Even Jasnah can admit there is something a little magical about letting someone else tend to her hair. The quiet slide of strands being separated, the occasional scrape of the comb against her scalp. Even the mild tug as a knot is worked free carries a strange, unexpected sensation. It is intimate in a way she doesn't yet have language for. Odd, but not necessarily unfamiliar. And she is still deciding what to make of it when he continues his story about Monoco’s Very Unfortunate Haircut.
"How did he manage that?" She asks, genuinely curious.
She doesn't ask how could he have been there for a year, because she already knows the answer. Gestrals, like spren, do not adhere to death the way most humans do.
(A sharp breath, entirely unrelated to the detangling happening now. Don't think about Ivory.)
She tilts her head just slightly, giving him better access, her tone sharpening with interest. "Better question," she amends. "What were you doing for an entire year while your dearest friend was trapped under a building?"
The worst of the knots in her hair dealt with, he sets down the comb and gets to braiding. He'd braid Monoco's hair like this sometimes, too. He'd thought it made him look warriorly, like a viking of old. Then Monoco would insist on doing his hair, too, and then they'd sport ridiculous matching hairstyles until Verso finally had to take it out.
"I thought that he went back to the Gestral Village." It's not his fault. "And we'd... been having some disagreements, so I thought he might not want to see me."
So, Verso left him there.
"It was only a year later that I realized he wasn't avoiding me. Took ages to get him out from under all that rubble."
All the same, he says this with a sort of fond reminiscence. Good times.
Something feels — off — in his story. It's not that it sounds fake. Jasnah believes the details, given what she's learned about gestrals. It's more that it sounds incredibly sad. And here's Verso, delivering it like it's no different from an afternoon spent avoiding a sibling. Faced obliquely away from him, she briefly thoughtfully chews her bottom lip.
— How lonely Monoco must have felt. How abandoned. It's a hard lesson, learning even the people who love you can hurt you. And not even on purpose.
Her head bobs and tilts, going with the soft tug of hair being braided, and when she notices the movement she steels herself, takes a breath, and stiffens once again.
Verso's nose twitches as he realizes that maybe, just maybe, this doesn't sound as much like a funny story to someone outside of it. It hadn't been funny at the time—Monoco had been furious, and Verso had felt terrible—but it's funny now with the benefit of hindsight. Sort of a 'you have to laugh or you'll cry' situation.
"Of course he did," he says, noting her stiffness and being careful to be businesslike, not allowing his fingers to linger on the nape of his neck or be too indulgent as they work through her hair. "Monoco always forgives me."
He kind of has to.
"Besides, I've had worse. Once, I got trapped under a rockslide in the mountains for two years. Thought I'd never get out."
Honestly, Jasnah should find this fun and interesting!
There's an itch at the base of her spine. Frustrating, maddening, and familiar. The unmistakable sensation of a conversation she has already had, in too many variations. The shape of it is the same every time: the content, the cadence, the faintly put-upon expectation that the listener ought to be suitably impressed by a tale of endurance. Immortal woe, carefully burnished. It lands with a dull thud of recognition.
It's exactly like him. Jasnah rolls her eyes.
"Let me guess," she says, voice edged with ennui rather than disgust. "You resigned yourself to making a home among the pebbles until a stranger with impeccable timing happened along and pulled you free. Now you're burdened with a life-debt to be repaid at some indeterminate future date."
There. That was unkind. Not cruel, but pointed enough to sting. She feels it the moment it leaves her mouth. Her posture softens, shoulders dropping as if in quiet rebuke of herself. She doesn't like it when her temper gets the better of her. And Verso can't be held accountable for the arch ways in which Wit would put himself above the rest.
"Sometimes," she adds, more carefully now, "it doesn't matter that you've had worse. Suffering isn't a competition."
"Uh, no," he replies, hands stilling. Usually, people like those stories. Find them exciting and interesting. Expeditioners, especially, seem to love the idea of enduring something lethal and coming out the other side with only a few scratches. (No points for guessing why a person doomed to an untimely demise would like that.)
"Esquie came to find me, so that I could help him look for his lost pet rocks."
Obviously. Nothing so dramatic.
"I thought you'd like hearing about my immortality," he says, trying not to sound petulant as he ties off the braid. "That's all."
Hard to explain, isn't it? How she does like hearing about all sorts of things about him — but also how a particular delivery and circumstance can make her kind of a petty bitch about it. Wit's right. Timing truly is the talent that mankind values most. But that line of thinking just risks making her more annoyed, so!
"I do," she answers. And it's true. It's not a backpedal or a correction. Just...fact. Fact, without any justification or explanation for her behaviour. But a fact all the same. "I would."
But what?
"Simply didn't seem fair. Comparing your circumstances to Monoco's."
"Didn't realize you were such a Monoco fan," he says, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. Braid... well, braided, he scoots to the other side of the divan to offer her some space.
"You wouldn't be saying it's not a competition if you'd met him. Everything is a competition to gestrals." Also everything is a competition to Verso, but this ain't about that.
"—But you're right. It wasn't so bad." Just a lot of darkness and dying of suffocation over and over again, whatever. He'd once considered weighing himself down and trying to drown, but that definitely disabused him of that notion. "I never had any bald spots."
Perhaps the straightest route to sympathy doesn't detour through boasting. How can she tell what's serious and what isn't when he introduces so much with the same levity of the damned court jester she's trying to hard to forget?
Jasnah touches the tail of the braid, long enough to hand over her shoulder. Without a mirror, she can't be certain. But his work feels good to her fingertips, gliding over the woven strands. She sits in silence for a long, long moment. Unsure how to thank him. Unsure whether she should. Unsure whether she should feel some kind of way about being a Monoco fan when she hasn't even met the gestral.
Unsure if she should tell him it would be a pity if he'd had bald spots. That thought confirms for her that she likes his hair, signing off on a suspicion that started back on the ship. Curious.
Instead, when she does eventually talk: "You mentioned an academy for the Expeditions?"
His knowledge of this Academy, compared to his academy, is quite lacking, unfortunately for Jasnah. She'd surely love if Lune were here to lecture on it right now, but I have made the executive decision that Verso has not yet met Lune in this thread, so!!
"Guess they decided that if they were going to send out a team of sacrifices every year, they had better come prepared." Because that's what they are: sacrifices. Stone after stone tossed into the water, sinking to the bottom. "I never went. It wasn't around back then; my Expedition was a mess."
She can think imagine nothing of its like. At least in the average war campaign, there's some probability of return. Of victory. How Verso describes it now and earlier, these Expeditions are all will and idealism and hope. And while Jasnah has plenty of the first two, she's never been one for hope. One has hope when they are outnumbered. One has hope when they lack options. Hope is always irrational. How often has hope prevented someone from standing up and doing what needs to be done, because they cling to a wish for everything to be different...?
Hmm. Alright, no, she amends her perspective. Perhaps these expeditions were less about hope than perseverance. It sounds very much like these people wanted to stand up and do something.
"A mess. How?"
Edited (gently massaging the dialogue punctuation. ) 2025-12-15 18:13 (UTC)
He doesn't talk much about his Expedition, really. Expedition Zero. The only Expedition with survivors. It had surely cast suspicion on them, afterwards.
"We didn't know what we were doing. It was just a search and rescue for survivors of the Fracture back then."
He and Renoir had joined up in the hopes of finding his mother. She'd disappeared along with the rest of the Lumièrans who were displaced during the cataclysm. They hadn't known yet— "We didn't even know about the Paintress. Or the Gommage." Hadn't known the truth.
"We weren't prepared at all. We made it to the Monolith, and we ran into an enemy too strong for our forces to fight." They hadn't expected any fighting at all back then, but there Clea had been with her Nevrons, horrible creatures they'd never seen the likes of before. Worse than her monsters, though, were the sharp daggers of truth from her tongue. "Most, um," he stumbles for a moment, "most people didn't make it."
She listens. And gathers pieces of information, points of data, that help her better understand the man sitting near-but-not-too-near to her. She wonders if this curse of his was caught up in the fight at the Monolith. Not for the first time, she wonders whether this means he's some sort of Cognitive Shadow. Dead, but staked back onto a body. The Heralds were effectively immortal, after all, despite having died once.
She doesn't ask. She doesn't address it aloud at all, in fact. She realizes she lost that chance with her outburst earlier. What she does do, however, is reach just far enough to put a hand on his upper arm — a light, barely there touch. Possible only because of the erosion of so many other boundaries since they left the ship. It's not sorry and it's not how terrible and it's not poor, poor Verso. But it's something. A wordless acknowledgement of how cruel probability can be. Not everyone can make it. It's exactly the kind of foolishness she'd protested when Dalinar had wanted to rush headlong back to Urithiru in the brief time it had spent under enemy occupation.
Her grip squeezes for just a fraction of a moment, then her right hand drops back to the upholstery. A lot easier to show a measure of care when she's not picked her way through the dry, thorny boasts.
Jasnah gives him a comforting arm squeeze and— he feels terrible. The reason he'd stumbled over his words hadn't been because he was so emotional over the deaths of his comrades. Sure, it was the first time he'd ever seen someone die, and he'd been horrified at the time. There's been so much death since then, though, that his feelings on it are... muted. Numbed. Watching someone die only hurts for a second now, and then he's instead filled with annoyance that he's going to have to find a place to bury the body.
No, he'd stumbled because he didn't know if he should share that he wasn't the only immortal who walked out of that fight. That's all.
"Well, it was a long time ago. There's been plenty of Expeditions since then." All ended the same way, of course. "They've gotten more prepared year by year."
She doesn't look at him as she continues. Her gaze stays fixed somewhere beyond the wall, beyond the present moment, as if she's arranging facts in careful rows and deciding which are safe to handle. It doesn't even occur to her that he might be sorta-lying. That the weight in his pauses comes from a different place than the one that tugs at her sympathy.
"Preparation is what people call it when repetition starts to feel obscene," she adds. "It's more palatable than admitting you're doing the same thing again and expecting a different outcome."
The words are critical, clinical — and yet she knows, with a quiet, unpleasant certainty, exactly where she would stand if placed in the same circumstances. Faced with the same choices. That, perhaps, is the most disheartening realization of all.
Especially now, with what she has learned of Roshar's Desolations: cycles of enemies, cycles of heroes, grinding forward again and again. Each turn hinging on the moment a Herald broke. What else is a Knight Radiant other than a renewable source of soldiers to meet and match Odium's renewable source of soldiers. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat.
Verso has nothing to say to that. The repetition does feel pointless, most of the times. It's why he'd become disillusioned with the Expeditions. Skipped more and more of them. He'd look at the calendar and know Renoir was out there slaughtering bright-eyed idealists with hopes for the future, and he'd just lay his head down and try to sleep off the hangover before Esquie or Monoco wandered around to tell him he needed to stop binge-drinking alone.
"Just 33 more to go," he finally says with a shrug. Then everyone will be gone. Save for, of course, the Dessendres.
It's such a cold, cold comfort. She can taste it metallic on her tongue. Unkind, unfair, unwarranted. She's basically telling him he has to write off what's left behind. How would she feel if she were the recipient of such a message? How would she feel if she were an impossible distances from home, being told that the security of Roshar simply wasn't her responsibility any longer?
(Storms, is it even her responsibility now?)
She shifts her body, leaning leftwards onto the gentle slope of the divan's head. Taking some stress off her muscles.
"You're here. Now, instead, our problems are your problems."
How shocking to find Roshar's prospects to be a damn sight more optimistic than somewhere else's.
Not for him, no. He wonders if the Gommage is still ongoing with him gone. If there's even a Canvas at all. If Aline only wants to stay here because of him, then it stands to reason that she'd finally leave if he were no longer there, and then Renoir would have no reason to threaten and intimidate her with the Gommage. Then again, if Aline Painted him once, she could Paint him again. It kills him to think that he could be that replaceable. That recreatable [roll credits].
"Yep," he says, and he doesn't know if it's bittersweet or not. Raising an imaginary glass: "To second chances."
— Of course, it does beg the question of what larger part he might play in the fate of Roshar. It isn't guaranteed. Perhaps it's enough to take him as a member of her retinue, a literal shoulder now to lean upon. But she'd be as much of a liar as he is if she pretended like she didn't at least consider how helpful it might be to have an immortal on the playing field. One who can actually maybe fight, unlike Wit. Oh — she's certain Wit had the skills to hold his own in a fight, he simply also had that pesky condition where he couldn't inflict violence on any living thing. The man couldn't even eat meat.
But Verso, well. She hasn't seen him fight, but she did see that sword.
In fact!
"During the attack," she dredges it up, "you summoned a sword. Like—" it's okay it's okay it's okay "—Ivory."
Verso, still kind of blissfully unaware of Jasnah's distress over Ivory because he doesn't really think about Ivory at all (sorry), says, "Not like Ivory." At least, as much as he knows about Ivory. Spren are, as far as he knows, living and sentient creatures. His sword and parrying dagger are nothing more than sharp things he hits stuff with.
"They're weapons conjured from Pictos," he says, like duh, doesn't everyone do this? It's elementary school stuff, Jasnah.
Oh. It kinda sucks when someone makes you feel dumb for not knowing a jargony word. :c
Jasnah chews her lower lip. Pictos? Is that some sort of Investiture? Stands to reason, if Investiture is the cosmic building blocks of all magic. Maybe Pictos is how that power manifest in his world.
"Can you..." she hesitates. Why does she hesitate? Really, she should be issuing a command. "Can you show me?"
In Verso's defense, he really does expect her to know what Pictos are. Surely they have such a basic building block of society here in Roshar. But then she asks him to show her, and— oh. Of course not. It's why she hadn't realized the piano could be moved, either.
He holds out a hand, palm up, curled as if to hold something. The little parrying dagger materializes bit by bit: the handle first, in a show of harmless sparks, and then the blade, and finally the point of it. It's a quick and seamless process, one that seems to take very little effort on his part.
"Pictos," he says, pointing out a small little symbol in the handle. "You etch Chroma into something in a particular shape, and then you can summon or dismiss it at will." Hmm. He thinks. "Guess you wouldn't be able to do it. No Chroma."
She doesn't flinch. Why should she? She had a lifetime of watching men summon swords even before she could summon Ivory. But those had been dead blades — they took ten heartbeats to summon, and couldn't change shape at will. A living shardblade, a spren, could do so much more...
An exhale. She distracts herself with Verso's demonstration. Leaning in, just enough to see the etching. Are Pictos the shape, and Chroma the medium? Chroma.
"The currency on the continent." A nod. That makes sense. Power has value; why put a middleman between the two? Very sensible, given how stormlight sits in spheres. "Are you at risk of running out?"
Of Chroma? Of Pictos? Is that why he's summoned what she assumes is a single weapon, but available in two different profiles? A smaller dagger, so as not to waste whatever he uses to draw the sword version.
"Oh," he says, feeling a little stupid, "I didn't think of that." He just didn't want to scare Jasnah by conjuring a whole fuck-off sword. Or accidentally cut Jochi's upholstery.
Verso takes a moment to think. Could he run out of Chroma? Talking it through aloud: "Chroma is... the life force of everyone in"—the Canvas—"Lumière." Aline was very uncreative when she made the building blocks of Painted people literally be called color. Ah, well. "It's running through my veins, and all around me." A vague gesture with the dagger.
"I assume it's regenerative, but without a link to Lumière..." A shrug. "I guess it could degrade."
Yep. Investiture. It's gotta be, right? All people have some soupy mixture of Investiture in them, she thinks, but it's not so easily accessible as Verso seems to imply. Storms, she wishes she was writing this down.
"But can anyone from your world use it?" Wait, wait, give her a second to sit up straighter from where she'd sorta half-collapsed into rest. "Can anyone do the — the etchings?"
...If his Chroma does degrade, is there a way to boost him with stormlight? Is that perhaps a silly thought? Oh, there, she's chewing her lip again. This subject is really more of Navani's forte. Not hers.
"You should try and conserve it. Just in case." She points a finger at the dagger. Wait, should she ask to touch it? Would it scream, like a dead blade? Don't think about dead blades. "Sorry. I shouldn't have asked you to spend any."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
"How did he manage that?" She asks, genuinely curious.
She doesn't ask how could he have been there for a year, because she already knows the answer. Gestrals, like spren, do not adhere to death the way most humans do.
(A sharp breath, entirely unrelated to the detangling happening now. Don't think about Ivory.)
She tilts her head just slightly, giving him better access, her tone sharpening with interest. "Better question," she amends. "What were you doing for an entire year while your dearest friend was trapped under a building?"
no subject
The worst of the knots in her hair dealt with, he sets down the comb and gets to braiding. He'd braid Monoco's hair like this sometimes, too. He'd thought it made him look warriorly, like a viking of old. Then Monoco would insist on doing his hair, too, and then they'd sport ridiculous matching hairstyles until Verso finally had to take it out.
"I thought that he went back to the Gestral Village." It's not his fault. "And we'd... been having some disagreements, so I thought he might not want to see me."
So, Verso left him there.
"It was only a year later that I realized he wasn't avoiding me. Took ages to get him out from under all that rubble."
All the same, he says this with a sort of fond reminiscence. Good times.
no subject
— How lonely Monoco must have felt. How abandoned. It's a hard lesson, learning even the people who love you can hurt you. And not even on purpose.
Her head bobs and tilts, going with the soft tug of hair being braided, and when she notices the movement she steels herself, takes a breath, and stiffens once again.
"He forgave you?"
no subject
"Of course he did," he says, noting her stiffness and being careful to be businesslike, not allowing his fingers to linger on the nape of his neck or be too indulgent as they work through her hair. "Monoco always forgives me."
He kind of has to.
"Besides, I've had worse. Once, I got trapped under a rockslide in the mountains for two years. Thought I'd never get out."
Honestly, Jasnah should find this fun and interesting!
no subject
It's exactly like him. Jasnah rolls her eyes.
"Let me guess," she says, voice edged with ennui rather than disgust. "You resigned yourself to making a home among the pebbles until a stranger with impeccable timing happened along and pulled you free. Now you're burdened with a life-debt to be repaid at some indeterminate future date."
There. That was unkind. Not cruel, but pointed enough to sting. She feels it the moment it leaves her mouth. Her posture softens, shoulders dropping as if in quiet rebuke of herself. She doesn't like it when her temper gets the better of her. And Verso can't be held accountable for the arch ways in which Wit would put himself above the rest.
"Sometimes," she adds, more carefully now, "it doesn't matter that you've had worse. Suffering isn't a competition."
no subject
"Esquie came to find me, so that I could help him look for his lost pet rocks."
Obviously. Nothing so dramatic.
"I thought you'd like hearing about my immortality," he says, trying not to sound petulant as he ties off the braid. "That's all."
no subject
"I do," she answers. And it's true. It's not a backpedal or a correction. Just...fact. Fact, without any justification or explanation for her behaviour. But a fact all the same. "I would."
But what?
"Simply didn't seem fair. Comparing your circumstances to Monoco's."
Sure. That's what bothered her.
no subject
"You wouldn't be saying it's not a competition if you'd met him. Everything is a competition to gestrals." Also everything is a competition to Verso, but this ain't about that.
"—But you're right. It wasn't so bad." Just a lot of darkness and dying of suffocation over and over again, whatever. He'd once considered weighing himself down and trying to drown, but that definitely disabused him of that notion. "I never had any bald spots."
no subject
Jasnah touches the tail of the braid, long enough to hand over her shoulder. Without a mirror, she can't be certain. But his work feels good to her fingertips, gliding over the woven strands. She sits in silence for a long, long moment. Unsure how to thank him. Unsure whether she should. Unsure whether she should feel some kind of way about being a Monoco fan when she hasn't even met the gestral.
Unsure if she should tell him it would be a pity if he'd had bald spots. That thought confirms for her that she likes his hair, signing off on a suspicion that started back on the ship. Curious.
Instead, when she does eventually talk: "You mentioned an academy for the Expeditions?"
no subject
His knowledge of this Academy, compared to his academy, is quite lacking, unfortunately for Jasnah. She'd surely love if Lune were here to lecture on it right now, but I have made the executive decision that Verso has not yet met Lune in this thread, so!!
"Guess they decided that if they were going to send out a team of sacrifices every year, they had better come prepared." Because that's what they are: sacrifices. Stone after stone tossed into the water, sinking to the bottom. "I never went. It wasn't around back then; my Expedition was a mess."
In, like, five different ways.
no subject
Hmm. Alright, no, she amends her perspective. Perhaps these expeditions were less about hope than perseverance. It sounds very much like these people wanted to stand up and do something.
"A mess. How?"
no subject
He doesn't talk much about his Expedition, really. Expedition Zero. The only Expedition with survivors. It had surely cast suspicion on them, afterwards.
"We didn't know what we were doing. It was just a search and rescue for survivors of the Fracture back then."
He and Renoir had joined up in the hopes of finding his mother. She'd disappeared along with the rest of the Lumièrans who were displaced during the cataclysm. They hadn't known yet— "We didn't even know about the Paintress. Or the Gommage." Hadn't known the truth.
"We weren't prepared at all. We made it to the Monolith, and we ran into an enemy too strong for our forces to fight." They hadn't expected any fighting at all back then, but there Clea had been with her Nevrons, horrible creatures they'd never seen the likes of before. Worse than her monsters, though, were the sharp daggers of truth from her tongue. "Most, um," he stumbles for a moment, "most people didn't make it."
Just him, just Renoir.
no subject
She doesn't ask. She doesn't address it aloud at all, in fact. She realizes she lost that chance with her outburst earlier. What she does do, however, is reach just far enough to put a hand on his upper arm — a light, barely there touch. Possible only because of the erosion of so many other boundaries since they left the ship. It's not sorry and it's not how terrible and it's not poor, poor Verso. But it's something. A wordless acknowledgement of how cruel probability can be. Not everyone can make it. It's exactly the kind of foolishness she'd protested when Dalinar had wanted to rush headlong back to Urithiru in the brief time it had spent under enemy occupation.
Her grip squeezes for just a fraction of a moment, then her right hand drops back to the upholstery. A lot easier to show a measure of care when she's not picked her way through the dry, thorny boasts.
no subject
No, he'd stumbled because he didn't know if he should share that he wasn't the only immortal who walked out of that fight. That's all.
"Well, it was a long time ago. There's been plenty of Expeditions since then." All ended the same way, of course. "They've gotten more prepared year by year."
no subject
She doesn't look at him as she continues. Her gaze stays fixed somewhere beyond the wall, beyond the present moment, as if she's arranging facts in careful rows and deciding which are safe to handle. It doesn't even occur to her that he might be sorta-lying. That the weight in his pauses comes from a different place than the one that tugs at her sympathy.
"Preparation is what people call it when repetition starts to feel obscene," she adds. "It's more palatable than admitting you're doing the same thing again and expecting a different outcome."
The words are critical, clinical — and yet she knows, with a quiet, unpleasant certainty, exactly where she would stand if placed in the same circumstances. Faced with the same choices. That, perhaps, is the most disheartening realization of all.
Especially now, with what she has learned of Roshar's Desolations: cycles of enemies, cycles of heroes, grinding forward again and again. Each turn hinging on the moment a Herald broke. What else is a Knight Radiant other than a renewable source of soldiers to meet and match Odium's renewable source of soldiers. Rinse, repeat. Rinse, repeat.
no subject
Verso has nothing to say to that. The repetition does feel pointless, most of the times. It's why he'd become disillusioned with the Expeditions. Skipped more and more of them. He'd look at the calendar and know Renoir was out there slaughtering bright-eyed idealists with hopes for the future, and he'd just lay his head down and try to sleep off the hangover before Esquie or Monoco wandered around to tell him he needed to stop binge-drinking alone.
"Just 33 more to go," he finally says with a shrug. Then everyone will be gone. Save for, of course, the Dessendres.
no subject
It's such a cold, cold comfort. She can taste it metallic on her tongue. Unkind, unfair, unwarranted. She's basically telling him he has to write off what's left behind. How would she feel if she were the recipient of such a message? How would she feel if she were an impossible distances from home, being told that the security of Roshar simply wasn't her responsibility any longer?
(Storms, is it even her responsibility now?)
She shifts her body, leaning leftwards onto the gentle slope of the divan's head. Taking some stress off her muscles.
"You're here. Now, instead, our problems are your problems."
How shocking to find Roshar's prospects to be a damn sight more optimistic than somewhere else's.
no subject
"Yep," he says, and he doesn't know if it's bittersweet or not. Raising an imaginary glass: "To second chances."
no subject
But Verso, well. She hasn't seen him fight, but she did see that sword.
In fact!
"During the attack," she dredges it up, "you summoned a sword. Like—" it's okay it's okay it's okay "—Ivory."
no subject
"They're weapons conjured from Pictos," he says, like duh, doesn't everyone do this? It's elementary school stuff, Jasnah.
no subject
Jasnah chews her lower lip. Pictos? Is that some sort of Investiture? Stands to reason, if Investiture is the cosmic building blocks of all magic. Maybe Pictos is how that power manifest in his world.
"Can you..." she hesitates. Why does she hesitate? Really, she should be issuing a command. "Can you show me?"
no subject
He holds out a hand, palm up, curled as if to hold something. The little parrying dagger materializes bit by bit: the handle first, in a show of harmless sparks, and then the blade, and finally the point of it. It's a quick and seamless process, one that seems to take very little effort on his part.
"Pictos," he says, pointing out a small little symbol in the handle. "You etch Chroma into something in a particular shape, and then you can summon or dismiss it at will." Hmm. He thinks. "Guess you wouldn't be able to do it. No Chroma."
no subject
An exhale. She distracts herself with Verso's demonstration. Leaning in, just enough to see the etching. Are Pictos the shape, and Chroma the medium? Chroma.
"The currency on the continent." A nod. That makes sense. Power has value; why put a middleman between the two? Very sensible, given how stormlight sits in spheres. "Are you at risk of running out?"
Of Chroma? Of Pictos? Is that why he's summoned what she assumes is a single weapon, but available in two different profiles? A smaller dagger, so as not to waste whatever he uses to draw the sword version.
no subject
Verso takes a moment to think. Could he run out of Chroma? Talking it through aloud: "Chroma is... the life force of everyone in"—the Canvas—"Lumière." Aline was very uncreative when she made the building blocks of Painted people literally be called color. Ah, well. "It's running through my veins, and all around me." A vague gesture with the dagger.
"I assume it's regenerative, but without a link to Lumière..." A shrug. "I guess it could degrade."
no subject
"But can anyone from your world use it?" Wait, wait, give her a second to sit up straighter from where she'd sorta half-collapsed into rest. "Can anyone do the — the etchings?"
...If his Chroma does degrade, is there a way to boost him with stormlight? Is that perhaps a silly thought? Oh, there, she's chewing her lip again. This subject is really more of Navani's forte. Not hers.
"You should try and conserve it. Just in case." She points a finger at the dagger. Wait, should she ask to touch it? Would it scream, like a dead blade?
Don't think about dead blades."Sorry. I shouldn't have asked you to spend any."(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
congrats on receiving my 1,000th comment in this post
throwing a party!!
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
first work tag of the new year...
ditto. 🥂
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...
...