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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Harrow lines up the sentence, I played hide and seek with the spirits sometimes, recognizes it as incredibly sad, and decides not to say it.

She leans closer to the niche instead, inspecting it, and frowns. "Hmm."

"These bones have been disturbed, I believe."

"I wouldn't be surprised."

For one thing, children often play hide and seek in the niches, which, well. They make good hiding places.

"How can you tell?"

"These bones are scattered and sucked dry," she says. "It's characteristic of a revenant tapping the thanergy for poltergeist energy."

Mist is beginning to drift over the stones, a sign that the temperature of the stone is dropping as well.

"There are stories, of course," she says, folding her arms over her chest again as the air chills.

"But there are stories everywhere in the Underside. Ghosts everywhere, too."

"This is recent," she says. "A Sixth House adept could pinpoint it, but... very recent."

There's a faint scratching, scuttling noise. Harrow knows it extremely well; it's the scrabble of bone over stone.

Ingress' eyes go wide at the sound, but she's grinning, not grimacing. She's not afraid of ghosts, particularly. She had one as a friend at Milliways once. Revenants, monsters, Velvets, spirits, and the like are a part of the background of the Underside.

She's afraid of the Night on the Bridge, but it's not here.

(She's also afraid of the creatures who killed her family, but she will never admit to that.)

"What's happening?" she whispers.

"I'm not sure," she says. "At least one spirit is active. But I wonder... the temperature drop suggests either one very strong spirit or--"

It's strange coincidence that the first niche she chose was disturbed. She moves quickly to the next niche, brushing her hand over the stone with a wince. "Ahh." She looks back at Ingress, her lips tight. "Interesting."

"What?"

If it's too worrisome, she should probably let the Marylebone know. In... a little while anyway, after her pressing business is complete.

Ingress draws her sword. Just in case.

"More than one spirit."

Rather than checking the next niche, she selects one at random, moving across the stone and through the swirling, rising mists. More scraping and scuttling is audible, echoing in the hollow catacombs.

Harrow kneels at the next niche. "Perhaps many more than one."

"I'd hate for the poor people of Marylebone to be troubled by ghosts in their crypts. Maybe we should inspect the catacombs while we're at it. Who knows what might have risen to the first level."

She points towards a dark corner where a winding, cobwebbed staircase leads to the entrance of the catacombs.

She nods, and strides towards the stairs. She's cradling her elbow in her hand.

As they move down the stairs, she can feel the ambient thanergy climbing; it reminds her of her ears popping as the shuttle left the atmosphere on Drearburh. The fog is pouring down the stairs with them. "It feels less... angry than I'd expect from a mass uprising."

The scuttling sounds grow louder as they descend, and then, as they reach the catacombs, they stop abruptly. Eerie silence falls over the catacombs. Even Harrow's night vision isn't equal to the dark depths.

Bones are embedded in patterns throughout the arch of the lintel, and the catacombs are dark. Darker, perhaps, than she remembers.

She looks round and strides over to a torch mounted on the wall. She takes out her tinderbox and sets it alight.

"We can carry that with us. Will you need both your hands free should there be a bother?"

A bother.

A sharp-edged smile crosses Harrow's painted face. The other woman's bravery and toughness sparks something, half memory and half desire.

"You should keep your hands free," she says. "I will not need my left hand as much." She holds out her hand as she looks around. "What a beautiful space."

But disturbed. The energy here is restive, turbulent.

"I think I'll keep my sword in hand," she says, handing over the torch. "I don't have magic to call on should I need it."

But she absolutely has her sword.

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--"