abraxaslogs | Open Log Prompts

WHO: Harrowhark Nonagesimus & other people!
WHAT: Reposting my TDM because I came in so late; let's make new official game canon out of these perfectly decent TL prompts I already wrote.
WHEN: June 12 & 13
WHERE: Around the castle.

i. wandering

Some people are definitely finding that kidnapping is not an effective way to garner assistance, but none of those people are Harrowhark the First. She knows that is her name now because it has been used for her a couple of times (then rise, Harrowhark the First) but she is also frequently still introducing herself as Nonagesimus because she has not gotten used to being First. She has not been First for very long. But she is certain this is a task assigned to her as a Lyctor, that her coming into her necrosainthood has been given this duty.

It's too bad about the fact that her Lyctorhood now feels like it is miles away instead of settling into her skin. She may still be a necromancer, but this world has wrenched something from her. It pains her. It burns at her constantly, the way she knows she still could control bone with little but a twitch of a single neuron, but it also feels like it would make her very tired. But that man--Ambrose--told her it would come back, and she has little choice but to believe him, as she must hang her hopes on something.

So until then, she is wandering the halls looking a bit adrift, but not anywhere near as angry as some might be: a small slip of a girl-woman, just eighteen, with short hair, black robes over a black turtleneck and black pants, and a face painted like a skull.

ii. dining hall

This part doesn't work as well.

With all the fancy food in the world, Harrow is struggling to find things she can eat. She's managed a single corn muffin on her plate, and a cup of water, and is sitting at the table taking tiny little crumbs from the muffin (which is still too rich) and putting them in her mouth. She absolutely looks pathetic and like she doesn't know how food works.

iii. the library / study hall

The library is better.

The library is everything, in fact. It is all she's ever wanted besides to renew her House and become a Lyctor, and so in some ways, she now has everything she could ever ask for in the world except a way to return to the Ninth -- which she would not have had anyway (the way back is closed to you) and will have to live without at least until those rules can be finessed to suit her.

She is reading and reading, and will read until her eyes begin to bleed if she isn't stopped earlier. She researches that sign on her if she can (using the information she got from the hallway as a start), she researches the kingdom, she reads about the war. None of it is sticking until a second read--it is a flurry of excitement--it is a new world that needs her and because she is needed, she is going to learn.

The apprentice mages may find her a bit unpleasantly demanding ("Teach me that") but she does remember to add a please, and of course, she of two hundred (and only two hundred, now that she's seen ~~her~~ Gideon) souls shows aptitude, even if it is entirely the wrong kind of magic. The tiny flame in her hand that she can put out by closing her fist? She's smiling.

No one knows her, but if they did know her, they would know that smiling is not something Harrowhark does.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[It's at this precise moment, however, that the door to their shared accommodations pushes open with an atmospheric creak, and Gideon sweeps into the room. All six-feet-two-inches of her, still decked out in the dark silk tunic and pants she'd received upon arrival, though nonetheless as unsubtly threatening as she might seem in her second-hand Ninth House garb. She hasn't yet washed her face, which means the ominous paint she wears has been made all the more ghastly by the fact that it is now slipping and horribly smudged. She knows how she looks right now okay, don't rub it in.

Almost immediately, she sketches out an obnoxiously exaggerated bow.]

I have returned, my crepuscular queen, my caliginous mistress. Did you miss me terribly, my--

[It's only on rising that she clocks the fact that she and Harrow are not alone, and abruptly her facetious accolades grind to a halt.]

Oh, uh-- Who's this guy?

[ Harrow had started to answer Hector — ]

Every one in three people tends to be a necromancer, population-wise, but in this case 'Ninth' is a place, not a—

[ ... and then there was Gideon. ]

— count. [ After the pause to look at her cavalier, followed by her attempt to hide the slight brightening to her expression when Gideon comes in with the epithets, she finishes schooling her face to neutral so no one can tell that she secretly loves the ridiculous titles. They can't, right? ] Gideon the Ninth, Hector. Hector, Gideon, my cavalier. We seem to all be in this room.

Edited 2021-06-19 20:39 (UTC)

[One in three? That is way too high a proportion of necromancers to normal population, if for no other reason than the demand for corpses. Hector is about to ask how and more importantly why, when Gideon happens.

And, um, wow, that is a lot of lady. Snarky, smudged up, and towering over Hector. He tries not to compare her to Striga, the giant vampiress, as he looks up at her. Gideon seems much less murderous, which is nice. At he cavalier and her necromancer aren't his captors, so he can join in on the snark.]

Hello. I hope I'm not intruding on your reunion. You two go on, I'm going to think of some florid titles for myself so I don't feel left out.

[She chooses to ignore whatever boring necromaner thing they'd evidently been discussing before she blundered in, and instead gives Hector a slow and appraising once-over, quite deliberate. She's never really shared sleeping quatres with anyone save Harrow, not since she was very young and there were still other children in the Ninth House to sleep amongst - something she knows to be true yet which she retains no memory of.

Maybe she should dwell a little more on the fact that there's a whole, sprawling castle to house them within and yet they're being made to share rooms with strangers, but instead what she says is--]

I could think some up for you if you're feeling left out. I wouldn't want you to go around saying the Ninth House cav cruelly excluded you.

No, it's a second reunion, it's all right.

[ It's weird to say you live here too, so she doesn't, though it's true. Harrow will allow for the idea that perhaps she's glad to see Gideon, from a third party. It's actually impossible for her to entirely hide the fact that she is glad to see Gideon, even if neither of them are entirely sure how to handle it. ]

She can certainly come up with titles, just needs a few worthy adjectives for you. I have the ... convenient [Harrow does not want to say fortunate ] status of having been known by Gideon my entire life.

[Hector nods at both Gideon and Harrow. He thinks he can stand to share a space with the two of them.]

So the two of you came from the same place. Interesting. There's someone here from my world as well, but he had the shit luck to get tossed into a cell.

[So, way to go keeping on Thorne's good side, ladies. It's much more convenient.]

So do Cavaliers do magic, too?

[Gideon gamely roles her eyes at the use of the word convenient, knows that at some other point in time it may have been replaced with unfortunate or dubious or some other altogether less pleasant word. But now? Now...things are more complicated than that.

But she's being asked a question, and abruptly she shakes her head.]

Nah, I do swords. I don't have a necromantic bone [ha ha] in my body.

[That there are other kinds of magic here, and that one would call something she's always considered more of an innate talent bolstered by lots and lots of boring scientific learning, could really be considered 'magic', is something she's yet to wrap her head around.]

I would be less useful without her presence, though I prefer not to draw on her, if possible.

[ Harrow can at least make cavs seem useful! ... even if it's true that she's terrified by the siphoning now, and is not going to do such a thing ever again if she can prevent it. Even if Gideon tried to get her to, and might again. It looks like she's going to say something else, too, but she swallows it; she doesn't want to actually compliment Nav. They both might die. ]

[Hector nods. Ok, a bodyguard. Hector prefers to make muscle when he needs it, but to each their own. He neatly categories their relationship in his head, and moves on.]

Have either of you heard anything about what they want from us here? It can't have been easy to summon us.

[One or two people, Hector could justify as curious wizards testing their power. But this many speaks to a purpose, and Hector is curious to find it.]

[Gideon is distracted from her mixed feelings around Harrow's words - like hell she'll allow Harrow not to draw from her if it's needed, and like fuck is she excited to feel that particular pain again - to focus on Hector's instead. She responds by making a particularly rude noise, and shakes her head.]

Understatement if ever I heard one.

[Getting her here? In the flesh? It's a trick that even the King Undying shouldn't be able to pull off...or at least, so she thinks.]

But I dunno. They said something about being chosen, I'd have thought we're here to do battle or something.

[Though that may or may not be because she hopes it's to do battle, battle being the first and foremost thing that she dreams about. She looks to Harrow though, before saying anything else. Chances are the Reverend Daughter has been paying more attention to the subtleties of their arrival than she has.]

It seems like it, yes.

[ Harrow read the details, where she could. She listened and she pried; she isn't as good a set of silent ears as Gideon might be, because she is not as good at not being the center of attention. ]

There is some sort of war on; the whole 'great peril' situation. I'm not sure if we were the people the mages were looking for, any of us — [ even though she wants to believe she was; how could they not want a Lyctor? on the other hand, if they wanted a Lyctor, why her? not that she would admit that out loud to anyone ] but I think they've at least decided we'll do. That, or they have no idea how to send us back.

Why wouldn't they have been aiming for us? If there's to be a fight, there is no one better to raise an army than a couple of necromancers.

[It's an efficient system- lose soldiers, raise more. As the enemy gets weaker, the necromancer's side get stronger.]

At least, that is how it tends to work back home. I think it is no accident that we are 'honored guests'.

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