Then, wood crackles — a railing, torn and splintered and sundering, while bursts of flame erupt on deck, and Lan Wangji hears the thunderous rumble of Emilia's instruction. Heeds it. Abandons the man at Emilia's side and stabs the night like lightning or knife's blade on oiled surface, feet skidding.
The spark of flame must spread. Bichen, steady and quick-drawn, serves him as the foot of a torch, while he straps tatters of abandoned sail cloth, stranded on the deck for its holes, then drenches it in the oils of braziers — in fire, after.
Then, he dallies, hastens to deliver Emilia's truer, stronger flame from one edge of the deck to the next, until he's traversed it seamlessly, and the pirates who see the shadow of him — nothing unto the nothing of the deck's inked dark, barely needle-stabbed by rain — do not give chase. Instead, the fire: it flickers, blooms. They scream. Strange, how, victims of hazard, men devolve into their animal skins in the hour when wit would best serve them.
He dissipates before they may think to wonder if the white of him, at distance, were a man's silks or the absent sky's stars, scattered. When he rejoins Emilia, breath laboured like the droning of a metronome, the crew has already been diverted to the twin, opposite half of the deck.
He does not think, We may have ruined their vessel, their one means of wealth. Does not apologise. )
How... ( Perhaps, aggrieved by strain, even Hanguang-Jun can succumb to exhaustion. ) What... help... yet required?
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Then, wood crackles — a railing, torn and splintered and sundering, while bursts of flame erupt on deck, and Lan Wangji hears the thunderous rumble of Emilia's instruction. Heeds it. Abandons the man at Emilia's side and stabs the night like lightning or knife's blade on oiled surface, feet skidding.
The spark of flame must spread. Bichen, steady and quick-drawn, serves him as the foot of a torch, while he straps tatters of abandoned sail cloth, stranded on the deck for its holes, then drenches it in the oils of braziers — in fire, after.
Then, he dallies, hastens to deliver Emilia's truer, stronger flame from one edge of the deck to the next, until he's traversed it seamlessly, and the pirates who see the shadow of him — nothing unto the nothing of the deck's inked dark, barely needle-stabbed by rain — do not give chase. Instead, the fire: it flickers, blooms. They scream. Strange, how, victims of hazard, men devolve into their animal skins in the hour when wit would best serve them.
He dissipates before they may think to wonder if the white of him, at distance, were a man's silks or the absent sky's stars, scattered. When he rejoins Emilia, breath laboured like the droning of a metronome, the crew has already been diverted to the twin, opposite half of the deck.
He does not think, We may have ruined their vessel, their one means of wealth. Does not apologise. )
How... ( Perhaps, aggrieved by strain, even Hanguang-Jun can succumb to exhaustion. ) What... help... yet required?