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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“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.”

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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?

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.”

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.

This mysterious girl crashes into Palamedes like a long-lost friend, a lover—like a cavalier, though even Camilla would hesitate to make such a display. He’s still for a moment, more out of surprise than anything, and then slowly, awkwardly pats her on the back.

He might not have any idea who she is, but it seems like a nice thing to do.

He clears his throat, uncertain what one says to a distressed figment of one’s imagination. I’m sorry? What are you doing here? Who are you?

“Ah, yes,” he says finally. “I was hoping nobody would see that.” With a grimace he adds, “Poor Gideon.”

Yeah, the back pats are nice and wholly professional. They're surface level comforting, and so very much not enough right now. The tight hold in her chest, like an invisible hand encircling her entire ribcage and crushing it to bits — that's sort of what she imagines Pal had felt finding her in the hallway the day after Halloween. The dead are alive again, and seemingly whole. But that hadn't made it easy for him to look at her covered in gore, right? And it certainly doesn't make it easier for Clarke, who can still smell the dust after the explosion, and whose ears are still ringing slightly.

Poor Gideon. Yeah, poor Gideon but also — in a short lived flurry of utter selfishness Clarke can't help but think poor me, too! She hadn't known, she'd walked into this memory blind, only to then watch one of her most cherished people on the ship die, and — and —

She finally unglues the sides of their faces, leans back. And the grief snaps, turns over on itself — becomes something more like anger. Her hands are on his shoulders, fingertips biting through fabric hard enough to bruise. And she shakes him a little, just once or twice.

"You never told me this is how it played out. You never told me that's how it happened, you —" Whatever sentence is stuck in the back of her throat turns on itself; cannibalizes itself until she's left with nothing to say, and only moderately aware of the fact her eyes are wet and swimming with tears.

The girl’s distress would have been touching if Palamedes had been able to make any sense of it. His ears may not be ringing—he has no ears to ring, not really—but still he remains dazed by the act of self-sabotage that led him to this place. At least half of his prodigious mind must remain dedicated to keeping this little bubble bobbing along on the banks of the River; the rest of his thoughts are crowded with Cam, and Dulcinea, and Cytherea, and God, with you lied to us and a theorem he is on the very cusp of cracking.

She shakes him almost painfully; he blinks rapidly and stares hard at her, increasingly thinking of her as an anomaly that must be sorted out. “Are you a manifestation of my guilt?” he wonders aloud. “Or something snuck in from the River?” Carefully, he peels her grip away from him. “In either instance, I’m afraid I cannot allow you to stay. The stability of the bubble is of upmost importance, you see.” And because even mad revenants and hallucinations deserve kindness, he adds, “I am sorry.”

He'll need to be rather firm hand to undo the stranglehold of her fingers in his clothing. But once accomplished and he starts thinking aloud, it's like she was slapped in the face.

"What?" Logicially, Clarke knows they're strangers to him; shouldn't fault that, shouldn't take it personally, and should shift the curtain of emotion aside. But illogically, Pal not knowing her now is a little like Jade and Rita thinking she'd murdered them near Halloween. Only it's worse, because it's not a burning anger he's looking at her with, more a gentle sort of practical indifference. It hurts, to cut to the chase.

And sucks way more when she realizes he's about to throw her out of the Bubble. Is that even possible? Would that even work in a memory? On the off chance it's entirely possible, the River sounds scary — too much like the Nothing. It's a little funny, how in most other memory cracks she'd fallen into, she'd been desperate to get out of. But in Palamedes', she doesn't want to leave.

"What? W — no. No no no." If Pal's still holding on to the hands he'd pried off himself, Clarke's now trying to wriggle her fingers free in order to grasp at his wrists. Desperately:

"We know each other! We meet — after this, after you died."

She holds onto him tightly, like he’s a lift raft, and that does nothing to dissuade him from the conclusions he is reaching about her. He needs to get her out of here, he knows that, it’s vital, but even if she is a revenant—even if she is a figment of his imagination—it feels cruel to throw her out of this tiny corner of safety, especially when she is so distressed.

Just a few minutes, he thinks. Surely he can hold the bubble steady for just a few minutes, enough time to send this desperate intruder gently on her way. He doesn’t pull away from Clarke’s grip on his wrists, though he shuffles very slightly backward to get some space between them.

“After—? Well, time doesn’t have meaning anymore, does it?” He’s speaking to himself more than he’s speaking to her—though perhaps there isn’t much difference between the two.

“Tell me how we know each other.”

This feels a little like being asked to plead her case in order to avoid a death penalty. Which... given the River around them, it may actually be. And which she'd never been allowed to do before being consigned to solitary in the Skybox, but she's actually ready for this time.

Even if she stammers through the beginning.

"We're — It's —" Complicated? No, buckle down Griffin, you know this man appreciates facts, even if they sound nonsensical to the ear.

"You're going to leave this Bubble and be interdimensionally transported onto a haunted ghost ship. We're going to meet there, we're not going to trust each other at first, but you're going to end up being the first person I go to whenever I have questions. The whole thing's powered by magic you're not familiar with, and I don't even understand — but you teach me, and I listen. And we go through a lot, we die a lot. I die a lot. But between all of that —"

Her voice breaks here, one can only impassionately plea for so long before it feels like their larynx is shattering against a swell of emotion. And Clarke doesn't sense it against her cheeks, but a few tears have finally broken loose of her waterline and are slipping down her jawline.

"We're friends."

But it's not just that, is it?

"And I — I walked into a rift that has me stuck in your worst memories, and can't leave you. You're important to me."

Palamedes expression remains concerned, even gentle, but there’s still a sense of remove in his eyes. He cares about this person because she is in distress, but it remains that he does not know her, cannot know her, in fact. And perhaps, too, the sheer emotional exhaustion of the day’s events and the nature of the bubble itself create an even further divide between himself and anything that could be considered deep emotion.

Yet he remains kind, terribly kind. Does he believe her? Palamedes isn’t even sure he can understand her, but clearly she believes what she is saying. “All right, all right,” he says gently. “Take a breath.” And he takes his own advice, too, because for all his outward calm, he can hardly see straight.

“I’m sorry you had to see that. And I understand that you do not wish to leave. I appreciate it, truly. But this room—I know it looks solid, but it’s as delicate as a soap bubble. The slightest bit of interference and it will pop, and we’ll both go tumbling into the River, and I—“ he falters, something of the hope, and fear, and despair he is holding back flickering across his face, “I cannot allow that to happen.”

He closes his eyes suddenly, wincing. “God, I have such a headache—well, not a headache, I suppose. Except in the metaphysical sense. Not without blood vessels to constrict or pain receptors to fire. But it sure fucking feels like it.”

Pal commands her to breathe, and Clarke tries. But it's easier said than done, all that she can manage at first is an ugly, shuttering half inhale that doesn't come close to filling her lungs. First attempt, abysmal. Second, painful. Third, a little easier. Fourth, just relieving enough that she can get back to herself a little. She's cried over boys before, but only ever allowed brief stints of shameless emotion before folding hurt over on itself and compartmentalizing.

It's harder this time, somehow. But is still done. She's reduced to a few wet hiccups, but finally manages to peel her hands off his wrists. Extricate herself from his personal bubble (of the personal space variety, not the only thing keeping them from plunging into an abyss variety) and step back. This was so, so selfish, and she ought to be ashamed for making his afterlife harder just because she hurt.

"Sorry."

It won't matter in the end, Clarke tries to remind herself. But god, in the present? The present is a nightmare.

"...sorry."

Give her a few moments longer to harden her resolve. To lift her hand and vigorously drag her sleeve across her eyes. To sniff once, then force herself to stop. It doesn't matter.

"I'll go."

Maybe being shoved into the River would actually be her ticket home anyways, but the fact of the matter remains that Clarke doesn't know how to try that and... really still doesn't want to leave him. Her eyes are still damp, and pinch around the corners at the prospect. How long is he fated to stay stuck here himself, alone?

Palamedes is taking off his glasses and pinching the bridge of his nose as she steps away. “No, no—goodness, don’t apologize. This—“ he gestures at the room, “is of my making, so it is reasonable to conclude that you are here because of my interference. When one plays fast and loose with reality, one most expect the unexpected.”

He returns his glasses to his face and looks at her gently. “Please, take a moment to collect yourself. It’s the least I can do, and it may, in fact, help you return from whence you came. There isn’t a traditional sort of exit, you see.”

The politeness of his rejection just continues to smack. Cold but not too cold; warm but not warm enough she could melt into it. A moment is offered in which to further compose herself and Clarke takes it; half turns away from him and exhales a ragged, rattling breath. Her eyes still burn, but the tears have been firmly locked away.

And it's then that she reminds herself how these memories usually come to an end. Another rift will open up, and touching it will drag her back through space and time, depositing her unceremoniously on a carpeted hallway of the Serena Eterna. If she could will one into existence right now, she would. Would paint it against the wall of his Bubble and willingly reach out, just to save them both the headache.

But at least for the moment, the room just looks like a room. Uninterrupted, whole. Flimsy maybe, but still a safe haven. It strikes her that she has no idea why or how this whole place was manifested in the afterlife.

"What are you going to do next? How do you plan to get out of this?"

“Now, I wait.” This is a topic with which Palamedes is infinitely more comfortable. He has only been thinking about it in minute detail for years. “…Though I didn’t expect to have to pull the trigger, so to speak, so soon, or in such imperfect circumstances.” Even more than usual, his thoughts flow into his words, barely divorced from one another in this creation that is, after all, a product of his own mind.

Restless as ever, Palamedes stands from the sofa and begins to inspect the room. “I anchored my soul to my body such that, when the circumstances are right, I might be returned to it. Because of the nature of, well,” he makes a vague kind of gesture, “it had to be hundreds—thousands—of anchors, instead of just one. I don’t know how much material will survive, or what Cam will be able to get her hands on.” A breath. “But as long as she gets her hands on something, and finds a clever enough necromancer, and gets out of Canaan House alive…” He trails off as he runs directly into a line of thinking he cannot waste energy contemplating—what if she doesn’t get out of there alive. “Harrow will help, and she’s clever enough to understand my notes. So that should be relatively straightforward, at least.”

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In her sepulchre there by the sea

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cw: suicide ment

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bubble time!!!

Re: bubble time!!!

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