INTRODUCTION Pyrrha Dve has limited time on page so far. To allay concerns about her playability, I have provided citations to the text to support her application from Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth, and the released excerpt of Nona the Ninth. Due to POV and impersonation, Pyrrha will be referred to as Ortus, Gideon, and/or Pyrrha throughout these citations.

Character Base

• Character Name: Pyrrha Dve
• Age: ~10,000* (it's complicated). A significant portion of that was spent in the back of someone's skull, not the driver's seat. Her apparent age will be 40s or 50s. She'll deal with the awkward situation of both her original form and the one she was used to feeling like hers.
• Canon (Date/Year Released)/Canon Point: The Locked Tomb (03/29/2022) | Nona the Ninth Chapter 1
• Items Coming Along: 6 items only. Go bag: a few sets of clothes, some food and water, a knife, a few guns, and ammunition including a handful of herald bullets. Her primary weapon set: rapier & spear; trunk of Canaan House keepsakes (e.g., group photo from her quarters, large portrait of Cyrus & Valancy (naked, nonsexual)); Gideon the First's shaving set; & 2 more.
• Content Warnings for Character: WAR CRIMES & MASS DEATH; BEING TRAPPED IN SOMEONE ELSE'S BODY; DYSPHORIA TRIGGERS; SELF-SACRIFICE & SUICIDAL IDEATION; DUBIOUSLY CONSENSUAL RELATIONSHIPS

Character Background

• History: Wiki link
• Core Relationships:

GIDEON THE FIRST Her husband. Her necromancer. Her fellow flame who will burn for what he believes in.¹ The only person she has had no opportunity to speak with since he killed her and absorbed her soul without killing it 10,000 (with rounding error) years ago.² The person she is so good at emulating it can fool people who know him.³ She's the spymaster⁴ who had to play him with complete believability or risk her death and, of greater concern, damage him and his psyche, interfering with that completion of what they believe in.³ If you want to know what he would do, say, or think, she could tell you or emulate it fully. She knows him as well, possibly even better, than she knows herself.⁵ She maintained some level of awareness, as she drowned in the back of his mind where he kept her, so as not to consume her.⁵ That kept her up on 'current events.' However, she could never communicate with him, not consult on what they should do, not ask consent to do whatever she did.⁵ He's rarely denied her anything, and nothing she's done as him is something Gideon wouldn't permit, for those rare instances she wasn't purely playing the part.

JOHN GAIUS Her friend, her god, the fire for which she burned.¹ He saved humanity when no one else could. He gave them the opportunity to rebuild it together.⁶ He protected that humanity with an irrational ferocity that she respects.⁷ Pyrrha is not and never was blind to his faults. Nor are all his actions forgivable.⁸ She doesn't need to forgive him to love him, to serve him, and to give however many fucks she had left to him.⁸ He's the man who became god.⁶ No one could expect any more goodness out of him as a god than they did as a man.⁸

AWAKE REMEMBRANCE OF THESE VALIANT DEAD KIA HUA KO TE PAI SNAP BACK TO REALITY OOPS THERE GOES GRAVITY Wake, for short. Wake was the enemy. She led Blood of Eden to the greatest threat it had ever been to the Nine Houses and to John Gaius. She tried to kill Gideon (and Pyrrha). They tried to kill her.⁹ At the end of the day, though they believed in different and opposing causes, Commander Wake believed as ferociously, as fiercely, as to set herself aflame and die for her cause as Pyrrha did her own.¹ It's always been what attracts her. What started as a hate!fuck became a hate!love. For both Pyrrha and Gideon (yes, they have similar tastes, see?).¹ That let Wake in on Pyrrha's little secret, but she was good enough between all the attempts to kill each other and seeing both of them not to reveal it.¹ Even dead, Pyrrha still loved her and continued the relationship (along with the attempts to kill each other).¹⁰

HER FELLOW DISCIPLES Augustine & Alfred, Mercymorn & Cristabel, Cassiopeia & Nigella, Cyrus & Valancy, Ulysses & Titania, Cytherea & Loveday, Anastasia & Samael.¹¹ Though her relationships with them individually varied, Pyrrha loves them all deeply. They built the houses together. They walked the path to lyctorhood together. Each cavalier died for what they believed in, and each necromancer killed the person they loved for it. No one, not even the second group to work toward lyctorhood, has been through what they went through. Those early days, those unending sacrifices. They will always be important, and she will be glad to see any and all of them again since they are, from her point, all dead. How ironic that she outlived them all. That was never what she wanted. Never what she sought. She lost half of them to lyctorhood. She lost half of those who became saints in the last year. She lost three fourths of those in one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad night.¹¹ A serious contributor to her dearth of fucks to give.

ALECTO Pyrrha has also always loved Alecto.¹² Though Alecto freaked most of the disciples out, she was the living embodiment of what Pyrrha believed in. Someone who burned for what they believed. People may have missed it in Alecto, but she was loving and strong and monstrous yes but in the very best ways.¹²

CAMILLA & PALAMEDES So goddamned young. So smart and stupid. So naive and idealistic. They're a constant reminder of her pre-lyctorhood days. Only so much pain and loss later, Pyrrha's more cognizant of the costs. They formed a household around Nona, and when Pyrrha thought she was done loving new people, they slipped past her defenses into her heart.¹³

GIDEON NAV The baby that might have been hers.³ The only other cavalier to go through something like she did.⁵ Pyrrha doesn't really know Gideon so much as feel some amount of responsibility for her.¹⁴ If she'd known what was going to happen, if she'd been able to, she may have taken the baby to raise. Or maybe she would have simply dropped her tiny ass down in some admiral/former admiral's lap.¹⁴

HARROWHARK THE FIRST A life for a life. Pyrrha told her how to protect herself from Gideon because Harrow had saved their lives from Wake's revenant. Fair is fair.¹⁵ She's also gotten rather fond of Harrow's body, though Harrow hasn't definitively been occupying it of late.^{13, 14} She's much like Anastasia,¹⁶ and they have loving Alecto in common.¹²

Character Personality Through Key Moments

(2+) Positive Experiences:

DUTY; DEDICATION; LOYALTY; BURNING FOR WHAT SHE BELIEVES Though Gideon lived up to the name the Saint of Duty, he carried that name for Pyrrha.¹⁷ When Pyrrha believes in something, it's all in. 100%. Far beyond survival instinct.¹ Half of the disciples became necromancers; half of them dedicated themselves as cavaliers.¹⁸ Pyrrha became much better at fighting than she ever was pre-Resurrection.¹⁸ Name a weapon she could get her hands on and she learned it.¹⁹ All manner of guns, swords, and other weapons.¹⁹ Heck, she became known for using a spear as the off-hand weapon.²⁰ It was clear early on, there was war and would be fighting.¹⁸ So she made herself a living weapon.¹⁸ Pyrrha isn't eager to throw her life away for nothing. She's not thoughtlessly self-sacrificing for this that or the other thing. Pyrrha has built what she believes in.⁴ She and Gideon founded the Second House.⁴ She led the Houses' spy agency because information was armament as much as a rapier or spear or nuclear bomb.⁴ That wasn't the end, though. The group study project, the mega theorem they built for lyctorhood, depended on the cavaliers' deaths.²¹ The necromancer's needed that power to fight Resurrection Beasts.¹² Pyrrha didn't force Gideon's hand the way Alfred and Cristabel forced Augustine's and Mercymorn's.^{1, 22} They both saw the results. They knew what would come. They loved each other dearly, and the trait Pyrrha loved so much, the loyalty, the devotion, the unwavering steps for what they believed in was how she convinced Gideon.¹ In some ways, Pyrrha knew he was getting the rawer deal, to lose her and to have to live with it. He was the necromancer. She wasn't. They weren't interchangeable parts. In true partnership, they walked the eight-fold path, and Pyrrha gave her life and her soul.⁵

SOCIABLE; PEOPLE SKILLS; COOPERATION; SPYING Resurrection's a trauma, and they built a whole new society with the Nine Houses.¹⁹ The Second House was founded around purpose and partnership.^{23, 24} Spying, however, was always the time Pyrrha depended on these skills most. She weaponized them. She embodied her roles so completely very few could see through them. She put together puzzle pieces of information. She managed webs of connections as a spymaster.⁴ The world had ended; there was no sitting back and leaving the work to someone else. She became better because she had to. At the end of the day, her ability to read people and use that have gotten her more than a rapier ever has.

(2+) Negative Experiences:

DISILLUSIONMENT; LOSING HER RELIGION; FUTILITY Pyrrha was the first person to learn that cavaliers didn't need to die, at least not completely, for lyctorhood.⁵ Case in point, herself. She lost her life. She lost so much more, so much of herself, to the incomplete consumption of her soul, to drowning in the back of Gideon's mind, to playing him so well the line was sometimes blurred between them, to ten thousand years of John's implacable trauma and vengeance.^{5, 7} Pyrrha scraped moments out for herself, but it never felt like living.²⁵ Then everyone lost their shit. The other lyctors abandoned the River and Number Seven, but Gideon, in character to the man she'd always loved, did not. His death to drive the Resurrection Beast away was a large enough blow for a decade. That night and the parade of deaths refused to end. Briefly, she thought John was gone, so she readied herself to spill the beans with Augustine and Mercymorn, much as that would drive the knife deeper in their hearts for what they did to Alfred and Cristabel. But no, John did not die so easily, and instead Mercymorn died.²⁶ Soon to be followed by Augustine.²⁷ In the depths of the River, on such a bad day, Pyrrha had lost faith in everything and felt no reason to bother to carry on.²⁹ Except for the baby. She dragged that body with her through the River back to the world because the baby wasn't ready to die.^{14, 29} Her world, her aims, her reasons for living and efforts toward it don't symbolize some renewal of faith. Her heart and her beliefs are shattered, and her focus is far narrower than it's ever been.³⁰ It's all she can manage after 10,000 years of trauma with little to show for it. Her bank account for fucks is at zero, but apparently she can leverage some debt.

LOVE WITHOUT LIMITS; LOYALTY WITHOUT BOUNDS; LACK OF BREAKING POINT Pyrrha has a moral compass, a sense of right and wrong. She's aware of the faults of the people she cares about. She recognizes all the bad they've done, what they've fucked up, the damage they've caused, the unforgivable nature of their actions. She isn't blind. There's simply no point at which her love and her loyalty break.⁸ She knows he lied to them and led them down the path where all the necromancers had to become monsters; they all killed their cavaliers. John could have led them another way, but he didn't.⁸ Despite his fears and abandonment issues,³¹ Pyrrha never has or will stop loving him. She saw the monstrous heart in Alecto as much as Augustine or Mercymorn or anyone else.¹² She also saw the deep love, the kindness, the pained sense of loss. No matter what Alecto did, nothing could overshadow what Pyrrha saw to love.¹² And Wake? How could she not love someone who lived up to the central tenet of Pyrrha's being even if they were enemies even if one day one of them would kill the other?¹ It's a fault, a weakness, a moral failing on her part. Pyrrha acknowledges that. She then simply keeps going. She wouldn't revenge John and kill Mercymorn and Augustine.² She wouldn't revenge them and kill John.⁸ Wake, yes, but they had always tried to kill each other from the start. It's hardly shocking that John would trump her. Though she did shoot Wake out of Cytherea's body for love's sake. John didn't need her. Once Pyrrha loves someone, she loves someone. No expiration date. No amount of monstrous and evil deeds can break it. Her loving someone is a dangerous thing.

Deer Country Attributes

• Canon Powers:

LYCTORHOOD PARTNERSHIP Although not a necromancer, Pyrrha has limited powers from the partnership. She no longer ages, is harder to kill, and heals quicker than a normal human being but not instantaneously recovering from major injuries. Her thoughts, inner emotions, and physical condition cannot be magically or psychically detected from any distance greater than in-physical-contact. Since she is not a lyctor, she is not affected by heralds, i.e., seeing one does not make her go insane.

TRAINED SKILLS Pyrrha has trained skills related to fighting including a wide range of guns and sharp weapons; since she served as a cavalier, her primary weapon set is a rapier and spear. She also founded the intelligence agency for the Nine Houses. It came with such fun responsibilities as training for years to resist torture, managing people of various egos, and piecing together fragments of intelligence. She's an excellent spy, skilled at reading people and playing roles. Her greatest role of all time is Gideon the First, her husband, her necromancer; Pyrrha's seamless at playing it. Only magic gives it away.

• Blood Type:

• Omen:

• Blessed Day:

• Patron Pthumerian:

• Blood Power Manifestation:

Her powers are relatively limited, and the durability/healing overlaps neatly with sleeper blood. Pyrrha's never met a weapon she doesn't like; with the help of people who make weapons, she'll likely make a flaming weapon and bullets. With people she cares about and, to a lesser extent, others, she'll use her blood to fight beast transformations. Bullets made of Coldblood may be a way to get that process going from a safe(r) distance. In time, she will explore her limits with the elemental abilities listed on the blood types page.

Writing Samples

One:

May TDM

Two:

June TDM

The Player

• Player Name:

• Player Age:

• Player Contact:

• Permissions:

Here

Citations

Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 28.
I WILL REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU KISSED ME—YOU APOLOGISED—YOU SAID, I AM SORRY, DESTROY ME AS I AM, BUT I WANT TO KISS YOU BEFORE I AM KILLED, AND I SAID TO YOU WHY, AND YOU SAID, BECAUSE I HAVE ONLY ONCE MET SOMEONE SO UTTERLY WILLING TO BURN FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVED IN, AND I LOVED HIM ON SIGHT, AND THE FIRST TIME I DIED I ASKED OF HIM WHAT I NOW ASK OF YOU I KISSED YOU AND LATER I WOULD KISS HIM TOO BEFORE I UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU WERE, AND ALL THREE OF US LIVED TO REGRET IT—BUT WHEN I AM IN HEAVEN I WILL REMEMBER YOUR MOUTH, AND WHEN YOU ROAST DOWN IN HELL I THINK YOU WILL REMEMBER MINE
General knowledge since Gideon the First is a lyctor, and Pyrrha lives in his mind. Further supported by Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 30.
He said flatly, with a note of warning: “Augustine.”

“I mean it. Don’t you think that’s astonishing, after all this time? Even Mercy doesn’t have a bad thing to say about her.” (“Why am I constantly painted as a critical person,” came the inevitable critique.) “I say, here’s to Pyrrha, the woman I cultivated a smoking habit to impress—the cavalier, the legend, the stone-cold fox … John, please stop joggling my elbow, I have heard stone-cold fox from your own holy lips.”

The Emperor protested, “Respectfully! Respectfully.”

Ortus said, “Another topic.”
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 50-52. All living characters who knew Gideon, and Pyrrha, mistake her for Gideon.
He swept aside the robes. He looked at us, Harrow. Then he made this weird, half-grimacing, excuse me expression, and he reached forward. I was so far fucking gone that I didn’t even flinch as he slipped the sunglasses off your nose. He slid them over his face, and then he let the robes drop back over me and Ianthe, and he walked straight into the shitshow.

Augustine lifted his head, and he said hoarsely, “Gideon?”
God exploded, “Gideon!”

“Wake,” said Gideon II—I?—as though that explained everything.

There was movement. Then God said sadly, “Damn it, Gideon, her ghost’s completely gone,” and Gideon said, “Good.”

Augustine said urgently, “Number Seven—”

“Got away.”

“What—what, it ran? You got it to run?” When this was not met with details, Augustine said, “But—you lived?”

Mercymorn said, “That’s not important right now! I don’t care about Number Seven! I want Gideon to hear this too. I want him to know what Pyrrha died for.”
“Gideon, were you aware that, when you let Commander Wake get as far as she did—to the House of the Ninth, to one of our own Houses, our own people—that she was pregnant?”

A pause. “I was aware,” said Gideon Classic.

“Why the hell did you not tell me?”

“Because I thought it was—mine.”

“No retribution, Gideon?” he remarked. His face was deathly livid. His features were still, but his hands were not. “I thought you might want to burn on his pyre.”

I opened my mouth to speak; I was startled when the raw-looking man wearing my sunglasses said, “No.”

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t surprised,” Augustine said, “but also lying if I said I wasn’t pleased. Here we three are at the end … Alpha, beta, and gamma.”

Gideon stared at the dead cigarette in his hand, and then he said, “Well. Augustine, there’s something you should know—”
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 52. Nona the Ninth. Chapter 1 (published excerpt).
“My name is Pyrrha Dve,” said the ghost in question. “Commander of the Second House, head of Trentham Special Intelligence, cavalier to a dead Lyctor.”
Pyrrha always seemed to know everything about everybody.
Pyrrha turned her eyes up to the ceiling in mute appeal. Her exhalation rasped loudly against the vent in her mask. “I used to run the whole Bureau,” she said, and she didn’t sound like she was addressing either of them. “Now I’m up against wannabe heroes and hairy dogs. This is the punishment she would’ve wanted for me. God, she must be pissing herself laughing… Let’s go, kids. Like hell am I walking in this heat.”
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 52.
We compartmentalized from the Eightfold Word, just like you and your girl—though I’m an accident, and he took more from me than got taken from you. I was able to go underground, even from him.
General knowledge from John's titles as God and the Resurrection.
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 51.
And Augustine said: “Stop your mission, John. Give up on the thing I know you’ve been looking for since the very beginning. Stop expanding. Stop assembling this bewildering cartography, this invasion force. I’ve puzzled over it for five thousand years, and I don’t believe I truly understand it now. But let it go. Let them go. Nobody has to be punished anymore for what happened to humanity.”

The Emperor of the Nine Houses turned to look at him.

“Augustine,” he said, “if the man you were—the man you were before you died, before the Resurrection—could hear what you just said to me, he’d tear your throat out.”
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 52. Even after everything revealed, Pyrrha still offers John her loyalty.
Then he looked at us, gave a little crooked half smile, and said, “Gideon Episode One, I mean. Gideon the First—third saint to serve me—my fingers and gestures. Mate, I’m not mad about Wake. I’m not even mad that you failed to either fix or put down Harrow. I just want your loyalty. Do I have it, or not?”

“You have my loyalty,” said Gideon.
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 30.
“Fine, pedants—I drink to the best of them, gone for absolute certain … not the remnant kooks, idiots, and zealots who think a nuclear missile could give us pause. The commander would never have settled for a nuclear missile … Lord, that was a merry dance she led us. It deserves something. Perhaps it’s a toast.”
“Bullets,” said Augustine, “Darts. Throwing knives. Dead shot. Got me right between the eyes once. Mad as a cut snake, and three times as vicious. We nearly lost you to her a few times, didn’t we, Ortus? Should we drink to Commander Wake?”
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 25 & Chapter 50 (romance). Incinerator scene (Chapter 31), Wake tries to kill Gideon/Pyrrha. Pyrrha shoots Wake's revenant in the face (Chapter 50).
“Lord, I saw the Saint of Duty kissing the body of Cytherea the First.”
In the room was Cytherea. Cytherea’s body, her back to us. She had been neatly tied to a chair with a band of angry-looking tendon. I couldn’t see whoever was talking to her.

“—not a difficult question,” someone said, without any particular concern. “It’s not as though you have anything to hide. I just want to know—how? Seriously, I’m more impressed than angry.”

The voice was still gravel. “I charge you with acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the human race—”

“Commander.”
“Commander Wake,” he said. It sounded like he scrubbed a hand over his face; there was a muffled exhalation. “I’ve heard this all before.”

“Call me by my full name, or don’t name me at all. I’ll be damned if I pass up the chance to hear you speak the words.”
Harrow the Ninth. Dramatis Personae. General background that they built the houses, developed the Eight-Fold path, and all the cavaliers died. General knowledge that 3 lyctors died before Gideon the Ninth. Cytherea dies in Gideon the Ninth. Gideon, Mercymorn, & Augustine die at the end of Harrow the Ninth.
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 51. The rest of the feelings extrapolate from Pyrrha/Gideon not hating Alecto and why Pyrrha has liked other people (e.g., Wake) that others hate.
She stopped, and said pensively: “But you see, we all thought you were just sentimental over that horrible thing—even though she was bad in every single way, we all hated her—”

“I didn’t,” said Gideon Zero.

“Oh, do shut up, Gideon—Lord, you and she went through all the early days together; it made sense that you didn’t want to kill her. We came to you, back then, we came to you and begged you to get rid of her. We said she was too dangerous … We knew the Beasts were coming, and we knew they were partly coming for her. ”
Nona the Ninth. Chapter 1 (published excerpt). This excerpt demonstrates the household built around Nona with Pyrrha, Camilla, & Palamedes.
"… Palamedes, we made this mistake ourselves. You can have the barracks or your people—or neither. You can’t say ‘I choose both’ like a wet towel and expect the universe to fall into line.”

“Pyrrha, this is sounding perilously like giving up.”

“Does it? You know I’m ready to give up. This is a shitshow. You know I’m ready to get Nona safely off-world the moment you accept the way things are.”
Nona the Ninth. Chapter 1 (excerpt). Pyrrha and Harrow's body came out of the River together. Per Gideon's narrative at the end of Harrow the Ninth, that isn't due to Gideon's actions. Therefore, Pyrrha traveled with it. She's been taking care of Nona since then and clearly feels some responsibility for her.
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 31.
You grabbed Ortus and pulled him down the side of the room as a mass of hot melted bone sludged from the door. You dragged him away from that singeing, choking, killing mass, and you laid him against the bulkhead.
The Saint of Duty said, with a kind of hoarse solemnity: “Fresh blood wards. Every night.”

You said, too surprised not to sound like a moron: “What?”

He said, “Can’t bleed thalergy … not fresh thalergy. Thanergy, easy. Mixed with thalergy … much harder. No bone wards. Blood wards. Understand? Fresh blood wards. Each night. Can’t break those.”
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 16. Augustine compares Harrow to Anastasia.
“Then that is your downfall,” you said.

“You are Anastasia come again.”
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 9. Saints were named for their cavaliers.
God said, “He had a mission. The Saint of Duty reflects his name.”

“Right, right,” said Augustine. “Unlike Joy and Patience. Quite right. Just—coming back here, and not seeing him—it gave me the heebie-jeebies, to be perfectly honest with you. I can’t quite shake the feeling that something’s wrong.
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 8.
“They were disciples, to begin with. Ten normal human beings of the Resurrection, though half were blessed already with necromantic gifts. But necromancy alone does not confer eternal life. Our Lord, the First Reborn, kept those ten devotees young and alive through his sheer might, but it was a shadow of living … They had to stay tucked near the Emperor’s feet so as not to strain his powers. They desired to spend their lives in service of him, not the other way around. They realised in the first hundred years how difficult their situation was, even as necromancy spread through the Nine Houses, and even as other disciples joined their number. Some of them took up the sword and became the first cavaliers, in the hope that their strength of arms might prove useful; the adepts honed their master’s craft, trying to break the rigors of deep space. And there was so much still to be done, and new necromancers being born, and ruins to reclaim. What a time to be alive.”
Gideon the Ninth. Chapter 19. Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 19.
The room had been split into three main parts—there was the laboratory, and then a broad space where the furniture had been moved out of the way for an empty stone floor. The wall had a sword rack, and the sword rack still held two lonely rapiers, gleaming as though they’d been filed and whetted an hour before. A training floor. Leant up against the wall was a hideous collection of oblong metal shapes and stocks. It took Gideon a long time to realise that she was looking at something goddamn ancient: it was a blowback carbine gun. She’d only ever seen pictures.
“I want that sword,” said Ortus the First.

“What?”

“Give me her damned sword,” said Ortus the First.

“You’ve already got a whole complement of oversized weapons, greedy.”
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 19.
The Saint of Duty shouldered his goddamned spear. That first time you were absolutely affrighted: a spear, a spear for the offhand.
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 8. Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 51.
“Necessarily a great research had to begin, into how best to serve alongside our Lord without needing him to confer immortality—this search for what would become Lyctorhood. And it took place here.”

He pointed downward. Everyone looked at the floor beneath his feet, seeking out the origins of Lyctorhood in a few square inches of rotting carpet. “Below our feet. The laboratories. The original body of the building—a place steeped in the death of ages—the quietude of the last sacrifice … that is where Lyctorhood was begun, and that is where Lyctorhood was finished.”
“You lied to us, John,” she said.
And, with a sob in her voice: “There is a perfect Lyctorhood … a perfect Lyctor process that preserves the cavalier, and you let us think there wasn’t. You let us think we’d cracked it … You let us think it had to be a one-way energy transfer … but nobody had to die. Alfred, Pyrrha, Titania, Valancy, Nigella, Samael, Loveday, Cristabel … You watched us kill our cavaliers in cold blood, and none of them had to die. You had already done it yourself. But you had done it perfectly!!”
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 51.
Augustine said, “I’ve got to know. Call it morbid curiosity … Anastasia didn’t misapprehend the process, did she? She nearly cracked it—the right way of doing it. I knew she was working closely with Cassiopeia … It didn’t make sense that I became a Lyctor under scrambling pressure and did it right, and that Anastasia screwed it up in laboratory conditions.”

God stared at him.

“Yes,” he said, though it sounded far-off and confused, like he was hungover.
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 6. Gideon the Ninth. Chapter 16. Gideon the Ninth. Chapter 32. Gideon the Ninth. Chapter 36. Pyrrha's trial is Imaging and Response which gave Harrow and Gideon the key to Gideon and Pyrrha's quarters. Only through teamwork, both the necromancer and the cavalier, can it be completed.
“You should start with Pyrrha’s trial,” called out the other Lyctor immediately.
“I can see it.”

Later on Gideon would think about how little triumph there was in Harrow’s voice: more awe. Her vision blurred, then spiked back abruptly into twenty-twenty colour. Everything was brighter and crisper and cleaner, the lights harder, the shadows colder. When she looked at the construct it smoked in the air like hot metal—pale, nearly transparent coronas wreathed its malformed body. They simmered in different colours, visible if you squinted this way or that, and in admiring them Gideon nearly got her leg broken.
“You did Imaging and Response, right? You must have, you got the key for it. Same deal. I’m going to think about the key, and you’re going to see it through my eyes.”

“Sextus,” said Harrow darkly.

“Wait, wait,” put in Gideon, intrigued. “You’re going to read his mind?”

“No,” said both necromancers immediately. Then Palamedes said, “Well, technically, sort of.”

“No,” said Harrow. “You remember the construct challenge, Nav. I couldn’t read your mind then. It’s more like borrowing perceptions.”
“Her necromancer said: “It’s all I can do to pin it in place, so you need to finish it for me. Breach the legs—I will show you exactly where—and then I can keep it quiet for a while.”

“Seriously? How?”
“You’ll see,” said Harrow grimly. “I apologise, Nav. Get ready to move.”

The construct crooned in its chains. The central rod that Harrow had somehow awled through its trunk was bowing dangerously. Gideon dove back into the affray of joint and gristle with her sword scything before her and, just as in the Response room, felt another presence slide into her mind like a knife into a pool of water. Her vision blurred out and something said in the back of her mind:

On your right. Eye level.

It wasn’t a voice, precisely, but it was Harrowhark.”
Gideon the Ninth. Chapter 20. The Second House's necromancy is also designed around partnership.
Harrowhark said, “The Second House is famed for something similar, in reverse. The Second necromancer’s gift is to drain her dying foes to strengthen and augment her cavalier—”
Nona the Ninth. Chapter 1 (published excerpt).
“Anywhere,” she said. “Anything. I’ve been out of commission for ten thousand years… I’m ready for pretty much anything else.”
Harrow the Ninth. Chapters 50-52 revelations scene general summary.
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 52.
I watched Ianthe dart down, rip the tongues from the Emperor of the Nine Houses, and wrestle him clear. The tongues entwined in a bower to bear Augustine silently down to that ravenous mouth, to the Hell where only demons went.
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 52.
“I have been trapped in the back of a brain for ten thousand years, and my necromancer is dead,” said the other cavalier. “Emotions are difficult right now. I do have a loaded revolver.”
“So what—we each swallow a bullet?”
“It’s an option,” said Pyrrha. And: “Joke.” And: “Mostly.”
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 52.
“Fuck this,” I said.
Pyrrha said, “Bullets—water—or waiting?”

I’d had this choice before. The different deaths. The death of waiting; the death of optimism. Harrow, the last time I chose to die, I died with your face the last thing I ever looked at. Let me tell you a secret: it was easy to die thinking I wouldn’t have to see you go. It was so easy to check out before you did.
As I dithered, Pyrrha sandblasted me with the calm, “Your mother would’ve picked the bullet.”

“Yes, well, jail for Mother,” I said.

And taking a leaf out of your book, I thrust my sword into the whimpering plex.
Nona the Ninth. Chapter 1 (published excerpt).
“If you asked me to pick between the three of us and those twelve million plus sixteen, I’d pick us without turning a hair. "
“You’ve got no idea. Listen to me. You’ve never met this Blood of Eden, not really. This Blood of Eden has spent their entire existence gambling everything on staying alive for one more day… and I don’t know if I even want to find out why anymore. ’Cause you know what? Gideon’s dead, and I don’t give a fuck either. Not if I can save our skins.”
Harrow the Ninth. Chapter 51.
Mercymorn said, “John, if you’d lied to me about anything else, about how the planet died, about the extinction of our species … or if you’d just admitted everything and said your hand was forced, or that it was for the common good, and said nice-sounding nonsense—I would have forgiven you.”

“You might have said you forgave me,” said the Emperor. He was staring at his hands now. “But I think it would have rankled … I know it would have rankled. There is no such thing as forgiveness, Mercy. There’s only bloody truth, and blessed ignorance.”

Pyrrha Dve @ doeit