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[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

[herald_ingress]

She squeezes her hand once and grins as she brings Harrow to the complex of the Marylebone.

A large stone church perches on a small rise above meandering rows upon rows of monuments and raised crypts, jumbled gravestones and obelisks reaching towards a starless sky. Mausoleums and statuary dot the landscape.

[we_bring_hell]

"--ation. Ah."

God, she loves a tomb. She can feel the thanergy of a thousand years flowing into her. Deer runs; bear-baiting; churchyards. She raises her hands, wrapped in leather, and feels the preserved skin plastic and obedient to her will. It boils back from her phalanges, creating fingerless gloves, and she kneels to plunge her light brown fingers into the gravid earth.

"Marvelous."

[herald_ingress]

Ingress beams.

"Oh, good. I hoped it would be to your liking. The Marylebone, Dessa, is a close ally of the House of Arch; my foster brother, Clement of Green Park, married her when she ascended and became her consort."

Ingress leaves off that the former Marylebone came to an early and unexpected end. She suspects Hunter assassinated her as part of her responsibility to the House, but she never pressed Door for details. She knows how beastly the Marylebone had been to her, and, well. Sometimes terrible things happen for good reasons.

"If you'd like to practice your powers, we ought to at least let her ladyship know we're here, but Dessa won't mind."

[we_bring_hell]

"This is the first place I've stood in this world that felt--right," she says, rising from the ground and brushing the earth from her fingers. In the starless dark so reminiscent of home, the black iris of her black eyes widens.

She pulls herself into her most formal and correct posture, the one that makes easy to understand her diminutive height and wraith-like proportions. She unzips her hoodie and lets the white bones of her corselet shine in the dimness.

She touches Ingress's shoulder. "Is my makeup in place?"

[herald_ingress]

"Yes. You look very proper, not a smudge."

Ingress regards her a moment, realizing how more fully herself Harrow suddenly seems. How at ease, even with the formal stance.

"Quite lovely," she assures her, because it is the truth.

[we_bring_hell]

She thinks: A slightly cruel jest, for Ingress. But then, perhaps she is owed for being so prickly.

She smiles thinly, brushes an invisible imperfection from her black jeans. "The Marylebone, is her title? Let us present ourselves."

[herald_ingress]

Ingress almost lets a worried look cross her face, but she wards it off with a non-coddling smile.

"She holds court in the sanctuary. This way."

Ingress strides off again, letting Harrow follow her up the rise. She greets the knights standing guard at the portcullis between the graveyard and the churchyard, and they let them through.

The inside of the church contains a long rectangular table with many chairs - a table for state occasions and diplomatic sessions, with nothing to do with any kind of worship. There is nothing on the altar but a tattered and very comfortable looking plaid armchair, in which a dark skinned young woman in a yellow dress and bright red lipstick sits, crooning to the young man kneeling at her feet, his hands wrapped around hers. The way their faces tilt towards each other, how they smile without speaking - it is clear that they are very much in love.

"Marylebone, oh magnanimous and thrice-blessed lady, I request an audience," Ingress calls out, and she waves at the couple, who turn to face her with smiles.

Clement rises to his feet, letting go of his wife's hands rather reluctantly, even though he hasn't seen Ingress for a long time. They greet with a hug and Dessa watches them fondly.

"I suppose I shall grant you one, Lady of the House of Arch," she smiles. "It's lovely to see you, Ingress. Who've you brought?"

"Marylebone, I am pleased to introduce my friend, the Reverend Daughter Harrowhark Nonagesimus. She's from a world beyond London Above, one that is not dissimilar to your fiefdom."

[we_bring_hell]

A lot of smiling is happening; Harrow smiles infrequently, and never laughs. What she does do is bow deeply, exactly as correct--no more and no less--than her bow to Portico. In her most sepulchral tones:

"I am Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Black Vestals of Drearburh, heir of the Ninth House. The Ninth House greets the Marylebone with all honors, in the name of the King Undying of the Nine Houses. May there be friendship between us."

"I am a keeper of Tombs and a master of crypts, born to cold and dark and stone and ash, far from the light of Dominicus. I had not hoped to see a true necropolis here, in the verdant cradle of our race. It has been to me a little homecoming. I thank you for the privilege."

[herald_ingress]

Dessa raises her eyebrows, impressed. Such manners!

"Now that is a way to be greeted. Well met, Heir of the Ninth House," she says, nodding in deference to Harrow. "You would indeed seem to be in the right place, and I welcome you."

Ingress steps forward. "Marylebone, I was wondering whether we might have your permission to enter the crypt and, perhaps, the catacombs. We'll leave everything as we found it."

"Do not stray past the first level, of course," the Marylebone warns. "Please enjoy what my fiefdom has to offer. However Clement and I can't go with you as we have, ahem, pressing business to attend to."

Clement's ears go pink, and Ingress hides her snicker. She knows all about this kind of pressing business. Once she grew up, she realized that Tom and Door often had these kind of "appointments" on a semi-regular basis.

"We'll be fine on our own. Thank you, so much, for your kindness and welcome." Ingress drops into a curtsy, gives Clement a teasing side eye, and says with a perfectly straight and innocent face, "May your business be conducted smoothly and with great success. I shall make time to visit another time, when we our schedules match better."

Dessa gives them a final nod, and Ingress regards Harrow once again. "Shall we?"

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow, ever the prude, stiffens at the not-very-subtle subtext. "By all means," she says quickly.

In a low voice she asks Ingress, "What is in the lower levels?"

[herald_ingress]

"Something very secret or very deadly. Probably both."

She leads Harrow to the passageway where stairs will take them underground.

"The first level is massive, though, so even if we wanted to explore the other levels, I doubt we'd have time."

[we_bring_hell]

"No fear," she says, even as her sense probe deeper underground searching for the organized thanergy of the undead.

"For my experiments, it would be helpful if you could Open a gateway to Milliways. Even a pinhole will do -- indeed, in some ways the smaller the better. Is that possible?"

[herald_ingress]

"I think I can manage that. How close do you need me to be to you?"

She opens and flexes her hand a few times. It's been a minute since she's opened between worlds, but she's in a groove now.

"Just let me know what you need and where."

[we_bring_hell]

"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.

[herald_ingress]

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.

[we_bring_hell]

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?"

[herald_ingress]

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.

[we_bring_hell]

'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?"

[herald_ingress]

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

"Did it work?"

[we_bring_hell]

"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.

[herald_ingress]

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."

[we_bring_hell]

"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."

[herald_ingress]

"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."

[we_bring_hell]

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."

[herald_ingress]

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