Lydia eventually returned having vented a considerable amount of her rage on various inanimate objects and while she rejoined the group a stony silence fell between her and Kaius. No longer completely deferential, she instead chose to be utterly silent in his presence, only speaking to Sofia and even exchanging a few words with Serana. The tension was thick enough to cut with a blade as they found a way out of the ancient crypt and onto the surface once more.

For her part, Serana remained quiet and acted like Kaius' shadow not out of a desire for protection but for the simple fact that within minutes of leaving the cavern where she had been entombed she had admitted to not recognising anything. For however long she had been locked away the world it seemed had moved on without her, and even the tomb itself had been altered, changed and expanded in the depths of the hillside. This was soon only one of several revelations about her as she had also been the one to have found the way to the surface and when Sofia had emerged she had found the vampiress standing, head tilted upwards and eyes closed as she felt the sunlight on her flesh.

Out of all of them, Kaius appeared to be the most in shock at that certain revelation. Sofia had long since grown used to his ability to withstand Sunlight, Lydia hadn't found Serana's ability any different to his. They both realised very quickly that he had not considered the possibility that there would be others of his kind who could exist in sunlight and the trepidation and wariness that gathered around him was obvious.

Serana was different in many aspects. While she could walk in the sun, she was obviously weaker, slower and less agile than Kaius who showed no marked difference in his abilities whether he was in the shadows or in the noonday sun. Like someone who had marched for two days straight, Serana plodded along with none of the grace and strength she had shown within the crypt and it was only when the sun fell that she returned to 'normal'.

They had made camp several hours from the small mining town of Stonehills, gazing upon it's faint flickering lights as torches, lanterns and braziers were lit. While they would have been able to potentially make the distance with time to spare, they all had decided, Serana included that it wouldn't have been the best idea to go close to civilization with her in tow. For the first few days at least. Like he had dozens of times before, Kaius had managed to light a small campfire, while Sofia pitched the two traveller's tents and Lydia gathered the wood needed to keep the flames going for the evening. While winter was a recent memory, frosts were still overwhelmingly common and it allowed them to supplement their rations with the rabbits Kaius had managed to catch.

"It's two days to Morthal." He had said simply as he had expertly skinned and gutted the rabbits in turn. "We'll stock up on supplies there and head to Dragon Bridge. All in all, should be a week to get to our destination."

Sofia always enjoyed watching him go through the process of preparing any game that he caught as he slitted them open, scooped the insides out and filled them with a collection of stones for cooking. There was something disturbingly mesmerising about the way that he went about it with such precision and ease from many, many years of practice. He was so skilled in the motions that he could twirl the knife and cut the rabbits apart without even looking at what he was doing.

"How can you be sure that your family is even still there?" Lydia snarled, staring daggers at Serana sitting on her own side of the fire. Lydia and Sofia were sitting close to each other, weapons at hand while Kaius and Serana sat on opposing sides that created a triangle between the small group.

Serana shrugged, her form mostly hidden under Kaius' cloak and the clothes she had managed to piece together by stripping the dead thralls in the crypt. Overall she looked almost swallowed in the pieces of clothing that were slightly too large for her. "I don't. I don't know if they are still there, or whether they still exist or anything at all."

"Just how old are you?" Sofia asked, remembering the way that Kaius had roughly told her his own age months ago that night before he killed the dragon.

There was another shrug. "I don't know."

"How old are you then?" Lydia's tone was entirely insubordinate as she directed the barbed question to Kaius and Sofia couldn't help but wince at the raw emotion in it. There was no yes my thane, no my thane, three-sacks-full my thane, from her anymore.

"Two hundred and thirty-four." Kaius said simply, tossing a handful of entrails into the hole dug into the soil at his side. "Give or take a year."

Only the crackling of the campfire could be heard as they all digested the information and Sofia pulled her cloak tighter around herself. Such a number somehow made her feel lonely and it was an unusual feeling. "How long were you in that… place?" She asked instead, trying and failing to look the other vampire in the eye.

"Good question." For several moments she sat deep in thought, taking a roasted rabbit leg from Kaius as he pulled the first one from the coals. "Hard to say. I… I can't really tell."

Sofia handed Lydia her roasted rabbit, skewered on one of the thin steel roasting sticks that Kaius kept strapped to his travelling bag for just this purpose and bit into her own. Lydia wasn't even accepting food from Kaius at the moment.

As Serana chewed thoughtfully on her piece of rabbit, both Lydia and Sofia shared an expression of concern at the recent memory that it brought to the surface. When Kaius had come back into camp after his companions had a very uneasy hour alone with Serana, one of the rabbits he had brought back was still alive and twitching in his hand. Somehow he had managed to catch it alive and unharmed and without any word of explanation or warning he had simply handed it to Serana who promptly bit its head off. Sofia couldn't decide what was more horrifying; the way the vampiress had changed into her darker nature and unhinged her jaw slightly, the way she had simply chewed a few times before swallowing, or the way she had fastened her mouth around the stump and proceeded to drain the rest of the corpse before handing it back to Kaius.

The more she thought of it, the worst part was the way how Serana had looked horrified at what she had done for the briefest of moments before returning to the cold persona that seemed to be her normal attitude. Kaius for his part had watched intently, studying Serana's every move with a predatory intensity and it was obvious that everything he was doing was testing her and her abilities.

"I feel like it was a long time." Serana said after delicately picking the leg clean with her human, unchanged teeth. "Who is Skyrim's High King?"

The way that Kaius, Sofia and Lydia chuckled darkly was not lost to her. "That's actually a matter for debate." Sofia said simply.

"Oh, wonderful. A war of succession." Ignoring the way that Kaius had been snorting in amusement at Sofia's tone Serana flicked one of the tiny leg bones into the fire. "Good to know the world didn't get boring while I was gone. Who are the contenders?"

"The Empire supports Elisif." Kaius said, pulling his own rabbit out of the fire where it had been stuck on the end of his sword.

"But there are many in Skyrim loyal to Ulfric." Sofia added.

The look of confusion was impossible to ignore as Serana turned and frowned at Kaius. "Empire? What… What Empire?"

Pulling the impaled rabbit away from his mouth and swallowing a mouthful of hot flesh he gestured about himself. "The… Empire. From Cyrodiil."

"Cyrodiil? Where's Cyrodiil?" realisation crossed her face and her mouth fell open in surprise. "You mean Cyrod? Cyrod is the seat of an empire? I must have been gone longer than I thought. Definitely longer than we planned."

For the first time in hours, Lydia, Sofia and Kaius all shared expressions of confusion and unease as Serana tucked her legs up under her chin and wrapped herself fully in Kaius' cloak. "I need to get home so I can figure out what's happened."

"Tell me about your home." Kaius asked softly.

"It's on an island near Solitude." Huddled under the cloak and overlarge clothing, the vampiress seemed somewhat small despite her obvious nature. "It's my family home. Not the most welcoming place, but depending on who's around I'll be safe there."

Sofia leaned forward and spat a chunk of gristle into the flames that sizzled and spat. "Why wouldn't you be safe there? We all saw what you did to those draugr back in the crypt and beside that, you're a vampire to boot."

Hint of glowing energies surged beneath the blue-green eyes as they reflected the fire's light. "Let's just say that my mother and father had a bit of a falling out." She caught Kaius' expression and gave a reassuring smile to Sofia, not that she needed the assurance. "Don't worry, I'm not in any danger or anything like that. It'll just be more unpleasant to run into my father."

"He sounds like quite the guy." There was absolutely no mistaking the threat in Lydia's voice as she finished her meal and dragged her axe over her lap. There was also no mistaking the intent as she went about the process of scraping the edge clean and sharp again with a whetstone, all the while watching Serana.

"So who was High King before you… well, you know." Sofia asked, partially because she was curious in a morbid kind of way.

"Well, King Olaf had passed away a year or two before and I never really found out who was named as his successor."

Again Lydia and Sofia shared a glance and their unease was mirrored by Kaius as he stopped in mid motion, showing the most amount of emotions that either of them had ever seen. Half chewed food fell out of his mouth in the moment as he openly gaped at Serana.

"King Olaf. As in Olaf One-Eye?" Kaius spluttered. "He was High King?"

Serana nodded, looking but not understanding their expressions. "I know my accent is hard to understand but you all seem to know of him. How long ago was his reign?"

Kaius' sword had somehow turned from an eating implement into a deadly weapon once against despite him not moving or changing the way he was holding it. "Serana, when were you born?"

"Five-Forty-Six. Why? What's the problem?"

She saw the way that all three were watching, and the circular motions Sofia was making with her hand with an expression of 'and, go on' on her face.

"Five-forty-six of…?" Kaius replied.

"Five hundred and Forty-six years since Ysgramor's conquests. Again, what is the problem?"

Silence fell between them again and Sofia's face scrunched in concentration as she tried to remember the dates and history and came completely up short. Such thinking was making her yearn for a bottle or mead. Or a dozen at least.

Wetting his lips with his tongue before wiping them on the back of his demi gauntlet, Kaius gave Serana a stare that could almost be described as grandfatherly. "Serana… That was in the Merethic Era."

"Am I supposed to understand the reference?"

Surprise and nervousness were not emotions or reactions that Kaius was used to and neither were Sophia and Lydia in seeing him as either. "Well, so much has been lost to time and history that most dates are uncertain…"

"Bara berätta!" she snapped. "Just tell me!"

"You're about four and half thousand years old."

If they had thought she had been shocked before, they had been mistaken. Her mouth split open slightly and eyes widened before her jaw clenched as the bones and muscles of her face tightened perceptibly. For several moments it was almost as though her darker nature would surface before she crushed it aside with her will, showing a moment of sadness before rising to her feet.

"I… I need a moment." She said softly, turning and walking into the darkness with the cloak hanging limply from her shoulders.

"Fucking oblivion." Kaius muttered to himself as she vanished into a small copse in the darkness.

"She didn't seem to take it well." Sofia added, staring in Serana's direction.

"Would you? We just told her that everything that she knew about this world… hells, her entire world ceased to exist a long time ago. There's a damn good chance that she's completely alone."

"So?" the sound of the whetstone on the axe punctuated Lydia's every syllable. "She's a vampire."

Kaius chose to ignore the obvious connotations his Housecarl's comments had. "It's still worth travelling to her home. It'll most likely be a ruin if it exists at all, but at least now we have a better idea of why the other vampires want her."

Sofia found her attention drawn to the burning embers of the fire. "Besides the Elder Scroll?"

"Yeah. Besides that, the older a vampire becomes the more powerful they are. If what Serana says is true, then she is quite easily the oldest vampire in existence and that is something to be concerned about."

"Then why don't we just kill her?" Lydia's voice was as cold and sharp as her axe.

"Because she might not be the only one of her kind…" Kaius looked distinctly uneasy at that thought. "We can't afford not to be certain."

It took them the better part of two weeks and a handful of short stays within towns and villages along the way but the group had lead Serana towards the northern regions of Haafinger Hold. The temperature was cold and bleak, snow falling on occasion despite the summer months and only fully clothed in thick furs and clothes were they able to make the journey in any comfort. Serana had proven herself quite capable at disguising her true nature when required, an ability assisted by the way the weakened in direct sunlight and after the first week travelling Lydia had relaxed a little towards Kaius. There was still a considerable gulf wedged between them but it was no longer appearing as though she was going to try to kill him at a moment's notice.

Travelling over the mountain range splitting Haafinger Hold in two they made good progress in the last days, arriving on a tiny peninsular jutting out from the land where it pointed accusingly at an enormous stone edifice built onto an island off shore. There was less than three hundred metres separating the giant fortress from the mainland but there was no mistaking the enormity of it. Kaius had estimated it to be about a third of the total height of White-Gold Tower but also said it appeared to be of Nordic construction rather than made by the hands of elves.

They camped in amongst the trees on the peninsular for the night, barely talking in the presence of castle that sat off in the darkness like a squatting gargoyle on top of a rocky outcrop. It was dark and foreboding and they all had noticed the way Serana had become even quieter as their destination had approached. They had not spoken much about their other lives or their personal histories, but it was obvious that Serana had developed a hunger of knowledge of the world as it was in the present. Sofia recognised it as a coping mechanism as such to take her mind away from the fact that the world that she had been locked away in didn't exist and that fact held massive ramifications.

When Serana travelled to the castle, she did so with only Kaius by her side. Lydia chose to wait for their return, and Sofia had no intention of getting in one of the handful of tiny fishing boats moored along the ancient jetty at the end of the peninsular. They were sea worthy only in the way that petrified wood could be and she wasn't going to take any chances. So as dawn arrived and brought morning with it, She and Lydia both made themselves comfortable for either their return, or for two days to pass to make their way back south to warmer climates.

The wait was shorter than expected, and shortly after noon Lydia had noticed the movement on water, seeing the tiny boat being rowed back from the castle. It had only been a few hours, but as it drew nearer they could see that Kaius was on board, and Serana was nowhere to be seen.

"How did it go?" Sofia asked as Kaius rowed the boat over to the crumbling jetty.

Without a word he quickly tied the boat off with a length of rope before jumping up and staring at the two women in front of him.

"Kaius?" Although they had been travelling together and face a lot of dangers over several months, she knew that Kaius was not by any definition a nervous man. But, he stood there, looking back at the giant castle with icebergs dozens of kilometres away framing it in view and even Lydia could sense his unease.

It was impossible to determine whether it was the cold that caused his full body shiver but Sofia suspected otherwise. Especially as he turned around, fixed them both with a pointed stare and sighed.

"We're in really deep shit..."

Author's note:

I am fully aware that the official lore regarding Serana and her family is extremely disjointed and leans towards her being locked away sometime in the mid 2nd Era. In my AU of Bloodtide Rising and the fact that the in-game and official Dawnguard lore is very contradictory I have specifically chosen to have Serana locked away in the 4th Century of the 1st Era, before the battle of Red Mountain and the disappearance of the Dwemer, during the first decades of the Alessian 'Empire' and so on. For anyone who can't be bothered with doing the calculations, she was locked away around 1E454 in my AU.

The languages she initially speaks are a mixture of Swedish, Latin and Dovahzul to show the major 'languages' spoken during the first era in my AU. For ease of writing and so I don't have to expand on the limited lore-languages in place, I am treating ancient Cyrodillic as Latin, Ancient Nordic as Swedish, and common (English) being a derivative of almost all other languages (like it is in lore). It has been roughly 5000 years since the beginning of the 1st Era by the time of the events in Skyrim and while I have taken a huge amount of creative license with the language side of things I was never really comfortable with the way how when you find Serana, not only is she fully clothed but she's speaking pure 'common' with no accent or difficulty. Yes I know it's a game thing etc etc etc but even if she was locked away in the middle of the 2nd Era, that's nearly a 1000 years locked away. Languages change a lot even in a few generations.

Serana is by far my favorite character in TES due to the extreme depth of character and the backstory that is only hinted at through her interactions and dialogue and while I am not happy with the amount of 'screentime' I have provided her in this story, she is going to be make much larger appearances in the coming parts of "Sos do Dov". I'm looking forward to not only working on her character but expanding Sofia's and Lydia's further, especially how they interact with each other and Kaius. Kaius may be the MC but he's not the center of attention in this series. Sofia is very much hogging the spotlight (as she does).

All this put aside, I hope anyone who reads this is enjoying the story so far! :-D