A/N: In Oblivion, Chapels are indistinguishable from one another, and only Arkay has distinct rites mentioned (but not how they are performed). I personally feel this means I can make up my own concepts of how individual aedra are worshipped in practice. I won't be sticking to the exact NPCs found in Chapels in the game, either.

Chapter 2

Varanu leaned gratefully against the great post of the Anvil Castle Gate. The Imperial who was on early guard duty eyed her askance as she finally sheathed her scimitar. She was gasping like a fish from a walk that should hardly have raised a sweat, and she was still crusted with grime. Given that the Fighters' Guild had an outpost in the town, it wasn't so uncommon to see injured people in armor staggering in early in the morning. The sight of a scarred and steaming Dunmeri woman in heavy armor, however, was just a little out of the common.

"Do you need help?" said the guard.

"No," said Varanu.

"You sure? You don't look so - "

She waved down his extended hand. "Don't touch me. I've got astral vapors."

"It's not all that contagious," he said, but Varanu was already on her slow way up the street toward the Chapel of Dibella. The ebony wasn't getting any lighter, but it was the principle of the thing.

It was clouding up overhead, as if it planned to rain again soon. The windows of the great Chapel glowed faintly up ahead. The steeple rose out of sight into the thin mist that often prevailed in Anvil in the early morning. Varanu's surroundings seemed to be taking on a tendency to warp at the edges, as if she were viewing them through a glass lens. She nearly fell on her way up the steps, and she had to fumble for a moment to actually find the handle of the door, though it was not too dark to see.

It was fairly dim inside the Chapel, however, so it wasn't surprising that she tripped over something just inside the door. With the current state of her reflexes, there was no chance of catching herself. Her right shoulder hit the stone floor with a dull clank, jarring her to the bone.

"Tsk, how clumsy of me," said a voice that was probably, all things considered, male. Sometimes it was hard to tell with Altmer, and nowhere was this more noticeable than inside facilities dedicated to Dibella. Varanu sat up slowly, shook her head, and glared up into the face of...

No, he couldn't be an aedra. Varanu was positive that wasn't what Arkay looked like, and she hadn't done anything significant enough to merit a personal visit in any case. Still, in her present disoriented state, looking up at the golden vision in Elven armor as he stood backlit by the glow of the open door, Varanu experienced a second's pang of doubt.

Fortunately, a dozen or so years' service in one of the world's less rewarding occupations plus the fact of her ancestry came to her rescue.

"Stupid Altmeri son of a guar," she said, and seized hold of a nearby bench to drag herself upright. The Altmer offered a shining gloved hand, but retracted it at Varanu's raised eyebrow. "Don't touch me, idiot. I've got astral vapors." She turned and made her way to the altar, ignoring the startled expression on his lovely face. One or two shocked worshipers were staring from the benches, though she didn't know (or care) whether her language or the noise she'd made falling had provoked the reaction.

Varanu slowed as she reached the great round of stone that served as an altar. A beam from a stained glass skylight overhead lit the air above it with swirling dust motes. She rested both hands on the rim to keep from falling over.

She wasn't a mer of many words. In the event, all she said, was, "Please."

A draft of magicka, pure and cold as ice, shot up her spine. The heavy feeling in her limbs departed instantly, the weight of her armor suddenly less as her strength was restored. She shook herself. A small clod of dirt dislodged itself from her hair and hit the stone floor with a small poof. She could feel her own magicka again, waiting. Some mer felt it as a sizzle in their veins, like liquor. Some felt it as an aura, a mist in the air around them. Varanu felt it as fire waiting to happen. Heat aggregated at the ends of her fingers, urgent with the need to consume the dead.

She went to the little round altar of Arkay next, in its shadowed place beside the wall. A faint murmur of prayer and ordinary chatter arose behind her as she stepped behind a pillar. This time she laid one hand on the altar as she lifted the unguent vial on its chain over her head. She held it out over the small column of marble.

"I've done it for you," said Varanu. "Stay with me and I'll do it again."

There was a soft buzz, and the vial lit up from the inside for an instant. Fire flashed around Varanu's fingers, but they did not burn. Then it went out. Varanu put it back on and turned toward the sanctuary in time to nearly trip over the same Altmer again. This time she took a quick step back, avoiding the duck-footed boot with its mirror polish.

"You're a slow learner, is that it?" she said.

"You're a votary of Arkay," said the Altmer, smiling faintly. "I suppose that explains it."

"Not the half of it, mer," said Varanu. "Did you want something?" It almost hurt to look at him closely. His skin and eyes and his long, plaited hair were almost the same shade of pale gold, and he hadn't been down any caves lately, by the look of things. His features were stunning in the manner common to his race, pointed and angular and absolutely symmetrical. He was only a couple of inches taller than Varanu, who was not small for a Dunmeri. At least I don't have to look up.

"You came by your recent indisposition in course of doing the Divines' work, is it so?" said the Altmer.

"I caught astral vapors off a zombie while I was putting down a cave full of Undeads," said Varanu warily. "If that's what you mean." And who are you and why are you still talking to me? She'd had some… interesting… conversations inside Chapels of Dibella before, but not generally while she was still filthy and reeking of dirt and rot.

"And you came to a Chapel of Dibella because… ?" he prodded gently.

"It was the closest altar," said Varanu. "I'm not here for your goddess, and I don't care remotely about how I look at this instant in time. For that matter, I don't see why it's any of your business."

"No, it really isn't, is it?" he said. "I do beg your pardon. I was mistaken." He didn't seem particularly sorry. But then, it wasn't an emotion Altmer were very good at expressing. "I don't suppose I might assist you with your hair while you are here?"

"You what?"

"Only it does appear to need some attention," said the Altmer. "I happen to carry scissors with me, and we have fonts in the Undercroft for washing."

Varanu squelched her temper with an effort. If you didn't want to hear about it, you should've found a different chapel. "Thanks," she said. "But I don't let anybody that close to my neck with sharp things. Nothing personal. And I've got a lot of other cleaning up to do - "

"I could help with that also," said the Altmer. "I'm quite a good armorer. It would be no trouble at all."

"No," Varanu said. "Thanks, but no. Blessings of Arkay, serjo."

"Blessings of Dibella," returned the other mer. He moved aside as she went up the aisle. Varanu glanced suspiciously back at him as she went out the door. He watched her go with an expression of superior blankness, the most typically Altmeri expression a living being could possibly have.

Ten minutes later she was inside the Fighters' Guild, stripped down to her underclothes and giving herself a spit bath from a basin of relatively warm water. Sven the Ugly sat on the edge of a bed further down the long, narrow room, hammering at a warped cuirass. Heavy muscle bunched and stretched in the Nord's big arms as he worked. He tended to go a little crosseyed, and he had a weak chin and a big, hooked nose. He was also, for what it was worth, probably Varanu's favorite person in the Guild.

"New scars," Sven grunted as he glanced up at her bare back. "What've you got into this time, then?"

"Same as always," Varanu said. She leaned over the basin, scrubbing at her scalp with the fragrant sand she always carried. "Saw the Hero of Kvatch down a hole in the ground, believe it or not. I caught astral vapors this time. Had to go to the Chapel before I came here."

Sven snorted. "You, in Dibella's Chapel? Wish I'd seen it."

"I wish you had, too," Varanu said. "For a second I thought this Altmer was going to proposition me. Weird. So what'd you run into, this time out?"

"Eh, guild business," said Sven. He hit the iron cuirass another resounding whack, forcing a dent out. "Minotaurs harassing some farmer. One of 'em just about took my head off. Probably improve my looks, but I figured to keep it this time."

"Mm hm," said Varanu. "And when's the last time you slept alone, again?"

Sven grinned. His teeth were crooked and yellow, but they were all there. "Why, Var. I didn't know you cared."

"Not much," Varanu said. She rinsed her hair as best she could, then fumbled around for her ebony belt knife. "Just wondering how much mileage you're getting out of that oh-poor-me routine."

"Plenty," Sven said. "Besides, I'm a nice fellow. Women like me. You ought to take a lesson."

"I don't want women to like me," Varanu said.

"You know what I meant." Sven put the breastplate back on over his head. He'd done it so many times that he didn't have to look at the straps as he buckled them.

Varanu hacked at the trailing strands of her black hair, cutting off the worst tangles. This made it considerably shorter. It was easier than this might sound. She kept the knife very sharp, and she'd used it to cut her hair many times before.

"I'm not interested," Varanu said. "Even if looks meant the same to men as women – which they don't, by nor large - I'm too busy for hobbies, which is what it is to you."

"Fair," Sven allowed. "Guild work's not for a family man."

"There are those who'd disagree."

"Un huh," said Sven mildly. He buckled his sword belt back on. "And they're wrong. Where you going to next?"

"I'm not sure," Varanu said. "I'll ask Azzan, but he doesn't usually have much in my line. Maybe I'll head north again. One of the priests up at Bruma is a fair diviner."

"I thought you didn't hold with that," Sven said.

"He's a natural," Varanu said. "No blood, no sacrificial victim, no praying to daedra. The god talks to him."

"He doesn't talk to you?" said Sven.

"He gave me a job to do, and he keeps me going so I can do it," Varanu said. "That's enough. Light follow you, big man."

"Luck follow you, little mer," said Sven the Ugly, and went out.