"I'm afraid not. Her ribs aren't just broken; they've ripped pieces off and only one of her lungs still functions. The only thing keeping her alive now are these foul magics. The best we can do for her is offer her a quick, painless death."

There's suddenly a howling noise like a dying wolf coming from the other room.

The three of them rush there, battle ready.

But what's there is the three vampires surrounding a fourth on another table. He is... even more messed up than the khajiit. His heart is lying on a plate next to him, shrivelled up and unbeating; his lungs have been cut to pieces and left on another plate; and his veins have somehow grown out of the hole covering the entire front of his torso and are wrapped around four separate magical stones nearby. "You useless asshole," says Arabelle, the one who howled. "You were meant to protect us, now you're, you're—" It's not clear he's conscious, though, empty eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, breath slow and ragged.

"Mara protect us..."

"...let's, uh. Put them out of their misery and move on, yes?" suggests Orthorn, but he shrinks away when the three living vampires shoot him extremely dirty looks.

"...there is nothing left for him. We cannot help him."

"We know," says #3, coldly. "This is why we will rip the Caller's limbs from their sockets one by one while keeping her alive for her to suffer."

...harsh, but fair.

Well.

Ruby summons his Bound Bow, nocks an arrow, and shoots at the khajiit's heart, instantly killing her. "Nevertheless, we should go."

#1 glares at him, Arabelle doesn't look at him, but #3 sighs and nods. "We should. Lenna, we need to kill him." She hisses at him but he stares her down. "He's already dead, Lenna. We've already mourned him. Now let's avenge him."

    She hisses again but looks away. "You do it. I—I can't."

He nods, grabs the dead vampire's heart, and crushes it. The vampire lets out one final breath and... crumbles to fine dust.

Erandur says a prayer for him, and for the khajiit. This was horrible.

Orthorn guides them towards the main ritual chamber, expecting at every turn that they'll be ambushed. They're not, though, and he gets more and more nervous. "There were twelve more mages, here, plus the Caller," he explains. "I don't like this. If they're all together at the chamber..."

"We will deal with them then."

They do, in fact, fail to find anyone else anywhere else. So up and up they go, to the "main ritual chamber" which is on the last floor of the keep's turret.

"So, they're probably all holed up in there and they're going to barrage us with magic as soon as we open the door."

"I will conjure a powerful Ward; all of you should conjure yours just behind it."

"I can conjure an Atronach right in the center of the room, if I have enough time to cast and good visibility."

"I'll do that, too," offers Orthorn.

"The Dremora can walk in first and then rush the closest mage—" ("I will kill them all.") "—and we run in after it and spread out."

"We'll go first," says #3. "There will be traps; our natural resistances will help."

    "And we will kill them all," growls Arabelle.

Plan decided: time to execute.

There aren't twelve mages in there, plus the Caller; there are seven, plus the Caller. And there isn't, really, much that seven Apprentices and one Adept* can do against, well, this group. They fight the necromancers, they kill the necromancers, they raise the necromancers. The Caller can call two Atronachs at once, so she's the most dangerous of them all, but even though she does manage to kill Arabelle she, too, eventually dies.

The vampires do torture her a little bit first, though, which not even Erandur can blame them for.

(* An informal classification some people from the College use for someone who is reasonably powerful but unaffiliated with it.)

"I assume the missing necromancers must've fled?"

"They were never a very close group..." says Orthorn, shrugging uncomfortably.

"And the books?"