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mayasaura:

So… about Kiriona and why she’s Like That, and what’s been happening these past six months.

She hasn’t just been living her worst monkey’s paw life as Ianthe’s chew toy and bored prince, acting as emotional support for her new dad in his dismyriad crisis. Which would all be bad enough on its own. At least half that time she’s also been actively deployed. Like, in the military, in a combat zone. Probably in a command position with very little experience and exactly zero training.

“Nav, talk to me,” said Pyrrha. “Antioch. You’ve been fighting these—things? How long?” “Fuck knows,” said Kiriona, highly distracted. “Three, four months? Took us a while to work out what they even were. Thought they only had a weird disease.”ALT

From the scattered mentions we’ve seen of Antioch, Kiriona was most likely deployed there to quell a rebellion. No doubt a terrible experience that would have expected her to do horrible things. Then these things—the devils—turned up.

“You can’t cure this,” said the Prince. “It’s spirit shit … possession. You can ward people so they don’t get grabbed—if you’re really good—but otherwise, chop them up and burn the bits. That’s the cure. Civilian or Edenite or House, it makes no difference.”ALT

Anyone who was infected by the devils, she had to dismember them and burn the corpses. Edenites, House, and civilians. That means regular old people who had nothing to do with the fighting, and people under her command. Either they became shambling zombies with mouths for eyes, or they were mercy-killed and burned before they could be taken.

“They bit him,” said the corpse prince, as though nobody had spoken. “I mean, they hit him—they don’t have to bite. It’s revenant magic. They’re waiting for him to die so they don’t have to work so hard. Heal him up now, and they’ll still ride that wound all the way into his hideous old body and I’ll get to kill him myself.”ALT

How many people did she see die? How many people did she kill, and how many of them did she consider herself responsible for?

So if we’re counting the reasons Gideon might seem a little off, we might want to take into account how she took a detour though a fucking zombie apocalypse while we weren’t looking. Shit.