(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 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.

[acrookedpath]

He huffs a wry laugh.

"You could say that, yes. But I know that I cannot be responsible for anyone's path but my own, and I must let others walk theirs as I ask them to let me walk mine."

Which is not easy, of course. Sometimes it is nearly impossible. But when has Wei Wuxian ever been afraid of the impossible?

[we_bring_hell]

"Fortunately, she has not asked me to do the same, so I can share any insights I gain and you need not talk to her."

[acrookedpath]

Slowly, Wei Wuxian's eyebrows rise.

This could be a way, he thinks. He will not share anything with Moiraine for his own safety; if, at the same time, he studies her cultivation, enough to counter anything she may attempt on him?

It is not trust. Quite the opposite. But at least he would not feel so hunted whenever he spots her blue robes across the room.

"I would be grateful," he says. "Can you think of anything that may work for me, knowing what you know of my own cultivation?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Nothing comes especially to mind at the moment," she says. "I have learned little enough about the portal magic as yet."

"It is a very different magic from either of ours; almost as different as yours from mine. Yours seem to take the form of making statements to reality as to what you wish to do, with the necessary precision and information. I have a single tool--thanergetic conversion--and must wield it like a scalpel using precise knowledge of the physical sciences. Moiraine Sedai's magic differentiates into elemental energies that she must assemble in complex weaves, but their action seems almost more metaphorical, than anything practical."

[acrookedpath]

He nods. Flipping to a blank sheet of talisman paper, he begins to scribble a few notes.

"She mentioned a 'True Source' to me," he says as he tries to cast his mind back to their first conversation, before Moiraine revealed her true colors. "It sounded broadly similar to how I work with resentful energy -- taking energy from outside the self rather than generating it from within."

[we_bring_hell]

She frowns. "I would not compare them in that way. Your resentful energy is like a more emotional, personal version of thanergy. Both of us gather energy from ambient sources, although I benefit from inhabiting thanergenic planets."

"But Moiraine Sedai simply opens a channel to a vast source of energy. She does not... scrounge, as you or I may be forced to. It is waiting for her, like Lan Wangji's qi, but external."

"I made contact with it once, when we were doing a shared working, and I collapsed on the spot."

[acrookedpath]

The pen slows for half a heartbeat at the mention of Lan Zhan; in short order, he returns to himself and resumes scribbling.

"I see," he says. "And -- you mentioned elements. I assume she is able to divide the energy somehow, once she has retrieved it?"

[we_bring_hell]

"It seems to be an intrinsic differentiation of the energy; there is no such thing as a neutral weave, so to speak. To use it, it must be in one of these forms, and they are all equally available from the... stream, I suppose. She spoke of it as a river."

"I find that deeply interesting, because thanergy has, as it were, only one form. It kills and decays, as it did your paper man. Yet with her assistance I have been able to explore, perhaps, different ways of thanergy."

"She calls her power also the Light of Creation, and although she has been uneasy about necromancy before, I believe we have come to understand one another; that life and death are both facets of Creation itself, and that all things must move from one state to another in their time."

[acrookedpath]

Moiraine has always seemed so focused on light and shadow -- and more than that, the inherent goodness of light verses the inherent evil of shadow. To hear she may have begun walking in the grey space between is... interesting. Perhaps even promising.

(Not nearly enough to get Wei Wuxian to trust her, though.)

He adds another note to the paper. "So her source is more a bundle of silk, with different cloths as different elements," he muses aloud. "I suppose that fits with her calling it weaving. So you have been able to -- not channel it, but differentiate your thanergy the same way? How?"

[we_bring_hell]

She pauses, very deliberately, to draw the sharp edge of her tongue from its sheath. She lays a hand on the paper.

(Nothing she has said so far goes beyond what Moiraine Sedai shared freely in their first conversations. That necromancy can kill thalergenic magic as it killed the paper doll--that is something else.)

"I will tell you that, if you can tell me how that, or any of your other notes, will help you improve your own practice. If your reason for asking is to prevail in a conflict I deeply wish to see avoided altogether, I will not help you, Wei Wuxian."

[acrookedpath]

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."

[we_bring_hell]

"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."

[acrookedpath]

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."

[we_bring_hell]

"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."