Green Flame Rising (Exalted vs Dresden Files)

20th of February 2007 A.D.

It occurs to you that you don't need the Council's permission to help people like Olivia, like Pauline and Anna and Helen, they are in most ways beneath wizardly notice, unless they break the Laws and that is what you want, that is what you are working towards, a world where kids don't get executed with swords for the crime of ignorance or for that matter carelessness. The death penalty may be 'biblical' as one of your more unpleasant neighbors argued to Dad one day, but that does not mean it should be given out lightly. You nod slowly, resolved not to live in a world anymore where taking up the Blackened Denarius carries a lesser sentence than being a fuck up kid.... A fuck up kid like I was.

"Alright, for the record I do reserve the right to change my mind." It's weird to have to spell that out, but it's that kind of place and that kind of time, a contract for all it's one of words not writing. "But for now the book should solve our more immediate problem."

And I have just the right ink in which to write that book, you think without explaining aloud. People tend to get jumpy when they find out you are using the ashes of newly slain foes in your work.

Gained: Ashes of the Hollow Seer (Tier 4 Splendor Reagent)
A thin dusting of black, like soot or powdered pencil lead save that one cannot touch it with the bare hand. It rejects life and warmth as life and warmth rejected it, the energy oddly responsive. Even someone without a hint of magic could form intricate shapes in the highly reactive dust, though you have been informed in no uncertain terms that most wouldn't want to. Simple shapes twist to alien geometries that swell an ache behind one's temples animate shapes decompose merge and divine into unspeakable chimera, the legacy of sight through madness.

"We will of course provide that you need for the Working," Rashid says pulling you out of reverie.

"Ah right, thanks." You're sure you'll find some other use for Drusus.

You bid farewell to the Gatekeeper and McCoy, a little surprised when Harry doesn't leave with his grandfather. After Olivia parts ways, she has to walk a friend's dog—when was the last time you did something that normal?— he falls in between you and Lash and turns his head.

"So you got room in that Book of yours for me?"

"You want to...?" you trail off surprised. It's hard to think of Harry as needing the help, as being someone touched by black magic same as those poor wardens or the idiot kids of previous imaginings. He'd been the one to introduce you to to the concept of the Laws after all, he wears a pentagram around his neck, he passed though wizardry and became enlightened for that love of magic.

"Yes," he says or starts to at least.

"You should take the lie-made true," Tiffany interjects. "It will clear your head, as though that's that's fogging it, without hobbling yourself. There may well come the day when you'll wish you could reach for the grey and I don't think that book does well with edge cases..."

"No, definitely not, if a spell even risks killing someone it won't chance the nature of it, it'll just fail and if you want to do something deliberately grey, like putting someone to sleep with magic that won't work either. It's an oath forever or at least while the book lasts."

Tiffany nods, like she had been expecting that. "Take it from someone who remembers six thousand years, you don't want to be tying your hands for centuries to come."

"There's some knots that should be tied."

A very Harry-like sentiment, though not delivered with quite the tone you would expect if that was all there was to it so you take a closer look. What you see if not a man struggling with old temptations, but one fiddling with his coat buttons against an balmy near-spring air. Oh... he wants to no longer have the option to transgress not for its own sake, but because of what it would say to the other wizards. No more 'loose canon Dresden', no more half-suspicious looks from Morgan and his peers.

If anything would get someone to think of himself as part of the White Council it's seeing that very Council almost ripped apart before his eyes and fighting to preserve it.

Is that reason enough to bind his own magic though?

[] Yes, if that makes him more at ease, no matter the reason you are happy to help

[] No, try to argue him around to Tiffany's side. Now is not the time to voluntarily disarm himself even of the most distasteful weapons

[] Write in

OOC: Next up we will be making the book and helping the White Council recover as much as one can in the short term.