we_bring_hell | (no subject)

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The Bar has not relented in her attempts to get Harrow to eat something with slightly more calories than air. After many false starts, she seems to have struck gold with potatoes, a vegetable Harrow has never had before.

Mashed was a success; soup went well, too. But chips--ahhh, chips. Hot, salty, taste like almost nothing at all. Harrow may never eat anything else again. After several false starts in the dipping sauce area she has made peace with a light sprinkling of vinegar. The only problem is they make her gloves and her papers greasy.

Therefore, find Harrowhark Nonagesimus at a table with her journal and a skeletal hand, drawing spirals and... God help us... eating chips with a fork. It could be worse. The hand could be feeding them to her.

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His expression tightens at that, but he tips his head, acknowledging.

"I do not wish her to go to Cloud Recesses," he says, quieter. "If her weaves can prevent you from being detected... I would like to speak to her first, but." He makes a helpless gesture with one hand. "I would consider it."

So long as he is able to ask Moiraine, bluntly, if her work will deliberately sabotage any effort to find Lan Zhan.

"I can finish my chips and shake, and wait for you here, if that's all right."

She inclines her head in acquiescence. "Of such things are allowances made. And now you have a plan, and a plan is a comforting thing, I have always believed."

"You are not alone. Neither is Lan Wangji."

As someone who has always been alone, she knows the value.

For an instant, he fears his already-shredded composure might crack altogether. His hands tremble; he forces them to stillness, makes himself breathe deep.

"I do," he says. "And it is."

And if they are lucky, Ingress will open the door on a very startled Lan Zhan who believes he has been gone from the inn for no more than a few minutes. (If they are even luckier, Lan Zhan will return, unharmed, without the need to enact any plan at all.)

"But I have burdened you enough with my worries. For several days in a row now!" He forces a smile, and gestures to the skeletal hand. "Tell me what you are working on today."

"By all means." She gathers her journal and arm and departs. She returns a few moments later, having made an emergency outfit upgrade.

She is zipping a black hoodie over her corselet of rib bones, and switched to leather gloves. Her silver athame is sheathed at her waist. The edges of her skull paint have also been sharpened and shaded.

"It is underground, correct?"

"I was inspired by your paper dolls, in fact," she says.

"My goal is to create a construct I can leave here but control even after I leave. I thought to equip it to copy written messages."

Edited 2020-10-09 02:40 (UTC)

"Well, yes and no. Some of it physically is located underground, like the trains and caves and the like. But think of it more as figuratively underground. It's where things, where time and memories and people get forgotten and end up. It's kind of like a reservoir for what went before."

Everyone has a black hoodie except her for these excursions. She needs to look into acquiring one.

"I have an old friend who'd say you're rocking that look, which means you look very nice, Harrow, definitely ready for an adventure. I'm feeling under dressed, but I like the black and white theme we'll have."

"Excellent - I do not favor brightly lit areas," she says, which, fucking duh.

"I am glad my appearance is -- appropriate," she adds awkwardly.

"Sometimes we might happen on a sunny patch, but London Below leans towards the murky."

She'll make sure they take the shadowed paths as much as possible. That won't be hard.

"Okay, so first thing, for me to bring you with me, you'll need to hang onto me when I find doors to open. You can take my arm, if you'd like, or hang onto my shoulder, hold my hand, whatever. Once we're through you can let go and be on your own, but it is a bit of physical contact. Is that all right?"

"I--of course,"she says awkwardly. "Do I need to remove my gloves?"

"Nope, just hang on. Tom never remembers to warn people, so I make sure I do. Oh, um. Other things. When we go through the House of Arch painting, it might feel weird, and you'll catch glimpses of our memories. But they're usually good ones."

She grins, excited. "Shall we?"

She takes Ingress' arm and tries to ignore the confused flutter of physical contact with another human being.

"Lead on."

She leads them to the painting of rabbits playing poker, which has grown on her, because the rabbits are really cute. She presses her palm to the canvas and opens, bringing Harrow into the front gallery of the House of Arch.

"Our house is an associative house that my grandfather built. Each room is separate but they're collected all together, and you get to them by going through the paintings that make up their portals. If you're an Opener, it's easy, but when we have guests living here, Tom uses magic to make rooms accessible. We used to have lots of guests from Milliways living here when I was small."

Harrow doesn't catch all of that. That's because she's reeling.

She was prepared for, perhaps, the deep hungry emptiness of space. The lack of the thanergy on which she depends. But this is something else.

This is not lifeless space; this is not even a colony world, ten thousand years old and barely terraformed. This is Earth, the mother of all, and on this globe is laid four billion years of life and death in an eternal ebb and flow.

There isn't a single planet in her world with this kind of history; the First House itself had all its life scythed away in one blow; it has no more life or even thanergetic unlife than any of the worlds rekindled in that same era.

She has never felt anything so complex and busy, swarming around her, a mosaic of thalergy and thanergy. She has never even imagined it. Her knees buckle and she leans heavily on Ingress.

“Oh, oh, Harrow, are you all right?” Ingress wraps an arm around the younger woman’s waist, supporting her.

“I’m so sorry. Did you see something terrible? Those things happened so long ago, it’s only ever recent memories. Usually.”

It would make sense, she supposes, if someone like Harrow glimpsed the murders of her family instead of the more mundane and pleasant memories that most guests encounter.

Harrow is almost weightless; smaller than Ingress in build, and half-starved.

She shivers. At the touch, perhaps; also because she's cold. She is used to generating her own heat. "No--I did not see anything. Everything is fine."

She finds her feet as quickly as she can. "It is simply that I have never been on a living planet before. It's so old," she says, still sifting through the Cambrian explosion.

"I do not think I can do much magic at all. At least not here."

"Oh?" He brightens -- it is far easier to smile now, his cheer no longer feigned -- and peers closer at the hand. He wiggles his fingers as if waving hello to it. "What theorems have you shaped so far? I could show you the talisman structure I use for the dolls, if it would be helpful."

"Certainly, if you wish. My constructs are merely puppets, not inhabited in the way yours are; I certainly cannot see without ocular tissue."

"The first goal is that it must be able to collect thanergy from it's environment to function, to minimize what I must pass through. Fortunately, this environment is rich in it."

Ingress doesn’t let go of Harrow quite yet, but she relaxes her grip.

“Do you need anything? A glass of water? We can sit down a moment, if you’d like; I’ll take you to our library.”

Wei Wuxian nods. Drawing out the portfolio she gave him, he slides the pen free and flips to the pad of paper dolls in the back. "The Observation Window, yes?" he says, jabbing upward with the pen to indicate. "I still hope I may learn how to access that energy someday. It would make my afterlife so much easier!"

He begins to scribble a line of characters down the front of one of the dolls.

"What is the next goal?"

"To cause it to echo my movements. Commanding it is a simple enough matter, but I wish for something more integral; for it to move in resonance with me when activated, without deliberate command. Spooky action at a distance."

"You must not worry over me," she says, moving delicately out of the curve of Ingress's arm. "I will be fine."

"But I would be pleased to see your library, I'm sure."

"Ah! That is easy enough," he says, making a swift modification to his own talisman. "Though -- I assume when you say leave, that would involve shutting the door behind you? That makes it less easy. Hm."

He taps the pen against the paper doll in thought.

"I have never actually tested whether closing the door severs the link to my own work. I've just assumed that it will. But if there is a way to... hm. Perhaps use the principles that allow someone to open a door to the inn to begin with? That is so unreliable, though."

Case in point, potentially: Lan Zhan's absence.

"Then I would be pleased to show it to you. This way," she says, offering Harrow her arm.

The library is just as 1970s themed as we last saw it, wood paneling wrapping around the bookshelves and avocado green sofas. There are a few more stacks of books on the floor, and beside one, a small, dark-headed boy sits, his back leaning against a sofa, engrossed in a book with dragons flying in lazy loops on the cover. He looks up when Ingress and Harrow enter the room.

"Auntie Ingress!" He puts the book aside and scrambles over to her, hugging her tightly around the middle. He looks about seven years old and has opalescent eyes like his mother (and Auntie) and a serious set to those eyes in a pale face that comes straight from his father.

"Hey, Portico. How is my best nephew?"

"I'm your only nephew," he says, looking up at her, laughing at their running joke. His eyes glance over to Harrow. Taking notice of the stranger, he stands up straight, prepared to greet her as a future Lord of the House of Arch, as he's been taught.

"Harrow, this is my nephew, Portico. He's Tom and Door's son." Ingress says, smiling at her grave little nephew. Portico can sometimes be too serious for his own good. "Portico, this is my friend, Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus."

If he's daunted by the name, he doesn't show it. He gives Harrow a bow. "Welcome to the House of Arch."

"My hope is that I can establish the... echo such that I need only bridge the gap for a moment, to activate it. But that remains to be seen."

"I had thought to scribe the theorem into the surface of the bone, on both ends, to establish an unbreakable link."

Yes, she's talking about the bones inside her arm as well as the arm on the table.

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