into the blood and grinning through a pair of fangs that were so long that they reached his chin. "Ah, but you are. Even now, especially in this place you can feel that thirst within you. Even moments after you have lifted your lips from a throat and the sweet taste permeates your mouth you crave for more. You can drain the arteries of dozens in a single gluttonous feasting or until your stomach bursts but you will continue yearning for more."

  Gesturing to me with the lengthy scabbard he pointed it to my chest and cocked his head to the side. "You are nothing but the thirst. You are not a vampire. The vampire is you."

  Rising to the surface with the first echoes of the beast, my choler rose red hot at his words. "I am never going to be an animal." I spat, staring him down. "I will not be a creature like you or any of the others I have slain in this pit. I have far greater control."

  "Do you really believe that?"

  "Yes."

  Once more the chilling laugh raised the hairs on body. "I have lived for centuries, travelling the bounds of Tamriel and beyond and fed on so many that even Molag Bal would struggle to guess how many lives I have consumed. But I do know this; the thirst will always win."

  Slowly he lifted his head to the altar at my back, the hideous, tainted thing shaped in representation to the daedric prince responsible for the birth of such a curse. "Other's mightn't be able to tell, but I know that you have done something that none of us ever considered possible, let alone achieved. You have drunk from the fountain of immeasurable power, and in doing so you have learned something that takes others of our kind decades, if not centuries to understand.

  My mouth went as dry as the deserts of Elsweyr, and I knew exactly what he meant. "Blood. Blood is our greatest strength, but it is also our greatest weakness."

  With solid clangs of metal that echoed like an anvil being hit with a smithing hammer, he leant the sword up against him and clapped his gauntleted hands together.

  "Exactly." His approval was like maggots across my skin and I felt like I was going to be violently sick. "The blood is the key to our very nature. Each drop sustains and strengthens us. You know this! You know this more than the few of my pathetic followers that you have slain. In four hundred years I have drunk from every creature in the world! When we feed, we consume part of what makes our meal what they are. If you drink from a bear, you will gain a portion of its strength. Blood from a mage will increase your skill with the magical arts. A mighty warrior will infuse you with the hint of their martial prowess and the more you drink over time, the greater your powers will become!"

  "But you-" He said, jabbing his finger at me as though it was a dagger. "You have drunk from the font of oblivion. From the very veins of a creature not of this world, and have gained something greater in doing so."

  Like an excited child waking on the day of the New Life Festival he almost appeared to jump in place with a boundless energy, staring at me unblinkingly as he did so.

  "Tell me," his voice churned and hissed around his fangs. "How did it taste, becoming one with the daedra? Did it taste of power? Did it taste whole and filling as the blood of a unsullied virgin? Or sickly and watered down as from an old crone?"

  At his words I stepped back, feeling my stomach turn in on itself. I couldn't help but think back to when I had torn open the throat of the Dremora and felt the hot black tang of corruption spurt into my throat. If I concentrated I could still feel the power it had contained circling my body deep within my veins, forcing memories of the destruction I had wreaked after feeding and in the depths of the Mythic Dawn's lair back into the forefront of my mind.

  "Yessssss..." he hissed, his body twitching as he beheld my reaction. "You remember all too well. You recognise the power that it has within you. Everyone you have drank from, and anyone that you will consume will remain part of you. Their strength will be yours. Their weakness will be yours also."

  "Enough." Recoiling I stepped away from the twitching vampire lord, seeing the look of surprise and annoyance overwhelming the alien emotion it had been experiencing. "I did not come here to talk or listen to the words of a crypt worm. I came here to avenge the deaths and pain you monsters have inflicted and retrieve the Light of Dawn."

  There was a chuckle once more from the creature as he hunched slightly lower, drawing the scabbarded sword from where it rested against him. "Monsters? That's rich coming from one such as yourself. And the sword you seek is no longer here."

  Carefully. Slowly, he drew the immense, curved blade from its ebony and palladium sheath, the edge of the blade humming with an unsurpassed keenness.

  With an expert's skill he twisted his wrist until the blade was facing vertically, rising nearly a full metre above his head with its claymore like length. He stared at it, running a caressing hand up the blunt edge as though it was a lover's thigh and seeming enraptured by the weapon.

  "It's beautiful, is it not?"

  I stared at the weapon, seeing the forging of such a weapon in its curved length that showed it ancient birth at the hands of the Ayleids. Like the sword in my hand it was gracefully curved, a hilt seemingly fashioned from liquid emeralds and malachite but there was something foul and unnerving about the weapon. With dawning realisation, I stepped away from the grinning vampire lord, seeing how the darkness of the throne room increased even further as the void that was the metal drank from the last vestiges of light.

  "In the hands of the Maegalla, the Light of Dawn was responsible for slaying hundreds, if not thousands of our brothers and sisters. Now? Now it is a mockery of everything it once stood for!"

  Twirling the blade, almost experimentally the predatory gleam in his eyes grew even more apparent, and with it so did my foreboding.

  "Where once we strode through the light of the sun, and now are confined to darkness; so too is the bane of all vampires. The Light of Dawn is now a symbol of the very changes were all go through when gifted with our Lord's blessings. While it cost dozens of my brood and all my pet warlocks, the Nightkiss is far more than a collection of hammered metal."

  "So... You corrupted the sword." My words were a simple statement, not a question. The sheer levels of revulsion and hatred at what he had done was tightening my jaws and restructuring my face under the concealing hood and mask. While sharing the same taint of the soul as the vampire lord, the beast within been seemed to share my loathing at the creature's actions.

  Volmyr laughed, a sound that plucked at my very soul with horror. Insanity brought on by the long years of his curse flickered in the soulless pits of his eyes and I knew that he could sense my growing fear.

  "Well youngblood. I think I will eschew the part where I offer one capable of killing my minions the chance to share my blood. Anyone who has already stabbed one sire to death is certainly not to be trusted."