In her sepulchre there by the sea

[hellonspectacles]

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.

Comments

We Loved With a Love That Was More than Love

[hellonspectacles]

Oh, you wanted to see the rest of Canaan House? This time you get to. You’re probably going to regret it.

This corridor is above ground, the walls white-washed, dim light filtering in from faraway windows. Signs of Canaan House’s abandonment are everywhere: there are broken tiles, rotting tapestries, little tables coated in dust. Everything, absolutely everything, smells of blood and death.

For reasons you can’t understand, you are drawn towards an open door at the end of the hallway. As you walk, you might find yourself having to step over the periodic piles of bone, each a human skeleton that seems to have suddenly collapsed where it stood. Soon enough, you might notice the woman standing by the door, the hood of her back robe pushed back to reveal short auburn hair. She seems to be frozen in place, which she is. Her eyes dart about with panic. Does she notice you? She might, or she might be too busy straining to hear the voices coming from inside the room. You will have to stay outside with her; if you try to cross the door’s threshold, you will find yourself hitting an invisible barrier.

Inside, Palamedes sits on a low chair beside a couch on which a young woman lays. She’s pretty in a Victorian consumptive sort of way, with light brown hair and pale skin, her lips dotted red in a way that might make you think she has recently coughed up blood.

“When this started I was eight, and you—you, Dulcinea—were fifteen,” Palamedes is saying. “My feelings were intense, but for God’s sake, of course I understood. I was an infant. And yet I was shown endless tact and sympathy. Does that run in the Seventh House?”

The woman smiles. “I suppose it does. They have been letting young necromancers die for a very, very long time.”

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis follows the pull, breathing in the death permeating the entire space. The dark halls, the piles of bones, the smell in the air. This place is falling apart, not quite abandoned, but definitely dying. The essence of life fading causing a humming in her chest. Power. Every breath into her lungs draws in power.

But there, a door, a woman frozen in front of it, and voices beyond. Valdis walks up next to the young woman, stopping to evaluate what she might be trapped by. Looking into the room, to Palamedes. This must be his memory.

Necromancers. Palamedes was not unique in his world, she knows that, but this? The woman on the couch is not what she seems. She is older than she looks, and deeply corrupted both in body and spirit. It almost feels like there is someone else with her, but the room only has Palamedes and this Dulcinea, who Palamedes told her he had never met. Strange that he had lied. With a deep breath, pulling the scents of illness over her tongue, Valdis tries to enter the room.

[hellonspectacles]

“I have two questions,” Palamedes says to the woman who had claimed to be Dulcinea Septimus. He asks about the murder of someone called Abigail Pent, and the woman confesses easily to killing her, explaining that Pent’s interest in history might have given away her entire scheme. They discuss a key that she had hidden inside the dead woman, gummed up locks, other ways “Dulcinea” had tried to throw Palamedes and others off her scent.

Then Palamedes says, “Where is she?” The woman tries to brush him off, but he persists. “Tell me what you have done with Dulcinea Septimus.”

The woman who isn’t Dulcinea doesn’t answer—because she has suddenly noticed that they are not alone. She looks past Palamedes towards the door, straight at Valdis (who will find it easy to step across the threshold) with a look that says that she is seeing into her very soul. “What in the name of the King Undying are you?”

[redlightgreenlight]

Valdis is quite content to just stand and listen, but unlike the woman in black next to her, she's able to step across the threshold and move. Palamedes hadn't lied, this is apparently not Dulcinea, she's something more. The gaze is uncomfortable, as if the woman can see in a similar way she can. Deeper than flesh and into the realm of souls and life.

She knows about the King Undying and how he is like a god. Thank goodness for her questions to Palamedes. But it's time to put on a show. She doesn't quite cross the room, giving herself space in case this sickly woman actually has some real bite.

"Something greater than even your king."

[hellonspectacles]

Cytherea’s eyes narrow. Her spine straightens, and though she still looks like a woman on the brink of death, she seems to grow without tangibly changing. Her eyes glow, their color shifting, just for a moment.

“Another soul melange?” She shakes her head, “I would remember you. Even after ten thousand years, I wouldn’t forget a face as pretty as yours.” The Lyctor’s gaze becomes searching, a faint frown crossing her features. “Could it be— No, no. You’re not her. Even if she escaped her prison, even if she found herself another body, she couldn’t change her eyes. His eyes. His curse.” She laughs coldly. “Oh, if only you were her. The poetry would be too sweet.”

Palamedes remains in his chair, gaze darting between both women. He had come into this room with a singular purpose and not a lot of hope that he would walk out alive, but he has enough self-preservation not to throw himself into the middle of this brewing battle.

Cytherea is standing now, unsteady and monstrous. “Who are you, then, you who claims to be greater even than God?”

[redlightgreenlight]

The desire to not change Pal's memories, and the desire to put this woman in her place war behind her green eyes, but she smiles, no sign of the confusion showing on her face. This woman seems to be at odds with another, someone else powerful, someone else cursed. Someone who has the woman's ire. Palamedes seems to have a decent sense of self-preservation, as he doesn't move, but he doesn't press either of them.

"Surely a necromancer of your stature would recognize the very embodiment of Death."

She's really just guessing, but the thousands of years, paired with Palamedes telling her about his research into immortality, plus the fact that this woman seems to have two souls, well, it's probably a good guess.

[hellonspectacles]

Cytherea laughs. She laughs, and laughs, until the laughter turns into a coughing fit. When she finally gets her breath, she grins, and there is blood on her teeth. “The embodiment of death? My dear, I have been dying for thousands of years, and in that time I have destroyed worlds. I have stared at death every day, and she never looked like you. Which is a pity, really.”

The next breath she takes rattles in her lungs, and she spasms again with coughs. For now, she seems to have forgotten Palamedes, who is staring at her with a strange intensity.

“But I’ll play along,” Cytherea says when she has caught her breath. “Let’s say you are Death. There’s a certain poetry to your arrival, at least. What do you think you can do to me that hasn’t already been done?”

[redlightgreenlight]

The woman may be older than her, but Valdis can see the illness and age have lessened her. Certainly still powerful enough to challenge a god, yet Valdis has no idea what is supposed to happen here. Is this woman supposed to die here? What does she want? What does Palamedes want?

Still, the overwhelming urge to end the woman's suffering, perhaps something from Meira, fills her eyes with a soft pity.

"Do? No. I will do nothing to you. But I can give you peace."

Can she? Valdis doesn't know much of this is the Angel and how much is the Hellhound. The Hellhound is excited, drinking in the decay and death. The Angel feels pity and the desire to soothe the woman's pain. She's not sure which one is more real.

[hellonspectacles]

“Peace?” Cytherea grins with bloody teeth. “You think I want peace? Do you think I would have returned to this horror show of a castle on this decrepit planet for peace? That I would have killed that girl and dragged the body of her idiotic cavalier all the way here because I thought peace was possible? What I want is the King Undying, the Necrolord Prime, the Resurrector, my lord and master. I want him to watch as I shatter his houses one by one, and I want to find out how many of them it takes before he breaks and crosses over.”

“What I want is revenge.”

“That makes two of us,” Palamedes says quietly—so quietly that he almost cannot be heard.

[redlightgreenlight]

"I never claimed you wanted it."

Though the dying woman is quite long winded. Valdis looks over at Palamedes, wondering what the creeping feeling running up her spine is. This place, so incredibly filled with death, feels a little sharper, as if it is approaching for one, or both of them, the woman and Palamedes. Her eyesight falters, like a thought slinking out of reach. Palamedes died at some point. He got a second chance on the Eterna, but he also potentially had one here, because of his research. Yet, this sinking, eerie feeling lingers.

"You cannot have revenge if you are dead, Palamedes. Isn't it better to live for Dulcinea instead of dying for her?"

[skaikru]

There is a big difference hearing a limited collection of tales of a place, forming a picture of it in your mind, and then stumbling upon it at its worst. This house has the bones of something that was once beautiful and impressive, now reduced to a bloated and rotting corpse of itself. The aura of blood and decomp swirling up to smack her in the nostrils is so thick and tangible that, even without any aptitude for necromancy, the thanergy bites. There's plenty to look at and inspect here, but none of the collapsed bone piles or destroyed patches of floor offer as good a hint for where she might have ended up this time as the figure that stands stock still in the middle of the hallway.

Red hair, dark clothes, the mask of death painted across her face in thick, oily paint...

"Gideon?" Clarke whispers, drawing level with the frozen young woman and staring up at her face. She half expects a reaction like was normal on the ship; something big and larger than life, even if it lacked any recognition. Not her first memory rodeo, but a baseline for experience doesn't mean there's no surprises. At first she thinks this must be one of Gideon's memories, but the cavalier does nothing more than look at her with a growing sense of dread coloring an otherwise frozen face.

And then she hears more voices, trickling out from an open door not that far away. One so familiar that she all out abandons the frozen figure of Gideon Nav to press closer and peer around the door frame — rewarded for bravery with the sight of a boy she knows at the bedside of a girl she doesn't.

Clarke almost calls his name, but this isn't... this isn't right. That can't actually be Dulcinea laying on the bed like a portrait of life stretched past its limits. A ball of thick anxiety clogs up the back of her throat before burning a path down to rest heavy in the bottom of her stomach, and even without magic cast on her limbs, she might as well be frozen in place.

[hellonspectacles]

“I have two questions.”

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.”

[skaikru]

His world is, and always has been, so strange to her. Necromancy, thanergy, thalergy — all the little bits that have slipped through in the time they've known each other, all the parts she'd committed to memory and tried to understand the practice of if not the actual concept. But truth of the matter is so much had been glossed over that she wasn't prepared for the magnitude of Canaan House, nor the full unveiling of events as the woman who is not Dulcinea spells them out. And this is a hell of a way in which to find out. The situation feels more dangerous than their calm discussion is appropriate for, the baby hairs on the back of Clarke's neck standing up just as the blood begins to drip from Pal's. Her teeth set and grinding as the muscles in the side of his jaw tighten. Goosebumps flare up across her arms and a shiver runs down her back that has nothing to do with the temperature of the hallway.

And then he says he's going to kill her. And Clarke's feet unglue, she wants to push into the room and help —

Only to be met with an invisible barrier right in the doorway. Which is confounding and infuriatingly horrifying all at once. It's not unlike any other door she'd encountered in life — something strong and impenetrable right in front of her; the bridge, the blast door of mount weather, the airlock glass behind which her father had been executed and her friends had almost been suffocated, the door in the bedroom at Polis after Lexa's body had been taken out and she and Murphy had been locked in. There have been many doors she's unable to open in Clarke Griffin's lifetime and this, like every single one before it, strike a chord of dread and desperation deep in her gut. Added insult to injury, this time she can see right into the room! It's like she ought to be able to walk through and be there, can even hear them talking and see the expressions wash over their features, but can't be seen or heard herself. It's like drowning in a frozen lake and pounding on the thick sheet of ice while you can see people walking across the top of it.

"Pal... Pal. Palamedes!"

She tries to push at it first, and when that fails, hits with a balled fist and kicks with the steel reinforced tip of her war boots. All to no avail, the two of them are in their own little world and it's one in which she doesn't exist. Has no business barging into or trying to change things, like she'd done with Natsuno and the shiki, or Skulduggery and the murder of his family.

[hellonspectacles]

"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?”

And that’s when Palamedes hears someone calling his name. His concentration briefly broken, his gaze snaps towards the doorway, expecting to see Gideon calling to him. Had his split concentration been too much? Had his friend gotten free of her necromatic bonds? For her sake, he hopes not.

But no, it’s not Gideon Nav crying out to him—it’s a girl he doesn’t know, and yet, through some strange work of the multiverse, somehow understands he should know. He looks straight at her and takes a breath, and there’s apology in his grey eyes that he wouldn’t be able to explain if asked.

Then he blinks and calls, “Gideon, tell Camilla—Oh, never mind. She knows what to do.”

The room explodes in cold, white light.

cw: suicide ment

[skaikru]

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.

[hellonspectacles]

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.

bubble time!!!

[skaikru]

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?

Re: bubble time!!!

[hellonspectacles]

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.”

[skaikru]

He doesn't recognize her, but that's fine. Distantly, Clarke can line up the logic of these shared memories and acknowledge that he has no reason to; that this isn't real, it won't matter, and nothing can be changed. Even if she could have gotten into the room with Palamedes and Cytherea, somehow talked him out of blowing himself up and managed to get them both out of harms way, once she returns to the Serena Eterna, Pal would still technically be dead.

But god did it feel real. From the settling dust to the reverb of voices; from the oily smear of sweating paint on Gideon's jawline to the ache in her chest when faced with an immovable barrier. Sometimes logic needs to take a backseat to emotion, and a strange mix of grief and relief currently have her in a chokehold, so.

He acknowledges her fully this time — not just a sad little side glance — and Clarke's subconsciously confident enough there's no barrier to prevent her from reaching him this time. She's up and off sore knees in a heartbeat, crossing to where he's seated in an instant, and — brace yourself, memory Pal — immediately crashing into his personal space with a desperate hug that puts her half in his lap.

Her lungs rattle with a wet, painful inhale; a swallowed sob. Cheek sandwiched to the side of his face, Clarke notes: he smells wrong, here. There's no scent of the standard issue Serena Eterna soap or shampoo clinging to his clothes or hair, but maybe she can delude herself into thinking there's still the faint aroma of tea hanging around his mouth. Not her Palamedes, but still familiar. A few tears prick at the edges of her eyes, but don't fall yet, and Clarke's voice is so thick it chokes her to say —

"I just watched you die."

...well, yeah, obviously. It's just going to take her a little while to get over that.

[neverleave]

Once the usual confusion from the rifts fades away, Natsuno realizes he's in Canaan House again. It looks much worse now and smells like the aftermath of a disaster. Natsuno scowls and goes to look for Palamedes. He hopes he doesn't die in this memory as well, he doesn't want to wake up to Jade looming scarily over him again...

He stops by the frozen woman - familiar from a different memory and perhaps the ship - but she's not very helpful and besides, Pal is inside the room. Natsuno frowns deeper, takes a step forward -

And hits the barrier face first. Ow.

[hellonspectacles]

Luckily, Natsuno can see--and hear--everything that's going on inside the room from his vantage point in the door.

“I have two questions,” Palamedes says.

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.”

[neverleave]

Abigail Pent and Magnus Quinn. It takes Natsuno a moment before it clicks - the bodies at the bottom of the ladder. Palamedes discovered the murderer, not before she picked off more victims.

He listens on, caught in the story despite himself. A lot of it is still unfamiliar and confusing, but the important things are obvious enough. This Lyctor woman has a myriad-old grudge and she'll have her revenge at any cost, including the life of someone Palamedes clearly cared about.

Seeing the blood tricking down his friend's neck, Natsuno realizes he's planning something. The woman prattles on about Pal taking this sensibly and oh, for all the time she spent in disguise, killing and sowing confusion, she has no idea who Palamedes Sextus really is.

Natsuno doesn't call out, because he doesn't want to distract Pal, but what he thinks is: fuck her up.

Bros understand that sometimes you gotta make something go boom

[hellonspectacles]

"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."

The room explodes in cold, white light.

[astrogator]

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.

[hellonspectacles]

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.”