Dragonborn Saga

Chapter 708: Night Attack

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The night was long and full of terrors. Winterhold was sleeping soundly and Neo Saarthal had started its curfew a little bit earlier than usual.

Yesterday, a corpse was found drained of blood and the culprit was being hunted since sunset. Since it is a Vampire, people started hanging braids of Garlic at their windows and doors and would toss anyone they meet in the street a silver coin before interacting with them.

While silver coins and garlic braids were the most affordable anti-vampire solution, those who could afford it would purchase Divine Amulets that ward off evil and hang it behind their doors.

It was weird how prepared the people of Winterhold were. These countermeasures were widespread the moment it was announced that a Vampire had attacked someone outside the city. What was even weirder was how the Dare Company had managed to keep the Dawnguard in check. In the rest of Skyrim, the Dawnguard were acting a bit wildly, especially in Riften and Falkreath, where the Vampires are running the scene, but in Winterhold, the regulations taken by the Dare Company and the Guards were too severe that on two separate occasions, a vampire was found dead in the streets where they found nowhere to run from the pursuit of the guards and ended up either dying to sunlight or burning by a thrown torch.

But the Vampires were relentless and tried many times to infiltrate Winterhold's main settlements. Once, they rode horses into the Whispering Mine village and attempted to lay it to waste but the village was saved by two brave hunters who launched fire arrows at the vampires and caused their horses to panic and even killed a few of their death hounds on the expense of burning three houses.

It was then announced that a prize will be put on discovering any Vampire Den within the Hold, the news which led the Mercenaries to rally outside the walls and leave no stone unturned before stumbling upon three structures that resembled gothic castles. As they were reported, the Dawnguard went in a massive force and laid waste to the Vampire hideouts.

Many of the kidnapped were found in these hideouts; some of them were enthralled, others were in terrible shape between the eaten, the sick, and even those who were carrying the effects of vampirism. Those who could be saved were sent to the temple and those who had no luck were disposed of on the spot.

But on a certain night, the one when Jon was having a meeting with the Lords of Skyrim at High Hrothgar, a cabal of Vampires gathered at the doorsteps of Saarthal, a battle was about to begin.

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It wasn't an hour past sunset and the gates were being readied to be closed, orders of Thane Alina Dare. The Vampires were expected to appear at any moment, many of them would just arrive at the gates and start killing the guards in order to hunt inside the city.

This type of attack may seem suicidal in the human sense but the Vampires have some abilities which let them phase through small objects like the arrowslits to enter the city. Once they enter, their goal is to cause as much mayhem as possible and kidnap any desirable blood and flee.

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The vampires would use their thralls as meat shields and speed past the guards on horseback if needed before hitting the key areas in a city. The temple would always be a key area since the blood of the holy men and women had a higher worth to the vampires than most and it would be of use to their corrupting rituals.

Even though many magical traps were readied to expose the Vampires before they came, these kinds of Vampires have a nature adept with magic and they were extremely sensitive to it thus they would recognize and avoid any traps effortlessly.

But that's where they were actually trapped. Alina realized this advantage Vampires have and turned it against them. Instead of being actual traps, Alina made it so that the Vampires would follow a set of routes that are clear from those traps which turned this situation from Total Defense Warfare to Tower Defense Warfare, a type of defense where the enemies move according to expectations and get hammered in prepared kill-zones.

And as the cabal of Vampires gathered outside Saarthal, they were to throw themselves against the strategic genius of Alina Dare.

They gathered in four groups, each with a specific mission. The first would rally the hounds and the thralls, creating a shock force. The second would hunt down the defenders at Saarthal's gate. The third would cause as much mayhem as possible with flashy magic and big spells while providing backup and support. The fourth would be the group that would be on standby only to move when the fight's objective is achieved.

The goal of the group would remain mysterious since it is no ordinary hunting force. After all, the main character from the Vampire side was known as the Nightmarshal, a male vampire whose age and strategic planning are lost to annals of history. No enemies survived to record anything. [A/n: Yes, I played V-Rising.]

And so it began.

The Shock Force of the Vampire Cabal moved through the wastelands of Winterhold and crossed the suburban area outside the city wall, where houses were fortified with garlic braids on their corners and silver coins on their windows and doorsteps. The Shock Force, which consists of mindless attackers such as hounds and thralls, wouldn't get attracted to anything other than a living target ahead of them.

They skipped the huts outside the city and rapidly closed in on the gates where the defenders were patrolling. There, the first confrontation occurred.

The "Houndmaster" targeted the first patrol they ran into and tried to take it out immediately. As it only consisted of simple hold guards, there wasn't hope for them to resist. The hounds ran with the darkness of the night and jumped the first guard before ripping off his throat with their cold fangs and targeting the next and the next. Three guards fell right away before the last two guards on the patrol were alert.

One of the two was a defender with a round shield and the other was a sharpshooter with a longbow. While the two wouldn't last more than a few seconds, the defender blocked the first hound that attacked him with sheer luck and swung his axe at the second one to keep it at bay but against the deathly fangs of a death hound, common iron and wood weren't anything special and the shaft of the axe was shattered away.

The defender tried to put as much resistance as they could to give the sharpshooter time to do anything, meanwhile, the sharpshooter notched an arrow and set it on fire before attempting to launch it at a death hound. Just a split second after that, another death hound leaped at the sharpshooter and bit his arm causing the fiery arrow to fly away and the sharpshooter to fall victim to the death hound followed by the defender soon after.

Still, this resistance wasn't futile and despite the fact that five members of the guards had already fallen, that fiery arrow that just flew away landed on the straw rooftop of a hut at the suburban shanty town outside Saarthal and the fire spread wildly.

"Fire! Fire!" Someone shouted from a guard tower and a bill started to ring.

An arrow swiftly flew at the guard and hit him right in the back with enough force that it launched the man off his feet and threw him off the watchtower but it was already too late since several patrols had seen what had occurred.

"WE'RE UNDER ATTACK!"

"ENEMIES!"

"LIGHT THE SIGNAL!"

It all happened too fast and many guards started to flood out of the houses with shields and spears, many others were still unarmored and hastily put on some hard pieces of armor and held their weapons before strategically retreating towards the gate.

It seemed that the defenders of the city were somewhat ready to put up a fight faster than the enemy would ever anticipate but that was just it, it wasn't anything special. Just as the guards would join up together, they would get flooded by death hounds or get mauled by a large-bodied thrall wielding a sledgehammer.

Some areas outside Saarthal were already putting up some decent resistance but they were fated to meet their end before the guards of the city gate would even get alerted. The fate of those who survived the shock force with injuries was written in grim destiny when the second wave of attackers came and the Vampires themselves were hungering for the blood of mortals.

Screams echoed, horror ran wild, and those on the walls of Saarthal watched with a hand of cold gripping their hearts.

"They are here!" Akara, Sargent in the Dare Corps, spoke and hissed out hot air running with her breath, "Sound the alarm!"

"SOUND THE ALARM!"

"SOUND THE ALARM!"

The voices of the lieutenants echoed on the walls and the bells rang. Those who were fighting outside retreated back into the walls or were killed trying. The vampire shock force overwhelmed the initial defenders and it wasn't until the gates that the true damage was estimated.

Over 18 were killed from the guardsmen that were stationed outside the city. It was a dear price to pay but in the scale of that attack, it was lucky not more than this were taken.

"Prepare the Fire Arrows!" Akara commanded and an archer line spread on the walls around the braziers.

Once she commanded to shoot, tens of flaming arrows rose to the sky and landed on the shanty town outside the walls.

It was brutal how the defenders and the attackers cared none for the shanty town or its residents. The Nightmarshall looked with his glowing eyes and intensely focused on the town without any emotion on his monstrous face. He realized that they were expected.

This surely meant that the shanty town was already empty. It was only filled with guards to ambush the vampires that hunt for villagers.

Whether Winterhold was expecting this scale of attack or not was unknown to the Nightmarshall but he was already involved in this plan and he was comfortable with whatever result it yielded for now.

{Houndmaster!} The Nightmarshall called.

{My lord?} The Houndmaster replied.

{Do it.} The Nightmarshall commanded.

{By your orders.} The Houndmaster, at the vanguard of the attack force, let go of his restraint and started to transform.

It was gruesome how a Vampire Lord comes to their true form. While their normal forms are already beyond saving, their transforming is the stuff of horror and the Houndmaster was already spreading his wings in a supernova of blood and filth whose power toppled the huts nearby.

"All empty, huh?" The Houndmaster noticed that the huts were indeed not filled with even simple furniture.

In other words, the guards of Winterhold used this makeshift shanty town as a checkpoint to sort out travelers and vampires.

Not bad, but that won't save them from what was coming.

As the night arrows burned the town, many Death Hounds and Vampire Thralls started rushing towards the city, unbothered by the flames. Even if they were to be caught in the fires, they would still run ahead with fire eating them away.

The snow had dried around many parts of Winterhold a month back and the fire easily spread in the hay and ate away the wooden structures. Those inside the city could look up to the east and feel the sky lighting up from the fire beneath. Still, this wouldn't harm the high towers and walls of Saarthal.

The fires lit the view below and the smoke mingled with the scenery as the corpses of the Death Hounds and the Vampire Thralls piled up on top of each other at the gatehouse. Even the ones that were incapacitated started clawing and crawling to the gate till the bitter end and the Houndmaster emerged.

He floated in the sky in his grotesque form and he was visible to all the defenders. His eyes radiated with its sickening piss-like color and his voice echoed.

"Mortals!"

A dangerous amount of Magicka gathered around the Houndmaster as he cast it at the pile of corpses.

"Tremble!"

Corpse Explosion!

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