megatheorem: (032)
palamedes THEE sextus ([personal profile] megatheorem) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2022-04-04 12:05 am

catchall for homies

Who: Palamedes and Friends (and Other)
What: the necromantic urge to come back from the dead
When: April (various)
Where: various

Content Warnings: death talk and necromancy inevitable, all else tba

it's a catchall baby, see prompts
necrolord: <user name="thebutt"> (drawing lines in the sand)

[personal profile] necrolord 2022-04-08 06:39 am (UTC)(link)
[ It was a genuine relief, to find this one on the beach. He had rankled at that as soon as he'd thought it, because of course anything given to him is given; after Augustine, he is exhausted with good fortune. He is buckling under the pointed grace of— impressively!— even pettier gods than he is. He is getting distinctly tired of curveballs.

Still: always nice to be the bearer of good news. So he brings the squid home, and he goes to make tea, and he doesn't even snap the boy awake until he has biscuits ready to offer in recompense. They never made it to tea and biscuits, him and the Sixth. He has a lot of catching up to do. The field has changed.

So God ambles back into his study, a tea tray in his hands, and is unsurprised to find a lanky bird-boned young man poking at his notebooks. This does not worry him: most aren't warded, and the warded ones aren't hard to break. He won't take it as personal affront to come back to a room of unpicked wards. If he hadn't given Harrow run of the place already, he would probably have to watch smoke come out her ears as she waffled between piety and the compulsive need for a challenge.

He sets the tea tray down: on the low coffee table, as a kindness. ]


And biscuits. [ He looks faintly amused as he drops into a chair across the still-damp sofa. ] I would've gone with 'devoured by a gargantuan sea monster.' It sounds suitably dramatic.

[ God pours the tea, stirs two sugars into his. It's all very pleasantly mundane. ]

Catch me up on what should have happened? I'll trade you what you've missed.

[ He looks at Palamedes, then, and it's maybe the first time he's really looked. There is a difference in him now: the absent air has cooled and solidified to a realer attention. The set of his shoulders conveys more weight. He is, by measurable degrees, fucking around distinctly less. ]

Welcome back, Warden.
necrolord: =- (the words fall flat)

[personal profile] necrolord 2022-04-13 03:39 am (UTC)(link)
[ The boy's expression draws hard around Canaan House, but only for a flicker. Only for a breath. Something shifts in God's eyes: the lines around them tighten, ever so. The black-hole light of the iris stays the same, as though it's some central gravity around which the rest of him moves.

He repeats, slowly: ]


You made a bubble.

[ God chews his lip. He considers this. He looks somewhere between impressed and lightly distraught, and he says, in the tone of a man working through an unusual math problem aloud: ]

Eight months. I do wish I'd seen it. But it's a big River... and a worse ocean. The two don't line up how you'd expect. There are, and I don't mind saying this, factors at play here I've never even seen... we're operating under a different ruleset. It isn't my domain.

[ God picks up a biscuit and fidgets with it, absentmindedly rolling the edge between his fingers. It gets crumbs in his tea. ]

I do think we can crack it, but there's a lot of work to be done. The sort of work we haven't done since the beginning. [ That we is, again, doing a lot of heavy lifting. ] And it's tougher when we have sea monsters trying to flatten town every month or so.
necrolord: <user name="thebutt"> (i babble on til my voice is gone)

[personal profile] necrolord 2022-04-13 06:48 am (UTC)(link)
[ Great, so. Several points here. Chief among them is that Harrow has been fucking around in River bubbles and not telling him about it, which is exactly the kind of thing he'd been a bit on-edge about, before everything went to hell about twenty different ways. Most of them literal.

He'll take it up with her later. Palamedes dunks his biscuit and says I won't die for you like casual conversation, as though that wasn't the deal from the moment he got the letter. For another moment God just looks at him, and considers. Then he says, quite reasonably: ]


I'll try not to ask you to.

[ And here he looks a little chagrined, and he puts the biscuit down fussed-with but uneaten so he can scrub a hand back through his hair. He probably gets crumbs in it. ]

Truth over solace. [ He echoes it low and weary (or low and wry, like someone dwelling on a punchline). ] How's this: you're welcome to my notes. Anything in this room's fair game. [ He gestures, broad, to the rows and rows of bone and blood and notebook. ] Unpick any ward you like, shout for me if you run up against one you can't. We'll start there.

[ This is said like prelude, like getting the unimportant stuff out of the way. He drums his fingers beside the abandoned biscuit. He says, more seriously: ]

And I owe you an overdue apology. I really didn't intend... I didn't foresee things at Canaan House getting so terribly out of hand, and I would have, had I been paying better attention. [ There is that chagrined not-smile again, that tightening of the mouth. ] You paid for my mistakes. That has always been the lot of a Lyctor, but I didn't mean it to come due so soon.
necrolord: <user name="thebutt"> (i babble on til my voice is gone)

[personal profile] necrolord 2022-04-15 06:31 am (UTC)(link)
[ Well! That's bold.

The Warden of the Sixth says I am not a Lyctor like he'd etch it into his bones, and God finds that he doesn't like that much. He finds that this is a bit of a sore spot. He has only just fished Augustine up from Hell and stood in this very study with him, just here, with the weight of Alfred's name unspoken in the air between them. His patience isn't what it might otherwise be. He is very tired.

So he decides they are not going to have this conversation just now, for everyone's sake.

God regards the boy before him. His drumming fingers go still, for just a moment. There is a beat of silence between them. Then he leans back, and picks up his tea, and the tension unspools. ]


Harrowhark and Gideon are just upstairs. [ He will let the Ninth pass on technicality; they're First, now, but that is a different conversation. Not one he thinks would be helped by hounding it here. ] And we've a few additions... a few others who came through that fight a bit worse for wear. They'll be glad to see you up and out of the water.
necrolord: <user name="thebutt"> (ninety meters of brick)

[personal profile] necrolord 2022-04-16 08:29 pm (UTC)(link)
[ God's eyebrows rise, because they are well past the limits of good sense and still moving. It is a little astonishing and a little impressive to fish a dead child out of the sea and watch him swing Don't apologize to me and I'm going to make a request, tone neat and clipped as though his hair isn't still rumpled by death and saltwater. God's lips twitch at With respect.

He listens. He inclines his head in a nod. ]


Understood.

[ That hangs for a moment, too, as he sips his tea. When he lowers the cup it is to settle forward again, something unreadable in his black-hole eyes. Pleasantly, seriously, he says: ]

I'll be glad to have you on these projects, but we aren't on a tight timetable. There's no harm in taking a moment to readjust. You were under for five weeks, by my count, and the scars of that battle are still being felt. Start with the notebooks. We'll go from there.