we_bring_hell | (no subject)

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You would need an advanced degree in Nonagesamics to realize that Harrowhark is ecstatically happy this morning, but even the layman can tell that her usual spikes are retracted somewhat. Not the spikes on her boots--Gideon liked these boots, and she has no intention of wearing anything else for a while. But the metaphorical spikes.

Aside from her boots she is back in her standard habit--black trousers, black long-sleeve shirt with the high collar. No gloves. Her hair is freshly cropped back to her scalp. Her face is painted with exceptional care, in what Harrow considers the sexiest pattern, because Harrowhark has opinions about things like that. This one is called The Chain and has considerable, immodest flourishes. She has edged the perimeter of the painted skull with midnight purples and deep blood reds, an even greater departure from propriety.

She is writing in her journal, and since she writes in code there is no way anyone can tell she has doodled One Flesh One End approximately one hundred times. She has been eating oatmeal, and by God she even ate the raisins.

Things are good. For now, for once, things are good.

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"Title of your sex tape," she says, automatically. Which part?

Honestly, does it matter?

"What? Portal?" She rolls to a sitting position, and stares at the two tiny magicians who have totally made her lose count, she's gonna have to start all over again. "Moiraine Sedai?"

When Gideon utters the words sex tape in front of Moiraine Sedai, Harrow's organs begin to cook gently from the inside out with shame. "Yes, Griddle, a portal."

"Moiraine Sedai was teaching me the weave and providing the thalergenic magic. Moiraine Sedai, I apologize for..." She searches for words to encompass everything that has gone wrong in the last ten seconds. "Everything."

"Do not be concerned, Harrow," the Aes Sedai says, perfectly tranquil. Her composure is unruffled, although she is studying the two of them very thoughtfully. "There is no need for you to offer an apology."

A single beat. "Either of you. Gideon, I am pleased to see you again."

"Hey," says Gideon, affronted at clearly being the everything Harrow is apologizing for, and also because she had no intention of apologizing for anything. She pushes to her feet, annoyed that despite being taller than both woman and probably weighing about the same as both of them put together, she's unable to physically intimidate either.

Life just isn't fair. She wishes Wei Wuxian or Ingress would show up so she'd have someone to talk about swords with.

"Yeah...you too." Harrow is fuming, Gideon is on her back foot, and Moraine Sedai is absolutely as serene as the calm stretch of sky arching overhead. Gideon is 100% out of her depth and wasn't that exactly what she was out here trying to avoid?

Edited 2020-10-22 14:23 (UTC)

Harrow relaxes slightly at Moiraine's words; if the indignities have not importuned her highly dignified companion, maybe it wasn't as bad as it seemed.

(It was, 100%.)

"We did not mean to interrupt your exertions, Gr--Gideon," she says. "You simply happened to be inhabiting the meadow I chose as a target."

Honestly, it makes sense; the reasons Harrow was practicing skeleton warfare here are the same reasons it's a suitable setting for a workout.

"We will endeavor not to disturb you." To Moiraine Sedai: "Well. Surprises not withstanding, it seems to work. I confess there was a moment--it did not feel the same as your portal, but I followed the weave as I memorized it and trusted it would work."

She nods.

"It may be that the difference is in the nature of your thanergy, as opposed to that of saidar, and manifests as the expression of the pattern exemplified in the weaving."

Moiraine glances at Gideon, and says, "As Harrow has said, I have no wish to disturb you, but if you wish to learn more of the nature of this weaving, I will explain."

Well, she's disturbed, despite these wishes, and she hates when she's surrounded by adepts who talk around her, even if she has a very big sword and obviously knows how to use it.

She shrugs. "If it might help us defeat a giant bone beast and help make Harrow a Lyctor.... I'm no good with theory, though."

Theory being so very difficult to punch.

"You guys have fun."

Edited 2020-10-22 15:01 (UTC)

Harrow absolutely knows Gideon's preferences, and ignores them thoroughly by explaining: "Moiraine Sedai draws power from an external thanergenic source, and can construct spells with those... building blocks, so to speak."

"As you know, I cannot take in or express out thanergy in the same way--hence the need for your... experiences as a battery." She will not say juice. She will not.

"However, if Moiraine Sedai produces the initial thalergetic magic, I can convert them into thanergy and build analogous workings."

Dark eyes narrow slightly as she listens, but Moiraine seems perfectly willing to let Harrow explain, for the most part.

"Such as this weave," she says. "A gateway; a portal to travel across spaces, from a known origin point."

The lopsided douchebag grin Gideon sends Harrow's way definitely implies she heard exactly what Harrow didn't want to say.

"Oh," she says. "So you wouldn't be able to do it on your own. At least, not without...?"

Yeah, she's leading the witness. Fight her!

"It has crossed my mind," she admits slowly, "that it might be possible for me to similarly draw from an external thalergenic source. Not Moiraine Sedai's--contact with that has been overwhelming when we have experimented in the past."

"However... the pseudo-siphoning we have done in the past... it is dangerous, Griddle. I do not wish..." She looks discomfited.

The Aes Sedai does not say a word, but watches silently, eyebrows arched and clear interest visible.

Gideon levels a tinted-glass gaze at Harrow, ignoring Moiraine for the moment.

(This is just them.)

"Just ask, Harrow," she says, simply.

She exhales. Grits her teeth.

"I find I have need of... your juice. Gideon. If you are sure."

"It may not even work," she says, on the very edge of petulance.

There it is.

"Yeah, you do," she says, grinning. "Whatever you need, my twilit princess; suck away."

Harrow closes her eyes, because if she can't see Moiraine Sedai she can pretend this isn't happening in front of her. She holds out her hand.

"Sit down," she says. "I do not wish for you to fall." The words no one will dab your brow and tell you how brave you are this time appear from her more hateful depths, but she stifles them; they are in company.

She sits, and leans her back against the corral fence. Adrenaline is already beginning to leak through her system and her heart is racing; she's the world's biggest idiot for offering to do this again, but at least it should be quicker this time.

"Ready when you are," she says, even though she's not and never could be.

She has to open her eyes again to do it, so her respite is short-lived. Anyway, Moiraine's expression is absolutely changeless, because of course it is.

She waves away the existing portal and reaches her hand out to Gideon, trying to open herself in the same way she has felt Moiraine doing and that she has done in short-lived and disastrous moments with the True Source.

For a moment, Gideon is overwhelming, a blaze of light and heat and thalergy; she remembers poor oblivious Wei Wuxian trying desperately to convince himself that his love for Lan Wangji was merely an attraction to the other man's golden core.

Oh no, she thinks, realizing Gideon is like a tiny sun she is attempting to harness. Oh no, she's hot--

She begins to hurriedly convert the thalergy to thanergy and funnel it away as quickly as she can, so the death energy doesn't do additional harm beyond the initial impact.

It's easier than accepting and 'killing' Moiraine's energy; almost too easy. She feels she could drain Gideon dry. She rapidly builds the structure of Spirit, reaching and probing to a different location, but one she certainly knows well.

Gideon makes a sound like dying and crumples back. The corral fence catches her, but trying to maintain her sense of balance is pretty precarious; she only hopes she won't fall all the way over and piss herself or vomit or die or do something else embarrassing in front of Harrow's teacher.

She doesn't – yet – but it's a near thing.

The cold fingers of siphoning caress her heart and it palpitates in panic, like a small animal trying to escape claws that have already sunk in. The one thing she can be grateful for is that it's not nearly as bad as the entropy field trial, even if that's like saying getting stabbed in the stomach isn't as bad as getting stabbed in the heart.

A shining golden corona springs into existence around her as Moiraine grasps saidar.

She does nothing, yet, save to observe. She will not intervene unless it becomes necessary -- but if it should, she will be ready to do so in an instant.

Dark eyes are narrow as she studies Harrow and Gideon, striving to discern the nature of the connection between them.

"I am changing to Earth now," she says aloud. "One third of the way there, Nav."

The differentiation is harder; uglier, for Harrow. Her mind is filled with images of the earth reclaiming not just generic energy or life, but Gideon specifically. Gideon's niche on the Ninth. Gideon's bones hoeing snow-leeks for a century without respite. The taste of bile fills her mouth and makes her want to spit. Physically, she feels much better than channeling from Moiraine, but all she wants to do is stop and check on Gideon.

But if she loses the thread now, this was for nothing; as with the avulsion field challenge, that knowledge motivates and hardens her.

Earth, Earth to erode the difference between here and there. Earth to bring them together. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

"Two thirds," she says. "We're doing it, Gideon."

Gideon is past any ability to respond, because when Harrow said I am changing to Earth the siphoning shifted and all she can do is fall over, pathetically, mouth open in a mute scream. The cold fingers of Harrow's siphon turn grasping; they grip her stomach and lungs, sink into her bones. Everything aches like a badly-healed fracture, everything spins and starbursts explode in her vision.

We're doing it, she hears Harrow say, from a distance, and she gathers herself, lurches into the connection like she's throwing logs on a fire. Air is burning in her lungs and every one of her nerves feels like someone has doused them with gasoline and lit them on fire and she's hollowing out, but there's plenty left. For Harrow, there's everything.

Harrow feels a trickle coming from her eyes. It's not blood, for once; she's crying.

Gideon, Gideon, Gideon.

She has to finish it.

Air now, to mark the edges and attenuate the spell to nothingness. She reaches for the delicate alveoli of Gideon's beautiful, powerful lungs; the cells carrying air through her blood.

Harrowhark has heard more than her share of death rattles on the Ninth, and she's not sure if it's her cavalier actually making that horrible sound or her imagination as she conjures thanergetic Air. All she knows is that it works, and the stoma in the air unfolds to reveal their room and the grey skeleton of perpetual bone, already hastening towards the portal. Rapidly, she ties it off and spins to kneel beside Gideon, slamming the door shut on further siphoning.

"We did it, Gideon, we did it," she says, checking her thalogram for the extent of the damage. Wiping sweat from Gideon's brow with the sleeves of her shirt. "You did it. You were perfect, fearless, incredible."

"Never again," she whispers. "Never again."

It's a beautiful day, sunny and clear enough that Gideon had rolled up her sleeves earlier to cool off after her reps, and she has no idea how it got so dark so suddenly. She's broken out into a cold, full-body sweat, but her lungs are burning and her throat is desert-dry. Harrow's power reaches further, and things start turning off throughout Gideon's body like someone is hitting a series of switches.

Stay awake, she tells herself, a little distantly worried about not being able to feel her left arm. If she loses it, Harrow loses it, and she can't, won't. The portal opens in the air and it feels like it opens in her gut; she retches and shudders and refuses to close her eyes.

Except she must have lost it for a second, or something, because a door slams and everything goes black, and when she manages to focus her eyes again, it's on Harrow, kneeling by her side.

She feels like absolute shit. She feels like she's been stomped on all over by the entire contingent of Ninth House skeletons; she feels as sick as if she'd accidentally seen Crux naked. "Don't cry, Nonagesimus," she says, except her vocal chords are refusing to work, and it comes out more like the ghost of a dehydrated whisper.

"You're gonna ruin your make-up."

She moves in a flurry of silk skirts, dropping to her knees beside Gideon Nav and reaching for her arm.

"Give me a moment, Harrow; you must not touch her, only for a moment--"

Golden light flares, and bright silver threads of Spirit race over Gideon like a spider's web as Moiraine Delves.

She would be surprised at what she finds, except that she has seen something like this before. What might have killed another will apparently not kill Gideon Nav, not today.

As she has done previously, Moiraine sends Healing over her to relieve stress and support her system, balancing and lessening the shock she has just endured with the rush of weaves of Air and Water. She pulls back, then, and waits.