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

[sporesprouter]

"Just food. For free. Some that the kitchen just magically provides, and some that people here cook, if we like to cook. But the ingredients show up just as magically."

[ninth_cavalier]

That's impossible, Gideon thinks, but doesn't say. Magic can't create something from nothing. It's all... thanergy. Thalergy? Fuck if she knows. But she follows Tress, lapsing into a nervous kind of silence as they move through the halls.

[sporesprouter]

Tress points out the welcome table as they pass by, in case Gideon wants to go back to it later. Food is higher priority now, though, so she continues to the kitchen.

"Is there anything in particular you'd like? Or just something basic?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"I mostly just eat whatever there is," Gideon says honestly. Food was food, on the Ninth—mainly gruel or soup reinforced with nutrient paste shipped in on supply ships, and while the food was better at Canaan House there still hadn't been much in the way of options.

[sporesprouter]

"That's fine." She starts going through cabinets and the refrigerator and puts together a plate of something simple and quick: a ham and cheese sandwich with some sliced fruit. She sets it down at the kitchen table. "It's not much, but it should at least help a little."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon stares at the plate. Tress made her a sandwich. No one's ever made her a sandwich before. Half an hour ago she was throwing herself headlong into death by impalement and magical cannibalism and now she's sitting in a kitchen in a world so alien it might as well not be part of the universe at all, and a cute girl made her a sandwich.

Gideon, you useless bitch, she tells herself, do not fucking cry.

[sporesprouter]

The way Gideon just stares at the food worries her a little. "Um. Are you all right? If there's something else you'd like better, I can try for that instead."

[ninth_cavalier]

"No," says Gideon, fiercely. "It's perfect." She picks it up and starts eating, making sure to really chew and savor every bite. There's so much flavor. And different textures! This probably has about as much nutritional value as the paste—there's vitamins and minerals in meat, just like there is in bone marrow, but this way you can actually taste them. And there's cheese!

[sporesprouter]

"Oh good," she says with clear relief. "Did you want anything to drink? I could make tea, or even juice or just water if you'd like."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Juice," says Gideon, around her last bite of sandwich, and then feels like a heel. "Please." She'd had enough tea with Teacher. Fuck, poor Teacher. It would be, like, so cool if Gideon had any memories that didn't just involve dead people.

[sporesprouter]

"All right." She heads to the fridge and comes back shortly having poured a glass of apple juice which she sets down. "There you go! Oh. By the way, I'm Tress. Sorry I dragged you all the way here without even introducing myself."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Gideon," says Gideon, examining the glass slightly dubiously. She doesn't think Tress would steer her wrong, but it does look remarkably like piss. "What is this the juice... of?"

[sporesprouter]

"Apples." She looks around and grabs one from a basket on the counter. "Like this. The fruit's pretty sweet, and the juice is even sweeter."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon takes the apple from Tress and bites into it. Real fruit, not freeze-dried. It's so crunchy.

She eats the apple and drinks the juice by turns, a bite and then a sip, comparing the tastes. Flesh and blood.

[sporesprouter]

"Looks like you like it. Good."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon finishes both apple and juice. "Thanks," she says, again, and pushes herself back from the table. "So. Now that that's out of the way. What's the plan for getting out of here?"

[sporesprouter]

Tress sits down with a soft sigh. "That's the question. Trying to leave by air just leads to an invisible barrier in the sky. Trying to walk away just turns you around and ends you right back at the house, even if you mark your trail. The house does keep somehow adding new doors and passageways, but nobody has found one that leads anywhere outside of this little world... except for one day when a lot of people showed up and then left just as quickly, but there's no obvious way to follow them. There's someone named Aornis¹ who's looking through books for evidence for how to make something called a Prose Portal, because she thinks we might have somehow been trapped inside a book?"

She shakes her head. "Honestly, there are days that I've come close to just trying to start digging my way out with my bare hands, because it feels like the only thing I haven't tried."


¹ Ping!

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon lets her head hang back over the back of her seat, staring at the ceiling. None of this makes any sense to her. It's not the kind of stuff that's supposed to make sense to her. She can hear Harrow now: You're going to try to solve this mystery, Griddle? You? How's that going to work, when all your grey matter turned to muscle years ago?

"Well," she says, finally. "You just let me know where to start digging."

[sporesprouter]

She smiles a little. "As soon as I figure it out. Promise."