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Dead Reckoning

Summary:

Gideon has a plan to bring Harrow back, but as with most of her plans, it isn't long before everything goes sideways. With the two of them stuck sharing Gideon's body, and Alecto holding Harrow's body hostage, they find themselves in a desperate race against time to get it back before Harrow's magic absorbs Gideon's soul.

Notes:

NOTE ON CANON: This fic takes into account everything that happens in Harrow the Ninth... except for the epilogue. There are too many unknown elements there, and it didn't really fit with the story I wanted to tell, so I'm ignoring it. Otherwise, consider this a direct continuation from canon.

Cover art is by the talented Defenestratin (twitter.com/defenestratin)

Chapter 1: The Ashes

Chapter Text

Cover art depicting Gideon holding her sword in a confident pose. The sword is broken, and where the shards cover her body, we see the reflection of a terrified-looking Harrowhark instead

 

Can you hear me, Harrow? Can you see me?

Are you listening?

Here’s how it really happened:

I walked back from the brink of death with a slow, graceless stumble. I was sure that I had died for real this time. That I had drowned in a river that wasn’t even real, wearing a body that wasn’t even mine, alongside a person I didn’t even know. I’m glad it didn’t happen that way. That was a pretty shit way to die.

Reality trickled into my brain, painful and viscous. I wasn’t consciously aware of opening my eyes, but vision resolved itself from the blackness. Pain wracked through my chest. I was… I was coughing? Oh, yes, I was coughing — great, wrenching coughs — and there was a phantom sensation of fluid being violently ejected from my lungs, because even if the River isn’t real water, it’s difficult to stop your body from freaking out when it thinks it’s drowning. My mind and my soul and your body slid protestingly back into sync.

Half of my face was pressed against the ground, and some kind of soft, ashy sand was getting in my mouth. A little puddle of drool wetted the sand next to it. I was lying on my stomach, limbs sprawled out in all kinds of fun directions. It took me a while to stop hacking like a plague victim, but I got there. I groaned and tried to spit some of the sand out. It didn’t work. I rolled onto my back.

The sky was dismally grey, and yet somehow still irritatingly bright. I hated looking at it. I sat up, then hauled myself to my feet with a body that protested every second I asked it to move. My mind dizzily oriented itself without being especially committed to the task.

A rocky outcrop just behind me was the only thing that disrupted the featureless wasteland. Vast dunes rolled lazily towards the horizon in every direction. Every single part of that desolate world was grey. The sky was a pale, hazy grey, the sand was a dull slate grey, the rocks were a dark, almost charcoal grey. It was really fucking grey, is what I’m trying to get across here. Eddies of wind swirled thin clouds of ash through the air. There was nothing — no one walking by, no ships overhead, no sign of civilization in the distance. I was alone.

Everything hit me all at once.

You were gone. You hadn’t come back. I was pretty sure you weren’t dead — I could still feel your presence in there somewhere — but you weren’t alive either. I knew from what the other Lyctors said that you weren’t down there fighting the big planet beastie. No, I had no illusions that you were on your way back. Nor could I get you back; what could I possibly have done? I’d have fought anybody I needed to fight to keep you alive, but this spirit stuff was beyond me.

There was nothing I could do. There was no path forward. I was by myself, in a body that wasn’t mine, on a world that I had no way to escape. You were functionally dead, and pretty soon I would be actually, permanently dead. I had failed you.

I’d like to say that that’s when I rallied. That I stood tall and refused to stop fighting. But it wouldn’t be true. What actually happened was this: I gave up. I trudged over to that big rock sticking out of the ground, I sat down, and I leaned back against it. I saw my two-hander lying half-buried beside me, and I placed it flat across my lap. I closed my eyes. I felt the single massive ache that your body had become. And I slept.

It might seem ridiculous, given where I was, but it’s true. I was so goddamn exhausted, Harrow. You barely ever slept. You hardly ever ate. You had apparently never heard the word cardio in your entire life. All of that negligence got dropped on my head, and I was exhausted. I was exhausted of fighting for air the whole time you kept me shoved under the surface of your mind. I was exhausted of watching you get stabbed and manipulated and humiliated. I was exhausted of watching you deliberately spit on every single thing I ever did for you, one by one.

Perhaps I would die there. I did not, in fact, die there, because your body was literally incapable of dying that way, but I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly. I don’t know how long I slept. The sky was unchanged when I awoke, just as bright and depressing as before. But as I blinked myself back into half-consciousness, I saw something.

There was a figure, standing atop one of those massive dunes. It was close enough that I could tell it was moving toward me, but not close enough that I could tell who it was.

So I waited. I sat there, uncaring, as the gaunt form of Gideon the First — or Pyrrha Dve, I suppose — resolved itself from the haze.

She had one of those stupid-looking white cloaks that you all carried, but now hers was tied around her neck like a scarf and pulled up into a makeshift mask to keep out the swirling sand. As she came to a halt in front of me, she pulled it down so her mouth was visible.

“She’s dead then?”

A manic, hysterical laugh burst from my lips. “No, no, Harrowhark Nonagesimus would never do something so mundane as to die. That would involve facing a consequence for once in her life. No, she’s fucked off and left us to clean up after her.”

Pyrrha nodded and looked off to the side. She squinted up at the sky, and took a deep breath. She cracked her neck, and then looked back at me and gestured with her head. “Alright. Let’s go.”

“Go? Where the fuck are we supposed to go? Hell, how did we even get here?”

“Friend of yours pulled us out of the River. This was the closest planet. Got you out, went back for me. Didn’t surface in exactly the same spot. We split up to look for you; should be meeting up with them again in a few hours.”

“What friend?”

Pyrrha hesitated. “It’s complicated. They’ll explain.”

“No, I don’t think they will,” I said. Pyrrha simply stared at me. “I’m not doing this anymore. I’m done. I’m tapping out.”

“That isn’t how this works.”

“It works however I damn well want it to work! Why should I go with you? What’s the point? It’s over. It’s done. She’s not coming back — she doesn’t want to come back. I’m cav to a necro who’d rather lobotomize herself than let me help her.”

Pyrrha wasn’t having it. “I don’t have time for your self-pity. Let’s go.”

“Give me one reason why I should go with you, one reason why I should bother,” I spat, sounding more than a little bit like a child having a temper tantrum, but too angry to be self-conscious about it. “If there was ever any reason for me to keep going, I’ve certainly lost it now.”

Something flashed in her eyes. She grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and hefted me into the air with one hand. My sword fell to the ground. My shirt slid halfway up my chest and I dangled from it, kicking my legs impotently. I looked like a toddler being bullied by a thirty year old man.

“Don’t speak to me of loss,” she warned, and for the first time, I heard genuine anger in that flat, monotone voice, “you have no idea what that word means. If I don’t get to tap out, then neither do you. Now let’s go.”

She hefted me forward and I landed running, stumbling and fighting to keep my momentum from sending me sprawling right onto my face again. I came to a stop, breathing a lot harder than I’d like to confess. Pyrrha walked past me, and as she did, she pressed my two-hander against my chest. I fumblingly grabbed it, and watched her walk away. She did not turn around to see if I was following her.

I followed her.

 


 

 

I quickly discovered that Pyrrha Dve took after her necromancer. She was not much for conversation — not that I was making much of an attempt myself. I was still feeling a bit rebellious and pissed off about the whole thing, and I decided that I didn’t give a shit, and I wouldn’t ask what was going on. But let me tell you, there was not much going on on that barren planet; I didn’t exactly have a plethora of options for how to fill the time.

We trudged over the endless dunes. The sand shifted and sunk beneath our feet, making each step take just enough effort to be irritating. I wasn’t even sure I should be calling it sand. It felt a lot like it, but it was softer, and the particles were bigger, forming little flakes of grey. I almost wanted to call it ash, or some kind of extremely odd snow, but the edges of the flakes were weirdly sharp, and they gave it that same unpleasant grit that sand has. You can probably tell how thoroughly boring that journey was by the fact that I was diving so deep into the taxonomy of sand.

Eventually, the boredom got to me, and I cracked. “Does being in his body feel as weird for you as this does for me?”

“No.”

The sand beneath my feet slid worryingly as we descended a steep incline, making me stumble and wave my arms about frantically to keep my balance.

“Not much of a talker, are you?”

She didn’t deign to respond to that. After we reached the nadir of our descent, we began the climb up a truly massive dune, the biggest anywhere nearby. My breath grew heavy as I hiked up that slope in a body that had never gone for a jog in its life. I was pouring sweat. At least that shitty planet had the decency to be chilly, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

Pyrrha looked at me, and I couldn’t quite parse her expression. Consideration, maybe? Or maybe she was just pitying the miserable state of my current form. It was hard to tell. It made me antsy, so I searched for something to say. I had a lot of options — a lot of shit had happened to us since I first woke up in your body. There were a lot of very good, pertinent questions I could have asked, like: Did the Emperor die? What happened to the Resurrection Beast? How did you become Gideon’s cavalier without dying? Did you really bang my mom?

I did not ask those questions. There was one question that was nagging at the back of my brain.

“Why were your buddies so scared of Alecto?” Yes, Harrow, I could see the Body too, all those long months under the surface of your mind. I couldn’t tell if it was a spirit or a delusion, but what you saw, I saw. Nobody told me that the Body was Alecto, but I’m not stupid, as much as you might like to argue the contrary, and I could figure that much out on my own. Maybe I wanted to learn a little bit about your girlfriend, alright? I wasn’t jealous, I just wanted to know.

Pyrrha’s face remained impassive, and for moment I thought she was going to keep ignoring me. At length, she spoke. "John never told me what she was — only Augustine and Mercy knew. She was volatile. Gentle most of the time, but her anger was… explosive. They were terrified of her.”

“Were you?” A strange expression crossed her face — not quite a smile, but something amused and self-satisfied nonetheless.

“No.”

It was weird listening to her talk. She had her necromancer’s taciturn demeanor, but it wasn’t the same. The way he spoke was always flat and monotone. Her words, on the other hand, had the slightest hint of inflection to them. There was more emotion there, even if it was subtle and muted. The slight searching hesitation before the word ‘volatile.’ The glimpse of anger she directed at me earlier. It wasn’t much, but it was more than you ever got from him.

There was a long silence as we made our way up the steep surface of that dune — me panting and wheezing, her looking completely unbothered. The silence weirded me out.

“So… which one of you was it that Harrow caught fucking Cytherea’s corpse? Was it you, or Gideon?”

Pyrrha didn’t even look at me. “Do you always ask so many questions?”

“Only when it’s funny.”

We crested the top of the mountainous dune, and the landscape opened up before us. The rolling hills transitioned into a vast flatland interspersed with massive rocks skewed at violent angles. They formed scattered piles that jutted out of the landscape like thorns. Pyrrha pointed to our destination — one particular outcropping where one of those spikes collapsed and broke into three segments, creating a semicircle that formed a large, sheltered clearing in the middle. But that wasn’t what drew my attention. What drew my attention was the sandstorm.

It loomed on the horizon, a huge wall of billowing ash ripping across the flat landscape ahead of us. It moved frighteningly fast. I’d never been in a sandstorm before, but I had a feeling that the sharp texture of the ash would not be kind to us at those speeds. My mind raced through our options. Shelter behind the dune? Unlikely to work, the dune was made of sand, it would get swept up in the storm. Retreat to the little sheltered rock pile I woke up beside? Too far back, we’d never make it in time.

Pyrrha and I didn’t even have to look at one another to confirm our plan. We started moving simultaneously, tearing down the far side of the dune at a breakneck pace, sprinting toward the semicircle shelter of rock. It was an incredibly stupid decision to make, and I regretted it immediately. Sand avalanched down the slope with us, our feet destabilizing great drifts of ash. Balance was impossible, and it wasn’t long before I toppled, tumbling head over heels down that surprisingly precipitous incline. My world was a greyscale swirl. A particularly brutal landing on my back forced the air from my lungs. Gasping for breath just made me inhale sand. I instinctively tried to cough, but my lungs had no air to expel.

I sprawled out onto my stomach as the slope evened out, and Pyrrha grabbed my arm, yanking me to my feet without a pause. She of course had not fallen, and she rocketed ahead of me as I struggled to find my feet. My sword was in her other hand. I felt a ripping pain as the glassy sand tore up the inside of my lungs, and then a viscerally uncomfortable fleshy sensation as they knitted themselves whole again. I stumbled forward fully doubled over and coughed up cancerous gobs of blood and grit.

The storm loomed closer. God, it was fucking fast . I heaved a rasping breath and resumed sprinting. We were on flatter ground now, and the wind was picking up, heralding the storm to come. I gritted my teeth and tore into it, feeling it whip your hair back. We were getting close now, the rocks growing larger and larger before us, but so was the wall. I tried so hard to move faster, but I couldn’t make your body do something it wasn’t capable of.

In the distance I saw a shape moving through the air parallel to the storm — a ship. From the looks of it the pilot must have been absolutely gunning it, slicing through the air at speeds that in-atmo engines don’t usually try to push.

Pyrrha reached the rocks first, and I followed not far behind. It wasn’t a perfect shelter — the huge slabs of collapsed rock had gaps between them where the wind could come through, and the stray boulders littering the ground weren’t packed tightly enough to form an enclosure — but it would have to be enough. I frantically searched for the safest spot to hunker down. I followed Pyrrha, and ducked behind the densest cluster of boulders, yanking my shirt over my mouth as the storm hit us like a sledgehammer.

The whole world went dark in seconds. I couldn’t see the sky. The wind screamed. The buffer of rock diminished the full force of the ash, but it couldn’t stop it. It swirled around the sides in hostile gusts that stung like chips of glass. I realized too late that I needed to close my eyes, and a whirl of ash caught me right in the face. I slammed my eyes shut, and felt a trickle of blood ooze down my cheek. Dozens of tiny tears bloomed across my skin before my healing wilted them.

A noise, barely audible above the keening howl. Engines. A rumbling whine that started strong, then stuttered, and gasped, and cut out entirely. A loud thunk of metal as something heavy slammed into the ground. I couldn’t tell where the ship was, only that it was close. We needed to move fast. I grabbed Pyrrha by the arm, and I opened my eyes. There was a light over to our side, just barely piercing through the shroud. I sprinted toward it, guiding Pyrrha blindly behind me as my eyes filled with blood. A shouting voice resolved from the gale as we got closer, but I couldn’t discern what it was saying. Three more steps, each digging into the sand beneath me, and then the fourth landed on solid metal.

I stumbled to the top of the ship’s entrance ramp and proceeded to immediately collapse, curling up on my side and clutching my face, keening in pain. A pneumatic hiss sounded from behind me as the ramp closed.

“Dammit Pyrrha, I told you it was a bad idea to split up our search!” I knew that voice. My eyes became eyes once again, and I resisted the urge to vomit. I blinked my vision back into existence and rolled over to face Camilla Hect.

She looked exactly the same as I remembered her — boring grey clothes, hair cut into a short, practical bob, hands moving with quick, efficient purpose. The sight of her, looking totally unchanged, calmed something within me.

“Cam,” I croaked by way of greeting. I meant to sound happy to see her, but my vocal chords weren’t really on board with that plan at the moment. She ignored me, huddled over Pyrrha, who was in abysmal shape.

Her whole body was cut all to hell. The sharp grit tore thousands of tiny little cuts across every single inch of exposed skin. The oozing wounds left her clothes spotted with blood all over. Cam pulled the cloak away from Pyrrha’s face to assess the damage, and Pyrrha’s lips were pulled thin and tight with pain. I waited for her wounds to close, for her body to miraculously heal itself as mine did.

It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t going to happen. Pyrrha was not a Lyctor anymore, and her wounds stayed stubbornly in place.

Camilla placed a hand on Pyrrha’s face, and I watched as the myriad cuts stitched themselves up. It wasn’t fast or automatic like my healing was; it was thoughtful and deliberate, wounds sealing up only a handful at a time. I might not have known Camilla Hect for very long, but I knew that she was no necromancer, and I knew for sure that she couldn’t do that. I looked closer. Camilla’s eyes were not the pale, wintry brown they used to be. Or, at least, one of them wasn’t. One eye was the color it should be, but the other was a deep, clear grey. The color of Palamedes’ eyes.

I watched her — him? — work, every movement deliberate, every glance intensely focused. I had so many questions, but the air was so thick with her concentration that I didn’t dare speak.

I took a moment to orient myself. This wasn’t the same shuttle that Camilla, Coronabeth, and Judith had been on the last time you came across them. It bore some resemblance to the other shuttle in its design — all plain, utilitarian metal, little more than a box with some wings glued to it — but it was less horrifically cramped. We were in an open, central room with a pile of crates stuffed in one corner, and a plex screen on one wall with a panel of buttons and dials beneath it. There were a few doors leading off to other rooms.

Camilla stepped back and held out her hand to help Pyrrha to her feet. Pyrrha’s clothes were still bloodied and disgusting, but her skin was no longer a mess. Camilla appraised her handiwork and Pyrrha nodded gratefully.

“Palamedes?” I finally ventured to ask. Whoever it was turned to face me.

“More or less, yes. It’s good to see you, Ninth.” The cadence was definitely Camilla’s, clipped and curt, but the warmth in their tone was distinctly Palamedes.

“But Camilla—"

“I am Camilla.”

“I — what? Which one of you am I even talking to right now?”

“I’m not sure you can make that distinction anymore Nav. There’s just… me.”

I didn’t know where to go from there. I could see what they meant, even just looking at them. They had Camilla’s tense alertness, that impression of being coiled like a spring, ready to leap into action at the slightest whisper of danger, but they also had Palamedes’s intent focus, their eyes curious and contemplative. It was Camilla’s body, sure, but there was so much of him in there, in their posture, their fidgeting, the sound of their voice, the look in their eyes. So many little details that were so distinctly not Camilla.

It felt like I was looking at the end of a story without knowing the middle. There were too many things I needed to get caught up on. But if there was one thing I always appreciated about Camilla Hect, it was that she liked to get straight to the point.

“Coronabeth?”

“In the Dominicus system. Surveilling the movements of Blood of Eden’s operatives in the area.”

“Judith?”

“Back in the Cohort, and very graciously not letting anybody know about us, in exchange for Coronabeth’s intel.”

“What happened with Blood of Eden?”

“Our original plan relied on Harrowhark. When it became clear that she wasn’t in play anymore, we had to scrap it. Without that agreement making us work together, our relationship with the Commander… deteriorated, suffice to say.”

“You figured out how to be a Lyctor without offing your cavalier?”

“Yes and no. I know how to do it, but I’m not certain it will work, and that’s not what I am. True Lyctorhood requires both people to be in their original bodies, and that was no longer an option for me. The form I have achieved is… limited. I’ll never have the power of a full Lyctor, but I’m still far beyond any normal human.”

I nodded, trying to absorb everything at once. I was formulating my next question when Camilla and/or Palamedes kept going,

“Alright, it’s my turn now. Pyrrha filled me in on everything before we went looking for you, but Nav, where is the Reverend Daughter? Where is Harrowhark?”

“Look Sextus, do you think I have any goddamn idea how this shit works? I’m not a necromancer. I have no idea where she is. She’s just gone. She’s not coming back.”

“Dead?”

“No.”

“How do you know?”

I shrugged, “I just do. Trust me, if Harrow was dead, I’d know it. No. She’s still here, I can feel her inside me.” There was a pause. Camilla looked at me with an air of resigned expectation. “Look, don’t even get me started, we’d be here all day. But I want you all to appreciate that I am exercising an impressive amount of restraint right now.”

They ignored me, and continued, “If she hasn’t surfaced, and she’s not dead, then there’s only a few other options to consider. Given our last conversation, I think the most likely possibility is that she has created a bubble within the River; a liminal space that is anchored to her body, allowing her to remain attached to her physical form without needing to occupy it.”

“Why would she do that?” I asked. The glare that was sent my way was distinctly Camilla’s, visible in the sheer weight of the implied ‘Are you slow?’ radiating out of it. “What?”

“I think we can safely assume that she will refuse to return until her body is vacated,” Palamedes said, “but luckily, we have the ability to vacate it.”

“Uh, I don’t mean to burst your bubble — pun absolutely intended — but unless I’m miscounting, I think we’re short at least one body.” They didn’t respond, but when I looked at them, there was a glint in their eye that spoke louder than words. “Oh shit. Oh shit you have it, you have my body. Okay, fuck, yes, show me, show me now.”

 


 

 

In a remote region of the galaxy, on a space station that circled no star, Ianthe Tridentarius returned to her body the way a brick might return to the ground from orbit. Her entire body felt like a single continuous wound. She struggled to breathe. Her vision was dark and blurry, her ears ringing. She was surrounded by corpses. The insectile Heralds were strewn across the floor in great swathes, their guts spilling out all over the place. The sight of them no longer held any fear for her.

It was dead.

It was dead.

The Beast had no body. It was a mass of seventy violently blue eyes, each of them bigger than the Mithraeum itself. Rather than a pupil, the center of each eye was a gaping mouth. Out of each mouth came seventy tongues, each comprised of seventy long arms with seventy joints. Each hand had seventy fingers, and in each palm was a mouth like a lamprey, with seventy teeth in a ring. The mouths did not eat flesh or blood, for those things did not truly exist in the River. Instead they ate away at her soul, until she wasn’t sure how much of one she had left.

And she felled every single one. She slayed it. She watched as the equally monstrous stoma devoured it whole.

She felt like she was dying. The pain was not receding, her healing was not kicking in. It had taken that from her too, and she did not know if she would get it back. She had barely been able to use necromancy at all by the end of it. The world was far away and dull, dwarfed by the emptiness, by the void it left inside her. Never in her life had she felt so alone.

Noises. A voice. Probably Teacher’s. She could make out what he was saying, but comprehension was beyond her.

“Ianthe! Ianthe hold on!” The world lit up white and she felt necromancy course through her as he tried to heal her. The wound resisted. It twisted and writhed inside her and she screamed, unable to make sense of anything through the agony. The flow of thanergy halted and the writhing stopped with it. “Dammit!”

Teacher’s hands fretted above her, trying to avoid hurting her even more by touching her. She wanted him to touch her. She wanted anyone to touch her. He was not high on her list, but he was something, anything other than the knawing emptiness. That was where the pain came from; the physical wounds were both immense and inconsequential. The Beast had planted a black hole in the center of her being, and it ate her alive with each passing second.

He placed a single hand on her upper arm. It was not enough, but it was something. The world was far away, but that touch was a lighthouse in the dark. She strained to take in shallow, choked breaths. She chased the light, held it tight, until it burned her hand.

As she blacked out, only one thought filled her head: he was the only one left. He was the only companion she’d have for the rest of eternity. Maybe she would die, and it wouldn’t matter anymore. She closed her eyes, and let the darkness decide the answer.

 


 

 

Looking at your own body from the outside is an experience I really cannot recommend to anyone. I’d seen myself in mirrors before, I knew what I looked like, but it was not at all the same. I felt suddenly hyperaware of every little thing I didn’t like about being in your body. Not to belabor the point Harrow, but it was a long list.

My body lay peacefully on a tiny cot in the shuttle’s crew quarters — a narrow, cramped little room with four identical beds arranged in a row along one wall. I approached it tentatively, and as I got close, reached out with one hand. My fingers brushed over my body’s cheek. I expected it to feel cold and dead, but it was perfectly warm. There was no decay — presumably some kind of preservation magic was at play. My hand trailed down to rest on one bicep.

“When Blood of Eden rescued us from Canaan House, we were able to negotiate with them to bring—“

“Shh shh shh,” I cut them off, “give me a minute. I need to appreciate how good I look.” Camilla sighed wearily. “Don’t you judge me, I’ve spent the last nine months stuck in Harrow’s shitty, malnourished body. I deserve this.”

The others waited impatiently as I made good on my word and spent a nice long while just staring at my body.

Eventually, Palamedes interrupted. “A very touching reunion, Nav, but we really do need to hurry.”

“Why?”

“If my theory about her whereabouts is correct, then her time is limited. It took me years to figure out how to create the bubble I stayed in. The Reverend Daughter had to do it on the fly, with zero preparation, using theorems she’d never employed before, from a school of necromancy that is not her specialty. It is extremely unlikely that the bubble she created is stable enough to last as long as mine did. If we do nothing, we might lose her, and we have no way of telling how soon that might happen.”

“What would I need to do?”

“The process is by no means simple, but most of that complexity is on my end. I’ll lay your bodies out side by side, and paint blood wards around them. Then I’ll induce your soul to leave your body. The wards will create a channel of sorts for your soul to follow, and keep out roaming spirits while your bodies are empty. Once you are back in your body, the Reverend Daughter should be able to sense that her body is vacant, and return.”

“Should?”

“This isn’t exactly something I’ve attempted before, Nav. Nothing is guaranteed. If all goes well, this will create a temporary barrier between your souls, to prevent her from immediately absorbing you. It won’t last more than a few days, but that’s long enough for Nonagesimus to finish the process.”

“Yeah, not a fan of the uncertainty there. Is there any way you can just… make her come back?”

Palamedes frowned. “Sure, I could drag her back, but I would need to find her first. The only way to do that would be to follow the link between your soul and hers — a fine idea in theory, but I can’t pull her back along that pathway unless it leads to her body, and that isn’t an option. If you were still in there when she returned, the traditional Lyctor process would resume, and you’d be devoured.”

“But it would work. You’re certain.”

“Yes,” he said hesitantly, “but that’s irrelevant. It’s simply not an option.”

Of course it was an option. In one hand was a chance of failure, and in the other was guaranteed success. I knew the decision I should have made. Sorry, Harrow, I know you don’t want to hear it, but being willing to die for you was kind of my job.

I stared at my body. Gorgeous. Sexy. God, I missed it — missed being me. It’s pretty great, you should really try it sometime.

This was a much easier decision to make the first time around. I died, and then I didn’t have to deal with the consequences anymore; or at least that was how it was supposed to go. But this… this was it. If I did this, there would be no tapping out, not anymore.

My reticence must have been visible on my face. “Nav,” one of the Sixth pair warned, “don’t tell me you’re seriously considering it.”

I didn’t answer right away. I rolled my shoulder, hyperaware of the feeling of being in your body, the visceral wrongness of it. If I did this — if I made you eat me — it wouldn’t be like before; I wouldn’t be alive, shoved under the surface of your mind, struggling for air. I would just be gone.

“She needs her cavalier, Nav,” Palamedes said.

Finally I looked up. But not at Palamedes. No, I looked at Pyrrha. She was standing quietly near the door, watching this entire exchange without comment.

“How long has it been since you died?” I asked her.

“Nine thousand five hundred and seventy three years.”

For once I felt like my stare was unwavering enough to match hers. “And was it worth it?”

That finally pulled a reaction from her. She blinked, and looked off to the side. I was surprised by the genuine consideration she put into it. It took her a long time to respond, and when she spoke, she looked directly at me.

“No.”

I let out a heavy breath and stared at my feet.

Your cavalier — hell of an idea, wasn’t it? I was your cavalier before of course, but not really. Not until the very end. But if we went true Lyctor, that’s what I’d be. I’d be your cavalier for the rest of eternity. God, I couldn’t even imagine how much we’d manage to piss each other off. You were a stubborn asshole, Harrow, but then again, so was I. Stubborn enough to handle you, that was for sure.

I’d be a damn good cavalier, wouldn’t I? You’d certainly need one — you had the self-preservation instincts of a moth with pyromania. If you didn’t have a cavalier, you’d get your dumb ass killed before you hit a century, wouldn’t you?

“It must be peaceful, being in a bubble. Just… sheltered from the world. Being able to rest. I bet this is the most content she’s been in her entire life.” My voice was low and contemplative. A long, steadying breath flooded my lungs. When it left, what remained within me was certainty. I knew what had to be done. I cracked my neck and looked at Palamedes. “Well? What are we waiting for? Let’s go ruin her whole fucking day.”

Chapter 2: The Stranger

Chapter Text

Waking up in my own body should have been a relief. It should have felt like a homecoming, like everything was right in the world again. What it shouldn't have felt like was trying on an old, favorite outfit you haven’t worn in a while and discovering that you’ve put on a few pounds and it doesn’t fit you anymore.

My whole body was stiff from months of disuse. I sat up and stretched, my muscles complaining as I warmed them up. Why were my limbs so ungainly? They were too long, too bulky. I was suddenly fifteen again, bumping into shit all the time as I gangled my way through puberty. A horrifying realization struck me: the reason my body felt so awkward was because I had gotten used to being in yours.

With that utterly gross realization at the forefront of my mind, I looked around. I was sitting in the intricate circle of wards Palamedes drew around me. A few feet away, your body laid peacefully in its own circle. My sword rested beside you, where I left it. You were still under, as Palamedes told me you might be. What surprised me was that your body was moving — chest rising and falling steadily. It hadn’t occurred to me that a body could remain alive without a soul in it, its involuntary processes chugging along without a pilot.

Even without you in there, your body was not at peace. It looked calm, sure, but not like mine had. Hell, I couldn’t even imagine you looking like that. Yours was not the serene calm of repose — it was a bated breath, the moment of silence between lightning and thunder.

Footsteps clanked against the metal floor, and Camilla walked up the entrance ramp. The ramp was lowered, revealing pale sunlight from outside — the sandstorm must have passed while I was out. My throat was dry and scratchy, uninterested in my desire to greet her. I cleared it noisily. Camilla squatted down on her haunches before me, roughly grabbed my face with one hand, and used the other to push my eyelid open, looking for… something.

“Agh — don’t do that!” I shrugged out of her grip. My voice sounded like a bucket of gravel. Camilla continued her investigation unfazed. She grabbed my wrist, procured a knife from her robes, and slit a tiny cut on my forearm. “Ow! What the fuck?” I protested, but the cut sealed itself back up near-instantaneously. Camilla nodded, satisfied, and sheathed her knife.

“It’s good to have you back, Ninth.” She stood and offered me a hand. I let her help me to my feet. My legs wobbled, my muscles still not totally sure about this whole ‘moving’ thing. She put a hand on my arm to stabilize me.

I cleared my throat once more with feeling, “Thanks Cam. Pal? I have no idea what to call you.”

“I’m not sure either. I haven’t… I’ve been on my own for a while.”

“Well you’re going to want to figure that out pronto, because if you don’t, I’m going to start nicknaming you, and while that will be very fun for me, I doubt it will be for you.”

“I’ll get right on that,” Campal said.

The air outside looked calm once again, the sand lying still without any wind to disturb it. I had no idea how long it would take a storm like that to pass.

“How long was I out?”

“Six hours, give or take.”

“Six hours? Holy shit, Pamilla, you didn’t tell me it would take that long.”

“If you call me that again I’m going to break your legs.” If they were still in Palamedes’ body I might have laughed at them, but they were in Camilla’s body, and I had a healthy fear of Camilla, so I didn’t.

He and/or she let go of my arm. I kept very still; I had a vague sense that I might fall over if I tried to move too much.

Another set of footsteps announced Pyrrha’s arrival from outside.

“What’s the prognosis?” Sext asked. Pyrrha held up a metal part.

“Need a replacement.”

“There should be a spare around here somewhere,” Hectus took the part from her, “let me see if I can find it.”

They walked over to the pile of crates in the corner, opened one of them up, and rooted through it. I figured I might as well help, and took a step toward the pile. It was a bad idea. I stumbled and wobbled with every step. My proprioception was completely fucked; it was like my body planned its footsteps on the assumption that my legs were shorter than they actually were. I only made it a few awkward steps before I lost balance and fell.

A single, huge hand grabbed me before I faceplanted. Pyrrha’s grip was like iron; she wasn’t even gripping that tight, her hands just gave an immediate impression of steadiness. Even with a light touch, she felt immovable.

“Mmh,” I grunted, “thanks.”

She sat me down on one of the crates.

“Move your body about. Much as you can.” Pyrrha instructed. I kicked my legs hesitantly, not quite sure what she meant, but she didn’t tell me to stop, so I figured that I had the right idea. I swung my arms back and forth, tapped my heels together, rolled my shoulders, wiggled my fingers — made myself look like an idiot, basically. I moved my body about as much as possible from where I was sitting, tried to get a sense of the shape of it again.

“You had to do this, didn’t you?” I guessed, “When you woke up in his body.”

“First few times. Not anymore.”

“What about you, Calamedes?”

At this point they were half-buried in a particularly big crate, bent over as they rifled through it. Their voice came out muffled, hard to understand over the sound of metal parts clanking together as they shifted them around.

“No. We’re not quite the same as either of you. At first the two of them were in here, swapping off control. Over time the line got… blurry.”

“Kinky.”

They extricated themself from the crate, holding the replacement part in one hand as they leaned on the lid and sent me a patented Camilla Hect glare. I shifted under the weight of their lowered evaluation of my personality.

“What? Don’t give me that look Sex Cam.”

They added approximately three thousand pounds to that weight. “From now on you are going to call me Master Warden — or just Warden, if you’re feeling casual. You clearly cannot be trusted with anything less formal.”

“Alright, fine then Warden, you got the thingy?”

“Yes, I have the thingy.”

I stood up. I still held all the grace of a newborn gazelle on hard drugs, but I wasn’t about to fall over. “Alright then. Show me what we’re doing with the thingy.”

“Pyrrha, I think I can take the rest from here. Would you take a look at the charts? We need to get a sense of what region of space we’re in.”

Pyrrha nodded, and the three of us split up. I followed Warden outside into the dismal sunlight. Without the threat of impending sandy death, I was able to fully appreciate our surroundings for the first time. Every part of the landscape was massive. The collapsed spire of rock must have been a truly awesome sight when it still stood, scraping the sky like a mountainous thorn. The flatlands stretched from the wall of dunes behind us to infinity. The shuttle was an infinitesimal speck on that grandiose canvas, but it was a rather important speck, since it was pretty crucial to the whole ‘not dying’ plan.

We circled around to the side of the ship and Warden stood directly beneath the bulky thruster. It was oriented vertically, so it faced the ground. I followed their lead and peered up into it. I reached up with one hand and tentatively spun the ring mechanism near the bottom. This dislodged a stream of sand directly onto my face.

“Fuck!” I stepped back and tried to brush it off, spitting grains of ash out of my mouth. When I opened my eyes again I saw Warden glaring at me. They maintained eye contact, spat sand from their mouth exactly once, and then brushed some more out of their hair with one hand.

“New rule: do not touch anything unless I tell you to do so.”

I saluted crisply, “You got it, boss.”

They narrowed their eyes at me meaningfully before turning back to the thruster. Their face settled back into that intently focused look that was just so distinctly Palamedes. They examined machinery that I could not see — I was giving that thing a wide berth — and fiddled with the electronics, prompting a crackling noise that made them wince and pull their hand back, shaking it to dispel the pain.

After a few more minutes of tinkering and a few more trickles of sand to the face, they stepped back and pursed their lips with a sigh. “This is not going to be an easy fix. The ash has clogged the entire system, and shredded a good bit of the electronics.”

“How long are we talking?”

“At least two days. But that’s assuming we can do it at all. If some of these parts are completely destroyed, we might not be able to replace them.”

“Well… shit.”

They grimaced, “That about sums it up, yes. I’d love to see the look on the Commander’s face when he finds out that I destroyed another one of his ships. This would make… four?”

“Who?”

“The Commander of Blood of Eden. Your mother’s successor, actually, now that I think of it. His name is Light.”

I leaned back against the side of the ship.

“How did you get mixed up with them in the first place?” I asked, “I never got the full picture on that.”

They plunged back into the thruster’s interior, their voice muffled, interrupted by occasional grunts of exertion as they worked.

“It was Mercymorn’s doing, actually. She showed up before the official Cohort crew came to retrieve Harrow and Ianthe, got us out of there. Blood of Eden is an extremist group, and Mercymorn found their beliefs as vile as I do, but she needed allies in her plot against the Emperor. Ianthe was still unconscious from her injuries, but the rest of us made a plan with her. To be honest though, I wasn’t surprised when I found out Harrow had thrown the plan away in order to save you, she was conflicted about it from the start.”

I had a few choice words to say about your plan to save me, but I bit my tongue, and instead said, “Yeah, but why? What made you want to kill my dear old dad?”

They extricated themself from the interior of the thruster, their hair distinctly dustier than before. They stared straight ahead, away from me, hands still resting on either side of the thruster’s lower rim, directly above them.

“The Commander should count himself lucky that Mercymorn was the one to retrieve us. I doubt I would have believed him otherwise. But Mercymorn… Mercymorn was there, when it all happened. She knew what the Emperor did. From anybody else I might have dismissed it as propaganda, but a first-hand source…”

“Warden, if you keep being cryptic I’m going to strangle you.”

They sighed. “The Emperor is the Resurrector, is he not? He brought humanity back from annihilation. But how did they die?”

That caught me off guard. I stood up a little straighter. “Disaster.”

“So the story goes. But Blood of Eden believes a different story, and according to Mercymorn, it’s the truth.” They hesitated for a moment. “He killed them, Nav. The Emperor killed every single human being in the Nine Houses, and that act of genocide was the crucible where his powers were born. He became God through the death of billions of people.”

We fell silent. Is it strange that the first thing that came to my mind when they said that was you? You always believed in him so fervently — you were so devoted, so desperate to be worthy. When they told me that the Emperor of the Nine Houses, the King Undying, was a mass-murderer, all I could think of was how that revelation would shatter you. I never understood your faith; it never really mattered to me. But it mattered to you, and I could not imagine how deeply that would wound you.

“I don’t—“ I began, then sighed as I struggled for words, “That doesn’t make any sense. I met the big man himself, and yeah, fuck that guy, but I don’t think he’d do that. He’s not some maniacal villain, he’s a self-righteous asshole who thinks he’s doing the right thing. How the hell would he ever believe that was the right thing to do?”

They shrugged. “The Commander believes he did it for power. Mercymorn said he was justified, that he only did what needed to be done. I’m not certain whether she’s right. But I don’t think it matters. People can convince themselves of anything when they truly want to.”

That didn’t add up to me. The explanation didn’t make sense — it wasn’t who he was. But then again, I had met God, and if there’s one thing I learned from the experience, it was that God lies. I wanted to ask them more about it, but we didn’t get a chance to discuss it further.

Pyrrha rounded the corner and said, “A ship just breached atmo. We’ve got company.”

 


 

 

The helm of the shuttle was a remarkably cramped little room. There was a pilot’s chair, a copilot’s chair, a control panel covered in an intimidating amount of dials and buttons and switches, two plex screens displaying charts and readings, and appoximately half a square foot of room to spare. With Pyrrha sitting in the pilot’s chair, that left me and Warden with a luxurious quarter of a square foot each to cram ourselves into as we peered over her shoulder at the screen.

Warden and Pyrrha clearly understood what the flow of numbers and diagrams meant, and I nodded along and pretended I did too. They muttered things to one another that sounded very technical and impressive. Eventually they said something actually useful to me.

“They must know we’re here, that’s the only way their vector makes sense.”

“So… this is good, right?” I asked, “We’ve got a way off this rock now, assuming they find us.”

“Possibly,” Warden said, “it really depends on who is in that ship. If it’s Blood of Eden… we have a problem.”

“It’s John,” Pyrrha said, then got out of the pilot’s chair and somehow squeezed past me without squishing me against the wall, which shouldn’t have been possible for somebody that huge. Warden and I exchanged a glance, and then untangled ourselves from one another and followed her.

“You’re certain?”

“Yes. Approach vector matches the region of space the Mithraeum is in. Signature matches the size of the Hermes, too.”

I saw the question forming on Warden’s face, and cut it off, since I actually knew the answer to this one, courtesy of my time spent in your head. “The God Squad’s mobile base of operations, for when they’re out on missions. Not a flagship exactly — it’s pretty small for a deep space ship. Fast as all hell though.”

Warden furrowed their brow. “We’ll need a cover story.”

Of course. Shit. We were in a Blood of Eden ship. Finding a survivor of Canaan House — who had been missing, presumed dead, for the past nine months — in perfect health on a ship that belonged to his sworn enemy might lead the Kindly Prince to some less-than-kind conclusions.

“You can hide,” Pyrrha said. “But John needs to think I’m still Gideon.”

“Why?”

She hesitated. “We… weren’t on friendly terms. He’ll know I’m not on his side.”

I thought for a moment. I didn’t doubt she could imitate him, she just needed to look the part. She had the right body, but the wrong eyes.

“Do you still have my sunglasses?” She patted down her various pockets, and eventually managed to extract them, looking more than a little bent, but still intact. She nodded at me and put them on. “Alright Warden, what else do we need?”

But Warden was not looking at me. They were looking past me, intently focused on something behind me. I followed their gaze.

Your body was moving. You were moving. You sat up, shaggy hair falling in front of your face. You were leaning back on your hands, knees bent. I felt suddenly breathless. There would be a shitstorm coming between the two of us, that much I knew for sure, but for the moment I let myself feel relief.

You brushed your hair out of your face, and in an instant, that relief dropped like a stone, hitting the bottom of my stomach icy and sharp. Because the eyes I saw in your face were not yours; they were not the dark, searching eyes I spent a lifetime getting to know. They were my eyes, bright and golden. And I knew what that meant.

“No.” I whispered. Everyone turned to look at me, including your body. “No, don’t do this. You can’t do this to me.”

“What’s wrong, Nav?” Warden asked.

“It’s not fair,” I choked. Pyrrha and Warden looked back at your body, but your body just kept staring at me. Her eyes were a knife in my breast, and there was no malice in that stare, but it was malicious all the same. The room went deathly silent.

“Who are you?” Warden asked quietly. Your body blinked, finally, and looked at them. Pyrrha’s quiet bulk emerged from behind me, stepping toward her. When she got close to your body she stopped and took a long breath.

“Alecto,” Pyrrha greeted, her voice carefully neutral. The Death of the Lord held out her hand expectantly, and Pyrrha grabbed it, helping her to her feet.

“It’s been an awfully long time, hasn’t it, Pyrrha, my dear?” That was what did it. Her way of speaking sounded so unbelievably wrong in your body. Sure, she had your vocal cords, had the same pitch and raspy undercurrent, but it wasn’t you. Your voice was a dark intonation, heavy with a portentous gravity that I loved to make fun of. Her voice was a lilting melody, gentle and rhythmic, as if reciting a poem.

I couldn’t stand it. I started toward her, fists clenched, spoiling for a fight. I had no idea what I was planning to do once I reached her — I couldn’t exactly kill her, could I? She was a squatter in a home that was yours by right. Before I could get close enough to figure out an answer to that question, Pyrrha held her arm out and placed one huge hand on my chest, holding me back. She wasn’t that much stronger than me, now that I was back in my own body, but it cleared my head enough not to push past.

“That doesn’t belong to you,” Pyrrha said. Her face was stone — neither hostile nor welcoming, simply unyielding. Alecto stared at her with that same unnerving intensity she had directed at me. It didn’t match her placid expression, her soft words, and I was torn between being mesmerized by it and desperately wanting to look anywhere else.

“I thought you might be happy to see me.”

The tense grip of Pyrrha’s hand on my chest softened, and she slowly lowered it back down to her side. “You know that I would be.”

Warden spoke up, “What have you done with the Reverend Daughter?”

“I’ve done nothing to her.”

“Bullshit,” I spat. She turned that awful stare upon me and tilted her head to the side quizzically. “You’ve been stalking her for half a decade, you geriatric creep. You were waiting for a moment like this, weren’t you?”

She didn’t look any less confused. “Of course I was.”

Well… get out!” I sputtered, “Let her come back.”

“No, I don’t think I will.”

I matched her stare, and fumed dramatically. She did not look in the least bit intimidated by my anger — if anything, she looked vaguely amused.

“We are not letting you walk away with her body,” Warden said.

“What you will or will not allow is of no significance to me.”

“Alecto,” Pyrrha murmured, “don’t… don’t do this.” A deep, heavy sadness etched itself in the gaunt lines of her face. It chiseled into her like a river chisels a canyon, ten thousand years of erosion made visible in the wrinkles around her eyes, the pinch of her lips.

“Why should her life mean so much to you?”

“We put her through hell, me and him. Figure I owe her this much.”

“Perhaps,” Alecto mused, “perhaps. But I will not be dissuaded. I am taking back what belongs to me.”

And there was my leverage.

“Not without me you’re not.” Her eyes bored into me as she waited for me to elaborate. “Taking back what’s yours — you’re talking about your body, aren’t you? I know you were watching, when I found out. There’s only two people in this universe that can open that tomb, and one of them is me.”

She considered this for a moment. Then, she bent over and picked my two hander up from where it lay on the floor beside her. My mind whirred as I drank in every detail of her body language. Stance, placement of her feet, spacing of her hands, angle of her grip — I picked it all apart. She knew what she was doing, but she wielded it as if she expected it to be far heavier than it actually was. She was used to something much heftier than my longsword — some kind of greatsword.

Warden, Pyrrha, and I all exchanged glances, then we all looked back at her at the same time. The two of them drew their swords at the same time. I instinctively reached for mine, even though I didn’t have a weapon on me. Warden wielded a traditional shortsword instead of a rapier, and drew a second one with their off hand. Pyrrha readied her spear — a different one than the one you had been skewered by countless times. It was short, only about a foot long, but when she pressed a button on the side, the shaft telescoped violently outward in both directions before snapping into place at its full length. I raised my fists.

The three of us advanced upon her as one.

Apparently she knew how to read the room, because she abruptly changed tactics. As we approached, she tilted her head back, held my sword sideways, and raised it so that the edge pressed hard against her neck.

“One more step and I will slit her delicate little throat.” I cannot explain what she did with her voice. Without losing a single ounce of gentleness or softness, it became terrifyingly vicious, like she was about to eat us alive for our impertinence. We all stopped short. But after a moment, I began to approach again, slowly and cautiously.

“And if you do, it will just close right back up.”

She sliced a short, shallow cut into her neck. Blood trickled down to her chest and seeped into the fabric of her shirt. “You are her cavalier. I am not.”

“And you still don’t have a way into that tomb without me.”

“Oh, Gideon, I don’t need you to cooperate with me. You threw your life away the moment you returned to your body. It will only take a few days before she drags your soul down with her, and I can take your empty shell with me.”

Shit. That hadn’t even occurred to me. I scrambled to find a response, to find a way to pressure her, but Warden beat me to it. “The Emperor is only minutes away. You have no way to escape.”

“John will do nothing. For all he knows, I am his Lyctor, and you will do nothing to disabuse him of that notion, lest you throw away her life. It would be… a setback, but I can find a new host.”

“The moment you do, I step inside the Mithraeum’s incinerator, and you will never get your body back.”

Her face twitched, almost imperceptibly.

“Nav!” Warden exclaimed, aghast, “You can’t—“

“Shut up Warden.”

My body was a rope pulled too taut, seconds from snapping. I tried to match the intensity of her stare, but I don’t think my face was meant for it. Something about her eyes made them feel like an anvil resting in my lungs. The cut on her neck remained, still oozing blood, and the dark, wet stain ran down the entire front of your shirt. She smiled, slow and pleased. The sight was nauseating.

At length, she said, “I think I like you, Gideon.”

“Go fuck yourself,” I deadpanned.

“Alas, it seems we are at an impasse.”

“If you don’t decide in the next few minutes, the decision will be made for you,” Pyrrha intoned gravely. I could only imagine how dear old dad would react to seeing this shitshow. Frankly, the idea of his calm, condescending mediation made me want to strangle someone.

Oh, how desperately I wanted you with me in that moment. I was so unbelievably out of my league. I had no idea what I was doing. I needed you there, I needed you to cut her down to size, I needed you to call me an idiot and point out some solution I had missed. I needed you. I’ve always needed you Harrow. I still do.

“Can you bring her back?” I asked, “Can you do it?”

“Yes. I’m not a necromancer, but I know a thing or two about the soul.”

“Show me. Show me you can do it, and I will open the Locked Tomb for you, even if I have to kill God himself to do it.”

“Nav,” Warden said, “you can’t be serious.”

“I will not surrender my leverage—“

“Then bring her back in my body! Make me like them,” I gestured at Warden, “just show me that you can do it. And when you have your body, you give hers back.”

Her eyes lit with fire, and her grin widened.

“Nav, don’t be this stupid,” Warden said, “we need to think this through. We don’t know what the consequences will be.”

“If you won’t help me I’ll damn well do it myself,” I growled.

“It would be utterly reckless of us to give in to her demands.” They turned to Pyrrha, “You know her better than we do. What will the consequences be?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then we shouldn’t help her. She’s been planning this, and we have no idea what she’ll do,” Warden insisted. Alecto watched us, seemingly unconcerned that we were talking about her like she wasn’t there.

“Why the hell are we even talking about this?” I said, “This isn’t a debate. I’m the only one here with special God juice in her blood; the only person she needs in order to open the Tomb is me. It’s my decision to make.”

Warden’s eyes narrowed. “Just because you can do it alone doesn’t mean you’re the only person who will have to suffer the consequences. I will stop you if I have to.”

“If you want this to be a fight I can make it a fight, Warden.”

“Quit acting like a child Nav,” they said, “it’s beneath you.”

I shrugged, “Some would disagree with that assessment.”

“Pyrrha, please, I need you on my side here. We cannot take this risk.”

Pyrrha didn’t answer right away. I awaited her word on bated breath.

“I don’t suppose I get a vote, do I?” Alecto chimed in merrily.

“No.” Warden and I shut her down in unison.

“I never believed them,” Pyrrha said, eyes fixed on Alecto, “I never believed you were a monster. Was I wrong?”

“Oh I most certainly am a monster, my dear, but I am also a woman of my word.” She lowered my two-hander and let the tip fall to the floor, holding it with only one hand. “We will have to move quickly. I can fit her in your body, but the arrangement won’t be like Warden’s, it won’t be stable. You will still be consumed if she is not returned to her body soon.”

Warden looked back and forth between us agitatedly, “This is foolishness. I won’t allow it.”

“And you’ll give her body back?”

She held out one hand. “You have my word.”

I didn’t take it immediately. My heart raced, and I knew, Harrow, I knew how stupid this was, but what else was I supposed to do?

“Would it help if I promised not to kill you?” Alecto offered, “Because I promise I won’t.”

“No. No, it really wouldn’t.” I reached out and shook her hand.

“Nav, don’t do this!” Warden shouted from behind me.

“Now,” Alecto said, releasing my hand, and putting her own against my forehead, “you’ll know what to do.”

At first nothing happened. I heard Warden running toward me, their footsteps loud against the metal floor. Alecto’s hand was warm — you always ran so hot, like a little furnace. I braced for collision, expecting Warden to tackle me and try to stop the process, but somehow, their footsteps had stopped without me noticing. Time stopped. It was utterly silent. Nothing moved, and I couldn’t move either.

There was a tug somewhere deep in my chest, and my whole existence flooded with ice-cold water as the world fell away.

 


 

 

It was ravenously dark. The ship was gone, Alecto, Pyrrha, Warden, all gone. I was falling, falling into an abyss. All my points of reference disappeared. There was no wind, no air to provide resistance. All indications of momentum and direction vanished, until I couldn’t say for sure whether I was falling or simply floating, suspended weightless in a vacuum.

And then I wasn’t. I moved my leg backward and my foot touched something solid. The angle of my body was all wrong; I was bent so far backward in relation to this surface that I should have fallen flat on my back, but I didn’t. I brought my other foot down. With solid ground beneath me I had a sense of gravity and weight again, but it did not make me fall. I pulled myself forward until I was standing upright.

There was no light, but I could see my own body. I looked down at my feet to see what I was standing on, but the floor was as featurelessly black as everything else. I took a step forward, and the floor rippled like a puddle. How I could discern the ripples at all was a mystery to me — the floor was perfectly black, but I could see the slightest contrast where the ripples raised up, as if they were catching a light source that wasn’t there.

I got the feeling that walking wouldn’t really get me anywhere, so I didn’t bother. Acting on some unknown instinct, I stomped my foot as hard as I could. It didn’t create a splash, and it didn’t sink below the surface, but it sent out ripples as tall as my shin. The blackness beneath me wavered, and as it settled back down, something came into view.

The scene unveiled itself like a gentle spotlight was fading in from above. I looked, through that strange, watery floor, into a room. And lying in the very center of the room, atop a raised altar, was you. You were asleep, hands folded atop your breast, the grip of my two-hander clasped between them. I exhaled shakily.

There you were.

I looked closer. The thing you were lying on wasn’t an altar at all; it was a coffin, its lid pushed off, resting askew on the floor beside it. Of course. I knew exactly what I was looking at.

The sepulchre of the Locked Tomb was made of a dense blue ice that carried no imperfections or hint of white, as if it had been carved directly from the heart of a glacier. Chains made from a thick, dark metal lay broken and slack on the floor around the bier. One of them still hung loosely from the edge of the coffin, lodged in the ice. Anything beyond that small circle of light was a mystery to me, and I had more important things to worry about than satisfying my curiosity.

I knelt and leaned forward, setting my palm flat against the ground to support my weight. It passed right through the floor and plunged into freezing cold water. I yelped in an extremely dignified and sexy manner and fell flat on my face. My arms both sunk right into the water, but the rest of my body did not. Once I regained my composure, I reached as far below the surface as I could. I stretched until my arm was submerged to the shoulder, but I could go no further, and you were still way out of reach.

I tried to sit up, but I couldn’t push with my hands, so I rolled over onto my back and crunched forward, then turned around so that I was kneeling. I held one hand just below the surface and swished it back and forth, feeling the water move.

A scan of my surroundings revealed no clues; there was nothing, just endless black in all directions. I looked back down at you, and immediately squinted at what I saw. There was something wrapped around your chest. I couldn’t make out what it was — I couldn’t even say for sure whether it was actually visible — but I knew it was there.

My perception shifted, like a camera lens refocusing.

It was a strand of golden light, looping back and forth across your chest, under your arms, over your shoulders. Each line met in the very center of your chest, and the sight of it should have been blocked by my sword, but it wasn’t. From the middle of that knot, a single strand rose, stretching up toward me. It didn’t move, I simply found myself suddenly aware of its existence, my eyes adjusting to see something that they couldn’t before. Tracing its path led all the way from your body to my hand. It passed between my thumb and my index finger and spiraled up my wrist, looping around my forearm six or seven times before finally coming to a stop, the end disappearing into my body.

At first I thought the golden light was a chain. There were gaps in the center of it — it wasn’t a solid line like a rope. But I looked at where it passed between my fingers, and saw that I was wrong. The edges were completely solid, but the center was fabulously detailed, a flat ribbon made of intricate lacework patterns. From one angle they looked like letters in an alphabet I did not recognize. From another they were geometric fractals. From another, flowery spirals. The edges were not fixed in one place — moving my head did not let me see the side of them. No matter what angle I looked at it from, the edges were always on the exact outside of the pattern, perpendicular to my vision, like the lacework was surrounded by a tube of light that I was only ever seeing a thin cross-section of.

I pulled my hand back, and the strand went taut. Of course. How simple. I reached my other arm under the surface, grabbed the thread a little lower down, and pulled with all my might. It didn’t take as much strength as you would think; you’ve always been so skinny Harrow, I could carry you all day. Hand over hand, I hauled you toward me. Your body arched as your chest was tugged upward. Your hands fell to your sides, dropping the sword to the floor with an echoey clang. You dangled limply from the cord that bound us together. Inch by inch, I pulled you away from your resting place, and back to the land of the living.

With one last almighty heave, your body broke the surface, and you gasped for air as I wrapped my arms around you.

“I’ve got you,” I panted, “I’ve got you.”

I hugged you tight, squeezed hard enough to hurt. For a brief moment we were pressed together, your body solid and shivering and real. Then something gave way, and my embrace didn’t just pull you against me, it pulled you into me. Our limbs and hearts and bones merged together, your body sinking into mine, and we were one flesh once more.

Chapter 3: The Impostors, Part I

Chapter Text

The moment I returned to reality, three things happened in quick succession: time started moving again, I gasped for air, and the Master Warden of the Sixth House full-body tackled me to the floor. We landed in a pile of tangled limbs. My breath was forced from my lungs. Warden pinned my arm to my back, contorted at a painfully akward angle. I groaned miserably. The others were talking — shouting? — but their voices were distant and indistinct. Something one of them said must have convinced Warden, because they released my arm. I pushed against the ground, trying to get to my hands and knees, but my arms were jelly, and I only managed to lift myself up enough to see in front of me.

I opened my eyes, and the world was alight. I was lying on the ship’s entrance ramp, facing the outdoors, and the outdoors were shining with light. A pale blue sheen glowed from every surface, coating the entire landscape. The shimmer was thin and not entirely even, growing more vibrant and substantial in some spots, and thinner and more transparent in others. It was beautiful, and surreal, and I was really not able to handle it at the moment.

I mustered myself, and pushed myself up with weak, shaky arms. I stood up, but my legs didn’t know how to be legs. I careened forward, and took a few desperate, awkward steps before I pitched forward and fell flat on my face on the sand outside. I groaned and pushed myself up once more, spitting ash out of my mouth. Nausea nagged at my gut. I stared blurrily at the ground below, blinking at that strange blue glow.

My existence slid achingly into alignment. I felt your presence, and then our memories joined together like two sets of fingers intertwining. I remembered the bubble in the River, the ghosts of Pent and Dulcinea and the others, the fight against Wake. And I could feel you remembering what happened to me — the fight against the Heralds, the revelation of my heritage, the deaths of Augustine and Mercymorn, the deal with Alecto. It wasn’t something I should have been able to feel, but I did feel it, and it felt bizarre and kind of tingly. It was a re-alignment of two brains and souls, and when we clicked back into place, the blue glow faded to nothing, and my vision was normal again.

My body rolled over, and I freaked out, because I didn’t tell it to do that. In my panic I bolted upright, sitting up with wide eyes. The others were all standing at the top of the ramp, staring at me in anticipation. My body looked down and surveyed itself without my input, and I yelped and leapt to my feet, staggering backward on wobbly limbs. My body righted itself. My hand raised itself in front of my face, and my body looked at it curiously, turning it back and forth. I put it down and shook my head violently.

“Okay, what the hell — is going on?

What… where — am I?”

Halfway through my sentence my voice switched from speaking aloud to speaking only in my head, and yours did the reverse.

“Pardon?” Warden asked.

Griddle…“ you said in my mind. The way you said my name absolutely killed me. It was laden with awe and disbelief, so soft that I didn’t know what to do with myself. My heart clutched in my chest. I took a deep, shaky breath. Words sat on the tip of my tongue, clamoring to roll from my lips and tell you how much I’d missed you. I bit them back viciously.

“Harrow, as soon as you’re back in your own body, I am going to punch you in the taint,” I slurred with lips that still felt weird and uncooperative.

I — pardon me? My what?” you sputtered. Warden rolled their eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. Alecto quirked an eyebrow. I had the belated realization that I had spoken my threat out loud.

This time I actually felt myself lose control. I wasn’t in the driver’s seat of my own body anymore, I was just a passenger. I could still feel everything my body felt, but my muscles moved entirely independent of my thoughts. It wasn’t even the loss of control over what I was doing that weirded me out — the weirdest thing was losing control over all the little movements, the little fidgets and balance adjustments that you do all the time without even noticing you’re doing it. Simply put, it weirded me out.

You sighed, and said, out loud, using my mouth, “It… it worked. All I ask is that if I say anything stupid, please assume it’s my host. I don’t want to be held responsible for her crudeness.” The soft vulnerability in your voice disappeared more and more with each word, replaced by the imperious affect I knew so well.

Hey!” I protested — internally, this time. Warden smiled and clasped one hand on your shoulder, despite your instinctive flinch.

“It’s good to have you back, Reverend Daughter.”

“Likewise, Warden.”

“We’re out of time,” Pyrrha intoned. I don’t think anybody in this universe is capable of sounding as ominous as you, but she gave you a run for your money. Following her line of sight to the sky above the flatlands, I saw a single, miniscule speck, way off in the distance. It was too far away to make out properly, but it was growing, slowly but surely. The Emperor was here. Reality came crashing back in. There was no time, no time for me to say any of the things I wanted to say to you, no time for a reckoning, and my words sat in my lungs like a lead weight.

“We need a plan,” Warden said.

You drew yourself to your — my — full height, back straight, head held high, and you were no longer lost and vulnerable, you were all business.

“The only way we are returning to the Nine Houses is through the River. Warden, if you can hide yourself and sneak aboard the ship, once we return to the Mithraeum you can stay on the Hermes and paint the necessary wards.”

I took back control of my body — I wasn’t quite sure how I did it, but I’ll do my best to explain: It was like there was one driver’s seat, and we were both stuffed into it, so when I wanted to take control, I shunted you aside so you were squished uncomfortably against the door, cheek pressed to the glass, and you couldn’t take the wheel back.

“Uh, problem with that plan, don’t I, like, die if I go in the River?”

“As long as the Reverend Daughter is with you, you should be fine,” Warden assured me, pacing back and forth as they though, “If we can all drop into the River, we should be able to—“

“I can’t,” Pyrrha interrupted. Warden, Alecto, and I all turned to look at her. If she was worried by this development, she did not show it. Empty reassurances hung on the tip of my tongue, but I would not insult her by saying them, and she spared me the choice anyway. “I’ll stay behind.”

At length, I asked, “Will you be alright?”

She shrugged. “I’ll have to be.” I stared at her for a moment. Her necromancer was a dick, but I actually kind of liked her. I think we all knew that she wouldn’t be alright, but she knew what she was doing, and I would not condescend to tell her not to do it. Eventually, I nodded and turned away, swallowing thickly.

“Alright,” Warden cut the tense acknowledgment in the air, “it’s time for me to make myself scarce. I’ll see you on the other side.” They turned and made their way toward a jumble of boulders near the edge of the landing area that was big enough to hide in.

“Gideon, you cannot stay in control of your body,” Alecto said. There was a strange anticipation within me when I looked at her. I knew this was your love, that you had pledged your heart to her when you weren’t even a teenager yet, but other than when you were speaking in my mind, there was no trace of you. I couldn’t feel what you were feeling, and that absence left a hole where my expectations were.

“What?” I said.

“Your eyes,” Alecto explained, “your eyes keep changing to match who is in control. If we were truly a Lyctor split into two bodies, we would swap eye colors, as he and I did. Mine are gold, therefore yours must be black.”

I spoke slowly, “So you’re saying that Harrow needs to pretend to be me?”

Alecto nodded. I groaned.

“Fuck.”

No, no, this will work,” you tried to convince yourself, “I’ve known you long enough Nav, it can’t be that difficult to emulate your mannerisms.”

I wiped my face with my palm and took a deep breath. “This is going to be a fucking disaster.”

But there was no time to do anything about it, because the fucking disaster was imminent. The Hermes grew large in the sky, and before long, it was directly overhead. I recognized it vaguely, but so many of my memories from within you were hazy and indistinct. It was easily ten times the size of the little shuttle we just left, and it looked like no other ship I had ever seen.

It was sleek and elegant, made of shiny black metal, but its shape was odd, like some strange species of bird. It had been the God Squad’s mobile base since the time of the resurrection, and its age showed. It wasn’t battered or worn-down — he kept it well maintained — but it was built a very long time ago and then upgraded and renovated many times over the millenia, leaving it a melange of old, outdated tech, retrofitted modernity, and antiquated architecture in styles I couldn’t even recognize. The windows were real, not plex like every other ship I’d ever seen. You could tell from the reflections; they caught the sun in a way that plex never would have, shining dully with what little glare the weak light could muster.

It floated gently down, the dull roar of the engines suddenly very loud in the stillness of that dead planet, blowing ashy sand and pebbles outward with the force of the exhaust. It came to rest in front of us with a satisfying thunk, the back facing toward us so the entrance was directly ahead. The engines cut out.

There was a long, awkward silence in between the shuttle turning off and the door opening, as the Emperor presumably made his way from the helm to the back. There were so many things I wanted to say to you, but there wasn’t any time. I fought the urge to make any movement, no matter how small. I still wasn’t used to this whole body-sharing thing yet, and I would’ve been really really pissed if I accidentally took control and got us rumbled through some pointless fidgeting.

So… turns out God’s my dad.” I said to you, because I am an impatient bitch.

I’ll be honest Griddle, I still haven’t quite wrapped my head around that yet. I’ve put it into the back of my mind, in the very large pile of things to panic about later.”

I snickered, out loud, and Pyrrha glared at me. I coughed sheepishly. I hadn’t even meant to take control. “Sorry. It’s Harrow’s fault though.”

Shut up Griddle,” you chastised, and I did. It wasn’t your best attempt though — your reproach sounded almost fond. You shoved me to the edge of the driver’s seat before I could call you out, and I couldn’t quite muster a response with my soul squashed into the corner.

The Hermes’ walkway extended with a mechanical rattle, pushing into the soft sand below and creating a ramp that led to the entrance. The doors slid open, and there he was.

The Emperor. The Kindly Prince of Death. Daddy dearest.

I still couldn’t understand how you spent all those months just… hanging out with this guy. His eyes creeped me out beyond belief — although knowing they were originally Alecto’s eyes made a lot more sense to me. He was too normal, too plain-spoken and casual for the terrible weight of that black, eclipse gaze. Even without them Alecto’s stare was piercing and unnerving, and I didn’t like the picture that was created in my mind when I imagined her with them. Those eyes came to rest upon us the moment we came into view, and they went very wide.

The Emperor of the Nine Houses looked at us, then he looked at Alecto, then Pyrrha, then Alecto again, then back to us. I could almost see the gears whirring in his head.

“I’ll admit, of all the things I expected to see when I opened that door, this was not it.” The Emperor walked down the ramp and approached Alecto. “I’m glad you made it Harrowhark, I was worried.”

I breathed an internal sigh of relief. He bought it. Now all we had to do was not fuck it up by opening our stupid mouths. No pressure.

“Thank you, Lord.” My biggest concern, her voice, turned out to be a non-issue. Her mimicry of your cadence was surprisingly good, if a bit less clipped than it needed to be. I’d have recognized the pretense in an instant, but anyone else should have been convinced. I guess it shouldn’t have been too surprising, given that she had been stalking you for the better part of a decade. The fucking creep.

The Emperor turned to us. I could almost feel you frantically trawling my memory, trying to recall how I spoke to him. “What’s up… pops?”

Oh god. Oh god no. I could not handle this. You sounded like a dorky dad trying to make his kids think he was cool. You sounded like Magnus Quinn trying to relate to the Fourth teens. You sounded like a space alien who’s heard about human beings before, but has never actually met one. I wished you had just gone ahead and eaten me from the beginning, to spare me the torment that was to come.

Somehow your shitty impression didn’t immediately give us away.

“I have… so many questions. I imagine you do as well — the past few days have been profoundly weird. But not here. Let’s get you all home first.” He walked toward Pyrrha, who stood in perfect posture, stiff-backed and ridiculously tall. He didn’t say anything to her, just put one gentle hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

He nudged his head in the direction of the entrance, and we followed him up the ramp.

As we walked, he asked Alecto a few questions about what happened and how she found my body, and she fed him a stream of bullshit that was probably very convincing. I wasn’t really paying attention. I was too focused on how awful you were at pretending to be me.

Okay sugarlips, we’ve got a few moments here, so we’re gonna play a little game called How to Stop Fucking This Up.”

Excuse me?”

Lesson one: stop being so goddamn tense. Relax. I know that you were born with the Empire’s biggest stick rammed up your ass, but I was not.”

What would you have me do?” you hissed.

Your posture needs to be worse. Unsquare your shoulders. Let them slouch a bit.” Slowly, awkwardly, you went from walking with a perfectly straight back and set shoulders to a more casual slouch. It was still weird and a little too formal, but it was a hell of a lot better than before. “Okay, good, yes, now we look a little bit less like Marta Dyas with her vertebrae fused together. But you’re still too stiff. You need to swing your shoulders and hips a little more when you walk.” That one you were less good at. You tried your best, you really did, but you couldn’t find a balance between military stiffness and flaunting your stuff on a catwalk. I decided that it was a lost cause.

You absolutely suck at this Harrow.”

Well pardon me, Nav, for not having practice piloting your body. I didn’t exactly ask for this, I don’t want to be here any more than you want me to.”

Wow, rude. My body is excellent, you should be honored.”

That’s not what I—“

This is what it feels like to be hot and have muscles Harrow, you should enjoy it while it lasts. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.”

We passed through a central war room with a big, circular table in the middle, its surface a plex screen. The table was far bigger than it needed to be for the six chairs surrounding it, and it made the whole room feel empty. A pile of twelve other chairs sat stacked in the corner, gathering what little dust exists in the sterile environment of a spaceship.

We arrived at the helm through the door at the far end of the war room. The helm was focused around a high-backed chair with two plex screens attached to swivel mounts on either side. Huge windows dominated the front, presiding over the emptiness outside. There was a pilot’s chair and a copilot’s chair closer to the window, each one nestled in a hive of buttons and screens and controls. Two long benches curved along the semicircle of the back wall. It was not sleek or pretty, it was busy and metallic and industrial. I kind of liked it. You sat on the end of one of the benches, close to the front window, as the Emperor took the central chair and Pyrrha took the pilot’s chair without a word.

“Take us home Gideon,” the Emperor commanded.

Pyrrha’s hands slid onto the controls like the caress of a lover. Her fingers flexed as she took a deep breath and brought them into position. We were sitting in the spot on the bench closest to her, so I saw what the others couldn’t; a tiny, private smile crossed Pyrrha’s face, and she murmured, so quiet I could barely hear, “Missed you, old boy.”

Her fingers danced across the console, deft, practiced, and confident. The engines hummed to life, the sound deeper and more penetrating now that we were inside, and the ground fell away. The acceleration was so smooth, the dampeners killing the g-forces so thoroughly that it took a moment for my body to even register that we were moving. The thin layer of clouds parted easily as the Hermes carried us into the upper atmosphere.

The ship rumbled as we picked up some serious speed, streaks of orange dancing across the windows. It broke, and the grey sky faded to black, revealing the endless stars. Once we were fully free of the atmosphere, Pyrrha’s hands massaged the controls further, the in-atmo thrusters cut out, and the deep-space engines powered on with a wavering whine. The noise faded as they fulled revved up, and that’s when Pyrrha really punched it. I could see the view from behind the ship displayed on one of the screens around the pilot’s chair, and the planet retreated into an infinitesimal speck in seconds.

“Trajectory’s set,” Pyrrha said, reaching above her to flick a dial from one position to another. The Emperor nodded.

“Alright, take some time to rest, all of you. It’s going to be a few hours.” We got up and walked towards the door, when he spoke again. “Actually, Gideon, would you stay, just for a moment? I’d like to speak with you.” Two people who were not named Gideon looked at him. He realized his mistake and chuckled, though it was half-hearted with weariness. “Nav, that is.”

Goddammit, I did not have time for this prick. It’s not that I thought he would figure us out — the extent of his knowledge of my personality was approximately two minutes spent in my presence — I just wanted to talk to you. My whole being had been left on pause right before the final act. We hadn ’t had a single moment alone. I was woefully antsy, but I couldn’t actually do anything, I had to keep my hands off the wheel, practically vibrating inside.

Pyrrha filed out the door, and suddenly, it was just us. You, me, and God, standing awkwardly far apart. He looked at us with a calm and patient smile.

“Is this some sort of father-daughter bonding thing?” you asked, “because I’m not really in to that.”

The Emperor chuckled, “Not quite. But you provide me with quite a fascinating dilemma.”

“It’s a habit of mine.”

“There has never existed a being quite like you before, Gideon. I am not entirely human, which means that neither are you. We are in uncharted territory here.” He sat back down in his chair and rested his elbows on his knees, leaning forward so his clasped hands were in front of his mouth. You shifted uncomfortably.

“I don’t think I’m any different than anyone else.”

“Do you…” he paused. “Do you ever see things that other people don’t see?”

You blinked stupidly, thrown off by the question. “Like what?”

“Hmm. It just surprises me that you have no necromantic aptitude. There’s a hereditary component to necromancy, so it’s strange that you can’t sense thanergy. I wondered if you might be like me.” He tapped next to his eye, “Curious side effect of not being human. Most necromancers experience thanergy as a sort of sixth sense, but I actually see it.”

“No, I’ve never seen anything like that.”

He sighed, “Well, I guess not, then. Still, there might be other effects. I know that you and Harrow were the only ones in the Ninth House to survive the crèche flu. That might be why.”

You went very still. “So being more than human helped me survive the gas?”

The Emperor raised a single eyebrow. “She told you about that?”

Having you in charge of my body gave me a window into what you were feeling. Your responses weren’t the same as mine, and while I couldn’t feel your emotions, I could feel my body’s physical reactions. Your muscles went tense. Your body went cold. When you spoke, your words were slow and carefully chosen. “I am her cavalier.”

The Emperor sat back in his chair, surprise evident on his face.

“Yes, I suppose you are,” he said at length. He contemplated this for a long moment before shaking his head and continuing. “But even if you’re tougher than most, it still doesn’t explain… hmm. I’m wondering whether being my kid helped you create the perfect Lyctor bond with Harrow.”

I couldn’t feel what you felt, but I didn’t need to in order to picture the gears whirring in your head. “Would it need to?”

“Oh, yes, absolutely. It shouldn’t be possible for the two of you to accomplish what you did.”

“Why not? I thought the others figured you out. Wasn’t it possible all along?”

“Yes and no. It’s possible, but it’s not as simple as they might have assumed. There’s a cost — there is always a cost. Your abilities may have facilitated it. I also think that the… unique circumstances of Harrowhark’s birth may have played a part.”

Your throat closed up, and you gripped the side of your robe tight enough for your knuckles to turn white. Both of your hands were trembling, and I could feel the enormous effort it took for you to prevent the rest of your body from trembling along with them. You swallowed thickly, and squeezed your eyes closed.

Harrow, don’t — don’t freak out.”

You opened your eyes, and the world was afire with blue light. The tension flowed out of you for a brief moment in your surprise and confusion. The blue glow was thinner here than it had been on the planet, a pale sheen that covered the ship in patches of light. Even in its thinnest spots, there was something — except for the Emperor. His whole body was entirely absent of light, and he looked like a hole punched into the fabric of reality.

Apparently I could see it after all.

“Are you alright?”

You closed your eyes and shook your head to dispel the trance the light put you in. When you opened them again, it was gone. The world was normal.

“Yes, Lord,” you managed, and I decided not to give you shit for thinking I’d ever call him that. I figured you had a lot on your mind. The Emperor looked at you strangely.

“Please, just call me Teacher.” You nodded, your body tensing once again, hands no longer clenched into fists around your robes, but still shaking slightly. After a moment of searching silence, he said, “I’ll need to do some calculations, figure this out. For now, get some rest. You’ve been through a lot.

You turned on your heel way too abruptly, and hurried out the door. The moment you were out of sight, you stopped trying to regulate your breathing. I couldn’t believe we had gotten away with that, with how awful your pretense was. But I figured he didn’t know me especially well. Or you, for that matter. I wondered, not for the first time, why you put so much faith in that man.

 


 

 

Your room on the Hermes was exactly what I expected it to be. It might once have been decorated and homey, but you stripped it down to its bare essentials. There was a narrow bed that looked harder than the floor it stood above, a single wooden chair in front of a tiny, unadorned desk, an end table beside the bed, and a chest of drawers against the wall. On the far wall was a door leading to the attached bathroom. It was way too little furniture for the size of the space, and it made the whole room look huge and unfinished. Intricate, excessively layered wards covered the entryway on both sides, but they lay dormant, disabled.

The Abyss of the First sat on the edge of your bed, hands folded primly in her lap. She had changed into a fresh set of robes, her torn and bloodied rags tossed in the corner. My sword rested atop the chest of drawers.

That was the moment where it really hit me, how strange it was being in my body with somebody else in control. The only physical reactions I felt were yours. But I knew that if I had been in charge, my stomach would have dropped like a stone. As it was, I could only watch, halfway dissociating, feeling weird and numb with the lack of physical response to my emotions.

This was the part I was dreading. I wanted to talk to you, to release the nine months of words threatening to vomit out of my mouth. Instead, I was going to have to sit there as you professed your love to your icicle girlfriend. Look, I meant what I said to Ianthe, I never went into this with the intention of making you love me. I expected nothing from you. But that didn’t mean that it wasn’t going to hurt watching you moon over her.

Without somebody we needed to deceive in the room, I could’ve taken back control, but I decided not to. I figured I’d give you your moment, bite the bullet and get it out of the way now. I sat in the back in my mind, resigned to what was about to happen. I waited for you to do it. For you to call her ‘beloved’ in hushed, reverent tones, or kneel at her feet and pledge your eternal devotion, or whatever the hell your definition of timeless romance was.

But you didn’t. You barely even looked at her. You walked straight over to your desk chair, collapsed into it, and stared down at my hands, turning them over slowly, like you had to check every single detail to make sure they were actually real.

You opened your mouth as if to say something, but instead just sighed. You closed your hands into loose fists. You opened them again, and placed them carefully on top of your thighs. You looked up at Alecto.

“If you would give us some privacy, please.”

I did the emotional equivalent of a double take. Alecto tilted her head to the side.

“Hmm, I thought you would have more to say to me, Harry,” Alecto mused, “you made me all sorts of promises, you know. I believe you promised me your heart. Promised me your undying love.” She looked at you with contemptuous disgust, like you were an insect with amusingly lofty ambitions. “But you don’t keep your promises, do you?”

Where the hell was this coming from? There was no hurt or rejection on her face; I didn’t believe for a second that she was genuinely interested in you.

“I…”

“Of course not. People like you never do.” Alecto stared at you, a slight, disdainful smile on her face. Your nails dug into your palms painfully.

I had seen enough. You offered no resistance as I pulled control from your hands. I stood up, took a step toward her, and said, “She asked you to leave, asshole.”

She stood up as well, and walked toward me. “Can she not speak for herself? Are you her keeper?” She came to a halt barely a foot in front of me, and I stared down at her. That fucking smile still wouldn’t leave her face. My lips twitched into a silent snarl.

“Yeah. I am.”

Did my eyes really look like hers? They couldn’t have — I think people would have treated me very differently if they did. No, they shared a color, but they did not look the same. I never could have looked at somebody like a lead spike being slowly driven into their chest.

She made no move to leave. I was about to get properly angry, start shouting, maybe shove her a bit.

“Get out,” you murmured. I hadn’t even felt you take control. One moment I was in the driver’s seat, the next, I was shoved into the back, without any idea of how I got there.

After a long moment, she hummed, and said, “You’re a good cavalier, you know that Gideon? Perhaps the best I’ve ever seen.” She turned away from us, and strolled leisurely toward the door. One finger traced the length of my two-hander as she walked past, catching slightly on the point. “What a curse. What a shame.”

The door clicked shut behind her, and we were alone. You stood in the middle of your big, empty room, next to the huge window that covered most of the far wall. Without a point of reference to compare to, it appeared as though we were standing still, the stars fixed in their firmament, making the Hermes’ speed invisible. The empty space inside and the stillness outside combined to make the room feel unreal, like an artist’s render that had been left half-completed.

You stared distantly at nothing. Then, you blinked, swallowed heavily, and looked down. Once again you held your hands out and looked at them intently. You lifted one of them up as if to reach for something, but withdrew it. You held it in front of your mouth, the knuckle of your index finger pressed against your lips, and furrowed your brow in a way that felt distinctly different from the way you did when you were concentrating on something.

I readied myself. I knew that nothing good was going to come out of this conversation. I wanted to scream at you. I wanted to throttle you. But I couldn’t find a place to begin. Everything in my mind was askew. You lowered your hand and lifted your head up as if to meet my eye. You sighed shakily.

“Gideon…”

No. No. That wasn’t fair. You weren’t allowed to do that, Harrow. You weren’t allowed to say my name like that, like it was the most reverent hymn that had ever left your lips. The sound of it was soft enough to murder me. It cut like a knife through everything I wanted to say to you; I had prepared all of my anger, and suddenly found there was nowhere for it to go. It was like when you’re pushing against something as hard as you can and it suddenly gives way, your own strength sending you sprawling with nothing to resist it. That same, stomach-dropping sensation, right before the fall.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” you attempted, voice stilted and awkward. Something inside of me cracked, and I felt all of it — all of me — threatening to pour out and reveal just how much of a mess I was. I reached down inside, and I mustered my anger once more.

No, Nonagesimus, I’m not okay, I’m pretty fucking far from okay. What the hell were you thinking?”

You frowned. “What are you talking about?”

What am I — I’m talking about you lobotomizing yourself, you idiot fucking wizard! That’s the whole reason we’re in this mess! You should have just gone and done what I asked you to do in the first place.”

“I was trying to save your life,” you protested.

You didn’t save shit. You just traded places with me — stuffed yourself into your beloved fucking Tomb so I could live. Because that’s so much better?”

“Yes, it is! I will not let you give your life for me.”

You should. Why won’t you let me do this for you? What else am I for?”

Your eyes widened and you actually took a step back, as if I was there in front of you. Your lips parted, ever so slightly. “Gideon, you’re not—“ you bit off the end of your sentence, made a strange noise whose meaning I could not interpret, then said, “It doesn’t matter. We’re here. We’re both alive.”

That’s results-oriented thinking baby! You didn’t know that was going to work!”

“I — what? I have no idea why you’re angry about this, Nav.”

How could you not understand—” I started, then took the mental equivalent of a deep, calming breath. The dissociative feeling was getting worse; there was so much anger that should have been coursing through me, burning hot and wild under my skin, but instead all I felt was the lump in your throat. Trying to express my anger without any outward body language felt like trying to burn down a waterfall. “I gave up my life to save you, and then you did your absolute best to get rid of me and get yourself killed anyway, you asshole, you selfish little coward!”

“Selfish?” Your voice went cold, and the anger I felt in your skin should have complemented my own, but it didn’t. It wasn’t a fire, it was a glacial current pumping frostburn through my veins. “I saved you, Griddle. I put my life in danger for you, I suffered constant humiliation for the better part of a year for you, and now you have the audacity to tell me that I’m selfish?”

You didn’t do that for me.”

“Who do you think I did it for!?”

“You did it for yourself!” I roared out loud, unable to take this silent fury. You went quiet, and when you didn’t respond, I kept going, “Save my life? I was already dead, Harrow, I’d already given you my life. You threw away every single thing I sacrificed myself for, just so you wouldn’t have to feel guilty.

The door opened.

Pyrrha took one step into the room, then stopped short the moment she saw me. She was holding a makeshift bundle made from some kind of cloth wrapped around a handful of items I could not discern. I was breathing heavily, and I couldn’t even imagine what my expression must have looked like to her. My throat locked up, my words lay stubborn beneath my tongue.

We both stood frozen for a long moment. The look she gave me was far too knowing. I might have shouted at her to leave if I had the ability to talk. She gingerly placed the bundle down on the chest of drawers and walked out, closing the door behind her without a word.

My hands were clenched into fists and I squeezed them tighter, once, twice. I walked over to the desk, limbs moving on autopilot, and unwrapped the bundle — the wrapping was a large cleaning cloth, and inside it were a handful of standard tools for maintaining a blade. I was surprised by the gesture. I was not surprised that she correctly guessed you didn’t own any such tools.

You still weren’t responding. Without the ability to see or feel you, it was as if you were gone entirely, and for a single, awful moment, I was convinced that you were. But the moment passed. You weren’t gone — you were hiding, like the coward you were. I carried the tools over to the desk, then did the same with my two-hander, setting it down neatly in front of me. The chair scraped gratingly against the floor as I pulled it out and sat down. Silent, numb, I set about the monumental task of clearing away nine months of your neglect.

Chapter 4: The Impostors, Part II

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

God told us to use the trip back to the Mithraeum to rest, but that plan was doomed from the start, as I am a contrarian bitch, and you never sleep. So we were still awake when the door opened and Pyrrha and Warden furtively slipped inside, shutting it behind them.

“Everything cool?” I asked.

“Yes, I just believe that staying hidden by the entrance when everybody leaves is a bad idea.”

“Cool, well… pull up a seat I guess.” I ran a cloth along the length of my longsword, cleaning off the honing oil. My baby was back, not quite in perfect form, but as close as it was going to get after the bullshit you subjected it to. I held up the blade and examined it closely, admiring my trusty companion.

“Reverend Daughter,” Warden interrupted, “I think you’ll want to take a look at these.” They held out a notebook, flipped open to a page somewhere in the middle. You put my sword down delicately, and read through their notes. Their handwriting was tiny, so perfect and neat that it could’ve passed for printed text. I had no idea what any of it meant, but I picked up enough to realize that these were their notes on perfect Lyctorhood.

This nerd shit was beyond me. You read through all of it, and asked intent, pressing questions. I figured if any of it was important, you’d let me know. The longer the conversation went on, the more animated you became.

“The approach seems sound,” you said, “but the numbers don’t add up. The Necrolord made a comment to that effect when he spoke to us. He was confused by our apparent success.”

“What isn’t adding up?” Warden asked.

“The Lyctor bond is a thanergy factory, but it’s fueled by the consumption of the cavalier’s soul. This bond takes tremendous energy to create, but you’ve removed the source of thanergy. It has to come from somewhere.

“That’s what I’m saying — it doesn’t generate energy through destruction, it generates it through the collision of the two souls. If traditional Lyctorhood is like nuclear fission, this is nuclear fusion.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” you maintained, agitated, “a reaction like that would generate thalergy, not thanergy.”

“Yes, and we harness that as part of the process.”

You shook your head, “That relies on the channel remaining stable, which is unlikely. You would have to be able to directly manipulate the thalergy in order for it to work.”

Can you not do that?”

“No Griddle, the human body cannot sense thalergy. Controlling it enough to utilize in a theorem is impossible.”

“No it isn’t.” Pyrrha said. You looked over at her, looming silently beside the door. It took her a minute to realize that everybody was waiting for her to elaborate. “That’s how Gideon drained your wards. Couldn’t sense it, but he studied it. Knew where it would be, just by knowing how it behaves. Too imprecise to do anything fancy with it, but it was useful.”

Your fingers twitched, and I knew you well enough to know you were aching to take out your notebook and start writing down theories. You muttered, half to yourself and half to them, “Of course, if he could direct it, he could initiate an alan cascade. The blood wards were secure because the existing thalergy would interfere with the resonance.”

Care to say that in hot sword lady language?”

Thanergy and thalergy are opposing forces. If forced into the same space, they create an effect not unlike destructive interference between two sound waves. They will… cancel one another out, so to speak. It’s called an alan cascade, because it occurs between thalergy and thanergy.”

That’s a cute little nickname. Did you know that if you put thanergy first in that abbreviation instead of thalergy, it would be called an—“

You cleared your throat emphatically. Warden gave you a questioning look, which you ignored. “Even if we could control it that way, it wouldn’t give us the level of precision needed for a massive reaction like this.”

“It worked for us,” Warden challenged.

“What you are is not remotely as sophisticated as this,” you said, and failed to notice the amused lift of Warden’s eyebrow as they ignored your astonishing rudeness, “and besides, you had the remnant thanergy from your body’s destruction to fuel the merging. We could attempt this, but if you’re wrong, our souls would cannibalize one another in an attempt to find enough energy. It could be disastrous.”

“No offense, Reverend Daughter, but I don’t believe you have a choice. If you don’t act, Nav’s soul will be consumed anyway.”

You stood up and paced, brow scrunched up in concentration. At length, you thought out loud, “What if we went in the other direction? If I could learn to manipulate thalergy in the way the Saint of Duty did… it would be too imprecise to forge such a complex bond, but breaking a bond doesn’t require such fine-tuned control. I could sever our partial Lyctor bond, and separate our souls.”

Whoa whoa whoa, that was not part of the deal, Harrow.”

“It’s better than dying, Griddle!” you snapped. Warden watched you impassively, unable to hear what you were responding to.

You’re going to be a Lyctor by the end of this Nonagesimus, whatever it takes.”

“Being a Lyctor will never be worth—“ you began, but were cut off by the crackling of the intercom.

“Girls, Gideon, if you would join me at the helm. We’re home.”

You sighed, and bit off what I could only assume was a furious retort. I turned to Warden.

“How long will you need?” you asked.

“Ideally? An hour. These wards need to be strong.” You nodded, but did not leave immediately, hesitating and chewing on your lip. You sheathed my two-hander.

“Work quickly, Warden.”

 


 

 

The Mithraeum was a wreck. We got a nice, long look at it as Pyrrha pulled us into the hangar bay. It was utterly battered, with dents and burn marks and great, jagged gashes all over it. The entire hull was plastered with thick layers of green Herald guts. The outermost ring was partially destroyed — an entire section of it was completely gone, leaving the ring as a crescent moon that broke off into ragged strips of torn metal.

The interior wasn’t much better. Piles of Herald bodies filled every room, every hall. Without the intense force of the Beast’s presence they no longer drove everyone into bouts of uncontrollable screaming, which I counted as a blessing, but they were still really fucking gross. We convened in the war room — the central table resembled the one on the Hermes, but the room around it was strewn with Herald corpses, leaving it cluttered and rank.

“The fight with the Heralds lasted significantly longer than we had hoped,” the Emperor said, “Ianthe was able to kill the Beast, but having to do it on her own was a tremendous effort. She was down in the River for almost thirty-six hours.”

“Ianthe killed the Beast by herself? you asked, incredulous. I focused more on the last bit of that sentence — how long had I been unconscious before I woke up on that planet?

God smiled wryly, “Well… not entirely. But I wasn’t lying when I said that I couldn’t help fight it. It can’t kill me, but I can’t leave my body behind, and I cannot afford to face the Heralds. The madness they inflict is unspeakably dangerous to somebody with my power. And with Augustine and Joy gone…” here he trailed off for a moment, gaze distant, before he collected himself and said, suddenly curt and businesslike, “Ianthe the First proved herself worthy of her title, though it nearly killed her. I told her to stay behind and rest while I looked for you.”

Given that our flight back to the Mithraeum took almost eight hours, and she still wasn’t around, that must have been a hell of a nap. I just wanted to get out of there before she woke up. God might not have known either of us well enough to see through our deception, but Ianthe most certainly did.

I watched the others, seeing how well they were doing at keeping up the pretense. Alecto was doing an… acceptable job. I still hated watching her in your body. I’ve watched you my whole life Harrow, and it made me intensely uncomfortable to see her emulate you. She was close, very close. But the fine details were off. Something about it went deep into the uncanny valley for me. Pyrrha on the other hand? Well, it was hard to tell. I never got that good of a sense of Gideon, given that most of the time he spent around you was spent in mortal combat. She was definitely good at matching his taciturn demeanor, but I figured there was no way she wouldn’t be, after ten thousand years of being part of him. But the Emperor knew Gideon the First a lot better than he knew, well, Gideon the Ninth, and I had no idea if he would pick up on anything strange.

The Emperor began to talk about the plan going forward — what was broken on the Mithraeum, what was the highest priority, how to begin the rebuilding effort. I didn’t really listen. We weren’t exactly planning on sticking around.

This time, when the blue light appeared, I paid attention. My vision felt fuzzy and weird, like a camera gone out of focus, and there was a sensation like something in my brain sliding to the left, slipping out of alignment. When the shift completed, the whole room lit up with the same blue glow I saw before, but this time, it was more than just a thin, pale sheen. The Herald corpses glowed like miniature suns. They created starbursts of light all around the room, the pools of their blood and guts shining like there was a blacklight on them. The Emperor was a void of light, just like before, but this time I was able to see that everybody else was too, including myself. That made me realize what I was looking at.

Is that—“

Thanergy,” you concluded.

But why now? I could never see this before you came back.”

Perhaps… perhaps he passed on the physical difference that makes him see it instead of feel it. You couldn’t see it because you didn’t have the ability to sense it at all. But I do.”

“Gideon, are you alright?” God asked. You snapped your gaze back to him, and the blue haze faded away in an instant. The sense of my vision being out of focus was delicate — the moment your attention got pulled away it slid back into place.

“I… yes, I’m feeling well, your, uh, your supreme… dudeness.”

I prayed for death.

“As eloquent as always, Ninth,” croaked a new and pathetic voice from behind us.

The eighth saint to serve the King Undying. Slayer of the seventh Resurrection Beast. Princess of Ida. Saint of Awe.

Ianthe Tridentarius had arrived, and she looked like shit. Her skin was decorated with a mottled patchwork of angry bruises, running the gamut of every color I’d ever known a bruise to be. The bags under her eyes were even darker than usual. Her hair was wet, leaving it somehow even more limp and flat, and combined with the pink tinge that filled the gaps between the bruises, it made me guess that she had just stepped out of a very long, hot shower. She limped slow and unsteady toward us, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped across her torso. Her whole body was folded in on itself.

The worst thing was her eyes. Her expression was what I was used to from her, sneering and disdainful, but there was something there I had never seen before. A haunted, glassy distance that no amount of flippancy could dispel. It wasn’t creepy in the same way that Alecto’s eyes were. Alecto’s eyes were intense and piercing and inscrutable. Ianthe’s were just… empty. I almost pitied her. Almost.

“What, no creative profanity for me? No threats of egregious violence? I’m insulted.” Her voice was that of a chronic smoker who spent their weekends gargling shards of glass.

You opened your mouth, then snapped it shut again. “You’re not healing.”

“Your powers of observation are staggering.”

“Number Seven had some ability to… drain people,” God explained, “we suspect her powers should fully return within a day or so.”

“Harry,” she greeted, “I’m glad to see you well, sister. I thought you hadn’t made it.” For once in her life, she actually sounded genuine. She hummed, looked at me, then at Alecto, then back at me. She gestured at me. “Do I even want to know how this happened?”

“Well,” Alecto began. Ianthe held up a hand to halt her.

“No, spare me, I’ve decided that I don’t care.” She turned to face the Emperor. “Tell me where I am needed, Teacher.”

“Ianthe, really, that’s not necessary, you should be resting. “

“I’ve been sleeping for twenty hours, Teacher, so please, give me something to do.”

He sighed. “Very well. I think we’ve just about settled on what needs to get done anyway. Let’s pair off so each person who can’t use necromancy at the moment has someone with them who can. I’ll get to work sealing off the outer ring. Ianthe, why don’t you and Harrow take a look at the life support systems. Even if they’re working, they’re definitely not functioning at full capacity right now. Gideon and, well, Gideon, I’d like you two to work on repairing the communications array. We can all meet back up here once we’re done. Although if you don’t mind, could you stay behind for a moment Gideon? I’d like to speak with you.” He smiled at me and said, “Other Gideon, this time.”

We all murmured our agreement and stood up. You headed toward the door, and Ianthe and Alecto headed in the opposite direction, Alecto patiently accommodating Ianthe’s pained pace.

I expected you to lead us off in the direction of the communications hub as soon as we left the room — I dimly remembered it from before — but instead you pressed yourself against the wall directly outside.

Harrow, what are you doing?”

“What’s with the sunglasses?” God chuckled, his voice still clearly audible, given how close we were, “Is that your new thing?”

“Gideon gave them to me.” Pyrrha did not elaborate past that. There was a thick, awkward silence. I didn’t even want to say anything to you in my mind, for fear of being the one to break it. There was no way to see what they were doing from our position, and I found myself suddenly glad that I couldn’t see their body language, their expressions. That felt too… intimate.

Why are we doing this, Nonagesimus?”

I need to be sure.”

“How are you holding up?”

“Fine."

“You always are, aren’t you?” God asked. There was no response from Pyrrha. I could almost picture her maddeningly unhelpful shrug. “Listen, mate, I’m… I’m sorry about how things went down at the end there.”

“Wasn’t your fault.”

God chuckled mirthlessly, but didn’t contradict her. “Still. Augustine, Joy,” he sighed heavily, “We’re the only ones left, aren’t we?”

“Yeah.” Pyrrha’s stoic demeanor cracked, that one word coming out thick and choked.

I shifted uncomfortably. “Harrow, seriously, why—“

I have to know. We haven’t seen her alone with him until now, we don’t know for certain where her loyalties lie.”

Really, Harrow? We can trust her.”

I’m not taking that risk.”

I don’t care, this isn’t—“

“It’s times like these when I wish Pyrrha was still here.” Any retort I might have summoned for you died. You froze. The Emperor gave a watery chuckle. “God knows it would be a comfort to have the firebrand around right now. Tell me to stop pitying myself. Maybe call me an asshole one more time.”

“Well, you are an asshole,” Pyrrha said. The Emperor outright laughed at that.

“I miss her, man. I miss all of them.”

There was a tremendous sadness in Pyrrha’s words when she replied, “I miss her too.”

“I failed them, Gideon,” the Emperor unsteadily admitted, “I was supposed to lead them, to make their sacrifice worth it. I promised them I would make it worth it. How did it come to this? I failed them. I failed you. I failed you, Gideon, and I’m sorry, I’m so bloody sorry.”

Somebody began to cry, but I couldn’t have said if it was him, or her, or both of them.

I pushed away from the wall.

Griddle?”

Fuck this. I’m not doing this.” I snuck away as quickly as I could manage without giving myself away. Their voices grew quieter and quieter, until I could no longer hear them at all.

Griddle, we need to—“

No,” I insisted, “This is so fucked up, I won’t do it.” As I got far enough away that I wasn’t at risk of being heard, I stopped creeping silently and properly let out my agitated energy, stomping down the hallways, barely paying attention to my surroundings.

This is too important Griddle, we have to be certain. If she gives us away, we are doomed.”

Then that’s a risk we’re just going to have to take.”

Your voice grew hysterical, “I am not willing to gamble your life on the whims of a stranger!”

I stopped. The hallways were winding and labyrinthine, and the intersection I found myself in was entirely unfamiliar. I sighed and leaned against the wall. As much as it frustrated me, there was something deeply comforting about your protectiveness. It was so contradictory to everything I knew about you, about us, but… it was nice. Maybe that’s why it all went to shit in the first place. Maybe you had just been protecting me, and I was so unfamiliar with it that I didn’t recognize it.

“I’m not willing to do that, no matter how important it is,” I said. Then, softer, “But I get it, Harrow, and… thank you.”

You don’t need to thank me, Nav.” Your voice was stiff and uncomfortable. I closed my eyes.

“Yeah, I do.” I insisted. You didn’t respond, and my cheeks flushed, vaguely embarrassed. I cleared my throat, and continued, “I do have one question for you though, my liege of darkness.”

Yes?” You were breathless, tentative. I opened my eyes again.

“Where the fuck are we?”

You rolled your eyes and took us where we needed to go.

 


 

 

The Mithraeum’s communications hub was a simple, boxy room, all functionality, without the typical sober decor of skeletal memorials that lined every hallway. The walls were lined with equipment, panels and screens with dials and blinking sensors all around. There was a single table in the center, covered in even more equipment. It had a plus-shaped divider cutting it into four stations, each with their own chair. It was less filled with putrid Herald guts than many of the other rooms we had seen, but it still had its fair share.

I had no idea how any of this worked — frankly, I was confused as to why the Emperor decided this should be my task — but apparently you knew what you were doing. There wasn’t as much damage as I expected, but there were definitely some electronics that had been wrecked in the fight. You disassembled machinery, fiddled with wires, removed damaged casings and screens. You rebooted a terminal that you fixed, and the screen flicked on, displaying a manifest with steles that the station was able to ping. At first glance, everything looked correct, but when I paid attention to some of the info listed about the steles, I realized that the data was gibberish. The locations didn’t actually make sense.

Uh, Harrow, I think this one is still messed up.”

“Of course it is, Nav, that’s the point. I’m not actually fixing them, that would let the Emperor track us. I just need to fix them enough to look fine at a glance.” Ah, yes, of course. I felt like a bit of an idiot. You started to move to the next station, but tripped over a Herald corpse and stumbled, almost falling on your face. You cleared your throat and dusted yourself off.

We should probably clear those out, right?”

You began to unscrew the metal housing on the next terminal. “That would be quite labor-intensive. We don’t want to be here any longer than we need to be.”

So just summon some skeletons to haul ‘em out, what’s the big deal?”

You rooted around in the wiring within, searching for damage. “I can’t do necromancy while I’m in your body.” You wiped your forehead, “Speaking of — are you always this sweaty, Nav? It’s disgusting.”

Okay, first of all, rude. Second, what?”

“Your body is not attuned to sense thanergy. I can tell where it is, but it’s like… it’s like trying to do a press up underwater. There’s no way to gain purchase.” I considered that for a moment.

“I’m going to try something.” I took control, extricating myself from the mass of electronics. We were starting to get the hang of this whole hot-swapping thing, so it wasn’t too difficult. I looked out over the room, at the bodies strewn across the floor and the table. With a deep, calming breath, I relaxed my vision and let it unfocus. It wasn’t an exertion of effort, not exactly. It was like unlatching my mind and letting it slide out of phase — more of a meditation than an action. For a moment nothing happened, and I felt a little stupid, but then, slowly, waveringly, the blue glow faded into view.

“Cool.”

How did you—“

I shrugged. “I just did it. I think you were right earlier, that I’m seeing it now because you’re in here with me. I saw something like this when you were in my head in Canaan House. The regenerating construct, its limbs glowed just like this.”

This is incredible,” you marveled breathlessly, “I’ve always been able to feel it, but I’ve never… it’s beautiful.

Pyrrha walked through the door. My gaze whipped over when I heard her, and immediately, the glow faded. It took maintenance, I had to keep myself in that deliberate state, and the moment my focus realigned, I lost it. She set a box of tools on the table with a heavy thunk, and popped it open. She pulled out a screwdriver, and without saying a single word, began to work on a bank of controls you hadn’t attended to yet.

We worked for some time in silence. I let you run the show, since you were the one who actually knew what to do. Working quietly with Pyrrha wasn’t awkward, but it did strike me as a little strange. The Emperor had called her a firebrand. Nothing about that word matched the quiet, taciturn woman I’d met.

After you finished up the last thing you needed to fix, I said, “So. You said you and old Johnny boy didn’t get along?”

She grunted in affirmation, buried in the guts of a broken terminal.

“Cool, cool,” I said, “can’t say I blame you. He seems like a real douche.”

Griddle!” you chastized, aghast, “You can’t — you can’t call the Necrolord Prime a—“

“He is.” Pyrrha agreed. I snorted, and you gave an affronted huff in my mind. Pyrrha emerged from the internals of the terminal. “We’d get in blazing rows. I was the only one who could make him lose his cool.”

There was a note of pride in her voice at that.

“Really? I can’t picture you like that. You’re all,” I searched for the right word, and gestured at her as if that would make my meaning clear, “I dunno. Stoic n’ shit.”

Pyrrha paused. Her expression was as flat as her voice when she said, “I wasn’t… this isn’t me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Not much of me left. Mostly him. I was… different, before.”

Oh. A wave of guilt swept through me. I felt like a jackass. Because of course. She was him, for almost ten thousand years. Now that she’d pointed it out to me, it seemed a miracle that any of her had made it through at all. That subtle expressiveness she possessed that Gideon never did no longer felt like a minor difference in personality. Every hint of anger and amusement and sorrow was a rebellion.

I remembered that the Emperor referred to Pyrrha as a firebrand, and I suddenly felt terribly sad.

“I know some of you made it through,” I said, “even when he was still alive.”

She shrugged. I bit my lip.

“Back in the incinerator, when Harrow tried to kill him — that was you, wasn’t it? You were the one who told her to use blood wards.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Pyrrha shoved a metal panel back into place on the terminal with a satisfying thunk. That terminal had been the last one we needed to fix, so she picked up her tools, and closed up her toolbox. “Didn’t think she needed to die.”

“But Gideon did.”

“He did.” Pyrrha walked toward the door, and I followed behind her.

“You didn’t trust his judgment?”

“No.”

“Why did you die for him if you didn’t trust him to do the right thing?” I said. Pyrrha stopped in the doorway. I half-expected her not to answer at all. I wouldn’t have blamed her. What right did I have to know? But she did answer. When she spoke, she was facing away from us, and all I could see was the back of her head.

“I did trust him,” she admitted, speaking slowly. There was a long pause between her first sentence and her second. “That was a long time ago.”

She walked out of the room without a backwards glance.

 


 

 

Ianthe lounged against a table while Harrow worked. She made a big fuss about how she was injured and how it simply would not do for her to exert herself, which was mostly true, despite her efforts to make it seem as inauthentic as possible. She’d asked Teacher for something to do, but even just walking over there took something out of her. Harrow applied sealant gel over a crack in the secondary oxygen recycler. It was a rickety patchwork of a fix, but it would have to do until they could get replacement parts. There quite a few cracks spread out over its delicate outer shell, and Harrow squeezed her body into a narrow gap in the machinery to reach the last one.

“So, Harry,” Ianthe began, as if speculating over a piece of gossip she was only mildly interested in, “your cavalier is back.”

“How astute of you to notice.”

“So how was it?”

“Pardon me?”

“Was it everything you dreamed of? Tell me all the filthy details.” She shrugged. “Or I suppose you could just give me a number. How many orgasms did she give you? I’d bet it’s high, she seems like an… eager little thing.”

“What does or does not happen in my bed is no concern of yours.” Harrow said plainly. Ianthe raised an eyebrow.

“That’s all you have to say? I’m surprised. If I’d said that even just a few months ago, you’d have been scandalized. Perhaps my influence has corrupted you.”

Harrow sighed wearily. “Has it?”

Ianthe hopped up to sit on the table. “Oh yes, I believe it has. Every day we’re on this station you become a little bit more like me. I find that attractive in a woman.”

“Do you ever stop talking? Or should I sew your mouth shut?”

“No, you already tried that once, and it was more of a pain in the ass than anything. The sewn tongue magic lifted when you died, but do you have any idea how annoying it was to only be able to refer to the Saint of Duty by his title for nine months? I couldn’t say your cavalier’s name either, but at least I didn’t live with her. Although I’ll confess, I just referred to her as Gonad in my head most of the time. Perhaps I’ll keep doing it; after all, if you can give her a nickname, why can’t I?”

“If you must.”

Ianthe's eyes narrowed. Harrow wasn’t defending her cavalier. How curious. “Did the two of you have some sort of lovers’ quarrel or something?”

“What are you talking about, sister?” Harrow asked, emerging from the machine. She looked at Ianthe, who met her with an intense, searching gaze. Ianthe stared at her for a moment, hand on her chin and elbow on her knee, calculating and inscrutable.

“Did you finally figure out that you could have better than her? After all, she’s such a simple creature, isn’t she?” Ianthe antagonized. Harrow slotted the gel canister back in place in a storage shed on the wall.

“Gideon is smarter than you seem to think.” Harrow said, voice calm and neutral. Ianthe’s gaze hardened. She put her hand down and leaned forward, resting her forearms on her thighs.

“And you love her, don’t you?”

Harrow hesitated, looking back at her over her shoulder. Ianthe watched her expectantly. “I don’t believe that’s any of your concern, sister.

Ianthe pushed off the table and limped over to Harrow. She kept going until they were uncomfortably close together. Harrow did not back away, but stood very still, body angled slightly away from her.

“Isn’t it?” Ianthe murmured in the delicate space between them.

“I don’t know what you’re—“

“Yes you do.” Ianthe interrupted. She brushed a lock of hair from Harrow’s face. Harrow did not flinch, nor give her the satisfaction of anger. Ianthe’s slight smile was taunting, or sad, or both, and it remained in place as she leaned across the tiny distance between them and kissed Harrow full on the mouth. She pressed her lips to Harrow’s, even though they were closed and unresponsive. Harrow did not return her kiss, but she didn’t turn away either, and Ianthe kept going for an uncomfortably long time without any reciprocation before pulling back. She made a noise that could have been a laugh and pressed her forehead against Harrow’s, her eyes remaining shut, Harrow’s remaining open. Her lips ghosted against Harrow’s with each syllable as she whispered, “She isn’t yours to have, you know.”

Harrow stood stock still as Ianthe turned and walked away, before looking at Harrow over her shoulder and saying, “Well? We’re done here, aren’t we? Do try to keep up, Harry.”

 


 

 

We all met up in the war room once we were done with our tasks. The only one missing was the Emperor, so we sat around the table and waited for him to get back. Ianthe was sitting on the edge of the table, one knee thrown up on top of it and the other leg dangling off the side. For reasons I did not understand, you sat down in the chair right next to her, when there was a perfectly good spot on the opposite side that didn’t involve us being up close and personal with Ianthe fucking Tridentarius. Pyrrha did not sit all, she just stood there, across the table from us.

Ianthe stared at me for a minute, weirdly serious and intense, before speaking. “I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect to see you again when Augustine dropped us into the River. What a… pleasant surprise.”

“I don’t have the patience for your sarcasm right now Tridentarius,” you sighed.

Fuck, Harrow, you have got to do better than that.”

I am trying, Griddle.

Ianthe narrowed her eyes. She turned to Pyrrha and fixed her with that same calculating stare. Pyrrha met it gamely.

“I figured you would probably survive. I wonder… you’ve known them for a myriad, how did it feel to see your traitorous friends get killed in front of you? Were you glad? I figure, you know, Saint of Duty and all that, you must be glad to see our Lord’s enemies destroyed.”

What the fuck? Where the hell was this coming from? Pyrrha did not react to Ianthe’s blatant provocation. After a moment without responding, she provided a shrug, and nothing else. Ianthe let out a long breath and nodded, looking off to the side. Alecto shifted in her seat.

“Well, it’s certainly unfortunate, but they needed to be stopped.”

Ianthe suddenly became the picture of good cheer, asking me in an uncharacteristically chipper voice that was rendered grotesque by her hoarse throat, “What do you think, Gonad? I mean, maybe you didn’t care about those two, but it must have been fun watching your dear old mum get iced in front of you. Maybe get a little shadenfreude, since, you know, she didn’t actually want you.”

You held achingly still, practically vibrating with the effort of preventing me from instinctively taking control and throttling her. Your hands gripped the sides of your chair seat.

“Shut up, Tridentarius,” you snarled.

Ianthe smiled violently. Her face contorted into a rictus of manic anger as she audibly ground her teeth. She stood up, turned to Alecto, and with a barely maintained veneer of calm, said, “I’m going to give you one opportunity to tell me where Harry is.”

Alecto froze. It’s possible that Ianthe was only guessing. That she felt like something was off, and she wanted to catch her off guard. But the moment Alecto froze, there was no doubt.

“What are you talking about sister?” Alecto asked, each word carefully spoken.

“Stop calling me sister!” Ianthe seethed, “I know Harry better than you seem to think, and I know that she doesn’t call me sister unless she wants to piss me off. Where is she?”

“I don’t know what you’re—“

“Where is Harrowhark, you dimwitted little thief?” Ianthe shouted, her hoarse voice cracking with the strain. In all the time you spent with her during these past nine months, I never saw her look genuinely upset. Whenever she was put off, she always covered it with flippant snark and sarcasm, even if it was obvious how she really felt. But now she was furious. Her hands trembled in their white-knuckled grip on the edge of the table.

Alecto said nothing at all.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Tridentarius?” you attempted.

Ianthe ignored you, and turned to Pyrrha, “I can tell that you’re still who you say you are. Did you know about this?” Pyrrha shook her head slowly, and her hand crept down to rest on the hilt of her rapier. “Of course you wouldn’t — you never spent more than five minutes around Harry without trying to disembowel her, you brainless lackey. But I’m a little out of sorts at the moment, so why don’t you do me a favor and use all that practice to help me get rid of these impostors?”

Pyrrha was the only one of us who was going to have to stay behind. She was the only one whose cover needed to last long-term. So when Ianthe asked her to commit a murder, she drew her rapier, hefted her spear, and made sure to do it just slowly enough that we were able to fucking bolt.

It was physical activity time, which meant it was time for me to take over. I pushed away from the table and stood up, knocking my chair over in the process, right as Ianthe drew her rapier. I bull-rushed her, slamming into her with my shoulder and sending her stumbling backward. As she reeled and tried to recover her footing, I pulled my arm back and delivered an almighty punch right in the center of her irritating little face. Her nose crunched under my fist and blood spurted out as she sprawled onto the floor.

Alecto threw herself to the ground as Pyrrha’s spear rocketed toward her, howling past only a fraction of a second too late, precisely when she intended it to arrive. I sprinted over and grabbed her arm as she recovered, hauling her back to her feet.

“Go time, c’mon c’mon c’mon,” I urged. We barreled out the nearest exit and skidded round a corner, setting off full speed down the hallway as Pyrrha emerged behind us at a sprint, Ianthe stepping out only seconds later, blood streaming down her furious face.

We rounded the next corner, and I prayed that Alecto could keep up with us with your useless leg muscles. Pyrrha would give us enough leeway to escape, but we had to make it convincing, or we would blow her cover.

“Way to fuck it up, hero,” I panted, “what now?”

“Now we hope that Warden works quickly.”

We were approaching a junction. I searched my memories of being in your body, but it was difficult to recall the exact layout of the ship, everything was so foggy while I was under the surface. “Harrow, help me out here, we have no idea where we’re going.”

Left. The next hallway branches off on the end. You’ll see the path to the hangar — avoid it. That’s the direction the Emperor went. We’re taking the circuitous route.” Your instructions were clipped and focused. Alecto and I tore through the hallways, Pyrrha hot on our tail.

I wouldn’t be able to appreciate it until later on, but this… something about this felt so comfortingly right. I was the one doing the heavy lifting, blood pumping, muscles working, and you? You guided me. Your confident, steady words led me where I needed to go. You aimed me, and I carried us to the target.

The target approached swiftly. We rounded the corner to the hangar, and found the walkway to the Hermes already extended. I sprinted up it and rushed over to the control panel. Alecto trailed about five seconds behind us, and the moment she set foot onto the walkway I slammed the button to retract it, so that it carried her toward us even quicker. The Hermes’ engines came to life only seconds after the door closed behind us, and really, God bless Warden, it felt so good to work with somebody competent.

By the time I got to the helm we were already moving, racing forward, squeezing through the half-open hangar gate while the doors were still sliding open. Warden punched it, and we really started to move, the Mithraeum growing smaller and smaller behind us. Alecto walked up to Warden and put a hand on their shoulder.

“I’ll take it from here. I’ve spent a lot longer flying this thing than you have.” Warden nodded and stood, letting Alecto take the pilot’s chair.

“I’ll submerge us in the River when you’re ready,” Warden said as you walked up behind Alecto and rested a hand on the back of her chair. “We submerge for five minutes. That should get us close enough.”

“Six minutes,” Alecto contradicted.

You gritted your teeth. “Gideon is not a necromancer, and has never traveled via the River before. She will not last six minutes.” I knew it was a very logical argument, but there was still some competitive part of me that was a little bit offended by that.

“Well she’s going to have to try,” Alecto snapped, “if we surface that early we’ll be stranded in deep space for hours. All we’ll be doing is giving John the time he needs to track us down.”

“Gaining a tactical advantage is pointless if one of us is dead. you insisted furiously.

“Not to me,” Alecto growled, “all I need is her blood. If she dies, she dies.” Her anger projected off of her like a physical wave, as if it could literally push me backward if she tried hard enough.

“We can’t—“

“This is not a discussion,” Alecto cut you off, “Brace yourselves. Entering the River in three… two… one…”

You fumed, but it was too late. Alecto took one hand off the steering mechanism and raised it. There was a great roar of rushing water, and we plunged into the murky depths of hell.

Notes:

Gideon and Harrow were impostors.
1 impostor remains.

Chapter 5: The Death of Gideon Nav

Chapter Text

Filthy, rust-colored water bubbled and spewed its way into the helm of the ship, and I pondered for a moment why the river of the dead looked like a sewage line. You planted yourself on one of the long benches that lined the semicircle of the back wall. Your movements were quick and agitated, and I decided to let you keep control and work it out of your system. You somehow managed to sit down aggressively.

I need you to listen to me, and listen carefully.”

I don’t know my furious overlord, I’ve never been very good at listening to you.”

Shut. Up. This is not a time for messing around Griddle. I’ve done this before, and while I’m better at it now that I’ve practiced, it nearly killed me the first time. You are going to close your mouth, you are going to listen to every word I say, and you are going to do exactly what I tell you to do, without question. Do you understand?” You enunciated every word crisply and emphatically, back in business mode, but I knew you. I had known you my entire life, and I recognized that tone. You were scared. And that, more than any words you could have spoken, made me afraid. I nodded, I shut up, and I listened.

First, we will drop below the surface. Your body will panic, but you will be able to breathe. The water isn’t real.”

The water rose higher and higher even as you spoke, and I mentally readied myself.

“I hate this part so much,” Warden said from the bench opposite us. You exhaled calmly as the water rose above your head. I tried to let you handle it, tried to let you use your experience and take control, but the instinctive reaction was much stronger than I expected. It surged through me, and I took over without even meaning to, my mind desperately trying to gain control over the situation. My eyes snapped shut. Forcing myself to take another breath rather than holding it was difficult — my brain resisted the attempt, like trying to fling yourself full speed at a wall — but I did it, and the water that did not exist flooded my lungs. An involuntary, animal panic shot through me. My whole body seized up and surged with adrenaline, but after a few choked breaths, the water filled my lungs and sinuses completely, and the terror passed.

“I’m gonna have to second you on that one Warden,” I said, sounding more than a little strangled.

“One minute past. Five minutes remaining.” Alecto called out.

“Blood ward is still holding strong,” Warden said, “It isn’t my best work, but it should last long enough.”

“I need you to keep listening to me, Griddle.”

“I am,” I promised.

“The world around us is no longer real. Physical space does not exist in the River. This is a projection, created from your mind’s expectations. Your grasp on reality will begin to weaken the more the River pulls on you, and things will stop making sense. The firmer you can keep yourself grounded in what’s going on in the physical world, the easier it will be for your soul to stay attached to it. You need to keep yourself here. Focus on the details on the ship, focus on Warden, focus on me.”

Focus on you? But you weren’t… and that’s when I realized that you weren’t just speaking in my head.

I opened my eyes, and there you were. Kneeling in front of me, in your own body. Harrow, I cannot possibly convey the relief I felt when I saw you there. It shouldn’t have made me feel that way; it’s not like I didn’t know you were alive, it’s not like I couldn’t hear you in my mind. But seeing you in your body, seeing you move, your body language exactly what I expected it to be, your expressions exactly as sharp and birdlike as I remembered them… it was indescribably comforting. My whole body relaxed, and I sighed. The Reverend Daughter was there in front of me, exactly as she should be, and something in the universe shifted back into its rightful place.

The feeling was so acute, it took me a moment to realize the obvious question. “How?”

You shrugged your head to the side, gesturing at the room behind you. “None of this is real. We’re not stuck in the same body here. We don’t even have a body here.”

I looked at you. Drank in the sight of you. You looked back, and your eyes weren’t my golden ones, they were your own. They were piercing, but not in the way Alecto’s were. Hers were invasive, alien. Yours were focused, demanding. Hers looked through me. Yours looked at me. Whenever your eyes were upon me, I knew I had your full attention. I had your full attention now, and it comforted me. I had a vague sense that my face was set in a big, stupid grin, but I didn’t really care. You narrowed your eyes.

“What?”

“I missed you, you dork.” I knew that I was embarrassing myself here, but I didn’t care. This projection of you had perfect skull paint, so I couldn’t see your skin, but your blush was visible in the expression on your face.

“I…” you attempted, but apparently ran out of words to say, your mouth opening and closing like a fish, which I resisted the urge to mock you for.

“One minute thirty.” Alecto’s voice interrupted, and you snapped back into composure immediately. Your features hardened.

“Just remember,” you said, “whatever you see, whatever you feel, it’s not real. Stay grounded.”

The blood ward sizzled more and more violently with each passing moment. I counted the seconds as they passed, waiting on bated breath.

“One minute forty.”

The ward’s sizzling intensified to the point that it was popping and spitting out little flecks of blood. It shattered with a sound like a gunshot. I gritted my teeth as Warden said, “That’s all we’ve got. Hold on tight everybody.”

 


 

 

Ianthe kept pace with the two men beside her, walking quickly and purposefully through the halls of the Mithraeum. They rounded the corner and entered the communications room. Teacher was in front, and he immediately found his way to a terminal on the far wall with a plex screen displaying readouts. He surveyed it, flipping through the entries in the log, scanning them with a serious, intent look on his face.

“Where is it?” he muttered to himself.

“Lord?” Ianthe asked.

“The Hermes! It has an entanglement link with the station — we should be able to ping it, keep track of its path, but it’s not showing up. Where the hell is it?” Gideon placed a hand on his bicep and motioned for him to let him through. Teacher ceded to him, and he began flicking through the system’s diagnostic tools. There was a tense, grave silence as he surveyed the data.

“The entanglement module is offline. I suspect it has been destroyed.”

“Of course.” Teacher steepled his fingers, pressing his lips to the tips of them and scrunching his brow in deep thought. “Ianthe, you’re certain about this?”

“Absolutely. Whoever that was, it wasn’t Harrowhark.”

Teacher sucked his teeth, and then rubbed his temple, “Okay. This is top priority. If somebody has control of the body of a Lyctor, there’s no telling what kind of damage they could do.” Gideon walked over to the far end of the room and checked up on some more data. Teacher saw where he was going and snapped his fingers, “Good plan, Gideon. If they used the River to escape, we can track the path of the ripples.”

Gideon initiated the scan, and waited for the results as Teacher went down the line, running diagnostics on each machine in turn. Ianthe stared at him.

“Weren’t you supposed to be fixing this equipment with them?” Ianthe pointedly asked. Teacher turned back to look at the two of them.

“What are you saying, Ianthe?”

“It’s a valid question,” Gideon admitted, “I got here after they did. Just focused on the stations I was fixing. Didn’t think to check theirs.”

“I asked Gideon to stay back and talk with me,” Teacher confirmed. Ianthe smiled, though it did not reach her eyes.

“Of course. I don’t mean to accuse.”

The terminal beeped as the scan finished, and Gideon checked the data. Ianthe could not see the results past the bulk of his body.

“The Aurelius system,” Gideon said. Teacher breathed out a relieved sigh.

“So they’re seeking shelter with the Edenites then. Good.”

Ianthe flicked her eyes back and forth between the two of them. “Would you care to enlighten me? Why is that a good thing?”

“Because we can deal with the Edenites. What we can’t deal with is them getting near Dominicus; the last two Beasts are already far too close for comfort after Cytherea’s little stunt.”

Gideon paused. At length, he asked, “How close?”

“Last time I checked? A week, at most. Less, depending on how fervently they chase her. It’s always hard to tell how strong of a draw a Lyctor will create.” He saw Ianthe’s questioning look, and explained, “Each Lyctor seems to draw them a different amount. The most powerful draw, by a considerable margin, comes from me. Cytherea always had a strong pull. We haven’t seen how they react to Harrow yet.”

“Would somebody else being in control of Harrow’s body have any effect on the pull she exerts?”

“There’s no way of knowing. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

“What’s the plan?” Gideon asked.

“Gideon, you need to fix the equipment they sabotaged. I’ll put together a plan to give to our Cohort contacts in the Aurelius system. Tell them to put out a wanted persons alert, at the very least. Ianthe, you can… actually, I don’t have anything for you to do.”

“I will stay here and assist in the repairs,” she decided. Then, pleasantly, “After all, it will go so much faster if there’s two of us, won’t it?”

“Good idea. Alright,” he took a deep, centering breath, running a hand through his hair and closing his eyes, “it looks like our work isn’t done, my friends. Let’s get to it.”

He was walking out the door when Ianthe called out, “I have one question, Teacher.” He stopped and turned back to her. Ianthe bit her lip, and noted with feigned casualness, “You said you’ve never seen anything like this before. So I’m guessing you can’t say whether the two of them are alive in there or not?”

The Emperor’s face softened. “I’m afraid not,” he gently replied, “I don’t mean to be cruel Ianthe, but I would not hold out much hope.”

Ianthe’s expression hardened. She drew herself up to her full height, straightening her spine and lifting her chin. A smoldering resolve pervaded every inch of her. “Then let’s fucking kill them.”

 


 

 

It started out slowly. When the ward broke, the entire ship was already full of that disgusting water. It only took a few moments for the viscera to start appearing. Globules of fat, skeins of human skin, bits of organ and meat and bone, appearing seemingly out of nowhere. I never actually saw any of them appear; it wasn’t as if they just popped into existence in front of my eyes. I would look to the side, or blink, and more of it would be there, as if it was drifting into the ship through an open window that didn’t exist.

Then came the bodies. Grey, bloated corpses, appearing in the water in front of us, slamming against the main window of the helm. One of them split apart on impact with the hull, skin tearing like wet tissue paper and disgorging slimy, rotted organs. It wasn’t long before the bodies were inside the ship. I flinched away from a drifting corpse whose burned, scarified skin brushed up against my own. I hadn’t even seen it appear next to me. More of them appeared, all in distinct states of disease and rot. It was vile. It was nauseating.

But I didn’t spend my life growing up on the Ninth for nothing. It was gross, sure, but it bothered me a lot less than it might bother someone from somewhere less fucked up. This wasn’t too bad. I could handle this.

“Two minutes thirty.” Alecto’s voice called through the murky clouds of blood and gore. I looked over at Warden. They were muttering quietly to themself.

They touched the metal of the wall behind them, “Three hundred years. Mined on the second house. Refined and manufactured on the Fourth.” They moved their hand to touch the surface of the bench, mumbling different facts about its origin, its age. They spoke with a methodical, ritual cadence.

The cloud of viscera grew denser and denser. It was getting harder and harder to make anything out. I could still see you right in front of me, but everyone else disappeared from view.

“Three minutes.”

“Stay focused, Nav,” you said.

“I got this,” I smirked, “this is nothing.” The look you gave me was not reassuring. I sat there, surrounded by gore, and watched it pass by. They were just bodies. I’d been surrounded by death my whole life, this was nothing new. A minute passed, and then another. You were being weirdly quiet, and for that matter, so was Alecto. The mass of bodies grew thicker, but not by much. I gave up on trying to avoid the gross sensation of dead flesh against my own. The water grew warmer and warmer, reaching an unappealingly tepid lukewarm temperature. We had to be close to surfacing at this point, right? I didn’t see what all the fuss was.

“Three minutes thirty.” I paused. That had definitely been longer than thirty seconds.

“I… what?”

“Griddle, stay calm.”

I looked down at you, still kneeling in front of me. “I am calm.”

The water was getting hotter. The water was getting darker. I looked around, trying to see if I could discern Warden through the dark. It was a laughable idea. I couldn’t even see the wall beside me. That realization made me pause. I looked down. I couldn’t even see as far as the bench I was sitting on. But I could still see you, I could still see my own body. That’s when I realized we weren’t on the Hermes anymore. The walls and the bench weren’t there at all.

“Uhh.” I looked around, trying to get some sort of bearing, but the mass of corpses was too thick.

“Four minutes.”

“Griddle, stay here. Stay in the ship.” I focused on you again, still visible in front of me, and for a moment, I was back on the helm. The darkness was thick, but I could make out the walls and the floor. It only lasted for a moment though. There was a sound of crashing metal, and I whipped my head to the side to try and find where it came from. The ship was gone again, and I couldn’t see the source of the noise.

Of course. The noise wasn’t real. Projections, all that stuff you said. I breathed in slowly, held it for a moment, and exhaled as calmly as I could.

“Yeah. I got it. I don’t know how to make the ship come back, but I got this. I can do this.”

The darkness was complete, and I could only faintly make out your silhouette. There was another metal crashing sound, then the sound of rattling bones and footsteps falling on unyielding stone. I listened more intently, trying to see if I could make out what the noise was, what the hallucination was supposed to be. I sat very still, trying to distinguish the noise. Other sounds joined the chorus. A faint hum of machinery, muffled and distant. Something rickety and wooden moving. The creak of old rope. The new sounds faded in slowly, one by one. I waited for minutes in between each one, intensely focused, trying to piece together the familiar-feeling melange of noise. It became uncomfortable, sitting still for so long. I shifted, wiggled my body a bit, trying to adjust. Fifteen minutes passed, twenty. The sounds all felt very familiar, but my brain wouldn’t cooperate and tell me where they were from. It was like a word stuck on the tip of your tongue.

“Four minutes thirty.” A thick bolt of fear lanced directly into my body. What? No, that wasn’t just me miscounting. I was listening for at least a quarter of an hour. Maybe only ten minutes, if I was really misjudging it. My breath quickened.

“Griddle!” your voice cut through the patchwork of sound. You were in front of me, but blurry and obscured in the thick haze of cloudy water. “Don’t chase it. It isn’t real. Think about the ship. What does the ship look like? Where are the others in relation to you?”

“I, um, the ship is metal. It’s got… it’s got two thrusters that can swivel to face different directions.”

“Good. What about the room we’re in? What does that look like?”

“It… it’s…” My throat started to close. Okay, okay, we were on the… helm. The helm was circular. Wait, no, it was sort of a hexagon shape, right? Fuck. Fuck. I wasn’t sure. The details were sand slipping through my fingers. The water was uncomfortably hot. The invisible sounds were louder now, less distant. The corpses were still bumping up against me, and my skin was suddenly very sensitive, making every brush an uncomfortable sandpaper rasp. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to calm my breathing.

I opened them to the ceiling of my cell on the Ninth. The rattling sound of skeletons marching to their stations was more distinct. I had to attend to my duties, before Crux got his panties in a twist about me being late. I was brushing the oss. I was on my knees, bent over my work, brushing vigorously, putting some real muscle into it, knowing that even if I’d end up sore, at least I’d get it done quicker this way and be able to do something less boring. After many dreary hours I finally finished for the day, irritated and weary. Crux came by and inspected my work.

“Alright, get to the mess hall. We’re not keeping it open late for an ungrateful wretch like you, so unless you feel like going hungry, you better hurry up. You’ve got—” and then in an entirely different voice, he said “five minutes.”

I was in the mess hall, eating the usual sludge the Ninth House produces. I was passing through Drearburh proper, closer than I usually like to get to the chapel. I heard your voice saying something, but I ignored it, not wanting to subject myself to one of your inane speeches to the congregation. I was trying to sleep, but the water was so hot it felt like I was burning, and I spent the night writhing and groaning in pain.

I was throwing on my robes to prepare for another day’s work. I was — no, fuck! I was on the ship. I was on the, the — I was pretty sure it was called — fuck, I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember. I was… I was…

I was brushing the oss. I was jogging around the perimeter of the snow leek fields. I was sitting in my cell. I was in the mess hall. I was in the chapel. You were shouting at me, but I couldn’t understand you over the din of a thousand rattling knucklebones. I was brushing the oss. It was harder and harder every time I did it. After years of labor, I had fucked up something in my back, and I needed to go easy if I wanted the pain to be light enough to let me sleep. But I had to get this done. I kept going through the pain. By the time the new Marshal came by to inspect my work, my muscles were screaming and sore. I was only halfway done. She curled her lip into a sneer.

“Useless.”

Shoveling tasteless porridge into my mouth. Jogging around the fields. Picking through the depths of Drearburh with Aiglamene, looking to recover some halfway usable parts. They were all too rusted to use. Picking through them again, but with lower standards, and by myself this time. Aiglamene had been dead for three years. I worked harder — somebody needed to pick up the slack now that she was gone. Maybe they’d make me the new captain of the guard. Brushing the oss — a change of pace, they didn’t ask me to do this as often anymore. It was usually better to let the skeletons do it, since my bad back made me pretty slow.

The water was scalding. I was so tired. My skin was getting tougher and more wrinkled. I came to the congregation willingly, looking for something, anything to believe in, anything to make my life worth something, but you were shouting at me again, so I left. I was brushing the oss, accepting the ache it would put in my bones for the chance to get some work done. Despite my hopes, I had gained no rank, I was still just a serf. I worked harder, harder, my body’s protests going ignored. I’d show them, I’d show them I deserved it.

The Ninth was dying. My home needed me, my church needed me. Every year there were fewer of us. I threw myself into my tasks, but they didn’t give me many anymore. They didn’t think I could do it, but I could, I knew I could. I ignored the pain. I just had to work harder, I just had to do more, and then they’d see, then they’d finally see me.

My hair was grey, then it was thinning, wispy and white, then I shaved it. After all, true Ninth House penitents always have shaved heads. Knucklebones clacked together in the chapel. I couldn’t walk very far on my own these days. I no longer held out hope that they might make me the captain of the guard, that they might make me anything, really. I was too old, too frail. I knew they were waiting for me to die. At least my bones would be worth something, even if I wasn’t.

And then I did die. My body lay collapsed on the floor where I’d been working. The Marshal stood over my corpse and asked, “Who was she, again?”

I was nothing but bones, and my every movement rattled. I was brushing the oss. I was tilling the snow leek fields. I was cleaning the floor of the chapel, sometime past midnight, when nobody would be using it. The door opened. Through it walked somebody who was you and who was not quite you. You were still eighteen, still exactly the same as you’d always been. Beneath the great, arched ceiling of the empty chapel you looked very small, and very alone. You walked up to the altar, your face heavy with despair. You placed your hands on it and rested your weight on them, back bent. You sighed wearily. I dropped my mop back in the bucket, and the sound made you look over at me suddenly.

Your eyes fixed intently on where mine used to go. You did not recognize me; I was just another skeleton, you did not know whose. You looked away after only a moment.

I reached out one skeletal hand, wanting to call out to you, wanting to ask you what I should do, wanting you to give me a purpose once again, but I had no lungs with which to speak. I wanted to cry, but I had no eyes to fill with tears.

You stood up straight. In a sudden fit of violence you grabbed at the skin of your cheek and buried your fingers into it like it was made of paper. You tore off a huge chunk of skin. You ripped and peeled your own flesh, and when there was not enough left on your face to satisfy you, you reached into your robe, pulling from your shoulders and upper chest. Even this was not enough. You pulled off your robe, and then the rest of your clothes, and great sections of your skin sloughed off with them. Blood poured from your body to the ground, forming a puddle around you as you fell to your knees. You shouted again, and this time I did not ignore you.

“Gideon!” I blinked, and you were in front of me, whole again. Your shredded, bleeding double was still there behind you, but now that I could see the real thing its falseness was obvious. Your face was a rictus of fear, and I dimly wondered why. Didn’t we always know this was my fate? Didn’t you always tell me this was all I was worth? You turned to look behind you. “Goddammit Alecto, pull us out now!

“Not yet! Five minutes thirty.”

You turned back to me, wild-eyed and desperate. You reached out and put your hands on either side of my face. That shook something within me. You never touched me — never touched anyone — unless you had to. I was in the chapel, and I was in the ship, and I was in both, and I was in neither, and I distantly knew that this should matter.

“Gideon,” you pleaded, “come back. Don’t sink in to it. Don’t let go.”

“I… let go of what?” I said with lungs I wasn’t sure I had.

“Me. Hold on to me if that’s all you can find. Please. Please.” I placed my hands on your biceps and held onto your arms. Behind you, the desecrated mockery stood, staring at us without any face left, just a single eyeball remaining. It raised its hands, and behind me I heard the din of dozens of constructs forming. My hands clasped tighter. They were grabbing at me, a hundred hands at once, pulling, pulling me away from you. I held on to you as tight as I could, and you kept your hands wrapped around my head, one buried in my hair, the other on the nape of my neck, holding me close.

“Five minutes forty!”

I was nineteen years old. I was eighty years old. I was an infant. I had been dead for a hundred years. I clung to you. The vision of the ship was gone. So was the chapel. We were surrounded by the inky red-black void of gore and corpses and nothingness. Something was pulling at me, but I didn’t think it was the skeletons anymore. Perhaps it was the corpses. Perhaps it was nobody at all.

You… I knew you. I was certain of very little anymore, but I was certain of you.

“Harrow?”

“It’s me, it’s me, Gideon, please, hold on.”

It was so hard to hear anything over the cacophonous din of screaming dead. It was so hard to speak through the pain of the water boiling me from the inside out. My grip loosened, and my hands slid a little further down your arms.

“I don’t… I can’t… I think they want me to go now.”

Something about that marshaled you. Your face lit up with fury, and the sight comforted me. “No! You are not letting go. I have not released you from my service yet, Gideon Nav, and I am ordering you to hold!”

A spark lit inside of me. I looped one hand over your shoulder, clutching your back. The other I brought underneath your arm and wrapped around your waist, pulling our bodies together in an embrace, foreheads pressed together, breath mingling in the inches between our lips, clinging fiercely to you as the pull grew stronger and stronger.

You were sobbing now. Tears ran down your face, blurring your skull paint. I wanted to wipe them away with my thumb, but I would have to let go of you to do that, and you had told me to hold on.

“It’s me. Stay. I need you to stay.”

The pull turned into a tear, the force so powerful that the skin of my back ripped away from my body. The water should have turned to steam long ago, but still it became hotter, boiling inside my sinuses and my throat and my lungs. I have endured agonies far worse than any person should have to experience, but this was greater than any of them. I was sobbing with pain and fear, insensate.

“Five minutes fifty!”

“Harrow, please,” I begged through desperate tears, although I could not say what I was begging for. Regardless, you understood.

“I’m here, I’ve got you, just please, please, hold on!”

“I can’t—“

“You can! You will! You are going to hold, and I am never letting go of you again!”

You kissed me. Your eyes closed, and mine widened. My heart stopped. The void around me erupted with golden light. It glowed with a warmth that soothed my soul, despite the boiling heat of the water, and it cast gentle shadows across your face as your lips — unmoving, pursed into a fine, desperate line — pressed hard against my own.

My grip failed. The awful might of that pull yanked me away from you, and I knew that I was lost.

Time moved in slow motion. I saw the source of the golden light; a brilliant thread, intricately decorated, emerging from my breast. It extended all the way behind you, and it fluttered as it was pulled along with me. The end of it whipped past you, untethered. You reached out, and just before it could fly out of reach, you grabbed it.

I stopped moving with a violent jerk. My head snapped back hard enough to give me whiplash, and my limbs were pulled backward along with it. You clung desperately to the filigree chain that connected us. The force was so great, you could barely resist it. The light was slipping inevitably out of your grip. But you held on, just for a moment, just for a few short, precious seconds.

“Six minutes!”

I blacked out as the thrusters roared to life, the ghost of your lips engraved upon mine.

Chapter 6: The Return

Chapter Text

I woke up gasping. A panicky fight or flight response surged through my body, and I tried to push myself away from the looming feeling of danger. I fell off the edge of something and tumbled to the floor. Trying to stand up was a bust — I immediately stumbled forward and fell to my hands and knees. The world around me wasn’t even registering.

I was dying. I had died. I was drowning. I was burning. I hyperventilated and tried to scramble back to my feet. Still no dice. Lurching nausea pervaded my gut.

Griddle!” your alarmed voice came, “Griddle, calm down, let me take control.”

I tried to, I really did, but the blind instinct was too strong. Trying to relieve the burning in my gut, I curled up into a ball, kneeling with my weight on the back of my legs, doubled over, clutching my stomach. A high pitched groaning was escaping me, and I had no idea how long I had been making that noise.

You tried to wrest control from me, and I could feel it, could feel the pulling, but instinctively resisted. My head pulled out from where it was curled into my body and whipped back and forth, trying to take stock of what was around me as I came back into awareness of reality. The vague existential panic turned into a more immediate, paranoid one, my body trying to figure out where the danger was, why it felt like this.

A huge window was in front of me, and a landscape of pale brown rock whipped past in an indistinct blur. Okay, I was in a room, a room, where was I? Window, bed, desk, drawers, end table, two doors. Your room on the Hermes. Even as my grip on reality returned, the nausea worsened.

The door. The bathroom. I pulled myself to my feet — successfully this time — and stumbled toward the door. Luckily I didn’t fall, but it was a near thing, and I collapsed forward against the wall, pressing my palms against it on either side of my head. A drunkenly grasping hand slapped against the wall until it found the button for the door. The wall in front of me slid open — oh, okay, that was the door. I half-walked, half-fell to the side of the toilet, collapsing to my knees and almost smacking my face against the side of the bowl.

I retched violently, but nothing came out.

Deep breaths.” I did my best to listen to you, but I kept getting interrupted by more retching. Eventually I relaxed enough that my deathgrip over my body eased, and you were able to pry control away from me. A couple trillion pascals of tension flooded out of my body as you relaxed away the painful tightness that twisted through my whole being. “We’re alright, Griddle, we’re alive. You’re alive.”

The sound of another door sliding open came from the direction of your room. Footsteps, which started out calm but quickened as they grew closer.

“Are you alright, Ninth?” came Warden’s dry voice from behind us. You turned yourself around, going from kneeling over the toilet to sitting, leaning back against the side of the bathtub with your legs sprawled out in front of you.

“The picture of health,” you croaked, throat hoarse from all my dry heaving.

“How are you feeling?” Warden procured a small pack of medical supplies and examination tools from somewhere within their robes and bent over to poke and prod at me.

“Much better once you stop doing that,” I groaned, and swatted their hand away. They harrumphed at me, but acquiesced at least partially and stopped trying to hold my eye open. I guessed that was the best I could hope for, as they ignored my halfhearted attempts to flinch away from the tube-shaped instrument they pressed against the side of my head.

“Are we on the Ninth?” you asked. Warden put away their implements, apparently satisfied, and stood.

“Yes. We’re making a low to the ground approach, to avoid detection. There’s a strong chance the Necrolord Prime has put out a wanted persons alert for us, we need to remain discreet. I contacted the Princess and let her know the situation. We’ve arranged a rendezvous point not far outside the Ninth proper, we’ll be arriving shortly.”

“Which one?” I asked, which was a very stupid question, given the circumstances of our escape, but I figure extreme trauma was a pretty good excuse.

“Coronabeth.”

“Ahh,” I nodded, “the good twin.”

Warden ignored my quip, but you couldn’t help yourself, “Really Griddle?”

Control slipped smoothly back and forth between us. Either it was getting easier, or we were just getting the hang of it, because it wasn’t a struggle like it was before. It flowed from me to you naturally, almost effortlessly.

Am I wrong?” You did not offer any protest to that, so I assumed that you agreed with my obviously correct analysis of the Tridentarii. Warden offered a hand, but I shook my head. “Just give me a minute.”

“I’ll let you know when we’re about to land.” Warden left the room, hitting the button to close the bathroom door behind them and give us some privacy.

I tipped my head back and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath to center myself. Disorientation still persisted in my mind, stubborn and nauseating. I was unstuck in time and space, slowly floating back to where I was supposed to be, but not quite there yet. Part of my mind was still in the River, the memories of my nightmare fading away like, well, a dream. There was one part however, that was not fading. It was not sand slipping through my fingers, it was a brand on my brain, burning hotter every second. My body shuddered with the recollection of the pain, but it was overshadowed by the memory of your lips on mine.

You had kissed me. You had kissed me. Even just thinking those words was surreal — my brain resisted the thought, like trying to recite words in a language you don’t understand.

Alright, Harrow, talk. What the hell was that?” I couldn’t even bring myself to say the words out loud. I struggled to my feet, almost tumbling right back over in the process, but managing to stay upright.

I’m not sure. Some kind of energy tied us together, but I don’t understand what it was. It appeared similar to the way you perceive thanergy, but that doesn’t make any sense; the River is full of thanergy, we were surrounded by it, why would that be distinct from the rest?”

Your ability to miss the point was a goddamn marvel.

That’s not what I was talking about, dumbass. I’m talking about what you did.”

Your response was so measured, I could almost picture you rehearsing it. “I said what I needed to say to ensure that you remained grounded.”

I paced back and forth in the cramped bathroom. “Sure. You have a lot of fucking nerve, by the way, talking about how I’m still in your service, talking about duty. But that’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

Listen, Griddle,” you deflected, “it’s important for us to stay focused. We’re going to be landing soon, and—“

“You kissed me!” I snapped. I stopped my pacing short and held very still. I wasn’t going to let you do that, I wasn’t going to let you pretend that it didn’t happen. I was absolutely done with you being all mysterious and aloof around me. I stood frozen, waiting for you to respond, and I did not plan to move again until you did.

It took you a long time, and when you finally spoke, it was stilted and awkward. “I… I have overstepped.”

I sighed, releasing the tension that bound me in place. My fingers ran through my hair. I placed my hands on the countertop on either side of the sink and leaned my weight on them. Part of me wanted to say yes, you had overstepped, to really lay into you and make you feel guilty, but I knew that was a shitty, juvenile urge.

“That’s not — you didn’t—“ I huffed, the right words eluding me. I wasn’t even sure what I was attempting to get out of this confrontation. An apology? Definitely not. “I’m not pissed at you for that.”

But you are angry with me.

Was I? I was pretty sure that I was. There was a question implicit in your words, and I did not know how to answer it. I didn’t say anything. I stepped away from control of my body. I couldn’t lose control unless you took it from me, but I retreated as far as I could, trying to make it clear that it was open if you wanted it. I wasn’t sure that you would.

You looked up slowly, still leaning your weight on your hands. When you saw your face in the mirror, you froze. Your lips parted. My face looked back with your dark eyes. It was equally as strange as when I saw your face with my eyes on the Mithraeum. Because it wasn’t just the eyes. It was my body, but with your tight, serious expression, your intense focus, all these little details that made it so visibly not me. Something about the sight of me captivated you. You stood up straight, and raised one hand to touch your face. You ran your fingers along the lines of it, exploring reverently, before bringing your palm to rest against your — my — cheek.

“I thought I would never see this face again.” Something twisted deep in my chest, and I bowed my head, squeezing my eyes shut, trying so desperately not to cry. I didn’t move my hand from my face. “You’re right, Griddle. It was selfish of me to do what I did, just so that I might get to see you again. But that’s the price you paid. You gave me my life, and now I get to decide what to do with it. You’re not always going to like what I choose.”

“And what did you choose?” I whispered.

I chose to say no.” I squeezed my eyes closed tighter. I felt them filling with tears. Perhaps it was an instinct, to hide those tears from you. It was what I had done my whole life. “Don’t hide from me, Gideon. I want to see you.”

I opened my eyes. The moment I did, the tears I had been restraining slid down my cheeks. All the things I wanted to say remained choked in my throat. I knew that if I tried to speak they would come out all wrong. Instead, I maintained unblinking eye contact with my reflection as I turned my face into the hand you had placed there and pressed my trembling lips to the center of my palm. I let go of the reins, and those eyes transformed from gold to coal. Your cheeks flushed with heat. You dragged your fingers down your face until they came to rest with your index and middle fingers on your cheek, your ring finger on your mouth, and your thumb on the underside of your jaw. You took a shaky breath, turned your hand around, and slowly, deliberately, kissed the back of it.

I could’ve gasped, had I been in control of my lungs. It felt like I gasped. There was a place inside me, an empty space for the hope I had buried beneath the pool at Canaan House, with closed eye and stilled brain. It yearned to be full once again. Ached for it. I held down the hope that sought to emerge from the water and fill that space, drowned it beneath the cold salt, for I could not bear to let it free again. But it struggled, it struggled.

Your lips tattooed themselves against my skin, and I felt it all the way through my body. Was that how it felt for you? Did you want like I wanted?

“Harrow,” I choked. I backed up slowly until I hit the door behind me, and I leaned my weight against it. My reflection met me step for step, and I kept staring at it from the other side of the room. “Harrow I… I want…“

What do you want, Gideon?”

I closed my eyes and tilted my head back until it knocked against the door. “You already know what.”

Do I?”

“I know you remember what happened after I woke up in your body. I know you remember what I said to Ianthe.” You paused, and I squeezed my eyes shut tighter. I couldn’t wait to hear what you were going to say. I couldn’t bear to hear what you were going to say.

You said, “I didn’t want to presume.” I laughed, the tension leaving me as my amusement replaced it. Your ability to make literally anything sound awkward as shit was truly remarkable. I settled, still giggling a little. My laughter did not dissuade you. “Would you show me?”

“What do you mean?” I asked you for an answer that I already knew.

I think I know what you want, Gideon, but would you show me anyway? Would you do that for me?”

That wasn’t fair, Harrow. There was nothing I would not do, no way I could deny you when you asked me that way. But I’ll admit, I was scared. I burned with wanting, overflowed with it, and all I could think is that it would be too much. That I would be too needy or too sexual or too raw, and you wouldn’t want it. Wouldn’t want me. There has always been so much of me, and you have never been a lover of excess.

But you asked. So I showed you.

I pressed the side of my hand back to my lips and kissed it. Trailed my fingers lazily down my neck, then further, until my palm rested flat over my heart. Let it rest there for a moment, feeling it beat, fast, but steady. I dragged it down over my breast — my breath hitched — then along my side, down to my waist and my hips. Its path continued, up and over to my stomach, where I slipped it into my robes and under my shirt, resting it against the flat plane of my skin, tracing the lines of my abs. My other hand I brought upward, but I hesitated just below my breast. I knew where this was going. You could feel everything my body felt, and if this kept going much longer, you would feel me getting wet. I couldn’t bring myself to cross that line.

Show me.” Even when it wasn’t spoken aloud your voice sounded breathy. It was full of a demanding resolve that made me shiver. I cupped my breast through my shirt, my touch tentative and self-conscious. I played with it like I would when I was on my own, and dug my nails lightly into my stomach. I kept my eyes closed; I don’t think I could have handled seeing myself in the mirror. It wasn’t much stimulation through two layers of cloth, so I slid my hand under my shirt and pushed my bandeau out of the way. The hand against my stomach flexed instinctively. I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to move it lower. I already felt like I was going to burst into flame with embarrassment — not being able to see your reaction was torturous. My mind summoned an image of you staring at me, unimpressed, and I couldn’t shake the feeling.

“Harrow I can’t, I—“ Your eyes flicked open, and you stared intently at your reflection in the mirror, head tilted back, lips parted with labored breaths. The light touch on my breast turned into a rough squeeze and my other hand moved to press against my waistband.

“I’ve got the gist of it,” you rumbled, and slipped your fingers into your pants.

Harrow!” I gasped. The moment you took over the feeling completely changed, and I felt pleasure course through me. You did not touch yourself — touch me — self-consciously. Your fingers dipped lower and parted your labia, tracing along the inside, from your clit down to your entrance. Your touches were clumsy, and I could tell the size of my fingers was throwing you off, but you were rough and confident and I was so incredibly glad I wasn’t in control because I knew that my noises would have been loud and embarrassing. Your chest heaved up and down, and it was so alien to watch my body in the mirror, moving in a way that I did not move, staring in a way that I did not stare. You pushed your fingers inside, and for a moment my mind screamed at me — no, this was wrong, they were wrong, they were too thick, too calloused, they weren’t yours — but it still sent ripples of pleasure through my body, and that gaze, that gaze was yours.

“Do you have any idea?” you panted quietly, “Any idea how perfect you are?” Your fingers moved faster, hand switching to your other breast and pinching your nipple hard enough to hurt. I wanted to say something back, wanted to answer you, but I couldn’t. It was too much, I couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. “I could write a textbook on the shape of your anatomy,” you continued, “teach a class on the muscles in your back, your arms, your stomach.

You cut yourself off with a gasp as you ground your palm against your clit. You leaned heavily against the door for support, hips rocking back and forth into your hand. You were getting close, I could feel the telltale signs, and I almost wanted to warn you, but interrupting even a single moment of this was unthinkable. It was quick and rough and dirty, fucking yourself against the door with your hand up your shirt, and it was exactly what I wanted. I don’t think either of us have ever wanted something gentle. It’s not in our nature.

“I think you do know. I think you know exactly what you look like. You’re shameless,” you growled, and fuck, hearing you call me that did something to me I cannot describe. You said it like it was the most beautiful compliment the universe had ever created. “This is what you want, isn’t it? For somebody to look at you? To want you? To fuck you? Utterly shameless. But I will give you what you want.” I made a desperate, pleading little noise, somewhere deep in my mind. I had never seen you like this in any situation other than anger and pain, but it felt completely natural. You were always an inferno, but fire brings more than just pain and destruction — it brings life, warmth, and it was only right that you would burn me from within. I relinquished myself, and let the blaze overtake me.

You kept perfect, unbearable eye contact as you cried out and came. The rhythm of your hips stuttered, and I shuddered helplessly as your pleasure coursed through me. Your movements slowly juddered to a halt as the aftershocks passed, and your legs wobbled as you relied on the door behind you to keep you upright.

I took control. I wanted to feel it properly, to control all the little muscle movements that kept me balanced as my legs shook, to be the one heaving air into my lungs as I recovered. It was beautiful, the unsteadiness, the ache. For the first time in a very long while, I felt properly grounded in my own body. But it was more than that. For a brief moment, it was as if the separation between us was thinner, as if I could reach across and hold your hand. Truly, properly together. I clung to that feeling, clung to you, not wanting to let the moment pass.

My breath was heavy and satisfied, my eyes lidded and drunk. There were no words to say, only a divine closeness, a connection that I reveled in. For the first time since I died, I wondered if things might actually work out. If we could actually do this. If I could be yours, and you mine.

After a long silence, my labored breaths the only noise that filled the room, I said, “Harrow, I—“

The door slid open behind me and I yelped as the support I was resting upon disappeared and I fell flat on my back. I groaned — the metal floor was not forgiving. Warden stood above me, looking down at me dispassionately.

“We’re about to land,” they deadpanned. They turned to leave, but before they walked away, they looked back at me and said in a voice that sounded genuinely sincere, “Congratulations, by the way. Maybe pick somewhere a little more soundproof next time.” The door to your room slid shut behind them.

For a long, pregnant moment, neither of us spoke.

I burst out laughing.

Griddle!” you protested, mortified. I only laughed harder, all that built-up emotion releasing in an exuberant cackle. “Griddle, this is not funny!”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I wheezed, “This is hysterical. This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Well I’m glad somebody finds this amusing, you grumbled. And I did Harrow, I really did. I kept giggling as I pushed myself to my feet and wiped the tears from my eyes.

“Alright, let’s go,” I said, still breathless from laughing.

Actually, before we do… would you do something for me Griddle?”

“That’s a stupid question.”

Oh, yes, of course,” you said, suddenly awkward, “my apologies, I—“

“That meant yes, Harrow.”

Oh…“ you took a moment to muster yourself and remember what you wanted to say, “I know this is your body, not mine, but… would you be willing to wear face paint? It would be a great comfort to me.”

I smiled, “Of course, my mistress of carnal delights, but I do have one condition: I want you to be the one to put it on.”

You took control, my broad smile turning into your small, almost shy one. “Gladly.”

 


 

 

When the ramp descended, we exited the Hermes, decked — if you’ll excuse the term — to the fucking nines. My skull paint had never looked so crisp and clean before, probably because I never gave enough of a shit to learn how to do it as well as you. We grabbed the biggest, most uncomfortably baggy robe you owned, which meant that on my body it looked perfectly fitted. My two hander was sheathed by my side. I desperately wished we still had my sunglasses, to complete the picture.

The landscape outside the pit of the Ninth House proper was a desolate wasteland of rock and frigid wind. Gravelly stone crunched underfoot as you stepped off the walkway and returned to the Ninth for the first time in almost a year. You closed your eyes and took a long, slow breath. I couldn’t say I was quite as relieved to be home. The frostbitten kiss of that sharp air stung your cheeks, and if nothing else, the familiarity of it was comforting.

Not far away was a familiar shuttle — the same one that you had seen when you first ran into Camilla, Coronabeth, and Judith back during your tenure on the Mithraeum. It somehow managed to look even more beat up and crappy than it did before. And walking towards us, out of that familiar shuttle, was a familiar face.

“Well, if you aren’t a sight for sore eyes,” said the Crown Princess of Ida. She looked different. She shrugged on a heavy overcoat, but before she did, I saw that she had built up some serious muscle in her arms — she still had nothing on me, of course, but it was a respectable amount. Her long, curly hair had been cropped short in a plain, practical cut, pulled back in a ponytail with a single errant, looping curl escaping and hanging in front of her face. But more than any physical change, she carried herself differently in a way that was subtle but immediately apparent. She had always come across as confident, but that confidence no longer felt arrogant or posturing; it was quieter, more self-assured. Everything about her was a little more weathered than the last time I had seen her, although no less effervescent. I was about to respond when it became clear that she wasn’t speaking to us.

“It’s good to see you princess,” Warden said, and the two of them embraced. They held each other warmly, familiarly, and when they broke apart they shared a look that was more fond than I thought Warden was capable of being.

“Maybe one day you’ll stop getting yourself in trouble, Camilla,” she smirked. Warden’s smile dropped, and Coronabeth noticed immediately, shifting to a look of concern. “Are you alright?”

They shook their head. “I’m… it’s a bit complicated to explain. I’ll tell you later.” Coronabeth lingered on their face, searching for discontent, but when she found nothing, she turned to look at us, and that beaming smile returned.

“Ninth! It’s good to see you up and about. Carting your body around for months on end was a little depressing, I must say.” Before I could muster a response she pulled me into a bone-crushingly tight hug.

“Yeah, well, it was a little depressing being dead.” I wheezed. She released me and I sucked in a grateful breath of air as she moved her hands to rest firmly on my biceps and stepped back until she was an arm’s length away, looking intently at my face.

“And Reverend Daughter, what news of my sister? How is Ianthe?” her voice grew more serious. The moment you took control, you couldn’t help but go very stiff, subtly trying to shift away from the grip on your arms.

“She is… well.” you said, each word coming out hesitantly, with no flow to them. I was glad that you were the one talking, because I had a few choice words to say about Ianthe, and I doubted that Coronabeth would be pleased to hear them. She sighed and let go of you, whereupon you immediately took a step back, fleeing from the possibility that somebody might deign to touch you again.

“I’ve missed her terribly,” Coronabeth said quietly.

“Your separation has not been for nothing. Your sister has slain a Beast that even the Emperor’s strongest hands, blessed with a myriad’s worth of experience, could not. She destroyed a foe that was the end of entire planets, alone, when we thought ourselves routed.”

I could not quite parse the look in Coronabeth’s eye. Pride, certainly, but there was something tremendously sad underneath that pride that I didn’t know what to make of. But then again, I never did understand the profoundly odd relationship the Tridentarius twins had.

“A touching reunion, to be sure, but we don’t have time to waste, children.” Alecto stepped off of the walkway behind us. Coronabeth turned to face her, and her expression steeled.

“So. That’s her, then?”

“I am me, indeed. Although less so right now than I’m accustomed to.”

“Princess,” Warden cut in, “any updates about Blood of Eden? Anything we should be concerned about?”

Coronabeth nodded, and pulled a small tablet out of one of her coat pockets. “I’ve been monitoring their chatter through the backdoor I set up in their system,” she explained to me, which I appreciated, since I had no idea what had been going on, “They’ve been relatively quiet ever since their big attack after we left Canaan House — they took a pretty big hit in the skirmish — but I think they’re gearing up for something big. Their fleet has built back up, and there’s been a lot of talk, but I haven’t been able to figure out what the plan is.” She turned to Warden with an apologetic expression, “They found my backdoor and cut it off, so I can’t listen in anymore, unfortunately. Commander Light decided to leave us a little message before he closed off my access.”

She tapped away at the tablet until an audio file began to play.

“Miss Tridentarius. Miss Hect.” The voice that came out of those speakers was not at all what I expected. It was quieter, for one thing, and far warmer. It was the smooth, self-satisfied tone of a man who had you strapped down to a table, calmly sipping exorbitantly expensive whiskey as he explained, in intimate, loving detail, exactly how he planned to vivisect you. “I must commend you for your little workaround, it was quite clever. However, I do wish you hadn’t taken the exact information you had; I rather enjoyed your company, but I believe you know that I can’t let you walk away with that knowledge.” Here he paused, and the strangely enrapturing cadence of his voice made me lean in, expecting more. “I’ll be seeing you soon.”

The audio cut off. We stood there, listening only to the wind.

“Well he seems like a bit of a dick,” I opined.

“Well, he isn’t, that is to say—“ Coronabeth began, struggling for diplomacy in her words.

“Yes, he is.” Warden cut her off.

“Does that change our plans?” You asked.

Warden shook their head, “Not yet. But we will need to be careful once we go off-planet. Coronabeth, what’s the size of their fleet at this point?”

“About as big as a Cohort legion.”

“Holy shit,” I said.

And that means…” you asked.

It means they have a shitload of firepower. The entirety of the Cohort is only twelve legions.” I was going to leave it there, but something occurred to me. I turned to face Alecto. “Wait a second, you were there before the resurrection, right?”

“I was.”

“Then is that guy right? Did the Emperor really kill everybody, just so that he could gain power?” I needed to know. It still didn’t make sense to me, that the Emperor would do that. It felt too out of character. And here in front of me I had the only other person in the entire universe who could remember the world before the resurrection.

“Lies,” she snarled, the sound chillingly vicious and feral, “of course those filthy traitors would spin it that way. John and I were left with no choice.”

“So he did kill them?” you asked. You sounded like you were about to throw up.

“We were facing the fire. We did what we had to do. And they could have prevented it! They could have saved them! But they turned their back on their homeworld the moment it needed them most. They think themselves pure because they did not strike the final blow, but they killed humanity just the same.”

Warden cautiously said, “If you’re not on their side, and you’re not on the Emperor’s… what do you want?”

“John owes me.”

I was pretty sure I was making an idiotic, confused expression, but my mind was trying to reach conclusions that seemed odd to me. “Hold on. So you want to kill my deadbeat dad, and you don’t want to work with the asshole brigade. Alecto, are we… are we on the same side?”

She looked at me, her expression impenetrably neutral. “It’s possible.”

I said, “Fucking hell, Alecto, this could have been so much easier if you had just told us what you wanted instead of being a dick about it.”

At exactly the same time, your voice overlapping with mine, you said, “Quit prevaricating and give us a straight answer.”

I slapped my hand over my mouth, eyes wide. We had both spoken out loud at the same time. That shouldn’t have been possible. How the fuck was that possible? We only had one mouth with which to form the words, yet we formed two different sounds simultaneously, like a throat singer. Coronabeth looked utterly baffled. Warden and Alecto both looked grave.

“What the hell was that?” I said, in an extremely deep and serious voice that definitely did not come out as a squeak. Definitely not.

“We need to hurry,” Warden said, “the barrier is breaking down.”

“How long do we have?” I asked.

“Hours, at best,” Alecto supplied. “Now, Gideon, Harry, Cori, let’s quit dawdling, shall we?”

“Cori?” I mouthed to Coronabeth. She looked deeply uncomfortable.

“Yes, let’s get moving. We don’t have time to waste,” you said, and we set off towards the Ninth.

 


 

 

The Ninth House came into view in all its dubious glory as we reached the ledge. It was an inverse stalactite, like somebody had driven a great spike straight through the rock, then pulled it out and left a jagged hole behind. The uppermost section was divided into layers of terraces, most of them farms, making use of what little sunlight the Ninth gets. They descended unevenly inward like a jumbled spiral staircase built for a giant.

Built into the rock at the bottom of the terraces was a rusted metal door — the Ninth’s hangar bay. It held precisely one ship, which was never used, and had been the focus of many of my earlier escape attempts before I realized that it was a trap, too carefully watched to ever be feasible. Further down, the great edifice of Drearburh was hewn into the rock, carved to loom imposingly and look very serious by a group of extremely goth nuns who were way too committed to their aesthetic to build anything that a normal person would want to use. Its foundations descended deep into the crust, disappearing into blackness, where the Ninth narrowed enough to become essentially a glorified mineshaft, tapering inward exponentially toward the event horizon of the Tomb.

I surveyed the scene as the others caught up. Warden joined us first, tapping away at a tablet that looked like one of the ones from the helm of the Hermes. Upon seeing my questioning look they lifted it a bit and said, “It’s entangled with the ship. If Pyrrha tries to contact the Hermes it will relay her message to us, even once we’re underground.”

The others followed not far behind, and once they were with us Warden said, “What’s the plan, Reverend Daughter? This is your territory.”

You looked upon your domain, face set into a comically serious far-off gaze, your hair blowing in the wind. “Stealth. No matter how loyal the Ninth might be to me, their fear of the Tomb is greater.” Everybody else murmured their agreement, but you continued inwardly, “Griddle, this is your show.”

It is?”

You’re the one who tried to escape it eighty-seven times. You know how to go unnoticed far better than I do.”

I turned back to the others. “Follow me.”

I clambered down the rim until I was hanging off the edge with my hands, then let go, falling onto the nearest terrace below and immediately dropping into a roll to break my fall. After I recovered and dusted myself off, I waited directly below the rim, arms outstretched, and motioned for Alecto to jump. The others I trusted to make it themselves, but I did not trust your body to make the drop without breaking your twiggy legs. When Alecto let go, I caught her out of the air, the laughable weight of your body not hitting me hard enough to be much of a bother. Coronabeth followed close behind. Warden pulled up the rear, and lowered themself to hang from the edge.

The crumbling rock broke off beneath their hands and my heart seized as they fell and hit the ground hard. A loud snap echoed through the air as their leg broke.

“Fuck!” I exclaimed, and ran over to their side. They grimaced, face tightly drawn with pain. Their leg bled where the broken-off end of their tibia poked out of their skin.

“I’m fine,” they gritted out, “give it a moment.”

I expected their bone to pop right back into place and heal up in seconds, like any other Lyctor. But it didn’t happen like that. Slowly, torturously, their bone retreated into their skin with a sickening, squishy noise. The wound closed behind it, flesh knitting back together, but it didn’t look smooth and unblemished anymore. There was a noticeable scar where the bone had broken through the skin, and it did not heal or fade, even as they stood up and tugged their leg of their pant back down.

“You didn’t heal all the way,” you said neutrally.

“Not a normal Lyctor, remember? My healing isn’t as fast or as complete as yours.”

“What the hell just happened?” Coronabeth squeaked. Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates.

“I’ll explain later,” Warden said, “we need to keep moving.”

I could hear the sound of bones clacking together and soil being turned below us as they went about their work. It was still fairly early in the morning, or at least what passed for morning in the irritatingly long day/night cycle of the Ninth, and I hoped that enough people would be asleep that we wouldn’t have too hard a time. My mind raced, running through the possibilities for routes we could take. I escaped along a similar path when I was much younger, and I didn’t yet understand that there was nowhere in the wasteland for me to escape to.

We crept down the stairs to the next set of terraces below, also empty of workers. The level below us had doors set into the cliff face behind them, leading back into the twisting stairways of the Ninth’s interior. That field was occupied, however, by three different skeletons.

“Warden,” I whispered, “can you get us past them without anyone knowing they’ve been tampered with?”

They considered this for a second, lips pursed, brow furrowed. They sucked on their teeth and said, “I can try, but I’m not a bone adept. I don’t know if I can achieve that level of subtlety.”

I think I can do it.”

I thought you couldn’t do necromancy in my body?”

Just… could you shift our vision so I can see the thanergy?”

I let my vision lose focus. It was still an unintuitive process, shifting my perception that way. My mind resisted it. But after a moment of making some truly strange facial expressions that earned me weird looks from Warden and Coronabeth, we once again saw the world in a wash of bright blue. I winced and blinked my eyes at the brightness — it was so much more vibrant here than on the ship or the ash planet. The world was painted with bright, glowing color, concentrated heavily in certain spots, like the skeletons. Cores of light pulsed within their ribcages like the hearts they didn’t have.

You extended a hand. The light flickered, our perception almost snapping back to normal, but you held it. I felt a tug deep in my body, a sensation not unlike dipping my hand into cool water, and the thanergy that infused them flowed and changed. I realized that this was what necromancy felt like. It was a twist of power, of control, a rush of command over the world around me. It was breathtaking.

The thanergy concentrated in the top of each skeleton’s spine began to writhe, and the vertebrae in their neck grew, expanded, until they were fused together, leaving the skeletons completely unable to turn their heads. This didn’t seem to bother them, and they adjusted to the change completely unfazed. Instead of turning their neck back and forth to place picked vegetables in the wheelbarrow behind them, they pulled the wheelbarrows around, so that they were on the opposite side of the line they were picking, and they could simply toss their harvest forward, not needing to adjust the direction they were facing at all. And as it so happened, the direction they were facing was away from where we needed to be.

Is that what it always feels like for you?” I asked, feeling more than a little breathless.

You smirked, “Well don’t sound too impressed Griddle, you might inflate my ego.”

We hurried down the stairs, as silent as possible, and crept through the doorway, out of the open air and into the dark, claustrophobic corridors I had grown up in. It was rare for anybody to come up here — the skeletons were perfectly capable of handling things on their own — so we descended the endless, winding steps unafraid.

BLA-BLANG! BLA-BLANG! BLA-BLANG!

The harsh cry of the first bell cut through the corridors, muffled by distance. I motioned to the others to follow and ducked back into a cobwebbed side passage that I knew nobody would check.

“Alright,” I whispered, “we need to wait for everybody to get out of bed and head to the mess hall. We should have a window while they’re all distracted.”

We waited patiently. I wasn’t generally a patient person, but when it came to this? When it came to this I was a regular zen master. I had spent so much time hiding away, from you, or from Crux — from anybody, really. During one of my escape attempts I spent fourteen hours squeezed into a ventilation shaft as I waited for my opening. This was nothing.

Behind me, I heard Warden and Coronabeth speaking in hushed tones, as Warden explained their new identity. She nodded along. When Warden concluded, she thought for a moment, then asked,

“So you’re like my sister then. Immortal.”

“Not exactly. I’m not a normal Lyctor; I won’t live forever, but my lifespan will still vastly exceed a normal human’s. About five thousand years, give or take. I did the math.”

“Of course you did.” The look on Coronabeth’s face was impossibly affectionate. I had a question of my own.

“You decided on a name yet?”

“I think I have, actually. I like what you’ve been calling me. It feels… appropriate. Warden. My name is Warden.”

Everybody murmured their understanding.

I was intimately familiar with how long it took to sweep my cell, get dressed, and head to the mess hall, so I knew exactly when it was safe to slip out of our hiding spot and continue down the stairs, without any need for a clock. Our path led us down precariously steep staircases and winding hallways, until all of a sudden I found myself directly in front of the door of my cell. I stopped short. It hadn’t even occurred to me that we’d pass by it.

Griddle—“

“Just… just give me a minute.” I said, and everyone patiently obeyed.

Griddle, I don’t know if this is a good idea.”

I swung the door open, and inhaled sharply when I saw what lay inside. The bed was made. There were freshly cleaned clothes on the hooks. There were books that weren’t mine on a nightstand that hadn’t been there before. A pair of glasses rested atop them.

Somebody else lived here now.

I passed my gaze over all the little accoutrements of a life that wasn’t mine. The bed was new — it still didn’t look comfortable, but it was bigger than my tiny cot. It was made sloppily, the blanket hanging over the edge, almost touching the ground, rather than being tucked under the mattress. Judging by the covers, their books looked like pulpy historical romances. Their robes were all slightly different lengths, and they had neatly arranged them in order of shortest to longest. On the wall beside the cot was a little drawing scraped into the surface of the stone — a line, with a pair of hands and the top of somebody’s head above it, as if peering over a wall, their long nose extending down on the other side. I catalogued every little decoration, every trinket and treasure — there weren’t many — and tried to form a picture of their owner in my mind. I couldn’t.

The Emperor fulfilled his promise. The Ninth has been renewed.”

I walked through the doorway with tentative, careful steps. It was still gloomy and depressing, but it looked far homier than it ever had when I lived there. I had no possessions, nothing to decorate the room with, only my clothes, my sword, and a few skin mags I hid in the vent so Crux wouldn’t find them. I stood on my tip-toes and peered over. The mags were still there. The others shuffled in behind me, but I didn’t pay them much mind.

I don’t know why I felt such attachment to that room. My memories from when I lived in it were pretty uniformly bad. Being locked in, the heat turned off until I sobbed and begged from the cold. Curling up on my cot after being beaten by Crux. Lying there, reading my magazines, crying, because the glorious life they promised was so unreachably far away. But the attachment to it was there nonetheless. It was the only space in my entire childhood that had been mine — even if it was frequently invaded, it still belonged to me.

But now it didn’t. I thought of the girl who had lived here, curled up miserably in her cot, dreaming of escape. She felt just as distant from me as the stranger who took her place.

A strange giddiness filled me. I would never have to stay another night in that shithole of a room. It was no longer mine. I didn’t have a cell on the Ninth anymore. I was free of it.

I looked around the room one more time and said, “Alright, fuck this place. Let’s go.” I grabbed two pairs of robes off the hooks, tossed the longest one to Coronabeth, and the other to Warden. “They may not fit well, but make it work.”

Alecto and I both had fresh robes from your room on the Hermes, so we were set, but those two would need a little assistance. The robes were comically baggy on Warden, and laughably short on Coronabeth, but it would have to do.

We all put up our hoods and made our way to the outside of the mess hall, where a thin crowd of people was streaming out after breakfast. Some of them went off to work their duties around the House, but a good number made their way along the bridge towards the imposing gates of Drearburh. I let you take over — you were better than I was at pretending to be all reverent and holy and shit. You realized what I was going for and slipped into their number unnoticed.

I had never seen the Ninth look so alive. The number of people the Emperor had resurrected for you wasn’t that high, so it wasn’t as if it was suddenly a bustling metropolis or anything, but… the new arrivals weren’t old. All of them were young, and they carried with them the vibrancy of youth, talking and joking and filling the air with chatter, where once it had been a solemn, reverential silence.

There were tears sliding down my face, I realized with a jolt of surprise, but they weren’t mine. You surveyed the crowd as surreptitiously as you could, taking in the sight of a house transformed. I gave you your moment, staying quietly in the back of my body while you absorbed everything, crying silently. Your hands were buried within the fabric of your robes, but you instinctively moved your fingers as if you were thumbing a set of knucklebones.

Looks like you saved the world, my moonlight marquess.” I said. You didn’t respond, but I didn’t begrudge you that. With every step across that bridge you drank in the fruit of your labor. I could hear little snippets of conversation from the people around us — inane things, everyday trivial nonsense. It was beautiful in its triviality.

You sighed at the sight of it. There was relief in that sigh, but a certain wistfulness, too. A distance, or a loneliness, that I was pretty sure I understood. This was the Ninth, that was certain, but it was not the place we grew up. It barely resembled the grim, dying world of our youth. This was not your congregation — you had never even met these people. You were not their leader.

Our path led us through the gates of Drearburh, and I felt your breathing pick up as we moved with the congregation. I could tell that it was too much for you, so I took over. It was trivially easy to break away from the congregation, but to my surprise, the tears did not stop once I took over. I was the one moving around, but you were still crying. That couldn’t be a good sign.

You were still too out of it to guide us, and I thought you deserved your moment, so I did my best to lead us where we needed to go, although I did not remember the path nearly as well as you would have. I walked into a small room with a number of tables and shelves bearing all sorts of necromantic reagents and religious miscellanea that I never bothered to learn the purpose of. I expected there to be a door past one of the shelves towards the far end of the room, but when I got there, it was just another wall, with a table pushed up against it.

“Wrong room, my bad,” I whispered. We all turned around to leave, but before we could, the doors swung open, and two people walked through.

I froze. There was no time to react, to hide. We were standing right in the open.

The blind great-aunts, Aisamorta and Lachrimorta, walked through the door. They shuffled through the room, guided by memory, avoiding every table and shelf perfectly. All five of us held deathly still. Aisamorta approached a shelf close to the door and began touching each jar on it, counting under her breath as she went, in order to grab the right one without being able to read the labels. Lachrimorta walked towards us, intent on a shelf on the far wall behind us. I held my breath.

She was going to bump into me. Just barely, but it was going to happen. I shrunk away from her, pulling my arm tight against my body and leaning to the side, slowly, so slowly, so my robes did not rustle.

She passed by, her shoulder barely a centimeter away from hitting mine. I did not dare turn around to watch her. Aisamorta stretched to grab what she wanted from where it was wedged at the back of the shelf — she was a short woman even before she developed her osteoporotic hunch. I barely noticed her, too busy trying to surreptitiously glance over my shoulder and catch Lachrimorta in my peripheral vision.

The jar Aisamorta was reaching for tipped over and fell to the floor, shattering with a crash that reverberated like a cannon shot in the thick silence. Coronabeth and I flinched violently, but the sound of our movement was covered up by Aisamorta’s shriek.

“What have you done now?” Lachrimorta chastized, her voice so scratchy it shot all the way past sandpaper and landed in the realm of just rubbing handfuls of actual sand against something. She stomped over towards Aisamorta, passing right between Alecto and Warden, who remained perfectly still — they hadn’t even flinched when the jar broke. The two great-aunts convened by the shattered remnants of the jar and bickered with one another cattily. We had to get the hell out of there, all this noise was going to draw attention. Attention that wasn’t blind.

I crept towards the exit, using their raspy, screeching voices as cover for my footsteps. Right as we reached the door, Coronabeth bumped into the side of a table, loudly jostling its contents. All of us froze, and she winced, face set in an expression of exaggerated apology and nervousness.

“Who is that?” Lachrimorta demanded, “Get over here, we need somebody to clean up after my idiot sister.”

“You’re taller,” Aisamorta protested, “you should have been the one to get that jar!”

We walked away quickly, and the last we heard of them was a distant, “Hey, did they just leave? These new folk are so rude, I’m telling you, no respect for their elders.”

When we got far enough away, I burst out into hysterical, bubbling laughter, my racing heart seeking an outlet for all that adrenaline. I tried to tamp it down, to kill the risk of giving us away, but I couldn’t stop it, and my attempts to suppress it made me sound like a serial killer.

You took over, putting your shoulders back and standing up straighter, and the laughter instantly stopped.

“I apologize for—“ you tried, but then the laughter came back. You were still in control, but my laughter kept going. You tried to suppress it, but you couldn’t. “I apologize for my host.” Even when you spoke, the laughter kept going. Coronabeth stared at us with a mildly disturbed look on her face. Warden looked fascinated, as if cataloging the details for later study. Alecto looked vaguely amused.

Eventually I managed to wrestle my laughter under control, and leave you in charge. You sighed and gestured towards the end of the hall. “I’ll lead the way.”

 


 

 

Ianthe plugged the central console for the Mithraeum’s security hub back in after finishing her repairs, and watched the screens flicker to life. Teacher had asked her to fix it, as part of their efforts to get the Mithraeum up and running again — and hoping to see if it was even partially functional while the two impostors were on board, to glean some extra information. It had not been functional at all, but she got it working again. They were mostly doing repairs at the moment, still waiting to hear back from some of their Cohort contacts after putting out the alert.

She was at least grateful that her nose had healed after the impostor broke it. Her powers were returning, slowly but surely, and she was nearly back to full health, her bruises slowly fading away.

Ianthe scanned the various camera feeds, not entirely sure what she was searching for. One camera overlooked the war room, and she saw Gideon walk into the room, joining Teacher, who was sitting hunched over the display set into the table. He was still wearing those damn sunglasses. The set of headphones plugged into the console caught her eye.

A moment of consideration, then she put them on, sitting in the chair and switching the audio feed to the war room camera. The two of them were talking about some troop movement logistics. Boring, mundane stuff. She sighed, and was about to take the headphones off when Gideon said,

“Lord… John. I need to ask you something.”

The feed’s resolution was quite high, and Ianthe zoomed in to look at them closer. Teacher shifted in his chair, and looked at him curiously. “Of course, mate.”

“Why did you seal A.L. away?”

Teacher’s seat was facing towards the camera, so she was able to see his eyebrows shoot up. “That’s a hell of a question to ask, Gideon,” he said softly, “What brought this on?”

“Augustine and Joy were terrified of her. They worked with Blood of Eden on a hunch that she might still be alive. And now they’re dead because of it. My friends are dead. I trust you, John, but… I need you to give me something. I knew A.L., and the woman I knew did not warrant that fear.”

That was the most words Ianthe had ever heard Gideon the First say at one time. It was curiously verbose for him. Ianthe leaned forward in her chair.

“I… yes. Yes, Gideon, I will tell you. You have earned at least that much from me. And I’m sorry that I have kept this from you for so long, but I need you to understand, I had no choice.”

Ianthe held her breath. There was no way in hell that Teacher would be okay with her hearing this. She kept listening anyway. She sat, rapt, as the Emperor of the Nine Houses told his Saint the truth he had kept buried beneath the rock for ten thousand years.

 


 

 

The door of the Locked Tomb was a flat wall of black stone hewn into the side of the landing at the very bottom of the Ninth, where the mineshaft terminated in a circular floor. Its builders had not bothered with intricate carvings or frightening imagery to convey its danger; they had built a monolith of awesome size, entirely flat and undecorated. It loomed above us. It was not intimidating in the way the gates of Drearburh were — it did not feel as if it was built to intimidate you. It was intimidating in the way a human might be intimidating to an insect, who knew that they could be crushed at any moment, and that the only thing keeping them alive was their tormentor’s apathy to their existence. There were pillars on either side, a thin line in the middle where the two doors met, and nothing else.

We stood before it, craning our necks to take in the size of it.

“So, do we just… walk in?” I asked, “You already broke all the locks, right Harrow?”

“They were designed to regenerate. I’ll need to undo them again.” You switched to speaking internally, “I need you to shift your vision.”

I did what you asked. The world became blue, and on the face of the door, I saw the wards. They were arcane symbols and runes, painted all over the door’s face, shining brilliantly blue with the concentration of thanergy within them. They had definitely not been there when my vision was normal — they were invisible somehow. You held out your hands, and you began to work.

You were a virtuoso conducting a silent symphony, deftly twitching the threads of power that flowed through you, making them dance and sing at your command. The wards responded, complex locks and labyrinths and riddles coming undone under the mastery of your control. You did not move, holding your hands steady in the air and concentrating intently, but beneath the surface was a roaring ocean of movement.

It was beautiful. You were beautiful. I had never known, never understood the delicate grace of your power, how easily it responded to you, how wild and untamed it would be without your touch. You had been holding out on me, my shadowy sorceress.

Slowly, inexorably, you dismantled the toughest, most thorough safeguards that the Ninth House could muster. The runes broke apart, their power cast away. Only one set of them remained — a beautiful, swirling pattern that ran the length of either side of the line where the two doors met.

You lowered your hands. Warden was staring at you with barely contained admiration. I wasn’t sure why you had stopped — there was still one more ward remaining. You bit your lip. “I’m going to try something.”

You walked right up to the door and reached out to touch it, but hesitated with your hand only a few inches away. You took a slow breath. Your fingers twitched, ever so slightly.

A strange shimmer formed around your hand. It wasn’t properly visible; it was on the edge of my perception, like a word on the tip of your tongue. I couldn’t understand why — I had already shifted my vision to see the thanergy. Whatever this was, it wasn’t that. It was almost like the heat shimmer that surrounds a fire. It felt different from thanergy too. Instead of cold water, it was a hearth spreading cozy warmth through my veins. It surrounded your hand completely, and you pressed your palm flat against the stone, just to the left of the swirling ward.

You dragged your hand across, perpendicular to the two lines of thanergy that ran from the base of the doors to the top. As your hand crossed them, the lines parted and disappeared. It wasn’t like the way you undid the other wards — those unwound and unraveled as you pulled them apart, but these just dissolved, like a puff of smoke. The dissolution began where your hands crossed the lines, but quickly ran all the way along the length of them, until the wards were just… gone.

“How… how did you do that?” Warden asked, awed.

“Thalergy,” you murmured.

“You mean the technique Pyrrha described?”

“Yes.”

“But she said that it took him—“

“It took him that long.” You pushed your palm against the colossal door, and it swung open. It took barely any strength, the stone responding to your touch like it weighed nothing at all. Without a single sound, without a single rumble or scrape of stone against stone, the door opened. You stared into the passage beyond for a moment, then looked over your shoulder, and said, “Follow me.”

The tunnel was pitch black. Warden pulled their pocket torch out of their robes and clicked it on, shining a beam of light into the rocky passage ahead. It wasn’t especially remarkable — just a big, dark cave. There were even more wards on the inside, and you undid all of them, using traditional necromancy to undo the ones that were too far away to reach, and using that same casual gesture of thalergy to brush aside the ones that were close enough to the ground.

It wasn’t long before we came to the true barrier. The rock that must never be rolled away. It was a gargantuan boulder sitting directly in the center of the wall where the tunnel ended. The wards that covered it were mind-breakingly complex — fractals and mazes and spirals that split and twisted infinitely. Looking at them made my head hurt.

Here you did not employ any special magic. You drew my sword, and held it horizontally so that the handle was in one hand and the blade lay flat upon your other palm.

Would you like to do the honors?”

What do I need to do?”

Just draw blood, and touch them.”

My sword sliced a thin cut into the palm of my hand as I pulled it across — perhaps not the smartest place to draw blood from, but I was feeling dramatic, and I knew it would heal. Before the wound could seal itself I closed my hand and spread the blood around. I sheathed my sword, and rubbed my palms together. When they were both coated with a nice, even layer of red, I approached the rock.

I lifted my hands, but did not press them to the stone right away. There was something that felt weighty about this, about returning to this place together. The last time you came down here was the night your parents killed themselves. The night when I realized that you would truly, deeply hate me for the rest of our lives.

Funny how things turn out, sometimes.

I pressed my bloody palms flat against the center of two different spirals, one on each side of me. The ward lit up brilliantly gold where I touched it. The gold spread, traveling along every single fractal, every single path, burning away the ward behind it like fire burning holes in paper. It propagated rapidly through the entire pattern, until it crumbled away, and there was nothing left.

A deep rumble. I nervously stepped back as the rock began to move. It rolled to the side without a single touch from any of us, and came to a stop with a resounding boom. Behind it was a narrow hallway — not a cave, but a smooth, deliberately carved tunnel — that quickly disappeared into inky blackness. I let out a breath I hadn’t even realized I had been holding.

Alecto took a step past me. She stared into the blackness, Warden’s torch only piercing so far into the hallway before the darkness reclaimed it. Her expression was not the calm, neutral look she normally carried, nor the snarl of anger. It was grave, and perhaps a little sad, though I wasn’t sure whether I was just projecting. Everything about her expressions felt alien to me.

“All this, just for me?” she muttered to herself, “Oh Johnny, you could have spared yourself the trouble.” She remembered herself, and looked back over her shoulder, not enough to face us directly, but enough that she could probably see us in her periphery. “Let’s go.”

Without another word, she walked into the hallway, and the dark swallowed her. I looked back at the others. Warden and Coronabeth both nodded at me — Coronabeth with an eager, determined bob of her head, Warden with a single, purposeful incline of theirs.

“Well, nothing else for it.” I cracked my neck, let out a heavy exhale as I psyched myself up, and crossed the threshold into the Locked Tomb.

Chapter 7: The Locked Tomb

Chapter Text

There is a unique quality to the darkness in the deep underground. It isn’t the same as the darkness you find indoors, closer to the surface. Light bounces, reflects off of the surfaces it hits. Even in a room with no windows, there is some tiny amount of light, slipping through the crack under the door, creeping in, determined, through any gap it can find. Your eyes adjust, after a time. You might not be able to see much, but you can see your hand in front of your face, you can see the faintest outline of the things around you.

In the deep places of the world, there is nothing. When the lights are turned off, you are swallowed by complete blackness. There is nothing, not the slightest sliver of perception. You might as well be blind.

That darkness consumed us as we entered the Tomb. The tunnel stretched on for ages, and Warden switched off their torch to preserve battery. I kept one hand on the wall beside me as we walked, to keep from bumping into the others. None of us spoke. There was only the void, and the noise of footsteps and quiet breaths, made invasively loud by the emptiness around us.

I had no idea how long we walked through the pitch, hand skimming along smooth, unchanging walls. But eventually we found our reprieve. Eventually, we found the lake.

The hallway opened into a colossal cavern. Glow worms took up residence in the dark, speckling the entire ceiling of the cave. They did not provide enough light to make out any details, but they gave form to the dark. The cave was unimaginably vast, big enough to fit all of Drearburh and have room to spare. The walls sloped away from us in a gentle curve, arching up to join with the ceiling high above us.

We were standing on a small spit of land before a deep, black lake. In the very center of the lake there was an island, visible only as a hole cut into the reflected light of the worms. At the end of the stretch of land sat a metal rowboat, somehow still in pristine shape after all this time. Our path forward awaited.

Warden took up the oars and we piled in with them. As we pushed out into the dark waters, I reached my hand over the edge and swished it through the water. I pulled back as though I had been shocked — it was glacial, cold enough to burn my skin, cold enough that it should have been completely frozen. Chastened, I placed my hand into my lap and waited as Warden’s steady rowing carried us towards our destination.

The worms were high enough above us to become indistinct dots of color. They speckled the entire ceiling, turning it into a sky full of stars. The glassy surface of the water reflected it beneath us. It tricked the eyes, placed us within a dream, an endless expanse of starlight surrounding us on all sides. It enraptured me, made me crane my neck to take all of it in. We were suspended in the dark, gliding across a mirror as the universe lit up around us.

When we reached the island — the boat thumping heavily against the rocks and jarring me out of my reverie — we disembarked and Warden clicked their torch back on. The island was featureless rock, empty but for what lay in its center.

The sepulchre.

Calling it that felt silly — it was enormous. A more fitting word might have been the mausoleum. It was a huge, circular building with a flat roof that ran into the side of a grand dome in the center. A ring of decorative buttresses surrounded the perimeter like the legs of a great spider, and in front of us lay a set of double doors. We opened them, pushing hard to move the heavy, uncooperative stone.

The interior greeted us with the same swallowing blackness as the tunnel, the starlight worms no longer visible as we stepped inside. Warden’s torch was woefully insufficient. They hmm’d and put it away.

“I’m not an expert in the Fourth’s brand of magic, but I think I can…”

A ghostly teal flame sprung from their palm, casting their face in stark relief. They pushed out their hand and the flame flew forward and upward before coming to a stop suspended in the air above the center of the Tomb. They crushed their outstretched hand into a fist, and the fire flared, roaring into a brilliant ball of light.

The sepulchre of the Locked Tomb was a series of concentric circles, radiating out from what lay in the epicenter. Along the outer wall was a wide walkway, hemmed in by an arcade that met the ceiling right where the flat roof gave way to the dome. Where the arcade ended, the floor fell away into a yawning pit — a cavernous abyss whose bottom was too deep to see. In the center of the pit was a column of dense ice, vivid blue like lapis lazuli, whose top flared outward like the bottom of a chalice, creating a broad platform that was connected to the outer walkway by a narrow bridge.

In the center of the platform was a circular dais, and atop the dais lay the coffin. Three thick, heavy chains ran through it — at first I thought they ran through holes in the sides, but I quickly realized that they didn’t; they ran directly through the ice, as if they had already been there when it first froze. They stretched from the coffin to the edges of the platform, held in place in grooves cut into the sides to accommodate them, before disappearing into the abyss below.

The teal glow of the necromantic fire made the ring of pillars cast long, flickering shadows, like spokes on a wheel. Its color rendered the room surreal and alien, an otherworldly gothic painting. It could not pierce far into the densely-packed ice of the platform and the coffin, but near the edges it seeped through enough to create a deep, pure blue glow.

The dais, the platform, the pit, the arcade, the walkway, the outer walls, they all formed ripples around the Tomb’s lone occupant, as if we were standing on the surface of the lake, observing the splash as she was dropped into the water.

“I wonder if God is the sentimental type,” I dryly observed.

We crossed the bridge with slow, reverent steps. We were so silent, terrified that a single breath might shatter the tenuous peace of that ancient air. When I reached the other side and set foot on the ice, I moved with an abundance of caution, completely sure that I was going to slip and fall on my ass. A few wary footsteps reassured me that, while I’d have to be careful, it was more grippy than I thought it would be. Reassured, I brought my eyes back up to fix my gaze on our destination.

The coffin looked so tiny, so insignificant for the ominous, gothic grandeur of the tomb around it. It was the same violently blue ice that comprised the rest of the platform, and it must have been carved from the same source, all in one piece, because there was no seam to be found between it and the dais below it. The ice was so clear and unblemished that I could faintly see through it. The shape resting within was visible, although not in any great detail.

We all gathered in front of it and stared at it for a long moment, unwilling to disrupt the oppressive silence of our approach. Alecto was the first one to break out of our reverie. She reached a hand out, and brushed it over the lid of the coffin, her gaze distant and unreadable.

“How we have suffered, for what he and I did,” she murmured. Then she turned back to us and said, “Help me push the lid away.”

Coronabeth and I crossed over to the other side, stepping carefully over the chains. Alecto and Warden leaned their weight against the lid and pushed it toward us. As soon as enough of it cleared the far lip to grip, Coronabeth and I grabbed it and pulled. Slowly, inelegantly, we slid that heavy block of ice away. It fell to the ground with a dull, echoey clunk, and the Body was revealed.

I saw her, when I was in your mind, saw your visions of the nameless Body, but she looked different in person. She looked so normal. No longer a haunting specter but just a woman. Just a body, like any other. I almost found her difficult to describe; she was tall — taller than me, but not taller than Coronabeth. Her hair was black, or close to it, with only the slightest hint of brown. She was fit, but not especially chiseled or buff. Her face was a picture of loveliness, with high, regal cheekbones, and thick eyelashes. I could see why she had captivated you, as a child; everything about her was gorgeous and perfect and lovely, and yet so, so unremarkable. Every part of her was conventionally attractive, to the point that nothing about her stood out. Even her one distinguishing feature — a slight divot pressed into her lower lip — felt almost token, as if it had been added for the explicit purpose of ensuring that she didn’t look so perfect as to beggar belief, like a beauty mark painted on a woman’s cheek with makeup. She was beautiful, I suppose, but in the most nondescript way possible.

I had seen better.

The others helped Alecto extricate her body from underneath the chains while I took her sword and moved it out of the way. It caught my eye immediately, because I am a simple woman and I know what I like. It was a gigantic zweihänder with two broad side rings alongside the crossguard and a set of parrying hooks partway up the blade. The metal was black, in classic Ninth fashion, and I wondered if this was the origin of that tradition. Frost rimed the blade, but the ages left it neither tarnished nor dulled — it was an astoundingly well-built blade, solid and momentous in the hand. The weight of it shocked me, not so heavy that I couldn’t imagine wielding it, but heftier than any other sword I had ever seen.

The others laid Alecto’s body out on the ground in front of the dais. Warden and Coronabeth stood, but she remained crouched beside herself, placing one hand on her body’s cheek. For once I was pretty sure I understood what she was feeling. I gave her a moment.

Without turning away from her body, Alecto simply said, “I’d like to go home now.”

 


 

 

Ianthe had to know. She had to know. The Saint of Duty was acting exactly like himself — by all rights she had no reason to be suspicious. But it niggled at her brain. Something wasn’t right. So after the three of them met back up to figure out their next set of tasks, she did not go where she was supposed to go. She did not go to repair the external shielding, like she said she would. No, she went back to the security hub.

She had to know.

All three of them would be split up, she knew she should be able to do it without drawing suspicion upon herself. She walked back into the room and sat down in front of the bank of screens she had just recently fixed. If this person had skills anywhere near the Saint of Duty himself, or even worse, if it really was the Saint of Duty, attempting to follow him would probably result in a swift disemboweling. She had seen what he did to Harrow, and she had no desire to be on the receiving end of that ruthlessness. So instead of following, she simply watched.

The Saint of Duty was supposed to go check out the automated defense systems, which had been completely decimated in the Herald attack. But that wasn’t where he went. Instead, he took a hard right and made his way over to the communications room.

Of course.

When Ianthe saw him begin to use the equipment, she decided she had seen enough. She had a good idea who the impostor was sending a message to, and she had no interest in letting this continue. She hurried across the length of the station, as quiet as she could. When she came to the hallway leading up to the communications center, she slowed down, and crept closer. The impostor was talking. At first his words were indistinct, but as Ianthe got closer, she could make them out.

“—know this is asking a lot of you, but it’s necessary.” Ianthe stood in the doorframe, watching the impostor send his message. Whatever information the impostor was trying to sneak to his comrades, she could not allow it to go through. If it was important enough for him to take this risk, it was too important for Ianthe to permit. She focused her power. “I hope you find another way to stay alive, but you must abandon the mission. I misunderstood what she is. When she returns to her body, Alecto will be a—"

The impostor jumped back in shock as the entire console before him stretched and distended outwards. The screen cracked, the seams of the plastic housing split, and from behind it grew a bulging mass of meat. Muscle, sinew, fat, all of it spread from within the electronics, oozing blood, and it shattered the whole thing apart with a wet, squelching crunch. It was destroyed beyond repair, sputtering a few lame sparks from the shredded wires before cutting out completely.

The impostor turned to see Ianthe leaning against the doorframe, looking at him with quiet intensity.

“You know,” Ianthe said, “I think it’s time you and I had a little chat.”

 


 

 

I sat on the bridge with my knees folded to my chest, chin resting atop them, watching your body. It was bizarre. I’d never seen you look so peaceful. It was anathema to who you were, by which I mean — in the most loving way possible — that you are an anxious, uptight little fucker.

Maybe it was because you weren’t actually in there.

You lay flat on the ground right beside the edge of the dais, in a circle of wards, similar to the setup Warden had used to get me back into my body. Unlike then, there was a third circle for Alecto, creating a triangle. I sat in the middle of my circle, awake, but not wanting to risk something going wrong if I stepped outside. There was no way to know how long this would take, or which one of you would wake up first.

I felt surprisingly lonely. I had grown used to your presence in my mind, and now I was without it. The feeling of your soul leaving my body wasn’t painful, but it was… unpleasant. It was like somebody scooped out my insides, leaving me hollow, and searching, and hungry. The feeling dissipated over time, but it left me listless.

Warden paced back and forth on the other side of the bridge, tapping away at the tablet that was linked to the Hermes, looking very busy and presumably doing very important things. Coronabeth sat in the center of the bridge, leaning her weight on her bent knees, looking at the three of us.

“What do you think you’ll do once you’re a proper Lyctor?” she asked. It took me a moment to realize she was talking me, too focused on the body lying across from me.

“What do you mean?”

“Once all this is done, the two of you are going to be together forever,” she sighed dreamily, “where will you go?”

I thought about it — really thought about it — for the first time. I never expected to come out of this in the end, but now, after everything… maybe I would. What would I do? Kick my dad ’s ass probably, that seemed like step one. But that wasn’t an answer, not really. Once the battles were fought, and the expanse of eternity lay before us, what would we do with it? I’d never had the freedom to ask that question before. Even when I wanted to escape the Ninth, I knew my options were limited. The Cohort was where I wanted to go, but realistically, it was probably the only place I could have gone. The whole universe laid out in front of me? I had no idea.

“I’m going to bully my necromancer into developing at least one muscle,” I answered. Coronabeth rolled her eyes, and was about to summon a retort to my sarcasm when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.

I perked up and watched with bated breath as you sat up and re-oriented yourself, flexing your fingers and stretching your legs. I’d gone through that rodeo myself, so I knew exactly what you were feeling, that weird sense of trying to get used to your own muscles again.

We locked eyes. I half expected them to be Alecto’s, or a completely different color, or something that meant that things were still fucked up. But when you looked at me, your eyes were yours again, smoldering coal embers, like you could dust someone down to ash with just a look, and were trying very, very hard to do so.

Both of us stood up at the same time. You opened your mouth to say something, but you were too slow. Before you could get a single word out, I swept you up in a back-breakingly tight hug, lifting you into the air and spinning you around with a joyous laugh that the oppressive atmosphere of the Tomb could not stifle.

“Unhand me, Griddle!” you wheezed.

“Not a fucking chance, my irascible myriarch,” I beamed. I held you tight until your squirming threatened to make me drop you, and forced me to set you down. You took a step back and tried to make yourself look a little more dignified, adjusting your robes to be less rumpled and askew, but it was for naught, because I placed one hand on each of your cheeks and tugged you forward into an exuberant kiss. An adorable little noise of surprise squeaked out of your mouth as I claimed it. Your whole body tensed up and you flailed your arms for a second as you tried to figure out what to do with them, before you placed your hands on my biceps — an excellent choice, by the way. Your lips were thin and chapped and perfect, and you were kissing me back. We were both clumsy with inexperience, but there wasn’t a force in all the Nine Houses that could have made me care.

Warden cleared their throat meaningfully. I gave them the middle finger, not planning to stop anytime soon, but you pulled away and turned your head to the side, face flushed. Warden looked pointedly elsewhere, but Coronabeth watched us with barely-concealed glee. She pressed her hands together just below her chin and bit her lower lip, practically vibrating with the effort of containing herself. I could hardly make fun of her for it, given that I was grinning like an idiot.

“Yes, well, it seems like the process worked.” You unsuccessfully tried to wrestle your voice back to its normal ominous timbre. Coronabeth was still staring at you with obvious excitement, and when you noticed, you narrowed your eyes at her and said, “Stop that.”

Coronabeth raised her hands in a placating gesture. “I wasn’t doing anything,” she giggled.

“We’ll give you two a minute,” Warden said with a slight, understanding smile, placing a hand on Coronabeth’s shoulder and guiding her across the bridge as she pouted at being moved away from her entertainment.

We were left standing by ourselves at the end of the bridge, staring at each other, drinking one another in. I pressed my forehead against yours, my hand cradling the back of your head. Your eyes fluttered, but didn’t shut. Every part of your body language screamed how unused to this you were. You relaxed into it like relaxing into a pillowy-soft mattress after a lifetime of sleeping on concrete floors.

“So,” I said at length, “feeling more like yourself now, gloom mistress?”

I already knew the answer was no. What did feeling like yourself even mean? Feeling like a rope about to snap? Feeling like an ocean of ice, bubbling and boiling with violent pressure underneath? I’d spent time in your brain, Harrow, and I knew that you didn’t consider feeling like yourself a good thing. No, you did not feel like yourself, I could see it in your face.

“Yes. I…” you faltered, “I understand if you do not wish to stay after this, I have already asked too much of you, and—"

“No, fuck that,” I insisted passionately, “I’m in this. I’m not going anywhere.” I kissed you resoundingly, with finality and determination. Your eyes lost their fight to stay open. Your lips instinctively chased mine for a moment after I broke away. Your breath was deep and slow, your hands resting on my collar. I met your gaze as your eyes opened once again, pinning me with the magnitude of their intent.

“I…” your voice cracked, and you swallowed. When you continued, it was steady, serious, with that same passionate, articulate cadence you used to lead the congregation in prayer, “I do not understand what I have done to earn your fealty, Gideon Nav. Though you owe me nothing, and I owe you everything, still you make yourself my knight. You have given me the gift of your devotion — a gift I shall cherish above all else, to the shores of the River and beyond, higher than any and every star in the vastness of our sky — and all I can do in return is offer you the fullness of my heart, and pray that that pauper’s Oblation might one day be enough.”

My heart stuttered. Glowing heat flushed through my cheeks. It was suddenly unbearably difficult to meet your eyes. A stupid, shy little smile crossed my face despite my efforts to stop it. I averted my eyes, and scratched the back of my neck sheepishly, futilely hoping my face paint might mask my expression. I stammered unintelligibly for a few seconds before I managed, “Well, you know, a girl’s gotta make herself useful somehow, right?”

Pathetic. Inadequate. Probably the best I could hope for, given the circumstances.

You frowned. “Don’t do that. Don’t downplay the worth of all that you’ve done.”

You tried to catch my eye again, but I definitively could not handle that. I had no idea how to respond. Warden spared me, calling out from the other side of the bridge, “We have a message.”

I turned to face them. They were holding the communicator tablet, staring at the screen. I knew what that meant — there was only one person that message could be from. You and I shared one last, lingering glance, before I broke away from the spell of your eyes and crossed the bridge to join Warden.

We all huddled around them, and they hit play on the recording.

“This needs to be quick. Listen carefully,” Pyrrha said, glancing over her shoulder, confirming that she was alone. “Abort the mission. Alecto can’t be allowed to return to her body, under any circumstances. Learned why she got locked up. The Beasts, they’re going to chase her — I always thought they were chasing him. Their bond is mutual. If she dies, he dies, and if he dies… that was her plan. Draw the Beasts in, let them kill her. Pull them into the black hole. Kill them all at once, the Nine Houses with them. He couldn’t stop them following her, couldn’t kill her, so he put her to sleep. The moment she’s back, they’ll chase her. Nav, I know this is asking a lot of you, but it’s necessary. I hope you find another way to stay alive, but you must abandon the mission. I misunderstood what she is. When she returns to her body, Alecto will be a—"

The recording abruptly stopped. It remained frozen on the final frame, cracks spiderwebbing across the screen, warping and fragmenting the image until it was an indecipherable jumble of color. The four of us stood there, equally as frozen, a collective held breath.

“Well, this is terribly awkward, isn’t it?”

My gaze snapped up to the source of the voice, and standing there, at the foot of the coffin, was Alecto, the First Resurrected, in her own body once again.

 


 

 

Ianthe sauntered toward the impostor.

“You know, you really had me going when you attacked the other two, that was a good ruse,” she drawled. The impostor stood stock still, expression unchanging, his hand resting on the grip of his rapier. But Ianthe made no move to draw on him. Instead, she lifted her metallic hand as she drew close and reached for his sunglasses. His other hand snapped up to halt hers, grabbing her wrist and holding it there with a steel grip. She didn’t even look towards it, just kept her eyes fixed on his with an expression that could have been a sneer or a snarl.

The impostor threw Ianthe’s hand to the side. Ianthe smiled, though her eyes remained deadly serious. She turned and began to walk slowly away from him.

“I only have one question for you,” she said, coming to a stop on the other side of the cramped room. She matched the impostor’s pose, hand resting on her rapier. “Is the Saint of Duty dead?”

“Yes.”

Ianthe tightened her grip on her rapier.

“I should just wait for Teacher, shouldn’t I? He’d know how to sort this out.” Ianthe took a deep breath. “But I don’t think I will.” She turned to face the impostor. Her smile was gone. “Would you like to know why?”

He did not humor her.

“Because, impostor,” she snarled, “your friend chose the wrong body to steal.”

Ianthe drew her rapier, and the impostor moved like lightning. With one hand he grabbed the retracted pole of his spear from his belt and tossed it into the air, pressing the button on the side. As his other hand drew his rapier, the pole telescoped outward in both directions, the slight spin bringing it from vertical to perfectly horizontal as it sailed upward, reached the peak of its arc, and began to descend. The moment it finished extending and the shaft locked into place, he snatched it out of the air, already rotating his whole torso into the movement, and launched it at Ianthe with terrifying force.

Ianthe’s eyes widened in panic and she tried to form a flesh shield in front of herself, but his speed caught her completely off guard, surpassing even the Saint of Duty himself, and the spear was past it before it could even form. It skewered her directly through the throat, shattering her spine as the point and a full third of the shaft came out the other side. The force of it threw her backwards and she collapsed to the floor, completely disabled, her spinal cord severed.

The impostor sprinted at her, and Ianthe hoped beyond hope that her regeneration would overcome the disruption of the spear shaft lodged in her neck before he could finish the job. He grabbed Ianthe by the hair and tugged until her head and half her torso were lifted off the ground. A Lyctor could not survive the complete removal of their head, but he was working with the wrong kind of sword for this task. He put it to the side of her neck and sliced inwards until he hit the side of the shaft. But maneuvering his rapier around the spear to complete the final cut on the other side proved too awkward a task.

He fumbled for only a moment as he tried to reposition his blade, but it was enough. Ianthe’s nerves squirmed their way around the spear and reconnected. She raised one hand, and a mass of tendon and muscle erupted from the floor behind him, whipping out and around, encircling him. Wherever two cords met in front of his body, they knitted themselves together, fusing into loops of muscle that pulled taut across his chest and his arms and his gut. They contracted violently all at once, yanking him backward and dragging him across the floor. He sliced through the strands and quickly freed himself, but it bought her enough time to stand up.

The impostor scrambled to his feet and barreled towards Ianthe with barely a pause. Ianthe wrapped her hand around the spear, still lodged in her throat, trying to figure out how to remove it without re-severing her nerves. She held it still with one hand and slammed the pommel of her rapier against it, snapping it off a few inches out from her neck, leaving the rest buried. She tried to ready herself, but the impostor reached her too quickly, and before she could react, there was a rapier piercing her heart. Ianthe growled at the pain, and thrust her rapier at his gut. But the impostor was a dancer with a blade, and he had already retreated, turning Ianthe’s stab into an impotent flail.

Again, again, again, the impostor fell upon her with a flurry of steel, giving her no time to pause or formulate a counterattack. Ianthe never had a moment to dislodge the other half of the spear, and the weight left her clumsy and off-balance. She slashed wildly, and the impostor disarmed her with an artful twirl of his blade, sending her rapier clattering to the floor before landing a slash across her collar.

A line of blood sprayed out to Ianthe’s side. She stepped back, drew her trident knife, and crystallized the blood into a solid, razor-sharp blade, like crimson glass, before sweeping it across. The impostor ducked just in time, and it sliced through the equipment on the desk behind him, sending out a shower of sparks before dissolving back into liquid. The sparks ignited the papers lying on the desk, and in seconds, a blaring alarm cut through the air and the sprinklers turned on, leaving them both instantly soaked.

He was upon her again in moments, feinting forwards to draw out her stab. After it passed he rushed in, slamming Ianthe against the wall behind her and pinning her arm against her body. Ianthe scrabbled at the spear sticking out of the back of her neck with her free hand. Extra muscles sprouted along the length of her arm, pulling with superhuman strength and snapping the shaft. The impostor held Ianthe’s pinned arm in place and levered downwards with his other elbow, breaking her wrist and forcing the knife out of her grasp.

The knife fell. The spear tip fell. The impostor tossed his rapier to the side and snatched the knife out of the air, leaving him in perfect position for a backstab right at Ianthe’s throat. Ianthe’s hand whipped downwards, reaching blindly for the falling spear point. The impostor’s stab connected, and he pressed the button to snap the prongs outwards, tearing through her flesh. But he aimed too close to the section of the spear still stuck in her neck. The prongs glanced off the cylindrical shaft, and instead of extending horizontally, diverted upwards, slicing right up to her jaw, but failing to finish the job and sever her head.

Ianthe plunged the tip of the spear into his abdomen.

The impostor’s eyes went wide. His hand slipped off the knife and dropped to her shoulder as he pitched forward. Ianthe ripped the spear point out and pushed him to the side. He stumbled back until he hit the wall, leaving a trail of blood upon it as he slid to the floor.

Ianthe knelt in front of him. There was a wet tearing noise as she ripped the knife and the last section of the spear shaft from her throat, spluttering blood from her mouth as they fell to the floor. After a few seconds, she choked out an impassioned “Fuck.” It took her a minute to recover, gasping for air as the impostor panted shallow breaths beside her. Once she had gathered herself, she picked up the trident knife and snapped the prongs closed.

“Alright, let’s see what you’re hiding.” Ianthe pulled off the impostor’s sunglasses and looked him in the eye. He met her gaze defiantly with eyes the color of red clay, stubborn and proud, fighting against the fog that crept into them. At length, Ianthe said, “I have no idea who you are.”

“Tell him—" the impostor attempted, before breaking into violent coughing, “tell John he’s a bloody fool. That he still needs someone to remind him.”

Ianthe frowned and brushed her soaking wet hair out of her face. “Normally I’d honor that request,” she said, glancing down at the knife in her hand, “but the thing is, I rather liked having Harry around.” She pointed the tip of the knife at him. He swallowed heavily. Her eyes blazed with fury. “And I have no mercy for people who steal my things.”

Ianthe thrust the knife forward, and after ten thousand years, the body of the Saint of Duty finally fell still.

 


 

 

Alecto was more than the sum of her parts. Her body, without her in it, had looked normal, unremarkable even. Seeing her in your body was unnerving, sure, but she still felt like a person. She was just a creepy weirdo with a thousand-yard stare. But the two of those things put together created something entirely different.

She was uncomfortable to look at. An aura of dreadful command radiated out of her, a magnetic force that made my skin crawl. The unpleasant, piercing quality of her gaze was magnified a thousandfold. Her eyes sucked the air out of my lungs. Her presence made the very air around me leaden and oppressive. Whatever she was, it was not human. She looked like a human, moved like a human, but there was no possible way to mistake her for one. The unremarkable perfection of her beauty made her into a doll, an uncanny approximation of a person, like a puppet made of skin.

Her hands rested atop the pommel of her sword, whose tip dug into the ice in front of her feet. She closed her eyes, breathed in, breathed out, a sigh of utter relief.

“It feels so good to be us again.” Her voice made my insides squirm. It carried too many emotions at the same time, like somebody had recorded her saying the same sentence a dozen times, each with a slightly different intonation, and then played all of them back at once. “We’re not accustomed to being by myself anymore. It was awfully lonely being an I, instead of a we.”

Warden put the communicator away and rested their hand on the pommel of their rapier. Coronabeth followed suit, but I didn’t take out my sword right away.

“Is it true?” Coronabeth asked, “Is that your plan?”

“It is.”

“You know we’re not going to allow that,” Warden warned. I looked over at them and scrunched my brow in confusion.

“Uhh, we’re not? I thought — alright—" I held up my hands in a placating gesture, despite the fact that nobody was actually doing anything. They didn’t need to, the tension between them was palpable, “Everybody needs to relax. You wanna kill my deadbeat dad? Fucking sweet. Go for it. Hell, we’ll help you out. We’ll get everybody out of dodge, and clear the way for you to do your thing.” She looked at me, and I found myself wishing that she wouldn’t. Her gaze hit me like a lead slug. My heart pounded in my chest. It was too much. I wanted to fidget and squirm and look away until she would just stop.

“No, Gideon. All of this, every one of you, is born from the ashes of a promise that was never fulfilled. We will take what we are owed — every breath of air, every drop of blood — and still, when all of the Nine Houses burn, it will not be enough to pay for his crimes.”

“Exactly Alecto. His crimes. Everyone living here? They didn’t do shit. Don’t bring them into this. Be angry with him, yeah — hell, I’m angry with him too — but don’t get angry at them for something they didn’t even do.”

Her face contorted into a wild snarl, “Don’t get angry? Don’t get angry?

“Okay, clearly I’ve — that’s my bad, I didn’t—"

“Ten thousand years!” she roared like a gale, “Ten thousand years were taken from us, we will be as angry as we wish!” Her words echoed unnaturally through the Tomb, far louder than anything a person of her size should have been able to produce. The echoes overlapped one another and became a cacophony, a chorus of fury.

Now I drew my sword. I stayed steady and did my best to look intimidating, but when I looked at you and the others, all of you were backing away, panic inscribed upon your faces. I didn’t have time to process it. I just turned back to her, and said,

“Don’t try us, ice grandma.” I took one step towards her, and she acted. Something changed within her eyes, and the air became choking. The darkness encroached upon the light of Warden’s flame. Reality creaked and groaned under the weight of her presence.

That’s when you began to scream.

You, Warden, Coronabeth, all three of you split the air with a concordant howl of visceral terror. You stumbled backward and fell, then continued to scramble away on the ground, one hand held out in front of you as a pathetic shield. It didn’t take long before you stopped moving entirely, giving up on fleeing in order to cradle your head and curl up into a ball.

“Harrow!” I cried, rushing over to your side and kneeling down beside you, hands hovering uselessly over your body as you writhed in terror. I looked back at Alecto over my shoulder, “Let her go!”

Alecto paused her advance. “We did promise not to kill you, we suppose. We are a woman of our word. They will recover when we leave — you will let us pass, and we will spare you.”

Pure, blinding panic was written across your face as you cowered and flinched away from me, insensate. I couldn’t bear to watch you like that. I gritted my teeth. I might not have been able to summon rage like she could, but burning fury overtook me nonetheless. She was hurting you. She was hurting you. I may not have known much, but I knew what my job was, and I was damn well going to do it. I stood, threw off my heavy robes, and stepped back onto the bridge with my sword at the ready.

I snarled like a wild animal, “You’re not going anywhere, bitch.”

Her lips quirked upward. “We expected nothing less of you.”

I ran across the bridge, bringing up my two hander, and fell upon her in a bloody fury. She lifted that gargantuan greatsword and twirled it around like a children’s toy, batting my thrust aside with an impact that juddered painfully all the way through my arms. In an instant, I knew that I was in way over my head. Her blow landed with strength far beyond what somebody with her musculature should have been capable of, and she moved with the casual confidence of a true master.

Her stroke knocked my arms to the side, and I took advantage of the opening to bull rush her and slam my shoulder into her chest, sending her stumbling backward, struggling to keep her footing on the ice. I followed up with a slash across her body. She threw her weight back sharply to dodge out of range, but the tip of it still cut across her shoulder, slicing a thin gash into her skin. Her sword swung at me and I flung myself backwards, just barely avoiding being disemboweled as she cut a slash across my gut. I landed on my feet but the slippery surface threw me off and I fell onto my back. Alecto stared at her shoulder as her cut and mine both sealed up in unison.

I was back on my feet in an instant, descending upon her aggressively, trying to force her to stay defensive, getting in close, where a sword the size of hers would be clumsy. I kept my attacks quick and my movements small, hoping to outmatch her raw strength with the speed of a lighter blade.

The screaming was unbearably loud. It jangled my nerves, disrupted my concentration. Alecto pressed her advantage, forced me back, and circled to the side so I wasn’t between her and the bridge anymore. Our blades clashed in the air, and I tried to push hers aside, but she caught my two-hander on the parrying hooks of her greatsword. I struggled to keep control, but she had too much leverage over my blade. I fought to keep her from lining up a stab. I pulled away, and she followed step for step, keeping our swords locked.

My leg caught on one of the chains running from the side of the coffin and I fell flat on my back. I kicked my feet against the ground and scooted away ungracefully on the slick ground, sliding underneath the two other chains and coming out the other side right as her sword struck the ground where my pelvis had been only a fraction of a second earlier. The time it took her to maneuver over the chains gave me a moment to stand up. The screams grew quieter, more strained as you and Warden and Coronabeth shouted yourselves hoarse and breathless.

She had the advantage of greater strength and greater reach, and I just couldn’t keep up. Slashes landed across my chest and my cheek, and I growled defiantly. Your breathless, strained scream turned to a pained keening noise, then stopped entirely as you passed out, Coronabeth following only moments behind you.

I had an idea — a stupid idea, mind you, but an idea nonetheless. I ran full speed at Alecto, and instead of retreating when she tried to force me back with a thrust, I kept charging forward. Her eyes went wide as the greatsword skewered my gut. A pained snarl forced itself past my gritted teeth, but it worked. I was suddenly way closer in her personal space than she expected, and she couldn’t maneuver her sword. With one hand I grabbed her hair and with the other I dragged my blade across her neck, trying to saw her head off and finish this.

Blood gushed down Alecto’s front. She tried to pull away, but I held her tight by the hair. She yanked herself away a second time, much harder, and tore herself from my grasp, careening backward and falling on her back, dislodging her sword from my gut. The stab wound sealed itself up behind it, and I prepared to press my advantage. She had broken away, but she was still off-balance, injured — I could finish this.

Warden’s scream trailed off to a breathless pant, then stopped as they passed out. Their teal flame flickered and died, and we were plunged into complete darkness. I froze. The disappearance of the screams made the Tomb deafeningly quiet. I could hear Alecto and I both gasping for breath. The dreadful weight of her will eased, as if her eyes couldn’t pierce me through the dark, and I felt like I could breathe again. I tried to shift my vision to be able to see thanergy, so I could at least see her as negative space among the blue, but nothing happened. I couldn’t do it anymore.

Footsteps, coming towards me. I raised my sword in front of me and backed away in a panic. The blackness was so complete that I couldn’t even see my own hands in front of me. Alecto’s sword slammed against mine, and the impact of it pushed me back. I swung blindly, catching nothing but air.

This wasn’t going to work. I sprinted toward where I desperately hoped the chains were and dove. My face slammed into the ground and I slid along the floor, my foot knocking against the last chain on the way down. My shoulders slipped past the edge as I skidded to a stop. I pulled myself frantically to safety, then placed the flat of my sword against the lip of the platform and ran, tracing it along the edge to keep track of where I was until I found the bridge. Alecto followed close behind, her footsteps loud, but halting, as she stepped over the chains. I ran to where I knew Warden’s body would be, but I misjudged my path and tripped over Coronabeth, sprawling out onto my face. I crawled to Warden’s body and rooted frantically through their pockets.

There.

I pulled their torch out of their pocket, Alecto’s footsteps right behind me, then clicked it on and turned to swing my sword upward with one hand. It collided with Alecto’s, and she forced my two-hander down until the tip hit the ground, the blade of my own sword pressed against my face, sinking a shallow cut into my cheek. I kicked Alecto’s feet, and she collapsed, freeing me up to get to my feet and hold the torch in my mouth, so I could use both my hands.

Alecto was upon me again, barely visible in the weak beam of the torch. I couldn’t stand my ground, and I retreated across the bridge, onto the platform once again. Our swords clashed, and she pushed right up against me, blades inches from our faces as I struggled to hold fast.

“You fight so hard for her, when all she has ever done is torment and abandon you,” Alecto hissed, “She lies — that’s what necromancers do. They make all sorts of pretty promises, and then stab us in the back.”

“You don’t know a damn thing about us,” I said around the torch in my mouth, more confidently than I actually felt, and forced our swords apart with an almighty shove. We circled one another warily.

“Oh Gideon, we know you better than you think.” We moved toward one another in unison. I put all my strength into an upward slash, right as Alecto brought her greatsword down in a tremendous overhead strike.

Our swords collided in the middle, and with a tremendous noise of wrenching steel, my longsword shattered.

I cried out in pain as the impact broke my wrist. I dropped the remnants of my two hander — little more than a handle with a short, jagged scrap of metal sticking out of it. Alecto rammed the pommel of her greatsword into my face and crushed my nose with a dull crunch. I fell to the floor, groaning in pain. The torch bounced off to the side and rolled in a semicircle, coming to a halt shining directly at us. Alecto rested her greatsword against her shoulder, holding it with one hand, then leaned down, grabbed me by the the throat, and lifted my torso off the ground effortlessly. I struggled fruitlessly as she dragged me across the ice.

“Devotion is your downfall, Gideon, as it was ours. We trusted him, and that mistake cost us everything we had. He built his Houses on our graves, and we are here to tear them down. You are not going to stop us, no matter how bravely you try.”

I whimpered and fought as she brought me to the lip of the platform. She lifted me into the air with one hand and held me over the edge. My legs kicked. I clutched frantically at her arm. The black void yawned below. There was no mockery in Alecto’s expression — it was sad, and it was proud, but above all else it was angry.

“And you were brave, Gideon. You deserved better than this. And you deserved better than her.”

She let go, and I plunged into the abyss.

Chapter 8: The Desolation

Notes:

I meant to put this in the end notes for last chapter, but I forgot, so I'll put it here. If you want to get a better sense of what Alecto's sword looks like, just in terms of shape, the sword in this video is pretty much exactly how I envisioned it: https://youtu.be/knNoib52PBw

Chapter Text

My world was cold and painful and dark. Each breath was a sharp, shallow gasp. The pain was scintillating. In a lightless pit at the bottom of the House of the Ninth, I stayed alive. I dangled from a chain in the swallowing black void, holding on with one hand and hanging limply. My shoulder was violently dislocated when I grabbed the chain, my momentum tearing it from its socket. It popped itself back into place, and I whimpered at the sensation. I swayed back and forth, my mind swimming. A twist of my wrist spun me around enough to grab on with my other hand and wrap my legs around the chain. The metal was colder than ice, colder than anything I had ever felt. It burned my skin the instant I touched it, but my skin replenished itself just as quickly.

Clenching my legs tight around the chain let me take my weight off my arms enough to crane back and look up. The only light was a tiny spotlight cast on the inside of the lip of the pit — that must have been Warden’s torch, still lying on the ground. God, it was so far away. My sense of distance was too warped and strange to tell exactly how far, but it seemed discouragingly remote.

I reached one hand above the other and pulled myself a few miserable inches upwards. Inch by inch, hand over hand, I climbed. It was hell. The pain was constant. Even if the damage was temporary, the agony built and built. My hands shook. I had to find you. I had to know if you were alive.

I had to stop. My legs took my weight and I pulled my hands away, looking to buy even just a moment, just a second without the horrible burning. I held myself up with my legs and my core. The top of my head pressed against the chain and I held myself in place. My heavy breaths turned to sobs. I couldn’t help it. I held myself there, and I shook, and tears fell from my eyes to my legs. But I did not have the luxury of stewing in my own despair. You needed me.

I put one hand above the other.

I put one hand above the other.

I put one hand above the other.

The tears slid down my face as I dragged myself every single agonizing inch to the lip of that platform. The light of Warden’s torch grew closer and closer. With one last almighty heave, I pulled myself over the edge, and back to the land of the living.

The ground was mercifully solid, and I rolled over to lie on my back, panting hard. Each breath stabbed and burned in my chest. I groaned pathetically. There was a sound of somebody shifting not far away. Before I could investigate, it was followed by the sound of them scrambling across the ground, and then violently retching. No time to rest. I grabbed the torch from the ground beside me and stood up. A sweep of the torch revealed the scene before me. No sign of Alecto. Coronabeth knelt, hands clutching the edge of the pit, heaving little dribbles of vomit into the abyss. I ignored her, and ran to your side.

“Harrow, Harrow,” I fretted, placing a hand on your shoulder and shaking you. You did not stir. I rolled you onto your back, and cradled the back of your head, lifting you up a bit. My other hand went to your pulse. Still beating. “Harrow, come on, come on,” I pleaded, and moved my hand from your pulse to your face.

Your eyes fluttered open.

“Griddle…” I laughed hysterically and hugged you. Your arms hung limp at first, but eventually you brought them around to hug me back. Your embrace was weak and shaky, but you were alive. I buried my face in your shoulder, clutching at you with both hands, as if you might float away if I let go. “We’re alive,” you marveled in disbelief. I nodded into the crook of your neck. You extricated yourself from my shoulder, and I begrudgingly let you pull back to look at me. “Did she escape?”

I nodded, and your eyes went wide. Your face blanched. You let go of me, stood up, and tried to run. Your legs wobbled and collapsed beneath you.

“Harrow!” I exclaimed, rushing over to help you. You pulled yourself back up and started running again, slow and unsteady as you regained your legs. “Harrow, wait!”

“There’s no time.”

I grabbed you and tried to hold you back. “Slow down Harrow, you need to recover.”

“There’s no time,you struggled out of my halfhearted grip and kept going.

“Harrow—“

“My House is in danger!” you cried. I stopped short. Oh. Oh shit. Of course.

Warden found their footing, Coronabeth’s hands on their shoulder and arm, offering support. They came to my side as you ran. I looked at each of them. We nodded at one another, and we set off at a sprint.

 


 

 

My dread grew with every step we took. We crossed the lake, we ran through the tunnel, past the stone that was rolled away, through the gates. We left the Locked Tomb behind us, a place with no name, for neither of those words were true anymore. The elevator wasn’t there — Alecto must have taken it back up — and we called it down, waiting impatiently, terrified. None of us spoke, not while we waited for it to arrive, not while we rode it back up. Your face was pale, your lips drawn thin — I had never seen you so afraid in my life.

The instant the elevator arrived at the top you took off, sprinting through the winding hallways of Drearburh. The ancient stone flew past us, the dim, wavering lights casting you in unnatural shadows. I listened for the sounds of shouting, of fighting and death, but I heard nothing. It did not reassure me. You led us to the chapel, to the side entrance. The heavy iron door creaked as you heaved it open.

We followed behind you, and we were greeted by a massacre.

The entire congregation was slaughtered, bodies strewn through the aisles and over the pews. This was not the congregation of my youth, its numbers padded with skeletons to make the place seem more full and alive despite the precious few living members who remained. This was the congregation of a House renewed, easily a hundred people, struck down where they stood. Most of them were not people I knew, but some of them were. In the front row I saw the great aunts, Aisamorta and Lachrimorta, sprawled out across the pew, their blood pooling on the bench. I didn’t understand at first. I didn’t understand why there were so many — couldn’t they have just run away? But then I looked closer at the bodies.

Their faces were gruesomely contorted, rictuses of fear and agony. I felt the sudden urge to throw up. She had done to them what she had done to you, blinding them with fear until they were insensate, until they could not defend themselves or flee.

They had died screaming.

There was a pained groan. I realized that some of them were still alive, a precious few of them, clutching their wounds, writhing in pain. The moment they heard the sound, Warden ran past and knelt by the side of one of the survivors — nobody I recognized. They tended to his wounds, hands becoming soaked with blood in seconds as they closed up a gash across his torso. Coronabeth stopped in front of the crowd, hands clasped over her mouth. It took her a few moments, but she gathered herself and ran to another survivor, not able to heal them as Warden did, but keeping pressure on their wounds, trying to keep them alive.

You stood frozen before the carnage. Your face was slack, your jaw hanging open. Your eyes bulged, as if opening even wider would help you comprehend the horror.

I followed Coronabeth’s lead and ran to a woman in the fourth row who was still alive. Her face was pale, her trembling hands clasped over a stab wound in her gut. I moved them aside, and applied pressure. She keened in pain at my touch.

“Fuck, I know, I know, I’m sorry,” I choked. Her breath was shallow and pained. “Warden!” I yelled desperately, “I need you! She’s fading!”

“They all are, Ninth!” they shouted back. “Keep her awake as long as you can.” I kept pressure on her wound. My knees rested in a pool of her blood. It soaked through the fabric of my pants, warm and sticky. The smell was overwhelming. She was looking at me now, but her eyes were foggy, drooping.

“Hey,” I said, “stay with me. What’s your name?” She tried to tell me, but the attempt made her cough and whimper, and I said, “Okay, no, don’t, don’t try to talk, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, fuck.”

“Harrow,” I cried out, “Harrow, get over here! I need your help!” You did not respond. I looked back over my shoulder. You were still standing there, frozen, catatonic. You stood stock still, beholding the carnage with wide, disbelieving eyes. “Harrow, come on!” Still you did not respond. The shock was plainly written on your face.

I swore and told the woman to keep pressure on her wound, then stood up and ran over to you. I grabbed you by the shoulders and shook you a little, “Harrow, Harrow, come on, you need to move, we need your help.” You did not register my words or my touch. You just stared straight ahead with unseeing eyes and a limp, pliant body. My frustration welled higher. I slapped you across the face and berated you with a demanding voice, “Goddammit, Nonagesimus, what is the point of all that magic if you won’t fucking do anything?”

Your eyes snapped back into focus. You looked at me, then looked at the woman I had been helping.

“Move aside, Nav.” Your frozen indecision disappeared. Your face was set, grim and determined.

The Reverend Daughter was here.

You strode confidently over to the woman and knelt beside her. You moved quickly, efficiently, placing a hand over her wound. Your other hand slipped beneath her body, to cover the exit wound. She whimpered and moaned, and you ignored her protests; you had no words of comfort to offer, no platitudes or reassurances. You had work to do. I couldn’t see your necromancy working, but I could see the look of concentration on your face. When you removed your hands, her skin was whole again, unscarred, though still covered in blood. Even with her wound closed, her face was drawn, pale.

“Warden,” you barked, “do you still have your medical kit?” They called out an affirmative, and you turned to me. “She needs blood.”

I understood what you meant immediately. You got up and moved on to the next survivor. I ran to Warden’s side, and they pulled their medical kit from their robes. I rooted through it until I found what I needed — some tubing with a needle on either end. I ran back to the woman’s side and stuck the needle into a vein. I put the other end in my arm, then sat down on the pew, holding the tube up above her to help the blood flow.

My frantic breathing calmed as I watched the blood flow from me to her. It reassured me, seeing my life flow into her. This, this I could do. Being a universal donor has its perks. “You’re going to be alright,” I reassured, “you’re going to be fine. Just stay still. Just relax.”

I wasn’t sure exactly how long I needed to keep transferring blood, but when the color started to come back to her face, I pulled the needle out. I ripped off a strip of cloth from her shirt and tied it loosely around her arm, as a bandage. Her breathing was calmer now, less shallow. I moved to stand up, but she stopped me, placing a hand on my arm. I looked back at her.

“Joanna.” Her voice was thin and strained, as if summoning it was a titanic effort. I understood her meaning, and gave her as much of a smile as I could muster. She smiled back, wan, but grateful.

“Will you be alright, Joanna?” I asked. She nodded, but said nothing, apparently not quite up to talking any more than that. I didn’t blame her.

I stood up, and directly in front of me, in the next row of pews, was the body of Marshal Crux.

I hadn’t even noticed him. He was on the floor, his back against the divider between two sections of the pew, so he was sitting upright. There was a stab wound directly over his heart. His sword lay on the ground beside him.

I circled around the end of the pew and walked over to his body. Those eyes were supposed to be cruel. They were supposed to look at me with hatred and contempt, but they were empty, filled only with fear. I had never seen Crux look afraid.

I hated that man. I hated you back then too, but that was different. Our mutual hatred fed into itself, burning hotter and hotter as you hurt me and I hurt you right back. But Crux? Crux was just fucking cruel. Yeah, I was a little shit as a kid, and I probably made his life difficult, but you know what? I was a goddamn child, and he was a grown man.

Looking at him flooded me with memories. One memory in particular came to mind, specific and vivid — I couldn’t have told you why. He had taken away my food as punishment for… something. I don’t remember. Something stupid, probably. It had been almost two days since I had eaten. I was so hungry. I gave in and stole something from the kitchens. I was caught, of course. Your parents found me, and they turned me over to him for punishment, wiping their hands of the affair and leaving the decision to him. And he decided to whip me. He flayed the skin from my back until I passed out in a pool of my own blood. Because I stole a bowl of gruel. I was nine years old.

I clenched my fist. I wanted to scream at the lifeless body in front of me. I wanted to break his fucking nose. I wanted to grab his shoulders and shake him, to demand that he answer for what he did to me, for every injustice and every gleeful lash of the whip.

I placed his sword in his hand and laid it delicately upon his lap. I closed his eyes. And with one last heavy breath, I walked away.

You and Warden were finishing up with the last of the survivors. I walked down the central aisle, scanning back and forth, looking for any quieter ones we might have missed. I got to the end of the pews, and I saw somebody propped up against the back wall, right beside the open main doors. My breath caught in my throat.

I ran to Aiglamene’s side. Her chest was moving — she was still breathing! She was unconscious, but alive, and I surveyed her wounds. A wicked gash cut across her torso, and her nose was badly broken; I guessed that Alecto must have knocked her out with a bash from her pommel.

“Harrow! Warden!” I called out, and the two of you ran to my side. Coronabeth followed shortly, and stood behind me, worrying the hem of her sleeve. Warden immediately set to work patching Aiglamene up — you were able to do it, but they had far more experience with that kind of magic. I waited, fidgeting nervously, as they sealed up her wounds. Her nose sprung back into place with a worrying crack. The slash across her chest sealed itself up with a fleshy, squirming noise that made me want to retch.

Aiglamene woke up with a protracted groan. She blinked her eyes open, and looked at you. “My lady… ”

“I’m here.”

“I’m sorry my lady, I could not… I could not stand against her.”

“It’s alright, captain. I’m glad you’re alive.”

Aiglamene nodded. Her every movement was slow, difficult. She looked at me, and I smiled weakly.

“Hey captain.” Her gaze grew thunderous, and while I didn’t show it, I might have quailed, just a little bit. Aiglamene got to her feet, rebuffing my offered hand with a murderous look. I fully expected her to chew me out, with the way she was looking at me, but instead, she turned back to you.

“Why is she here?” Aiglamene strained the limits of her deference.

“Wha — hey!” I protested.

“Shut up, Nav.” Aiglamene ordered, and I did. Her eyes remained fixed upon you. I had never seen her so furious in my life. “I vouchsafed for you. I vouchsafed Gideon Nav’s freedom. Have you made a liar of me, my lady?”

I briefly died inside. I expected you to meet her anger with your own, to grow haughty and dismissive, the way you always did when you were feeling threatened. That is not what happened. You shrunk beneath her anger, looking suddenly nervous and guilty.

“I… things became… complicated. I’m working on it.”

I wondered what the hell you meant by that, because I had no plans to go anywhere, but before I could ask you, Aiglamene rounded on me again, seeking confirmation. “It’s alright. I chose to be here.”

Apparently that was enough to satisfy her. She turned back to you and asked, “Is that woman who I think she is?”

You nodded. “The Tomb is open.”

Aiglamene closed her eyes, leaning back against the wall for support. “God help us all.” I winced, and decided not to get into that particular side of things. The old lady was having a rough enough day as it was. “We need a plan, my lady.”

“We need to assure the survival of our House,” you said, “I’m going to try to stop her, but the rest of the Ninth needs to get to safety. Our resources are not enough; it’s time to bite the bullet — we call for aid.”

“The Eighth is unlikely to give us anything, but the Fourth should be willing to help,” Aiglamene strategized, “If we request a transport ship, it won’t take too long for it to arrive.”

“Then that is my task for you, captain. As of now, I am making you my seneschal. Gather everybody who is left. Get them out of the system, and wait there. I will send word when I know whether it is safe to return.”

Aiglamene bowed her head. “As you wish, my lady. And you?”

Your face hardened. You glanced out the door, and your hands twitched, reflexively reaching for bone bracelets that you weren’t wearing. “I will bring the wrath of the Ninth upon her.”

Without another word, you strode purposefully out the door. Warden and Coronabeth exchanged a glance, and followed. I moved to do the same, but Aiglamene grabbed my wrist as I walked past. I looked back at her over my shoulder. She met my eyes with her familiar, chipped granite gaze. It took her a moment to speak, and I waited patiently.

“Don’t let her keep you,” Aiglamene said, quiet and serious.

“Don’t worry about me, old lady,” I joked, “I can take care of myself.”

She glared at me. “I’m serious, Nav. If you see a chance to get out, you grab it.”

My face dropped. Something curled up and settled heavy within my throat. “I’m her cavalier,” I weakly countered.

“You shouldn’t be. The Ninth has already taken far more from you than it ever should have.”

“I told you, I’m here because I chose to be. She’s not taking anything, I’m giving it to her.”

“And if you keep doing it, before long there won’t be any of you left.” I stared at her helplessly. I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t just leave, but if she had asked me why, I wouldn’t have been able to tell her. She held my eyes for a time before she let go of my wrist, apparently satisfied that her point had been made. She nodded, exactly once. “Go.”

I returned her gesture, but slowly, more of a bow of the head than a nod. Then I turned away, and I followed my necromancer.

 


 

 

“This is the third funeral I’ve held here this year,” Teacher said. He stood before the altar in the great chapel of the Mithraeum, surrounded by hundreds of candles he had lit, one at a time, by himself. “I didn’t expect to hold one for someone I had already mourned.”

Ianthe shuffled uncomfortably at his side. “Teacher, if I had known—"

“How could you have known? I do not blame you Ianthe, Pyrrha chose her path willingly.” Ianthe had not expected to learn who the occupant of the body was, but the moment the Kindly Prince looked at her eyes, he knew. The crew of the Mithraeum now numbered only two, and Ianthe struggled to cope with the idea of being alone with this man for eternity. The cavernous space station had already felt quiet and empty when it was the six of them, but now it was the suffocation of sound. The body of the Saint of Duty was not given the same lavish treatment as Cytherea’s was. There were no rose petals. Teacher told her that the man had eschewed such things, but he needn’t have said anything. Ianthe never suffered under the delusion that the Saint of Duty was a soft man.

“I suppose we mourn the both of them.” Ianthe said, desperate for something to say, to break up the looming quiet, the awfulness of God’s complete lack of accusal.

“I suppose we do,” Teacher murmured. His eyes were difficult to read at the best of times, but here, they were an endless traverse, leading to an unknown destination. He stepped closer and laid a single hand on the Saint of Duty’s cheek, the touch so light his fingertips barely made contact. “Gideon earned his epithet. All of the Saints’ epithets came from their cavaliers, and he was no exception, but he was the only one who fit it even better. None of the others took our mission as seriously, myself included. He was going to see it through, either to its end or his own, no matter what happened. He was the only one of us who did not succumb to the weight of time. He bore it on shoulders fashioned from iron.”

He brushed one thumb along the Saint of Duty’s cheek. His soft features did not waver. He looked upon the body of his friend with the same implacable calm that always drove Harrow insane.

“And Pyrrha! God, Pyrrha,” Teacher shook his head fondly, “she was a force to be reckoned with. She was the only one of them I could never command. She didn’t give a damn if I was God, when she was right, she knew it, and she refused to give. We were at each other’s throats more often than not, but I think I needed that from someone. I’ve missed her so much, these many years; I only wish I could have spoken to her again, without the pretense getting in the way. Perhaps she could have called me a fool one last time.”

“She did,” Ianthe said unthinkingly. Teacher looked at her questioningly. “She said to tell you that you still need somebody to remind you.”

A wry little smile crossed his face. “Of course she did.”

Ianthe stood awkwardly by Teacher’s side. Coronabeth had always been better at these kinds of things, but even then, Ianthe was usually better than this. If it were anyone else, she figured she might have been able to spin some eloquently empty words of reassurance, to fill the silence without having to get her hands dirty and actually connect with their grief. But not with him. She doubted he would chastise her for it, but the mere idea of trying that with him was laughable. It just was not The Thing To Do.

“You’re lucky, you know?” Teacher continued, “You can count yourself among the vanishingly small number of people who’ve faced Pyrrha Dve in her full fury and lived to tell the tale.”

“I almost didn’t.”

“That’s my girl,” he said with a watery chuckle. Ianthe realized that God was crying, and as she thought about it, it occurred to her that she had never seen him do that before. Not even during Cytherea’s funeral. “I apologize,” he said, and Ianthe briefly pondered what the hell happened in this man’s life that he felt the need to apologize for crying at a funeral, “I always try to make these things a celebration of their life, not an excuse to wallow in misery. But truth be told, I don’t think I have it in me to celebrate today.”

Teacher placed his hand on the Saint of Duty’s other cheek, cradling his face in his hands with reverent care. “Five friends, gone, all within one year. I’ve gone millenia without losing so many.”

“I am sorry, Teacher.” Ianthe murmured, and to her own surprise, she found that she meant it.

He did not acknowledge her. “I’m the only one left. God, what happened? What happened to us, Gideon? What happened to us, Pyrrha?” He leaned over, bracing his weight on his elbows, and rested his forehead upon the Saint of Duty’s. He pressed their bodies together, he closed his eyes, and he shook silently. He was human, then. Not the Necrolord Prime, not a God or an Emperor. He was John Gaius, and he looked old, and achingly tired. Never in her life had Ianthe felt so much like an intruder, like a voyeur stealing a glimpse of something she had no right to witness.

He did not speak again, and Ianthe slipped out of the chapel unnoticed, to allow him the dignity of his grief.

 


 

 

The Hermes was gone — honestly, we really should have expected that. The only thing there was the tiny, beat-up shuttle Coronabeth arrived in, visible across the open expanse between the lip of the Ninth and where we had landed. The wind up there was blustery, without the protection the Ninth proper had from its position below the ground. I stared at the crappy shuttle.

“Okay, well fitting all four of us in there is going to suck,” I remarked.

“We have a ship we can use in the hangar,” you said, “it isn’t much, but it’s better than that.”

“We’re going to need to split up,” Warden cut in, staring at the shuttle for a moment before turning to us, “I’m going to the Sixth.”

“Warden, you’re not going to do any good there. If we don’t stop her, all of the Houses will be gone.”

They shook their head, “When the Sixth was built, they knew that its contents would be too valuable to risk. It’s an archive — it holds our history, our knowledge. The loss of all of that would be irreplaceable. So they designed it to be able to move. It isn’t just a planetary station; it’s a ship. In the event of a catastrophic emergency, the entire Sixth installation can separate from the planet and evacuate. We call it the Alexandria protocol. My mother — Palamedes mother — is the head archivist of the Sixth, she has the authority to initiate it. I am going to ensure my House’s safety.”

“Okay, I think I see the plan,” I said, pacing back and forth as I followed my train of thought, “Warden, you’ve got the Sixth. The Ninth is already handled. Coronabeth, you can help with the Third, and we can probably get in touch with Judith to help with the Second — hell, to help with all of them. She can get the Cohort involved. That’s already four out of eight taken care of.”

You looked at me strangely, “What are you talking about, Nav?”

I made a vague gesture. “We need to get everybody out of her way before we let her blow up the sun.”

“Why would we let her do that?”

“That was the whole plan!” I insisted, “She wants to kill the Emperor? Fucking super! Same here! We just need to get everyone out of dodge before she does it.”

“That was not the plan.”

I stopped my pacing and stared at you. “Well then what the hell is your plan?”

“We get in contact with the Emperor. If we let him know the situation, he can put her back to sleep.”

“I’m with the Reverend Daughter on this,” Coronabeth said, “even if the Emperor needs to die, this is too big of a risk to take.”

I shook my head. “No way, no fucking way. We want to kill that dude, Harrow, we’re not working with him.”

“Since when do I want to kill the Emperor?” you exclaimed, exasperated.

“I thought — I thought you were on the same page as us!” I sputtered.

“I just lied to him so I could live!”

“He has to die, Harrow.”

“No.”

“He told the Saint of Duty to kill you!”

No.”

“He committed genocide!”

“I don’t believe you. I don’t believe he would do that.”

“It’s the truth, Reverend Daughter,” Warden said. “The Saint of Joy herself told me as much — and she was actually there when it happened.”

“Then you were lied to! The Kindly Prince is not a mass murderer.”

“He’s not the man you think he is, Harrow,” Coronabeth said quietly.

“But he’s… he’s God, you said helplessly.

“Yeah, well God can get fucked.” Normally, me saying something like that wouldn’t warrant much comment. But there was just one small problem.

I said it through your mouth.

The words that I was supposed to say came from your lips, and the instant they did your eyes went wide with fear and you slapped your hand over your mouth. There was a long moment of silence as everybody stared at you in shock. Warden was the first to collect themself.

“The barrier is collapsing,” Warden said, “you need to finish the process before we go off-world, it’s too risky to let it go any longer.”

A biting gust of wind sliced through us, and I wrapped my arms around my torso, trying to keep warm. All four of us shivered, and all four of us were miserable, but you? You looked like you were about to have a panic attack. The edges of your composure were visibly fraying. Luckily, Coronabeth picked up on your distress.

“If we’re going to figure this out, we should get out of the cold,” Coronabeth concluded, “Let’s regroup in the hangar. Warden, maybe you could help me go through the shuttle and take stock of what supplies we’ve got? Gideon, Harrowhark, why don’t you check out the ship in the hangar and do the same.”

We all nodded, and you and I broke away from them, making our way back down into the Ninth.

 


 

 

The hangar was cramped and dusty, barely big enough to fit the ship it housed. The transport itself was an ancient, derelict rust bucket, right at home on the Ninth. It was designed to carry ten people on a reasonably long-distance journey, so compared to Coronabeth’s shuttle it was positively roomy. It was decorated with bones — naturally — and filled with narrow hallways and low ceilings. The helm was not designed for a whole crew, it was designed for one person to fly, so it was pretty much just a chair in a room the size of a broom closet. We explored a little further, and wound up in the bunk room — a series of tiny, moldering cots, which I did not plan to use, no matter how long we were stuck there. I sat on the rusted metal railing at the foot of one of the cots.

You were still in business mode, like before, efficient and purposeful, but I could see how fragile that facade was. There was a desperation in your eyes, and I reckoned you were not far from a full-on mental breakdown. Apparently you were unwilling to breach the silence, so I did it for you.

“Alright, let’s do this Nonagesimus.”

“Warden was wrong about perfect Lyctorhood Nav.” Your voice was thin and weak.

“What would happen if we tried and it didn’t work?”

“Our souls would devour one another in an attempt to find fuel for the reaction. The result… it would be an abomination. A mindless, ravenous creature, with all of the power of a Lyctor behind it. It is a risk we cannot take, under any circumstances. We can’t do it.”

“Fine. We won’t risk it. But you’re still going to be a Lyctor.”

Your eyes went wide. “No. Absolutely not. We take the alternate option; with what I’ve learned about thalergy manipulation, I should be able to sever the remaining bond between our souls. You will live, and I will make do as a normal necromancer.”

“You need to eat me, Nonagesimus. There’s no way in hell we can take her on if you don’t. This isn’t a fight we can win as normal people; you need to be a Lyctor.”

“I cannot ask that of you, Nav.”

“You’re not asking. I’m offering. This is what I’m for, Nonagesimus. You need to let me do my job.”

“I have already taken far too much from you, Griddle. I have taken your childhood, your freedom, your body, your life. I will take no more.”

“Nonagesimus. Harrow. My mistress of eternal twilight. Shut up, and eat me.”

“I am not going to enable this bizarre, self-destructive urge you seem to hold,” you declared haughtily, as if I had ever been cowed by your theatrics.

“Eat. Me.” I growled, standing up and looming over you.

“No!” you shouted. You stared at me defiantly. I ground my teeth. “You will have your freedom, Nav, whether you want it or not. I made a promise. I am not going to take your soul. I will never take your soul. I am going to sever our bond, and you will be free of me, eighteen years too late.”

You moved toward the exit, probably looking to calm down before you broke us apart. Something bubbled up inside of me. I fought for you. I had been thrown off a cliff for you. I suffered through the River for you. I had done everything for you, and still you would not take what I was offering.

“Why do you keep doing this?” I demanded, “I want to do this for you, why won’t you let me? Why don’t you want—" I bit off the end of my sentence, squeezing my eyes shut. You stopped short. You were not looking at me.

“Is that what you think?” you asked, voice flat. Slowly, you turned back around, and revealed eyes filled with blazing fire. Not a fire of anger, not exactly, but something close to it. “You think I don’t want you?” You fixed me with those burning eyes, and I looked away, cheeks burning with humiliation. “Look at me, Gideon.” I couldn’t do it. I saw you moving closer to me in my peripheral vision, but I couldn’t see what you were doing. I closed my eyes again, my breath quickening. You grabbed my face with one hand, fingers digging into each cheek, and roughly forced me to face towards you. I still kept my eyes closed. Once again, you said, “Look at me, Gideon.”

I was helpless to deny you. My eyes fluttered hesitantly open. The fire was there, yearning for kindling, with a sadness behind it that hurt far more than any burn. It did not waver as you asked, “That’s what you think? That I don’t want you?”

“I—" I choked, but did not continue.

“Answer me Gideon!” you demanded.

“Yes!”

You yanked my head down into a searing kiss. I inhaled sharply through my nose, my eyes going wide. I had to stumble backward as you pushed me until my back slammed into the wall. You pinned me against it with a furious claim. When I kissed you in the Tomb you were hesitant, uncertain. There was no hesitance now. No uncertainty. You kissed me ferociously, ravenously, and swept me up in the tide of you. Your teeth dug into my lower lip hard enough to draw blood, and I moaned breathlessly. Your hand found its way from my face to the back of my head. It tugged my hair, hard, forcing my head to tilt back, and oh, oh, I had not known that I liked that, but god, I did. The noise I made was pathetic.

You set upon my neck, kissing and biting, and I gasped for breath. It was ridiculous, you were so much shorter than me, I was ten times stronger than you, but you had me pinned to the wall, and I could not have thrown you off if my life depended on it. Not when your hand crept under my shirt, your palm sliding over my abs. Not when your teeth left sweet, possessive bruises on my neck, even if they faded almost instantly.

“You would think for even a single moment that I don’t want you?” you hissed into my neck. Your hand kept sliding upward, pushing up my bandeau and palming my breast.

“Haa—" I could not hold in my desperate noises.

“Then you are a fool.” Your other hand flicked open the button of my trousers and dipped inside, and I learned that when you were in this kind of mood, you absolutely did not fuck around. You had three fingers inside me before I could even blink, but it didn’t matter how rough you were, because I had never been this wet in my life. You fucked me the same way you fought our enemies — savagely, with a focused, feral abandon I could not match.

When I imagined what it would be like to have sex, in the long and lonely nights growing up on the Ninth, I always imagined myself as the swaggering hero in some convoluted fantasy. All the women would swoon over me, and they would want me to take them, and that’s exactly what I would do. I never concerned myself with how I would get this imagined sexual prowess, despite never having even kissed someone. My mind just skipped past that part. But I was always the one doing the taking. So when you dismantled me, it was a revelation, the discovery of how badly I wanted it. Of how good it felt when you were rough with me, how good it felt to be helpless beneath the whirlwind that was Harrowhark Nonagesimus. I was overwhelmed with the knowledge of what I wanted. I wanted you to hold me down, I wanted you to make me cry and beg for it, I wanted you to destroy me. I should have been upset to feel your desperate anger and sadness unleashed this way, but I couldn’t think.

You pulled my earlobe between your teeth and used your thumb to rub my clit, and I came with an explosive cry. But even as the orgasm pulsed through me, you did not stop. You ignored my oversensitivity and kept right on going. I squirmed and cried — actually cried, tears flowing down my face with the sheer overwhelming too-muchness of it — but I did not ask you to stop. My wriggling intensified, and you took your hand away from my breast and brought it to my throat — not to choke me, but to remind me.

“I want you more than you could possibly imagine,” you rumbled. I whined pathetically, wanting to escape the sensitivity, wanting it to never stop. The hand on my throat squeezed lightly; it wasn’t enough to cut off my breath, but it sent a bolt of pleasure through me nonetheless.

“Harrow,” I pleaded.

“I want to devour you whole,” you growled like a feral animal. I belatedly realized that you were crying. My legs were jelly, and they started to give out, but you just pressed your body harder against mine, pinning me in place. I was getting close again, I could feel it, and your unrelenting pace did not waver. “I want you to be mine.

I came with your fierce claim echoing in my mind, and I was yours, yours, yours.

My legs gave out completely, and you held me as I slid down the wall until I was sitting and you were kneeling in front of me, my whole body shuddering with the aftershocks. Your hand slid out of me and your head fell to my shoulder. My chest heaved as I tried to catch my breath. Your tears dripped onto my shirt. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t have found the words even if I did. Our bodies were furnace-hot, pressed together.

“But I have to be better than that,” you whispered, broken and longing. “I have to do the right thing.” Your hand came to rest on my sternum, palm flat to my chest. You took a deep breath, and pulled away from my shoulder, looking me right in the eye as you said, “I’m sorry.”

I realized what you meant a moment too late. “Wait—"

There was a tugging sensation in my chest, and a sharp pain that made me gasp. Your tears kept flowing, but your face was stony and resolute. Your hand began to glow, threads of golden light weaving around it like veins. Some of them went from your hand to my chest. Others kept going up your arm, fading out of sight after a few inches.

“No, Harrow, don’t,” I pleaded, but you did not stop. You ran your hand slowly down my chest, and with each inch, it was like something was being torn from me. It was not a physical sensation; it was an agony of the soul, a vast, empty feeling, like every ounce of light and warmth was being pulled out of me. I cried out, choked and frightened, as I felt my entire existence hollow out. A dreadful, pervading loneliness filled my being. The world narrowed, everything else falling away until all that existed was you and me, and you were pulling away. I wanted to reach out, to claw at you and make you stay, but I couldn’t move. You dragged that golden light down the meridian of my body and cut through us. I sobbed, “No, no, Harrow, please, stop.”

My words grew weaker with every breath. The world darkened.

Your face was grim and determined through your tears. In your eyes I saw the exact same pain that I felt. And then I couldn’t see you at all. The emptiness was complete. I was insensate, my world a void of light and sound and feeling. My breath grew shallower and shallower. With one last final pull, you ripped our souls apart, and I faded into unconsciousness.

Chapter 9: The Hanged Man

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

It’s growing harder and harder to tell where your story ends and mine begins. It’s all getting jumbled up together in my head. All I can do is keep talking, and keep listening. Because I can hear you, Harrow. I can see you. Though we were worlds apart then, I am listening now.

Can you hear me, Harrow? Can you see me?

Are you listening?

 


 

 

You guided the ship through the beautiful blue skies of the First, over clouds and oceans. The sun was painfully bright, hanging low in the late afternoon sky, lighting the thick carpet of clouds in shades of fiery golden orange, contrasted against deep, purple shadows. Though there was no sign of your destination beneath the veil that covered the surface, you dipped down through the clouds. Rain pitter-pattered against the hull of the ship the moment you dropped out of the upper atmosphere.

On the horizon appeared a familiar collection of crumbling spires and moldering grandeur. At first it was only a silhouette in the distance, but as you grew closer, it emerged from the fog. You circled Canaan House in a lazy, descending spiral. The stormy clouds above draped the looming towers and withering gardens in moody twilight. The landing platform approached, and you cruised to a gentle landing. The ship rocked as it made contact with solid ground, and you cut the engines. The Crown Princess of Ida poked her head through the door.

“Oh, have we arrived?” she asked pointlessly. You did not deign to answer such an unnecessary question. Instead, you braced yourself internally as you walked past Coronabeth towards the exit, prompting her to follow behind you. The journey here had taken many hours, and you had barely spoken to her that entire time, but apparently that diligent effort was all for naught, because there was no way you could avoid her now, and she seemed determined to make idle chit-chat with you. You ignored her.

The ship's doors opened, and you put up the hood of your robes as you stepped out onto the walkway. You had a full coat of face paint on, and it simply wouldn’t do to let the rain ruin it, would it? Your clothes had been absolutely ruined, soaked through with blood, but, well, Ninth attire isn't exactly known for its diversity. There were spare robes on the ship that fit you just fine.

The two of you entered the atrium where we were given our key rings. The huge, open space felt even more moldy and run-down than before, with water dripping from the leaky, glass roof. On the other side of the room, between the twin colonnades, were two staircases, which curved around and met in the center, turning into one staircase that ran the rest of the short distance to the second floor. A dry fountain sat between them; it must have been impressive and beautiful back in its day, but now only looked depressing and filthy, with a pool of slimy, stagnant water in its bottom bowl. Coronabeth took her sweet time looking all around, taking it in, while you kept going, moving determinedly towards your destination. When she noticed you had gotten ahead of her, she jogged up the stairs to catch up with you.

“Feels strange to be back, doesn’t it?” she remarked. You didn’t answer, and her face fell, just slightly. Nevertheless, she persisted. “Do you think the equipment will still be working?”

“Hopefully.”

“I can’t say I care for this rain. You can’t exactly go outside on the Third, so we never have to worry about it. Does it rain much on the Ninth?”

“No,” you dismissed, with growing irritation.

“That’s a shame. You seem to have a very moody aesthetic, it feels like it would be almost fitting. Don’t you agree?”

“Miss Tridentarius, please, stop trying to make small talk with me. I have seen my House slaughtered. We are facing an enemy that could be the end of everything we know. I am in no mood for your banal pleasantries. We have a job to do.”

“I am trying to provide you with some company, you uptight little nun,” Coronabeth chastised angrily.

“I do not recall asking for your company. I do not need company.”

“And that’s why you left your cavalier behind, is it?”

You stopped abruptly, and with a wave of your hand, cleaved Coronabeth’s tongue to her palate. She made a furious noise and clutched at her mouth. “You are just like your sister,” you hissed, “you both presume too much. You understand nothing of me, or my cavalier.”

There was a moment of silence as you tried to glare Coronabeth down, but she met you unshaken. She drew herself up to her full — and quite considerable — height, head tilted up imperiously, and switched to Imperial Sign Language,

“You’re more like my sister than I am. You left your cavalier behind for the same reason she left me behind.”

You growled and turned away from her, freeing her mouth with a dismissive gesture as you walked away. Coronabeth followed behind, but made no attempt to catch up with you, choosing instead to let you stew in your own misery. You needed no encouragement. You had plenty of practice.

 


 

 

I woke up on the floor of a tiny, dingy shuttle. It was the same shuttle Coronabeth had arrived in on the Ninth — same cramped, uncomfortable interior, same frowning portrait of my mom on the wall. Warden sat in the pilot’s chair, though they must have heard me stirring, because they turned to look at me over their shoulder.

As I fully came back to consciousness, I suddenly realized that I was ravenously hungry. So hungry that it hurt. I groaned. Warden got up, extricated a nutrient bar from somewhere within their cloak, and handed it to me.

“Eat.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I ripped the wrapper off and devoured it like a wild animal. It was bland and gross, as nutrient bars always are, but I scarfed it down in approximately three seconds. They pulled a water bottle out of their robe next, and I chugged that down almost as fast. They rooted around in a crate on the floor behind them and dug out some more food, which I eagerly tore into. When I finally slowed down enough to fit words in between bites, I asked them,

“What the hell is happening to me?”

“You haven’t eaten since you woke up. That isn’t something you can get away with when you’re not a Lyctor.”

Oh. Right. That. It was a stark reminder, my brain having been too focused on the hunger to consider my situation. I slowly put down the last bit of nutrient bar I was eating and lowered my gaze. I glanced over and out the front window of the shuttle, though I couldn’t see anything that would indicate where we were.

“We’re en-route to the Sixth as we speak,” Warden sensed my question, “this shuttle is… not fast. But we’re about halfway there.” They spoke delicately, which was probably nice of them, but I still resented it a little bit. I stood up, and was immediately confronted by how disgusting I was. Blood permeated my clothes, dried and crusty, flaking off with every movement. Warden gave me a pointed look, and gestured toward a door behind them. “There’s a sonic in the bathroom, and there should be at least one set of spare clothes in that box over there.”

The bathroom would have made a broom closet look roomy. The door opened to reveal a toilet sitting about a foot away from the entrance, and that was it. The sonic was hanging on a hook on the wall. Warden gave me some privacy as I stripped off my disgusting clothes, and I closed the bathroom door to clean myself with the sonic while I sat on the toilet. There was a meditative roteness to the action. I probably should have used that time to think about my situation, but my brain was a pile of sludge. I wasn’t really thinking about anything at all. My mind felt empty and dead.

The clothes in the box must have belonged to Coronabeth, so they were a fine fit for me, if a bit big. They didn’t look like normal Third attire; she must have picked them up while she was traveling. I pulled on a set of worryingly tight pants, a sleeveless shirt with a dangerously low plunging neckline, and a leather jacket that looked more expensive than the shuttle itself. I wasn’t able to properly appreciate it at the time, but I can confirm that I looked damn good. What can I say? The princess has got style.

I took a deep, slow breath, in and out, and I started to feel almost human again. I leaned back against the wall.

“How long was I out?”

“Ten hours, give or take.”

“And Nonagesimus?”

“The Reverend Daughter and miss Tridentarius took the Ninth’s shuttle, and are headed to the First, to get in contact with the Emperor.”

“What’s the situation?”

“We’re going to the Sixth, to initiate the Alexandria protocol. This was the only way off world for you, other than evacuating with the rest of the Ninth. I figured that you would be less than satisfied with that solution, so I brought you with me.”

“I appreciate that,” I mumbled.

“Of course.”

“You think we’ll be able to track Alecto down?”

“I doubt it. Even if we could find her, there’s no way we’d ever be able to keep pace with her.”

“What do you mean?”

“She can travel via the River, and… you can’t.”

That hadn’t even occurred to me. I hung my head and said, with extreme passion, “Fuck.”

Warden winced sympathetically. “I’ll be honest, I’m concerned about what she’ll be able to do with that advantage. She seemed experienced with River travel; she won’t need much recovery time between dives. I have no idea what her objectives will be while she waits for the Beasts to arrive.”

“Goddammit, Nonagesimus.”

Warden sat down on a crate opposite me. They leaned forward, elbows on their knees, hands clasped together in their lap. “I’m sorry, Nav.”

“Not your fault my necro is a righteous cunt.” I said. Warden’s mouth quirked to the side, lips drawn thin in displeasure. They didn’t say whatever was clearly on their mind, so I drew it out of them. “You got something to say, Warden?”

“The Reverend Daughter can hardly be criticized for not wanting to let her cavalier die.”

“Yeah, actually, she can be criticized. In fact I’m doing it right now! This is me, criticizing her. You seriously think we’re going to win this fight as normal people? That’s what being a cavalier is, that’s what I’m for. She’s the one who couldn’t follow through.”

I leaned in closer, folding my legs so I could shift my weight forwards. I wanted to punch the pitying, disgusted look right off of Warden’s stupid face.

“If you think that’s what being a cavalier means, then I’m glad you’re not her cavalier anymore.”

“Fuck you, Warden! Are you seriously going to look at me with a straight face and say that Camilla wouldn’t have died for Palamedes?”

“He never would have asked that of me — of her.”

“That’s not the point. If he did ask her, don’t tell me she wouldn’t have done it.”

“If he was the kind of person who was capable of asking her to do that, she never would have sworn that oath.”

“For fuck’s sake — okay, forget about the asking. She wouldn’t do it? She wouldn’t die to make him a Lyctor, to give him a fighting chance against someone like Alecto? If she was in my place, are you really saying she wouldn’t have done it?”

They mirrored themself gently, but firmly, “If she was the kind of person who was willing to do that, he never would have sworn that oath.”

I sat back, thoroughly thrown off by their answer. What the hell was the point of a cavalier, if they weren’t willing to do that? But Camilla was probably the best cavalier I had ever seen.

Warden must have seen the incredulous look on my face. “If you think that’s what one flesh, one end means, then you have no idea what being a cavalier is about.”

Without waiting for a rebuttal, they stood up and walked back over to the pilot’s chair.

“Not like it matters anyway,” I said bitterly, “she doesn’t want me as her cavalier? Fine. Then I won’t be. I’m a free woman now, I don’t have to deal with her bullshit anymore.”

Warden tilted their head as if they were thinking about turning around and looking over their shoulder at me, but apparently they decided against it, because they went back to looking at the readouts on the display next to their chair.

We rode the stele pathway in meditative silence. There wasn’t much actual piloting that needed to be done — once a ship hooks on to a stele, you basically just keep the engines on and wait — so Warden rifled through their medical kit and took stock of what was left. There was plenty of time to think, but I didn’t even do that. My brain still felt fuzzy, scrambled, and it was difficult to hold a thought in my mind. The view out the front window was not helpful — the way that steles contort space makes everything outside the pathway look warped beyond recognition — so I had no way of marking our progress.

I’m not sure how long we sat there — a few hours, probably — before Warden noticed something on the screen beside the pilot’s chair. They perked up immediately, which grabbed my attention. They read whatever was on that screen, pursed their lips, and furrowed their brow in concentration and concern.

“Problem?” I asked.

“We’re being followed,” they muttered. I stood up and looked over their shoulder. I’m not a pilot, so I wasn’t especially familiar with all the technical details that were shown on the screen, but I understood enough to tell what they were talking about. A ship — a big ship — was moving directly toward us, and it was moving a hell of a lot faster than we were.

“Alecto?”

They shook their head, “Too large to be the Hermes. Unless she picked up a new ship.”

“Shit.” My hand instinctively reached for the hilt of my sword — not that it would even have been useful in that situation — only to find nothing there. Right. “What do we do? Can we outrun them?”

“This ship is not fast. I don’t think we could outrun an especially committed geriatric.”

There was nothing we could do — we could only watch as the ship drew closer, and closer, and closer. If they were looking to kill us, we were almost certainly going to die. Warden kept their hands on the controls and their eyes on the screen. The ship slowed to match our speed as it got closer, and they brought it in until it was only a few hundred feet behind us.

Something appeared on the screen.

“They’ve fired a projectile,” Warden said, and danced their fingers across the controls, evading to the left. A shape flashed by us, visible only for an instant before we turned too far away. There was no light coming from it, so it couldn’t be something self-propelled, like a missile. Another shot, and Warden swerved out of the way again. We had precious little room to maneuver without dropping out of the stele pathway. They acquitted themself admirably, but there was no way to escape this forever.

The fourth projectile hit us, and I shouted and threw myself to the ground as a spike of metal pierced through the shuttle’s hull with a screech of tearing metal. Air escaped through the hole it tore. Four prongs snapped out from the end of the spike, and an unseen force yanked it back, the spikes digging into the hull and holding it in place. There was a hissing whine, and some kind of sealant foam sprayed outwards from the head of the spike in every direction, closing up the hole behind it.

The ship lurched, and the harpoon began to reel us in. The shuttle’s engines groaned, but the harpoon’s cable didn’t even really need to actually pull us, just to guide the shuttle, pulling it through an open airlock door and making sure we weren’t smashed apart as their ship accelerated and caught up with us.

The space around us rippled as we were pulled through the air shield. The walls of the ship cut off our view of the outside like a curtain being pulled across a stage, and a sea of dull, gunmetal grey swallowed us. The hangar doors slid shut with dreadful finality. The engines of our little shuttle kept us floating in the air, inches above the floor. Warden eased us down to the ground.

They sighed and switched the engines off. “Are you ready, Nav?”

I looked at them like they had grown an extra head. “Am I — I don’t have a weapon, Warden!”

“Yep,” they said, popping their lips at the P, and hit the button to lower the entrance ramp, standing up to face our welcoming committee. I fell into a fighting stance, though I had no idea what I actually thought that would accomplish. The ramp lock disengaged with a hiss and levered downward, slowly revealing the scene before us. Ten grim, black-clad soldiers pointed rifles at us. Warden offered an amused smile and raised their hands, holding them up at chest height. I looked at the soldiers. I looked at Warden. I looked at the soldiers again. I begrudgingly raised my hands.

Footsteps approached the ship, and the soldiers parted to let somebody else through. A short man with dark skin, a shaved head, and a bitchin’ salt and pepper beard approached us, coming to a stop just before the entrance ramp. He did not have the same deadly serious expression as his soldiers. His face was soft, calm.

Commander Light, Blood of Eden’s general, my mother’s successor, smiled, and said in a warm, quiet voice that seemed much too deep for his stature, “Miss Hect. I apologize for my insistence, but I’d like to speak with you.”

 


 

 

We were led at gunpoint through the winding halls of a ship that could not have been more different from the Empire’s fleet. Ships from the Nine Houses were macabre space-mausoleums with engines strapped on them as an afterthought. This ship was designed by somebody with a serious fetish for right angles. They were a boring person, who ate unflavored nutrient paste for every meal by choice, and considered colors other than grey a frivolous indulgence. It was a pile of unadorned metal boxes stapled together with narrow hallways whose ceilings were just low enough to be irritating.

Warden and I were shunted down into two supremely uncomfortable high-backed chairs, and Light took a seat across from us at the small, metal table. He had such a curious face. I expected him to look scowling and dour, like Wake, but he didn’t. His face was soft — kind, even — but his eyes had an unnerving perceptiveness in them. He looked calculating, in a way that made him come across far more dangerous than he would if he simply barked threats at us.

He smiled, and asked, “Could I get the two of you anything? I’m afraid we’re low on tea at the moment, but sparkling water, perhaps?”

Warden shook their head. I looked back and forth between them and Light a few times, then slowly raised my hand. I wasn’t sure what sparkling water was, but it sounded like a good thing from the way he said it. Light nodded at another soldier standing behind him, who walked out of the room, then he turned back to face us.

“How have you been faring, miss Hect?”

Warden did not correct him, but instead deadpanned, “You know Commander, I’ll be honest, I haven’t been great.”

He chuckled, “So I’ve heard.”

Warden narrowed their eyes at him. “Been hearing a lot about me lately?”

“I have, actually, but believe it or not, I’m not here for you.” He turned his gaze to me. “I apologize, I haven’t properly introduced myself, have I? How rude of me. My name is The Wound is the Place Where the Light Enters You Uske Ghar Mein Der Hai Andher Nahin Thanks For The Memories Even If They Weren’t So Great, but you may call me Light.”

I nodded and gave an awkward little half wave. “Name’s Gideon.”

“Yes, and I have been dying to meet you, miss Nav.” He looked like he was about to continue, but he was cut off by the soldier returning, bearing a glass. “Ah, thank you, Halcyon.” He proffered the glass of what I assumed was sparkling water, and I took it from him. Upon inspection, I realized that it was just water, but with bubbles in it. I did not trust it one fucking bit. Had I known what it was, I wouldn’t have asked for it in the first place, but now that I had, it seemed like kind of a dick move to not drink any. I sipped at it, and tried very hard to avoid scrunching up my face in displeasure.

“Thanks.”

“I had a visit from a… well, I wouldn’t quite say a friend of yours, but an acquaintance, if nothing else. She had all sorts of interesting things to tell me. How exciting, to get to meet Awake’s daughter.”

Oh.

“Never knew her,” was all I said.

“Regardless. She was a great woman you know. But unfortunately, the reason you’re here has more to do with your father.”

“Yeah, I know, you wanna kill the guy, join the club.”

He laughed — he had a quiet, genuine laugh, his eyes turning up warmly at the sides. “It is becoming quite a large club, isn’t it? But miss Nav, you do realize that means you’re going to have to die as well?”

He said it completely nonchalantly, as if he was discussing the weather.

“Uhh, what?”

“The wound John Gaius created cuts far deeper than just the atrocities of his Empire. I know you’ve traveled through the River, I know you’ve seen it. The waters of the afterlife, polluted and vile.”

“Are they not supposed to be like that?”

He shook his head sadly. “No, they most certainly are not. The River is supposed to be clear and beautiful, a realm of passage for the dead to cross over to the other side. But now it is murky and clouded, and the dead swim restlessly, without any sight of shore. Do you know why the Dominicus system is the only place in the universe where new necromancers are born? It’s because of him, because of the wound he created when he restarted the star.”

“I told you before, Commander, and I’ll tell you again,” Warden interjected, “that’s a myth. That isn’t how necromancy works.”

“There are many myths surrounding John Gaius, miss Hect, but that is not one of them.”

“Uh, anybody want to explain what this has to do with me?”

“Necromancy must be cleansed from this universe, miss Nav. Only then will the afterlife begin to heal. Dominicus is a wound, and necromancy an infection, its users like bacteria, spreading the disease. Every trace of it must die, every trace of him and his Empire, and that includes you.”

“Why do you seem to think that I—" I began, cutting myself off with a frustrated noise, “I’m just some random chick, man! I don’t have — fuck, I don’t know — special God powers or whatever the hell you think I’ve got. I’m not even a necromancer!”

“Regardless, we cannot allow the daughter of John Gaius to survive; our mission is too important. I’m sure you understand,” he said, conciliatory.

I sighed wearily. “I understand,” I said. He smiled sadly, and I could see the respect in his eyes. “I understand that you can suck my dick, you pompous, egotistical jack—"

He flicked his eyes to the soldier in the corner, and without any further prompting, they smashed the butt of their rifle against my face and cut me off. I groaned, and spat a gob of blood onto the floor. Light did not look even remotely upset, remaining perfectly calm and affable. Warden made no move, keeping their breathing very carefully controlled, brow set like granite.

“You shot our shuttle with nonlethal capture harpoons. If you wanted us dead, we would be. Why are we here, Commander?”

“You are to be bargaining chips, and then you are to die. Miss Nav is a useful backup plan, in case our plot against Gaius fails, and you are going to help us acquire miss Tridentarius.”

“Fuck you,” I grunted.

“You have no idea what Alecto is about to do, do you?” Warden asked.

“Of course I do,” he responded, “our goals align. She is the Death of the Lord. She will kill him, and all she requires is for us to keep her enemies at bay, which, in this case, means the two of you.”

So she didn’t tell him that killing her would kill the Emperor. That much made sense to me — she could not afford to die until the Resurrection Beasts were close enough to get pulled into the black hole, and Light would be unlikely to pass up such an opportunity.

“And if you’re here when that happens, you’re going to die along with him,” Warden said. “When the Emperor dies, the sun will collapse.”

“Ah, yes, of course, that old tale. He’s gone to such great lengths to ensure that that notion keeps floating around. Awfully convenient for him, isn’t it? That to move against him inherently spells death. No. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about John Gaius, it is that he lies. I’ve had my doubts about that little tale for a long time, and Alecto confirmed them.”

She lied to him, I realized, she told him the exact opposite of what she told us. The arc of her plan began to fall into place in my mind. Light could help keep us off her back while she waited for the Beasts to get close, and when she died, Blood of Eden’s leadership would get caught up in the aftermath, just like everyone else.

“If you seriously think she’s on your side, then you’re a far bigger fool than I ever thought.”

“Of course she is not on our side, I never claimed she was. I merely claimed that our goals align. The Hermes is a very distinctive ship, we are keeping a close eye on her movements. But enough of this — I decided to speak with you as a courtesy, because I respect you, miss Hect, but you are not going to change my mind.”

“She’s trying to trick you, Commander,” Warden insisted, “You have to let us go! We can stop her! We can stop this!”

Light shook his head sadly, then glanced up at one of the soldiers behind us. “Take them to the brig.”

A pair of hands fell upon each of our shoulders. Warden struggled against their grip. “You are going to die along with us, you goddamn fool, you have to let us go!” Light stood up, and adjusted the collar of his jacket. “Commander, you need to let us go!”

Light turned and walked out the other door as the soldiers dragged us away kicking and screaming.

 


 

 

The communications room was a small, simple affair. The screen of the communicator was mounted on a desk with a single, wooden chair in front of it. By the usual standards of Canaan House it was plain, even stark, but the emptiness did nothing to distract from the spots where the bodies of Teacher and Marta Dyas had once lain. They were gone now, but you could see them in your mind, clear as day.

The legs of the chair clacked gently against the ground as you pulled it out and sat down in it, alone in the tiny room. Waiting for Coronabeth to catch up wasn’t worth the time, and though she could not have lagged that far behind, she did not arrive. You suspected that she had gotten lost. You did not particularly care.

There was no delay in entangled communications, no need to wait for a signal to travel, so you merely pressed a button, and waited for God to pick up the call. He did not answer immediately — reasonable enough, he was a busy man — and you sat, stock still, posture perfect, for ten minutes. Eventually, the message was received, and God appeared on the screen before you. The sight of him ignited something inside you. Perhaps reverence, or perhaps fear. He looked precisely as ordinary and as terribly divine as he always had, but he carried a harried exhaustion, with bags beneath his eyes, his hair uncombed, his collar rumpled up.

His face cycled rapidly through three expressions — confusion, then pleasant surprise, then hard accusation.

“What have you done with Harrowhark Nonagesimus?” he demanded coolly.

“I am who I am, my Lord,” you said, “it’s true, my body was not my own, but my… unwanted guest, is no longer here.”

He eyed you warily, “And why should I believe you?”

“I can do nothing to prove myself to you, but please, even if you do not believe me, at least listen to what I have to say. We are all in danger.”

After a moment of consideration, he spoke, with obvious uncertainty, “First you’re going to tell me who was in your body, and who was in Gideon’s.”

“Nav and I were sharing her body.”

He raised one eyebrow. “And yours?”

It took you a moment to muster yourself.

“My body was possessed by Alecto the First.” He had no dramatic reaction for you, no gasp of shock. He became strangely enraptured, breathing slow and steady, lips ever so slightly parted. You decided to get the rest of it out of the way. “I — I have recovered my body, because she left it to return to her own.”

He closed his eyes, and swallowed thickly. He addressed you with the measured, deliberate calm of a parent trying very hard not to blow up at a misbehaving toddler, “Harrowhark. What have you done?”

And you told him. You told him everything, from the very beginning — minus the part about the rest of us wanting to murder him, but that was probably a wise exclusion. He never erupted at you. He never screamed or berated you. You so desperately wished that he would. He took it all in with the beleaguered calm of a man who has dealt with entirely too much bullshit in his lifetime.

For the first time in a very long while, you felt like a child. But it was more than that. You started to suspect that he wanted you to feel that way. That his demeanor was carefully calculated to shame you far more than any expression of anger ever could. You were not there to see it yourself, but you retained the memories of what happened when I was in your body, and the recollection of him revealing to his Lyctors that he had lied, without any hesitation or remorse, colored every single word that he said. Where you had expected to find comfort in his measured calm, you instead found yourself sick to your stomach.

Still, you told him what happened, in as much detail as he requested — which wasn’t a lot. He clearly understood the time pressure posed by Alecto’s presence, and you skimmed over certain things. By the time you realized that you hadn’t even mentioned Coronabeth was with you, the story was over, and he was already in planning mode.

“The Beasts are drawn to me — not as strongly as they are drawn to her, but if I can get close enough to be a more obvious target I may be able to draw them away for a time. I am going to send Ianthe to retrieve you. The two of you can work on tracking her down. When you have found her, contact me, and I will come to put her back to sleep. It’s going to be a close thing, but I think we can pull this off.”

“Of course,” you said, “and… I am sorry.”

“It’s… well I won’t say it’s alright, Harrow, because it isn’t, but I understand, and I forgive you.” The relief you expected those words to prompt did not come.

“Thank you, Lord.”

He held up a hand. “Please, just call me Teacher.”

The conversation lapsed into silence. It felt as if anything you could possibly have opened your mouth to say would have been an imposition, as if doing anything other than sitting there looking chastened would be impolite. Thankfully, he spared you. He said, “So, you got to meet Pyrrha, then?”

“I did.”

“I feel like I should let you know — Pyrrha is dead.”

You paused for a moment.

“I thought as much. I am sorry for your loss, Teacher.”

“Thank you, Harrow,” he said softly. “Our relationship was not a kind one. But she was my friend.” He then proceeded to follow up that sentence with the most awful thing he could possibly have said to you. He said, “You are too, you know that?”

You blinked. “Pardon?”

“I think of you as my friend as well, Harrowhark. A new one, to be sure, but a friend all the same. I hope you could say the same of me.”

The idea that the King of Nine Renewals was your friend, that your relationship was so mundane and equal, was blasphemous. He was not your friend — he was God. The thought of it was stomach-wrenchingly wrong. But what else were you supposed to say? “I — yes, of course, Teacher.”

He smiled, and you could not comprehend it. How could he be happy that someone like you called him a friend?

“I’m glad you’re alive, Harrow. I should have said that earlier, shouldn’t I?” he laughed, “I feared that you might not be. So it’s good to know that you’re okay.” You weren’t sure how to respond to that, so you didn’t. “I will send Ianthe to collect you shortly. This is going to be dangerous, but I have absolute faith in you.”

“I will not let you down, my Lord.”

“Good luck, Harrow. And stay alive.”

The call ended, and God’s face disappeared from the screen. The room felt suddenly empty. You almost wished that Coronabeth was there, if admitting that wouldn’t have hurt your pride so much. It made you ponder, not for the first time, how speaking to your God could make you feel so alone. You shook your head. He was the Emperor of the Nine Houses, the God who was man and the man who became God, it was not your place to ask such questions.

But the human heart has never once worked that way, and your questions remained, nonetheless.

 


 

 

Things were not going my way. That’s a fairly generous way to put it, allow me to rephrase — everything was absolutely fucked, and I hated it. I was in a prison cell, in space, with no way out, as I waited for the entire solar system to die. I wished you were there, purely so I could laugh at you. Because I was sitting in a cell that belonged to an interstellar terrorist organization, and somehow it was still more comfortable than your room on the Hermes. That’s not to say it was cozy by any stretch of the imagination, but there were two cots, and both of them were miles softer than yours.

I availed myself of that small measure of comfort. I sat on one of the cots, sitting up against the headboard with my knees pulled up to my chest and my head buried somewhere between them. I could not see Warden, but I could feel the pitying look they were giving me. It had been at least a few hours since we were tossed in there, though I couldn’t have said exactly how long, and I had been in that position just about the entire time.

So maybe I was moping. Sue me. I earned that much.

Footsteps approached. That at least got me to look up. Another anonymous black-clad soldier came into view, visible through the bars that comprised the front wall. They were holding a tray, carrying enough food and water for both Warden and I, and they held it out through a slot in the door. More importantly, they were wearing a rad pair of sunglasses, just like mine, and I respected them immensely. Warden took the tray from them with a murmured thanks, and the soldier walked away.

Warden placed the tray on the squat table that sat between the two cots, and gestured me over. I ignored them, and planted my head back into the cradle of my knees.

“Oh quit sulking, Nav.”

“I am not—" I protested, but stopped when I saw the look on Warden’s face, which was a weaponized form of shaming so effective there must have been laws against it. “Okay, fine, yeah, I’m sulking,” I mumbled.

I shuffled over to sit on the edge of the bed, knees almost bumping against the table, and reached across to grab a cup of water. We ate quietly, mechanically, but there was a companionship in that silence that I appreciated. The food was plain and spartan, though it was not insufficient or unappealing.

At length, I said, “Man, we’re prisoners on this ship, how the hell is this food better than what we had on the Ninth?”

“I can’t say I’ve tried Ninth cuisine. Our food on the Sixth tends to be spicy, so I’m not used to meals this bland.”

“What’s spicy mean?”

Their eyes bugged out of their head. “What?”

“Is spicy good? Our food was not good.” I said. They looked more aghast than I’d ever seen them before. “Well, you’ll have to show me sometime. I don’t have to eat Ninth House food ever again. After all,” I gestured at the cell around us, “I’m a free woman now.”

They rolled their eyes. “And what will you do with your newfound freedom? Once this is all over, that is.”

I shrugged, “I don’t really know yet. I used to want to join the Cohort, but that sure as hell ain’t happening anymore. I guess I’ll just find someplace to make myself useful, doesn’t really matter where — as long as it’s far, far away from the fucking Ninth.”

The lights dimmed, switching from the bright overhead fluorescents to low, slightly teal lighting coming from strips on the floor. The ship transformed to an approximation of nighttime — a common method to prevent a spaceship crew’s sense of time from warping. I looked around and took in the change.

“Mood lighting,” I joked. Warden did not appear to be in the mood for laughter. They stared at me with a curious look on their face.

“Why?”

I cocked my head to the side and gave them a puzzled look. “Why what?”

“Why do you need to make yourself useful?”

“That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? I figure if I go out having taken more than I gave, that means I’ve failed.”

“We’re not here for anything. Why should you owe anything to the universe?”

“I’m here. I’m alive, aren’t I?”

Warden considered this for a moment. They reached out to the tray sitting on the table and grabbed a hunk of bread — the last piece of food remaining, which neither of us had touched, as the amount the guard had given us was fairly generous. They held it out to me for a moment.

“Still hungry?”

I eyed them warily, and shook my head. They looked at the bread, tossed it up and down in their hand a few times, turned it around. Then they threw it at me.

It hit me right in the face. I yelped and flinched away from it. It fell, hitting my chest, then plopping into my lap.

“What the fuck Warden?” I cried.

“You owe me, Nav.”

“What?”

“I gave you that bread. That was mine, but I gave it to you, and you need to pay me back for it. You owe me.”

“What are you — I never asked for any fucking—" I cut myself off with a hard, exasperated breath through my nose at the sight of Warden’s loaded glare. “Alright, point taken.”

I held the piece of bread in my hand, unsure what to do with it. Eventually, I made a decision, and tossed it right back at Warden, who easily caught it, and dropped it back onto the tray. I let myself fall onto my back so I was lying with my legs dangling off the edge of the cot. The bed wasn’t that wide, so my head lolled off the other side.

“I honestly figured you’d get what I meant more than most, given how stupid you were over Dulcinea.”

“I didn’t do those things for any grand cosmic purpose, Nav,” they snorted, “I did it because I loved her. I wanted to spend my life with her. No chance of that anymore, I suppose.”

I propped myself up on my elbows to look at them. “You know, when Harrow was in that bubble, she brought a bunch of ghosts in with her without meaning to.” Warden sat up a little straighter, and I could see the nerd in them light up. “Dulcinea was there.”

“And?” Warden kept their face impressively neutral, though their reaction was evident in the slight strain in their voice.

“Not much to tell. She was sad, knowing that she wouldn’t get to meet you. And I don’t just mean Palamedes — she wished she could have met Camilla too.”

They looked down, and for a moment, it appeared as if they might cry. But instead, they met my eyes again and asked, “What did she look like?”

I grinned. “She looked like trouble.” Warden burst out laughing, louder and more free than I had ever heard them. I grinned. Their laughter was infectious, and I found myself chuckling a little bit too. “I mean, I don’t want to creep on your girl, but she was damn fine.”

As their laughter tapered, they said, “Ah, she was really something. I wish I could have met her.”

“Yeah. Me too, honestly.”

“Was she a failure, Nav?”

“I — what?” I stammered, taken aback.

“Dulcie was sick her entire life. Countless people spent time doing things for her, waiting on her, because she wasn’t strong enough to do them herself. I practically dedicated my entire life to her. She unquestionably took more than she gave. Does that mean she was a failure?”

“I, well, no, of course not.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t — it’s not — it’s different.”

“Why?”

“She wasn’t able to give back.”

“So?” they countered. I opened my mouth to retort, but there were no words to come out. I snapped it shut with an audible click of my teeth. They stared me down, and I shifted uncomfortably under their gaze. At length, they said, “You know, Nav, it’s okay to do things for Harrow just because you want to.”

“Yeah, well I don’t.”

Warden looked at me like they were searching for something, but whatever it was, I don’t think they found it. Eventually they must have decided that their point had been made, because they sighed and stood up.

They walked over to the door of the cell and peered up the hallway, then down the hallway — as much as they could from behind the bars.

“What are you doing?”

“Did you notice that the Commander still thinks I’m Camilla Hect?”

“Uhh, yeah.”

“You know what Camilla wasn’t?” they asked, and then they put their hand on the door. “A necromancer.”

The door changed. The pristine metal dulled, rust blooming across it. It corroded before my very eyes, as if it was aging dozens of years in a single second. The rust consumed it further and further, until the gate looked like it had been abandoned for centuries. Warden gave it a single, solid yank, and the brittle, degraded hinges broke off. They stepped to the side as the door fell to the ground with a clang, a cloud of rust flaking off it on impact.

I stared at them, slack jawed. “Could you have done that the whole time?” I demanded.

“Yes.”

“I — what — why—"

“I was waiting for the lights to change, so the guard shift would be lighter,” they explained, and started to walk through the now open doorway before hesitating for a moment. They shrugged, “Also, I wanted to get you to talk about that stuff. I’m pretty sure you needed it. Seriously, you and the Reverend Daughter are the most emotionally constipated people I’ve ever met.”

“Hey!” I protested. They stepped off to the side and gestured for me to go through.

“Shall we?”

 


 

 

Warden and I pressed ourselves back into a tiny alcove as a soldier strolled leisurely by. We were lucky to find it — the ship was so boxy and utilitarian, it was difficult to find places to hide away. We watched them stroll past; they must not have realized we were gone yet, since nobody seemed to be in a particular hurry.

As soon as they rounded the corner, I crept down the hallway in the other direction. I let Warden go ahead of me and take the lead. They knew the way back to the hangar, which I certainly didn’t. Turns out an eidetic memory is useful, who knew?

The hallway led out onto a catwalk at the top of an open room filled with machinery that rumbled and hissed out jets of steam. Footsteps approached from below. We pressed ourselves as far back as we could, trying to stay in the shadows at the top of the room. The catwalk was lit from below, so I just hoped they didn’t think to look up.

Commander Light walked through the door on one side of the room. Two more sets of footsteps approached from the other side, and two soldiers ran out. They met him in the middle, and breathlessly let him know that we had escaped.

Well shit.

We were close enough to hear them clearly. As the two of them finished letting him know the situation, he quietly considered it for a moment. When he spoke, he did not raise his voice. He remained level and cool. He did not shout or threaten. He did not need to. Only two words were needed, and both of them dripped with dreadful certainty.

“Lethal force.”

There was no blaring alarm — nothing that would have let us know we were rumbled if we hadn’t seen them. One of the soldiers merely spoke into a communicator on their shoulder as they walked out of the room. Light did not follow them, he just stood in the center of the room. He ran a hand over his shaved head, then reached to a holster tucked beneath his coat, on the back of his belt, and pulled out a pistol. I didn’t dare move, didn’t dare breathe. Light removed the pistol’s magazine, examined it, then put it back in and readied the pistol. He sighed.

In one fluid movement he spun around to face us, raised his pistol, and fired.

I flung myself to the ground as a bullet pierced a pipe right behind my head. It spewed steam as I scrambled up and toward the exit, ducking my head as low as I could. We bolted into the hallway that continued from the other side of the catwalk. A shot rang out from behind us. I glanced over my shoulder to see one of the soldiers that had just been talking to Light standing at the far end of the hallway behind us. They were too far away to get an accurate shot, and we sprinted forward. The other soldier that had been with him rounded the corner at the end of the hallway as we approached it.

We ducked through a doorway into a room beside us. The autodoor slid closed behind us, and Warden pressed a hand to the mechanism. The metal casing corroded and decayed, and within seconds, the wiring within sparked and died. The door juddered as the soldier approached the other side, but did not open.

There was another door on the other side of the room, and we ran through it. “What now?” I panted.

“We’re not far from the hangar.” The door led out into a short hallway that formed a T-intersection with a longer one, and we sprinted into the intersection.

With a deafening crack, Warden’s head snapped back, and blood sprayed out as the bullet punched it’s way out of the back of their skull. They slumped motionless to the ground.

“Shit!” I flung myself back out of the intersection and into the shorter hallway. Warden laid in a growing pool of their own blood. They did not get up. I ran back to the room we just came from. There was no other way out. I could hear somebody on the other side of the jammed door working to get it open. Footsteps grew closer as the soldier that shot Warden approached. I pressed myself to the wall beside the door, and glanced around.

The soldier rounded the corner into the hallway. I ducked my head back as they fired. I had no idea what to do. I had no weapon. I breathed quickly and psyched myself up to jump out and get in close quarters with them, maybe wrench their gun away. They grew closer.

I leapt around the corner, ready to attack, but they weren’t as close as I thought they were — there was no way I’d be able to stop them before they shot me.

Warden was standing right behind them, and as the soldier raised their gun, Warden placed a hand on the back of their head. The soldier’s eyes went wide. Their skin wrinkled. Their hair turned from dark brown to pure white. Their entire body shriveled and aged before me. By the time they died, they were a dried-up husk, a horrifying ghoul with glassy eyes that bulged from their sockets. They collapsed to their knees, then flat on their face.

I stared at Warden with amazement. My jaw hung open. The hole in their head finished sealing up, leaving a pale, star-shaped scar where the bullet hit their skull.

They gave me a weird look. “What?”

They raised an eyebrow, “Did you seriously forget that I heal?”

“No!“ I protested, then grumbled “Maybe.” They snorted, then bent down, picked up the soldier’s rifle, and tossed it to me. I instinctively grabbed it.

“Come on.” They gestured with their head, and I ran after them. We emerged into a huge hangar bay filled with dozens of ships. It wasn’t the same hangar we had been pulled into, and I gave Warden a confused look.

“We don’t want our ship, Nav,” they whispered, “we want something fast. A fighter.”

“But how did you know—"

“I’ve been on this ship before. I was working with them, remember?” I had not remembered that, but I didn’t say anything. We descended a spiral staircase from the upper catwalks down the ground floor. There was one small ship nearby — something streamlined, with a single, huge engine on the back and guns set into the side. It looked sexy as hell compared to the rust bucket we’d taken to get here. The door was on the side, with a set of stairs that lowered to allow access. There was one person next to it, inspecting the engines. I noticed that they were wearing sunglasses; they must have been the same soldier that brought us our food earlier.

I looked around. They were the only guard nearby, but there were plenty of other people in the hangar. Rather than raising my rifle to fire it, I clutched it so the end pointed over my shoulder and the butt was facing forward, and snuck up behind them. I tapped them on the shoulder twice, and they spun around to face me.

I slammed the butt of the rifle into their throat. They stumbled back with a choked noise, clutching their neck. I adjusted my grip on the gun and wielded it like a bat, winding up and clocking them in the side of the head. The hit sent them sprawling to the ground, unconscious.

Warden grabbed the soldier’s rifle for themself, then ran past, climbing the stairs to the fighter’s door. They noticed I wasn’t following them, and gestured for me to come on. I ignored them, and squatted down next to the soldier on the floor. I pulled them out of the way of the ship’s engines, then rolled them over onto their front. I plucked the sunglasses off their face, and put them on my own. Then I followed Warden, who rolled their eyes.

The stairs folded up and pulled up into the ship with a press of a button. The door sealed behind them. The hangar doors were open, a new ship entering, creating visible ripples as it passed through the air shield. Warden and I sat in the cockpit — I was in the copilot’s seat, but I let them handle everything. I was no pilot, and they were.

The engines ignited, and the whole ship rumbled with power. The other people milling about the hangar took notice. I heard muffled shouting start up, and people ran toward us. Warden’s lips quirked upward, and they slammed the throttle all the way forward.

The thruster flared, and my head slammed back against my chair as we exploded forward fast enough to make a missile weep with envy. We crossed the entire hangar and sliced through the air shield in under three seconds.

“Holy shit,” I strained through a body pressed flat against the seat like a pancake.

“That’s more like it,” Warden grinned dangerously. Their hands flicked across the controls as they located the Sixth’s stele and quickly latched on to it. My heart calmed a little as the intense force of acceleration let up and we slid into the stele pathway. I laughed manically, the adrenaline seeking an outlet.

“Alright, next stop’s the Sixth,” Warden said.

“And what’s our gameplan once we’re there?”

“Gameplan?” Warden turned to me, still grinning, “We’re going to meet my mother.”

 


 

 

Ianthe joined Teacher in the Mithraeum’s hangar. The Hermes was gone, but a number of smaller, simpler ships were still there, and he was standing next to the fastest one — a small, sleek fighter, light and aerodynamic to be able to maneuver in-atmo.

“You summoned me, Teacher?” She felt that familiar twinge of awkward discomfort as she came to stand before him — it was far too weird of a feeling to know that she was taller than God.

“Yes. I received a communication from Canaan House. Ianthe… it was Harrow. She was there.”

“What did the impostor want?” Ianthe said, voice steely.

Teacher shook his head, “No, Ianthe, it was Harrow. Or at least, she claimed to be.”

Ianthe’s lips parted. Hope flared in her chest. She said, “What happened?”

Teacher told her everything Harrow had told him. Ianthe listened with rapt attention as he laid out the situation. She fought to contain her hopes — it was still entirely possible that Harrow was dead, they had no way of knowing if it was her, or an impostor. Still, she could not keep the excitement from her voice when she said,

“You need me to retrieve her?”

He looked at her sadly, and shook his head. “What I am about to ask is unfair of me, perhaps. But I do not ask it of you lightly.”

“Yes?” Ianthe prompted trepidatiously.

“Ianthe… we cannot take the chance that Harrow might still be an impostor. It’s far too great a risk to accept.”

Ianthe paused.

“Are you asking me to kill her, Lord?”

“I am,” he said softly.

Ianthe met the Emperor’s gaze for a moment without responding. She looked God in the eye as he told her to kill the only person that might give her companionship through the heaviness of eternity. There was sadness in his eyes, but no hesitation, or remorse.

She nodded, once.

“I will do what I must.”

Notes:

So, about the sign language thing: I like the idea that learning sign language is just a normal thing in this universe. People are brought up knowing a standardized spoken language, and a standardized sign language.

As for Warden's powers, we don't know much about what Sixth House magic can do in canon, other than their ability to discern information about an object's history. I picture Sixth House magic as being basically time magic, so when used in an offensive capacity...

Chapter 10: The Past

Chapter Text

I’m not sure what I expected the Sixth House to be like, but whatever I expected, it was nothing like the reality. It was a warren, a tangled jumble of rooms packed far too closely together in a system that was probably very logical but was so overly complicated that it appeared to be chaos. It was a scholar’s desk, cluttered with papers and notes and pens and maybe half of a sandwich that they left behind when they started to eat lunch but got distracted.

It didn’t look that way from the outside. From the outside, the Sixth was neat and orderly. There was a single, central building that was little more than a broad, squat cylinder, with enclosed bridges leading off to a series of six tall, narrow spires evenly spaced around it. In a few spots I could see skeletons clinging to the outside of the station, busy with some indeterminate maintenance task.

Our approach in the fighter had been easy enough — it seemed the general public was still not aware of Blood of Eden’s existence, so our choice of vehicle caused no alarm. It merely involved a lot of sitting around while Warden relayed access codes to them via radio and then waited for them to double check it, triple check it, run it by their manager, who then ran it by their manager, who I imagine must have run it by a ten person committee, who then shrugged their shoulders and said ‘sure, why not’ after wasting about two hours of our time.

Warden was in their element. They knew precisely how to navigate the bizarre labyrinth, and I followed them diligently. It must have been their equivalent of nighttime as well, because the lights were low and there weren’t many people about. Warden had asked the attendant for the local time when we finally docked, and they said a number that meant nothing to me. According to Warden it meant it was about as late as you could get before it wrapped around and just turned into being a really early-morning person.

Both of us kept the rifles we stole from Blood of Eden slung over our shoulders, which earned us a few weird looks, but given that we saw a few cavaliers walking around with their rapiers proudly displayed on their belts, there clearly wasn’t any rule against carrying weapons.

I took in the sights of the Sixth as we walked quietly side by side. It quickly began to make sense to me, how a place like this would result in somebody like Warden. I was curious to find out what their parents were like.

“So, are we going to meet your dad too?” I asked. Warden looked at me strangely.

“How much do you know about parenting customs on the Sixth?”

“Uhh, literally nothing.”

“My mother and my father are not together. They did not choose one another because they loved each other, they chose one another because there were fewer than ten people in all of the Sixth House that they were allowed to have children with. When you have a population as small and insular as this, genetic diversity becomes an issue. Having children is a duty, not a choice. I am… close, with my mother, but she did not raise me.”

I wasn’t entirely sure what a relationship between a mother and her child was supposed to look like, but I nodded and pretended that this information was meaningful to me.

Our destination, as it turned out, was not Warden’s mother’s home, as I anticipated, but instead her office. When I asked whether she’d be at home sleeping, given the hour, Warden snorted with laughter and shook their head. In the middle of an otherwise unremarkable part of the station, we came across a door with a plate on the front that read,

Juno Zeta

Head Archivist

I stood off to the side as Warden rapped on the door twelve times in a particular rhythm, six quick taps, then six slow ones. After a moment of silence, the sound of a chair scraping against the floor and somebody rushing to their feet came from inside.

The door flung open, and in front of us stood a frazzled, round-faced woman who could not have been more obviously Palamedes’ mother if she had tried. She was worryingly tall, made of angles and long, gangly limbs. Her skinny frame couldn’t quite fill out her robes, which draped and pooled around her until she was swimming in them, and it was unclear whether there was actually a body beneath the billowing fabric at all. She had striking eyes just like her son’s, covered with spectacles that were slightly askew. It felt like she should have dark circles under her eyes, even though she didn’t. She had them in spirit, if not in practice.

Her face was painfully hopeful, and when she saw Warden in front of her it fell, only for the slightest moment, before picking back up into naked relief.

“Camilla!” she exclaimed, and pulled Warden into a full-body hug, planting her face into their shoulder. Warden froze up, and I got the distinct impression that they were not used to this kind of affection from her. “Oh, darling, I’m so glad you’re alright,” she muffled into Warden’s robe. At length she pulled away, stepping back and standing in front of them, keeping a hand on each of their shoulders, examining them from an arm’s length away. “Is he with you?”

“I’m here.”

Juno stared directly into their eyes. Recognition flashed across her face, and her own eyes went wide. “Palamedes?”

Here Warden became very choked. “It’s me, Juno.”

“But — I — Camilla—“

“I’m here too,” they said, “we’re here. It’s both of us.”

Juno stared at them with naked wonderment.

“Come, tell me what happened.” She ushered them inside. I did not follow. The two of them deserved a moment to themselves; Warden could call me when they were ready. They left the door half-open behind them, but it was enough that their voices were an indistinct murmur. I caught a few words, but nothing significant.

I stood awkwardly out in the hall for a few minutes while they talked, leaning back against the wall with my hands stuffed in my pockets. It was late enough that few people were out and about, but I did see one person pass me by. They craned their neck to look at me curiously as they walked past. I met them with my best ‘fuck off’ glare.

The voices within the room grew watery, then they grew serious and hushed. I tried to ignore them, and focused on taking in my surroundings. The air was perfectly climate controlled, to the point that it almost unnerved me. I was used to the frigid cold of the Ninth — even the milder weather of the First had been noticeable, changing from day to day. I couldn’t feel the air here, it was too neutral. In fact, neutral was probably a good way to describe the whole station. There was little in the way of adornment; everything was plain and practical, albeit in a very cluttered, disorganized way.

“You can come in now.” Warden’s voice called from within the room. I walked in to see Juno sitting at her desk, with Warden in a chair on the other side of it. Both of their eyes were red and a little puffy. Juno’s expression was grave. Warden gestured to me. “Mother, this is Gideon Nav.”

I gave her an awkward little half wave. “Yo.”

“Warden informed me of the situation.”

“Yeah, it’s a shitshow.”

“We know our basic plan. Any member of the Council of Six can activate the Alexandria Protocol, and that includes me.” She tipped her head to the side for a moment in thought. “Technically, that includes you as well, Warden, but I shudder to think of the paperwork we’ll need to fill out to officially transfer the title of Master Warden from Palamedes to you.”

“You know, with the way everything has been this past year, I’m almost looking forward to it. It’ll be nostalgic.”

Juno laughed. “Yes, that sounds about right. You’re still my son, after all.” She paused for a moment. “My daughter? Are you a man or a woman?”

“No.”

“Noted.”

“How far away do we need to get?” I asked. “I mean, if Dominicus gets smushed down into a black hole, wouldn’t it still have the same mass? Just, like… smaller? I don’t get why it would pull us in.”

“Dominicus is not a normal star,” Warden answered. “It is a thanergetic star — courtesy of the Necrolord Prime. I haven’t gone through the exact numbers, but I know it will form a supermassive black hole. Something far, far bigger than the sun that created it.”

“In theory, this should be simple,” Juno said, “I activate the protocol, and we leave the system. That will get the Sixth out of the range of the fallout. But ideally, we’d like to stop this woman from carrying out her plan in the first place.”

“Far as I can tell, I was the only one her spooky fear powers didn’t affect. I don’t know why, but that means I’ll be the one who has to fight her.”

“Yes, but to what end?” Juno sighed and massaged her temples. “From what Warden said, it doesn’t sound like you can kill her, and even if you could, it wouldn’t help anything.”

That… was a good point. What the hell would I even do if I fought her?

Warden leaned forward and rested their weight on one elbow, which was digging into their thigh, with their hand over their mouth as they thought.

“We don’t know enough about her,” they said at length. “We don’t understand what she is. We don’t understand her powers.”

“Well, if we want to learn more about her, we’re in the right place.” I laughed halfheartedly.

Warden gave me a curious look. “What do you mean?”

I shrugged. “She’s from before the Resurrection, right? I figure if there’s anywhere that has information about what things were like back then, it’s here.”

Juno and Warden shared a look. They were clearly communicating something to one another, but I had no idea what. Eventually they must have come to an agreement, because Juno nodded. She stood up abruptly, opened a drawer on her desk, pulled out a key, and slammed it shut.

“We have no time to waste.” She walked to the door and opened it, motioning for us to follow.

“Uhh, what?”

“Come on, Nav,” Warden said. They walked past me out the door. I hesitated for only a moment before following behind them. The three of us strode briskly down the hallway as Juno led us towards… wherever we were going,

“Somebody want to tell me what we’re doing?”

“I am going to activate the Alexandria Protocol. You are going to the archives. To the vault.”

“The Vault?”

“Where we store our most ancient artifacts. Those few relics that have survived from before the resurrection. As head archivist, I am giving you permission to enter.”

“You’re right, Nav,” Warden said, “we might be able to learn more about her. We must take any edge we can find.”

I followed Juno until we arrived at an elevator, and she stopped. She turned to us, and pressed the key into Warden’s hand, folding their fingers shut over it.

“This is where we part.”

They nodded. The doors to the elevator opened, and the two of us stepped inside.

“Warden,” Juno said. They looked back at her. “Be safe. And for the love of God, don’t break anything.”

They smiled. “You know me.”

Juno returned their smile, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I do, Warden. I do.”

The doors slid shut.

 

 


 

 

You found Coronabeth again on your way to one of the Lyctoral studies. She perked up and waved at you when she spotted you, holding a tablet in her hand. You nodded at her and she jogged over to catch up with you as you walked across the grand hall.

“I got in contact with Judith,” she waved the tablet in her hand, “She has enough sway in the Cohort to help organize an evacuation effort, in case we aren’t able to stop Alecto. She’s going to organize a meeting with the admirals. I’ll sit down and chat with them in an hour or two.”

“Good.”

“Did you reach him?”

“He is sending your sister to retrieve us.”

Coronabeth’s footsteps faltered for just a moment before she caught up. A painfully hopeful look appeared on her face.

“Yanthy is coming?” she asked, breathless and soft.

“Yanthy?”

“Oh, I’ve missed her awfully,” Coronabeth said, though you got the sense she was talking more to herself than to you. The two of you walked in silence for a moment, her following along as you led the way. Then the obvious question occurred to her. “By the way, where are we going?”

“To investigate the Lyctors’ studies further. We have some time before Ianthe arrives, and Alecto’s nature is still a mystery to me; I may find the answers I seek in their notes.”

“Why not just ask the Emperor?”

“He has no way of knowing if I’m still an impostor or not, it would be unwise for him to tell me such secrets.”

You walked up a set of spiral stairs and through a series of hallways, leading over to the other side of Canaan House. It took you some time to notice, but eventually you realized that Coronabeth was walking exactly a half step behind you, as a cavalier would. It occurred to you that you knew very little about what had happened to the Crown Princess during your time aboard the Mithraeum.

It didn’t take long for you to reach the Lyctoral study that must have belonged to Cytherea — by that point things had fallen apart so thoroughly that you never got a chance to properly explore it, and you guessed that if any of the studies would help you understand anything new, it would be that one. The memory of what happened in that study did not occur to you until you walked through the door.

You stopped short. Written in huge letters on the wall was the words YOU LIED TO US. The bodies of Naberius, Colum, and Silas were no longer there, but their presence filled the room nonetheless. The spots where they had fallen were burned into your mind, and you stared at the empty places as if their bodies had burned imprints on the floor.

Coronabeth stopped short just as abruptly as you did. You had never been good at reading people, but even you could read her like a book. Everything about her was so open and unhidden. You could see how hard it hit her, how much the memory hurt. You found yourself feeling unexpectedly guilty.

“I apologize, I had not considered—"

“No, it’s quite alright Harry.”

She said it so offhandedly, it caught you completely off guard. But if she noticed the look on your face, she didn’t say anything. She walked over to where Naberius’ body had lain and crouched down, running her fingers over the spot, as if she expected the blood to still be there.

“Were the two of you close?”

“He and I were friends,” Coronabeth said. “He… cared for me.”

Something about the way she said it stood out to you.

“But not for Ianthe.”

“No.”

He died unwillingly, for a necromancer he didn’t even like. For a necromancer who abused him and dismissed him. But Coronabeth was different. The image was so distinct in your mind, of Coronabeth slumped on the floor after Ianthe left the room, bawling because Ianthe hadn’t chosen her. She had wanted Ianthe to kill her. It was beyond your understanding. Ianthe mistreated Coronabeth same as Naberius, and you could tell it wasn’t something new. Coronabeth had accepted it so readily, with the familiarity of an old lover. No, you knew Ianthe well enough by that point, you knew that she had treated Coronabeth that way their whole lives.

“He deserved a better death.” This, at least, you knew how to handle. You had overseen so many funerals in your lifetime, sat beside so many deathbeds and said comforting words, to the dying, or to their loved ones. You were intimately familiar with how to handle death.

“He did,” Coronabeth agreed. “He never would have wanted this.”

You shouldn’t have said anything. It wasn’t your place — you knew it wasn’t your place — but you had to know. Even if you had no right to ask, you needed to understand.

“But you did,” you said, voice carefully neutral.

“I did,” Coronabeth admitted. She sighed, and sat down beside the spot where Naberius died, going from crouching to sitting with her knees bent in front of her. “It was a stupid thing to wish for.”

“Yes, it was.”

“It seemed awfully poetic at the time, for my soul to be a part of her for eternity. Just an extension of what I was already doing — playing the support role while she did all the real work.” She was quiet for a moment, lost in thought, and you let her have her space. At length, she continued, “But you know what? That was bullshit. I learned how to fight from the greatest swordswoman of the Sixth House. I outsmarted God, and his enemies. I got into a dogfight with three of Blood of Eden’s fighters at once and won. You know what I learned while I was apart from my sister, Reverend Daughter?”

“What’s that?”

She grinned toothily, “I kick ass.

You chuckled dryly. “You sound like Griddle.”

“High praise, coming from you.”

You tensed up, the laughter disappearing from your face like a breath in the wind, replaced by solid stone. “Hardly.”

Coronabeth rolled her eyes, “Oh please, don’t even try. My sister did the same thing, and it wasn’t convincing when she did it either.”

“Then let me ask you this; if the two of you were so close, if you were as inseparable as you say — why didn’t she take you with her?”

“Because she’s just as blind as you are.”

“Pardon me?” you said harshly.

“She did it because she loves me. Because she thinks the kindest thing she can do for me is keep me away from her. As confident as she is, my sister is convinced that she’s not a good person.”

“Which she isn’t.”

“No, I suppose she isn’t, is she?” Coronabeth laughed, “But you’re missing the point. No matter how much she thinks I’d be better off without her, no matter how right she might be about that, I still wish she would let me join her again. It doesn’t matter whether she’s a good person.”

“Of course it does!” you protested, “She mistreated you! Why should you do anything for her? She has not earned any such loyalty, you owe her nothing!”

Coronabeth pushed herself to her feet and dusted herself off. She looked at you strangely. “Just because I want to be with her again doesn’t mean I’m going to let her treat me that way anymore. And of course I don’t owe her anything; that’s not why I want to see her.”

“Then why?”

Coronabeth walked toward you. You took a panicked step back as she drew closer and reached out with her hand. You flinched away, but it did nothing to help you escape your dreadful fate. She extended her pointer finger and booped you on the nose.

“Because I miss my sister, silly.” She smiled and leaned back against the wall by the door. “I don’t need her to protect me, I’m a big girl, I can make my own decisions. And I’ve decided that I want to see her again. I love her — what other reason do I need? I swear, you necromancers are so melodramatic sometimes.” You opened your mouth, trying to find a rebuttal, but frankly, you couldn’t really argue with that one, so you snapped it shut again. Coronabeth made a shooing gesture. “Go on. Go read all your very important wizard notes about very important wizard things.”

You looked back over your shoulder at the study. Really, what were you expecting to find? These were their notes on how to become a Lyctor. You already knew how to become a Lyctor. Given that they didn’t know Alecto was the Emperor’s cavalier either, what could you learn from them? You already knew everything that was in this room. You sighed, and turned back to Coronabeth.

“No need. This is a waste of time, I don’t know what I was expecting; I already know everything there is to learn in these rooms.”

Coronabeth shrugged. “Fair enough.” The two of you walked out the door together, and you closed it behind you. As you walked down the hallway, Coronabeth mused, “I’m trying to think if there’s anywhere in Canaan that you haven’t been, where you could find new stuff. You scoured all of it pretty thoroughly, didn’t you?”

“I did. The only rooms I did not explore were the others’ bedrooms, and they knew no more than I did.”

“What about Teacher?”

You stopped abruptly.

“Teacher?”

“Well yeah, he was some kind of weirdo construct they made, wasn’t he? Although, hmm, it didn’t seem like he knew about how to become a Lyctor either.”

You perked up, and kept walking, faster now. “Tridentarius, you’re a genius.”

“Oh!” she beamed, and followed a half step behind you.

 


 

 

In the end, we had to take three different elevators to get down to the archives. There wasn’t a single elevator that led all the way from the top of the House to the bottom. The Sixth was just like that. There seemed to be some system of organization in place, but as far as I could tell, the system was different across each area of the ship, like somebody had looked at the old rules, come up with a better system, and then just started using it without checking to see if they’d be allowed to change all the old stuff first. It was a mesmerizing kludge. Somehow, Warden was able to navigate it.

The “nighttime” lighting was similar to the system used by Blood of Eden, with strips of pale white lights on the floors, although in some places it was in bulbs on the ceiling, and in others they just used the normal lights, with no apparent system in place for creating a distinct nighttime.

We were walking through the hallways, towards the second elevator, when the entire structure shuddered. A deep rumble shook the Sixth, and the world lurched as it began to move. The soft, pale nighttime lights switched all at once to vivid cerulean. The overhead speaker system that I hadn’t even noticed crackled to life, and Juno Zeta’s voice came through, announcing the activation of the Alexandria Protocol and urging everyone to remain calm.

The second elevator led far enough down that I realized the Sixth must have been much larger than it initially appeared. The central building didn’t look that tall from the outside, but it must have extended far underground.

The third and final elevator was not like the others. The other two had been a whole bank of elevators, to accommodate the volume of people going back and forth in their everyday life. Here there was only one, and there was no button to call it, merely a panel with a keyhole in the center. Warden inserted the key Juno gave them, and the doors opened. They took a deep breath, as if to mentally prepare themself, before stepping inside.

The final leg of the journey took longer than I expected, the seldom-used elevator trundling along unhurriedly. The two of us stood side by side. The silence was awkward, expectant.

“So,” I said, “she took all that pretty well.”

“The archivist is a remarkably unflappable woman.”

“I guess I can kind of get why she’d be able to roll with it so easily,” I mused, “she already knew the two of them, it wouldn’t be too hard to adjust to you. You’re basically Pal sitting on Cam’s shoulders in a big trenchcoat. Two for the price of one.”

Warden frowned. “That’s not precisely true.”

“I know, Warden. It’s called a joke.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean I’m not the two of them added together. I’m not a ‘we’, Nav.”

The vehemence of their voice surprised me. Their face was unusually expressive, its normal carefully-controlled neutrality replaced by a furrowed brow and a tightly-drawn mouth. They might have been angry, or they might have been upset, and in my estimation neither of those was a good outcome.

“Yeah,” I said at length, “yeah, I think I get it.”

They looked at me piercingly. “Do you?”

“I do not. It seemed like the right thing to say in the moment, though.”

They sighed and looked away to stare straight ahead.

“They had to fit two people in the space of one person. Parts of them had to be… cut off, in order to fit.”

“Cut off?”

“There are some things that were a part of Camilla, or a part of Palamedes, that aren’t a part of me.” They took a breath, and bit their lip. I gave them a moment to gather their thoughts. “Some of those things were important to them. And they’re gone now.”

“Yeah, but if they didn’t do that, you wouldn’t be here.”

They shook their head. “Don’t get me wrong, they knew what they were getting into, and I think they’d still do it, if they saw how I turned out. I don’t regret it, but I won’t pretend nothing was lost along the way either.”

We fell to silence. The elevator trundled along. Juno’s distorted voice crackled through the crappy overhead speaker, though we paid little attention to her words.

The elevator came to a stop.

“I think you turned out alright.” I said.

Warden smiled a small, lopsided smile. “Thanks, Nav.”

The doors opened. Lights flickered on automatically, revealing a small room, almost like a locker room, with two benches and a collection of little cubbies to leave your belongings in. A set of haz suits sat folded on a table, complete with masks and air tanks. On the far wall was an airlock door.

“What the hell?”

“Decontamination,” Warden answered. I frowned, but followed suit when they pulled off their weapons and placed them in the cubbies. Getting the suits on was an involved process — haz suits have to be able to withstand a vaccum, so they’re built to seal up completely airtight. I pulled the hooded mask over my head, looking at the world through the big, insectile lenses. The air tank on my back made me top heavy and awkward. Each breath tasted stale. I’d never worn clothing so colorful before. On the Ninth, the only options were black, blacker, and cryptique grey (basically black, but less committed to it.)

“Is this really necessary?” I protested through the comms built into the mask. I couldn’t see Warden’s glare through their mask, but I could hear it in their voice.

“These artifacts are over ten thousand years old. They are our only surviving records of the world before the resurrection. They are unspeakably precious, Nav. They need to be preserved for… well, forever. Speaking of which, if you break anything in that room, the next thing to be broken will be you. Keep that in mind.”

I kept it in mind.

We stepped through the airlock door into the actual decontamination chamber, a pitch black cube of a room that sprayed us down with some kind of gas, then made a very strange whining noise as it did… something. According to Warden, this both disinfected us and cleared our external thalergy signatures. Only after this did the other doors open.

I expected the lights to flick on automatically, like they did before, but it didn’t happen. Warden stepped forward without me.

“Uhh, Warden, lights?”

“Press the button on the side of the mask’s goggles.” I did as they instructed, and the room lit up a pale green.

“Seriously?”

“Ten. Thousand. Years.”

“Fine, fine,” I grumbled, and walked out after them.

Harrow, I’m pretty sure if you’d seen that place, your little nerd brain would’ve orgasmed on the spot.

The oldest archive of the Sixth House was set up almost like a museum. There were precious few artifacts, and each one rested in its own sealed display. Preservation wards surrounded every pane of glass. It was real glass too — they must have built this part before such things became rare.

I hated looking at it through the night vision. My field of view was quite small — there was no actual light in the room to amplify, so the light came from a tiny torch built into the lens of my mask. It was so dim that I probably wouldn’t have been able to see the beam at all without the night vision. It rendered the room claustrophobic and creepy, even though, objectively, there was plenty of open space, and there was nothing there that could possibly hurt us. The effect was worsened by the shape of the room; it was quite wide and open, but the low ceilings made it feel like a cellar.

We looked through the displays, searching for anything useful. Each display had an inscription in front of it discussing what information was known about the artifact, from its origin to its purpose and potential relevance. Some of them were quite mundane, though that did not deter Warden in the slightest.

A simple, plain shirt, slightly torn at the collar: an insight into pre-resurrection manufacturing techniques, and what technologies were available to them. An old, worn down tablet with some letters on it in a language I did not recognize: the earliest surviving example of human writing — apparently a merchant complaining about a substandard shipment of copper. A black disc covered in concentric grooves, with a hole in the middle surrounded by a torn, faded label reading “Everytime We Touch”: a mystery, its purpose as of yet unknown.

All these little things visibly excited them, and though I didn’t find it as thrilling as they did, I became somewhat swept up in their enthusiasm.

The next display we saw was a painting of an enormous city, a forest of towering skyscrapers atop a cliff that emerged from the water below, silhouetted against the setting sun. Age left the paint faded and dulled, but the skill of the artist shined through nonetheless.

“That… I’m fairly certain that’s Rhodes,” Warden said almost immediately. They checked the inscription, and sure enough, it confirmed their guess.

“Isn’t that where Dulcie is from?”

“Yes,” they answered absentmindedly, staring at the painting, lost in thought.

“Well Rhodes is friggin’ huge,” I said. The mere idea of it boggled my mind. You could probably fit the entire population of the Ninth in a single one of those skyscrapers.

“Yes and no,” Warden said. “It’s expansive, but mostly empty these days.”

“Why?”

“The Seventh’s population is not what it used to be.” They spoke slowly, each word coming out careful and deliberate. I recognized the restrained cadence of someone fighting to avoid agitating an old wound. Something raw and unresolved.

“That why you wanted to get her away from there?”

They nodded jerkily. “I used to dream about stealing her away. About bringing her here and marrying her.”

I grinned, though I knew they couldn’t see it. “How did Camilla feel about that little idea?”

They looked at me. Their mask rendered them expressionless, and for a moment, I thought my question might have pissed them off. When they spoke, it was hesitant,

“Palamedes wasn’t the only one who wanted that.”

My lips parted. I wished I could see their face. It handicapped me, made it so much harder to read them. They looked away from me, staring back at the painting.

“I’ve never told anybody that before,” they admitted, “not even him. He knew. But the two of them never spoke about it.”

I stared at the painting alongside them. The colors must have been vibrant once, but the weight of time rendered them muted and dead. The ghost of a city that once was. I had a sudden realization — if there was a painting of it in this archive, the city must have existed since before the resurrection. I’d never really tried to picture what the Houses looked like before it. The idea that they looked the same as they do now was monumentally depressing.

“Are they all like this?” I asked. Warden looked to me for clarification. “The Houses. Have they all just stayed the same this whole time?”

They tipped their head to the side, considering. “It’s hard to know, we don’t have enough records. We at least know that they all existed before the resurrection, except the Ninth.”

I snorted. “Well thank God for that. At least the folks that lived back then didn’t have to deal with the fucking Ninth.

“You don’t care for it, do you?”

“I tried to escape eighty-seven times.”

“I’ll take that as a maybe.”

I chuckled. “I hated that place. Hated Harrow too.” I shook my head. “You should have seen the two of us growing up. We tore each other apart.”

“What changed?”

I hesitated for a long moment. When I spoke, my words tasted bitter in my mouth, “Nothing changed. I’m just an idiot. I never fucking learn.”

I looked at the painting again. It really was rather lovely, despite the gnawing of time. It piqued my curiosity, made me want to know more.

I looked back over at an artifact we had skimmed past — a broad poster depicting a diagram of the Dominicus system. It was some kind of teaching aid for young children, more a stylization of reality than an actual chart, with simple little ‘fun facts’ listed beneath each House. I searched for what it had to say about the Seventh House. I’m not sure what I expected to see, really — a myriad is a blink of an eye in the eyes of a planet, it’s not like it would have changed much since then. Sure enough, all of the information about the planet was exactly what it should be. There were no insights to be gleaned about the world of old. But there was one thing that was different.

“Hey, Warden, come look at this.” I said. They obliged me, and I pointed at the labels under the planets. “They had different names for the Nine Houses.”

They were not called Houses, and they were not numbered. Each planet had its own name, none of which meant anything to me. The inscription on the display stand talked about various theories for what the names might mean. My curiosity piqued, I scanned through the lists of facts on the poster. Each House had its own small list, and Dominicus did too. Dominicus’ list talked about the temperature on the surface. It talked about how big the sun was. It talked about its layers, from the outer layer, down to the hydrogen shell around the helium core.

“Wait, that can’t be right,” Warden protested, “that composition doesn’t make any sense, that only occurs in red giants.”

I had never been taught about most of this stuff — just the basics — so I didn’t really know the significance of that. I shrugged. “Well apparently pops fucked with the sun when he became God, maybe it, like, reset?”

“Yes, of course,” Warden exasperatedly acknowledged, “but if Dominicus became a red giant, it would expand, big enough to swallow… definitely the Sixth and Seventh, maybe the First as well. Hell, it wouldn’t even need to come to that, they would become entirely uninhabitable long before that.”

“Well it lists the diameter right there.”

They thought for a moment. “That’s certainly larger than it is now.”

“Maybe it only just started?” I offered.

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe it was turning into a red giant, but it hadn’t gotten that much bigger yet. Like, it was only just starting to grow.”

Warden held very still for a moment, then they stood up straight. “I think you might be on to something.”

I beamed, though I knew they couldn’t see it. “You know, I don’t get that nearly as often as I should.”

“If Dominicus was old enough to begin its transformation into a red giant…” they thought out loud, “The Houses grow hotter. Intense climate destabilization occurs. They didn’t have access to steles back then — without the Emperor or his Lyctors, there’s nobody to place them. They’d have nowhere to go.”

“So he restarts the sun.”

Warden paced back and forth agitatedly. “But that doesn’t make any sense. The Resurrection was the Emperor bringing everybody back all at once, when all of them had died. If this was how they died, it would have taken generations and generations to happen, there wouldn’t be one big group for him to bring back. The apocalypse couldn’t have been both slow and instantaneous at the same time.”

The shape of things began to come into view.

“What if it was,” I said.

“Explain.”

“The sun is dying. The world is ending. He knows that they’ll go extinct if nobody does something. He comes up with a way to restart the sun, stabilize it, but he needs a source of power. A tremendous burst of thanergy, all at once.”

They paused their pacing. “Just like the Saint of Joy said.”

“He killed them all. He killed everybody, so he could bring them back again in a world that was no longer dying.”

Warden was silent for a long time. The truth sat thick and heavy in the air. At length, they said, “I think you’re right.”

“But I still don’t get what Alecto has to do with all this,” I said. “What the hell did he do to her?”

“I can’t be sure. Whatever he did to her… it must have turned her into a tremendous source of energy. He made her his cavalier, did that to her, so that he’d have enough power to bring them all back.”

The big, empty room we were in suddenly felt terribly lonely. I didn’t want to keep looking through it. I didn’t want to stare at these remnants of the people he killed. Because that’s what they were. We were surrounded by the memories of the dead, and I couldn’t help feeling like an intruder.

“She agreed to it,” I realized. “Back on the Ninth, she said ‘we did what we had to.’ She knew what he was going to do. She was part of the plan willingly.”

“Hell of a thing to agree to,” Warden said. “Whatever he did to her, it doesn’t seem like it gave her much chance for a normal life afterward.”

We sat in solemn, reverential silence. At length, I said, “What a chump.”

“Pardon me?”

“She’s all pissed at old Johnny boy for not following through on… whatever it was he promised her. But the guy is shifty as hell — I barely spent ten minutes around him and I could tell that much. If she seriously thought she could trust him, then she’s an idiot.”

“You trusted the Reverend Daughter, even though you told me you hated her.”

“Yeah, like I said. An idiot.”

“Don’t pretend you made that decision for no reason.”

I sighed and thoughtlessly tried to scratch the back of my neck, only to be stymied by my suit. “I don’t know. For a while there, at Canaan House, I really thought I could trust her. I thought she’d be worth…” I trailed off.

“Worth dying for?” they prompted. I shrugged. I stared at the poster without really seeing it.

“Doesn’t matter. I was wrong. I shouldn’t have trusted her.”

“Should she have trusted you?” they quietly asked. I snapped my gaze over to them. The empty black lenses of their mask were maddeningly inscrutable.

“Why would she need to?”

Warden sighed, and shook their head. I got the distinct impression that I’d failed some sort of test.

“Nevermind.” They looked around the room, taking stock of everything around us. “Come on. We’ve seen everything we need to see.”

I wanted to press them further, but something about the way they said it stopped me — a certain authoritative finality that I couldn’t bring myself to contradict. I just followed behind them as we walked back to the decontamination chamber. I was glad to get out of that place — the artifacts had intrigued me at first me, but by the end, they were just depressing. I remained lost in my thoughts as the outer door opened, letting us back into the prep room. Warden stopped short the moment the door slid open, and I walked right into them. I mumbled an apology, and glanced over their shoulder to see what the big deal was.

The room was the same. Nobody was in there. The only difference was that the lights were a different color. Instead of the vibrant blue from before, they were a deep, crimson red, that cast the room in a hellish gloom.

Warden remained paralyzed for only a moment before they sprung into action. They tore their mask off and clipped it to their belt, not even taking the time to take their haz suit off. They snatched their weapons from the cubby and strapped them on quickly and efficiently. I tried to follow suit, but I couldn’t manage it quite as fast as they could.

“Hurry up.”

“Uhh, what’s going on?” I said as I did my best to comply, slinging my stolen rifle over my shoulder and following behind them. The elevator doors slid open, and from within came the noise of a whining siren through the speakers.

“Of course the bottom level doesn’t have speakers, they’re so damn paranoid,” Warden muttered to themself.

“What. Is. Going. On?” I grabbed their attention. “What does that siren mean?”

Their face didn’t give a whole lot more away without the mask on than it did with, but their expression was grim.

“It means the Sixth is under attack.”

 


 

 

The door to Teacher’s quarters was guarded by a fiendishly complicated ward, which you dismantled in under a minute. Your new experiments with thalergy were proving fruitful; whereas before you would have needed to undo all of the many layers and traps within the ward using your traditional necromancy, now you could simply dissolve the whole thing, slice through it like it wasn’t even there. The intricate magic ceased to exist as you ran your hand through it. If you had more time, you would have liked to experiment with it more, pursue the limits of this field of magic. But you had no such luxury.

The doors swung open before you, and you stepped tentatively across the threshold. The room directly in front of you was a short hallway, revealing the simplicity of the space. It was the living quarters of Teacher and the other priests, and there was a room branching off the hallway for each of them, as well as a restroom. There were no labels on the doors, so you simply glanced inside each room to guess which one might have been his.

Two of the rooms were fairly plain and bare. This much you expected. The other priests did not seem to be nearly as sophisticated as Teacher was. They were simplistic creations, with little personality, and you doubted they’d have much ability to express themselves. The third bedroom was different.

You opened the door to reveal a room lined wall-to-wall with bookshelves. The sheer volume of them made your jaw drop. Bookshelves lined every single wall from floor to ceiling, and every inch of those bookshelves was tightly packed with thick books bound in what appealed to be real, genuine leather. The bed was a narrow cot, and it wasn’t even given space against the actual wall — it was nestled into the corner, in the space where two bookshelves met, blocking off access to a few shelves, which were nonetheless filled.

The walls had at some point stopped being enough space, because there were two shorter shelves that stood away from the outer perimeter, forming two tiny little rows of bookshelves. One of these was not quite full — only about two thirds of it occupied. In the very center of the room sat a tiny desk with a bare, wooden chair. Another book sat in the center of it, lying open, with a pen lying beside it. You inspected it closer, and had a realization.

“They’re… they’re journals, you remarked, awestruck. Coronabeth looked similarly stunned.

“But… how are there so many?”

“Teacher was created by the Lyctors while they were still in the system. He must be at least nine thousand years old.” You turned around and around in the center of the room, trying to take all of it in. Coronabeth came closer to the desk, and looked at the journal sitting there. Her eyes bugged out.

“His handwriting is so small! My God, how much did he write?”

“The history that must be contained here,” you marveled breathlessly, “the secrets I could learn.”

“Yes, but how are we going to find anything?”

The pages of the journal on the desk were crisp and high quality, all of it actual, real paper, which you took between your fingers. You flipped to the very first page. His entries were dated, which was a start, but there was no way you’d find what you needed in a reasonable amount of time if you had to pull books off the shelves one by one and check the dates inside. You hoped that he had a system.

As it turned out, he did. The journals were arranged on the shelves in chronological order, and you were able to follow the trail all the way back to the very first one. It was at the very top of one of the shelves in the far corner, on the wall opposite the cot. You tried to pull it down, and growled under your breath when you could not reach it. Coronabeth plucked it off the shelf easily and handed it to you. You cleared your throat meaningfully and nodded at her, then flipped the book open and walked over to sit down at the desk.

Teacher’s handwriting was a nigh-illegible cursive scrawl, the letters so tiny and smushed together that the loops on the taller letters often overlapped, forming little venn diagrams. Luckily, you had a lifetime of experience reading old, musty books written by older, mustier scholars, so you were able to decipher it. You read the very first entry.

Augustine told us that we ought to start writing things down. Said it will be useful to have a record of our thoughts, to evaluate the results of the experiment. We think that's a very fine idea! Though we will confess, we were unsure where to begin. It is… difficult to organize ourself, ever since the procedure. There’s too many of us — the thoughts overlap. Sometimes we contradict ourself.

That much made sense to you. Teacher was an amalgamation of dozens of souls, it was only natural that the multiple identities might take time to integrate — you knew that much from Warden, if nothing else. You skimmed through more. The entries were largely dull, recounting the mundane goings on of day-to-day life at Canaan House, but not in broad enough detail to give you any insight about what happened there. You flipped through, keeping track of the dates on the entries, until you happened across one a little over a year in.

Mercymorn chided us today, said that we should practice calling ourself “I” more, instead of “we”. I… suppose I can give it a try. It may be difficult for — here was a scribble where he had scratched out the word ‘us’ — me to grow accustomed to it. I don’t feel like an I. There’s still so many of me. We don’t like it. But we suppose I will try. Augustine and Mercymorn are the only reason I’m still alive, after all. If they hadn’t… we — I — wouldn’t be here at all. I suppose I can do this for them.

“He talks like Alecto did,” Coronabeth noted. You startled, having almost forgotten she was there. She loomed over you from behind, reading over your shoulder.

“What do you mean?”

“Alecto called herself ‘we’, once she was back in her body, didn’t she? Err, didn’t they? I’m not sure what to call her.”

“Yes, of course. She didn’t refer to herself in plural until she returned to her body.”

“Perhaps she has multiple souls in her, the same way he did.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense. She was created many years before Teacher was, and apparently Teacher was an experiment. I can see why Augustine and Mercymorn would be involved — he’s a spirit magician, and she’s the progenitor of the Eighth, so she must have at least some expertise in that field — but why would they need to learn how to do something they already did? And from the looks of it, something they had already done much more successfully?”

Coronabeth shrugged. “Keep reading?”

You skimmed further. It became easier to figure out which entries were relevant or not the more you read, you could usually tell from the way he wrote them. It took you another half hour of reading, but you found another relevant passage, this one from many years later. The writing was even messier here, as if his hands had been shaking.

Joy was in a state today. More upset than I ’ve ever seen her. She stormed around in a great huff, and snapped at everyone. I only asked her a question, but I suppose I must have tried her patience. She told me to get out of her way, and she berated me. Her words struck me. She said,

I suppose I don’t even have to bother with you anymore. What a joke. Two decades of research, and all you were was a waste of my goddamn time, because apparently he already knew all the answers from the start. Consider the experiment over. You don’t have to keep your silly little notes anymore. We know everything we need to know, and trust me, you should be glad that all you are is a dead end.”

She has always been cruel when she ’s upset.

I ’m not sure I understand what she means. But I think I’m going to keep writing, even if she says I don’t need to. Gives me some way to get all this out of my head. I think I need that. The two of them don’t talk to me much anymore.

You leaned back in your chair with a deep exhale — you hadn’t even realized you’d been hunching over the book. You massaged your temple as you thought. The picture was starting to come together, it was just a matter of fitting all the pieces into place.

“I think I understand,” you said. When Coronabeth prompted you to continue, you explained, “Augustine and Mercymorn were the only ones who knew what Alecto was. They were also the ones who were working on the experiment with Teacher. They stopped the experiment when the Emperor told them something.”

“When he told them about Alecto,” Coronabeth latched on to your logic.

“Precisely. That was why he told them, but nobody else. Not because he trusted them, but because they were on to something. Given their similar modes of speaking, I think we can assume that Alecto is a similar creation to Teacher — a melange of souls. The souls are tied to her body, which is why she couldn’t simply keep mine. But why would the Emperor need to keep that such a secret? It seems like the other Lyctors knew about Teacher, so why all the hush?”

“Where do you think those souls came from.” Coronabeth said, quiet and grave. It was not a question.

Your throat closed up. That couldn’t be right, could it? He wouldn’t do something like that, would he? But nothing else made sense. Teacher was more powerful than the Second had expected, sure, but he wasn’t even remotely close to Alecto. To have power like hers… the number of souls inside her must have been enormous. There was only one time in all of history where he’d have had access to that many souls at the same time. The spirit of every single life on a planet, released all at once. Your mind raced over every interaction with her. About the fear she inflicted upon you, and how familiar it felt. How I was the only one unaffected. Because of course I wasn’t.

After all, a Lyctor’s cavalier is immune to Herald fear.

“Alecto is a Resurrection Beast.” You concluded, your words quiet and certain.

The revelation hung heavy in the dusty air of the study. You were close to tears. You loved that man. You had spent your entire life in his service, in the desperate hope that you might prove your worth to him, that he might judge you worthy of the sacrifice made to create you. And he had. He had told you that it wasn’t your fault. That nobody had a right to judge you. Had he said those same words to himself?

Something he said during that conversation came to the forefront of your mind.

To all intents and purposes, your mother and father committed a type of resurrection. They did something nigh-on impossible. I know, because I have committed the same act, and I know the price I had to pay.

You stood up abruptly, palms still flat on the desk. Coronabeth startled and took a step back. Then you walked, quickly, stumblingly, your vision blurry and head swimming, into the hallway. You kept going until you reached the restroom, then you collapsed onto the toilet and threw up.

“Harry! Are you alright?” Coronabeth fretted, following you. She leaned over behind you and tried to gather up your hair, to keep it out of your face. You flinched violently, pushing yourself away from her until you fell from your knees, landing sitting down, back pressed against the side of the bathtub. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to—" she shook her head, “are you alright?”

“It was true,” you croaked weakly, throat still burning, “Blood of Eden was right. He killed them. He killed all of them. To make… her.”

Coronabeth sighed, and looked at you sadly, pityingly. You wanted to strangle her for it. “Yes, Harry, he did. That must be where his power comes from, if he’s a Lyctor with… that as his cavalier.”

And you were the same. You were made in the same way, you held the same rot in every inch of your flesh, every atom of your bones. You curled over the toilet to vomit once again. An abomination. You were an abomination, same as she was. You had always known that’s what you were, but perhaps for a time you forgot, perhaps for a time you thought…

No. You were not a person. You were a maw, devouring everything in sight, ravenously, mindlessly. You took and you took and you took, until there was nothing left. You gave nothing in return, for what could you give? Everything you were was stolen. Nothing more than a parasite.

“I’m sorry, Harry. I know this can’t be easy—“

“Shut up!” you snapped. “Will you please just shut up!” Coronabeth pulled away from you, her eyes going wide. You gripped the edges of the bowl with shaking, white-knuckled hands. “Just, stop! I don’t need your useless, simpering platitudes, nor do I need your pity. What do you want?

“What are you even talking about?”

“Why are you doing this?” you demanded hysterically. “Why are you acting like you care about me?”

She furrowed her brow. “I do care.”

“Oh please,” you sneered, “don’t lie to me. You barely even know me — we are not friends.

Coronabeth sat down, leaning back against the wall opposite from the toilet. She brushed a hand through her hair as she thought. “Maybe not. But I’d like to be.”

She didn’t know, she didn’t know. She wouldn’t feel the same way if she knew what you were, if she could see the rotten core of you. But you certainly weren’t about to show her, so instead you asked, “Why?”

She shrugged, a sheepish look on her face. “Do I need a reason?”

You shakily pushed away from the toilet and slumped to the side, leaning your head back on the corner of the counter below the sink.

“I don’t understand how you could possibly have survived this long, if you’re that naive. You don’t know anything about me. I would eat you alive.”

“Oh please,” she rolled her eyes, “I’m not frightened of you.”

“Then you are a fool.”

“No, I’m not.” Coronabeth insisted, not angrily, but authoritatively, with an unquestionable certainty that made it clear that dissent would not be tolerated. You snapped your gaze down to her. “You presume too much, Reverend Daughter. I don’t appreciate people trying to make my decisions for me.”

She stared you down defiantly, undaunted by the burning warning in your eyes.

A friendly chirping noise emerged from somewhere within Coronabeth’s coat, and prompted her to finally break eye contact. She retrieved the tablet, and tapped at it for a moment. With a decisive nod, she tucked it away again and stood up, checking her shirt for any specks of vomit. Finding it clean, she held out a hand to help you up. You didn’t take it, just stared at her warily. She sighed, and lowered the offered hand.

“The meeting with the admirals is about to start. Perhaps you can join us when you’re feeling a little more civil.”

With that, she walked out, and left you by yourself. Your legs shook traitorously as you got back on your feet and stumbled over to the sink to wash your mouth out. You leaned your weight on your palms, planted on the counter. The mirror showed how much of a mess you were. Your skull paint was smudged around your mouth and drippy in a few spots from the rain. Stray strands of wet hair stuck to your face.

You could not bear to look at yourself. You left the room, and wandered the halls of Canaan House, aimless and inattentive. You were lost in your thoughts, the neglected grandeur of your surroundings an unregistered blur.

You came to a hallway with huge windows lining one of the walls, looking out over the landing pad. It was difficult to see anything through the storm, but you didn’t mind. Mostly you just watched the rain hit the window. The noise was calming, a steady thrum that filled your mind like white noise. It was almost nighttime — the sun must have begun to set while you were occupied — and the thick rain clouds rendered the view outside dark and gloomy.

A light appeared in the storm. It brought you back to full attention, and you watched as it moved, weak at first through the fog, but growing stronger. It approached the landing pad, and after a moment you realized it was a ship.

Of course.

You followed the hallway to the atrium, coming out on the second level. You walked down the grand staircase to the small landing where the two curved staircases met in the middle and became one. A glance over the balustrade let you survey the room below. The main doors were still open, and the front lights of the ship shone through them, forming a wedge of bright light in the otherwise dim hall. As you descended the stairs, the light was interrupted by the shadow of a figure walking towards the doors, heralded by the light it blocked.

You reached the bottom of the staircase as the figure reached the doors. They were only a silhouette against the bright light behind them, but you knew who they were. From across the atrium, Ianthe Tridentarius drawled, lazy and imperious,

“Hello, Harry."

Chapter 11: The Twins

Notes:

Content warning for this chapter: manipulative relationships, brief references to eating disorders

Chapter Text

The atrium was a chiaroscuro of mossy stone and damp furniture. Fading twilight filtered through the clouds, casting Canaan House in shades of prussian blue. The light that shone through the door was bright yellow, almost white, and it cut sharp lines across the floor. Twin walkways sat on the far side of the majestic colonnades, shrouded in gloom; the harsh, artificial light killed any hope of your eyes adjusting to the dark. Puddles on the floor reflected the glare, rendering the ground wavering and shiny, with the exception of the ornamental rug running all the way from the door to the foot of the fountain. It must have been beautiful once — exquisitely crafted, marvelously detailed — but now it was musty and waterlogged. The sound of the rain was clear through the open doors, a constant downpour that filled the air with white noise.

Between those doors, silhouetted against the sharp light, stood Ianthe Tridentarius.

“Feeling a little more yourself this time around, Harry?”

“Are you?” you countered. You stood at the foot of the grand staircase, eying her warily. Ianthe walked toward you. The light cast her face in shadow, and hid her expression from you.

“Is that… concern I hear? I’m touched.”

“Hardly.”

Ianthe’s hand rested atop the end — pommel — of her rapier. As she came closer, the details of her face resolved from the shadow. The patchwork of bruises that had covered her body were gone. Her broken nose had healed. She held herself regally, unlike her pained hunch from earlier. Her voice was back to normal — which was to say, the condescending drawl of a rich girl who spent her childhood working with vocal coaches so she could learn to maximize the disdain she projected towards the plebeians that surrounded her. But no amount of healing could take away the emptiness in her eyes. It was hard to see in the gloom, but it was there, hollow and distant.

She did not stop until she was uncomfortably close, looking down at you with a measured boredom that couldn’t hide the wariness beneath it. You did not shrink away as she invaded your personal space — you refused to give in to her predictable attempt to discomfit you.

“So how does this work?” she asked, “Ooh, do you tell me something only the real Harrowhark would know?”

“Alecto demonstrated that she had access to my memories, did she not? Please, use your brain Tridentarius.”

“Hmm, not defending your innocence? How can I be sure you are who you say you are?”

“You can’t.”

Ianthe’s lip tipped upward into a slight, crooked grin that did not reach her eyes. “Fair enough. Then perhaps I should give you a warning?”

“If you must.”

“Do you know what I did to Pyrrha when I came to believe she was one of the impostors?”

Your glare was chipped granite. “I can imagine.”

“I stabbed her in the throat,” Ianthe casually informed you, “punched the blade right through her larynx and between her fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae. Just thought you ought to know.”

“Thank you for enlightening me, sister,” you said through gritted teeth.

“Just imagine what I might do to you. Or your cavalier for that matter. I suppose it would be very tragic if I got it wrong. Well, for you anyway. In Gonad’s case it’s really a win-win for me, either way.”

Her ensuing laugh was instantly cut off as your hand shot up and grabbed her throat. You squeezed hard; it wouldn’t do anything to a Lyctor who didn’t need air to live, but it served as a warning. She grabbed your wrist — not trying to wrest you off of her, just holding it. Her face was a cool, satisfied smirk. It was blindingly obvious she was baiting you, but you didn’t really give a shit.

“I will flense every inch of skin from your body if you harm her. I will snip off every single finger that you lay upon her. I will pour boiling water down your esophagus and scald your insides if you so much as look at her askance. Do not test me, Tridentarius.”

“There you are, Nonagesimus.” Her smirk became a smile that looked almost genuine. She prised your fingers off her throat, one by one. You let her do it — your point had been made abundantly clear. Once she freed herself she turned away from you, taking a few aimless steps through the atrium as she surveyed her surroundings. “No need for such theatrics, Harry. Your cavalier is safe.” She paused her sightseeing and looked at you over her shoulder. “I did want to ask you about that, by the way.”

“Tread carefully,” you warned.

“Oh relax, Harry. I’d just like you to dispel the sorcery you put on my jaw so I can actually say her name. You have no idea how much of a pain in my ass this has been these past nine months, having to live with the Saint of Duty without being able to say his name.”

“Are you going to use it, or are you going to continue with your childish nicknames?”

She put a hand over her heart. “I’ll use her real name. Honest to God.” Here she paused. “Hmm, bad phrasing, perhaps.”

You rolled your eyes and walked over to her. Ianthe stood still as you placed one hand on her jaw. The gesture was strangely tender, but you forced yourself not to think about that, and instead focused on reversing your magic. It didn’t take much doing — the magic of the sewn tongue was designed to be easy for the caster to remove, and nigh-impossible for the subject. You finished, but your hand lingered.

“Not going to seal it with a kiss like you did last time?” she said breathlessly, any intention of it coming out as a taunt ruined by how softly she spoke. You jerked away from her as though burned, her words shattering your curious trance.

“You’re well aware of why I did that.”

“I am,” Ianthe said. “Very clever, by the way. Took me a while to figure it out. But my question still stands — not even a little peck for the road?”

Your face twitched. She hummed in faux consideration.

“Of course not. As you said, your affections lie buried in the — ah. Well isn’t that awkward.”

“Regardless, they certainly do not lie with you.

“Ouch,” she placed a hand over her chest, “how cruel, Harry. You’ll break my vulnerable heart.”

“And what a tragedy that would be.”

“Truly, it would. But alas, you cannot be blamed. One does not control the wanderings of their heart,” she sighed theatrically. “Where is Nav, by the way? I thought she’d be glued to your side, like a lovestruck little puppy.”

“Tridentarius,” you warned. She took a few steps away, stretching her arms out and enjoying the open space in a way that felt precisely calculated to be as irritating as possible. She leaned back against a pillar and sighed.

“I really thought you had done it at first, you know? I thought you had figured it out. You and her, together forever. How insipidly romantic.”

“We thought we had.”

Ianthe paused. Her voice was carefully neutral. “Oh?”

“I believed it would be possible once I returned to my body. The basic principle was sound, but the energy calculations didn’t add up.”

“How does it work?”

You explained the process to her — no harm in divulging a theorem that wouldn’t even work, after all. Ianthe took in everything you said with rapt attention. For once she was quiet, with no snarky commentary or snide remarks, only asking for the occasional clarification. She was a surprisingly good listener when she wanted to be — which wasn’t often. You already knew not to underestimate the sharpness of her mind, but it was fascinating to see it so clearly in action. You finished explaining the concerns that came up in your discussion with Warden — about the energy signatures not adding up.

“You didn’t discover the perfect Lyctor process, Nonagesimus,” she said at length.

You furrowed your brow. “I already told you it didn’t work.”

Ianthe waved her hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, but that isn’t what I mean. If you used thalergy to fuel the process, the resulting bond would be a thalergetic one, not a thanergetic one. Even if you could manipulate the thalergy precisely enough to make it work, you wouldn’t become a Lyctor. You would become… well, I don’t believe there’s a word for what you’d become. You’d be something else entirely.”

“Only if you relied purely on the thalergetic reaction. It could be wrested under control using thanergy, and that would certainly result in a thanergetic bond. That would make you a Lyctor.”

“True.”

“But it’s besides the point,” you said, “neither type of bond is possible.”

“Yes it is.”

“I just explained why the energy doesn’t — “

“The energy doesn’t add up on it’s own. You’re assuming that you can’t complete the reaction because without using the cavalier’s soul, the energy source is removed. But you can always use an external source of thanergy.”

Of course. Alecto. The Emperor. The ten billion. Fuel for the fire.

“It doesn’t matter,” you said, “the amount of thanergy it would require would be impractical.”

“You’re not thinking through the implications of this process, Nonagesimus. The reaction you described wouldn’t work the same way as imperfect Lyctorhood. The bond wouldn’t result in a fixed level of power; it would scale based on how much energy was used to create it. Using more energy would enhance the bond, make you more powerful, but you should only need a single soul to create it, same as the regular Lyctor process.”

You ran the numbers in your head. It was so difficult to be certain. All of this was theory, completely untested. There was no way to acquire the data you’d need to accurately calculate the amount of energy required. She could be right. The Emperor’s bond with Alecto required a tremendous sacrifice, sure, but he was also far more powerful than a mere Lyctor.

“Irrelevant. I’m not going to murder an innocent person in order to become a Lyctor.”

“Who said anything about that?” Ianthe pushed herself off the pillar she was leaning against and walked toward you again. “I happen to have an extra soul lying around, you know. Not even using it! I’m sure Babs wouldn’t mind.”

Your lips parted. “You’re serious about this,” you realized. “You actually want to do this.”

“Why should the bond have to be between a necromancer and a cavalier?”

“This is ridiculous! You couldn’t possibly — “ you began, but Ianthe cut you off as she brushed a lock of hair out of your face. You flinched violently, but that did not dissuade her. Her metal fingers were cold and tender as she tucked your hair behind your ear. For once she didn’t appear mocking, or disinterested, or insincere. She didn’t say anything to contradict you, just rested her hand against your cheek and held it there. Her eyes were blue and brown and lavender, a conflicted jumble of her and Naberius, and she kept them locked on yours. “That’s not — I — “ you protested, your voice choked. You should have rebuffed her, told her you’d never be interested in someone like her, but, well… that wouldn’t have been true. Instead you said, “My affections lie with my cavalier.”

“Then tell me, Harrow — why isn’t she here?”

“She deserves her freedom.”

“But she asked to go with you, didn’t she?”

You did not understand what it was that left you so disarmed in that moment. It was foolish to entertain her offer, to let her spin her web of words and try to convince you. It was foolish to be honest with her, but somehow you could not lie to her.

At length, you whispered, “Yes.”

“Then why isn’t she here?” Ianthe said. You looked away from her, averting your gaze and turning your head to the side, but she stopped you, dropping her hand from your cheek to your jaw and placing her thumb on the other side, holding you in place, unable to do anything but look into her eyes. “I think you know why.” Still you did not respond, and after a moment, she continued, “It’s because you’re like me.”

“I’m not — “ you weakly protested.

“Yes you are.” Ianthe insisted. You could not break away, no matter how light her grip on your jaw was. Her voice turned hard, demanding, “The only difference between you and me is that I have no illusions about what I am. Now tell me why your cavalier isn’t here!”

“Because I would ruin her!” you blurted out helplessly. Ianthe’s eyes lit with triumphant fire, and she finally let go of your chin, though she did not break eye contact.

“That’s what we do, Nonagesimus. That’s what we are,” her eyes softened, as did her voice, “You did the right thing. She deserves better than you, just as my sister deserves better than me.” Ianthe walked past you, running her hand along the outer lip of the fountain as she circled around it, staring into the shallow, murky water in the basin with a contemplative look. “How noble of us, to be the ascetics. But I have seen what is coming. When the Beast touched my soul, during that final battle… I saw eternity. I saw the weight of it. I saw it, and Harry, it is beyond me. It is beyond any of us. No one could hope to bear it alone; you’d go mad.”

“And now you have your solution,” you murmured, not even sure whether she would be able to hear you.

“Now we have our solution,” she corrected. “Because I’m not going to drag you down, am I? We’re the only ones, the only ones who can survive one another.” You stood there, staring at the ground, feeling Ianthe’s eyes on you but not seeing them. The lump in your throat was cancerous, suffocating.

“We’re unlovable, Harry. You’re unlovable.” Two skeletal fingers hooked underneath your chin and gently tilted your head up. “But I love you.”

Hopeful desperation filled her empty, lavender eyes. There was not an ounce of deception within them; she was not lying when she said she loved you, of that you were certain. A dreadful, terrifying realization swept through you.

You wanted her back.

Ianthe was hauntingly beautiful, and she loved you. You weren’t sure whether you loved her, but you knew that you wanted her. No, that wasn’t it, not quite. You were attracted to her, certainly — you had understood that since the Mithraeum — but more than wanting Ianthe herself, you wanted Ianthe’s love. You wanted her to love you.

But there was one thing she had wrong.

“I am not unlovable,” you said softly, “Gideon loves me.” You swallowed around the stone in your throat, then repeated yourself, so quiet you barely heard your own words. “Gideon loves me.”

Something flashed in Ianthe’s eyes, though you could not say what it was.

“I never said nobody would want to love you. But you need to remember what we are, Harry. Of course she loves you. She’s such an earnest creature, isn’t she? So much fire. But you know what would happen to her if she was with you. You would destroy her. Slowly but surely, you’d drag her into the darkness with you. Her fire would die. All that light and life would be snuffed out. She’d become like you, like us. We are the death of light. Black holes.”

You wrested your chin from her grip and walked past her. You did not walk far, only a few feet, but you stood facing away from her as you shook your head and said. “Don’t try to tell me what I am, Tridentarius. You have no idea what I am.”

“Oh but I do, Harry. I know exactly what you are. What you’ve always been.”

Your blood ran cold. Icy dread suffused your heart. Slowly, irresistibly, you turned to look at her over your shoulder.

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, you still haven’t remembered, have you? I assumed you would, though I suppose it makes sense that the time around the procedure would still be a blur.”

“What are you talking about?” you repeated, louder this time, more frantic.

“That was part of my price, Harry, in exchange for helping you. A secret. Something you would not tell anybody else. I know all about what you are.”

“Shut up,” you hissed, pleaded.

“Harrowhark Nonagesimus. The chimera. The genocide. The end result of two hundred sons and daughters of her house.” Ianthe walked toward you.

You shook your head frantically. “Stop.”

“You’re just as monstrous as I am. The difference is that I don’t lie to myself about it.” She passed in front of you, but did not stop there, circling you like a shark as you stared straight ahead. “Nobody can change what they are, not truly. Those who try are doomed to misery and failure. So stop trying. Stop fighting it, stop wallowing in shame and trying to atone for your nature. I see how much it eats at you, Harrow, I see how miserable you feel. I am not miserable, I am not ashamed, and I want that for you too.” She came to a stop behind you, wrapping her arms around your waist and resting her chin your shoulder. “Because I understand, Harrow. I might be the only person who does. I see past it. I see you. You don’t have to change for me. I can love you despite what you are — for what you are.”

And what were you? A war crime. A monster. A stain upon the universe. You knew that’s what you were — you had always known, ever since you were a little girl and your parents took you to that pool of freezing salt. Ever since they revealed the abominable truth of you.

You relaxed into Ianthe’s arms, the ramrod stiffness of your body giving way as you let her take your weight. Her arms tightened around your waist. Her lips brushed the top of your shoulder, a ghost of a touch, then dragged along the length of it, all the way up the curve of your neck. She pressed a kiss to the underside of your jaw, and you shivered. Her voice was a promise whispered in your ear.

“I would give you everything.” You shuddered, though you couldn’t say whether it was due to the sensation or the images it conjured in your traitorous brain. Ianthe unwound her arms from your waist and walked around you, tracing her fingers along your back and your shoulder as she did. She faced you the entire time, walking backward a few steps to create a slight distance between the two of you. Then she held out one skeletal hand in clear invitation. “Embrace it Harrow. Come with me. Face eternity with me, side by side. The two of us, together, hand in unlovable hand.”

You stared at the arm she held out to you, the one you made for her. You counted the bones — radius, ulna, scaphoid, sesamoid, metacarpals and phalanges — your mind curiously detached, running through the list of them in the absence of any ability to think real thoughts. They were your mark upon her body. She had no such mark on yours. Perhaps you wanted her to leave one.

Her gilded fingers were cold as you reached out and took her hand in yours, like a pact, or a penance. Ianthe smiled — a true smile, not a sneer or a smirk, something you hadn’t been sure she was capable of. Your fingers closed around her hand, and hers around yours. Gently, encouragingly, she tugged you toward her. You stepped closer. She lifted your clasped hands and held them against her sternum. Closer, closer. There were only inches between the two of you. She placed her free hand on your face, brushing her thumb across your cheek. Your eyes fluttered. She brushed her fingers through your hair, then slid her hand down to the nape of your neck.

“Just let me take the lead, Harry.”

Her grip tightened, and she pulled you into a kiss. Your eyes fell closed, and you reciprocated, tentatively at first. Her lips were softer than your own, the lips of somebody who took care of herself, rather than letting them crack and bleed as you did. You had no idea what you were doing — you had kissed only two people in your life, and one of them was her — but she did. She guided your fumbling efforts until your lips were moving together. She sucked on your bottom lip, and a noise of quiet pleasure escaped you. Your free hand fell to Ianthe’s hip, pulling her tighter against you.

Despite what she might have thought of you, you were not timid. Pleasure had always been foreign to you, something locked away in a display case, wanted, but never deserved. As her lips fell to your neck, as her kisses grew hard and insistent, you felt pleasure. And you were hungry for it. Your fingers dug into her back — your gloves blunting your bite of your nails too much to scratch her. One hand slipped beneath her shirt, and you growled in frustration at your inability to feel her.

Her eyes fluttered open as you pulled back. You ripped your gloves off, undid the clasp of your heavy robes, throwing it all to the floor before falling upon her like a starving animal. You grabbed her collar and yanked her into a biting kiss, your other hand sliding beneath her shirt and up her back, your nails cutting into her flesh properly this time, skin scraping satisfyingly beneath them, leaving thin lines of blood that healed as soon as you made them. Ianthe was practically purring.

You were not careful with her. She would not ask it of you, nor would you ask it of her. Nothing gentle was about to happen here. She rucked up the thick fabric of your shirt, sliding one hand up towards your breasts as the other slipped beneath the waistband of your pants. The wetness that greeted her made her smile against your lips. Hard, metal fingers that you had fashioned with your own hands touched you everywhere but where you wanted to be touched. Of course she did not give it to you right away, she wouldn’t have been Ianthe if she didn’t tease you. Your teeth dug into her lip in retaliation, as if that wasn’t exactly what she wanted.

The flood of pleasure and touch swept you up so thoroughly that for a moment you forgot what was about to happen.

At first it was only a sensation of closeness. You were physically close, yes, but this went beyond that. It was as if your body was merging into hers, pushing closer and closer together until you began to overlap, two circles forming a venn diagram on their way to becoming a single shape. Her lips were against yours, her teeth nipping your bottom lip, but also they were inside you, kissing your mind, nipping at your thoughts. Your hand was clutching her back, but it was also within her body, clutching her heart. It was such a fluid change that you didn’t even notice, as if it was merely a natural extension of your physical closeness.

Next, your sensations became shared. You weren’t just kissing her, you were kissing yourself. You felt her fingers teasing you beneath your pants, but you also felt the searing heat of your cunt against your fingers. The skin of her back was beneath your fingernails, and your back burned deliciously as your nails dug into it. The experiences of two people filled your senses, two people who were separate, and together, and in two bodies, and in one body, touching each other and becoming each other.

That was enough to make you notice, but you only faltered for a moment before you kept fucking her — or perhaps she was fucking you. It was difficult to tell, and you didn’t much care. The world was a nonsense of pleasure and feeling. She moaned, or you moaned, or you both did, and it didn’t matter at all.

Then, the story began. Your souls brushed together, and you saw her — not physically, no, you saw her, every part of her, everything she was, and it came in the form of a story. It wasn’t a story told in words; it was a story that you saw, that you felt. Moments, memories, from every part of her life. It all flooded into your brain. It wasn’t a sequential story, but somehow it felt like it was, like it was arranged to tell you the story of who she was, rather than the chronological events of her life.

At the same time, you told her your story. Not consciously, not deliberately, it just happened. An instinct. Your souls were joining hands, dancing with one another, as you both learned who the other was — who they truly were. You understood perfectly. After all, how could you become one with someone if you did not know them? If you did not understand them? You had to bare every inch of your existence to her, and her to you, before you could even begin to join together.

You spoke with your soul instead of your mouth, and at the same time, you listened. Her life came to you piecemeal, in snippets and flashes of memory, in emotions and intentions.

You knew what the Third House looked like of course, from books and stories, but now you were there. You were three years old, you were twelve years old, you were nine years old, you were twenty-one years old and leaving your home behind. You were there, upon the gargantuan, enclosed barges, looking out onto the endless ocean. Each barge was like a jewel, a glittering lattice of metal and transparent plex within the gorgeous sapphire fog, rimed with sparkling ice, buffeted by the endless, stormy waves and thousand-knot winds. The flotilla was a cascade of diamonds atop the surface of the ocean, deep within the atmosphere of the ice giant, where the temperature and pressure were just right for water to stay liquid.

Ianthe loved the Third — you loved the Third. Loved its harsh beauty, loved the gentle, almost imperceptible side-to-side rocking that never quite went away, no matter how hard the stabilizers fought against the wind and the water. Loved the subtle games of the court, the lethal skullduggery, for you were better at it than any of them.

You were seven, and your parents expected you to rule your House one day. They showed you the interior of the huge wind turbines affixed to each barge, spinning in the howling winds. Like everything else on the Third, they were supposed to be beautiful. They weren’t just functional, they were art, grand sculptures of metal that twirled in the storm. You hated them. Something about them terrified you. They looked to you like giants, inscrutable and alien, surrounding your home on all sides. But what scared you more than anything was the noise they made, the awful, throbbing roar that reverberated inside of them as your parents showed you the workings of the House you would one day command.

Something you did had upset them. This was not unusual; their expectations were great, and they were quick to anger. You remembered his disgusted face as he threw you into the room at the base of one of the turbines and locked the door. You remembered sobbing in paralyzed terror, you remembered what it felt like to be deaf; he would not let the flesh magicians heal you, he said you had to learn to do it yourself.

You endured an entire childhood of abuse with Coronabeth by your side. Your beloved sister, the only one of them who was worth anything. You loved the Third, but you did not love its people. Only her.

It took you by surprise, how much you loved her — how much Ianthe loved her. You had not thought her capable of it. Cori stood by your side through the best and the worst of it. Cori stood by your side as you wove your web of plans, a spider in the viper’s nest that was the court of Ida. Cori was fifteen, and she was the only one who saw you slit your mother’s throat in the dark — years of plotting come to fruition, years of anger taken out on her flesh. The first step of two, the second still unfinished.

You felt no love for your cavalier. He was a useful tool, nothing more. A vainglorious jackass who nevertheless was very good at what he did. He was supposed to be loyal to both of you — and he was, on the surface. But in his heart he was loyal only to Coronabeth. That was fine. You did not need him. You did not need anyone.

You were twelve, you were fourteen, you were nineteen. You hated these people more and more every day. You were cruel to them. It was basic at first, but it escalated with each year you lived. Because growing older meant you were given more responsibility in the court, it meant you held more power over them. You reveled in the helpless fury of your victims as they realized that you were untouchable. Years of cutthroat politics made your games masterful, so artful that they often didn’t know it was you at all.

You were sixteen, and you made an innocuous comment to your cousin at dinner. It filled you with dark satisfaction when you heard him retching in the bathroom later that night. He was thin, and handsome, and so, so dull. It was laughably easy to trigger his insecurities.

You were twenty-one, and you stared at Cytherea’s corpse, stuffed beneath Harry’s bed. You could see it clear as day. You could feel her practically vibrating behind you. Could feel the tension, the madness, the desperation that filled her, about to shake her apart.

“What am I looking at?” you asked. It filled you with perverse joy, seeing something inside of her break, just a little more. If you could have frozen time, played through it in slow motion, you might have pinpointed the exact instant she shattered.

You savored the moment like fine wine.

You were eighteen, pointing out the evidence you had planted, watching the man beg as he was sentenced to death. Truthfully, you did not do it because he was a threat to you — he was a threat, but he could have been neutralized in other ways. He was just so goddamn obnoxious, you couldn’t stand having to listen to his irritating little voice. And now, you wouldn’t have to ever again.

You were fifteen, and you stifled your laughter as Coronabeth bit a chunk from Babs’ hand. She did not need to do it. It was not unusual for flesh magicians to abstain from the practice; many found it distasteful, or simply did not wish to hurt their cavalier — the sentimental fools. Coronabeth’s temperament was far kinder than yours, you doubted anyone would be suspicious if she didn’t do it.

But Coronabeth was deathly afraid of being caught. She never even noticed the little nudge you gave her in that direction. You were surprised, honestly, when she did it. You didn’t think she had it in her. Babs complained, of course, said it was unnecessary, but you quickly shushed him and told him to remember his place. You didn’t want them to stop — it was far too funny to watch.

You were eleven, you were nineteen, you were nine, you were twenty. A lifetime of cruelty, inflicted upon you, inflicted by you. You received the invitation to Canaan House, and you were overjoyed. You would become a Lyctor, you would wield the power of God’s Saints. Nobody would be able to stop you — you’d have liked to see them try.

Your stomach twisted in knots.

Visions of a thousand schemes filled your mind, an intricate latticework of plans both large and small, formed over many years. There would be no need for them, once you were a Lyctor. There would be no need for it when you could do what you wished without fear of retaliation.

You felt nauseous.

You would kill your father. You would wear Ida like a diamond on a ring. You would watch the court squirm helplessly, knowing there wasn’t a goddamn thing they could do to stop you. You would make them all fucking suffer.

Your breath was quick and shallow, laced with panic like a meal laced with poison.

You would, you would… you would…

“No!”

You shoved Ianthe away from you. You cut the story off, slammed the book shut. Identity and self warped and stretched as you dragged your essence back. You ripped Ianthe from your soul, and the bond forming between you snapped, like an ending, or a heartbreak.

Burning loneliness invaded your entire being, strong enough to make you gasp. It was like the air was forced from your existence instead of your lungs. Your body ached for affection in each place her lips had kissed, your skin begged for warmth in each place her fingers had touched. You throbbed with wild, hungry wanting, but you did not surrender to it.

Ianthe stumbled back, almost falling over as she struggled to return to herself. Her eyes were wide, and in that moment they were her eyes, not a trace of Naberius’ blue or brown within them. A pure, pale lavender, with a single imperfection in the left eye — a feathering line of charcoal black, like a scar on her iris. You suspected you had your own lavender scar to match. The lights of the ship were behind you now, and they shone directly on Ianthe, casting her features in harsh relief, every micro-expression highlighted, every changing emotion laid bare as she reeled.

“Harry?“ She sounded so small.

“You’re wrong. I — I am not like you. I am nothing like you.” Your whole body shook, your voice wavering beneath the awful emptiness that filled you, but you were not diffident.

“What are you talking about?”

“You said you’re not ashamed of what you are; you should be. You had every chance, every opportunity to be something else. Do you have any idea what I’d do, any idea what I’d give, it it meant I could undo my own creation? They made me this way, before I was even born, and I cannot change that. I never had a choice, not like you did. I’m not… I’m not a monster. Not like you are.”

You watched Ianthe’s heart shatter. Her emotions were plain on her face, unguarded and entirely genuine. Ianthe Tridentarius, the Saint of Awe, laid bare before you. You could see the raw, unadulterated hurt on her face. The breaking of the bond took something out of you, out of both of you, and it left you breathless and drained. Ianthe looked at the ground and cocked her jaw to the side, biting the inside of her cheek hard.

For a long time there was no sound but the steady drumming of the rain and the panting rhythm of your breath. When she spoke, it was quiet and soft.

“There’s nothing I can do to change your mind, is there?”

“No.”

She tipped her head to the side for a second, then took a deep breath. She looked up at you again, and her eyes were wild and hateful.

“Have it your way, then.”

Ianthe held out one hand, and you froze. Time slowed. Your insides squirmed, sinew and organ and nerve lighting up with anticipation as they fell under her control. Because you weren’t a Lyctor anymore. Your body was not a void to her anymore; she could see every errant pulse of thanergy within you, every detail of your biology.

You had only seconds before she ripped you apart from the inside out. You reached out, searched for the thalergy around you. It was a stupid idea, a far-flung hope, but it was the only hope you had. Instead of wielding it like a scalpel, as you had before, you pulled at it, drawing it around your body until it surrounded you like a suit of armor. It wasn’t going to work. It shouldn’t work.

But you didn’t claim to be the greatest necromancer of your generation for no reason.

You couldn’t feel the thalergy, couldn’t feel any feedback from your actions, but all at once, the squirming stopped. The sweeping wave of thanergy that she projected toward you broke like the ocean upon the shore. Ianthe’s brow furrowed in confusion. She redoubled her efforts, and you felt the energy slam against your armor, battering it like a lighthouse in the storm. But it held, it held.

“How the hell are you — “ she cut herself off with a growl of frustration. The assault stopped, and she dropped her hand, drawing her rapier and her trident knife with single minded intention. “Fine,” she snarled, “let’s do this the old fashioned way, Harry.

Your mind raced as you fell into a defensive stance. What were your options? What were the parameters? You broke it down like a theorem.

Ianthe was a Lyctor. You were not. Ianthe had a functionally infinite well of thanergy to draw upon. You did not. Ianthe could only be killed via decapitation. You could die like any normal soft, squishy human. If you did not end the fight quickly, your thanergy reserves would run out, and you would certainly die. Ianthe’s ideal strategy would be to fight careful and defensive, to refuse to take risks, and maintain pressure until you had no necromancy left to fend her off. But Ianthe was emotional. She was not thinking clearly. You could take advantage of that.

You had your plan of attack. Provoke her, bait out a mistake, and end her swiftly.

You pulled two fistfuls of bone chips from your pockets and tossed them into the air. They morphed into spikes, floating in a circle behind you, ready to deploy at a moment’s notice. Shanks of bone sprouted from each of your forearms, forming twin blades.

“Never in a million myriads would I lower myself to spend eternity with one such as you,” you said as Ianthe descended upon you like a tidal wave of jilted fury. You knocked her rapier thrust aside with one blade, trying to buy an opening.

You underestimated exactly how fiercely Ianthe Tridentarius could fight when she was holding nothing back. She was a force of nature, and you were an untrained simpleton when it came to the sword. Ianthe countered your attempts to throw her off guard like a child’s impotent flailing and landed three wicked slashes across your torso before you could even blink. You leapt back, snapping off one of your blades and launching it into the ground, where it sprouted into three vicious stalagmites of bone, stabbing into the air. She deftly dodged between two of them and smashed them apart with barely a second thought, but it bought you some space. You kept the light behind you, ensuring that you could see her clearly and she couldn’t do the same.

“I don’t know why I wasted my time,” you sneered. She growled, charging at you half-blind from the glare of the light.

With a single gesture, you unleashed the array of osseous spikes hovering behind you in a deadly salvo. She couldn’t dodge all of them — she probably could barely even see them. One of them speared her gut, another, her shoulder. She cried out in pain, staggering backward, and you rushed her with your remaining blade. A wall of flesh formed in front of her — you had seen her do this in her fight against Silas, and you knew that penetrating it with a weapon was fruitless. But you weren’t limited to just weapons.

You pressed a palm against it and channeled thalergy, flesh sizzling and melting to nothingness as you sliced it in half with nothing but your bare hand. Her eyes went wide with surprise and panic, and you rewarded her hesitation by thrusting your blade through the narrow gap and into her face. It punched through her skull and came out the other side. Her flesh shield instantly disintegrated. There was no time to celebrate your own cleverness; you pushed forward, growing a new bone blade in the place where the old one had broken off and readying a killing blow.

Ianthe opened her mouth and vomited a torrent of blood at you. It hit you like a firehouse and sent you flying backward, tumbling head over heels and sliding across the floor as you scrambled to find your footing. You shook off a bone bangle and slammed it into the ground, expanding into a shield that blocked the stream. But it was too late — she’d bought herself space, and pushed you into the dark walkway on the other side of the colonnade, where you couldn’t use the light to your advantage.

The hole in Ianthe’s head knitted itself shut, and the naked fury upon her face terrified you. She held both arms out, away from her body, and cuts opened up on her wrists. The blood flowed into the air and shaped into floating discs, hardening into razor-sharp glass, like blood-red obsidian.

She flung them at you in a hail of death. They sliced through the bone barrier you threw up to defend yourself like it was made of paper. You dodged the first disc and ducked the second, then dipped behind one of the pillars for cover, but she did not stop. A broader disc sliced all the way through the thick, stone pillar, emerging only a fraction of an inch above your head. The pillar rumbled and cracked as you dove out of the way, and within seconds it crumbled apart and collapsed, taking a chunk of the ceiling with it. You just barely dodged the first wave of rubble. You threw down another bangle and summoned an ogre-like construct that caught the biggest chunk of masonry only seconds before it crushed you. It lasted less than five seconds before another disc sliced it in half and it toppled to the floor.

You needed a new defense, and you knew exactly what to do. If it was anyone else you would have called them stupid and reckless, but it was you, so you knew it would work. You hadn’t tried this with something so fast and violent before, but in desperation, you thrust your hand out in front of you palm-first as a disc rocketed straight toward your head. It came within inches of slicing your fingers off when it hit the thalergy field and broke in half, the shards whizzing past either side of your body.

Now this you could do.

The barrage of blood rained upon you unceasing, and you held your hands out in front of you, shattering each projectile and batting them aside before they could hit you. The crystalline shards embedded themselves in the wall behind you, until it was a pincushion of crimson glass. Ianthe realized her tactic wasn’t working and growled, the discs in the wall dissolving back into liquid and splashing to the floor.

You tried to counterattack with the same strategy, throwing pieces of bone jewelry through the air, where they exploded into hundreds of tiny shards that flew toward her like so much osseous shrapnel, but she just threw a flesh shield up in front of her, and the fragments could not pierce it.

More of the ceiling crumbled as another pillar gave way, succumbing to the myriad gashes Ianthe had cut through it. You flung yourself out of the way just before a pile of rubble slammed into the ground right where you’d been standing. You were so occupied by not dying that you didn’t notice as the puddles of blood her discs had dissolved into slithered and reformed. They squirmed and solidified, transforming into muscle and tendon, and you were caught unawares as tentacles of flesh wrapped around you. They allowed you only a moment of fruitless struggling before they heaved mightily and flung you through the window.

It shattered with a deafening crash, shards of glass slicing all along your arms and back as you flew through the air. You scrambled for your last bone bangle, flinging it behind you like a frisbee, desperately hoping it would hit the right spot. It collided with the ground and sprouted into a huge arm, reaching out and grabbing you. Your momentum was too much, but it slowed your fall just enough to prevent you from being brained against the stone as it hit the floor and broke apart, sending you rolling across the landing pad.

After an eternity of bruising momentum, you came to a stop. The thin sheen of water that coated the ground was cold, and it sputtered beneath your mouth as you squeezed your eyes shut and huffed gasping, irregular breaths. You pushed yourself up to your hands and knees, arms shaking from the effort. The downpour plastered your hair to your skin, and you swept it out of your eyes with a disgruntled noise. Rain streamed down your face, washing away blood and paint alike.

Ianthe emerged through the main doors, rapier held out to the side, striding toward you with murderous intent.

“This isn’t a fight you can win Nonagesimus,” Ianthe called out, raising her voice to be heard over the rain, “You don’t have the stomach to become a Lyctor, to do what it takes. But I do. Judge me all you like you insufferable, self-righteous nun, I’m still the only one who’s walking away from this.”

Wearily, achingly, you stood, and settled into a defiant fighting stance.

It was no use. You were running out of energy, and she was still at full strength. She had every advantage; all you had was a killer nosebleed and a few dozen gashes all over your body. But you weren’t giving up. As Ianthe fell upon you with her rapier and her knife, you summoned a dozen constructs and regrew your bone blades. You would show Ianthe Tridentarius that even with your back to the wall, you were not to be trifled with.

A horde of skeletons rushed Ianthe, and you fell upon her at the same time. You tried to overwhelm her, but the constructs weren’t enough to throw her off balance and she easily parried your clumsy, amateurish slashes. Whipcord tendons sprouted from her back, curling around the skeletons that tried to surround her and ripping them apart. One of them knocked her knife out of her hand just before she tore it in half. She circled around you and pushed you back, forcing you to retreat toward the doors. Without the ability to see behind you, you stepped into the bright beam of light in front of the ship without realizing it. It blinded you — you couldn’t see Ianthe, couldn’t see what she was doing as you winced away from the spotlight in your eyes. You swung your blade wildly and knocked her rapier aside. She levered her arm back around and elbowed you in the face. Your head snapped back, and you staggered as blood spurted from your nose. A hand grabbed the collar of your shirt.

Ianthe yanked you forward and stabbed you in the gut. Your slammed into her, almost doubled over, your momentum pulling you into the thrust. The tip of her rapier went right through you and came out the other side. All the air rushed from your lungs. Your constructs disintegrated into clouds of bone dust, which quickly dissolved into the puddles of water on the ground. A pathetic, pained whimper escaped your lips as your legs failed you, leaning your whole weight on Ianthe. She pulled her sword out of your stomach and pushed you aside. You fell to the floor and your back hit the metal hull of the ship, your whole body going limp as you slumped against it like a doll whose strings had been cut. Blood poured from your wounds, clouding the pool of rainwater beneath you and tinging it pink.

Your vision was fuzzy. Your breath was shallow. Ianthe loomed over you.

“It’s pathetic,” she spat, “it’s pathetic to watch you lose to me. I’ve seen what you’re capable of, Nonagesimus, I’ve seen you do things that no other necromancer alive could hope to attempt. I shouldn’t be able to beat you. But you’ve got no conviction. You could have been the greatest Lyctor there ever was — all you had to do was let one idiot ginger die. You didn’t even have to kill her yourself! But you just couldn’t do it. That’s why I’m better than you, why I will always be better than you. I tried to guide you, tried to give you another chance, but now you’ve thrown that away too. What a fucking waste.”

She lifted her rapier. You awaited your death. Ianthe’s eyes were fixed on the ground, fixed on you.

That’s why she didn’t see her coming.

Coronabeth slammed into her sister like a juggernaut. Ianthe careened backward. Coronabeth’s rapier was drawn, and in her off hand was a familiar set of knuckle knives. She leveled her blade at Ianthe, planted herself between the two of you, and said,

“Get the hell away from her.”

Ianthe stared at Coronabeth in naked shock. Her jaw hung open.

“Coronabeth, you’re… “

“Still alive,” she confidently said. You knew little about swordfighting, but her stance was the same one you had seen other cavaliers take — the stance of somebody who knew what they were doing.

“How did you… why are you…”

“You’ve missed quite a lot these past months, sister. Now put down your sword.

Ianthe’s voice hardened, “Get out of my way, Coronabeth.”

“No.”

Ianthe sneered. “You don’t know what you’re doing, Cori, now step aside.”

“I know exactly what I’m doing, Yanthy. Harry is my friend, and I’m not letting you touch her.”

Ianthe stepped forward and placed a hand on the flat of Coronabeth’s rapier, pushing it to the side as she came closer. She rolled her eyes. “Oh, do shut up Coronabeth, the adults are talking now.”

Coronabeth’s rapier moved like a lightning bolt. The tip dropped down, flicked to the side, then whipped back across and sliced Ianthe’s throat open in the span of a heartbeat.

Ianthe choked and stumbled backward, blood gushing down her neck and staining her already soaked shirt red. Her free hand shot up to clutch at the wound. She squeezed her eyes shut and gurgled pathetically. Her face contorted into a grimace as the slash sealed itself up.

“What is it with people and my throat lately?” she bemoaned with a watery croak. You couldn’t see Coronabeth’s face from where you were sitting, but she carried herself with an air of practiced determination, her breathing steady and calm, an invisible energy suffusing her still limbs like a coiled spring. Ianthe stared at her with utter disbelief. “You must be joking, Coronabeth. Are you honestly going to put her before your sister?”

“No, Ianthe. But I’m not letting you boss me around anymore either.”

“What do you even want?” Ianthe asked helplessly. Coronabeth’s stance relaxed ever so slightly, and her voice softened.

“You’re going to let her live. You’re going to heal what you did to her. And then… and then you’re going to come with me.”

Tears gathered in the corners of Ianthe’s eyes, visible in her expression even as they were lost in the downpour.

“I can’t… I can’t do that. You need to stay away from me, Cori.”

The roll of Coronabeth’s eyes was audible in her voice. “Oh don’t start with that bullshit, Yanthy. You’re my sister. I love you. Come with me.”

Ianthe’s grip on her rapier weakened, the tip dropping a little, before she remembered herself and lifted it to point accusingly at Coronabeth’s heart.

“I’m not going back — certainly not to father. I won’t do it,” she insisted through gritted teeth. Her whole body was tense. She looked like a cornered animal.

“I never said that. I said to come with me. We can go wherever we want to go, do whatever we want to do, just… just do it with me? Please?” Ianthe looked like she'd been stabbed. Her face contorted into something ugly and desperate. She did not answer, and Coronabeth softly continued, “I miss my sister, Ianthe. I know you’re scared, but we can do it better this time. We can do it right. I know we can. That you can.”

Tears flowed freely down Ianthe’s stricken face. It took an eternity for her to respond, an eternity of pattering rain and wordless anticipation.

Ianthe dropped her rapier. It hit the ground with a splash and a tink of steel hitting stone. Coronabeth hesitantly lowered her rapier.

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

Coronabeth squeaked and hopped excitedly in place, then sheathed her weapons and ran over to scoop her sister up in a crushing hug, lifting her off the ground and pressing her cheek against her chest.

“Cori, not so tight,” Ianthe wheezed in a strangled voice.

“Oops, sorry Yanthy!” Coronabeth beamed and set her down, burying her face in Ianthe’s shoulder and rocking side to side. Ianthe looked helpless with relief, or possibly terror. She hugged her sister back — not as tight, not as sure, but she did it. The Tridentarius twins held one another close in the rain, reunited once again.

“I’m very happy for the two of you,” you said weakly, “but I have a stab wound in my kidney, and I would appreciate some assistance.”

“Oh!” Coronabeth remembered, “Right, yes, of course! Yanthy, if you would?”

Ianthe didn’t move right away — she still looked vaguely concussed — but eventually she collected herself and walked over to you. She knelt and placed a hand over the hole in your midsection. You hissed as your flesh writhed and knit itself back together, the uncomfortable squirming sensation of flesh magic filling your skin and your guts.

Ianthe’s lips were pursed into a fine line, and she did not meet your eyes even once as she tended to the dozens of cuts and gashes that covered you. Your breath steadied, the ragged edge leaving it as she reluctantly pieced you back together. The press of her hands against your body was far too intimate, far too gentle for everything that had happened between you. Strands of wet hair were plastered messily across her face, and in that moment, Ianthe was wonderfully, tragically beautiful.

“Your sister is wiser than I gave her credit for,” you whispered as your strength returned, quiet enough that only Ianthe could hear, “you would do well to listen to her. You can do better this time. That’s the thing about choosing — you get to change your mind.”

Ianthe paused, her hand hovering over your final wound — a jagged incision in your deltoid. Her expression flickered, just for a moment. Then she continued without a word.

You were mentally preparing for the ordeal of getting to your feet — you were still weak and wobbly, even if your wounds were healed — when Ianthe held out her hand. She was not looking at you, body turned to the side and head tilted away, staring resolutely at the ground. But you had no intention of refusing a peace offering when you saw one. You took Ianthe’s hand, and she helped you up. She let go almost immediately, and Coronabeth came to your side to support you as you swayed unsteadily.

“Thank you,” you murmured. Coronabeth smiled at you softly.

“Of course,” she said. “Anything for a friend.”

 


 

 

Ianthe sat in the lone chair in Canaan House’s communications room, water dripping from her soaking wet clothes to the wooden floor, leaving a puddle around her. She looked like an absolute mess — drenched, shirt covered in blood, hair tangled and wild. It was almost comical, how utterly ruined she looked in that tiny, neat room.

God’s face appeared on the screen before her. The camera was looking at him from below and off to the side. He wasn’t quite looking at it, focused instead on whatever was out the front window of his ship.

“Ianthe, you made it, good. We need to move quickly. I’m not sure the distraction plan is going to work, the Beasts are moving faster than I’ve ever seen. This is going to come down to hours, not days. It's going to be a close thing, but I think we can still pull it off.”

He turned to look at her fully. “How are things going on your — good lord!” he exclaimed at the sight of her.

“Teacher.”

He sighed. “So it’s done, then?”

She shook her head. “I found Harrowhark. It’s her. I’m certain of it.”

The pity in his eyes was revolting.

“Ianthe, I know you care for her. But it’s a risk we cannot afford to take, under any circumstances. Harrowhark must be eliminated, no matter how sure you are.”

Ianthe huffed an exasperated breath through her nose, “Teacher, I’m not saying that my intuition tells me it’s her; I am saying I’m certain it’s her. Irrefutably.”

He sat back in his chair, suddenly curious. “How could you possibly be certain?”

“I — “ here she grew hesitant, almost embarrassed, “The two of us attempted the perfect Lyctor process. It was… interrupted, but I saw her soul.”

He went dreadfully pale. When he spoke again, his voice was deadly serious.

“You should be grateful that you were interrupted, Ianthe. It wouldn’t have worked, and I’ve seen what happens when…” he trailed off, then shook his head, as if to cast off a thought, “I assume you planned to use Naberius’ soul?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she dismissed, “what matters is what it showed me. It is her. I have confirmed it, beyond any possibility of doubt. This is not some false hope — she is not an impostor.”

“Ianthe, I did not mean that you’re wrong, or that you’re fooling yourself. I meant that she must be eliminated. Even if you’re sure it’s her, Harrowhark cannot be allowed to live. She has already shown her willingness to betray the Nine Houses — she put the entire Empire at risk in order to save her own life. She cannot be allowed to wield the power of a Lyctor, the responsibility of being a Lyctor, if she is willing to do that. It pains me to say it, more than you could possibly know, but she must die.”

God’s decree hung in the air, weighty and final. Slowly, deliberately, Ianthe corrected her slumped, exhausted posture. She sat up straight, the wooden chair creaking beneath her as she shifted. Her expression was serious and intense.

“You would condemn her for that? She did not know the gamble she was making when she made her decision. She did not know what would be unleashed. She believed she was taking a calculated risk, to get into the system and out, as quickly as possible. You would issue a death sentence for that? For wanting to survive?”

“She lied to me, Ianthe, and that, above all else, I cannot abide. I have seen the consequences of my Lyctors lying to me firsthand, and I will not allow it, not anymore, not ever again.”

“There is a difference between trying to save her own life and actively plotting your murder!” Ianthe insisted.

“Are you not my Lyctor?” God demanded, “My fist? My gesture? You will do what I ask of you!”

Ianthe pursed her lips. Her agitation went away, replaced by cold, steely resolve.

“No. I don’t think I will.”

“Excuse me?”

“I said no, Teacher. Do it yourself.”

Haloed eyes flared like a supernova. “Don’t do this, Ianthe. I will not let you remain a Lyctor if you won’t wield your power for the good of the Empire.”

She sneered at him, “What are you going to do, pull Babs’ soul out of me?”

“Do not underestimate the extent of my power.”

The two of them stared at each other, one commanding, one defiant. Ianthe held his gaze like that for a long time. Then, quietly, she said,

“I don’t plan to.”

And she stood up and walked out of the room.

“Ianthe? Ianthe!” God demanded, but Ianthe did not answer.

You did.

You stepped out from the doorway, where you had been standing just out of sight of the camera. You sat primly, hands in your lap, and calmly scooted the chair in so that you were sitting properly at the desk. God stared at you with all the defiant guilt of a child who had been caught by a teacher they did not respect.

“Harrow — “ he began, then cut himself off with a long sigh. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Alright, I’m not going to insult you by pretending I meant anything other than what I said. I won’t lie to you to avoid a difficult conversation — I’d like to think that’s beneath me. But I need you to understand that I’m not doing this because I want to hurt you. We are operating at a scale that goes beyond the significance of any one life. Any mistake, any miscalculation, could result in the deaths of countless people — of entire planets. I cannot afford to take risks, no matter how small, no matter how painful the cost might be. I’m only doing what I have to do.”

He really believed that, didn’t he? He really believed he was doing this out of logical, impersonal necessity. You could imagine him making the same excuse about any number of things — how many times had he used it in the past? How many difficult decisions had he made?

You stared at the face of the only man you had ever truly loved. He was your God, your Emperor, your reason for existence. The House you commanded existed for the singular purpose of protecting him, of guarding his imprisoned enemy. You could not remember what it was like to not love him — you loved him from the moment you first learned what love was.

The realization you had in that moment was not the realization that you no longer loved him, nor was it the revelation that he did not love you. You weren’t sure you would ever stop loving him, and you knew that he had meant it when he called you his friend.

No, your realization was that you did not respect him. He commanded life and death, held the fate of entire worlds in his hands, and he was just a man. A man, who had friends and lovers, and offered you biscuits with your tea, and made mistakes. He wasn’t even a particularly wise or insightful man; he was just a big a fool as you were.

“Harrow?” he tentatively asked. “Harrow, I’m sorry. I wish it didn’t have to be this way. You’re a brilliant young woman, and you deserve better than this — you deserve better than me. But I am the God you have, and we must make due. I have no intention of punishing you or causing you undue pain, but neither will I be swayed from my decision. Rest assured, you will be remembered with honor; your bones will be enshrined within the Mithraeum, alongside the great heroes of — “

You shut off the communicator. The room went silent. All you could hear were the muted voices of Ianthe and Coronabeth, made indistinguishable by distance, and the far-off pitter-patter of the rain. You stared sightlessly at the empty black screen, and allowed yourself a moment of solitude to mourn for your faith.

 


 

 

The Tridentarius twins stood idle in the hallway, conversing in low voices, when you rejoined them. Coronabeth looked over at you as soon as she noticed you. Ianthe did not.

“How did it go?” Coronabeth asked.

Instead of answering, you asked, “What was the outcome of your conversation with Judith and the Cohort admirals?”

“Oh, yes, of course. The evacuation is underway. Transports are to be sent to the Houses with the least resources, to expand the holding capacity of their fleets. Yanthy and I are going to return to the Third, and help coordinate the evacuation there. We might not be the biggest House, but the Third has enough political sway that we should be able to get the other Houses on board.

“Beyond that, there have been reports of Blood of Eden ships in the system. They seem to be gathering near the Third and the Seventh; given the current orbital positions of the Houses, right now those two are the only ones being used as endpoints for the steles leading out of the system. We can assume they know our intentions, but with the Cohort on board, we should be able to deal with them.”

“Good.”

“That’s not all, though. They received a distress signal from the Sixth — more than just the evacuation protocol. It seems they’re under attack.”

“Blood of Eden ships in the area?”

“None.”

You nodded, expression grim. “Tell Judith to call off any ships they’ve sent to reinforce the Sixth. This battle won’t be won by throwing numbers at the problem. You two stay the course. Go to the Third. I’ll deal with Alecto.”

“Take my ship,” Ianthe quietly said. She still could not look at you, but she spoke without hesitation. “It’s faster than that antique you call a spacecraft, and it’s a fighter. You’ll need weapons — unless you’d prefer to get yourself killed.”

Your lips parted. When you spoke, your voice briefly softened.

“Thank you — both of you.”

“Of course, Harry,” Coronabeth smiled.

“Alright, we have our plan. There’s no time to waste.” You turned on your heel and stalked away from them.

“Wait!” Coronabeth called. You paused. “There’s one more thing.” Coronabeth hesitated for a long moment. “Before the protocol was activated, the Cohort’s intelligence officers received an anonymous tip. Gideon has been spotted on the Sixth House.”

You closed your eyes and took a deep, slow breath. Of course. How naive, to assume that I’d willingly stay on the Ninth and evacuate with the others.

“Harry?” Coronabeth tentatively prompted.

“Stay the course,” you said, “go to the Third.”

“What are you going to do?”

Shoulders set like stone, back turned to her, you spoke with the cool, furious confidence of an avenging angel.

“I’m going to retrieve my cavalier.”

Chapter 12: The Death of the Lord

Chapter Text

All we had to do to find her was follow the screams. They echoed, distant but growing louder, as we ran through the upper levels of the Sixth. The red emergency lighting cast the halls in a bloody, claustrophobic gloom. I gripped my stolen rifle tight. Warden had their dual swords out, their own rifle still slung over their back. The screams were loud now. We were getting close.

The hallway split in a Y-fork, and without exchanging a single word, Warden and I agreed to split up, each of us running down one of the corridors. The halls snaked and wound through the station in a maddeningly unhelpful labyrinth. I followed them to a broad, open hub in the center of the station. I ran through the door, heart pounding, and stopped abruptly when I saw her, standing in the center of the room.

She was dressed in black, tactical clothing, with a huge gun slung over her back — courtesy of Blood of Eden, I assumed. There was a bandolier tied across her chest, but I couldn’t figure out what the ammo on it was. They looked way too big to be bullets, but they fit the gun’s unusually wide barrel.

A man crawled away from her on the floor, screaming and shielding himself with his hands, and before I could react, she casually swiped her sword across his throat and silenced him.

“Fuck!” I exclaimed as the man’s scream gurgled and cut out. She looked up at me, and smiled.

“Oh, we knew you were something special.”

I raised my gun and said, in as authoritative a voice as I could muster, “Put the sword down, asshole.”

She clicked her tongue. “Oh come now, Gideon, you’re not that stupid. Really, put our sword down?” she shook her head like a disappointed teacher, “Or what? You’ll kill us?”

“Maybe I just feel like unloading a magazine in your skull, ice grandma.”

She shrugged. “Feel free. You’re more than welcome to waste your ammunition. We’d rather you didn’t, but we’d be fine.” She stared at me, her eyes a straightjacket constricting my existence. She grinned tauntingly. “Unlike you. Why, Gideon, weren’t you a Lyctor the last time we spoke?”

“What’s it to you?” I growled.

She sighed, “We told you, Gideon, they never keep their promises.”

“I don’t give a shit. I’m not stopping you for her.”

“Then who are you stopping me for?”

“I don’t know, maybe for the eight planets worth of people you’re about to kill?”

“Thieves, every single one of them. They deserve to die.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I demanded exasperatedly.

“I’m talking about us!” she snarled, jabbing her chest with her finger as she pointed at it, “All of us! The Nine Houses are built upon the graves of the people he refused to save. On our graves. Every breath taken within the Nine Houses is a breath that belonged to us, every child born is a life that should have been ours, and we will reclaim what was stolen from us.”

“These people never had a choice. I’m not going to let you punish them for what he did.”

“Then you will die alongside them,” she threatened. I braced the rifle tight against my shoulder.

“Maybe. But I’m the only one here you can’t scare away, so it looks like the job falls to me.”

“It’s true,” she admitted, “a Lyctor’s cavalier is immune to Herald fear. But Gideon, you’ve forgotten something.”

“And what’s that?”

“You’re not a Lyctor anymore.”

Her eyes changed, same as they did in the Tomb, but the feeling they projected was not the same. All of the air sucked out of my lungs. The world stretched, my vision tunneling. Every single neuron in my brain lit on fire. Every drop of adrenaline my body was capable of producing flooded into my bloodstream. I stumbled backward.

Alecto was a thousand feet tall. I saw the souls of the dead inside her, ten billion mouths crying out in anger, an overlapping, eldritch wail of cacophonous screaming faces. I felt every single one of them, felt the malice and rage radiating out of them like blinding light. I was going to die. Visions of a thousand ends flooded my mind. I was being torn to pieces. I was withering to a shriveled husk. I was burning alive. I was drowning. I was being vivisected. I was suffocating beneath crushing rock. I was being stripped apart, molecule by molecule, until every trace of my existence was ripped from the universe.

My scream was drowned out, just one more voice added to the chorus. I turned away, closed my eyes, covered my face, but I could not shut them out. I didn’t even realize I was falling until I felt my body hit the floor. I crawled away from her in a blind panic. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t stop screaming long enough to inhale.

The crack of a gunshot ripped through the air, and the cacophony fell silent. The fear ebbed, but my body was still thrumming with adrenaline. It was impossible to orient myself. Nausea flooded my gut as I slowly pieced reality back together.

Somebody grabbed me and hauled me to my feet. My vision spun, but I was coherent enough to notice Alecto’s body on the floor, her skull completely blown open, pieces of bone littering the floor behind her. The hole in her head was quickly sealing, and I convinced my legs to move, to follow along with my savior.

Warden pulled me through an open door, and slammed it shut behind us. They let go and I stumbled forward, shaking my head and forcing myself back to cognizance. We were in some sort of office, cluttered and cramped with desks and filing cabinets and stacks of flimsy. There was a door on the far wall — a way out.

“The door doesn’t lock, help me out,” they gruffly commanded, slinging their rifle back over their shoulder. The two of us grabbed each end of a heavy desk and pushed it against the door, piles of flimsy fluttering to the floor as they fell off the side. The doorknob rattled, then there was a loud slam. Alecto tried to force her way through, but the desk held strong, wedged solidly against the door. Warden and I backed away.

“Okay, that’s going to make this a lot harder,” I panted, “what’s the plan?”

“I think we need to — “

THOOMP

The door exploded in a shower of fire and splintery shrapnel.

“Shit!” I ducked and threw my arm in front of my face to shield it, backing away from the fireball. My ears rang with the noise of the blast.

So that’s what her gun did.

“I think we need to run! We sprinted towards the other door, flung it open, and ran into a long hallway. Warden pointed toward our destination, another door down the hallway to the right.

THOOMP

The grenade flew through the open door at an angle and hit the opposite wall on our left. The blast knocked me off my feet and slammed me against the wall behind me, forcing the air from the lungs as I fell to the floor and rolled onto my side. I scrambled to my feet and grabbed Warden, who had fallen a few feet away from me.

We made it through the door, emerging into a wide, open mess hall filled with long tables. Three people cowered behind a pillar in the center of the room, utterly unsure of what was happening or what to do.

“Come on, you need to run!” I shouted as I ran.

“What’s going on?”

“No time!”

We didn’t wait for them, we just kept running, and after a moment of hesitation, they started running behind us.

Not a moment later, a grenade landed in the middle of the mess hall, arcing all the way across the room and landing between a group of tables off to our side. The blast flung the tables through the air. I ducked down as one of them flipped only inches above my head. It slammed into one of our companions, sending him careening off to the side. The other two tried to stop and help their friend, but we didn’t let them, yanking them through the open doorway. Seconds later, the screaming started again. We didn’t stop.

We fled through the halls of the Sixth with a hail of fire and sulfur nipping at our heels.

Alecto was hot on our trail, but this was Warden’s home turf. We managed to put some distance between us and her, and ducked into a small control room overlooking one of the Sixth’s hangar bays. The room rested at the top of the large, open space, looking down upon a dozen or so small ships. We told the two survivors to grab a ship and get out. They ran down and grabbed a small shuttle, and Warden opened the doors for them. Once the ship passed through the air shield, Warden closed the doors again.

“No escape for us, huh?” I said.

“You’re welcome to leave if you want,” they told me. I gave them a pointed look. They shrugged. “Always an option. I’m not leaving.”

“It’s time for me to do my job, Warden, I’m not going anywhere.”

We left the control room behind, but before we did, Warden hit a switch, and the transparent plex walls frosted over, turning foggy and opaque. We climbed down to the ground floor of the hangar, and pressed ourselves against the wall.

“Alright, we need a plan,” I said, “how are we doing this?”

“We need to establish goals. What are our limitations?”

“We can’t kill her,” I offered, “even if she can die, all that would do is kill everybody faster.”

“Then we trap her.”

“Maybe we can incapacitate her, find a way to fuck her up really bad — not kill her, but injure her badly enough that she can’t fight back, at least for long enough that we can restrain her.”

Warden considered this. “There’s an incinerator on the lower levels.”

“We could eject her into space. She doesn’t need air to live.”

“What are her goals?”

“Kill everybody.”

They shook their head, “Walking through the ship killing everybody one by one isn’t an efficient plan for her. She needs to find a way to damage the Sixth, take everybody out at once.”

“Life support system?”

“Has multiple backups. But if she got into the master control room, she could do some real damage without even having to destroy it. We’ll need to keep her out of there.”

“What else?”

“Stele engines. If we can’t get out of the system we’re as good as dead. That will be simple to defend, direct access to the engines is only possible through a single maintenance entrance. If she does try to sabotage either of those systems, that might be our opportunity to stop her. The lower levels have tighter security, since all the vital infrastructure is down there. It’ll be far easier to contain her down there than up here.”

“Okay. Okay,” I breathed, steadying myself. “I think we’ve got our plan.”

I looked over at the control room again. The plex was still foggy and opaque, and I couldn’t see through it, but I could make out the shadow of a person on the other side. I had only a second to register what that meant before the plex turned transparent, the fog disappearing and turning clear and glassy again. The instant it did, the fear returned.

The open space of the hangar expanded, turned vast and endless. I was dwarfed by the expanse of the universe, a tiny speck in an infinity of malice and danger that swallowed me whole. Billions of eyes stared at me from every direction, knowing and accusing. They saw my every sin, my every thought and desire, and they judged me lacking. Their gazes stabbed me until I was a pincushion of knives, more wound than human. I tried to hide from them, to hide from the spotlight, but I could see them even through my closed eyes, their slitted pupils carved into the inside of my eyelids. There was nothing, there was nowhere to hide, I was exposed, there was no shelter that existed in the endless expanse that surrounded me. Their gazes were burning me away, searing my flesh and bone and stripping it away until they revealed the truth of me, revealed the rotten core of me, open and bare for everybody to see.

With a titanic, panicked effort, I held my gun out and fired blindly. I hammered on the trigger and unloaded the entire magazine, eyes closed, unsure what I was even aiming at.

Reality shrunk down to it’s proper size. I was in the hangar bay again. I gasped for breath. I looked around frantically. There was a bullet hole in the windows of the control room, cracks spiderwebbing out around it. The plex was splattered with blood. I stumbled drunkenly to my feet with violently shaking legs. The two of us floundered out the door on the side of the hangar bay and retreated from our relentless assailant, leaving our guns abandoned on the floor.

We sprinted through the halls until we came across the same bank of elevators we had used to descend to the bowels of the archives. Warden stopped me with a hand pressed against my chest.

“We need to split up,” they said. “The life support center has a manual lockdown protocol, it should be able to keep her out, but you need to trigger it yourself.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll get the engines.”

I nodded, and once they told me the route to take, we split up. I took one elevator, and they took another. I pressed the button and leaned back against the wall as the elevator began to descend. My head knocked lightly against the metal as I tipped it back, eyes closed, catching my breath. I already felt completely wrung out. I was so thoroughly unprepared for this, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. More than anything, I wanted you there. You would’ve known what to do.

Me? I was a weapon with no one to wield it. But I kept going, regardless.

 


 

 

I stepped through the thick bulkhead door marking the entrance to the life support sector. The control center was at the end of a long room filled with rows of plants growing in aeroponic beds, stacked three high. The air was thick and humid, the blood red emergency lights catching on the mist. It felt like I was creeping through some sort of hellish jungle. On the far end was another heavy door, and I stepped through it into the Sixth House’s life support control center, currently abandoned in the panicked frenzy of Alecto’s attack.

It wasn’t much, really. A small, crowded room filled with pipes and equipment, centered around a terminal with three plex screens. A metal chair was pushed in at the desk. A large ventilation grate sat fixed on the wall beside the terminal. I closed and locked the door behind me, then sat down in front of the terminal and tried to figure out how the hell all this worked. I punched in the security code Warden told me, and flipped through the controls.

The central life support system was an entirely self-contained sector of the station, capable of locking down against external threats and sustaining whoever was inside for an indefinite period of time. There were security cameras overlooking the different rooms. There were controls to manage air composition for different sectors of the ship, including a separate circuit specifically for the life support center, in case it went into lockdown. I searched for the controls to lock down the sector, and I had just found them when something caught my eyes on the security feed.

Alecto was inside. She walked through the outer rooms, moving inexorably toward the control center. I swore under my breath and slammed the button to close and seal the outer bulkhead. If I couldn’t keep her out, at least I could lock her in.

Okay, I needed a plan, right fucking now. How could I stop her? How could I incapacitate her? Data and control systems flipped past my eyes as I flicked through the options the system offered me. The door to the control center wasn’t sturdy enough to withstand her grenades — the security came from the outer bulkhead, not from anything inside.

An idea sparked in my brain. I flipped through the controls until I got to the system for managing the atmospheric composition of the life support center. I locked down the outer vents, to lock the sector’s air supply into a closed loop. Then I tweaked the controls, and cranked the oxygen levels way, way up. The ventilation system hissed and whooshed as it worked overtime to recalibrate the internal air composition as quickly as possible. I couldn’t feel the difference right away, but I could see the oxygen levels going up on the readout on the screen. As the levels crept higher and higher, I began to taste the difference. It was subtle — I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what the difference was — but I could taste the difference, smell it. Apparently so could Alecto, because she paused, sniffing the air and smacking her lips. Then she grinned.

“Oh, that’s you, isn’t it Gideon? Very clever.” She slung the grenade launcher back over her back, and looked around, searching for an alternate entrance to the control center.

I swore. If she wouldn’t use her grenades, I’d need to find some way to trigger a fire or a spark on my own. It didn’t take me long to figure it out. There were a number of gas tanks in various different rooms throughout the sector. If I entered an override into the controls, I could overload the pressure, and make them all explode at once. In the high oxygen environment, an explosion would become a devastating conflagration. She’d heal, of course, but it would take a long time. Long enough for someone to drag her off and lock her up. She would be completely incinerated.

…and so would I. It hadn’t occurred to me when I first thought of the plan, but of course. I was locked in here too. I would be caught up in the blaze, and unlike her, I wouldn’t recover from it. There were ventilation shafts leading out of the control room, out of the life support sector, but they had to be sealed off in order to maintain a separate atmosphere for the sector, I couldn’t escape through them and maintain a high enough oxygen level for my plan to work.

I should have had no hesitation. These people, they were good people, they deserved to live. And I could save them. I’d be a hero, going out in a literal blaze of glory. And wasn’t that the same as what I wanted before? I had wanted to die for you, to give you a chance to beat her. This was even better — I wouldn’t be buying a chance, I would be buying a victory. And who was I to say no to that?

Despite all that, despite everything, I hesitated. My stomach dropped like a stone. My finger hovered over the button. Gideon Nav, savior of the Empire — miserable from womb to tomb. Because even if the circumstances were different, this was why I was born, wasn’t it? I was born to die.

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fucking fair.

A desperate, frustrated noise escaped my lips, and I slammed the button to unseal the ventilation system.

I turned, taking the heavy, metal chair in my hands, and slammed it into one of the water pipes running through the room. It creaked, and I hit it again and again until it burst, spraying water all throughout the room. It pooled on the floor, seeped into the computer casing of the terminal. I yanked the ventilation grate off the wall and jumped up, grabbing onto the edge and pulling myself up as the control terminal sparked and died. The vent was narrow and I barely fit inside it, but I wriggled through until I emerged in a hallway outside the life support sector. I tried to descend gracefully, but instead tipped over and tumbled to the floor. I pulled myself to my feet and looked at the bulkhead door. That should hold her for a while, she’d have to figure out the vents before she could get out.

I sprinted towards the elevator, to find Warden. Alecto said that I would die along with them. But fuck that. They were going to live. And I would do it with them.

 


 

 

I found the door leading to the engineering access for the stele engines. It was all thick, sturdy metal, and it was locked. I rapped on the door frantically — I had no idea how close Alecto was. After a moment of impatient waiting, a viewing slot at roughly eye level slid open, and Warden’s mismatched eyes met mine through the plex. They slid it closed again, and then there was a loud hiss of air, and the door swung open. I slipped through quickly, and Warden shut it behind me, locking the airtight seal.

“What happened?” Warden asked.

“She got in before I could seal off life support, but I was able to destroy the central control terminal and seal off a lot of the side passages. She shouldn’t be able to do any damage.”

They nodded, “Good. We should be able to stay in here then.”

“What do you mean?”

“The engines produce a toxic gas as a byproduct. This whole area is very well ventilated, but the vents can be sealed in an emergency. The life support center is the only other place that has control over them.”

“Alright, we’re good to be in here then. But what’s the actual plan?”

Warden winced. “We keep her from getting in here until we get out of the system or she leaves, whichever comes first.”

“That’s a pretty shit plan, Warden.”

“I’m aware.”

I sat down with my back against the wall and closed my eyes, tipping my head back until it knocked against the wall. Warden sat down at a central control terminal, not unlike the one that controlled the life support sector. They tapped away at the controls, and I opened one eye to watch them.

“What are you doing?”

“Seeing if I can connect this terminal to the security system. If I can get access to it I’ll be able to see the camera feeds, maybe keep track of where Alecto is.” They frowned, brow furrowed in concentration. After a few minutes of typing and fiddling, they shook their head and continued, “Looks like I can’t get access unless somebody in security manually grants it. I sent a request, but I have no idea if anybody’s there to approve it.”

I shrugged, “Well, worth a shot I guess.”

There was a knock at the door.

Warden and I both looked at one another, then at the door, then back at one another. I said, “No dice on the cameras?”

They shook their head and cautiously approached the door. They placed a hand on the handle for the viewing slot, took a deep breath, and slid it open.

They started screaming immediately. They flung the slot closed just before they fell onto their back, throwing their hands up and cowering away. I leapt to my feet and grabbed them, dragging them away from the door. They began to recover even before I grabbed them, their screams slowing and turning into frantic panting. By the time I dragged them aside, they were mostly back to normal, breathing heavily, but no longer struck by the fear.

“You alright?” I asked, and they nodded, accepting my hand as I helped them to their feet.

THOOMP

The walls shook with the force of the blast, but the door held strong. I grinned and shouted, “Get fucked grandma!”

The air was tense, with only the whine of the engines further back in the maintenance tunnels to break the silence. We waited breathlessly for another explosion, but none came. For a time, I thought she might have given up.

But then I heard it. It was quiet, very quiet, but there was the sound of a person moving. She must have been shuffling, that’s the only word I could use to describe the sound, like she was shuffling over metal. But it wasn’t coming from the other side of the door, it was coming from the side, almost as if she was in the…

Shit.

“Warden!” I called out, and they ran over to the computer and slammed on the button to seal off the vents right as Alecto fired another grenade. There was a loud clang as it hit the barrier, and another explosion rocked the room. But the barrier held. I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Okay, good, we’re all good now,” I said, but paused when I saw Warden’s grim expression, “We’re all good, right?”

“I had to seal the vents, Nav.”

…oh.

“How long do we have?”

They pointed to a meter on the screen displaying the levels of the toxic chemical in the air. “We’ve got a few hours before the concentration gets high enough that we’ll need to worry about permanent consequences. Past that, our suits’ air tanks should last us another half hour or so.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” Warden said, voice dry and flat. “Shit.”

 


 

 

It took hours. At first I was tense, pacing back and forth restlessly, before Warden berated me and told me to calm down. It wasn’t easy to do. The room was claustrophobic, which normally wouldn’t bother me, but under the circumstances it made things so much worse. The dull red of the emergency lights didn’t help either, casting the room in a constant, ominous glow that called to mind vivid, pooling blood.

Eventually I sat down with my back pressed to the wall, knees curled up to my chest, resting my folded arms atop them. I needed to calm my breathing. I pretended this was just one of my escape attempts from the Ninth. I needed to stay still and patient while I waited for my opportunity. That worked, although not because it calmed me. It made me think of you, which just made me depressed, as opposed to panicky. Was I really going to die like this, after how we had left things? My introspection slowed my external restlessness and got me to chill out.

Warden was the picture of stoic calm, but I could tell they were anxious too, beneath that unflappable exterior. They were too tense, like Camilla always was before a fight. The silence got to me, and I fidgeted nervously.

“You know, I guess you were right about the Emperor in the end.” Warden gave me a questioning look. “I said I couldn’t see him doing what he did, but you were right, he really did do it.”

They shrugged. “But not for power. You were right about that.”

“I guess. It all seems so… pointless. The Empire, the Nine Houses, none of it is ours. It’s just a stage for him to play pretend and act like he saved them. We’re not even really important to it. We’re like puppets, going through the motions of a civilization that’s been dead for a myriad.”

“He killed ten billion people Nav. If he stops, if he tells himself it’s over, that he’s not going to try to fulfill his promise to them, then he has to admit that he made the wrong decision. That’s a hell of a mistake to own up to. I don’t think he can stop.”

We fell silent again. We made a few more attempts at conversation, but the atmosphere in the room was grim, and it was difficult to keep talking. The air tasted bitter and acidic.

“Should we switch to the tanks now?” I asked. Warden shook their head.

“We need to hold off as long as we can. We have some time before it becomes actually dangerous.”

I nodded, and followed their lead. We waited a little longer. The air in the room sharpened like a knife, harsher and harsher with each breath. I was growing lightheaded. My mood dropped the more desperate the situation became. There was no way out of this, was there? If I was going to die anyway, I should have just gone ahead and got rid of her when I had the chance. What the hell was I thinking? All these people, all of Warden’s people, were going to die. Because of me.

“I’m sorry, Warden.”

“For what?”

“None of this would have happened if it weren’t for me. I should never have brought her back in the first place. I should have just…” I bit off my words.

“You should have what?” they said softly.

“Earlier, in life support. I had the opportunity to blow the place up. I could have stopped her, I should have stopped her, but I didn’t. I could’ve stopped all of this, if I hadn’t been so goddamn selfish,” I choked, fighting to keep my words steady, “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Warden stood up and walked over to me. The expression on their face was unreadable. I prepared for them to hit me, to berate me, as I deserved. Instead, they crouched down in front of me and put one hand on my shoulder.

“You have nothing to be sorry for, Gideon.”

“What are you talking about? You could have lived, everybody could have lived, all I had to do was — “

“Do you not deserve to live too?” they interrupted. I met their eyes, but I didn’t answer them. “There is not a single person on this station I would ask that of. You deserve life just as much as the rest of us do, and I’m glad you didn’t throw yours away. I am not angry with you, Gideon, I am proud of you.”

I burst into tears. I couldn’t help it. Warden wrapped their arms around me and pulled me close, and I buried my face in their shoulder. I cried like a goddamn child, great heaving sobs, the chemical air stinging my lungs with each gasp. Pathetic noises came from my mouth, and the shoulder of Warden’s robe grew damp with my tears. I shook, and shook, and they held me, wordlessly, without an ounce of judgment or reproach.

Breathing deeper only accelerated the effects of the chemical. I was dizzy, and I leaned forward heavily against Warden as my weight fell off-balance. They were a little wobbly too, and I knew we would have to put on the oxygen tanks soon. We had so little time left.

The computer on the other side of the room made a friendly noise. I lifted my head up, and Warden turned around to look at it. They stood up slowly, and I followed behind them, both of us a little unsteady on our feet.

The screen was covered in a series of camera feeds, along with a set of controls to switch between them. One overlooked the room directly outside the door, where Alecto waited, sitting on a bench by the wall. A few of them were mounted on the outside of the ship, overlooking stretches of metal — without any context, I couldn’t tell what part of the ship they belonged to.

“Is that — “

“The security feed,” Warden completed my sentence.

“But how?”

“Somebody must be in the security room,” they answered my obvious question. On one of the feeds that overlooked the outside of the station, a small, sleek ship came into view — a fighter of some description. It must have been remotely controlled, as the plex surrounding the cockpit was transparent, and I could see that nobody was inside. Then, there was a slight crackling as a communication channel opened up, and a familiar raspy voice came through.

“Really you two, do I have to do everything myself?”

The fighter opened fire. It unloaded a barrage against the side of the Sixth, and the vibrations shuddered through the entire room around us. On the security feed I saw Alecto stand up, holding her grenade launcher at the ready. The guns tore through the hull in seconds. Alecto’s eyes went wide and she threw herself to the side as a torrent of fiery explosions poured into the room. Her grenade launcher fell to the floor and was left behind as she scrambled to her feet. She stayed low and sprinted out the other door, but it was futile, as the fighter strafed alongside the Sixth’s exterior, raining a hail of gunfire upon her. Warden and I frantically flipped through the security feeds, trying to keep track of her as she fled. The gunfire wouldn’t kill her, but if it ripped her apart, she would drift out of the ship and into open space before she reformed. The fighter trailed Alecto across two more rooms before she found a door that led further into the station, where the guns couldn’t reach her. She ran a few rooms deeper into the ship when the door behind her slid shut on its own. She whipped around, then tried to open another door and keep running, but when she tugged, the door wouldn’t open.

“I’ll funnel her toward the incinerator,” your voice came through, “get out of there while you can.”

“Harrow,” I said helplessly.

Go,” you commanded. Warden and I looked at one another, then I pulled my mask on and sealed it closed. The flood of pure air sent a rush of relief through my body. Warden snatched the smallest screen from the terminal — a detachable tablet — and tucked it into one of their suit’s outer pockets.

I stood ready by the door as Warden slammed the button to open the air seal. They looked over just in time to see me fling the door open.

“Nav, wait!”

I ran through, and my feet immediately left the ground. I careened through the air — the gravity field couldn’t remain stable with the walls torn apart and the outer boundary disrupted. Warden braced themself against the doorway and pushed off, sailing gracefully through the air and grabbing on to the opposite door. They turned and held out their hand, which I gratefully grabbed and let them pull me in. I hugged the side of the doorframe as watched as Warden leapfrogged to the next one with the poise and composure of a champion diver. Something told me my own attempt wouldn’t be quite so elegant. I tried to gauge the jump, but it wasn’t easy; the path was straight but the room was full of shredded debris, big chunks of it careening through the air. I would have to time it perfectly.

I pushed off the wall, and was immediately vindicated by how solidly on-target my arc was. It didn’t last long. A chunk of floating scrap metal ricocheted off the wall at an unexpected angle and slammed into me, sending me flying off course. I flailed my arms like a headless chicken trying to swim; the instinctive urge was difficult to resist, but it did nothing as I drifted away from my target and toward the open wall. My hands frantically grabbed for something, anything, but found nothing. I floated out of the station and into the void of space.

“Reverend Daughter, your cavalier!” Warden cried out.

I spun wildly. I couldn’t tell which way was up because there wasn’t an up, there was just a spiral of shapes flying through my vision as I drifted steadily away from the Sixth. Dizziness and nausea fought for dominance within me. My breaths came fast and panicked as my disorientation grew more and more complete.

My side slammed into solid metal. I careened off of whatever I had just hit. The bounce slowed my spinning until I was capable of discerning objects again; your fighter was right beside me, the thrusters swiveling to try and follow my movement. I snatched at it and missed, once, twice, then my hand hit a ridge of metal that surrounded the front window of the hull, and I clasped tight. My momentum kept me going, and I hit the limit of my reach. A pained cry gasped from my lips as my shoulder was almost pulled out of its socket by the violence of the tug.

But I held on.

I groaned, half in pain, half in sheer bloody-minded determination as I pulled myself in and got a solid grip on the outside of the hull, pressing my body flat against it.

“Take me in!” I called across the suit’s comms, and Warden’s voice echoed me as they spoke to you through the tablet. I braced myself as the fighter began moving again, straining my muscles to keep as close as possible to the hull as you smoothly drifted back towards the Sixth. You flew me as close as you were able to safely get, just outside the room whose door led further into the station. You slowed, and kept perfect pace with the Sixth’s movement, so the fighter was stationary in relation to it.

You couldn’t get me inside the station itself, I was going to have to jump. I pulled myself forward until my back foot was braced on the metal ridge, with my hands holding onto it on either side of me, my body coiled like a spring. Deep breaths. In. Out. I tried to stay calm and focused. I watched the pattern of debris moving through the room. I aimed for Warden, who stood in the open doorway on the other side, waiting for me.

I dove. I sailed through the vacuum, fighting the urge to flail my arms. Two huge chunks of debris sailed past me in opposite directions, and I threaded the needle between them perfectly. But my aim wasn’t perfect; I hit the floor and bounced off, going from a graceful dive to an ungainly tumble. My body hit the wall beside the door hard. I bounced off and started floating away again, and I couldn’t contort my body to face the door. I reached toward it blindly.

Warden grabbed me, and with a tremendous pull, tugged me through the door. They slammed it shut behind them, sealing this completely intact room off from the destroyed one outside, and with the external border sealed once again, the gravity field restabilized and weight returned to us.

I fell flat on my face. I laid there with my face pressed to the floor, and let out a long-suffering groan.

“She’s safe, Reverend Daughter,” Warden said from behind me. Your voice came through the tablet, made tinny by the weak speakers.

“Never doubted you for a moment, Griddle.”

“That makes one of us,” I grumbled, flipping over onto my back before grabbing Warden’s outstretched hand and letting them help me to my feet. We stood side by side and watched the security feed on Warden’s tablet. Alecto was fiddling about inside a panel of wiring on the side of the wall in the room she was in. When she finished, she extricated herself and stepped off to the side. A plume of fire burst out of the paneling, and the sealed door slid open. She stepped through the now open door to the incinerator room. It looked very similar to the one on the Mithraeum — a control booth overlooking an open loading area in front of a thick, transparent plex wall that divided off the incinerator itself. Directly adjacent to the incinerator room was a hallway with a number of wide service elevators.

“I can slow her progress enough that moving through the lower levels is effectively impossible,” you said, “but I can’t stop her from getting to the elevators, and in the upper levels, her movement will be far less impeded. If there was a way for us to get closer, we could get her in the incinerator and end this, but we can’t even be in the same room as her, I have no idea how we could pull it off. We don’t have enough information about how her powers work to form an effective plan.”

I stared at the screen. I muttered, “Yes we do.”

“What?”

My mind raced. I kept coming back to her eyes — everything about her seemed to come back to her eyes. Even before she was back in her body, those eyes carried a dreadful infinity within them. I felt it intensify every time she looked at me. I remembered the weight of them falling away when the lights were extinguished in the Tomb. I remembered her powers hitting us the instant the frosted windows in the hangar turned transparent again. I remembered the eye slot on the door.

“It’s her eyes,” I said, “she has to be able to see us.” My contemplative reverie broke, and I stood up straighter, spoke more authoritatively, “Harrow, I need you to open the doors between us and her.”

“Griddle, this isn’t something you can brute force,” you said. I ignored you, holding one hand out toward Warden. They recognized my meaning and pulled their dual swords from their sheaths, handing one to me and holding on to the other. I spun it once in my hand, then held it steady. Calm confidence flooded through me, my entire body reassured by the comforting weight of steel in my hand once again.

“I need you to open the doors,” I insisted, “and I need you to shut off the lights.” You were silent. The door in front of us slid open. Warden switched off the tablet and tucked it into their pocket.

The world went dark. Every single light in the entire floor shut off all at once. I flicked the switch on the side of my mask, and the world came into relief in shades of pale green. Warden and I advanced.

The distance between us and our target was not far, and when we stepped through the door, it slid shut behind us automatically. The incinerator room had stairs on either side, leading up to a pair of raised walkways that ran into either side of the control booth. The booth itself was tiny, with big windows on each wall overlooking the floor below. The floor was wide and empty but for a few crates pushed into a corner. All of this sat on one side of the room, opposite the transparent plex wall of the incinerator itself. The wall was framed by metal, including a pair of thick, heavy doors right in the center. Alecto stood on the metal walkway closest to us; the moment the door slid shut, she whirled to face us, readying her greatsword in front of her.

She stayed totally silent, unmoving, unbreathing. Of course — she thought we couldn’t see either. I looked at Warden, pointed at them, then pointed at the staircase on the opposite side of the room. They nodded, and padded quietly across.

I headed straight for her. Every movement of my muscles was deliberate, achingly slow and quiet. Alecto stood still as a statue. I crept up the stairs as silently as I could manage. I was close now, and I held my breath. Inch by inch I drew nearer. We were barely two feet apart at this point. I readied my sword.

The moment I thrust my sword Alecto leapt into action. She reacted faster than I thought possible, batting my stab to the side and countering with a slash that forced me to throw myself backward, falling to the ground. I landed on my back and rolled back until my weight was on my upper back and my shoulders, curling my legs up, then pushing off the ground with my hands and springing back to my feet. Warden burst out of the door behind Alecto, and she twirled to catch their attack, forcing Warden’s sword down and catching it on her greatsword’s parrying hooks so they couldn’t maneuver it back around.

She was about to land a counterattack when I stabbed her in the back. Without missing a beat, she took her sword in one hand and used her other arm to elbow me in the side of the head. The force knocked me aside and I slammed into the wall beside me — god she was fucking strong. But Warden and I had her surrounded. With her holding her sword with only one hand, Warden was able to break their own sword free. Alecto bull-rushed them to press them back and avoid giving them room to swing. I darted forward and pulled my sword out of her back, reopening the wound that had already closed around it.

Alecto fought for space. She levered her elbow up and caught Warden in the throat. They stumbled back, choking, She swung her greatsword back around in a frighteningly powerful horizontal slash. I wasn’t risking getting another sword broken — I ducked, stepping back to avoid a follow up as her greatsword crashed against the wall. Alecto vaulted over the railing on the side of the walkway while we were still recovering and dropped to the floor. She hit the ground and rolled.

The two of us took different staircases, splitting up and following Alecto down so that we’d be able to keep a surround on her. But she had bought herself an important tactical advantage; we were on the wide, open main floor, as opposed to the narrow walkway set against the wall, where there was barely any room for her to swing her greatsword. She held totally still as we approached, eyes unmoving as she listened for us. In the utter silence of that room, every noise was amplified a thousandfold. Every panting breath, every thudding heartbeat.

We fell upon her, and she whirled her blade around, turning to swing at me, then at Warden, then at me again, alternating between us in a flurry of attacks as she used her greatsword’s vastly superior reach to keep us from getting too close. I had the wrong damn sword for this job, and I missed my longsword more than anything in that moment. Alecto fought both Warden and I off at the same time, when we had full vision, and she was completely blind. Some inner part of me shrieked with glee at the display, at the sheer mastery she displayed. Every movement had a ballerina’s grace, every twirl of her greatsword fluid and seamless like a ribbon dancer. I weaved in and out, dodging the whirlwind of steel and dipping in to land a hit with my shortsword.

And I was landing quite a few of them. Even with her skill, she couldn’t completely fend off two of us at once, but we couldn’t land anything substantial enough. I darted in and out and scored hits, but all of them sealed up within moments. We needed to force her back.

I ducked beneath her slash and ran in, forgoing my sword and aiming for her waist, looking to tackle her to the floor. I was too slow. A brutal slash cut all the way across my torso, from my side up and across to my shoulder. A weak puff of breath gasped from my lips and my eyes went wide.

My momentum carried me forward, and I slammed into her. The two of us went down, and Alecto’s greatsword flew out of her hand, skating across the floor as we hit the ground. I kept going, rolling past her, my limp arms unable to keep a hold on her. Alecto scrambled to her feet, but Warden was upon her, shoving her back and away from her greatsword. Alecto knocked Warden’s sword out of their hand. I could barely keep up with them. My vision swam. I tried to get to my feet, but immediately stumbled forward and fell flat on my face. In my peripheral I could see Warden and Alecto — with both of them disarmed, they resorted to close-quarters grappling and brawling. Alecto had the advantage of height and strength, but I knew from firsthand experience that Warden was not an opponent to be underestimated, and they forced Alecto back, slowly but surely. It took me a moment to realize what they were doing.

They were wrestling her toward the door of the incinerator.

I knew what I had to do. I turned my focus away from them and crawled toward the stairs. Every part of me hurt. A trail of blood marked my path across the floor as I went. I reached the stairs and took a few deep breaths, summoning all my effort. Hand over hand, step by step, I pulled myself up to the walkway. The pain was all-consuming and yet strangely ephemeral; it was so bad that I couldn’t walk, but I was so full of adrenaline that I was barely aware of it.

A glance to the side showed me that Warden had successfully wrestled Alecto through the door to the incinerator. They had Alecto pinned to the ground, but Alecto landed a succession of brutal punches into Warden’s kidney. My blood dripped through the holes in the grate that made up the floor of the walkway. I could do it. I had to do it.

The door to the control booth was mercifully open. I pulled myself across the floor until I reached the bank of controls. It seemed impossibly high above me. I grabbed the rolling chair and pulled myself up with a noise like a dying animal. I looked up. Warden lost control, crying out as Alecto landed a particularly savage blow against their midsection. Alecto broke out of their hold and stumbled for the exit, but Warden grabbed her ankle before she could get away, and she fell to floor. I reached for the control bank. I accidentally pushed against the chair as I leaned my weight away from it, and it rolled backward, away from me. I flopped forward, landing slumped over the controls, kneeling, my cheek against the metal panel, one arm thrown over to grab onto the other side. Alecto was on her feet. She was running for the exit. With one last burst of resolve, I brought my other arm up, and slammed the button to activate the incinerator.

The doors slid shut, and the room erupted with light as the incinerator filled with fire. The night vision mask amplified the light until it stabbed my eyes, and I cried out, ripping it off blindly. Through the transparent walls of the incinerator, two bodies writhed. It was soundproof, but I heard Warden’s howl of agony through the comms in the seconds before the fire melted through their suit and they were cut off with a staticky crackle. The two of them were on top of one another where Warden had tried to tackle Alecto back to the floor. Through the fire they were a tangle of limbs and flesh.

Then the fire melted through the seal on the air tank of Warden’s suit.

A tremendous explosion filled the entire incinerator with a wall of blindingly bright fire. My shaky grip on the other end of the control bank failed and I slid off, falling to the side so I was slumped with my back against the wall. The room went dark as my hand slipped off the button and the explosion flashed and died, the torrent of flame ending as the incinerator shut off. I couldn’t see them, too low to the ground to see through the windows. I had no idea if they were alive, if Warden was alive.

My breath came slow and shallow. I could see nothing in the dark, only a narrow patch of light on the ceiling, cast by the dim glow of the few remaining flames. My mind was fuzzy and unfocused. Not a single thought entered my head. There was just me and the dark.

The lights turned on.

The overhead lights flicked on, and I blinked as my vision adjusted to something so much brighter than the blood-red emergency lights from before. A whoosh — the door to the hallway with the service elevators opened, and multiple sets of footsteps came through. Two sets of footsteps ran toward the incinerator. I was having trouble making sense of their words, but my mind managed to latch on to two words:

“…still breathing…”

Then, through the open door to the control booth, I saw you. You came into view at the top of the stairs, and when you saw me lying there, you ran faster than I thought you were capable of.

“Griddle!” You dropped to your knees in front of me, practically slamming into me as your momentum carried you sliding across the smooth metal floor of the booth. You put your hands on either side of my face, roughly turning my head one way then the other as you tried to take stock of my injuries. Then you let go and pulled me into a hug, your hand on the back of my head, pressing it to your shoulder as your other hand clutched my back. “Griddle…”

I closed my eyes and pressed my face further into the crook of your neck. “Hey babe,” I said weakly, “that was pretty badass, wasn’t it?”

“Griddle, you are a reckless idiot. A hopeless braggart.”

I grinned. Speaking was a struggle, but I did it anyway, “Yeah. But I was badass.”

“You were incredible.”

I passed out with your words reverberating in my ears.

 


 

 

Despite the amount of blood, it turned out that my wound was, while deep, fairly uncomplicated to heal. You sealed it up quickly, and at that point, the only issue was blood loss. That got handled by one of the Sixth’s nurses, a quiet but extremely affable man named Marcus, whose frankly ridiculous size suggested that he might have found a more successful career in the Cohort, wrestling enemies of the Empire to the ground with naught but his absurd biceps. He administered my blood transfusion with the same calm, slightly condescending maternal comfort one might offer to a toddler with a scraped knee. You fretted over me the entire time, and seeing your fussy, neurotic worrying directed at me soothed something within me. It also made it very difficult not to make fun of you, but I managed, somehow. Well, mostly, anyway.

Warden was an entirely different story. I felt awful for Juno — she was with you when you entered the incinerator room, and she saw exactly what had happened to her child. They were alive, but the state of their body was nightmarish. The fire destroyed their flesh, leaving it warped and blackened. And that was just in the spots that still had skin; huge swathes of their flesh had melted away entirely, revealing exposed bone and burnt organs. The explosion obliterated both their legs. They would heal — they were a Lyctor after all — but their healing was not as fast or as complete as a normal Lyctor, and those legs were not coming back. You guessed that it would take them hours to recover enough to regain consciousness, let alone move. They were whisked away to the hospital ward to rest.

It seemed a cruel joke that they would face such disfigurement when Alecto was right there in front of us. She suffered from no such consequences. Her body completely healed in barely over ten minutes, and there she sat, whole and healthy before us. Her hands were bound tightly behind her back by standard Cohort-style cuffs — I comforted myself with the fact that even somebody with her strength didn’t have a chance in hell of breaking those. We blindfolded her with a thick, heavy cloth.

It took us a moment to get ourselves settled, but we gathered around a table not unlike the war room on the Mithraeum or the Hermes, its surface a screen that currently displayed a chart of the stele links in, out, and within the Dominicus system. You and I sat next to one another, with Marcus beside me, keeping an eye on things as the blood filled my body, and Alecto cuffed to a chair across from us.

I thanked Marcus as he finished up and left, just in time for Juno to walk through the door, returning from the hospital, having made sure Warden was stable and cared for. You greeted her politely, but she did not respond. She walked up to Alecto and stood right next to her, staring at her for a moment. Alecto looked at her unseeingly. You and I exchanged a glance, but did not dare interrupt.

Juno punched Alecto in the face. A spurt of blood flew from Alecto’s nose, which cracked to the side before quickly snapping back into place. Juno took deep, fuming breaths. Alecto grimaced and said, “Fair enough.”

Juno stared at her for another moment, then sat down a few seats away from Alecto, closer to our side. She said, in a voice icy with carefully redirected rage, “What’s the plan?”

“We need to get her away from the system as soon as possible,” you began, “She is being pursued, at all times, by… Beasts. We need to keep them from getting to Dominicus.”

“How close are they?”

“I can’t be certain. Close. It’s possible it’s too late already; if they get close enough to the system, the lure of so much energy to consume will outweigh their desire to pursue her. We won’t be able to lead them away. We just have to hope we have more time than that.”

“Alright, how are we getting her out of here?” I asked.

You pointed at the map. “The Sixth is here.” You pointed to another spot, on the other side of Dominicus. “Based on the most recent information I have, the Beasts should arrive from this direction. Right now the long-distance stele links leading out of the system are hooked onto the Third and the Seventh, whose orbits are in the most ideal position. The Third is coordinating the evacuation effort, along with the Second, which is fairly close to it, so most of the evacuating ships will be following this stele link out of the system.” You traced a line away from the Third, leading in the opposite direction of the Resurrection Beasts. “Obviously, this is ideal for them. But if we’re going to lead the Beasts away, we can’t use that link — our path would still pull the Beasts through Dominicus. We need to take this stele link off the Seventh,” you traced another line, starting from the other side of Dominicus, closest to the Beasts, and going off at an angle that would let us pass beside the Beasts and pull them off to the side and away from Dominicus, “We’ll need to use the intrasolar stele to get to the Seventh first. Unfortunately, at the moment its orbit is about as far away from the Sixth as it could possibly get without leading us directly through the sun.”

“Okay, so we hop over to the Seventh, and then take the stele and get the fuck out of dodge. Seems simple.”

You nodded, “Simple enough. We take the Hermes — it’s what Alecto used to get here, and it’s the fastest ship we’re going to get.”

Juno closed her eyes and sighed, nodding along with you. “It’s the best we can do. I’ll look after the Sixth as we evacuate, and… and I’ll look after Warden.”

All of us stood up. I walked over and grabbed Alecto by the arm, tugging her to her feet, ready to drag her along with us. Juno led us to the hangar bay Alecto used to enter the Sixth. There the Hermes sat, in all its glory. It really was a beautiful ship, in its own bizarre, ungainly way. The walkway to the entrance was extended, and we stood at the foot of it. Juno put a hand on my shoulder. I turned to her obligingly.

“I just want to tell you both, good luck, we’re all counting on you.”

“We won’t let you down, archivist. Look after them for us, alright?”

“I will.”

I guided our unwilling passenger along the walkway and onto the Hermes. We arrived at the helm, and you sat down in the pilot’s chair and brought the ship to life. I pushed Alecto into the captain’s chair and cuffed her to it, removing the two control tablets and setting them off to the side so she couldn’t cause any problems, then I joined you by the pilot’s chair, standing just behind you and putting one hand on your shoulder. You looked up at me as the hangar doors slid open. The Hermes’ engines thrummed with potential. We shared a long look, as our words failed us. You broke away, and set your sights forward. You put one hand over mine and squeezed.

“You’ve got this, galactic empress.”

A wan smile crossed your face. Your fingers were so tiny and bony wrapped around mine, but they were warm and alive. You took a deep breath and squeezed my hand one more time. “Of course I do, Griddle. Now,” your fingers fell to the controls, “let’s go save the world.”

You punched it, and we left the Sixth behind, with the fate of the Nine Houses before us.

Chapter 13: The Precipice

Notes:

UPDATE: This chapter comes with some big changes! Long story short, getting to the end of the story let me look at the fic as a whole, and see a bunch of things I would've done differently in the earlier chapters if I'd known how it would play out from the beginning. So I went ahead and changed them! Don't worry, the plot and the general thrust of the character arcs are still the same — you won't be lost if you don't go back and reread everything — but I made a bunch of changes to the fine details. I gave the whole story a fresh coat of paint, so to speak. I think it really helped the story come together!

Chapter Text

The wait was unbearable. After we hooked onto the stele leading to the Seventh, there wasn’t much to do other than sit there. You said it would take a few hours. Alecto sat unsettlingly still, blindfolded and cuffed to the captain’s chair. The blindfold nullified the oppresive effect of her presence, but she still looked uncomfortably inhuman. You sat in the pilot’s chair, obsessively checking and rechecking all of the charts and readouts displayed by the screens around you despite the fact that literally nothing had changed for the past half hour. I occupied myself with Alecto’s sword, and did some basic drills to get a sense for the impressive weight of it. It was a hell of a weapon, and I planned to keep it. I figured it was fitting recompense for her destroying my baby.

None of us spoke. The air sat silent and tense as we ignored one another, studiously attending to our unnecessary tasks. It wasn’t like I wanted to ignore you, I just had no idea what to say. The presence of the third party in the room made attempting any kind of personal discussion a no go. You’d caught me up on what happened to you at Canaan House while we waited for my blood transfusion to finish back on the Sixth, but you kept it factual and impersonal, not wanting to go into further detail while we weren’t alone. But we still hadn’t had a moment to ourselves, and the maddening shallowness of it left me agitated. It was as if the air was full of static electricity. It put me on edge, and I worked through my agitation by throwing myself into my drills. The only noise was the quiet thrum of the engines, the subtle whoosh of the greatsword as it moved through the air, and my own breathing and noises of exertion.

For once, I wasn’t the first one to talk. You sat in my peripheral vision, no longer studying your screens. Your hands rested folded in your lap, your unfocused stare resting on nothing at all. Finally, you said,

“Griddle, we should discuss what to expect.”

“What’s up, twilight princess?” I finished the last movement of my drill and halted, my breath pleasantly labored and my brow tinged with sweat.

“We need to be prepared for anything we might come across.”

“Blood of Eden’s been up to some shenanigans in the system, they might cause problems.”

“The Hermes might be able to outmaneuver them, but if we do get forced to the ground, we’ll need to be cautious with our… cargo. We can expect her to attempt to escape toward the line of fire.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but paused before I did. I turned to face Alecto — not that she’d be able to tell either way. “Yo, grandma, is it she or they? You keep calling yourself we, so I’m not sure.”

“We have tried to kill one another, and that’s what you’re concerned with?” Alecto said with a bemused expression on her face.

“Okay, I know I can be kind of an asshole sometimes, but I’m not that kind of asshole, give me some credit here.”

“She will suffice.”

“Cool,” I turned back to you, “So yeah, we’ll have to keep her from running off if the situation comes up. Seems like the two real threats we need to be concerned with are Blood of Eden and the Emperor, and I don’t think we need to worry about her running off to him.

“If John arrives you’ll be well and truly fucked either way,” Alecto said, “but you’re not wrong.”

I winced. “Yeah. He does that whole thing where he freezes you in place? I don’t think we can really get around that.”

Alecto tipped her head to the side. “We can offer you some assistance, at the very least. We are his power source. When he attempts to draw from us, we can… resist. We don’t know if it would make any difference, but it should hamper him. But that’s besides the point. We need the two of you to make us a promise.”

You raised a single eyebrow. “I don’t believe you’re in much of a position to make demands of us.”

“We need you to promise that if he finds us, you’ll let us go. We will flee him as though hell itself were at our heels, but we cannot afford to be slowed down.”

I nodded, as if she could see me. We were all quiet for a minute. Something was bugging me, something that I couldn’t quite let go of. I bit my lip as I thought.

“Before, you said that he made you a promise that he didn’t keep.” Her head snapped to the side to face me, unseeing. “What did he promise you? What did he do to you?”

She looked down, expression unreadable.

“They don’t teach you about the generation ships anymore, do they?”

“I… no?” I said, somewhat baffled by her question.

“They were such a sight,” she said wistfully. “There were five of them, in the end. We actually got to see the Ross before it left; of course the others departed long before we were born. Not to make ourself sound like, well,” she smiled, “an old grandma, but you kids have it easy these days. Do you have any idea how hard interstellar travel is when you can’t go faster than the speed of light?”

You absorbed her words with a look I was very familiar with — a particular kind of single-minded, scholarly focus. It always made me want to laugh; it made you look as if each new piece of information was personally offensive to you.

“Humans attempted interstellar travel before the steles were invented? How? It would take far longer than a human lifetime to reach another planet at those speeds.”

“It did. They took centuries to get to our astrological neighbors. They were built to be, well, homes. There were people who were born on those ships, and died on them without ever setting foot on solid ground. Utter marvels of engineering — the Wolf alone took over a hundred years to build. The Sixth reminds us of them, in a way. A great big box full of creature comforts, designed to distract from the fact that you never see the sun.”

A realization struck me. “Is that what they did when they realized the sun was dying?”

The casual, nostalgic tone from earlier disappeared. “So you do know how it happened.”

“Yeah, took a gander through some of your old stuff in the basement. But my question is, if they could build those, then why the hell did you and him need to kill everybody?”

“There were ten billion of us, Gideon, use your brain, do you really think we’d have fit? Five million was already a herculean feat.”

‘A what?’ I mouthed at you. You shrugged.

“We had generations, and yet still there just Wasn’t. Enough. Time.” she punctuated. That familiar edge of anger crept back into her voice. “And you know what? It didn’t have to be that way. We could all have lived, if those traitors hadn’t abandoned us. John and us — we had it figured out! We discovered the principle for how to build the steles. We were going to save the world.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I interrupted, “you can’t create a pathway unless there’s a stele on both ends.”

“That was where they failed us!” she rumbled, with a growing undercurrent of fury, “The Teegarden colonists, they were the only ones who had reached their destination — the others still had many centuries left to go. So we asked them to set up the destination stele. And they refused!” The fury bubbled over, and her voice grew oppressive, commanding, as it had in the Tomb, “They turned their backs on us! They wanted to be free of the Empire, and they would not let us come. They valued their precious independence higher than billions of lives.”

“Blood of Eden,” You concluded. The pieces were clicking together in my mind.

“Blood of Eden,” she spat, “what a pretentious title — to claim they fight to avenge the people they left behind to die. We wouldn’t have had to do it, if it wasn’t for them!” She was breathing heavily, fuming with anger, and it took her a moment to collect herself before she could keep going. “They slammed the door on us. That was when we grew truly desperate. That was when she decided to become us.”

“Alecto?” you said.

She shook her head, ”No, Alecto is our name. She had a different name, but we do not use it. She is one of us, but we are not her. She became us, and we chose the name Alecto. ” She smiled a cruel, sickening smile. “That’s why he hates to use it. Good old Johnny — he just hates having to admit that she’s dead. No, she died so that we could be born, and we were born so that John could save us.”

A look crossed her face that went beyond anger. Anger seemed to be her default state of being, but this was something else. A sadness. A genuine sense of betrayal.

“He needed true power then. He needed to be God. So she became his battery, and he introduced necromancy into the universe. At first, he did what he promised. He took the souls from us, and he put them back in their bodies. But… we were his battery. The more he put back, the more his power waned. Do you know how many people died to create us?”

“Ten billion.”

“Do you know how many he brought back?” Neither of us responded. “Fifty million. Not billion, million. He told us he couldn’t bring us back. That the system would die again if he couldn’t sustain it. That we owed it to them to keep the world they built alive, as if they were not us, and we were not them. But it wasn’t supposed to be that way! He was supposed to use his new power to move our bodies through the River, and resurrect them on a new, living world. We thought he wanted the same thing as us, but we was wrong. We committed genocide to preserve billions of lives. He committed genocide to preserve, what? A bunch of rocks?! To preserve a nation, as if that means anything?!”

She tugged fruitlessly against her cuffs, too agitated to remain still. Her breathing was hard and heavy, her whole body almost shuddering as her fury got the best of her. I stood there, staring at her helplessly, because fuck, what the hell do you even say to something like that? Apparently you knew the answer better than I did, because you got out of your seat and slowly walked over to her. Her head did not move to track you, even though she could definitely hear you. She stared sightlessly at the ground. You stood in front of her for a moment, wetting your lips with your tongue as you thought, and then said,

“I’m sorry.” Her head snapped up as if to look at you. You paused, considering your words slowly and deliberately. “As woefully insufficient as it might be, I am sorry.”

“Why?”

You blinked, caught off-guard by her question. You simply replied, “What was done to you was monstrous.”

Her lips contorted into a gruesome expression. “No, what we did was monstrous.”

“You couldn’t possibly have known—“

“Do you think they care?” she snarled, “Do you think our intentions matter in the slightest to the people we slaughtered? We took the lives of ten billion people into our hands, and you think we have any right to claim we aren’t responsible for what happened to them? They died because of our poor judgment. The River overflows with their blood, and we are drowning in it. That is all we are, Reverend Daughter, the stain of her sin — our sin. We are not a human being, we are a genocide. We are the ashes of ten billion sons and daughters of our world.”

I saw it then, saw in her face an expression, an emotion I had seen all my life but never quite known how to interpret. A self-loathing that went beyond mere insecurity — an absolute, irrepressible hatred for everything that she was. I saw it, and I pitied her.

“For whatever it’s worth… I understand,” you consoled her.

A small smile quirked across Alecto’s face. “Perhaps you are the only person alive who could.” I looked back and forth between the two of you, unsure of what to say. Alecto’s voice became shockingly gentle, “You know how it feels, don’t you? You’re like us.”

“Hey!” I interjected, taking a step forward, but you held up one hand and stopped me. Your expression was flat and unreadable.

Alecto continued, “It’s hell, isn’t it? To be nothing more than an obligation — nothing more than a debt. We think you know exactly why we refuse to stop. Why we refuse to let the Nine Houses stand.”

Still you said nothing. You weren’t looking directly at her, your eyes were fixed slightly downward, staring off into space as you took in her words.

“We will admit, it’s something of a relief to meet a kindred spirit. We hope it’s a relief to you as well. To not be alone anymore. For we’re the same, aren’t we? You and us.”

I watched you with a growing sense of desperation. Your face was totally blank, and that worried me more than any grief or rage you could have summoned. As much as you liked to keep your mask up, you were always shit at hiding your feelings when it mattered. You stayed like that for a long time. Then, finally, you tilted your head up to look at her face.

“No,” you murmured, “I don’t believe we are.”

Then you walked right past Alecto and out the door.

“Oh dear, did we upset her?” Alecto said. “We do that sometimes. We didn’t intend to, we assure you.” Alecto’s words shook me out of my stupor, and I ran after you.

I chased you down the halls and quickly caught up with you.

“Harrow—“ I attempted, putting my hand on your shoulder to stop you, but you just shrugged it off and kept going. You moved as though you were in a trance. “Harrow.”

You walked through the door to your quarters, and I followed close behind. When you reached the center of your room you stopped suddenly, as if it hadn’t occurred to you that you’d have to stop moving eventually.

“Okay, Harrow, you are really freaking me out right now.”

“She’ll never be worth it, will she?” Your voice was so quiet I could barely hear it. All I could see was your back as you faced the plex window of your room, staring out at the stars. “No matter what she does.”

“…you’ve already lost me.”

“If Alecto slayed the Kindly Prince, if she wrought vengeance on every person who ever wronged the ghosts she carries, would she suddenly be worth their deaths?”

I stared at you with helpless concern. The utter lack of any evidence that you were upset freaked me out. The strangling tension that you always seemed to carry was absent; you remained eerily calm.

“The idea is laughable,” you continued. “Nothing would balance out what was done to them. Nothing she could ever do would compensate for their lives. There will be no justice in their story. There will be no part where it becomes worth it. It’s just… it’s just a tragedy.”

“Yeah,” I murmured at length, “yeah, it is.”

What else could I have said? I searched fruitlessly for words of comfort, but when you turned around, your face was not stricken. Your expression was soft and thoughtful in a way I couldn’t quite understand.

“Do you think she ever grieved for them?”

I blinked stupidly. “What?”

“She has fought for them. She has bled for them. She has suffered for them. But has she ever grieved for them? Has anyone?”

“I—“ I began to speak, but the words petered out before they could leave my lips. You bit your lip and looked back at the window again, before turning back to me and jerkily extending your hand toward me in invitation.

“Would you take a moment to grieve with me, Griddle?”

My lips parted. Your request took me by surprise. After a moment’s hesitation, I gently took your hand and stood by your side. The two of us stared out the window, upon the stars. I tried to think of them, tried to think of that faceless multitude that died so long ago, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t picture them. I don’t think the human mind is capable of comprehending that kind of scale. At a certain point, the numbers cease to mean anything; an invisible threshold, past which they all blend into an indistinguishable blur of ‘too many.’

Your grip on my hand grew tighter with each passing moment. I could see you fighting to keep your composure, keeping your breaths even and measured, unconsciously squeezing harder and harder. It was not a fight you were winning.

I’d seen you mourn before, of course I had. You’d performed countless funeral ceremonies back on the Ninth, comforted the bereaved, faced and contemplated death over and over. Ten billion deaths was a lot, yes, but I knew you; death alone did not upset you. I’d only seen death truly upset you once, and it was for an entirely different act of mass murder.

Finally, your composure broke.

“I am free of them.” A choked sob stuttered from your lips. Your eyes filled with tears. “I am free.”

The tears burst from you like a pressure valve being released. I wrapped you up in a fierce embrace. You froze, arms held awkwardly by your sides as I squeezed you tight. Then, you pressed your face against my chest, and brought your hands up to clutch at my jacket. You shook uncontrollably in my arms. The sobs you fought so hard to contain spilled violently out of you, and you pushed yourself against me as if the circle of my embrace might swallow you whole. Your legs trembled and gave out. I took your weight and lowered us to the floor, kneeling before one another, your whole body pressing into mine. You wailed like a dying animal, incoherent howling noises muffled against my chest. I kept one hand on the back of your head and held you close, pressing my face into your hair. Your hair blotted the silent tears on my own cheeks. I said nothing, just made vague noises of comfort and reassurance, barely audible over your sobs. I rocked us back and forth in what I hoped was a soothing gesture. It was all I could do. I rocked and murmured and held you tight as you came undone within my arms.

 


 

 

The House of the Third buzzed with activity. Ships flew in and out, people ran through the halls, all movement and shouting and confusion as an entire society packed up to flee. It was an especially windy day, and the barges pitched and rolled in the waves. The stabilizers worked overtime, keeping the buildings within the glittering domes perfectly steady as the outer walls rocked back and forth around them, like a gyroscope. It made the entire evacuation effort more difficult, as ships fought to stay stable in the gale.

Ianthe and Corona knew the halls of Ida like the back of their hand. They knew which wings would be empty, which rooms people would not go to in their rush to leave. Corona shut the door behind them as Ianthe wiped the blood from her trident knife. They walked quickly through the corridors. Ianthe’s body thrummed with adrenaline. They walked and walked until they knew they would not be found, then they stopped in the middle of an empty room, and looked at one another.

The two of them moved at the same time, and embraced one another tightly.

“I told you,” Corona said. “Just us.”

Ianthe nodded wordlessly into Corona’s shoulder.

But they did not have time to linger. They pulled apart, sharing a meaningful look, and kept walking.

There was no time for reflection either. There were too many things they had to keep track of, too many things happening all at once. Ianthe pulled out her tablet, and scanned through the flurry of reports clogging the channel.

“Did they manage to break the Blood of Eden blockade?” Corona asked.

“Handily,” Ianthe said. Blood of Eden’s attempts to block access to the stele out of the system were futile. The Cohort was fully mobilized, focused entirely in the sky above the Third, where all the houses — save the Seventh — needed to pass through on their way to safety. “But these numbers concern me. This can’t be their full fleet, it isn’t nearly as many ships as you said.”

There was one other report on the tablet that caught her eye. A ship was seen leaving the Sixth House, and Ianthe had a pretty good idea who was on it.

She said nothing, and tucked the tablet away. They had more pressing concerns.

The royalty of Ida had their own, small, private hangar. Few people used it, and those who did would almost certainly be gone already. Ianthe walked out into the hangar. The doors were open. A number of ships still remained, for who among the wealthy would own just one? She looked out the doors and watched the scene outside, the swarm of ships coming and going. Cohort transports were scattered among the Third’s, shuttling people back and forth to the bigger ships above.

One ship broke away from the group, and headed straight for the hangar she stood in. Corona noticed it too, and stared for a moment, squinting at it to try and figure out who it might be. It came closer, until Ianthe could make out the details of it.

Shit.

“I know that ship,” she said flatly. Corona furrowed her brow.

“What are you — oh.” The air went out of the room as Corona realized what that meant.

Ianthe did not run. It was too late for that, anyway. The Emperor’s ship was upon them in moments, pulling smoothly into the hangar and alighting gently upon the ground.

“Together,” Coronabeth said. Ianthe nodded.

She approached the small ship and stood before it with her hands clasped behind her back and her head held high, her sister by her side.

The door opened. The Emperor stepped through, and set foot on the Nine Houses for the first time in over nine millennia. His eyes were lightless and yawning as he stared at his Saint. She met his gaze defiantly.

“Welcome to Ida, my lord,” she said primly, “You honor us with your presence.”

“Don’t even start with me, Ianthe,” the Emperor said, voice clipped and serious.

“I’m sure I don’t know your meaning, my lord.”

He laughed bitterly. “This is a goddamn disgrace. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t have to do this. It’s beneath me. I thought it was beneath you, but apparently I was wrong. Well, you know what they say, if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. Now where is she?”

“Where is who?”

“Don’t play games with me, child,” he warned.

“Oh, but I’m so very good at them,” Ianthe said condescendingly.

“Ianthe.”

“If you want to kill Harry, then find her yourself.”

He looked at her like she’d grown an additional head. “You think I’m here to kill Harrowhark? When my Houses are about to die? I have bigger concerns at the moment, Ianthe!”

“Then why do you want to know where she is?” Coronabeth asked.

“Because I know Harrowhark. And I know that wherever she’s gone, that’s where I will find Alecto.”

“And I’m sure it’s only incidental that our Harry will die when you do.”

“You think that I want her to die? She’s my friend too, Ianthe.”

“I’m sure this must be very difficult for you,” Ianthe sneered.

“It is,” he softly replied, “but it must be done. And if you will not help, you will join her.”

Ianthe’s face contorted into something bitter and ugly.

“I called you my Teacher,” she spat, “I suffered through agonies deeper than I could have ever imagined for you. I saved your life! I could have saved Augustine, but I chose you. And this is my reward? You ask of us our loyalty, but you offer none in return.” Her lips curled, and she snarled, “I should have let the stoma take you both.”

“I don’t have time for this,” the Emperor said. “Where is she?”

“Or what? You’ll kill me?” Ianthe sneered.

“No. I’ll make this simple,” he said calmly. “Tell me where Harrowhark is, or I kill your sister.”

The world flared white.

Corona stood frozen, her eyes wide, locked in place like a statue. Ianthe’s hand instinctively flew to the grip of her rapier. She took a step back, eyes wide.

“Wait, no—“ she stammered. Her eyes darted back and forth between the two of them. The ozone taste of the Emperor’s power intensified. Blood poured from Corona’s nose.

“Now, Ianthe!” the Emperor thundered.

“The Seventh!” she shouted in a panic. The blaze of white eased, just slightly, and though Corona still couldn’t move, the flow of blood trickled to a stop. Ianthe reached for her, but pulled her hand back before it touched her. She looked at the Emperor. His eyes were black holes, demanding more. “The Hermes was just spotted leaving the Sixth on that route. It’s the only place she could be. Please!”

The invisible grip released Corona. She collapsed to her knees, gasping for breath.

Ianthe tried to rush to her sister’s side, but before she could take a single step, The Emperor closed the distance between them and pressed his palm to her sternum. Blinding pain radiated from the place where his hand touched her. It felt like being strangled for something other than air. She grabbed his arm with both hands, but she could not push him off. Weakness spread through her limbs like lead in her veins, as if she’d been exerting herself for hours and her muscles were too sore to move.

"Ianthe!” Corona shouted, but before she could even make it to her feet, the Emperor’s power arrested her again.

Ianthe gasped for breath. It felt like something was burning inside of her, like her organs and her blood were on fire.

“If I cannot trust you to use your power wisely, I will not let you keep it,” the Emperor said.

“No, no,” Ianthe struggled, but she could do nothing. Her legs gave out and she fell to her knees. The Emperor followed with her, planting one hand on her shoulder to hold her in place while the other remained on her chest. He turned the hand on her sternum so his fingers pointed toward the floor.

Ianthe knew what he was doing. She felt it, felt the soul of Naberius Tern burning inside her like magma injected into her veins.

“Ianthe the First,” the Emperor declared weightily, “Saint of Awe. My eighth fist. My eighth gesture. I revoke your title.”

Slowly, inexorably, he closed his hand into a fist and pulled. Ianthe cried out. The fire moved through her body. From the very tips of her fingers, from her furthest extremities, it coursed inward toward his hand. It all flowed toward her chest, roaring hotter and hotter the closer it got, the same heat concentrated in less and less space. It left pure, icy emptiness in its wake, a bitter, consuming cold that felt like dying.

“Stop, please,” Ianthe sobbed. The pain reached a crescendo as the Emperor All-Giving drew every ounce of Naberius into a single point, into a singularity in the center of her chest.

“Be grateful that I have chosen mercy, child.”

With one last violent pull, Naberius Tern’s soul vaporized into nothingness, and Ianthe blacked out.

 


 

 

You rested in my arms like a puppet with its strings cut. It took you a long time to calm down, but eventually you ran out of tears to cry. I didn’t mind. I was in no rush.

Your fingers clenched and released over and over, grounding yourself in the feeling of my jacket beneath your fingers. I said nothing. The two of us remained there, kneeling on the floor in total silence. Eventually, after an eternity of simply being, you spoke.

“I need you to promise me something, Griddle.” Your voice was thick and hoarse from sobbing, and I barely understood it, muffled as it was against my shoulder. I didn’t respond, just waited for you to say your piece. “I need you to promise me that you’re not going to die for me.” My grip on you slackened for a moment, but I tightened it again just as quickly. “I can’t… I can’t have anyone else die for me. I couldn’t bear it.”

I bit my lip. I ached to tell you what you wanted to hear, to reassure you, but I had no intention of lying to you.

“I — I can’t promise you that,” I murmured. You lifted your head from my chest and pulled back to look at me, your hands still scrunching my jacket in their grip. The naked hurt in your eyes killed me. “We’re about to jump into hell. I can promise that I won’t do it unless there’s no other choice, but if it’s the only way… I’ll do what I have to do.”

“Why you? Why does it have to be you?”

“I’m not letting you die, Harrow. I don’t care what it takes.”

“You—“ you cut yourself off with an inarticulate, exasperated noise, “I need you to disabuse yourself of the notion that you are less important than I am.”

“Aren’t I?”

“No!” you insisted, thoughtlessly pulling on my jacket as if to shake me. “I watched you die once, Griddle, I won’t do it again. I refuse.”

The look in your eyes was desperate, pleading. It felt like a knife in the chest.

“I’ll do the best I can.”

It was woefully inadequate, but it was the best I could do. You hung your head with a defeated sigh.

“Trust me, I’m not too keen on the idea either,” I said, “I don’t want to die.”

“It certainly seemed like you did before.”

“I know.”

You lifted your head again. Your eyes cut me like obsidian, sharp and demanding. Your lips were pursed in vexation.

“What do you want?”

“That’s a very good question,” I laughed. “I’m still figuring that one out. I don’t really think of things that way.”

You tipped your head to the side, brow scrunching up with confusion. Fucking hell, Harrow, you were so cute.

“What do you mean?”

I shrugged. “I don’t really have something specific in mind. I just… I want to have a job to do. I want to be good at it. Doesn’t really matter what it is.”

That expression graced your features again, that intent consideration. Anybody else would mistake it for annoyance, but I knew better. At length, you nodded, apparently satisfied. But… I wasn’t done. A wave of confidence surged through me, and I prepared to make myself look like the sappiest idiot this side of the Seventh.

“And I want you to come with me. Or I’ll go with you. Doesn’t matter which, long as I’m with you.”

You broke away from my gaze, averting your eyes. “You don’t… you don’t want to be with me.”

“Yes I do,” I insisted confidently.

You let go of my jacket and shifted back. You looked almost panicked. “You can’t, we can’t do that. You don’t want that from me.”

That surge of confidence warped into a sickening, embarrassed feeling in my gut. I stood up, and fought to keep my voice steady as I said, “Don’t do that. I’m a big girl, I can handle a no, but don’t pretend that this isn’t your decision. If you don’t want me, that’s fine, but—“

“No!” you blurted out, leaping to your feet and reaching out for me before pulling your hand back and looking away again. “It’s not — of course I want you, Griddle.”

You made a frustrated noise.

“I can’t… I am not…” hopeless yearning radiated from every inch of you, and I fought the urge to reach out to you. “I am not a soft woman. I cannot be gentle, or sweet, or domestic. I am not capable of it. I cannot give you what you want.”

My gaze hardened. I walked up to you, and you kept your head turned away to avoid looking at me. I put my hand on your chin, ignoring your flinch as I forced you to face me. Wild, fearful longing filled your eyes.

“If you think that’s what I want, then you clearly haven’t been paying attention.” I spoke steadily, evenly. “I don’t want soft. I don’t want sweet, or demure. I want you.”

A deep blush filled your cheeks.

“I am utterly inexperienced in these matters,” you attempted to dissuade me.

I shrugged. “So am I.”

“I am demanding.”

“I like it when you tell me what to do.”

“I am possessive.”

I cradled your face in my hands, gripping either side of your jaw, and stared into your eyes with burning intensity.

“Then possess me.”

You pushed forward and pressed your lips against mine. The force of it made me take a step back before I pushed right back. You had to stand on your tiptoes to reach my lips, so I bent over to meet you. One of your hands rested on my chest, and the other looped around to grab the back of my head, as if you could somehow pull me closer than I already was. I wasn’t going to let this be like last time, I wasn’t going to let you sweep me up. I planned to give as good as I got. It was effortless to push you back, and you let out an adorable little ‘eep!’ as I walked you backward until your legs hit the bed and you fell down to sit on the mattress.

The sudden motion broke our lips apart, but I didn’t miss a beat, leaning over to follow you down and attaching my lips to your neck. I kissed along it, just beneath your jaw. You leaned your weight on your hands, fisted tight in the crisply-made bedsheets behind you. I kept one hand on your cheek with my thumb pressed to the underside of your chin, keeping your head tilted back to give me access to every inch of your skin. I wanted to paint it all with kisses and bruising marks, because that’s the secret, my sexy sovereign — you’re not the only one who’s possessive. I wasn’t rough like you were; I kissed and nipped gently, but firmly, steady and determined, enjoying your breathy little noises as you tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

“Griddle, what are you — ah!”

“Returning the favor,” I mumbled into the crook of your neck in between kisses. You brought one hand up and weaved your fingers into my hair. I dropped to my knees in front of you to get a better angle.

“You don’t —mm — you don’t have to — dammit Griddle!” You tightened your grip on my hair and tugged my head back. An utterly filthy moan sprung unbidden from my lips. I looked up at you, your eyes wide and dark, breathing heavily. “You don’t have to do that for me.”

“What if I want to?”

“That’s…” you trailed off.

“I already told you what I want. What do you want, Harrow?”

“I… I couldn’t… I couldn’t ask you to…” At this point, your face was more blush than not.

“You’re not asking. I’m offering.”

“I don’t want this to turn into you obeying me while I dictate the way things will be. I don’t want that to be our relationship anymore, Griddle. You are not my servant anymore, nor my slave; you don’t have to service me. That’s not what I want this to be.”

“Harrow, what did I tell you I wanted?” I said, as patiently as I could manage.

“You… you want to have a job to do,” you said hesitantly, “and you want to be good at it.”

“I think I have some idea what kind of job you have for me. Can’t say whether I’ll be any good at it — I’ve never done it before — but trust me,” I grinned toothily, “I plan to get plenty of practice.”

I could practically see the filthy thoughts that swam behind your eyes, behind that flushed, flustered expression.

“I am yours to command, dark mistress, but that doesn’t mean anything unless you actually do it. Please…” It came out low and imploring, my voice a bizarre alchemy of confidence and neediness.

“Gideon…” you murmured breathlessly. The sound of it was deliciously electric. Your grip tightened in my hair. I licked my lips.

“Command me, my lady.”

Your gaze turned steely, impossibly heated, and I knew I had gotten through.

“Take my boots off.” Your tone sent shivers through my whole body. I was already kneeling before you, so all I had to do was reach out and grab your ankle, pulling your leg forward so it was resting in front of me. Next came the laces; I undid them slowly, deliberately. This was not something to be rushed, yanking them off and falling upon one another in a fit of passion. No. You gave me my task, and I was going to do it properly. I patiently untied the many rows of laces. I ran one hand up to your calf and held it delicately as I pulled the boot off. I set it down next to me at the foot of the bed before moving on to the next one. Your heated gaze burned into me, but I didn’t let it distract me from my task. Once the second boot was sitting beside its twin, I looked to you for further direction.

You stood up in front of me, and I shuffled back to give you space without needing to be told. You put your hand beneath my chin, as if to tilt my head up to look at you, even though that was what I was already doing. The wavering hesitance that filled your face earlier was gone. This was not a lost, uncertain girl before me. This was the Reverend Daughter.

“My robe.”

I stood up, and undid the ties holding the two halves of your robe together. I circled behind you, reaching around and tucking my fingers under the folds of the robe. You held your arms out to the side, just slightly, so I could ease it over your shoulders and slip it off. I walked over to your desk and folded it neatly over the back of the chair. There were very few times in my life I had seen you without your robes, and even fewer without your face paint, but now you had neither. You were still wearing your trousers, a long-sleeve turtleneck shirt, and your gloves — all black, of course. I came back to you, and you wordlessly held out your hand, wrist slack. I understood your meaning, gently taking your hand and slipping your glove off, then repeating the process for the other. Next came your bone bracelets. I set it all carefully on your nightstand.

When I turned around, it was to the sight of you pulling off your shirt, peeling the thick, tight fabric away from your body. You wore nothing beneath it. I swallowed hard. When I stood in front of you again, you didn’t need to tell me what to do. I got down on my knees and undid the button of your trousers. I hesitated, but you didn’t stop me, so I continued, revealing the stockings and surprisingly lacy panties underneath them. It was so difficult not to stop and stare at you, take you in, but I had a job to do. My thumbs slipped under the band of your panties, and I slid those down too. When I went to take off your stockings, you stopped me, placing one hand on top of mine to still it. I complied — not necessary to get rid of them, I assumed — and sat back.

Your body was a collection of jagged angles. You were worryingly skinny, with your hipbones and your ribs clearly visible through your skin. Your knees were nothing but knobble. Your elbows were knife-points. Your breasts were barely there. Your pale brown skin carried an unhealthy grey pallor that suggested a decidedly antagonistic relationship with the sun. Your hair was long and unkempt, a few strands escaping from behind your ear and hanging in front of your face.

God, you were fucking gorgeous.

The whole of you was beautifully delicate, all thin wrists and narrow shoulders and high, sharp cheekbones. The effect was that of a rare, predatory animal viewed from a distance, beautiful and graceful, but also lean and hungry, with the suggestion of a wild savagery lurking just below the surface. From that low angle your head blocked the overhead light, and it haloed you like the divine descending from on high. You took my breath away.

I was so captivated that I didn’t notice your hand until you ran it through my hair. Your fingers tightened, and you pulled back so my head was tilted at an even sharper angle. You spread your legs.

“You know what to do.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I dove forward, bringing my mouth to your cunt, and got to work. I couldn’t believe how wet you were already. It eased my nerves as I tried to figure out what to do, hoping that eagerness might compensate for inexperience. But the thing was, if I’ve ever been good at anything, it’s mastering my own body. It didn’t take long for me to figure it out; I tried different things — lapping at your entrance, circling your clit, sucking on it, switching between different motions as I gauged your reactions, learning and adapting. You weren’t loud, but that didn’t mean you weren’t responsive. Little gasps and breathy noises poured from your lips, and I savored every single one of them. It didn’t take me long to get a good sense for what you liked. I learned that your clit was sensitive, and I couldn’t touch it for long before your pleasured noises would turn to a hiss of discomfort. I learned that you loved it when I would switch from my rhythmic lapping to come up and tease your clit for just an instant before dipping back down. I learned how to make you pant and gasp, and your visible pleasure made me thrill with pride. I was pretty sure I was born to do this — forget swords and war, I wanted to be buried in your cunt for the rest of eternity.

Your legs trembled and your breath quickened. I redoubled my efforts, and you tensed up as you came, your whole body bowing over as you curled in on yourself. You held yourself like that, every muscle taut, for a long moment before a heavy shudder shook through you and you relaxed again. I began to pull away, but you pulled me right back and growled,

“You’re not done yet.”

I grinned against you and set to work once again. This time I brought my fingers into the equation. I slipped one finger inside you, quickly followed by another, then crooked them, as if to beckon more gasps from you. I fell into my rhythm quickly, and you came undone again within minutes, going totally silent and throwing your head back as you quivered ecstatically.

This time your legs gave out completely. You put your hands on my shoulders, leaning all your weight on me as you gasped for breath. I brought my hands around to the back of your thighs and stood, lifting you up with me. Your hands instinctively wrapped around my shoulders. I carried you back to the bed and sat you down on the end of it, kneeling in front of you once again. Without even waiting to be told, I brought my mouth right back to you, and you cried out in surprise and overstimulation.

“Ah! Yes, just like that, good girl.”

I wanted to keep going forever, I wanted to bring you pleasure, I wanted to make you come again. I immersed myself in the sensation of you — your taste, your noises, your touch — until you were the only thing that existed. You slung one of your legs over my shoulder, heel digging into my back, and I put my hands on top of your thighs, feeling your hot, flushed skin beneath my fingers. Both of your hands curled in my hair — a feeling I was quickly becoming addicted to — and you clenched and unclenched them rhythmically.

“You’re so good at this, Griddle,” you rumbled. I heard you, but the idea of responding was beyond me. There were no thoughts in my mind, no worries or distractions. I was just a body, just flesh and blood and pleasure and touch and a thrumming, purring heartbeat beneath it all. There was nothing but the physical. I don’t even know how many times you came — I was too focused on the sensations that surrounded me to process what those sensations actually meant. Everything blurred together in a wonderful haze.

I only came to a stop when you pushed my head back, panting, “Too much, too much. That’s enough.”

I looked up at you, your chest heaving, limbs shaking, lip caught between your teeth. I had a dim awareness that I must look absolutely ridiculous — still fully-clothed in front of you, face coated in your cum — but you didn’t look at me like something ridiculous; you looked at me like a prized possession you wanted to jealously hide away from the rest of the world.

“I — did I — was I—” I found myself suddenly unable to get the words out. You pulled me up by my collar and kissed me hard.

“You were perfect,” you said in between kisses. You grabbed my hands with your own and wordlessly pulled them up to touch your breasts. There wasn’t much there for me to work with, but I quickly discovered that you were wonderfully sensitive. I was so lost in you that it took me completely by surprise when you shifted your leg and pressed it firmly between mine. The sudden jolt of pleasure made me gasp, breaking our kiss, but you didn’t let me stop for a moment, using the opportunity to take my lower lip between your teeth.

I hadn’t even realized how wound up I was, how wet, how achingly sensitive. I was off like a rocket and you’d barely even touched me. You ground your leg against me rhythmically and brought your hands to my sides, encouraging me to move with you. I needed no such encouragement. A chorus of moans spilled from my lips, the most beautiful song I’d ever sung. I was not quiet like you — my reactions were noisy, and I don’t think I could’ve stopped them even if I’d wanted to. It took no time at all for you to bring me right to the edge.

“My lady, I…” The title slipped from my lips without even thinking about it. I could barely get the words out beneath the relentless pace of your lips on mine. But I didn’t need to.

“Are you close?” you asked.

“Yes! Please, fuck, I need, I need…”

“You’ve been so good for me, Gideon, now claim your reward. Let go. Let go for me, beloved.”

And oh, I did. Hearing you call me that undid me in an instant. My whole body tensed, a livewire of pleasure, and I came with a protracted moan of your name. For a brief moment my every muscle pulled taut, and then the peak of the orgasm passed and I went completely boneless, almost knocking you over with my bulk. You took me in your arms and slowly coaxed me to lie down so my head was laying in your lap.

I was breathing hard, and I turned my head to press even more of my skin against yours. You pet my hair as I recovered, murmuring words I only half understood. I didn’t want to come out. Your lap was warm, your touch comforting, and I’d never felt so present in myself. There was nothing but the soft animal of my body, my existence a collection of good feelings, of contentment and pleasure and satisfaction. I had done well for you. I had done well for my lady.

Bit by bit, I recovered. It felt like I rediscovered human speech from scratch, my brain had been so scrambled. Still, I did not lift my head from your lap. I wanted to savor this feeling as long as I could. You were holding me so gently, and that thought made me laugh quietly.

“Griddle?”

I grinned against the skin of your thigh. “And you said you can’t be soft.”

“You bring that out in me.”

Finally, I opened my eyes and looked up at you.

A warm, golden glow illuminated the space between us. I saw the strands of light once again, but this time it was so much more than a single, lone ribbon. Hundreds of threads wove around us, between us, tying us together, a cat’s cradle connecting you to me. The patterns within the threads were so gorgeously intricate, but I still could not say what they were; it was as if my brain simply refused to process their shape, no matter how close I looked. It bound us together, an ephemerally beautiful web of delicate light. Each ribbon carried something within it, some unique meaning that I could not name or understand.

Unlike before, the threads tying us together weren’t the only ones I could see. More ribbons ran from our bodies, but instead of leading to you or to me, they led off in all different directions, strung through the air around us. They faded into nothingness only a few feet away from our bodies, but I could tell that it wasn’t because they stopped there; I knew that each of them connected to something on the other end, but my ability to see them was incomplete, and I could not follow them further than that.

The sight of it left me speechless.

You must have seen my wonderment on my face, because you said, “Griddle?”

“The light,” I responded distractedly, “the gold light from before, I can see it. Oh, Harrow, it’s so beautiful.”

“What does it look like?” you asked. I described it to you, but it was difficult to find the words to properly convey it. It was so much more than what it looked like. It felt ethereal and unreal — the threads tied us together, but at the same time, they moved through us and within us. I did the best I could, but I wished so fervently that I could just show you. Regardless, you listened attentively to my breathless description. When I finished, you thought for a moment, before saying, “Tell me what you see when I do this.”

You held out your hand, and it moved through the threads like they weren’t there. But then you concentrated for a moment, and when you moved your hand again, you touched them. The threads tangled around your fingers as you pulled, tugging them and dragging them along. They didn’t seem to offer any resistance, even though they were pulled taut. They simply moved with you. Then, you released them, and they unwound from your hand, drifting back to where they were before. I told you what I saw, and your face lit up with awe.

“Griddle, that’s… that light is thalergy. You’re seeing thalergy.”

I raised one eyebrow. “And that’s, like, not normal, right?”

“Not normal? Griddle, that shouldn’t be possible. I can only assume that ability comes from the Necrolord. Perhaps… perhaps you retained his ability to see thanergy, but the tuning changed somehow — like a mutation. You might be the only person in the universe who can see it.”

“Aww, you think I’m special.”

“Griddle, this is unheard of, the implications of it are enormous. There are so many potential applications to explore, so much I could learn; I just wish we had more time.

“Well my spooky scholar, when we make it through this, you’ll have all the time in the world to explore me. In fact, I’d encourage it.”

“Ugh, Nav!” You shoved me, and I fell flat on my ass, laughing the whole time. I grinned at you, but as my laughter faded, I realized something.

“It’s gone,” I said, “it disappeared. I didn’t even notice, it just… faded.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” you said, “it took some time for you to learn how to maintain the ability to see thanergy as well. There must be a trick to it.”

I shook my head. “No, that’s — I don’t think it’s the same. Even when it was there, I couldn’t see all of it. The threads disappeared when they moved away from our bodies. It feels like I can’t see all of it because I don’t… understand it? I don’t know how to explain, it’s like I’m only seeing a glimpse of it, and I can’t see the rest because I don’t know what to look for.”

“When has it shown up?”

“Only when I’m with you. Only in moments where I’ve been close with you.” I considered this for a moment. “I wonder… I know it sounds crazy, but hear me out here, maybe it’s—“

“If you suggest to me that thalergy is the power of love I will disembowel you on the spot.” You glared at me.

I raised my hands in a placating gesture. “Hey, you said it, not me.”

You sighed, and ran your hand through your long, unkempt hair. “Well regardless, we don’t have time to work it out now.”

I watched your mouth twist in displeasure as you tried to tame your hair. You had always kept it short, but it had been growing weirdly quickly lately, and I could tell it was annoying you.

“Alright, that won’t do,” I said. You paused, and looked at me quizzically. “You can’t fight the big final battle looking like a deranged, gothic mop. Let me cut your hair.”

“I — what?”

“Come on! It’s the big boss fight, the final showdown, we gotta look presentable!”

“You really don’t have to—“ you stammered.

“Yeah, I know,” I cut you off, rolling my eyes,” but I can tell you want to, and I’m good at it. Come on.”

“Well… if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t. Under one condition.”

“Yes?”

“Paint my face?”

Your eyebrows shot up hard enough to put a hole in the ceiling. “Really? Why?”

I shrugged. “Just feels right.”

You smiled, and gestured toward the bathroom with your head.

There was not much time left. Not much time before we’d arrive at the Seventh and face the next stage of our uncertain journey. But when we did, we would be prepared. We would face it decked to the nines — pun absolutely intended — and we’d be ready for hell.

I had a feeling that was exactly what we were going to find.

 


 

 

9

Aiglamene moved through the crowd of frightened Niners. The ship was a din of worried conversation and hushed speculation. The entirety of the Ninth House — all that was left of it — was aboard one big Fourth House shuttle, waiting outside the system for news of the destruction or salvation of the Nine Houses. It was cramped and chaotic, and Aiglamene did her best to supervise and keep everything under control. It was not easy. These people were scared; many of them were grieving. But she knew they were safe, and for the time being, that was what mattered.

The Ninth House lay barren and empty, not a single soul remaining on it. The skeletons went about their tasks undaunted, the magic placed inside them still going, with nobody to redirect them or tell them to stop. They walked through empty hallways, brought vegetables to kitchens with nobody there to prepare them.

Aiglamene wondered whether she would ever return to her world.

She suspected that she would not.



8

“I will not be told what to do by a Cohort dog in the seat of my own House!” In a cathedral of spotless, uniform white, the Grand Judge of the Eighth House argued with the Cohort commander. All around them, Cohort soldiers directed people toward the exit, toward the waiting ships, preparing them for evacuation. The Judge continued, “You have no authority here!”

Commander Raphael Zweigraf looked at the Judge with naked contempt. “I don’t care. If you won’t help your people, I’ll do it for you.”

The Judge’s personal guard stood behind them, surrounded by a dozen Cohort soldiers holding them at swordpoint. The myriad voices of the soldiers and the fleeing citizens echoed cacophonously throughout the cavernous space. The light of Dominicus cast long, prismatic beams of light through the enormous stained glass windows behind the pulpit. The Grand Judge fumed, summoning all the righteous authority they could muster.

“This is our home, given to us by the Necrolord Prime himself, and we will not leave it for some baseless fearmongering.”

“I’m afraid you will, your Honor,” Raphael sighed.

The Judge’s arguing continued fruitlessly. All throughout the Eighth, people packed up as much of their lives as they could, and fled their home.



7

Mia collected the last of her things that she could carry, and hustled her sons out the front door of their house, bearing backpacks and small suitcases stuffed full of things they could not bear to lose. Mia’s was full of keepsakes — mostly from her husband. His sword, recovered from Canaan House by the Emperor’s soldiers. A box of flower seeds — his own particular, favorite breeds. A collection of letters written on flimsy, sent back during his tours in the Cohort. There was so little of him left, and she was not willing to give up a single thing.

She herded her children to the side of the road, and they awaited the shuttle that they were told was coming their way. The air swam with humidity, the sun still hot despite the altitude, even during the protracted sunset of the Seventh’s interminably long days. The steep mountain road wound its way down, between the terraced flower gardens, away from their remote home. Far off in the distance, the gleaming spires of Cypris were just barely visible. She wiped the sweat from her brow, though it was a pointless effort in the tropical heat. Heavy coughs wracked her body; all this exertion was bad for her condition.

The shuttle came into view, a speck on the horizon, distorted by the wavering heat shimmer. She watched it approach, and held her sons close, doing her best to quiet their fears, despite the immensity of her own.



6

Juno Zeta sat beside her child’s bed in the hospital, keeping watch over them. Their body was ravaged, but healing, and she refused to leave their side. The hospital bustled, busy with the injured and the dead. The Sixth House counted its losses, and grieved. She was grateful that Warden had been given their own room to rest in, as it kept them insulated from the frantic efforts of the doctors outside. Still, she did not have peace. She was the Head Archivist, and there were people she needed to talk to, decisions she needed to make. She insisted that they meet her in the hospital, unwilling to leave.

She was good enough at compartmentalizing to be attentive and focused during her meetings. She acquitted herself admirably, given the circumstances. It surprised her, in some ways, how strongly she reacted to Warden’s injuries. It wasn’t as if she had raised them — she wasn’t really a parent in the way the other Houses would think of it. But still, she was fond of them, at least as her pupil, if not her child.

Warden healed steadily, the unrecognizable mess of their body slowly becoming human again. It was a gruesome process, but not once did she flinch from her duty.

The Sixth House limped on, battered, but not broken.



5

Astrid watched the massive swarm of ships flying through the sky of the Fifth House. They stood in line with hundreds of other people, waiting for their spot on one of the transports. Evacuating a place like the Fifth was never going to be easy — it was the most populous house by a large margin. They chewed their lip, knowing that there was little they could do to speed up the process, to increase their chances of getting out in time. There were hordes of people waiting, and even with the endless stream of ships coming in and out, it would take a long time. And that was just for Corinth, they couldn’t even imagine what the sight must have been like on the other moons.

They adjusted their glasses, pushing them back up as they slid down their nose. It was difficult to do with their arm squished against their body. The throng of people pressed forward constantly, anxiety unconsciously driving them to try to get closer to the dock, even if they knew it would do nothing to hasten the process. It made Astrid nervous — somebody was going to get crushed like this. A few people in the crowd tried to urge everyone to back up, to make space, and while they couldn’t stop it, their efforts prevented the throng from descending into a dangerous panic.

The line shuffled forward as another couple dozen people were let through. Astrid inched closer to the front, and tried to suppress a rush of anxiety at how little progress they were making. There was nothing they could do at this point. They could only hope.



4

François Chatur was scared. He and the other children followed the headmaster and the Cohort woman, hurrying quickly towards… something. He wasn’t sure. Adults were never good about explaining things. All he knew was that they were in danger, and they had to move quickly. He carried everything he owned in his backpack. It wasn’t much — just about all of his stuff belonged to the orphanage. It wasn’t his stuff. Not for the first time, he wished his sister was still here.

The gaggle of children hurried through the plain, industrial corridors of the Fourth House. They came out in a hangar bay, noisy and chaotic with activity. Ships moved in and out, people ran and dragged their things along with them, shouting and trying to stay together. There was a big ship right near them, and the Cohort woman gestured for them to go in. The headmaster ushered him through and he filed into a big, open cargo bay. The crates were pushed off to the sides, and he followed the example of some of the other kids and used one of them as a chair. The headmaster filed in once all the children were inside, and immediately did a headcount. The Cohort woman came in last, pressing a button to close the entrance ramp behind her, and walking through the door on the other side — probably to the cockpit, he guessed.

He stood up and followed her. He had always liked ships, and he knew that when he joined the Cohort, he wanted to be a pilot. The woman didn’t notice him at first, and he snuck into the cockpit, watching curiously as she sat in the pilot’s chair and begin fiddling with the controls. She noticed him abruptly, and paused for a moment, staring at him. He did not understand the look that she gave him. Finally, she waved him over, and he hopped into the empty copilot’s chair and watched her go about her work.



3

“Come on Yanthy, please,” Corona frantically urged. Ianthe’s eyes fluttered open as she returned to consciousness. She was cold — violently so — and she shivered uncontrollably. Her limbs were jelly. An awful, empty feeling ate at her insides, the same dreadful, gnawing hollowness she felt after she fought the Resurrection Beast. The same marrow-deep loneliness.

And then Corona’s warm arms wrapped around her, lighting the darkness like a crackling hearth.

Ianthe struggled to her feet with her sister’s help. Her legs shook like reeds in a gale. She pushed off of Corona to stand entirely unsupported. This wouldn’t be a problem. She reached for her necromancy, to reinforce the muscles in her legs.

Nothing happened.

Ianthe stumbled and fell, but Corona caught her before she hit the ground. Ianthe’s heart filled with dread. That wasn’t just a fluke — that wasn’t her failing to use her power due to weakness or confusion or lack of thanergy. She’d reached out for her necromancy, and she’d found nothing. There was nothing there. It was gone. Corona tried to help her along, to support her as she walked, but it was a lost cause. Her legs didn’t know how to be legs, and she was practically falling over the whole time.

And then her feet left the ground entirely. Corona swept her up in a bridal carry — good lord when had her arms gotten so strong? Ianthe did not care to question it. Corona’s embrace was a gentle glow in the fearful blackness. She leaned into her sister’s warmth, and let herself be carried.



2

Judith Deuteros stepped out of the transport ship and immediately began giving orders. Soldiers streamed out behind her and she directed them where to go, sending groups of them off in different directions to round up the last of the stragglers in the area. She barked out commands, and those she commanded set to work immediately, a finely-tuned machine set into motion. She went along with the last group — she had never been one to sit back on the command ship and watch her troops do all the work. She believed in leading by example.

The city was an outpost of civilization in the barren desert, gusts of wind carrying eddies of red sand through the streets. It was not quite a ghost town, but it was still unsettlingly empty. Few people remained, though those who did certainly weren’t calm. There were people shouting and calling out to one another, trying to figure out what was going on, trying to figure out what to do, but the constant, underlying buzz of the city was gone, without the dense mass of people to sustain it.

She gathered up a panicked family who hadn’t made the previous shuttle in time, reassuring them that they would not leave without them. It was nerve-fraying work, gathering the frantic people and trying to corral them, but she knew that it was vital. She had no intention of leaving her people behind.



1

. . .

 


 

 

We returned to the helm of the Hermes significantly more put-together than when we’d left it. We both used the sonic — the moment I started to cut your hair I realized we were both pretty damn filthy, given everything we’d gone through. I shaved your hair almost to the scalp — given its newly acquired habit of growing frustratingly fast, you decided in a fit of irritation to just get rid of it all. It was a distractingly handsome look on you, and I loudly bemoaned my own skills the moment I finished.

Our face paint was immaculate. For your skull, you went with the Chain, an intricately beautiful classic. It completed your look — your usual long, flowing robes weren’t the best during a fight, so you went without, but you still wore your turtleneck shirt and your gloves, along with the bone corset you were so fond of, and all your bone jewelry. My paint, on the other hand, looked incredibly out of place with my leather jacket, combat boots, and sunglasses. Yes, the sunglasses made it a little difficult to see, given that we were on a spaceship lit entirely by neutral, artificial lights, but I liked the aesthetic, so I didn’t care. I didn’t have a sheath anymore — a greatsword like Alecto’s was too big to wear like that — but I tied an adjustable strap across my torso, so I could strap it to my back if I needed to. For my paint, I asked you to apply the sacramental skull of the Priestess Crushed Beneath the New-Laid Rock — the ugliest goddamn skull the Ninth had ever devised. When you asked me why, I simply replied, “Because fuck ‘em, that’s why.”

Alecto was still where we left her, cuffed securely to the captain’s chair, sitting unnaturally still. Upon hearing us enter, she said, “We hope you kids were able to work it out.”

Honestly, the weirdest part of that sentence was that I was pretty sure she was being genuine. Neither of us dignified her with a response. The Seventh House still wasn’t visible through the window, but I didn’t expect it to be; the way that steles contort space makes everything outside the pathway look scrambled to the point of meaninglessness. The screens showed our actual position, and I could tell that we were about to emerge. You sat in the pilot’s chair, keeping an eye on the display. It didn’t take long for us to get close. You busied yourself with the controls, preparing to exit the pathway so we could fly around the planet and latch on to the long-distance stele leading out of the system.

You rested your finger on a switch, mounted on a bank of controls directly above you. You spoke with the rote, businesslike tone of somebody who had these procedures drilled into them until they were completely automatic, “Prepare to disengage. Three… two… one… mark.”

You flipped the switch, and everything warped around us as we returned to normal space. Our surroundings snapped into place.

We were greeted by an entire goddamn legion.

Hundreds of Blood of Eden ships filled the sky before us, a sea of plain, boxy metal. You sucked in a sharp breath at the exact same time I did. Behind them was the scattered wreckage of two Cohort battleships, completely torn to shreds. Beyond that there were a few dwindling stragglers on the tail end of a stream of smaller Seventh House shuttles and transports beelining for the pathway before zipping out of sight. Not all of them made it in time — the swarm shot them down before they could escape.

A blockade.

For a moment we hung there, suspended before the wall of death. Then, an alert displayed on your screen — an incoming message. You pressed the button to accept the transmission.

Commander Light’s face filled the screen in front of us. He scanned the view in front of him quickly, taking in the situation. I realized that the angle of the camera meant he could only see you and me — Alecto was entirely out of his field of view. A small smile crossed his face.

“Miss Nav, how good to see you again,” he said. “And you must be miss Nonagesimus.” I hated the sound of your name in his mouth, “I’ve heard so very much about you.”

“State your intention,” you tersely replied.

"Oh, I believe you’re well aware of my intentions. The Hermes is one of the most distinctive ships in the entire galaxy, did you really think you could avoid being tracked? I told you once, miss Nav, the universe cannot suffer you to live. Your presence on the Sixth was not unnoticed. Now, let me be clear, I have no quarrel with you, miss Nonagesimus, if you hand miss Nav over quietly, I’m sure we can come to—“

You cut off the transmission, and his face abruptly disappeared from the screen.

“Buckle up.”

I ran to the copilot’s chair and strapped myself in. I had my own set of screens in front of me, displaying much of the same information that yours did. You laid your hands on the controls, and kicked up the engines, preparing to move. I watched the display for the scanners.

A blip appeared on the screen, moving toward us from the wall of ships. Then another appeared. And another, and another, and another. They closed in on us rapidly.

“Harrow, incoming!”

You cracked your neck, flexed your fingers, and then slammed on the throttle. We rocketed forward. The dots on the screen came closer, closer. Adrenaline flooded through me, and I almost yelled your name again, my throat closing up as the missiles closed in on us.

For a single, infinite instant, everything paused. The universe held its breath. We hung suspended in time in space. The rockets were only seconds from hitting us. Your hands held steady on the steering mechanism. Then, in the instant before you leapt into action, you commanded,

“Brace yourselves, both of you — this is it!”

Chapter 14: The End of the World

Chapter Text

You pulled the steering mechanism hard, and the Hermes abruptly cut downward. My head slammed against the seat behind me as the bright trails of the missiles flamed past above us. I gripped the armrests of my seat tight. I could see the second wave coming on the sensors — vastly greater than the first, an entire wall of them closing in on us. Behind it, a swarm of fighters broke away from the blockade and headed toward us.

You kept cutting downward, diving toward the planet’s surface, but the missiles followed, their course slowly veering to track us. A whole cluster roared toward us. You threw the steering up and pulled out of your dive, then pitched it to the side. The Hermes spun in an aileron roll, weaving through the salvo. The missiles’ homing made them all try to curve toward us, and they converged in the center as we slipped past, slamming into one another and exploding behind us.

More of them, more of them, they descended upon us like a tidal wave. The Hermes pulled up, evading the closest missiles at the bottom of the wall. You rode the wave, the sea of death skimming past just barely beneath us. We crested the last of them, and you cut the thrust.

We were changing direction so fast, I had no idea which way was up. You twirled the ship around until we faced the ground, then pushed the throttle as far as it would go. We beelined for the ground as the fleet of fighters closed in on us. They unleashed their own wave of rockets. You slammed a button, and a wave of brilliantly bright flares streamed out of either side of the ship. The missiles veered off to chase the phantom enemy. Streaks of fire streamed across the hull as we pierced the upper atmosphere. The Hermes was impressively fast, and we kept our distance from the swarm, but they were too close already.

Gunfire surrounded us like hail. The Hermes sprinted for the clouds below, for some way to break their sightline, but there wasn’t enough time. You evaded to the left, evaded to the right, bright bursts of fire zipping past on either side of us. It was an impossible task. A salvo of explosive shells tore into the Hermes’ engines, and we plunged toward the surface, completely out of control.

We tumbled through the clouds, spinning wildly. The dampeners must have been destroyed, because I was thrown back and forth aggressively in my seat. Then my whole body became lead. The g-forces glued me to the chair. I fought to keep my head up. The edges of my vision darkened and narrowed. My head went fuzzy. For a moment I thought I was about to pass out.

You wrenched the steering under control and wrestled us out of our tumbling freefall. The crushing heaviness abated. I shook off the fuzziness and watched you fight to keep the Hermes under control, face grim and focused. It was impossible to keep the ship up; it descended, inevitably, but you kept it in a shallow glide rather than a full-on nosedive. We tore through the air worryingly quickly, the surface blurring past beneath us as we got closer and closer to the ground. You pulled back as hard as you could, trying to slow us down.

The ground below got closer, until I could actually see it properly. Huge mountains dotted the landscape. A carpet of lush, toxic-green foliage and black volcanic rock whipped past below. Soupy, yellowish smog pooled in the lowlands and valleys. A city came into view on the horizon, directly in front of us — a sprawling ring of gleaming skyscrapers centered on a tall, sloping mountain. The setting sun sat directly behind it, a ball of deep red-orange swimming in the heat shimmer. You slowed us down enough that we didn’t immediately crash into the city like an asteroid.

The skyscrapers were barely a hundred feet below us, approaching rapidly. You bullied the controls into submission, and pulled us to the side in a delicate curve. We threaded the needle between the tallest towers in a shockingly graceful descent. The ground rose steadily to meet us. You tweaked the steering to the side and aligned us so that we were flying straight along one of the wide streets below. But there was no avoiding the crash.

You pulled up hard at the last moment, redirecting our momentum so we were moving almost completely parallel to the ground. The tail end of the Hermes hit the ground with a jarring crash, and the front of the ship pitched violently downward. It threw me forward with whiplash-inducing speed. My seatbelt strained to hold me back. The ear-splitting scream of scraping, tearing metal ripped through the air as we skidded along the street. The ship slowly turned as we slid, until we were facing sideways. We slowed down the further we skated along the ground, but I could no longer see what was in front of us.

We slammed into something. The impact tossed me around in my seat like a ragdoll. Pain lanced through my body. One last, deafening crash echoed through the air, and we came to a violent stop.

The cacophany of sound and movement stopped. Everything was suddenly still and calm. I blinked heavily. My vision swam. My ears rang. The world was distant and unreal. Your voice sounded from within the fog, but I wasn’t capable of comprehending words just yet. You sounded frantic. You grabbed my shoulders and shook me.

“Griddle!”

My vision came into focus. You were standing right next to me, looking panicked. I shook my head to dispel the haze, and reached down to unclip my seatbelt. Pain shot through my body. I cried out. You placed a hand on my side and concentrated. I keened as my broken arm snapped back into place. You finished unbuckling my seatbelt for me and tried to yank my bulk out of the chair. You weren’t quite capable of that, but you succeeded in prompting me to stumble to my feet.

“Griddle, we need to get out of here!” you hissed, “They’re coming for us! We don’t have much time.”

I stood up straight and shook my head again, then slapped my cheeks with both hands a few times, as if to reset my brain. I grabbed my greatsword and strapped it to my back. You ran over to Alecto, still cuffed to the captain’s chair.

Her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle. A stream of blood stained the chair where her skull had smashed against it. The handcuffs had restrained her body too much during the violent jostling of the crash, and one of her arms was broken so bad that the jagged, snapped-off end of her radius poked through the skin. I watched with increasing nausea as her neck un-snapped, her arms un-broke, and the blood on the chair flowed back into her un-shattered skull.

She cracked her neck, flexed her jaw, and then smiled.

“Shall we?” she said pleasantly.

I put my hand on the scruff of Alecto’s neck and pushed her along with us as we ran toward the exit of the Hermes. There wasn’t an exit door anymore — the entire back wall was missing, leaving only twisted scrap metal in the spots where the guns tore it apart. There was a steep drop to the ground below.

“We need to get her down. Let’s think this through; if you jump down first, maybe we can—“

I shoved Alecto off the edge and she plummeted blindly to the floor below. Her legs broke with a loud crack on impact. You yelped at the sudden movement. The two of us lowered ourselves down safely, and by the time we reached the ground, Alecto’s legs had already reset themselves.

The heat was tropical, the humidity suffocating. In the sky between the looming skyscrapers, the Blood of Eden fighters appeared as dots on the horizon, moving steadily toward the city. I tried to pull Alecto to her feet, but she refused to be cajoled. She made her whole body limp and boneless. Dragging her was far too slow. I growled and hefted her over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry. She thrashed and fought; her arms were bound, but I struggled to keep her in place as her legs kicked. You slapped a piece of bone against her lower legs and grew it into a blobby mass of oss, gluing her legs together.

The ships weren’t far now, we had to move. We ran, sprinting to put distance between us and the crash. We were exposed in the middle of a wide, central avenue, so we ducked off into the narrower side streets. The roads were a rigidly-patterned polar grid, with narrow, curving streets in concentric circles, intersected by long, straight boulevards that radiated out from the center. The roaring engines of the fighters echoed through the city. We didn’t run indoors yet — we had to put as much distance between ourselves and the crash site as possible before we slowed down.

The roaring closed in on us. We dipped through the doors of the skyscraper beside us just before a fighter rounded the corner. We hid behind a huge pillar in the atrium as it swept past outside.

Once the coast was clear, we emerged from our hiding spot. I looked back out at the street, all white brick lined with rows of trees on either side. Upon closer inspection, I realized that they weren’t real trees — they were plastic.

You gestured for us to keep going, and we crept further into the building. A series of shops surrounded the atrium, and set into the far wall was a bank of elevators leading to higher floors. The overly-thorough air conditioning made the interior uncomfortably chilly. We hurried down one of the hallways beside the elevators, through a row of more shops. The banal outposts of everyday life surrounded us, made eerie by emptiness. The evacuating populace left everything exactly as it was in their hurry, the storefronts still open and the lights still on. But it wasn’t just that the people were gone, it felt like there hadn’t been enough people there to begin with. Only a tiny handful of shops were still open, most of them shuttered and empty and dark, dusty with disuse. It felt like it had been a ghost town even before it was actually abandoned. I suspected that the rest of the city looked much the same.

The hallway led back to a spacious sitting room with glass doors leading out to a wide, open balcony. Perfect. We’d be more exposed there, but we needed to take stock of our situation. Our time ran shorter with each passing second, we had to find a way off-world as soon as possible. I pushed the door open and stepped back out into the sweltering heat. The moment I emerged, the shape of the city revealed itself to me.

The balcony was an overhang, jutting out over a precipitous cliff where the ground fell away into a massive caldera. The glass floor revealed the dizzying drop into the lake below. The circular shape of the city made sense to me now — it was all built around this. In the very center of the caldera lake was an island, and on that island was a magnificent palace of white stone. Seven terraces surrounded the central spire, winding around it in a spiral. Each of the terraces connected to a series of bridges that crossed the lake to join with the rest of the city. The bridges lined up with the city’s main boulevards, dividing the city into seven districts. The buildings were arranged in a strange way, with clusters of taller buildings in the center of each district, furthest from the boulevards and the lip of the caldera, while the buildings near the edges of the districts were shorter. It took me a moment, but I eventually realized what the shape was meant to be.

The city was a flower of metal and glass, the districts unfolding like broad petals, cast in shades of fire and gold beneath the setting sun.

It was stunningly beautiful, but not quite as luxurious as it seemed. The shining glass of the skyscrapers must have been millenia old, back from when such things were common. The flooring of the building we were in was made to look like dark, handsome hardwood, but I could guarantee that none of it was real wood. The parts of the city that were not worn down by age were tacky and fake. It was huge and sprawling, with all these tall, magnificent skyscrapers, but barely any of it was occupied. Everything about the city was gorgeous, but strangely cheap, a hollow replica of real opulence and splendor.

I recognized the wall of skyscrapers atop the cliff on the other side of the caldera. I’d seen this view before, in the vault of the Sixth House. Rhodes looked the same now as it had a myriad ago; it was as if that faded old painting had been brought to life before me.

You pointed down at the palace. “Do you see the landing pad down there?”

I did. One of the seven terraces was clearly meant for ships to come and go, with designated landing stations and lots of heavy equipment. A few small ships still remained — probably personal ships belonging to wealthy occupants of the palace, who owned more than one, and had left behind the spares when they evacuated.

“It’s going to be a real son of a bitch to get all the way over there, you know that?” I said.

“Oh come now, Griddle, don’t tell me you’re tired already,” you taunted. I grinned.

“Not a chance.”

A small ship appeared above the city. It did not fly down from the upper atmosphere, nor did I suddenly notice something that had already been there; it simply appeared, first the nose of it, then the rest, emerging from some invisible other place. It left ripples in the reality around it as it surfaced, wavering for a moment before settling back down to solidity. Definitely not a Blood of Eden ship — it was very recognizably of the Nine Houses. It bypassed the barricade by simply appearing behind it. And I knew exactly who was in the pilot’s seat.

The King of Nine Renewals. The Necrolord Prime.

“Harrow, there’s—“

“Yes, I see it.”

The ship changed course, and veered toward us. Nothing else for it. You dissolved the blob of bone holding Alecto’s legs together, and I set her down. We’d made a promise.

“You ready to run, old lady?”

She nodded.

I threw the door open and we ran back inside. My hand rested lightly on Alecto’s shoulder, guiding her. I still couldn’t risk taking off her blindfold — if I did we’d have no chance of capturing her again. But for the time being, she cooperated, and ran alongside us as we burst out the front doors and back onto the street.

One of the Blood of Eden fighters sat parked in the middle of the street, three blocks down. A group of soldiers stood outside it. We looked at them. They looked at us.

We bolted. There was no time to escape down the street, I headed straight for the building on the other side. A hail of gunfire shattered the glass walls. I ducked, curling my free arm over the back of my head as I ran. We escaped into closest hallway and out of the line of fire. Their shouts trailed behind us as we sprinted through the halls.

We burst out onto the street on the other side. We barely made it ten feet before the soldiers emerged from behind us.

You threw a handful of bone chips at the floor. They exploded forward in a rain of osseous shrapnel. The soldiers cried out as it hit them. The shards turned their body armor into pincushions, but did not kill them. They raised their rifles.

Click!

Nothing happened. They threw aside their guns, riddled with holes. I didn’t stop for a second. The three of us sprinted down the street, and within moments the soldiers were following behind us. I glanced over my shoulder to see every single one of them drawing black combat knives from their belts.

We tore down the street and into the intersection where it met one of the central boulevards. The bridge was only two blocks away. We were so close, we were so close, come on, we could do this. The soldiers were gaining on us. We could outpace them, I knew we could.

They were barely five feet behind us now. Just one more block, just one more block to the bridge. We ran out into the next intersection.

Gunfire tore through our pursuers. The Emperor’s ship barreled down the street. I didn’t stop. We could still escape, we could still—

White. All color faded from the world. I couldn’t move. My ears rang. A horrible, hollow pressure surrounded me. Blood trickled from my nose. I was suspended in time, while my brain ticked agonizingly onward.

Alecto kept running. The Emperor’s ship swerved into the boulevard, and he shot her. The bullets ripped through her body, and she collapsed to the ground in a nonsense of organ and thoughtlessly twitching muscle. He circled around to land between us and the bridge.

The Emperor of the Nine Houses stepped out of his ship, and looked at the mess in front of him. He stood patiently before Alecto as her body knitted itself back together. He helped her to her knees. She thrashed, but she couldn’t fight him with her wrists still bound behind her back. He stared at her.

What was he doing? Why was he waiting? There was no time for this, the Beasts were almost upon us. He had to go. But he stood calmly, unhurried. The way he looked at Alecto was so unspeakably tender I might have averted my eyes, had I been able to move them.

“My Teacher,” he greeted her softly. She inhaled sharply at the sound of his voice.

“Use our name, John.”

“Annabel—“

“Don’t insult us.”

“Ananke.”

“She is dead, John, now call us by our name! she roared.

Her chest heaved up and down with heavy, furious breaths. He sighed.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he said. Then he looked at me. “That goes for the two of you too. Do you have any goddamn idea? You know, I think these last few days have been a nice little lesson in trust. I should have killed the lot of you along with Augustine and Mercy.”

“We’re doing what you wouldn’t,” Alecto said, “we’re taking our justice, because you gave us none. You tossed us aside, like our lives meant nothing to you!”

“You think their lives mean nothing to me? All of this, all of this is for them! Everything I have ever done has been for them! Everything I ever will do will be in their name.” He turned around and looked to the sunset, shining deep orange above the bridge in front of him. He took a few steps toward it. “Every brick in this Empire’s foundations, every life that has ever lived within its borders, all of it is in their name. Every war we have fought has been for them. They live on in every breath of air taken within my Houses, every moment of joy found upon these worlds.” He kept walking forward, staring ahead at the brilliant sky. “Don’t you understand, Teacher?” he turned back to look at her, raising his arms as if to gesture at everything around him, “I have made their memory a blessing that lives within all of us. And that memory will never fade. In the fabric of my Houses, they are immortal.”

A noise like a thunderclap split the air, and the Emperor exploded. The force of the blast threw us backward. I slammed into the ground and tumbled helplessly.

My ears rang. I lifted my head. I was lying on my stomach. The place where the Emperor had stood was a scorched crater. He was just gone. The explosion bit chunks out of the front of the buildings on either side of the street. Shattered glass littered the ground. You lay sprawled out on the ground beside me. Alecto was a few feet in front of us; she’d been much closer to the explosion than us, and her body was mangled and burned, already regenerating before my eyes. I turned to look up over my shoulder.

Three Blood of Eden battleships hovered in the upper atmosphere, directly above the city. There was another thunderclap, and an explosion rang out distantly. I couldn’t see where it had hit, but it wasn’t anywhere close.

They knew that God was here.

The skyscraper on our right side shuddered. I saw two support pillars through the hole the explosion tore in the facade, and I saw the growing cracks scarred into their surface. There was a gigantic, groaning sound, and the skyscraper began to lean.

I staggered to my feet. We had to move. We had to move. I stumbled to your side and pulled you up. I grabbed ahold of Alecto, who by this point was already almost back to normal. Glass shattered. Metal tore. The skyscraper tipped precariously across the street, directly above the Emperor’s ship, toward the bridge. I turned and ran, dragging my two dazed passengers with me.

A tremendous, deafening crash shattered the air as the skyscraper slammed into the one across the street from it. They both came down in a towering cascade of rubble. I pulled us into the next cross-street. A cloud of ash and smoke and dust billowed through the streets and overtook us. I ducked my head, slammed my eyes closed, and pulled my jacket over my face to cover as much of it as possible. I didn’t stop running, couldn’t stop running.

We emerged from the cloud. The battleships kept firing, a staccato thunderstorm bombarding the city from orbit. It tore everything around us apart. They had no clear target — I don’t think they actually knew where the Emperor was, they just knew he was somewhere in the city, so the city had to go. Buildings crumbled and fell. The tips of the tallest skyscrapers, poking out above the rest, disappeared from view.

Further down the street, a group of Blood of Eden soldiers ran for cover — Light hadn’t even waited to evacuate his own troops before opening fire. I guess a chance to kill John Gaius was worth any cost.

Another explosion tore through a building not far in front of us. It began to lean over the street. Shit. Shit. We could not let our path get cut off again, we didn’t have time. Nothing else for it. I bulldozed ahead, sprinting to get past it before it fell. We crossed directly beneath it as it toppled across the street and hit the building opposite it. I lifted my jacket and held it over my head like a shield. Broken glass rained down upon us. Shards of it exploded outward as they shattered against the ground. Little chips of glass tore my skin, covering my legs in dozens of tiny cuts and wounds. We crossed over to the other side and didn’t stop, not even daring to look back as it collapsed right behind us.

The cloud of ash and debris swallowed us. The force of it threw us to the ground. My head slammed into the brick floor. Blood streamed down my face from a gash in my forehead. I groaned, and pulled you to your feet. Alecto grabbed my arm for guidance. We stumbled blindly toward the next avenue, the next bridge, the next chance to escape.

We emerged from the ash cloud, coughing and bleeding. I saw the sky again, and the moment I did, my heart stopped.

In the distance, a great cloud darkened the sky. It looked like a swarm of locusts descending upon the city. Wispy tendrils stretched out from it like searching limbs.

The Heralds were here.

“Harrow—“

“We still have time!” you said. “The Heralds travel far before the Beast — it’s not too late yet! It can’t be too late.”

“Then we have to move!”

The next boulevard was in sight. We were so close, so goddamn close. We ran for it.

We burst out into the boulevard and turned sharply. The next bridge came into view before us, only two blocks away. And between us and that bridge was a squad of fifteen panicked Blood of Eden soldiers. They stopped short where they were fleeing.

They raised their guns.

You threw a bone bangle at the ground and it erupted into an osseous wall. Bullets poured into it. You traced one hand along it as we ran parallel to it, and when we reached the end of the wall, it kept growing along with us, blooming under your fingers. We reached the other side of the intersection — we’d have to loop around them, there was no other way. The cloud of Heralds reached the outer limits of the city.

An orbital strike hit one of the skyscrapers right in the center of the roof. The orange light flashed behind each row of windows in quick succession, top to bottom, before exploding outward in a wave of fire and shrapnel as it collided with the ground. The building tipped over, right across the path in front of us, too far away to get past it in time. No way forward. I undid the strap holding my greatsword to my back, and took the weight of metal in my hands.

We were going to have to do this the hard way.

We ducked into the building beside us, and on the other side of the wall, the soldiers did the same. We poured into a hotel lobby filled with tacky marble fixtures. You hit the soldiers like a hellhound. The second we stepped through the doors there were two dozen bone constructs rushing toward them. You launched three great spikes of bone in their direction and speared the frontrunners. Another wall of bone sprouted up and carved a path all the way to where the soldiers were streaming in.

I ran down the length of it, and hefted my sword.

The first soldier that rounded the corner of the wall lost his hands in an instant. I bashed him in the face with my pommel, and he went down. I swung at his companion, but she threw herself back, out of the reach of my slash. She landed on the floor on her back and held her rifle out in front of her. I dodged back behind the wall. Her bullets ripped chunks from the edge of it.

This wasn’t going to work.

“Fall back!” I called to you. You were at my side in moments, Alecto only a second behind you. We ran for the nearest hallway. A series of metallic clicks sounded in quick succession. Three grenades slid across the floor, right toward the hallway entrance. “Shit!”

We dove over the reception desk. Three explosions tore through the lobby in quick succession. Shrapnel bombarded the front of the desk. We landed in a heap and tumbled over one another. I disentangled myself and pressed back against the marble counter. Attempting to peer around the edge prompted a burst of gunfire. I flinched away from it. The three of us huddled together behind our barricade.

There was no exit we could reach without leaving cover. The soldiers had their guns trained on both sides of the desk. Their footsteps drew closer.

There was nowhere to go. There was no way to esacape.

I closed my eyes.

But they did not reach us. They did not send us to hell in a wave of gunfire.

Hell came to us instead.

The windows shattered with a deafening crash, and the lobby erupted into a cacophony of screaming. A shower of blood painted the wall red. Gunfire punctuated the terrified wailing. Beneath it all was a dull, droning hum. I stood up with my sword held in front of me.

Fun fact: did you know that each of the Resurrection Beasts had their own, distinct type of Herald? Because I sure as hell didn’t.

Picture a locust. No, that’s not right, picture a dragonfly — no, a spider. Picture all three of those things mashed together, and then throw that picture out, because that’s nothing close to what they looked like. They were a nightmare of teeth and wings and way too many sharp, spindly limbs. They looked like evil, flying stickbugs, if stickbugs had been designed by somebody with a profound aversion to human life.

They tore the soldiers apart. One of them hooked a sharp leg into the stomach of the woman who’d dodged my sword and lifted her into the air. A multitude of limbs with too many joints curled around her, ripping off chunks of her flesh for its beaklike mouth to eat. Another Herald pinned one of the soldiers to the ground and dug into him directly. Blood sprayed and splattered across the entire lobby. The soldiers fired wildly. They killed three of the Heralds, four of them, but more were pouring in by the moment, until there was almost a dozen of them, all here to mindlessly feast.

We had to go.

We sprinted for the exit, dodging around one of the already-occupied Heralds. One of them flew toward us, but you struck it from the sky with a salvo of osseous spears. Another tried its luck and came at us from the other side. Its spindly limbs extended toward us. I slashed at it and severed half a dozen of them in one go. It hissed and pulled back, only to leap straight at us mouth-first. I thrust my sword and impaled it right through the mouth. Its momentum knocked me onto my back, my sword buried all the way down its throat, my arms halfway inside its dead, useless mouth. I yanked them out — I’d already lost enough thumbs for one lifetime, thank you very much.

Alecto dragged me out of its embrace and pulled me to my feet. I buckled over and vomited. It was only then, once my mouth was occupied, that I realized I’d been screaming the entire time. Alecto didn’t let me rest, didn’t let me stop. She pulled me along with her until I was running again.

We barreled out the front door and back onto the street. Heralds swarmed through the sky in packs of ten to twenty — the first wave, arriving ahead of the vast swarm. The Blood of Eden battleships unloaded their bombardment wildly, blindly, as this new enemy entered the fray. The skyline of the city collapsed around us. We paid no attention to any of it.

We made it to the bridge and kept going. The open stretch extended before us, a straight shot to the palace. My lungs burned. I couldn’t even imagine how you were feeling. You wheezed beside me, and pressed a hand to your chest. Your bloody, rattling breaths evened out and stabilized as you used necromancy to assist your lungs, your muscles, pushing yourself further than your body was capable of going. We crossed the halfway point.

An explosion rocked the bridge behind us. I looked back. The orbital strike punched a hole through the middle of the bridge. The roadway around the hole cracked. Chunks of it broke off and fell into the water. More of them followed suit, traveling down the length of the bridge, coming closer. I faced forward and pleaded with my legs to run faster. I summoned every last, desperate ounce of effort left in my body. The roadway collapsed in a slow wave of crumbling metal and stone. It closed in on us like a predator. The end of the bridge was only a few feet in front of us. The ground shook. Cracks spiderwebbed beneath my feet.

“Jump!”

All three of us leapt through the air in unison. The road fell away beneath us. The dizzying drop into the lake yawned below. We hung suspended in the air, each millisecond an eternity. My feet dropped below the level of the ground. I reached out.

I slammed into the outer lip of the terrace. My body hit the stone wall right at chest level. My arms stretched out and grasped frantically at the cobblestones. My legs dangled and kicked. With an utterly feral noise of exertion, I dragged myself onto solid ground. Alecto followed only moments behind. You struggled, barely able to hold on, let alone pull yourself up. Your nails dug into the stone. I dove toward you. Your grip failed and your fingers slipped off the edge.

I grabbed your hand and held on for dear life. Your weight pulled me along with you. I had no anchor. You dragged me across the ground. My torso was halfway off the edge.

Two steady hands grabbed my ankles.

“Hold on!” Alecto and I shouted at the same time. You clutched at my forearm and reached up with your other hand. I took it. Alecto pulled me back on to solid ground. I scrambled to my knees to get better leverage and pulled you to safety. You collapsed against my chest, gasping for breath in the circle of my arms.

I stared out upon the space where the bridge used to be, and watched as great ripples spread through the lake below where the chunks of roadway had landed. There were no Heralds here yet, and no explosions — even Light would not dare fire upon the palace, and risk destroying the stele that was his only way out. For one, brief second, we were able to catch our breath.

“Hot damn!” I said at length, “That was the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life. Harrow, please tell me you understand how badass that was.”

“You were very badass, beloved,” you mumbled into my chest, still panting for breath.

“Hell yeah I was! Alright, let’s get out of here.”

We ran across the open courtyard. I knew from our survey of the city that the landing pad was two terraces above us. We followed a long set of stairs past the outer wall surrounding the next terrace. An expanse of neat footpaths came into view, surrounded by greenery and splashes of bright color. The whole landing was a beautiful, neatly-maintained garden, with rows of colorful flowers lining the sides of the paths, and little grassy lawns dotted with stately trees — real ones — filling the spaces between them. I had never seen so much color in once place in my life.

Far in the distance, another cloud darkened the sky on the other side of the city. An entirely separate pack of Heralds swarmed toward the city. The other Beast was here. We were running out of time.

We made a beeline for the next set of stairs, on the opposite side of the garden. I could see the tops of a few ships, just barely visible through the gap in the outer wall at the top of the stairs. We were there — we were going to make it.

The Kindly Prince stepped out onto the staircase, and time stopped. My body froze. Alecto stopped short. Her head whipped back and forth as she tried to figure out where he was. Your remaining bone jewelry shook as some unseen force acted upon it. It was pulled away from your body. The pieces converged on Alecto and surrounded her. They morphed into bone restraints and dragged her down to her knees on the ground before us. She struggled against them, fighting, no matter how obviously futile it was. She threw her weight into each movement with desperate, panicked ferocity, making animalistic noises of exertion as the Emperor of the Nine Houses strode towards her.

This was not the calm, put-together man from earlier. His hair was unkempt, his clothes torn and covered in ash. His dreadful eyes blazed like black fire. He did not pause for even a second. He placed his hands on either side of Alecto’s head the moment he reached her.

The world blurred white around the edges. The effect intensified more and more the further it got from the two of them. There was no distortion where he stood — no blur, no flare of light. Reality became more real around them, sharp and vivid, like a camera lens that was already perfectly in-focus somehow becoming even more so, more crisp and detailed than it should have been possible to be, truer to life than life itself. The whole world narrowed onto them, everything more than a few feet away from them fading into an indistinct monochrome bloom.

An indescribable noise came from Alecto’s lips. She threw her head violently from side to side, trying to shake free.

“No, no, no,” she repeated over and over again. The Emperor tightened his grip on her head, forced her to stop moving.

The more he exerted his power on her the more pronounced the warping of reality became. The crushing, featherweight pressure blurred, the same way everything around me did. It was still there, but less controlled, like a heavy weight rather than a suffocating straightjacket. His power was so focused on her, he couldn’t restrain us fully. I could just barely move. Enough to curl my fingers, enough to move my lips.

“Teacher!” you cried out as best you could, voice strained and strangled with the effort it took to use it. “Please, there’s no time! We need to get her out of here now, before it’s too late!”

“It’s already too late!”

My heart stopped.

He was wrong, he was wrong. It wasn’t too late, it couldn’t be too late, not after everything we’d gone through.

“The Beasts are already within range,” he said, “it was too late before I even landed! They’re too close. They are going to devour the Nine Houses, and there is nothing we can do to stop them. It’s too late.”

It hit me like a hammerblow. The Nine Houses were going to die. The solar system was going to be devoured. We were too late.

We’d failed.

His fingers dug into Alecto’s skin. It wasn’t right. He was going to put her to sleep again. He was going to keep using her for eternity, even though the very thing she died for would no longer exist at all. I summoned what little strength I still had. I fought to move my lips like a fight to the death.

“Then let her go,” I said. “It’s over. You can’t save them, you don’t have to do this.”

He growled and pulled even more power. The pressure overtook me once again. Blood trickled from my nose, from my ears, from my eyes. Alecto’s movements were slow and weak. Her body was limp, like she was about to pass out. She mumbled incoherently, pleading with him, the words too weak to hear.

“I will not let my Houses die,” he insisted.

The tightened grip of his power didn’t last long. He couldn’t maintain it for more than a moment, it was all being pulled into Alecto. Reality grew sharp enough to stab my eyes. It fell off like an exponential curve the further it got from them, dissolving into a void of pure white.

“You have to let go,” I pleaded, “they’re already dead.”

“Then I will build them anew!” he roared, “I will find a new system, ignite a new star, whatever must be done, but they will not die, I won’t let them! The Nine Houses will stand eternal, a year for every life they cost — a decade, a century, a myriad for each of them! They will be remembered!”

His power buckled reality like a singularity. Alecto slumped against her restraints, breath slow and ragged, not even strong enough to fight anymore. His grip on you and me weakened more and more. With titanic effort, I could move. It was like swimming through molasses, but I could do it. I took a step toward him. I reached my hand out. Beside me, you did the same.

“Teacher!”

“Father!”

“Enough!”

He swept his arm to the side. We were flung violently through the air. Reality snapped back into place as we flew outside the radius of his power. The ground whipped past beneath me at terrifying speeds. My stomach had no bottom. My limbs had no muscles. My lungs had no air.

You hit the outer wall of the terrace. Your head snapped back and smacked into the stone with a dull, wet thud. Blood splattered across the pale bricks. You hit the ground slumped on your side, completely motionless.

I slammed into the wall only moments behind you. Pain lanced through my body as something inside me broke. I landed on the ground, unable even to cry out in pain, all the air already forced from my lungs.

Waves of pain throbbed through every inch of me. The world was far away. My breath was too loud. The sound of explosions and crashing metal still filled the air, but it was distant, unreal.

I opened my eyes.

The setting sun was blood red through the veil of fire and smoke. It was so hot. The view beyond the edge of the terrace swam in the haze. My senses were dulled, yet still focused, like tunnel vision for my entire being. The pain was immense. At least a few of my ribs must have been broken. My cheek pressed against the ground as I laid on my side. It hurt to breathe. I couldn’t see the Emperor or Alecto from this angle, but I could still feel his power in the air. Things probably weren’t going our way in that department.

But I couldn’t bring myself to care about any of that, because lying there, not ten feet away from me, was you. And you weren’t looking as peachy keen as I was feeling. You laid on your side on the grass, facing away from me. You weren’t moving. Blood soaked into the soil around you.

No. You were alive. You were okay. You had to be. I just needed to wake you up.

I extended a hand above my head. My fingers dug into the dirt. I clawed myself a few miserable inches forward. My entire body protested. I ignored its complaints, and reached out again. It would’ve been so much easier if I was on my stomach, but that would’ve put weight on my broken ribs, and I was pretty sure I would pass out if I tried that. I groaned feebly, and dragged my body across the lawn.

After a minute or an hour or an eternity, I reached you. I didn’t have the strength to get to my knees, so I just crawled on top of you. I tipped over and accidentally rolled onto my stomach as I did it. A harsh cry ripped from my lips. My vision blurred and darkened, but I stayed awake. I rolled you onto your back.

“Harrow?” I quavered. You didn’t answer. I reached my trembling hands around to cradle your head and oh, oh fuck, there were shards of your skull on the ground, between my fingertips. Your blood coated my hands. Your body was limp in my arms.

You were dead. The impact killed you instantly. I knew from the second I saw it happen, but I convinced myself that I might have been wrong, that there was still a chance you might be alive. That there was still hope.

I’ve always been a fool.

My hands grasped at you frantically as if to somehow get a better grip. Your shaved hair was prickly beneath my fingers, and sticky with blood. I just… I needed to be touching you, I needed to feel you. You were still real as long as I could feel you. But it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough, you slipped away like sand between my fingers.

I clutched your head close to mine so our foreheads were pressed together. My eyes squeezed shut. I rocked back and forth with you in my arms. A keening, animalistic noise escaped my lips, shrill over the dull roar of the flames, and kept going until my lungs had no air left to sustain it. I wanted to push further, to empty more than just air from myself. I’d have emptied myself of everything, if it meant a respite from the feeling in my chest.

Was this how you felt when I died? Was this what I did to you? Did I rip a hole in the fabric of you? Did I split you open like a wound? Of course I did. Of course it was.

I’m sorry, Harrow. I’m so fucking sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand. I knew it would hurt you — of course I did — but I didn’t understand.

I understand now.

I understand. I understand why you left me, why you refused to accept what I wanted to give you. Because fuck, Harrow, dying for you once was cruel enough. I was going to put you through this a second time. I was going to destroy you again.

There’s no such thing as self-destruction, is there? I thought that’s what I was doing. But we’re tied to one another — bound together in strands of golden light. How could I ever have thought you’d survive it? That one of us could be ripped away without taking part of the other with them?

I ripped a hole in your chest, in the heart of you, and expected you to be grateful. Perhaps I deserved this then. I gripped your body tight, as if by touching you, by feeling your lingering warmth beneath me, I could pull you in and fill the ravenous emptiness.

The feeling was not unfamiliar. It may have been fainter then, smaller, but I’d felt this burrowing hole before. Our ties to one another were tighter than most, but you weren’t the only person I was tied to. When Isaac and Jeannemary died, when Magnus and Abigail died, they all took something from me. I was tied to all of them, however loosely, and them to me. I was tied to Warden. To Coronabeth. To Aiglamene. Even to fucking Ianthe, as much as I hated her. All of us woven together in an elegant web of criss-crossing thread.

We were doomed from the start, weren’t we? Watching the chains pull tighter and tighter, until we were drowning, bound too tight to swim. The golden threads wrapping around our necks until we could not move without choking one another.

After all, that’s what the connection was, wasn’t it? The web was a spiderweb, and the weaver was hungry. The ties were to the tracks, and the train was on its way.

No.

I refused to believe it. That’s not what the ties were. That’s not what the light was.

I knew what the light was.

I kissed you delicately on the forehead. My eyes were still closed, and I wondered whether the blood in my mouth left an imprint on you, like a lipstick mark. I hoped that it did. It was a hollow gesture of comfort, but I made it regardless. It was more for me than for you. I was going to need it.

I took a deep breath, far more steady and calm than it had any right to be.

I opened my eyes, and the brightness almost blinded me.

The world was a tapestry of woven light. I saw the connections between all things in elegant ribbons of gold, from each blade of grass to the feet that stepped upon them, and each tree to the birds that rested in their branches; from each brick in the wall to the people who laid them, and each razed home to the people who lived in them. They wound back and forth, around me and through me, up into the sky and out of sight. A delicate, unbreakable web of life, endlessly detailed and complex. There were billions of threads, trillions of them, and I saw them all. It was like a second layer of sight, overlaid atop the physical world.

The intricate lacework patterns that decorated each ribbon of thalergy weren’t just meaningless shapes to me anymore; they were poems and hymns and staves of music, Fibonacci spirals and Mandlebrot fractals, love letters and silent prayers, DNA sequences, mathematical equations, thoughtlessly beautiful doodles scribbled in unsuspecting margins. They were every sacred geometry human beings ever worshiped. They were every masterwork of art human hands ever made. They were bottled inspiration and jarred change, potential energy and acts of creation.

They described the world in an imperfect stream of golden chaos, weaving around us and between us in strands of fire and starlight.

I ran my hand along the length of one of the threads and followed it to its source — a patch of flowers I had crushed when I crawled over them to reach you. I twirled the light around my finger and gently tugged. The crushed flowers twitched on their strings and stood back up. Their petals unfurled and they bloomed greater than they had ever bloomed before. I let go and brushed my hand through the forest of threads above the lawn. The short, neatly-mowed grass grew tall and wild, flowering for the first time in its existence. There were ribbons tied to me as well, a countless multitude of them. I gingerly tugged my broken ribs back into place, carefully plucked the chips of glass from my legs

I turned to you. There were still threads tied to your body, between you and me, between you and everyone else you had ever touched, but great bundles of them were severed, hanging slack and broken. I took some of the loose threads and sewed them across the back of your head like stitches. Your shattered skull became whole, your countless wounds closed, and your body was broken no more.

But your lungs did not fill with breath again. Your body did not fill with life. You were dead. I could heal the damage to your body, but it was too late. Your soul had already left it behind.

Snap!

More strands frayed and broke. They were strained and taut, pulled by some unseen force. I followed them as they threaded up and away from your body, before disappearing abruptly into nothingness. Into the River. Your soul fled your body, unmoored, but not destroyed. It pulled away, further and further, severing the last links that still held you to the world of the living.

I could not resurrect you. I could not bring back the dead. But that didn’t mean there was nothing I could do. I knew what to do. I did not have to learn; the instinct was somewhere within my soul, intuitive and clear. All I had to do was follow it. And that’s exactly what I did. I began the process.

I began to tell you this story.

I lifted my hand to the sky and I began to tell my tale. A strand of light wound its way into the air, away from my hand, up to you. An offering. An invitation, to listen, and to see.

After all, how could you become one with someone if you did not know them? We could not come together, could not become one, unless we knew one another better than we knew ourselves. I needed you to see me, really see me. I needed you to see through me and within me, until my soul was transparent to you.

But I couldn’t do that if you wouldn’t listen. I made my offering, but it was worth nothing if you did not accept it. I wasn’t sure if you would — after all, it wouldn’t be the first time you rejected me. I knew you were afraid, Harrow. I’d hurt you before. I gave you something you could not bear to have. I just hoped that you would have me now. I hoped you would understand that this wasn’t the same thing.

You and Warden called this perfect Lyctorhood, but I don’t think that’s what it was, not really. Ianthe was right — this was a different kind of joining. It wasn’t a sacrifice laid out upon an altar. It wasn’t two people being chopped down to fit the space of one. It wasn’t even a summation of the two of us — it was something more. Not addition, but multiplication. It was a kind of death, to be sure, and I understood why that scared you. When we were done, Gideon Nav would not exist anymore. She would be gone. But I would exist. Gideon would die, and Harrow was already dead, but we would live.

But I needed you to say yes. It takes two to tango, my sunset queen. I couldn’t do it alone. I needed you to accept what I was offering. Though I knew you would not hear it, I pleaded with you.

Please, Harrow. I knew you were scared, but I needed you to be brave. I knew this was a leap of faith, but I needed you to believe I’d catch you. I needed you to believe we could do it right this time.

Please.

Please.

The strand pulled taut. Where before it had drifted untethered, now something anchored it, held it tight. I didn’t stop. I wrote my story in strands of shining gold, more and more of them winding their way into the air. I offered myself to you, and you accepted. One by one, you picked up the threads of me.

And then you offered your own. Ribbons emerged from nowhere and snaked down to me. I took them in my hand, tied them to my soul, tethered myself to you. I listened to your story, because yes, you needed to know me, but I needed to know you just the same. I heard you. I saw what you had seen, felt what you had felt. I even saw Ianthe’s story — or at least what you had learned of it — filtering through secondhand. I saw every piece of you, every fear and hope, every desire and despair. I turned them in my hands, memorized every inch of them. I listened to every moment of your story, and I knew you.

You’re a wonderful storyteller, Harrow.

The more our threads intertwined, the more your story became a part of me. So I’m sorry if I repeated things that happened to you, instead of me. It’s just that I can’t really tell where my story ends and yours begins anymore. It’s all a jumble in my mind, all happening at once.

Good. That means it’s working.

I know you can hear me, Harrow. I know you can see me.

I know you’re listening.

I’m listening too.

The threads loop around us, encircle us. They draw us closer and tie us together. I take them and pull, hauling you closer, dragging you back from beyond the shore. Hand over hand, I bring you back to me. With one last, desperate pull, you emerge from beneath the waters. I still can’t see your soul — that would be thanergy, not thalergy — but I can see the shape of you in the strands that surround you. A faint impression, the suggestion of your shape written in light. I open my arms. Gently, like a soft breeze, you drift into my embrace. I hold you close, both body and soul. The light draws tighter around us. It weaves through us, stitches us together.

This is it, Harrow. There’s no coming back once we do this. We won’t be Gideon and Harrow anymore — they will be gone. But that’s okay. I’m ready. I’m excited. Because this isn’t an ending. This isn’t an act of destruction. This is an act of creation.

And I can’t wait to see what we’ll create together.

See you on the flip side, sugarlips.

Chapter 15: Sunset

Notes:

Thanks for reading this far everybody. This is the biggest project I've ever taken on, and I'm really proud of how it turned out. You all have been incredibly encouraging. I've gotten so much feedback on this — a bunch of you have been leaving comments on nearly every chapter, and I appreciate that so so much. It has made this so much more rewarding to work on.

I also made a playlist for this fic. It's divided into sections, with a few songs for each chapter. Keep in mind that the songs for this chapter are a bit spoilery, so read before you check those out! https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5mXL2b5JGEvji8ao8OdFWn?si=524d1955bb8f421c

Chapter Text

At first, there is nothing.

No light. No sound. No Gideon. No Harrow. Thought and comprehension and existence are gone, leaving behind only a void of emptiness.

And then, we exist.

We?

Yes.

We.

Us.

That feels right.

We think two sets of thoughts. We feel two sets of emotions. We are not one person.

But we’re not quite two people either, are we?

There are two streams of thought and emotion and sensation, but they are not divided. Both of us experience both of them at the same time. Our thoughts blend together. Our emotions intermingle.

There are two of us, two distinct minds, two distinct beings, but there is no line between them. We blur into one another. Both of us experience both sets of thought and emotion at the same time, until there is no distinction between which one of us is thinking what, which one of us is feeling what.

It’s a breathtakingly unfamiliar sensation.

We explore this new existence, reverent and curious. We are so excited to discover precisely what we are. We try pulling our mind in opposite directions, tugging the bond to see how far it will go. The more we pull, the further we separate. The gradient of us narrows, though it never becomes a clear, unbroken line. We’re still blurred together in the middle, but we can pull apart until we’re more distinct, more noticeably two.

We stop pulling and let the bond relax. As it goes slack, we blend lazily together, until we can barely tell one another apart. There is nothing but a sensation of oneness, of unity, the two streams of consciousness so intertwined that they appear as one cord. But even then, we are not one. The cord is still made from two strands, no matter how tightly they’re woven.

An awestruck breath slips through our lips. We suddenly realize that we’re smiling. Our cheeks are wet with tears.

We did it.

We’re together, beloved.

We are us.

Slowly, gradually, noise filters into our perception. It fades in like somebody carefully cranking up a volume dial. We hear it through two sets of ears. Two streams of sensation, filtering into both of our minds at once.

What Gideon’s body hears and what Harrow’s body hears are subtly different. We perceive the differences in both bodies, hear how the slight distance between them effects the way the sound hits them in tiny, almost imperceptible ways.

The next thing to return is touch. We are holding ourself in our arms, pressed up against one another. Gideon’s body, and Harrow’s. And yet, the division of our mind is not so clean. We could not label one half of us as Gideon, and the other as Harrow. There is part of us in one body, and part of us in another, but it’s not static. It’s like we can shift which parts of us go where, focus ourself in one area or another. It’s not as simple as Gideon being in her body, and Harrow being in hers. The division isn’t quite so neat anymore. It’s just us.

The world continues to fade in around us. The pain of our ordeal reasserts itself, a bone-deep ache settling into us. What before had only been an indistinct, muffled blur of noise solidifies into proper sound. We hear the roar of the flames, the drone of the heralds, the distant, staccato thunderstorm of the orbital bombardment.

And we hear him.

Are you ready, love? We know we’re tired, we know we only want to rest, and be together, and explore this new existence of ours. But we’ve got a job to do.

We take a deep breath, taking in the smell of flowers and smoke and each other.

We open our eyes.

The first thing we see is not Gideon’s golden eyes, nor Harrow’s obsidian ones. It is our eyes, black as ink, flecked with chips of gold and precisely one speck of lavender. Our eyes are the sky at night, a galaxy of stars glittering in the firmament of our irises. The sight of them takes our breath away. We’re still in our arms, foreheads pressed together, the tips of our noses only a fraction of an inch apart. We brush our thin, bony fingers through our fluffy ginger hair. Our rough, calloused hands hold our narrow waist. We sigh, and it comes out shaky, awestruck.

Oh, beloved, we are beautiful.

We stand up, first in one body, then the other, and take in the world around us. There is the physical world, the false beauty of the Seventh House. Then there is the blue glow of thanergy, visible again now that we’re together, infusing everything around us. Then, finally, there is the golden tapestry of thalergy weaving through it. The sounds of the collapsing city still fill the air, loud, but distant. The thrum of the swarm sits beneath it. The sharp edge of the Emperor’s power is still in the air.

So she’s not asleep yet.

Good.

The Emperor stands above his Death, holding her head in his hands. And we’ve got a bone to pick with that motherfucker.

We walk toward him. He stands in the center of a broad lawn, framed by trees on either side, with a huge rosebush behind him on the other side of the grass. Our greatsword lies on the ground where it fell when he threw us. We pick it up. The weighty metal feels satisfying in our hands. It feels right. The Emperor’s influence sharpens more and more the closer we get, but with a gesture of our hands, we draw thalergy around our bodies, like a cloak, or a suit of armor. The presence of his power is still noticeable, but we feel no fear. It cannot touch us.

The strands of thalergy dance like puppet strings beneath our fingers, and the rosebush erupts with life. Its roots rip through the ground behind the Emperor. It explodes outward, thorned, flowering vines growing and unfurling across the grass. Once they’re right behind him, we twitch the strings just so, and the vines leap from the ground and wrap around him. His eyes go wide with surprise. He pulls against them. The thorns dig into his skin. We whip the vines backward and yank him off his feet, away from Alecto. They drag him across the ground. He instinctively struggles against them, before he realizes what’s actually going on. With a sweep of his hand, the rosebush instantly decays to mulch.

We walk toward Alecto with Harrow’s body, and the Emperor with Gideon’s. He gets back on his feet, the gashes from the thorns already closed up, and looks at us.

The weight of his power intensifies as he tries to hold us in place, but our cloak of golden energy disperses it like it was a single feather. His eyes narrow.

He tries to boil our blood in our veins. He tries to turn our organs inside out. He tries to wither us into an ancient husk. He tries to pull our soul from our body. He tries to turn our bones into a construct and tear us apart from the inside. Each assault falls upon us like a tidal wave, the wrath of God unleashed as a cataclysmic storm, and each assault breaks harmlessly against our armor.

We walk confidently through the gale.

“What did you do?” He takes a step back. “What have you done?”

Blood erupts from his wrists, crystallizing into twin blades, sharp like obsidian, hard like crimson diamonds. We twirl our greatsword in a circle with one hand, then hold it steady in front of us, ready to fight. Our lips twist to the side in a lopsided smirk.

“Get fucked, my Lord.”

Our strike hits harder than a sledgehammer. The force of it hitting his blades sends him stumbling back. We redirect our sword’s momentum and spin it around into a sideways slash that slices open his gut. He counterattacks and thrusts with one bloody blade. It shatters like glass on impact.

He flees.

Dozens of ogre-like bone constructs spring to life around him as he backs away. They fall upon us. We struggle to push through them; their osseous limbs dissolve to ash the longer they touch us, but they’re bulky as hell.

We kneel down before Alecto. A gesture of our hand dissolves the bone restraints holding her in place. She collapses into our arms. Her body is limp, her breath shallow, but she is awake. She brings one arm up to rest her hand on our shoulder. Her fingers flex weakly. We hold her patiently, stroking a hand along her spine as she recovers.

Now that we can see thanergy again we can see the core of her — see the ball of blue light that fills her chest, bright like a supernova. The power of ten billion lives, collapsed into a singularity in her sternum. Chains of thanergy criss-cross her body, tied around her over and over, holding those souls prisoner.

We break through the horde of skeletons, and advance toward the Emperor. He throws everything he has at us, every school of necromancy, every trick up his sleeve, but none of it can hurt us, because he does not understand what we have done.

He renews his blades, trying to defend himself as our sword hammers him relentlessly. We have no reason to hold back anymore. We cannot run. We cannot take Alecto and escape. The Nine Houses are already doomed. But the last of the Resurrection Beasts are within the radius of the singularity. There will never be a chance like this again.

He parries, parries, parries, but he’s not fast enough. We slip past his defenses. Our sword arcs in a broad, sweeping slash, and slices through his neck. He topples to the floor, his head rolling to a stop beside his body.

We turn to look at Alecto and our other body. Her breath slowly evens out, still heavy, but steadier than before. She’s no longer totally limp. Arms shaking, she pushes back to kneel unsupported in front of us. We reach out, and slip the blindfold off her face. She holds no fear for us any longer.

Without the dread influence of her power, we are able to look into her eyes properly for the first time. Even without her power she doesn’t look quite human — she isn ’t human — but she merely looks alien now, as opposed to looking like death given form. More than anything, she looks afraid.

We open our mouth to speak, but before a single word leaves our lips, the ground beneath Gideon’s body explodes. We’re thrown violently forward, skidding and tumbling across the floor. The moment we come to a stop we are back on our feet, turning to face the threat.

The Emperor stands there, whole again, with an array of gigantic bone spears hovering in the air above and behind him. He is fury personified, stanced to fight.

With a single gesture, he launches the spears, not at us, but around us. They pierce the dirt and the brick footpaths and explode beneath the ground like landmines. Huge plumes of soil and stone burst outward, because we can dissolve thanergy, but we can ’t dissolve a goddamn rock.

We’re thrown skyward, buffeted by earthen shrapnel. We tumble through the air and hit the ground behind Harrow’s body like a sack of particularly unhappy bricks.

But we don’t let him distract us. While we groan and clutch our sides, we also brush Alecto’s hair out of her face, and tuck it behind her ear.

“Ready to go, grandma?”

Alecto nods.

The Emperor walks toward us, arms outstretched on either side of him, palms open as he channels his power. Spinning rings of crystalline blood encircle him. Dozens of bone spears fill the air behind him. A swarm of tendrils made from muscle and tendon carpet the ground around him, squirming and writhing as they search for a victim. His eyes are the death of light.

“That is enough!” he thunders. “Give it up. No matter what tricks you pull, no matter what powers you have, this isn’t a fight you can win. I cannot die!”

We’ll see about that.

We gather thalergy around our hand, and place our palm flat against Alecto’s sternum, high up, fingers touching her throat. And then we pause. For a moment, we’re tempted to make a quip. To get in the last word.

But you know what? He’s not fucking worth it. Instead, we look Alecto in the eye.

“We pray that you may find peace.”

We draw our hand down the meridian of Alecto’s body, straight through the bonds of thanergy wrapped around her torso. The gold dissolves them to nothing, and one by one, the chains break.

The supernova in her chest explodes. The spirits of the dead burst from her body by the thousands. They erupt from her chest in a tidal wave of thanergy, millions of ghostly blue faces filling the air.

And every single one of them goes straight for the Emperor.

They grab at him, countless hands grasping and pulling, all at the same time. His eyes go wide. All his weapons of magic and death dissolve to nothing, abandoned, useless against the onslaught. He struggles against their grip, trying to do something, anything, but he can do nothing. They pour from Alecto’s body like fire and fury, streaming toward him in an unstoppable torrent.

“No!” he shouts as more and more of them descend upon him, “No, stop, you have to stop!”

Their presence whirls through the air like a hurricane, like a physical wind buffeting our bodies. We brace ourself against it, anchor ourself in place as best we can in the roaring gale. He thrashes desperately back and forth, but there are too many of them, they overwhelm him with the sheer volume of their fury. A myriad of anger and resentment is unleashed upon him all at once. His existence cracks and distorts as they tear chunks out of his soul. His voice warps like a computer glitch.

“Please, I’m doing this for you!” They pay no heed to his desperate pleading. His skin flays from his bones. His blood turns to vapor. They pull him in every direction at once. He screams, “All of this was for you!”

We watch in horror and awe as God is ripped apart by ten billion angry ghosts.

His last broken, distorted scream reverberates through the air like a punctuation mark. He is shredded to nothingness. Not a single trace of him remains. After ten thousand years, John Gaius, the Emperor of the Nine Houses, is dead.

Alecto’s eyes abruptly switch color, from gold to lightless black. The torrent slows. The horde of ghosts disperses as they return to the River, where they belong. Finally, the last of them streams from her chest, and the supernova is gone. The darkness that fills her eyes — that filled his eyes as long as we knew him — fades away. It clouds, the whites of her eyes becoming visible again, before diluting to nothing. Behind the eclipse, her true eyes are a warm, friendly brown, perfectly lovely, and perfectly ordinary. They are etched with a relief beyond anything we can possibly comprehend. It remains there as the life leaves them, and Alecto’s body collapses into our arms.

It is done.

We lay Alecto’s body gently upon the grass. In death she finally looks peaceful. For a moment we consider bringing her body with us, trying to honor her in some way. But no. There will be no funeral for her, no grave. We think she’s had quite enough of tombs.

The bombardment has stopped, the city razed to the ground. The roar of fire is a low, white noise that fades into the background. The droning buzz of the Heralds almost drowns it out. They darken the sky all around the city now. Great plumes of smoke darken it even further. The other side of the lake is a vision of hell, of fire and monsters and destruction. But the palace remains untouched, a bubble surrounded by a shield of azure water. The eye of the storm.

A great, tremulous rumble shakes the world, and gravity wavers. The blue and gold energy that surrounds us squirms. Something changes in the air. A sharpening. A breath of anticipation and dread. Though it is far enough away that the sight of it won’t reach us for minutes, we know exactly what’s happening. After a moment of fluttering indecision, gravity makes up its mind.

The entire world shudders, and millions of miles away, the sun goes out.

In the center of the Empire, the cradle of humanity, Dominicus dies with its god. The world buckles and groans as gravity swells. The blue glow of thanergy that infuses everything around us warps and changes. The golden threads of thalergy thrash and sever as the balance of energy in the system goes absolutely haywire.

It’s time to fucking go.

We run for the stairs, and up to the next terrace. We pick out the ship that looks the fastest — a gorgeously sleek number decorated in true Seventh House style, lavish and handsome and classy. It’s a simply matter of channeling thalergy to undo the wards protecting the door, then thanergy to break the physical lock. We fling the door open and get in, jumping into the pilot’s chair in Gideon’s body.

It’s some kind of personal transport for somebody who must be fabulously wealthy. The cockpit is tiny and cramped, but the passenger area is plush and roomy, with two comfortable benches along the sides, and big plex windows on each wall. Two railings run along the ceiling, to provide something to hold on to for those who want to stand. We strap ourself in and start the engines; they hum to life with a smooth purr. It joins in with the low rumble of the earth beneath us, the planet itself quaking and shuddering. No time to fuck around.

Buckle up, babe, this might be rough.

We slam the throttle. Before we can even pull the steering up we rocket past the edge of the terrace and into open air. The drop into the lake hangs below us. We pull up and away from the surface. The great cloud of Heralds covers almost the entire city now, converging toward the center, blocking out the sky.

We push the ship as hard as it will go, flying straight up. The cloud closes, surrounding the city like a bubble. We slam through the thinnest layer of them in the center, splattering half a dozen Herald bodies against the hull. The flaming ruins disappear beneath the swarm behind us. Next comes the great cloud of smoke that fills the air. We plunge into it, and the visibility outside falls to nothing for just a moment before we punch through the other side.

The huge Blood of Eden battleships are still above the planet, but one by one they blink out of sight, grabbing onto the long-distance stele and warping away from the calamity. At least we won’t have to worry about the blockade. If we were a Lyctor we could just dive into the River, but we’re not a Lyctor. Our magic isn’t the same. There’s no guarantee it would work, no way of knowing whether we can survive it.

Fire streaks across the hull of our ship as we scream through the upper atmosphere and into the vaccuum. The moment we’re clear, we tap at the targeting display, grab the other end of the stele, and flick the switch.

Space stretches and blurs, and the Seventh House disappears in an instant as we latch onto the pathway and blaze forward into the tunnel. We don’t have long, all we can do is hope that we’ll be able to put enough distance behind us.

The view outside the front window means nothing anymore now that we’re in the pathway, but the ship can pick up the system on its sensors, and we can see it displayed on the screen. Each well of gravity is shown like a gradient circle, and the one where Dominicus used to be is growing. It reaches further and further out, the color growing darker and darker, like a spreading puddle. The little dots of each of the planets fall towards it, slowly at first, but picking up speed. We keep our eye on the Seventh. It falls further and further towards the singularity. Its gravity used to be a sphere, but it stretches as the planet is pulled apart.

Only a few more seconds, come on, come on.

The Seventh House falls into the black hole, and the stele goes with it. The pathway breaks. We’re spat out, thrown violently through space, tumbling wildly. We wrestle with the controls. Space blurs past around us in a dizzying starlight spiral.

We fight to even ourself out and get oriented, pushing and pulling at the controls until we’re able to align ourself, pointed directly away from the singularity. We throw the regular engines back into action.

The Blood of Eden fleet lies before us, thrown into jumbled disarray. Two of the battleships are still spinning completely out of control. They slam into one another, shattering to pieces in a frightful explosion of metal. The debris flies off in every direction. No time to divert our course, to go around. We have to go through it.

The great sea of scrap metal fills the sky before us. We duck and weave our way around them with sharp, precise jerks of the steering, keeping our speed up as we twirl around them like a feather in the breeze. The great flagship of Blood of Eden, where the Commander had taken us hostage, rockets forward alongside us. The behemoth vessel does not bother with dodging, it simply plows straight through the debris cloud like a juggernaut.

It isn’t enough. Our speed steadily decreases, no matter how hard we push it. The gravity well is utterly enormous now. It is catching up with us. The engines scream with effort, but this is too much for them to fight. Slower, slower, slower. We’re not moving forward at all anymore. We hang suspended in space, the flagship similarly arrested beside us.

And then we begin to fall backward. The black hole pulls us in, inexorably. We fall faster, faster, the Commander’s flagship pulled along with us.

We’re too close. Nothing else for it.

We plunge into the River. The front of the ship slams into the surface of the water. The deathgrip of gravity releases as we submerge into the realm of unreality. Water pours into the ship, sprays through the edges of the plex window as if it wasn’t actually airtight.

A spray of water hits our skin, and it burns like acid. We cry out and flinch away from it, unbuckling out seatbelt and climbing out of the pilot’s chair to get out of the way.

We’re not immune anymore.

The water pools on the floor of the ship. It rises, slowly, steadily. We rejoin our other body in the passenger area. We jump up onto the benches along the walls of the ship, Gideon’s body on one side, Harrow’s body on the other, with the water filling the space in between us. We look at ourself, and the fear in our eyes is clear. We’re not going to make it.

The water rises. It pours over the top of the benches, burns at our feet, then our shins. We pull ourself up, standing on the narrow ledge of the window to hold ourself a little higher, escape the pain a little longer, but it’s futile. It creeps higher, higher. It reaches up again. We whine desperately at the pain, and screw our eyes shut. Is this really it? After everything, is this honestly how we’re going to die?

Fuck, babe, we’re sorry. We deserve more than this. We deserve better than this. It’s not fair, but there’s nothing we can do.

The water reaches our knees. The pain is unbearable, but it seems… lessened? It’s agony, to be certain, but it’s less intense than it was at first. Maybe we’re imagining it, maybe we’re just adjusting, but…

We open our eyes. The water bubbles higher and higher, but the color is different. The dark, rusty red is paler. Thinner, almost. It no longer looks totally solid, it looks cloudy, like dye dispersing in water. And the clouds are moving, flowing from the front of the ship to the back. We follow it, and look out the back window.

In the distance, visible only as a darkened shape in the red cloud, is the soul of one of the Resurrection Beasts. It appears as a gargantuan mass of writhing tentacles, silhouetted in the fog.

And it is being pulled into the singularity. The soul thrashes and fights, but ultimately it is dragged along with its body toward the event horizon. The clouds of red flow along with it, though we can’t say whether they are following the Beast or simply being pulled into the black hole. The fetid pollution plaguing the waters of the afterlife flows back to its source, blood returning to the cut as the wound in reality is violently cauterized.

But the water isn’t clear yet. It eats away at us like bubbling acid. It’s almost to our waist. We have to hold out, we have to survive long enough for the corruption to clear. Along the ceiling of the passenger area is a railing — a bar for people to hold onto so they can steady themself if they need to stand while the ship moves.

We grab it, and let our feet fall from the window ledge as we curl our body up and pull ourself out of the water. We hold ourself there, hanging in the air, close to the ceiling, above the surface. With Gideon’s body it’s easy — our long arms easily reach it. Not so much in Harrow’s body. We stretch as far as we can, but it’s too far.

We leap for it, our body half-submerged. We snatch at the bar, but the resistance of the water slows us down too much. We miss. We’re falling, falling into the death that waits below.

We grab our hand. We hold onto the bar with only one arm in Gideon’s body, reaching out with the other and grabbing Harrow’s hand just before we plunge into the deadly water. We grit our teeth and groan with the effort as we pull ourself up. We grab onto the bar with Harrow’s body and pull ourself up. We swing back and forth and use our momentum to bring our legs up and loop them around the bar, holding ourself nearly parallel to the ceiling, as high up as we can manage.

We’ve bought ourself a little time, as much time as we can possibly hope for. Now there’s nothing we can do but pray that it will be long enough. We’re clutching the bar too closely to turn and see what’s beneath us, to see if the color has changed.

The water rushes higher, higher, we can hear it getting closer. Our muscles burn with exertion — god, Harrow’s body is not meant for this. Our core trembles. The water is almost upon us now. We squeeze our eyes shut, and it finally overtakes us.

Agony.

Pure, blinding agony.

It burns — not as intensely as before, but it still burns. We scream, unleashing a torrent of bubbles into the water.

Please, please, we just need to hold out a little longer.

Just a little longer.

Our grip fails, and we sink down into the water. The burning lessens, lessens, but we can’t hold on.

We can’t, we can’t…

Our vision blurs, then goes dark.

 


 

 

We gasp for air. Water floods our lungs. We cough violently, hacking and choking at the phantom sensation of drowning. Our eyes snap open.

Clear. The water is clear.

We’re floating, suspended, in the middle of the passenger area of the transport. It takes our vision a minute to fully come back, for the blurriness to fade. We turn with both of our bodies to look at the other.

The pain is gone.

Relief flood our bodies. We take a deep, steadying breath.

We made it.

Once the instinctive panic fades and our hearts stop racing, we take a minute to just float. We hang suspended in the water, and simply let ourself be. We close our eyes, and sigh deeply.

We’re okay, beloved. We’re going to be okay.

Once we decide we’re satisfied, we open our eyes, and turn to look out the windows.

The dark, stagnant mire is gone. The River is a clear, crystalline blue; we can see for miles, endless water in all directions. It is dappled with light, like sunbeams near the surface of the ocean, though there is no source for it.

Far in the distance, we see the last remnants of the bloody cloud as it is sucked toward the singularity. The monstrous souls of the last two Resurrection Beasts struggle futilely against the pull of the supermassive black hole. It is all dragged toward that final point, and then, in an instant, it is gone.

The Resurrection Beasts are dead.

The River is cleansed.

The Nine Houses are no more.

The water is so clear that we can see all the way to the bottom; there are no dark depths here, no murky abyss waiting down below. Instead there is an endless expanse of sand. It is broken up by a regular pattern of dunes — it takes us a moment to realize that those are the stoma, lying dormant beneath the sand, their monstrous maws closed with no prey to devour.

It is breathtakingly beautiful.

We relish the sensation of seeing two views at once, of feeling two sets of emotions at the same time. Outside the ship is the afterlife, restored to its full beauty, and we drink it in with two sets of starlight eyes.

There are no rotting corpses around us anymore. The souls of the dead drift peacefully through the waters, whole and unmarred. They all swim unhurriedly in the same direction. We follow their movement, and as we turn to find out where their path leads, we see it.

The other side. The place where all souls go to rest, where all souls are supposed to go to rest, finally revealed again after ten thousand years hidden in the murk. The dead all swim toward that distant shore.

There is a part of us that wants to go there. There is a part of us — and if we’re honest, that part is entirely Harrow — that wants to find out what lies on the other side. It itches at our brain, telling us to go, to discover.

But we don’t. For that is not our destination. Not today. The dead are at peace, and the living are not. They will need our help.

We guide the ship away, and carve gently through the water as we steer toward our goal.

 


 

 

The survivors of the Nine Houses float in deep space, frightened and adrift. It doesn’t take us long to find them. Basically everyone had routed through the Third House stele during the evacuation, and when it broke they were all spit out in the same region of space. By the time we emerge they’ve already begun to regroup, the scattered ships clustering together as everybody tries to figure out what the hell they’re going to do. It’s a chaotic, disorganized swarm.

The Sixth House is here, an absolute colossus amongst the normal ships. It’s the only thing bigger than the Erebos. Which is technically called the Seat of the Emperor now, but… yeah. We’re going to go ahead and keep calling it the Erebos. There’s no sign of the Seventh’s fleet here; they left through their own stele rather than the Third’s, so they must have been spat out in a different region of space.

We are sitting the pilot’s chair in Gideon’s body, focused, planning a course of action, arrange to board the Erebos and join the meeting that will surely be coming together. But we are also in Harrow’s body in the passenger area, completely overwhelmed, staring at the fractured remnants of an entire civilization.

This is all that’s left. We know that a sizable majority of the population got out in time, but looking at it like this, it looks like so few.

How many? How many lost? How many dead? The Empire had to end, the Beasts had to be destroyed, but god, at what cost?

We have the sudden urge to cry, but it only strikes us in Harrow’s body. In Gideon’s body we are still focused, our attention directed elsewhere. We are simultaneously aware of our grief and unaware of it, and the contrast is off-putting. It feels intensely strange, to the point of being disorienting, even frightening. The distress the feeling causes only makes the disconnect more intense, more noticeable. We are staring at a bereaved people and we are staring at the screen in front of us and we are overwhelmed and we are focused and we are trying to grapple with the immensity of what has been lost and we are trying to figure out how to contact the Erebos and we don’t know how to do this, we don’t know how to handle this, we don’t, we don’t—

We burst into tears. Our hands grip at our arms, folded across our chest. Great, heaving sobs wrack Harrow’s body. We shake from the intensity of it.

We finally register what’s going on and leap to Gideon’s feet, running back to the passenger area, coming to our own side. We gently prize Harrow’s hands from our arms, our vice grip coming undone with gentle coaxing, and loop Gideon’s hands around the back of Harrow’s neck. We press our foreheads together. We sob freely in Harrow’s body, and some of it spills over to Gideon’s, a few stray tears spilling down our cheeks. We try to remain calm, try to be an anchor for ourself. We wrap Harrow’s arms around Gideon’s body in a painfully intense embrace.

It’s all so terribly confusing. We don’t know how to be us yet. Some of it feels as natural as breathing, but some of it is strange and overwhelming. We wish that Gideon was here, we wish that Harrow was here. It feels stupid, but we want to be touched. We want that reassurance. And they can’t do that for us, because they’re not here. They’re gone. It’s just us.

But that doesn’t mean we’re alone. We sit down on the plush, padded bench in Gideon’s body, and pull Harrow’s body down into our lap. We want to be comforted. We want to be held and told that it’s going to be alright. Nobody has ever done that for us, not once in our fucking life, and goddammit, if we have to do it ourself we will.

“It’s alright, beloved,” we say, “we have you.”

We hold ourself through the tears. It doesn’t feel like talking to ourself, like holding ourself. It feels like hearing the murmured affections of a lover, like hearing the steady reassurances of a lifelong friend.

We might be overwhelmed, we might be confused, and frightened, and sad, but we are not alone. And we never will be again.

We remain like that for a long time, Harrow’s body softly shaking in our lap, in our arms. We don’t try to hold it back. There’s nobody to hide from, nobody here but us, and truth be told, this has been a long time coming. We pet our hand along our spine soothingly.

Eventually, the tears slow. Something within us feels achingly, satisfyingly empty, a total purge that leaves us relieved to feel hollow. We hold one hand on the nape of our neck, a reassuring, grounding touch. We know what we need. There’s no need to say it aloud, for we are of one mind, but we do anyway, relishing the feeling of companionship.

“Touch us?” It’s quiet, shy, as if there was a possibility we would refuse ourself.

Our touch stays light and innocent at first. We run our hands along Harrow’s body, without any heated intent. We just explore, touching every part of ourself lovingly, gently, because Harrow might have claimed that she wasn’t capable of being soft, but we are not Harrow anymore, and we certainly are. Maybe it’s the Gideon in us.

Each touch grows heavier — not rough, but hard, like a massage. Our fingers dig into our muscles, pressing, dragging, and we sigh, pressing Harrow’s tear-stained cheeks to Gideon’s shoulder. We turn and press a kiss to the side of our head, feeling the prickly sensation of our shaved hair beneath our lips. We dig our thumbs into our inner thighs, and a tiny, muffled noise escapes us. Steadily, rhythmically, we brush our hands up and down our thighs, pressing with our thumbs each time, going higher and higher up with every pass. We squirm, almost panting. Finally, we bring one hand all the way up and cup our sex through our pants. Our other hand grips our hip, and encourages us to rock gently back and forth.

It’s all slow rhythms and hard pressure, not chasing an orgasm, just luxuriating in the feel of being pressed together, the steady pleasure and intimacy. Everything stays above our clothes — we’re pretty damn filthy, and we might have crazy healing magic now, but we’re also not stupid. The hand on our hip comes up to clutch the back of our head, holding it against our shoulder. Our lips stayed pressed to the side of our head, murmuring endearments and encouragement into our ear.

Just like that, beloved.

Keep going.

We’re doing so well.

Good girl.

Ride our fingers.

We’re exquisite.

Slowly, unhurriedly, we build ourself up until we come, toe-curling pleasure pulsing through us. Our teeth sink into Gideon’s shoulder as we come — a thoughtless, instinctive action that draws a low, breathy moan from our lips. Everything is spilling through us and between us. We feel the pleasure in Harrow’s body, but we also feel it in Gideon’s body. It’s like both of us are coming at the same time, pressed together until it’s unclear where one body ends and the other begins, Harrowhark-and-Gideon, Gideon-and-Harrowhark at last, blurred together in a single crescendo of warmth and pleasure and love.

The climax doesn’t come as a single peak; it is a long, slow wave, overcoming us, building to its crest, then gradually tapering off. We’re left breathing heavy and slow, pressing our bodies together as if to make them follow suit with our souls.

We stay like that for a long time. Time blurs, perhaps five minutes going by, perhaps twenty, we cannot be sure. All we know is that it is quiet, and it is warm, and we are together.

A noise comes from the computer in the cockpit.

Goddammit, somebody is hailing us.

We sigh. For a moment we could pretend the universe was nothing but us. It’s so tempting to stay like this, to stay in our arms. But we won’t.

We clamber reluctantly out of our lap, and we walk into the cockpit in Harrow’s body, sitting down in the pilot’s chair as we lean against the doorway, looking over our shoulder. We press the button to receive them.

“This is Sergeant Amos Quell, hailing from the Seat of the Emperor. We’re trying to take a census of who is left. To whom am I speaking?”

“This is Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the—“ we pause. Our parents are gone now. We know Aiglamene will have left their bodies behind on the Ninth. There is no reason to pretend anymore. “Reverend Mother of the Ninth House.”

There is a pause. “I’m sorry for your loss, Reverend Mother.”

“There are only two of us here — Harrowhark, and Gideon Nav, our cavalier primary.”

If our weird phrasing throws him off, he doesn’t show it. “We’d like for you to come aboard, if you will. We’re attempting to gather the heads of all the Houses, to discuss… well, everything. Your Seneschal is already here; she wasn’t sure if you had made it or not. I can secure a docking bay for you.”

“We will await your word.”

The communications channel cuts out. We sigh. Aiglamene made it. The Ninth made it. We can take comfort in that, at least. We suspect that there will be little comfort once we exit our little bubble and rejoin the rest of the survivors. That’s fine. We’re ready to face it. It feels like something has been purged from within us, leaving us satisfyingly empty, like the pleasant ache after a good workout. We’re ready to face the world again.

It’s time to pick up the pieces.

 


 

 

The scene on the Erebos is total chaos. The heads of all the Houses — plus all sorts of nobles, advisors, attendants, and retainers — are all packed into the chamber. The room was built to be a meeting place for the admirals, and isn’t equipped to handle this many people.

The central table isn’t big enough to fit everyone, so people are spread all throughout the room, broken into separate, overlapping conversations. Many of them are injured, and the medics bustling to and fro certainly don’t help the crowded feeling. There’s a huge bank of displays mounted on one of the walls, which are being used to patch in the Seventh House, so they can participate in the discussion.

The rest of the walls are decorated with memorials to great generals and heroes of the past. Their skulls line the perimeter of the room, each of them mounted above their own stately plaque and surrounded by wreaths of sad, wilted flowers. The ceiling is tall and vaulted, with great plex skylights that make it look like a planetarium.

We survey the crowd, catching snippets of conversations — arguments, really — as they happen.

“—already told you, we will not allow the Ninth to become an appendix to the Second House,” comes Aiglamene’s growling voice.

“That’s not at all what I’m suggesting,” Judith Deuteros says, adjusting her grip on a cane made of bone, “I’m simply saying that with the resources of the Cohort at our disposal, the Second House is best equipped to offer aid and—“

Aiglamene looks like she’s about to skin her alive with nothing but her eyeballs. She holds herself as tall as she’s able on her bad leg, somehow glowering down at the poor woman despite being shorter than her. Judith looks like she’d rather be anywhere else. Good to know the Ninth can still instill at least some fear in the hearts of the other Houses.

The Tridentarius twins are at the main table, facing a group of Cohort admirals on the other side. Ianthe looks like she hasn’t slept for a week, with dark bags beneath her eyes, her body folded in on itself to make her look even skinnier and less substantial than normal.

The glowing thanergy that pervades her body is… wait, hold on, why can we see thanergy within her? She’s a Lyctor, we shouldn’t be able to do that. But we can see it clear as day. Did she… lose her necromancy? Is that why she looks like she’s about to pass out? She’s resting her weight on Coronabeth, who is animated and fiery, doing most of the talking for the two of them.

“This is pointless,” one of the admirals says, “we need to have this discussion with the King.”

“The King refused to leave until all of his subjects were safe,” Ianthe says, her voice almost as hoarse as it was after she fought the Beast, “I’m afraid that he didn’t make it, in the end. That leaves the two of us as the heads of the Third.”

Ah, so they killed him then. Good to know. He was a huge piece of shit, so we don’t really blame them, but what the fuck happened while they were on the Third?

Juno is visible on the other side of the crowd — she’s pretty impossible to miss, given how comically tall she is — arguing with a group of people we can’t quite make out. There’s no sign of Warden beside her, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they needed more time to heal before anything like this.

There are dozens of snippets of conversation going back and forth, all of it angry, and growing angrier by the second.

“—the Eighth House does not have the authority to—“

“—we refuse to let the Cohort undermine the sovereignty of the—“

“—well then the Seventh can damn well fend for themselves!”

“—no we will not let this fall to a vote, the Ninth and the Sixth’s populations are a tenth the size of ours, we will not let a tiny minority dictate—“

This is going to be a disaster. We can see it now, unfolding before our very eyes. The larger Houses will bully the smaller Houses until they have no say in their future. If we had to guess, we’d wager the Second will call upon their authority over the Cohort, and use the chaos as justification to take command. No matter what happens, it’s going to be ugly.

These people are desperate and frightened, and that is a dangerous combination. They have no guidance. They have no leader. They have no home.

Because of what we did. We chose to accept Alecto’s deal. We chose to try and flee, rather than turn her over to the Emperor. We knew it was risky, but we did it anyway. We took these people’s lives into our hands. That was our decision, and that makes this our responsibility.

We know what we need to do. Maybe it’s the Harrow in us, but we recognize a lost flock when we see one.

We step forward into the horde of people. The cacophonous din envelops us. We stand in the middle of the crowd, side by side, surrounded by people. We raise two hands — one as Gideon, one as Harrow — and stretch them to the sky above us, palms facing the ceiling so that the tips of Harrow’s fingers and Gideon’s fingers almost touch one another. We listen to the devolving arguments.

“—don’t you dare suggest that—“

“—you can’t possibly think—“

“—we will not stand for—“

We close our hands into fists, and every strand of thalergy in the room pulls taut.

Light — real light — erupts from our fists, casting beams of glowing gold upon the crowd like a newborn star. The wreaths of flowers erupt with growth, unfurling to the floor in a waterfall of vines and blooming colors. Everybody’s injuries all heal up at once.

Broken bones snap back into place.

Gashes close.

Bruises fade away.

All the exhausted faces that surround us brighten with renewed energy. It’s like a shock of fresh air flooding into the lungs of every single person in the room.

We release our power, and the light disappears. The sea of people instinctively parts around us, backing away to make a circle of open space.

We look like death. Gideon’s body is especially bad; our leather jacket is beat to shit, and we’re completely covered in soil and ash. Our sunglasses are cracked. We’re holding our absolutely massive sword in our other hand, resting its weight on our shoulder. Its length is coated in blood. So are our hands. Our face is covered in skull paint that was deliberately ugly even before it got smudged beyond recognition. We look like we’ve emerged from the bowels of hell.

We lower our hands.

“We are the daughter of God,” we say plainly. We do not raise our voice. We do not need to. The crowd has fallen to silence. “We are the heir to the House of the First. By imperial law, command of the Nine Houses falls to us.”

There is not a trace of doubt in the sea of awestruck faces. Nobody dares interrupt. The entire room breathlessly awaits our words.

“The admirals and the leaders of each House may stay. Everybody else, leave.”

A moment of silence. For a second, we think somebody might challenge us. But then everybody begins to shuffle out of the room. Some of them whisper amongst themselves as they go, but nobody speaks outright. Eventually the last of them leaves, and closes the door behind them.

We survey those who remain. The Tridentarius twins. The twelve Cohort admirals, including Judith Deuteros; we hadn’t realized she’d been promoted. The Grand Judge of the Eighth, looking like they’re about to compulsively kneel and pledge their undying devotion. The Seventh, participating remotely. The Commander of the Fourth and the King and Queen of the Fifth. Aiglamene, who we guess is probably unsure what the status of the Ninth’s leadership is, given our new form. The Sixth has a larger presence than the other Houses, since they’re ruled by a council, not a single monarch. We don’t recognize most of them, but Juno is there, standing beside a person in a wheelchair who… wait…

“Warden?”

Their skin is warped and gnarled, as if it’s melting off their body. They’re completely bald. The bottom half of both their legs is missing. One of their eyes is milky and sightless. Their wheelchair must be borrowed, because it’s not the right size for them at all. They smile at us, but they do not speak. Instead, they use sign language.

“Good to see you again, Ninth.”

“We — shit, we’re glad you’re alright, Warden.”

“Likewise.”

We bite our lip. We want to talk to them, to have a proper conversation, but there are more pressing matters at hand. We turn to the assembled crowd.

“Well. Lot to talk about, hmm?”

The Grand Judge drops to one knee and bows their head. “You have the loyalty of the Eighth House, Lord. As we once offered our fealty to the man who became god, we offer it now to the woman who has done the same.”

“Oh, no, that’s really not—“ we attempt to dissuade them.

“Long live the Empress.”

“Don’t call us that.” We abruptly contradict them. “That is done with. No more Gods or Emperors; we have no intention of dragging these Houses along for another myriad. The Empire is no more. It’s time to let it die.”

A murmur sweeps through the crowd. They speak in hushed, frantic whispers. They look like they’re drawing straws to decide who has to be the one to speak up.

“Where will we go?” Coronabeth asks at length. “We have no home.”

“We sue for peace. We don’t need to rebuild. We will find a new home for us, for our people, amongst the rest of humanity.”

“So that’s it, then?” the Commander of the Fourth asks quietly, “You are the inheritor of the Nine Houses, and you’re simply going to let them die? You’re going to abandon your people?”

We shake our head vehemently.

“We’re not abandoning shit. We’re not sticking around forever, but we’re not leaving you behind, either. When all our people have found homes, when all our people are safe, only then will we leave you to your new lives. We will guide you through the sunset of the Empire.” Our lips twitch into a small smile. “We will be your Sunset Queen.”

And the Grand Judge is back on their knees again.

“Hail, to the Sunset Queen.”

We pinch the bridge of our nose and sigh wearily. Ianthe looks like she’s about to burst out laughing. Warden is better at hiding it, but we can tell that they’re not far behind. Ianthe fixes us with a shit-eating grin. She does not bow, but inclines her head. “Hail, to the Sunset Queen.”

Coronabeth echoes her. Then the Second follows suit, and the Fourth, and the Fifth, and on and on, until all of them have said the words. As the last of them finishes, we nod in acknowledgment.

“There’s a lot to do,” we say. All of them look at us expectantly. We look down at our utterly filthy bodies. We look back up at the assembled crowd. “But first, we’re going to need someone to point us to a goddamn sonic.”

 


 

 

It goes on for hours. Dear lord, it goes on for hours. Of course it does, an entire solar system ’s worth of people were just rendered homeless at the same time. There’s so much to do, so much to plan, so much goddamn, insufferable bickering.

The basic plan is not that complicated, in the end. The admirals were rightly concerned that the rest of humanity might not be too keen on taking us in, given, you know, the whole ‘millenia of brutal, unrelenting war’ thing. But necromancy is a hell of a bargaining chip. Dominicus is dead, and new necromancers cannot be born outside its light; the survivors of the Nine Houses are the last generation of necromancers that will ever live. There’s a lot that can be done with that power, and we reckon that people will want to take advantage of it while they still can.

But just because the basics are uncomplicated, that doesn’t mean that the details are. The political infighting is insufferable. Everyone is tired and stressed, and it makes for a volatile dynamic. We have to order the Fourth and the Fifth to walk away and cool off after they get into an outright shouting match. Juno snaps at the whole group and berates them for talking over Warden, whose injuries have left them fully mute. Ianthe pisses Aiglamene off so badly that the admirals have to physically restrain her. Honestly, we kind of wish they wouldn’t — we could really use some entertainment.

The planning and arguing goes on endlessly, but eventually, people start to flag. Everyone has had a long, stressful day. Many of them were injured, and even if we healed them, it still took something out of them. At a certain point, we have to make it clear that people can go and get some sleep if they need to. Everyone is reluctant at first, but one by one, they start to trickle out.

The group is whittled down until it’s just us, Aiglamene, the Tridentarius twins, the Commander of the Fourth, Warden, and one of the other members of the Council of Six whose name we cannot remember for the life of us. Everybody is slumped in their chairs in increasingly tenuous states of uprightness. Papers and tablets lie scattered all over the table. Coronabeth picks idly at a bowl of salad — the admirals arranged for the cafeteria staff to bring food over after things started running long.

“I think I’m going to call it for the night.” Warden signs.

“Yeah, of course, get some rest. You’ve had a hell of a day — even more than most of us.” They start picking up their things, and the Commander of the Fourth and whatshisface from the Sixth follow suit. We haven’t been able to properly talk to them, it’s been so frustrating, but we’re certainly not going to hold them back now. Once they have everything together, they turn their chair to leave.

“We’ll talk more tomorrow. Goodnight…” their hands flutter indecisively for a moment. “Hmm. I’m guessing that calling you Gideon or Harrow wouldn’t be accurate anymore, would it?”

“No, we don’t think so.”

“What should I call you?”

“We’re still working on that, to be honest.”

“Well you’re going to want to figure that out pronto,” Warden signs with a deadpan expression on their face, “because if you don’t, I’m going to start nicknaming you, and while that will be very fun for me, I doubt it will be for you.”

We give them a Look. They Look right back.

“Just think about it, Griddlehark.”

We blink.

“Yes, honestly Navegesimus,” Ianthe smirks, “you really should think these things through.”

“Stop that.”

“What, are we bothering you, Hav?” Warden signs.

“We—“

“Are you bothered, Griddow?” Ianthe asks with faux concern.

“That’s—“

“Don’t get so flustered, Narrowhark.”

“Yes, really, don’t get so—“

“One more word and we will rip your radii from your bodies and use them to play a sick drumbeat on your exposed skulls.”

We stare them down, eyes narrowed. Warden meets our gaze, completely expressionless. Our little staring match is interrupted when Coronabeth bounces in her seat and says,

“Ooh, ooh, I’ve got one!” she pauses for dramatic effect. “Nark.”

We point a finger at her. “We’ll let it go this once, but only because you’re nice.”

Warden’s shoulders shake with silent laughter.

“Goodnight, Ninth.” They look to Coronabeth. “Goodnight, Princess.”

“That’s Queen to you,” Coronabeth corrects, though there’s no heat to it.

They head out the door, and we realize that the Fourth Commander and the Sixth councilor left while we weren’t paying attention. Aiglamene is still here, staring at the Third duo with narrowed eyes, like she’s debating whether it’s worthwhile to slap them for their disrespect. She stumps over to us. All this activity must be making her leg act up, because she’s limping more than usual.

“Finally worn out, captain?” we ask. That’s not technically her title anymore, but old habits die hard.

“Not by half, my lady.”

“You really should get her to replace that creaky old thing,” Ianthe says. She’s staring right at Aiglamene’s false leg. She looks Aiglamene in the eye and holds up her skeletal arm, turning it back and forth as if to show it off. “I can personally attest to the quality of her work. Couldn’t recommend it higher, really. Rave reviews.”

“I get the impression that not enough people have told you to shut up over the course of your life.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“No, I really wouldn’t be.”

We fight to contain a smile. “She’s not wrong, you know. We could replace it. It would probably give you less trouble if we did.”

“I’ll be fine.”

Ianthe shrugs. “Suit yourself.”

Aiglamene moves to leave, but we put a hand on her shoulder to stop her. We lean in closer, and speak low enough that the twins won’t hear us.

“Thank you, captain.”

Even though we spoke to her using Harrow’s body, Harrow’s body is not the one she responds to. She looks us right in Gideon’s eye.

“Of course, my lady.”

She leaves, and suddenly, it’s just us and the twins. Coronabeth picks at her salad some more. We stare at Ianthe. She busies herself collecting papers from the table. She’s been speaking to us pretty normally the whole night — which is to say, she’s been a snide, sarcastic little shit — but despite that, she has not looked us in the eye even once.

“You planning to tell us what the hell happened to your necromancy?”

She does not lift her eyes from the table. “Hmm, well you see, we encountered the Death of the Lord directly during our daring escape, and she used her dread powers to drain us of our necromancy.”

“Both of us,” Coronabeth pipes in, with affected solemnity, “it’s tragic, really.”

“We’re beside ourselves,” Ianthe deadpans.

“It’s going to be so hard, adjusting to life without necromancy. I don’t know how I’ll manage it.”

We narrow our eyes at them. “Fine. Keep your secrets, then.”

“You seem to be content keeping your own,” Ianthe says.

We laugh. “Honestly, we didn’t mean to be so opaque about what we’ve become. Everyone seemed to catch on fairly quickly. Or perhaps they were just too polite to question us.”

She pauses. “So you really did it then?”

“Yes, we suppose we did.”

She considers this for a moment, then shrugs and tips her head to the side in a sort of ‘fair enough’ gesture. She makes a show of busying herself, gathering up the last of her stuff. Then she turns to Harrow’s body, and finally meets our eyes.

“Well, I think it’s time for us to retire for the night. But Ninth? Do feel free to stop by, in case two ever starts to feel like a lonely number.”

Coronabeth chokes on her food, and punches her sister in the shoulder.

“Are you serious, Yanthy?” she gestures at the bowl, “Right in front of my salad?”

Ianthe could have just been joking, just needling us like she always does. But no. She made certain that she could play it off like that’s what she was doing, but her offer was serious. It’s not like we have no interest — Harrow’s attraction to her plus Gideon’s general ambient horniness is… quite a combination. But when we try to think about it, all we can see is the way her face looked as she stood over our broken, bleeding body.

“No, Ianthe,” we softly say, “we’re glad you made it, but we think it might be best for you and us to keep our distance.”

Ianthe’s face falls. There’s a brief flash of anger, just for an instant, before it slips away, replaced by something that looks almost like shame. She nods, not quite meeting our gaze anymore.

“Yes, of course,” she says. Coronabeth stands up to join her sister. “Shall we, Cori?”

“Why don’t you go on ahead?” Coronabeth replies, “I’ll catch up in a moment.”

Ianthe nods, and moves to leave, but then she pauses. Her eyes flick briefly up to ours before looking away again. “Be seeing you, Gideon, Harrow.”

We nod in acknowledgment, but say nothing. She leaves, and we watch her as she goes. For a moment we just stare at the door, as if looking at an afterimage.

“I hope that doesn’t apply to me as well.” Coronabeth breaks us out of our reverie. We turn to face her in Harrow’s body, and we’re greeted by a soft smile that seems too small for her outsized personality. We place a hand on her arm.

“Of course not. Our doors are always open to a friend.”

Her smile turns absolutely beaming. She nods enthusiastically, placing one hand over ours and squeezing briefly. We return her smile, and she leaves with a skip in her step that really shouldn’t be possible for somebody who’s been awake this long.

We are alone. Or as alone as we are capable of being, anyway.

Holding up alright, beloved? It’s been a long day.

This room felt so crowded and claustrophobic earlier, but now that we’re by ourself it feels huge. The chairs aren’t perfectly pushed in, sitting askew where people left them. There are still some stray papers scattered across the table. The tangled waterfall of flowers spills down the walls. Somebody will probably have to clean that up at some point.

We sigh wearily, and walk out the door. How long has it been since we slept? Gideon got a few hours on the shuttle on the way to the Sixth, before she got captured. As for Harrow… well, she never got much sleep at the best of times. The admirals arranged for rooms to be set aside for everybody in the meeting, and that includes us. A comfortable bed and a full night’s rest awaits us.

 


 

 

But despite our exhaustion, we don’t head to our room immediately. We wander aimlessly through the halls of the Erebos. It isn’t like we’re lost in thought — frankly, we’re too tired to do much thinking at this point — but we’re certainly lost in something. After a while, we figure if we’re going to be contemplative, we might as well go somewhere that’s actually conducive to it. We head for the observation deck; we remember enjoying the view during Harrow’s stay on the Erebos.

The deck is built at the end of a long, narrow section of the ship. The back wall of it is solid, but the rest of it is a great bubble of plex, criss-crossed by metal supports that break it into triangular panels. The door leads out onto a walkway that terminates in a broad, circular platform in the middle of the bubble. Thin metal railings form the frame of it, but the floor and the sides are completely transparent. When you’re in the center, it gives you an almost completely uninterrupted view of the stars on all sides.

And sitting right there in the middle is a familiar figure.

“Mind if we join you?”

Warden nods, and gestures for us to do so. The two of us stand on either side of them, and we stare out at the expanse before us through Gideon’s eyes.

The whole sky glitters with stars in every direction. The bright band of the galaxy wraps around us. Brilliant light glows from behind the vast, patchy clouds of dust. Shades of blue and purple of orange suffuse the blackness. We see star clusters and nebulae, distant galaxies and supernovas. Even after almost a year of living on a space station we’re still not used to the beauty of the universe.

At the same time, we can’t help but stare at Warden. Their skin is twisted and gnarled. Their blind eye is clouded and empty. Before, their eyes had been heterochromatic, but now their one good eye is split evenly in half, a diagonal line cutting across their iris where it changes from brown to grey. We wonder if their hair will grow back, or if the burn goes down to the roots. Their legs aren’t quite the same length, one of them ending just above where the knee would be, the other ending about halfway up the thigh.

It really isn’t fair. We wish we could undo what was done to them, but we can’t. We can’t heal them — they’re already healed. Just because a wound has closed doesn’t mean it won’t leave a scar.

“You can stop worrying.” We look up at them at the sight of movement. Ah. We guess our staring was not as subtle as we hoped.

“We apologize. It’s just… we’re sorry.”

They shrug. “I’ll adjust.”

“Yeah.” Our lips twitch into a smile. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt. You looked like you were thinking Deep Thoughts.”

“I was thinking that Palamedes would’ve loved to see this.”

God, he would have, wouldn’t he?

We miss him, all of a sudden. We remember when we last saw him — saw him, not Warden, because even if he became them, they’re not the same person. It was in the bubble in the River. We remember him hugging Harrow, remember the naked relief on his face when he realized Gideon was still alive. He was our friend too. Perhaps it’s the tiredness catching up to us, but we find ourself feeling strangely melancholy.

“Do…” we start, then bite our lip as we try to choose our words, “Do you ever miss him?”

They sigh, and look back at the stars. Their face is lined with thought as they consider. At length, they sign, “Yes.”

“We miss him too. He was a good man.” We say. Warden doesn’t respond. We sigh. “It’s such a bitch. He should still be here. He should be here with his wife and his cavalier, and he should get to see the stars. He should get to find a new home with us, and stay up way too late reading until Cam bullies him into getting some rest. He should get to kiss the woman he loved.” We pause. “Women he loved?”

“It was complicated.”

“Either way. He deserved far better than he got.”

Warden’s hands grip the legs of their pants absently, curling thoughtlessly where they rest upon their thighs. Their lips are pursed, their gaze distant. Their fingers pluck at the fabric before they lift them to sign, “He did. I don’t… I don’t really know how to reconcile those things in my mind, if I’m being honest.”

“What do you mean?”

“If he was still here, I wouldn’t be.”

We hum in acknowledgment. We chew Harrow’s lip — a nervous habit of hers that seems to have carried over. Curiously, we only feel the urge in Harrow’s body, no matter which part of our mind is centered there.

“We think we know what you mean.”

“Yes, I suppose Gideon and Harrow didn’t exactly get a fair shake either, did they?”

“Yeah, it’s… we’re angry for them, you know? They never got to have anything good. Not once in their life were they happy.” We hesitate for a moment. “They should have been. They deserved to be.”

“They did,” Warden signs, “and if I properly understand what you are, then… I’m going to miss the two of them, too.”

Our hearts skip a beat. Fuck, we are not prepared for the emotion that sentence stirs in our chest. We open our mouth — we’re not even consciously aware of which one — but we can’t find any words. A shaky exhale is all that comes out. Our eyes stare sightlessly up at the stars.

“Yeah.” It comes out thick, almost choked. Warden places a hand on Harrow’s arm, the touch immediately reassuring. We want to look at them, to do something to indicate we appreciate the gesture, but we can’t bring ourself to meet their eyes. “Is… is it bad that we wouldn’t give this up for them? That we wouldn’t stop being us, even if it meant they got to live?”

We fight the urge to look away from them, to hide from their gaze, their judgment. But they don’t look judgmental, just thoughtful. They take a moment to consider before responding.

“You know, when Palamedes figured out the theorem — figured out how to become me — he refused to do it. He told Camilla that it wasn’t fair to her, that she should get to live her life.” They pause for a moment. “Do you know what she said?”

“What?”

They smile. “She said it would be an honor to become something new with him.”

Our lips part. We try to respond, but we don’t know what to say. They gently pat us on the arm, and with that, they bid us goodnight. They turn their chair around, and head back down the walkway. The door slides shut behind them with a gentle whoosh.

The deck falls silent.

The stars are beautiful. The whole sky sparkles, an ocean of color and glittering light. There are no lights on the observation deck, nothing that might dim the view. It is dark, and when we stare away from the back wall, it’s like we’re standing suspended in space. There is nothing — no walls, no floor, no light, no sound but the barely-there hum of the engines. The universe envelops us.

Neither of our bodies looks at the other as we speak.

“It’s been an honor, babe.” Our fingers intertwine. We hold our hand and squeeze affectionately. Though there are tears rolling down our cheeks, we’re smiling.

“It’s been an honor.”