{ pfsb } megatheorem

[we_do_bones]

"For the Ninth!" said Gideon.
And she fell forward, right on the iron spikes.

Everything after that was hazy. Including, thank the Undying King, the pain of a grim and broken shaft of cold metal spearing her straight through the heart. Harrow would act quickly, she knew – she counted on it, planned for it. Even in a state of total shock, the Reverend Daughter would do what had to be done, would use Gideon's sacrifice to shore up her own reserves of thanergy and thalergy, to speak the Eightfold Word, that great mystery which had now so violently unfolded itself before them, Palamedes' megatheorem come to shocking resolution. It's not as though Gideon wanted to die, but seeing as it looked like she was going to die anyway, why not make use of it? Why not set Harrow, however unwillingly, on the path to sainthood?

She found some smug satisfaction in that. Maybe she'd be gone, but Harrow would live for another ten thousand years, give or take, and Cytherea would die the ignominious death she so richly deserves for the cold-blooded executions of the Fifth and Fourth. Perhaps Harrow would see fit to have some portraits painted; perhaps those portraits would show Gideon reclining amidst a sea of enthusiastic and buxom devotees. Perhaps –

– But something had gone wrong, weirdly so. Harrow had pinned her soul; Harrow had acquired it. Her life force was now burning, an eternal battery, in Harrow's cells. She and Harrow had intertwined at the molecular level, a prospect which only a few short months before would have filled her with such horror she'd have committed suicide via boredom by asking Ortus Nigenad to recite his favorite sections of The Noniad at her. All this was as it should be, so why was she still conscious? Her soul was pinned, acquired, but not eaten; Harrow the precise, Harrow the surgeon, Harrow the genius had neglected the most important step. And before Gideon could figure out a way to shake Harrow from inside her adept's own body, she was summarily shoved aside and through, sent careening over the River like a stone skipping on water, only to find herself, finally, in a place she never thought she'd see again. The end of the universe burning outside, the forest a smudged shadow full of mystery.

And none of it anything she can interact with, even to make the lights flicker or knock over a cup; annoying, seeing as she might as well enjoy some of the perks of being a ghost if she's being forced to become one. 

Harrow! she yells, beating impotently at the blank wall where the door should be. You can't do this halfway!

But Harrow isn't there to hear, and when had she ever listened to Gideon, anyway?