A/N: Isn't it hilarious how racial stereotyping is okay, if the race is fictional? Ferengi and Vulcans come to mind, but it's just as true in every fantasy game ever made…
Chapter 7
If you were to ask any person of any Cyrodilic race to describe to you the typical Imperial, the answer would look very much like the priest Tychicus Varen. Not too tall, they would say. Thick-bodied, though except for a few individuals you wouldn't see much fat on them. They're a hardworking people. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Small features, with a round head and a little beaky nose.
And this, so far as it went, was Tychicus Varen. This was also the point where any description of that race would tend to fall short of the man himself. A lot of people wouldn't notice the little odd things, because a lot of people didn't notice much outside the preoccupying concerns of surviving day by day in the difficult age following the closing of the Gates.
Perhaps he spoke a little formally for his race, but so did a lot of priests. Perhaps he held his eyes open a little wide, and tended not to blink. It would have been rude to speculate as to the cause, especially with skooma so easy to come by in most of the Empire and temptation so hard to resist for so many. He was a very good Restorationist, but again, so were many priests. If his mana seemed nearly bottomless, well, there were those among his brother servants who suspected he might have been a battlemage once upon a time.
Varanu noticed all of these things. It wasn't so much that she was naturally observant or inquisitive, though she had necessarily learned a little of both. "Ha," she said flatly.
"I beg your pardon, sister?" said Tychicus Varen. He raised his head where he knelt. "Do I cause you pain?"
"Hm? No, I still can't feel a thing," Varanu said. She glanced down at her numbed left leg, presently greaveless and laid open from below the knee to above it. A flattish bowl on the floor caught the occasional drip of blood, but there wasn't very much; the entire limb was presently both paralyzed and frozen. Normally this should have resulted in an inability to move it plus painful frostbite, but that never seemed to happen with Varen.
There wasn't much light in the long, low undercroft, but that didn't seem to bother him either.
"Good. In any case, I believe I am nearly finished here. I've reannealed the tendon in a more correct alignment. It should serve." They were alone in the Undercroft except for a lone priestess, who was having lunch at one of the room's two tables without apparently being bothered by the impromptu surgery taking place in the same room. Esgeriad, on the other hand, had taken one look at the blood, blanched, and politely excused himself.
"Thanks, Brother," said Varanu. She watched as the priest began to carefully heal the wound from the inside out, making sure everything stayed in place. "You seem to have some new faces in the Chapel," she said.
Varen's hands stopped moving for a second. A pained look crossed his face for an instant, then smoothed quickly away. The blue glow resumed as he went on closing the wound inch by inch. "I'm afraid Raius is dead," he said. "And Iridir with him. The other two I believe you did not know."
"What happened?" Varanu said. She had a fair idea. Priests of Arkay who died young generally hadn't fallen down the stairs.
"I'm afraid they fell foul of Namirans," said Tychicus Varen. "But that has been dealt with. That circle is closed. You come to me with an open one, is it not so?" He finished closing up her knee and cast a small dispel on it. Feeling returned instantly. "How is that?"
"Excellent," Varanu said. She flexed the limb experimentally. There was a blessed absence of pain. "As always." She rolled down her thin linens, then reached for her greave and began to buckle it back on. "And you're right. I need to find a necromancer. I thought you might be able to help me."
"This is one particular transgressor of the Boundary?" said Varen.
"Oh, yes. It seems he's come up with a method for adding to his life by using other people's. Typical experiment. It's just that this one seems to have succeeded, and now he's writing to the other ones about it."
Varen took up the bowl of blood, said a couple of syllables Varanu did not recognize, and waved his hand over it. The blood turned obligingly into water. He set it on the nearest table and proceeded to wash his hands. "Do you have an object that I may use, Sister?" he said.
"Not much of one," Varanu said. She produced the journal. "This wasn't his. It just talks about him."
The priest turned a wide, bright eye on the book as he dried his hands on a towel. He dabbed at a stain on his brown robe. "This is a tenuous link at best," he said. "It would require a powerful evil for me to find it thus."
"I'm afraid that won't be a problem," Varanu said. "I'm not sure I'd touch it without gloves on." Tychicus held out his hand anyway. She shrugged and gave him the bloodstained book. He didn't flinch overtly, but he did set it quickly on the table almost the instant he touched it.
"Ah. I see what you mean," he said. "I will need some time to… examine it. If you and your young friend would care for a meal while you wait, you are welcome."
"With a will, Brother, but we're not friends," Varanu said. "I'm not even sure who he actually is. He seems to have followed me from Anvil."
"You called him by name earlier," Tychicus said mildly. He went to a cupboard near the priestess who was eating. "Pardon me, Sister, I need two plates. Thank you."
"Yes, but I don't know who he is," said Varanu. She took off her gauntlets and hung them on her belt so she could lay out the forks and spoons Tychicus handed her. The priestess smiled at her encouragingly and went back to reading her book as she ate. "I think he's really just a knight. It's a good cover story, but I don't see how he could be for real. I mean, you've been inside Chapels of Dibella, right?"
"Once or twice," said Tychicus Varen.
"See a lot of people in heavy armor?"
"No," Tychicus said. He set out a loaf of bread and some apples, then stared bemusedly into the cupboard. "As it happens, I did not. Dibella's service is not a martial one for the most part."
"It's not that seriously followed most of the time, either," Varanu said. She looked over his shoulder and saw only a few leeks and a plate of shepherd's pie. "We'll be find with the bread and apples, Brother. …Not that Imperials are mostly all that religious, for people with this many gods, but Dibella especially tends to catch the short straw. She spends a lot of time being an excuse for people to do what they want to do anyway."
"Perhaps that is her will," said Tychicus. "The aedra are sometimes hard to fathom."
"Could be worse," Varanu said. "At least they're permanent. More or less."
"In any case, I sense no evil from this mer," said Tychicus Varen. "Nor, I suspect, do you."
"No, but that doesn't mean he's harmless," Varanu said. "Water under the bridge can still have dreugh in it. After what's mostly happened to the others, the Imperium has a reason to keep an eye on me and any other… survivorsWhat's left of the Imperium, that is. They've got to be even more paranoid than I am, in this day and age."
"Paranoia," said Varen. "Yes. I think perhaps you are a little too inclined to succumb, Sister. This is indeed an evil day. The Imperium has its own concerns." He extracted a single leek from the cupboard, looked at it thoughtfully, and went to set it on the second table beside the journal.
"I'm carrying the only ebony scimitar in the province," Varanu said. "They're going to figure it out sooner or later."
"I have wondered why you persist in so doing," said Tychicus Varen. "You have not struck me as a sentimental mer during our acquaintanceship to date."
"It's the only thing I ever got from Herthat was worth keeping," Varanu said. "And I may not be sentimental, but I am stubborn." She went to the door of the Undercroft and hauled it open. Nothing was visible except the steep stairwell. Varanu ascended the stone steps and looked around the cavernous Chapel, lit with bright shafts of color from the stained glass windows. There was no sign of the Altmer. She went back downstairs.
"He probably went to an inn," she said. "It'd be too much luck if I was rid of him that easily. Don't worry, I'll stay quiet."
"It does not matter," said Varen. He sat down in a chair and used the damp towel to nudge the journal toward him, then flipped it open and began to page slowly through it. Varanu put away the second place setting, then sat down across from the priestess. The two of them ate silently for a while. Varanu glanced at Tychicus Varen every so often. He never shook, or moaned, or glowed with an unearthly light while he was divining. He simply stared very intently at his object, and every so often his lips moved, posing a silent question. Once or twice he touched the book with his bare finger, but most of the time he turned the pages with the towel.
He also didn't blink for five minutes at a stretch. That should hurt a normal Imperial, Varanu thought as she bit into her second apple. The priestess had finished eating and was cleaning her plate by the simple expedient of scorching the pewter surface with a fire spell. A thin wisp of smoke rose toward the ceiling as she put it away.
"Blessings of Arkay," she said cheerfully as she went out.
"Light follow you," Varanu said. She cleaned her own plate the same way. There was a bottle of very thin mead in the cupboard, but she left it there. She settled for a drink from the small font on the back wall instead. Then she went and sat down again. The font at the back of the room burbled gently. After a few minutes she took out the scimitar and began to polish the blade with a rag she kept. Its surface was pitted and scratched, marks no armorer could remove. In Tamriel there are things harder and sharper than ebony. Daedric steel, for one.
A little after that, the door opened and Esgeriad came inside. He looked at Varanu, then at the priest. "Do I interrupt?" he said.
"Shh," said Varanu.
The Altmer came and sat down across from Varanu, apparently impervious to her patently unencouraging glare. He glanced thoughtfully at the scimitar, then extracted a small jar and rag from somewhere in his armor. He drew his knife and inspected the curved blade critically. Then he took off his gauntlets, set them gently on the table, and began to polish the hilt of the knife. Every so often he held it up to check the reflection in the blade. Varanu rolled her eyes.
After a while he said, "How did you lose the end of your ear, Varanu?"
"None of your business," Varanu said.
"No, I suppose it isn't," Esgeriad said cheerily. He stared into the red gem on the end of the knife's pommel, made a satisfied noise, and sheathed the weapon. Then he began polishing his gauntlets. After a while one of the priestesses wandered back in. This one seemed to be a young Bosmer. She stared covertly at Esgeriad as she went to the cupboard. Varanu, keeping an eye on this behavior, observed the movement was rather aimless. Esgeriad glanced up and smiled at her, a blinding flash of white teeth. She stood there for an instant, wearing somewhat the same facial expression as a person recently hit in the head with a hammer, and then wandered dazedly out.
Varanu snickered.
Esgeriad raised his eyebrows politely. "Is something humorous?"
"Not funny so much as it is sad," Varanu said. I was that age, once. I was just that destroyed by a pretty face, once. More than once, actually. Though I don't know that I ever fell for someone who turned out to be fond of other men.
"You don't think a great deal of the opposite sex, do you," Esgeriad said, and went back to polishing his gauntlets.
"I don't think much of anybody," Varanu said. "Male or female. I've not got the time and it's too risky."
"How very candid of you," Esgeriad said. "Especially for someone who but a moment ago declined to discuss a minor, if permanent, injury to her ear."
Varanu shrugged one shoulder. "I'm only telling you what's obvious."
A faint crunching noise drew her attention to the room's other table. Tychicus Varen sat back in his chair, nibbling thoughtfully on the white end of the leek. He swallowed.
"Did you find him?" Varanu said.
"No," said the priest. "The path from here to this deadraiser is cluttered and crooked. I can show you where to begin, and tell you one or two things that may be useful."
"You've never steered me wrong before," Varanu said.
Tychicus smiled slightly. "Thank you, Sister. This necromancer is not a deadraiser by birth and vocation. He is simply a clever, if an awful, hobbyist. To find him, you must seek out assassins."
"You mean the Dark Brotherhood?" Varanu said. "He's one of them?"
Tychicus shrugged and took another bite of the leek. "I cannot tell. You will have to seek out the Sanctuary near Anvil and inquire there. He himself probably is not there, but that is where the information is."
"I have to walk into a Dark Brotherhood Sanctuary and walk out again?" Varanu said.
"You will not be alone," Tychicus said. "Though I suspect you will not be glad to hear what I am about to tell you."
Varanu looked at Esgeriad. "Tell me you're joking," she said.
"I have never been known to joke," said Tychicus Varen.
