"Ha! Nice."

Cute dork. 

After that, everything is pretty much just logistics...

Meanwhile -

After her sister and cavalier bully her into accepting help back to their rooms (which does result in them actually getting there in a reasonable time frame), Phaedelia starts pacing in front of her desk. 

"What's got you all in a tizzy now?"

"Lyctorhood," she says. "What they did - what the Resurrection entailed - and, a bit more minor, what the fuck is going on with the Ninth."

"I certainly wouldn't be opposed to some fuck going on with the Ninth. They are stone cold badass."

She snorts. "I meant things like 'why did Gideon know Cytherea's name,' or 'the geopolitical implications of the Ninth cavalier being God's daughter,' or 'the theological implications of a Lyctor accusing God of deception.' - We should use our key as soon as possible, speaking of. Cytherea was trying to keep us from it."

"Not until you've slept," Babs says severely. "You're skipping steps again. We don't know that person was referring to God."

...Reluctant nod, followed by a thoughtful hum. "The Ninth didn't think she was, I think." 

"Should be a point against, no?"

"It just raises more questions." She rubs at her face. "...There's something we're missing - not just with this... Incident. Something with this place - with everything."

"What... kind of something?"

"I think..."

"...The energy doesn't balance - it doesn't add up. I've spent my life studying the Resurrection - and if a Lyctor's strength is only provided by the eternal consumption of their cavalier's soul, then where does God's infinitely greater strength come from? Necromancers can become Lyctors - but how does Man become God? How does God become Man in the same moment? How does the effect preceed the cause?" It's basic, childhood theology, repeated so often it's little more than a thought-terminating cliché - She was Man, and She became God; She was God, and She became Man. "Where does the energy come from? You can't use someone's own death to Resurrect them - you can't even use a hundred deaths to Resurrect one soul. You'd need an astronomical amount of thanergy - and this place is a grave still screaming its death a myriad after the fact."

"Isn't that, like, why she's God. The miraculous stuff."

She shakes her head. "I don't believe in miracles."

"...What killed the Houses? Other planets, the Cohort flips, but there wouldn't have been a Cohort."

"...Possibly whatever caused the Resurrection to be necessary in the first place. How did humanity die?"

"Greed, hubris, a flood, a fire," Phoe ticks off the Scriptural explanations on her fingers. "And then the cleansing. So. We, uh. Don't actually know?"

"Might be part of what's missing."

"So how do we find out?"

"...Not sure yet. There might be clues in the studies, or in the Lyctorhood process itself..."

"Nothing that can't be done tomorrow, then."

Sigh. "Fine."

Hugs. "Come on, Phae. Let me take you to bed."