[And just as something in her had lit up like a light going on mere moments before, now she seems to slump into herself, infinitesimally. Given what admittedly little she ever bothered to learn about the Nine Houses and the Resurrection, it's not such a shock. She had known there were worlds out there that functioned very differently from the collection of planets under the benevolent care of the King Undying. But it's still an odd feeling, to know how alone they really are, and how different.]

Probably just as well.

[She says, and her voice is a touch heavier.]

It turns you pretty weird, obsessing over the dead. And it's less that the Houses are pitted against each other, although you wouldn't have thought so, with how things went down...well, never mind that. It's another long story and I'm not trying to bore your ass off, here. But it's more like, the Houses are united under the King Undying - that's our God, who brought all the Houses back from the brink with the Resurrection - and then there are other worlds out there that aren't really into the way our God runs things, and we defend him from them. Or the Cohort does...from what I can tell, the heads of most of the Houses just sit around getting ever more weird and obsessed with the dead, and my House is the worst of the lot, just rotting away in the dark and guarding some chilly weirdo in a coffin...

[But she looks at him then, and shakes her head. Flashes a smile that looks almost self-conscious.]

But I bet this all just sounds like gibberish, doesn't it? I'm even starting to bore myself. What did you mean, he didn't use them well?