[To say that Ortus has been adjusting to his new circumstances would be strictly accurate. Having experienced one disorienting, world altering shock has seemed to somewhat inoculate him against the subsequent ones, or perhaps it is the purview of the dead to handle the variegates of life with more equanimity than the living.
He has found it a relatively simple matter to fall back into the practice of obscurity. Whatever coda this place is to be in the unlikely annals of his existence, it is not one where he is called on the way he was in the false House of the Lord. He is superfluous, and as this has been the case for the majority of his existence, it has been something of a relief to be forgotten in the wake of several arrivals and apparent scandals he still does not understand. (Nor, in fact, does he wish to.)
There are two people who have retained notice of him, despite this. The first has been, of course, the Lady Harrowhark, whose solicitousness towards him has been a painfully sincere and vulnerable thing to behold - which he has good reason to suspect has not sweetened the regard of the second towards him at all. The message he receives one moonlit day soon after his arrival does nothing to dispel his suspicions.
Nevertheless: the Ninth calls, and he must answer as best he can. This is why when he arrives at the isolated location specified in the message, he is painted in precise formality, affecting a more defined pale jawbone than his usual style, with his inelegant inheritance of a rapier belted at his black robed waist. He forsook the pannier, assuming - correctly, as it turns out - that there will be no one there to make use of anything he might carry in it.
Ortus looks at Gideon for a long, contemplative moment. Longer than perhaps he's ever truly looked at her, and only her, his eyes deep shadowed sorrows in their black painted setting. He clears his throat like a muffled knock, as if she has not already marked his approach.]
Where is the snail that reminds you of Matthias Nonius? I am curious to see it.
[Ortus Nigenad has had a very interesting day. Given the extent to which he has sought to limit the number of interesting days he would be required to suffer throughout his life, that alone would be distressing. The particular contents of this interesting day, beginning as it did with awakening with too many (and far too boneless) limbs and culminating in the meeting of a certain august personage, has managed to be interesting in a novel way, which in Ortus' estimation is the worst possible way for anything to be interesting.
Perhaps some of this shone through his queasily mortified expression in the aftermath of his rescue, as one of the (excessively) kind strangers bundled him off the ship and onto land soon after disembarking, ushering him to the closest local drinking establishment and settling him at a long, splintering stretch of darkly stained wood with instructions to 'open a tab' directed at the apparent proprietor. It seems he is to await collection at some point in the near future, after incomprehensible affairs (some practical, others more rarefied) are dealt with on the ship by his betters.
This is how Ortus Nigenad, lately of the Ninth House, finds himself as a broad black-swathed slump in front of a glass of some brown frothing liquid that smells of yeast in a place much like the frontier bars described in many of his primary sources. He stares at it with baffled dark eyes, his fresh skull face paint and raised hood obscuring all but a thin sliver of brown skin at his throat, his hands hidden in his crossed sleeves laid over his rounded belly.]
Is...this beer?
[He asks the question tentatively, despite the ponderous depth of his voice, glancing apprehensively at the nearest individual.]
[If a person has cause to be near the edge of Gaze and the dilapidated, looming house there, there is a chance they will come across Ortus fussing around the even more dilapidated shed at the edge of the property.
(Sleeping on God's hallowed couch had proved unbearable, at least partially because of the havoc it wrecked on his back.)
He is not, by any definition, a 'handy' man, but he is a diligent one. The debris that had filled the shed - a haphazard assortment of rusted tools, half-finished seeming projects, and rotted wooden planters - has been hauled outside and organized into piles for further consideration at another date. He has pinned heavy blackened canvas over the freshly cleaned windows, whose dim moonlit glow and view of the endless yawning sky had unnerved him as soon as their caked grime was scrubbed away. He has set up a modest, unyielding cot with sufficient blankets to stave off what he is informed is 'spring chill', though it lacks the bite of the Ninth's true cold.
The basics complete, Ortus can now turn to other, smaller projects. Dressed in his black robes with his face painted in a lesser elaboration of the Jawless Skull, Ortus labors under a thankfully dark daytime sky on marking the gaps in the shed wall with white chalk, looking solemnly and perplexedly at the crooked hang of the shed door, and sitting on a nearby stump holding a hammer as if he wished it might turn out to be something else.]
[Presumably, those last three labors are not taking place simultaneously — but whether they are or not, there's a tall, slender, pale shadow of a man lurking by the house's back door, adding the occasional waft of a more pungent smoke to whatever other fresh-air post-industrial pollutants (not to mention, of course, spring pollen) are cheerfully drifting through the air of Trench and waiting to fuck with people's lungs, and quite plainly watching Ortus at his labors.
His voice is polished, cultured, the sort of voice that sounds as though it ought to be raised to declaim poetry, or battle cries, or both — with no evident sign that the smoke has caused any damage to it, no less — and it's pitched to carry effortlessly across the yard, for all that it isn't raised.]
Works better when you're aiming at steel, rather than corpi unguii, if you're really looking to nail it.
[God must be so proud of this man who has spent ten thousand years playing Teacher's Pet.]
early april | gaze: bone house | harrowhark nonagesimus
[The last time Ortus had ever expected to see the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus, she had been wretched with exhaustion, sodden with grief, and terrible in her triumph. He does not know what to make of any of the rest of their wholly unanticipated reunion, but he does know that when her hollowed near-black eyes fell on him once more, he was troubled by how many of those shadows yet clung to them.
He has not found himself put more at ease by anything that followed. She is fretful and imperious by turns - she is coiled tension in a buried spring-loaded mechanism - she is worn in the manner of polished bone, and none of these are unusual states for his Lady Harrowhark, which is precisely what concerns him. By all measures, she should have, if not peace, some measure of reprieve.
But the strictures of the Ninth House bind his tongue without the need of needles. He cannot ask 'how are you?', a barbaric and indelicate question; he cannot ask 'what is wrong?', as the answer stretches out beyond all reason; he cannot ask 'what do you need of me, Lady Harrowhark?', because he has never known Harrowhark to understand what she needs of anyone.
What he can do, in the wake of their arrival at the (blessedly enclosed) house of the Lord, is arrange himself on a worn seat in a scholar's study, as was once their custom. He may sit up after arranging the folds of his robes, as he always has, his hands clasped modestly in his lap as he regards her with creased brow and downturned mouth.]
It has been some time since we last spoke.
[The observation is offered mildly, as if in passing, but it is at least a beginning, a delicate cracking open of the weighted silence.]
[typically viktor isn't a bar person. ok, that's not entirely true, he's hardly against the concept when he has a specific goal in mind but rarely is he in a position where a bar will help him achieve some goal. he could likely find cheaper, better liquor that isn't watered down in a bottle he can bring anywhere he likes, like his lab, for example. where it is quiet and people don't cause trouble.
but lately he'll admit to certain level of aimlessness in quiet moments, ones that sometimes see him at the shore, both to watch the ships and look for scrap along the beach. sometimes that aimless, drifting feeling does not go away with the sea air, and sometimes the trench is an overwhelming place that has that little voice inside go 'fuck it, why not.' in this case fuck it, why not stop at the dingy little bar on the way back? it might even be nostalgic, like the horrible little holes one could find in the undercity where it was so easy to vanish like another stain on the counter as you sat and nursed your drink.
he's trying a beer himself when ortus is brought in, glances over from idly tracing the ghosts of schematics with the condensation of his glass on the scarred bartop before him. the first thing he notices is the skull paint, which... is admittedly a lot to notice, the kind that forces a second look out of a passing glance. interesting. odd, but certainly there is odder. he was nearly eaten by a shadow of himself just the day before, things got weirder.]
Yes, on the cheap side but- [viktor offers a shrug with the answer, tapping his own glass to show hey, he drank some and he's still alive so... there's that going for it.] Sometimes cheap beer is preferable.
[ There was a part of Gideon that didn't expect Ortus to show up. A snail with Matthias Nonius energy is a pretty good draw, of course, but it's no guarantee.
Gideon used to cleave up the aged population of the Ninth House into three groups: Harrowhark, Aiglamene, and everyone else. Ortus might be one of the nicer members of everyone else, but it still doesn't change the fact that he probably hates her, and she doesn't especially like him.
But he's here, fallen for the bait, and he's looking at her, which is weird, she never asked for that. (except that she did, over and over again, screaming in her own way for someone to notice) Trust Ortus to make things weird. Whatever. She's got a job to do. Gideon sighs. ]
There's no snail, dude. I just needed a sneaky reason to get you out of God's receding hairline. [ Gideon starts to duck into a nearby abandoned shack, waving for Ortus to follow. ] In here.
[ Once she's confident he's not about to up and leave, Gideon will kick a couple crates together, as if that makes a halfway decent seating area. It doesn't, which is, you know, very Ninth. She sits. ]
There's some things you should know. About God. Since you're living in his area, and all.
early april | the pthumerian sea: the lonely island | the emperor
It is a question that Ortus has contemplated before, and he imagines it is not an uncommon contemplation. He has read the fragments of the oldest gospels, those not long surrendered to the archival acquisition of the Sixth House, and in these most ancient of Ninth House records, God is never described in His embodiment, but only in the halo of His divine acts. So it continues through the canon, God ever expressed in his virtues and his glories, the incidental trivia of anything so mundane as appearance elided in their favor.
In some commentaries, theologians of a particular bent suggest that this is an intentional omission on the part of God, one meant to remind His people to treat each stranger as if they could be divine. This had been the practice Ortus seized on in the wake of the terrible knowledge that he was, evidently, soon to stand, his soul unshriven, before the regard of his Lord.
Thus, when he does, at last, stand before God, there is a very small part of him that notes these theologians were as baldly incorrect as he had always suspected.
God is a man on the pitching deck of a ship under a yawning sky. God is a man with brown skin warmer than Ortus' own, with a tousled head of dark hair, with a hole near the collar of his shirt, with eyes -
There are those would look at Ortus (especially now, in his embarrassingly unlayered white shift, in his hastily sketched skull applied by his unseeing, shaking hand alone already running) and imagine there is no action he might undertake with grace. They would be largely correct, but there is no child of the Ninth (save, perhaps, one blazing exception) who does not learn their devotionals until the bruises feel as though they have set into the bony caps of their knees, until their robes stick tacky to split skin.
Ortus folds to his knees with his hands dutifully clasped at his breast, his eyes downcast in reverence, as if the waves beneath him do not exist to tip his balance. He prostrates himself before his Lord God without thought or hesitation, his forehead kissing the splintered, blood-flecked wood shamelessly. It is his voice which holds all the tremulous, stricken fright of him, awestruck as if cleft between the eyes with a single blow.]
[With a sufficient lean, or perhaps a stick strapped to the chalk, Ortus might be capable of all three from where he sits on the slightly crooked stump. He is engaged in contemplation of the haft of the hammer when a voice calls out like the Drearburh bell itself, and his hand closes around it as he startles, straightening to attention in a way that Aiglamene would scoff to see.
He has not heard the voice before, too overcome by humility (and caution) to linger anywhere the man - the Saint - might be, but the face is that of the evidently benignly obnoxious Saint of Patience. He drops his gaze as soon as comprehension comes to him, respectfully averting his near-black eyes. Of course he was aware of the observer, but he would not have gotten as far as he did in life without the cultivation of practiced unnoticing.]
Thank you, most holy Saint. My knowledge of tools is, I admit, scant.
[Under usual circumstances, Ortus may have noticed that second look with the pained sensitivity of someone who very much prefers to not receive so much as a first look. Usual circumstances do not involve beer, or asking questions of a stranger who has the hollowed, gaunt look of a necromancer.]
It is?
[He peers at the glass, then glances at the stranger out of the corner of his eye. The man does seem to have survived his consumption of a drink that Ortus had always imagined to have a somewhat different odor than the effluvial one it possesses. He produces a hand with split knuckles from his sleeve and gingerly brings the glass to his lips.
Well. Ortus sets it back down with studious neutrality.]
I have been led to understand that beer is sometimes considered a reward for valor in battle, or the quenching of thirst incurred from labor. Would you describe this beer as 'typical' in its taste?
[ah, it's interesting to see someone try beer for the first time, or so it sounds. viktor wonders if he should warn the man beer doesn't really taste good persay, but it's subjective enough maybe the man will enjoy it regardless.
the neutrality tells a different story, though again, maybe the man is the stoic type. the question has viktor consider seriously for a moment, taking a sip of his own glass to double check before offering a nod.]
Hm, typical enough. Beer can vary dramatically in quality and I would say this is firmly a stronger, cheaper beer, very much the type preferred by the laborers you mentioned. I would hardly consider myself an expert in the matter but from my understanding it is less the flavor of beer that is the appealing aspect but the fact it is cheap, cold and alcoholic.
Oh, also awful for actually quenching thirst in a meaningful way. [a pause and he says,] I've always thought it tasted terrible, in truth.
[Having only the vaguest guess at what a snail might be, Ortus manages to endure the disappointment of the deceit with equanimity. God's receding hairline would have banished any thought of what he has missed out on anyway, his eyebrows darting upward as his lips thin in automatic disapproval that gives way.
But he says nothing. He follows her into the shed solemnly, then sets himself tentatively on one of the crates, not wholly convinced of the structural integrity of wood. She continues, and his brows slide down and together, the stark white of his paint emphasizing the well-worn creases of worry in his forehead.]
I imagine that there are.
[This is not the discussion he had expected, but then, he had hardly known what to expect. What does he know of her, beyond what he has beheld at a distance, and the imprint that she left on Harrowhark?
He knows she would not speak to him like this if it were not crucial.]
[The man also sounds much like a necromancer, who tend to dominate the academic world, but he does not dare to assume. Indeed, assumptions have been thoroughly shocked out of him altogether, at least for the time being. He nods once at the explanation given, still eyeing the beverage.]
It is...potent. [He picks it up once more, staring into it as if it may provide further insight that way.] I have had worse.
[Though nothing ever so...energetic in his mouth, the buzzing of bubbles on his tongue faintly disconcerting. Still, it is not so foul as his still-sharp memory of leek wine, a thin and reeking brew that he half-suspected was at times sweetened with astringent paint cleanser.
But it is beer. He sips it again, and finds it no more palatable.]
[frankly being mistaken for a necromancer would amuse him and not particularly surprise him either, now that he's met palamedes. he'd also be much less surprised about the skull paint, as he's come to understand vaguely that bones seem to be a bit of a thing in that universe.
for now though he just nods along to that assessment, offers,] Where I am from they have liquors that taste more like if turpentine could rot. Truthfully this is very much a treat in comparison.
[he lifts his glass in a mock toast to those disgusting drinks in the undercity, another sip himself and a shake of the head as it goes down.]
Viktor- no family name, another oddity of my home. It is good to meet you- I hope it isn't rude to say you seem like you are having eh... a bit of a time at the moment. I hope the beer is at least a distraction.
[By pure coincidence, the most direct path from Palamedes' unmarked bunker and the looming face of God's Own House includes passing through a copse of scraggly, haunted-looking trees, the dramatic emergence through which should only be fitting for scions of the Empire of the Nine Houses: dark, somewhat haunted, inexplicably not coming down the street like a normal person.
For Palamedes, it's just annoying, but not so much that he's going to go around and waste the extra few minutes. It is thus that he appears in view of God's Own House and Some Guy's Own Shed, ostensibly on a quest to walk into God's kitchen and see if literally anyone else is around who can lend him a spatula: yanking the hem of his gray cloak off an errant thorny bush, and with leaves in his hair.
So he's taken just fine to living in a place with real plants, one could say.
He comes to an ambling stop not when he sees Ortus - he gazes fairly overtly at the hulking shape of a man marking a shed as he starts his way across the property some 50 feet away - but rather, when the realization dawns, he veers back to the shed proper with a more businesslike step. The kitchen can wait.]
The other Ninth; I'd heard you were here. [three whole Ninths looked upon with his own eyes, amazing!!] I'm the Sixth Warden. What's this you're doing?
[No House name would seem to eliminate the possibility of Viktor hailing from the Empire. This raises a field of questions that shamble aimlessly about, ones Ortus seeks to submerge with another measured sip of the brew.]
I do not find it rude. It is a perceptive observation.
[He sets the glass down still barely touched. He cannot risk intoxication, and he has no way of knowing how much the drink will affect him. It would not do to be in disarray before his Lady Harrowhark, or - the other significant authority.]
I did not expect death to present so many trials. I had always imagined that, while my bones would undoubtedly labor on in service, my soul would be subsumed in the River.
[He is matter of fact about his death. What grieving there was to be done for it, he has already done. He reserves his mournfulness for his next statement, a doleful pronouncement.]
I did not even know what a squid was.
[On the other hand: perhaps Viktor is right, and the beer will provide a distraction. In the hopes of dispelling thoughts of tentacles, Ortus steels himself for another attempt at beer.]
[Ortus took note of the passing stranger approaching the Emperor's defense, and then he took note of his long, gray silhouette, the slight reflective flashing about his face. By the time the young Master Warden pivots on his path, Ortus has taken the opportunity to school his features to placidity.
There is still a lingering mournfulness to his expression, but this is not atypical. What is atypical, and what he dolefully hopes the young man does not notice, is the flicker of inexplicable relief as he regards the whole and intact face of a stranger.]
Warden of the Sixth. [Ortus dips his head in a respectful nod.] Yes. I am Ortus Nigenad.
[It shouldn't come as a surprise that he's been mentioned, and yet: it remains difficult to picture circumstances in which he would be a topic of discussion.]
As for what I am doing...
[He looks at the chalk-marked shed, then at his white dusted sleeves, then back to the Warden with an even more wearily dolorous set to his skull-painted face.]
It seemed best to identify the areas of concerns before formulating a plan to address them.
[oof, that already sounds like a lot to deal with. death here was such a different beast, pun not intended but allowed, and horrific in ways viktor is still grappling with himself. there's a lot to unpack about 'my bones would labor in service,' but packs that one away to maybe question later.]
You mean to say you died in your world and were brought here? [that's his guess, which he hadn't even considered being an option here if that was the case. did that happen to him? did his lungs give out without him realizing in singed's lab?
not something he wants to think long about, in truth. in fact he takes a sip of beer in retaliation of the thought.]
It is... hm, it takes time to adjust to how little reality really conforms to what we thought, doesn't it? A squid, of all things. [his lips thin and he takes another sip.] I try to take comfort in the thought that something about who we are as people is powerful enough to survive into... being a squid.
[Luckily for Ortus, Palamedes' near-obsessive attention to detail does not make him a mind-reader; he can catch the briefest shade of some other emotion under the paint, but with absolutely no context about Ortus Nigenad other than he is Ninth (and he writes some manner of Long Works), it ends there.
Perhaps Ortus is merely relieved his visitor is not, like, some kind of weirdo. Like God or something. Never mind that thought, for now. Palamedes returns a brisk nod, tilting to one side to see better the, ah, adventure with the chalk Ortus is having.]
Palamedes, [he offers, belatedly, and then,] You've identified an alarming number of concerns. Have you considered replacing the whole thing?
[Not that he knows anything about architecture, but he can count chalk marks in a hurry, and wow. No offense.]
I think chalk might be sturdier than some of this wood, actually.
[ She's been known to frequent this kind of shithole — the kind where the booze is barely potable and the smells are highly questionable. Andy blends in well with the questionable crowd, smelling faintly of cigarette smoke and throwing back the maybe-beer with the ease of a seasoned alcoholic.
The large, black-clad fellow had gotten a cursory glance from her when he first sat down, but she'd practiced her habit of minding her own damn business — at least until she caught that hesitant question. It earns a second look, her eyebrows lifting ever so slightly towards her hairline, giving her a vaguely skeptical look. Finally, with a light huff of breath that's half-amused: ]
Barely. [ With a twinge of wryness: ] Not much of a drinker?
[Ortus nods to his own death mildly, then to the concept of reality's nonconformity with more vigor. Victor's final comment about the power of their selfhood receives a faintly startled and less faintly dubious look, one Ortus drops back into his drink nearly as soon as he levels it at the other man.]
I died nearly a year ago. The transition here was not immediate. I have journeyed more in death than I ever dreamed in life.
[First the River proper, then his Lady's memorial construct, then once more into the tumultuous current of death, to...here, where he has evidently yet retained his selfhood and his sanity.]
This is preferable to where I last was. [To say the least.] Despite the indignity of bonelessness.
[This was clearly the most upsetting aspect of being a squid.]
May I ask where you last were, before your arrival in this place?
[Considering some other encounters Ortus has had lately, the relief that Palamedes is not any manner of sanctified soul or divine being (AKA, some kind of weirdo) is a very explicable one.]
That would require an even greater array of skills I do not possess.
[He says it mildly, with a trace of self derisive humour, as he sets aside the chalk and dusts his hands in puffs of minerals.]
It serves as shelter for the time being. I have found it bracing to imagine myself a vanguard on a shepherd planet, homesteading the land as it is surveyed. The occasional breezes and periodic creaking add, I think, to the effect. [A slight, deliberate pause, for effect.] Also, I do not have sufficient quantities of chalk for larger architectural work.
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