[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

[acrookedpath]

"Does that mean I'm forgiven?" he laughs as he finishes pouring Lan Zhan's tea. Moving on to his own cup, "You have seen me be much ruder, I suppose. It will be fine."

Instead of drinking his tea straight away, he goes back to attacking the chili oil bottle, with all intent to smother his dinner just as he did his breakfast.

[lightamidchaos]

"There is nothing to forgive."

He leaves the tea where it is for the moment and instead turns his attention to putting rice in a bowl, which he sets in front of Wei Ying before preparing his own.

[acrookedpath]

You know what goes well with rice, Lan Zhan? More chili oil.

Pretty soon, the sinus-clearing sting of Wei Wuxian's dinner can probably be smelled from three tables away. He shovels the food into his mouth without decorum, slowing down only when he realizes he's threatening to spatter oil on his papers by accident. Next time, he tells himself, he'll remember to ask for lunch before he gets too absorbed in his work.

(Knowing Wei Wuxian, he'll forget this thought in the next five minutes.)

[lightamidchaos]

It will forever be a mystery to him how Wei Ying can eat as he does without searing the ability to taste anything away forever.

He shakes his head very slightly at the thought and begins his own meal - in silence, as the precepts require.

[acrookedpath]

Maybe he has! Maybe that's why he can keep eating the equivalent of a raging bonfire so cheerily.

"I have another talisman to show you, Lan Zhan," he eventually says once he's polished off half his food. Leaning over, he starts to dig through one of the more haphazard piles of paper.

[lightamidchaos]

He makes an encouraging noise, even as he reaches out to make sure that another stack of papers doesn't get knocked over in the process.

[acrookedpath]

After a few tries (and thanks to Lan Zhan holding the stack in place), he wiggles out a slip of paper printed with a dense array of characters.

"Here," he says, slapping it flat between them and gesturing to it with his chopsticks. "It's more complete than the others, but it's still so limited! Spiritual energy only, and in no more than a one-meter radius. I suppose if this is to be a stepping stone to the energy talisman, the radius doesn't matter, but -- " A small noise of frustration. "Do you have any ideas?"

[lightamidchaos]

He sets his own bowl aside and turns the talisman slightly to get a better look.

"Too large might have interference."

He looks up at Wei Ying.

"More than one? As with your spirit flags? To enhance the effect?"

[acrookedpath]

He sulks, as exaggerated as a child wheedling for sweets. "I thought I might have to do that," he grumps. "I wanted to confine it to a single talisman. But it may simply be too complex to manage. I thought in addition to a stepping stone, I might try to combine it with a paper doll to create a sort of..."

He mimes walking with his fingers.

"Moving lantern, I suppose, that could illuminate energy in a wide radius. Which goes in an entirely different direction from the original idea of the energy talisman, I know."

Some days -- especially when he consciously tries to distract himself, as he has done so often since his arrival at the inn -- it feels like his mind is sprinting kilometers ahead of him, dragging him behind like a pack fallen from a galloping horse. The best he can do is let the ideas go where they may.

[lightamidchaos]

He glances at the now-quiet paper doll lying to one side on the table, then back at the talisman, then at Wei Ying.

"If anyone can, you will."

He looks at the papers again.

"Does it work? To combine with the doll, like that?"

[acrookedpath]

A tiny smile lifts his lips, completely involuntary. He picks up the paper doll. A spark of red lights the characters printed down its chest, and Wei Wuxian sets it loose on the table again.

"I did succeed in combining it with a basic levitation talisman just before you arrived," he says as the doll walks over to investigate the teapot. "Not well -- the cup barely levitated, and only for an instant -- but it's a start. I think I could work up to more complex talismans easily enough, but if the energy talisman has to be an array..."

He sighs, disgruntled.

[lightamidchaos]

He glances at the doll, then back at the talisman.

"Is the limit in the paper and ink? Or in what it can reveal as drawn?"

He knows a reasonable amount about talismans for a cultivator, of course, but Lan Wangji is well aware that Wei Ying's skill in this has far surpassed anyone else's.

[acrookedpath]

"I'm beginning to worry it might be the latter." Absently, he eats another bite of his dinner, eyes on the paper doll. "Madam Bar gave me a pen -- it allows you to write very fine and very precise, even on a small piece of paper. I have to test it more. But I think if I truly want it to work, I will need to figure out a new way to draw the entire talisman."

[lightamidchaos]

"If you drew the symbols for energy around instead of inside...?" he tries, then shakes his head.

"I do not know."

He frowns at the talisman, then looks up from it and at Wei Ying.

"You said, before, the Reverend Daughter -- Harrow," he corrects himself, remembering.

"--that her necromancy gave you ideas. Could it help?"

[acrookedpath]

"It might," he muses. "I'll have to -- "

Wait.

Wait a minute.

He looks up at Lan Zhan, and slowly, an impish grin slides across his face.

"Lan Zhan," he says. "Harrow? She is no longer the Reverend Daughter to you?"

[lightamidchaos]

Lan Wangji blinks.

"Is she not that to you?"

[acrookedpath]

"She is the Ninth," he says, "but Lan Zhan, you are always so formal! What changed?"

He's still grinning, but an odd, tight knot has formed under his breastbone. Not only has Lan Zhan refrained from attacking the Ninth, but they have become friends? Good friends, it seems, for how quickly Lan Zhan dispensed with her title. And within only a few days!

[lightamidchaos]

"She asked," he says, stiffly.

"I played for her."

[acrookedpath]

His eyebrows rise; the grin slips for a moment.

"You did?"

The doll is eyeing Lan Zhan now, too, as much as a faceless paper doll can eye anyone.

[lightamidchaos]

"She wanted to know. About cultivation with the guqin. And later, when she was ... upset."

The wariness in the way both Wei Ying and the talisman are looking at him presses down on him like a weight.

"Wei Ying. I did not -- "

[acrookedpath]

He still has some food, and hasn't even touched his tea yet; Wei Wuxian picks up his cup, as if he could gather his thoughts in the same action, and drinks deep.

(He should have asked Lan Zhan for some wine instead.)

"Not even after -- " He stops. He will need to tread carefully, he thinks, and meets Lan Zhan's eye. "What did you see, when you played for her?"

[lightamidchaos]

He knows what Wei Ying means, what he must mean.

"No. Not then, not later. I did not."

She is like me. Doesn't that bother you?

He holds the other man's gaze with his own.

"The resentful energy she carries. She asked, too, if I saw it. And told me to ask you why. To say that she gave you permission."

[acrookedpath]

He closes his eyes; his shoulders sag, a little, and the paper doll leans against the teapot.

For a moment, all Wei Wuxian can do is toy with the edge of a paper stack near his dinner. He runs his thumbnail up and down, fanning his notes, letting them settle back into place. Repeats this a few more times.

He said he would not hurt her, he reminds himself, and he does not lie.

"However it happened," he says, low, "it was not her fault. It was done to her, Lan Zhan. Before she was born."

Another scrape of his thumbnail over the paper stack.

"There are two hundred resentful souls at her heart. Like a core. A massacre done by her parents, that made her a necromancer."

[lightamidchaos]

He stares at Wei Ying in utter shock.

"They--"

Two hundred souls. A massacre, to give Harrow her power, a path forced on her before her birth.

"... I did not see that," he manages, finally. "Only the energy. Not what caused it."

[acrookedpath]

He forces himself to stop scraping at his notes and look up at Lan Zhan.

"I'm not sure I would have seen it either," he says. "But the first time we met, I was playing the flute outside -- trying to seek out resentful energy. And then..."

He opens his hand, like a flower unfolding. There's no humor to his smile.

"I could sense all of them, as she walked by. All at once."