[hm. they glance down to the crystal, still held carefully in their hand, and the first part of what they say sounds more like a recitation.]
...'herein I commit the chronicle of the Traveller. Shepherd to the stars in the dark.' [a moment of silence.] A containment of memory, preserved in crystal, for one who no longer exists.
[and maybe it's the focus on it. maybe it's something else. but abruptly her perspective shifts, and she no longer sees despair in front of her; she will have the sense of being someone else entirely.]
[the figure in front of you is robed in white, and he has shown no emotion even after informing you the third of your trio has been truly eliminated. one of the three survivors of your world, destroyed as you both knew he would be, grown reckless and mad over time. always brilliant and passionate like the fiery creations he made, but burning out just as readily, and even though it was not an unexpected end... you wonder, not for the first time, if the person before you will ever show the affection he once displayed to all of you so readily, or if the man who once was like a little brother to you has lost those emotions entirely.
he asks you what you are thinking about, and you tell him you have been considering how similar your companion was to his creations. the confusion in turn, the way he tenses, makes it clear-- he does not remember what you're talking about. he has lost another piece of your lives.
"will you not look at your crystal?" you ask him, and with the question comes an understanding for harrow, observing this memory. the three of you created thirteen crystals, preserving the memories of your lost compatriots and yourselves, hopeful that they would one day be used to restore them. that they would one day teach those who came next, if anyone ever followed you at all. there would be much within it to help him remember.
(the traveller's was not among them, however. this one you created and imbued in secret, alone, for even though they betrayed all of you, you still kept the memories of who was once your closest friend.)
the man shakes his head.
"so long as i remember my duty, that is enough. aught else i would only lose again in the course of this timeless struggle...and if these memories are truly so precious, pray do not ask that I forget them twice."
as he is now, you doubt he can tell your casual shrug in response is an affectation. you doubt he can read you much at all, anymore. he leaves, tells you that you will need to return to your duties; you consider telling him you prefer to sleep, but he is already gone.
[Me, pulling up GameFAQS to understand this Final Fantasy cut scene.
But she watches, the story connecting with the one Despair already told her. It makes her brain itch a little, because she does understand why Despair dislikes the decision - it is so stubborn, it is so cruel to cause this pain to others, merely to avoid pain yourself. She wants to believe her own circumstances are different, but then, how would she know?]
. . . Ah. I did not realize this would happen with you, as it did with the others. I've pried.
[But Despair will get, in turn, her own memory. One she herself is unable to see.
you sit on your bed next to Ianthe Tridentarius, your face bare and unpainted, your head shaved bald. Two skeletons are holding up a mirror, one showing the back of your head and one the front. You are finishing your letters, scrawling in a cipher you know she will not be able to undo. She is frowning at you, her expression hard to understand, something like wonder and bemused shock.
"This may not work," she tells you.
"You have reminded me," you say tersely.
“I’ll say it again. The procedure could fail. Or it may work, but only temporarily. There could be any number of side effects — physical disorders — if you push your brain too hard, any surgery could simply heal over — and if you’re doing what I have a suspicion you’re doing, it could play merry hell with scar tissue. This is profoundly experimental. More to the point, it is totally fucking demented.”
Your eyes meet - yours black, hers violent, but with flecks of blue and brown in them, growing more and more clear each time you look. You remember Naberius' eyes, before she murdered him, consumed his soul. The changing eyes are a symptom, the Lyctoral process at work. With each additional fleck of brown, the little that is left of Ianthe's old cavalier is absorbed into her, gone for good. You look down at the tray of tools in front of you — scalpel, saw, little bottle of water with a spray nozzle.
You're astonished when Ianthe speaks and her voice has almost something like concern in it. "Ninth. Maybe this is an eleventh-hour point to make, but I find myself making it. Tell me what you’re doing. Tell me the details of your grim, dark, and shadowy plan. If you don’t, I have no assurance that I am not about to have a front-row seat as you reduce yourself to a gibbering wreck - or lower. A vegetable. A hunk of wood. A Fourth House write-in advice column.”
You do not deign to answer her, so fixated are you on the work, on understanding each step of what you must do, and nothing else, because if you begin to think of ought else, if you begin to consider what might go wrong, you fear your nerve will crack and your will will crumble. Ianthe makes her voice as low and coaxing, and she presses: “Make me understand what this is worth to you, Ninth. Think about what you’ve promised. Consider what I am, and what use you might get from me. I am a Lyctor. I am a necromantic princess of Ida. I am the cleverest necromancer of my generation.”
That wakes you, for one moment, from your maudlin reverie. “Like hell you are,” you snap.
“So impress me,” says Ianthe, unmoved, though she stares at you with those blue brown eyes at you, as though she's trying to untangle something in your gaze, or reveling in the astonishing ugliness of your bare face.
“I will impress upon you this,” you hiss. “I asked you for a reason. That reason was not your genius, which I admit exists. Nobody who reverse-engineered the Lyctoral process could be anything but a genius. But I haven’t seen anything that makes me believe you are more than — a kind of necromantic gymnast, doing showy tricks without concern for the theory. You’re not of Sextus’s calibre either.”
“No,” says Ianthe lightly, “but Sextus’s head exploded, proving to the world that he hadn’t accounted for everything.”
You didn't know you had new depths of anger and grief left to uncover, but something in your heart clenches, remembering Palamedes Sextus, who cracked the Lyctor process even more easily than Ianthe, and dismissed it instantly, without even a flicker of temptation, as a monstrous thing to do. "I may have been Sextus’s necromantic superior, but he was the better man," you admit. "You are not even so worthy of that brain as to wipe its bloodied remnants from the wall,” you tell her. “You are a murderer, a conwoman, a cheat, a liar, a slitherer, and you embody the worst flaws of your House — as do I. Nonetheless, I did not ask you because you are a Lyctor, Third. I did not even ask you because you know significantly more about your subject than I do.”
“Tell me, because I am hugely bored of hearing all my flaws,” says Ianthe, pretending as always to be unbothered.
You stare into the mirror, and your black eyes stare back, dull and empty, a void. You keep wondering if you'll see a trace of Gideon Nav, still reflected in them. You keep fearing you'll see a trace of her, knowing it will mean the process is working - more of her soul burned away. “I asked you because you know what it is,” and here, against your will, your voice shakes, “to be — fractured.”
“Harrowhark,” says Ianthe. “Let me give you a little advice. It is free and smart. I’ll walk this back now — I’ll adopt the sweetest good humour about everything you’ve done for me already — if you admit that you are running away. And running away is for fools and children. You are a Lyctor. You have paid the price. The hardest part is over. Smile to the universe, thank it for its graciousness, and mount your throne. You answer to nobody now.”
“If you think that you and I are not more beholden than ever,” you say, and hope your voice isn't truly as raw as it sounds to you, “you are an idiot.”
“Who is left?" she asks. "What is left?”
You shut your eyes for a moment. It is true that the moment you consumed her soul to save your life, all was likely lost. The other Lyctors - their cavaliers' souls inside them are no more than a dumb battery, burning for eternity. And yet - if there is any possibility, any scrap of her you can preserve -
When you open your again, they are not correct. You are heterochromatic, with celestially mismatched irises. One black. One gold. Your chest clenches in horror and your stomach threatens to heave.
"We are wasting time," you command Ianthe. "Open me up."
“It will be worse for you in the end, Nonagesimus—”
Out of patience, uncharacteristic, you roar - "Do it, you faithless coward, you swore me an oath! Expose the brain — guide me — and let me handle it from there! There’s still time, and you thieve it from me!"
If she can only forget, then the mindless, automatic consumption may be out of her reach. Perhaps she can forget her to save even a piece of her. Or perhaps Ianthe is right, and it is only that she cannot bear to live with this, refuses to let a decision made against her will stand.
“All right, sister,” says Ianthe, resigned, and she reaches for the awl first. The hammer would be second; the hammer for her living hand, the awl for the dead. She rests it high on your frontal bone, and squints. "Time to absolutely fuck you up."
[they exhale the words on a quiet breath, slightly out of sorts from the experience. it's--
the thing is, they understand. they have understood, with the awareness they have of her past. they know well the desperate way one clings to whatever is left, the choices made under these circumstances and the consequences that can arise.
but they also believe that to be forgotten is to die in the most permanent of ways, and they cannot stomach the thought of attempting to preserve someone by forsaking them in such a way. it is, to them, all backwards. distasteful.
they're quiet for several moments, before they decide to ask:]
Have you any awareness at all of this memory? I do feel as if my commentary is somewhat pointless, otherwise.
[She's like. Really not disturbed, whether it was a joke or not. Sometimes you hang out with immortal liches who talk about killing you basically every day.]
It is true - how unsatisfying it would be. But what do you mean when you say 'my kind'?
I mean to say that there is a base difference between us, my status as Avatar notwithstanding. Were I not in possession of this vessel, very few of you would be able to speak to me at all.
[at which point they pause, considering. they remain quiet a moment, then seem to settle on something, reaching up to tug their hood back with their claws while your mod scrambles to gather the reference links ANYWAY-
despair looks fairly similar to this, though the wings lack the masks and the metallic spires of his crown grow directly from his head. his eyes match the color of his sigil, deep blue and starry, and tear-track marks in the same blue shade trail down his face, presumably below the collar of his robe. his claws are also longer than that.]
With many of you I would not mind that being so, but- I suppose with some, this arrangement is preferable.
[The way I had to reverse google search this to make sure it was Emet. Anyway, she knows that beneath their robes, they're inhuman in various ways, but to look upon their face is something else.
Harrowhark's experience with religion doesn't lend herself to recognize whatever is angelic or demonic or some weeb bullshit about him - the God of her religion is a human being, as are the assorted necrosaints - humans in appearance, merely long lived and terrible. But there is still something about her appearance that leaves her awestruck.
Still, she has to push back.]
You are aware to whom you are speaking? If you were in a more difficult to comprehend vessel, I would be only more driven to speak with you, and teach my mind to adjust to comprehension.
[She's a little caught off guard by that. She's not used to being liked, at least by those who have the choice to decide.
But here, somehow, it keeps happening - people tell her that they like her. Even ones who know something of her; even ones who can see her whole life and all of the distasteful parts.
It doesn't surprise her that Despair is reserved but perfectly willing to speak with her. It just surprises her that her company is also wanted.]
You have been. . . very acceptable company, as well. I hope that, when all of this is said and done, I will be free and capable to speak with your about these distasteful things.
[It is only that, in the writings she left herself, she was so adamant that she was not to interfere. She fears to know what will happen if she breaks covenant with herself.]
[No, she will gladly explain. It's easier with him than it was for Wrath, whose sudden impulses of kindness terrify her a little. She understands him a little - that his coldness is not without consideration for her, but he won't try to press past the borders of her own coldness. She'll say it rote, the way she had before, because it's so much easier that way.]
We were transported to another place entirely. It was some sort of building intended for giants - the furniture was as tall as two of I, and we had to climb about to get anywhere. As we progressed, we became increasingly cold and hungry.
We came across a child. She was wearing a bag over her head. She became attached to us, seemingly, and began to help us make our way towards the exit. She was very strong and powerful. Ah - it was in the vents, as we made our escape, that she came upon your crystal, and brought it to me. When I took it, I could sense it belonged to someone who treasured it. We found other items of that sort, as I'm sure you're aware.
Past the vents, we came across a feast of giants, devouring a table of meats, fighting one another for scraps of flesh. Some of them had the appearance of enormous, fattened versions of familiar people.
My condition, of which you are aware, caused me to experience a fainting spell. [When she saw Gideon, specifically. The little piece of bone in her brain has been expertly placed to reduce her to unconsciousness whenever anything threatens to disturb her scarred brain tissue.] I was nearly devoured, but the child came to my aid.
We escaped out into the cold, and then into a school. Inside the school was another creature - a facsimile of a woman with a long snake for a neck. We drew her attention and she came after us, but we were able to kill her.
And then. . . we crawled through the vents to another room. [She's doing better at this now. She's still clipped and matter of fact.] The hunger we had been feeling became all-consuming. We were weakened, barely able to continue. Ravenous, to the degree that we would have eaten anything before us, like those sickening giants at the table.
And the child gave us her hand, and her voice said mercy. But we could not bring ourselves to do what we believed she asked of us. We tried to devour whatever else we could to assuage our hunger, but instead we perished there.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[harrow has a new companion, now.]
no subject
[She likes her little friend.]
. . . This was appreciated. I wonder if it would not be boorish of me to ask after the meaning of that crystal?
no subject
...'herein I commit the chronicle of the Traveller. Shepherd to the stars in the dark.' [a moment of silence.] A containment of memory, preserved in crystal, for one who no longer exists.
[and maybe it's the focus on it. maybe it's something else. but abruptly her perspective shifts, and she no longer sees despair in front of her; she will have the sense of being someone else entirely.]
[the figure in front of you is robed in white, and he has shown no emotion even after informing you the third of your trio has been truly eliminated. one of the three survivors of your world, destroyed as you both knew he would be, grown reckless and mad over time. always brilliant and passionate like the fiery creations he made, but burning out just as readily, and even though it was not an unexpected end... you wonder, not for the first time, if the person before you will ever show the affection he once displayed to all of you so readily, or if the man who once was like a little brother to you has lost those emotions entirely.
he asks you what you are thinking about, and you tell him you have been considering how similar your companion was to his creations. the confusion in turn, the way he tenses, makes it clear-- he does not remember what you're talking about. he has lost another piece of your lives.
"will you not look at your crystal?" you ask him, and with the question comes an understanding for harrow, observing this memory. the three of you created thirteen crystals, preserving the memories of your lost compatriots and yourselves, hopeful that they would one day be used to restore them. that they would one day teach those who came next, if anyone ever followed you at all. there would be much within it to help him remember.
(the traveller's was not among them, however. this one you created and imbued in secret, alone, for even though they betrayed all of you, you still kept the memories of who was once your closest friend.)
the man shakes his head.
"so long as i remember my duty, that is enough. aught else i would only lose again in the course of this timeless struggle...and if these memories are truly so precious, pray do not ask that I forget them twice."
as he is now, you doubt he can tell your casual shrug in response is an affectation. you doubt he can read you much at all, anymore. he leaves, tells you that you will need to return to your duties; you consider telling him you prefer to sleep, but he is already gone.
you have not seen him since.]
no subject
But she watches, the story connecting with the one Despair already told her. It makes her brain itch a little, because she does understand why Despair dislikes the decision - it is so stubborn, it is so cruel to cause this pain to others, merely to avoid pain yourself. She wants to believe her own circumstances are different, but then, how would she know?]
. . . Ah. I did not realize this would happen with you, as it did with the others. I've pried.
[But Despair will get, in turn, her own memory. One she herself is unable to see.
you sit on your bed next to Ianthe Tridentarius, your face bare and unpainted, your head shaved bald. Two skeletons are holding up a mirror, one showing the back of your head and one the front. You are finishing your letters, scrawling in a cipher you know she will not be able to undo. She is frowning at you, her expression hard to understand, something like wonder and bemused shock.
"This may not work," she tells you.
"You have reminded me," you say tersely.
“I’ll say it again. The procedure could fail. Or it may work, but only temporarily. There could be any number of side effects — physical disorders — if you push your brain too hard, any surgery could simply heal over — and if you’re doing what I have a suspicion you’re doing, it could play merry hell with scar tissue. This is profoundly experimental. More to the point, it is totally fucking demented.”
Your eyes meet - yours black, hers violent, but with flecks of blue and brown in them, growing more and more clear each time you look. You remember Naberius' eyes, before she murdered him, consumed his soul. The changing eyes are a symptom, the Lyctoral process at work. With each additional fleck of brown, the little that is left of Ianthe's old cavalier is absorbed into her, gone for good. You look down at the tray of tools in front of you — scalpel, saw, little bottle of water with a spray nozzle.
You're astonished when Ianthe speaks and her voice has almost something like concern in it. "Ninth. Maybe this is an eleventh-hour point to make, but I find myself making it. Tell me what you’re doing. Tell me the details of your grim, dark, and shadowy plan. If you don’t, I have no assurance that I am not about to have a front-row seat as you reduce yourself to a gibbering wreck - or lower. A vegetable. A hunk of wood. A Fourth House write-in advice column.”
You do not deign to answer her, so fixated are you on the work, on understanding each step of what you must do, and nothing else, because if you begin to think of ought else, if you begin to consider what might go wrong, you fear your nerve will crack and your will will crumble. Ianthe makes her voice as low and coaxing, and she presses: “Make me understand what this is worth to you, Ninth. Think about what you’ve promised. Consider what I am, and what use you might get from me. I am a Lyctor. I am a necromantic princess of Ida. I am the cleverest necromancer of my generation.”
That wakes you, for one moment, from your maudlin reverie. “Like hell you are,” you snap.
“So impress me,” says Ianthe, unmoved, though she stares at you with those blue brown eyes at you, as though she's trying to untangle something in your gaze, or reveling in the astonishing ugliness of your bare face.
“I will impress upon you this,” you hiss. “I asked you for a reason. That reason was not your genius, which I admit exists. Nobody who reverse-engineered the Lyctoral process could be anything but a genius. But I haven’t seen anything that makes me believe you are more than — a kind of necromantic gymnast, doing showy tricks without concern for the theory. You’re not of Sextus’s calibre either.”
“No,” says Ianthe lightly, “but Sextus’s head exploded, proving to the world that he hadn’t accounted for everything.”
You didn't know you had new depths of anger and grief left to uncover, but something in your heart clenches, remembering Palamedes Sextus, who cracked the Lyctor process even more easily than Ianthe, and dismissed it instantly, without even a flicker of temptation, as a monstrous thing to do. "I may have been Sextus’s necromantic superior, but he was the better man," you admit. "You are not even so worthy of that brain as to wipe its bloodied remnants from the wall,” you tell her. “You are a murderer, a conwoman, a cheat, a liar, a slitherer, and you embody the worst flaws of your House — as do I. Nonetheless, I did not ask you because you are a Lyctor, Third. I did not even ask you because you know significantly more about your subject than I do.”
“Tell me, because I am hugely bored of hearing all my flaws,” says Ianthe, pretending as always to be unbothered.
You stare into the mirror, and your black eyes stare back, dull and empty, a void. You keep wondering if you'll see a trace of Gideon Nav, still reflected in them. You keep fearing you'll see a trace of her, knowing it will mean the process is working - more of her soul burned away. “I asked you because you know what it is,” and here, against your will, your voice shakes, “to be — fractured.”
“Harrowhark,” says Ianthe. “Let me give you a little advice. It is free and smart. I’ll walk this back now — I’ll adopt the sweetest good humour about everything you’ve done for me already — if you admit that you are running away. And running away is for fools and children. You are a Lyctor. You have paid the price. The hardest part is over. Smile to the universe, thank it for its graciousness, and mount your throne. You answer to nobody now.”
“If you think that you and I are not more beholden than ever,” you say, and hope your voice isn't truly as raw as it sounds to you, “you are an idiot.”
“Who is left?" she asks. "What is left?”
You shut your eyes for a moment. It is true that the moment you consumed her soul to save your life, all was likely lost. The other Lyctors - their cavaliers' souls inside them are no more than a dumb battery, burning for eternity. And yet - if there is any possibility, any scrap of her you can preserve -
When you open your again, they are not correct. You are heterochromatic, with celestially mismatched irises. One black. One gold. Your chest clenches in horror and your stomach threatens to heave.
"We are wasting time," you command Ianthe. "Open me up."
“It will be worse for you in the end, Nonagesimus—”
Out of patience, uncharacteristic, you roar - "Do it, you faithless coward, you swore me an oath! Expose the brain — guide me — and let me handle it from there! There’s still time, and you thieve it from me!"
If she can only forget, then the mindless, automatic consumption may be out of her reach. Perhaps she can forget her to save even a piece of her. Or perhaps Ianthe is right, and it is only that she cannot bear to live with this, refuses to let a decision made against her will stand.
“All right, sister,” says Ianthe, resigned, and she reaches for the awl first. The hammer would be second; the hammer for her living hand, the awl for the dead. She rests it high on your frontal bone, and squints. "Time to absolutely fuck you up."
She strikes, and everything goes black.]
no subject
[they exhale the words on a quiet breath, slightly out of sorts from the experience. it's--
the thing is, they understand. they have understood, with the awareness they have of her past. they know well the desperate way one clings to whatever is left, the choices made under these circumstances and the consequences that can arise.
but they also believe that to be forgotten is to die in the most permanent of ways, and they cannot stomach the thought of attempting to preserve someone by forsaking them in such a way. it is, to them, all backwards. distasteful.
they're quiet for several moments, before they decide to ask:]
Have you any awareness at all of this memory? I do feel as if my commentary is somewhat pointless, otherwise.
no subject
. . . I'm afraid I do not. I do understand that it is something you find distasteful.
no subject
[they say this almost flippantly? maybe it's a joke? it's pretty hard to say.
but they wave a hand, there.]
But then your kind always does what they see fit, in the moment. It is not a personal failing of your own.
no subject
It is true - how unsatisfying it would be. But what do you mean when you say 'my kind'?
no subject
[at which point they pause, considering. they remain quiet a moment, then seem to settle on something, reaching up to tug their hood back with their claws while your mod scrambles to gather the reference links ANYWAY-
despair looks fairly similar to this, though the wings lack the masks and the metallic spires of his crown grow directly from his head. his eyes match the color of his sigil, deep blue and starry, and tear-track marks in the same blue shade trail down his face, presumably below the collar of his robe. his claws are also longer than that.]
With many of you I would not mind that being so, but- I suppose with some, this arrangement is preferable.
no subject
Harrowhark's experience with religion doesn't lend herself to recognize whatever is angelic or demonic or some weeb bullshit about him - the God of her religion is a human being, as are the assorted necrosaints - humans in appearance, merely long lived and terrible. But there is still something about her appearance that leaves her awestruck.
Still, she has to push back.]
You are aware to whom you are speaking? If you were in a more difficult to comprehend vessel, I would be only more driven to speak with you, and teach my mind to adjust to comprehension.
. . . You've removed your hood. Why?
no subject
[one brow is arched, one side of his mouth quirked in a slight smile.]
Despite what I find distasteful about you, you are far more acceptable company than most here, you realize.
[how is she supposed to when most people would never guess given the way his asshole self speaks to her. lord.]
no subject
[She's a little caught off guard by that. She's not used to being liked, at least by those who have the choice to decide.
But here, somehow, it keeps happening - people tell her that they like her. Even ones who know something of her; even ones who can see her whole life and all of the distasteful parts.
It doesn't surprise her that Despair is reserved but perfectly willing to speak with her. It just surprises her that her company is also wanted.]
You have been. . . very acceptable company, as well. I hope that, when all of this is said and done, I will be free and capable to speak with your about these distasteful things.
no subject
[he really dislikes it so much.]
no subject
[It is only that, in the writings she left herself, she was so adamant that she was not to interfere. She fears to know what will happen if she breaks covenant with herself.]
no subject
no subject
[No, she will gladly explain. It's easier with him than it was for Wrath, whose sudden impulses of kindness terrify her a little. She understands him a little - that his coldness is not without consideration for her, but he won't try to press past the borders of her own coldness. She'll say it rote, the way she had before, because it's so much easier that way.]
We were transported to another place entirely. It was some sort of building intended for giants - the furniture was as tall as two of I, and we had to climb about to get anywhere. As we progressed, we became increasingly cold and hungry.
We came across a child. She was wearing a bag over her head. She became attached to us, seemingly, and began to help us make our way towards the exit. She was very strong and powerful. Ah - it was in the vents, as we made our escape, that she came upon your crystal, and brought it to me. When I took it, I could sense it belonged to someone who treasured it. We found other items of that sort, as I'm sure you're aware.
Past the vents, we came across a feast of giants, devouring a table of meats, fighting one another for scraps of flesh. Some of them had the appearance of enormous, fattened versions of familiar people.
My condition, of which you are aware, caused me to experience a fainting spell. [When she saw Gideon, specifically. The little piece of bone in her brain has been expertly placed to reduce her to unconsciousness whenever anything threatens to disturb her scarred brain tissue.] I was nearly devoured, but the child came to my aid.
We escaped out into the cold, and then into a school. Inside the school was another creature - a facsimile of a woman with a long snake for a neck. We drew her attention and she came after us, but we were able to kill her.
And then. . . we crawled through the vents to another room. [She's doing better at this now. She's still clipped and matter of fact.] The hunger we had been feeling became all-consuming. We were weakened, barely able to continue. Ravenous, to the degree that we would have eaten anything before us, like those sickening giants at the table.
And the child gave us her hand, and her voice said mercy. But we could not bring ourselves to do what we believed she asked of us. We tried to devour whatever else we could to assuage our hunger, but instead we perished there.