TESFest, Day 4
TESFest, Day 4 - mortal / sanctuary - @tes-summer-fest summary: 2,082 words; PG. Home is where you hide your Elder Scroll. No content warnings. housekeeping note: based off a pipe dream I once had of rewriting the plot of Dawnguard because...well... *gestures broadly*...you know. This fic assumes Serana wouldn't want to bring an Elder Scroll back to Castle Volkihar and the waiting arms of her probably-still-prophecy-obsessed father.
Serana regards the weatherworn chest before her with open suspicion. With the tip of her index finger she lifts the lid. Hinges creak. Wood shifts. She doesn’t even examine the contents before letting the lid slam shut again in a whumpf of dust.
She whirls on the two adventurers behind her, arms folded across her chest, brow furrowed. “This is the most absurd idea I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s…unorthodox,” Eira - on her left - concedes. Her teeth worry over her lower lip as she thinks. “But I suppose it could work.”
“It will work.” Erik gestures to the chest as if inviting Serana to take another look. “This is the safest spot in Skyrim. I promise,” he adds, puffing faintly with pride.
“Because a stripling couldn’t understand how to work a lock growing up?” Serana scoffs, heedless of the way Erik’s smile fades. She rolls her shoulders, shifting her cargo around into her arms. “We’ll look for somewhere in Solitude. A…they do still have vaults, right?”
“Well, yes, but–”
Heavy footsteps overhead interrupt the debate. Three sets of eyes dart towards the floorboards up above. Dust falls in a steady line headed right toward the basement steps.
Erik winces. “I thought he was asleep.”
A moment later and Mralki’s broad, bare feet appear on the top few steps, followed shortly by the rest of him. He tugs at his nightshirt with one hand, the other hand holding a lantern aloft. “Try and keep your voices down. Erik, you know Sissel’s a light sleeper.” Then his gaze falls on the aging chest they’ve arrayed themselves around, and then on Serana and the oversized, ornamented scroll cradled in her arms.
Mralki considers them a long moment before he sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “You found another–of course you did. What have I told you about bringing priceless artifacts under this roof?”
“It won’t be staying,” Serana answers, at the same time as Erik, looking down at his boots, mumbles something about intending to tell him in the morning.
“You want to hide an Elder Scroll in my basement, and you thought telling me could wait until morning? What else have you hid down here? Ysmir’s beard?” Mralki lifts the lantern higher as if to look.
It’s Eira who stops him, with a gentle smile that makes wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. “You’re right; we should have told you. It’s only that we need a place to stow it for a few days, safe from Serana’s family.”
“And that isn’t here,” is Serana’s grumbled retort. Mralki nods his agreement.
Eira’s hands rest on her hips. “I’m not convinced a bank vault is any better,” she murmurs, setting off a fresh round of debate between herself and Serana.
“Listen,” Erik interrupts, motioning to the chest. “If you were looking for an Elder Scroll, where would you go?”
Serana’s retort is dry and immediate: “Where I know where to find one.”
Eira’s palm bounces in the air as if weighing the question before she speaks. “I’d start with the Imperial Library, I suppose. Or the College.”
“Or an ancient ruin, lost to the ages.” Erik almost bounces on his toes as he concludes, “But would you look in an innkeeper’s basement?”
“Does the innkeeper get a say in this at all?”
Erik’s eyes dart to his father, wide and pleading. “It’d only be for a few days. And my point is that no one would think to look for it here. Would they? Serana?”
“My father suspected I took the scroll when I was…sent away. If he’s still…” She shakes her head; stops the thoughts there. “He could try to retrace my steps, looking for it.”
“That sounds like a long line of ifs, to me.” Eira’s shoulder to shoulder with Erik now, or as close as their differing heights will allow. Shoulder to elbow. “This is still better than delivering it into his hands.”
“Is it? How can I trust him?” She points a pale, slender finger in Mralki’s direction. The innkeeper draws back, eyebrow arched, despite the distance between them. “Better yet, how can I trust you?”
Erik stammers over the first words of a reply. It’s Mralki who cuts him short. “The same way I’m going to have to trust that you won’t hurt my son or Eira, whatever it is you’re mixed up in.”
Serana’s lips narrow to a thin line. She and Mralki stare at one another, arms folded in near-identical poses of defiance. Some things, it seems, translate well enough across the millennia.
“I see.” She hugs the scroll closer to her chest. Her yellow eyes narrow, a faint gleam in the swirling candlelight.
Then a sigh. She turns, fast enough to swirl her long dark cloak behind her, and lifts the lid of the chest once more. Aging armor clanks and shifts as she moves it about to settle the scroll in place. By the time she’s done, only a hint of a handle peeks out, a glimmer in the dim light.
“I’ll be back to claim it, once I’m sure my father–once it’s safe.” Hinges creak again as she eases the lid shut. The rusty padlock - temporarily set aside on a dusty barrel - follows shortly after.
“That’s a Legion-issue lock,” Mralki warns. “Any thief worth their salt will have it open in a heartbeat.”
Eira’s lips curve upwards in a wry smile. “Perhaps, but first they’d have to get past you.”
“Again, I’d ask you if I get a say in this.” Mralki sighs. “But Divines preserve us, I already know the answer.” He turns to go, his voice drifting back to them as he climbs the uneven steps. “Not a word of this to another soul, and you’d best not even think of leaving it here for more than a fortnight. Julianos knows how I’m going to keep the girls out of the basement until then.”
They tromp up the stairs one after the other, Serana leading the way. Only a few glances back to the basement, the chest lost in dust and darkness now that they’ve carried the candles up with them.
Mralki waits at the top step, arms folded. “Where is it you’re bound after this?”
Serana’s foot hesitates just as she reaches the top step. “North,” she answers, before amending, with a touch more reluctance, “home.”
Mralki’s brow furrows as if trying to imagine, for a moment, what that word means to a vampire. “Well.” He’s talking over her shoulder now, to his son’s thudding, familiar steps as he makes his way up the stairs behind her. “Erik, try and make sure you’re back here before Sundas. The last of Lemkil’s potato crop needs digging up, and the children and I can’t manage it all by ourselves.”
***
It rains the night they return to Rorikstead. Before the last dark clouds have rolled away east, Serana slips out the inn door. She comes to a stop on the inn’s bottom step, away from the dripping eave. A few belated drops of rain pattern against the hood of her cloak.
The sky clears into a delicate web of stars before the inn’s door ever opens again. She glances back just in time to see Mralki step outside.
“Ah, there you are.”
Behind him, as the inn’s door swings closed, she can just make out Eira and Erik at one of the tables. Their heads are both bent over a map of Skyrim, their voices a susurrus half lost to the wind and the crackle of the hearth.
It’s like there's no space for air between you two, Serana had told Eira during the sea crossing to Castle Volkihar. Erik remained on the shore pacing, grumbling, the only one of them who couldn't water walk.
We’re not used to working alone or in threes. That gentle smile, again, so patient and courtly it made Serana’s jaw clench.
Had there ever been a time when Serana hadn’t had to guard her own back? She doesn’t remember. If those two are what it’s like, having someone you trust at your side, she’d rather lock herself right back in Dimhollow Crypt.
A hen pecks the dirt near her boots, on a late-night hunt for worms turned up by the rain. Its beak strikes alarmingly close to one of her toes. Serana quirks a brow down at it, her expression a good match for the storm clouds receding on the horizon.
The chicken carries on regardless.
Mralki shoos it away with a firm hand and a few muttered words, back toward the henhouse. It complies with a faint bwok that sounds for all the world like a curse. “You should be back inside, nearer the fire.”
For a moment, Serana thinks he’s talking to the chicken. “Afraid I’ll catch my death?”
“Your kind doesn’t feel the cold?”
“Volkihar don’t.” And even if they did, she’s still relishing being under a night sky again. Even if the stars themselves are different from what she remembers.
Mralki takes another step down, closer to her. His breath frosts light in the air. “Well. All the same, it’s a poor host who lets an honored guest stay out in the cold and damp.”
Serana’s laugh is soft as a chime, and all the more bitter for it. “It’s a foolish host who lets the wolf in.”
“True enough, but you’re no wolf.”
She snaps her head around to stare at him, narrow-eyed. Her lips curl upwards in something half a smile, half a snarl. Just enough to bare a hint of fang. Mralki doesn’t visibly flinch–but the wooden step creaks as he shifts his weight away from her.
“Alright,” he murmurs, “you’ve made your point. And my point is that my son trusts you.”
She scoffs, turning her attention back to the constellations overhead. “Your son trusts everyone.”
Mralki demurs with a shake of his head. “Erik sees the best in everyone, but that doesn’t mean he trusts them. And Eira isn’t in the habit of bringing trouble to my door. Certain scrolls notwithstanding, mind.”
“There’s been more than one?”
Mralki nods. “Last spring. Something about an ancient city under all our feet.” He wards off her next question with a preemptive wave. “There’s only so much I care to know. They came back safe; that’s all that matters.”
Serana regards him out of the corner of her eye. “Would that things were always so simple,” she murmurs, tone half rueful.
“I’m not sure simple is the word I’d use.” He cups his hands to his mouth; blows on them to ward off the chill. “Come inside. You might not feel the cold, but you’ll feel the next storm when it comes in.”
She can smell it on the wind already. Still, she dawdles, her boot tracing a line through the muddy dirt. Mralki descends the last step to stand beside her. “You brought them back safe. You might not believe it, but you’ve earned the guest right under this roof.”
“My father told Eira the same. She was right not to believe him.”
“Not every father’s a monster, Serana, literal or otherwise.” Her eyes dart toward him again, narrow with alarm. “Eira told Erik, of course,” he explains, one hand raised. “And my son never neglects an opportunity to turn my hair gray.”
He turns to go back inside, pausing on the first step. “I won’t press the matter, and you may not believe it, but the offer stands. You’ve nothing to fear under this roof.”
She can hear his footsteps receding up the steps and across the narrow porch, though they pause at the door. Serana turns sideways, looking at the cobblestone road out of town rather than him. “You…mentioned something about potatoes, the last time we were here.”
The small snort of surprise is out before Mralki can stop it. “You were listening when I said that?” She shrugs. He watches her for a moment, considering–and then gestures across the road to a field lost in shadows. “The man across the road, he’s passed - trust me when I say it was for the best - but his last plantings won’t harvest themselves.”
Serana considers him for a moment, then the field. Her lips curve into a smile, though still pressed tight, to hide her teeth. “My mother used to keep a garden. If you need an extra set of hands, I…think I’d like to help.”
He matches her smile with one of his own, motioning her back inside.
