Chapter 78 – Remarkably Transparent
Varra answered the call on the third pulse.
“The dead are listening,” she said, voice pitched low and dramatic.
Orestis paused and looked down at the call-node in his hand. While he was reasonably sure some of the dead were, in fact, still lingering in the world and listening in, Varra could not be included in their number.
Still that same fool as always.
“You realise you’re not technically dead, right?”
“Hey! Stop ruining this for me,” Varra berated. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for you to call me? And the first time you do, you start nitpicking.” She clicked her tongue. “This is why you don’t have any friends.”
“I do have frien—” Orestis cut himself off.
Why am I letting myself get dragged into her pace?
Besides, this would be a losing conversation for him. Since he only had one person that he truly considered a friend. Although one was better than none, even he understood that it was not a particularly compelling statistic.
He decided to get to the point. “Aelia Varra.”
“Why are you using my full name?” Varra asked suspiciously. “I’m not in trouble, am I?”
“Wait. So your name really is Aelia Varra?”
“Yeah?” She said it as though he’d asked whether water was wet.
Which made the whole situation feel even more ridiculous. That idiot, Maxim, had made a good point regarding the centuries of time Orestis had known Varra for. If she had mentioned her first name even once—even if only in passing—he would not have mistaken her for a man.
“Why did you never mention that before?” he asked.
“Why would I need to?” she asked, sounding genuinely confused. “You already knew my name when we first met.”
Orestis had called her by name when they met, but that was not the same as knowing her full name. Still, pursuing that line of argument would serve no one. Better to move along; there were other things he wanted to ask about. Such as the presence of another with the exact same name.
I do have a couple of theories, but let’s just confirm.
“Then, the other Aelia Varra in the village is…?”
“That’s my other half. I told you about her, too. Remember?” Varra paused, then continued in a more concerned tone. “You didn’t forget that too, did you? Are you getting old? You should go see Aelia about it. She’s good at healing mental stuff. Also healing in general. I mean, I’m good too; but she’s better.”
Orestis ignored the nonsense that came after the main point while sighing internally. He really was an idiot. The clues had all been there for the taking, but he had kept brushing them off as Varra’s eccentricities.
No, forget leaving clues; in her unique way, she had been outright proclaiming it.
Something to keep in mind going forward, I suppose.
“Anyway. I called because there is a problem. My group is preparing to confront Aelia. They believe she is the necromancer.”
“That’s silly,” Varra said. “She’s not the necromancer; I am.”
“Yes. I’m aware of that. They, however, are not,” Orestis said, and proceeded to explain the situation.
“Well. That’s not good,” she said once he was done.
“The situation was somewhat worse than not good,” he replied dryly.
“Eh. Aelia says she had been expecting it for a while now,” she said dismissively.
Orestis raised an eyebrow. If he understood the situation correctly, Varra had informed her other half through their soul link, which she had previously described as functioning similarly to the way demons shared information.
“You told her just now through your link?” he asked, so as to confirm it.
“Yeah. She says it was obvious that they’d connect the dots eventually since they had her name, and you’d mentioned knowing me since the beginning.”
Varra paused, then added, “She didn’t say this, but she thinks you’re all a bunch of idiots for not figuring it out sooner, given how obvious it was.”
That was because everyone had been operating under the assumption that the necromancer was a man.
I probably should hide that I was the one who made the assumption.
“Out of curiosity,” he said, purely as a matter of academic interest, “how are you two existing as two separate entities?”
He did remember her saying something about splitting herself into good and evil halves. If he filtered out the dramatic embellishments, then was she saying—
“Were you born as two souls in one body, and eventually separate?”
Orestis remembered reading about a similar situation during his early days of soul research. The second soul had lain dormant until an accident, in that particular case.
“Hey, that’s a surprisingly good idea,” Varra said. “But no. We were always one soul; we just split it into two. Aelia says she’ll tell you all about it in person, since you’re all planning to go see her anyway. She says she’ll prepare tea.”
I suppose that’s as good a plan as any.
Besides, if she was calm enough to be planning refreshments, then she clearly had a way to handle the situation. That made things convenient.
“Alright,” he said. “Let her know we’ll be there soon.”
“Sure,” Varra replied cheerfully. Then, in a sepulchral voice, said, “The boundary between life and death grows thin. I must withdraw.”
Then she cut the call.
And then the call-node pulsed again a moment later.
Orestis looked at it sceptically, then answered. “Yes?”
An excited Varra asked, “So? What did you think of that line? Did that sound cool? Be honest.”
He immediately cut the call, annoyed.
Orestis pocketed the device and dispelled both the cloaking veil and the sound barrier. Throughout the conversation, he had not stopped work on the spell formation.
But now, he had a decision to make.
Should he stop the work now, then go and tell the others that Aelia was expecting them? Or should he finish the work, and not tell them about his relationship with Aelia?
Orestis scoffed. As if there was any doubt regarding the answer.
I’ll finish the work. And then I’ll go tell them.
He had lived long enough to know that attempting to conceal things at this stage would only end up making things even more convoluted. More complications meant more things that could go wrong.
Simple is always better, he thought, then teleported to the location of the next anchor point.
***
It didn’t take long to complete his half of the task.
Annoyingly, the moment he completed the final sigil, the wards activated. Which meant that Maxim had completed his half before Orestis.
Not that it was a race. But Orestis blamed the conversation with Varra.
He teleported to the meeting point—the main gates of the village—with a fairly good idea of what awaited him. And, as expected, he materialised to see a smug-looking idiot.
“There he is. You were taking so long, the whole village was beginning to think I was waiting for someone imaginary,” Maxim said.
“I’d be happier if you were a figment of my imagination,” Orestis retorted.
“Now, now—no need to be so sour,” Maxim said with mock sympathy. “Everyone slows down eventually. It's a natural part of growing old.”
Why is everyone talking about my age today?
Before he could come up with a suitably creative response, Eirene appeared next to them, dropping her invisibility. Maxim must have already sent her a signal after he arrived.
“Aelia is still here,” she said. “But, after she finished her shift, she made a pot of tea and settled down alone at the edge of the volunteer relief site. She appears to be waiting for someone, but has politely turned away everyone who has approached her so far. It’s very suspicious.”
Before Maxim and Eirene could start speculating, Orestis said, “That would be us she’s waiting for.”
Both of them turned to him.
“Turns out, Aelia is Varra. And also, not,” he explained. “It’s complicated; she split her soul in two. The healer is a separate entity from the necromancer. But they are connected to each other via the soul. The lich Varra is elsewhere. Aelia is waiting to explain the situation to us.”
There was a short, evaluative silence. Then, Maxim said, “And you know this, how?”
“Varra is a brilliant researcher. Once I knew she was in the area, I sought her out to help me research my curse. Again. We made a deal.”
“I knew it!” Maxim jabbed a finger at him. “I knew you’d know where Varra’s secret bases were!”
Eirene crossed her arms. “Orestis.”
Orestis glanced between the two of them. Maxim, he didn’t particularly care about. However, seeing Eirene looking at him with disapproval was… somewhat unpleasant.
“It’s not as bad as you think. Varra’s fairly harmless,” he explained.
Maxim’s brows rose. “The records have Varra destroying twelve paladin orders in a single year—one every month. Harmless isn’t the word that comes to mind.”
Given some of the things that made it into the history books, that was a fairly tame example he pulled up.
Is he being considerate to me on account of Eirene? Huh. Who would have thought?
Still, history recorded deeds, not people. It had plenty to say about what Varra had done, but very little about who she actually was.
“You’ll know what I mean when you meet her,” Orestis replied with a sigh.
Their expectations will suffer a violent collision with reality.
Maxim considered him, head tilting. “So, you’re saying Varra is harmless the way you’re harmless?”
Orestis opened his mouth to disagree, his hand partway up, then paused. He thought about what Maxim had said.
Technically, no one who knows of my history would call me harmless either. But it is also true that I haven’t really done anything significant recently. Except the temple thing. But that doesn’t count.
While he was thinking, Eirene’s displeasure had eased somewhat. Her arms stayed crossed, but the set of her shoulders had softened. She also had a more contemplative look on her face.
What that meant, he had no idea. But it was much better than before; this expression did not evoke unpleasant emotions.
“Anyway,” Orestis said. “Let’s go and meet Aelia.”
Eirene took the lead, and they headed towards the location where Aelia was waiting.
After a few steps, Eirene turned to Orestis and asked, “Wait. When did you find out about Varra and Aelia? That she was waiting to talk to us?”
“I called Varra while working on the formation,” he replied.
She gave him an exasperated look. “If you already knew she wasn’t going to run, then why did you finish the formation? Isn’t that a waste of time and effort?”
“It would have been a waste only if we didn’t finish it,” Maxim said, before Orestis could.
“Exactly,” Orestis agreed. “Since we started it, it’s obvious that we should finish it.”
The work was its own reward. Maxim also understood that. It was one of the few things that he and Maxim could agree on.
Eirene looked between them, then shook her head.
“You’re both ridiculous,” she said, and kept walking.
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