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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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."

"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)

"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."

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."

"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.

"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.

Wei Wuxian, who does not really -- as the Ninth House would say -- do bones, glances up from his work with a small furrow between his eyebrows.

"Both ends?" he asks. "You mean -- "

He waves the pen toward Harrow's flesh-and-blood arm.

"Indeed," she says. "It is a minor enough working compared to some I have done."

"Huh." He quirks his eyebrows, intrigued. "I would not have thought of that."

Granted, Wei Wuxian's upbringing means he winces at the idea of even trimming his hair, let alone carving theorems into his bones.

"But it seems like it might work. It could give the link enough power to surmount whatever severing a closed door might attempt."

Edited 2020-10-09 20:38 (UTC)

"I have been studying as well the magic of portals," she says. "But I cannot rely on it to do more than send an immaterial signal, I think."

Wei Wuxian hums thoughtfully again, puts the finishing flourish on the paper doll, and grabs a sheet of talisman paper from the portfolio.

"A sustained portal is not easy," he says, "but a quick one, that appears just long enough to bring you to another location -- " He pens two nearly identical columns of characters on the paper, then carefully tears along one of the sheet's perforations to separate them. "Ah, but one thing at a time, I suppose. I can share that with you in a moment."

He sets them aside before pushing the paper doll closer to Harrow.

"This is one that would mirror any of my actions. Here -- " Lightly, he indicates with the pen without leaving any extra marks on the paper. "This is how any doll begins: animation, allowing it to move. Here and here," another gesture, "these tie it to whoever activates it, giving them control over its movements. And this -- " Pointing at the very bottom. " -- is reflection, to capture anything I do and echo it in the doll. For more complex constructions like I used in Canaan house, I would change the talisman there so it would hold my sight and hearing properly, rather than simply mimic me."

"Ideal for my purpose," she says dryly. And then thoughtfully: "I suppose we never tried thanergy as an activating energy."

"We haven't," he says, equally thoughtful. "If I was able to channel it into the talisman before, however poorly, then I think it ought to work. Though I wonder how the paper will react to prolonged exposure to undiluted thanergy."

And considering talisman paper is crafted for the specific purpose of storing and channeling spiritual -- or resentful -- energy, Wei Wuxian doubts they could simply replace it with the flimsy of Harrow's world.

"I cannot really... 'channel' energy as you or Moiraine Sedai can," she says thoughtfully.

"There must be a medium. But... paper is organic, at least."

He nods. "If I were to make a guess, it will probably not hold your thanergy as well as bone. But it will hold it better than ordinary paper. And if it does not work at all, perhaps the characters could be incorporated into your own work somehow."

A quick grin follows -- perhaps not as radiant as his usual grins, but he is doing his best.

"But we could sit and theorize all day and still be wrong! Would you like to try activating it to find out for certain?"

She nods, and stretches out a finger. She touches it to the first character, visualizing the cells and organic matter of the paper, and lets thanergy flow.

Something happens. Probably not what she intended.

The writing is the first to go. Ballpoint pen ink, at least, does not eat through paper as it degrades; it merely fades as if worn away by the tide.

That alone would be enough to disrupt the talisman and keep it from working, but as the thanergy seeps into the doll, and the talisman paper -- as it is meant to do -- absorbs it and bonds tight, its yellow cast abruptly deepens to a withered brown. Fine cracks appear along its surface as the thanergy gnaws apart the cellulose, burning the paper without heat from the inside out. Soon, all that is left is a blank, brittle doll unmoving against the table.

Gingerly, Wei Wuxian picks up the paper doll. It flakes apart in his hands, crumbling to fragments too small to piece together.

"Damn," he sighs as the remains of the talisman sift between his fingers.

"I killed it," she says dryly. "Rather thoroughly, too."

She worries her thumb at her temple.

"Let me see." She reaches for the radius of her skeletal arm--it slips free of the light animation holding it in place without protest--and rolls it between her hands. The periosteum peels off, becoming a flat surface that she lays carefully on the table and leaving a rod of compact bone between the untouched epiphyses.

She picks up her brass fountain pen and tucks into her cheek, drawing it back loaded with blood. "Can you draw the characters again?"

"Yes," he says; he eyes the fountain pen, but only briefly, before picking up his own pen and tearing off a new sheet of talisman paper. Mindful of his tendency toward slapdash calligraphy, he forces himself to slow down, drawing a line of large, tidy characters that should be easy enough to copy.

He slides the paper across to Harrow once he's done.

She nods and begins to transcribe the characters onto the strip of bone; it is narrow, a ribbon of osseous material, just wide enough for the vertical inscription.

Mindful of her ignorance of the language, Harrow imitates his writing as exactly as she can, in all of her brutal precision. She has to stop several times to reload the pen. When she finishes, she turns and looks at Wei Wuxian.

"Is it correct?"

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

He skims over the writing. She has copied it with such painstaking precision that it is as if Wei Wuxian himself wrote it onto the bone; she even captured a small, meaningless blot of ink in the upper corner of the reflection character.

"Yes," he says with a nod. "That is perfect."

She nods, and holds out her hand over the ribbon of bone; smoke begins to rise from the characters as the blood eats into the bone like acid etching metal. The smell is like... burning bone, nothing else.

As it burns through, Harrow dabs her nose delicately with a blood-stained handkerchief of blue silk.

When it finishes, she lifts the delicate ribbon--the characters are cut clear through to the tabletop--and wraps it back around the radius. "Perhaps the other away around?" she offers, as she fits it back into the arm. "You activating my work?"