we_bring_hell | (no subject)

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Harrowhark is in the bar, wearing the style of facepaint known as the Vanitas, with no lower teeth and sharp angular edges. It's good to be back in her makeup, even if the consecration was a greater undertaking than anticipated.

Although she is formally painted from the neck up, she is wearing some of the more informal clothes her room had supplied; soft trousers and a hoodie all in black. She is not wearing gloves today, because her palms are wrapped in bandages, but it is the kind of wound she is used to dealing with and it is healing quickly. The pinpricks of pain around her lips are worse, if only because it's been a very long time since she underwent the ritual of the Sewn Tongue.

She is diagramming spirals on paper, working in ink rather than blood right now. She can't spare any blood currently. She has refreshments to share, if you like faintly cucumber-flavored water and very bland, crumbly biscuits.

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"It is, although it will be interesting to see how this works with a weave or spell that is new to me, in the future," she observes. "But that is for another time, I think."

She resumes channeling and renews the weave, demonstrating slowly and carefully how the threads of Fire snake through the woven lattice at key points.

Now that they have the diagram, she finds it already effective in making marks to indicate where it weaves through.

"Hm... we need to go back and indicate how loose or tight the weave is, too, don't we?" She runs a hand over the stubble of her scalp. "And the two dimensional aspect of this part is much harder than the lattice. But did I mark the points of intersection correctly?"

"I believe so," she murmurs. "Let me just..."

Moiraine shifts her hands, manipulating the weave in three dimensions, and carefully extends it to float sideways above the diagram.

Glints of Fire shine in their pattern and reflect against the intersection points marked below.

"Ahh--no, I think I got it wrong."

"Perhaps I can try to hold it? So you can work on the notation?"

"Very well," Moiraine says.

"Place your hands against mine, like to like, and thread your fingers through the weave while I hold it."

She inhales, then carefully extends her hands to touch Moiraine's fingertips. She forces her mind away from the fleeting human contact and focuses on receiving the thalergenic magic.

She can see the fizzing corrosive edge where her own necromantic magic slowly converts the weave, and focuses, trying to pull it back or slow it. It feels like artificial respiration on a tiny living creature.

She shifts her hands, slowly pulling back and allowing the threads to slide onto Harrow's fingers in place of her own.

Rather than tie it off completely, she laces a maintenance thread of braided light from the edge of the weave to her left hand, keeping the flow of saidar steady as she studies the diagram.

Moiraine picks up the orange pencil and begins to alter the notation for the points of Fire - overwriting the ones that match where Harrow had written, and adding others where they do not.

She watches this thoughtfully; the steady flow of life into the dying weave.

And isn't this how life works? she thinks. How an organism lives? Always dying, always being renewed. Life isn't just growth. Growth alone is cancer.

She begins to feel it again--the warmth of the Light of Creation on her skin, through paint and black gloves. She can feel the nosebleed starting--and then healing, drying uncomfortably. Her jaw trembles; she knows if she says anything she'll lose it.

"There," she says, after several moments. "I think that is it."

The Aes Sedai glances up from the paper, at Harrow.

"Do you wish to pass the weave back, and check my markings?"

He dips his head in a nod. "That is for the best," he says, with a faint, wry smile, "unless I am to fetch a whole new set of robes from Madam Bar."

Mug in hand, he rises to follow the Ninth.

She nods, extending her hands.

The weave transfers without incident, and to her surprise the feeling of Light does not pass; not until Moiraine's finger tips draw away.

She clears her throat again, and bends her head to study the markings. "Yes--I think this is very definitely a starting point. I believe I can read this. Let me try something."

She grabs another sheet of paper and rapidly sketches a copy of the diagram, but this time inverts the Fire weave relative to the lattice. She imagines, based on nothing more than the intuition that suggested the mechanism of the invisibility weave, that this should return the light rather than bending it around the object; a perfect mirror.

She might be wrong; but the more interesting point is if Moiraine can even see what she was trying to suggest.

"You do know," she says, on the walk to Room 99, "that they make garments particularly for bathing. I wore one last night."

Room 99 is spartan; sufficient to her needs. There is a single painting on the wall, painstakingly straight. It seems to be a mounted jigsaw puzzle of a tower at sunset. The room, like any room long inhabited by Harrowhark Nonagesimus, smells of ink, incense, harsh lye soap, and the coppery smell of blood.

There is a skeleton on a stand in the corner and a large scrolltop desk that is nothing like a raven. There are also two white, crisp beds; the one perpendicular to the other has never been slept in, and the other one has apparently never been made. There is also a set of dusty free weights in one corner for some reason.

There is one other chair in addition to the one at the desk, and Harrow gestures towards it as they enter. She sits at the desk and toys with a pair of ivory compasses. Well. Probably not ivory, when you think about it.

Moiraine looks back and forth between them for several seconds, frowning slightly in concentration.

Then, she drops the weave that she has been holding, and begins to construct another one.

She shifts the threads of Fire slightly and settles it around the water glass, watching as the glass vanishes behind it -- and the space in front of the glass is reflected back.

"A variation on the Mirror of Mists, I think," she observes. "Invisibility and reflective illusion created from the space around it."

The Aes Sedai slants a glance at Harrow, and a slight smile curves her lips.

"Is that what you intended, with your revision?"

Swimming garments that aren't just loose trousers? Interesting! He will have to investigate later.

(Much later, probably, considering the importance of the matters at hand.)

He sinks into the proffered chair and takes another long gulp of his tea. The incense, ink, and blood is -- not exactly soothing, but familiar. It smells like Demon-Subdue Cave. It is a place of study, the beating heart of all knowledge and protection.

"I suppose I should say what Lan Zhan told me, to make sure I have it right," he says, still with care. "That you opened the Tomb when you were young; that your parents, rather than assist in suppressing the spirit inside, killed themselves. And that you are haunted by the spirit even now. Yes?"

Harrow never laughs, and rarely smiles; she does now. It is a savage and brilliant thing; the last time Moiraine saw it on her face there was blood on her teeth. This is substantially less creepy, even with the paint.

"Indeed! Truly, I primarily wanted to see if you could read a new diagram I created, but I must admit I am pleased to see that my intuition was correct."

Edited 2020-09-17 13:53 (UTC)

"I am, as well."

"If the weave is fully inverted, rather than in part," she adds, "it is also possible to hide the weaving itself."

She's not sure she understands that. "So that it cannot be seen that magic was done?"

"So that the weave itself is not noticed by others who might otherwise be able to detect it, yes," she explains. "Although I do not think it likely that I could invert myself, so the process of weaving could still be observed."

"Once you are behind such a shield, could you make other weavings unobserved? Or would that be visible to other adepts despite the visual shielding?"

"I begin to consider how I could adapt this to be invisible to another necromancer," she explains, "who could otherwise sense the energies I carry in my body, even in darkness. But I think even if I was obscured that way, they could sense a theorem in action."

"It is similar in the world where I was born. An Aes Sedai can sense the ability to channel in others who have it, or who are near to developing it. The act of channeling, of weaving, itself is even more apparent."

She hesitates for what feels like a very long time.

"I have been made aware of ways to hide certain abilities among channelers," she says, at last. "I do not think that something that would be able to be adapted for use here. But preparing weaves in advance might offer some options."

She nods. "It is no great matter at the the moment," she says. "Only trying to understand the limitations of what you had described."

"There are so many preliminary questions to be answered first; I cannot generate differentiated thanergy, nor weave it, nor am I sure that it will have the same effect," she says ruefully. "But progress continues."

"Broadly," she says; the hairs on the back of her neck stand up in hearing the secrets at her core spoken so flatly, but she clings to her composure.

"She sleeps. The Tomb still holds her, as far as I know; I only entered it. I have seen and heard things that others could not sense. I have often wondered," she lets out a little breath, "if I am mad. But if not, yes, she has accompanied me. It has faded in time. Lately it has been stronger than it has in a long time."

The Aes Sedai smiles, very slightly.

"There is much to be said for that."

She reaches for her journal. "I have learned a theorem to share the perceptions of another," she says. "I used it to see through Gideon's eyes and guide her in fighting a monstrous construct. She was able to see the thanergetic structure that bound it. I was able to speak to her mind."

"I was not able to read her thoughts; it was far more biological than that. I sensed the flex of her muscles and the adrenaline in her blood, the chaos of the temporal lobe."

"Would you consider allowing me to use such a thing? You could see the thanergetic and thalergetic signatures of the world around us, and I could perhaps experience Channeling from within. It might be educational for both of us."

Edited 2020-09-17 14:58 (UTC)

Wei Wuxian nods, studying her closely over his tea.

"I am glad the suppression held, and she still sleeps," he says. "But her accompanying you, and you seeing and hearing things others don't, makes me think a piece of her escaped. I know our necromancy is not the same. But if you were from my world, we would determine it a haunting and try to help."

A small, humorless twitch of a smile.

"Lan Zhan also told me you do not wish for help, though."

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