pyr0clast:
in any fantasy setting where afterlives of eternal (or even transient but identity-obliterating) suffering exist, it is ethical and correct to achieve immortality through dark magic in order to buy yourself time, accrue sufficient magical power to alter, bend, or break reality itself, neutralize or eliminate any spineless little deities who object, and then personally unfuck the cosmos so that torture isn’t baked into the setting mechanics
then retire to a beach somewhere and spend however long you’d like doing whatever, because you’ve damn well earned it
coffincoitus:
rushed marriage, bad parenting, cheating, divorce, attempted murder, child murder, getting back together, life-long codependency
ghosts-and-you-might-die:
I love when our girls get to Canaan house and one of the first interactions they have with non ninth human beings is Dulcinea commenting on how charming and novel it is to meet a ninth house nun, and then Harrow leads them in the Ninth version of the prayer and everyone stares at her like she has twelve heads, and Gideon is treated like the avatar of death itself swooping through the corridors
And we, as the reader, had just been going along with the bone motif the whole time. This is a book about necromancers, sure, skeletons working the fields, skull paint, bone prayer beads. That tracks.
And then they get out in the real world and it turns out the Ninth are just fucking weirdos being treated like a 12th century nun just walked onto the set of a modern reality show set because that’s exactly what fucking happened.