Author's Note: Those who have read TFC: Luckless may be somewhat less surprised by the following, although apparently enough people haven't that they'll still be surprised. I'd like to add that the ideas that the beings in question a)can change their shape and b)are not bound to any daedra prince are both in lore and are not my invention, though I suspect Bethsoft didn't have in mind quite the interpretation I came up with.

Oh, and Merodach's use of "affect" here is not a misspelling. If you don't believe me, go look up what physicians mean when they say a patient has "flat affect."

Chapter 10

Laure took an involuntary step back as Tychicus Varen's body shrank in on itself, then exploded out and upward into an entirely new form. The matte colors of human flesh and brown robes suddenly changed to pale, slick blue, like glacier ice in the sun. Ordinary skin bulged outward into points and spikes, rugged as granite but smoother than ebony.

She squinted in the sudden glare as the sun reflected from jagged new facets on the outside of what had been an Imperial a moment before. It still had two arms, two legs, and something analogous to a face. The resemblance ended there. A nine-foot behemoth made of ice towered over her, glittering each time it breathed in and out. The width of its great chest was probably greater than her own height. She felt the cold radiating from it even from two yards away. Things moved obscurely beneath the shining surface, but even a Breton eye could not distinguish them.

"I know what that is," Laure said. Her own voice sounded oddly normal in her own ears. It sometimes did, when she was utterly petrified. Despite all her spellcraft, she was intensely aware that one quick stomp of the demon's foot could instantly and utterly annihilate her. "That is an ice atronach."

Lidless stone-chip eyes stared unreadably down at her. The creature's craggy jaws opened slowly, and then a voice issued from it like the echo from a deep well.

"Don't be afraid," said the daedra. "I am still a priest of Arkay." Laure could detect no familiar note in the sound. It had a tone like a hammer striking metal.

"I take it your name is not Tychicus Varen," said Laure, and mentally kicked herself. Brilliant. You were going to prove to him that you aren't a child, remember?

The atronach lifted its massive shoulders briefly. "My people use names differently," it said. "I knew a man of that name, long ago in Vvardenfell. He was a good man. I prefer to be called simply Varen, if you'd rather."

"But how does an atronach end up in the service of an aedra?" said Laure slowly. "How is that possible?"

"We are not bound to obey any Prince of Oblivion," said the thing which had been Tychicus Varen. "Most of us serve no one, and accomplish nothing. I chose otherwise. Arkay has honored my oath of service." The creature inhaled once, and then there was a whoosh of inrushing air as it suddenly compacted inward again. Laure received an impression of tremendous pressure, fissures forming in the ice, and then the blue dissolved back into tan and brown and Tychicus Varen stood before her as she had always known him. He breathed out slowly, like a man who has just picked up a heavy weight.

She had the oddest feeling that his eyes ought to be blue. They were still brown.

"So for all this time you've been... Er... passing for human?" Laure said.

"It took me a very long time to learn to hold this shape and speak," Brother Varen said. It might be Laure's imagination that his deep voice still held a tinny echo. "I led a nomad's life in Nirn for, oh, probably lifetimes. It's only Bruma that I have ever called home."

"Because it's cold there?" said Laure.

Tychicus Varen smiled sadly. "No," he said. "Because it is there that I have met with warmth."

Laure nodded slowly. Her heartbeat was at last returning to normal. She hoped she'd hidden her initial reaction better than she suspected she had. "The Chapel is that sort of place," she said. "It's what brought me there as well." Scattered thoughts began at last to coalesce, and she looked at Brother Varen with merely ordinary surprise. "So when you said you were leaving on personal business, you meant the business of an atronach?"

"In a manner of speaking," said Tychicus Varen. "I'm able to perceive when something crosses the boundary between this plane and Oblivion without being summoned. It's happened before, but nothing ill has come of it since the closing of the great gates."

"You mean someone came here yesterday?" said Laure.

"Yes," said Tychicus Varen. "And I am going to find them."

"And I'll come with you," Laure said quickly. "Have I not passed your test?"

"You didn't run away screaming," said Varen. "You did not try to kill me. I think we will call that a pass, Sister Laure."

He might have been joking. But as he keeps saying, Laure thought dryly, He's never been known to joke.

---

"We are nearly there," said Sodrinye the Sleeper. Her voice was slightly muffled, since Ebel-Merodach was presently carrying her down a shallow dip in the road, but the words were not impossible to make out.

Merodach did not reply. It had been a long morning's walk, and Sodrinye had apparently slept through most of it, completely undisturbed by the fact of hanging head-down over his shoulder. Then he stepped up to the top of the next small rise. The road dipped steeply up ahead, and cupped in the curve of a hillside was a tall ruin. Merodach squinted down at it. It was made of white stone, sharp contrast to the green plants of the plane of Nirn. Jagged points that might once have been pillars of some sort pointed up toward the achingly bright sky. A couple of giant arches stood aimlessly nearby, gateways to nowhere.

"Well, what do you know," said Menien Goneld. "She got it right."

"She often does," said Merodach.

"So far," said Goneld. "And it's not as if I'd care, but I'm surprised you toss her around the way you do. She's only got to hit her head once and you're seriously out of luck, demon."

"Perhaps you should be silent on subjects you do not comprehend, mortal," said Merodach, and started down the slope toward the cluster of irregular columns.

"Never stopped me before," said a muttered voice from behind him. He could hear Goneld's footsteps, but only just. Merodach's own footsteps, armor-shod and laden with Sodrinye's weight, were quite audible.

"There is one outside," Sodrinye said. "The others are all within."

"He'll hear you coming," said Menien Goneld. "Leave that to me." He turned and padded off toward the shadow of a column in his new fur boots.

"Let him go," said Sodrinye, before Merodach had even got his mouth all the way open. "You will be sated today, Caitiff. Do not covet first blood."

"It is entirely wasted on a mortal," said Merodach, but he said it quietly.

"I do not think it is entirely wasted on Menien Goneld," said Sodrinye.

Merodach grunted noncommittally and went to look for a door. It wasn't hard to find, facing into the little courtyard in the midst of the great columns. He set Sodrinye down to one side and nudged it with his foot. The rectangle of white stone glided unexpectedly and suddenly open. Merodach ducked to one side as he drew his mace. No projectile emerged from the opening. He waited. He had used that trick himself, waiting for a clear shot at an enemy's silhouetted head.

There was a hair-raising crackle of magicka from beside him. He glanced sideways and saw the faint purple light as it suffused Sodrinye. "They are all down the stairs," she said. One hand groped for the wall, and she got laboriously to her feet. "They cannot see the doorway from there. You are safe."

Merodach quashed his puzzlement at the irrelevant last statement. "And what is your debtsworn to do with you, loathsome one?" said Ebel-Merodach.

She did not seem to hear the insult. After the first time, she never had. "I will follow. Let one escape this way alive. Only one."

"As you will," said Ebel-Merodach. Even Sodrinye ought to be able to survive one lone mortal, assuming she was still awake when they arrived. In retrospect, he suspected she'd been hoarding her strength since their arrival, perhaps for exactly this occasion. It didn't annoy him particularly that she should use him thus. He would have been impressed by her success in tricking him, if he could've been sure that was what she had done.

He was still trying to understand her, and failing. The Sleeper did not seem to covet souls, and if she had, he was certain no honorable being would wish to count the soul of one who had already been allowed to escape. Weak. Unworthy.

Of course, Sodrinye the Sleeper is both of those things, Merodach thought. But that was not quite consistent with his experience. Ordinary Dremora thought would tend to assign those attributes to any creature which did not behave exactly like themselves. One was Kyn, or not Kyn – the same way one people of Nirn sometimes, had he but known it, would say one was human, or not human. Sodrinye did not behave as even a weak kynaz ought, and it nagged at him like a wound in the heel. Her affect was so different from the ordinary that he could not even be certain she was mad. Perhaps she was merely cunning, and kept making these indecipherably emotional statements – you are safe? - in order to keep him off balance.

It was working, Merodach thought grimly, and stepped down into the cold blue darkness of the ruin.

He felt with one foot for the ground to his left, making sure it was stable, and then groped for a wall in that direction. He found one after a yard or so. It felt a little like stone, but it was nothing familiar. Stone in Nirn was chill and lifeless.

After a few moments, his eyes began to adjust and he could see the landing on which he stood. Not much light came in from outside despite the open door. It was darker than the inside of a Citadel, and the only light was the harsh and hideous blue coming up from below. A broad stair went down that way. He could see glowing stones stuck into the wall, throbbing with that same unpleasant hue.

Someone laughed harshly from down below. There is work to be done. Merodach showed his teeth, adjusted his grip on the mace, and started down the stairs. He made no attempt to be silent. In the dark, on a stone stair, and in heavy armor, he would certainly fail. Besides, he wanted them to hear him.

He was halfway down the steps before he heard a human voice say, "Shh! Somebody's coming."

"'S just the wind, Geron. You're too drunk to know which way's up, let alone - "

"Shut up, idiot! They're on the stairs!" said a third voice. There was a scuffling noise and a couple of scraping sounds, probably the gathering of dropped weapons. At the bottom of the stairs Merodach could see filigree of rusted metal to either side, cages or cells built into the pitted white stone of the underground walls. The design was elaborate, smooth, and utterly alien, but the holes were too small to easily shoot through. Certainly not if one were a drunken mortal.

A fireball the size of Merodach's head hissed off his left shoulder a half-second after he stepped between the cages. A krynvelhat can fire through anything. Merodach ignored the brief pain in that arm – his pauldron had absorbed most of it – and stepped quickly around the corner of the cage to look for the caster. A human female in a gray robe shot another fireball at him, but he had only to turn a little to one side to avoid this one, and then she tried to turn and run and he hit her in the back of the head with the mace. There was a crunch, and she hit the ground so hard her body bounced on the stone

Someone was coming up behind him, soft-shod footsteps on the stone. Merodach turned and caught the falling blade on his left arm. The longsword was made of mere iron; it didn't even scratch his cuirass. Besides, the mortal surely was drunk, to try an overhand swing on an armored opponent. Merodach cuffed him aside with his left gauntlet and looked for the third mortal.

Things moved in the blue shadows. There was not one more. There were five. Merodach stamped on the chest of the man he'd knocked down, ignored the resultant gurgling scream, and turned to put his back to the wall. The men wore various combinations of dirty clothing and leather armor, but none of them moved like real fighters. More of Goneld's bandits, Merodach judged contemptuously. Not one was leveling a bow at him. Apparently they had expected their krynvelhat to kill or dispel him easily.

"What in every hell is that?" said one of them. He had darker skin than the others, and unlike them, he wielded nothing more than a dagger.

"'S a Dremora," said another. "I saw one once. They got good armor. Get a good price for it."

"Gotta be summoned," said a third. "Somebody go find the wizard and kill him."

"Got it," said one, and peeled off to run for the stairway. Merodach smiled, showing his teeth. Fools. Of the remaining four, three were smaller than Menien Goneld and one was of the taller race he had called Nords. Ebel-Merodach contemplated drawing his dagger, but rejected that idea. There is too much possibility of waste. Mortal blood was thin, and he was very thirsty.

When the rush came, it was ragged and poorly coordinated. That would not have mattered if they had been facing an unarmed traveler or merchant. Against an armored caitiff of the Citadel of Crushing Burdens, it was utterly fatal.

The Nord arrived first, swinging a great axe. Merodach ducked under the swing and swiped at his belly with the flanged head of the mace. It tore his fur garment but barely scratched his skin, and then Merodach had to move aside to avoid the dark-skinned one with the knife. The dark human was faster than the Nord, who was now staggering as he realized how little damage it takes to kill with a poisoned weapon. Merodach saw this from the corner of his eye, and laughed. The sound echoed off the high walls. The dark one took the opportunity to try and jab through the seam of Merodach's cuirass, but unfortunately for him, Dremora breastplates are very closely forged. The small blade rang sparks from the armor, and then Merodach cut him down with the mace and spun to face the next.

---

Sodrinye the Sleeper watched her debtsworn feel his way toward the stairs of the Ayleid ruin. She was not entirely certain how she knew that was what it was. Some scrap of dream barely remembered, perhaps. She had spent quite some time since their arrival in a black and empty space of utter exhaustion, the silence next door to a mortal conception of death. The sight of these white walls looming out of that abyss had been a tremendous relief. Merodach had given her back some of her strength.

She was sure her sister had been trying to reach her, but she could not quite hear. She had sensed no strong hostility from Drurinye. Probably there was enough territory here in Nirn for two Sleepers to coexist in whatever freedom was possible for them. Or perhaps Drurinye had some design for her disposal already in mind. She might be a Sleeper, but she was still Kyn.

Ebel-Merodach's outline was nothing but a moving smudge now, foiling Sodrinye's poor vision. She could not look easily from light to dark. She waited until the sound of his heavy step grew distant, then reached out to the doorway and stepped gingerly inside. Her limbs were heavy and stiff, defeating her purposes, but she had learned to master them far enough to stay upright. The floor seemed frigid under her bare feet, the stone against her hand cold as the grave.

Cold as the grave? Now where had she heard that? It wasn't a Dremora thing to say. The Kyn didn't bury their dead. It would have been a waste of perfectly useful flesh and blood and bone.

There were voices from below. Sodrinye did not use another life detection. She knew how many there were, and she didn't want to be visible to whomever Merodach chased up the stairs. She didn't doubt he would do it. He wanted her alive, and he would keep her so by the means most comprehensible to him. It wouldn't be the same way an honorable mortal would treat a helpless female, of course. Merodach, on the other hand, would not quail at whatever it did take to preserve her life – including some things that even most of the Kyn, that bloody, bold and resolute people, would hesitate to do. Traitor to his Citadel. Fugitive from his plane. And he has done this for me, whom he calls loathsome. What would he have done, for one who was truly worthy?

But such a one would not do what I will. Sodrinye felt that connection pulling between them like a length of chain, a spiny anchor embedded in the center of herself. She'd tried to explain it, but she wasn't very good at that. And he doesn't want to know. That he is bound to me is bad enough. Mutual advantage or single possession is the Kyn way. I was born to know this. It is only an ill fate that has made me learn I cannot follow it.

Sodrinye took a step onto the stairs and almost fell. She clutched at the wall for support, dreading the inevitable tumble end-over-end, but righted herself at last. This will not do. She leaned there for a moment, fighting the dragging weariness in her arms and legs, and at last sat down on the top step. She leaned against the cold wall, trying to keep her eyes open, and moved one foot and then the other down a step. Then she pushed off with her hands and slid her backside down onto the next little shelf of stone.

It was not a quick nor a dignified method, scooting down one step at a time, but it worked. She was down to the sixth or seventh step when she heard someone running toward the base of the stairs. It was not Merodach. He couldn't run that fast, and this person was wearing light boots. Sodrinye pressed herself into the shadow of the stair, wound up the magicka into a tight, aching ball inside, and waited.

The unknown started up the steps without pause, and she heard his panting breath. He does not see me. Sodrinye saw only a dark blur coming toward her, but she could judge where his feet were by the sound of his steps. When he had almost passed her, she swung her arm out and into both his shins.

The man cried out as his elbow and shoulder thudded into the hard stone. The side of his leg hit the stair, so that Sodrinye's arm was not crushed. She jerked it out from under him as he scrabbled for purchase with his hands. Her clumsily groping fingers found the main mass of his body. She held on as best she could, resisting his attempt to push her away and get up, and then she set up the channel and let the magic go.

Red light bloomed from the end of Sodrinye's fingers, blotting out her view. That was all right. She didn't need to see. Magicka bound her to the struggling mortal so tightly that even her weak grip sufficed to hold him. The link was not a comprehensive one, insufficient to read his thoughts or understand the inner workings of his body. It bound them together in one way only:

Life to life.

It is not precisely an easy thing for a magus to draw the life out of another being and into herself. Among other things, one must be very certain the prospective victim is not better able to hold onto that life than you are to steal it. This is why the method is often used by the Undead, who are already lifeless and have nothing to lose and much to gain.

Sodrinye the Sleeper was entirely alive. Her body was utterly without strength. And no human will to live was greater than Sodrinye's thirst after life. She felt the soul leave the man's body after less than ten seconds. Sodrinye let him go, and the lines of magicka snapped so hard that he was thrown back against the opposite wall. The body began to slide down and away from her, unhindered by any further effort. Sodrinye was not troubled by the look on the corpse's face. Among other things, all she could see of it was a white blur.

The Sleeper shook herself. For as long as the infusion of life lasted, she would be completely awake. There was no dragging weight in her limbs, and her eyes stayed open of their own accord. The Sleeper stood up on her own two feet and began her stiff but unhesitant walk down the stairs.