faderift | war table: one giant leap.

"I don't either, I'm afraid. I've read some of the Crossroads reports, but I haven't run into anything connecting them to the Fade. Oh except—"

She flips back through her notes, some of which were reference she brought along in addition to the new measurements.

"There were some thaumascope measurements at the first Crossroads gate, I think. There was, um." She turns her notebook so both Ellis and Wysteria can see her small but neat (ish) recreation of a pair of waves tracked over a time interval. "There's the Fade energy like you'd get in rifts, and then this one," she taps it, "is like .... taint energy, for lack of a more precise term. Right? God I wish I was a physicist sometimes, this is not my area at all." Magic aside. "These aren't the original notes, I just jotted them down for reference, so it's not all the underlying data, but this was the broad pattern."

In any other setting, it might be pleasant to hear he's hit upon something Wysteria finds fascinating.

In this moment, he is having a hard time making space for anything other than the rippling curls of dread crawling beneath his skin. That either of them find any space to marvel at the elements at play here—

It's miraculous.

Still, Ellis obligingly looks at the notations. In all this time, he has not quite grasped the meaning behind them, though he leans closer anyway to examine the line Cosima indicates.

"I didn't know it could be measured."

And he doesn't care to explore the matter any further, in any more detail than they are looking now. This is not an invitation to consider the matter once they return to the Gallows.

"Does any of this show where it was interacted with?"

"There, I think."

Wysteria has beetled over to join the pair of them, and cranes her neck now at the awkward angle necessary to join in looking at Cosima's notes. With the point of her pen, she gestures toward a spot of the wave pattern where the identified strand of 'Fadeiation' collapses dramatically and the blighted strand surges in answer. She flicks a glance toward Cosima for confirmation; it's been some time since she reviewed the Dumat report herself.

Cosima nods, confirming her read of the graph. "Right, so. If I've been reading the thaumoscope correctly, here's there's no waves. It's just steady output of both. Is that what you're seeing?" The thaumascope is still new enough to her that she prefers a second opinion to make sure that she's interpreting the readings logically. "It's just ... steady state for both. Which, if that's right, is seriously creepy, but also interesting."

It would probably be more interesting to read about in someone else's report from the safety of the Gallows, but she can't have everything.

"What does that mean?" is kin to Why is that interesting?

The tone is likely very familiar to Wysteria. Ellis has posed it before, in relation to all sorts of experiments that sometimes end in smothering a small chemical fire or throwing open windows and doors to dilute sudden smog.

It's almost comical how thoroughly this moment dwarfs those. Ellis would welcome a minor chemical fire as opposed to their present object of study.

"It means that this 'Gate', such as it is, has reached a sort of...state of equanimity. It's more stable than those we've discovered previously. Or that would be my guess, anyway. It may be more difficult to disrupt. Or maybe it's simply been here longer. Or maybe, given the state of our surroundings, it has somehow linked itself to the Gate in Orlais and they are now feeding off of and supportive or one another. Or maybe we are merely standing on the other side of that one, and if we were to return to Ghislain to take new measurements we might find that Gate has stabilized as well."

It's a charming array of possibilities. And also very ominous and dangerous, of course. Charmingly ominous. Dangerously fascinating.

"Yeah. You can only observe data so long before you pick a hypothesis to test. The data by itself can be interesting, but it only tells us so much." She's not especially eager to revisit her initial suggestion that someone try their luck with their anchor shard, but Wysteria no longer has hers and Ellis didn't have one to begin with.

"Measuring the age would be hard with just what we have here. And I'm not ready to suggest anyone, like, try to go through it and see if they end up in Ghislain. So I guess that leaves is it more difficult to disrupt, of the theories you mentioned." Of course, maybe someone else will have another idea, but that is possibly too much to ask for.

"Do you think they'd have to all be closed at once?"

Challenging, considering they only know of two.

"Oh, now there's a dispiriting theory!"

Yet she's all pride as she says so, going so far as to jot down a note as if Ellis' particularly grim hypothesis is the most pleasant or promising thing she's heard all day. How charming it is to recognize one's positive influence in another person!

"First literature, now the sciences. We will make an academic of you yet, Mister Ellis. Miss Niehaus, what is you assessment of our Warden's suggestion?"

Edited 2022-05-16 06:38 (UTC)

"Definitely possible. Not great if true, but it feels like the kind of rule that might govern a bunch of magic gates." To her credit, she looks less delighted than Wysteria, though at least they're not in the middle of trying to close it right this second.

"It also raises the question of whether they'd all have to be closed from the same side. But I don't have an immediate idea of how to test that. Probably just worth adding to the report for now."

Oh, by the way, we were wondering.

"Mme de Foncé, were you looking for anything particular? I know our research has some overlap but isn't exactly the same."

The briefest twitch of amusement crosses Ellis' face, Wysteria's enthusiam returned and then muted as the full scope of what that would entail sinks in. Nevermind that on top of that, they don't exactly know where this rift leads to.

Not great indeed.

But here, rather than interject, Ellis straightens to observe the pair of them. Weighing up the wisdom of calling attention to a thing that feels like an interruption.

"In particular? Oh no. Only confirming that this Gate acts in such a fashion which is more or less consistent with the one in Orlais. I wonder whether—" and here, she lapses into a brief moment of contemplative silence before jotting down a quick note.

Evidently, this passing musing isn't solidified enough to be worth sharing with the class however. For rather than complete the sentence when she's finished, Wysteria simply tucks her pen away again and diverts her attention back to Cosima.

"And you?"

"The Gate isn't really my wheelhouse directly," she admits, interested but resisting the urge to press after that half thought. "But ever since we've figure out that red lyrium has the Blight, I've been trying to figure out if the Blight is a pathogen the way I understand it, or if it has a different mechanism. The taint energy we're measuring might be connected, I think, but I'm making up a lot as I go because I'm not sure which of the rules I know about pathogens even apply, you know? I mean, those rules aren't perfect even at home, viruses are objectively weird, but this sometimes feels more like a physical phenomenon."

These are considerations far outside Ellis' wheelhouse.

Physical phenomenon furrows his expression into a frown, though rather than ask the question, he slants a look sideways to observe Wysteria's reaction before interrupting the flow of their conversation.

And still, a question of his own held in check. For now.

war table: one giant leap.

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