[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]

"I did!" Still beaming, he kneels to sweep the lures into a lopsided pile before hopping off the rock. "I was not entirely sure I would -- it is a problem I have sought to solve for over a month. But at last -- "

He waves the little cluster of yellow paper.

" -- I have the beginning of a solution."

[weird_cop]

"Brilliant." Sefton grins back, infected by his energy. "I love that first rush of getting to the answer."

It's liek that breakthrough on a case. He sees it on Ross, but he feels it himself often enough. When the first string you pull actually shows up as being attached to something.

"What was the problem?"

[acrookedpath]

"Ah -- " He tucks the talismans into the front of his robes and idly twirls the bamboo flute between his fingers. "There is very little of what my world calls resentful energy here. It is how I work my tricks, but because so few have died near the inn, I have not been able to do much here. Until now! There is far more deep in the forest, it seems, so I am working to lure it out of hiding as quickly as possible."

He gestures to the woods with his flute.

[weird_cop]

Sefton holds out a finger in a pointing gesture, not quite pointing at anything, but in the vague direction of the departed energy, wagging it slightly, like a nod.

"That's what that stuff was."

The thing is, he has no idea if anyone else can see it or not, or if they can, if they see it in the same way as he does. But yes, he hasn't seen it around the rest of the place.

"And the music draws it out?"

[acrookedpath]

"Yes," he confirms. "Cultivators often use music to work with spirits of the living and the dead. But usually, with the dead, it is to calm or suppress them. Not make use of them as I do."

He says this all with the same easy cheer, as if they were discussing different ways to prepare a meal.

[weird_cop]

Sefton's reaction is to tilt his head and glance back to the forest, where the ghosty magic had disappeared to.

Making use of actual dead spirits makes him think of the woman under the longbarrow, being forced to kill to further the aims of an ambitious man. But he also thinks of the woman called the Ninth, and her necromancy, and this hadn't look like either.

"There are loads of dead people walking around the bar, though," he says. For a start he's pretty sure he's talking to one. "That doesn't work?"

[acrookedpath]

Wei Wuxian winces, slightly. "I have not tried," he says. "But I do not wish to. It is -- not the same. There is still some life, isn't there? It may only be provided by the inn, but it is there."

And that alone could interfere with the energy, if he wished to call upon it.

(Still. He would be lying if he said he had not considered the option, in his most desperate moments.)

[weird_cop]

"So this - resentful energy?" Sefton repeats, slowly while he thinks. "It's from the dead themselves? Seomthing about the act of dying? The memories of the deceased?"

He's thinking of the ghosts at home, and the people who die and visit which aren't the same, and then the dead people here, which aren't the same again.

[acrookedpath]

He nods, still absently spinning the flute around his fingers. "A little of both, I would say. Resentful energy is formed in a violent death, or an angry one. It is rage, or hatred. It is a desire for revenge. It is not mindless, but it is not as...hm." He pulls his mouth to one side, thinking it through. "As complex as a living person, most of the time."

There are exceptions, of course. Like Wen Ning. But sometimes, what happened with him feels like such a perfect confluence of events that Wei Wuxian wonders if he could ever recreate it.

"That is why I do not think I could draw it from the dead that walk here."

[weird_cop]

"I get you," Kevin says, and he does.

He tucks one hand under the hood of his sweatshirt, rubbing the back of his neck while he thinks.

"The way it works on my world, there's all sorts of ways people can harness the energy of violence. But what we call ghosts seem to be a different thing."

[acrookedpath]

"Oh?" He cocks his head, curious, as the bright grin returns. "I would be very interested to hear, if you will tell me! Learning more of the energies, spirits, and magic of other worlds fascinates me. We could sit, if you wish?"

He gestures back toward the rock.

[weird_cop]

Sefton's face lights up at the chance to talk about his specialism.

"Yeah, sure."

He's finished his tea now, and trails the mug by its handle as his other hand digs into his hoodie pocket for the notebook he always carries around with him.

"Oh, I'm Kevin, by the way - uh, London, Earth, the year twenty-twelve."

[acrookedpath]

"Ah! My apologies for not introducing myself -- " Quickly, he bows to Kevin. "I am Wei Wuxian. My home is the inn, and my year is whichever year Madam Bar keeps as her calendar."

There is no point in mentioning where he used to live, he has always figured.

Heading to the rock, he hops back up and takes a seat, crosslegged, the flute resting in his lap.

[weird_cop]

Because he's dead. Right. Sefton gets that, and it's good to know there's an alternative after-life for people who don't come specifically from his London, even if he still needs to fix that mess.

He attempts a bow, aware of its awkward, but hoping the intent gets across, before sitting down on the rock at the edge where he can use it like a chair. In his hand now is the standard issue police notebook which he's scribbled the letters MW in the corner.

"So full disclosure I've been into this stuff for like a year, and there's no decent record of it, so it's all oral tradition and the people in the tradition just don't like to talk to people like me - " he means cops, but the fact that the London Magical Community is all white people isn't irrelevent - "so I'm basically making it up as I go."

[acrookedpath]

"I have always been fond of making it up as I go myself," Wei Wuxian reassures him. "It is a new path for you! Sometimes making it up is the only way to move forward."

[weird_cop]

"Yeah but when you're dealing with stuff this big and dangerous it'd be nice to be able to do research that isn't just 'hey what if I got on this ghost bus,'" says Sefton, fully aware that there's no context for that sentence whatsoever.

So he presses on, and leaning over the notebook on his lap he gestures with his hands, more animated as he talks.

"The thing about our magic shit, though, is firstly that it's localised. I mean cities, and not all cities. Not even the oldest or the biggest, just some combination of a dense population and possibly the architecture makes this - I don't know, energy, I guess - focus in and area. You go out of London, and you lose it."

Which isn't to say he doesn't have it here, but that he can't see the same things because they're not here to see.

[acrookedpath]

Wei Wuxian hums thoughtfully. "I know of places where spiritual or resentful energy is heavier than most," he says, "but never where that is the only place it could live. So when you are between cities, there is simply -- nothing?"

Even close to the inn, with its suppression in full force, he could still find traces of resentful energy in the grounds. Yes, it was so little that he could not do anything with it, but it was there.

[weird_cop]

"Not nothing," Sefton says. "Like - there are some things that you can only see with the Sight anywhere, but yeah, the power's local. And specific to the city."

Otherwise the London black markets would be loaded with things from New York or Paris, and they're not.

"I keep meaning to take a holiday to one of the other cities, see it for myself, but I'm always so busy."

[acrookedpath]

The weight Kevin gives to the word sight makes it plain he is talking about something more than ordinary vision.

"The Sight?" he echoes. "What does that let you see?"

[weird_cop]

"Flipping everything."

He's not kidding on this either. "Ghosts, magic, gods. It's like the world's had another layer of paint added." He'd say it looks like the world's in post production but movie metaphors aren't useful in this context.

He casts about for an example, and wanting to go back to explaining the difference between the sacrificial magic, ghosts and actual dead people he lands on Quill's mate's dad.

"Can you believe that some people carry their dead loved ones around? Like a shadow on their shoulder, always burdening them with their presence?"

He doesn't mean this in an incredulous can you believe this??? way, but in a genuine, 'I need to establish context' way and also because this is a pretty easy-to-relate-to metaphor - even it's not actually a metaphor.

[acrookedpath]

Something flickers briefly in Wei Wuxian's eyes: a shadow that belies the easy cheer he has exhibited through the entire conversation.

It was not very long ago that he stood outside and watched one of Harrow's skeletons transform, unbidden. He wonders if the dead can carry their own dead around as Kevin describes. If, even now, his shijie hovers just beyond the edge of his sight.

"Yes," he says, a little quieter than he means. "I can believe that."

[weird_cop]

Sefton glances at Wei Wuxian, a quick soft glance that shows that he expected an answer just like that. Because everybody's got them to some extent or other. Not everyone carries their dead child on their literal shoulder like the man at the West Ham game, but everyone can understand, at least a little.

"My boss' mate," he explains, "had his dead dad, constantly following him around, telling him he was rubbish, comparing him to my boss, comparing him to everyone. Always at him, and he couldn't hear it, not consciously.

"But the thing is, it's not real. It wasn't his real Dad, it was some thing conjuried up by his memories and his pain and - I don't know, the thing that makes London special. Even with the Sight, we can't talk to these ghosts, can't get a reaction out of them. They're like - puppets, acting out a role."

[acrookedpath]

He draws a quick breath of recognition.

It is not wholly the same. It is -- swiftly, he tries to transfer the idea to a framework he knows -- as if a ghost were conjured by someone else's resentful energy, not the energy of the spirit itself. A fierce corpse of a new making, intangible, powered by the living instead of the dead.

It is dreadful. It is fascinating.

"I see," he says. "Is there any way to suppress them?"

[weird_cop]

Yeah but, also powered by the dead, which Sefton's definitely not going to go into.

"Nope," he says bluntly. "At least, I don't know. Like - this one, a witch did manage to make him more real, give him more power, so possibly she could make it less. But that power comes from acts of violence, in this case killing the poor sod in question. So I've got to disapprove of that kind of thing.

"But that's what your resentful energy reminds me of. The power caused by sacrifice."

And that's new, Sefton realises. At home he couldn't tell what was sacrifice and what was remembered. Not even Losley could make that distinction. If he can remember the things he sees here, he can bring that back and do...

...well, who knows? Something.

[acrookedpath]

Wei Wuxian nods, slowly.

"I can see why it would," he says, and there is a note of caution to his tone. Kevin has not denounced him; merely drawn parallels to what he knows, the same as Wei Wuxian himself translates any new information he gathers. "It may come from violent deaths, murders, but that is not what I do. I do not create it; I only work with what is already there."

And usually there is no shortage of violent death to call upon.