Blood

I did not want to live for eternity inside dark caves, dungeons, keeps, and Ayleid ruins. Give me the sublime beauty of the blinding sun and sapphire skies over Cyrodiil, the vast stretch of horizon of the Abecian Sea, the lushness of The Great Forest in summertime, a million shades of emerald, the amethyst and amber sunsets from Cloud Top.

I was a vampire for a one week. It ills me to even reflect on it now as the very thought of the beautiful spacious days of Cyrodiil, her sunrises, the dapples of playful shadows from the leaves of trees on her rolling meadows and forests, would have been lost to me forever had I continued with the horror.

I did not wish to be a night creature, it was the unfortunate circumstance of my confrontation with Count Hasseldor of Skingrad, a misunderstanding, an ambush for which one of his most trusted men, affiliating himself with the Necromancers, betrayed the Count and tried to kill me for my association with the Mages Guild. And all I wanted was a certain book from the Count, for which Polus at the Arcane University sent me to retrieve.

In the heat of battle taking place in the middle of the night just beyond the gates of Skingrad, the Count's betraying man and his Necromancer friends swarmed me, a lone battlemage. I didn't even see that the Count himself finally appeared and began fighting on my side and together we managed kill all of them. It was then that the Count struck me with his knife and tried to kill me and I, of course, had to defend myself. In the moment of our violent embrace I felt a particularly sharp sting on my shoulder. Never did I think that men of honour, in lieu of their blades and staffs, resort to teeth and claw in combat, that only the despicable goblin race do that. Instantly I felt green with sickness but I still managed to knock him down unconscious.

When he recovered he was very angry and said that the Mages Guild were stupid fools to think they could send one of theirs to spy on him and jeopardize a good vampire's alliance with them. Yes, Count Hasseldor is a vampire, by choice. He aligned himself with the Mages that he may live unbothered by them in exchange for a stream of information he might have on the current activities of the Necromancers. Evidently the Mages didn't trust him enough so they sent me to retrieve some damn book (which I found didn't exist, it was just a ruse).

Fuming, the Count left me. I reported back to Polus at the university and he admitted it was another test of my strength and resourcefulness as a student of the institution. I toyed with the idea of pickpocketing the bastard of his gold and robes or, if I were only able to keep the Stark Reality spell I had visited upon Countess Caro and her stuffy dinner guests in Leyawiin, I would not have hesitated to humiliate Bastard Polus in front of his colleages.

Three days after my scuffle with the Count I woke up and saw that my eyes turned red.