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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Even in the instance that she'd participated in the trial without any other help besides the Warden's, he's sure that she was awesome. He could tell that she was when it was the two of them cooperating.

"Makes sense. Some specific transitive properties of mental connection holding over between whatever you're trying to do. He's definitely smarter about this kind of thing than I am but I can see the through-line." There's a fondness to the wry smile in return over Pal's careful precautions, able to pretty easily imagine this being important to him. "If nothing else it should enable you to talk face to face later when there's not all of this," he gestures to the walls to indicate the ship as a whole, "going on."

The offer gets a shake of the head. "Don't worry about me. I'm chill wherever and you were here first."

"That's why you summoned me, isn't it?" Valdis asks, placing her hand on the hilt of Revelations. "To protect you in whatever foolhardy endeavor you have chosen to pursue?"

He never did get a chance to see her actually fight or wield her powers in any meaningful way.

"And even if their people have been fighting necromancers for thousands of years, I have lived for thousands of years. I might be younger than that woman I confronted in your memory, but I outclassed her then, and you know I still do now."

Valdis glances behind where they are standing.

"I do hope you have a plan to get us through this voyage though, I don't know your universe and word games tend to go better when there is knowledge behind them."

He takes the hand and shakes it, warmly.

"I don't need to sleep." A small, crooked grin. "But I can pretend, since I'm a miserable stowaway and all. I'll tell Camilla what we talked about."

Camilla is beginning to see why Palamedes said that she would like Lieutenant Tayray. Of course she has questions, as any intelligent person would, but she understands that sometimes, in times of precarity, all but the most important questions must be set aside. As it is, those that she asks have answers that are decided complex.

Shrugging off Ari’s I’m sorry, she does her best to explain Blood of Eden. “In the Houses we call them terrorists. I think they would prefer ‘freedom fighters’.” She presses her lips together. “The Emperor has colonies on habitable planets across the galaxy. Most of them signed contracts thousands of years ago granting the Houses full use of their natural resources during the Emperor’s lifetime. What they did not realize is that the Emperor would never die, or that the extraction of natural resources would involve the destruction of most organic life on the planet and the displacement of its people. Blood of Eden is made up of individuals from those planets who object to these conditions. Violently.”

Camilla Hect nearly, nearly smiles. “More of an acquisition, as we remain entirely separate entities.” The Sixth likes contracts and corporate-speak in their own way, too. “One of them is still in the infirmary, chained up and slowly dying of a gut wound sustained while we were at Canaan House. The other one bunks with the rest of the crew.” Meaning: Judith Duteros, Second House heir and Captain of the Cohort, remains a prisoner of war, while Coronabeth Tridentarius, Princess of Ida, has forsworn her titles and joined Blood of Eden. Nothing in Camilla’s expression reveals what she thinks of either of these choices.

And now for the important bit: “The Warden wants to convince the Sixth House to secede from the Empire under the guarenteened protection of Blood of Eden.”

:Oh.: The word is like a breath, even if Palamedes isn’t actually breathing. Every day, he thinks his lucky stars that he has both life and Camilla Hect, and every day, he mourns the things he has lost and might never get back. That includes seeing Camilla’s face, the way she quirks an eyebrow when he’s said something stupid, or rocks up on her toes when she’s thinking. Joined like this, they are always together and moments apart, and he hates it more than he has a right to.

:I would like that. I would like that very much. Creating this...bridge, it won't hurt you?:

Remarkably, the plan goes off without a hitch. Despite Natsuno’s healing abilities, which they must take great pains to hide, he makes for a good stowaway-turn-Blood of Eden recruit. He’s seething with anger, and he doesn’t say much, and his eyes speak of pain that most of the ship’s crew recognizes and all know better than to ask about. Maybe a few members of Blood of Eden are puzzled as to why a former refugee has become the Sixth’s closest confidant, but even that doesn’t raise too many questions.

When the Blood of Eden ship hails the Sixth House station, it’s Archivist Juno Zeta who speaks over the intercom, and Archivist Juno Zeta who allows them to dock when they reveal that they have the Sixth’s presumed-dead cavalier primary on board. There’s an awed crowd waiting when Camilla and Natsuno step out of the airlock (Palamedes-as-Camilla had insisted that Natsuno be the only BoE representative to accompany him on his first visit), and Zeta pushes through it and guides them back to her office as quickly as she can.

For the time being, dark sunglasses remain on Camilla’s face, hiding her grey eyes from view.

The moment the door is shut, Zeta pulls Camilla into a tight hug. “My dear girl, you are a sight for sore eyes.”

“Did no one tell you that would become your job indefinitely when you were assigned to be my roommate?” Palamedes shoots back. Oh, he has missed Valdis—more than he will likely ever admit.

“I can’t stay much longer, I’m afraid. The time I remain conscious must naturally be limited, and Cam needs her beauty rest.” Pal doesn’t explain why, exactly, he has to limit his time in Camilla’s body. He has neither the time nor the inclination to listen to another lecture about his hubris. “But I’ll be back in the morning when we go to see the Commander.”

Camilla’s eyes go a little tight at the corners when Wayne confidently asserts that she and Palamedes will speak face-to-face again someday, but she has never been as optimistic as either her necromancer or his lemon-yellow friend. And maybe they’re right. Maybe there will be an ‘after,’ and she and Pal will be together again as they are meant to.

While she might be courteous enough to offer her bed to this odd newcomer, she isn’t so much that she is going to push it. With a nod she moves to the bed and tucks her knees up to her chin.

“The Warden says you can do magic and fight,” she says with cool interest in her eyes. “That sounds handy.”

"No, but I'm sure I'm up to the task."

She has noticed something strange going on in Camilla's body as Palamedes is conscious, but he clearly knows so she doesn't comment and instead gestures to the door she had unlocked.

"Do I need to lock that again?" She asks. "And how upset will they be if I explore a little? I don't plan on being caught, but you never know what might happen."

He's still not going to be seeing that from the outside, Need doesn't point out. She knows how to stabilize and transfer and re-anchor a mind and soul, whether that's into flesh and blood that can support them or into something like a sword, but she's not going to just promise something like that in these circumstances.

:It won't. There will be a price for my help, though. I don't imagine it's something you wouldn't agree to, or I wouldn't have come. She'll have to agree to it too and I don't feel like explaining it twice. You can talk to her first, even if you decide against my assistance afterwards and I go back to Velgarth.: I am such a soft heart, Need grumbles to herself.

-all right, one good thing about this situation. Palamedes and Camilla come from a culture that in most respects appalls Need's sensibilities but is not patriarchal. There's some remnants of that to the Blood of Eden people - she is snooping without fear or shame - but they're also almost Kaled'a'in-level egalitarian as far as gender and sexuality go. Huh.

There are still people that her mandate applies to. She's never visited a dimension or a world or whatever she cares to call it that has no systemic oppression, no one exploited and misused with impunity by someone who has power over them. They exist somewhere, she hopes.

:Now I want you to envision your left hand. Imagine I'm taking it and wrapping it around hers on my hilt. You can speak when that contact is there.:

Edited 2023-10-24 20:28 (UTC)

Unfortunately, he has no real way of knowing either way. He's only recently learned to try and be an optimist and doesn't realize that such a thing isn't necessarily appropriate here. He only knows what he wants for his friends, including Cam, and that means holding on to that hope that they'll all be able to actually see one-another again.

At least there's no argument to be had over politeness here. He's grateful for that.

"You guys call it magic but for people like me it's just a biological thing. Energy and intent into whatever I need it to be in the moment, mostly in a combat sense. I don't have a lot going on outside of that but being a user of Proscribed Gestures does come in handy, at least."

“Hah. Probably should lock it, just to keep up appearances.” He gives a huff of a sigh at her request. “Valdis, if you wanted to explore, I couldn’t stop you. But for the record, they would be quite upset.” He smirks a little.  “So don’t get caught.”

::I don’t have a left hand:: says Palamedes, narrowing avoiding making the joke that the closest thing to his hand sits, in skeleton form, on the desk. Despite his skepticism, he does his best to do as she says—he pictures the sword that Camilla is practicing with, he pictures his long-destroyed body, imagines Need’s hand holding his as together they reach out a cover Camilla’s hand with theirs.

He pictures it, and he swears he can almost feel Cam’s hand, warm and strong, under his own.

::Camilla Hect:: he says, and he waits to see what happens.

Edited 2023-10-29 01:36 (UTC)

“The Warden would say that ‘magic’ is only a euphemism for that which a person cannot—or does not want to—explain.” Never very good at sitting still, Camilla shifts her knees from side to side, stretching her joints. “That doesn’t sound very different from necromancy. What is a ‘proscribed gesture’?”

:Tsh. Neither do I, still-warm, that doesn't make you special,: Need says, both caustic and amused. Imagine thinking less than a year is a long time. :Hands are a useful metaphor in my line of work. You still remember yours, be thankful for that.:

She doesn't remember hers in detail. That they were large and brown and had lost much of her old strength by the end, yes, with arthritis in her joints, and yes, that they were worn from her career as a fighter and then a mage-smith. Not which fingertip was missing and if that was actually on her right hand, not the way the loosened, less elastic skin set, not the number and placement of scars, not if her nails had been clean or stained.

Regardless the metaphor of her hand is cool and hard with calluses, and very sure. For the theatrics of it, Need exerts a mild influence on the nerves in the back of Camilla's hand, just a sunlight-touch of heat and pressure as if something really is there. She also ensures that as she passes Palamedes' voice along it seems to be coming more from the left.

She can handle it if the girl's response is to drop or throw the sword, but it's going to prolong things.

"Admittedly very few could stop me from doing what I want to do."

It's probably the kind of statement he expects from her, but that doesn't mean she's not right.

"I'll do my best to not get caught and will avoid using necromancy." Because that's the word he prefers for what they both do. "I'll also lock you in, but just so you are aware, I take guard duty very seriously so try not to die while I'm gone."

"He always did strike me as a clever guy." He smiles faintly at that, looking from Cam back to his gloved hands resting in his lap. They come up and twist into a Gesture, one that would transfer status effects between the two of them, if there were anything to transfer. It comes with the sound of a slide guitar and a coiled cord of clay that fades into and then out of sight between them. "Like this. They're somatic abilities that involve the energy of the user and call on skills learned from the Monitor. A lot of mine are kinda limited because I don't have access to the signal anymore, but I'm pretty good at muddling through on my own too."

Of course, he knows by now that nobody knows what the Monitor is, what the signals are, what the active cabinets mean to his people. It doesn't help that he's just the low guy on the totem pole; he knows enough to function in the world, that's about it.

"At home, one of my closest friends was way more powerful than I've ever been. Used gauntlets and the wave artifice to take out whole swaths of dudes."

Hiding his abilities is a pain, but the rest is easy. Natsuno wears his anger like a familiar old coat and sees its reflection in every Blood of Eden member's eyes. The sheer scale is incomparable, but the core of the story never changes.

All you wanted was to mind your own business, but those who cheat death had other plans. They came to your home, drained it out of life and gave you a choice: submit or die. So you took a third option, and you will destroy them.

Natsuno's loyalty is with Palamedes, but boy does he get it.

He keeps his mouth shut when they reach the sixth, when Pal insists he come with and when Archivist Juno Zeta leads them through the crowd. All eyes are on Camilla, of course, but if anyone's gaze lingers on Natsuno, he's determined to give nothing away.

He hangs at the back of the office as Zeta hugs the cavalier. Until Natsuno is spoken to directly, he'll stay out of the way.

Camilla’s response is to go very, very still. For a long moment she stands unmoving, barely daring to breathe, ears strained for a voice or a sound to explain what she just heard—no, felt. But there is only the silence of the ship at night.

Maybe she’s going mad.

“Warden?” she says, words barely above a whisper.

::Cam! I’m here. Well, I’m always here, aren’t I? But I’ve found a way for us to communicate. No—I’ve found a friend who can help us communicate. That’s her sword, actually.::

“But how—“

::I think we may have asked her for help without meaning to. I don’t really understand it. Ah, she might be able to explain better than I can.::

"We've stayed alive this long, Valdis. We won't die after a few hours alone in the dark. Have fun exploring."

Pal waits until she's gone, and then goes to the desk and records his meeting with Valdis in as much detail as possible. Then Cam returns to her body, and finding herself still in front of the desk with the notebook open, begins to read with interest.

Camilla jerks slightly with surprise as the sudden, melodious sound fills the room, and then fades as quickly as it came. She watches transfixed at the coiled cord that is there, and then gone, fast enough that she doesn’t give into the instinct to reach out and touch it.

“I’d like to see that,” she says, and she could be referring to what more Wayne can do here, or what he could do at home, or even the ability of his friend. “Can he do more because he has more experience, or is it a matter of genetics?”

Camilla isn’t very big on hugs as a general rule, but when Zeta pulls her close, she clings to her, her heart hammering hard in her chest. She’s doubly glad that the sunglasses hide her eyes, if only to stop the older woman from discovering that her eyes are wet.

“Archivist,” she says with careful formality that hides the swell of emotion in her chest. “It’s an honor to speak with you—“

“Oh, don’t ‘it’s an honor’ me. Tell me how you are, and tell me what’s happening. That ship out there, it’s a Cohort ship, but those aren’t Cohort soldiers. Who are they, and—“ her gaze settles on Natsuno with a searching intensity that he might recognize from Palamedes— “tell me who your friend is.”

Camilla starts with the last request. “This is Natsuno Yuuki,” she says, and when Zeta looks puzzled, she adds, “A representative of Blood of Eden.”

“Blood of Eden? My girl—“

“He knew the Master Warden.”

Zeta’s eyes go wide.

Natsuno bows. Though he rarely bothers, he is perfectly capable of being polite. Juno Zeta may wave Camilla's attempts at etiquette, but he is a complete stranger and this authority figure is owed respect.

"Hello, Archivist. How I know the Master Warden is a long story." Know, not knew. Natsuno doesn't elaborate for now - if the Archivist is anything like Pal, she will know when to wait and when to ask the right question. "But I would like to make one thing clear. I don't really care about 'representing' Blood of Eden. I'm here because Palamedes is my friend."

"Yeah, yeah."

She locks the door behind them, heading down the corridor to explore. She keeps all her senses open, locking on to every soul on the ship and tracking them as they move in relation to her. Many are asleep, some are patrolling, others are clustered in one area. Then there are the ones Palamedes mentioned. The important ones. There's the ones that don't match their bodies, the one he says he thinks is on their side and the unconscious one. She naturally gravitates toward both, but the draw of one is stronger than the other, if only because the soul is awake.

She stops outside the door, curious about the mismatch, but she'd told Palamedes she wouldn't get caught, so she starts to move on without investigating further.

Wayne's finger twists in the air, producing a last little note in the air.

"Yeah, Somsnosa's both got more experience and more power behind her. We're all pretty different in terms of ability. Even between Waynes it's variable. Somsnosa's really great at the area-of-effect and damage-over-time. Pongorma could hit harder than anyone I've ever met, as a Dread Knight. Decres could do physical damage, I'm support and damage-over-time. I'm not a great healer but I'm better at that than outright fighting. Pal says I'll make a pretty good distraction even without all that though so I'll defer to him."

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Page 5 of 6

Once more into the breach, dear friends

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feel free to skip to the sixth the next tag!

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Sixth House Time!

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