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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As they proceed into the darkness, the torch illuminates arches and walls with bones missing from the mosaics, gaps in the stone like missing teeth. She inspects the ossuary heaps of sorted bones, which are comfortable and homelike to her. But as she runs her eyes over them she feels a pang of concern.

"There are bones missing from here," she says. "Or quite a few people were buried missing large chunks of themselves. I can sense... three hundred complete skeletons, but about a dozen with missing bones, quite random. If whole skeletons are absent, of course, I would not know."

"But my guess is that a skeleton or skeletons have been assembled haphazardly from bones that don't belong together." Phalanges scrape over stone, quite close by, and Harrow swallows. She is beginning to sweat blood from asserting her power so wantonly on a thalergetic world and her elbow is burning.

Edited 2020-10-12 16:24 (UTC)

"That would make sense. I doubt very much if these remains were interred at the same place in London Above. More like this is where they've collected once they've been forgotten."

Or dug up wantonly for construction in times before anyone cared overly much about the bones being laid to rest.

"Is there something that can be done? Or should be done?"

...And is the sweating blood normal, because Ingress is getting a little worried.

"They should be at rest," she says, swinging the torch sharply but failing to catch anything in the light. In the mists, the halo of light is short, and the scrape of bone on stone moves too quickly.

"And they have appropriated bones that are not their own--they probably lacked the power to free themselves from the niches above, but these were just lying around. That is not usually approved of."

"Revenants are usually limited to their own power--what Wei Wuxian calls resentful energy. But if they kill, they can feed on that thanergy."

Scuttle, scuttle, scuttle.

"And--I believe we are surrounded."

Edited 2020-10-12 16:38 (UTC)

"Hmm. So we're in a bother?"

Ingress doesn't seem too worried, but she slips into a guarded stance, ready to act.

"Perhaps even a dither," she says, fighting to keep her right hand extended. "Perhaps we should retrace our steps towards the stairs."

"That we can do, I should think."

She begins backing up, her eyes fixed on the darkness ahead as the scuttling intensifies.

"I know I said I wouldn't coddle, but are you doing okay? Please let me know if I may assist you in any way."

"Thanergy is the energy of death. Handling it always has repercussions for a mortal being's health," she says tersely.

"You will know when I have overextended myself. My nose is not even bleeding yet."

They are making good time back towards the stairs, despite moving backwards. The scuttling remains in front of them, and Harrow has the uncomfortable feeling of being herded.

Her bootheel strikes the last stair. At the same time, a curiously light footfall lands on a step above, and then another. Something is coming down to meet them.

Edited 2020-10-12 17:52 (UTC)

Ingress will scoop Harrow up bodily and fling her over her shoulder, if she has to. The girl is light enough that Ingress bets she can both carry her and fight or open a way out.

"Right. So there's something in front of us and something behind. We can always go sideways, if I can touch a surface."

But where's the fun in that?

She nods. "Let's wait and see what's coming," she says.

The scuttling has grown no closer, only tapdancing around the edge of the light in a way calculated to unnerve.

The footsteps thump closer... closer... closer... revealing a skeleton that has apparently gathered the energy to claw itself out of its niche above. It leans forward, mandible dangling, points of light burning in its eye sockets. Hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, it says.

"It... it wants to speak," Harrow says. "Take the torch." Her right arm is too numb to go for her athame.

She takes it, holding it high.

“Oh, the poor thing,” she says. Ingress has empathy for all manner of things.

She keeps her sword unsheathed, however.

Harrow swiftly drags the athame from her belt, raises her aching, distant right arm, and slashes across her fingertips; the leather still covers the palm of her hand. It stings in a bright silver way that grounds her, and she is able to manipulate her bloody hand to reach out and grab its jaw, fingers curling over decayed and broken teeth.

"It says--"

Ingress advances, alarmed, not so much by the blood magic - that’s normal to her - but more because Harrow has stuck her hand in a skeletal mouth. She doesn’t think the teeth would be sharp enough to bite off fingers, but this is a scenario she has never dealt with before.

The revenant moans, a shattered husky scrape of sound that spills chills down Ingress’ spine.

She sticks her athame back on her belt and puts her hand on Ingress's shoulder.

"Tag. Found you."

Ingress cocks her head, baffled for a moment. She looks from Harrow to the revenant and back to Harrow once more.

Then she bursts out laughing. There may be a snort on the next inhaled breath.

“Temple and Arch. Oh. I’m not laughing at its state of being, which is tragic, but that... was not what I expected. Tag I’m it, indeed.”

Harrow does not laugh. But she does smile, an authentic, unmistakable smile, and not about killing something.

She touches the skull like a benediction, and it stumps back up the stairs. Behind them, receding skittering sounds as the bones return to their shelves and mosaics. "She played here too, as a child. And heard generations of children playing--and longed. Your words, and no doubt my presence, drove her to take finally action."

Harrow wavers, and sits suddenly on a step, rubbing her thumbs on her temples. The right leaves smears of blood. "Lady Ingress, only you could wake a revenant motivated not by rage but by a longing for fun."

Edited 2020-10-12 22:08 (UTC)

“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” she says, sitting down beside Harrow.

She can tell Harrow’s going to need a moment, and that’s fine. Ingress has moments to give. She rummages in a pocket and fishes out a handkerchief, offering it to her if she wants it.

“Well, if I’m ever bones like that, I hope someone comes along who’ll let me laugh one more time.”

Harrow pats her face carefully, absorbing the blood without disturbing her makeup too much, although the skull is somewhat blurry. The slices across her fingertips scab over under her imperative gaze, although it sends another pang up her arm.

She sags against the cold stone, which feels amazing on her hot face. "There is a skeleton inside us all," she says, a little light-headed. "And one day yours will be mine, Griddle."

He huffs a wry laugh.

"You could say that, yes. But I know that I cannot be responsible for anyone's path but my own, and I must let others walk theirs as I ask them to let me walk mine."

Which is not easy, of course. Sometimes it is nearly impossible. But when has Wei Wuxian ever been afraid of the impossible?

"Fortunately, she has not asked me to do the same, so I can share any insights I gain and you need not talk to her."

This is all probably normal. Right? And not a sign of a medical emergency in the making. Harrow needs water, probably, and rest under warm blankets.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Ingress agrees, and she pats soothing circles on Harrow’s bony back. She feels for this strong prickly girl who tries so hard to have edges that viciously slice whoever comes into contact with her. It’s a shame that blood loss and the draining effects of one’s magic are what it takes for those edges to soften.

Ingress will never tell her about her moment of weakness and slip of tongue.

After a few silent moments, Ingress lowers her head to speak softly in Harrow’s ear. “Harrow, I can take you back to Milliways from here, if you’d like. Or we can wait here a little longer until you’re ready to move on.”

She’s not sure why, exactly, that she presses a little kiss to Harrow’s temple. It just seems like the right thing to do.

Slowly, Wei Wuxian's eyebrows rise.

This could be a way, he thinks. He will not share anything with Moiraine for his own safety; if, at the same time, he studies her cultivation, enough to counter anything she may attempt on him?

It is not trust. Quite the opposite. But at least he would not feel so hunted whenever he spots her blue robes across the room.

"I would be grateful," he says. "Can you think of anything that may work for me, knowing what you know of my own cultivation?"

Harrow is cold to the touch; icy, even. Ingress would have no way of knowing isn't normal; in a thanergy-rich environment an active necromancer is a furnace, and despite her thin skin and sharp angles Harrow could usually boil a kettle on her back, if that was her idea of a good time. But right now she's an iceberg.

She does not react to the rubbing of her back; perhaps it does not penetrate her hazy perceptions that it is coming from a living source. But upon the kiss her face bursts into flames, ears fire-engine red, and her black eyes go wide.

"Y-yes. Milliways, please," she stammers. There's an ache in her stomach and from parts of her body that Harrow tries to forget exist at the best of times, like her heart.

Edited 2020-10-13 00:57 (UTC)

"Nothing comes especially to mind at the moment," she says. "I have learned little enough about the portal magic as yet."

"It is a very different magic from either of ours; almost as different as yours from mine. Yours seem to take the form of making statements to reality as to what you wish to do, with the necessary precision and information. I have a single tool--thanergetic conversion--and must wield it like a scalpel using precise knowledge of the physical sciences. Moiraine Sedai's magic differentiates into elemental energies that she must assemble in complex weaves, but their action seems almost more metaphorical, than anything practical."

He nods. Flipping to a blank sheet of talisman paper, he begins to scribble a few notes.

"She mentioned a 'True Source' to me," he says as he tries to cast his mind back to their first conversation, before Moiraine revealed her true colors. "It sounded broadly similar to how I work with resentful energy -- taking energy from outside the self rather than generating it from within."

She frowns. "I would not compare them in that way. Your resentful energy is like a more emotional, personal version of thanergy. Both of us gather energy from ambient sources, although I benefit from inhabiting thanergenic planets."

"But Moiraine Sedai simply opens a channel to a vast source of energy. She does not... scrounge, as you or I may be forced to. It is waiting for her, like Lan Wangji's qi, but external."

"I made contact with it once, when we were doing a shared working, and I collapsed on the spot."

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