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[we_bring_hell]

Harrow knows every inch of the Ninth; knows it better than anyone else, for is she not the one who climbed the Anastasian Monument?

Perhaps that is how she found this door.

Squinting in the brutal light and slightly heavier gravity, Harrow Nova runs through her rapier forms. She is small, hardly the typical necro suitcase of the Ninth, but she is lithe and fast and ruthless. She is slim but muscular in cast-off dusty blacks; her abbreviated, pinned back robe flares behind her like raven wings.

She's been wielding the black blade for seven years, but the chain in her offhand is new and she has to integrate it into her repertoire. The chain is pure black Drearburh steel, every link a death's head, the weighted end a carved butterfly of pelvis in lead-filled bone. It is heavy--she is not--and once it gains momentum it moves like a living thing, an unforgiving dance partner.

She will master it. She will supplant the cavalier primary. She will accompany the Reverend Daughter to the First House.

Comments

[acrookedpath]

Wuxian was kicked out an airlock to fall to the surface of the Ninth about a month ago, was found half-delirious amid a pile of constructs he'd ripped apart two weeks after that, and has -- well, not exactly settled on this creepy-ass planet, but come to an uneasy truce with the Reverend Daughter. She won't send a message to the Sixth saying hey, FYI, your adept you tried to execute by dumping him on my house is still alive, and he won't try to dismember any more skeletons. At least not the ones they need for farming.

Never mind that Wuxian's pretty sure whoever kidnapped him was probably from one of the more dangerous splinter sects on the Fifth -- there was that whole thing he and his cavalier did to them a while back, after all -- but whatever.

God, he misses his cavalier.

There is no way in hell he's ever going to assimilate so much that he paints his face, but he kind of likes the all-black situation the Ninth's got going for it. (Though he still ties his hair back with a long red ribbon.) So here he is, dressed in a black hoodie and loose black trousers, watching Harrow as he turns over a couple of bone chips between his fingers.

[we_bring_hell]

"Wuxian Qiu," she says, using the arithmonym forced on immigrants. "I see you've found the number one attraction of Drearburh."

She dances closer, the chain whirling through the air and brushing over the ground as she moves.

Her face is painted, in the very basic paint reserved for the disgraced and invisible, black around her eyes and on her nose and cheeks, her parchment-pale face the bone.

[acrookedpath]

"Yeah, looks like," he says with an unfeeling laugh. He shoves his hands into the front pocket of the hoodie and squints up at the bright, bright sky. "A little pocket dimension where the sun's close enough to heat things. Interesting. How long's it been around?"

[we_bring_hell]

"The first time I came here I was eight years old," she says. "I've learned things." She snaps out the chain, leaving the ground at the same time, and glides through the air behind it as if it's pulling her; hits the ground and rolls to her feet.

[acrookedpath]

"Huh."

He watches the display. It's nothing like how Wangji moves -- moved? No, he has to trust his cav is still alive, somewhere -- but all the same, he feels a deep pang of recognition. Of loss.

"Things like what?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Fighting," she says shortly.

She grunts; comes to a halt and sheathes her rapier, snapping the chain back and catching it so she can hang it from her belt.

"There are no public whippings here, exile. Nothing to gawk at. You won't like it."

[acrookedpath]

He snorts. "Hey, there's booze, sunshine, and a giant library that I'm pretty sure is too big for the actual bar's dimensions. That's way more than I've had for the last month."

Just because he's thankful the Reverend Daughter hasn't killed him doesn't mean he likes the Ninth.

[we_bring_hell]

"A library?" she says, in the tone of voice of someone who did not know there was a library after nine years and intends to forget as soon as possible.

She dusts off her hands and stalks towards the bar. "Only a Sixth House bore would be excited about sunlight. Didn't you get enough dangling into the corona?"

[acrookedpath]

"Yeah, and then I started living underground."

Wuxian follows after her, intent, as always, on being a pest.

"Hey. Nova. You want to actually fight something? I've been practicing."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow Nova stops at the bar and waves at the busy bartender. "Vodka shots."

"I don't want to fight your constructs, Tellurian."

[we_do_bones]

The bartender tips up her chin in acknowledgment and pulls down a glass bottle and two shot glasses.

"For the Ninth," she says, and winks one golden eye.

[acrookedpath]

He rolls his eyes -- probably more at Harrow than the bartender; probably -- and says, "Fine. Whatever."

He still needs to practice, though, and it's a lot easier in here with the Window churning out a nonstop torrent of thanergy anyway. Wuxian flicks one of the bone chips he'd been toying with onto the surface of the bar. In a matter of seconds, it unfurls into a tiny, perfectly-formed skeleton no more than six inches high; he pats it on the head like a fond parent before it goes loping down the bar.

And then he grabs one of the shot glasses the instant it hits the bartop and downs the vodka.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow is watching the weenie little construct, not the bartender; she grabs the vodka with a grunt of thanks and downs it.

When she tips her head back down she has a nosebleed.

[lightamidchaos]

Lan Wangji is fuming.

He is a scion of the Lan family of the Eighth House. He is renowned for his brilliance, regarded as a quintessential example of everything an adept should be, known for the strength of his determination and his diamond-clear adherence to the principles of the Eighth. Even here, in this -- this place, his pristine white robes shine as if showing the purity of the Eighth itself, as they should.

But he is alone, despite the impropriety of it all, because his utter fool of a cavalier is not here.

He has never liked the cavalier he had been assigned, but Su She is sufficient in strength to support soul siphoning, and it is not as though he needs him to do anything else. This level of incompetence, however--

His mood is not improved in the slightest by noticing one of the Ninth.

[we_bring_hell]

This one of the Ninth is painted lightly by their standards; only the black grease allowable to outcasts and the invisible. She has used it on a pale face to paint the rudiments of a skull, around her eyes and nose and on her cheeks and lips. It's crooked.

She carries on with her routine without acknowledging the Eighth, but somehow--certainly inadvertantly--incorporates a leap across the field and a wild rebound of her chain off the ground that sends dirt spraying towards his pristine whiteness.

She puts up her arm to catch the widly ricocheting chain, hooks the remaining length around her shoulders, and then reverses direction, building incredible speed into the whirling head.

[lightamidchaos]

His lip curls in a sneer as a flicker of icy blue light flashes, somehow--

(from where?)

--repelling the dirt.

"Boring." He looks her up and down as though repulsed by what he sees.

[we_bring_hell]

She allows the momentum of the chain to carry her away, somersaulting after it with a flourish of her rapier.

"You aren't the one heading to the First House, are you?" she spits out when her feet touch the ground again.

[lightamidchaos]

"Who is asking?"

He may find the Ninth reprehensible for various reasons, but he knows enough of its traditions to be able to tell from her paint - such as it is - a great deal about her status.

(The Eighth has made it their business to keep track of certain things about the Ninth House, after all.)

"Certainly no one of consequence," he sniffs.

[we_bring_hell]

"The cavalier primary of the Ninth," she lies impassively. She allows the chain to dissipate its energy and hooks it on her belt.

"I'm trying to figure out if it would matter at all if I killed you."

[lightamidchaos]

"Ridiculous," he snaps.

"As if you could."

[we_bring_hell]

She has not sheathed her rapier, and turns to present a narrow profile.

"You're here without your cavalier, Eighth slime," she says. "What are you going to do without your inbred battery?"

[lightamidchaos]

He is going to kill Su She.

"And as if I need a cavalier to deal with the likes of you," he snarls. "Do you even know anything?"

(Are you sure you know how it happens?)

[we_bring_hell]

"I know I am the greatest cavalier of my generation," she snarls. "I am the unfulfilled vow and the bloody teeth of the unkissed skull." Her eyes burn like the searchlights in the parking lot of hell, in the black pits of her paint.

"I will accompany the Reverend Daughter to Canaan House. You are either a part of that destiny, or you're nothing at all."

[lightamidchaos]

"You know nothing," he sneers. "You are not qualified to speak to me."

A silver-and-white sword appears at his side, and disappears again. He does not seem to notice it.

"You are nothing. Not like this."

[we_bring_hell]

She growls, deep in her chest, and flings herself forward, point first.

The weapon handles perfectly, like the dream weapon every duelist imagines; an extension of her arm. But like a dream as well, the distance between them stretches to infinity.