(Update: all quotes from GTN are now in the bot! I'll move onto HTN right away. I apologize for how long it's taking; my only defense is that I have been off my ADHD meds for over a month lmao)

“I now possess the competencies required to ride another living soul. I’m perhaps even more interested in what I’ve learned from the theorem behind the construct.”

That evening, it was funny to see Harrow fuss. She put on her best and most senescent Ninth robes, and became a skinny black stick swallowed by night-coloured layers of Locked Tomb lace.

“You’re too forensic.”

“That depends on what the favour is.”

A rubber-bodied toddler with a painted face and very red hair lay dead beside your knee and for some reason it was this that destroyed you, it was this that kindled within you something you had no hope of defending against.

The Saint of Duty exploded outward as your construct emerged from his abdomen. Your soup was watery and mediocre, as soup went, but as a delivery method for gelid explosives—marrow rendered through so much water as to not pass comment—it was perfect.

You grieved the loss of your diary from Canaan House, but your things had been filtered through Ianthe back to you, which meant that all you got was a small supply of sacramental paint and your old clothes.

As Harrow smouldered with hatred, Gideon began to enjoy herself.

From whining speakers set in each corner, Harrow cried out. It wasn’t a noise of annoyance, or even really a noise of surprise—it was more like pain;

She had always thought—when she bothered to think—that Harrow would feel cold, as everything in the Ninth felt cold. No, Harrow Nonagesimus was feverishly hot.

You were on a steel-frame balcony overlooking a field of hundreds and hundreds of oblong boxes.

Ianthe ended this startling speech by chucking you under the chin. You were too outraged and befuddled to dodge her.

But you pressed: “Lord, it’s not certain that I’m going to die.”

The glove fell away in hunks, dwindling into fine sand before it even hit the ground, and Harrow yanked her hand back to stare at its sad puckered appearance a third time.

You had been laid in a pew halfway down a small, exquisite chapel. Now that you could look, you recognised the tender and yellow light as that which came from hundreds of candles.

The Ninth House necromancer flushed nearly black.

Look upon me as a Harrowhark who was handed the first genuine choice of our lives; the only choice ever given where we had free will to say, No, and free will to say, Yes. Accept that in this instance I have chosen to say, No.

You were so afraid she might touch you. You were so afraid anyone might touch you. You had always been afraid of anyone touching you, and had not known your longing flinch was so obvious to those who tried it.

Harrowhark lowered the paper to a long silence; a real silence, without even the hint of a prayer knuckle clacking or a skeleton’s jaw falling off.

Your body was numb to grief; perhaps you had felt it once, but you did not feel it anymore.