Homecoming // Varania & Fenris
The Imperium. If Fenris had been able to have his way, he never would have returned to that hated place. True, the island of Seheron was not a part of the Imperium in the same way that Minrathous was, but the knowledge that he was so close to that hated hierarchy of mages and magisters made his skin crawl and his heart race.
And yet, he had no choice. He was, despite years of searching, growing desperate. The brands that Danarius had cursed him with had always caused him discomfort, but it was only in the past few years that he had realised that the lyrium within them was actually poisoning him; with each passing month it leeched deeper, sapped more determinedly at his strength, brought with it insomnia and nightmares and spiralling paranoia. But these days, he had no companions to protect him from himself; no Hawke to quest for some mysterious cure, no Isabela to keep his spirits buoyed, and he had eventually resigned himself to the thought that, if there was a cure to be found out there, he would have to seek it out himself.
Perhaps, he had hoped, Danarius might have written a book on the results of his proudest test subject. Fenris knew that he had been the first, the prototype of a new breed of slave – Danarius had taken enough pleasure from showing him off that he was sure he wouldn’t pass up the chance to brag in printed books. Perhaps, at worst, he might have to break into the hated, dead man’s old estate where he would undoubtedly still have notes from those years of experimentation.
Either way, his path would lead him back to the Imperium, where manuscripts and documents on slavery and rituals were still openly written and traded. He would have never set eyes on that hated place again if he had any say in it, but he was a desperate man; his eyes were ringed with shadows, and exhaustion sapped at his steps and stooping his shoulders. These days, he would do anything to leech that poison from his blood. He had come via Seheron on an Antivan trader's ship, as though perhaps by approaching from the island he might have less chance to change his mind and flee once more, but now that he was here he found some reason to pause in one of the small, trader's settlements that had grown on the southern shores.
Seheron. This was where they said that he had been born. He had very few memories to prove whether that was true or not, but as he ran the tips of scarred fingers along the broad, flat leaf of a tropical plant he could not tell himself that this was not familiar. His mind had retained a few things; he remembered heavy summer storms, and the smell of vegetable stew. He remembered a fat, balding man who leered over an elvhen woman with familiarly green eyes, a woman who had healing hands and a gentle voice. Was she still alive, that person...?
Troubled by the turn that his thoughts had taken, he sighed and pulled the hood of his oiled cloak back over his distinctive ears and shock-white hair. There would be enough time for reminiiscing later; right now, he had to cross into the Imperium proper before nightfall...
