(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

[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."

[we_bring_hell]

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."

[herald_ingress]

"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?"

[we_bring_hell]

"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.

[herald_ingress]

"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."

[we_bring_hell]

"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.

[herald_ingress]

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.

[we_bring_hell]

"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."

[herald_ingress]

"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.

[we_bring_hell]

"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."

[herald_ingress]

"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.

[we_bring_hell]

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.

[herald_ingress]

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?"

[we_bring_hell]

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.

[herald_ingress]

"I think I'll keep my sword in hand," she says, handing over the torch. "I don't have magic to call on should I need it."

But she absolutely has her sword.

[we_bring_hell]

As they proceed into the darkness, the torch illuminates arches and walls with bones missing from the mosaics, gaps in the stone like missing teeth. She inspects the ossuary heaps of sorted bones, which are comfortable and homelike to her. But as she runs her eyes over them she feels a pang of concern.

"There are bones missing from here," she says. "Or quite a few people were buried missing large chunks of themselves. I can sense... three hundred complete skeletons, but about a dozen with missing bones, quite random. If whole skeletons are absent, of course, I would not know."

"But my guess is that a skeleton or skeletons have been assembled haphazardly from bones that don't belong together." Phalanges scrape over stone, quite close by, and Harrow swallows. She is beginning to sweat blood from asserting her power so wantonly on a thalergetic world and her elbow is burning.

[herald_ingress]

"That would make sense. I doubt very much if these remains were interred at the same place in London Above. More like this is where they've collected once they've been forgotten."

Or dug up wantonly for construction in times before anyone cared overly much about the bones being laid to rest.

"Is there something that can be done? Or should be done?"

...And is the sweating blood normal, because Ingress is getting a little worried.

[we_bring_hell]

"They should be at rest," she says, swinging the torch sharply but failing to catch anything in the light. In the mists, the halo of light is short, and the scrape of bone on stone moves too quickly.

"And they have appropriated bones that are not their own--they probably lacked the power to free themselves from the niches above, but these were just lying around. That is not usually approved of."

"Revenants are usually limited to their own power--what Wei Wuxian calls resentful energy. But if they kill, they can feed on that thanergy."

Scuttle, scuttle, scuttle.

"And--I believe we are surrounded."

[herald_ingress]

"Hmm. So we're in a bother?"

Ingress doesn't seem too worried, but she slips into a guarded stance, ready to act.