Mercymorn The First - Tumblr Posts

ok i'm sleepy and having emotions and i'm not gonna grab my copy to pull the specific quotes but. you remember that scene in htn where mercy and augustine are arguing. i think it's the "you have rendered yourself unlovable" one. and augustine tells her that he could kill her if he wanted. he could do it without a second thought, could stub her out like a cigarette beneath his shoe, and john would forgive him? john would understand? augustine is his favorite, and they all know it, to such a degree that mercymorn ceases to matter in the slightest?

cool great. now remember that time when john killed mercy? without a second thought? stubbed her out beneath his shoe? and then he turned to augustine and he said, you understand why i did that, right? you know that you're my favorite? you know i love you? she doesn't matter. we can put this behind us. augustine, can't you forgive me?

and augustine says no, john. no, i can't.

cause i'm thinking about that and i'm tearing my hair out. i'm eating the drywall. her death was too far. it was too far and augustine couldn't forgive him. he was right about john, probably more right than he realized, but he could never have brought himself to do it. it was unforgiveable.

the saint of joy

Mercymorn, second saint to serve the king undying, and my other favorite duplicitous slut

Thanks! I think the biggest thing currently bugging me about HtN is why every surviving lyctor, with 1 single exception, was plotting to kill Jod? My understanding is that it was only when they saw cav!Gideon's eyes on the Mithraeum that they realized Jod lied about the existence of perfect lyctorhood. So why had they spent decades plotting with BoE to open the tomb and murder God? Only explanation I've read is "because he made them kill their cavs," which seems weak.

The short answer is: They at least suspected that he lied about it even before meeting Gideon. She was just the final nail in the coffin, so to speak. Plus, he did make them kill their cavs! Their siblings, their lovers, their closest friends! They dealt with that truth for far more than a lifetime, but they just so happens that they had a lot of time to dwell on it. It’s not really a surprise that it eventually got ugly.

Long answer under the cut, because I love my followers and don’t want them to suffer.

First off: it isn't just the surviving lyctors who betrayed God. Mercymorn, Augustine, Cytherea, yes; but even G1deon was willing to share a bed with the enemy. Either he or Pyrrha told Wake about the RB's and what they do to necromancers, thereby handing her an effective weapon against lyctors. 

And then there's Anastasia, who's implied to have gone against John's orders by even founding the Ninth House. Cassie, who contacted BoE *6 000 years ago*. So who really knows what Cyrus and Ulysses were up to, or would have been if they'd survived for long enough. 

As for why? We get two pieces of explanation in the text. 

YOU LIED TO US

Could this refer to the proof in Gideon's eyes? Sure.  But I'm not convinced that it wasn't the message Cyth always wanted to send. 

Checking in with the other duplicitous sluts:

“You’ve offered us explanations for everything over the years. But—some of them didn’t hold up on examination … It was the power I could never get my head around, you know? I follow power back to its source, John. It’s the skill you asked me to perfect. And the longer I looked at yours, the less things added up.”  “This has been troubling you for a very long time, then,” God said finally. [...] “You don’t get your power from Dominicus,” said Augustine. “It gets its power from you. There’s no exchange involved, no symbiosis. You draw nothing from the system. It relies on you entirely, as we all know. You’re God, John. But—as the Edenites are fond of pointing out—you were once a man. So whither that transition? Where does your power come from? Even if the Resurrection had been the greatest thanergy bloom ever triggered, it would drain away over time. And then Mercy said to me—in a moment of true Mercy vileness—she said, What is God afraid of? [...] I never wanted to believe it when she said, What if he didn’t really put down A.L.? And then—What if he couldn’t put down A.L.?” (HtN, ch. 51)

So: they knew that John didn’t have a tangible power source; and lyctorhood was the only kind of internal furnace they know about. Ergo: yes, they suspected that John had lied about perfect Lyctorhood. He made them kill their cavs. 10 000 years of guilt, literally chasing them across the universe, and for what? For whom?

What kind of God demands such a sacrifice? I think that's one of the central questions of these books. What kind of God demands it? (compare the Binding of Isaac - John) But also: What kind of God punishes it? (compare the Mark of Cain - the Resurrection Beasts) 

But - 

“Why would one of the Emperor’s Lyctors hate him?” “Hate him?” The voice of the girl whom Gideon had known as Dulcinea rose, high and intent. “Hate him? I have loved that man for ten thousand years. We all loved him, every one of us. We worshipped him like a king. Like a god! Like a brother.” (GtN, ch. 35)

They are Believers losing their Faith. They’re questioning the entire foundation of his divinity. Augustine and Mercy are still asking, still hoping that they're wrong - “All that effort to break open the Locked Tomb,” said Augustine, “only to have the answer we wanted wander up in the form of one dead teenager flaunting your genes." - but crucially, they are also lovers going through a messy divorce. You know, when people who once loved each other and were presumably capable of communication are suddenly throwing plates at each other? “Come, swear your loyalty, my son—my brother—beloved—Lyctor—saint.” 

Possibly what Tazmuir is saying is, they're the same picture. But that might be conjecture. 

(edited to add in links to other theory posts. call it the director's cut)

In Defense of Loveday Heptane

My special interest in the lyctoral cavaliers knows no bounds. I have developed a particular interest in Loveday Heptane: a creature so reviled that God himself had to coerce Mercy and Augustine into eulogizing her a full myriad after her death... and he doesn't have anything kind to say himself. When even the guy who nuked a planet thinks you're a piece of work, you must be something REALLY special.

This begs the question: Did Loveday Heptane, like... eat a baby or something?! Is she evil incarnate? What the heck did she do?!

Reader, I have some thoughts.

Loveday never speaks anywhere in the text. All the details about her are second-hand (some might even say third-hand: her own necromancer only mentions her ONCE, and she doesn't give us much). Figuring her out requires a deep dive into contextual evidence, human psychology, and marvelous leaps of misplaced intuition.

Lucky for other cavalier-obsessed folks, I am deranged and up for the challenge! Join me beyond the cut for a very long post about grief, caregiving, and why literally every bad thing in this series is Cristabel's fault! Onward! (Heads Up: this is a LONG post, even for me!)

First Gen vs Second Gen Disciples

I think it's common for people to perceive ancient history as a monolith. When many people think about "Ancient Greece" for example, they're lumping together 1,000 years of history. Likewise, the pre-lyctorhood period spanned a minimum of 200 years from beginning to end.

For context, that's a little less than all of colonial American history. It constitutes multiple human lifetimes. A LOT of cultural shifts took place in that period. The difference between a "first gen" Canaan house disciple (for our purposes, any disciple present on Earth pre-resurrection, which may or may not include Ulysses and Titania) and a "second gen disciple (for our purposes, born in the Houses) is massive. First gen disciples were resurrected. They were whole, adult humans, without complete memories. They contributed to the culture and religious practices in the houses. We can assume they created the first necromantic theorems. Not only that, but they were always together. As far as they are aware, they did not exist in any other context - no parents, no families, no other support structure. They had each other, period. Second gen disciples were born. They had parents and families prior to their time at Canaan house - they came from a context beyond John and Canaan house. They grew up under the cultural and religious norms established by the first gen disciples. So much of what the first genners established from scratch was axiom to the second genners - the way things had always been for them. They all arrived at Canaan house as outsiders, chosen for skills or aptitude as the field of necromancy progressed. Most importantly: first gen disciples met John as a man and centered him as God. Second gen disciples met him as God and had to reconcile that he really was just a man. I do believe he was CLOSER to a man, pre-lyctorhood. He could still travel to the houses then. He was still and accessible, flesh and blood human. Even so, I find it hard to believe that a second gen disciple could stand before God without feeling a little starstruck. The power imbalance SEEMED greater, even if it wasn't.

All that said, I think it's essential to acknowledge that Mercy, Cristabel, Augustine and Alfred were all first gen disciples. In contrast, Loveday and Cytherea were both second gen - the LAST second gen lyctors to arrive at Canaan house, at that. There could have been a hundred years between Cyrus and Valancy's arrival and Cytherea and Loveday's. The first gen disciples had been palling around, creating a society, for nearly 200 years before those two were even born.

That gap mattered. Even posthumously, Augustine called Cytherea "Little Cyth." She was always and forever the little sister, even after she outlived three lyctors (plus Anastasia). Think about Mercy calling Harrow and Ianthe infants. Yes, the scale is a little different, but Cytherea and Loveday would have arrived with SO MUCH LESS life experience than the oldest old people.

Keep this all in mind as we move forward.

Cytherea and the Miracle at Rhodes

I believe that Cytherea's specialist Seventh house knowledge was essential to the completion of the eightfold word "megatheorem" and unlocking lyctorhood... and all roads to this discovery lead to, well... Rhodes.

What was The Miracle at Rhodes? I do not believe it was Cytherea herself, but her work. John says he wanted to remain a disinterested party: he didn't want to see the woman. In fact, he had to have it confirmed that the woman was even a necromancer.

What are the necromantic specialties on the Seventh? There's puppeting - but that would NOT be interesting to John. That was literally the first necromantic miracle pre-resurrection.

The other Seventh house specialty is the creation of the beguiling corpse and other funerary and preservation magic.

I consider Cytherea to be a pseudo-reliable narrator. I believe her when she claims she never lied. In GtN, she tells Gideon that her greatest fear - the fear that propelled her to go to Canaan house at all - was the fear of dying, being locked away, and being forgotten. It tracks that her personal necromantic work might have centered on creating beautiful, incorruptible corpses - cadavers lovely and perfect enough to be kept on display in glass coffins, where the dead would not be forgotten.

Perhaps by... fixing a soul fragment in place so it couldn't deteriorate, allowing the essence of the deceased to remain? Something with MAJOR applications for a certain megatheorem? Something like "Step four: fix [the soul] in place so it can't deteriorate" - the portion of the eightfold discovered in Cytherea and Loveday's lyctoral lab?

(I also want to take a moment to acknowledge that the two types of necromancy that John does not condone, beguiling corpsehood and siphoning, were keys to lyctorhood. Hmmm hmmm hmmmmm)

Either John or someone with him (Cassy? Anastasia?) could have recognized how Cytherea's expertise would be essential to the work at Canaan house. Either John decided to invite Cytherea, or he was coerced into extending the invitation so the disciples could gain access to the mind behind the miracle.

As I've asked before...is an invitation from God ever really an invitation? What would it have meant to say no to the emperor? Cyth seems to have thought that going was fully her decision, but I wonder about the extent to which she really felt she had a choice.

Ultimately, it was "the right" choice. The theorem wasn't complete until Cyth and Loveday arrived.

Canaan House and Grief as a Context

Not only did Cytherea and Loveday arrive as second-generation disciples, forced to leave family, culture, and lives behind, but they were also the first pair we know of who were grieving before they arrived. They were the only duo for whom arrival at Canaan House always meant goodbye.

Cytherea came to Canaan house to die. She was not doing well when she arrived - both John and Augustine describe being surprised by just how close to death she was when they met. Choosing to study under the emperor was a choice to die as brilliant AND beautiful, as someone too important to lock away in a grave for all eternity. I doubt Cytherea realized the others were working on immortality before she arrived.

She was sick. She expected to get sicker. None of the other disciples could "do anything for her" at the time (per Augustine in HtN).

I am reminded of the summons from the emperor at the beginning of GtN: "no retainers, no attendants, no domestics." Assuming there was no formal cavaliership in the early empire, Cyth would have been tasked with bringing along a single companion. For Cyth, this wasn't a case of "which of my closest friends do I pick to go and meet God?" or "Which nurse at Rhodes do I like the best?" This was a question of "who is going to be at my bedside holding my hand when I die?"

I do not think she made that choice lightly.

We don't know who Loveday was to her. A lover? A lady's maid? A nurse? A best friend? Perhaps some proto-cavalier with many duties of care? What's important to me is that she was someone who Cytherea was willing to ask to be with her at the end. What's even more important to me is that Loveday said yes, even though it meant giving up a LOT.

Being a caretaker is hard. Watching someone you love die is agonizing. I have done both, and I rate it a big 0/10 stars. The only person who has it harder is the person who is dying. It's kind of an unwritten rule of active grief that you do NOT ask the person who is dying to comfort YOU about THEIR death.

Now, remember all that seemingly irrelevant detail about first gen vs second gen disciples? About how strange and isolating it would be for second gen disciples? About everything they'd have to leave behind?

Here we have Loveday, the final second gen proto-cavalier. She's not the special one - that's Cyth. Everyone gathered to meet Cytherea: the woman, the miracle worker. Loveday was there for Cyth, period. Nobody is there for Loveday.

in GtN, Cytherea offers Gideon the most authentic smile when she calls herself "the fakest-ass cavalier who ever faked." It felt very much like she'd seen this behavior before. Did Loveday feel like an impostor? Was she being handed a rapier and being asked to compete with cavaliers with a century or more of sword fighting experience? Even if she could fight, she certainly felt like an outsider among God's best and brightest.

Furthermore, is she supposed to go to these intimidating members of god's inner circle for comfort as she navigates the imminent death of the person she loves most in the world? The one person who wasn't part of a 200-year old clique was the one person she couldn't go to for comfort. That's LONELY. At least on the Seventh there would have been a little respite - family members, friends, someone to talk to. And Loveday would have KNOWN Cytherea - known how well she could perform wellness, known that she was "good at seeming," known that she was going to push herself and make it seem effortless until the end.

What do you think happened when Cytherea returned to their quarters at the end of a long day of being smart and charming and polished in public? Who would have been there to help her when there were no longer eyes on her, and she could finally admit she was exhausted and in agony? Loveday was, presumably, her "safe person" - the one who saw the worst of her and her illness. Did Loveday ever get her at her best?

I assume Loveday didn't want her to go at all, but couldn't begrudge her the ending she wanted. I wonder if, from Loveday's perspective, "[she] had the choice to stop." In John's words, "Loveday brought [Cytherea] in, looking as though she wanted every one of us beaten to death." Anger is a stage of grief, and Loveday was dealing with more than grief over Cytherea's imminent death. She was losing everything she knew. As Cytherea's caretaker, she was about to lose a major part of her identity, too.

And what's the stage of grief after anger? Bargaining - the part of grief in which you "yell at God." I imagine that might have gone a little differently when God was literally standing there, picking biscuit detritus out of his teeth.

Imagine looking god himself in the eye, asking for help, for a cure for the brilliant, hilarious, kind, beautiful person you love - a person he claims to value as a friend and collaborator - and getting a pat on the head. I'm pretty sure that would test anyone's faith.

...not even to mention the fact that a tangible form of immortality was on the line, and they were close.

Mercy, Augustine, and John: Reliable Narrators?

"I will say this," said Mercy presently, acting as though Augustine had never said a word. "I NEVER mourned for Loveday Heptane. She did one good thing with her life, and she knew it."

Those be fighting words, Mercymorn! Augustine does not disagree with her or try to come to Loveday's defense - not even to be contrary and get on her nerves. Nor does John.

I would like to argue that John, Mercy, and Augustine are not the most reliable narrators, however. Just a few pages before the eulogies, John is misremembering the circumstances surrounding Cytherea's arrival. We've also seen them claim, carte blanche, that everyone hated Alecto and wanted her gone. We know that's bullshit from Pyrrha in Nona. We also come to learn that Anastasia likely felt differently, too.

This suggests to me that Loveday probably didn't eat a baby. We only know for certain that Mercy, John, and Augustine weren't fans, with Mercy being the most outspoken about her feelings.

Now, we got to spend an entire novel with Mercymorn and learn about what made her tick. I tend to believe that "I didn't like this person" is synonymous with "this person did something to Cristabel."

It All Comes Back to Cristabel Oct

Okay, so you're Loveday Heptane. The person you love most is dying painfully, and you are actively grieving. You're also hanging out in a big ol' castle with God. As Cyth's illness progresses and the megatheorem fails to materialize, your grief continues to multiply. You reach the bargaining stage. You are on your knees, begging God to do something, do more, do better. God does not do anything, let alone more or better. God apologizes and asks if anybody wants to play Scrabble on Game Night.

Could you blame Loveday for getting angry at God? For questioning everything she believed? For questioning everything going on at Canaan house, and casting doubt? Maybe she even tried to strangle John! Who knows!

Do you know who would see that desperate, hungry, angry faithlessness and strike? I'll give you one guess.

That's right! Cristabel "suicidal golden retriever with self-inflicted brain damage" Oct!

She's here, telling you why you're wrong, and why your suffering is actually nothing in the scheme of the work! She's here, telling you that God is good, actually! That you just can't see the bigger picture! Here, I'll shove a tract under your bedroom door! I'll let you know I'm praying for you whenever I pass you in the halls! Do you want to pray about it? Do you want to fast about it? Do you wanna do a bunch of inane, ritualistic shit about it and then come around to loving God again?!?! Huh? Huh? Do ya? Do ya?

COULD YOU BLAME LOVEDAY IF SHE DID, IN FACT, PUNCH HER IN THE FACE?

Now, I'm not saying she did that, but I think she would have been well within her rights to tell the nun to politely fuck off.

Anyway, if you have beef with Cristabel, you have beef with both Mercy and Alfred. If you have beef with Alfred, you have beef with Augustine. If you have beef with all of God's favorite toys, and you're being an angry heretic in his halls, you probably also have some beef with God, whether or not you tried to strangle him.

Candor and Alien Grief

Remember, THE FIRST GEN DISCIPLES HAVE NO MEMORY OF EXPERIENCING GRIEF! They have been living safely with God, with no fear of death, for hundreds of years! Before lyctorhood, loss was an alien concept for them. Every single person they loved (their "brothers and sisters") was immortal and living in a castle on their very own private planet! It was like the Garden of Eden!

Loveday and Cytherea are outsiders - the only two who honestly know what's coming.

To tell the truth, I don't think Loveday had to have kicked Cristabel's ass to get on Mercymorn's shitlist. I think this angry, doubtful, grieving, exhausted caretaker only had to observe Cristabel and Alfred's suicides (and Mercy and Augustine's ascensions) and have an honest opinion about it a little too soon.

It needn't even have been malicious. She could have merely whispered "that was shitty," within earshot before the bodies were cold.

She could have turned to Cytherea and promised she would NEVER do what Alfred and Cristabel had done - that it would always be their choice together, no secrets.

To Mercy, being a new denizen in the world of absolute grief, that might have been enough to put Loveday on the shit list for 10,000 years. How DARE she say anything about Cristabel now that she was gone? How DARE she acknowledge what, 10,000 years later, Mercy still could not acknowledge herself?

And remember: Cytherea was the last saint to ascend. We don't know how long it was between Mercy's ascension and Cytherea's. Loveday was the last, stubborn cavalier in the halls of Canaan House - a living, breathing reminder of what everyone else had already lost. It would be easy to resent her. She was the proof, however temporary, that it was possible to say no.

What we do know, from Cytherea herself, was that the choice was 100% mutual. She says "WE thought it would make me live." They waited until Cytherea was on her deathbed and made the decision together. Cytherea and Loveday got something Mercy never got.

All things considered, I might have hated her, too.

Who Was Loveday Heptane?

Maybe Loveday was angry but civil.

Maybe she had a bad attitude and never made friends.

Or maybe nobody thought about her twice until they were grieving themselves and it became too easy to make her an enemy for telling the truth.

We don't know who Loveday was in life, and the odds are good that we never will. She only survived as the death of light - the gleam in a monster's eyes.

But she was also the companion who was brave enough to accompany her necromancer to the grave. She was probably the person who filled Cytherea's lab with stunning, dreamy, pastoral frescoes, cozy cushions, and embroidered quilts, so she'd never have to know discomfort. She was the last cavalier standing when the pressure was high and mounting and did not give in until she didn't have a choice.

Augustine tells us that Cytherea loved unguardedly. She was a patient soul who loved the unlovable. And she loved Loveday Heptane: the good, bad, and ugly.

Somehow, all things considered, I can't help but love her, too.

i wanna talk about mercymorn the first. let's talk about mercymorn the first.

mercymorn, the ex cryogenicist turned master anatomist, the know-it-all flesh magician who memorized the entire human body by rote, the scientist, the skeptic, the heretic. mercymorn, who founded...the eighth house???

the eighth house. the eighth house? the spotless-white-and-delicate-chain-mail spirit magicians? the religious fanatics who carry around giant portraits of the emperor undying when they travel? the guys who explicitly model themselves after the knights templar? little miss "thou shalt not take cristabel's name in vain" founded the soul siphoner house?? the one that produced glorified human battery colum asht??

i'm not the only one who sees something strange in this, right? none of the others are this mismatched. augustine's fingerprints are still all over the fifth. we know very little about cyrus, but from what we do know, i completely buy that he founded the third. g1deon and/or pyrrha make perfect sense as the founders of the second. same goes for casseopeia, anastasia, and ulysses. where the information exists, it adds up. except in the case of mercymorn and the eighth.

but, of course, there's an obvious answer here. who do we know who was resurrected in the first wave, who worked very closely with mercymorn, who had a notable interest in the soul, who was fanatically religious, who probably wouldn't have minded the idea of a cavalier being used for anything, no matter how painful or demeaning? who do we know who could easily have been the first to suggest soul siphoning, who could have thought up eight for salvation no matter the cost in the same sitting as one flesh, one end?

personally, i can't believe it's not just commonly understood that cristabel oct is the true founder of the eighth house.

ok i'm sleepy and having emotions and i'm not gonna grab my copy to pull the specific quotes but. you remember that scene in htn where mercy and augustine are arguing. i think it's the "you have rendered yourself unlovable" one. and augustine tells her that he could kill her if he wanted. he could do it without a second thought, could stub her out like a cigarette beneath his shoe, and john would forgive him? john would understand? augustine is his favorite, and they all know it, to such a degree that mercymorn ceases to matter in the slightest?

cool great. now remember that time when john killed mercy? without a second thought? stubbed her out beneath his shoe? and then he turned to augustine and he said, you understand why i did that, right? you know that you're my favorite? you know i love you? she doesn't matter. we can put this behind us. augustine, can't you forgive me?

and augustine says no, john. no, i can't.

cause i'm thinking about that and i'm tearing my hair out. i'm eating the drywall. her death was too far. it was too far and augustine couldn't forgive him. he was right about john, probably more right than he realized, but he could never have brought himself to do it. it was unforgiveable.

*screams incoherently into the space*

ok i'm sleepy and having emotions and i'm not gonna grab my copy to pull the specific quotes but. you remember that scene in htn where mercy and augustine are arguing. i think it's the "you have rendered yourself unlovable" one. and augustine tells her that he could kill her if he wanted. he could do it without a second thought, could stub her out like a cigarette beneath his shoe, and john would forgive him? john would understand? augustine is his favorite, and they all know it, to such a degree that mercymorn ceases to matter in the slightest?

cool great. now remember that time when john killed mercy? without a second thought? stubbed her out beneath his shoe? and then he turned to augustine and he said, you understand why i did that, right? you know that you're my favorite? you know i love you? she doesn't matter. we can put this behind us. augustine, can't you forgive me?

and augustine says no, john. no, i can't.

cause i'm thinking about that and i'm tearing my hair out. i'm eating the drywall. her death was too far. it was too far and augustine couldn't forgive him. he was right about john, probably more right than he realized, but he could never have brought himself to do it. it was unforgiveable.

so. mercymorn's eyes are described as sort of a mainly red hazel colour. y'all ever wonder if cristabel's eyes were red post-res bc she shot herself in the head and john couldn't remember the actual colour after that?

Thinking about what Dios Apate Minor must've been like for Gideon Prime, and like.

Imagine your dinner nearly killed you the other day because the new kid your boss will not let you stop trying to kill finally took matters into her own hands. Fair enough, you can respect that, you'd prefer not to be doing all this either. Your dead ex is haunting the body of your recently deceased coworker, suffice it to say you have other problems.

Then a day or two later everyone shows up to dinner dressed to the nines. Nobody thought to tell you there was a party going on. You feel a bit awkward, and then they break out the wine, and you just know it's all about to get Worse. Because now your coworkers are talking about their dead best friends, and you know that never ends well.

They start talking about your dead best friend, talking about her appearance like being hot was the only thing she deserves to be remembered for. You remember that she had at least a dozen nicknames for everyone. Sometimes it feels like she's still here with you, but you will never find out for certain. All you have left is her green eyes in your face.

They still won't let you forget about your ex, either, refusing to let you live down a relationship you only half remember. You're still the only one who knows she's here. You're convinced that the new kid knows more than she says, but you have no way of confirming this.

You leave long before the threesome starts. You've got too much unfinished business to sit around talking about ghosts.

It's been said before but I'll say it again — ever be so deeply, permanently emotionally destroyed by killing your best friend in the name of the newfound necromancer/cavalier relationship that you build a house that treats cavaliers as innately disposable, breeds them for a single purpose, genetically matches them to babies before they are born, names them for sacrificial animals, specifically so none of the necromancers who follow behind you will experience the heartbreak of losing the person they love most in the world, so horribly that they can't stand to hear their name spoken aloud for the next ten thousand years, only for the scion of that house, ten thousand years later, to be so revolted by the concept of killing his cavalier for Lyctorhood, so disgusted by your crime, that he claims G-d's directly expressed will is heretical and fundamentally morally opposed to the principles of the religion you helped to found?

And then, when that person does do what you explicitly built his house to be able to do and uses his cavalier as a tool rather than a person — even if he does it because he believes his cavalier capable of surviving anything, the polar opposite of what you tried to teach his house to believe — he experiences his cavalier's death as such an abrupt and horrifying loss that after he himself is killed he wanders the afterlife in grief, impotently taking revenge on a woman who should have been burned up for Lyctorhood by the person who loved and needed her most, but was spared, saying may all the blood of your blood suffer even a fraction of what I have suffered? The suffering you tried so incredibly hard to insulate him from? He of the church you built to bury the memory of a nun?

The Saint of Joy and the Saint of Patience

Based on the Leyendecker painting of course

My deepest fantasy is to be mercymorn's stupid underling who she treats like I'm useless but due to my many years in customer service and my blatant autistic tendencies I pretend I'm too oblivious to notice until she has to admit her days are much easier when I'm working versus admiral sarpedon and gradually my combination of feigned innocence, ability to empathize without technically agreeing to anything, genuine human emotion peeking out from underneath several tantalizing layers of deflection, and let's be real my status as a nonthreatening gay friend remind her of the past she's left behind and she finally imprints on me to the point where she's left broken when I leave for $2 more per hour at a different job and has to confront who she truly is in a way she hasn't in 10 thousand years

Harrow the Ninth wish fulfilment fanfiction, except it’s just 8000 words of Mercymorn giggling maniacally whilst making Jod suffer in the Acid Jail. I often think about this.

Me, in the dead of night, delicately whispering my desperate pleas into the universe,

PLEASE DONT LET ALL THE OG LYCTORS BE WHITE, PLEASE DONT LET ALL THE OG LYCTORS BE WHITE, PLEA

augustine and mercymorn didn't marry but are divorced. trust.

mercymorn cristabel appreciation post.

In honour of the local screening room doing 15 year twilight anniversary showings, that one scene from htn