There's a sound like splintering wood (or perhaps more like the splintering of dead vines, given the circumstances), before a teen tumbles through a section of the vines that was not, previously, covering up a hole in the wall. If one were to look now, the hole currently present is jagged and uncommonly dark, utterly black despite any ambient light that might be present. As the young woman flips through the air and lands with supernatural grace, the dust and vine-fragments which burst forth during her entrance reverse their course, tracing the same arcs back through the air before collapsing back into the hole, sealing it back up with a gentle whoosh as if nothing had happened.

"Where the hell did Crack send us this time..." the young woman mutters to herself, adjusting her red baseball cap and brushing nothing in particular off her vibrant green jacket.

The baseball cap seems to gently tug her head towards the cloaked figure eating at the table, prompting her to slowly back away.

The woman in black finishes her food, and then looks up—and suddenly freezes when she realizes that she's never before seen the only other alive occupant of the room. Her hand, the only part of her that moves, goes to her rapier, and then she's still.

Is that a sword? That looks like a sword. The young woman quickly raises her hands in a supplicating gesture, eyes subtly searching the space for an escape route.

"Sorry for barging in," she apologizes, half realizing that there may well be a language barrier as she speaks, "I didn't mean to...interrupt your meal?"

There are three hallways leading away from this room, plus a few smaller doors.

The woman eating doesn't seem to be less confused by these statements, but at least doesn't seem any more confused. She shakes her head and gives a lazy shrug, but keeps her hand on her sword and doesn't look away.

The younger woman nods slowly, before carefully approaching whichever of the hallways is closest to her current position, backing down it while still facing the sword-wielding figure. Once she can't see them anymore, she'll turn around and start flying down the hallways as quickly as the Outfit can carry her.

Where she will quickly run into another sword-wielding woman, this time in tight-fitting grey clothing. She draws her sword and holds it in a defensive posture.

"Who are you and how did you get here?" she asks calmly.

She has, apparently, fallen into the sword dimension. "I'm Mo, and I got into an argument with a friend and his Monster sent me here," she gestures vaguely, "wherever here is."

She wouldn't normally be especially afraid of swords, the Outfit's taken gunshots without a scratch before, but given that Crack is what sent them here, there's no telling who or what might have the punch of a Monster or Freak.

The Outfit rankles a bit, at the cowardice, but ultimately doesn't put up a fight. These people don't seem obviously important, living in this kind of a dump, so losing face here isn't that big a deal.

"You don't know where you are?" Camilla lowers her sword, slightly. "This is Canaan House, on the First. No one is supposed to—allowed to—be here except us and the priests."

Of course Crack would send them somewhere forbidden. "Nope. I don't even know what Canaan House is, or what 'the First' is the first of. I'm from Chicago, if you've heard of it."

"The First House of the Lord Undying, the Resurrector, et cetera, et cetera, the Necrolord Prime... And no, I haven't heard of Chicago—one of the Cohort planets?"

Mo is unable to stifle a giggle. 'Necrolord Prime' sounds like something her little brother would call himself in a game. "Ah, so we're talking planets. Chicago's just a city. the planet I'm from is Earth. A bit unimaginative, I know."

"Hmm. Okay, so you're mystery three. You said a—friend and his monster sent you here? A necromantic theorem of some kind, involving a construct?"

"Uh...I don't actually have any idea what Monsters are, or if they're even really, like, one kind of thing. I wouldn't call Crack-in-the-Wall, my friend's Monster, 'necromantic' exactly, though."

The Outfit tugs at Mo's arm, and she plays along, bowing a bit as the Outfit's hat doffs itself before finding its place on Mo's head again.

"The Outfit doesn't really strike me as undead either."

"...I also wouldn't characterize your outfit as undead, but I suppose I'd have to ask my necromancer. I need to go find the Ninth, will you come with me? Fair warning—if you decide to follow me around you'll antagonize the Second, but then again if you're not from a Cohort planet they'll already be antagonized."

Mo resigns to the fact that, apparently, fighting is probably going to happen eventually here. She can feel the Outfit's excitement through its jacket, like goose-bumps but on her clothing. "Sure, I guess, though it'll be awkward if the lady I just met is this 'Ninth'."

Mo will drop back down to her feet and walk like a normal person as she follows Camilla.

Camilla will start walking back in the direction Mo was coming from

"Dressed in all black, face painted like a skull, carries a sword?"

Mo sighs. "Yup."

"Yeah. If it makes you feel any better, they've been some of the more helpful contestants."

"Uh..." Mo is really not sure how to parse that. "That's good to know? I think I'm missing more than just a bit of context, though."

"I guess there's no harm in telling you things everyone else here knows. The people here are eight necromancers from the eight Houses, and their cavaliers, plus a bonus necromancer from the Third House, because they are twins and figured that meant they could bend the rules. We've been invited here to try to learn the secrets of Lyctorhood, except when we got here it became clear it was less 'learn' and more 'independent study of the place the last set of Lyctors ascended'—and then the murders started. Two of the contestants—the Fifth—are dead, two more—the Seventh—are missing, and an as of yet unknown dead body was found.

"I'm Camilla. Cavalier of the Sixth."

Mo sighs again. "It really is just like Crack to drop me into a mess like this. Where did it even find this place..." she mutters under her breath, before asking, "Sorry if this a dumb question, but what's a Lyctor? And I guess I should also ask what the actual deal is with your necromancy. I'm aware of the general idea but not the specifics."

"The Lyctors were the eight original necromancers who serve the Emperor. They're immortal, and much more powerful than a normal necro, but can be killed at great effort, and we're down to four. So they decided to send for candidates from the eight Houses to bolster their numbers.

"I'm not a necromancer and they can go into much more detail, but the basic summary is that they can perceive and manipulate thanergy, death energy, and thalergy, life energy. The energy can be used to animate bone, move flesh, speak to the dead, create wards and sensors that are sensitive to certain individuals, heal injuries, cure disease, manipulate embryos—is this too basic? I don't know what they teach on the Cohort planets, I know they don't throw any native necromancers."

Mo nods along. "I don't really think I need to know the high-level stuff, there's just a lot of things that people could decide to call 'necromancy'. The gist of thanergy and thalergy makes sense, though. It sounds pretty useful, though. I can see why necromancers are so important. What's the deal with being a cavalier, then? Is it just sort of a bodyguard thing or do you have your own magic?"

"One, necromancers are physically weaker than normal humans, so having a bodyguard is important, and two, necromancers can get a lot of power out of a single death, so in large scale combat we're flint and steel to a flame. And the role is traditional, it's much more prestigious—and permanent—than a generic aide plus bodyguard."

Mo grimaces, just briefly, before schooling her expression. "Fair enough. Sounds like kind of a rough deal to me but maybe I'm underestimating the prestige." Valuable to know that necromancers tend to be the more vulnerable sort, though.

"So, what can you—"

Camilla stops when they enter the atrium with Gideon.

"Duel's off. Seventh never turned up, and they're not in their quarters. I also don't know anything about our bonus person. Let's move."

Gideon nods, stands, and turns down one of the other hallways, walking quickly, but not running. The floor is wet from the rain.

"Come on, let's follow her.

"So, what can you and your outfit do?"

"Fly, and move quickly in general, mostly." Mo levitates briefly again for the sake of demonstration. "Plus it's pretty durable, and protects me from most kinds of damage." She puffs her chest a little in a show of confidence in the face of (possibly) real danger.

"And this is common where you're from?"

Camilla is trying not to show disbelief on her face or in her voice, but she's slipping a little. This is almost certainly not necromancy, but if there was something besides necromancy that could do this she would know, because Palamedes would have researched it: therefore, this is either an unknown power or a secret one.

"I don't think so? I only know of, like, a dozen other kids with Monsters, maybe another half-dozen Freaks, and as far as I'm aware that's everybody in the city. I know the east and west coasts both have their own groups, we had a Freak from the east coast come in town one time who was trying to make a name for himself by picking on us. I can only assume other countries have some too." Mo considers it seriously for a moment. "If I had to guess, there might be, like, a few hundred Monsters and Freaks all told, maybe a thousand, for the whole Earth?"

The Outfit jostles on her shoulders, distinctly pulling her around a bit, which seems to remind her of something.

"Oh yeah. Monsters and Freaks aren't really, like, common knowledge, either. Monsters all have ways of hiding from normal people, when they aren't already pretty innocuous like the Outfit is, and Freaks get black-bagged if they're not careful about what powers they show so they're all real careful about keeping it low-key. So I guess it's possible there's more than I know about and they're just better at hiding than I and my friends back home are at finding them."

"The bad news is that appearing here rules out 'low key'. The good news is that there are fewer than nineteen people on this planet and I don't imagine they'll black bag you. The other bad news is that whoever is killing people might try and kill you."

Camilla looks like she might want to say something else but that's when Gideon leads them out into a conservatory, made nearly opaque by heavy rain, the inside fogged up and the outside covered in sheets of water. A few broken glass panels let rain in.

On the wet flagstones, a sickly thin woman with veins showing through her pale white skin lies facedown, a pair of crutches scattered next to her.

"Yeah, I think I've pretty thoroughly blown my cover. Hopefully it's not a big--"

Mo's words are cut as she grimaces at the scene. She isn't entirely unfamiliar with death, but with everyone keeping things secret back home, its rare for there to be...evidence, like this. It's surprisingly uncomfortable.

She wonders if she could fly away from here, but at the same time knows that the Outfit couldn't countenance that.

"So, is this whole murder mystery deal part of the, uh, 'contest', or someone trying to stop it?" Mo asks as much to distract herself from the body as out of any real curiosity.

Camilla will quickly kneel next to the body and turn her over. Her skin is blue and her body is slack.

And then she’ll cough up a truly alarming amount of blood and shakily breathe in a few times. She looks around, lingering on Mo for just a moment, and settles on Gideon.

"He never came back."

And then she faints.

Camilla will help lift her up into Gideon’s arms while she answers Mo’s question.

"It’s not really even a contest—nothing stops all of us from succeeding, supposedly—so our best guess is stop it, or a side effect of it—some be necromantic monster accidentally loosed, I mean.”

"Uh!" That's a lot to process in just a few seconds. This whole place's shtick is necromancy, she really shouldn't be surprised by people who look ready to be buried deciding to get up. She's already tried to be cautious about their capacity to damage her, but thinking of them as being similar to Monsters in terms of durability might be smart too. "Fair enough. Any idea who the 'he' who never came back was?"

"Her cavalier, presumably. He's been helping her around, if he never came back that would be why she's been lying here."

Camilla catches sight of Mo's face.

"Not all necromancers are this frail. She's got a degenerative genetic disorder that will probably kill her before she's 25."

"Ah! Okay. I, uh...thought she was dead, I guess. Though if this 'Lord Undying' guy is special I shouldn't be expecting people to be coming back regularly. Anyway, hopefully someone can find that cavalier."

Camilla grimaces at the last part.

"Someone found a cremated body recently. I don't think it's been identified yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's him."

To Gideon: "Come on, let's take her to her rooms and then go get help."

Back to Mo, once Gideon starts walking: "The Lord Undying is actually the only one who has ever managed resurrection. It's considered impossible, none of the theorists have any idea how he did it. She was probably just—very close to death. It's not that hard to bring people back from very close to death, if their thalergy hasn't been converted into thanergy yet."

Mo nods. That tracks, mostly, if this is a place where 'life energy' and 'death energy' are concretely measurable things. She's pretty sure that she's seen some Monsters bring back dead people, but the Outfit certainly can't, at least not as far as it's shared with her, so she'll hold her tongue on that front.Instead, she'll just follow them all to wherever this lady's rooms are. Along the way, she'll ask, "So, any chance that having someone who can fly will help with the investigation?"

"A lot of the exploration of Canaan House has been limited by which parts of it we can safely get to. Although you'll need a necromancer with you for some things—how much can you carry while flying? and we should ask Teacher whether or not flying to unreachable places is allowed under the rules...

"Sorry, that was from the perspective of helping with the original challenge we are here for, not the mysterious deaths. Hopefully your flight and durability will let you survive whatever is causing it. If you're attacked, run and gather more support. Right now we have no idea what is causing it and that's rather hampering our ability to combat it."

"I don't actually know exactly how much I can lift?If it's with just my hands..." She thinks back to the various times she's lifted her friends over her shoulders as a show of strength, before she found the Outfit and had more interesting ways to show off, "Maybe like a couple hundred pounds at most, for just a few seconds? But if we can set up a harness around my shoulder I genuinely don't know what my upper limit is."

She'll not along at the suggestion to run and gather support, even if both she and the Outfit are kind of dying to know how well they'd do in a fight against whoever, or whatever, is going around killing people.

"We should test that, but none of the necromancers here weigh more than 150 pounds, so you should be good. Maybe even a necromancer and their cav, if we're lucky. Let's plan on getting Septimus to her room and then go get my necromancer. Then we can plan next steps. Any objections?"

Mo certainly doesn't have any.

The Outfit is getting kind of bored, but not bored enough to start picking fights for no reason. Not yet at least.