For the first time in her life, or at least in recent memory, Sofia didn't feel like drinking.

  It wasn't that she didn't want to. Far from it in fact. No matter how she tried to raise the flagon in front of her and drown her thoughts in the honeyed liquid, all she could see was the dozens of bodies scattered about the roadside, and the bloodied figure standing in their midst. The colour of the mead swirling in the flagon reminded her all too much of the golden armour of the Aldmeri Dominion soldiers after being coated in their wearer's gore.

  Slowly, as her thoughts tumbled over themselves, her fingers stopped the mesmeric circling of her drink as it continued going stale and warm. It had been an interesting couple of days to go along with the month that she and Kaius had been working and travelling together. Since they had met, Kaius had seemed content doing random jobs throughout the city; chopping firewood, delivering packages, harvesting crops, repairing buildings and whatever else helped earn them both some coin. One day, as she came back from collecting a minor bounty of clearing skeevers from basements, she had found him working at ‘Warmaidens’ smithy, assisting the owner, Adrianne sharpening a batch of Gladii for the Legion.

  Even for the days that followed where they had managed to earn enough to equip themselves better than in rags and scraps, there was no sign of the terrifying nature of her travelling companion. No task was beneath him, no job too small to undertake, and while she knew that it was mostly to work on his reputation in the city there was a general undercurrent of kind-heartedness that almost seemed out of place in the war-torn province.

  But then came the bounties they undertook together. The bandits at the two camps in the old ruins to the north west and the old iron mine to the north. She should have realised that there was something subtly wrong about Kaius then, but she had been too in awe of his fighting ability. It had been insanity each time that he had simply wandered into their camps, demanding they leave the province or surrender, but each time it had been overwhelmingly effective. Sure, the bandits had laughed in his face and threatened all sorts of nastiness to both Kaius and especially herself. Sure, they had made a fight of it, but in the end both of them had returned, almost entirely unharmed and pockets and pouches full of trinkets and the bandits' ill-gotten gains. She should have known that no one was that good. With sword and bow and a bit of magicka they had managed to collect bounties on two dozen bandits where over the months previous she had been limited to the occasional highwayman.

  Between the bounties and the past month working together, they had both warmed up to each other in ways that only fighting by someone’s side could. He was still a cold, sometimes miserable bastard who kept to himself, especially when compared to his polar opposite in Sofia who bounced around like a Khajiit high on skooma. Underneath it all though she had seen glimpses of the man under the mask. Several times he had proved that the kindness and generosity that had resulted in him providing his own shirt off his back was a deeply ingrained character trait, but so was his sense of humour, his personal honour and an indefatigable will and drive to succeed. He was by far the best person she had spent any length of time with, and even to herself it wasn’t surprising that he had become the first that she had spent more than a night or two with in several years.

  It had helped immensely that the money, and the subsequent booze that it purchased went a long way towards quietening that whispered warning in her mind that there was something not quite right. It was a voice that she had gone out of her way to drown in alcohol with every available opportunity. The trouble was that experience had shown that every time her mind had thought something had been too good to be true, it was eventually proven correct. Despite all this it still didn't stop her from grabbing her things and following along after Kaius as he travelled at the behest of the Jarl's wizard to conduct an archaeological ‘expedition.’ Using the term ‘expedition’ very, very loosely in this case, as it soon turned out.

  ‘Graverobbing’ would have been a better way of putting it, and if she had known exactly what she had been getting herself in for, she would've upended herself into a flagon and waited for Kaius to return. Part of the sarcastic, dry humour that she was beginning to thoroughly enjoy from Kaius had left him describing their contract as a "merry jaunt" through an ancient Nordic crypt. She knew better. It wasn’t the first, second, third or even twentieth time she had dived into the depths of one of the hundreds of ancient barrows with their restless dead in her life, and she knew roughly what to expect. Between the handful of outlaws camping in the upper levels, the dog-sized frostbite spiders in the middle and the living-and-yet-not draugr every-bloody-where else it certainly wasn't boring.

  The tavern was increasingly busy, the crowd growing in number and she started as the door closed suddenly as the wind caught it. Like the other times after delving into the three thousand year old barrows, it would be days before she wasn’t left feeling on edge. Draugr; ancient mummified beings from the long lost nordic kingdoms and dragon-worshippers were unnerving to be around, especially how the difference between one that was properly dead and one that was undead was determined by whether they would lunge at you when you got too close. No matter how many times that happened to her in all of her adventures into the tombs it was still just as terrifying as the first time.

  And that was not to mention the giant frostbite spider of all things. How in the hells did something that size get in there! For a moment she found herself brushing away the phantom strands of the webs and she swore to herself. Frostbites the size of mastiffs were bad enough, but at least they were easier to fight and deal with. One the size of a mammoth was the stuff of the worst kind of tavern stories by those who drank even more than she did!

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  But always, Kaius was there. Kaius the shadow that would block a sword wielded by a dead man. Kaius, the armoured figure that drew the dripping arachnid maw towards himself to allow her to stab somewhere vital. Kaius the man that no matter what, ensured that he wouldn't let anyone else do something that he wasn't prepared to do himself.

  Kaius...

  Kaius the vampire...

  After the previous day there was no longer any denying the fact. Her heavily scarred, highly skilled, incredibly strong, brave and somewhat attractive travelling companion was not human. He was a vampire who had seen decades, if not centuries pass him by and who had obviously been roaming the lands of Tamriel for the Nine-only-knows-how-long. While a lot of the mysteries around her strange travelling companion had been answered, there had been many more raised in their place. The scars? That was an easy answer at least. Anyone who seemed to go out of his way to fight things would suffer some form of injuries from time to time. Especially if they had the luxury of several lifetimes to do so. It also answered why all of the scars that he had on his body all seemed old and faded. As he had grown more experienced and skilled, the number of wounds he would suffer dwindled to almost nothing. His skills, strength, and speed? Easy. It was obviously a result of his nature, so was his abilities to hide in the shadows and even in plain sight.

  But several questions nagged at her mind. First and foremost; just how exactly was he able to waltz about in daylight? It was unheard of! None of the stories or tales or legends ever mentioned a vampire roaming about in daylight. Yet, here he was somehow, finding the light more agreeable than what she did. He even had a better tan than most people did outside of Hammerfell!

  And then there was his complete and utter hatred of elves. No... not elves... She thought to herself as she swirled her finger around the moisture on the lip of her flagon. The Aldmeri Dominion… Especially their Thalmor agents...

  That shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise though. Everyone hated the Thalmor. The Nords hated them for taking away their god. The Empire hated them for starting the Great War in the first place. Everyone else hated them for being such arrogant bastards. Oblivion take them; even the Thalmor hated each other! What she had never seen was anyone hate as fiercely or terribly as Kaius. The way that he had picked that fight with that contingent of Justiciars, and the way he toyed with them, goading them on was somehow more terrifying than the way he tore them apart!

  She had tried drinking the thoughts away but she couldn't bring herself to do it. It was unusual to say the least as she couldn't remember the last time she managed to go a whole night being sober. But sober she was, and filled with images of death and horror was her mind.

  The location of their contract; Bleak Falls Barrow, was located near the village of Riverwood two days' travel to the south, along some of the safest and most well travelled of roads. Roads that they were returning along to Whiterun with the fruits of their labours in the dark. They had even been making good time, walking, chatting, and even singing from time to time. Well, Sofia was singing. Kaius was just walking along as he usually did, but all the fun and frivolity had ceased when they came across the group of Thalmor escorting a mass of prisoners.

  The look on Kaius's face had told Sofia more than what she wanted to know and for the first time since they had met he was angry in a way that numerous bandits, spiders and undead had failed to achieve. Somehow, the hatred was even more terrible than the sight of the three dozen elves escorting the sorry collection of individuals shackled together; the latest victims in the anti-Talos purges as the Dominion enforced the White-Gold Concordat. Such prisoner trains and representatives of the Dominion were increasingly commonplace throughout Skyrim and was one of many reasons why the Stormcloak rebellion was supported as much as it was in the province. In many ways the Empire had lost the Great War despite the devastation inflicted on both sides and the resulting stalemate. Through treaty and ink the Mede Empire had spent over twenty years being forced to ban its patron deity, and while unofficially most turned a blind eye to Talos Worship, the Concordat did allow the Dominion to enforce it across Tamriel.

  Justiciars; the agents, hunters and not-so-secret ‘police’ of the Dominion and the Thalmor ruling class were a well known presence, especially in the province that had birthed and given rise to the man who so long ago ascended to godhood. They roamed from city to city, town to village seeking out hints of outlawed worship and arrested everyone they found. The prisoner train Kaius and Sofia had encountered was one of the larger ones, consisting over a hundred, manacled and chained men, women and children dressed in rags and heads wrapped in stifling hoods. The prisoner train was making the long journey south to the Cyrodiil border for ‘punishment’. Afterall, it was typically easier to dispose of people outside of their homelands…

  Even then she had been blind to the truth. The sight of children being whipped and dragged along had been terrible but she should have noticed that Kaius was not just angry at their treatment. The rage that consumed him should have been enough for her to know that something was wrong. Before that point she had never seen him show much emotion at all.

  "Stay here." He had told her, reaching under his breastplate and pulling his amulet out so that it hung freely and in plain sight. "You don't want to be involved in this..."

  Out of shock and confusion more than anything else she watched as he casually strolled down the road, whistling obnoxiously loud and not bothering to make way for the column of golden armoured figures, and their bedraggled prisoners. Almost sickeningly curious, all she could do was watch as one of the mounted Thalmor rode over to him, ordering him to step aside, before catching sight of the amulet and barking orders to the rest of the thalmor guards.

  The fact that Kaius was smiling when the Thalmor went to arrest him should have been a warning to them all.