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Most of the other heirs and cavaliers had left their shuttles, and the skeletons were busy pulling luggage out from their holds. The last two shuttles slowly spiralled down to earth, a fresh gust of warm wind scything over everyone as they came to their fluttering rest. Skeletons with poles were already there to greet them, and other living priests, one for each arriving shuttle. The two new shuttles had both alighted next to the Ninth’s, the Seventh’s closest and the Third’s one over, which was close enough to see who or what was inside as the Third’s hatch opened.
Whatever Gideon had been expecting, what emerged from the shuttle was not quite that. The cavalier who emerged was standard: enormously tall and hugely bulky, yet wearing a bright, happy smile that seemed to Gideon a little unreasonable, considering the solemnity of this day and this place. But he was two steps behind what surely must be the most frightening person who had ever lived. She was a tall, stick-thin figure, clearly a necromancer given her anemic frame, who was draped and feathered all in rich royal purple: a woman with weird grey-tinted skin, a face more wrinkled than Crux’s asshole, and eyes that swept over everything with a sort of evil calculation that rivalled even Harrow’s dark gaze. Gideon continued staring even as another white-robed priest approached and spoke with the pair. She was, for no reason she was certain of, scared out of her wits; her bowels had nearly turned to ice water at the sight of the impossibly old woman. She was simply—
“Scary beyond all reason,” Teacher was muttering to the white-robed priest who had hurried from the Third pair to his side.
The other priest was murmuring worriedly back to him. “—were inflexible—family tragedy—sent their advisor instead, and the cavalier secondary—”
“Well, what can we do?” Teacher said with a forced laugh, but Gideon could tell he was as scared of the weird-ass old woman as she was, which served to make her even more nervous.
“I do not like this,” said Harrowhark darkly. Gideon, vow-of-silenced as she was, didn’t respond, but repressed a vigorous nod. She’d never agreed with Harrow more than in this moment.
Teacher laughed, again sounding forced, and said something about how the Mouth of the Emperor can only produce good fruit and so on, but Gideon could tell his heart wasn’t in it. The old necro had, somehow, made them all nervous.
-
Gideon learned, through no inquiring of her own (as she was forbidden to speak), but through passive observation, that the Third pair were Yzma, longtime advisor to the Third princesses, and Kronk the Third, her unflappably cheerful cavalier. As the trials commenced, she also learned that Harrow did not like the Third, as Harrow said this out loud about ten billion times.
“There is something monstrous about that woman,” Harrow would grumble, pacing back and forth, when she bothered to speak to Gideon at all. “She—unnerves me unlike any other. I have to admit it.”
“Right! Right. Finally we agree on something. What is it about her, anyway? What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing that I can ascertain by looking alone. But she gives me…”
“Bad vibes,” Gideon suggested.
“Bad vibes,” repeated Harrow, as though the words were foreign in her mouth. “I hate to rely on instinct alone, but instinct is telling me she is a powerful necromancer and a shrewd opponent. Be careful of her and her cavalier, Griddle. I don’t know how great the danger is, and I don’t plan on getting close enough to find out.”
Gideon, of course, roundly ignored this. Not with respect to Yzma—you could not possibly have paid Gideon enough cash to get within fifty feet of that freak—but the Third cavalier seemed less than harmless, and the Emperor knew Gideon would grab with both grubby hands any possible opportunity to flout Harrow’s orders. Harrow was always off skulking around somewhere in the bowels of Canaan House, with Gideon left alone to do whatever the hell she wanted that didn’t involve talking; so one morning Gideon traipsed the corridors of the First until she reached a glass-ceilinged dining hall.
There, sitting at one of the wooden tables, was Kronk the Third. The huge cavalier was, in Gideon’s estimation, the biggest on the roster, bigger even than the titanic zombie that was Protesilaus the Seventh; but though he wore a rapier at his hip, she somehow couldn’t imagine Kronk doing any sort of cavalier-y violence whatsoever. On either side of him were the two wretched teens from the Fourth, and they were all having some sort of animated conversation about exercise or lifting weights or something; he’d clearly made good friends with them already.
The kind-looking cavalier of the Fifth was sitting a few tables away watching them with an amused grin over a plate of scraps. When he saw Gideon, he leapt up and thrust a hand out for her to shake, which she, reluctantly, did. “Magnus the Fifth,” he said jovially, and there were introductions and a huge amount of awkwardness all around, and Gideon was very glad when the Fourth and Fifth fucked off and retreated from the room.
However, this left her alone with the inscrutable and bizarrely cheerful Kronk the Third, which was somehow both better and even worse. Harrow had forbidden her from interacting with the Third, though, and Kronk didn’t scare her anywhere near as much as his necromancer did, and for those reasons Gideon plunked herself down beside him when he invited her to sit.
“You, uh, doing one of those vow of silence thingies?” Kronk guessed when Gideon said nothing. She nodded. “I get you,” Kronk said sympathetically. “Yzma tried to make me do a vow of silence one time, but I kept forgetting about it and saying things. Ticked her off, I guess, so she sealed my mouth shut with flesh magic for a while, but then I couldn’t tell her where her potions were, ‘cause, uh, I’m the one who labels and organizes them and everything, so she had to unseal me, but I guess she was pretty annoyed about it. Gave me the silent treatment for a couple days.” He nodded serenely. “Good times.”
Gideon said nothing to this, less due to her vow of silence and more due to the fact that she was kind of stunned. Luckily, Kronk picked up the slack. “So, uh, does that paint give you acne?” When she nodded: “Oh, yeah, I feel that. I used to have the worst acne, let me tell you. Yzma took care of it with some, uh, necro trick or other. ‘I won’t have you looking like a rotten pizza in front of the crown princesses,’ she said. ‘You embarrass me enough already,’ she said. Which kind of hurt my feelings if I’m being honest, but it’s not like she cares or anything.” Now he was frowning, looking genuinely hurt at the memory. Gideon gave him a sympathetic wince, trying to communicate the shared pain of having a shitty necromancer who was constantly saying mean things.
“Anyway, uh, if you want clear skin I’m sure Yzma can take care of that for you. Best flesh magician on the Third, no disrespect to the princesses of course, but she is.” Gideon’s eyes widened at the thought, and her terror must have been obvious; Kronk quickly amended, “No pressure though. I know she can be, uh… a little much. I’ve been her cavalier for, huh, must be ten years now, and I know that better than anyone,” he finished with a laugh.
Gideon could not offer much in the way of good conversation, but Kronk seemed not to care very much. He just kept talking, and Gideon just kept sitting there, enthralled by everything he had to say. By the end of half an hour, she’d learned about every single goddamn bird species and subspecies there were on the First, and every time another bird flew by overhead above the glass ceiling, Kronk would explain to her about that species too. Gideon, who had never seen a bird except in her comics, was genuinely fascinated by this. She also learned a great deal about why Kronk and Yzma were here instead of the crown princesses of the Third—“Terrible accident; someone ate their cavalier; yeah, I know, gross, huh”—and about Yzma’s position as advisor to the princesses and their father.
“Uh, between you and me,” Kronk said at one point, leaning in, “Yzma does a lot of… plotting. To take over the throne and whatnot? Which I guess makes her uniquely suited to the whole situation here on the First.”
Gideon, filing this intel away to tell Harrow later (if Harrow was nice to her and/or bothered to show up at all), distantly wondered if it was Yzma herself who had “eaten” the cavalier, whatever that meant. She could definitely see the scary-ass old woman eating somebody. It wasn’t hard to envision. Probably with a knife and a fork and a fancy, jewelled, embroidered Third bib and everything.
At some point Kronk began commiserating with Gideon about his endless duties as cavalier slash henchman: the eternal drudgery of organizing potions and fetching hunks of animal flesh from the royal freezers for Yzma to experiment on, and of bearing her around on a royal litter, “...which is great cardio, but hard on my back, gotta be honest.” (Gideon made a mental note to thank Harrow for not making Gideon carry her around on a litter, then threw away that mental note because it might give Harrow ideas.) Then he started talking about his exercise regimen, and then he got up and started lifting chairs around, and then, only after Gideon’s express approval, lifted her up in her chair and hauled her around over his head as though she weighed nothing, an object lesson which made Gideon appreciate all the royal litter bearing Kronk had apparently been doing. When Gideon turned the tables and tried to lift up Kronk in his chair, she was only slightly embarrassed to find she could barely lift him two feet off the ground before her arms gave up like limp noodles: the guy was the size of a shuttle and ten times as heavy, after all. “Hey, good try,” he told her warmly anyway, which was nice.
She was about to ask him if he wanted to spar—not with her voice; with a complicated and probably stupid-looking series of hand gestures—when she felt a cold chill sweep through the room, and eyes boring into her back. She turned and there was Harrow in the doorway, cloaked all in black like a wicked creature of the darkest night and so on, and staring at Gideon mutinously from the depths of her hood. Gideon got the hint, said goodbye to Kronk, and skedaddled.
“Why must you,” said Harrow blackly a few minutes later as they traipsed down the corridor, “always do the very things I ask you not to do.”
“Sorry, murky mistress of midnight,” said Gideon, who was not sorry. “I was just gathering some intel for your dark purposes and shit.”
Harrow’s ears of course perked up at that. She stopped in her tracks. “What have you learned? No, wait until we’re back in our rooms. Then tell me everything.”
-
Much later, in the aftermath of the Fifth’s dinner party, Gideon and Harrow stood alone for a few moments, a lone island in a sea of marginally more socially-adept partygoers, as Gideon’s necro gazed balefully over the rest of the room. Her benighted gaze alighted on Yzma, who was busy talking to the Eighth, and Harrow’s eyes narrowed as she beheld them.
Gideon looked too. “Look at those wrinkles,” she hissed in her adept’s ear. “What is holding that woman together? What the—” A giant hunk of lettuce had, even from this distance, become apparent stuck between Yzma’s teeth. Gideon winced. “Eugh. How long has that been there?”
“Vow of silence, Griddle,” Harrow snapped under her breath, but Gideon noticed that her necromancer could not tear her eyes away from the Third necro, staring with a sort of disgusted fascination.
After a few moments, Harrow, sounding almost as though she were talking to herself, muttered, “What is holding that woman together? It must be some sort of advanced flesh magic, some abominable practice they have on the Third. Griddle, Sixth psychometry could pinpoint her exact age, I am only grasping; but... with my admittedly limited scope of understanding, I think that crone must be upwards of one hundred years old. ”
“Wow! Gross,” said Gideon. “She and Crux should get together. We should invent a dating service specifically to set them up. ‘Geriatrics Only.’ ‘Old People Match.’ ‘Wrinkly Wedding.’”
“Shut up,” Harrow hissed, “remember your vow,” and Gideon, though silently grinning to herself, said no more.
-
The murders began—Abigail and Magnus at the bottom of a ladder; the unknown cremains in the furnace—and Harrow was suspicious of everyone, but of Yzma and Kronk most of all. Gideon, who had made fast friends with Kronk and had been spending a lot of time with her fellow cavalier, was on the defense.
“Just listen to me, Harrow. That guy isn’t guilty of anything.”
“I suppose you know this because he said to you ‘Gideon, I am not guilty of anything’,” said Harrow meanly. “How nice that you have made a friend, but this is not the time to let our guard down. You will keep your distance from the Third cavalier from now on.”
Gideon scowled down at her necromancer. “Fuck off! I’m not an idiot, and I’m actually a pretty good judge of character if you’d bother to listen. He’s a good guy. On top of that, he cannot keep a secret. He straight up tells me everything that pops into his head.”
“You can’t possibly be serious.”
“Think again, O Goddess of the Gloaming. He’ll be like, ‘Does your necromancer sometimes make you do stuff you don’t want to do? Because the other day Yzma made me go down into the basement and it was gross,’ and then he tells me literally everything about it. I am not joking, Harrow. So if you won’t let me be friends with him just because I like him, let me be friends with him because he’s a walking talking gossip machine.” She paused for a second, then added, “Plus, I could take him. If it came down to it.”
“You think you could ‘take’ everybody,” scoffed Harrow, but Gideon could tell she was intrigued. “I refuse to believe it. No one could possibly be that stupid and loose-lipped—not here, not now, not with the risk of losing what we are about to achieve.”
“Yeah, well,” said Gideon, “you haven’t met Kronk.”
Harrow was silent, regarding Gideon for a few moments. Then: “All right. First you are going to tell me everything of import that he’s said to you, because I am not sure why you haven’t done this already; then, we will discuss whether or not you can continue your friendship with the Third cavalier, and if so, what parameters must be met to ensure your safety. And regardless of your friendship with him, I don’t want you going near his necromancer.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Gideon, suppressing a shudder.
-
The Sixth and the Second duelled. Gideon, who had already gone toe-to-toe with Camilla the Sixth and had nearly lost said toes as a consequence, watched this duel with open, vicious delight. But then, when it was over:
“I challenge the Sixth for their keys. I name the time, and the time is now.”
A nauseated chill ran down Gideon’s spine, and probably the spines of everyone else in the room. Yzma had spoken, confidently and weirdly seductively, as though she was trying to give everyone in the room some sort of fear boner.
Kronk, standing just behind his necromancer, audibly gulped. “Uh, Yzma—”
“Don’t interrupt, Kronk, I’m trying to scheme,” snapped the purple-gray pillar of evil.
In another universe, where someone less abjectly frightening had made the challenge, a huge argument probably would have broken out at this stage, with everyone from every House getting their opinion in. Here, now, the room was deathly quiet. Yzma continued in her slithery, sinuous way: “The Second have made their challenge, and they’ve lost. It’s time for the Third to have our say. Well, what do you say, Sixth?”
Palamedes Sextus and Camilla Hect exchanged a glance that, to Gideon, looked like the glance of two people about to be simultaneously hit by a bus, who had already been hit by several buses and just wanted this damn bus to kill them already so they could be done with it. The injured Camilla looked to Kronk, sized him up, and said, “Right. Second round.”
“Uh, Yzma,” said her cavalier again. “I don’t think, uh, this is the best idea.” He had gone deathly pale.
“Stop talking, Kronk. This is our moment! Get over there and defeat her,” ordered his necro.
The mood in the room was slowly shifting, and Gideon guessed why: Kronk looked absolutely scared out of his wits, bowel-evacuating levels of pathetic; the guy was practically shaking in his boots. Given what they’d all just witnessed—Camilla the Sixth turning the Second cavalier into a pile of finely chopped mincemeat—Gideon did not blame him for one second. Yzma, apparently, was under the delusion that her cavalier was capable of kicking the Sixth’s ass into the stratosphere. Gideon was maybe being naive, but she damn well didn’t think so. She had seen Kronk spar in the training room; she’d even gone a round against him, and unless he was extremely good at faking, the guy was a bumbling klutz (respectfully) who didn’t know his rapier from his left leg. Camilla would fashion him into confetti in two seconds. Basically, Yzma was suffering from a terminal excess of confidence, and she was making it everyone else’s problem.
In another universe, perhaps Gideon was silently begging Harrow to intervene on Camilla’s behalf. In this universe, she was silently begging Harrow to intervene on Kronk’s behalf.
And Harrowhark rose to the occasion like an evening star.
“The Ninth House will represent the Third House,” she said, sounding cold and bored. Gideon grinned, the Sixth shot Harrow simultaneous affronted expressions, Kronk seemed to deflate like a popped balloon in relief, and Yzma stuttered and babbled her way through a comical protest. “You can’t—that’s not—but I—”
“Despite his bulging muscles, your cavalier clearly could not defend himself against a wet paper bag,” said Harrowhark contemptuously. “The concept of you pitting him against Camilla the Sixth is ludicrous. I find myself forced to intervene on his behalf. This is a farce, Third. Accept my offer or back off.”
Gideon had known Harrow’s game from the outset—had known that she’d never have to fight Camilla; had known that Yzma’s pride would prevent the Third necro from ever accepting such an offer. The woman was scary beyond all reason, but she was also prouder than a peacock, and it showed. She would never accept such a backhanded offer of help, and Harrowhark knew it.
Yzma growled, crossed her arms tightly, and hissed like a cat: “Fine. We withdraw. Come on, Kronk, let’s get out of this cesspit.” And she swept out of the room in a flurry of purple robes and feather boas. Kronk slunk behind her, sending a grateful glance towards the Ninth before he went. Gideon got a last glance of something mysterious clutched tight in Yzma’s hand, just before it disappeared under a swirl of violet sleeves: a little pink bottle. A potion she hadn't had the chance to use. The source of her confidence, perhaps?
“Well, that was anti-climactic,” said Palamedes Sextus calmly in the silence that followed.
-
Despite Kronk’s clear and obvious incompetence as a cavalier or a fighter—muscles did not, Gideon noted, count for everything, or even most things—he was an excellent cook and baker, and she found herself devouring his spinach puffs and cookies at every meal. Until one day, when she passed the right room at the right time and overheard Kronk and his necromancer having a conversation.
“Do you have it, then?” demanded Yzma eagerly. Intrigued by the hissed tones, Gideon flattened herself against the wall just outside the cracked-open door and eavesdropped silently.
“The…?” Kronk prompted, sounding confused.
Yzma sighed heavily in exasperation. “The you know.”
Kronk was silent a moment, then made a noise of comprehension. “Oh, right! The poison. The poison for the Ninth. The poison chosen specially to kill the Ninth. The Ninth’s poison.”
A pause.
“...that poison?”
“Yes!” snapped Yzma. “That poison!”
“Got you covered,” said Kronk. Then, in more hesitant tones: “Do we have to poison her, though, Yzma? There’s gotta be some other angle we can, you know, pursue. I kind of like Gideon. She’s a great conversationalist.”
“I can imagine,” said Yzma, dripping with sarcasm. “She eats your food and that’s what matters. I need to isolate that Ninth nun, get her unprotected—she’s more trouble than the rest of them put together.”
“Yeah, but…” Kronk waffled. “Can’t we just, I don’t know… tie Gideon up somewhere?” Plaintively: “She’s my friend, Yzma. Friends don’t poison friends. That’s a no-no, when it comes to friendship.”
“So I’ve heard,” said Yzma between ground teeth, and that was the end of it: Gideon got out of there, high-tailing it down the hall as silently as possible. And from then on, as much as it pained her, she didn’t accept Kronk’s offers of baked goods.
“I told you, Griddle,” said Harrow smugly when Gideon informed her of this, and even though Gideon promptly told her to shut the fuck up, inside her heavy heart admitted: Yeah. You told me.
-
More murders, mysterious events, heads found in closets: just a cavalcade of shitty and garbage things happening left and right, until Gideon’s head was swirling trying to make sense of it all. Harrow was totally convinced that Yzma was behind everything, and if not her, then the cute Seventh necromancer who Gideon thought probably couldn’t stand up on her own two feet for half a minute without collapsing prettily back down into a pile of gauzy blankets, let alone go around murdering everybody. So, Yzma was the more likely candidate, which meant Kronk was helping her with her dark deeds, as much as it pained Gideon to admit it.
“I see the Third sneaking around everywhere I look,” Harrow growled half to herself. “All examples of necromancy I have seen from her have only proved her genius, though her arts seem limited to the flesh school. She has probably untangled everything already and is laughing at the rest of us behind closed doors.”
“I think you’re giving her too much credit,” said Gideon, although she still found Yzma scary beyond all reason and wouldn’t put anything past her, to be honest. And yeah, Yzma had to be some sort of genius flesh magician to be holding that papery mass of leathered skin together.
Harrowhark’s fears were confirmed on one fateful day. The Sixth and the Ninth were working together, which made Gideon think of the number sixty-nine, which made her grin secretly to herself like an idiot, which made Harrow scowl at her and demand to know what was so funny, to which Gideon only shrugged and mouthed “Vow of silence!”, which made Harrow scowl even harder. (She had long ago given up the vow of silence; nobody had ever been buying it, she suspected.)
Harrow and Palamedes were nerding out together, attempting to replicate a key through sheer dork brainpower. Clown to clown communication, thought Gideon to herself, though admittedly fascinated, as she watched the Ninth and Sixth necromancers close their eyes and think really really hard at each other, until Harrow was able to replicate a key of bone from Sextus’s memory. With that key, fitted neatly in the lock of a closed door, they were able to gain entry.
“Oh my God,” said Harrow.
“All right. No, I did not actually think that was going to happen,” said the Sixth.
And together, the four of them strode into the dark of the laboratory—
Only to hear a sultry, evil voice emanating from the darkness. “Looking for this?” purred the voice, and the light flicked on dramatically, revealing Yzma, dressed in dramatic violet robes and holding up a pile of dusty, loose-leaf flimsy that she had clearly already rifled through. Kronk was behind her, smiling in that loosely confident Kronk way.
There was a general air of amazement and outrage from the necromancers; Gideon and Camilla, in tired unison, put their hands on their rapiers. No one spoke for a long, long moment.
Finally: “No,” blurted Harrowhark in shocked anger. “This cannot be. How could you possibly have breached this chamber before us?”
“Uh—” Yzma paused, looking confused. “How did we, Kronk?”
Her cavalier reached up and pulled a chart of uncertain origin down from the ceiling, causing Harrow to emit a sharp gasp of commingled bewilderment and fury. “Well, you got me,” said Kronk the Third. “By all accounts it doesn’t make sense."
Palamedes sputtered, which unnerved Gideon more than anything else, since she got the distinct impression that the Master Warden was not the sputtering type. Harrowhark gathered herself up and said with the frosty chill of the Tomb itself, “You may have somehow managed to infiltrate this room first and taint it with your—materials, but we have an equal right to examine these artifacts. You have had your turn. I suggest you take your leave.”
So it was going to be like that. Gideon’s eyes met Kronk’s over their respective necromancers’ heads, and they shared a look of solidarity. Kronk gave a shrug that let off a distinctive “well, what can you do” vibe.
“Hmm,” said Yzma mock-contemplatively, “I don’t think I will.” Then: “Kronk, now!”
Kronk produced a knife; Gideon’s heart immediately hammered into overdrive, but within a split second he’d made his move—not an attack, instead he’d cut a rope that led to the ceiling. Something crashed down towards them, too quickly for Gideon to tell what it was. In an instant, reacting quicker than thought, Harrowhark had produced four massive skeletons that leapt to their defense. As the necros and cavs threw themselves to the floor, the skeletons caught the thing—Gideon looked up bewilderedly, and saw that it was a giant chandelier; why was there even a giant fucking chandelier in a laboratory, anyway?—and held it safely above everyone’s heads.
By the time everyone had gotten up and dusted themselves off, Yzma and Kronk had disappeared seemingly into thin air. “How the hell do they do that?” said Camilla the Sixth.
“Well,” said Harrowhark repressively; Gideon could tell she’d been put into the blackest of black moods. “Now that that—bizarre attempt on our lives seems to be finished with, let’s do what we came here for.”
They examined the laboratory, but Gideon couldn’t stop thinking about that damned weird-ass ceiling chart. Where had that thing even come from, anyway?
-
Harrowhark was more convinced than ever that the Third necromancer had some sort of secret black power born out of the darkest of dark flesh arts, and was going around killing everybody, and Gideon could no longer find it within her heart to argue against this. The Third, she had to admit, did give off the weirdest of all possible vibes, and Kronk—no matter how nice and friendly—was part of the Third. Of all the remaining Houses who hadn’t been killed off yet, the Third creeped her out the most: more even than Silas Octakiseron and his cav, more even than the sepulchral Harrow herself. Scary beyond all reason indeed.
The deaths continued, until the Third was one of the only houses left standing, which left Harrow even more suspicious of their every movement. And then everything was turned right on its head: Dulcinea revealed herself to be not Dulcinea at all, but some sort of crazy MILF bent on revenge, which Gideon distantly thought was kind of hot, but generally terrible, and when her rampage began and one-half of the Sixth was killed in the process, Harrowhark was forced to admit they needed all the help they could get. This included the creepy Third and their scary-beyond-all-reason necromancer, as well as the distasteful and mayonnaise-tinged Eighth. And so a fierce battle began: three necromancers and four cavaliers against a single Lyctor. It could hardly have been less fair.
At one point during the battle, with Gideon clutching her beloved sword and breathing hard from a long period of kicking construct ass, she was able to take a quick breather and found herself back-to-back with Kronk, bloody and bruised but still, thankfully, alive, despite everything. He’d been doing a lot of punching and kicking, and had been surprisingly spared from the worst injuries. Gideon distantly wondered if this was because Cytherea felt sorry for him. It would be kind of like kicking a puppy.
“Did you guys figure out what it’s all about, by the way?” said Kronk, oddly conversational despite the evil death swarming all around them.
“What what’s about?”
“The trials. Lyctorhood. Everything.”
“Oh. No? I mean, I don’t think so. I think Harrow has an idea, but we never actually…”
Kronk the Third said, “Yeah, well, uh, we figured it out. Yzma did, on her own, I mean.”
“Yeah, and? What is it? The great shitty necro mystery of ages?” When Kronk hesitated, she pressed: “Come on, it can’t hurt to tell me now.”
“You got a point there. All right. To become a Lyctor, she says you have to consume your cavalier’s soul.” Kronk said these last words slowly and delicately, as though the mere act of stating them aloud was too distasteful to bear thinking about.
“Huh,” said Gideon, whose brain was too short-circuited from recent events to handle any more of this necro fuckery. “Well. That sucks.”
“Yeah,” said Kronk. “It kind of does, uh, suck.”
Gideon’s brain refused to even approach the concept of thinking about the concept of Harrowhark consuming her soul, so she didn’t. “Is Yzma going to eat you? Do you need me to, like, stage an intervention for you?”
“Nah, she told me she’d never do it.” Kronk brightened a little as he relayed this.
Gideon was surprised. “Yzma? Yzma told you she’d never eat your soul? I mean, no offense, but I can see her eating a thousand babies’ souls if it meant Lyctorhood. She always came across as—uh…”
“Scary beyond all reason,” Kronk offered.
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, I know, you’re right, but…” Kronk the Third sighed, sounding distantly wistful. “She’s got a good heart under there, under all of the scheming and plotting and poisoning and murder. It kind of warmed me up when she told me she’d never do it. She acted kind of offended when I asked her, actually. She really does care about me. Maybe she likes my spinach puffs after all.” He sighed again, and distantly across the ruined hall they watched as Harrow, Silas and Yzma worked in unison, raising ferocious constructs to battle Cytherea’s. “Nice to know your boss actually needs you around.”
“Yeah,” said Gideon, preparing to throw herself back into the battle, “I wouldn’t know.” Sarcastic as a matter of reflex, but the words rang hollow: she was remembering the pool, and the quiet moments after, and she did know, after all. She did.