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WHO: Lan Wangji, Wen Qing, Emilia + others to be added...
WHEN: mid/just post-revolution.
WHERE: Palace of the Doxe, broader Taravast.
WHAT: Revolution, spiritual inquisition, the undue instinct to take inspiration from one ~~old, Machievallian~~ man's quest for immortality.
WARNINGS: descriptions of carnage, some roughening up of spirits during interrogation.

NOTE: so far, this houses a few follow-up or pre-discussed catch-up logs, but definitely please PM if you'd like to do something \o/

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( A dread settles in the low of her gut, the sight she stumbles on so harrowing it brings her to stillness more so than Lan Wangi's address.

Emilia had not shared Vittoria's fascination with the dead, a fascination their grandmother once feared would lead to the darker side of their practices. She herself had always been torn on the subject, but her twin. Oh, her eyes would alight with interest at the prospect of washing and preparing the bodies of the deceased. It hadn't mattered in the end, of course. The brotherhood had chosen their lone friend Claudia for the task, much to her sister's disappointment.

But on rare afternoons they weren't all working and could walk along the beach to pick shells for their Moon Blessings, Claudia would share stories of how the mummies of the monastery came to be. Vittoria would lean into her with a hungry gleam in her eye as Emilia squirmed, the way she no longer squirms now.

She tries not to think of the last thing her best friend said before she lost herself to a madness, the beds of her nails coated with dried blood from her efforts to pry stones up from the street. Piles of bodies and ashes of the fallen. None are welcome, and you — you'll burn and burn.

A steady drip-drip-drip bring her back to focus, as it did in a dark chamber on the worst night of her life months and months ago. Questions threaten to rise up her throat like bile, but she pushes them back. Forces herself to remain in place, to quiet both her thoughts and the fierce pounding of her heart.

To this stillness she remains, though it may be a lie. Whatever he has begun, he must finish. )

( Wait is the thick of the toil, trickling. He coaxes spirits to him like trinkets to his pocket, whispers them to peace. Among exorcists, this is the heartbreak: to divulge their own demise to wisps of being that have only just been sundered of their fleshly silhouettes and cannot stomach the separation. To bear their battered screams, their futile, aborted fury.

Under the glass, glistened chandelier, he sprawls over marbles and corpses and rights gowns and velvets, stitches broken bone back into familiar geometries of position, shields burns and corrosions of fatty tissue with dregs of veils and shawls. The Bessis deprived the Attaryl of life, of final decorum and dignity; Lan Wangji stole their peace. The well of what is theirs to share has long dried. He cups his hands again to plead teardrops.

Smear of blood on his cheek, the last ghost marks him. Leaned into her touch, his cheek appears perches long. He drifts back to sit, knelt — back to himself, to a gentle righting of his breathing. Sinister fucking bastards, he has heard villagers whisper after them on assignment. Lan Wangji wears the name well, wipes the sweat and congealing, glistened ash and oils off on his palms on tile.

Then, he recalls Emilia. )

Come, as you can, with a mind eased. Bring no anguish or power. ( This is rite, or habit, his voice barren. It strikes him that men, most men, require reasons. ) You are too gifted. ( A simple truth, like Bichen's cut set to perforate and bleed his fingertips. Easy. ) Spirits will ever flock or flee you.

( Like stream and stormed rivulets set to disturb lake waters, Emilia's presence sends ripples the dead cannot ignore or circumvent. )

( Where mortals accrue wealth in their never-ending acquisition of power, the realms that exist beyond them favor other forms of currency. In the underworld, nothing is more prized than blood and the magic that runs through it, though secrets and fears will suffice in a pinch. To show weakness of any kind is assured destruction. She tries to make herself untouchable. She buries her own hurts as best she can and readies herself to do her worst, for the Seven Circles surely will.

But what he asks of her is near impossible: her mind is never at ease and her gifts were dulled long ago. The truth of how and why hides somewhere in her bones, and the key to the lock forsaken. She is only ever left with the fading of a memory, and a sorrow she thought she'd killed.

In another life, these might have been her sisters. Would she have fought for them as she fought for the witches of Palermo, or would her fire burn them, too? It all began this way. With vengeance, yes — but also a burning desire to protect her kind from being slaughtered as Vittoria was. To give the fallen true justice and peace. Accountability for the guilty, no matter what it made her. Whatever the Attaryl were guilty of, and it was dreadful, this — there is no word for this.

She doesn't fully understand, but continues her attempts to push it all back. The sickened dread that twists her insides. The suspicions that roil, and an odd observation: that this should be the most he has said to her all in one go. She wants to turn and flee. She wants to yank his hands away from them.

She thinks she came too late, and this is not a story of forgiveness. ) I thought there was nothing left.

Only grief.

[ You know better. And, You are no child. His mouth stretches against the silhouettes of laughter. Sound claws its grave at the root of his throat. He cannot release it. Swallows down, in dappled gulps of acrid strain, against the tempting cruelty of childish hysteria. It is a simple thing, to break when others witness you and raise you.

The ticking of a distant clock, his heart beating. He trails fingers wet with cold and writes faint characters of release in the salt he begged off a maddened serving girl, who must have heeded him only to evade the looming threat of his eyes, his wandered step. Better a thick sickness attended and contained than a plague spreading. He has passed his salt not to encircle the bodies — crass, obvious, intrusive — but only to corset the wrists of these witch women and prevent the idle twitching of barely departed flesh, when the spirit is summoned close.

Given the opportunity for possession, victims of burning so often gravitate towards clawing their throats to ribbons. Enough of bloodshed here. All red debts have gone paid. ]

They could only assist Bonaccorso Spina through possession. [ Perhaps it is not he, but another Lan Wangji who speaks — softly, reverently, like any child who accepts and appreciates the demerits of a beloved toy he has taken to play. Who is paternally disappointed with its failures, but ultimately untroubled. As if his stakes in this were threadbare and few. ] They could not improve their rites to extend life, once his flesh was broken. Their knowledge is frail.

[ And rigid and wanting, and Wangji's teeth grit and snap, but release. He can compel spirits to answer him — not to speak those lies he would wish heard. ]

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