A/N: Thanks to all those who have left thoughtful, even articulate reviews. I may not have tons of fans here, but the ones I do have are obviously quality. :)

I would also like to note that, while under the right circumstances it can take minutes for a person to bleed to death even from a major artery, I've previously stated that Dremora are of faster metabolism and thus bleed more freely than we do. Those concerned about this whole loss-of-soul thing please refer back to the lore discussion at the beginning of Chapter 1 - I'm being consistent with my own canon while taking a small liberty with the game's.

Chapter 26

Sodrinye gasped in incredulous relief as the grip of the summons broke. The atronach was out of range, and she did not stop to think why. All her attention was for Ebel-Merodach, who now lay beside her. His left arm was under her shoulders, but he had let go when he fell. She rolled onto her side, cursing the prison of her stiff skin, and reached out to the sword handle.

The wound had stopped bleeding. Ebel-Merodach lay snarling open-eyed at the black and alien sky of Nirn. His skin was fading from its dark black-and-orange toward a more uniform brown. Sodrinye knew without having to check that he was not breathing. I have already seen this. Now that the moment had arrived, she was calm. Sodrinye pulled the sword free as she leaned across his body. She felt the debtbond stretching but unbroken, leading out into the Voidstreams as Ebel-Merodach's undying self was drawn inexorably toward vortex and utter loss of being.

Sodrinye lowered her head, closed her eyes, and leaned out into the Void after him. This was another direction from the one the summoner would have brought her, nearer the level of the gray limbo she knew than the swirl of the Voidstream. I cannot heal your body without your soul. Return.

The debtbond was meant to stretch only in one direction, from him to her. He could not know the rhedek bound her just as tightly. It must have been quite a shock when she took hold of that thin, barbed line and began to pull. Even now she could not sense emotion nor sensation from him, but she felt it when he began to help from his end – somehow, without a krynvelhat's familiarity with the Void or a Sleeper's ability to navigate, he was pulling himself back toward her.

She felt her fingers tighten on the shoulders of his corpse, holding to that anchor as he had held her. If she lost hold now they would both fall forever, separated from one another and from everything but the Void. She was not asleep, not entirely awake, and the strain was more than she had ever felt.

"Ebel-Merodach," she heard herself say, in the emotionless Sleeper's voice that had been hers for all of her lives. "Return, and live."

She was fading, not toward the gray limbo but toward something deeper and blacker. Still she felt his soul come spiraling back into his body, and with all the strength of desperation and denial she forced the healing charge into his flesh. He jerked under her, and she heard him take his first coughing breath.

For a long time afterwards that was all she knew. It was enough.

--

"Have they stopped?" Goneld heard the priestess ask in a strangled voice. He spared a glance for the two atronachs as he continued scanning the dark courtyard. That archer is still here somewhere.

"Yes, he set her down," he said. "Now shhh." The girl obligingly shut up. Goneld's brief look caught her with an expression of stunned loss. He didn't understand for a moment, and then he got it. Oh. She's not traveling with him because he asked her to. She's soft on the atronach, for all the gods' sake. He supposed it wasn't all that surprising. Girls fell in love with schoolteachers all the time. And she surely hadn't always known he was a daedra. Not 'til it was too late, I'll bet.

He'd been that thrown by the loss of a woman himself. A lifetime ago, before his world was made of cage bars and fires and pointed boots.

Goneld heard the Sleeper's voice say something he didn't catch, and then there was a guttural cough from that direction. So Ebel-Merodach isn't dead yet. I thought sure he'd bought it when that poor bastard stabbed him. He wondered if the initial shock of the burns had worn off yet. He didn't hear any screams. Perhaps the man was one of the lucky ones and had quietly passed away before he felt the pain. Burn victims in Oblivion could stay alive for days. The atronach priest could heal him, but I bet he didn't know that. There was something about the sword he'd seen, a bare glimpse as it darted downward toward the Dremora's hiding place. It was very long and thin, too flat for a rapier...

It was a katana, he realized, dredging up the shape of the hilt. And nobody in Cyrodiil carries those in this day and age except...

"Flaming Akatosh," said Goneld quietly. "The Emperor's Blades."

"What?" said the girl, shaking herself.

"The man who got burned was carrying a katana," said Menien Goneld. He risked another look around the column. The two atronachs were still standing beside the fire, talking in low and urgent voices.

"Oh. Yes, I'm afraid Brother Varen and I ran into a pair of those earlier today," she said. Her voice was level as she said his name. She was frowning now. "But they were both Redguards. That man looked paler."

"He was," said Goneld. "What happened to those two Redguards?"

"Brother Varen left them paralyzed," said the girl. "He seemed to think the effect would last for some time."

"Let's hope it has," muttered Goneld.

--

Akhanad wriggled free of the Kheised's grip, landing easily on her feet. She could sense the Master raging as she tried to prepare another summons, but it was too late for that. Akhanad was not in the Void now, but in another plane. She would not allow the link between them to reform enough for the kynaz to summon her again.

"You freed me from the summons," she said, shaping the words with a still-unfamiliar palate and tongue. "Why?"

"It was not only for your sake," said the metallic bass of the ice atronach who had called himself Varen. Akhanad watched as the eight-foot creature shrank down to her own height, recovering his previous peculiar color scheme. "Much harm would come to this plane if I let the Citadel of Natural Disaster retrieve this Sleeper."

"Yes," agreed Akhanad. "But I would not mind doing it again." She was already healed from the minor damage the surface of the Kheised had done her, and his mortal form showed no marks at all.

The Kheised, now once again a stubby mortal in shape, smiled. "We will see. For now I have things to do here which you will only hinder. I do not need anyone killed."

"Really? Why not?" said Akhanad suspiciously. This struck her as typical and needlessly complicated Kheised reasoning. "You and I could kill all of them, and no one would ever know we were here."

"You serve no one," said Varen. "I have taken an oath against destruction for the one whom I do serve. I will not break it for your sake, young one."

"Suit yourself," said Akhanad. "I am going away now. Perhaps I will find you again when I have learned to shape myself better." She looked at him slyly, fingering the strands of hair she had grown. "What color do you like?"

"Anything but red," said Varen dryly. "Goodbye, Akhanad."

"Nonsense," said Akhanad, and turned and ran out the gateway into the night, grinning with fearsome cheer.

--

Marcus Barnabas knelt beside Lybiad at the top of the stairs. He was out of magicka, and the small spell of healing that he knew was not enough to heal the other agent's horrible wounds. His two small health potions had had no apparent effect at all.

He had seen the priest become an atronach, which explained a little, although he neither suspected nor cared what the kiss was about. Then Lybiad had come running up the stairs in a perfectly natural way, started to say something, and then collapsed. His burns stank horribly, and there was nothing Marcus could do for them. Lybiad's unburnt skin was deathly white. He was breathing quickly and shallowly. He's in shock and he's going to die, Marcus thought. I can't stop it.

But there's at least one person here who can.

Marcus sheathed his sword and unlimbered his bow as he moved toward the edge of the stone walkway. "Tychicus Varen," he called down. The priest, now apparently human again, turned to look up at him across the fire. It was nothing but coals now, probably in response to the chill from his other form. At the moment he looked utterly ordinary. His eyes had even gone back to being brown.

"Yes," said Varen, as calmly as if Marcus had come up to him in the Chapel at Bruma. "Why, I believe it is Brother Marcus. This is rather a different circumstance from that in which I've known you."

"I think you know why I'm here," Marcus said. He heard movement below, the two Dremora still down at the bottom of the stairs.

"Yes," said Tychicus Varen. He folded his hands in front of him. "But you won't succeed. In fact, I'm quite certain you'll die in the attempt. Unless my previous insight fails me, your companion already has."

Marcus went back to check on Lybiad. He was dead, just like that.

"Gods damn you to every Hell, demon," he said, quietly but with feeling, as he returned to the edge. "I'm not saying I liked him, but he was a Blade."

"I didn't kill him," said Tychicus Varen. "No more than I would kill you, my brother. Even the flame atronach did not intend harm to him specifically. She was aiming for the caitiff."

--

"Then her aim was very bad," muttered Laure. She knelt leaning against the pillar, wondering how much of her thoughts had shown on her face just now. The Imperial hadn't said anything. He was slowly drawing his bow. "What are you doing?"

--

Ebel-Merodach coughed as the massive healing charge hit. It hurt more than the fatal wound had. The last few seconds were dim and confused, what someone more familiar with human thought would call a bad dream, but of one thing he was perfectly certain: he had been dead, and was alive. The Sleeper lay draped heavily across his chest. He sat up slowly as he gathered Sodrinye into his lap. She was utterly limp, but she was breathing. Her robe was soaked with blood, but all of it was his.

The weight of the debt bond across his shoulders had lifted. In its place there was something else, a spiky anchor in the middle of himself and a chain drawing away toward Sodrinye. She did try to explain it to me once. I did not understand.

"Little fool," he said, and shook his head and looked around for his mace as he laid her carefully on the stone paving. Debtsworn were made to be spent. That, as the Xivilai had said to her not so very long ago, was what they were for. But then, it wasn't a debtsworn she wanted. It was Ebel-Merodach (as she had almost certainly told the Xivilai, he now suspected). He understood the imperative now that it was too late, of course. The rhedek was like that.