fuligxn

[fuligxn]

here's the long and the short of the matter— bedivere is only half startled when the doors open, only momentarily feels his hand go towards his rapier at the open and close of a door. he had his training, had reflexes drilled into him. but this was not a space of concern for him, and so his defenses were… not lowered perhaps, but only raised on the whole social front of things.

(so perhaps it is for this reason that he can feel the prickle of timshel's gaze upon him. part of him wants to look back, an orpheus caught in the world after. but timshel had left the domain of the styx, and and still— but bedivere swallows the thought, returns to the task at hand.)

the third house was— there wasn't a polite word for how he felt regarding them, the sheer artifice. he was a mirror too, but he could have a sense of elegance about it. they just made him want to learn a thing or two about hemlock tea. still, he plasters on an absent smile, peers down at the book and attempts to tune out the chatter of everyone else save his necromancer.

after all, there was a puzzle to be solved, and his fingers itch at the prospect of something that could be managed, something that wouldn't be him spinning his wheels, racing after something he might not ever manage to resolve.

he offers a smile to timshel, settling himself down at the table, taking the proffered paper and a pen from an inside pocket of his jacket (for what well intentioned bureacrat could be caught without a pen?) and settles down to sketch out a lengthy grid, pausing for a moment to frown at the thick black lines. "it's a transposition cipher, i'd wager?"

another glance, upwards at his fellow cavaliers: "that's what you see as well, yes?"

               ❛❛ 𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐃,   𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄   𝐖𝐀𝐒   𝐀   𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓   𝐎𝐅   𝐇𝐈𝐌—   𝐀𝐍𝐃   𝐈   𝐃𝐈𝐃𝐍’𝐓   𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖   𝐇𝐎𝐖   𝐏𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓   𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓   𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐓   𝐌𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓   𝐁𝐄—   𝐓𝐇𝐀𝐓   𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐒𝐓𝐄𝐃   𝐅𝐎𝐑   𝐌𝐘   𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃.   𝐀𝐍𝐃   𝐓𝐇𝐈𝐑𝐃,   𝐈   𝐖𝐀𝐒   𝐔𝐍𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐓𝐈��𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐘   𝐀𝐍𝐃   𝐈𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐕𝐎𝐂𝐀𝐁𝐋𝐘   𝐈𝐍   𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄   𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇   𝐇𝐈𝐌. ❜❜   His   eyes   find   Bedivere   as   the   last   line   leaves   his   lips.   With   a   swift   flutter   of   eyelashes,   he   hopes   to   meet   his   gaze,   but   the   library   doors   creak   open   and   Bedivere’s   attention   is   stolen   with   cruel   abruptness.   Timshel   is   left   staring   at   the   side   of   his   face—   the   familiar   profile   of   a   man   whose   hair   curls   he   even   has   memorized;   the   way   strands   fall   into   place   at   his   temple   and   twirl   behind   his   ear,   locks   that   feel   like   soft   silk   between   his   fingertips.   His   gaze   is   torn   away   and   replaced   by   a   flat,   disinterested   stare   to   address   the   newcomers.   Arachne   forgoes   greetings   as   does   he;   she   is   out   of   sight   as   soon   as   he   notes   her   presence   and   returns   to   his   book.   The   sound   of   her   heels   hints   at   her   whereabouts;   it   is   not   shocking   that   she   sprawls   atop   the   velvet   couch   while   Gawain,   with   some   sense   of   purpose,   begins   examining   the   bookshelves.

       Meanwhile,   the   Eighth   Cavalier   has   been   lost   in   his   private   study   for   an   hour.   Timshel   occasionally   hears   him   murmur   as   he   reads   from   a   different   book—   hunger,   spiders—   he   beckons   her.   Asterion’s   despicable   crime   is   minding   his   business.   He   has   the   misfortune   of   suddenly   finding   himself   in   the   presence   of   one   who   cannot   stand   the   serenity   of   others.   Her   heels   get   busy   again;   she   has   found   a   problem   with   his   existence.   Timshel   has   no   interest   in   getting   involved   until   he   notices   Bedivere’s   closeness   to   Gawain.   He  ��has   been   quiet   for   a   spell   when   he   appears   behind   them   and   peers   at   the   book   they’re   hunched   over.   ❛❛ Curios   and   curiouser. ❜❜

He   immediately   recognizes   the   jumble   of   letters   as   a   cipher.   Though   the   book   is   nearly   destroyed   and   covered   in   blood,   Timshel   is   drawn   to   the   odd   tome   because   of   the   filth—   something   stirs,   familiar   like   the   call   of   The   River.   He   holds   his   tongue   while   Gawain   calls   for   them   to   gather   beneath   the   light.   There,   Timshel   sets   his   journal   down   and   flips   through   lists   of   book   titles,   authors,   and   passages   until   he   happens   upon   a   blank   page.

       ❛❛ If   I   may,   I’d   like   to   transcribe   the   note   left   behind, ❜❜   Timshel   says   and   glances   at   Gawain.   ❛❛ You’re   right   in   that   it’s   a   cipher.   Those   who   have   been   in   the   Cohort   will   surely   be   familiar   with   its   kind;   the   Cohort   uses   a   handful   of   methods   to   construct   coded   messages   like   this   one.   Of   course,   this   might   use   a   different   encryption   method   altogether. ❜❜   Timshel   notes   as   he   rips   pages   from   his   journal   and   offers   them.   ❛❛ I   invite   anyone   with   experience   to   make an attempt. ❜❜

@fuligxn.

[fuligxn]

fuligin (noun) — soot, lampblack. a hypothetical colour darker than black.

an rp blog affiliated with @dominicusrpg.

bedivere cinquefoil, 36, he/him, cavalier primary of the fifth house.

— posts + bio.

iphigenia nonagesimus, 24, she/her, necromancer primary of the ninth house.

— posts + bio.

[fuligxn]

effy can feel herself go red in the face — perhaps for the first time she feels half thankful for the face paint and veil that she wears as a nun (or the semblance of one) belonging to her house. the fifth house— and it's scion, who she had flagged at the onset of landing, filing him down with specific care— was one of the groups she had hoped to impress through this project. through them, and a strengthened tie between them, she might be able to ensure better trade routes for her home.

and so to be caught like this, all wild doe eyes and a mouth that can't help but attempt to stammer out a response, feels like an abject moment of weakness. "i wasn't— it felt different from all the other books and i— i wanted to know why."

she can feel the mortification spilling through her and wants to raise her hands to cover her face, but forces them down, holding them in front of her. instead of fleeing like a jackrabbit, she turns towards the necromancer of the fifth house (timshel, offers the voice within her, scrabbling for a name) an edge of questioning in her voice as she does so. "but— um, what knowledge are you seeking out then?" as she inclines her still veiled head at the stack of books lingering in front of him.

               𝐑𝐎𝐖𝐒   𝐎𝐅   𝐒𝐇𝐄𝐋𝐕𝐄𝐒   𝐃𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐃𝐄   𝐓𝐇𝐄   𝐋𝐈𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐑𝐘   𝐈𝐍𝐓𝐎   𝐐𝐔𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒,   𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆   𝐇𝐈𝐃𝐃𝐄𝐍   𝐍𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐒   𝐓𝐇𝐑𝐎𝐔𝐆𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐓   𝐓𝐇𝐄   𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐌𝐁𝐄𝐑   𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐂𝐊𝐄𝐃   𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇   𝐏𝐈𝐋𝐄𝐒   𝐎𝐅   𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐒   𝐎𝐅   𝐀𝐋𝐋   𝐒𝐈𝐙𝐄𝐒   𝐀𝐍𝐃   𝐂𝐎𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐒,   𝐒𝐎𝐌𝐄   𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍   𝐎𝐍   𝐓𝐇𝐄   𝐅𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐑.   Timshel   has   been   attempting   to   go   by   genre,   or   in   alphabetical   order,   or   even   authorship,   but   his   attempts   to   map   out   the   library   have   been   in   vain.   The   antique   books—   they   are   that   old—   are   scattered   haphazardly.   He   finds   tomes   on   prehistoric   civilizations   on   the   same   shelf   where   someone   piled   a   stack   of   decrepit   cooking   books.   Out   of   curiosity,   he   picks   one   titled   ❛ The   Farmer's   Wife's   Cookbook:   Hearty   and   Humble   Dishes   for   Every   Occasion ❜   and   adds   it   to   the   small   tower   of   books   he’s   carrying. 

Timshel   walks   around   the   corner   to   find   a   seat   among   the   tables   in   the   center   when   he   sees   Iphigenia   Nonagesimus,   Heir   Necromancer   of   the   Ninth,   clutching   a   book   suspiciously.   She   nearly   drops   it   when   Timshel   walks   by,   which   is   how   he   manages   to   catch   sight   of   the   cover:   two   figures   in   a   state   of   undress,   with   one   of   them   caressing   the   other   and   a   suggestive   title   in   white   cursive   that   tells   Timshel   all   he   needs   to   know.   Laughter   doesn’t   manage   to   escape   his   lips,   thankfully,   he   bites   his   tongue   and   lowers   his   selection   of   books   atop   a   table   as   if   nothing   moved   him.  

       ❛❛ You’ll   find   no   judgment   here,   Heir   of   the   Ninth, ❜❜   Timshel   promises,   though   his   amusement   is   evident.   ❛❛ All   knowledge   is   worth   seeking   out. ❜❜

[fuligxn]

he pulls away from the door, hands reaching towards his own rapier. internally, he's already moving through the motions that he knew his body would have to follow— the rising arc of his arm, the clear cut viciousness of a blade swing.

but instead of making those motions, bedivere watches romilly, taking stock of her body language, the way that the essence of a question seemed to follow through her movements. the fifth house had believed in a certain sort of training, one predicated on the notion of "reading the room" before all else. so he watches her, waits, feels out the space in the conversation-- how does she seem to think the pendulum will fall?

and for his patience, he finds this-- a quiet murmur of conversation, a scrap that he wondered at, the questioning air around it thick. he finishes pulling his rapier in parallel with his response: "were you expecting something like my house? or maybe the third."

a frown, as he takes a few small swings with his rapier. there is something tense in the act of being the mirror that he was raised as, something in the notion of reflecting and not showing that seemed at odds with his life now. but this was a game, and one where he wanted (needed, perhaps) to hold the upper hand. "of the list of things i was anticipating, something this abandoned didn't seem in the cards."

of all the current occupants of canaan house to take her by surprise, bedivere cinquefoil was perhaps one of the most relief-inducing. the cavalier hadn't yet appeared to have a truly malicious bone in his body, and his history seemed to back this up. from what romilly knew of him, he was an honorable military man from a family of cavalier powerhouses, and so she did not hesitate to reply, "of course." she dipped her head briefly and backed up a few steps to allow him farther into the room. "company would be... nice."

company was not something she felt readily prepared for these days, but she supposed that would need to change. canaan house, with all its shared spaces and confusing corridors, would likely necessitate some collaboration. romilly didn't know if aurelius had been making any beneficial connections on behalf of the second, but she figured she'd need to pull her own weight for her house anyhow. although, would it truly be for her house, or was this for her? did she not crave companionship now that her closest confidante was no longer among the living? "this place isn't what i expected," she began, her sad little attempt at an olive branch, "although... i don't really know what i was expecting, exactly."

she rolled the grip of her rapier in her fist, glancing down at the thin line of her reflection in the blade. "it's got a training room, at least, so i can't complain."

[fuligxn]

who: open. when: shortly after arrival. where: the shore.

the fifth was a planet of storms. eternal storms, broiling across the planet, catching the inhabitants in wind, in red skies, in constant upheaval.

bedivere called that place his home, had learned how to stay solid under constant upheaveal, under the mercurial nature of the elements. he had learned how to exist in the fluidity of his home too, the way he had been told to be the perfect bureaucrat, and had found some comfort in the way that he could shift his face to fit the whims of the conversation. a slight bit of change could grease a conversation this way or that, provide the best outcome for any part involved.

so perhaps that's why he feels so out of sorts on this planet. this planet, with weather that is more stoic than not, this planet kept austere and unchanging. he wonders how old this building it, how long it has been since it felt the weight of so many within it.

with all this solidity, all this permanence, is it any wonder that he turns towards the water?

so find him here, on the beach, in the crisp light of early day, hands tugging at his shirt, unaware of anyone else on the land besides the sea. he's so caught up in the fantasy of pushing his body through wave, of pulling a body into a point of ache, that he doesn't notice another person approaching. in retrospect, he suppose he should have paid more attention. with a faint tip of his head, he tries not belay a sense of being off kilter-- "i hope you haven't been standing there long?"

[fuligxn]

who: open. when: shortly after arrival. where: the library.

there had been books on the ninth. certainly, there had been whole troves of them. but they were primarily religious tomes, the odd thing of poetry, all the annals and records of the past ages. they were her friends, these psalms, these hymns, these bound things of bone work. and iphigenia, as the heir of the house, the ever hungry collector of knowledge, had read her way clean through all of them.

and now-- there was a whole new library. effy couldn't help but run her hands along the spines of the books, feeling the crumbling bindings of them through lace thin gloves. there were so many to read; so many to revel in the existence of. she wanted to hoard them all for herself, stack them up and pile them in her rooming, hiding away from the rest of the crowds. maybe there would be a clue hidden in one of them.

of course, clues weren't the only things to be found. there's one that catches her eye (or rather, her hand, the flimsy paperback binding a radical shift from the rest of the flaking tomes). she pulls it loose, her face going a peculiar shade of red upon seeing the cover. the winds of the heart the cover loudly announced, featuring a woman in nothing but a slip of fabric, another person caressing her face, in a similar state of unrest. the book nearly slips from her fingers, and she glances around, hoping that none saw the debacle.

of course, prayers in the hands of a woman of little faith have almost no hope in succeeding.

[fuligxn]

sun cuts through the whole of iphigenia. sun skitters against her skin, bruises her eyes, leaves her starblessed and uncertain. it's enough to make a girl want to cry, enough to make her teeth dig into the tender flesh of the interior of her cheek as she tries to stay her ground.

back on the ninth, she'd be haphazard with her use of facepaint, only applying the obligatory swatch or two, dreading the way it felt on her skin, the way the presence of it lingered eternally, splicing through her thoughts, setting her into disarray. now-- her whole face was bedecked in it, and she could feel wind shifting, sand drifting lazily to catch in the paint, another irritant throwing a wrench in her own ability to think, to navigate the interactions that would follow.

which is perhaps why she fails to cling onto politeness upon hearing the other necromancer's words. there's only the need for precision, for an answer to be rendered in clear lines of certainty. "or maybe-- they're the ones that left the ruins." no introduction, no nothing. only the need for clarity in the space of this moment.

“All of the water on the Sixth House is brought from cargo ships,” Althaea's voice cuts through the lapping of the waves, where the tide draws to the rocks. Unprompted, only dragged from their throat as they feel the presence of another. A terrible us of their time, staring into the abyss, and not attempting to unravel the strangeness of Canaan House. S shells of sea urchin's lingering along the shorelines, a blue crab scampering along and into the salty depths— all merely existing on this uninhabited planet. Unaware of what surrounded them. The ocean stretches beyond the horizon, vanishing into the cerulean of the sky, mixing into one endless stain of blue. Only interrupted by the grey divots of buildings that have fallen to even greater rot then Canaan House. How open... How refreshing. The entirety of the Sixth lived buried underground, sealed away to save them from the raging heat of Dominicus, starving them of any light. And of the sea. “I've read about it but seeing it... it's very different. A planet, almost entirely covered in water. And the ruins— do you think the previous Lyctor's explored them?”

[fuligxn]

bedivere doesn't quite know what he's doing in this place, if he's being perfectly honest-- not in the way of not knowing the purpose of him being on this planet. he knows the purpose of that like he knows his own bones, like he knows the feeling of a rapier in his hands.

but there's some kind of dislocation running through the bwhole of him, a dislocation that's more mental than physical. he'd always had a sense of how to adjust to a new planet, how to relearn the feel of gravity and dirt under his feet. but to be set on a planet, with little guidance and purpose relegated primarily to his necromancer? that was something he didn't know the shape of, that was something he couldn't figure out his place in the midst of.

and so: the training room, the comforting hum of physical activity. routine would have to come as a balm, a normalcy that he could only pray for. he supposes he should have expected others to be in this room: that's the routine of a soldier after all. he's got her name, got her profile scrawled ion some corner of his mind (one did not belong to a bureaucratic powerhouse, a family holding a long line of cavaliers, if one did not keep the details intact.)

"no, you were preoccupied," he responds, resting his weight upon the door frame. "do you mind if i join you?"

who: open when: a few days after arrival where: the pool room

it's early, too early for her to be awake, and yet, here she is. sleep did not come easy to her, but regardless, she enjoyed the early morning hours. the air is colder, crisper at this hour, and canaan house is even more still than it usually seems. after quietly slipping out of the second's quarters, rapier and daggers in tow, romilly made her way to the pool room. she'd visited this room once or twice now, but had not yet had the space to herself.

the training space brought her an odd sense of comfort. being a part of the cohort was never what she dreamed of, but it was all she knew, and running through some of her rapier drills brought familiarity to an unfamiliar place. the motions were performed by rote, purely muscle memory - the passing lunge, the squaring of her shoulders with her hips, the swipe of the blade against the air. it allowed her to clear her head, to ignore what she swore was her brother's lifeless gaze against her back.

when she finally did turn to repeat the drill on the opposite side, she stumbled, caught off-guard by a visitor that was notably not an undead apparition. "oh!" romilly couldn't help but gasp, her shoulders tensing as she regained her footing. she nearly let the rapier slip from her grasp. "i'm sorry - i didn't hear you come in."