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[princess_of_ida]

Three for the gleam of a jewel or a smile.



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[princess_of_ida]

Yeah. All necromancers need to know the body for our work. Really, the body is nothing but flesh, blood, sinew, and bone. It's grotesque in nature and both incredibly complex yet simple for being nothing but a vessel to contain the soul and fill with thalergy.

As an animaphiliac, I have mastered fleshcraft. Iggy's performance tits were courtesy of me, though any flesh mage could've made those.

Why the interest?

[rezni]

I traveled with two Heartrenders for years. They can manipulate the body and the organs inside, even the blood, but they can't create.

Or perhaps it simply hasn't been discovered. I wonder at the common ground, in spite of how outside my own depth I find myself.

[princess_of_ida]

Alina once told me that if Ravka had a Heartrender with half my power, the war would be over. She also explained merzost to me. I think we agreed to disagree about it back then; it was so long ago before we were even friends.

Perhaps they can't create because they use thalergy instead of thanergy. Much of my research into Alina's power has been to find how it relates to necromancy. The principles are the same, but the source is different. Grisha are more varied across the board, but also restricted to one discipline. Necromancers only access three main disciplines, but they can learn any of them. The best know all three well. Most of us learn what our House favors, some with more talent than others, but some are broader in their scope.

But in the end, flesh is flesh. Maybe one day your best Heartrender will rise to sainthood and be capable of more.

[rezni]

I'm not grisha. As long as I have served alongside them and traveled with a crew of them, I can't pretend to know all that they do. There are things I think that aren't shared with me, and I don't begrudge them that choice.

Not all of the time, at least.

But merzost—

I don't know if it's comparable to your talergy and thanergy. I've never heard the terms before.

[princess_of_ida]

Think of thalergy as life energy and thanergy as death energy. Thalergy is necessary for life to exist. When someone dies of old age, it's because their thalergy has run out. When someone dies abruptly, though violence or accident, their thalergy converts to thanergy. That's what necromancers use. It's the energy that's created by death, decay, and entropy.

Most planets and stars generate thalergy. The Dominicus System of which the Nine Houses are uniquely generates thanergy because of the Great Resurrection. Within the system is the only place necromancers are born.

[rezni]

You've access to both wherever you go? As long as there are aspects of the place that fit into those categories?

[princess_of_ida]

I do, but I'm a lyctor. I can access my necromancy even in the dead if space where there is neither thalergy or thanergy.

House necromancers cannot.

[rezni]

Has that always been?
Nothing is different here?

[princess_of_ida]

I wasn't always a lyctor. Much like Alina with the amplifier, I ascended to become something more. Prior to then, I was shackled just as any House Scion was.

There is plenty of both energies here. The land is thalergetic; the Void is thanergetic.

[rezni]

I never asked what you learned, you know. When you were experimenting with the Void.

[princess_of_ida]

Nothing useful other than it's remarkably stable distancewise from the village. And the whole obsessive psychosis insanity thing that everyone who went on the expedition experienced.

Wait. The obsessive part doesn't come until a much longer exposure. After you get to that point, it never really leaves you.

[rezni]

Meaning that even now...?

[princess_of_ida]

Think of it like a drug addiction from which I'm currently two months sober.

Wait. Less than two months.

[rezni]

Do you think it's something you can be cured of completely? Or something you simply have to live with?

[princess_of_ida]

I don't know. I suppose when I stop hearing the Void whispering to me in my sister's voice, I can test it.

I have an enchanted necklace for protection. It let's me recognize that it really isn't her.

[rezni]

Can I ask if it was a gift? The necklace?

[princess_of_ida]

Nate Hawthorne made it. It was one of the few he was able to produce before the Void expedition. There might be a few others floating around out there, and they're not all necklaces.

I just requested mine to be my House symbol. You've seen it: the inverted trident pendent with the yellow stone. I almost never take it off.