there'll be only a hole in the soil (closed)

[unsheathedfromreality]

Who: Emperor John Gaius, Illarion Albireo, various other worthies from Bone House and their extended CR
What: A duel goes very wrong.
When: The day of John and Kiriona's network post
Where: Bone House, Gaze –> the Salt Lake via the woods

Content Warnings: Inevitable violence and body horror; spoilers for MHA and Nona the Ninth; additional warnings per thread.

Choose your time, Illarion had said to God, offering him the right of one challenged. The shrike had accordingly chosen the place: On the grounds of the house in Gaze, where the Reckoning's blade had scarred the earth. He stands beside the great gash, an unassuming figure in unadorned black, and waits with Death's own patience for his opponent to arrive.

Comments

eye of the storm | mid-squabble (Start for John)

[martyrofduty]

After the silence breaks and conversations multiple in waves of emotion, all bright and hot and burning in the chill air, after the proposed champion and another around her age split off for their own argument, Pyrrha remains near the center of it all: Heartnest and John.

Her heart beats steady among the chaos. She turns to John, quiet and close. "No matter the outcome, Kiriona obfuscates it," Pyrrha says, "Some will say the shrike could not fairly fight the duel he called in her name. Some could question whether you take it seriously, for the same reason or because you could have a stronger fighter."

Augustine isn't here, and Pyrrha does not mean John should place another person in the middle of this horrid mess. She's there, she's armed, she'd gladly take any injury for Kiriona.

"He won't hold back if it's me."

[necrolord]

He looks, at this point, impatient; beneath that, exhausted. Pyrrha knows him well enough to see it, the way he crawled out of the ocean buoyed on Annabel's presence at her side, and the way that brief flare of eager energy has dropped from him since. He's worse now than he'd been back in August, hiding in the dark and languishing alone in his rooms. This is the downslope: there's a crash coming. Probably a bad one.

"I get it," says God. "Seriously, great effort, but that isn't the point."

The point is that she's his, now, and she wants to be. She wants the chance to prove it. He wants to let her. He's past caring how it looks; he'll double down into bad optics for the spectacle of it, for him-and-her as a team. Pyrrha can understand that. She's clever.

[martyrofduty]

Great parenting, Pyrrha bites back in the recesses of her mind. John and Kiriona shouldn't be a team, not this way, not as parent and child. John wouldn't need to do that. Only God, fresh from tossing this undead tennis ball for himself as the last toy in his chest, feels the need to run around showing it off.

"Everyone can see you have her," Pyrrha says. His network post said it. Naming her champion and Kiriona throwing a pissing contest not far away with one of the only kids even to show her face says it. She motions at the chaos around them, at the Cohort whites that read like the First House here in Trench.

"We're partners, a team, you and me," Pyrrha says, even through shit like this, the bad, painful, embarrassing days, "It's not you and Kiriona against the world, against everyone." Sending the one person clearly in hand makes a weak case for God that he is or has anything or anyone else.

Even Mercymorn's set up in the audience with Cytherea like all the rest. No sides like a wedding, for a challenger and the challenged. Just the John "God" Gaius show, episode 10,001.

[necrolord]

It's the right thing to say— that he has her, that he still has her even now— but it doesn't go down as easy, after the past six months. After whatever the fuck Duty's been up to on old shepherd planets. Is that her or Gideon? Are they catching up with the in-laws, smoothing things over with BOE? Playing both sides seems like her kind of game. He almost can't fault her for it.

Almost.

"You said it yourself, right?" This energy in him is the toxic kind, the jittery impulse towards anything that hurts or distracts, the last dregs of hideous intensity dimming towards a low and heavy depression. "You're not my cavalier."

Annabel was here. So close he could touch her, could hold her, could clean black sand from her skin with the pad of his thumb. She would've fought the bird for him and they all could've stood back to marvel at the frenzy of it. She's always been his champion.

She walked back into the sea and left him, just like everyone does.

Behind them, the girls are still arguing: Faith is openly hurt and aching, her wounds raw; Kiriona has gone steely and closed-off, but she's struggling through it. He doesn't want to look at anybody's hurts, today. He'd rather get this over with.

"Changed my mind," he declares, voice raised loud enough for the bird to hear— for the kids to hear— for everyone to move along. John Gaius steps forward to face his challenger. "I'll have to give you somebody else to smoke, kiddo. I think I have to take this one."

She's right about one thing: it's not him and Kiriona against the world. It's just him.

[martyrofduty]

Despite all the emotional tumult and wrecking ball John's taken to relationships today, he calls back to one of the central tenets of their bond, of their partnership. Pyrrha will not undercut that. Today will be a shit show. It always was going to be. They need those boundaries and agreements kept and affirmed more than ever.

The next moment is slow as molasses, a terrible sighing stretch of breath.

John declares for himself, and Pyrrha could swear in joyful amazement. It's what Heartnest wants. It's what she wants, far more than doing it herself. She steals this memory for herself, no matter how terrible the reasons John tells himself. Going through the right motions is still a step in the right direction.

Ignoring the world around them, Pyrrha steps close to place her hand on his shoulder, over its reflection revealed by moonlight. She leans her forehead down against his for a moment. "Partners," she whispers fondly. Even when he doesn't understand it, even when he doesn't believe it, even when everyone cannot understand it, Pyrrha made her decision and stands by it.

She steps back toward the edges to stand near Kiriona and Faith. The immediate matter is settled but not the crux of their conflict. What a spectacle for Augustine to miss, she thinks.

[unsheathedfromreality]

It's neatly done, Pyrrha's little coup over John. She'd finessed the outcome he'd intended--with dread and hope both attending--and now it remains for him to perform his part.

How well that will go, he thinks, comes down to how in control John Gaius believes himself to be. (As Duty had warned.) The Emperor's already lost his choice of champion and seen his meager Court dissolve to bickering--atop his beloved vanishing again, atop Trench's bitter reception of his recognized heir.

To say nothing of how little control the Waking World permitted him to begin with.

"We are then agreed on combatants," the shrike acknowledges, as John makes his declaration.

"We fight to first blood. Should you lose, you will acknowledge to all Trench the evil you have committed against Gideon Nav, now called Kiriona Gaia. Should you win, my rebuke is without effect--the gods justify you.

"It is proposed this be a duel of talon and blade--bare hand and edged weapon, no magic but that learned for either. Do you accept this, or counter?"

He expects the counter; he expects necromancy. There is truly no even footing between them, but it would give back the illusion of control--the opportunity to play indulgent godling to a gnat of a challenger.

[necrolord]

The way she smiles at him breaks his heart. He sees it in her eyes, written across Gideon's face, and he wants to hold that look forever; he wants to break at the pain of it and run. But he only shudders out a low breath when she touches her forehead to his.

It takes him a moment to fall back out of the embrace and turn to the dead guy trying to fight him.

"If I'm swinging a sword, it'll be sad to watch," says John. "Wizards' duel. You can throw everything at me, and just throw me a bone." He couldn't resist. The stupid joke seems to hearten him; he cracks a smile, and raises a hand in demonstration, so that he can pull the tip off one of his own fingers. The bone comes away bloodless in his hand, regrown in an instant, and he holds it up to the light like a pearl. "No cheap shots: this is what I've got. Deal?"

He could drop the bird in an instant, otherwise. He could drop the bird in three seconds even constrained to constructs. Still; it looks less shitty, this way. It looks like more of a fight.