(no subject)

[we_bring_hell]

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.

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

"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?"

[acrookedpath]

"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.

[we_bring_hell]

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?"

[acrookedpath]

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."

[we_bring_hell]

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?"

[acrookedpath]

Well, hopefully no other cultivators will arrive at the inn and decide to try animating the table!

"I will try," he says. As always, the surest way to distract Wei Wuxian from his darkest thoughts is to present him with a new challenge; his eyes are alight with fresh enthusiasm as he ignites a spark of red energy between his fingertips. With a flick of his wrist, it leaps toward the bone and streaks down the line of characters.

It is --

It is not impossible. But as the spell activates, it immediately becomes clear to Wei Wuxian that bone is not the ideal medium for a talisman. It is sluggish, like wading through knee-deep mud, where an ordinary talisman would be as easy as sprinting across an open field. Perhaps it is only because of the density of the material, he thinks. Bone is far heavier than paper.

With effort, he turns over his hand. The skeletal arm turns with it, resting palm-up on the table, and snaps its fingers with a muted click as Wei Wuxian snaps his own.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow never laughs and smiles infrequently; but the gleam in her eye is a good as a grin. "It works."

"Is it tied to you forever? Or can I take control?"

[acrookedpath]

After years of translating Lan Zhan's minuscule expressions, he knows a not-really-a-grin when he sees it. He beams back at her, wiggling the arm from side to side as if waving.

"I have never tried to hand control of a talisman to someone else," he says. "I wouldn't know where to start. But it is always worth trying, if you have any ideas!"

[we_bring_hell]

"Transferring control of a construct is possible, but I'm unpracticed... not many other necromancers on the Ninth."

But she had to hand over control of the planet's corps of skeletal servants when she left. "I can definitely control it as a puppet--I'm just not sure how to take on the talisman. Hold on... this may get weird."

She has always been a mind controlling a set of bones. She does the alchemy that comes as second nature, and expands that set, tugging the arm against Wei Wuxian's control. It's like... arm-wrestling, almost.

[acrookedpath]

His first instinct is to clamp down on his own control of the construct, as if it were a fierce corpse on the verge of breaking ranks. No; it is safe, he tells himself sternly. It is only Harrow, and it is only a single bony arm.

As effortful as activating the talisman, he lets his grip on the arm slip, fraction by fraction. The glowing characters along its surface flicker and dim like lanterns in a breeze.

[we_bring_hell]

She can feel his control, indirect and different than the usual strings she would cut in a hostile takeover, whether of a necromancer or the natural owner of the limb. She tries to creep into the space he's leaving, squinting in concentration. Blood sweat begins to collect on her brow.

The characters flicker... brighten... flare too bright, and the smell of charring bone rises again from the construct. But Harrow has been practicing the regenerating bone theorem to the point of delirium, and the characteristic silvery sheen begins to spread.

At the same time she ratchets back her thanergy control until the glow dims. She can feel the unfamiliar magic trying to tap into her motor cortex, and now it is her turn to relax slowly and surrender to something that feels downright off.

For a moment the arm wobbles, caught between her puppeteering and the reflection magic, but when she stills the control theorem it moves as easily as her own arm.

"The hard part is resisting the urge to control it," she says. "Letting it simply mirror. Perhaps if--" She focuses on her own arm as an assemblage of bone, and focuses her control there instead, puppeting herself as she has done in moments of great strain. "Aha!"

Her hand, and the skeletal one, clench in triumph.

[acrookedpath]

Wei Wuxian lets out a whoop of glee. "It worked!" he crows. "Well done, Harrow. That is incredible!"

A thousand new avenues open up in his mind, theorizing how to pass control of a talisman from one cultivator to another, the possibilities such a mechanism could open -- it would probably not work as neatly as with Harrow, considering she can control the bones without a talisman, but still. Still. Oh, he will have to test this with Lan Zhan when he returns.

(When. One way or another, he will find Lan Zhan.)

[we_bring_hell]

"If it can draw its own power," she says, mind racing ahead, "then I need only actively achieving one touch, to initiate the connection. This is fantastic. I should still etch the characters--" she says, touching her arm. "You will have to help me design it."

"God of the Nine Houses; a hybrid of three magics! We are the greatest necromancers of our generation, Wei Wuxian!"

[acrookedpath]

Necromancers, plural: it still sends a thrill through him. It is one thing to create, but to collaborate, to have a peer, and to see the proof of their joined labors in front of them --

He's laughing, elated. "Yes! If I had a drink, I would toast to us," he says. "Look at the marvel we've accomplished! And I should not have to modify the talisman too much before you place it on your own arm -- oh! The portal work! Will you still need that?"

Wei Wuxian grabs the other two talismans he'd laid aside earlier.

[we_bring_hell]

"I would be pleased to see it; I have been studying a different method, but I am unsure I will ever be able to reliably reproduce it."

[acrookedpath]

"Right, yes, so -- "

He pushes them across the table so she can get a better look. They are far more complex than the paper doll -- and now skeletal arm -- talisman, with multiple columns of characters and sigils woven in between.

"It is not as straightforward, but to break it down to its most simple, this -- " indicating the first column of the first talisman -- "sends out a call to this." Pointing to the last column of the second talisman. "And all of this in between works to draw them toward each other as a compass points north, regardless of distance or what features may lie in between. It is meant more for quick travel, so the portal it creates cannot stay open for long. But it might serve as a basis for calling to the arm from Canaan House?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Hm - yes I see. And indeed, putting out the call is truly all I need, if the synchronization works as I hope. But have you been able to draw such a talisman for Milliways?"

"The element it seems would be most problematic is that you must find the other symbol not just in space but in time."

[acrookedpath]

"I haven't," he says with a sigh. He scratches the back of his head with the end of the pen. "If I had, I would not be so worried about Lan Zhan finding his way back here. And I think you are right -- it needs several layers of precision to land properly. Far more than simply distance, as it would back home."

He blows a loose lock of hair out of his face.

"I will think on it. I'm certain it can be done."

[we_bring_hell]

"Other magics can do so," she broaches. "But lack the, ah, portability and simplicity of your talismans. Perhaps we can use your methods to those portals more biddable, or learn the details necessary to target such a place."

[acrookedpath]

"Perhaps."

He's still looking down at the teleportation talismans, idly tapping the pen against the rightmost one.

"Moiraine's cultivation?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Yes," she says calmly. "She is willing to teach me the weaves, but I still cannot originate the energy without her assistance. And she cautions me it is dangerous."

"A hybrid approach may prove fruitful."

[acrookedpath]

He nods. It takes another moment before he looks up at Harrow.

"I would ask that you not share any of my necromancy with her," he says, quietly. "I am glad you have learned much from her. But I still do not trust her not to harm me."

[we_bring_hell]

"I can do that easily," she says. "I would not consider it mine to teach. The secrets of each House are their own."

[acrookedpath]

At this, Wei Wuxian visibly relaxes, halting the incessant clatter of the pen against the talisman.

"Thank you," he says, not much louder than before. "I greatly appreciate it, Harrow."

He wants to ask: has she harmed you again? He swallows it back. Harrow has made it plain that Moiraine's aid is worth the risk, and that the bond the two women share is not one easily severed.

[we_bring_hell]

She shakes her head. "It is your right to ask, as it is your right to mistrust her."

Even if she doesn't understand why. She doesn't understand how Moiraine could see a taint on him that is not on Harrow, both a more powerful necromancer and an objectively worse person (in her opinion). She doesn't understand why Wei Wuxian hasn't been able to make peace with someone who she is certain means him no harm. But she doesn't have to understand.

"I suppose you have much practice at being caught between in such a way," she says, thinking of Lan Wangji and his duty to Gusu Lan and his loyalty to his beloved Wei Ying.