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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"Nearby--eventually I must develop the theorem to do so on my own, but this will help prove the concept."

She inhales slowly and focuses on the thanergy ambient to the graveyard and in the deep, deep reservoirs of her bones, resonating with the symbols carved in the skeletal arm back at Milliways.

She folds her arms in front of her and leans back against the stony space in between shelves of dusty remains. She always likes learning new things and observing different skills and magic.

She's smiling fondly as she watches.

She has not yet etched the characters into her own bones, or even properly inscribed the arm. It's just a proof of concept. But... is she imagining that she feels an echo? A sense of being in two places at once from the shoulder down? She feels--or imagines she feels--the resistance of the unactivated magic picking up the resonance but refusing to respond.

Only one way to check.

"If you can open the portal, please?"

She steps away from the wall, pressing her palm against it. Opening a door and not going through, or not sending something through, is a bit of a trick. It requires a great deal of focus. She closes her eyes, breathes deeply, and feels for the door that wants to open to Milliways. A smile slips onto her face as she concentrates on her sense memories of the place - the smells, the tastes, the warmth of the hearth - and soon enough, there is a click inside her head and a small hole in the wall.

"Okay," she whispers, her hand hovering close to the opening, just in case it closes before she wishes it to.

'Sending' energy is the real problem; that's not really how thanergy works. It's more of a punch than a touch. She feels a burning ache in her own arm as she nearly rots a hole in her radius, but suddenly--yes--the skeletal arm is moving. She can't see it but she's sure it is.

No fine control; she waves her arm and imagines it flopping around in her room, spilling off the desk.

"Good," she says. "Close it?"

Edited 2020-10-12 02:37 (UTC)

She does so, a wave of her hand over stone, and she steps back, breathing harder than before.

"Did it work?"

"I believe so." She moves her arm again. "I believe it continues to. I will have to incorporate an off-switch. Sloppy."

She has not built in the self-powering theorems, anyway, extracted from the larger theorem for regenerating bone. "It will use up its supply of thanergy and I will return to a pile of ash, but the location of the ash pile should be indicative."

She rubs her elbow; her right arm is clearly tender.

She bites her tongue before she asks "Are you alright?" She promised not to coddle! Ingress tries to keep her word.

"That's great, Harrow. I'm pleased I could bring you here where you could make it happen."

"Yes--when I try to use it in seriousness, I should be somewhere with a steady supply of thanergy, but I do not wish to return to my world right now to test it. Things are in a delicate place. I appreciate your assistance.

"Do you think it would be politic to view more of these crypts... recreationally? That is, for 'fun'?" she says dryly. "I would not give offense to your neighbor."

"I played down here often with the other children in the compound," she grins. "It would be fine for you to view whatever you wish."

And then, because she cannot resist, she continues, "Especially if it would be for fun."

She sweeps towards one of the niches of the mausoleum. "When I was a child I learned much of my history from such crypts on the Ninth. It was... diverting."

"We played hide and seek," she says. "I was a bit old for it, but the little ones liked it well enough."

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.