[pfsb]

[acrookedpath]

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.

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

"I am contemplating a longer visit," she says. "I have retained a room here."

Neither of those exactly answer the question.

"A material construct? I have heard this magic is quite difficult for some." She examines it with eyebrows pulled down.

[acrookedpath]

"Ah, this?" He tips his head toward the paper doll, which straightens to its full three-inch height and waves an enthusiastic hello to Harrow. "It's a modified animation talisman. I admit I mostly used them to pester my friends during lectures, but there are other applications. I am trying to see if I can... hm."

How to explain?

"Use it to deliver the effects of a second high-level talisman to something."

[we_bring_hell]

"Interesting. Is that paper?" she asks, leaning closer.

"Overlapping spell perimeters is something I've been studying myself."

[acrookedpath]

"Yes. What else would it be?"

There's no malice to the question; he sounds genuinely curious. Is there another future invention he needs to investigate? Something to complement the ballpoint pen? Maybe Bar will provide it!

The paper doll waves its arms at the Ninth as if begging to be picked up. Wei Wuxian goes on, "And where have your studies taken you? If you're willing to share, I would be excited to hear."

[we_bring_hell]

"Flimsy?" she says. "Organic materials like this are rarer than rare in the Empire."

She reaches out to the paper with her necromantic senses, trying to detect what remains of the cellular structure of the plant material. If she knew more about plant biology...

"What I have mainly learned is that like many Lyctoral abilities, the power requirements of overlapping spells are tremendous," she says absently. "Palamedes Sextus says there is something we are missing. We need a furnace of power, not a slow dribble of deaths; but there's no way to produce power on that scale in a sustained way."

Not even siphoning will do it.

[acrookedpath]

Interesting! Perhaps a side effect of a world built on necromancy, he thinks, to have so little organic material that you cannot even make paper.

But that can wait for now. He shoves some of the paper aside and holds out a hand to the doll, which obediently jumps into his palm and lays flat. "A furnace," he echoes thoughtfully as he returns to his seat at the table -- there's enough clear space for Harrow to sit as well, if she wishes. "You cannot cultivate it from your qi?"

That, too, may be a side effect of a wholly necromantic world. Hm.

[we_bring_hell]

She sits, pulling her feet up beneath her to sit cross-legged. "I don't know that word," she says. "But I will guess the answer is no."

"Necromancy--as I know it--consumes thanergy, which comes from death. Only a dying necromancer--" in the queendom of her power, as Dulcinea Septimus once said, when Harrow was sadly not present-- "could produce their own. The Seventh House has cultivated such techniques, but it is not remotely common."

Behind her veil, thinking about Septimus makes her scowl, but it passes.

[acrookedpath]

"Ah, yes, I remember you mentioning that," he says with a nod. "That you cannot generate your own thanergy. Qi is -- well, the opposite of thanergy, so it would be useless in this anyway."

A quick, rueful smile.

"It is the life force we all carry. And if a cultivator is advanced enough, they can shape it into a furnace similar to what you need."

[we_bring_hell]

"That does sound like what we need," she says ruefully. "But of course it is intrinsic to the definitions of the two terms--life can always produce more life, but death cannot produce more death without an external source."

"Yet what you describe--a perpetual internal furnace--does fit the description and needs of Lyctoral power." Her eyebrows frown.

[acrookedpath]

He does not want to tread fraught ground by mentioning the theory he had when they first met: that the resentful souls at the Ninth's heart are her own golden core. What would be the point? It obviously doesn't work as a golden core would; otherwise, she would be a Lyctor already.

But to carry that much resentful energy and still fall short...

He rubs the tip of his nose, considering what to say next.

"Are you certain the Lyctors use an internal source?" he asks. "That they have not crafted a tool that generates its own thanergy somehow? I used such a thing for my own work."

[we_bring_hell]

"I am not," she says. "There are two principle theories at present." She says this as if there was a symposium, and not just her and Palamedes Sextus sniping at one another.

"The so-called 'mega-theorem' hypothesis holds that when all eight theorems are known, there will be an unforeseen interaction that results in the power source being unlocked."

"The 'secret door' hypothesis holds that there is a ninth theorem, behind a ninth door as yet undiscovered. I have entertained the possibility that I have found that door." She gestures up at the window.

"This is an incredibly potent source of thanergy. However, there is a time limit, and I could not maintain access beyond the door." She flexes her fingers in their black gloves. "At present, all we have is conjecture."

[acrookedpath]

He nods, casting a thoughtful look to the Observation Window.

"If there is a ninth door, I do not believe it's this one," he says. "Unless they wish for you to find a way to catch that thanergy and carry it back with you. That would be a trick! My friend Lan Zhan thinks it's so heavily suppressed that it pushes away all resentful energy, and I believe he's right -- I don't know why else I can find so little resentful energy here."

[we_bring_hell]

Her eyebrows frown as she ponders this.

"Interesting. I am registering a great deal of thanergy, but you sense little resentful energy. That points to a distinction between the two, and suggests a great deal of death, but gradually and accepted. The kind that will not produce revenants, in fact. Although I don't believe that an astral body could resent its death or produce one," she says, being 100% wrong for a change.

"Is it not possibly as simple as the fact that very few people have died permanently in this location? It is a small space, we are not sure how long it has existed here, and we know that the dead are--rejuvenated, here. Death is, definitionally, what happens outside." She gestures at the window again.

[acrookedpath]

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.

[we_bring_hell]

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.

[acrookedpath]

"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?"

[we_bring_hell]

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.

[acrookedpath]

"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?"

[we_bring_hell]

"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."

[acrookedpath]

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.

[we_bring_hell]

"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."

[acrookedpath]

"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.

[we_bring_hell]

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."

[acrookedpath]

"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."

[we_bring_hell]

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."