Uuelmo left her to her new study, claiming he had business to attend to elsewhere.
Levoline lifted her palm from the book he’d given her. A copy of The Song of Pelinal. An odd title to leave her, she thought, till she looked more closely at the cover. On it, the legendary Alessian knight, Pelinal Whitestrake, shrank from the blow of a powerful elven warlord, shield raised high as he hid beneah it. In every incarnation of the story, in every Imperial fresco and hand-painted vellum, the shield was always a red diamond—the symbol of the First Empire, the Second, and now the Third. In this printing, it was a simple steel kite. The knight’s tabard was bare too, painted only by his own blood.
Levoline smirked. How quickly the Empire liked to forget its own history. Pelinal the Bloody—the Elf-Slayer—the Mad. The champion who felled the last of the Ayleid Sorcerer-Kings, Umaril the Unfeathered. So many tellings failed to demonstrate the horror of the man beneath the armor&mashthat Pelinal was a murderer of civilizational proportions. In truth, Umaril and Pelinal slew one another. They died bleeding in each other’s arms. The glory of the Empire often meant forgetting certain inconvenient truths.
The front was deformed, bulging with the promise of something hidden beneath. Levoline opened it curiously. Inside, a fragment of parchment, folded neatly into a small, dense square.
Unfolding it, Levoline smirked to herself again.
An anagram. The words were too tightly wound. Struggling to fit their meaning into the shape they now took. A trifle for her, trained as a bookkeeper. The message was simple enough to decode once she picked out the word 'Elysana.' She stood from her desk, fetched her cloak, and made for the city below.
Wayrest was known far and wide as the Jewel of the Iliac Bay, a sentiment Levoline could understand, for her part. The city was beautiful, certainly. Cobblestone streets. Timber-framed houses finished with daub and lime. No shortage of imported stone—be it marble, granite, or Velothi basalt. Patterned bartizans collared every tower, from Mages Guildhall to guardpost, unifying Wayrest’s horizon like buttons fixing Nirn to the sky.
She passed a stone-walled demesne with buttresses carved into the likenesses of the beasts and creatures of Breton folklore—a Skaafin faun with twisted antlers, a centaur rearing as it drove its spear into an unseen foe. They were beautiful, in the way Breton architecture so often was—brutal and cold. Artisanal savagery. Proudly scarred, full of seams and mortar as though the builders marked their work with wound after wound. As though they wanted their craftsmanship to be seen. In Alinor, towers were built as though their construction had been effortless—an onlooker should never be able to see the architect's hand, except in his mastery of his craft.
An archway led into a small courtyard, where chickens scratched at grain and servants went about their daily chores. A bakehouse, built into the demesne’s walls, worked tirelessly; the bakers’ labor fresh on the afternoon breeze. Levoline was quickly learning that the smells of Wayrest—the scent of bread, the wafting aroma of western spices, and the hearty smoke of the abattoir—were constantly mingled with that of horse dung, unwashed bodies, and the salty sea air.
The people, likewise, were a mixture of the affable and abrasive. For every half-decent merchant there was a beggar raving in the streets. A peddler grasping at the hem of her dress. A doomsayer crying about the coming end—of the 'Dreugh’s malevolent return', or 'Doors to Oblivion, yawning open across land'. There was a certain part of her that enjoyed the chaos of it all, if only because she knew she was above it. She wondered at what sort of city produced such a people—and what sort of King Eadwyre must be to rule it. How much of what she saw was wrought by his hand?
Leaving the palace afforded her the opportunity to alter her ensemble—and though she left in haste, Levoline made certain to seize it. She wore a more comfortable dress now, hitched through a hefty girdle at her waist that doubled as a band of light armor. The sleeves did little to encumber her arms, something the Breton clothing had excelled at. Being able to draw Thorn unhindered made her feel less vulnerable, even as she waded through the crowded streets. Her hair was tied back practically—in a style she’d long since mastered. Elegant, effortful, and most importantly, familiar.
Ahead, she could see the cathedral, rising high above the surrounding cityscape. The campanile marked it as the tallest building for leagues—save for the domed palace of Wayrest itself. It was crowned by a dragon wrought in bronze, swallowing a sword cast down from the sky. Akatosh—or as her people called him, Auri-El. The Dragon God of Time.
The belfry rung, announcing the hour. The bronze dragon roared, the sound funneled through its gaping maw.
She clmibed the great stone steps to the cathedral. At her approach, a man pushed the heavy door open from the inside.
“Downstairs. Middle door to the undercroft,” was the only thing he offered. He was dressed in a cloak. Beneath its hood, she could see the milky white of his irises. He did not look at her as she passed him by.
The nave stretched further than she would have thought after seeing it outside. The door closed behind her, as though she’d stepped through her own Door to Oblivion—as she entered an entirely new realm of incense and glittering light.
The Eight Divines were enshrined there—alongside the heathen god Talos, the deification of the Imperial God-Emperor Tiber Septim. She let herself ignore its blasphemy for a moment, soaking in the kaleidoscope of rich greens, blues, and reds, that radiated from the portraits of the gods. There was Mara, Goddess of Love, clutching both hands to her breast. Kynareth, Goddess of the Winds, with a hawk perching on her outstretched hand. Stendarr, God of Mercy, weighing the deeds of every mortal on his scales, smiling ever so gently as he tipped them in their favor.
And Akatosh, whose head was a dragon, whose spines were the face of a gnarled old man. In his hands, an hourglass—with sands running up instead of down.
She’d forgotten for a moment why she came. There was no one else here. That couldn’t be a coincidence. Levoline shook the distraction of the cathedral's beauty from her mind. The blind man who’d let her in was standing beside a low railing that encircled a flight of stairs into the undercroft. He made no acknowledgements as she walked past, except that he made for the door almost as soon as she had begun to descend.
The central door to the crypts was unlocked and slightly ajar.
She stepped through carefully, hand on Thorn’s hilt. In the dim light, she could make out three figures.