#and this is while Pyrrha still thinks it's probably Gideon in there

[mayasaura]

ntn spoilers ahead

Question!

I appreciate that you champion Harrow's schizophrenia, and I had a thought that I'd like to run by you. It's intended with full respect for anyone with the disorder, and is also related to the neuro-bio-psych elements.

When Nona, Cam, and Crown are visiting the Captain, Nona hears Varun speak through the Captain. Afterward, she references the incident and realizes that neither Cam nor Crown had heard this happen. I was confused *how* Nona-lecto had that sort of experience, but...

If Nona-lecto is in Harrow's body, is it possible that she's experiencing schizophrenia symptoms? I'm not wanting to imply that it's a full hallucination, though perhaps since Harrow's 'meat' is schizophrenic meat, there are effects. Would mental health/illness be tied to the soul? Personality certainly seems to be, and some forms of memory.

Just rolling this around in my head a bit, and have no thoughts more advanced than this. Thank you for all your theorizing and writings about the books 💀 - heedee

I've been wondering how or if Harrow's schizophrenia effected Nona since the cover first dropped, and literally speaking, the way you're wondering about? I'm still not really sure. Brain stuff is complicated, even before souls are part of the equation, and everything about Nona is already so goddamn weird. I do think Nona is thematically schizophrenic, the same way she's thematically intellectually disabled.

Like the scene you're talking about here:

I think you're absolutely onto something, seeing this as related to psychosis. Reading this scene with that framing in mind, Nona's experience is so clearly about hallucinations. She was just trying to change the subject, and fuck. Turns out no one else heard that! Camilla and Crown's reactions, too.

But to your point about neurobiology, and the relationship between soul and body, it doesn't really tell us much. Nona wasn't hallucinating, because it turned out Judith wasn't just screaming. Varun was speaking to Nona through Judith in the language of a murdered planet, a language that sounds like screaming to human ears. Like Nona's uncanny knack for human languages, that's a product of her soul, not her brain.

We get proof of that later when Nona is pretending to be Harrow, and faking being effected by the blue light. She imitates the way Judith screamed, makes her mouth make the same shapes Judith's did, and her words come out in italics; just like Judith's words that Camilla and Crown heard as screams. She calls for help, in the screaming language she'd heard from Judith, with Judith in the room to hear her, and Varun answers by attacking the planet.

To your question about whether schizophrenia would be connected to the soul or to the body in setting, I don't think there's a dichotomy there. Body and soul aren't separate things, even when they're separated.

Lyctorhood, for example. You'd think muscle memory would be a clear cut case of living in the body. It's muscles. But when Ianthe chowed down on Naberius' soul, she got his reflexes with it. His swordsmanship, his stance, his training. The soul brought the body with it. And when Harrow literally cut Gideon out of her brain, it removed Gideon from her memory even when her soul was elsewhere. She spent half that book in the River, but didn't remember Gideon until her skull construct failed and her brain began to heal. So I would say that, just like memory, it's both. Harrow's schizophrenia is tied to both her soul and body, and there's not really much point in trying to separate the two.

[cutetanuki-chan]

rereading Nona and not sure if Corona meant it about the broadcast or not

but this got me thinking about Pyrrha seeing Kiriona before Cam and Nona came, while she was still pretending to be just a corpse

probably didn't happen but👏give👏Gideon👏a👏mom👏

[liesmyth]

I'm always thinking about how G— was an engineer. A damn good one: the sole engineer of the cryo project, good enough that of all the ten billion, the FTL project chose him to inspect their work, back when the project was still a pipe dream. He was a man from an immigrant family in an underprivileged area who became arguably the world's best engineer, which is impressive in its own right, but it gets me thinking... Pre-Resurrection, John says they can't grow food on Mars (and for all John's unreliability, that's pretty believable, given that the high perchlorate concentration in Martian soil is one of the big obstacles to carrying out a sustained Mars mission), and as silly as this might sound, the engineer and scientist divide is real, and of all the nerds that John resurrected, I can't imagine it was the artist or the contract lawyer or the medical and chemistry experts that made the Mars installation viable. Gideon made a House out of it, and one that accepts recruits from across the Dominican system! "Saint of Duty" is said to fit him, evident in his loyalty and commitment to the Cohort and fighting the Resurrection Beasts, but I have to wonder, how much of that was his commitment to making shit work? I can't shake the image of a couple million people awaking to a ruined world, and someone had to get the other Houses settled, figure out spacecraft and space habitats using what little supplies they have left, and what better candidate for that than the man who canonically engineered spacecraft twice?

ANON I love this so much. You're SO right, and you put into words something about G1deon and John's shared background that I've tried to articulate for a while. In the very first chapter, John says, "It wasn’t that they didn’t have the money for a bigger team; we were simply the only ones capable of what they were asking."

This was an incredibly elite team. They were a brilliant bunch of hyperspecialised nerds. And, like, among John's squad, A- and M- and everyone else started out as colleagues — very smart people he probably met in academic circles, where being smart was kind of a prerequisite. It was their research that brought them together to begin with.

G1deon, though! He was John's friend growing up. John knew his grandparents. They spotted each other spare changes for snacks!! Then John went on to Dilworth, then to university and then overseas, and G1deon had his own (probably different) academic path, and maybe they only stayed vaguely in touch, but when it was time to look for an engineer that could help them build spaceships constructed to provide life support to the whole of humanity for centuries — and G1deon was the guy for that.

The fact that two boys from similar underprivileged backgrounds individually made huge breakthroughs in their chosen fields, and got to work together on a project that was meant to save the world... I bet at the time it felt like a miraculous coincidence. I think they thought, if they'd made it that far, that they could do anything.

(yet another layer to the tragedy of what happened etc etc. G1deon torn between John and P—. John stopping G1deon's heart)

Thank you so much for all your thoughts about the Mars space installation, also — I wonder how long there was between Mars becoming the Second House (founded by G1deon! he and Pyrrha did the bulk of the work!) and the institution of the Third House, which doesn't have a named founder and might very well have been a shared project built on the blueprint of what G1deon set up. "the man who canonically engineered spacecraft twice" — my god I love this so much. It's G1deon emo hours today

[nonas-third-tantrum]

I’m trying to figure out when exactly Pyrrha realized that Nona was Alecto. I had been thinking that it was after Kiriona woke up, because at that point Pyrrha would have understood that Nona’s eyes came from Alecto, not Gideon, but I think it may have actually been a bit earlier…

After the fight between Ianthe and Cam, when Pyrrha and Nona go off to find the corpse, Nona tells Pyrrha that she’s dying, and Pyrrha says, “‘Course you are…the soul longs for the body, Nona. Even a fucked up soul…even a soul that’s been changed forever. It takes a lot to acclimate a soul to a body it wasn’t born in, if that original body’s around for it to miss.”

Now, she could still be talking about Gideon. BUT something about the way she phrases this, with the “fucked up soul that’s been changed forever” …feel free to disagree but to me that sounds a heck of a lot like Alecto. I think it’s possible that Pyrrha has even worked out Alecto’s true nature, so when she refers to the ‘original body’ she could be talking about the planet earth itself.

Pyrrha goes on to say, “Kiddie, when you were yelling…” but she trails off and doesn’t get to finish her sentence. We know that Nona “screamed like the captain had screamed.” We also know that when the captain screams, Nona hears her speaking in varun’s voice, and it’s interesting that Pyrrha describes it as yelling, not screaming, which to mean indicates that Nona may have said something. Something that alerts Pyrrha to the fact that Nona is not who they’ve all been thinking she is.

Yes - Pyrrha does say within the next couple of pages that Gideon’s body “might be you, kiddie.” But I don’t think that necessarily means she doesn’t at least suspect that Nona is someone else. I know the rest of that scene heavily implies that Pyrrha still thinks Nona is Gideon…but I’m suspicious. I think what she wants to believe and what she knows to be true might not match up.

This post is getting away from me but I just have to add that after the roof incident, both Nona and Pyrrha know who she is, and Nona is desperate to keep herself in the dark. Pyrrha starts to call Nona “A…” but Nona stops her and begs her not to make her remember. And then Nona slips into her Alecto self, and mocks Pyrrha for playing house with her (hello, more doll references), and that must absolutely break Pyrrha’s heart, but she lets it go.

So when Pyrrha finally says her “what’s like except a love that hasn’t been invited indoors?” speech, she’s reckoning with her feelings towards both Nona and Alecto, has probably been wrestling with those feelings for a while, and it’s just. So devastating. Pyrrha loved Nona. Nona loved and was loved by Palamedes, Camilla, and Pyrrha.

But Alecto? Nona is terrified that when she realizes who she is, she won’t love anything. We know that John loved Alecto, and I think we can infer that Anastasia did too, and Alecto loved them back. But then Pyrrha tells us that she and Gideon liked Alecto, and for some reason that feels even more significant to me—maybe because there are all kinds of twisted love in these books and to like someone, while less intense, is more…mundane. There aren’t a lot of instances in these books where people just like each other, plain and simple. And I think that the love everyone has for Nona is a lot less complicated than the other types of love we’re shown. Truly a like that’s been invited indoors.

[harrowharks-iliac-crest]

Lyctorhood

Worldbuilding/Lore

<< Previous: Necromancy | Masterpost

-

You become a Lyctor by utilising the "Eightfold Word" and absorbing the soul of your cavalier. At least, that's what all the current and hopeful Lyctors thought before the revealing chapter at the end of Harrow the Ninth. There appears to be a way that you can gain Lyctoral power without killing cav or necro. Though so far, only John did this with Alecto, who is a special case. Anastasia almost managed, according to John, who admits to killing her cavalier. John is probably lying about some or all of this - maybe Anastasia got too close to doing it right, and he couldn't risk all his secrets being unveiled, so he killed Samael in order to save face. Maybe if he'd let Samael live, they would have attained perfect Lyctorhood.

I'm reasonably certain that you can also attain Lyctorhood by fusing souls in the body of the cavalier. A current example of this is Gideon the First, and Pyrrha, who mentioned Gideon "took more", and he is described as unusually buff for a necromancer. Could it be that they attained Lyctorhood "in reverse", using Pyrrha's body? Or is their body an unholy fusion of the two bodies? It's not made entirely clear - Pyrrha refers to it as "his body", which leans towards the second option, but her eyes are described as suiting the face more, which favours the first.

It's said that the cavalier part of the Lyctors have no sense of self, only fighting muscle memory. I highly doubt that this is even a little bit true. It's at least partially untrue - Pyrrha is an example, as is Gideon the Ninth. What about Naberius, then? Alfred and Cristabel? What about Alecto?

(Alecto is a special case, again, we'll get to her.)

I'm fully not ruling out the possibility that the cavs are all still in there, and while the necro parts are dipping into the river to hunt revenants and make wards against Resurrection Beasts, the cavaliers in the bodies could easily be plotting. The cavaliers could all be on Eden's side, for all we know - we don't know where Pyrrha's allegiance lies. And we Know that all Lyctors have had dealings with them at some point. (I'm still very much expecting that to include Ianthe and Harrow, btw.)

I think all those times when the souls of the necromancers were in the River, the cavaliers were busy plotting with each other in their necromancers bodies.

All that aside - in what we see as "normal" Lyctorhood, the only visible part of the cavalier inside the necromancer's body are the eyes. This leads me to believe that Lyctorhood isn't just a fusing of souls, but a fusing of brains.

Anatomically, the eyes are a part of the brain. We've seen people with golden yellow and with lilac eyes, unusual colours for eyes to be. Could be a result of genetic altering? But in Lyctors, the eyes change, and in Ianthe's case, keep fluidly changing - in Harrow and Gideon's case, and evidently in Gideon and Pyrrha's, the eyes are an indicator of which soul is "present", awake.

Narratively, souls and brains are inherently linked. Brains and minds are basically interchangeable. In order to kill something - a planet; a revenant - you have to kill its body, and you have to destroy the brain in the river. You can go into the River as a mind only, or take your body with you. Oh, speaking of...

>> Next: The River

[paradoxcase]

Chapter 26 of Nona the Ninth

A fourth skull, so another skull that corresponds to zero characters in this book that I know of. Aim/The Angel/The Messenger also isn't in this one, it's just the kids

Dark and blueless night - heh

Good on Palamedes

What is their plan, here? Camilla is going to have some conversation with Gideon/Kiriona while hopped up on a ton of pain meds? If they planned this out earlier, Nona didn't report it. And I see Pyrrha trying to get in a probably-family-related conversation with her there. Actually, I think everyone else other than Judith probably has more to talk about with Kiriona than Camilla does

At this description, I was like, oh, yeah, the Convoy was definitely 100% some BOE shit, wasn't it? Also, more of Pash's weird fear of Gideon/Kiriona's body

I really hope Judith makes it out of this book alive at this point

I'm sorry, Corona, Linkin Park has permanently ruined that line for me

So that is stuff that Honesty said when telling his story about the Convoy, and in that scene he was eating Nona's fruit, which was described as

but Nona gave away all of her fruit, just like she always does, she didn't eat any of it. Maybe she's eaten that kind of fruit before and knows what it tastes like, she seems to know how to eat it, anyway - but why would she associate the memory of tasting this fruit with this story when she didn't actually eat that fruit here? Like it sounds like she was somehow experiencing Honesty's tasting of the fruit in this scene. Maybe additional evidence of some telepathy thing?

You know, I think this ship could be a lot of fun, actually

I don't know if this means that Alecto's like, OG resurrection beast form is going to turn out to be some kind of cosmic spider, or if Nona is just missing normally being a lot taller than Harrow is, which seems likely if the body that John made for Alecto was approximately average

I need more scenes of Pash interacting with these two

Honestly, my first reaction to this was "earlier this week? That was like a month ago, wasn't it?" But no, this really is still just day five from when this book began, the whole thing has happened in less than a week, it just was like a month ago when I read that part. God damn

Does Nona know about something that could be termed "double death" at this point? I don't think she knows anyone or anything who's died twice, has she? There are some people who died once and came back (although, I'm not sure if she actually knows that Palamedes and Pyrrha died), and there's Naberius's corpse that's been wandering around lately, but I don't think she's seen anyone die twice yet, unless you count herself getting headshotted twice, but that "double death" was not final

So this is not some weird translation that Nona did, her name actually means "hot sauce" in the language that she speaks natively

I think this is probably the end of Hot Sauce and Honesty in this book. We've tied up the story behind Hot Sauce's name, the Convoy story, the map from the classroom, and Hot Sauce telling Nona she was out of the gang, so I don't think there are any remaining plot threads to resolve with them. I wasn't real invested in these characters originally, but I think I'll miss them now. I wonder what Hot Sauce would think if she ever found out that Nona wasn't just a "zombie" but actually like Varun the Eater's sister? Would she be out of the gang again?

[7sage9]

the unwanted guest thoughts

OBSESSED with the format as a stage play... makes so so much sense for ianthe and the third house

funeral part is so cool and sexy and i wonder if thats insight into how funerals actually are on the third

palamedes' mask being shattered and glued together like his skull....

ianthe slaying in all her fits... wait this reminds me of a dream i had a while ago in which ianthe duelled someone and did a ton of costume changes... i literally predicted it

ianthe being the lady and the master of the house... unprecedented levels of gender

significance of 7 coffins?? bc of 7 original lyctors??

the VOICE!!! my first instinct was dulcie but how?? so i thought maybe babs or someone else?? but i was right!!

still unsure of significance of "did your tingue ever toungle" maybe shows ianthe not being in complete control??

not the playing strip poker with harrow...

fascinated by ianthe and pal's differing views of the job of the cavalier... to die for vs protect the necromancer

"because you never stop to check the price tag" FUCK

is palamedes actually shocked by the third house assigning cavaliers as babies or is he pretending to get ianthe to share more?

oh ortus... blown up for being sad

would love to read about one of ianthe and corona's insane birthday parties

should have seen earlier how much the gideon nav description was shaped by babs, it makes so much sense

something about ianthe disqualifying her opponents as a form of winning... she never plays fair

the more we get of her the more i LOVE DULCIE!!!

DYING to know what happened to dulcinea after harrow's river bubble collapsed

"I loved you. I love you still. I would have worked out how to love you better over time." "It would have been very beautiful. Camilla would have had to cook. But I didn't just want beautiful..." "This again? From you and her both? That merely by loving you, I added to your torments?" FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK IT REALLY ALL COMES BACK TO LOVE ALWAYS...... DYING

cant stop thinking about how ntn must have been such a cruel mirror to the domestic life they dreamed of with dulcie

"You two were my best friends, and that was real. I loved real, ugly, unfinished things. Gracelessly uncompleted things. There's freedom, too, in not ever being completed." FUCK DULCIE I LOVE YOU

its a river... there are two shores... still so curious about the river

"Was I cute?" "You're perfect." AAAAAAAAAAAAA <3 <3 <3

"would you have used your sister instead?" YES!!! THAT IS THE QUESTION!!!

"Or... Coronabeth herself is part of your goal. You can't spend her, because you'd invalidate the very thing you were trying to buy." WOAGHHH i am so so curious about ianthe's plan

THE FINAL QUESTION... THE FINAL REVEAL...

the implications of souls bleeding and mingling... first of all for the OG lyctors... how much of what we were seeing was alfred and cristabel and pyrrha (though its probably slightly different for them)?? how much of pyrrha is g1deon??

and this has SO MANY implications for the gideon harrow alecto nona situation... simultaneously makes things clearer and a lot more complicated, if there doesn't have to be an actual transfer of soul bits, but they just do it naturally when together

overall SO GOOD!!! so much analysis potential of course and also just gutwrenchingly, horribly beautiful, like everything she writes

[treeofnonsense]

❤️ Wake/Pyrrha

I think I may have flipped the prompt from what you'd first think of.

Pyrrha’s body felt wrong – well of course it did, it wasn’t her body at all. You’d think you’d get used to that after a couple thousand years, but nope, just her fucking luck. Her eyeline was still too high, her arms too long and muscly, and she kept bumping her boots into corners if she didn’t pay attention. And rubbing her chin – Gideon’s chin – because apparently that oaf hadn’t even bothered to shave again. Fine, she’d do it for him after. He was lucky she didn’t slit his throat while she did it.

It wasn’t a long walk to the center of the Mithraeum, and she knew she’d come to the right place when she found flower petals under her feet. Cytherea’s body lay on a pedestal with her arms crossed over her chest, serene as could be. John must have patched her up, and then he’d decorated the room with the whole funeral shebang: flowers, softly burning candles, the works. Cyth probably would have loved it – she’d always been the drama queen. Pyrrha thought it looked fucking stupid, especially now that half the candles had melted into little ugly lumps.

God, I hope they didn’t hold a memorial like this for me. It had taken her a few months to manifest the first time, so she’d never really gotten to check.

Carefully, she maneuvered Gideon’s big body through the petals and coils of smoke, until she loomed over Cytherea’s tiny form. Ever-so-carefully, because Gideon had big meaty paws and Cytherea’s bones looked like glass, she cupped her old friend’s dead face in one hand. “You deserved better than this,” was all she could think to say; it was the only farewell she’d ever managed for a Lyctor. She bent down and gently kissed the body on the lips.

The corpse opened its eyes. One bony hand snaked out and seized Pyrrha by the collar, the grip like iron. Pyrrha froze and instinctively went for her spear, but of course she didn’t have it because Gideon liked to walk around the Mithraeum unarmed when he couldn’t sleep, protected by his magic. Pyrrha didn’t have that luxury, so she stared down into dead, milk-white eyes, the natural color so decayed that she couldn’t tell the soul within. But it wasn’t Cytherea, that was for damn sure. Cytherea could never look so fierce as that.

“I know it’s you, Pyrrha,” the corpse said, with a voice raw and burbling from disuse. She smiled, and Pyrrha’s blood ran cold. She knew that smile, even on different lips in a different face, though she’d never expected to see it again.

“Wake.”

“Yes. This is so much more comfortable than a sword.”

Pyrrha’s shoulders felt heavy with the number of questions she was carrying. She decided on the most pressing first. “How are you here? What are you doing here?”

“I’m finishing my mission.” And just like that the smile was gone. All that was left was the intense look, the burn-the-world-to-ash look. It was dangerous and a million times more attractive, which was what had gotten them all into this situation to begin with, dammit.

“You mean your daughter. Harrow's eyes…”

“Blood is nothing compared to a cause,” Wake said, which was both ironic given her organization and quite possibly the truest thing she’d ever uttered. Pyrrha knew she’d do anything to open the Tomb, and Wake knew she knew it, so she said, “Are you going to try and stop me?”

Pyrrha could, probably. If she got in a sneak attack while Wake was pretending to take a dead nap, or maybe just bodied her now. Wake didn’t have necromancy, but she was in a fragile little necromancer’s body. Granted it would be a risk, and it would mean hell for Gideon once the rest of the Lyctors found out, and who knew what splash damage could be done to the station or even the new kid Lyctors… damn. Damn it all.

“No. Not yet,” Pyrrha sighed. Wake smiled, released Pyrrha, and laid herself back down on the pedestal. “How did you know it was me and not him?”

Wake snorted. “I’ve always known. You kiss different. Fuck different too. Honestly, a lot better some nights.”

“A thousand years of practice does wonders,” Pyrrha said, because it was just instinct at this point. Wake didn’t respond; Pyrrha studied the body laid out before her and felt a pang in her chest. She realized she missed the red hair. “Don’t you touch those kids, Wake. They didn’t ask for this.”

“None of us asked for your necromantic subjugation,” Wake hissed. “If you’re not going to kill me or tell the world the truth, then kindly step off. I have some pretending to do, and I’ve gained a lot of patience over the last two decades.”

Pyrrha left, crunching rose petals into dust under her heels. She needed a smoke, and so she was going to have one, even if Gideon’s lungs paid for it. He deserved it really. Hadn’t anyone ever told them not to fall in love with crazy?

[empty-pizza]

thoughts on nona the ninth chapters twenty-four and twenty-five

PALAMEDES FUCKING TOOK THE BODY

HOLY SHIT

HE DID IT

HE COMPLETED THE NERD TO JOCK TRANSITION

we might be able to find gideon's body soon. can't wait to find out that none of this works as we expected.

maybe if ianthe read more novels about plucky youths with the power of logic she would have beaten palamedes in the mental battle

so pyrrha suspected nona was dying. honestly i've really enjoyed the way that nona is just, a kind of being that engages with life differently. aware of her own mortality in a way most humans aren't, yet enjoying every moment she can and always curious about the next moment.

damn we really might be about to find the body. key to a door, last thing left of wake, and possibly nona.

lol the blood wards are so weak they could only even kill one of nona's hands

hey it's her

got that potentially selfcest kiss in

kinda anticlimactic

is what i said until i finished the chapter what the FUCK gideon is here what the FUCK bingus bongus zinkus zonkus idk where this is going now, so maybe Nona really is just Harrow's mind in a weird state, or maybe she's Something Else, who fucking knows

let's read the next one

this is

gideon with more confidence than usual, i think, maybe, i dunno, it's been a while. i guess she kinda wasn't allowed to be outgoing during most of book 1 but idk. it's still a weird level of confidence for the situation. or not. idk.

so john just

brought gideon back

and this entire time she's just been hanging around as the daughter of big g

this makes me kind of mad, because i think how gideon and john would react to each other is super interesting and i wish we got a book that showed us more of that

but she goes by kiriona gaia now

and she's dead

but like, what

this isn't right

this is not right

the real gideon would care way more about finding harrow again

but what if she does, and this situation is just so fucking weird and i'm missing the contxt

what happened to her

she calls nona a fake nonagesimus

i'm gonna be honest, i like nona more than i like gideon and harrow, so if i have to say goodbye or fuck you to either of the OGs, i'm willing to if it means staying on team nona

gideon would not be this mean to someone as innocent as nona!!! don't tell nona to shut up!

what's going on in the river right now

kiriona wants to go to the ninth?

As emotionally frustrating as this is, I think this is probably the most interesting way to answer the mystery of finding Gideon again. That we find her, but she's not who we wanted her to be anymore. And the question of who Nona is can be something more complicated than just, Gideon or Harrow. A simpler reveal would honestly just feel flat.

her motivation being just to kill the boredom could make sense, but like... she just doesn't feel right. Where's the Gideon that cared?

But did she really ever care about anything that wasn't hot girls, fighting, and Harrow?

Is this how she always looked from the outside?

I don't think so (she wouldn't have been so mean to Nona) but they're questions worth asking. And I believe Nona that Kiriona is lying.

Maybe it's not a real Gideon. Or is intentionally corrupted in some way by John. Maybe this is all part of a big plan to sabotage the attempt to get into the tomb. Give them who they think they need, but she'll betray them.

hmm. can't take her blood. could just be a general defensive measure. or could be a way to force BoE to need to take the woman with them personally.

Honestly though, if we were building to a "not the real gideon" twist, if it was purely a fake, then it would actually try to hide it. I think that, like it or not, this is who John made his daughter into. Dick move ngl.

Nona had never seen anyone so sad in her whole short life. It made her nearly afraid to die.

damn

man this was some shit

[iviarellereads]

Full TLT series to date thoughts on rereading Harrow the Ninth, chapters 5-10

A probably semi-regular weekly bonus to my reread blog, since sometimes you realize things on reread that just make you need to yell in a full spoiler space.

Mercy's naked relief that Harrow isn't in any way the product of Dios Apate, Major. That she doesn't have to deal with that mess. Little does she know yet who's tagging along behind Harrow's retinas.

I still don't really understand the Sarpedon fanatics in the fandom but y'all are out there doing your thing and I respect that and love that for you.

Alecto seeing John. Just, that's it, that's the whole statement. The hard angles of her Barbie face soften for him.

Harrow's unsureness in herself, thinking that John is only saying he thinks her incapable of surviving the River… but Ianthe is still fighting Babs too.

In chapter 7, when they're in the ship in the River, John says a word Harrow doesn't understand. Did he just cuss in te reo Maori? (EDIT) User typicalstormcloak in the replies raises a good point: it's "Kumbaya". Of course it is.

Here we are at last, chapter 8 and the description of Canaan House's origins, at least as far as the remaining multi-soul construct of Teacher will or can explain in the River bubble. The House came first, then the disciples at different times across centuries. But why does John's story in Nona conflict so much with this? I need Alecto so bad.

Given that Varun caught up to Nona… I wonder if it sped up because it felt Harrow in the River, felt Alecto with her. Felt its sibling traveling close, and felt a drive, a need, to find out why she was back.

And I don't get to brag about much in this read, but I can say that I put together that Harrow had done something to her brain and forgotten Gideon and replaced her memory with Ortus as soon as chapter 9 ended. I already had a strong suspicion so much earlier, when John names Gideon and Harrow hears Ortus and starts bleeding and losing control of her body. This just cemented that suspicion in my brain. I'm not always very good at guessing what's coming next, so I'm disproportionately proud of that one and I'm sure it will never happen again in this series. LOL

Seeing Ortus, Abigail, and Magnus talk around Harrow's delusion that the River bubble is real (since I suppose it IS real in a way, she's the one shaping it so), it's just so interesting. I can see exactly why I didn't guess this reveal on the first read.

That recipe is fascinating and I didn't recall it at all until literally just reading it to summarize. The only M we know in the original crew is Mercymorn… If it's her, then it's funny that it's abbreviated to just M, not Mercy, while Nigella is in full. It calls to mind John's (and Pyrrha's!) mentions of the dead names of his crew, though that would be M-.

Wake's missive to Mercy in chapter 10 is the W I L D E S T of rides. That's it, that's the whole observation.

[githjanken]

The Fandom Ask! - The Locked Tomb

:3 oh yes

The first character I first fell in love with: gideon because i’m predictable and i love a jock of a butch. even better when she’s this fucking stupid and gay and sad.

The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: crown. listen i am firmly camp “crown was big and tall” and i love a fucked up fat strong tomboy femme. she’s so sparkly and charismatic and deeply fucked up, i love that about her. like babygirl you really will just latch on to any shred of affection and belonging huh?

The character everyone else loves that I don’t: ianthe, probably? i know lots of folks love her but i don’t see the hype. like yeah she’s a greasy rat of a woman but also she just doesn’t do it for me.

The character I love that everyone else hates: ??? i don’t think my faves are particularly hated? i also don’t feel like people really hate anyone, like the fact that all these assholes are fucked up is part of the appeal of tlt right?

The character I used to love but don’t any longer: i mean, i did really like “dulcinea” in gtn but… well. (i do still love dulcie)

The character I would totally smooch: pyrrha dve loml stone cold fox. also abigail because she’s very cool and also not a literal baby.

The character I’d want to be like: These People Are Not Exactly Aspirational, but if i gotta… pyrrha and magnus. pyrrha cause sexy dyke vibes and magnus cause look at him. he’s just an admin guy who loves his wife and happens to be able to wield a sword.

The character I’d slap: john, hands down. probably the entire mithraeum gang, they’re such a great gatsby terrible edwardian set But Scifantasy, and while i appreciate they’re all very traumatised i would like to invite them to maybe just stop. consider not being like that.

A pairing that I love: i’m not super shippy with this fandom but honestly? whatever involves cam being super gay. camilla hect i love youuuu. (bonus points for crown/cam like it’s Compelling to me cause cam is so cam and crown is so shitty (affectionate)) also obvsly griddlehark

A pairing that I despise: ngl to me Cam and Pal are very much strong platonic love, they’re cousins and it makes me really uncomfy when people ship em. i also don’t care for harr*w/i*nthe (asterisked to make it not show up in tags) like i don’t HATE it, i just think it’d be much funnier if ianthe gets cockblocked, she’s trying SO hard to be draco in leather pants.

[worrywrite]

I hadn't thought that hard about it, but probably. I think it would vary from cav to cav though. The sixth probably has some actual formal agreement, but the ninth is a grudging "one flesh, one end".

Also I'm thinking about it more, so I'm going to say that powers wise they would vary. Gideon is getting bone armor and unlimited bone swords. Camilla gets accelerated healing and can scan ignore most non-lethal wounds while transformed. Jeanmary gets stealth but also a sword that shoots lazers, because she deserves it. Marta gets enhanced speed and when she wounds a living thing she gets a little healing. Naberius doesn't do his thing so much, relying on his own talents most of the time, because his thing is that he eats Ianthe and gets a big general buff at the cost of Ianthe getting progressively more control over him (she gets spit out after, until she doesn't). Magnus gets to be the heart of the team, never really going on on missions, his abilities are research based and let him spot weaknesses and disarm people. Column... Hm, martial trance berserker ability probably. And Protesilaus isn't actually a contracted cavalier, he's a strong puppet creature because Dulcinea is actually Cytherea and Cytherea is like the archetypal fallen magical girl villain who commands demons and stuff.

I'm going to say that lyctors are entities that had their contracts "fulfilled" and can also take human form if the wish but they look part cat. Alecto is just a normal feral cat. Nona is straight up weird feral cat girl. John gets to be a sphinx cat. For narrative purposes, Harrow becomes a lyctor by dying with Gideon and they have to do a sort of body swap back and forth thing, sort of like Palamedes and Camilla do, but they're actually stable and can communicate mind palace style (because the genre is fluffier than the actual books) but eventually the Gideon half gets corrupted and sort of dies on Harrow.

I'll say... Main plot is probably more cohort versus the resurrection beats at first, with resurrection beats being the sort of they send a monster of the weak invading demons thing until Cytherea gets sussed out and all hell breaks loose and that season ends with Cytherea being defeated and Harrow and Gideon fulfilling their contract after Cytherea tricks Ianthe and Naberius into fulfilling theirs (to their detriment). Second season splits the original team into two teams (the river team and the lyctor team) and introduces the old lyctors, and I'm just going to assume setting wise everyone is still going to have to deal with high school or something. Lyctor team gets more direct missions to take on a resurrection beast properly, but they're disfunctuonal. John currupts Gideon behind the scenes and siphons her out of Harrows contract, leaving Harrow weaker and beginning to turn Gideon into a proto resurrection beast. The beast Varun arrives and all hell breaks loose when John simultaneously betrays everyone but then Harrow goes up against Varun alongside G1deon (her reluctant and harsh mentor character for the season) and there's a sort of fade to black season ending. Season 3 is sort of a mid apocalypse theme, Nona shows up and no one is sure who she is, Palamedes and Camilla have fulfilled their contract in the background, G1deon is dead but Pyrrha is around and it is implied that Varun did to G1deon what John did to Gideon. Varun is still there too, but inert. Everywhere there are rumors about an ancient hero, Alecto, who will return to end this crisis at the darkest hour. Somehow school is still happening, kind of. Gideon is around, weirdly becoming friends with Ianthe, also looking very demonic but acting mostly normal. The resistance, who has been a largely minor antagonistic force throughout the series, has turned into a general ally in John's sudden and dramatic absence. The cohort is falling apart. The pieces all come together is a dramatic all hell breaks loose scene where Nona accidentally turns Varun back on and releases everyone's souls back where they're supposed to be. And Alecto does return, but as the only human in appearance minion if a returned John at the last minute of the season finale.

The show gets canceled during preproduction for season 4.

Locked Tomb au, but all the necromancers are magical girl cat companions to their cavaliers (who get to be martial coded magical girls).

Mostly I want to see what cat Harrow looks like, but in a way where she's like an actual character and not just a cat. Also I think the cavaliers should all get a magical girl transformation sequence as a treat.

[liesmyth]

Why do you think Pyrhha never tried to communicate with G1deon and let him know she was still in there? Seems kind of messed up to let him think for 10k years that he killed the person he cared the most about while she was still there the whole time

Congrats! This made me sad <3

I'm honestly not sure HOW much Pyrrha was able to communicate, or even how often she emerged. I tend to believe that she became more aware as time went on, but that especially early on it was a struggle for her to make conscious decisions, as opposed to just piloting G1deon's body while he was in the River or something. I can believe that it took a couple of millennia and that Pyrrha only really became able to take over G1deon for longer periods of time (hours as opposed to minutes or seconds) relatively before canon. Probably his mental condition deteriorating contributed to that, or maybe Pyrrha's presence was actually fucking with his brain. Maybe she feared it making it worse?

I also think that it was a real concern that if G1deon became more aware of her it would complete the integration, and that's why he didn't Think Too Much about it and why she was hesitant to make herself known, but yeah, at some point she would've realised it wasn't as big of an issue as she had feared.* Maybe by that point she had witnessed enough that she didn't trust G1deon would have their best interests in mind and go to John? I find this unlikely though because G1deon "had an affair with Wake for 2 years" would IMO have kept a secret from John if Pyrrha asked him to.

(Re: awareness of Pyrrha and integration. My pet headcanon is that actually the reason why Pyrrha "remained" was because she regained her pre-Res memories since John's mindwipe was tied to the brain and not the soul, and she became aware of an identity that was "broader" than just Pyrrha Dve. Sort of how Harrow removed her memories of Gideon to avoid consuming her soul; the fact that Pyrrha's soul and her sense of identity did NOT match G1deon's memories of her could be WHY she remained even if G1deon clearly remembered her)

Anyway YEAH I truly don't know! Even with all these limits, she could have found a way to leave a sign. But IMO there's a lot we don't know about Pyrrha, and it may come out if we move out of the very narrow frame of Nona's POV in AtN.

(I also wonder what made Pyrrha get SO invested in Wake when realistically they couldn't have interacted that often, and why Wake out of everyone G1deon came into contact with over the centuries? So MUCH to think about)

[vaguely-concerned]

-another layer of 'ow ah ouch' to everything pyrrha says about lyctorhood in nona the ninth is that she and g1deon may very well have been the first necro-cav duo to have done it fully mutually consensually, eyes open. it's heavily implied mercy and augustine had their hands forced by cristabel and alfred and wouldn't have done it otherwise ("I have built a myriad on the idea that I could have talked him out of it, given five minutes"), and they're the first and second saints... g1deon's the third. he and pyrrha presumably saw what it did to mercy and augustine, and they still decided to go through with it.

I WILL REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU KISSED ME—YOU APOLOGISED—YOU SAID, I AM SORRY, DESTROY ME AS I AM, BUT I WANT TO KISS YOU BEFORE I AM KILLED, AND I SAID TO YOU WHY, AND YOU SAID, BECAUSE I HAVE ONLY ONCE MET SOMEONE SO UTTERLY WILLING TO BURN FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVED IN, AND I LOVED HIM ON SIGHT, AND THE FIRST TIME I DIED I ASKED OF HIM WHAT I NOW ASK OF YOU

imagine the extra weight over the years in knowing you chose this. at least augustine can cling to that desperate fantasy world where he did stop alfred in time, but pyrrha and g1deon thought they knew exactly what they were doing. they thought it was love. john let them think that was love.

-...do you think mercymorn and augustine begged john for the same thing harrow did, after? Please, undo what I've done, Lord. I will never ask anything of you ever again. (Also one of my all time favorite Harrow moments where she gets to ask the question they aren't allowed to for ten thousand years: How dare you ask me to live with it?) did he comfort them? tell them he's so incredibly sorry, but he needs them?

at least pyrrha’s understanding of how the process works does corroborate his claim that he can’t extract a cavalier’s soul from their necromancer's after the lyctorhood is complete without destroying both souls, which I guess makes for the one thing he isn’t totally lying about lol. though while referencing their own situation paul tells ianthe there's still hope for her and naberius, a duo where the soul absorption did seem to complete, which suggests another layer here john might not know about (out of lack of interest?) or doesn't want anyone else to find out about.

actually let's reexamine some things from the Gideon the Ninth epilogue now in light of Nona I'm on a roll here:

-[God] said, "I know you became a Lyctor under duress."

"Some may call it duress," said Harrow.

"You aren't the first," said the Emperor.

screaming. howling. clawing at him like a wild animal. the two people who have loved you the most, and you stood by and watched as this happened to them, as you engineered it to happen to them, you've seen up close what it did to them, and now you're repeating the process with new children a myriad later without a blush. you suck so bad john I have no words fhksajfhsa.

-"I have three teachers for you. And a whole universe for you to hold on to, for just a little while longer."

a) oh yeah just wait for those three teachers they're a real barrel of laughs they probably won't even try to repeatedly murder you or anything lmao and b) what's that supposed to mean john. 'for just a little while longer'. why does it only have to be a little while longer. as far as I can tell you're no closer to the fullness of your revenge than ever. does it have anything to do with 'good morning, annabel' and 'it gets dirty, you clean it again'?

So, the universe was ending. Good. At least if she failed here, she would no longer have to be beholden to anybody.

could this also be some kind of foreshadowing? from the dialogue on page here harrow's conclusion that the universe is, for sure, ending is not necessarily a natural conclusion (john only speaks of the empire slowly dying) so like... does pre-lobotomy harrow know something we don't? or is it just that she's the saddest person anyone's ever seen pre-nona seeing gideon? (most heartbreaking shade of drift compatability discovered :') )

-He said presently, "Most of my Lyctors have been destroyed by a war I thought best to fight slowly, through attrition. I have lost my Hands -- not just to death. The loneliness of deep space takes its toll on anyone, and the necrosaints have all put up with it for longer than anybody should ever be asked to bear anything. That's why I wanted only those who had discovered the cost, and were willing to pay it in the full knowledge of what it would entail."

so... in the same way g1deon and pyrrha decided to pay that price willingly, then. I am 100% calling bullshit on him here, though, because if any of that had been his real intentions he would have taken at least a modicum of time and energy to write ANYTHING to that effect in the invitations haha. but I think he does recognize in some way that mercy and augustine are burning out under the ten thousand years he's asked of them, like cytherea just did, and maybe mistakenly thinks g1deon is handling it better, because his and pyrrha's decision seemed more informed/less coerced? loveday always knew it was her life or cytherea's, after all, that wasn't ever a real choice either. huh.

-god, harrow literally states all her (frankly very modest and doable) goals and needs to him -- to return to the ninth at least once, to find her cavalier's body, and to figure out what happened to the other survivors of canaan house -- and once she is incapable of remembering them........ he does fucking NOTHING to remind her or help her follow up on any of them fhsdkajfhasdkj I am losing it! at least there is the delicious irony that he could have saved himself a massive headache if he had helped her with any of these, so his own fecklessness and narcissism is its own punishment in this case I suppose lmao

-another observation: harrow is not as deferential or worshipful towards God in this epilogue as she will be in HtN or beyond. she's angry with him! she's kind of sharp and a bit rude, even! she seems more to feel begrudgingly beholden to him because fair enough he is god I guess than to emotionally buy into it as sacred service. I wonder how she'll think of him after nona the ninth, now that she knows him so much better and has more of herself too -- ironically my sense from their last scene in nona the ninth is that her worship of him seems to have all but disappeared, but she loves him more, despite uh the everything of him, in all his awfulness. not in that she doesn't recognize him for what he is or that she wants his approval anymore, she's grown so far past him already, but I do think there's still love there. 'I still love you' is the real power he has, I guess

[necrolord-prime-camilla-hect]

What do we know about Anastasia’s timeline?

Anastasia’s bones were in the Locked Tomb.

Do we know when she died?

(side note before anyone decides to read this that this is 100% me speculating about probably very insignificant detail, based on very spurious evidence for anything, simply because I can’t quite get it out of my head.)

It seems improbable that she had someone else in the Ninth House place her bones there after her death, considering the whole “I pray the Tomb is shut forever” thing. Which means that she died in the Tomb. Either (a) after the initial imprisoning of Alecto she lived for a while running the Ninth House and then decided to go walk into the Tomb and curl up by the door to die, or (b) she died when the Tomb was initially closed.

(a) seems improbable because, while she of all people should have been able to bypass the wards and traps, she would still have needed a way to bypass John’s blood ward and kill someone for a burst of thanergy. Not impossible, but unlikely.

(b) is the likely scenario, but I’m sad about it, and I’m confused by the timeline. This is supported by Silas’ comment in Gideon:

“‘They had one job-- one rock to roll over one tomb; one act of guardianship, to live and die in a single blessedness-- and they made a cult instead.’“ (page 320 of Gideon)

The thing is, Anastasia had at least one child, because her bloodline has been unbroken for the last almost 10,000 years until Harrow’s birth. And Pyrrha talks about painting a nursery on the Ninth House. So either (a) the Ninth House was founded during the construction of the Tomb, and Anastasia had a child while the Tomb was being constructed (side tangent: who did Anastasia have a child with?) in which case Pyrrha’s nursery-painting would have taken place during the construction of the Tomb, (b) Anastasia already had a child before the construction of the Ninth House who took over running the Ninth House after her death and who Pyrrha/G1deon knew well enough to visit to decorate the nursery for their child, or (c) Anastasia already lived on the Ninth House before the original Lyctoring, and Pyrrha visited in her own body to help her paint a nursery.

As far as (b) goes, I want to think that if Anastasia had an adult child during the timeframe of the construction of the Tomb, we would have heard about them already. Maybe not, but it seems like Pyrrha at least would have mentioned them if she knew them well enough to pay them a visit to help paint their nursery.

(c) is plausible, but it feels a little bit unlikely. Mostly because of what we’ve heard about the original Lyctor process, that everyone arrived at Canaan House as a kind of pilgrimage (or were invited particularly, in Cytherea’s case) and studied there to develop the Lyctoral process. It doesn’t seem like the kind of thing where they were commuting back and forth between their home planets and Canaan House, or paying each other visits at their home planets. Additionally, the Ninth House was founded particularly to house and protect the Locked Tomb, so there doesn’t seem to be any reason that Anastasia would have been living there before anyone decided to build the Tomb in the first place.

So my current conception of Anastasia’s most likely timeline is:

The Resurrection

The original Lyctoral process - I think these might be as much as a generation after the Resurrection, because Augustine refers to Cytherea as being from the “second generation” of Lyctors at some point in Harrow but based on the notes and pictures from Canaan House it seems like everyone became a Lyctor more or less at once, or at least was working towards it simultaneously. The timeline of the original Lyctoring is something for another post.

The first attack by the Resurrection Beasts, followed shortly after by the decision to build the Tomb - this must take place only shortly after the original Lyctors were made, based on things that Teacher and John say in Harrow.

“’But when the work was done-- when I was finished, and so were they, and the new Lyctors found out the price-- they bade him kill the saltwater creature before she could do them harm...’” (Teacher, page 328 of Harrow)

“’She lived to see what happened at Canaan House. Not that she took much interest... And when the cost of Lyctorhood was paid, when the emotions were at their peak... we found out the price for our sin. The monstrous retribution. To be chased for our crime to the ends of the universe, to have our deed stain our very faces and follow after us like a foul smell. She died after that first terrible assault.’“ (John, page 346 of Harrow)

Anastasia moves to the Ninth House to begin construction of the Tomb?

Anastasia has a baby, possibly? G1deon, with Pyrrha in residence, visits to help her paint a nursery.

John Cask-of-Amontillado’s Alecto, putting her to sleep (as described in the poem at the start of Nona) and tying her up with chains. He closes the Tomb over her, seals all the wards, and leaves forever. Anastasia stays, to die in the Tomb.

But why would she stay? It wasn’t an issue of keeping Alecto in there while it was closed, because Alecto was asleep and chained up. Did they need a burst of thanergy to initially close the Tomb, as they do to open it? Or was it part of her vow to Alecto?

I expect a lot of these questions to be answered in Alecto, but Anastasia has been fascinating me since I finished Nona. I can’t wait to see her backstory explained, and I fully expect it to be absolutely heartbreaking.

[prryhic]

to her mild surprise, palamedes stands in a body that he's still learning how to pilot and fetches the bottle from the top of the fridge, without arguing... so he must really want something. this isn't easy for him. she watches as he stands on his toes to pull it down, the way his shirt rides up his (her) back, just a little, and doesn't pull her eyes away when palamedes turns around again, quarry in hand. her gaze stays steady: from this angle she can see that camilla's hair is getting long enough that it's probably time for a trim, a little too long for what pyrrha has come to assume was a customary, rigorously maintained bob, cut off sharp at the chin.

when that long-fingered hand offers the bottle, their fingertips brush, and she smiles; it's a toothy, wolfish sort of grin, but it isn't really for him. it's just... an old reflex, a struck nerve. ❛ aren't you sweet? ❜

she has to twist the cork in the neck of the bottle in a certain way to keep it from going pop! too loudly, and she's more pleased with herself than she'd like to admit that she manages it. that pleasure doesn't stick around for very long. her eyes (his eyes, now) flicker up when palamedes broaches the question of gideon. she lets out a long, slow sigh, a resigned exhale, an acceptance. ❛ you were just chomping at the bit, weren't you? ❜ but if palamedes wants to play twenty questions, then she's going to play the fucking game, and, frankly, palamedes is desperate.

she's an asshole, so she doesn't offer palamedes the bottle, and pulls right from the mouth. it's acrid and unpleasant at first, smooths out towards the end. she swallows. gideon was never a man for clutter, but he did enjoy his nice, vintage bottles of the good stuff, never met a bottle of whisky he couldn't get along with, if he was in the right mood and the circumstances allowed for him to peel off the armor, for a while. she was never much for trinkets, either, knick-knacks or worry coins to be kept in the pocket, but gideon kept the bottles he thought looked nice on a shelf. the booze is set down, cushioned with the tip of her pinky to muffle the noise.

in the other room, nona does not stir.

she stares palamedes down, his notepad, his pencil. she's glad he doesn't have the tape recorder out, doesn't think she could bear that. he wants to know about her gideon. she rubs a hand along her (his) jaw, feelings the scrape of stubble against her thumb and forefinger. she needs to shave, camilla needs a trim. ❛ i don't know. should i eulogize him? he was... ❜ not a good man. pyrrha isn't a good woman. it'd be hypocritical to try and put that on him, after his death. he'd have hated her for it. ❛ from the very beginning he was different from the rest of the necromancers, the way i was different from the rest of the cavs. it's... he wanted to do it all, and wanted more hours in the day to do it. ❜

she pauses, considering, watches the way that palamedes holds his hand at an odd angle to write. he really isn't used to camilla's body. it looks all wrong on him. ❛ he rolled his own cigarettes because he thought the pre-packed shit was terrible, and if he was drunk and you got him on a roll he could talk theorems for hours. i remember one night i actually begged him to stop and go to bed. ❜ pyrrha scoffs out a little laugh and then falls silent. ❛ he loved the emperor. didn't like him, all the time, but he doubted, and so he believed. he was capable of terrible things. ❜ she swallows, hard, and reaches for the bottle. like an interrogator, with palamedes tied to the metaphorical chair, she asks: ❛ how'd you and camilla end up so tied at the hip? ❜

he's still learning how to move in this body. an intruder made flesh, a dead soul in a living girl's body -- palamedes knows innately how precious is each moment he spends in the proverbial 'driver's seat' of camilla hect's nervous system. they're all three of them stolen bodies in this stuffy apartment, getaway drivers. but pyrrha's necromancer is gone, and perhaps not even god knows where gideon nav or harrowhark nonagesimus are. camilla is not gone, he can feel her presence in the set of his mouth (her mouth) and pulsing behind his (her) eyelids.

he's sure pyrrha notices the tentative way he carries the shared body -- their lyctor is the observant type, as they would expect of any military sort. palamedes lowers his voice -- nona needs her sleep, whoever she really is. "you're not busy," he negotiates. he gets her reference, mostly. in the sixth house, sleepovers are uncommon unless they serve a practical purpose; he and camilla had been exceptions, attached at the hip for as long as either of them remember, they'd fallen asleep together countless times as children, on a shared bed or cot or leaning against the library shelves. palamedes had always fallen asleep first; even in childhood, camilla stood guard over her necromancer as though it were already her sworn duty. "unless... have i interrupted your brooding?"

pyrrha's smile is sharp-edged, and palamedes finds himself wondering if that was a quality she shared with the deceased lyctor whose body she inhabits, or if that knife's edge danger is all pyrrha dve. (it's moments like this, with the light playing off those sharp cheekbones, that he understands the appeal for those merchants pyrrha flirts with to get them more for their rations, or lower prices, or information. it's quiet moments like these that are the dangerous ones, as he's confessed to cam. the ones where he wants -- )

but it serves his purpose to sweeten her up (why he hasn't said anything about her smoking; that and they're all too exhausted for another fight), so he fetches whatever god-awful concoction serves as booze on this shitty little planet (has to stand on camilla's tiptoes to do so, and he's sure pyrrha's watching) and sets it on the table. he stumbles slightly as he slides into the opposite chair, still adjusting to a change in stature from a body that is mostly particulates of ash and bone by now, but was once taller than camilla. gestures to the bottle with one slender, calloused hand. "your booze, my lady."

he should be washing his face and going to bed, claiming the few hours of restless sleep that will come before nona awakes, before he has to study this poor, traumatized girl in what seem like increasingly desperate hopes of piecing together a wrongly-shaped puzzle. but. but it's been a headache of a day for both of them, and even if he can't find out more about gideon-and-harrow, there's another source of answers right here.

he attempts to be subtle in fishing out a pencil stub and a pad from one of camilla's spacious pockets. "what can you tell me about gideon -- your gideon, i mean?" he wants to dive right in and ask about gideon and pyrrha's fragmented lyctorhood, discuss palamedes' own theories on whether there was any way to recreate such a thing without requiring camilla to alter her own memory. but he's trying to be -- delicate. under the circumstances.