Vampires on the Horizon

The foothills in the south of Skyrim were an odd place to be traveling in the dead of night, but it was precisely where Azaren Velendas found himself on a pleasant little stroll today. He wasn't all too far from the place he now called home, the Cave of the Children as some of the Children had taken to calling it. It was only a few hours' walk, at most, but enough that the sun rising before his arrival home was very real.

Not that he burned or anything; Azaren wasn't that kind of vampire. The weakness that accompanied him, instead, was more of an inconvenience than painful: left him feeling lethargic and without his strength, but did not burn his flesh as one might have expected. There were a few of the Children, recent recruits, who did burn in sunlight when they were hungry - and they were the ones he understood least, both from the nature of their curse to the individuals themselves.

A distraction shook him from his walk, something just at the edge of his senses – a human, it felt like. It was hard to discern properly, but he decided he was due for a bit of excitement anyway.

Azaren darted off the game trail he'd been following, into the brush. Somewhat hidden, he channeled his magicka into a trio of lower-scale enchantments, one after the other. The first, a spell to muffle his footsteps; the second, one to blend himself into the surroundings, a spell of chameleon; and the third, arguably the most necessary to defend himself: a conjuration magick, meant to summon a dagger. A century of this, of hunting as he did, had taught him the necessities of skulduggery, how to avoid being seen until the last possible moment.

He put much of that practice and knowledge to use as he crept closer to the life force he sensed, though he could sense it moving – perhaps the head was turning as if paranoid, perhaps he was shaking it. Azaren's heightened perceptions did not grant him the ability to discern a head shaken out of fear or disorientation, let alone read minds or anything on that level. He was close, though, and stepping out from behind a small tree brought him into sight of what was actually two men – one which, he noticed immediately, had stabbed the other with both a dagger and a pair of fangs.

Azaren raised an eyebrow and cocked his head slightly, only mildly surprised. There were certainly cleaner ways to hunt as vampires did, let alone better places, but he supposed it wasn't too out of sorts to find someone else like him in the cold and often-overcast mountains. He waited silently for the other to finish, though he did at least have the decency to end the spell of concealment with a thought as the man approached. The conjured dagger, he casually hid partially behind one robed leg.

He gave a faint, toothless smile as he spoke, inclining his head in acknowledgment. His manner of speech was an interesting one: his words were soft, yet well-enunciated and almost quickly spoken. "And good evening to you as well. I must say, I didn't expect to meet another of us on my evening walk." Azaren paused briefly, both to take a breath and to size up the man to whom he spoke. Probably a Nord, well-muscled, heavily cloaked. Nothing special. "What brings you to these parts?" he asked.

"Besides him, of course," Azaren quickly added with the briefest of glances at the fallen human.

The other vampire backed off slightly, a move that elicited another small smile from Azaren. He honestly hadn't even noticed if the human—well, ex-human—had been trying to intimidate him, not that he would have been in either case. Azaren had been around long enough, dealt with enough people, that such posturing didn't mean much to him. His own pose was rather relaxed, in fact, and he dispelled the conjured weapon in his hand with a flourish to reinforce that lack of nervousness he felt. He knew he could summon the weapon quickly enough to defend himself if he really had to.

His comment about strange times, though, gave Azaren a bit of a start. He snorted, chuckled to himself. Dragons, civil wars, the Thalmor... "Strange times, indeed," the Dunmer—well, ex-Dunmer—commented idly. And he'd been lucky enough to stay out of the way for much of it, between the dragons and the civil war and for the most part the Dawnguard he'd heard on-again, off-again rumblings of. But he'd worry about them when they came knocking.

"If you must know," Azaren replied, "I was out on my evening walk. My legs, they get stiff and sore sitting up in my home all day." He was rather unsurprised at the vampire's hunting habits; they were common enough, moving from village to village to feed and then vanishing before fingers could be pointed at the newcomers when people woke up ill or didn't wake up at all. Smart way to do it, if you were subtle enough. And patient enough, and careful enough.

Hm. Maybe this fellow would be a useful addition to the Children, were he willing. Looking at him, he seemed capable enough; and apparently he was subtle enough to avoid drawing attention when feeding—and just as it happened, he was looking for a place to weather the snowstorm. "Well, my home is a few miles--" Azaren paused briefly, getting his bearings, "--southeast of here now. If you're interested in joining us... we could perhaps be there in an hour. Maybe half that, if we really hurry."

He paused briefly as the other vampire introduced himself, returned the favor shortly thereafter. Azaren placed a hand on his chest and inclined his head as he spoke: "'Tis my pleasure to meet you, Thrynn. I am called Azaren Velendas." He spared him the grandiose self-introduction that included a number of adjectives; it just wouldn't do to scare away a prospective recruit with what was more speech than name.