...the horses. He is manipulated in motion, more rag and ridicule than apt combatant, a partner in the tender choices of Wei Ying's countless crimes. That time, together, another rooftop nearly mounted — Wei Ying a stain of warmth on Lan Wangji's own back. Learn the humility of yielding. The great nibbling pressures of knees and backs bent, of traction compounding.
It drips of him, like the wet of mould, "You have not earned my burden." But Lan Wangji awards it like gold and tinsel on fine spread, and he does not stir past the rare occasion when he remembers himself — Hanguang-Jun — enough to let his core have its last punitive roar, feral, when he targets the rare talisman behind them. Fire — no, mere flame. A whisper of it, blighting dead eyes, a humble distraction they would know better than to heed in a night less darkened. Roam there, and not upon us.
Flame, distant, catapults the horse to terror. Fractionally blinded, and Wangji can still taste the aches of an animal stormed by confusion. In war, they were educated for this — the unexpected, tearing viciously at their skins, their flesh, their posture. Rain of arrows, puddles thick with ill coagulated blood. Screams, from the master commander, or the dying's shrieks, strident.
Here, this steed barely keeps position long enough for Wangji to drag the surrendering corpse of his body, strained, up one leg, then its brother, to laugh when the muscle of the creature pulls taut beneath his heel — and scoot obediently forward, ambivalent to the reins, possessed of enough discipline to give Wei Ying control of their escape. An absent, another talisman thrown hastily behind him. Let it never be said he does not work to purpose.
"You may steal the chief cultivator." And hissed, "If you make haste."
...because Wei Ying has stood at the heart of their delays, surely.
no subject
It drips of him, like the wet of mould, "You have not earned my burden." But Lan Wangji awards it like gold and tinsel on fine spread, and he does not stir past the rare occasion when he remembers himself — Hanguang-Jun — enough to let his core have its last punitive roar, feral, when he targets the rare talisman behind them. Fire — no, mere flame. A whisper of it, blighting dead eyes, a humble distraction they would know better than to heed in a night less darkened. Roam there, and not upon us.
Flame, distant, catapults the horse to terror. Fractionally blinded, and Wangji can still taste the aches of an animal stormed by confusion. In war, they were educated for this — the unexpected, tearing viciously at their skins, their flesh, their posture. Rain of arrows, puddles thick with ill coagulated blood. Screams, from the master commander, or the dying's shrieks, strident.
Here, this steed barely keeps position long enough for Wangji to drag the surrendering corpse of his body, strained, up one leg, then its brother, to laugh when the muscle of the creature pulls taut beneath his heel — and scoot obediently forward, ambivalent to the reins, possessed of enough discipline to give Wei Ying control of their escape. An absent, another talisman thrown hastily behind him. Let it never be said he does not work to purpose.
"You may steal the chief cultivator." And hissed, "If you make haste."
...because Wei Ying has stood at the heart of their delays, surely.