A/N: Those who read TFC: The Cold Light of Day and TFC: A Second Cold Light may recall the (invented) Dremora concept of close emotional attachment as inevitably onesided and essentially a fatal curse. The word I used for this is rhedek, so I'll stick to that.

Chapter 16

Sodrinye paced. Not in any literal sense; no doubt her body was still being bumped along over Ebel-Merodach's broad shoulder. She could not tell, and probably would be unable to do so until there was a distinct threat or she had rested enough to regain her strength. Such as it is.

Ordinarily, this time would be very busy, occupied fully with dream and vision. She should be traveling to many places past and present, in Nirn and Oblivion. That was not happening. Precognition seemed to have utterly deserted her, and though she actively grasped at the threads of actuality, they slid through her fingers and left her no further than before.

If the truth were known, she was as anxious as it is possible for the unreactive subrace of Sleepers to be. She had barely survived one crisis. She ought to be anticipating, preparing for the next one. She had concluded that she could in some sense depend on Goneld and Merodach to go where vision took her, but that was useless without the vision itself. And so she stayed, trapped in the gray nothing that is a Sleeper's limbo, oscillating in ever-shrinking circles. She could feel Nirn and Oblivion near her, but this place was neither. Only a very thin partition divorced it from the Voidstreams between planes, and sometimes she suspected that was imaginary; it was completely possible that she was simply unable to perceive other souls in the Void because the bombardment of voices would drive a mere kynaz mad.

The one small comfort was that if proximity to the atronach had done this much damage to her clairvoyance, it had almost certainly done the same to him. Sodrinye might have felt better about this if she had been more certain that was a good thing. An utterly blind enemy might strike out in panic as Goneld had done, when the memory of pain and terror had overmastered him. The strict discipline it must have taken to attain human form told in Tychicus Varen's favor, but elemental creatures could not be depended upon. Sodrinye, who could deal with almost anything it was possible to summon, generally chose not to summon atronachs. The Xivilai had shown himself willing to be reasoned with, albeit for reasons she did not completely understand. Most lesser daedra were able to sense a fundamental sympathy, her own imprisoned self reluctant to impose on them a bondage as great as her own. And not all daedra had the kyn tendency to equate sympathy with weakness.

She was sure it would come down, in the end, to Tychicus Varen. Was he the slow and chilly mind that he pretended, or had he simply never encountered a real threat to himself here in Nirn? The distinction was not a paltry one -

"Sister?"

Sodrinye pulled herself to a halt as she heard the voice. She recognized it at once. In Nirn it might be possible to hide the presence or absence of power. Not here. In this indeterminate place, a fellow Sleeper's mind glowed like a beacon.

"Drurinye," Sodrinye said, and turned to face her sister.

---

Menien and Merodach went on marching to the East. Ebel-Merodach kept a wary eye on his surroundings as the terrain began to change. For a place not at all enamored of violent overthrow, Nirn seemed to have a ridiculously inconsistent geography. He did not care for the feel of the landscape changing underneath his feet. The path was growing a little steeper, inclining upwards, and there were more trees around them.

Presently Ebel-Merodach could hear Goneld's breathing. "Damnation to all mortal weakness," he muttered in the Kyntongue, but he slowed his pace. He was growing more tired himself, if the truth were known. He had been accustomed to heavy armor in his own plane, but heavy armor under a hot, alien sun with an extra hundred and fifty-odd pounds of weight to carry was beginning to tax him.

"Mortal weakness is damnation enough," Goneld replied. He turned his tonsured head toward the left, from which direction a low bubbling had been audible for some time. "I hear water running. I'll refill my bottle."

"Be quick about it," said Merodach, but the moment Goneld was out of sight he unslung Drurinye from his shoulders and laid her on the turf beside the path. She, at least, should not be thirsty for some time. Merodach had no idea what she had done to convince a Xivilai to voluntarily share from its own veins, but such a draught must be potent indeed. She does not lack the capacity to bend others to her will, or neither I nor Menien Goneld would be here. The day's events had demonstrated amply that she had not lost the ability to shock him.

And yet...

He could not have spoken with the Xivilai as he had today (and was he already thinking in terms of today and tonight?) before he had met Sodrinye. He felt more powerfully than ever the enormous distance between today and that first moment when Sodrinye had healed his wounds and bound him. Oblivion was further away than space or time could make it, now.

In Oblivion loss of life is inconvenient, no more. Here the loss of one incarnation is the loss of all. And to persist we must do what was once unthinkable. He recognized at last that this logic was inescapable; and besides, who would judge him here? Not Sodrinye. And certainly not Goneld, who was so confused he barely knew his own race.

---

"I am glad you're still alive," said the other Sleeper. Through the gray, Sodrinye caught a glimpse of a pair of dark little horns in the purple glow. Drurinye's were very short, but she was obviously older in her current incarnation than Sodrinye was. She must have deliberately cut them.

"Why?" said Sodrinye dryly. "Before that situation disintegrated utterly, the atronach told me your will is not your own."

"It's more complex than that," said Drurinye. "But you'll learn this for yourself. This plane has the power to change us, and not only Sleepers. If we are denied contact with the place of our making, and do not die, we adapt."

"We," Sodrinye said.

"You are changing already," said Drurinye. There was a flash of teeth through the dim. "And so is your caitiff. You know it to be true."

Sodrinye thought about what she had said to the Xivilai. "Yes," she said.

"Varen is a reasonable being. Onesimus and I have dealt with him to our benefit, albeit usually from a distance. I've had the experience of being visionless as you now are. I did not care for it."

"No more do I," said Sodrinye, more dryly yet. "No more, I hope, does he."

A flicker of caution made itself felt through the ether. "Will you take advice from one who has... spent time in this plane?" said Drurinye. The question was in the Kyntongue, but the words spent time were in Cyrodilic.

"Probably," said Sodrinye honestly.

"Be careful of that Imperial who follows you. Partial understanding is more dangerous than complete ignorance."

"But you don't advise me to kill him," said Sodrinye. "Nor leave him behind."

There was a shadow of a shrug – one shoulder and little movement, the way a Sleeper would always do. "As I said, Nirn changes us. And I think he has a part to play yet. Do you not see it?"

"I see nothing," Sodrinye said. "And..." She debated with herself. Drurinye was not what she had expected, but she knew herself to be more vulnerable than customarily. Some risk must be taken, or I would not be here. "I am very tired, Sister. I had hoped to find escape from conflict here, and instead I find confusion. Pain."

"I can testify that the confusion passes," said Drurinye. "As much as it ever can, for a seer. Pain... That will depend, I'm afraid." Sodrinye caught a glimpse of some emotion that was only a little familiar, and completely terrifying. "I know my Onesimus, but I don't know your debtsworn. There may be a limit to how much he can change. And if he cannot reach the same place toward which you are moving, you will suffer."

"And what place is that?" said Sodrinye.

"Ka rhedek," said Drurinye, and whirled away into the gray.

Sodrinye shrank in on herself at the words, and then she was shooting upwards and her eyes opened on darkness.

---

It was dark in the Chapel at Bruma. Everyone had gone to bed, and the night outside was cold. Sleet poured down and rendered the steep streets lethal to man, mer and beast. Sometimes lightning flickered, lighting up the high, colorful windows. Images of the nine Divines stared down solemnly, writ forever in the glass, and the mixture of colors that leached through bathed the great Altar of the Nine in eerie light.

Tychicus Varen stood before the great stone wheel that was the altar, head bowed. Time was passing, and time was what he could not spare. And, in his experience, where aedra were concerned it never hurt to ask. He was aware of Sister Laure, sitting at the top of the stairway to the Undercroft and peering around the divider at him, but he chose not to acknowledge this.

"I will need to find them," he said quietly. "And I am no tracker. Nor would I risk another soul by hiring one. I know you would not wish it. Therefore return to me what I have lost, that I may carry the light forward."

Lightning flashed outside. Varen waited patiently. The elements in Nirn were strange, but he had grown used to them, and mere weather would never pose much threat to him. "There is none better suited to this work than I am," he said. "Would you have chosen me if there were?"

He did not quite hear the voice that said No. He felt it through the bottoms of his feet. Then the spiral of white light rose from the center of the Altar of the Nine and burst outward, bathing him in the glow. Varen stiffened as he was momentarily blinded, and then the vision in front of him was not what he ought to be seeing.

A shallow canyon, barely a dip in the landscape, with a little lake at the bottom of it; and at one side of the lake, half-submerged, lay the ruin of a fort. The eye of observation tracked closer, taking in the mossy walls and the silence where nothing lived; even fish generally detoured around this place.

Sometimes, when the wind died down, there was a rattle of bone against iron.

Where? Varen persisted silently. The vision flew dizzingly downward, as if he were flying up into the sky, and he saw the shape of the Eastern mountains. I understand. It was not a place he had seen before, but he would be able to find it. If nothing else, a priest of Arkay would be drawn to a place of such unrestful death.

The image cleared slowly, and he was looking at the Altar again. Varen knelt, offering his silent thanks, and then rose smoothly and went toward the Undercroft. Laure froze, too slow to dive back down the stairwell. He stopped to look down at her. She blushed as she sat there on the top step.

"Sister Laure," said Tychicus Varen.

"Yes, Brother," said Laure. She did not, to her credit, make any excuses.

"If you are going to come with me again, you had better find your knapsack," said Varen. Laure stood up quickly, and he saw a quick flash of white teeth as she grinned.

"Yes, of course," she said, and vanished back down the stairs.