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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The pen stills. Slowly, he raises his eyes to Harrow's; he does not speak right away.

"I will not lie to you," he says at last, quiet. "I do ask in part for my own protection. But it is protection only; I want nothing more than to spend my afterlife in peace. If she does not strike at me -- truly strike, with more than words -- then I will not strike at her."

He sets down the pen and straightens in his seat.

"But it is not only that, Harrow, and I do not lie in this, either. I want to know as much as I can about the energies of this place and the ways it can be used. To know that thanergy is not a single thread, but can be split into many?" The familiar, earnest curiosity has sparked in his eyes. "That is something I didn't know was possible. And when I still wish to know if I can safely use thanergy, or tap into the energy of the body as you do to raise skeletons or carve into your very bones -- " He shrugs, with a faintly helpless smile. "I have always wanted to learn new ways to cultivate, beyond the boundaries of what I was taught."

"I will not ask you if you thought I was dishonorable, or simply a fool," she says, ice tinkling off each syllable.

"But if I must be drawn into this conflict, I will ask you instead: why do you fear her so? I thought at first she had given offense, and that was no great surprise. I myself both give and take offense quite easily, I find."

"But it seems to me that although you say you do not want an enemy, you are determined to make her into one."

His throat works.

"You know what was done to me and those I care about," he says, no louder than before. "Anyone who will so cleanly divide the world into light and shadow, believing one good and the other evil, and call themselves righteous for it -- I cannot trust them, Harrow. Nor can I trust someone who will follow the letter of an oath but not its spirit, as she does with her edict to speak only truth. I have seen too many atrocities by those who follow every law and call themselves good, even as they slaughter the weak and persecute the helpless."

He rubs the side of his hand across his forehead, fitfully.

"And I am sure you will tell me she is different. It may be so. I accept that I may be too blinded by my own pain to see clearly. But I don't know what can be done to change that. I am sorry."

"I do not say you are wrong about her, Wei Wuxian; I think you are wrong about yourself." She shakes her head.

"You yourself believe in good and evil; it is in every word you say. To slaughter the weak and persecute the helpless is wicked. The people who slaughtered your people were wicked and deserved their deaths. My parents--were wicked. Were monsters. Monsters walk among us, Wei Wuxian, and you know it as well as I do."

"I have long feared I am one. The Eighth House, who carve the world with their tome in the way you describe, would say so. But Moiraine Sedai does not think so."

Wei Wuxian frowns slightly.

"Of course you're not," he says.

She snorts. "You say that with such confidence."

"You have not given me reason to think otherwise," he says, with the smallest shrug.

"When people say such things," she says quietly, "I feel tempted to prove I am."

"That was why I unburdened myself so fully to Lan Wangji, I believe. I was sure I could find a sin too far for him. He is such an upright fellow--even his colors remind me very much of the Eighth House."

He cracks a wan smile. "He is," he agrees quietly. "But I think he has changed in the last three years. He has become better at walking the grey spaces between."

If his seclusion had done what his uncle wanted it to do, Lan Zhan would have struck down Wei Wuxian the instant they crossed paths. That he has not -- that he has, instead, helped him, comforted him, shared meals with him --

He wrenches his thoughts on another path.

"Yet he is not a man who does not care about the difference between good and evil," she points out. "Far from it. He has only learned to find the difference for himself and to have compassion for all; to offer assistance when something concerns him, but to acquiesce at a refusal and withhold judgment unless they do real harm."

She looks him in the eye as she says: "It is a quality I admire in my friends."

Her words strike him like a rebuke; he looks away, shame twinging his belly, and manages a nod.

"I understand." He still cannot push his voice any louder. "But I am still -- wary. About what may qualify as real harm to her."

"It is your decision," she repeats. "But do not try to use me to plumb her abilities."

She worries her temple with a thumb, disturbing the paint. "I confess I do not understand how you could show 'the taint of Shadow' and not I. You are, I think, a better person than I in any moral dimension."

"I do not understand it, either," he says, a little startled by her admission. "Perhaps..."

His mouth twists.

"The clans often said that resentful energy harms the body and temperament. Yet if it does, I would think thanergy harms the body just as much. It is the energy of death -- of course it would. But." A long sigh. "We both know it is different. I should fine-tune the energy talisman array soon, so I can continue researching how different."

Pushing the pen aside, he rips his sheet of notes free of the portfolio. Wei Wuxian folds them in half and slides them across the table to Harrow.

"Here." Low. "Do with them as you wish. I acted dishonorably in my fear, and I apologize."

She considers, and slides the paper back. "It is nothing more than I learned the first time we spoke. I do not think there is anything harmful in it."

But it means a great deal that he offered.

"After seeing you gathering energy, I am truly inclined to believe that resentful energy is similar to the poltergeist energy revenants wield."

"You can only wield the energy after it has passed through the hands of the spirits; the difference, perhaps, between these chips," she says, indicating the paper cone, "and biting into a raw potato, which I do not recommend."

Midway through tucking the folded paper back into his portfolio, Wei Wuxian makes a truly impressive face of disgust, complete with a tiny blegh at the end.

"Indeed," he says -- but already, he's brightening slowly, the wheels of his mind visibly turning. "So if there were a way to 'cook' the raw thanergy, so to speak, transforming it into resentful energy -- but how could that be done if it is unattached to the energy of the spirit? I would have to attach it somehow, and figure out a way to do it non-destructively if possible -- "

He snatches up the pen again and turns to another blank sheet of paper.

"Or like bees turning nectar into honey?" she says, vaguely, because she's never seen a bee. "Perhaps that analogy is better."

She ponders, and when she speaks again it's slow. "The Ninth art of growing bone might be relevant here."

"Oh?" He looks up. "How so?"

She hesitates, but speaks on. "This is a secret of the Ninth. You must guard it."

"The trick to growing bone--the fundamental of it, at least--is that bone is a natural reservoir of thanergy. A necromancer working with thanergy can't heal, can't move it, can't store it; only convert it. You can power a cell by flipping its thalergy into thanergy, but it's like setting yourself on fire to keep warm."

"But if it's bone--as long as I have a single living osteoblast, I can wick away the thanergy into the new bone. The cell is dying all the time, but growing too, and it never tips all the way over because the overflow just soaks into the bones."

"You can set yourself on fire as long as there's always more fuel and the fire never reaches your skin."

Edited 2020-10-14 01:07 (UTC)

This is a secret of the Ninth, she says, and immediately Wei Wuxian sets down his pen. To guard it as closely as she wishes, he will not leave a written record.

As she describes the method for growing bone, though, a crease forms and deepens between his eyebrows. Not for the first time, he is struck by her brilliance, how her necromancy operates on a level far above Wei Wuxian's own. He has the same sense one would get when sprinting breathlessly after someone so much faster: he will catch up, eventually, but the faltering in between lights a tiny spark of frustration.

"So," he says slowly, trying to parse what she's said. "The new bone you are able to grow acts as a reservoir, nearly. But only because it is constantly changing as it grows. I may be able to hold onto the thanergy if I can do something similar?"

She nods. "Perhaps. You already have the ability to store resentful energy. If you could transform the thanergy and draw it away as quickly as you take it in, perhaps you could stockpile it as you do now, and the thanergy would never truly touch you?"

"For me, necromancy is about converting energy back and forth between two volatile states, to be used immediately. Exposure to that energy seems to harm you. But resentful energy is a third, stable form you can store and use safely."

"The question is, can you do your own conversion, without harming yourself. You *are* a spirit, after all."

"Yes," he says, as his mouth twists slightly again. "That has always been the bump in the road as I try to learn what will work and what will not. I do not know how to account for it when I still feel as alive as I did before, and so much of my work is the same -- but I am undeniably different."

He scratches the side of his nose.

"I have also never had the opportunity to convert energy that way. It is not as... mutable, where I am from. Once it is formed, I do not think it can be changed. So I will need to work on that as well."

"It may not be mutable," she says. "Or it may be that you do not have anyone able to convert it. The Emperor was the first of us all, and your world is either Pre-Resurrection or a different world altogether."

"But I did not just mean that you are dead. Fundamental to my education in necromancy has always been that these principles are already in action in our biology. I am already a spirit controlling a skeleton. Recognizing that, adding another skeleton is not impossible."

"You are a spirit. You have always been a spirit. If spirits are capable of turning thanergy into poltergeist energy, you should be as well. At least in theory."

Edited 2020-10-14 14:49 (UTC)

That stops his thoughts as suddenly as a gate slamming down before him.

"Huh," he says at last, gazing into the middle distance as a grin slowly spreads across his face.

In the language of memes, Harrow, you have just clobbered Wei Wuxian with a true galaxy-brain moment.

"Do you know how spirits create it? Or--you know methods to quiet spirits. Could you stir one up?"

She taps her temple with a thumb. "And could it be done without overwhelming you with the violent emotions associated with resentful energy. Again--if you could move it away as fast as you created it?"

Edited 2020-10-14 15:01 (UTC)

"Yes, that is the main principle behind my cultivation." He's near to beaming. "Stirring up resentful spirits and directing their energy through music. So -- yes, perhaps. I have wondered if it might be possible to use my own resentments as energy, if I am among the dead now, but if it does not truly matter if you are alive or dead..."

He grabs the pen and resumes his notes in a whirl of motion.

"Yes. I could start there, and if it goes well I could see about drawing from a larger thanergetic source like the Window, transforming and moving it away from me as quickly as you described. This might work. I think it might work!"

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