Introducing Gideon Nav, Cavalier Primary to the Ninth House, Keepers of the Locked Tomb...

[ninth_cavalier]

...House of the Sewn Tongue, The Black Vestals. We pray that the tomb is shut forever. We pray the rock is never rolled away. We pray that which was buried remains buried, insensate, in perpetual rest, with closed eye and stilled brain. We pray it lives, we pray it sleeps, we pray for the needs of the Emperor All-Giving, the Undying King...

One minute Gideon is doing the stupidest and most perfect thing she has ever done, heroically sacrificing herself so her necromancer can eat her and achieve true Lyctorhood and break Cytherea the First's body into so many little shards of bone and ribbons of fat and flesh that even her own mother (thousands of years dead, and most likely a huge bitch) couldn't recognize her, and the next she's—standing. Whole, the aches in her leg and shoulder gone, her sunglasses perched on her nose, the comforting weight of her longsword¹ on her back. She takes a breath, just for the novelty of it, and looks around.

The first thing she notices is how clean it is. No blood, no mold, no grime, no layers of bone dust. When she breathes, she just breathes air, and it feels like extra clean air, which—she looks further around—is probably due to the actual grass on the actual ground. In the distance there are trees. With birds in them.

Is this—this can't possibly be what the inside of Harrow's brain looks like. The inside of Harrow's brain is undoubtedly as spooky as the outside of Harrow's brain, because where would she even have found the imagination to dream up something this—idyllic?? There's nothing even close to it in any of her experience on Drearbruh, and Gideon would know, having been there and actively making that experience worse for all of Harrow's sorry little life.

No, what she's looking at is—a house. A big, boring, white-painted house, not a bone to be seen. "Okay," says Gideon. "What the fuck."

Anyone looking at her will see a tallish (though not for Mansion standards), broad-shouldered and very ripped butch woman, dressed all in black (black tank top, black pants, black stompy boots). She has short-cropped red hair, medium-brown skin, and her face has been painted with stark black and white skull makeup, atop which she has incongruously perched very old-looking aviator sunglasses. Slung over her back is the aforementioned sword.

¹ Typist note: the books consistently refer to this as both a "longsword" and a "two-hander," and from the way its weight and length is constantly emphasized I interpret it to be more toward zweihander than longsword. Also, bigger sword sexier.

Comments

[summerdude]

"Oh, are you dead too? There are a couple of us here, but honestly the others are still pretty weird about death."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Dunno," says Gideon, honestly. "I intended to be, but I also intended for my necromancer to eat me. So I'm a little unclear on whether the death part happened and just not the Lyctorhood, or the death part didn't happen and I'm just here, alive, or the death part and the Lyctorhood happened and the thing that thinks it's me is just a fragment of my brain slash soul still remaining while the rest of me is digested slowly by the world's angriest and most uptight grey matter."

[summerdude]

"...huh," Magnus says. "Sure. I can see how that would be confusing."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Hoping for the last one, honestly," says Gideon cheerfully.

[summerdude]

Magnus has heard lots, lots weirder, to be honest. "There's some people here who might be able to tell, if you want?" he says. "Like I said, where I'm from, when you die you get a new body, so maybe you just got a new body when you got here, too? But I think there are people here who can talk to, like, unembodied dead people."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon's not sure she likes the idea of getting a new body, nor, honestly, a real answer. Still—"Lan Wangji's a Speaker to the Dead," she agrees.

[summerdude]

Whoa. Huh. Really? Magnus supposes, based on stuff Shen Yuan had said months ago, that this might be true, but it's not something Lan Wangji has really talked about a lot. "Yeah, okay," he says. "Lan Wangji is the best." And then, so Gideon doesn't make the same mistake he did: "I thought he was a god when I first got here but just FYI, he's not. No one here is."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon gives him an odd look. "Where I'm from there's really just the one God," she says, "and I don't usually expect to run into Him casually. Kind of an invited audience type of thing."

[summerdude]

"Oh. In my afterlife there are dozens. Maybe hundreds." Magnus has long since gotten over the time when he was circumspect about his heritage here. "My dad is one! Frey. God of summer."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Hang on," says Gideon. "Your dad's a God, and you died--you're just like that dude Jesus, from Earth."

[summerdude]

"I am not," Magnus says, indignant. Rude!!

[ninth_cavalier]

"Woah, okay, sorry, jeez." It could not be more clear that Gideon's stuck her foot in it. "I just learned about him, like today. What'd he do, kick your dog?"

[summerdude]

"No, I've never met the guy," Magnus says. "I'm pretty sure he's not real? He's got a lot of followers, though, and a lot of them are transphobic and homophobic dillweeds."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon blinks at him. "You lost me. Fear of...sameness?"

[summerdude]

"Um. Gay people?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"People are afraid of gay people?" Gideon demands, genuinely baffled.

[summerdude]

"Okay, so in my, um, time, homophobia and transphobia can mean fear, but mostly mean hatred? So a lot of people try to, like, restrict the rights and privileges of gay and trans people, or, like, treat them differently. Kinda sub-human? And those are the terms we use for that kind of behavior." Remembering how this came up: "And a lot of people do that stuff in the name of Jesus Christ, or whatever."

[ninth_cavalier]

"How are there even enough non-gay people to do that shit?" Gideon doesn't even know if she knows anyone who isn't a little fruity. Like, Sex Pal was hung up on Dulcinea his whole life and has--had--whatever going on with Camilla, but she can't imagine he wouldn't smooch a dude if the dude was hot and/or insane enough. "Anyway--yeah, sorry for the comparison, then, fuck all that."

[summerdude]

It's fine, it's chill now, Magnus has bigger concerns. "Oh no," he says, putting his head in his hands. "First I tell Laertes that straight people even exist, and now here I am telling you that they make up a big chunk of the population back in my time. Alex is never gonna let me hear the end of it." This last has him brightening a little. Maybe if he does enough things that would make Alex laugh at him and/or piss Alex off, she'll just, like, sense a disturbance in the force or whatever and appear in front of him again. To laugh or to yell. He'll take either.

He peeks at Gideon. "Forgiven," he adds.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Transphobia makes even less sense to me, for the record," says Gideon. "But I guess it's gotta be more complicated in places you can't just call a necromancer to fuck with your hormones for you."

[summerdude]

Okay, that has Magnus fully sliding his head out of his hands. "Say what now?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Well, any necromancer worth their salt can stimulate extra hormone growth, or limit it, or whatever," says Gideon, like that should be obvious. "That's like, baby shit, you don't even need to be a flesh adept. So if you're not happy with what you've got going on, you just--" she wiggles her fingers.

[summerdude]

Magnus considers this. That seems... wildly convenient. "My girlfriend is a shapeshifter," he offers. "Well. Sometimes he's my boyfriend. But the shapeshifting is separate from the genderfluidity."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon nods. Shapeshifter's a new one, but genderfluidity isn't, and it's at least less openly impossible than like fridges that generate endless food. "So, similar, kind of, since he can just play around with mix and matching."

[summerdude]

Magnus is pretty sure that they're not on the same page, actually! "Like. She turns into different animals," he clarifies. "She does a really great flamingo. And cheetah. And poison dart frog."