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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"Ah," she murmurs. "I suppose they would be part of the very structure of my being, at that."

"I have no standard of comparison," she says. "But they were deeply anchored in your lifeforce, to be certain. Fueled by your own biology, it seemed."

"And I believe I learned much about channeling differentiated magic."

She looks up to the window of Milliways and opens herself to the flood of thanergy; not a rosebud opening to light, but a wilting rose surrendering to time. She breathes in death energy, far too much, her body aching instantly, and she surrenders most of it.

She huffs out a breath and can taste on it the toxins flushed from her blood and carried out through her lungs; anchors herself on the dying alveolar cells and marries it, in her mind, to the images of air burial. The vultures pick her chest bare, and--

A breeze blows, ruffling Moiraine's hair; not a kind breeze, but chill as the jealousy of angels. It only lasts a moment, and then Harrow's nose is bleeding.

"They would almost have to be, for them to bind as they do," she says, quietly. "And they have been meant to bind unto death."

She blinks as her hair moves with the breeze -- and as Harrow's nose begins to bleed, Moiraine reaches into a hidden pocket of her gown and draws out a blue silk handkerchief, which she offers to the younger woman.

She takes it, as much for the kindness as the handkerchief, and presses it to her black-painted nose. "Ahh, the perennial problem of necromancy... the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak," she says wryly.

"Do all Aes Sedai have them? They aren't just about speech, are they?"

Moiraine nods.

"The Three Oaths are administered as part of the ceremony to be raised Aes Sedai, after one completes training and testing for the shawl," she explains.

"To speak no word that is not true; to make no weapon with which one man may kill another; and never to use the One Power as a weapon except against Shadowspawn, or in the last extreme of defense of her own life, or that of her Warder or another Aes Sedai."

"Ahhh," she says. "That explains the amygdala."

"Not being able to lie seems it would come up the most often," she muses. "But which one is the hardest? Do you secretly dream of having a forge and churning out swords?"

"I think different Aes Sedai may experience different challenges, depending on their own inclinations," she says. "I have never been especially interested in making weapons, myself."

Fortunately the Oaths do not restrict teaching people any number of destructive things.

"I have been accustomed to them for so long that I am very, very rarely limited by them. Possibly the third oath was the most recent one that I remember being particularly difficult in an exceptionally frustrating way."

"Yes, I believe that one would weigh on me as well," she says dryly.

"I've never actually ripped a man's bones out but the knowledge that I could is an ever-present comfort."

"Hopefully it will remain an infrequent, even nonexistent, need," the Aes Sedai says, dryly.

"But the wording of the oath is important. It is not to say that you cannot use the One Power as a weapon, but rather only that the circumstances in which you may do so are clearly defined."

She lets that stand for a moment, and then adds, with casual calm,

"Besides. There are often many other ways to accomplish what is necessary without weaponry."

Harrow considers this. "The Oath says nothing about what your Warder may do, and once she enters combat, her life may well be in danger," she observes.

Edited 2020-09-17 21:45 (UTC)

"For example," Moiraine agrees. "Yes."

Harrow nods in appreciation.

A thought crosses her mind, and she reaches for her journal while still holding the handkerchief to her nose with the other hand. "Moiraine Sedai, you have a wide-ranging field of knowledge and have been in this bar for a long time. I found this message on a garment the Bar chose to give me, does it make sense to you?"

Written in the journal (in plaintext, although Harrow has been at some pains to imitate some very tacky fonts), it says

𝕮𝖍𝖎𝖛𝖆𝖑𝖗𝖞 𝖎𝖘𝖓'𝖙 𝖉𝖊𝖆𝖉
𝓈𝒽𝑒'𝓈 𝒶 ＢＵＴＣＨ

Edited 2020-09-17 22:02 (UTC)

No matter the terms and cultural understandings of her own world, Moiraine Damodred Aes Sedai has, among other things, been a visitor and sometime resident of Milliways for several years, a resident of Twin Peaks, and due to her adoption-in-spirit as sister, rather exposed to the unquenchable personalities of Raven and Ace.

It has been some time since she has been this glad of it, where cultural context is concerned.

"I see," she says, and gives Bar a long, steady look before turning back to Harrow.

"You spoke of chivalry before, as I recall, when we were discussing Warders, so I will presume you have knowledge of that term. In the historical usage of it, in some worlds, there is an assumption that chivalry is a predominantly male behavioral code. There was a saying for a while in some worlds, due to a presumed or perceived dearth of politeness, that chivalry was dead and its tenets no more."

She taps the page in Harrow's journal.

"In these same worlds, 'butch' is a term for a lesbian woman, one who loves other women--"

Her Cairhienin upbringing attempts to strangle her to prevent her from speaking of such private affairs, but she suppresses it, although her color may be slightly heightened.

"--and who chooses to adopt fashion and mannerisms that might be more commonly observed among men."

Once again, Harrow's traitor ears give away her own heightened color.

"I see," she says, in a slightly strangled voice.

"It appeared in my closet when I took up residence in my room, along with the more standard items."

"Bar has a sense of humor," Moiraine tells her, and once again the serene tones are slightly dry.

"It may be a message of some sort, or simply a joke. Usually, however, her jokes are meant well."

"It isn't..."

She sighs. "Well, it's not wrong."

That's not the point, of course; the point is that wearing such a garment is an advertisement that either one is such a chivalrous person, or is fond of one. Perhaps in search of one.

"If the Bar thinks Gideon Nav is ever far from my thoughts... it is wrong."

Edited 2020-09-18 01:05 (UTC)

He breaks into a smile. It does not lift all the exhaustion; still, it is solid, unwavering.

"As you are," he agrees. "I am honored to call you a friend."

He drinks more of his tea, then digs the heel of his palm into one eye and utters a tired laugh. "Aiya, Ninth, I feel as if you deserve a secret or three from me, but I have no good ones to give."

She doesn't believe that's true.

"Would you tell me how your sister died?" she asks in a quiet voice.

His hands, where they fidget at the mug, still completely.

You did offer, murmurs a quiet voice in his mind, and he does not want to admit how much its gentle, light amusement sounds like his shijie.

"She died the same day I did." No louder than the Ninth. "The same place. Nightless City. It -- " Swiftly, he looks up. "It is a very short end to a very long story. But I will tell as much of it as you wish to hear."

She turns up one of her hands; at some point she's tugged off her gloves. It's a nervous tic.

"It might help to understand." Understand him; understand Lan Wangji; understand the undercurrents and shadows that fall over them.

Wei Wuxian nods. He casts his gaze down to the mug, with its obscenity cheerfully nestled among the bright glaze of the ceramic.

He will tell it as if relaying long-forgotten history. He will shore himself up as he should have done by the inlet.

"Until recently, there were five great cultivation sects, not merely four," he says. "Qishan Wen was the fifth. They took pleasure in their cruelty; they wanted only power, as much of it as they could gather to themselves. And they were very powerful by the end. We were able to subdue them and destroy their sect leaders, but it took enormous effort from all of the remaining clans.

"The problem was that in Qishan Wen's expansion, they forced many to follow them whom they treated just as cruelly, who were innocent of any crime. Lanling Jin -- they rose to prominence after Qishan Wen fell -- they dedicated themselves to hunting down every remnant of the Wen clan they could find. Even the elderly. Even children. I stopped some of Lanling Jin's cruelty and managed to rescue a small group of Wen remnants. Fifty in all, perhaps."

He smiles again, and it is small, and terribly sad. "We made a home elsewhere. For a time, we were happy.

"And then I was invited to my nephew's one-month celebration. Shijie's son."

She nods slowly. "So these sects... they're not just warriors and adepts like you? You have civilian populations?"

"Yes. There are servants; there are family members who may not be cultivators themselves, for whatever reason, but must be honored by their children. Qishan Wen was as large as a city."

He draws his thumb along the rim of the cup.

"Jiang Yanli, my shijie, she had married into Lanling Jin. Already they did not like me much for my crafty tricks, but when I became the Yiling Patriarch, the head of this new clan made of what they believed to be vermin, they liked me even less. A group of them intercepted me on the way to see my nephew, believing I had cursed one of them -- I defended myself with a fierce corpse, and -- "

Easier to think of Wen Ning as simply a fierce corpse. Easier, easier.

(His voice has begun to tremble.)

"I lost control of him. I don't know how. He killed my sister's husband, Jin Zixuan -- the other one you saw in the inlet, all in gold. He killed so many others. I was able to subdue him and flee, but it was too late." He wraps his hands more tightly around the mug to keep them from shaking. "Instead of letting me defend them, the Wen remnants... one of them paralyzed me, so I would not interfere, and they gave themselves up to Lanling Jin. It was too late."

He draws a shaking breath.

"They strung them up over the gates of Nightless City. I will be truthful with you, Ninth: I do not remember very much after I arrived at the gates and saw their bodies. But I do remember one thing." He raises his eyes to her, and they are bright with tears, hollow with the embers of rage and terrible pain. "I thought, If all of you think me a monster, then I will show you a monster."

"Perhaps that is why," she murmurs.

"Do not let it trouble you, if you can."

She nods slowly; her black eyes are shining, blacker than the pits of hell.

"Of course," she whispers. "Of course you had to. What else could they expect?"

Wei Wuxian has seen in her a kindred spirit; another necromancer, from a world of necromancers. But of course the truth is that she is a heretic and an outsider within the Empire. She has always feared seeing the colors of the Third or the Fifth flying above the Ninth's black; how would she react if instead they hung the bodies of her gentle ancient anchorites and devoted sisters? If they had flown Marshal Crux like a flag from the top of Drearburh?

Another myriad later and they would still be telling the story of the vengeance of the black nun.

She finds his eyes. "Tell me you killed them all."

Edited 2020-09-18 01:54 (UTC)

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