Overview
The Vigil-Carry Revenant is the lean, quick shape of the oath-line — thin through the jaw, long through the hand, the head a little high on the body, and the whole of it reading as one low line from crown to toe, built to move where the oath-line runs and to spend one word the size of a promise. It is the second of the Revenants a stranger meets at The Vigil Gate, and the one the gate keeps for the part of the gate the Gate-Sense revenant will not cross.
Habitat
The Vigil-Carry Revenant keeps the deep ground of The Vigil Gate, the chambers below the gate-wall where the soul-light runs old and the phosphorescence is thinnest. It needs three things: a gate old enough to hold the carry, an oath-line long enough to spend the word, and a soul that is being kept by the Gate-Sense line. The young revenants are set into the deep chambers, where the dark is oldest, and they learn to carry before they learn to stand, because the carry is the only mother the gate has.
Appearance
Males stand 1.78 m, lean through the jaw, with the hand longer than the mortal ideal; females stand 1.65 m, quicker still, with a longer memory of the vigil. The hide is a pale grey, the grey of the deep gate, with a faint sea-black wash along the spine that shows in the dark like a seam of old stone, and the distinguishing mark is the carry-mark, a wash of true black at the throat, the black being the oath made hide, and the depth of the black is the length of the carry. The finger-tip is a bone-white, the white of the oath made bone, and the white is the one part of the body the dark of the gate has never taken.
Behaviour
The Vigil-Carry Revenant moves fast and certain, 8 m/s along the oath-line, and it does not make a sound the dark cannot carry. It reads the gate before it moves in it: the shape of an oath by the soul it stirs, the cold of a stranger by the air that goes wrong around them, the fall of a soul that has been spoken and not kept, all of it arriving before the step is made. It is patient in a different way from the Gate-Sense revenant, patient in the way a held word is patient, and it will hold an oath in the gate for hours before spending the word, because a word spent in the gate is a word no one can see being spent.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The weapon is the oath, and the oath is the promise: the Vigil-Carry revenant carries one word, and the word does not come back until the carry is spent, and the word is the last word of the gate. The second weapon is the hand, because the oath is not always the word, and the hand that is a little too long for the arm is the word the oath is too quiet for.
Magic Alignment
The Vigil-Carry Revenant stands in the service of Brakka, the Unbroken Word, the god of the word that does not break, and its magic is the carrying of the oath — the power to make the oath into a thing the hide holds and the holding into a word. Vigil-Carry is the primary gift: the oath carried across the gate, the word spent on the stranger, and the true black at the throat that is the oath made hide, because the black is the carry made visible, and a deep black is a long carry.
Society
A Vigil-Carry Revenant walks in a deep chamber of four to eight, and the deep chamber is led by the one who has carried the longest word, because the deep chamber is the only ground in the world where the carrying is the law. The hierarchy is by the length of the carry: the one whose word goes farthest eats the soul-debt first, and the one whose black is deepest keeps the oath-mouth. The young revenants share the oath-line and share the carry, and the carry is the only school the gate has, and the school is the gate, and the gate does not grade, the gate only carries.
Culture & Lore
The Vigil-Carry Revenant keeps its lore in the carry, and the carry keeps it better than the vigil does, because the carry is the only book in the world that gets longer when someone speaks. The old revenants say the first Vigil-Carry revenant was a word that learned to stand, and the gate gave it a body because the gate had no other way to keep the carrying. They call the strays the carry takes "the ones who were worth the word," and they keep the best of the oath-mouths — the true black of the ones who were quiet enough to be a carry — in the gate, which is the finest teaching in the line.
Home
Its home is The Vigil Gate, the part of it that is below the gate-wall and older than the standing. The Vigil-Carry Revenant is the gate's second voice, and the voice is quiet in the way the deep is quiet, and the quiet is the one thing the gate cannot lose, because the vigil needs the carry the way the soul needs the word. The oath-lines are kept quiet by the young, the deep chambers are kept old by the line, and the dead are kept where the word fell, which is the one law the deep does not break.
Relations
The Vigil-Carry Revenant keeps a quiet, oath-kept peace with the Gate-Sense line of The Vigil Gate, a peace of the carried oath and the kept vigil that has held since the first stranger fell. To Brakka, the Unbroken Word, the Vigil-Carry line is the first unbroken word made quick, and the line keeps a single true black scale at the oath-mouth for the god, which is the one offering the god has asked for and never taken, and the asking is the keeping.
In the Story
In the story of the six who arrived, the Vigil-Carry Revenant is the second pale test the gate offers, the carry that asks which of them the word will keep and which of them the word must spend. It is the figure that carries the oath while the oaths are made above the ground, and the figure whose carrying is the map the war is spoken by, because the gate has heard every word the warrens have made, and the gate has carried them, and the gate is the one page in the world the war cannot set down.