westwhere | arc iii: house of ravens

arc iii: house of ravens | arrival

Hi, everyone! Our Arc III arrival event covers 20 Feb-11 March and doubles as a test drive. Participants don’t need an invite to apply by 11 March. Reserves live here. Try to label if you’re a test drive tourist or an old timer — and have fun!

COTTAGEVORE

TDM TOURISTS | OLD TIMERS | COMMON PROMPTS | NOTES

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TDM TOURISTS: THE SCENIC ROUTE

You flinch awake, hand weighed by a sharp stick, stone, or makeshift torch. Your clothes sit stiff, splattered with dried dirt and dusted leaves. Here and there, scratches and shallow wounds litter your limbs, the marks of days of dazed survival alone that you mistily remember. Your strength and supernatural powers are currently largely depleted, but should recover within two to three days.

As they journey, characters discover stretches of the eerily silent forests briefly transform into woodlands or recognisable spots of nature from their home worlds — perhaps they’re now seeing the meadows outside their home towns, their backyard orchard, or a fondly remembered lake pier. These images are short-lived illusions that other characters can also see.

Mind your steps: the mirages try to lure characters deep into the forest, where unfriendly animals and hidden pits wait.

A. THE MORE, THE MERRIER

Trailing through the labyrinthine woods, you stumble upon a group of heavily armed bandits who are already herding several captives. Depending on how agitated you are, expect shackles, leashes and tusk pendants that allow characters to speak and glean local tongues — including the thugs' barked instructions. The outlaws are on a three-day voyage to cursed village Ke-Waihu, where they intend to sell their prisoners to the Hok-Shinn criminal clan.

■ Ensure fellow captives survive the trek, avoiding leg-hold traps, snares and hunting nets.

■ Beatings continue, but morale never improves: help mouthy prisoners with their tasks or wounds.

■ Capture or forage food — and stop naïve captives from going deeper into the forest to follow glimpses of beautiful (wo)men or cries for help. There’s nobody there.

■ At night, prisoners are locked in stitched-shut tents — get friendly quickly.

B. JUST CRUISING

The bandits never saw you coming — but you’ve been watching them collect their prey. Perhaps you’ve even found others like you — also spared enslavement, but condemned to trail after the thugs towards Ke-Waihu. Characters can pick up discarded translation and communication tusk pendants, scraps of food and frail weapons.

■ Beware: superstitious thieves frequently patrol at night, while woodland predators are emboldened by the absence of fires.

■ Leave messages or instructions to the bandits’ captives (tree husk carvings, anyone?) and maybe try to rescue them.

■ ...or leave them for dead and trot on to Ke-Waihu. You savage.

» GO CAMPING, THEY SAID

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OLD TIMERS: CURSES FOR ONE, CURSES FOR ALL

After a bumpy ride aboard the Salamera II, the party arrive at idyllic village Ke-Waihu.

They are greeted by Hok-Shinn Weisi, the slippery mayor who officially helms Ke-Waihu, while his brother Sairen leads the clan’s heavy underground ventures. Weisi’s flippant and spoiled son Taksui is the Merchant’s local liaison. The botanist Enam and his apprentices set out to explore, taking the group's baggage along.

■ Weisi was told the party members are families of Taravast refugees, seeking finer fates in Ke-Waihu. Each family has been assigned a humble but serviceable dwelling — see what luck has in store for you.

■ Weisi officially welcomes the newcomers in Ke-Waihu’s main bustling marketplace. Every merchant, fishmonger and beggar stops to watch as foreigners are briefly stripped of their ostentatious jewels, clothes or weapons, soaked in iced water and told to embrace the village by accepting its old, its new, its ugliness and its truths.

■ To join the community, characters must absorb and redeem the wrongdoings of a deceased ancestor. They are served flasks of a thick, bitter brew that slides down mildly corrosive and cold.

■ The brew’s effects vary: some drinkers feel only a sudden, electric awareness of the story behind the curse they inherited. Others feel scalded from the inside, agonising for hours. The ancestral curse effects start to take hold that night.

■ Characters are sent off to their new homes in Ke-Waihu — but are contacted within hours by one of Enam’s anguished apprentices. His master and his peers were captured by bandits while inspecting the elusive forests for plant specimens. These wicked men took everything: your goods, your Ellethian high fashion, your extra weapons, even your Sleeping Zenobius. Go get’em — but beware the deadly illusions of Ke-Waihu’s forest.

» DUDE, WHERE’S MY COMATOSE SLEEPER?

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ALL TOGETHER NOW

The thugs, the old timers, the test drive prisoners and their creepy watchers collide in the mist-drowned forests of Ke-Waihu.

A. BANDIT BANE

■ Infiltrate the thug group in, kick some outlaws’ teeth on the way out.

■ Release and escort roughened-up newcomers to Ke-Waihu, picking up strays along the way.

■ One of the thugs snitches that the remaining stolen loot is hoarded in a nearby secluded cave, drowned under foliage. The entrance is watched by large, agitated boars with startlingly hard, but not impervious skin. With gold, gems, guns within reach, anyone for pork dinner?

■ After speaking with the new arrivals, party botanist and guide Enam confirms they have been summoned to serve as weapons in this world’s ongoing conflict between warring undead factions. The Merchant, Enam’s collaborator and the party’s patron, is leading otherworlders east, where forgotten beacons might return them home.

■ The villagers Ke-Waihu, Ke-Waiar and Ke-Waicai reportedly know the location of such a beacon. They will unveil it if the party breaks the curse of the House of Ravens.

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B. THE BLUSHING BRIDE

When the group returns, Ke-Waihu is celebrating the joyous procession of dozens of lavish 'weddings.' The (false) rites are carried out to commemorate the marriage of a huntsman and his fox bride...

■ The roads are awash with flower petals and rice, houses extend their hospitality freely, and the rich give away coin. Even Hok-Shinn clansmen don their finest garments and hand out gifts and favours, while lawmen grant pardons to captives held for minor offences.

■ Villagers pose as 'brides' and 'grooms' to play act public weddings. Characters are asked to participate as brides and grooms, or to join the wedding retinue of a NPC villager. Characters can unknowingly marry, but not become foxes.

■ The evening culminates in a grand market fete, with stalls offering sickly sweets and strong alcohols. Poets recite love songs, professional weepers wail to strangers that they lost their children to insidious in-laws, and petty clashes erupt among merrymakers.

■ Some of the NPC fox 'brides' seem to grow wide-eyed and alert, suspicious of the many hunting dogs that watchmen walk around the marketplace.

■ Come nightfall, 'wedded' pairs are escorted to suites in a large and extravagant inn. For each 'couple,' accommodations comprise one room for the retinue and a linked conjugal bedroom.

IF CHARACTERS MARRY A (FOX) 'SPOUSE':

■ They are handed three pieces of parchment before they are locked into the marital suite with their consort and their retinue.

■ Once alone in their 'marital quarter,' characters first enjoy polite conversation with their spouse, whose eyes start to glimmer golden, while their teeth and claws lengthen, their mouths distort to snouts and their hair reddens. The fox brides do not seem aware they are, in fact, foxes, but try to scratch, bite or maim their partners. Viciously quick, strong and prone to thralling their victims into spells of lethargy, these foxes could get the best of you — happily, the little parchment papers you received can share some survival tips.

■ Fool the fox spouse into thinking you are already married or pledged to someone in your retinue. Affronted, the fox bride will exile you out of the wedding room. Refresh the salt lines that surround the conjugal room, and gently steer the fox back if it flees overnight.

■ Your retinue and you should impersonate a hunting hound, down to howling, running on all-fours and sniffling. The fox will hurriedly isolate itself in the conjugal room, but will actively try to escape at night. Keep every inn door and window closed.

■ Become a widow(er). Call your retinue and make the best of your fists and a butter knife. You will need to kill the spouse a few times before they stay fully dead, each time reviving more and more fox-like in appearance.

AS A WEDDING RETINUE MEMBER:

■ Awkwardly hold watch outside the conjugal bedroom of the dashing NPC ~~cannon fodder~~ groom and his fox bride.

■ The NPC groom might request help as above — or might fall deathly silent. If that happens, villagers instruct, character must loudly ask if the wine pleases the couple. The flushed, visibly fox-like bride will then open the door to complain their new consort — clawed dead in the marital bed — won’t even share a wine cup with them. The fox does not seem to grasp they have killed their groom.

■ Defeat the fox at drinking — the fox bride can hold its cups, but slipping in some of the relaxing opiates on hand will help the cause. Sneak the NPC groom's corpse out with a buddy when the fox drops asleep.

■ Or prove you are a fairer marital prospect by verbally wooing the fox or doing battle with your retinue companion, to prove your worth. Your wingman may wish to throw the fight, feed lines, or generally smoulder. The fox bride will offer the NPC corpse as a betrothal gift.

Come morning, the villagers open the now-delapidated inn. Those who survive fox weddings receive braided bracelets of red, golden and tangerine rope, earning good will in the village. The murderous fox brides have disappeared — in their place, yellowed and dust-drenched bones 'sleep' in the marital beds, covered by withered and torn wedding clothes.

Villagers share the whole story: a huntsman encountered a fox goddess in the forest, when she had taken the shape of a beautiful woman. Lovestruck, he brought her back to Ke-Waihu as his wife — but the horrified villager slaughtered her and her husband on their wedding night. The fox god cursed the village to relieve yearly 'fox weddings,' during which the bones of those murdered during the previous 'conjugal' festivities rise as brides to terrorise new spouses.

Skipping the fox wedding rites, villagers say, shrivels their crops and depletes their food stocks for several seasons.

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C. A-HUNTING WE WILL GO

It’s all fun and wedding games, until one of the victims of the recent nuptials is the son of influential wine merchant Saguk Chaomin. He vengefully sponsors a a hunt to finally lift the foxes’ curse.

■ Saguk Chaomin assigns weapons — from knives, spears and sharpened sticks to bows, arrows and rifles operating on gun powder — alongside lanterns and climbing rope to the brave adventurers. The contingent splinters into smaller groups to avoid detection.

■ The forests now aggressively conspire to lead characters to their deaths: whether it’s through fostering illusions that trip them into gullies, or decrepit bridges that crumble, sending travellers into whirling river waters. Animals (excluding wolves) attack travellers fiercely. Keep a hunting hound close.

■ Characters with unusual physical features or suspicious behaviours — from supernatural powers to a fear of dogs — are accused of being shape-shifting foxes.

■ Fox spirits assume a mortal but resilient shape the day after the wedding — strong, large, feral and willy. They’re quick to bite, and their presence dulls the senses of hunters.

■ To exorcise the foxes, kill their mortal bodies or obliterate or repair their small, decaying forest altars. These are stone rings the size of one’s hand, often hidden at the root of ancient trees. Cleanse the altars of filth, vermin and predatory creatures, and replenish the stones with fresh river pieces. Beware rare fox spirits that come to protect altars or hide their young.

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D. WELL, WELL, WELL

In the wake of the weddings, characters head to their abodes, while test drivers are garrisoned in communal temporary shelters. Over the next few days, everyone may notice:

■ Villagers have a marrow-deep fear of the Hok-Shinn clan, whose members behave as if they are immune from repercussions.

■ Villagers tell eerie tales of strange encounters in their locked stables, abandoned houses or wells — they have seen a creature with the head of a beautiful woman, whose hair braids to form her snake-like body. 'She' slithers away once discovered.

■ Word spreads across the marketplace that dark waters have returned. A farmer’s well has dried, leaving only a thickened, tar-like liquid at the bottom. Another villager shamefully admits his well also dried a month ago, clogged by dark filth — the fount was old, and he assumed it had naturally depleted.

■ Horrified villagers speak no more of this, but superstitiously volunteer flower and food tributes for the Ka-Sanwon volcano. Mayor Hok-Shinn Weisi intercedes to reserve the resources for the upcoming return of the patron lord of the volcano’s three villages — the undead Beastmaster.

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QUESTIONS

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh.

[Anduin chokes slightly, at Lan Wangji's words and at the slumped pose that accompanies them. He takes half a step forward towards the other man, a flush staining his cheeks as he hesitates, uncertain exactly what this wilting is to indicate exactly.

Is he alright...?]

I, uh. Doubt that, sincerely.

[A beat.]

I apologize, if he has. Said, or done anything. He's not... [Anduin hesitates, uncertain of exactly what to say.] He really does mean well, if you can believe as much.

( Suspended rests suits him, as if the violent, vicious discomforts of his contortions erase the steady, damp beat of pain that rocks his temples. If he hurts physically, openly, at shallow skin levels — his hurts become deeply sketched, singular fixtures. He can isolate them, tally them, control his understanding of their depth. Breathe attuned to them, drowning them.

He can assume control, where his migraine ebbs, crests and tides without his say. A pitiful gesture. His murmur's half a groan between the snarled obscenities of the man who paces outside, an animal testing his cage. He will not leave, Lan Wangji knows. For hours, he has not left.

What does he wish to find here? Men cannot hope to desperately outpace their troubles. )

You are not his keeper. ( The man Wrathion may mutter his own apologies with a willing mouth. )

[Anduin glances over his shoulder, frowning slightly at the man outside their door, before taking another half step toward Lan Wangji. Moving to hesitantly kneel by his side -- it feels odd to stand over him and talk with him sitting prone in such a position.]

No, I. I am... [His king? No, he isn't even that, Wrathion is not a member of the Alliance. It's Complicated.] We have known each other for a long while now and I -- understand how he can be, at times.

[Another beat.]

I'm sorry, are you well? Is there anything that I can...?

One man cannot make another's excuses.

( Nor right his wrongs, nor walk his single-log bridge, nor claim his redemption. If Lan Wangji has learned the lessons of a life, they are two: that Wei Ying, Wei Wuxian, Yiling Patriarch has yet to encounter odds he will not spit the face of, until they improve from impossibility to probability at his whim. And that men are for the knowing, the pleasing, the worship, the mourning, the long and gutting hate — and never for taming.

What use are Anduin's apologies? No better than if he were to take the knee and, shrivelled into himself, wilting, offer a hundred alms and beg a thousands excuses and subject himself to ten thousand deaths, if only he were permitted to erase with a drenched cloth the stain of their visitor's brayed cacophony.

"Unnnnnnnclllllllllleeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. You know some rope'em, the wives' mothers, and leave'em to drown in the river? Like cats, ahhh? Unnnnnnnnclllllllllllllleeeeeeeeee? Ahhhhhnnn? Should I be, me, I should — should I be drownin'er, me?

Arid, Lan Wangji's lips nearly tear. He wets them the once. Again. Another turn. Then, carefully, as if by way of explanation: )

He screams.

( As if, perhaps, Anduin may have failed to notice. As if they are not both possessed of the same gutting vulnerability to shattering screeches. As if Lan Wangji is the only man of this world susceptible to the terrors of a migraine. )

[Anduin winces slightly. At Wangji's chiding. At the other man's discomfort. At the visitor's yowling and the things that he is saying, by the Light. He cannot actually mean to do such a thing, can he?

Anduin casts a wary eye over his shoulder toward the door before looking back toward Wangji, his expression pinching with concern now. The fact that he is still sitting like that on the floor is... Telling.

Also: worrying.

Anduin presses his lips together for a long moment, before hazarding:]

I can speak to him? Again. I cannot guarantee he will not return tomorrow but. For now...?

( There are mercies and blessings and kindnesses in life, and one such is this: that Anduin, voice oiled and steady, and the look of him strained, proposes assistance.

Molten still in prostration, Lan Wangji tempts himself with the ease of somnolence — with resting here, as children do, boneless and sweet, until his troubles dissipate at foreign hands. But he is a man grown, and, between them, blinks and breathes elder.

There are limits to self-indulgence, to unmooring. He lifts himself, back first and strangely arched like a caterpillar flinching away from fire licks. Then, his arms brace and support him up. Finally, doused in stupor, he kneels in silence, eyes wet with the tenuous blur of light assaulting his sight, invasive. He expects the coagulation of granules of light before him is Anduin. Speculates. Nods, half-convinced. )

He will not heed you.

( But he does not ask, Do not go. )

[Anduin has not shared with a soul in this place the fact that he has governed a kingdom, despite his youth. Despite his character. He knows the way that he comes off to those who encounter him: soft. His advisors thought him too soft to rule as well. That did not mean he was not sat upon the thrown, regardless.

He reaches out to place a hand on Wangji's shoulder and give a gentle squeeze. It is so tempting to push something of the Light out through his hand -- Wangji does not seem well, and as a priest of the Light his first instinct is to turn towards it in times of need. But first thing's first. They will never get any peace with that man outside their door.]

I will do my best. Stay right there.

[He says, as if Wangji seems in any hurry of making any move at all. Offering a watery smile, he pushes himself -- somewhat stiffly -- to his feet, before crossing to the door where he takes in a deep breath. Steeling himself before he forces himself to stand up tall and pulls the door open before he can think better of it.]

I do not understand what was not made clear to you the last few times you brought this matter to our door, sir,

[Anduin begins, an authority in his voice he usually only reserves for those moments when it seems as though Genn and Jaina might actually go for each others' throats if they are not reminded that this is a council session and he is in fact their king and not the 10-year-old child they remember him as...]

((ooc: i was sort of planning to handwave this interaction between this man and anduin, unless you wanted to actually play it out together haha, just lmk!))

( All at once, skies above clear, their storm breaks. After, when Anduin's touch is but a burning print that burdens his shoulder, pestilential and corrosive, when Lan Wangji still recoils from it — when he is half possessed by his body, and half in possession of it, and he can start the gentle rise of his head, of his back — when every breath is no longer a barter between tepid convulsions to spill his stomach, and the instinct to grow gelid and hard.

After, when Anduin acquits himself of his duties in whatever tongues of persuasion Zewu-Jun would have mastered to fluency, and their house sings of pained, hollow silence, and Lan Wangji's migraine recedes like spring flood waters, draining.

After, he drags himself, two outer silk layers yet untied above four bound and crawled behind him like his hunting procession, until he is beside Anduin — watching their visitor depart, head bowed and whatever private restlessness within him, now simmered to a startling silence. Unwatched, Lan Wangji's hand feels like an animal, flinching extension of himself, absorbing the shape of the open doorframe, the ridges that crackle wood.

He thinks of what it is men say when they are rescued. Perhaps, Gratitude. Or, I pledge you compensation. Better, for Hanguang-Jun has received his share of this, A thousand blessings on your house.

It slips him instead, heavy on the tongue, before he can consider its suitability: )

I do not relish touch.

( Take note, sir. )

[Anduin lets out a soft breath as the villager leaves, unable to help but feel an immense sense of relief that he has managed to get through to the man. ...for now, at any rate. Bit by bit, he forces his posture to relax until he feels something more like his normal self again, turning to glance aside at Lan Wangji as the other man joins him by the door.

The other man seems -- better? He is at least standing upright instead of sitting prostrate on the ground, which is something. He still has to wonder after the status of Wangji's health nevertheless, and he is just working himself up to ask about it when Lan Wangji speaks himself.

Anduin -- blinks.]

Oh. I -- apologize. I did not mean to overstep.

[He hesitates for a long moment, before he is unable to continue on to ask:] Are you... Feeling better?

[He raises his eyebrows in question. Yes, he had noticed that, earlier.]

( Action outstrips intent. Were Anduin his disciple, he might say —

But then, they are not ribbon-bound, or fate-forged, or chained, or familiars. No intimacy stretches taut and cloying between them. But Anduin asks, and in a friendless world of pox-saddled faces and callused hands and sickness and poverty wherever they glance in the village, Anduin is king and saviour.

A man's back still casts long shadow where he slinks and steps, dislodging morsels of gravel in his withdrawal. And will his mother-in-law drown? There are crimes even cultivation cannot hope to prevent or acquit. )

The halls of my home are silent. ( There, worlds away, where his mother's ancestral jingshi residence sleeps erected between winter's breaths, bright-white and pristine and irreverently stalwart. There, where Lan Wangji is whole and not sum of parts, not a futile weapon occasionally lent purpose in Wei Ying's hands. ) Disruptions —

( Agitates him like a stormed sea. Poisons his temper. Amplifies a spate of perennial migraines. )

Ill suit me. ( Or that. ) Apologies. You attended to him alone.

[Anduin is... Surprised. Firstly, that Lan Wangji is offering him personal information about himself, however sparse. Secondly, that that selfsame man is offering him an apology.

Anduin turns to raise his eyebrows at the other man, hesitating a moment before offering him another careful smile.]

Oh. No, that's. Quite alright, you need not apologize. You did not ask for this any more than I did. It's just...

[Anduin turns to glance out the door once more, towards the retreating form of the man, as he tries to decide how to choose his words once more.]

I suppose you might say that I have had practice with such things.

( They are creatures shaped by blood, habit and circumstance, the sums of choices others inflicted. He hears the words, then their underlying concessions, and he does not ask, Who gave you this right?

Heavens dole out their mandates with unwavering hands. If Anduin were chosen, then he is no more to fault or question than the blades of long grass, dappled golden by smeared sunlight. A being that respects its shape, if not its substance. )

You lead men. ( You should not. A heart of kindness is not one of practicalities. He has seen this in Wei Ying, his spider's web of virtues torn in the hands of vicious, carefree invaders. He who controls righteousness and justice need not be he who survives. ) You failed to mention.

( But then, they barely traded names. Only complicity of counsel and a lush, privileged pardon of lady Rigarda's sins. Then, Lan Wangji encountered a child. Now, veiled in the shadows of his migraine, he sees the dark possibility of a boy-chieftain.

Their shapes do not superpose. So much of the day comes to this, to sketches of men as they are and men as they mean to be. )

[Anduin's eyebrows rise slightly -- he tries to school his face into something resembling a neutral expression, but he cannot help having some reaction. He had meant... To at least try to keep his position on the down-low. But he supposes that it is inevitable, at least someone would figure these things out. Wangji is an observant man, and Anduin is no actor.]

I...

[He hesitates. He needs to be careful with who he reveals what truths about himself to. But Wangji has already discovered this part of himself. To lie to him now would be dishonest.]

Yes.

[Anduin's eyes are clear and blue as he meets Wangji's. And perhaps just a little bit sad as well.]

It is not something which I am advertising. It may not matter here, in truth, we all became equals the moment we set foot in this land. But the truth of my position... Has made me a target in the past. It is best to err on the side of caution.

Power, prestige and pay invite assassination.

( A simple truth, easily bidden of Zewu-Jun's fragile, dignified mouth. And he remembers, oh, Lan Wangji remembers what it means to be the brother of the better man, of the leader of a sect: that they spend an incense stick's burn of each evening in wait of the master exorcists and curse breakers who cleanse Zewu-Jun's quarters of evil and inspect them of the slightest trickle of poisoned malice. That they assign him the wealth of an escort, at all times. That Zewu-Jun declines the caution of a dish taster, but only eats from the table of his hosts at great fetes.

That Lan Wangji watches and waits and knows he is a spare and dreads the looming possibility of becoming heir — xiandu on this day, leader of all sects above even his native Gusu Lan, for a farce of convenience. Rank will not stay with him, strips his skin and bristles his bones.

He has the privilege of shedding an unwanted existence. Zewu-Jun can never be less than what a precarious alignment of constellations made of him. No less, Lan Wangji accepts with the slow, feline tipping of his head, can Anduin. )

Rank is as nothing here.

( Breathe. A crown sprawls in silvered filigree atop Lan Wangji's hair, even now. Wei Ying's choosing, but the symbol persists. And what does it matter, what will base metal win Wangji? Blood will not stay unspilled for his voice here, soldiers will not join his banner.

The great men of one world slip to their knees just as prettily as the beggars of another. )

[Anduin's expression saddens as he holds Lan Wangji's gaze. The maturity in his gaze belies otherwise youthful appearance. There is a weight of knowledge that Anduin holds on the subject of power, prestige, and responsibility that he has only learned the hard way.

Anduin Wrynn gave his first royal decrees at the age of ten. He has been kidnapped by dragons, targeted by assassins -- both within his own faction and that of the enemies. He has led armies in battle, negotiated an armistice of peace, he has lived through the invasions of demons and aided as best he could in the slaying of the Old God, N'Zoth.

And frankly, he is tired. He is so tired. There is a part of him that recognizes he is not in Stormwind and he does not have to answer to its customs or his guards or SI:7 or... Any of the associated responsibilities at all. All the same.]

I am not certain I know how to be anything else.

You are a child.

( A boy, a stalk, mere roots. Was Lan Wangji taller than he, beneath the long-cast shadows of his first war banner? Had he counted more summers, fresher grass blade crunched beneath his feet?

Children are wishes parents whisper in the dark. There is a muted, hollow, bone-breaking expectation that they should fill out the negative space between the dreams, ideals and ambitions of their elders: slim and strong and distorted. Suffocated.

Better to leave them between dappled sunlight, the dough of their pale flesh to stretch and grow, their bright eyes to dull, their lips to crack, their mouths to cleave around words — and they will suffer, Sizhui has suffered. And they will be free.

Before, I do not relish touch.

Now, the sickly sweet drip of his hand, wavered, dropped on the tips of Anduin's sleeve, where folds crease. A tap, more than a touch. Butterfly's wings landing. )

You never learned to be.

[Part of Anduin would like to protest that he is eighteen and therefore does that not make him grown by at least someone's standards? To be called a child. A boy. It irks him.

Because the truth of the matter is that Anduin had never really had a childhood. Not after losing his mother as an infant. Not with his father all but losing himself to grief and anger for the next ten years of Anduin's life. He had been forced from the start to learn to stand on his own two feet, but it wasn't until Varian's death that the weight of the kingdom had been settled upon his shoulders alone.

Alone. For all that he had clashed with his father, he would be lying if he did not say there is not a part of him that wishes that his father was still there to guide him, with his deep voice and strong, capable hands. Letting him choose his own path but being there to catch him, should he fall.

Anduin can feel the touch of Wangji's fingers on his sleeve, and recognizes it as the gesture of support that it is. He offers the other man a soft, sad smile in return, before shaking his head.]

I suppose I didn't, no. Everyone has always had their expectations of who I was to become. Of... what I was to do, when I did so.

( Cat scorned, his touch removes itself. Unbidden, perhaps wanted, better ash vestige and a desolate shadow than a lingered burden.

He does not ask, Did you rise from your knees to the height they wished of you? Are you the better, lifted man? Did they set him stone, a statue of virtues? Gild him in their sainted gold? Was he righteous, pure, sufficient?

But Lan Wangji sees a boy like the eye of a storm of anxieties, blinking. Sees him trembled, his back too slimmed to bear the world. )

Family casts a tight noose. ( A father absent, a mother withered, an uncle punitive. Alone, his brother's winter radiance. Lan Wangji's eyes shutter — open wide. ) Breathe.

[Breathe.

Anduin's smile curls up further at the edges. He cannot help himself. He is... surprised to have Lan Wangji's support and encouragement. Truth be told he had not been certain the man liked him very much. But standing here with him in the doorway of the wise man's house, Anduin feels... Understood.

It is a comfort he had not known he had needed until the words are offered up. It is funny how such things come from the most unlikely of places, he muses to himself.]

Yes, it does. And the crown can be a heavy burden to bear, even when you have been raised exactly for that purpose.

[He twitches the other man another crooked, half-smile, before taking in a deep breath.

Breathe.]

It sounds as though you are familiar with the concept yourself.

( And what does he know, what has he learned? The burden of snow crushed beneath his knees, the ever-kneeling, the bend of his bowed back, the stupor of hard, steeled weight — of wonder. Of knowing his mother's doors will not creak open, of breathing the air of those who, were they a different sect given to perversions, might have danced on her grave. )

Against my elders, I do not presume reproaches.

( Once upon a time, his betters — now, seniority has substituted eroded virtue, and he does not ask if the well of his patience with his sect's veterans will one day dry and leave him stranded, adrift and unmoored, seeking sympathies. Prepared for abandon.

Now, filial, he turns a baleful, lead-heavy gaze and lands it on Anduin's strained face. )

You have the gift of men. ( Better, at least, than Lan Wangji. ) You may attend our visitors hereafter.

( Sir, you are welcome. )

[Anduin supposes it to be a compliment. The gift of men. It must be, for Wangji to continue to suggest such a thing. He must have done something right, maybe even impressed the other man with the way he has handled this?

He wonders what it says that he seeks the other man's approval in such things. Whether it speaks to the way Lan Wangji had initially seemed to disfavor his softness. Or Anduin's still almost childish yearning for someone, anyone to notice and appreciate him. See him.

Anduin offers his companion a half-crooked smile in response to the offer, if offer is exactly what it can be called.]

I will do my best to see that their needs are met.

[Naturally.]

As best I can, at any rate. Some of them, I fear, are beyond my assistance.

[This man in particular.........]

( It is not for want of resolving their troubles, only for the gift of misplaced sympathies, the graceless, generous fount of Anduin's kindness. They have not earned succour, nor offered payment. They crawl at their gates like vermin, come sweltered summers, uncaring for who opens the doors.

Mere days ago, they looked upon Lan Wangji as the new occupant of this all-hailed house and thought nothing of his youth, his foreign dress, his silence — only weighed him, first with greetings, then with secrets like a feverish spill, before stays could be spoken. He might have been anyone. No one. He might barely have been a sketch of himself. A monster.

Perhaps he is, for how he plays Anduin like a stone of weiqi. )

Some merely wish to be heard.

( If the gods smile, perhaps even listened to. And of the two, for they are paired, and the dregs of Lan Wangji's migraine still storm his temples, he knows who is better fitted for tasks of conversation. Besides, and this is where the duty is better acquitted with a honeyed smile and laughter — )

You may yet glean better knowledge of them. ( It is easier to like and befriend a golden prince than a statue of jade who does honour to his name. This is known. Lan Wangji will not refute it. )

[Both of these observations are true, and Anduin takes a moment to consider them.

Some do only wish to vent their frustrations. For all that he had chided that man who had just come to their door, he does not suppose that he will actually drown his mother-in-law. (He hopes not, anyway.) Some will no doubt come to simply pour their heart out in other ways as well. Anduin has heard some of this already. And he will do the best he can, in all their circumstances.

He always has.

It is true also that he will get to know these people when they do. He will learn of their comings and goings, and of the comings and goings in the village itself. If he serves them well, they will come to trust him, and... There is a responsibility in that. And a benefit as well.]

I hope to be worthy of their charge.

[Speaking of caring for others--

He glances aside at Lan Wangji and considers him for a moment. He has spent enough time around Wrathion to understand that perhaps a direct approach is not the best way to go, and if he wants to ask about his health (for he still seems to Anduin's healer's eye less than 100%) he must take different tactics.]

I had been considering making some tea, perhaps? If you would like some as well.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

arc iii: house of ravens | arrival

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handwaving fine by me!

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