acrookedpath | [pfsb]

[pfsb]

The latest idea that struck Wei Wuxian mid-lunch: if he combined one of the theoretical energy talismans with a paper doll, would that allow him to search the grounds for resentful energy without having to blanket the whole inn with talismans?

It seems like a sound idea! It won't replace the planned night hunt with Lan Zhan -- nor would he want it to -- but if he succeeds, it will be a fun experiment.

First, though: combining a paper doll with a simpler talisman. Which brings us to Wei Wuxian at a table underneath the Observation Window, not an inch left uncovered by his notes, scribbling onto a tiny cutout with a ballpoint pen Bar gave him. (What an invention!) He completes the last character with a flourish and waves his hand over the doll; it springs to its "feet," and, grinning, he directs it toward the empty cup perched precariously on a corner of the table.

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He brightens. "I considered that!" he says. "I thought it unlikely when I first arrived, but the more time I spend here -- that may simply be all there is to it. Most of those who live here aren't alive, and whatever energy sustains the dead as it does prevents them from rising as resentful ghosts or fierce corpses. And they are so strict about violence, with such skilled healers on hand, that no one dies brutally within the grounds."

He laughs, a little, as his smile goes crooked.

"I need to finish my energy-revealing talisman. If I do it right, it might even reveal to us the difference between thanergy and resentful energy."

Energy of the body, energy of the spirit. That's what it keeps coming back to.

Edited 2020-09-03 16:32 (UTC)

She nods along with his theories. "Consider also that someone killed here might immediately simply become an embodied revenant, without leaving traces behind. I would love to know more about how these embodiments are formed."

"You are working on an instrument to view the energies you can sense?" she asks.

"Yes. It's nowhere near done," he's quick to say, "but -- "

He leans over to the far left of the table and rummages through a stack of papers. From the middle of the pile, he pulls out a slip of paper inscribed with rows and rows of characters and runes, the text looping around itself to form an even larger pair of characters.

"This is an early draft," he explains. "Eventually I want it to reveal all energy, no matter the type. I think this one -- " He squints at it. " -- will only show spiritual energy within a one-meter radius. But I thought of how you work with energy of the body, and I realized: I do not even know what to look for, how to separate that from the energies I know. So what if I did learn what to look for?"

She nods slowly, fighting down panic at the idea of others being able to sense what Wei Wuxian can apparently see; the lingering anger of the two hundred children who died to make her a necromancer.

(She has tried, in the dark of night, to hear those voices; spilled blood to call them. But nothing happened.)

Surely, others wouldn't know what it meant, as Lan Wangji did not. But it still horrifies her.

"I don't even perceive a difference between the two, really," she says, trying to sound thoughtful. "I mean, the energies I use are the same either way. But perhaps that's because spirits hunger for thalergy--I wonder if our spirit magicians do approach from a perspective totally different from yours."

"I cannot call a spirit without letting blood."

For the first time it occurs to her that the Fifth might find their way here. She hopes for that. She truly does. Abigail Pent and Wei Wuxian would find much to talk about.

"It's possible there is no real difference," he allows. "We may simply be talking past each other, using different words for the same idea. But the talisman could help clarify that, too, if I get it to work."

He shoves the rough draft back into the same pile. (There is some method to the general disorganization of the table.)

"Do your spirit magicians call with blood as well, or can they do their work without it?"

"They do, but they have a great degree of artistry in it," she says. "Libations, and poetry, flames and flaring lights. Very showy, traditional magic, as I understand it."

"I have never seen much of it. But the theory, I understand, is that as the cells of the blood die they create a trail that crosses the border between worlds."

He's nodding again, listening with the full attentiveness of a well-behaved student.

(If only Gusu Lan had talked of things such as this! Then again, if they had, Wei Wuxian would not be where he is today.)

"Demon-attraction lures do work better if drawn in blood, I've found," he agrees. "I am only surprised it's the sole way for you to call them, even among your most skilled. That would speak to a stronger chain binding body and spirit than I thought. Interesting!"

He grabs a second paper out of a closer pile to scrawl some notes.

"In truth," she says, "spirit work is always at least partially diplomacy, short of a full exorcism. We have few tools to force spirits to comply, and if angered, they can become threatening. Blood is simply an effective bribe to get them to the table."

"It interests me deeply that for us the spirit is merely one dimension of the practice, while many I talk to here begin and end there. I spoke to someone recently who could not raise a simple bone construct without a spirit to possess it. Yet his facility with spirits was startling."

"Oh?" he asks, his eyebrows rising. "There is another one like you and me?"

He can't put name to the sudden swell of emotion in his chest. Belonging, at its simplest. The quiet realization that while he may have walked this path alone while alive, he is not the only one who has ever walked it. It is a cool hand on his brow after a night of fever; it is sinking into a long, dreamless sleep after weeks of nightmares.

This is not the first time he's felt this way, but it still startles Wei Wuxian, how often the emotion has stirred since he woke up on the ground by the Milliways lakeshore.

She nods. "His world seems largely unrecognizable to me, however--as does yours. However, he does not dress or have the same features as you and Lan Wangji do. His House is called Pavus."

"Not a few of the people I've met here seem to come from the distant history of my race, when we all dwelled in the First House before the great Resurrection. At least, they recognize our system, although the Houses are yet undwelt in."

"But others seem to come from other worlds entirely, what I have heard called 'Mirrors of the Wheel.' In truth I am not sure where either you or he lie in that cosmology."

"I could not tell you either."

His smile has softened, without him realizing, and grown more lopsided as he looks down at his notes. House Pavus, he adds as an afterthought to one corner of a page.

"It's a marvel enough to know there are other necromancers. I have no clan any longer; I am the only one who walked my path. But there are houses, and worlds!"

His eyes shine, a little. (He is not aware of that either.)

"I am not the only one after all."

Harrow is... bemused, inured as she is to the ubiquity of necromancy.

"I am glad to be of comfort," she says. "In truth, among the necromancers of my world, I am myself somewhat unusual. You must not think that every Empire adept would resemble a nun of the Locked Tomb."

"In that way, I know what it is to be alone with your... beliefs."

"Yes."

He exhales. The crooked smile persists.

"Where I am from -- this path was not even to be glanced down. I remember I asked one of my teachers whether it was possible to use resentful energy, not merely suppress or destroy it, and had a scroll thrown at my head for my troubles. It was not to be considered. No one dared."

She raises her eyebrows at that, but admits:

"Silas Oktasiron desires not to breath the same air as me, if he can possibly avoid it. Others have been kinder, but we are objects of curiosity."

"My parents were the only other living necromancers I knew, growing up. The rest of the Ninth are religious pentinents, nuns and anchorites. No adepts."

Which would explain why all the hopes of her House ride on her. Especially when speaking of her parents in the past tense: dead, he presumes. Or stripped of their power somehow, if such a thing is possible in the Ninth's world.

"I am sorry you were so isolated," he murmurs. Then he hesitates, wondering if this is the time to broach the topic, before continuing tentatively, "It is not the same as another necromancer -- I know that well -- but Gideon, your sworn sword...?"

She hesitates.

(I hate you. I never stopped hating you. I will always hate you and you will always hate me.)

"We didn't get along," she says calmly, the hesitation the only mark of her inner turmoil. "Our interests were very, very different. I have always been interested in history and thaumaturgy, and she has preferred pornography and weight-lifting. And for a long time I blamed her for things that were not her fault."

"If I had recognized her value... perhaps we could have grown up together like some necromancer-cavalier pairs. But instead we grew up.... against each other."

Still hesitant: "And now?"

He cannot grow angry at others for dancing around a subject, he admits to himself, if he is unwilling to do the same. And so, lowering his voice:

"Lan Zhan told me there was another experiment. An avulsion field?"

The avulsion field already feels like a thousand years ago. She thinks of siphoning again to unblocked the keyhole--

(Saddle up, sunshine.)

"Things were better between us for a moment," she says, with a tight smile behind her veil. "But moments pass. Even... Even very nice ones."

"She is unhappy with me right now."

She is telling Palamedes Sextus about the severed head in Harrow's closet right now, actually, in the frozen eternal now beyond the door.

His mouth twists in sympathy.

"I am sorry," he says. "We don't need to speak of it more. I was... ah, but I worry too much, sometimes. And when Lan Zhan mentioned she was injured by the field..."

He shakes his head.

"I was worried about her as well," she says. "But she recovered quickly. Gideon Nav... has always recovered quickly."

Steering around THAT.

"Things have gotten tense for all of us since then, though. I told you I was afraid what would happen when someone realized there truly are no rules, didn't I? Duels over keys have begun." She frowns. "Palamedes Sextus believe all of the keys have been claimed, and we can certainly account for seven of the eight."

Wei Wuxian winces.

"Is it just you and Sextus working together?" he asks. "I know you said it did not seem likely the Houses would join together."

"We are not exactly working together," she says. "Sharing information. He has promised to share his notes with me if I help him pick a lock..."

She accounts for the teams on her fingers.

"In the beginning there was little motivation to cooperate. Now the sides have congealed, but... the Fifth and the Fourth are dead," she says, with a wince, "and the Seventh adept has lost her cavalier and seems to be dying. If she is still playing, it is a deeper game than anyone understands."

"The Second continue to ignore the trials and try to claim their authority, but when they attempted to bully the Sixth, Camilla Hect won the duel handily. They underestimated her. So they have only driven things into anarchy faster."

"The Eight has three keys, one of his own and two stolen from Dulcinea Septimus, one of which we earned," she says, with a bit of a snarl. "And he loathes us, so no hope there."

"And the Third is... maneuvering. They have no keys, but they have two necromancers, a ranked duelist for a cavalier, and a great deal of political influence and treasure. Ianthe Tridentarius seems to be suddenly trying to enter the stakes at the last moment. I admit until then I thought she was just a pale shadow of her twin, but she seems to be the mastermind after all."

"No, I believe it is the Ninth and the Sixth versus the Eighth, with the Third as a dark horse. And a missing key."

By the end of that recitation, Wei Wuxian's head is spinning a bit from trying to keep track of the alliances, betrayals, machinations, and bloodshed. Always prone to laughter, even at the worst of times, he laughs now: quick and nervous, shaking his head in disbelief.

"That is as bad as any fighting among the Great Sects," he says. (Somewhere, Gideon is probably snickering. Heh. Great sects. "Worse! Ninth, are you sure you don't want any wine? I know I would be into my third bottle of Emperor's Smile at a time like this."

She quirks an eyebrow. By coincidence Emperor's Smile is also the name of a wine cultivated on the Third. "I do not drink," she says. "It is one of the forbearance of the Locked Tomb."

Also, she's seventeen.

To be fair, Wei Wuxian tried to smuggle two bottles of wine into Gusu Lan when he was fifteen! (And he would have succeeded, too, if Lan Zhan hadn't intercepted him.)

He cracks a smile. "Ah, that is something you can bond over with Lan Zhan when you speak to him next. His sect is very strict -- he does not drink, either."

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