come_sailaway | In her sepulchre there by the sea

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In her sepulchre there by the sea

Who: Palamedes Sextus and his cavalier, Camilla Hect, the rest of the House Heirs, a gaggle of spooky monks, some skeletons, a murderer, and you!
What: Memshare adventures! All memories are open to all.
When: Anytime in March
Where: Canaan House, Earth!
Warnings: Canon-typical blood, violence, and mild body horror
Notes: Below the cut you will find some scene-setting and descriptions/notes for each of the prompts. Prompts themselves are in the comments!

In general, characters will assume that you arrived with the other visitors to Canaan House a few weeks before any of the events described below, but they will have no idea who you are and why you’re there, and will be extremely suspicious of your presence.

Canaan House rises out of the sea like a castle, a tower, a crumbling mausoleum. Outside the small island on which it stands, the ocean stretches as far as the eye can see, sparkling under the bright rays of Dominicus. The building itself is clearly old, crumbling in places, windows cracked and bricks pitted; even on a thanergenic planet, where life must fight for its existence, nature is slowly overtaking one of the last symbols of humanity on the planet all people once called home.

Inside, the sense of grand decay continues. If you squint, you might notice the way it resembles a university building, some wings made up with wood floors and elaborate bannisters, fading paintings and rotting tapestries on the walls, while others are full of large, light-filled spaces, all glass, and steel, and concrete. There is a large courtyard with a dry fountain, broken elevators and flights of stairs that end halfway up, and dozens of doors with numbers above the threshold, each with its own unique lock, each requiring a key to open. Listen closely and you might hear an ambient hum of electricity, or the quiet clatter of bone from the dozens of otherwise-silent skeleton constructs that clean, and cook, and gather food for the planet’s first guests in nearly ten thousand years.

Welcome to the First House. Don’t stay any longer than you have to.

The Wind Came Out of the Cloud By Night
Investigate a murder scene! This is the best chance of meeting lots of other characters or exploring Canaan House more broadly.

The Demons Down Under the Sea
Solve a puzzle, fight a skeleton monster, hang out with Palamedes and Camilla

We Loved With a Love That Was More than Love
Experience Palamedes death! Please note that unless previously discussed, characters will not be able to interact with this memory, only observe.

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He looks at her like he ought to know her, and that births a fresh wave of resolve in her chest that sees Clarke throwing her shoulder against the barrier. The soundtrack playing in her mind on repeat is — wait. wait please. you're going to die. Logic is obviously not winning out over emotion here, because she knows in her heart that he means to do so but still wants to do something. Anything about it. Doesn't want to see it, doesn't want it to happen, cannot fucking fathom being kept on the outskirts when he kills himself for a cause.

But, worlds away, this has already happened. Her intrusion and all her good intentions aren't going to change that fact.

Gideon, tell Camilla —

Sightline locked or not, Pal's still about to follow through. Something in Clarke's chest seizes up, then shatters, and she takes a step back from the doorframe.

Oh, never mind.

There hasn't been enough time for her to begin to cry properly, but her eyes are wet and her mind's at war. Stay calls to her, but gut instincts reign and she's died enough. Doesn't want to again. And doesn't think Palamedes would thank her for staying put in a static memory just for the sake of burning alongside her.

She shakes her head once, then turns sharply to run.

She knows what to do.

This faux cut out of a world is suddenly engulfed in white light and the heat of an explosion. Clarke barely makes it a few paces before she has to close her eyes against the burn in her retinas, and maybe makes it a step or two further before the world shakes and shatters. She doesn't remember falling, but feels the impact of the ground right in front of Gideon Nav's feet. Then, before the rumbling is even over and the bones of Canaan House begin to settle —

The scene shifts.

He doesn't even look at the Third this time. Palamedes doesn't bother, so engaging with them won't progress the memory to a conclusion. He makes his way to Pal when beckoned, standing a bit off from him and Harrow.

"More like very little," he admits. "If there's a drawn symbol you can destroy it, but I don't know how to do it safely."

According to Ava, the only reason he's in this memory to begin with is that someone sabotaged the sigils keeping the ship together.

It isn't often that Ari sees this level of decay, the kind that results from long abandonment. Most colonies are new, relatively speaking, and those that fail do so hard, and quickly. She smells blood. She walks cautiously, alert, as if anticipating a threat. Well-trained spacer that she is, her precautions even extend to looking upwards. The people who died here didn't die recently, but the deaths were sudden, she surmises. The little piles of bleached-white bone are unnerving. Whose life is this? Who could live in such a place?

She soon has her answer. Palamedes Sextus, the Master Warden. Ari Tayrey peers through the door, standing beside the auburn-haired woman. She listens to Palamedes, and the sickly-looking young woman on the couch. Ari hasn't the context to make sense of it. When what started?

Eight is perilously young to let anything start, even by Tradeline standards, especially if it carries risk of death. She resolves to ask him about it, someday. Not today. Today she has to deal with him as he is. Ari tries to step forward, into the room, but some invisible force rebuffs her. She takes two quick steps back, her hand reaching towards her gun. She glances towards the woman in black, as if seeking some explanation.

“Now that is a relevant question. What is this, anyway?” Palamedes eyes twinkle. “This is where things get interesting.”

Camilla seems less enthused about the entire situation, but she offers Cassandra a one-shouldered shrug that one could almost call a gesture of solidarity. “We’re looking for keys,” she says, voice clipped and businesslike. “Presumably, to open one of the many locked doors in the floors above. The door,” he gestures at the door in the window, “doesn’t open by any obvious mechanism.”

“So presumably we have to find a way in there to get the key,” Palamedes adds.

Palamedes still doesn’t know who this woman is, but with those last words, he feels a tug of a connection to her. He nods faintly to her, but before he can say anything, Cytherea breaks in.

"Oh, it's going to take a great deal more than that. You know what I am, and you know what I can do.”

"Yes," says Palamedes. "I also know you must have studied radical thaneegenic fission, so you know what happens when a necromancer disperses their entire reserve of thanergy very, very quickly.” To Valdis, he adds, “Angel of Death or no, I would suggest you leave now.”

“That is the question.” Palamedes presses his hands together and begins to pace. “Necromancer and cavalier are forced to split up. They cannot combine forces in the chamber…” Suddenly he stops, eyes going wide. “Or can they? Sir—I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name—I did see something else. But I can’t be sure what.”

He frowns faintly. “I don’t want to put you in a dangerous situation, but I would be grateful for another look, if you don’t mind returning to the chamber.”

Both Palamedes and Camilla watch Jade as he talks, neither of them reacting to his outlandish tale. When he offers to help, they look at one another, and a silent conversation seems to take place—a lift of an eyebrow here, a pursing of the lips there, until they seem to come to some kind of agreement.

“Very well,” says Palamedes. “Camilla, would you mind walking him through what we know.”

Cam jerks her head at Jade and walks back to the chamber with its glass wall. “We’re looking for keys,” she says, voice clipped and businesslike. “Presumably, to open one of the many locked doors in the floors above. The door,” he gestures at the door in the window, “doesn’t open by any obvious mechanism.” The she points at the door in the side wall. “We haven’t been through there yet.”

It's only her friendship with Palamedes that prompts her to listen to his past self. She knows how this ends and she'll see him soon enough. Sooner if she leaves before he...explodes. With a brisk nod, it's like she vanishes, even if the reality is that she's used soul energy to leave the room faster than the human eye can follow. She's not keen to see her roommate die, and is tempted to keep going, but she can't so she slips behind the other woman, waiting for the memory to end.

Palamedes Sextus is sitting on a low chair beside a now-empty couch. He doesn’t wake up there; he doesn’t appear there. He merely is there, as though he had always been sitting in this chair. And perhaps he has; Pal can’t say how much time has passed since he spoke to the woman who was not Dulcinea, and locked eyes with the mysterious blond girl, and released the energy of a very small nuclear bomb upon Canaan House. The pain of it had been unimaginable, but the memory is already fading, falling through his hands like sand.

He looks around.

The room is familiar, if somewhat more bare than when he had last seen it. There is the chair he sits on, and the settee where Cytherea had laid swooning, and a small end table. The wallpaper is peeling off the walls in places, and a small window near the ceiling lets in grayish light. Slowly, Pal stands, turns around, and approaches a nearly-empty bookshelf against one wall. He picks up the single book on display: The Necromancer’s Marriage Season. It feels solid and real, the plex pages firm against his fingers.

But, of course, none of this is real.

A slow smile spreads across his face.

“Camilla, we did it,” he declares to the empty air in a voice filled with wonder.

Oh, she has to answer that look from Cam; a wry half-smile, as she might commiserate silently with someone about dealing with Percy in a similar wave of enthusiasm. (This is where things get interesting; it's so very much something he might say.)

"Keys," she says then, focusing on the matter at hand. "And one of them is likely to be here. May I have a look at the door here, Master -- is Warden the appropriate way to address you?"

"Wayne," he replies, looking back toward the chamber again, putting together what he's pretty sure they might have to do as soon as Palamedes starts to walk himself through it in kind. That's...huh. That's clever, if this is supposed to be a test of bonds. One person outside, and a talented fighter in would give them a better chance at solving this.

So Wayne props his axe against his shoulder, shifting his weight and assessing himself briefly, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out an anomalous juice box that seems to be a much lower graphical fidelity than the rest of the surrounding space, sucking it dry then crushing it to put back into his pocket. If he's going to be in a fight, he needs to be able to perform accordingly.

"Let's do this."

Harrow looks unimpressed, but Palamedes offers Natsuno a brief, encouraging smile. "It was worth a shot. You're right about the symbols, but time is of the essence. We can't know running around Canaan House looking for the right ward to destroy when we know Lady Pent and her cavalier are drifting further and further away from us."

He folds his arms, considering their options. "Perhaps we can draw them with some object of significance. If you're not too squeamish," this is directed at Natsuno, "would you mind going through their pockets to see what they might have on them. Reverend Daughter, I'd appreciate your help re-setting the circle."

"This is desecration," hisses Silas Octakiseron. "If the House the Fifth discovers what you've done here, Master Warden--"

"Desecration was killing two of the kindest people I have ever met in cold blood," Palamedes shoots back, coolly calm. "This is an investigation. And one that Abigail Pent, a woman you barely knew, would support and encourage."

The young woman can't move, and not by her own choice. Pinned like a bug by necromatic power, her eyes flash as a stranger comes into view, but she can do nothing to communicate with this person, or stop what is happening just beyond the doorway.

Meanwhile, the little drama playing out inside continues. The strange pair in the room speak to one another calmly, unaware that their audience has grown. “Why the Fifth?” Palamedes asks next, hands folded in his lap, his expression unreadable. And though the woman, the so-called Dulcinea, tries to hem and haw, she finally admits why she murdered Abigail Pent and Magnus Quinn. Pent was good at talking to spirits—more than that, she was a historian, someone who could have easily blown this woman’s cover.

Palamedes seems satisfied with this answer, but ultimately unmoved.

“What was your second question?” the woman asks.

“Where is she?” Palamedes answers quietly, so quietly that those standing at the door might have to strain to hear him. “What have you done with Dulcinea Septimus?”

“Oh, she’s still here,” says the woman who is definitely not Dulcinea with a flutter of her hand.

From there, the story pours out of her in waves, each one growing with momentum. A dam has broken in this creature, this Lyctor, and she talks about the perfectly polite conversation she had with the real Dulcinea Septimus when she intercepted her ship on the way to Canaan House, how she killed her and her cavalier, and took her place, and burned her body. And why? Why come back here, why pick off the House heirs one by one?

“This wasn’t really about any of you, not personally,” she says, as though that would mitigate her evil deeds. “I knew that if I ruined his Lyctor plans, I’d draw him back to the system.” Without actually getting louder, her voice seems to grow in power as she speaks. “I’ll give the the King Undying, the Necrolord Prime, the Resurrector, my lord and master front-row seats as I shatter his houses one by one and find out how many of them it takes before he breaks and crosses over.”

“Why would one of the Emperor’s Lyctors hate him?” Palamedes asks in that same dangerously calm voice.

“Hate him? I have loved the man for ten thousand years. We all loved him, every one of us. We worshipped him like a king. Like a god! Like a brother.”

They continue to talk, but Palamedes is barely listening. Those that know him well might even notice the look of concentration on his face—a slight tightness in the mouth, a hardening of his jaw, and most significantly of all, a trickle of blood down the back of his neck.

“You’re taking this much more sensibly than I thought you would,” the Lyctor is saying. “I assumed you would try something silly when you realized she was dead.”

“I wouldn’t ever try to do something silly,” Palamedes answers lightly. “I made the decision to kill you the moment I knew there was no chance to save her. That’s all.”

If Cassandra looks closely, she might notice Camilla relax by an infinitesimal amount. She still doesn’t look very happy about the situation, and she certainly doesn’t smile, but the cool look in her eyes shifts from I will run you through at the slightest provocation to we’re in this together, but if you take a wrong step, I will still run you through, don’t you forget it.

“Hmm? Oh, yes, Master Warden is fine,” Palamedes answers, already drawn back to the door himself. “Please, by all means. I’d be interested to know what you think.”

Now it's the Eight's turn to be stared at for a moment. A necromancer who's into soul siphoning calls going through a dead person's pockets desecration, really? Palamedes seems so normal compared to the rest of them.

"I'm not squeamish," he says blankly and kneels next to the bodies. There's nothing but cold efficiency in his movements - what's a dead stranger compared to a dear friend's brutalized corpse?

Maybe there is something in their pockets, but Natsuno's attention is caught by a certain scent. He kneels closer to the woman's body, and... huh.

"Master Warden. There's something inside Lady Pent. Made of metal."

"Thank you," she says, making her way toward the door, "it's only that we seem to have skipped introductions ... what is this made of?"

Her tone's carefully offhand at first, as though she's more interested in the door than in getting names. Which she is, a little bit, but she also doesn't want to risk accidentally saying aloud a name she hasn't heard yet.

More accurately, the scene lurches.

It's a strange sort of discombobulating; she goes down in a cloud of white heat and the first wave of dust falling from the ceiling, and pushes herself up in an all around pristine room. Not caked in ashes, but still coughing up the residue of the explosion. For a second she feels safely (subjective but true) back on board the Serena Eterna, and indulges the coughing fit. There's a voice several feet away, dampened by the ringing in her ears but it doesn't sound angry. Clarke hacks so hard it brings tears to her eyes and leaves her stomach in knots, but once she looks up and takes in the space around her... well, the knot tightens.

And once she rubs her eyes enough to focus on the figure seated in a chair at the other end of the room, the tears well up all over again.

She hadn't really focused on the interior of Cytherea's room enough to immediately place it, and honestly doesn't care. It's whole and quiet and they're alone, and Pal is smiling — though even through the haze of emotional grief, Clarke can figure it's not directed at her like it usually is. It's still not right, but she's so happy just to see him intact.

"Pal?" She finds herself asking, while pushing from hands and knees all the way to her feet. "Palamedes?"

Can he at least hear and properly see her now?

“Wayne,” says Camilla, her expression implying that this is not the sort of name she expected a Canaan House-dwelling monster to have.

“An absolute pleasure, Wayne,” says Palamedes with, as usual, much more good cheer. He claps his hands together. “Excellent. Cam, you stand watch as before.” To Wayne he adds, “We’re pulling you out the moment things get dire. Now, let’s take our places.”

Pal returns to the smaller room, leaving Camilla watching Wayne. She looks…just a bit impressed. Before long, the door to the chamber slides open once again.

Palamedes abruptly stops conversing with Harrowhark and looks at Natsuno with sharp eyes.

“I’m sorry, did you say inside?”

From there, a series of events happen in quick succession. First, Dulcinea Septimus faints into her cavalier’s beefy arms. Palamedes looks sharply towards her, frozen to the spot, torn between investigation and his instinct to protect this woman at all cost. Then, two teenagers, both fifteen at the oldest, come down the ladder; when they see Abigail and Magnus, they gasp and stumble back, and one of them soon begins wailing.

The Eight cuts through the noise. “Enough of this nonsense,” said the necromancer, rolling up his sleeves and stepping closer to decidedly larger cavalier. “Brother Colum,” he said.

“Ready, Brother Silas,” said the larger man.

Silas laid his hand on the other man’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Almost immediately, color seemed to drain from Colum—and soon, from the very world itself.

“Ah, we did, didn’t we?” Palamedes gestures towards Cam, who is searching one of the rotting, rusted desks. “Camilla Hect, Warden’s Hand, Cavalier Primary, and the best wielder of the sword the Sixth has ever seen. And when I’m not standing on ceremony, I’m called Palamedes Sextus.” He places his fingertips lightly on the translucent wall to the chamber and frowns. “Glass. About four inches thick, probably. Remarkable.”

Out of a sort of amused curiosity, Palamedes skims the first few pages of The Necromancer’s Marriage Season. Where had it come from? Was this book pulled from the deep recesses of his memory, something so far back and inconsequential that he doesn’t even recall it? Or is it some subconscious amalgamation of every ridiculous romance novel Dulcinea had forced Pal and Cam to dig out of the Library in their youth? Either way, it’s unfamiliar enough to him now that he is soon reading the story in earnest, and never mind that the writing itself is sub-par.

The girl’s coughing interrupts him. He looks up from the pages, blinking at the same blond he had seen seconds before his thanergenic explosion had detonated.

Almost immediately, he decides that she must be a figment of his imagination—like the book in his hands, some strange combination of memories and experiences, built into a form he can’t quite recognize.

“Er. Hullo there.”

"Yeah, in her - "

Thump. The sickly-looking woman faints, Pal is distracted, some kids are crying and the pale weirdo is doing - something. It's extremely unpleasant. Right, that must be soul-siphoning.

"So crass," he murmurs, recalling one of the blonde women's comment from earlier.

It takes a few tries, but eventually, Palamedes finds the rift he’s looking for.

He’s back in the Library, watching as as crowd begins to gather around the Swordsman Spire’s sparring ring. Squaring off against each other are a fifteen-year-old Camilla Hect, Cavalier Primary and the Warden’s Hand, and Captain Diana Promachos, Master of the Swordsman’s Spire, decorated veteran Alexandrite, and—thanks to the Warden’s meddling in the Spire’s activities—one of Palamedes’ political enemies.

In reality, Palamedes Sextus wasn’t in attendance for this event, but he has heard about it enough times to immediately recognize what he is watching. He slips behind a pillar, but he isn’t too worried about being spotted. Everyone is far too interested in the match that’s about to take place.

The two masters of the sword circle each other carefully at first, but once the fight begins, it’s like watching a pas de deux danced at the speed of sound. Strikes of sword on sword echo; sometimes, Camilla seems to gain ground; other times, Promachos clearly has the advantage.

Then, Camilla seems to stumble, and her opponent lunges in to take advantage. Every spectator holds their breath—even Pal, who knows what’s about to happen. From her seemingly off-kilter crouch, Camilla swings out a leg to trip Promachos; the other woman stumbles as Cam easily dodges her strike, and then falls to her knees. Camilla presses her sword to the back of the woman’s neck.

“The match goes to Camilla the Sixth.”

The room erupts in cheers. Even Pal can’t help himself—he whoops, and he swears that Camilla looks straight at him with a rare, radiant smile.

Then, abruptly, the memory ends. Palamedes is left standing in the middle of the dining room, a cooling cup of tea on the table at his elbow.

He stares at it, gaze a little vacant and heart still pounding.

[You can join Pal in the memory or catch him afterwards!]

She wouldn't be the first person to be surprised by his name being decidedly human. At least Palamedes seems to be in much better spirits than his companion.

Knowing that others are at his back again is comforting, and Wayne moves as soon as the door opens again. He looks back at the man with his hand on the podium and offers an easy thumbs-up. To Camilla he adds, "We got this." He's confident in his ability to fight with this extra bit of guidance after all.

The moment the door slides closed behind them again, Wayne's hand is out, and he curls his fingers in such a way that the air before Camilla warps, and a protective barrier wraps around her. A simple precautionary measure that would blunt the first blow that she might take. Best to make sure that the other walked away unscathed one way or another.

She nods to each of them as their names are given, and then focuses back on the glass wall. It's hard not to think about one particular wall made of translucent residuum, lowered and raised by magical means.

"Are you certain it's just one part that opens, and not the entire wall?"

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Page 4 of 8

In her sepulchre there by the sea

cw: suicide ment

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bubble time!!!

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Re: bubble time!!!

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I love the way she moves (late March, OTA)

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