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Now up on AO3, Chapter 36 of TILL WE HAVE CASES: “Of the Darkness before Dawn and What Befell Within It”

The latest (22.5K word) chapter of Till We Have Cases is now up at AO3.

Please note: the last update of TWHC was on May 14, 2016. It’s good to be back! For those interested, some very apologetic notes on the Not-So-Great Hiatus are here.

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In Chapter 36: In the lavish Egyptian home of the two demigods who are prime suspects in the ancient world’s most notorious serial murders, the Consulting God and Prince Iaon have staked their lives on an undercover operation to bring the murderers’ centuries-long killing spree to an end. Hidden somewhere in the House of the Lilies is crucial evidence that will bring the criminals to justice and release the souls of forty-nine unjustly condemned Danaïds from Hell.

But though the God’s deductions have led him to the evidence he and Iaon seek, bad luck has betrayed the Consulting God into their suspects’ hands. Now the suspects—the fiftieth Danaïd, Hypermnestra, and her husband Lynceus—have used their favorite murder weapon, a drug out of ancient myth, to render the God helpless and obedient to their will. He’s now the bait in a trap meant to lure Iaon to the same fate they’ve planned for the God: a one-way trip to the Houses of Hades…

The space around Iaon was changing—slowly going pallid, the light now fading, slowly being sucked away by some deep underlying dimness like water into sand. Everything around them was going wan and drear, going chill… Iaon shivered. The very walls were fading away in the dimness, mists wreathing in through where they’d been, lying heavier all around with every moment that passed.

Even before piercing through to this place, Hypermnestra said, as the God was reading my heart, so the drug laid him open for me to read his. I had time to learn much of his secret mind—things he was unable to conceal. There’s one thing the Consulting God does greatly fear, I’ve learned. And it’s your fear, too! Which makes it doubly delicious…

Warnings for mind control of captured deities, canon-typical violence, journeys through liminal states, seriously angry BAMF princes, spilled ichor, and subterfuge.

Holmsie Award 2014 for Best Long Fic / Slow Burn

Till We Have Cases is a BBC!Sherlock AU fic set in the post-Trojan War Bronze Age of ancient Greek myth. In this fusion with the classic love story of Eros and Psyche, a dangerous young god with a gift for deduction is sent to put a stop to the lifesaving ways of a warrior-prince with healing hands. But all of a sudden Prince Iaon has moved into the Consulting God’s flat on Mount Olympus and they’ve started solving crimes together. And what follows after that is, well, somewhat unexpected.

Warning! Till We Have Cases contains: Greek wines, mythology running amok, embedded casefic, industrial-strength smut (from around chapter 19 on), the birth of firearms discipline and other freeform but entirely justified anachronism, body parts (some still splendidly, if not magnificently, in use), and True Love tested to destruction… and final triumph.

Notifications about updates, as well as maps, notes, and other reference material can be found at The Lotus Room.

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Notes on Chapter 36 of “Till We Have Cases”

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First of all: It’s been four years since this fic updated.

That was…really NOT how things were supposed to go. And I’m so sorry to have kept everybody waiting so long.

The combination of circumstances that led to this very UN-Great Hiatus would, at the end of the day, just wind up sounding like a litany of Inexplicable Weird Shit: life stuff, family stuff, Real World stuff, all conspiring to keep me away. But at last everything quieted down enough for me to start getting back to grips with this work. (And to overcome the awful guilt for it having taken so long.)

Lest anyone wonder if the coronavirus situation contributed to this improvement in local circumstances, in terms of making more time for writing: I only wish. Paradoxically, real-life stuff surrounding the ‘Rona has conspired to make life more busy for me, not less. Yet here we are, and here is chapter 36 for you: 22.5K words, the WP program says.

(Please also note that there’s been a slight change in chapter numbers and numberings. There will now be 49 chapters and an afterword.)

And what comes next?

Well, first of all, I have no idea when the next update will occur except “soon” – later in July 2020, I hope. What I most need people to know at the moment is that (a) I have no intention of abandoning this fic – I have approximately another 80K of it complete already, from ch. 37 through to the end – and (b) that I’ll do my best to be more frequent about updates, a LOT more frequent in view of recent history, despite the depredations of the coronavirus and everything else that’s been going on nationally and internationally. This piece of work is very dear to me, and I’m as eager to see the ins and outs of how it all comes out as I assume a lot of its other readers are.

My endless gratitude goes out to those who have read it and kept reading it – what there was of it – despite its being a WIP and despite it having languished so long with no sign of continued activity. I treasure your fidelity; you are my fixed points (as the man says) in a changing world. Thanks again, so much, for sparing this tale your time. I hope so much you enjoy what’s to come.

And now back to it.

…Finally, a note imported from the chapter 35 notes, for convenience’s sake:

Nepenthe: …Nothing whatsoever to do with Edgar Allen Poe (the major reference left to the word in English). νηπενθές is a compound word: νη / ne, “not”, and πενθές deriving from πένθος, penthos, “grief, sorrow, or mourning”. It is the world’s first substance specifically described as an antidepressant…but powerful well beyond anything known today.

The drug is first mentioned in Odyssey book 4 lines 220ff, when Helen puts it in the wine for herself, her husband and their visitors (Odysseus’s son Prince Telemachos and his friendly escort and fellow-prince, King Nestor’s son Peisistratos Nestoridês) after the conversation turns rather sad. The passage says:

Then the noble Helen had an idea. While seeing to the bowl where their wine was mixed, she put in a dose of nepenthe – a drug able to lull all pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness of every sorrow. Anyone who drank wine that had been so mixed would feel no sadness all that day: not even if his mother and father died, not even if someone killed his brother or his only son right in front of his eyes. That was just one of a number of marvelous drugs the Queen possessed, given her by Polydamna the daughter of Thon, an Egyptian woman. For in that country the fruitful Earth brings forth all kinds of medicinal plants, some helpful and some deadly. There every man is his own doctor, and there they’ve become skilled in the healing arts far beyond the ability of most mortals; for they have the blood of Paeion the Healer in them.

There has, as one might expect, been endless conjecture over what nepenthe actually was. Various writers and analysts have tried to identify it with hashish, opium, henbane, and even coffee, but no one has any realistic idea of what Homer was thinking about. The temptation to label it “100% plot device” is strong, but it doesn’t particularly drive the plot, so that doesn’t work either.

Hypermnestra’s mention of the plant eaten by the lotophagoi, the Lotus Eaters of the Odyssey, is interesting in that many mythology-oriented botanists and historians have spent a good while attempting to identify just what plant was growing on their island. (At least one source claims that the word lotos can be translated as “clover” and suggests that the lotophagoi were early vegetarians.)

At any rate, the description in the Odyssey makes it plain that the Lotus Eaters’ plant was at the very least immediately psychoactive and intensely addictive. It has occasionally been associated with the eastern “blue” lotus, Nelumbo nucifera, as well as the Egyptian blue water lily, Nymphaea caerulea. While both have mystical associations, neither seems to be pharmacologically active, though some sources claim N. caerulea was used in Egypt for shamanistic inductions.

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Scythian Gold Goryt Overlay, 4th Century BC

Found in the Chertomlyk Barrow near Nikopol, Dnieper Area, Russia. A goryt is a carrying case for both bow and arrows (diagram).

Ancient Scythia was centered on the Pontic-Caspian steppe and ranged from modern Kazakhstan to the Baltic coast of modern Poland and to Georgia. The identities of the nomadic peoples of the steppes is often uncertain, and the term “Scythian” should often be taken loosely. In the earlier period Scythian art included very vigorously modeled stylized animal figures, shown singly or in combat, that had a long-lasting and very wide influence on other Eurasian cultures as far apart as China and the European Celts. As the Scythians came in contact with the Greeks at the Western end of their area, their artwork influenced Greek art, and was influenced by it.

The Scythians were known for their horsemanship and the equipment of a Scythian warrior was minimal, limited to what could be carried while riding or in hand-to-hand combat. Their abilty to launch a sudden attack and withdraw quickly was their best defense, hence their light weapons, easy to handle (e.g. a bow and arrow, a sword, and possibly a shield).

Source: hermitagemuseum.orgart

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Till We Have Cases

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