Tabby
Derpsichord
Name: Cyrille Harkonnen
Concept: Researcher, sorceress, plot device
Caste: Twilight
Quote: "Paperwork? Official documentation? Who the hell do you think I am? Get out of my way, I have science to do."
Motivation: Learn.
Intimacies:
- Arturia - Because everyone needs an obsession that stretches nearly to the point of unhealthiness.
- Gran Grimoire - It is more than just a book, and she would happily beat anyone who said otherwise over the head with the weighty tome. The sheer knowledge held within its hallowed pages is enough proof in itself.
Personality: A dichotomy of sweet and sour, Cyrille can vacillate in the blink of an eye from perfectly pleasant to demanding investigator. Partially to blame is her near-total lack of patience with people unless necessary, or indeed any matters not related directly to research, but it also illustrates somewhat of a fundamental disconnect. Unlike Arturia, Cyrille coped with the events in Magvel by closing her heart and keeping people at arm's length; rarely rude, usually concilliatory, but never able to open up to the extent she was once able to.
Cyrille does not see it as a problem, per se; she never lets on that it is the truth, and to her it is perfectly natural. Everyone she knew and loved died in flames as the world burned around her. It may be irrational, and she knows it somewhere deep down in her heart, but she can't help but compare the people she knows now to those forever lost and inevitably find them wanting. Rather than forging new bonds, it seems easier to just focus on her work, and spare herself the bother of losing those close to her again.
To say that she is asocial would be functionally correct. To say that she prefers swimming, or reading, or other leisure activities not requiring significant human contact would also be correct. To say that she is unable to function in society, or that she is crude and unlikeable, however, would not be; Cyrille was always the talker of the group, the one to convince the baker to dole out some bread or cut deals with other urchin gangs, and she has not lost a touch of her wit or ability to pacify others. While she can be harsh, with exceptionally stupid people or when too focused on an exciting new discovery, she never attempts to be; the occasional cynical witticism aside, she is pleasant - both as part of her facade and in truth - and pacifistic, often acting the part of mediator when it is necessary.
That is not to say that she intentionally - or at least consciously - seeks out the role, but it does tend to fall on her moreso than others, and she takes it in stride. Not all of the girl who nearly died trying to protect Arturia was burnt to cinders in the maelstrom of Magvel; whether or not she admits to it or even realizes it, she is still a kind soul. Even if it is remarkably cathartic to occasionally curse people out for being bloody morons.
Her trust in Arturia is nigh absolute, and as the only one of Cyrille's inner circle to have survived Magvel, it did not take long to latch back on to her old leader - and she makes little secret of it, jealously protective of her friend and often with an excuse to spend more time in her company. Arturia returns the feelings twice over, of course; for a time they were all each other had in the final days before the curtain fell on Magvel, and they have eight years of separation to catch up on. Her trust in the rest of the group was... less immediate, and there is a certain aspect of jealousy, but she trusts Arturia's word, and it was obvious enough that Arturia trusted Lance with her life that Cyrille was willing to give him a chance as well.
Bio:
The first trial is that of melancholy. In a study of melancholy, the necromancer must experience true rock bottom. To have nothing left but to continue to live, living almost without purpose, shows the necromancer how little really separates the living dead from those living without cause.
...They were dead. All of them. For some reason, Cyrille could not feel the bitter sting of tears on her cheeks, nor come to terms with that fact. As Magvel burned behind her, little more than an ashen blot on the horizon, she could do naught but mutely walk along, part of a great mass of humanity; hostages and slaves, all of them now the property of those who had brought the latest and most cruel chapter of Magvel's history to a bloody end. Nothing remained of the group of orphans she had once helped lead, of the friendships she had made over the years, of the adults she had known.
The baker who fed them when he could, the cobbler who had once given them the better part of a dozen pairs of shoes he had been able to make with leftover scraps of material. The innkeeper who had let them use the back room whenever there was room during the winter months, occasionally even food. The boy who had thought himself a knight, and his friend who died trying to distract a trio of soldiers after the first boy had riled them up with a barrage of stones. Arturia, too; impaled to a wall after an equally idiotic and unrealistic attempt to save her. Dead. All of them. They were all dead, and she... she could not shed a single tear. at their loss. Not even Arturia's. It was as though something inside her had finally finished rotting away, some part of her humanity that no longer held purpose.
Cyrille couldn't help but wonder if her inability to mourn her butchered friends left her a worse person than the butchers herding the straggling line of humanity along.
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The second trial is memory. Just as the sunless realms change only slowly, shaping themselves to the memories of those who dwell there, the necromancer must engage in self-instruction. She must learn something by exploring her own memories of experiences past, discovering new meaning in old knowledge.
That was why she was doing this, after all. Cyrille hadn't been particularly enthused at the idea of revisiting everything bad that had ever happened to her, but Kreia had been insistent that it was necessary to truly understand the very heart of necromancy. She had been significantly less helpful about explaining what Cyrille should look for, though, and the mage adept was growing somewhat cross. But Kreia had a tendency to be right, the wizened old bat, so she traveled back to the ghost city, still abandoned eight years later as some of the sorcerous fire continued to burn, and did that whole meditation thing.
...Which she had been doing for close to three days now, with no particularly grandiose revelations. Well, she'd managed to come up with some small things here and there, mostly due to the simple fact that she was eight years older now and therefore mature enough to come to terms with some of the events, or understand the reasoning behind them - and less pleasantly, how Magvel had fallen so low. She supposed that now she could understand some of the children's motivations better, and even why she had tried to protect Arturia despite the inherently illogical nature of such a self-destructive act, but definitely nothing worth making the sixteen hour trek back to the manse. She was beginning to want to come up with some imaginary revelation to tout.
"There will be no need for that, dear. You will understand better when you grow older."
Cyrille started, but before she could turn around and ask just how the hell Kreia knew what she was thinking about, she was surrounded by shades of muted grey as her mentor's hearthstone whisked both of them back to the cottage-manse. For more trials, no doubt. Her last thoughts, before the darkness and nausea overtook her once more during the short and jarring trip, more or less concerned her wondering - in significantly less polite terms - what she was supposed to have learned.
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The third trial is stasis. The Underworld resists change. For most places in the Underworld, one can return year after year after year and see no difference in the landscape or inhabitants. A necromancer must understand this intimately.
The third trial... that one was easy, Cyrille realized. In an intellectual sense, not emotionally. She was already intimately familiar with the concept, having spent nine years in an unchanging hell as Magvel slowly crumbled. Minor aspects of life changed - the people she surrounded herself with, sometimes parts of the city's layout, sometimes daily patrol routes - but the grand structure of it all, the regular attacks and constant death, had not. It had consumed much of her childhood, and while she was no more ready to detach herself from it emotionally than when she had been nine. Perhaps she understood the world just a little bit better now, and perhaps she realized that things did not change - a far cry from her optimism at the time, unnatural and unrealistic in the face of the horrors of war.
Magvel, though... it was the same. The stench of death still pervaded. There were no more people, driven away by the hungry ghosts or the sorcerous flames that still burned nearly a decade later, but it was still the same city. She had walked its dust-covered streets by memory, seen the places she had once known so intimately that they were as much a part of her as her hands and feet. The Alcove, their longest-running base, was still there - home to vermin and arachnids, but still there. The roads were much the same, albeit with minor cosmetic differences in the choking dust that covered everything and the occasional omnicidal undead creature. The skeletons, though picked clean or with the flesh entirely decomposed, were still there.
She had always thought of Creation as constantly evolving; life and death, each day bringing forth change. Evolution. In the last few days, Cyrille had come to understand that life was not so simple, nor so bright.
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The fourth trial is infliction. Death comes to all things in time, as the Primordial War proved. And with the Underworld’s inception, death became something more frightening than guaranteed reincarnation and continuance. Now, one may languish as a ghost for centuries or even fall into the forever depths of Oblivion.
People fear death, now.
It was ironic, she thought, that she should be the one shaking like a twig in a hurricane. She had the bloody dagger held in both hands, so tightly that the coarse handle bit into the skin. She stood above him, ready to deliver the final blow - and yet it was hard to tell who has more terrified of the two. Nothing could have prepared her for this, not even all the death she'd see - to actually be the one to rip someone from the mortal coil, damn them to the Abyss eternally. There was power to be felt, but also responsibility; vast responsibility, more than a child of nine could handle.
And yet she could not back down. Not now. One of her friends' blood stained his hands, and she had been the one to ram the blade nearly up to the hilt in his back after another of the group distracted him for a moment. To back down now would not only erode any authority or moral ground she had in the group, but in effect, pardon his death. That, she could no more do than she could move the world with a thought.
In retrospect, it was little more than luck that she glanced down then, saw the combination of fear and hatred on the fallen man's face. It steeled her to bring down the expectant blade on his throat, to not stop savaging the body until the last whisper of life escaped the gaping, ragged pit in his throat.
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The fifth trial is decay. It shares a great deal with the fifth sorcerous ordeal, of sacrifice, but the necromancer must sacrifice through degradation. This loss sharpens the necromancer’s mind, opening it finally to the black wonders of necromancy. Sacrifice can be of anything, but the manner must be appropriate. Rather than cutting off a finger, the necromancer ties it off and lets it blacken and die from lack of blood. Instead of severing ties with a lover, the necromancer slowly poisons his relationship with lies or neglect, and its death is all the more painful for it.
"I already have."
She had surprised even herself by speaking up so quickly, and her mentor's upturned head and searching gaze demanded an explanation for the blasphemy. All the other trials had taken days, and this, after years of practice trying to even reach a basic working understanding the fundamentals. But Cyrille was certain of the truth of what she had said, and slowly, haltingly, it came out.
"It was - on two levels. Watching, and being a part of Magvel as it slowly collapsed over the years, was..." She trailed off for a moment, marshaling her thoughts and trying to hold back the emotion. "...That was part of it. It was not so much my own sacrifice as one that I was a part of, but... it was certainly the most obvious. And it was a part of my own sacrifice, though not of my own choosing." The girl paused, almost cowed by her mentor's disapproving stare. It was obvious that Kreia expected more than a feeble attempt to avoid a real sacrifice, and Cyrille realized that she had worded it poorly. Swallowing a lump in her throat, she spoke once more. "But, as much as it was a part of it, the - on the personal level, from within the group. More than once, we - had to leave someone behind. Watch our fellows... die. I watched the slow collapse of our group, and... a part of me died as each of them did."
As she spoke, the adept realized that she was no longer saying what she had started to say. The purport of her words had changed, and her voice was growing husky. In retrospect, it was obvious. "That is what I sacrificed. So much of myself. I am... no longer who I was. The girl that I was when I was born, the girl that I was as we struggled for life on the streets of a dying city - both of those influenced who I became, who I am, but... they are not who I am. I may never be perfect, nor understand everything, but I cannot ignore what I so blissfully ignored then about the world. Then, I did not so much care about learning as surviving; knowledge as food. I saw the world through a lens, not as it was."
"And how do you feel about that, little necromancer?"
Kreia's croaking voice startled her for a moment, but flushing with pride, Cyrille dropped her head and searched for the words to describe what she was feeling.
None came.
"I'm afraid there will be no maelstrom of power swirling around you, nor armies of the dead rising to your thoughts. That I accept that you now understand the fundamental concepts of necromancy, both on an occult and philosophical level, does not change who you are. You are no more a necromancer than you were five minutes ago; you knew the words of power and the cantrips then as well as you do now. Probably better, considering that then you weren't stammering like a halfwit." Cyrille thought she saw the slightest glimmer of a smile on the elder woman's face, but it was hidden by shadows an instant later. "The difference, little one, is purely in your mind. It is not such a big difference, yet, but you now see the world closer to how it actually is. You have the mindset to understand your power, rather than simply hurling it around like a power-hungry fool bent on the pursuit of power."
Kreia's voice instantly changed from slightly jovial to deadly serious, a hint of steel giving every word an edge. "Never forget that, Cyrille. That you are a necromancer gives you no true power - only responsibility, and just as importantly, knowledge. The pursuit of knowledge is not a means to an end. Knowledge is not power. Power is a trinket, a mere bauble, a distraction. Knowledge is an end unto itself. Never forget that, girl."
Cyrille stumbled backwards, surprised by the vehemence in her mentor's words. She struggled to find the words to reply in kind, but the old woman she had come to reverse simply gave a dismissive wave of her hand. "Do not worry about that so much now, little sorceress. It should always be in your mind, and your heart, but not on it. For tonight, we celebrate. I will prepare dinner tonight, so you may spend some time composing yourself in the garden if you wish, or freshening up, or whatever it is you young ladies do after mastering the dark arts." Kreia seemed quite pleased, though at exactly what, Cyrille wasn't quite sure. "Though I suppose there are two more circles for you to learn, in time. All in due time. And of course the other two circles of sorcery, though those too will have to wait until the future..."
Kreia departed, mumbling about something, and Cyrille was left to her own devices. Why the older witch seemed to be hinting about the higher circles of magic, she had no idea. They were far beyond the reach of mortals, and it was only due to Kreia's superb tutoring and some custom Charms the old woman had apparently created that she had learned anything. Of course, according to Kreia, she was a prodigy of some sort, but it was hard to feel like anything special compared to the seemingly endless breadth of what the woman knew. Cyrille had almost made a game of trying to think up things that her mentor wouldn't know, but so long as she asked specific questions, the hag always seemed to know, and half the time she just happened to have a book about it.
The cottage's library far belied its tiny size from the outside, but Kreia had waved it off as part of the magic of the manse. It seemed so... ancient, though. Cyrille had once asked how long her mentor had lived there, and the old bat had replied with nothing but an infuriating smile and an amused command to get back to doing the dishes.
The newly-christened necromancer shrugged, and followed her master into the cottage. Kreia was right; she had plenty of practice to do before even being able to muster enough essence to pull off even the weakest spells reliably, her own small stocks desperately in need of augmentation, and Kreia was sure to know something that would help. And the elder witch had been working on teaching her the fundamentals of sorcery, insisting that Cyrille would continue cooking for the both of them until she understood the lesson behind it - Cyrille, for her part, suspected that it was less a life lesson or introduction to sorcery and more intelligent use of non-paid help around the house on Kreia's part - so she doubted that tomorrow would be any less exhausting than today.
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If she was to be completely, unabashedly, and brutally honest, Cyrille had a gut feeling that Kreia had been lying through her god damned teeth. "Couldn't teach her sorcery," her ass; her mentor had already evinced an uncanny knowledge of the fundamentals as she taught the girl necromancy and certain kinds of thaumaturgy, and Cyrille was pretty damn sure that she had seen the old crone shape sorcery before. But Kreia had been persistent, insisting that her pupil go out into the world and do something worthwhile rather than "growing old and grey in a backwater hovel with a grouchy old woman," as she had so eloquently put it, and then pretty much kicked her darling pupil out.
That had been two weeks ago, and the platinum blonde mage was quite completely lost. The world had changed, and not all for the better, while she was sequestered away; nothing she knew from necromancy had particularly prepared her for helping people with their daily lives and she had a feeling that using dark magic to protect people would probably get her burned at the stake as a witch - or possibly a duck - so she had eventually agreed to join the Church of Something or Other, she didn't much care what, as a researcher, both for access to their libraries and tutoring, and to maybe make a difference in the world. Even if it was only by proxy. There wasn't much she could do about Magvel, but if she could help spare the world another atrocity of that scale, she'd count herself lucky.