acrookedpath | [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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Ah." Unconsciously, he relaxes away from the slight wariness. "Yes, in that case -- it does sound similar. Which is why I am surprised it is so difficult to suppress! If it is not a true ghost, though, and made mostly of the memories of the living, I suppose any suppression would have to be on the living person themselves. Which can be done; it is just not suppression, really."

Sefton gives a quick grin "Yeah it's not suppression, and it's not just created by the memories of the living. Things get remembered when there's not one alive anymore to remember. They're just created."

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."

There is an eerie beauty to the idea of a memory, once there is no one left to recall it, simply choosing to carry on in a new form. Wei Wuxian does not expect it to latch onto his heart as it does -- but then again, what has he become but a memory that has stubbornly refused to die? Perhaps that is why he appreciates it so much.

(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?"

"The violence helps, gives it a certain power," Sefton says. "But no, that act of sacrifice is important. I've done - well, I've walked some hard paths to find things out - " and he doesn't much want to talk about some of that because the torture of the bus was very specific to him - "but I've also managed to get around it.

"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.

Turning loss into an instrument of power.

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.

"Okay."

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."

He huffs a faintly amused breath of his own at the smirk, and lets the discussion move on with no further comment.

"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."

"Magic wise, no," Sefton says. "It's all too specific - which I should have guessed from the implication New York magic is different from London magic."

('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?"

"Really?"

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?"

How do you translate 'I danced with the literal biblical devil and the moonlight wasn't even pale' into a parlance that might translate across universes?

"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?"

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