recreatable | open post.

"Hey," he gripes, "I'm telling the truth." He is the Continent's resident chess champion! It's just that there's not exactly anyone else to play chess with. He'd spent time painstakingly teaching Monoco, but he's the only person Verso has to play against. The other gestrals have minimal interest in sitting down and thinking through chess moves, and Expeditioners don't have enough hours left for such time-consuming games.

"I'm better than Monoco. And Esquie's hands are too big to hold the pieces without crushing them." Poor guy doesn't know his own strength.

"I'm the best chess player you've ever met." Probably.

He may well be telling the truth, but Jasnah rankles at the way that truth insists on being expressed along a bell curve. Top of one's class, best on the continent, best you’ve ever met — all of it comparative, all of it anchored to a population she cannot evaluate. She can concede the last one, perhaps. Reluctantly. But the pattern still chafes. Dalinar could claim the finest handwriting among the highprinces; it would not prevent his script from resembling cremling scratches all the same.

"Well," she says instead, redirecting, "is it difficult to play?"

Chess. Perhaps she should ask about the game, rather than his aptitude for it. As she speaks, she gives his arm a light tap and tips her chin toward a narrow patch of cobbled space ahead. A bench tucked into the shade. A wordless request for a pause, now that they've managed another block.

"More difficult than vingt-un."

He did describe it as a strategy game, after all. Long-term planning.

"More difficult than vingt-un?" Verso laughs a little, sitting down on the bench and offering his arm to help steady her as she presumably lowers herself onto it, too. "Are we going to compare everything to vingt-un?"

He's played other games, you know!!! But admittedly, vingt-un seems to be their one area of shared understanding. She's taken to it quickly, although he knew she would. Jasnah is far too intelligent for a simple card game like that to trip her up. Once they're back, he looks forward to teaching her games with more complexity.

Like chess.

"I'd say it's more difficult, yeah. Some people dedicate their entire lives to mastering it."

It remains remarkable how quickly he's become almost an extension of her. She keeps her hold on his arm as she lowers herself onto the bench beside him, the grip easing from his sleeve to his wrist and settling there. Loose, habitual, half-familiar and half-precaution. As if she's keeping a lifeline, should they need to move quickly, despite the city's complete and obvious indifference as it hums past them.

"Yes," she says, dry as ever, "we're going to compare everything to vingt-un until we acquire a fresh data point."

They've left the fiction of their marriage behind on Torreth's ship — though, in hindsight, it was likely only ever the rank-and-file who believed it — but some habits linger. Two weeks ago, she would never have kept a hand on him in public. Two weeks ago, the closest she'd come was sitting beside him at his piano.

"Hard to imagine anyone spending their entire life mastering a game," she continues, thoughtful. She knows his homeworld isn't peaceful, not by his account, but it still strikes her as strange. Devoting that much time to a single pursuit that does not materially affect or improve the world state itself. Not unlike music, or the visual arts, admittedly, though experience has taught her not to voice that comparison aloud. People don't like it when you all their art frivolous.

Verso's fingers twitch as he thinks about—and then violently dismisses—how easy it would be to hold her hand right now.

"Well. Lives are shorter now."

Thanks to the Gommage. It hasn't escaped his notice that Jasnah would likely already be gone, were she in Lumière. Although there's a tinge of melancholy to his voice, he mostly sounds resigned. Vanishingly shorter lives aren't news to him. No use crying over it now. Not until he's drunk.

"Anyway," he says, "I think you'd like it. It's... complex. Requires quite a bit of cleverness."

Oh. Right. The Gommage. To her credit, her expression does pinch with a brief, diluted regret when he reminds her how much shorter a life would be back. The empathy flickers (real, if restrained) but it doesn't meaningfully alter her conclusion. If anything, it seems like more reason to devote one's time to pursuits with lasting value. She has the good sense not to say that aloud, either.

Nor does she linger on the other thing he says. It is, after all, a compliment. He must think her clever if he's recommending the game to her. But it doesn't land the way it might for him. Yes, she's clever. That's settled knowledge. Her mind slips instead to a more practical curiosity: how long it will take her to beat him, once she learns it?

"—So many games," she muses, thoughtful rather than impressed. It's not as though the Alethi lack pastimes of their own; they just seem...pedestrian, by comparison. A side effect, perhaps, of a nation that has long prioritized warfare over nearly everything else.

"And artistic pursuits," she continues, then tilts her head slightly. "What about science? Was there much invention after the Fracture? Do you know?"

Sometimes he knows. Sometimes, she suspects, he doesn't. Half the goal is to watch for what catches him up.

"Necessity is the mother of invention, no?"

That is to say— with the Gommage and the Expeditions, invention has been necessary. "I've seen Expeditioners come with grappling hooks. Airships. Automobiles." Some of which he's more familiar with than others. No need for ships and cars when you've got an Esquie to ride everywhere on.

"I've even heard there's a man at the Expeditioner Academy working on a device to convert Nevrons' chroma into a more usable resource."

You know, Navani would love these topics. Jasnah had accepted whatever-in-Damnation chroma was without much complaint or investigation; her mother, on the other hand, would have been just as insufferable on that topic as Jasnah has been with some of the others. She'd want to know what powered their airships, given how the Fourth Bridge relied on stormlightt and fabrials.

On this topic, however, Jasnah's questions are decidedly novice.

"—What's an automobile?"

She knows what everything else in that list is, at any rate.

"Oh. It's like—"

He gestures vaguely. How to describe something that he himself has nearly no experience with?

"It's a machine with four wheels, powered by some sort of motor." He thinks??? Look, he's not a car guy. In lieu of having anything actually useful to say on this topic (sorry, Jasnah), he says, "...They're for travel, I believe."

"...Like a wagon that doesn't require a chull?"

She connects the dots. Easily, really. Despite Verso's slightly-worrying uncertainty. Or rather, it's less worrying that he's uncertain and more worrying that he'll name a thing quite so cavalierly only to have it turn out that he can't actually elaborate on what that thing is.

"Something like that," he says with a shrug. Sorry, Jasnah x2!! He doesn't know what he doesn't know, and therefore has nothing particularly illuminating to say on the topic. If only Gustave—the aforementioned man at the Expeditioner Academy working on an invention—had tumbled into her world instead, they'd be having all kinds of technological conversations. "Never used one. All machinery pales in comparison to an Esquie."

Just as well! The less potential he has to be interesting to Navani, the better. Jasnah shudders to think of her mother getting her talons into this particular offworld visitor. She'd never see him again — he'd be swept into her cabal of researchers and artifabrians. No, it's just as well that he's got no worthwhile intel on automobiles and foreign airships. Then, you see, the only talons in him will be Jasnah's own.

"Right. The," there's no way she's gonna get this right, "marshed-mellow."

Laughing: "Marshmallow, yeah."

It's a little strange to think that she doesn't know what a marshmallow is, but 'marshed-mellow' is also quite charming. He prefers when she's the one looking clueless instead of him. Unfortunately, it's too often the other way around here in Roshar.

"That's a food. It's a confection that's..." Another vague gesture. "Big and fluffy."

A pause, wherein he realizes this may clear nothing up on the topic of Esquie. "He's not actually a marshmallow. He just resembles one. He's a..." Hm. "Well, he's something unique."

Her attention drifts to his hand — the one she is almost, but not quite, holding — as it moves through a vague gesture to accompany his explanation. Whatever a marshmallow is, she has the faint but certain instinct that she would not like it. Not if it's a confection. Her opinion of Esquie, however, remains largely neutral, save for a healthy skepticism about his rocks. (Yes, she remembers the rocks.)

Any reminder of something other and singular pulls her back to the reason they're out here at all. With an insistent, decisive tug at his wrist, Jasnah signals that it's time to move. She's rested enough. Her palm lifts to his shoulder, pressing down as she rises, using him without apology for the last fraction of leverage.

"Do you know why he's something unique?" she asks.

The gestrals aren't, as far as she can tell, given there's multiples of them. And she can't help but wonder if there's truly only one Esquie — whatever, precisely, he is.

If it's notable how quickly he's become an extension of her, it's notable, too, how quickly he's taken to following her lead. The dynamic has been easy to fall into. She calls the shots, and he attempts to ease her burdens in other ways than decision-making, such as with his so-called patience. Still, there is a moment in which he feels a bit like a leashed hound being taken on a walk.

"I'm not sure," he lies. I don't know, I'm not sure, I can't say. His constant refrain.

"But I do know that he's singular. Esquie is the most powerful being in our world, in fact." Just casually dropping that little fact. "...But he might also be the most lazy being in our world."

Her answered hum is nasal. Captured in the back of her mouth, near the roof, and tinged with an undefined kind of skepticism. Or maybe just yet-again-one-more flicker of disappointment when he can't give her what she wants: answers.

They leave the shaded, cobbled square and Jasnah doesn't need to wait for Verso to indicate their heading. She might have been barely-conscious during their flight from the attack, but the woman has an aggressively keen sense of direction. She picks the right street and, attached to him at the arm, strolls down a well-maintained curb.

"Most powerful?" Uh-oh. We could all see this line of inquiry coming, right? "More powerful than the Paintress?"

"It's complicated."

More than Jasnah knows. More than she would be able to tolerate, he thinks. If she knew the truth, would she even be able to stomach his presence? She has such a strong sense of right and wrong, stringent and exacting, and he fears he'd fall strictly on the side of 'wrong'.

"Esquie can't get to the Paintress. There's a barrier of pure chroma around her Monolith that disintegrates anyone that attempts to pass through it."

Both he and Esquie would survive the process—or, more accurately, be regenerated after the fact—but they would never make it through. It hardly matters how powerful Esquie is or isn't in comparison to her, then. There's no world in which he could ever even attempt to fight her.

"Trust me, we've tried."

...Oh. Okay. This forces her to adjust her (floating, drafty) definition of chroma. Maybe less like stormlight and more like, like what? She rakes her teeth across her lower lip, committing something to a mental note.

"Must have been painful."

Disintegration. She offers small, empathetic shiver at the thought. Of course, it leads her to the conclusion that this marshmallowy Esquie must also be afflicted with the same curse if they have 1) tried and 2) been disintegrated.

A soft, thoughtless tap of her fingertips on the inside of his elbow. Maybe a sort of there, there gesture, if he squints. It's instinctive and hardly intentional and Jasnah doesn't even realize she's doing it. Her thoughts are still spinning slowly, attentively around the seemingly destructive effect of chroma on human and non-human bodies alike.

"...Pure chroma. Is there impure chroma?"

Jasnah, please don't try to understand chroma. It's whatever is narratively useful at the time. You'll drive yourself mad.

"Chroma can get corrupted, yes," he says, before wondering if maybe he shouldn't have. The only time that chroma gets corrupted is when a Painter is involved, and there's no good way to explain that. He hurries past it. "—But that's very uncommon."

So. Not even worth dwelling on.

"By pure chroma, I meant— concentrated. There's chroma everywhere in the world, but there's nowhere else where you can find it in such high amounts. It keeps us out, and... keeps her in."

Verso, babe, she's 100% going to try and understand chroma. Right now, her working theory is that corrupted chroma might be something like anti-stormlight? Because, oh yeah, there are different kinds of lights. This is another reason why Navani should be kept away from Verso — all she'll do is bore him with light talk, displacing all that history and philosophy talk Jasnah is putting so much effort into planting like seeds in his mind.

"We would call it a Perpendicularity, here." She offers. "A concentration of power — of Investiture."

"Guess we weren't as creative as you," he teases. "We just called it the barrier."

Well. Verso did. No one else ever knew about the barrier until he told them; each Expedition he'd helped would learn, but there would never be anyone to return back to Lumière and inform the general populace. It grew impressively dull having to repeat the same information over and over again for each new Expedition.

"What is Investiture, exactly?"

"Stormlight," she answers. Unhelpfully.

They pass underneath an awning — unfurled, shading over a display of fruit and vegetables. Some, by the look of them, must have travelled very far by ship. Worse for wear, and either too ripe or not ripe enough. Either way, there are just enough prospective shoppers milling around that Jasnah waits until they slowly, gradually, make their way past the shop before she continues.

"Stormlight is a kind of Investiture. Power. Or, perhaps, spiritual energy?" She winces. It's not the best way to explain it. "There are many kinds of Investiture, and stormlight is only one kind. The kind most commonly found here. Like, I think, how chroma is a different kind of Investiture. It's a working theory."

They turn a corner.

"Your piano and your guitar both make music — sound, presumably through vibration." How have they gotten themselves back to cymatics? "Investiture is a little like that. There are many different ways to harness it, depending on one's home world. I've been told one world drinks vials of metal shavings to access the same power."

She leans in, just so, and drops her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.

"That's privileged information. The average Rosharan knows storm all about Investiture."

Edited 2025-12-29 02:28 (UTC)

Interesting. And fucking confusing, honestly. Verso's not unintelligent by any measure, but he's not a scholar. These vague, arcane concepts are incredibly foreign to him. It's not an unpleasant feeling, though, this ignorance. What a novelty to have things in the world that are still unknown to him.

His mouth quirks up at her inward lean. "Of course, you're not the average Rosharan." Far from it, he's learned. A sharp-witted, sharp-tongued academic with a rebellious streak. No, he imagines there aren't many like her.

"—Where did you learn all of this, though?"

Perhaps it matters less that Verso fully understands the nuances of Investiture, and more that Jasnah feels at ease just enough to speak freely around him. He's become a place to set things down. To store and to vault the grander, less rigorously edited theses that orbit her thoughts on the topic.

"The Queen's Wit. Your predecessor," Jasnah confirms his hiring with a single, economical word, "had access to at least three Invested Arts. Likely four — though I was never able to confirm the fourth." A faint shrug. "Regardless, most of what I know about Investiture beyond Roshar came from him. Each Invested Art is handled differently, and produces different outcomes. Like different instruments."

She returns to the analogy she used moments before, clearly pleased with it. Invested Arts as instruments. It has a satisfying precision. When she eventually commits a small explainer to paper, she suspects she'll use the analogy again. Refined by whatever she learns at Verso's side.

"Ah," he says, trying to remember all of what she's told him about the Wit before. He remembers that she'd explained about his— predecessor. (Okay, then.) From another world-planet-universe; he's still somewhat shaky on the understanding there. Everyone hated him, too, apparently. Clearly, he's very powerful, if he has access to such magics—maybe that's why.

"I see your aim. You find handsome"—literally no one said anything about 'handsome'—"men from other worlds, hire them as your jesters, and use us to fill your knowledge gaps."

Although this man from another world seems significantly less impressive than that man from another world. He can barely infuse his blade with elemental magics, much less use four different kinds of Investiture (again, whatever that is). But could the previous Wit do really, really good shadow puppets?

"I'm not sure I understand why he was hired, though." Or, more accurately, why he'd accept the job. Verso just doesn't have anything better to do. Someone that skilled, though, surely has other things on his plate. "He seems a bit... overqualified."

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