[Honestly, she - has had her reasons, for doubting they were precisely what they said they were. But she can't deny that what they are saying is true. We are all other than what we say we are, herself included.
Anyway. Memshare back. You walk into the library at Canaan House, though you often avoid it. You had not bade Ortus not to speak to the other heirs, thinking he would not likely obey you, and you regretted it. Here was Ortus now, declaiming his amateurish poetry for the Abigail Pent, the Fifth necromancer and her cavalier husband, Sir Magnus Quinn. There was no one in Canaan House whose company you wanted less than the matronly and overfamiliar Pent and the curly-haired moron that is Quinn, both of them friendly and inviting, and wearing clothes the cost of which could have provided the Ninth with material resources for a decade.
But you must stay and speak, because Pent is remarkably clever, and she has devised some scholarship on the Lyctoral process that she is bewilderingly willing to share with you, her competitor. So you talk to her of Lyctors and history, defensive and ready to bolt at any moment, while Ortus humiliates you and every one of your ancestors by declaiming versus of the Nonius to Quinn's baffling delight.
"I would like to give you something," says Abigail. She takes a note and passes it to Harrowhark with her strong lovely hands, and smiles as though it did not hurt her to give you something so valuable. "Scholarship is best made as a communal effort," she says. "If you can tell me anything of interest about that paper, I’d be very grateful for it. If you could tell me anything tedious, I’d still be thankful. Bone adepts do have such a notorious eye for detail."
You are stunned, a little caught off balance. You take the paper, feel it in your gloved hands, and say, with genuine gratitude - "I -- am obliged to you, Fifth House."
Magnus was saying: “Ortus. What does happen to Nonius, after he faces the ensorcelled swordsmen? I assume they fight?”
You are surprised at how immediately you can answer in your cavalier’s stead, having heard these lines so many times before: "He cuts down seven men in about as many lines. Then the leader of the swordsmen approaches, carrying two swords. I would have assumed there was a swift rate of decay in the efficacy of additional swords. The others part to let Nonius and him fight. Nonius wins easily, though he takes eight pages to do so. The remaining onlookers he kills, rather more cursorily, as it only takes around four lines.”
Magnus stares at you for a moment, his expression strange. "Is this how it happens?"
Something about that unsettles you, because very much against your will, you have memorized most of the Noniad in the interminable amount of time you have spent in Ortus' company. Then, something happens that unsettles you even more.
"I say, Reverend Daughter, is it an ancestral Locked Tomb tradition for your spirit energy to be so diverse?” Abigail asks brightly. "I’ve counted up to almost two hundred signatures contributing to you, and there’s more. They’re stamps rather than complete revenants, of course, which means their spirits were manipulated to leave marks on you in some way, which is fascinating if it means . . ."
Your blood runs cold, as you calculate with immediacy how you might kill Abigail Pent. Against any other ghost-caller, their wards so exquisite and fatally slow, a single decisive strike would do the job. But Pent introduced that doubt, and that doubt makes you flee, a tactical retreat. Your heart hammering, feeling clammy and nauseated, you turn on your heels and walk out the door, as you hear the fool Quinn murmuring in your wake "My dear, you didn't have to - "
You shake in the corridor outside the library, and Ortus follows after you, reluctant. "We now avoid Pent and Quinn at all costs. For the sake of the Ninth House, and of the sanctity of the Locked Tomb. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, my Lady Harrowhark," says Ortus.
"If I believe they pose a threat, or that they intend us direct harm — frankly, on any minor excuse — I will invoke Tomb retribution. I’ll kill Pent where she stands if I need to, and you will swear that there was no sin of unjustified House war, no matter the circumstances."
Only a pause. “Yes, my Lady Harrowhark,” says Ortus.
This calm agreement makes you all the more furious, and cruel. "And it ought to be Non-i-us as three syllables, or Non-yus as two," you add, feeling some satisfaction. "Not whichever you happen to feel like at the time. It’s amateurish."
Ortus looks down shyly, like a beast of burden steadying himself for a jump. "Yes, my Lady Harrowhark. I am flattered by your attention to my craft. It’s consciously archaic. Emphasising my commitment to spoken performance."
"For God’s sake, Ortus, please stop sounding as though I’m about to whip you. I am taking care of our affairs, despite your ignorance."
"Let me not be unpleasing to my lady," he says. "Let the unseeing eye of the Locked Tomb gaze down upon me, and see me guard her with the unmoving aegis of a cavalier’s love. But I will not modulate my tone for you."
You round on him, knowing you're being unfair, knowing you are being petulant because you were frightened, and you cannot soothe yourself, and would use any means to try to do so now. When you are scared you become a child again, and you are afraid of being a child again more than almost anything else in your life.
"I have every right to correct you. We are at the gates of the Tomb, even now," she says. "I carry it with me, and its rules hold clear."
"Let us never leave it," says Ortus, gravely. "My lady, I follow your every order. I will accept your chidings gratefully. I will watch you slay whomsoever you feel the need to slay, and I will sponge the blood from your brow, but when I lay me down to sleep, I am a fully grown man who is allowed to feel precisely what I want, about anything I want. There has never been a rule against doing so, and that has always been my deep and unyielding relief with regard to you. Your final will be done, my lady.”
Then he bows to you — the very correct bow of a Ninth House tomb swordsman; his paint a perfect, if sad and melting, skull, his attitude sombre, his face the blankness of the grave. Except, seemingly unable to resist, he adds - "I might also note that synizesis is characteristic of some of our finest examples of early Ninth prosody. I'm certain your studies have kept you from the full breadth of the classics."
You decide to ignore your cavalier's insolence, and instead you examine the note Pent gave you. It is, to your horror, covered in nonsensical ranting and ravings, letters crowded together, screeching in capital letters about betrayal and eggs. You make the sign you taught to Ortus, the discreet symbol that means What am I seeing, devised to hide your madness, and he takes the note from your hands.
"If you come to my study, I will make you the potato dish you liked," he reads. "How must we understand potato?"
"As your closest vegetable relative," you snap, even though you also have never seen a potato.
"You are a ready wit," Ortus says, with something like admiration. "I have always admired your facility for repartee, my lady. Oftentimes someone will say something to me, and later I will think up the perfect riposte — so perfect the hearer could not help but wilt, and be ashamed that they had set themselves up to receive it — but by that point it is often hours after the fact and I am lying in my bed. And in any case, I hate conflict, all kinds."
"The Tomb have mercy," you swear. "If only duels took the form of competitive passive aggression, I'd probably be a Lyctor already. For the love of God, Ortus, I need a cavalier with backbone."
"You always did," says Ortus gravely. "And I am glad, I think, that I never became that cavalier."
You spend the next few hours with that thought in your head, wondering what the hell he meant by that.
Of course not. I am Ashiya Douman, in my entirety.
[As if suggesting that Limbo is a shell, Limbo is not the whole picture. But before they can continue, they get thrust into a dream.]
[How very interesting. These talks of Tombs and cavaliers and Lyctoral processes is strange to Douman's ears. It reminds them of some sort of medieval society, vaguely, with vassals and lords and things of the like. But even with such terms going over their head, its clearer what is happening between these individuals. A crossing of the line, and a hard refusal from Harrowhawk, frightened by the intrusion. Its a lot to think about certainly, but the first thing that Douman will say, when the memory ebbs from their visions, is:]
...I like that Ortus of yours. [And a beat.] Does he still work for you, as your cavalier?
[She. . . very much dislikes these memories, but this one isn't so bad. It suggests more than it says. What it suggests is very frightening to her, but she doesn't think Douman will catch the significance.]
[She. . . is not sure she wants them to know this part. There's a reaction, again, like the one in the memory, where she goes frightened and angry at an unexpected question.]
. . . He died doing his duty to the Ninth House. He died to ensure that the Ninth would live.
Sacrifice...yes. A true measure of his loyalty and devotion.
[But they will be merciful, and will leave Ortus for now, though that reaction...yes, they understand a little better, now.]
Your society is interesting. Never have I seen something so complicated built on the backs of those who raise the dead. Is there really so many spirits and skeletons to go around, in your time?
[Ah. Well, this she can speak of. And congratulations on unlocking this bit of lore that she doesn't even know is lore.]
More than a myriad ago, there was an extinction event that destroyed the House of the First. It may be difficult to conceive of, but I am given to understand that at that time, there were billions of human beings who lived there. But the event - I am told it was something to do with rising sea levels and a nuclear fission chain reaction - destroyed nearly all life on that planet.
A key principle in necromancy is that of the release of thanergetic energy. All living, sentient beings have thalergy, the energy of life, and thanergy, the energy of death. A sudden and violent death produces an enormous amount of thanergy. The more death that occurs in an instance, the more power that is generated, and the more that can be done with it. [This principle she knows all too well.] The sudden and violent death of billions of people, nearly all at once, produced enough to turn a man into a God.
And so was born the Emperor Undying. Before the extinction, he had been an ordinary man, but now he possessed the power to perform resurrections. He used the thalergy of the star Dominicus and the planets of the Dominicus system, he flipped them thanergetic, and he used the energy to perform a Resurrection of some of the dead of the First House. Not all of them; a thanergetic planet, a dead planet, cannot sustain billions of life forms even if a living planet could.
Many of the children of those whom he resurrected also had necromantic abilities. Nothing like the Emperor's, but enough ability to learn how to manipulate bone and flesh and spirit in a number of ways. The Emperor colonized the other eight planets in the Dominicus system, and tasked some of his necrochildren to oversee these small colonies. Hence, the Nine Houses - eight overseen by great families of necromancers, and the first the seat of the Emperor, empty now - were created.
Traveling to thalergenic planets outside the Dominicus system lessons our abilities somewhat; we rely upon soldiers to generate death there for us to practice our art. But on a dead planet, for those born with the ability, it is as simple as breathing air.
[This is...a lot to process. Extinction event? The Emperor Undying? Thanergetic energy? Nine Houses? It would make anyone's head spin. But Douman just bows their head, letting out a chuckle.]
Ah, so that's to be the fate of Earth? How interesting. [A pause.] Mm, but that is quite the history. I have never heard of this thalergy...I guess it will be some time before it comes to light in some timeline of the world I come from.
That was the name of the "House of the First". A planet where billions of human beings lived. Where I lived, once upon a time, before I became what I am, now. Some other people are also here from that planet.
[She seems surprised by this information, but not - thrown, exactly. It is just a fascinating tidbit to someone scholarly enough to know their history, but not interested in the subject enough to consider it too deeply. She thinks of Abigail Pent for a moment, with an unexpected burst of fondness. The brilliant historian - how thrilled she would be at the opportunity to learn more of the period predating the Resurrection. But Pent is dead, so - there's no real reason to inquire.]
I hadn't realized. It makes some sense - I have seen blue skies and oceans in certain memories.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[Honestly, she - has had her reasons, for doubting they were precisely what they said they were. But she can't deny that what they are saying is true. We are all other than what we say we are, herself included.
Anyway. Memshare back. You walk into the library at Canaan House, though you often avoid it. You had not bade Ortus not to speak to the other heirs, thinking he would not likely obey you, and you regretted it. Here was Ortus now, declaiming his amateurish poetry for the Abigail Pent, the Fifth necromancer and her cavalier husband, Sir Magnus Quinn. There was no one in Canaan House whose company you wanted less than the matronly and overfamiliar Pent and the curly-haired moron that is Quinn, both of them friendly and inviting, and wearing clothes the cost of which could have provided the Ninth with material resources for a decade.
But you must stay and speak, because Pent is remarkably clever, and she has devised some scholarship on the Lyctoral process that she is bewilderingly willing to share with you, her competitor. So you talk to her of Lyctors and history, defensive and ready to bolt at any moment, while Ortus humiliates you and every one of your ancestors by declaiming versus of the Nonius to Quinn's baffling delight.
"I would like to give you something," says Abigail. She takes a note and passes it to Harrowhark with her strong lovely hands, and smiles as though it did not hurt her to give you something so valuable. "Scholarship is best made as a communal effort," she says. "If you can tell me anything of interest about that paper, I’d be very grateful for it. If you could tell me anything tedious, I’d still be thankful. Bone adepts do have such a notorious eye for detail."
You are stunned, a little caught off balance. You take the paper, feel it in your gloved hands, and say, with genuine gratitude - "I -- am obliged to you, Fifth House."
Magnus was saying: “Ortus. What does happen to Nonius, after he faces the ensorcelled swordsmen? I assume they fight?”
You are surprised at how immediately you can answer in your cavalier’s stead, having heard these lines so many times before: "He cuts down seven men in about as many lines. Then the leader of the swordsmen approaches, carrying two swords. I would have assumed there was a swift rate of decay in the efficacy of additional swords. The others part to let Nonius and him fight. Nonius wins easily, though he takes eight pages to do so. The remaining onlookers he kills, rather more cursorily, as it only takes around four lines.”
Magnus stares at you for a moment, his expression strange. "Is this how it happens?"
Something about that unsettles you, because very much against your will, you have memorized most of the Noniad in the interminable amount of time you have spent in Ortus' company. Then, something happens that unsettles you even more.
"I say, Reverend Daughter, is it an ancestral Locked Tomb tradition for your spirit energy to be so diverse?” Abigail asks brightly. "I’ve counted up to almost two hundred signatures contributing to you, and there’s more. They’re stamps rather than complete revenants, of course, which means their spirits were manipulated to leave marks on you in some way, which is fascinating if it means . . ."
Your blood runs cold, as you calculate with immediacy how you might kill Abigail Pent. Against any other ghost-caller, their wards so exquisite and fatally slow, a single decisive strike would do the job. But Pent introduced that doubt, and that doubt makes you flee, a tactical retreat. Your heart hammering, feeling clammy and nauseated, you turn on your heels and walk out the door, as you hear the fool Quinn murmuring in your wake "My dear, you didn't have to - "
You shake in the corridor outside the library, and Ortus follows after you, reluctant. "We now avoid Pent and Quinn at all costs. For the sake of the Ninth House, and of the sanctity of the Locked Tomb. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, my Lady Harrowhark," says Ortus.
"If I believe they pose a threat, or that they intend us direct harm — frankly, on any minor excuse — I will invoke Tomb retribution. I’ll kill Pent where she stands if I need to, and you will swear that there was no sin of unjustified House war, no matter the circumstances."
Only a pause. “Yes, my Lady Harrowhark,” says Ortus.
This calm agreement makes you all the more furious, and cruel. "And it ought to be Non-i-us as three syllables, or Non-yus as two," you add, feeling some satisfaction. "Not whichever you happen to feel like at the time. It’s amateurish."
Ortus looks down shyly, like a beast of burden steadying himself for a jump. "Yes, my Lady Harrowhark. I am flattered by your attention to my craft. It’s consciously archaic. Emphasising my commitment to spoken performance."
"For God’s sake, Ortus, please stop sounding as though I’m about to whip you. I am taking care of our affairs, despite your ignorance."
"Let me not be unpleasing to my lady," he says. "Let the unseeing eye of the Locked Tomb gaze down upon me, and see me guard her with the unmoving aegis of a cavalier’s love. But I will not modulate my tone for you."
You round on him, knowing you're being unfair, knowing you are being petulant because you were frightened, and you cannot soothe yourself, and would use any means to try to do so now. When you are scared you become a child again, and you are afraid of being a child again more than almost anything else in your life.
"I have every right to correct you. We are at the gates of the Tomb, even now," she says. "I carry it with me, and its rules hold clear."
"Let us never leave it," says Ortus, gravely. "My lady, I follow your every order. I will accept your chidings gratefully. I will watch you slay whomsoever you feel the need to slay, and I will sponge the blood from your brow, but when I lay me down to sleep, I am a fully grown man who is allowed to feel precisely what I want, about anything I want. There has never been a rule against doing so, and that has always been my deep and unyielding relief with regard to you. Your final will be done, my lady.”
Then he bows to you — the very correct bow of a Ninth House tomb swordsman; his paint a perfect, if sad and melting, skull, his attitude sombre, his face the blankness of the grave. Except, seemingly unable to resist, he adds - "I might also note that synizesis is characteristic of some of our finest examples of early Ninth prosody. I'm certain your studies have kept you from the full breadth of the classics."
You decide to ignore your cavalier's insolence, and instead you examine the note Pent gave you. It is, to your horror, covered in nonsensical ranting and ravings, letters crowded together, screeching in capital letters about betrayal and eggs. You make the sign you taught to Ortus, the discreet symbol that means What am I seeing, devised to hide your madness, and he takes the note from your hands.
"If you come to my study, I will make you the potato dish you liked," he reads. "How must we understand potato?"
"As your closest vegetable relative," you snap, even though you also have never seen a potato.
"You are a ready wit," Ortus says, with something like admiration. "I have always admired your facility for repartee, my lady. Oftentimes someone will say something to me, and later I will think up the perfect riposte — so perfect the hearer could not help but wilt, and be ashamed that they had set themselves up to receive it — but by that point it is often hours after the fact and I am lying in my bed. And in any case, I hate conflict, all kinds."
"The Tomb have mercy," you swear. "If only duels took the form of competitive passive aggression, I'd probably be a Lyctor already. For the love of God, Ortus, I need a cavalier with backbone."
"You always did," says Ortus gravely. "And I am glad, I think, that I never became that cavalier."
You spend the next few hours with that thought in your head, wondering what the hell he meant by that.
The memory ends.]
no subject
[As if suggesting that Limbo is a shell, Limbo is not the whole picture. But before they can continue, they get thrust into a dream.]
[How very interesting. These talks of Tombs and cavaliers and Lyctoral processes is strange to Douman's ears. It reminds them of some sort of medieval society, vaguely, with vassals and lords and things of the like. But even with such terms going over their head, its clearer what is happening between these individuals. A crossing of the line, and a hard refusal from Harrowhawk, frightened by the intrusion. Its a lot to think about certainly, but the first thing that Douman will say, when the memory ebbs from their visions, is:]
...I like that Ortus of yours. [And a beat.] Does he still work for you, as your cavalier?
no subject
[She. . . very much dislikes these memories, but this one isn't so bad. It suggests more than it says. What it suggests is very frightening to her, but she doesn't think Douman will catch the significance.]
And, no. He is dead.
no subject
[Their expression turns sympathetic.]
My condolences. How did he pass?
no subject
. . . He died doing his duty to the Ninth House. He died to ensure that the Ninth would live.
no subject
[But they will be merciful, and will leave Ortus for now, though that reaction...yes, they understand a little better, now.]
Your society is interesting. Never have I seen something so complicated built on the backs of those who raise the dead. Is there really so many spirits and skeletons to go around, in your time?
no subject
More than a myriad ago, there was an extinction event that destroyed the House of the First. It may be difficult to conceive of, but I am given to understand that at that time, there were billions of human beings who lived there. But the event - I am told it was something to do with rising sea levels and a nuclear fission chain reaction - destroyed nearly all life on that planet.
A key principle in necromancy is that of the release of thanergetic energy. All living, sentient beings have thalergy, the energy of life, and thanergy, the energy of death. A sudden and violent death produces an enormous amount of thanergy. The more death that occurs in an instance, the more power that is generated, and the more that can be done with it. [This principle she knows all too well.] The sudden and violent death of billions of people, nearly all at once, produced enough to turn a man into a God.
And so was born the Emperor Undying. Before the extinction, he had been an ordinary man, but now he possessed the power to perform resurrections. He used the thalergy of the star Dominicus and the planets of the Dominicus system, he flipped them thanergetic, and he used the energy to perform a Resurrection of some of the dead of the First House. Not all of them; a thanergetic planet, a dead planet, cannot sustain billions of life forms even if a living planet could.
Many of the children of those whom he resurrected also had necromantic abilities. Nothing like the Emperor's, but enough ability to learn how to manipulate bone and flesh and spirit in a number of ways. The Emperor colonized the other eight planets in the Dominicus system, and tasked some of his necrochildren to oversee these small colonies. Hence, the Nine Houses - eight overseen by great families of necromancers, and the first the seat of the Emperor, empty now - were created.
Traveling to thalergenic planets outside the Dominicus system lessons our abilities somewhat; we rely upon soldiers to generate death there for us to practice our art. But on a dead planet, for those born with the ability, it is as simple as breathing air.
no subject
[This is...a lot to process. Extinction event? The Emperor Undying? Thanergetic energy? Nine Houses? It would make anyone's head spin. But Douman just bows their head, letting out a chuckle.]
Ah, so that's to be the fate of Earth? How interesting. [A pause.] Mm, but that is quite the history. I have never heard of this thalergy...I guess it will be some time before it comes to light in some timeline of the world I come from.
no subject
Earth?
[It hasn't been called that for tens of thousands of years, so she never realized.]
no subject
That was the name of the "House of the First". A planet where billions of human beings lived. Where I lived, once upon a time, before I became what I am, now. Some other people are also here from that planet.
no subject
[She seems surprised by this information, but not - thrown, exactly. It is just a fascinating tidbit to someone scholarly enough to know their history, but not interested in the subject enough to consider it too deeply. She thinks of Abigail Pent for a moment, with an unexpected burst of fondness. The brilliant historian - how thrilled she would be at the opportunity to learn more of the period predating the Resurrection. But Pent is dead, so - there's no real reason to inquire.]
I hadn't realized. It makes some sense - I have seen blue skies and oceans in certain memories.
no subject
[Of course. If its in space, on dead planets...would "blue" be a color even possible to see?]
Ahaha. I guess that explains why you didn't know what a potato was.