as a shadow smudged against the wall,

in the throes

a while back in the discord server we were talking about the possibility of wake returning in atn and @katakaluptastrophy pointed out that we learn in HTN that revenants can attach to murder weapons and we get a very specific description of pyrrha pressing the gun against cytherea's skull when she shoots the body to kill wake's revenant — possibly creating an avenue for wake's revenant to jump into the gun.

then @eskildit pointed out that we get a clear chain of custody for the gun in NTN, so i wanted to highlight some of the passages where the narrative really seems to focus on pyrrha's gun. i thought it was particularly interesting that pyrrha's first priority is retrieving her gun even after camilla's just been stabbed, when nona describes everyone else as rushing toward camilla. admittedly this might just be because it has a herald bullet in it (which she later uses to shoot ianthe), but i thought pyrrha's fixation on the gun being because of wake's revenant was a cool possibility nonetheless.

Slower, now. I can sip a slow breath. My heart can unclench its dizzy fist. I can grapple the container to me with an arm and both legs, fish a jump cable out of the suit belt to clip it to me. Payload won’t get away now. I can breathe; I can stretch out my biosupport as long as it’ll last, maybe get down into atmosphere before it runs out; maybe I can still execute the mission. If I can fight off a pack of mad skull-faced coffin-worshipping wizards with my cunt ripped open, asphyxiated half to death. But no need to count coup before the moment comes. I’ll raze that bridge when I get to it.

🚨🚨🚨 REVENANT WAKE FIC IS HERE 🚨🚨🚨

Explicit, Graphic Depictions of Violence and Major Character Death, Gen, 5,892 words

keywords: angst, brutal gore and tragedy, the cruel death and grisly afterlife of my all-time favorite blorbo, Blood of Eden animist ancestor worship worldbuilding, tone shifts, epic poetry, fragments & lacunae, (*dangles a piece of steak* surprise evilbaby Griddlehark!), can you tell I wrote the first poetry section in 3 hours in a fugue state halfway through reading the Iliad

didn't you ever think "wow, I love Wake's enraged notes in HTN, but I just really wish there were some sections in dactylic hexameter" ... yeah queen me too. points for commenting with all the Homeric Easter eggs you found tehe

there is so much I want to say about Wake's hamartia and her relationship to baby Gideon and her depiction in the fandom and the role that the classics play in Tamsyn Muir's construction of the necromantic empire... but in the end... I said it all with the story. so go read the story and then you'll know

the coloured version of a sketch i made last week for the front page of htn's chapter 53 💀 i would love to be able to illustrate an actual book someday hheh

closeups under the cut 🗡 prints!