Chapter 77 – Several Centuries Late
The Divinarium was, Orestis had decided, one of the few places in Nomyra he could tolerate without effort. Hub of all the religious matters in Nomyra though it may be, it did have a pretty decent library. Large enough that the whole place smelled of ink and old paper even at the top floor.
The whole structure floated above the river in stepped tiers, each gallery open to the air. As was customary, the higher the tier, the more important the location. Being Chosen meant the three of them had been waved through to the upper tiers without the usual application process.
Convenient. Spared us the tedium of explaining ourselves to an archivist.
Quite by coincidence, all three of them had things to study today. So, they had spread out across one of the quieter galleries and set to work.
Orestis had pulled everything the archives held on soul and temporal theory. The soul material was just in case they had anything he hadn't seen before. The temporal material was by necessity; that was one line of inquiry he had abandoned centuries ago, after confirming that time magic had no effect whatsoever on the undying curse.
Apparently, one could not simply undo the curse by turning the clock back. His body had simply refused to even acknowledge the effects of any magic that tried to reverse its adaptation; it would either evolve forward, or not at all.
At least I don't have to worry about that anymore. But I do need to touch up on time magic.
Across the table, Eirene had the spellbook open—the one he'd gifted her—along with four reference volumes stacked beside it. She had not stopped studying it ever since her birthday.
Orestis smiled, watching her enthusiasm. It felt good to see her genuinely excited by his work.
He hadn't really done much; just given structure to her unstructured mana-strings spell. Before, the spell was little more than mana forced into a particular shape and held there through sheer control.
It was still that. But with his sigils woven into the structure, the strings could maintain their own shape. And, depending on the rune configuration, she would be able to add various properties to the strings.
At present she appeared to be testing the spell against every other technique she could find, checking which ones it could absorb or combine with. The answer was obviously 'everything'.
As if I'd design something shoddy enough to have arbitrary limitations.
By altering the runes and sigils woven into the spell, she could modify the strings however she pleased—make them stronger than steel, sharp enough to cut armour, blunt enough to restrain without injury, or imbue them with heat, frost, poison, and even soul-affecting properties for dealing with ghosts.
He had left it quite open ended, really. Limited only by her imagination. But she would enjoy proving that for herself far more than she would enjoy being told, so he left her to it.
Maxim was working through a stack of documents with his usual unhurried ease, reading each one, setting it aside, reaching for the next. He had requested a great deal of material—the hero always cast a wide net—and most of it he skimmed and discarded within seconds.
It was, all told, a productive sort of quiet. Orestis was almost content.
Which was, of course, when Maxim stopped.
He had a single sheet of paper in his hand, and he was looking at it with the sort of thoughtful expression that, in Orestis's experience, invariably led to an inconvenience.
Well, as long as I'm not the one inconvenienced, I don't care.
"Hey, Orestis." Maxim called.
And of course the universe had to take that as a challenge.
Maxim did not look up from the page as he continued, "Do you happen to know if Varra has a sister?"
"I don't know," Orestis replied. "I never asked. Why?"
"Remember the healer you sweet-talked into joining us back in the village?"
Across the table, Eirene glanced up at Orestis with an amused expression.
"She volunteered herself," Orestis clarified. And then, he paused.
Wait. Why am I explaining myself?
He gave Maxim an annoyed glance and asked, "What about her?"
The idiot looked quite pleased with himself as he turned to Eirene and said, "Her name was Aelia."
Eirene, to her credit, did not take the bait. "I think I remember her," she said thoughtfully. "Although she didn't talk to us much."
"She didn't, no." Maxim turned the sheet around and held it up. "I asked the Divinarium for a list of every healer working in Nomyra. They conveniently put in the full names for everyone."
Orestis nodded. Everyone at the villages had been busy, and their records had reflected that. Most of the lists they had provided contained only given names, with the occasional nickname mixed in.
Maxim tapped a line near the middle. "This one's hers."
Orestis read it from across the table. And frowned.
Aelia Varra.
Eirene also read it. "It could be a coincidence," she said, though she did not sound as though she believed it.
"It could," Maxim agreed. "Plenty of people share a name. But here's the part I don't like." He set the sheet down. "Everyone in that village describes Aelia the same way: kind, warm, and extremely friendly. The sort of healer who remembers your children's names, basically.
"And yet, the entire time we were there, she went out of her way to avoid the three of us. That doesn't fit a friendly person. That fits someone who didn't want to be looked at too closely."
He let that sit for a moment.
"There's something else," he went on. "Licinia—you remember, the sharp one who worked out the necromantic angle? I talked to her after. Getting a feel to see if she could be the Saintess. Standard stuff. Anyway, turns out, she didn't work that out on her own. Someone else pointed her in that direction, then let her arrive at the conclusion herself."
"Aelia," Eirene said, finishing the inference.
"Aelia." Maxim nodded and spread his hands. "Back then, I didn't think anything of it. Plenty of people don't want to be noticed. But put everything together—the name, the avoidance, the fact that she let another take the credit for discovery—and it starts to look like someone managing a situation from the inside."
"You think she's the necromancer?" Eirene asked.
"I think she might be." Maxim leaned back. "Think about it. A healer with Varra's name, embedded in the exact area where Varra's been harvesting life force, quietly making sure the investigation points where she wants it. If Aelia is Varra—or becomes Varra, the lich the histories talk about—then she's been sitting in the middle of this the whole time, watching us look for her."
Orestis listened to their theory crafting in silence. The whole sequence of events was indeed suspiciously convenient. Except that he had been meeting with Varra on a daily basis. The name was either an extreme coincidence, or the two were related.
I'm betting on the latter. A sister is not out of the realm of possibility.
Then Eirene frowned and pointed out the main flaw in Maxim's theory. "Wait. Isn't Varra a man?"
Maxim, however, didn't seem discouraged. But that was because he was operating on incomplete information.
He did not know that Orestis had been meeting the lich; as far as Maxim was aware, Varra was still some future threat who had not yet undergone the transformation at all.
"This might be a bit of a long shot," Maxim said slowly. "But—how sure are you, exactly, that Varra's a guy?"
Orestis opened his mouth to say completely, and stopped. Because the moment he reached for the certainty, it dissolved.
He had known Varra for centuries. But their first meeting had been long after the lich had adopted his skeletal body. And Varra had always used an ethereal soul-voice to talk. There had been no body to read. No voice, in the ordinary sense, to gender.
During their first meeting, Orestis had unconsciously filed the lich under he and never once found a reason to revisit the classification.
On the other hand…
Orestis thought about the feminine features on the androgynous body they had built in the future. He thought about how Varra was wearing a female body now.
He had always assumed that Varra was being eccentric. The gods knew the lich had eccentricity in spades. And yet, looking back, he couldn't identify a single piece of evidence supporting the conclusion that Varra was male. Only the assumption itself. He had simply accepted it as fact and carried it forward for several centuries.
Orestis put a hand over his face.
"I'm an idiot," he said.
"Hey, they say recognising your own idiocy is the first step toward wisdom," Maxim said, sounding far too pleased by this development. "You're practically a sage at this point. It's very brave."
Orestis lowered his hand and gave the idiot a look that should, by all rights, have ended him. It didn't. Probably no thanks to the curse.
Eirene was watching him with something that was not quite a smile and not quite pity. "How did you mistake Varra for a man?"
With as much dignity as he could muster, Orestis said, "In fairness, when I first met Varra, she"—not he, Orestis mentally corrected himself—"was already a skeleton that spoke using a soul-voice. Both had been altered for maximum intimidation."
"Historical records did describe Varra's voice as a haunting choir of the dead—a hundred whispers speaking in unison," Maxim agreed.
"Exactly," Orestis said. "There was nothing remotely human left to judge by."
"You spent centuries with her, though." Maxim said. "In all that time, you never realised she was a woman?"
"Yes. Thank you. The significance of that fact is not lost on me."
This idiot is really going to squeeze this for all its worth, isn't he?
Eirene, mercifully, moved them along. "If Aelia really does become the Varra you know, then we need to figure out how to approach this."
Orestis chose not to comment. Given how spectacularly wrong he had just been, further speculation regarding Varra's identity seemed unwise. Not until he had spoken to the person in question, at any rate.
"Right." Maxim said, setting the teasing attitude aside without hesitation. "If she really is the necromancer, then we can't just walk up to her and accuse her. Plus, there's always the chance that we're wrong—unlikely, but it's there."
"So we don't accuse her," Eirene said. "We talk to her first. Ask careful questions and see what she reveals."
"That's the idea." Maxim nodded. "The problem is, if she is the necromancer, and she realises we've worked it out, we don't know how she'll react. But we also don't want her slipping away if it comes to that. Which means before we go anywhere near her with questions, we should put some contingencies in place to make sure she can't simply vanish if it turns bad."
"Which would be?" Eirene asked Maxim.
Maxim, in turn, glanced over at Orestis and asked, "Suggestions?"
Right. He's still trying to help me climb Lyse's rankings.
"Just place a containment formation around the village," Orestis replied half-heartedly. Not contributing would be suspicious at this point.
Although… perhaps there was a way to turn this into the breathing room he needed.
"Map," Orestis said, clearing space on the tabletop.
Maxim, understanding what Orestis wanted, used mana to create a detailed three-dimensional map of the village and the surrounding countryside above the table.
With his memory, I don't need to worry about mistakes in scale or topography.
After inspecting the area, Orestis decided on which setup would be the most ideal, then drew a formation over the map.
This particular containment field would not be lethal, obviously. But it was comprehensive in all other aspects. No teleportation. No gates. No phase-shifting. No dimensional travel. No tunnelling through the ground. No flying over it. No transforming into mist, mana, or anything similarly annoying.
Once activated, crossing the boundary in either direction would simply fail. But within the barrier, everything would still function as normal; it was leaving the barrier that would be prevented.
As for how to get in and out—the only way to pass through the threshold was to genuinely believe that no one was pursuing you. Which meant regular people to cross without issue.
It was designed so that random people would not be stuck inside or outside the boundary—something that would make it obvious that there was, in fact, a boundary in place.
Not very useful whenever secrecy is one of the requirements.
"Ah. That one," Maxim nodded, recognising the formation. "Yes, that'll work."
When Orestis was done, Maxim drew a line in the middle, splitting the formation in half. "I'll take this half, you take that one—we split the work and meet in the middle."
Orestis nodded. That suited his purposes perfectly.
Maxim glanced at Eirene, then added, not unkindly, "No formation work for you. No offence, but I doubt you're familiar with this, and application time isn't practice time."
"I gathered as much," she replied. "I'll go to the village to keep an eye on Aelia. Just in case she leaves or isn't there when the formation is done."
That was reasonable. However, since this was meant to be covert surveillance, Orestis took a few minutes to teach her a proper invisibility spell—one that could be integrated into her battle shield. That should cover any situations where she needed to follow Aelia somewhere.
A moment later, all three of them teleported away, each heading to their respective destinations.
After materialising at the location of the first spell anchor, Orestis sent a message to Lyse through their link: You know the drill. I need more divine power.
I understand. But try to be quick about it, she replied grouchily. Then, of course, added: And rank up quickly!
Orestis made a noncommittal sound and drew both sacred and profane power to start work on his half of the formation. The process required attention, but not enough to occupy his mind completely. More importantly, he was away from prying eyes and ears.
Well, mortal ones, anyway.
Divine eyes would still be on him. That was also easily solved—though it would be a bit tricky.
Orestis surreptitiously diverted some of the profane divine power and threaded it through the link between him and Lyse. Then, he created a resonance between them that would partially mask it, but not mute it completely.
Now, she will not be able to tell exactly how much I'm pulling.
That done, he drew more power to cast an illusion over himself, making it look like he was working as usual. He also wove a sound-dampening effect around himself, ensuring that anything he said would go no farther than his outstretched hand.
Having made the necessary preparations, Orestis reached into his coat and retrieved the call-node paired with the one he'd given Varra.
Let's see what she has to say.
If you’d like to read more, I’m 6 chapters ahead on Patreon, along with side chapters, author notes, and extra lore.