*Is* this how it happens?

[for_tradition]

There's a woman in the Bar proper. She's commandeered a medium-ish sized table and covered it with things: books, pieces of parchment, notes. There's a plate of biscuits and a pot of tea. She has one pair of glasses tucked on her shining brown hair, and she's wearing another, and she's humming to herself.

She is also, as a certain cavalier might say, mega-dead... but she doesn't seem at all perturbed by it.

Comments

[for_tradition]

"I'm allowed to want to show off now and again," she smiles, and her clear brown eyes are very fond as she glances from her husband to Wei Wuxian.

"No, not at all. If his hand vanishes in a puff of smoke, I imagine that will just be him having a little joke at your expense." She says this as if it has happened multiple times before, despite the fact that they have only been dead a few days. "It is interesting, though – in this place, revenants appear, for all intents and purposes, perfectly alive again. I wasn't at all sure my blood would work, but..."

[debtstothedead]

"You make your own fun when you're dead," Magnus confides to Wei Wuxian, a twinkle in his eye. "I'm still hoping to find a good length of chain I can rattle spookily."

His grip is firm when Wei Wuxian meets it with his own, and his hand stays politely solid.

"The pleasure's all mine, Master Wei."

[acrookedpath]

He inclines his head over their hands in a quick bow, still grinning.

"Were I more decisively dead, I would do the same," he says. "But whatever life the inn bestows that let Pent-laoshi call you here leaves me solid and free of chains."

He releases Magnus's hand and glances to Abigail.

"That is where I often stumble in my own work -- I should be able to do things as one of the dead that I could not while alive." Gesturing to the drop of blood on the paper, "Just as you can do things as if you were one of the living, despite being dead."

[for_tradition]

"Apparently the Reverend Daughter and Gideon the Ninth are in residence here," she tells her husband. "Perhaps Harrowhark could conjure up some bones for you to rattle."

She has been making notes this whole time; now she looks back at Wei Wuxian, flushed with success. "I wasn't sure it would work, to be honest," she admits. "The rules here are so strange! But it seems that, in order for the living and dead to stay here all together, it offers some...unusual benefits to the deceased patrons. It is a powerful Summoning indeed! And, do you know, I think being dead has increased my ability significantly."

[debtstothedead]

"Are they?" asks Magnus, brightening. "Wonderful! Wait -- they are still alive, aren't they?"

For the first time, his easygoing smile falters slightly.

"Not that I'd be unhappy to see them if they're dead, but it would mean things have taken a worse turn than I thought."

[acrookedpath]

"They are both alive," Wei Wuxian confirms swiftly. "And they are doing well."

(Magnus whooshes out a sigh of relief at that.)

He leans to get a better look at Abigail's notes. "Your ability to control thanergy, you mean?"

[for_tradition]

"I have even heard," she confides in Magnus, "that Gideon the Ninth speaks, here. You might finally be able to tell her that knock-knock joke you've been holding on to."

She nods to Wei Wuxian's question. "Yes. Theoretically, a necromancer just on the verge of death would be at their absolutely most powerful...and most useless, of course, as one would only have access to the thanergy bloom for a second or less before succumbing. But being dead, in a place which rewrites the rules so you are almost alive...I have so much research to do!"

She does not look at all put out by this proposition.