chevaleros | 7rings: harrow

[She's getting more and more confused looking by the second. And she's touching her hand to her temple, like she has a headache coming on.]

The cavalier primary of the Ninth House. The man you watched me. . . drive a rapier, through his chest, in order to defeat Cytherea.

[ Who's the confused one here? Vira just looks at her for a moment. Maybe she shouldn't press—because what is this? Some sort of coping mechanism? She tries to approach it from a sideways angle. ]

Do you... remember who you saw at that wretched table? When you fainted during our adventure last week?

[ Though she gets the feeling this will just be a non sequitur from Harrow's perspective. ]

[She doesn't get a coping mechanism. Just. . . a little nod, almost like recognition.]

Ah. No, I don't recall. So, there was a person familiar to me there. I wasn't sure.

[ She doesn't know what to do with this. Would it just cause Harrow to collapse again, if she keeps pressing into her wound? ]

I hadn't really realized until now, but yes, there was. [ She'd assumed that one of the giants was Harrow's, simply to complete the miserable set, but her reaction wasn't exactly one of recognition. More like an aneurism?

Vira realizes she's afraid to speak this name. Gideon. ]

...Would you tell me more? Of what happened after you felled Cytherea?

I would be glad to.

[Well, not glad. But it's Vira, so it's fine; she doesn't mind telling her what happened.

Though it's perhaps necessary to start sooner than after.]

The purpose of my travel to Canaan House was to study the path of ascension to Lyctorhood - an invitation of great honour by the Emperor. However, that invitation necessitated that I bring a cavalier. [She's aware this terminology isn't familiar to everyone so - ] A necromancer is accompanied by a trained swordsman, and the cavalier to the heir to one of the Nine Houses is the cavalier primary. Ortus was no skilled swordsman, however. He was granted the position because - because his father was cavalier primary to my father, and because frankly there was no one else in my House with any skill at the sword anyway.

. . . There was a reason we were asked to bring our cavaliers, however. The key to becoming a Lyctor was a human sacrifice. The death of the cavalier; the consumption of their soul, transformed into a battery for everlasting power.

In order to defeat Cytherea, I was forced to kill and consume Ortus. And so she died, and so I ascended, and was brought to the side of the Emperor to carry out his work.

[. . . But she did ask what happened after. And besides; as clipped as her delivery is, she doesn't want Vira to think her so cruel. She had no love for Ortus, nor he for her, but she still wishes she hadn't been forced to do something so terrible.]

My transition was. . . troubled, I'm afraid. My convalescence after the battle long and painful. After that first time, when I fought Cytherea, the techniques of Lyctorhood never worked so well for me again. I could never again access the remains of poor Ortus' soul, and I was plagued by hallucinations and fainting spells of the kind you witnessed.

[ It all makes sense in the context of what she saw, except that it brings to question whether Harrow's memories are correct, or whether her perception of things is.

Vira is leaning towards the former. ]

...Could it be that you're calling upon the wrong soul?

[I hate this because I still need a Vira memshare but she's just going to. Stare at her a few seconds like she's struggling to make sense of the words, reach up to touch her forehead, and then immediately pass out. Bye.]

[ HARROW. she's just going to catch her as she slumps over and help put her to bed.

seems asking too many questions about this isn't going to work out. ]

[It's fine. She'll wake back up in a little bit, dizzy, but otherwise fine.]

. . . Oh. This is beginning to become humiliating.

[ She's sitting on the edge of the mattress, laughing a little. ]

Actually, I think that was my fault—I'm sorry.

[ ... ]

You may have more fainting spells this week, so don't be too hard on yourself.

Don't apologize. I suspect you're right, but. . .

[Gross.]

[ Vira smiles at that, though they've made too much eye contact, and now i need to stop stalling from giving you a memshare. (16:08-22:18)

The scene swirls away from them again. Though this isn't your memory, even if you know all the lines.

This is a time long before you were born, a war you never fought in. Strewn at your feet are bodies piled high, beasts spiraling high above as monsters shriek in the distance. The woman next to you—your commander—is not your beloved, but she takes Katalina's shape, because this may not be your memory but it is your sleeping, dreaming mind.

"Can I count on you, my astral knight?"

She asks, and you can feel the feelings swell up, not quite yours, but ones so symmetrical to your own that they may as well be. Anything for her—you'll sink islands if she asks. All you want is to be close enough to admire her, but if she asks you to fell an army, you go. You'll go, and every moment apart is aching, but this too serves a purpose: to be her blade, to end this war that consumes so much of you both.

"Please leave it to me... My sword exists solely to serve you."

You speak the words as though they are your own. Luminiera's power wreathes you in armor, her power thrumming through you as you fight, sword sinking into monster flesh and splitting open carapaces, shattering bone, the very light around you condensing into rays so bright they burn whatever they touch. No one else can wield this power but you, and the thrill of that excites you. It beats rotten like the adrenaline in your blood, right beside how terrified you are to die or to let your strength falter, because then you will never see her again, you'll die without ever finding the words that capture her beauty, and it all grows and intensifies and blurs together until your love is all you are. If your sky has a sun, she is it, and she is every other star at night. You would die for her in an instant, even if all you want is to live at her side.

When the battle ends, you resolve to tell her.

But you made an error. A tactical misstep, guarding your front as you expose your back, and you are only one person. You cannot see that the main camp is burnt and broken down until you turn back, your skin turned to gooseflesh as you sprint there, your heart battering, already so wearied from the day's events but refusing to stop.

Though it may as well, when you see her, dying.

Your love is all you are, and now there is none of it to keep you standing, so you collapse and let your lip quiver and your eyes drown with tears, your throat aching and coarse as you beg and beg—

But this is not your memory—it is a warning. A prophecy. Luminiera makes you live a story from eons past, because she is afraid for you. She is a sweet, child-like thing and wants you to grow roots elsewhere, because heartbreak will kill you, and she does not want to see you go.

It does not work as she intends. ]

[First of all, Katalina hot. . . she gets it, Vira. She gets it.

She understands at the start that what she's seeing is a vision, not reality - but suffering this way in a dream is still suffering. She has often wakened from her dreams with the ghost of a grief so raw and real, like a piece of herself has been torn away, and it leaves her shattered and reeling for days even though it never happened, even though she has only had one love her entire life, and that love was never hers to be stolen from her.

So she comes away from the vision shaken now, too, grief for Katalina (or is it for someone else?) choking her. But there's an anger in her feelings, too, that are all her own. This Katalina should not have made Vira fight alone. She should not have ordered that Vira leave her side. She should not have left her behind.]

Vira. . .

[ Katalina is a beautiful disaster of a lady. And Vira's affection is crystal clear in the memory—excessively, destructively so.

Though now that they're back in reality, she looks... alarmed. A little afraid. ]

Ah... But I don't—who was that?

[ That was certainly her dream, a warning given to her by Luminiera in hopes of scaring her into better life choices, but pieces of it no longer make sense. The absolute breadth of her own emotion for this perceived stranger is overwhelming.

And despite how well she's kept herself together in this hell hole of an experience so far, her eyes are watering up again, going stiff like that might keep her from crying. ]

What is happening here, Harrowhark?

[Ah. What. What. Oh no.

She. . . hasn't noticed at all, her own missing memory, because her thoughts are so jumbled and disorganized anyway. So she also has no idea what the fuck is going on, except that Vira clearly can't recall that woman she called her beloved, and it terrifies Harrow in some way she can't quite grasp at.

What would it be like, to experience that level of love and loss for a someone you can't recognize? Haha, can't relate!

Anyway, seeing Vira go stiff and teary eyed, she reacts - a little uncharacteristically. Harrow is so fanatical about others' boundaries, wanting to preserve her own. But something about the way Vira looks in this moment has struck her to her core, reminded her of all of the times she's woken up alone and filled with a raw and inexplicable pain, longed for tenderness and comfort that should have been unfamiliar to her; there was never anyone, was there, who had cared enough about her to provide it?

A little nervously, fearful of being shoved away the way she might do to someone who tried the same, she'll try to wrap her arms around Vira.]

It was a dream. It was only a dream.

[ Oh, she doesn't anticipate that. Harrow seems like someone who likes her space, even if her heart is more brazenly visible than she seems to think. So when she embraces her, Vira seizes briefly in surprise, equally uncertain of how to react.

Because has anyone ever held her like this? There's only a great emptiness of answer when she thinks on it—does she not remember, or has it simply never happened? Is losing the memory of a single person enough to leave her with so little? (Without Katalina—what even remains of her to cherish or comfort?)

Even if it was a dream, a vision of the past, her misery is real and Harrow's presence is real, unexpected and kind in a way that disarms her too thoroughly. She doesn't even think to be composed, or of how weak she seems when she breathes out a sob as she buries her face into Harrow's shoulder, holding onto her fiercely as she weeps and weeps. ]

[She understands that feeling so intimately - what it's like to long to be held, but to fear the weakness of needing it. She has never been on the other side of that dilemma, and finds to her surprise it is not one at all. She doesn't perceive any weakness on Vira's part, or feel any sense of superiority or advantage. She only recognizes the pain, and wants to know how to diminish it. She holds her back just as fiercely, as long as Vira will allow.]

[ It doesn't fully soothe her emotions, but having Harrow there blunts the worst of the impact—where ordinarily she'd likely just sob until she's wrung out all her feelings like a rag, eventually she settles into miserable, embarrassing sniffles and calms herself.

To share such a private moment with someone else... she should be more abashed, or maybe afraid. And maybe she is, a little, but there is some strange relief in it, too; she shifts and draws enough away so she's not crushing Harrow in her arms anymore. ]

I... [ What does someone say in the face of all this? She speaks softly, worn out but comforted. ] Thank you, Harrowhark. I'm all right.

7rings: harrow

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject