Wei Wuxian (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
acrookedpath) wrote2020-09-23 05:05 pm
acrookedpath) wrote2020-09-23 05:05 pm
[pfsb]
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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"The Sight?" he echoes. "What does that let you see?"
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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.
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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."
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"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."
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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?"
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"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.
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"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.
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"I mean it reminds me - looks like, has the same, I don't know, 'weight' to it. Not that it's the same."
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He shakes his head. "I'm getitng the two things mixed up though," mostly in his excitedness to be talking about it really. "There's the ghosts - and they don't have to be even of once living things, we've had ghosts of buses and flipping novel characters for chrissakes - and then there's the sacrificial magic. We've heard it called 'being remembered' and 'making sacrifice' - two different sources of power, but both rooted in the City."
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(Perhaps it is nice to think that his own memories -- of the Wens, especially -- might not have died with him.)
"So the sacrifical magic," he says, "that is always rooted in violent action? Or is it something else?"
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"Like when I recruited my partner to, um, donate some of his bodily fluids."
Joe would bloody kill him for bringing that up, but he's pretty smug that it even worked.
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Yes, he thinks. He can understand that very well.
Before he can let himself ruminate too long on just how well he understands it, Wei Wuxian opts to seize on the other part of Kevin's story. "Blood?" he asks. "Or, ah -- no, please don't tell me if it was something other than blood."
Because there are a lot of options, not all of which are fit for discussion with someone you just met.
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He doesn't tell him. Which probably doesn't help, any more than Kevin's slightly amused smirk. But just 'blood' doesn't really cover the physical exersion in the act.
(And hey, worth noticing: Sefton just effectively came out to a person from a wildly different culture to himself, and nothing happened.)
"But yeah, it's mnore about the act and the intention, but all the magics around here," he gives a vague gesture, "are way more specific. People know what it is and how to harness it in much for exact ways."
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"Have you found anything yet that may be useful in your own world? Or is it too specific? I met another necromancer here who has a precision to her work I have yet to capture -- it gives me much to do, but not everything translates perfectly to my own path."
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('Exactly what you'd expect,' Gaiman said. Sefton still doesn't know what to expect.)
"Weirdly the most transferrable thing has been meeting the equivalent of our local... uh, the word 'gods' doesn't really fit. Spiritual beings?"
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He has heard stories of extremely powerful beings making their home at the inn, whether gods or otherwise, but has yet to meet any himself. Sometimes he will muse on it, but never for too long. If it happens, then he will figure out what to do when it happens.
"What sort of spiritual beings? How does it transfer?"
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"Beings that have been created from all the - magic, belief, memory, whatever it is - that makes my London what it is. Not things that used to be human and changed but that are a part of the locality themselves. They're assigned to certain concepts, I guess, and have a dominion of a sort.
"I think it helps that I have so much cultural overlap with worlds that come here - there are lots of Londons, and while they don't all have magic, they all have a - Baker Street, for example."
Which will mean nothing to Wei Wuxian and he knows it.
"Does your culture have the idea of an afterlife? A domain, maybe with someone ruling over it?"