hellonspectacles | Once more into the breach, dear friends

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Once more into the breach, dear friends

It is nighttime, or what passes for nighttime in space, and the ship Mount Ida is quiet.

It isn’t a particularly large vessel. There are berths for a dozen crew members and private rooms for the ship’s two officers, a mess hall, a med bay, an armory, a brig. Nothing about it is particularly luxurious—Blood of Eden doesn’t go in for luxury, and the members of Troia Cell are no different—but everything is functional and well maintained. The ship hums faintly with the sound of engines and life support and electric lights, a but most of the crew don’t notice it anymore.

Near the officer’s cabins is another berth, occupied (or so it seems) by a single person. It contains a bed, and a sink, and a table on which, strangely, sits the perfectly formed skeleton of a human hand. The door is locked from the outside and a crew member stands guard. Are these precautions to keep the person inside from escaping, or to protect them from coming to harm? No one is sure anymore.

The crew member, Sergeant Hot Coals of Vengeance, is bored. Their shift is almost over, they need a piss, and they’re not even sure what the point of this assignment is anyway. Sure, the room’s occupant might be a zombie lover, and she might be a little weird. And sure, she did dislocate Lieutenant Pash’s arm when they tried to take that gross little bag of bones from her, but that was months ago. These days, she’s polite, and she spends long hours in secret meetings with the Commander, and she always asks for an escort when she needs to leave the room.

Coals really needs to piss. They peek through the little window in the door.

Inside, Camilla Hect is curled up on a narrow bed, breathing steadily. She’s asleep, and anyway, the door is locked. What’s the worst that could happen if they stepped away for a few minutes?

Coals leaves their post, and Camilla sleeps on—or so it seems.

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For about half a shameful second, Palamedes considers saying all right, let’s do it. It would be so easy. He and Cam could get the hell out of here; they could find somewhere safe to hide, maybe even return home. Home. It’s not just a place, but a place in time—a world before Canaan House, and Dulcinea’s death, and ethical questions.

But no: that would mean pretending away everything they have learned in the last year. And it would mean abandoning people he swore to protect.

“I can’t do that, Lieutenant. I’m sorry. If you want to go at it alone, I won’t stop you. I’ll even tell you where the shuttles are, and try to distract Smokey.” A faint smirk. He’s going to remember that nickname. “You may not be home, but you are finally free of the Captain’s reach, and I am certain you could make a life for yourself here.”

He takes a breath. “Or, since you refuse to shut the door, I can take you to the storage bay, which should be empty now, and explain why I brought you across the multiverse. It isn’t because you can fly a shuttle, Tayray. It’s because you can negotiate.”

They are really cutting it close, and Pal will not put Camilla in danger for Ari’s sake. They have to act soon. “You have thirty seconds to decide.”

Palamedes is suddenly aware.

It isn’t like usual. Cam hasn’t gone under, and Pal isn’t in control of her limbs or her senses. He can’t see, or taste, or touch, or hear. He continues to exist in the same nothingness as before—only, someone is here in the nothingness with him.

:that’s not supposed to happen:

Did he say that aloud? What does ‘aloud’ even mean in this context?

That’s a puzzle for later. Palamedes doesn’t ask this presence questions, and he doesn’t answer them, either. Too much is at stake to waste time on this. He knows what carrying one soul is doing to Cam; he shudders to think what carrying two could do to her.

:get out of here before you hurt her:

There are people who might say that Valdis is about to release some kind of necromancy monster. Others, including the crew of the Mount Ida, would insist that all necromancers are monsters.

But even if that were true, this monster happens to be a very dear friend of hers as well.

The person Valdis finds inside appears to be a woman. They're muscular and of medium height, with brown hair cut bluntly at the chin and brown eyes. They're rocking on the balls of their feet, and they're beaming.

After a moment they fly at Valdis and wrap her in a fierce, and likely startling, hug.

"In the name of Cassiopeia the First, it is good to see you."

Edited 2023-06-04 20:42 (UTC)

“I did it!” God, it feels good to say that. It feels good to hear someone say that. Time and again he has seen the words Congratulations, Warden written out in Cam’s hands, and been brought to tears by how much he wishes he could hear her say it aloud. Hearing it from Wayne isn’t the same, obviously, but after months of one kind of isolation or another, it is balm for his soul.

But there’s no time for sentimentality. “Oh! You found us already! Good, good. Just come back the way you came, then. We’ll be ready to let you in this time.” A beat. “When the shift changes, Corporal Smoke of the Watch Fires comes to stand guard outside my door. He tends to be a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ sort of fellow, so it’s best to avoid him for now.

Cam cocks an eyebrow at the mention of stabbing and slips the makeshift knife into her hand. “Smart.”

She watches him for a long moment. The Warden had informed her of his harebrained scheme, of course—more insane, somehow, than creating a habitable bubble by the edge of the River, or haunting a skeleton hand, or even haunting her. One day, not long after they had figured out how to communicate, she had woken up to find the tale of the Serena Eterna written in his tiny, spidery handwriting over dozens of scraps of plex. Later, he had added, I need to rescue my friends. They can help us.

It was a stupid idea, but Palamedes had a way of coming up with ideas so stupid they wrapped back around to being smart. And besides, she knew she couldn’t stop him.

And here, just maybe is the fruit of his labors.

“Prove it.” Despite the knife, she doesn’t sound hostile, exactly. But she needs a lot more evidence the boy is who he says he is before she lets her guard down.

It's nice to feel hopeful about something again.

Wayne straightens himself up, glancing up and down the hall again, in case the man in question might already be on his way. He mutters a "right, cool, okay," and glances toward the doors of the vacant cells, figuring that if he really needs to he can duck in and hide until the danger of being shot is a little bit less. With that in mind, he confirms which direction he's supposed to be going, then pauses and takes a breath, before adding, "It'll be good to see you again."

And then he'll be making his way back along where he'd come from to try and find a familiar face. With any luck he'll make it there before he's noticed. If he needs to, he could at least briefly change into the Illusion Form that might make him at least a little bit less conspicuous. It would also just render him unable to defend himself if it actually becomes necessary.

This both is and is not Palamedes, a dichotomy she will have to examine later, because her former roommate has flung his arms around her and is squeezing tightly. Palamedes had never been one to show her that kind of affection before, so she freezes in his arms. The bewilderment lasts for only a breath.

"I don't know who that is, but I suppose I'm glad to see you too." Valdis briefly returns the squeeze, "Though it appears you have a lot of explaining to do and we may not have a whole lot of time."

Prove it. Natsuno thinks about it, wondering how he can possibly do that without sounding like a creep, a madman or both. Pal doesn't seem to be around, but if this is another memory there's little chance his friend would vouch from him.

This means that his only option is an admission so ridiculous, so outrageous it can't be denied or ignored.

"I met Palamedes in a pocket dimension. People from many different worlds were trapped there, and we were trying to find a way out. That place exists outside time, so he may not remember it, but it's the truth. I can show you."

His phone is still in his pocket. It will die out eventually soon without a charger, but for now it'll do.

"I need to take it out, it's not a weapon so please don't attack me."

Natsuno messes with the phone for a moment and slides it across the floor towards Cam. It plays a certain video tutorial with Natsuno's voice clearly heard behind the camera.

Thankfully, Wayne reaches the door to Pal’s cell-slash-room without incident. At some point they are going to have to figure out how to explain the presence of a giant yellow monster, but thankfully that is a problem for another time. When he reaches the room, he will find Cam, or someone who appears to be Cam, peering through the door’s mail slot-sized window. The figure waves and slips something under the door.

Hopefully, even if Wayne can’t read, he can match the figures written on the piece of paper to the numbers on the nearby touchpad.

“No one knows much about her, but what I do know inclines me to believe that you would find her interesting,” Palamedes answers, full of nerd facts even under such unusual circumstances.

He pulls back, still beaming, and points to her sword. “You’re probably looking for that. Cam says she didn’t touch it, which honestly speaks to her miraculous level of restraint. Do you know how long it’s been since either of us saw a sword?”

But this isn’t the time for smalltalk, and Valdis is looking for answers. “First things first: we’re on a ship called Mount Ida, crewed by a paramilitary cell belonging to the anti-imperial terrorist organization Blood of Eden. Camilla has been a prisoner here, or something like it, for about a year. They still don’t trust her—which is fair, honestly, the feeling is mutual—but we have proven to be useful enough that they are no longer keeping her chained up.”

A dark smile flickers on his lips and his eyes briefly harden. Despite his light tone, the young man is furious about what happened to his cavalier in his absence.

Arilanna Tayrey expects agreement. She expects that since her course of action is rational, and he clearly called her here to take action, he'll follow her lead. There's a faint look of disbelief on her face as he tells her he can't, he won't.

She could do just as he says, of course. Leave. She'd be in a far better position to try to find her way back home from here. When it comes to it, however, she doesn't give the possibility more than a passing thought, because leaving Palamedes locked up in here is simply not an option.

He wants her to negotiate. Tayrey had been good at that once, hadn't she? Before her captivity. Before everything had gone so terribly wrong. There's understanding on her face now, a fractional nod, and then-

'A thirty-second?' It's incongruous with the urgency she hears in his voice. A thirty-second part of a twelve-hour shift isn't - no, Tayrey! The realisation hits her as soon as the words are out of her mouth. Being shipside now doesn't mean that he or anyone else understands Tradeline timekeeping. It's a translation. It's-

Well. More like twenty seconds now. Isn't it fortunate she's been trained to make quick decisions? In a starship battle, the wrong tactic might kill you, but inaction absolutely will.

'Yes. Storage bay, let's go, now. You lead the way, I'll cover.' No hesitation. Tayrey gestures once more towards the door.

The story matches Palamedes’ own, but no recognition shows on Camilla’s face. Without allowing her eyes to leave his face, she crouches down and picks up the phone.

She might not show it, but Natsuno is earning a lot of Camilla Hect brownie points for being so calm and careful about all this.

For a few minutes, the only sound in the room comes from the palm-sized device in Camilla’s hand. Once or twice, she nearly seems to smile, but otherwise, she doesn’t react. As the video ends, she takes a slow, deep breath. Then she gets up off the bed and walks across the room to hand the phone to Natsuno. Up close, Natsuno might notice that somehow Camilla has Pal’s stone-grey eyes.

He also might notice that the eyes are a bottomless well of longing. Camilla Hect has not heard her necromancer’s voice in nearly a year. Technically, she never will again.

“Thank you,” she says. “The Warden told me about the Serena Eterna. He has been trying to bring you here. I told him it was impossible, but he only ever takes that kind of thing as a challenge.” A beat. “You probably want to speak with him.”

Thank goodness for Tayrey’s quick thinking. If her suspicion and hyper-rationality had nearly doomed Palamedes’ plan, then her willingness to compromise and shift course, even just slightly, had saved them.

Once she agrees, he turns back to the bed and shifts the covers so that, at first glance through the cell door’s tiny window, it looks like someone is still asleep there. Then he says, “Follow me,” and strides out the door.

Save for the ship’s constant hum, the corridors are silent. Over the months of their captivity, Pal and Camilla have learned a lot more about the movements of the people on board than, and that’s why he can navigate now and not run into anyone, and why he knows which storage bay will be both unlocked and empty.

No one needs to check on barrels of chemical fertilizer in the middle of the night.

Pal lets them in to the storage bay filled with rows and rows giant metal drums of fertilizer. The room is dark, but Pal doesn’t turn on the lights. He makes his way to a corner far away from the door and sits down on the metal floor. This explanation is going to take a while, so they might as well get comfortable.

“Now will you let me explain?” He sounds fond, but a little exasperated, too.

Sharp as always, if Pal thinks she would find someone or something interesting, it's best to pay attention. Cam was right to not touch Revelations, but Valdis makes no move to retrieve the soul bound blade just yet, listening to his quick rundown. The brief story induces no small amount of rage, and from the look in his eyes and the spike of anger from him, they are in agreement.

"Anti-imperial and paranoid. Sounds like I've walked into a less than ideal situation. They probably won't be pleased by the appearance of someone unknown, much less someone with powerful necromantic abilities."

She slips past him to grab her sword. That woman from his memory, she had been severely ill, but formidable. If these rebels were going up again the God of this world, they would probably need one of their own to help them.

"How foolishly are they likely to react?"

At least he won't be Old Wayne for some time yet, he just doesn't know how the flow of time might work here after everything else that's happened to him so far. That will be an interesting, and likely distressing revelation for most others involved when he becomes Wayne-colored goop for a while.

Just to be safe, when he gets that slip, he quickly correlates the symbols to the buttons, and is relieved when they're easy enough to match. He presses close to that slot and murmurs a quick "thank you" before straightening up and moving to punch in the offered code. The moment it confirms, he's going to dip into the room and hopefully not spot anything any more out of place than just the fact that Pal was in a cell to begin with.

Need is a big, enveloping presence, a sense of great power carefully controlled, as careful as a mastiff closing a newborn chick in its mouth and moving it without causing any pain would have to be. There isn't pain, and Palamedes is smart enough that he could work out some way to retaliate, but also that might be unwise from this position.

:You've set up so you're running off of her brain,: she says in a kind of fascinated disgust. :She knows the risks and still wants you there. No, don't fret, I'm not in on that. I run off this.:

An image - her sword, both as the metal and enamel and stone and the less-important wrap of the wood and leather hilt, and as a ludicrously complicated lattice of ancient spellwork. Not theorems the Houses use, but not completely unfamiliar either. Soul magic. Thanergy in some form, too. A long time ago, someone died to make this.

Edited 2023-06-24 20:38 (UTC)

His eyes widen at her admission - the first hint of emotion Natsuno showed since the conversation started.

"He - what?"

So it's not another memory? This is Pal's actual reality, did he manage to escape the captain's clutches and even break someone else through -

"...yes. I'd really like to speak to him."

She hasn't yet realised just how familiar Palamedes is with this ship. Captives aren't generally allowed to wander, after all, and it doesn't occur to her that he might have been there so long. The result is that she's far more cautious than he is. Careful steps, boots landing lightly on the metal flooring, and that gun of hers not only drawn but raised, as if she might need to defend him at a moment's notice.

It doesn't take long for her to see that he knows exactly where he's going, but she doesn't pass comment on it. Clear route or not, this sort of thing takes focus.

In the storage room, she follows him to the far corner, but stays standing, eyes on the door. Tayrey is vigilant, and more than a little tense.

'Yes. Yes, please explain. I promise not to interrupt,' she says quietly.

The conversation isn’t like consciousness—they aren’t talking to each other, and Palamedes does not see the sword with his eyes or sense its power with his necromantic blood. It’s as though the information this being wishes to convey appear in his mind without conduit. He feels the horror and, quick on its heels, the effort to assuage him.

Palamedes doesn’t think this being is lying, but he also doesn’t like the way it noses about his own mind, and Camilla’s too.

:I am hers.: He is Camilla’s. Her necromancer, her friend, her burden. :Now, what are you?:

“They are fearless, but their Commander believes in living to fight another day. If we present the situation properly, we may be able to convince them not to shoot you on the spot. Best that you keep your abilities to yourself, though.”

He pauses, looking at his friend through eyes that are not his own.

“I realize that I have brought you here without explanation or permission, and am asking you to take significant risks just by your presence on this ship. If you would prefer, I can help you get away, and ensure that you find somewhere relatively safe to live. I may even be able to send you back to the Serena Eterna, though I’m afraid I cannot guarantee that it will work. Sorry.”

The room is exactly as Wayne observed through the slot earlier. There’s a bed, a wardrobe, a desk and chair. And there is Camilla Hect, standing in the middle of the room.

Or, at least, it looks like Camilla Hect. But she’s beaming in a way that Cam never really does.

“Wayne!” the figure cries. “Oh, it is good to see you. Shut the door and come this way—they won’t be able to spot you from this angle. We can’t keep you hidden forever, obviously, but we can choose our moment to our best advantage.”

Camilla watches him for another long moment, sizing him up and weighing his worthiness with grey eyes that do not belong to her.

Then she points to the chair at the desk in the corner. “You might want to sit down.” Without waiting to see if he complies, she closes her eyes. Technically, it isn’t necessary for the transference to happen, but it makes it easier, somehow. More like going to sleep.

Or waking up.

Palamedes opens Camilla’s eyes. He rubs them, and blinks a few times. How odd it still is to be able to see clearly without a barrier of glass. As his gaze swims into focus, his lips part in awe.

“Well, fuck me sideways it worked. Hullo Yuuki, sorry for not sending a note ahead.”

Natsuno glances back at the door, wondering when the guard will be back, but figures voices carry anyway so he might as well have this conversation in a chair instead of on the floor.

He sits down as Camilla turns to look at him. Wait, why are her eyes brown, weren't they gray a second ago -

Well fuck me sideways.

Even before Camilla's voice calls his name, Natsuno knows who speaks through her mouth. The inflection, the happy greeting like nothing freaky is going on - that's Palamedes Sextus alright.

He has so many questions, but what comes out is:

"Why are you possessing your cavalier?"

"Thermodynamics."

Palamedes pauses for a reaction. Presumably, he doesn't get one.

"There usually isn't much left after a thanergenic explosion originating from inside a necromancer's body. One's cells are vaporized instantly. Well, most of them." He gestures at the skeleton hand resting on the desk behind Natsuno.

"Cam and I tried to make do with my bones, but it just wasn't working. We needed a better way to communicate, you see."

Palamedes isn't particularly surprised that Ari remains standing. She's a bit like Camilla in that way--always alert, always ready to fight or bolt or protect those around her.

It's probably helpful, as well, to have someone keeping a sharp eye on the door, just in case.

"All right. There are about twenty places I could start, so forgive me if you feel like I'm throwing you into the middle of it. More than I already have." He smiles faintly. "First, I really am the Palamedes Sextus you knew on the Serena Eterna. I'm happy to answer any questions you require to prove it. I don't look like him because, well, I'm borrowing someone else's body. The mechanic isn't so different from how the ship's ghosts possessed passengers last--Emperor's bones, when was that?" Pal shakes his head a little. "Sorry, time has proven itself to be quite malleable for me these days. In any case, I'm essentially possessing Cam with her permission. She's in charge. I can't take over unless she wants me to."

"I can pause there for questions, if you like."

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Once more into the breach, dear friends

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