?????????

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow knows every inch of the Ninth; knows it better than anyone else, for is she not the one who climbed the Anastasian Monument?

Perhaps that is how she found this door.

Squinting in the brutal light and slightly heavier gravity, Harrow Nova runs through her rapier forms. She is small, hardly the typical necro suitcase of the Ninth, but she is lithe and fast and ruthless. She is slim but muscular in cast-off dusty blacks; her abbreviated, pinned back robe flares behind her like raven wings.

She's been wielding the black blade for seven years, but the chain in her offhand is new and she has to integrate it into her repertoire. The chain is pure black Drearburh steel, every link a death's head, the weighted end a carved butterfly of pelvis in lead-filled bone. It is heavy--she is not--and once it gains momentum it moves like a living thing, an unforgiving dance partner.

She will master it. She will supplant the cavalier primary. She will accompany the Reverend Daughter to the First House.

Comments

[acrookedpath]

"Yeah, and then I started living underground."

Wuxian follows after her, intent, as always, on being a pest.

"Hey. Nova. You want to actually fight something? I've been practicing."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow Nova stops at the bar and waves at the busy bartender. "Vodka shots."

"I don't want to fight your constructs, Tellurian."

[we_do_bones]

The bartender tips up her chin in acknowledgment and pulls down a glass bottle and two shot glasses.

"For the Ninth," she says, and winks one golden eye.

[acrookedpath]

He rolls his eyes -- probably more at Harrow than the bartender; probably -- and says, "Fine. Whatever."

He still needs to practice, though, and it's a lot easier in here with the Window churning out a nonstop torrent of thanergy anyway. Wuxian flicks one of the bone chips he'd been toying with onto the surface of the bar. In a matter of seconds, it unfurls into a tiny, perfectly-formed skeleton no more than six inches high; he pats it on the head like a fond parent before it goes loping down the bar.

And then he grabs one of the shot glasses the instant it hits the bartop and downs the vodka.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow is watching the weenie little construct, not the bartender; she grabs the vodka with a grunt of thanks and downs it.

When she tips her head back down she has a nosebleed.

[acrookedpath]

The construct appears to have decided to make its own fun: it grabs a paper umbrella from someone's drink and twirls it above its head, grinning its empty skull grin.

When the burn of the alcohol subsides, Wuxian glances to Harrow and frowns. "You good?"

A napkin pops up beneath his hand. He shoves it her way.

[we_bring_hell]

(The napkin says, this isn't how it happens.)

"Yeah," she says thickly; the blood has run down her throat when her head was tipped back. "I'm good." She sets down the glass and wipes her nose.

"Let's see what you've got, exile."

[acrookedpath]

"You could actually call me by my name," he points out, a touch acerbic, before whistling to get the construct's attention.

(The whistle sounds more -- resonant -- than one that could be produced by an ordinary human.)

The tiny skeleton jogs back down the bar. Wuxian scoops it into his palm, collapsing it into a chip of bone once more. "Let's go, unless you want to kick off a bar brawl."

[we_bring_hell]

"Amazingly, names are a sore spot for me," she sneers, leaving the blood-stained napkin behind.

"But I am the true heir of Samael Novenary, so. Whatever." She puts her hand on the chain she retrieved from the Anastasian monument.

[acrookedpath]

More Ninth politics. Of course. And Nova calls him a bore.

He ambles back out into the sunlight, breathing in a lungful of the warm, clean air. In the front pocket of his sweatshirt, he curls his fingers around another fistful of bone shards.

One, two, three, four, five paces beyond the door, and without any warning he spins around to fling the bone to the ground, like scattering sheets of paper into a breeze. They sprout into a quartet of looming skeletons the instant they land, and before the constructs are even fully grown, they're moving to bum-rush Harrow.

[we_bring_hell]

She yanks the chain away from her hip, and dives forward, ducking between the constructs and under their reaching boney arms. She leaves the rapier holstered for now; weapons that stab are terrible against bone.

Instead she whips the chain against her arm, the quick pivot in direction adding speed to the whirling head. The heavy butterfly of pelvis crashes into the back of a skull and caves it; she spins the chain back the other way, building speed.

[acrookedpath]

The construct crumples. Its flailing hands pick at the fracture in the back of its skull, as if unable to comprehend the damage -- until a few pieces of bone come away with a delicate snap.

It drops them, and as it crumbles to a cloud of pitch-black dust, three more skeletons rise where it fell. An odd red shimmer seems to trace their bones for an instant as they join the fray.

Wuxian smirks, hands still shoved deep in his pockets as he watches.

[we_bring_hell]

She steps forward, the chain a whirling blade mowing through the constructs, smashing and tearing apart. She steps into the middle of the group and blasts through as many as she can reach.

Then she draws her rapier and hurls herself at the adept; the only way to win against constructs is to take out the adept.

[acrookedpath]

Which is when something odd happens.

Wuxian draws out his hands. Without losing the smirk, he sketches a complicated figure with his fingertips, a long vertical line of unreadable calligraphy that superheats the molecules of the air to a fiery red. He slams his palm against it to send it shooting toward Harrow.

And suddenly it is as if she's rammed into an invisible brick wall.

[we_bring_hell]

A brick wall, invisible or not, at that turn of speed, is a painful thing to hit. The rapier flies out of her hand; the trailing chain catches up and the weighted end slams into her kidneys, making her retch.

"Bastard!"

[acrookedpath]

"Harrow."

The smirk is gone. There's a weird gentleness to his voice all of the sudden, this obnoxious, irritating adept who doesn't belong on the Ninth any more than he belonged on the Sixth. And more than that -- a weird almost-lilt of formality, the more he speaks.

"Are you certain this is how it happens?"

(There's a bright slash of red underneath his hoodie. A flicker. A bamboo stick in his hand.)

[we_bring_hell]

Blood is pouring down her face; from her ears. Her head throbs like an abscess in reality itself.

"Wei Wuxian?" The grass flickers and glitches under her fingers. "What are you--" Water is rising between her fingers, up through the grass. Not like a flood but like the ground is turning into a river.

[acrookedpath]

"This isn't how it happens." More urgently. "Harrow -- "

He is in his long dark robes now, the skeletons gone, and inky smoke whips around his hands as he reaches for her --

[we_bring_hell]

She crashes into the water--

And wakes up somewhere else.