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falmerbrook · 1 month

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TES Summer Fest Day 3: Hungry

Summary: In the months after becoming a vampire Vyrthur is still trying to maintain a sense of normalcy, but having not fed recently, he is struggling to keep up with his duties, and his brother grows concerned.

(warning for descriptions of blood and gore)

I’ve been working on and off on this long backstory fic for Gelebor and Vyrthur, and this is a scene idea I’ve had for the second half of it that I think could work alright out of context as well. These guys live rent free in my head. I think I have thought about them more than the people who actually made them.

AO3 Link

The sun had never been so oppressive. It was noon of the summer solstice, and it felt as if the eyes of Aurl-El himself were baring down on Vyrthur, judging him as he stood on the Chantry’s balcony. In front of him there was a wooden altar with Auri-El’s bow and a sunhallowed arrow laid out upon it, and beyond that his clergy gathered below him. He couldn’t see them as he squinted and tried in vain to blink the pain of the sun’s searing light out of his eyes, but he could smell the metallic scent swirling inside their bodies and feel the warmth radiating from their skin. The emptiness in his stomach was scratching at his insides as the feeling infected his thoughts.

“We thank our… exalted father for giving… giving us these long… w-warm days under his… merry—no, merciful light. We are, as always… undeserving of… of… of this,” he spoke out into the crowd as the sensations of Auri-El’s mercy bombarded him. He knew he was butchering the prayer, but every second in this moment was agonizing.

“May Auri-El continue to… to bless us with… peace,” Vyrthur looked down to reach for the bow and arrow, but everything was too bright. His hands felt like they weren’t his own, and the table below him was beginning to pulsate and sway. He fumbled for a moment to pick up the bow and nock the arrow.

“And may his brilliance protect us from… our enemies and… and…” Vyrthur drew the arrow back and aimed the bow at the sky. It was just a blinding white, so bright it pierced through even his tightly shut eyelids. The skin of his hands and face were on fire and prickled as if he were being poked with thousands of needles, “illuminate our path.”

He fired the arrow, unsure if it was even pointed at the sun if not for a sudden flash of light from the sky and the awed gasps from the crowd. It was too much, and Vyrthur finally brought a hand up to shield his eyes from the light; to shield his eyes from his beloved god like a coward.

With that, the festival had commenced, but Vyrthur couldn’t bear to be outside anymore. The ceremony had been a few minutes at most, but it had felt like hours. His skin was on fire and the world was so bright, the air so filled with the heaviness of the warm bodies around him that a primal hunger was seeping into his mind. He stepped off the platform and made his way towards the doors to the main chapel, stepping slowly and deliberately so as to not make it apparent how desperate he was to get inside. However, by the time he had reached the door, his attempts to seem leisurely had been cast aside as he nearly threw himself through the doorway and slammed the door behind him. The sounds of the festival outside were cut off with the crispness of the Inner Sanctum’s air. Stumbling along the walls of the room he made his way to a bench and fell onto it, heaving and shaking. The halls of the Chantry were lined with guarded windows that let in little light, usually meant for protection in the winter, but now protecting Vyrthur from the summer. The Vale outside was so blinding that he had found the darkest corner of the chapel to rest. Barely 10 minutes outside and his body was aching and burning as if he was completing his pilgrimage all over again, famished and weak. Only this time, he was starting to realize Auri-El might not greet him at the end of this one.

For 3 agonizingly long months it had been a repeating cycle of starving himself until he had no choice but to give into the temptation. Unable to be satiated by the normal food that had fed Vyrthur for the entirety of his life, he would eventually find his thoughts becoming wild and disjointed, only clear when he could smell the blood of his clergy; those thoughts being only of violence and the spilling of their blood. The feeling terrified him in his moments of solitude, and the growing fear that one day he would harm one of his own peers became an ever-present gnawing at his psyche. He knew he needed to feed to protect his people from whatever darkness had infested him, but the act made him feel disgusting. He had been targeting animals of the Vale, but the discovery of their bodies and the threat his hunting was doing to the precious few resources Auri-El provided to them in their haven made the choice to continue down that path risky. Risky and selfish. With every feeding he felt his sense of self and his connection with Auri-El slipping as it filled him with a sickly energy and satisfaction each time.

“Vyrthur.”

Caught up in the dizzying thoughts of his hunger, Vyrthur hadn’t noticed the opening and closing of the chapel door, nor the footsteps approaching him, and startled at his brother’s voice.

“Are you alright? You seemed… distracted during the ceremony.” Gelebor usually spoke in soft tone, but Vyrthur recognized it as particularly gentle and careful in this moment.

“I’m fine, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me, I’ll be back out in a minute. I’m just not feeling my best today, but it will pass,” he replied.

Despite avoiding looking at the other mer, Vyrhtur could almost hear Gelebor’s frown deepen as he crouched beside the bench.

“You seem like you’re quite beyond the point of ‘not feeling well’. You look pale. I think you may be ill.”

Vyrthur kept his eyes focused on the floor, but noticed a hand reaching out to touch him and pressing against his forehead briefly before he squatted it away with a huff.

“Seriously, Gelebor, I’m fine. I’m just tired. It seems like I must’ve overexerted myself in all the commotion around the festival preparations. We aren’t quite as young as we used to be, are we,” Vyrthur said, attempting a chuckle to lighten the mood.

Clearly this didn’t work, as Gelebor flatly ignored him and continued with his concerns, “You looked like you were burning up out there, but you feel so cold. You’re clearly—"

“It’s fine. I’ve felt like this often recently. It’s just my age.”

“That’s why I’m worried, Vyrthur. You have seemed so unwell and distant since you almost died. The others are noticing it too—and I don’t say that to embarrass you, but I know they worry you are becoming unable to fulfill your duties. I know you would never do that on purpose, and I understand that you may not want to be public about whatever it is plaguing you, but something is clearly affecting you and I wish you would at least talk about it to me.”

Vyrthur kept his gaze cemented to the bricks at his feet in silence. He could hear the concern dripping from Gelebor’s words, but he struggled to embrace the feeling as his brother’s physical closeness triggered the hunger pains again. He had been avoiding eye contact over the past few months, worried Gelebor would notice the change in his eyes. To make matters worse, now just being near him Vyrthur could smell and feel the rich blood inside him. The thought of attacking Gelebor and splattering it all over the floor was clawing at the back of his mind, with the revulsion of the thought’s existence at the forefront. He was worried that if he even glanced over at Gelebor he’d be unable to resist the temptation.

Perhaps he should say something though, at least lay out a hint out for Gelebor to muse over, but the fear of his own blood spilling to his brother’s mace petrified him. Gelebor had made a promise to bring down whatever beast was terrorizing the Vale, and Vyrthur couldn’t feel completely secure in the thought that he would forego that promise just because the monster was his family.

“Seriously. I’m alright. Please stop worrying about me. I’ve not felt like… I’ve not felt as good as I used to since the excursion, yes, but today was just a result of not taking care of myself recently. I just need to rest for a moment,” Vyrthur said, finally bringing his gaze up to meet Gelebor’s, “Go out and enjoy the festivities with everyone.”

The eye contact replaced the pain of the hunger with a pain of guilt as Vyrthur saw the sustained worry in Gelebor’s eyes. It was obvious that Vyrthur’s reassurances made no difference, but still, Gelebor straightened himself with a sigh, relenting.

“Just keep resting until you feel better then, ok Vyr? Take your time. Don’t push yourself. We can wait,” he said as he turned to leave back through the doors to the balcony. As the doors closed, Vyrthur was left in the dark and silence, his hunger finally leaving the forefront of his mind.

-----

That night, Vyrthur found himself crouched in the entrance of a cave along the side of the Vale’s cliffs, his jaw tightly clenched around the neck of one of the Betrayed. His robes and arms were drenched in its blood from his frantic feeding, but as he lapped up the blood gushing out of its neck, he felt a surge of power and energy. He was getting high off it. Even as he drank, it made his hunger stronger until eventually his stomach began to feel full. How bad was this, really? Better he hunt one of these inferior beasts than one of his own, right? The less of these disfigured abominations of Auri-El’s children, the better, and the safer. Safer for the Chantry, and safer for himself.

As the hunger began to subside as his thoughts began to finally clear, Vyrthur paused and pulled away from his feast, looking down at it. The neck and shoulder had been shredded and mangled, the head nearly decapitated. In the few breaks through the blood covering his hands and the Betrayed’s body he could see their skin was the same. This one was clearly young, not a child, but small and inexperienced enough to have been easy prey. As the blood sat heavier and heavier in his stomach, he couldn’t look away from the scene in his arms.

Unceremoniously, Vyrthur tossed the body of the Betrayed down a steep passage of the cave, out of sight before the disgust could truly settle in.

#tesfest24 #tes summer fest #skyrim #tes #the elder scrolls #skyrim fanfiction #knight paladin gelebor #gelebor #vyrthur #mine #my writing #apparently i enjoy writing people feeling ill

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