[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

[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.

[acrookedpath]

"Huh," he says weakly, and scratches his nose in his usual absentminded tic. "A tianma, maybe? I will have to ask. That's, ah. Not what I expected when she said she was a Herald."

[we_bring_hell]

"I found it unusual myself," she says, still calm. "As my own cavalier has grown frustrated in my service. Perhaps Gideon Nav would prefer it if I had four hooves and a mane she can brush."

Something bitter and honest squirts out with that irony.

[acrookedpath]

He sobers, regarding Harrow anew. After a moment he sets down his pen.

Quiet, "Things still do not go well with Gideon? More than before?"

[we_bring_hell]

She exhales. "Shortly before I came here she asked to be released to serve the Seventh, in the time she has left to live. Perhaps any of us have left."

[acrookedpath]

Unconsciously, he mirrors her exhalation, closing his eyes as if in pain.

No louder, he says, "I am sorry, Harrow."

[we_bring_hell]

"I have been inexcusably cruel to her," she says in a small hopeless voice that sounds very little like herself.

"Perhaps never moreso than when I refused her request. If we are all going to die I will die beside her. And I will have told her the truth. All of it."

[acrookedpath]

The last time Harrow sounded this upset, he thinks, was the day they first met. The day he accidentally struck such a cruel blow of his own, in his ignorance of what she desired to keep secret.

And yes, perhaps it would have been kinder of her to let Gideon go, but he cannot deny the ache of understanding: if we are all going to die I will die beside her.

"Perhaps she will understand why you did not release her, once she knows the entire truth," he says. It is all he can offer.

[we_bring_hell]

"Or perhaps she will kill me," she says, aiming for calm. Surprisingly, she finds it. She has had the thought more than once, but it feels good to say it aloud. "The lone survivor takes vengeance for her crechemates. It would be fit."

[acrookedpath]

His mouth twists a little, wryly. "I hope it will not come to that," he says.

He almost asks, will you fight back? or will you go to your death willingly? -- but, well. Speaking of cruelties. And if Wei Wuxian is honest with himself... he is afraid to ask.

(Harrow has not yet appeared in his nightmares alongside the Wen remnants, but he still believes it is only a matter of time.)

[we_bring_hell]

She swallows. "I saw the corpses of the Fourth. I would rather have Gideon Nav."


She looks down. "I am sorry. My distraction has turned to ashes. My emotions are--erratic."

[acrookedpath]

The wry quirk to his mouth grows to an equally wry smile.

"There is no need to apologize," he says. "I would not call them erratic. Sometimes our burdens grow heavy enough that we cannot keep everything so neat and contained. And besides," he adds, lighter, "I seem to remember I wept like a child in your quarters not too long ago. Your emotions do not trouble me."