#Pyrrha who has been scarred by the Stranger and an agent of the Spiral chipping away at G1deon's reality just by existing

[mayasaura]

sorry this is a very silly ask but. asking as a fellow fan of both TLT and TMA: what entities do you think the lyctors would serve?? personally I’m a big fan of Extinction!John, Flesh!Mercy, and Stranger!Cytherea (the not-Sasha parallels are too strong to ignore lol)

Oh boy oh boy!!!

John - I am a huge fan of John as an avatar of the Extinction. There isn't any need to fudge a damn thing. He went through an ascension almost beat for beat identical to an Avatar's, and checks every box we ever saw for the Extinction's domain.

Augustine - Belongs to the Eye. He could never stop looking for the truth, examining every variable he knew and carving away at that niggling doubt, that inconsistency, until he had ferreted out the key to John's most closely kept secret. He trades in secrets with Mercymorn, using them as leverage. If he has secrets all his own we never discover them, but I'm still comfortable aligning Augustine with the Ceaseless Watcher.

Mercymorn - I agree that Mercymorn is the Flesh. Her anatomist's specialization and the power it gives her over bodies would be qualifier enough, but the Flesh also manifests as dysmorphia, the fear of being physically changed, reshaped, and shaped from viscera. I firmly believe that if tma had ever addressed reproductive horror, it would have fallen within the domain of the Flesh. When Mercy delivered the "sample" to Wake, that was in service of the Flesh. The dripping viscera mixed with invitro paraphernalia that creep through the Canaan bubble under Wake's influence are a consequence of Mercy's plan made manifest, and could have been plucked straight from that Fear's domain.

Gideon - We know less about Gideon the First, which makes it harder. Most of the applicable Fears—the Lonely, the Stranger, the Spiral—he is decidedly more a victim than an avatar, but we saw him vividly put the fear of prey in Harrow. Gideon the First serves the Hunt.

Cytherea - She's the Stranger, you're so right! She's not-Dulcinea, of course. A stranger replacing a beloved friend, and no one can tell the difference. The Stranger also covers taxidermy, or, in Cytherea's case, the Beguiling Corpse. And for a hat trick, the Stranger also encompasses performance as the art of lying, a deception that breaks down one's sense of self. Cytherea worked that art on Gideon, apparently just for fun, chipping away at her with pretty stories and sharp compliments until Gideon was ready to die as the perfect cavalier.

I don't know if you meant just God's Duplicious Sluts, the Horribly Old People, but since I'm warmed up:

Ianthe - She's a servant of the Web, The Spinner of Schemes, The Hidden Machination. Power and control, baby. We still don't know what her game is, or how much of what she's done was intentional vs. improvisational, but one thing we do know is that she covets having control over others. She's even described once as a spider (tucked inside a shoe).

Harrow - Deeply embedded in the Buried. When Harrowhark is not crushed by responsibility while literally living in a hole in the ground, she's drowning in salt water and debt.

Thank you for asking, this was a lot of fun!