[pfsb]

[acrookedpath]

The good news: the energy-revealing array works!

The bad news --

It's not bad news, he insists to himself. It just... is. It's a complication, a hole in the road, a little snare tripping him up. That's all. It doesn't have to be more. It might not even be in the first place, yes? He is dead, Lan Zhan is alive, of course seeing just how very alive would stir something in him. That's all it is.

Right?

Never mind that he's fairly certain if he placed the same array on Harrow, or Tom-gongzi, or Ingress, he would not have been struck the same way. That -- it's ridiculous, this is all ridiculous, and that's why he's out here by the lake, standing on a flat rock with another array of talismans fluttering in his hand.

The key is not just luring resentful energy from the forest, despite the suppression around the inn. It is how swiftly he can do it. During his coffee-fueled spree of work last night, he drew up some new lures that ought to work faster than a traditional set. Now he scatters them in a wide circle around his feet, gestures sharply, and sends a bolt of red energy into the yellow paper slips.

Silently, in his head, he begins to count. One... two... three...

At the count of thirteen, something boils at the forest's edge, dark and oily.

Wei Wuxian smiles and lifts his flute to meet it.

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

"You don't know what?" She cocks her head.

"Did you feel drawn to consume Lan Wangji?" At this point Gideon would have an aneurysm.

[acrookedpath]

"No!" he yelps. "No, it's nothing like that, I'm not -- "

He can feel his cheeks flushing.

"I'm not a danger to him, I know I am not behaving like a ghost would in our world, the inn's -- counteracting that but I don't know if it's counteracting enough. I think it is? I think -- "

Wei Wuxian buries his face in his hands.





Very, very muffled: "I think I might be in love with Lan Zhan?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Yes?" she says, waiting for the shocking part.

[acrookedpath]

She is taking this so much better than Wei Wuxian himself, he thinks dimly.

"That stupid array," he groans, with a drama that would make even Nie Huaisang raise his eyebrows a bit. "It would have made sense if it was only because he is pure thalergy. I can't describe it, Harrow. I have been thinking about it all day."

[we_bring_hell]

"Wei Wuxian," she says as kindly as she can, which isn't very good to be honest. "I told you I thought of you as a necromancer and cavalier pair. It is a rather... intense emotional relationship. Not necessarily passionate--indeed, there are some who frown on that sort of coupling--but I have never been especially concerned with matters of the flesh."

"Of course you love each other. It has been clear to me for some time."

[acrookedpath]

He raises his head, baffled. "You -- ?"

To be fair, Wei Wuxian has had... rather a lot on his mind since he arrived at the inn. And before that. And before that. But if his face weren't aflame before, it is now with the realization that Harrow has seen him so plainly, long before even Wei Wuxian himself could see it.

"But we had drifted apart before... everything." He rubs at his face again. "I didn't think -- of course I was happy to see him here, but..."

He trails into another frustrated groan.

[we_bring_hell]

She shakes her head, nonplussed and a horrific hypocrite.

"You have both been through a terrible loss together. I do not know who you were before that, but now.... he is so obviously the most important person in your life. And it is just as obvious that nothing matters to him as much as you."

[acrookedpath]

He exhales a long, long breath.

She's right. Lan Zhan has always meant so much to him, and never more so than here, where he is Wei Wuxian's last tie to his old life. Even when they were at odds, they were connected, never straying far from one another's orbit.

Somehow it is easier to think of it that way: he is the most important person in my life.

And yet --

"I don't think," he says, haltingly, "it is the same love I would have for a friend or a sibling. Or any other important person in my life."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow colors slightly, which the facepaint is great for. "I take little interest in matters of the flesh."

(Lies. Hypocrisy. She who tells lies does not love the sacred truth of the Tomb.)


"But if that is something you both wish--" She gestures, slightly helplessly. They are treading close to a point of honor. Before Lan Wangji had confided in her, she could have shared her suspicions, but now she knows more and can say less. "Surely he knows his worth to you already?"

[acrookedpath]

Wei Wuxian has no such reprieve as Harrow's greasepaint: he whole face is on fire, and the best mercy he can offer himself is dropping his head back into his hands.

"Perhaps." Muffled. "As I said, though -- we had drifted apart. In some ways it is not as easy as it used to be."

[we_bring_hell]

She sighs. "Wei Wuxian, who am I to give you counsel? Gideon Nav thinks I despise her."

How on earth did she find herself in this situation?

"I will tell you this; I do not believe there is anything you could do to lose the esteem of Lan Wangji."

[acrookedpath]

Despite himself, Wei Wuxian laughs, quick and wry. He drops his hands -- his cheeks are still as red as if he drank five entire bottles of wine -- and chances looking up at Harrow again.

"I am sorry," he says. "I did not mean to burden you. I am thinking far too much about -- everything. It is part of why I came out here to test the lures: so I would think about something else for a moment."

[we_bring_hell]

"You do not burden me," she says. "But I am not... I could not conceive of a worst person to help you."

"If you would rather discuss something else--shall we speak of necromancy? I have been experimenting with... our common acquaintance... on creating differentiated thanergy with elemental alignments."

[acrookedpath]

"I would like that," he says with another small laugh. "Tell me what you have learned, Harrow. I am grateful for the distraction."

Our common acquaintance -- he has his suspicions. If it is indeed Moiraine, this may give him more knowledge of how her own cultivation works, and perhaps give him the means to better counter it. If it is not -- well, then he has learned something new and exciting anyway!

[we_bring_hell]

"As you may know, she channels power from an external source--not from her own energy, as your cultivators do, or from disparate sources as you and I do."

"That raw power is differentiated into one of five elemental forms, which are then combined in what she calls weaves--for instance, she showed me a wall of Air using components of Fire to bend light around an object."

"We have proven that I can handle her thalergenic magic, but when I do so it transforms to thanergy. I have been trying to maintain the elemental distinction across the transformation, and have had some promising results."

[acrookedpath]

He nods. Digging out another scrap of used talisman paper from his robes -- he really ought to ask Madam Bar for another, smaller notebook sometime -- he flips it to the blank side and begins taking notes.

"I see," he says. "Being able to transform that power into something useful -- that is a skill! What sort of results have you found?"

[we_bring_hell]

"I have not been able to manifest differentiated thanergy without her magic as a starting point, but I have been able to manifest all five elements. We have not worked together to create an actual weave yet."

"I also managed to contact her Source, but only for moments. I lost consciousness almost immediately the first time." She says this calmly enough; necromancy comes with its fair share of nosebleeds, hemorrhages and sudden drops in blood pressure.

[acrookedpath]

He winces, a little.

"Simply because the thalergy was so strong?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Strong, and... I"m not sure. It reminded me of this sun, in fact." She glances up at the sky.

"On Drearburh, the sun is missing for months at a time, and just a particularly bright star when it is visible. And even on the First, Dominicus is... different. It is a Resurrected star."

"And I am a Resurrected human. Or descended from that race."

[acrookedpath]

Hm. He pauses in his notetaking to study Harrow, briefly.

"Does that make you significantly different from other humans?" he asks.

It is something he never considered before, but the emphasis she places on that word, resurrection, as if she stood on a gulf apart from others --

[we_bring_hell]

"I am unsure," she says. "I have never met a pre-Resurrection human until I come here, and I have not had the opportunity for a dissection. But the patterns of thalergy and thanergy I see are somewhat different than what I'm used to, in both the living and the dead."

[acrookedpath]

"Intriguing!" This is an admirable distraction indeed: Wei Wuxian's expression has lit up anew. "Well, now that I have completed a first workable draft of the energy-revealing array, perhaps that could be useful if you wanted to examine the patterns without, ah, dissection. I still need to modify it so the energy is visible to more than the one activating it, but that should be an easy enough task."

[we_bring_hell]

She nods. "I am sure it will be informative."

"It is indeed remarkable how many different sources and kinds of magic apparently exist--Aes Sedai, Openers, cultivators and wizards, city magics, talking horses."

[acrookedpath]

Wei Wuxian is nodding along to this whole list, ready to agree and perhaps discuss the strangeness of so many varied types of magic --

-- and then the proverbial record scratch hits on the last two words.

Blankly: "Talking horses?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Lady Ingress is the--cavalier, essentially--to a magical creature that she assures me is not a horse, although it looks like one," she says calmly.