"Young Warden of the Sixth House, what have you done?"
"Tied the noose," says Palamedes Sextus. "You gave me the rope. You have severe blood cancer, just as Dulcinea did. Advanced, as hers was when she died. Static, because the Lyctor process begins radical cell renewal at the point of absorption. All this time we've been talking, I've been taking stock of everything that's wrong with you--your bacterial lung infection, the neoplasms in your skeletal structure--and I've pushed them along. You've been in a terrific amount of pain for the last myriad. I hope that pain is nothing to what your own body's about to do to you, Lyctor. You're going to die spewing your own lungs out of your nostrils, having failed at the finish line because you couldn't help but prattle about why you killed innocent people, as though your reasons were interesting. This is for the Fifth and the Fourth--for everyone who's died, directly or indirectly, due to you--and most personally, this is for Dulcinea Septimus."
Not-Dulcinea sounds impressed, but not particularly worried. "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 thanergenic fission, so you know what happens when a necromancer disperses their entire reserve of thanergy very, very quickly.”
“What?”
Pal raises his voice, but not to call out to the stranger in the doorway. "Gideon! Tell Camilla--Oh, never mind. She knows what to do."
Bros understand that sometimes you gotta make something go boom
"Tied the noose," says Palamedes Sextus. "You gave me the rope. You have severe blood cancer, just as Dulcinea did. Advanced, as hers was when she died. Static, because the Lyctor process begins radical cell renewal at the point of absorption. All this time we've been talking, I've been taking stock of everything that's wrong with you--your bacterial lung infection, the neoplasms in your skeletal structure--and I've pushed them along. You've been in a terrific amount of pain for the last myriad. I hope that pain is nothing to what your own body's about to do to you, Lyctor. You're going to die spewing your own lungs out of your nostrils, having failed at the finish line because you couldn't help but prattle about why you killed innocent people, as though your reasons were interesting. This is for the Fifth and the Fourth--for everyone who's died, directly or indirectly, due to you--and most personally, this is for Dulcinea Septimus."
Not-Dulcinea sounds impressed, but not particularly worried. "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 thanergenic fission, so you know what happens when a necromancer disperses their entire reserve of thanergy very, very quickly.”
“What?”
Pal raises his voice, but not to call out to the stranger in the doorway. "Gideon! Tell Camilla--Oh, never mind. She knows what to do."
The room explodes in cold, white light.