For a moment the armoured giant looked down at his hands, clenching and unclenching them and smiling as the gauntlets began to shimmer with faint energies. I had no doubt that the ritual had indeed worked exactly as Lariel had intended it but not how Eregor had wanted. His flesh and possibly soul had been consumed entirely by the ancient presence within the armour and allowed the ancient warrior to walk Tamriel once again.

  "This has just become significantly more difficult." Malulain said simply, watching the way the pair of Xivilai bowed slightly to the reincarnated Graithlan and how the expression of triumph was obvious on Lariel's face.

  Watching their every move I stayed by Malulain's side as he and his Rangers gravitated together. "I'm guessing that the 'kill them all' plan is still our best option?"

  He nodded. "Separating the armour now won't do anything except maybe annoy him." All our eyes were focused on the dread figure as he stepped down from the altar. The crunch of broken marble under his boots was one of the loudest sounds in the ruins. "We can't let him leave here."

  "I'll take care of Lariel." My gaze was firmly fixed on the Bosmer Sorceress as she began chanting again, the sickly corrupted verse of the spell plucking at my senses as I twirled Sunchild in my hand and held it hilt first to Malulain.

  With a glance between me and the offered weapon he hesitatingly gripped it tight in a determined but somewhat inexperienced grip. "Are you going to be able to handle her on your own?"

  I shrugged and clenched my teeth at the sight of the towering figure reaching into the sky and appearing to wrench an enormous mace from the air itself. Obviously daedric in nature the Mace was sickly green and black, weeping greenish light and carved into the snarling features of a daedra and spiked. "I've faced worse odds. I think the more important question is whether you lot can handle him."

  "Apparently only stabbing him in the heart will defeat him..." The handful of Rangers gripped with weapons tightly, some drawing back hard on their retrieved bows in the hope that their arrows would fly true. With Sunchild gifted to Malulain I reached up and drew the gleaming Light of Dawn, feeling its unique weight that provided me some comfort with what was to come.

  With the building laughter from the resurrected Ayleid in our ears we broke into runs at them. Arrows snapped from bowstrings, flitting through the air and slamming hard into the metal-bone armour that he wore. Each arrow staggered the towering figure but none seemed to do any lasting damage other than scour the horrific plate. Over two dozen Rangers charged, silent and without a single battle cry or shout while the handful of wounded ones did what they could with groans of agony.

  Dark bolts of magicka rippled through the air from the mind burning gestures of the sorceress, bursting bodies like rotten tomatoes, boiling blood in veins until it wept from pores and peeling skin from bones. Several of the Rangers died such excruciating deaths from the Mage's foul sorcery. I saw how her eyes were burning with a dark power, filled with blackness and corruption as she stared unblinkingly into the mess of bodies for her next target.

  I had barely taken half a dozen steps towards Lariel and the pair of Xivilai when the armoured figure of Graithlan began casting his own spells. Blood suddenly seemed to start pounding in my veins, drowning out all the sounds of the struggle around me and rendering me deaf to all but the roaring of my body's life-force. Dark whispering seemed to grow from the pounding of my heart, rolling into my mind with insidious thoughts and desires not of my own. The creeping blackness was talking directly to the darkness of my soul, tempting me with forbidden pleasures and secrets that threatened to overwhelm me with their mere existence.

  Lariel's expression, a haughty sneer of superiority was clearly visible through the fog and I found myself snarling under my mask. Both fangs were pushing out of my gums, the skin of my face pulling taut and the bones straining forward as the vampire made its presence felt. Her magicka was reminiscent of the Vampire Matriarch's and the beast within me seemed to have a personal hatred towards illusion spells. She was attempted to ensure or otherwise befuddle the senses of myself and the surviving Rangers as well as taking more direct measures to deal with us. Darkness was building in the ruins as she called upon the shadows themselves to grow in strength and smother the few light sources.

  The glowing blade of the Light of Dawn cut through the treacle-like darkness wafting from the gesturing sorceress and I roared on the top of my lungs. Her eyes were devoid of colour or whites, instead being consumed with blackness and corruption. At my battle cry she turned and locked onto me with her gaze almost like she was laying eyes on me for the very first time. Her expression was unreadable, her body flowing unnaturally and limbs almost like they were lacking any form of bone structure as she weaved patterns in the air that stung the eyes.

  My roar of anger announced the renewed battle as the handle of Rangers came within reach of the enormous warrior. Crunches of bone, meat and blades ripped through the air that was suddenly filled with the sounds of screams and roars of anger and pain and within the first second of the fight more than one of the Rangers had been brought low by their adversary. The mace the armoured figure wielded screamed with an unnatural hunger for pain and suffering as it laid about itself with massive swings, killing and wounding the slow and careless. In a mob the Rangers and Malulain swarmed their taller adversary, stabbing and hacking and firing their bows with every opportunity that presented itself.

  Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

  The Light of Dawn was grasped firmly in my hands, glowing faintly and although its radiance would not be unlocked by anything other than the blood of Vampires, its beautiful glow was more than enough to cut through the obscure corruption that floated sickly in the air. I held it rightly in both hands, blade resonating with its sharpness only a few short centimetres from my right ear as I charged right at the Sorceress and her daedric bodyguards.

  With every pounding step I took, the Xivilai seemed to grow taller, their unnatural bulks radiating a pure level of power that was unmatched by any creature within Tamriel. They were unlike the Dremora that I had faced over the previous months and other than the Marknayz that I had originally fed on there would be few daedra that would have been able to match their raw strength. A single glance was all that I need to tell me that they would have been able to wrestle a minotaur to the ground.

  Both of them surged towards me as I charged towards their mistress, a banshee cry of laughter rolling from my throat. In the back of my mind I was somehow trying to understand how I had been finding myself facing off against every massive creature within Nirn and Oblivion since deserting the Legion. Between the Dremora, daedroths, minotaurs, werewolves and vampiric bodyguards I was almost yearning for a foe my own size. Despite my experience against such foes and the building pressure of the vampiric instincts growing in my mind it was not enough to entirely remove my fear or dread at their unnatural presences. Especially how both of them gestured and conjured weapons from the depths of Oblivion like the cultists of the Mythic Dawn.

  Unlike the daggers, swords and maces that the followers of Dagon conjured, these pair of hulking monstosties called upon a gigantic two handed sword and a double headed battleaxe that most mortals would have been unable to lift. To these two daedra the weapons looked little more than toys in their oversized fists and they held them one handed as I did with my daggers. What was worse was that I knew that to die against such a foe was a fate worse than death. These weapons were not only imbued with the essences of those that they had killed, but also the spirit-energy of a daedra that would feed upon and toy with the fallen for eternity.

  I narrowly dodged the downwards cut from the first, rolling out of the way as the blade buried itself into the marble underfoot. The overwhelming hunger from the trapped demon within the blade was sickeningly strong, and I could almost feel its presence trying to press itself into my mind. The mere thought that I had a daedra trapped within a weapon trying to sink its spectral talons into my mind left me laughing as I dodged another physical blow. It seemed ridiculously funny at the time that with my vampiric nature there wasn't any more room for further corruption in my mind.

  The sheer size of the Xivilai meant that I could easily outmanoeuvre them and ensure that they both were getting in each other's way. I danced around them, cutting and slicing at them with the resonating edge of the Light of Dawn, forcing them to step back out of the way of the humming blade as it cut through the air with the sound of tearing silk. They were wary of me as I was of them but so far I was merely dodging their blows, getting a feel for their movements and speed. For the first seconds of the fight our weapons didn't

  I swung the Light of Dawn in vicious arcs, cutting through the air and each time only narrowly missing the gleaming flesh of the Xivilai. If I didn't know better, I would have thought that they had been thoroughly rubbed down with oils or sweating profusely. Both of the creatures were overwhelmingly powerful, matching the minotaur titan in strength but also matching werewolves in their speed and agility and between the three of us we were almost evenly matched. They seemed content on keeping me at bay from the Sorceress as she hurled spell after spell into the raging melee at my back, and by now several of the Rangers had fallen to spells or to the shrieking mace of the Ayleid champion. Malulain and the others were fighting surprisingly well against their unnatural foe; the Ranger Commander was using Sunchild to keep the Mace at bay and the others were using every skill and weapon at their disposal in their attempt to defeat him. Daggers and arrows were hurled through the air but for the most part they simply bounced and shattered against the ancient armour. Every second one of their number would jump in, stabbing at weak points in the armour and leaping away before they could be touched by the daedric mace or a serrated gauntlet of bone spikes and talons. There was a good chance of winning, but not while Lariel still breathed and killed with spells.

  The battleaxe wielding Xivilai stepped backwards, wrenching the massive head of the axe from the floor with a crunch of shattering marble and allowed the other to step in towards me. There was no time for me to move to dodge the next attack, and as the massive blade of the claymore cut through the air with a keening wail, I gritted my teeth, locked my back leg and swiped upwards with a diagonal strike to parry the weapon away.

  The Light of Dawn had seemed to be capable of cutting through everything, no matter the material or the thickness. During my fight against Lord Volmyr and even while the blade was still corrupted it cut marble statues and pillars in half without the slightest hindrance. Against the Vampires of Castle Glenvar it had made a mockery of armour plate and even some weapons forged in the heart of Orsinium. That night in the darkness of a corrupted Ayleid ruin the Light of Dawn was finally stopped in mid cut.

  With a sickening crack both my arms felt as though they were wrenched out of their sockets. Pain flared from every muscle, and an involuntary whimper escaped my lips as the Light of Dawn was left buried in the unnatural substance of the Daedric Blade.