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

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon looks sideways at him, and then laughs. "You're a weird kid, anyone ever tell you that?" she asks, and then, amused with herself, "Says the nun in the skull paint."

[summerdude]

"Wait, hang on, you're a nun?" Magnus has never met a nun before. "Are you even allowed to have babes if you're a nun?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon snorts. "Not according to the Blessed Sisters Lachrimorta and Aisamorta, but luckily for me they went blind in grand service to their House. And somehow I doubt the Emperor Undying gives a shit about where and with who I get my kicks." Not that Gideon has, actually, ever gotten any kicks, per se, but this kid (young adult? twenty four year old?) doesn't have to know that.

[summerdude]

"Emperor Undying, huh?" Magnus says. He doesn't add funny name for a god, because he's pretty sure a guy from a Viking afterlife has no room to speak on this matter. "Monotheistic?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh, like, there's only one of Him? Yeah, far as I know," says Gideon. "I guess it's possible that when you actually meet the guy He ends up being 200 dead kids in a trench coat. Hey, just like someone else I know." She pauses, and then, despondently, "that was actually also a really good joke. Anyway, yeah, only one God. We've got Saints, though. If it turns out the whole Lyctor thing I talked about before did work, me'n'Harrow'll be one pretty soon."

[summerdude]

"Is that why you wanted her to eat you?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon nods. "We were under attack by a different Saint. Cytherea the First. Harrow eating me and ascending to her level was pretty much the only way any of us were getting out of there. Plus--I'm her cav." She stares at her feet, and her voice when she speaks is soft but infused with the weight of ritual. "One flesh, one end."

[summerdude]

Yeah, that makes sense; there are tons of stories in Valhalla about guys eating other guys to gain their powers. He hesitates a moment at the tone of her voice. "Do you, um. Happen to be injured, right now?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Apparently the fuck not," says Gideon. "My arm should be broken, and I should have big ol' holes right about," she looks down at her chest and taps a point just above her sternum. "hereish. But I don't see any. Why?"

[summerdude]

"I have," Magnus says, and twiddles his fingers. "Healing? And when I do it sometimes I see people's memories, and sometimes I can also see things that are happening in other places, too. I was gonna offer to heal you and try to see if it's all worked out back home for you, if you wanted."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon considers this. "That might tell you whether I'm physically here, too, right? Like if you're talking to me or to a piece of my like, psyche or whatever?"

[summerdude]

"Maybe!" Magnus says, brightly. "I've never tried that particular thing before, so I don't know for sure." He pauses. He wants to tell her not to go hurting herself on purpose just to check, but also -- like, he doesn't know her well enough to say that, and also it would be a little hypocritical, wouldn't it? He's certainly knocked himself out here on the off-chance he could dream about Alex more than once.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Right," says Gideon. She pops open a button on small sheath on her belt, and pulls out her knuckle-knife, palming it automatically and using it to matter-of-factly slice open her palm. Wordlessly, she holds her hand out to Magnus.

[summerdude]

Magnus takes her hand in both of his and closes his eyes. It takes a moment to call on summer, but then he thinks of Alex's smile and the warmth blooms in his chest. He directs it to Gideon's cut, for once not trying to shy away from her memories -- trying, instead, to probe.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon's mind is likely a mess of recent blood and violence—a vast creature of bone; her own body wracked with pain and exhaustion; a pale, skinny girl with far more elaborate face paint than Gideon's, bleeding from her nose and eyes and ears, reaching out to her; a different girl, pale blond, her arm being torn from her body—but if Magnus reaches past those flashes he'll see Gideon and the first girl, fully clothed but floating in a strange, subterranean pool, huddled close together in the water. The other girl's paint has mostly washed off, and her face is pinched, and exhausted, and alight with purpose; Gideon's hands are on her jaw.

Gideon. If I die, I need your duty not to die with me.

[summerdude]

Magnus catches it all, and a few other shifting thoughts besides. The violence and blood, though of a foreign nature, still feels like home to him, in a damn, is Valhalla messed up or what? kind of way, but the bone-thing is new. There's a cast over the memories, like the death there has a different tenor to the deaths Magnus knows well. There's a sort of mismatch between the arbitrary-yet-reverent way Valhalla deals with it, and the way it's colored in Gideon's memories.

He pushes through that, not looking closely at the girl in the pool or the shape of Gideon's feelings about her, looking for some kind of sign about Gideon's life, or maybe-death, or whether she's in two places at once. And the cut isn't terribly deep; it's gone and the resulting scar has disappeared before Magnus can get any further.

He sits back, releasing her hand, and makes an apologetic face.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon sighs. "No, huh? Thanks anyway." She lifts her hand, examining it. "Neat trick, though. Never had someone seal up a wound in a way that smelled so good before."

[summerdude]

"Sorry," Magnus says, with feeling, and then does some jazz hands. "If you ever need First Aid Guy, though, that's me! I live over there." He jerks his thumb in the direction of the woods.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon raises her eyebrows. Surely this dude isn't the source of the army of the undead? "You live in the woods?"

[summerdude]

"I like being outside." She doesn't need the whole sob story about how he ended up out there, she just got here.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon shrugs. "Fair enough." It does, weirdly, not feel that bad out here right now? She could've sworn it was colder before this conversation. "If I ever get banged up doing something stupid, I know where to look."

[summerdude]

"I know all about recovering from doing stupid stuff," Magnus grins. He gives her an awkward thumbs-up. "Nice to meet you, Gideon."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah, you too," says Gideon. She looks over at Jack, who is, improbably, still singing. "If I walk away, will I break his heart, or—"

[summerdude]

"He's used to disappointment in love," Magnus confides, quietly enough that Jack can't hear him over the singing. "He'll be fine."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Right," says Gideon. "Okay. See you around, Magnus." She starts off, back toward the Mansion. "Bye, Jack! She's not gonna call you!"