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

[ravkanwitch]

"Don't worry, this place keeps you on your toes," Nina says, a little ominously. "We were attacked by the undead-- but not really the undead, since I had no control over them. And then after that, someone from my world came in to visit, but only for a day. And before that, I was turned into a child. But only for a day."

She huffs a little. "It's exhausting. But... thanks to the attack, I've decided I want to craft a bone sword and learn how to fight with it."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon wants to ask her if she'd be able to control the undead if they were already under someone else's control, and also how the fuck the child transformation works (again, like with the shapeshifter question, where does the goo go??), but she immediately shelves those for Later Thoughts at the entrance of this final one. "A bone sword! That's hot." She hesitates. "Probably a little impractical. But still hot."

[ravkanwitch]

"I think it'd make things easier at a closer range," Nina offers. "I used to have control over the living. Well, blood. I could give a man a heart attack or an aneurysm just by squeezing my hand." There's something about Gideon that makes it easy to talk about the darker things, things that she doesn't dare touch on with frieds like Sagramore or Laertes.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh, it'll definitely make things easier. That's like, the whole logic behind cavaliers—the necromancer's sword arm. It's just—bone's kind of brittle, so unless you can hack the regenerating bone thing or constantly reform it all the time while trying to fend people off, you might need to reinforce it with something." The handshake thing is also, unsurprisingly, super hot. It's also crazy—control over the living sounds like working with thalergy itself, rather than thanergy. "What happened to make the switch? With your magic, I mean."

[ravkanwitch]

Nina hesitates for a moment. The effects and subsequent withdrawal from jurda parem was one of the darkest moments in her life and she'll never forget the feeling of the control that she had, the feeling of being almost-- a puppet master. "I did something very idiotic with a 99% death rate to save my friends," she says, carefully. "I survived it... but my abilities changed."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon nods. "A hail mary play,¹" she says. "I'm familiar." She shoulder-checks Nina, lightly. "Glad you survived it."

¹ Who do you think Mary is, Gideon??

[ravkanwitch]

Nina grins, storing the trauma of it all in the back of her mind with a practiced ease. "Me too. Otherwise I wouldn't be here, staring at all of these creepy bones and animals with you."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Flatterer," accuses Gideon. "Is that what this big, hard bone is for?" She waits a beat, and then, "Making your sword, I mean."

[ravkanwitch]

"Yes, I've been looking at a lot of big, hard bones," Nina replies, very innocently as if she Did Not Get It. "For my sword, of course."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Of course," agrees Gideon, with a grin. "And when it comes time to...hone your big, hard bone, into that sword, I hope you'll think of me."

[ravkanwitch]

Nina can't help it; she lets out a snort of laughter. "You're as bad as my friend Jesper," she says, and it's obvious that's a fond comparison.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Hotter, I hope," says Gideon with a wink, but then she relaxes out of her exaggerated flirtation. "I mean it, though, I'd love to like—advise. On the whole sword situation. If you want. 'Sword' is the only class I ever aced." She shrugs, fluidly. "Cool if not, though." Nina doesn't really know her, even if she does immediately feel more familiar to Gideon than basically anyone else here.

[ravkanwitch]

"Sword and bone it seems like. Sagramore and Laertes have first dibs on lessons, but obviously, I'd be silly to not consult an expert on the whole situation," Nina says, with a friendly smile.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh, I've met Sagramore! And heard about Laertes. He does swords, too?"

[ravkanwitch]

"Laertes taught me how to fence," Nina offers. "It sounds like we both have experience with royal courts. He must have learned it there."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon makes a mental note of this.¹ "You were at a royal court?" she asks. "The Queen in question needed a bone witch?"

¹ And immediately forgets it, given how she makes fun of fencers when she does meet him. Whoops!

[ravkanwitch]

“Well, King,” she corrects her. “King Nikolai Lantsov. And if I’m being honest, he mostly wanted my skills as a spy.” She feels mildly guilty that everything she did with her Grisha abilities were for the most part against orders — but not too guilty.

[ninth_cavalier]

This makes less sense to Gideon—if you have a bone witch, why not make use of a bone witch?—but she nods. "Was this before or after you were going around seducing and robbing people?" she asks, with absolutely no judgement.

[ravkanwitch]

"After the seducing and robbing -- but ...before I disobeyed orders and called up a horde of the undead to bring down the Wellmother of a convent," Nina says, a little wryly. "And then I found myself here."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon raises her eyebrows. "You took out a convent? I mean, I can't say I haven't been tempted, but——what did they do?"

[ravkanwitch]

"Remember the thing that happened to me that changed my abilities? It's a drug. A plant. They were feeding a watered down version of it to pregnant women - pregnant Grisha - and getting them addicted to it, in hopes that the babies would be born addicted as well. Then they'd have complete control over the children and whatever abilities they might have." Nina shakes her head a little, almost like a dog shaking off water, thinking of the voices of the dead calling to her. They knew her name. "So many had already died before I showed up."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon swallows. I am a generation of the Ninth, Harrow had told her in the pool under Canaan House. I am a war crime. The Ninth House creche, every bed but her own silent.

If Gideon were a different kind of person, she'd make some profound comment right now about babies, and power, and poisoners, and maybe even nuns, that would key Nina in to the fact that she gets it without giving away a horrible secret entrusted to her by her Necromancer. But she's not. Talking's never been her thing, at least not talking well, so all she says is, "Bloody hell," but she says it with feeling.

[ravkanwitch]

"Exactly," Nina says grimly. "I stopped it-- right before I came here. But only at that convent. Who knows how many other places it's happening in." She can only hope that Adrik and Leoni got word back to the Ravka and that they can do more, now that they know what they're looking for.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon nods. She reaches out to clap Nina on the shoulder, reassuring. "We'll get you back there, and you can keep holding those fuckers accountable."

[ravkanwitch]

Nina smiles at her. "Honestly, at this point, I'd really hate to leave this place. But... I do have unfinished business. If you find a way out, let me know."