Open Post: The Arms of the Emperor are Never Idle

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon spends her mornings in the practice yard, bright and early, despite the cold. She jogs and stretches to get her blood pumping and her muscles warm before she draws her sword, and then after drills she brings Tally her coffee, and then after that it's back to more sword—unless Tally hauls her off to some other activity, which she pretends to hate but is secretly devastatingly grateful for. The absolute worst part of this place is all the time. Endless stretches of time, with barely any work to be done.

In some ways it's just like the Ninth—except on the Ninth she knew her exits. They were few, sure, and near-impossible, but she knew them: buy her way out, fight her way out, trick her way out, or truly earn it.

None of those apply, here.

She breaks for lunch, and wanders the halls trying to locate various Clues and Mysteries that might end up giving her a way out, and mostly just finds people. More and more people.

She's not antisocial. She likes the people here, more than she's openly liked anyone in her life, individually or as a group. But a gnawing restlessness keeps her on the move rather than letting her time fill up with idle conversation as so many here do. She's always hunting for something to keep her busy, to wear out her body so that when she sleeps her mind is forced to rest rather than serving her a lovely buffet of the worst things she's ever seen and even worse things she hasn't, the things she was yoinked away just in time to miss.

Sometimes it even works.

[This post is open in perpetuity until something happens to make me close it, at which point I will edit it and say so! Feel free to find Gideon in the morning doing sword drills, or tooling around inside, opening and closing drawers and trying peel the wallpaper off in case there's flesh underneath.]

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[ninth_cavalier]

"Alright," says Gideon. She sizes up a mid-sized tree to start, cuts her guidance notch, then circles around to the other side. "Those shadow powers of yours can make ropes, right?" she asks, between measured, powerful swings. "You wanna help lower this thing down when it falls?"

[temnota]

"Yes. That's good thinking," Aleksander said. He took a breath and raised his hands, calling forth his shadows. He looped several large strands around the tree and flicked his fingers in unison to make the shadows solidify. When the tree fell, he would be ready.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon gets into the swing of it—literally. It's a satisfying task, precise enough to require focus but simple enough you can't really fuck it up. In not too long, the first tree gives the groaning sigh they give when they're no longer holding themselves up, and then the trunk starts swaying in the direction she'd chosen for the notch.

Gideon keeps one eye on the strands of shadow, but she's more interested in watching how Aleksander controls them. She scans the ground around them, checking to see if he was gathering real shadow—pulling from the shade of the forest—or somehow generating it from somewhere else.

[temnota]

The moment the trunk began to sway, Aleksander's focus sharpened and he spread his hands wide. He pulled the shadows from wherever they laid - ground, other trees, even his and Gideon's own. They wound themselves around the falling trunk and held fast. This was the part he loved best of all about summoning - working his will through the shadows, feeling the power flow through him and knowing that no one else could ever match him.

He flexed his fingers and the shadows carefully lowered the trunk to the ground. "Is it good there or should we move it?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"That's good," says Gideon. Asked and answered on the shadows front! That's pretty cool, and makes a lot more sense to her than a lot of the stuff people have been doing around here that they call magic, which seem to summon shit from thin air in defiance of the laws of physics.

She contemplates the fallen tree. "Okay, I admit I only got this far. I guess we need saws?"

[temnota]

"I had not thought about after the tree came down either," Aleksander admitted ruefully. Since using the Cut was not an option and he did not have a Durast available, they would have to use more mundane methods. "So I agree. Saws."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon nods. "I feel like there might be some where I found the axe," she says. And, in fact, there is one—it's slightly haphazardly put away amongst a number of other tools, only some of which Gideon recognizes, in a big shed next to a weird round structure made of bricks and clay. "Yoink," mutters Gideon as she takes it. She'll return it. Probably. Whatever; this person's loss is her gain.

[temnota]

Found or "found", Aleksander wondered but as he didn't see any angry residents charging after them, he decided not to worry about it. When and if such a thing happened, he would just have to deploy an excess of charm.

"What do you need me to do?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon regards the tree, and its not inconsiderable thickness. "Take turns?" she suggests.

[temnota]

"That is fair," Aleksander agreed. He quickly unbuttoned his kefta and shrugged out of it. Lacking any better options, he found a tree with a branch of suitable height and hung it up. He unbuttoned his sleeves and started to roll them up.

"I'll go first if you like." He waited a beat then added, "My technique will no doubt be terrible but since you are helping me, the least I can do is provide some amusement."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon grins and hands over the saw. "I would love to watch you embarrass yourself."

[temnota]

"I live to serve," Aleksander said loftily as he accepted the saw. It had been a very long time indeed since he'd done this sort of manual labor and the first few cuts were as awkward and graceless as any rank amateur. Eventually, he improved his technique a bit but he was more then ready to hand the saw back when it was time to switch over.

[ninth_cavalier]

It's not like Gideon's done much sawing before, either, at least at this scale—cutting through the rusty-ass bars on her cell window with a broken piece of plate doesn't count. But she's a quick learner, and she pays attention to what works for Aleksander and what doesn't, so she manages to not make much of an idiot of herself.

Eventually they have the tree trunk cut into several vaguely table-length sections. She steps back from it, wiping her forehead.

[temnota]

Aleksander considered the sections. Was that enough? Should they cut more wood but in different sizes? It would be more work but he wanted Laertes to have options. It also wouldn't hurt to have extras in case of any mishaps.

"If I promise to cook an entire pot of beef stew that iswould entirely all for you, would you cut a little more wood for me?" he asked, giving Gideon his most charming smile.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon would do it anyway—but she enjoys the barter system they have going. "Throw in some good crusty bread and you got yourself a deal."

[temnota]

"As they say in Ketterdam, the deal is the deal." Aleksander grinned and held out his hand for her to shake.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon shakes. "What do you think, other tree... types? Species? Or the same?" She taps her toe against the one they'd just carved up. "No idea what this one's called, but I could recognize it by its bark if we wanna find another."

[temnota]

"Let's stick with the same kind of tree if we can," Aleksander said after giving it some thought. "Then the wood will look consistent."

He wasn't sure if it would really matter or not but decided to keep things as simple for this first table. If it all worked out and he wanted to build another one, he could get fancy with the wood then.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Right." Gideon shifts through the woodchips at her feet until she finds a scrap of bark, then holds it up to the trees around her, squinting, til she finds another that looks the same. "They've got different names, right? Trees."

[temnota]

"They do," Aleksander answered. "What these particular trees are called, I don't know. They do look similar to what we have in Ravka but knowing how this place is, I would not want to assume they are the same. I wonder if the library has something that would say."

Wanting to help, he picked up one of the wood chips that did have bark and started to compare the trees. "But I suppose that is a mystery for another time."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Ugh, the library," says Gideon, and swings her axe, notching the next tree she's chosen. Then she pauses. "Hang on, aren't the books here also made of trees? Like, paper?"

[temnota]

"They are," Aleksander answered, wondering where Gideon was going with this. "Why do you ask?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon isn't going anywhere with it, really. "Where I come from," she says, between swings, "or—when I come from, or whatever, everything's, like. Super divorced from the stuff it comes from. Like—raw materials, versus final products. You know? Like, I deal a lot with metal, but I've never seen a mine, or ore, or whatever. Even most of the ways we get vitamins is through nutrient mush delivered to us from another planet, and I have no fucking idea what's actually in it." She hefts the axe and squints at the tree in front of her. "The idea you can take something like a tree and make a table, or a book, somehow, it's all new to me."

[temnota]

Aleksander listened with great interest. It made sense when he thought about - Gideon's world was clearly far more technologically advanced than Ravka and if there were easier ways to obtain raw materials and turn them into goods then the farther way one would be from the process. He'd seen it on a smaller scale as Ravka was turning from an agricultural society to a more industrialized one.

All the same, there was much about the technology of the Mansion that was new to him. "I come at this from a different end. I was familiar with electricity as a concept and some of the Durasts were doing experiments but we had not gotten so far as the cold boxes in the kitchens and lights everywhere. It's been an adjustment - not an unwelcome one, but an adjustment nonetheless."