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There was darkness. That was perfectly normal… well normal enough. Even the Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House needed to sleep occasionally. Not enough, but nonetheless Gideon was familiar with the sensation.
What Gideon wasn’t familiar with was a brief pulling, a sharp pain, radiating throughout her nervous system. Was Harrow hurt? Dying? Would Gideon even know if she was? She felt completely helpless. Gideon’s palms would’ve been sweating if she had the luxury of palms.
Then, in a flash of blinding light, Gideon was somewhere new. And after a first glance, intimately familiar. The weight of the air and the smell of mold and octogenarians told her she could only be in one place. The Ninth.
Gideon’s mind raced. Surely she hadn’t been under the surface for that long. How had Harrowhark managed to return to the Ninth so quickly? But before she could follow that train of thought, she paused. One thing they don’t tell you about having your soul consumed by another person is that the sounds of your own body are distinctly your own. Harrow’s heartbeat was near double what Gideon’s was, her breath coming in significantly faster. The noise of Harrow was beyond distracting. They should put that in the Lyctor Training Manual.
So the silence temporarily stunned her. It was a silence that could only be applicable to one person, because the sounds of this body were meant for her. Her body.
Gideon felt her own breath hitch. Her own heart race. Her own eyes fill with tears. She reached for her chest and where there should’ve been a gaping hole, there was a sternum, intact, covered by unscarred flesh and blood.
So she was whole. And she was her. The thought of having muscles again almost brought her to tears. She patted one more trail down her body to make sure this wasn’t some trick. And it was then she noticed what she was wearing. Full black robes complete with a set of knucklebeads adorned Gideon’s frame.
First red flag that something had to be wrong. There was not a day in her life that she wore this bullshit. Even as cavalier primary she wasn’t expected to have this getup. And she bet if she touched her face… yep, completely sticky and gross with what was certainly a full, greasy death’s head painted on.
After allowing a slight panic, she took a deep breath and swallowed down another wave of hysteria. Why could she not remember how she got here? Both dying and getting a body back were things a person didn’t tend to forget. She needed to think through this.
Out of a myriad of possibilities, Gideon narrowed it down to the following:
1. She returned to her body, which was, for some reason, fully decked out as a welcome and honored member of the Ninth.
2. She never died, and has only just now regained her memory
3. This is a hallucination of her own, to end her never-ending boredom inside of Harrow’s brain.
4. This is Harrow’s fault somehow, probably the product of some terrible and sleep-deprived plan.
The second option was impossible. She felt the pain of dying and the pain of being absorbed, on top of the pain of being irrelevant and forgotten by Harrow.
The first option: also unlikely. Given that the second option was false, her body would’ve been abandoned on the First. Her rotting corpse was probably feeding the birds, and if it wasn’t, the Ninth wouldn’t want her back anyway.
This left the third and fourth options. It was not outside the realm of possibilities that she’d finally lost her entire mind. It was honestly her right, after all the batshit things she’d seen and done. But she’d also met Harrowhark Nonagesimus, and therefore could not rule out option #4. Gideon simply needed more info.
Now that she had taken stock of her body and rejoiced over the fact that she was no longer trapped inside a body that couldn’t lift a rapier, she scanned her environment.
Inky shadows were pushed back by smoky, shitty lamps. The oily black walls were carved out of stone, and she could hear the rattling of the heating system straining to do the absolute bare minimum. Gideon shivered.
Yep, confirmed Ninth. Why was she in Drearburh though? Unless Gideon’s brain was trying to practice some psychoanalysis or induce a fight or flight response, this was looking more and more like the work of one Reverend Daughter of the Ninth. She racked her brain looking for answers. There was one sure giveaway. The face paint. Harrow would never allow Gideon to walk around with subpar paint.
Gideon scanned the room for a mirror. Balls. Completely typical of the Ninth to never provide her with what she needed.
She walked toward the door on a mission. As she reached for the handle, she noticed the world tilting. Gideon blinked and shook her head, in hopes of clearing her vision. And there was blackness again.
Truly what the fuck.
She came to again, and was immediately relieved to see that her body accompanied her on this journey to… wherever. However when she looked down, she was now wearing a suit of pure white. A suit? Hell yes. White? Not really her color.
Before she could process this outfit that she definitely never wore before dying, she was interrupted by… a party?
She could hear endless conversations, music, and laughter. There were people dancing in a wide array of colors. Gideon didn’t realize how completely and utterly alone she felt until now. For a moment, she basked in the company, before she noticed another bit of crucial information.
Trays of food were lining the room, wafting scents that Gideon hadn’t got to process first hand in too long. As her stomach blindly guided her over to a tray of cakes, something caught her eye. More precisely, someone.
The hulking mass of Protesilaus the Seventh loomed over the crowd like a bad omen. Had someone reconstructed his rotting corpse again? Gideon, having had enough of beguiling corpses in her life (and now apparently death,) redirected from the cakes, needing to get a better look. But as Gideon was straining to see the man-hulk’s face, she saw who he was next to - someone Gideon had never seen before, but was 100% certain who she was.
Where previously Gideon had known her to have long, sweeping hair – if a little charred at the end –, this new person’s short, fawn colored curls dusted over pale, translucent skin. Every single one of her veins was visible, but despite this, her cheeks were flushed and her green eyes sparkled as she leaned on Pro for support.
Dulcinea Septimus, the real Dulcinea Septimus, was alive and attending this party. Gideon now realized how poor of an imitation Cytherea was. Sure, they had the same Seventh features, but anyone who had seen the true Dulcinea would never have been fooled.
The same can be said about poor Protesilaus the Seventh. He chatted amiably with Dulcinea, smiling and friendly with those around him. How anyone did not see through Cytherea’s meat puppet, Gideon wasn’t sure. Although, she guessed, someone did immediately see through it.
Looking for that particular someone in a totally dignified and cool way, Gideon scanned the room for black. As she was doing this, she had a horrible realization that made her stomach drop.
If the real Dulcinea and Pro were here… then “here” couldn’t be alive. She illogically patted her hands down her body again to check for injuries. But of course if Pro and Dulcinea were here unscathed, the rules of injury didn’t apply. They were, after all, not piles of ash.
Returning to her previous list of potential explanations, Gideon could now completely rule out a hallucination of her own. She had never met the real Dulcinea Septimus. Or the alive Protesilaus the Seventh. She stopped scanning for the presence of the Ninth. She was starting to find that line of inquiry unlikely as a new theory was forming about her companions.
In her hesitant scan of the room, her eyes fell on the Third…. Or not. Coronabeth Tridentarius was a poor imitation, sitting flocked among members of the Sixth House. While there were similarities in build and profile, something was… wrong. Ianthe even looked off, and she looked off to begin with. Well, if her theory proved correct, that seemed promising for Corona’s fate.
Gideon scanned for more familiar faces. Marta the Second looked as resplendent and stiff as ever, her white cohort uniform starchy as all hell, standing next to …. Not Judith Deuteros. Interesting. But if Gideon learned anything from comics, it’s that no one is confirmed dead until you see a body. And Judith had been alive when Gideon last saw her. Barely alive, but alive nonetheless.
One of Judith’s last statements rang through Gideon’s mind, unwilling. Nobody should ever have to watch their cavalier die. Initially, she would’ve sworn Harrow would agree. Gideon really thought they had a moment there, right at the end. But Gideon had never felt so personally victimized by the phrase “out of sight, out of mind.”
Moving on from her pity party, she continued to search for her friends. Fake Palamedes and Camilla were just as Sixth as they were in real life, people watching in isolation on the sidelines, but those were definitively not the real deal. Fake Palamedes didn’t clean his glasses even once in the time she watched from a distance. This truly stumped Gideon. If her theory was correct, and these people were all, in fact, dead, she made a silent prayer to the Locked Tomb that Camilla had survived their encounter with Cytherea. But she had watched as Palamedes Sextus blew himself up. Pal was a gifted necro, but not that gifted.
Feeling a little itchy, she scanned for blue and an over-active pituitary gland, but the Fourth were nowhere to be seen. There were other representatives of their house, but not the adept and his cavalier. She let go of the breath she wasn’t aware she’d been holding. Gideon didn’t know if she could look Jeannemary Chatur in the eye, knowing that she was to blame for her death. Nor did she want to face Isaac’s judgement on her inability to keep a 14 year old alive for 15 minutes. This, like Palamedes, did throw a wrench in her “party of the dead'' theory.
However, Gideon’s theory did hold up when she saw the outline of someone wearing all brown, whose warm energy she felt from across the room. Gideon’s eyes burned as fresh tears rose to the occasion. Magnus Quinn and Abigail Pent were striding across the room with a purpose, the former with a fistful of snacks for the road.
She looked to see who they were headed for, and saw… Ortus Nigenad and Aiglamene? What? Ortus was definitely dead. Like accessed-from-the-spirit-world dead. And Aiglamene, under further inspection, was fake. As Ortus turned to greet the Fifth, he unknowingly derailed Gideon’s entire line of reasoning and logic. His tall frame had been hiding the top of a decrepit black veil pinned to a very short head.
And she was running. Heart in her throat, she pushed past the Seventh and Third. For the third time, tears risked spilling over. But she couldn’t spend time analyzing that; she needed to focus. She needed to get across this room more than she’d needed anything in her life. She was confident at this point that this whole elaborate setup was bullshit, but she didn’t care. If there was the slightest chance to see Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Gideon would take it. It was only fair to want to check in on the person you literally died for. She naturally had some questions.
Just as she was clearing the last group of people, the now-familiar pulling sensation started. Her vision tilted.
“HARROW,” Gideon shouted, but it was too late. She was in darkness again. She hung between the back of Harrow’s brain and these… hallucinations? She felt raw. She was an exposed nerve. Thankfully she never felt the muscle ache from running, the shortness of breath. But somehow she still couldn’t breathe. But that was fine. Gideon was aware she was still dead. Could a dead girl even breathe?
But despite her lack of oxygen and a pulse, she was unceremoniously dumped into another scenario. Gideon blinked to clear her vision. Hold on a minute. Was Harrow dreaming? Gideon wasn’t sure Harrow had the capacity for dreaming. She’d never done it before. At least not while including Gideon, which was frankly rude; it’s boring sitting in the dark all the time. But why would she start now? And why were some of the characters of the dream wrong?
Taking stock of this new (for a lack of any actual understanding) dream, Gideon almost barked out a bitter laugh. She was wearing a Cohort uniform. Was this some kind of sick joke? Gideon would’ve given anything to wear this in real life. But she didn’t foresee herself serving in the Cohort by… making coffee? Because, sure enough, over the top of the uniform was a white apron.
Ooooh Nonagesimus, if this is your doing, I am definitely going to make fun of you for this.
As if in response, Gideon felt a sudden, foreign urge to move. Whatever this was, Gideon could feel this force getting stronger. Without a single thought entering her own head, Gideon’s arms started going through the motions of making coffee, for whatever godforsaken reason. She could easily fight the force off, but why, when this might actually get her some answers?
As she worked through an order, she heard a familiar, pre-pubescent voice.
“Have you tried the coffee yet?”
Gideon’s heart leapt and broke simultaneously. Her stomach was lead. Jeannemary Chatur. God, she hoped she got the chance to apologize to her. Not like that would even begin to cover it. But before she could begin to feel too sorry for herself, she heard another voice.
Cold as the depths of Drearburh, Gideon heard a chilly “No.”
For 17 years, Gideon only heard the spite in those deep, frozen tones. But now Gideon hears the weight of them. The burden. Like speaking one more word might crush her.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. And above all she worried that she’d be jerked from dream to dream for eternity, while never getting to so much as see Harrow. But that fear was banished as her body turned around.
Her enemy. Her best friend. Her necromancer. One flesh, one end.
Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House, stood before her. She looked like hell. She was the best thing Gideon had ever seen. The rest of the room stood completely still.
Harrow, however, wasn’t even looking at her. Well not at her face anyway. She was watching her hands. Gideon frowned. Look me in the eye, damn it. You owe me that much.
Unable to fight her own will now, the will that needed to get under Harrow’s skin like she needed to breathe, Gideon smirked. She felt her mouth form the words: “Let me guess, you take it black.”
Black eyes were on gold. Before Gideon could even react, she noticed a flush coming up under Harrow’s paint. To an outsider, there may have been no changes to the Reverend Daughter’s stony countenance, but to Gideon, it was like fireworks. In her effort to take her coffee, Harrow’s fingers brushed Gideon’s.
Oh, Gideon thought. Her stomach twisted, and before she could address that completely normal reaction, they were interrupted. She heard Abigail Pent say, “Absolutely not,” and was unceremoniously ripped from the dream. But Gideon had no time to mourn the loss of it.
When she awoke again, her hands no longer held Harrow’s bony fingers. Instead, her abnormally small hands hovered, blood-soaked and helpless, over a rapier pierced through her stomach. She was alone again.