the clock tower

[groundrules]

Happy Hallow-elevator! The clock tower event lasts between 22 October and 8 November. ICly, the tower incursion stretches around a week, and you’re welcome to have your character investigate something else, if they finish early!

THE CLOCK TOWER

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ALL IS AS ALL WAS| TRIAL & NO ERRORS | THE TOWER

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ALL IS AS ALL WAS

Play it cool, as Serthica’s customs officers pore over your passport papers, before grudgingly allowing you overground. Minaras, you hear, is hunting a delinquent.

Both it and Eidris fare well, with no sign of the damage that preceded the Unwinding. Locals no longer behave eerily, dragons and clockwork droids roam freely, and everyone hates taxes.

Yet perfect strangers insist they know you. Your assigned address leads to a different house. The roads, buildings and architecture look ‘lived in,’ but changed.

No one remembers the Unwinding.

■ Burlap mannequins sometimes watch from mirrors, windows and reflecting surfaces.

■ You might hear shifting and scratching in Eidris walls.

■ Minaras has doubled its bounty for a man not unlike Leonard McCoy.

■ Black fungal spores are found on the increasingly voluminous experiment vials, specimens and supplies thrown out by Minaras medical facilities.

■ Frail and confused, Ellethia survivor Zenobius finally awakens. A short thread is up for RNG grabs.

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TRIALS & NO ERRORS

The guard troops that Eidris and Minaras assign to the Neutral Zone now protect King Thivar and High Councillor Arabella during the annual Sanctuary Reckoning trials. Both adjudicate cases that violate the ceasefire.

Prolonging the trials buys time for your companions in the clock tower.

■ Create a distraction — flood the judgement hall rooms? Fire? Illusions?

■ Pose as trial participants: perhaps you are of Eidris, and you caught this wicked Minaraian raiding your home? Mayhap this wretched man of Eidris stole your girlfriend? Wait, you’re a Minaraian who wants to kill King Thivar?

■ …organise breakouts, if Thivar or Arabella have your jailed. You are first imprisoned in makeshift Sanctuary cells — all but poorly locked, glorified closets. Get a trial sentence!

■ Thivar and Arabella treat the trials as a box-ticking exercise.

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THE TOWER

As Eidris and Minaras play court, you can infiltrate the Neutral Zone clock tower of Vassarizhia.

■ Only token security remains. The door is unlocked.

■ Karsa supplies paper talismans that must be burned in the watch fire at the tower’s top level.

■ Each burned talisman amplifies the reveal spell that Karsa activates. Link a finished burning thread by 8 November to help the cause.

■ A November mod post will describe how much of Serthica’s ‘undeath’ characters can see.

■ Placing Magnus’ dragon eye before the tower’s telescope will allow characters to always see Serthica’s undeath, moving forward.

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✘ ELEVATOR ETIQUETTE

Imperfect stillness dominates Vassarizhia: your footsteps do not click, words die in your mouth. The tower’s rickety gear slither silently. Your heartbeat aligns with the clock’s tick… tock.
You have the growing, gnarly certainty that you have invaded something ancient and alive.

The tower’s entryway level is large, deserted, stacked with gears. At its core is a dilapidated open elevator shaft.

A large sign says to find and pull the floor lever, if elevators stop.

■ There are two elevators. Each narrow lift can hold up to four people, crammed. The upper half of the carriage is chain-link fence, while the floors contain hatches that sometimes open mid-travel for 30 seconds. Hold on to ceiling-bound leather straps.

■ The ropes holding the elevators are thick, but tattered.

■ The elevator’s creaking squeals can awaken swarms of 1m-tall bats and bat wyverns. They rattle the lift, but ultimately withdraw.

■ The elevator can stop at as many levels as you want (or none!).

■ Beyond the second level, you feel intensely paranoid and see your companions as the persons you most hate/fear for five to 10 minutes. Reaching the top, you are tempted to cut the lift ropes of those who follow. (The ropes and elevators recover, after crashing to the bottom. )

■ On each floor, as you exit the elevator, a nearby wall shows a different scratched instruction, signed by DAVID.

LEVEL I: THE LABYRINTH| LEVEL II: THE ANCESTOR | LEVEL III: TAG! YOU’RE IT
LEVEL IV: THE ROOM WHERE NOTHING HAPPENS | LEVEL V: IT’S RAINING (AGAIN)

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LEVEL I: THE LABYRINTH
CONTENT WARNING: MINOTAUR, BODY HORROR

Step into a jail maze, flooded to knee level. Confusing corridors narrow, widen and contort, while wall torches dim.

Intermittent howling reveals you’re not alone. Hiding, you see child-like chalk drawings of forest animals on walls — and a great minotaur. Keep silent.

■ David S P’s wall scrawl says, IT RUNS IN THE FAMILY.

■ Collect some of the many discarded daggers or axes. Rope bundles float in water — use them to paralyse your captive or briefly force them under your control.

■ Don’t linger in one place: rotting, bodiless hands surface to restrain you.

■ Bad news, if you swallow water when the minotaur or dead hands try to drown you: your skin stretches and bursts, while your bones pop and extend. You mutate into a half human, half woodland creature, all bloodlust. ( Inspiration, anyone? ) Your companions should still recognise you; between hazy memories and constant pain, you might struggle to remember them and even attack.

■ Morphed characters can (painfully) return to normal within minutes of re-entering the elevator.

■ A smaller and distressed three-headed minotaur also roams the labyrinth. Two of its heads sob, while the third urges you to hide with it when brother approaches. It tries to throttle you with a noose to make brother happy, if you follow. David did say.

■ The minotaur and its sibling have poor sight. They cannot enter a corridor where you’ve drawn or laid down a line.

■ Pull the lever, and a straight corridor leads you to the elevator.

TOP | LEVEL II | LEVEL III | LEVEL IV | LEVEL V

LEVEL II: THE ANCESTOR
CONTENT WARNING: GIANT SKELETON, BLOOD DRINKING

Here, only barren stone and thin rivulets of fresh water pouring from wall fountains with sharp-tipped ornaments — your spilled blood quickly infects the basins. Knives, pins and bowls have been abandoned nearby.

High pressure and vertigo overwhelm you. Follow a rhythmic heaving to where the upper half of an enormous skeleton — the Ancestor — has broken through a wall. White, silk thread fetters it. Dried blood rims its cracked mouth. Before it, the stone floor has been tarnished, up to a 5m radius.

The Ancestor appears dormant, a crown of iron thorns on its head. It clutches the lever tightly in its right hand. Above it, an engraving urges, SPILL WINE FOR YOUR ANCESTOR.

■ David S P’s elevator scrawl says, WATER TO WINE.

■ Dally staring and you feel dizzy, nauseous, depressed and compelled to share your close-death encounters. Before you know it, you are stepping into the Ancestor’s radius…

■ …where it plunges for you, if you don’t bear a filled cup. The silk ropes keep the Ancestor from reaching beyond 5m.

■ Two carvings under his fists read HONOUR THY FATHER and DISHONOUR THY MOTHER.

■ Quickly distract the Ancestor from crumbling his captives, tearing their arms or attempting to eat them.

■ The Ancestor is instinct-driven, consumed by thirst. It cannot see or smell, and only remembers taste. Sounds divert it.

■ Improvise: there is no actual wine here. Infuse water, spill blood, or vocally pretend you are delivering wine, and the Ancestor might spare you.

■ If sated, the Ancestor releases the lever.

TOP | LEVEL I | LEVEL III | LEVEL IV | LEVEL V

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LEVEL III: TAG! YOU’RE IT
CONTENT WARNING: SCARECROW, SKINNED CREATURES

Enjoy pitch dark, dread and bile spreading in your gut. Take a candle from near the elevator and roam through small, unlocked rooms that feature tattered beds, strips of tanning leather and blood or wax spilled on the floor.

■ David S P’s wall scrawl says, O CATCHES IT.

■ Ahead, you see candle-bearing mannequins that dance a hora to the same song played by Jim Kirk’s music box: “Up the mountain, in the grove, hand in hand to Ke-Waihu, fresh harvest’s a treasure trove, each fall we feast anew.”

■ The creatures are patched abominations of wax, skinned flesh and burlap. In the middle of the hora is a wiry scarecrow, eyes blazing with candle fire as it points a large cleaver. In certain lights, the scarecrow’s face briefly contorts into that of your mother. It wears priestly robes that Arc III survivors may recognise from the House of Ravens.

■ As the dance finishes, you notice the lever in the middle of the circle, where flame spells out TAKE THEM, NOT ME. The game begins.

■ The abominations run, gleefully manic and screaming TAAAA~AAAAAG. YOU’RE IT! The scarecrow unflinchingly cuts them down while pursuing you. Hide in the abandoned rooms, or risk snuffing your candle to avoid detection.

■ Some abominations slap you, hold you, or alert the scarecrow. Others offer shelter. A few peel off wax skins from their limbs — showing black fungi beneath. They murmur, IT NEVER GOES AWAY.

■ Parchment strips fall from the scarecrow’s sleeves, reading, HAPPY NAME DAY, MOTHER KNOWS BEST, THE SIN RAN DEEPER THAN SKIN, IF YOU CAN BEAR IT, IT’S A GAME.

■ Bless David: draw the scarecrow into a drawn or makeshift circle to trap it.

■ Intense, paralysing fear arrests you, if the scarecrow catches you. The wax abominations chant, TAKE THEM, NOT ME. One might even take pity and move your numbed mouth to utter the words. Say them — and the scarecrow lands deep cuts on your arms, then pursues your companion.

■ If you betray someone, the abominations take the appearance of your worst version: whether physically mutated, with a temper that amplifies your worst features, or both.

TOP | LEVEL I | LEVEL II | LEVEL IV | LEVEL V

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LEVEL IV: THE ROOM WHERE NOTHING HAPPENS
CONTENT WARNING: MANIPULATION, MENTAL COERCION

You enter a quiet room. The lever sits on a table, beside rope and a dagger. As you approach, your surroundings transform: perhaps your dearest dead appear to warmly welcome you. Crowds of your doubters celebrate your success. Or you are in a calm oasis, where nothing hurts.

■ David S P’s wall scrawl says, THIS DREAM IS A NIGHTMARE.

■ Whatever your deepest wishes, the room’s vivid illusions provide. With time, your beautiful dreams deteriorate into horror. Sometimes, you hear whispers of, Make a wish.

■ The room increasingly drains your life force. Within half an hour, you have gaunt flesh, brittle bones and a hunched back. Or you might feel compelled to harm yourself, clawing your arms and face, or pulling your hair out.

■ The damage comes undone minutes after reaching the elevator.

■ The room focuses on one person: if someone joins you, they see fainter echoes of what the room shows you, but they are not enthralled. They must coax or drag you away.

■ If you are under the room’s influence, it forces you to make any later intruders stay.

TOP | LEVEL I | LEVEL II | LEVEL III | LEVEL V

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LEVEL V: IT’S RAINING (AGAIN)
CONTENT WARNING: PLAGUE, THE CHILD

At the tower’s open-sky top, fire crackles from a small stone pit, shielded by a familiar, immovable blood-spattered white umbrella. Nearby, discover an immense rusted telescope and other discarded astronomy tools.

You trip on rain-battered yellowed bones at every step. One skeletal hand holds a watch piece, engraved for Mr. David Sebastian Pumpkins.

■ David S P’s has only scrawled his signature.

■ You might reach the flame easily, or be overwhelmed by sickness, black fungal spores blooming on your fingers, while you cough blood and experience intense fever. The symptoms wane once you reach the fire.

■ Burn paper talismans and link finished threads to help Karsa’s spell.

■ The child with a fox mask from the Unwinding could appear. Sign up for one of three short threads, which must finalise by 3 November.

NOTES

■ Some of the bigger plot clues have been emphasised, to help navigate through the horror details.

■ You can hit up some NPCs during the trials.

■ Check out plotting posts for last-minute team-ups.

■ Back to the top.

QUESTIONS

Comments

[downswing]

Leave me. ( And softened, because they are no longer the children who depend on stiffness and animosity to explain away their private truths, who must shield themselves with the conceit of formality: ) Your ghosts, my qi. Dissonant.

( Resent tarnishes, he need not whisper, hours, days, weeks of songs of clarity yielding no success throughout an age of war, past communicating intent plain: to right the wrongs that assailed the husked heart where Wei Ying's core might once lived, but no longer thrives. Resentful energy transits the body, clogs it, besieges it like black of mould. Wei Ying has learned to metabolise its storm of aggressions as strength, but Lan Wangji's qi remains more fragile, the balance threadbare. It would harm him to dress in the dark of Wei Ying's ghosts at length, sooner than it might defend him.

And yet, when the shrill wisps of Wei Ying's whistling coagulate, he does not flinch, nor pull away, but allows the Patriarch's ghosts to know him like their grief, to walk him like the dirt of their graves, to traverse and inhabit him and move past him, into their master's hold. Only then, he calls Bichen to hand, silver of her blade darkening in his hold, flimsy, biting.

When the first bat-wyvern spills into their space, clumsily scuttling in, creaking plates of metal, its wings folded to its body in te narrowness of the shaft, he knows the creature is only pursuing reconnaissance for its brother — that they must dispense of it quickly, Wangji jumping up to send his sword down its spine and reap lines of blood, until the bat's propelled down, for Wei Ying and his dark children to feast on.

Two work better than one. He hisses down, listening for more: )

How many do your dead say to expect? Handful or legion?

[weifinder]

( He smiles, without clarifying, as guard, not as fuel to his husband: he understand what answer was given well enough. Then what comes, comes, and the chatter of resentment peaks and whines and soars, crying, as the bat-wyvern slips and clatters and climbs lower, lower, to then meet Lan Zhan's steel.

They want to strike even before he calls the note for it, wrapping around and fettering wings, a dark and quiet to most ears howling of anger, of grief, and of intention. There's the question being asked, and he whistles another note, answer coming in voices that overlap and whisper, shriek, or moan. Size limits, such as it is. But life does not, much as the lift itself can repair, the broken and degraded coming back to whole again and again, cyclic.

He remembers the tower, and he answers, his song left on a lingering note, his lips already aching. )

Handful, not counting this one.

( The bleeding creature that shivers and lashes and then goes still, held across the breadth of the shaft, downturned. Dying, yes, he can feel it in its way, but still alive now. )

More large bats? I don't know how large they meeeaaaah!

( Flapping of wings, and bats a third their height drop down, deadly in a dive. Wei Wuxian hurriedly resumes his song, the raw strength of it less melodious in parts for the lack of his flute's finesse, and the resentful energies thrust upward, the bat-wyvern born aloft and turned into shield, smaller bodies hitting and shrieking in shrill high notes as they make contact, thud, thud, thud.

The hurried nature of his manipulations makes for little room where they hold, and the invasion of the wyvern's dying mind turns it spastic, not smooth at first. It comes near to knocking him down, does likewise with Lan Zhan, in its progress upward, leaping, to intercept the bats falling thick as hail, heavy as boulders.

Small boulders. )

[downswing]

( ...trust in Wei Ying to find and manipulate and master the enemy at a time of feverish disaster. Wangji thinks, smile like lightning, fleeting, Finally, we have found fair use for your mouth —

...ah, but then there is the alternative, and he stares into the cracked mirror of himself, into thick depth and abyssal ravine, and he is of glass and misplaced interest, of wants that should have been long buried with the young man he was once, before war wintered him. No matter. No matter, now. Creatures rain down, more leathery and tanned and dust-cradled than ember dark, and he stretches out his hands, his arms, and the spider silk of the assassination cord between his fingertips — then broadening their remit, setting out his trap, so the creatures must cross the weaving, landing in.

They do, inevitably. Blind, rushed, callous things, thinking to break the thread — not understanding silk ruptures, but diamond dust holds and cuts, and they're ripping their own wings off —

Before Wei Ying's first wyvern comes from below, hounding them, nipping at their wings, tearing them with sharpened claws. Caught in between, Lan Wangji turns to plaster himself to the shaft well, protected above by the weaving of his cord, by the wyvern — and below, by Wei Ying, keeping the watch. Belatedly, he throws down parchment, aiming the slip of nothing for the crown of Wei Ying's head. A protection talisman, for a last resort. )

One creature will not vanquish dozens. ( And calling Bichen and her smooth sheen close: ) How many can you hold, if their bodies are... freed for purpose?

( ...of their life, spirit and volition. )

[weifinder]

( If there's ever one to learn in pressure and at need, he hangs below Lan Zhan, and he allows his song to fade while they wyvern continues acting on his command. There is blood raining down, thick and fetid, as wings tumble past like sad banners of a lost, murderous cause. Lan Zhan wearing the destruction he curates and Wei Wuxian, beneath, bearing up under its cascade.

The wyvern fights as a creature who calls in high tones sees and respond before even Wei Wuxian's eyes make the proper forms in the darkness. His husband has asked, and he answers, quick calculation, all forms unfamiliar, but recently dead, without yet will repurposed into them... )

Twelve, if I don't have to guide their flight.

( Death knows a body, knows the sweeping of spirit and all life, and it is different unless they're as possessed of recollection of motion as the dead he's manipulated here so far. He supposes, pressing in resentful energies will let them dance to his asking, but it loses some artistry, and he'll have to call them back again.

He's learned to resurrect, and that's not the same at all. Manipulated the dead, but not the absent of some spark of... not life, not spirit, but consciousness. He shuffles sideways, fingers reaching, clawing into stone. Toes catching and holding, back protesting the motion. )

Eight if I do. Let us see.

( Bring down a rain of violence, his husband calculated in his strikes, and Wei Wuxian, whistling again, ready to command. The intact bodies will be more use than those that tumble past, down one wing, less two, but what need he to say that? His husband is many things, but less likely to be that kind of fool.

Above, the bats continue, and a larger form, a wyvern not gentled and manipulated, calls out across the dark. Guana falls in clumps, missing them barely, splashing against walls higher, then lower, and on the bats who've dived low. On the controlled wyvern that claws up and calls back, challenge! Until two bodies wind through the narrowness, heads twisting to snap at necks and shoulders, and Wei Wuxian sings, he sings, he tells, and the first of the whole bats are pulled in, puppetted, directed to labour up, and up, and up. )

How far to the next level?

( A breath stolen between moments, a question asked, before he whistles on, and on, and achingly yet, on. No family to lose. Lan Zhan, you are not allowed. No countermands given, with Xue Yang gone, Jin Guangyao long parted, and Su She never present.

Dark tower, tremble, ache, yearn, and bow to his asking, in small, riveting parts. )

[downswing]

( A dozen, at a generous count. Eight, adjusted for the sophistication required of Wei Ying's command. Paltry numbers, if the coiled and waiting nests Lan Wangji spies with the bare eye hide as many winged listeners as he suspects. They cannot depend on an army capable of withstanding the tumult of fliers that the tower can unleash upon them.

Even now, Lan Wangji supplements the creatures with the tosses and turning of his wire, scissoring through meat like a butcher's morning work, splintering fat and bone and tossing out debris. The stench of death pervades, putrid — he shifts aside, for the swooping drop of cadavers that plop on the first level's ground in spatters of smooth, oily sheen.

...what would it take to fall, to rally down? The freedom to abandon everything consumes him. And then there's Wei Ying, voice easy and crystalline, and Lan Wangji stirs enough of himself from reverie to gaze up, where the wyverns swarm and circle each other, and assess: )

Less than a li. ( But then, who knows what porcelain face the puppetry of that level will show them? Caution recommended the climb. In dark of the tower's gut, they cannot be certain of the waiting dangers. ) Would you trust your creatures to fly us to the rooftop?

( To circumvent the levels, this arduous climb, their attackers? Better this than Bichen, allowing Lan Wangji control of his sword, should wyverns attack. But if Wei Ying's bats cannot be trusted... )

[weifinder]

( He laughs, breathless, and reaches out, curling fingers into the soiled fringes of Lan Zhan's robe and tugging, gently, insistently. )

Yes, if needed, but you ask me... Lan Zhan, husband. You ask me the wrong questions.

( Or the right ones, as he does find the physicality of the wyvern useful, the posturing of all but dead and toothily alive as they prepare to clash a testament to the usefulness of quick thinking. )

In the city so dark it never knew day from night, it wasn't the bodied dead who fought with me, with my song. Or later, at Su She's.

( Pride, rusted through, admits what hadn't been known, what had been arrogance failing, but failing other than his suspicion. One more piece of the puzzle left unexposed, that would have driven him to live, rather than to seek his own death, crying in bloodied laughter: yes. His weakness was in living on for nothing, then. )

It might yet lend footing that I might play.

( Take power, raw, on his aching lips, and translate it into the flute his sister helped him name, at her insistence that it had earned such a thing, that it was a tool, that it was worthy. That he was.

He knows that now. For a long time, he hadn't believed it to be so. The bats overhead shriek, the bulk of the wyverns preventing easy access for now, but it only takes slips of moments, shifts of air. Wei Wuxian is as much a part of that battle as he is aware of what might be allowed in pushing through, in fleeing, but he asks, he must, he will, if Lan Zhan understands the difference.

The bodied dead he's learned to work with here, necessity breeding familiarity spawning contempt from others. Or the resentful energies, bodiless but for in extremes, capable of inflicting themselves on those trapped in bodies, irrelevant.

The invitation: let it rain.

Hold him back, tip him forward, remind him of balances, find fear where he's forgetting it, with his husband assailed, and the bats a lingering threat to son, to friends, to companions of months and longer. )

[downswing]

( The right man, the wrong questions. Wei Ying a brewing storm of summer dark, ill contained in Lan Wangji's tea cup. Possibilities roil and ebb and tide and crash in his mind.

And Wei Ying says, it was not the bodied dead who...

And Wei Ying's whispers, his whistling, the shrill undertone of his voice husk and rattle Lan Wangji's bones, and he feels lessened by the moment, trapped between the sobbed, incontrollable descent of limbs and wailing and webs above, and the illusionary pulse of the abyss, below. Feels unmoored.

They want the efficiency of a rapid climb, the satisfaction of assisting the sorceress Karsa's spell work. They want their deed done quick and fast, without the wastefulness of bloodshed. His nails come dulled, thin, scrapped and eroded on the wall. He scratches lines the length of his soul, speared. )

If not this creature, your children. ( Shallow concession. Above him, another wyvern darts down, and this turn, the cords nearly cascade down. They can hold and saw and chain, but the strain of weight propelling down will soon rupture the thread's arrangement.

While supplies last, Lan Wangji can set down more. If they have a shi to spare — ...and call closer the familiars and reinforcements of whatever other bats sleep across the levels, and the monsters each floor ground holds. Perhaps, if fortune favours tem, the creatures cannot escape the territories of their levels.

They cannot know, with certainty.

Breath burns Wangji's lungs. A bat's cries above, like thrumming thunder. He skids down, one step, another, drags his back in a flinched arc, tensely suspended, until he is prone, nearly horizontal —

And he releases the wall, while wyverns sneer, and blood dances grim and lashes his cheekbone, and they all fall, sweetheart, they all fall down. )

[weifinder]

( One heartbeat follows into silence, breath exhaled in the punctuation of a gasp, rending. The tearing of silk between soft, strong hands, and

goodbye

he falls

the cries of cranes echoing

darkness staining dirtied whites to greys and blacks to blacker still.

It isn't a question of what needs doing. A noose around Lan Wangji's neck, or no? As he falls, the sharpness of a whistled note. It is not one wyvern that responds, but the two, breaking from blood bliss to careen downward, and oh so does he remember the binds that tie, the bonds of lifetime, of moments, of Lan Wangji's stiff, insufferable pride:

Binding, the qi that catches Lan Wangji's ankle, checks the fall, but creates the strain with what it pulls from Wei Wuxian, who cannot hold to his wall when he refuses his soulmate's disgrace. His arm protests, the violence pulling him down, blood raining warm and cloying all around.

When he falls too, it's the delay that's delivered wings and hot breath and scrabbling talons on slick, mucal stone: it's the pain of impact three times over, joints, then bodies meeting walls, then bodies grabbed and pinched and punctured before strong necks thrust underneath them, and wyverns, creeling anguished rejections, bear them both up, up, up, to the careening courses of hanging bats disturbed in plenitude. Wings spread in overlapping whirlwind, bats escaping, smacking into them and bouncing away, fleeing ahead of each other and the wyverns crashing through, disturbing the few other wyverns who had remained higher, wishing idle watching, now disturbed into snapping, snarling confusion.

Up, and they break out, away, to the sloped rooftop the bleeding, dying creatures cling too as wood spinning madly in a flash flood, knowing it can't possibly spare what they need, but to not try is to give up living before the drowning death swallows them complete.

Wei Wuxian sits up from the neck he's wrapped around, dark gaze deepening, yet less wild when he searches out Lan Wangji's form. It must be here: it must. His whistled commands are paused, the bats riot overhead and fly away, fly back, some returning to settle in their roosts, but their weight remains, and the lurking, coiling whispers of the resentful energies demarking the dead. )

[downswing]

( He had anticipated —

It's a silent thing, the groaning. The rupture. Like the flayed unstitching of a womb, the birthing of a stillborn. Ebb tide: nothing, only the breakage of bone, the splintering of his spine when Wei Ying's creature gives answer, formidable — and it is a braid that ensnares him, a web of flesh and bone and energy, constantly mutable. Shaping itself as it catches Wangji, first cushion, then cove, then monster possessed of flinching wings' span. It saturates him, ash of its anger wet.

The flood tide: howling. White noise, anger. The crush and crash of meat, first the wyverns they ram through, then the wood creaking broken behind. Lan Wangji, splayed on his back like a wraith and a rag, only calls the cold of his sword to himself, and shivers when Bichen weighs his hand. When she is whisper and burden and anchor.

Then nothing, again. Only a sky broad and slate and chilled, the vast emptiness of
waiting winter. Soon. Soon. Below, wyverns wail, guttural, echoing, tinny. A part of him expects they might give him — them, for the second silhouette that follows, crawling, on the rooftop, Wei Ying, Wei Ying — chase. Light protects them. Light, and death.

He is surrendered down, gently deposited. The scratches of where he's torn through a building's post heal long before he may even reroute his qi. Wei Ying's resentful energies stimulate it, like a fever answering the proximity of sickness. Licking his wounds, loving the shape of him. There is desire in death that only exorcists know.

He straightens, starts to walk on a graveyard of bones. Does not look behind. Does not thank Wei Ying. Only recovers the stretch of crinkled, brittle parchment the sorceress Karsa gifted them, from the nethers of his most intimate silken layers, and leaves it to untangle and float in hand, ends frayed in the stoking wind's spell. )

Come. ( Flames crackle beyond, only a short death's walk away. Mere footsteps. ) Wei Ying, come. Warm your hands.

( Yes, that is the true trouble here. )

[weifinder]

( There are no words: not yet. There's the adrenaline, the fear, the sharp edges, the consummation of purpose, the invention. A lack of pride, but a sense of what's been achieved.

Hollow, as marrow dried bones. His husband calls to him like a dog, and Wei Wuxian stills.

Moves after. Moves equal to. Moves to drop his retrieved talisman into the flames, still quiet. )

As ever, Hanguang-jun, in the heart of darkness.

( The depths of chaos, a cutting light.

He turns away, and to the edge he moves, walking with purpose. Easy to the lip, and without pause, he leaps. A strong arc, outward, hair streaming as banner, arms out, no fall. No giving in. A choice, soaring outward, at the peak caught in dive by the wyvern, struggling to lift them higher.

They come to rest at the highest point of the roof. He who leapt, and the beast who fell.

The paper already consumed before he'd reached the edge. )

[downswing]

( He trusts too readily. Assumes their winter done, and does not ask, if it is crisp drip of ashes underfoot or the powder of ground bones. Crackling, tumbling, distorting, the flames consume and spread out Wei Ying's paper, joined by the unbound ribbon of Lan Wangji's talisman. He watches flame, fire, like the hungering mouths of a hundred fresh-born bird babes.

And then he feels steps like a stripping of his skin, false wind coursing through his hair. Turns, ripped from himself, and there is Wei Ying like a flinched ink's stain in water, advancing and dissolving the trace of himself, and he does not think —

Is it trust, when your every next thought is not your last, is not your worst? Does not predict the leap, the throw, how he is paralysed again at the heart of the tower, limbs and fingers loose and lax and slow, unrooted. )

Wei Yi —

( He means to scream. It comes out ragged gossamer, tearing, bubbles of coarse, throttled silence infecting his lungs-throat whole. He cannot move or breathe or sink down. Lashes connect and stay peeled, connected in pooling water. Tears — not grieved, but for the want of blinks.

And then, Wei Ying rises again, master riding his make, spearing the skies like the storm-clouded tip of a long claw. He is wind, and he is wild, and he is beautiful —

Lan Wangji's crippled knee gives first, the one once broken. Weakness remembers itself. The second follows, for company, for the habit of optimising his movements. He crushes a man's sternum, breaks his fall, palm cold-sweated on the round swell of a skull.

It is not the same. They are not equal in this. It is not the same. He heaves, chokes, and drags himself up by his own strings, back first to rise — as if he were a puppet, accepting every pinch and pull to climb to verticality. As if his own gravity is a conversation that excludes him.

He has a blade readied for flight, the experience and ability to hike or leap or conquer such a slight distance. His limbs refuse him. )

Please come down.

[weifinder]

( lan zhan witnesses the birth of a new gargoyle, terrible and achingly beautiful, dirt stained and blood soaked and silent, until the moment where he begins to play on chenqing:

absterge.

he does not come down. he does not move. the wind tugs at his hair, and the wyvern hunkers low, unhappy with the muted light, and lan zhan is left kneeling in broken bones and wei wuxian's cold, clear understanding of himself.

if lan wangji chose to die, as motivation or final desperate move, wei wuxian would resurrect him. then leave, forever, to give lan zhan the last gift he could in such a situation.

his life, and someone to blame for it.

he does not think lan zhan truly understands what it is he does, or who it is he brings down his acid-laced suggestions of fallen horrors, of a death chosen in the absence of love known. with no solutions offered then, and the rocky negotiations they engage in now. conversation at a blade's cutting thrust is not conversation. it's forced confrontation. it's blood spilled from lips and organs wrenched and wretched. the sword in his stomach, and his brother's broken arm.

family pays in blood.

wei wuxian knows he forgives him, or will forgive him, because that is who he is. forgiveness and forgetfulness are artful tools in his hands, and he sighs, closes his eyes, and plays on.

cleansing, for lan zhan. )

[downswing]

( The white-fingered, hard-knuckled grip of his hands on Bichen's build, her waist. She might break in the corset of his palms, wrung. She might sigh and shudder for him, were she a woman trueborn, her spine curled by his violence.

You play well for a man who loathes my people. Beneath the vast, white calling of a steely sky, he feels watched, wanting, measures. If Wei Ying slapped his face, cursed his ancestors, clawed his core, Lan Wangji might name the wound terrible and known. Might breathe and recede into righteous indignation, turn on his heel and desert the war field his soulmate has won from him, fairly.

But Absterge wails on, tremulous, negligent. Lacking the filigree of qi infusions that a veteran practitioner of Gusu Lan might carefully infiltrate, with the appropriate teachings. It slips and skids off Lan Wangji's skin, like oil coursing water.

Patience is in the harrowing wait until Wei Ying has done. At his feet, he feels bones that have slipped, cracked under the violence of the Patriarch's song. Finding them, he chases his footing, then the threads of his qi required to whisper his guqin summoned before him.

He answers Wei Ying with the scattered, saccharine, self-indulgent, self-referential, irreverent, wrong, wronged notes of a familiar, cavernous song.

Within heartbeats, he dispels the zither. Then, midnight is his gaze, chasing Wei Ying, running raw over his face, the absence of his wounding. A distraction would have been simple. )

...wuji.

( Gasped breath, and memory sobs in him once, quiet. Like for like, kind for kind. Amends are concessions, waiting. He cuts his truth from himself and lays it bare, vivisected.

Come down, then. Silver on the table. )

[weifinder]

( The pause that extends beyond this is abyssal: dark and depthless, light consuming.

He does not come down. He calls down, voice carrying with ease: )

Which characters?

( Spell out your truth, Lan Zhan. He's having trouble believing that of all times to finally state that song's name, it is now: and that it sounds as it sounds. Surely it isn't. Surely it cannot be.

Surely he's not been asking for this song's name for years only to be told so now when Wangji bargained his life wanting speedier answers. )

[downswing]

( You know, bitter on the tip of his tongue, tea and rusted blood and the scattered, swelling certainty that Wei Ying has made a scab of him — that his nails itch and tear and peel back Lan Wangji to his flayed core.

Sometimes, as a child in an abandoned house, Lan Wangji would see his mother's silhouette in the mirror, the smoke and shade of her passing. She belongs to the jingshi in whispers of latent, forced presence, light arcing around her, steered away.

When he is a man now, Wei Ying haunts him: the boy he was, all midday sunshine and laughter overspilling, and teasing and flighty and keen to transgress against the most sacred of Wangji's private truths. Worse, the young war hero who did not require Wangji's attention. Worst still, the grandmaster who scorned it. You know, you know the characters already.

There is a moment when vertigo spirals around him, and he feels too tall, too wrong, sickened by the sight of Wei Ying above him. Leave, oh leave your rooftop, never climb it alone. )

I may write them in your palm.

( And his gaze sharpens, lifts, When you come down. )

[weifinder]

( Oh, but his husband knows the tunes that call to him, the way that play begets curiosity begets the desire to know, to understand, to see, to press, to move beyond: in a younger version of himself, he'd have leapt at the intimation, smiling and breezy, landed to make half comedic faces with dark eyes and full curiosity, fingers itching to tug at Lan Zhan's stiff perfection, pleasant and pungent at once.

He's older now, and in the moment that stretches, the tightness of mere heartbeats across the vast distance this creates, their supplecation and implacability twofold, he frames words that are too knowing, in their own way.

His husband knows him.

For better, and for worse, he also knows the shape of his husband. )

May, ( he calls out, just loud enough to be heard. ) or will?

( Promises that are promises, and not the illusion of them, the favoured way for Lan Zhan to win his battles, the earnest desire Wei Wuxian has to take things at face value. The reason he trusts and knows better; had not questioned enough in one lifetime.

May is, after all, a flirtation. Will is a promise. Will is a driving force, and his flute spins between his fingers, his other hand splayed across the wyvern's blood-matted, crested forehead. The poor creature, he knows, should be sent back inside soon.

To live or die, he does not care. He's not that kind of bleeding heart, nor one to enjoy suffering. The creature lived by cursed instinct. It was death, inevitable, that found one or the other. )

[downswing]

( When was it doubt burrowed a deep home between their ribs? He feels the thin stabbing blade of Wei Ying's uncertainty stab and swivel and catch, only to loosen the frail filigree of his breath, rippling in the warmth of the talisman fire.

Trust me to do right by you. But Lan Wangji has not.

Trust me to speak the truths that keep you livened. But Lan Wangji has not.

Trust me to defend you against the teeth of my instincts. But Lan Wangji has not.

He feels the bloodlessness of his cheeks, the gaunt, untethered terrain of their pallor. Feels himself lacking enough to lift the three fingers of one hand in paltry imitation of Wei Ying's heart-anointed pledges, his earnest vows before the heavens. )

Will.

[weifinder]

( Yet to trust enough, that with a word, he pats the wyvern's head, steps forward, taps down his foot, and with arms out, leaps from his chosen height. The creature wings skyward with a creeling call, diving back inside the tower, to the darkness. Wei Wuxian doesn't look back in the strength of his descent, Chenqing in hand, tucked into his waistband as he lands.

He controls his falls.

Even the one that'd been almost, and intentionally, fatal.

Footsteps, settled over bone, and a thin wrist, turned and offered. His fingers on his left hand curled when he offers Lan Zhan the use of his palm, the canvas promised blank and for painting. )

Which characters.

( What impossibilities were real, what stories were silent, in the litany of those he'd never known. Difficult to allow, finally, the follies of their youth were always mutual. That nothing he did could change what he didn't know, and some regrets had never been his to own or forget.

That instead, some of them could be now, in reflection, amusing, in a heart-conflicted way. Lan Zhan taking ownership of what he's held over Wei Wuxian's head, to be this? A youth's passions directed down familiar avenues, and what, confessed when Wei Wuxian couldn't recall even if he'd wanted to. Held against him because? Because.

Neither one of them is easy to love. Both are simple. Something in that warms him even through the chilling unpleasantness of Lan Zhan hedging bets on his own fall. The deep anger that stirs, then settles, a tightly leashed beast breathing for moments before it subsides to its long, abyssal slumber. )

[downswing]

( The trickle of his touch, torn from him. Bare. He wants, desperately, to spill over like water from a broken cup, to fit the negative space that Wei Ying permits around himself. To disappear, fading, faded. Desaturated, darks to greys to gone.

He pledged.

And, so, he nears him, crack of a skull and break of a bone and the joints battered under his step. Fingers half trembled, he takes Wei Ying's hand in his own, bares the barren land of his palm, and he — scries down.

The start gives him the conceit of maturity, one last chance to flee, 无. It should have been 无极, if he had the sense for it. Infinity, the primordial supreme, aspiration of cultivation. Immortality towards which all converges.

If he lies to this man, he will lie to the world, will spit the cheek of his ancestors, will claw their eyes out. He watches himself, knows himself watch, feels the growing thick gasp of fire behind him, the shrink of his flesh into himself. He does not weep again — 机 — and releases Wei Ying's hand, like a flower wilting on an empty grave —

Then catches it again, manacled at the wrist. )

Find me different discipline. Do not jump again.

[weifinder]

( Fingers spasm, his eyes lingering on Lan Zhan's face, gaze deep and unblinking. Yes, it is the absurdity he had believed could not be true, but he's known longer now, the depths of Lan Zhan's lingering regard for a Wei Ying who hasn't breathed for decades. Who had not, perhaps, been entirely who he thought, just as Lan Zhan was who he thought and was also not so limited, or so known. Soulmates who had the most of each other's understanding, but still did not know, were still in such things the pebble pummeled by autumn rains: human, shaped by circumstance and choice, wedded to time.

A different discipline, and he is not the man for it, won't be the spouse. Doesn't know if Lan Zhan wants some form of it, or warns him off the idea, or what the hells it means, because Wei Wuxian doesn't know. Doesn't have examples to follow for how do we stop clawing each other into bleeding, how does love and regard help instead of add a bittersweetness to each intake of laden air.

Bones and blood and fire, this might as well be any home given to him, anything claimed because no one else would dare, would want to contest, before the lands healed. And they would have healed. He knows it, marrow deep, that Yiling would have healed, if he and his had not been sacrificed on the altar of the righteous world's hysteria.

If he hadn't cut himself off early, sparing all, and damning many.

If.

He breathes in, turns his wrist. It aches, or else he forgets what pain is, and what it is to have pain delivered by those he cares for. This isn't playful. It's why he smiles, corners of his eyes dissolving into the beauty of tiny sparrow's feet, and he is not the young man he was once. Nor is he the ancient soul he wonders at, time to time. He's just older than he was, and younger than his elders. Same as so many, many people in countless, poorly reflecting worlds.

Turns his hand, so fingers brush at Lan Zhan's skin, exposed or hidden. )

In that lifetime, it scared me how much I cared for you.

( The pause of natural breathing, of an unblinking, soft gaze. )

Your brother isn't here to serenade me with explanations and warnings, Lan Zhan. I need you.

[downswing]

( Fearless, brazen, callous Wei Ying. Wei Wuxian, Patriarch.

Lonely, hollowed, terror-struck, young. It scared him how much —

And now, 无机. Summer storm, thundered. More riot of violence dissatisfied, destined to never escalate in crescendo. In their youth, this moment would have been a tumultuous confession, peaked. Now it hangs like old bird-scavenged bones, set to dry, wastefully wandered between them. Where was 无机 when it might have meant the world?

If Lan Wangji had named their marriage true then, bound Wei Ying with that burden, set him aside like painted porcelains, a doll for the Lan to have and hold and safeguard in the chokehold of their defences — would it have all been so different then? The sky-dark of Wei Ying's eyes, abyssal then. Starry now. Beneath drummed touch, Wangji's pulse quickens, )

Jiang Cheng spoke truth. ( Between rivulets and spume of anger. ) Sixteen years ago, you widowed me at Nightless City. And two men died.

( How did he fill out, the husk of him, the taut and quilt and patchwork of his skins, how did he remember human motions? They speak of dolls-made-man, and what was he, sixteen years come and gone, but debris of flesh and the force of his grief, made habit?

Sizhui says, Hanguang-Jun. Brother, Uncle, Wangji. He wonders when he learned to answer the names of a dead man. How he drags the half moons of his nails against Wei Ying's palm and knows the feeling is not his own to claim. )

I lack that boy to give you. Do not rattle his corpse, threatening your loss.

[weifinder]

( A small, sighing sound, and his fingers a ring like the halo cast over a head when light shines strong from behind, illuminating. )

Almost eighteen years ago. ( ... Yes, he's being pedantic with a ghost of a smile; they've been here for two years. ) Almost twenty years since the boy I'd been had died.

( He has been reborn more times than he ever wished for, even if he'd always been stubborn about living, until he'd splintered too far, in emotional distress. Yet it's that dissonance that haunts, and to what end, to what cry? He doesn't understand.

But he'd learned from his shijie that loving does not mean understanding. It is accepting, and having patience, and faith.

And more trust than he easily knows how to give in the ways he once did. His thumb shifts, stroking over Lan Zhan's skin, heat to burn against how many years of frozen homes? )

I didn't marry that boy. I married you. Twice, three times, more. ( No mention of four. ) You know I'm not who I was once. Why do you think I know that any less? Why do you think I'd handle the threat of loss with anything like grace?

( Who is allowed to threaten their ending, and who is not? Why are either of them? )

[downswing]

( He is, for a moment, transfixed, paralysed, mouth cold and slack and still.

The excuses: Bichen lingered near. His own leaps are measured, his body stood prone. There was no threat, no possibility of injury. If Wei Ying failed, Lan Wangji would provide for himself.

Only, the notion never interceded. There was no need. )

I trusted you would catch me.

( He cannot trust himself to acquit himself of the same duties towards Wei Ying. Precedent has served the lesson. At the mouth of Nightless City, Wei Ying's tomb yawns sweet and long. Then, Wei Ying's tears were a foregone, caricatural conclusion — the man who lost everything must surely be knelt to humility. Every true villain must be reduced.

He catches Wei Ying's hand, turns it, drags it up. Looks upon the mountain row of his knuckles as if Wangji were a snake considering if he can fit their span in his mouth's breadth. Then, calmly, instead of the traditional kiss, or the token greeting of skin to his headband, he pointedly reaches out to pinch the soft, taut skin between Wei Ying's thumb and pointing finger with petty aggression. )

I tire of saddening you. ( And so, this is.... his incentive. For Wei Ying, surely, to smile more. ) I pledge Wei Ying, before the heavens, sixteen years of laughter.

[weifinder]

( He doesn't flinch, not at the pinch, though his lips twitch, considering a smile. Or a frown. Or nothing, in the end, but a neutral line and a languid blink, before he brings his hand up, rakes his nails through his husband's hair and all the dirt, the blood, the sweat and oil that has found a home there, and holds. Doesn't lean in for the kisses he's sought now, with an appetite that grows larger than his body contains, pubescent in a way he hadn't been when he'd lived through those moments in truth. It is not lust, not desire, not something easily identified that coils through him in that moment: a hum he doesn't feel, but senses, in himself.

They would consume each other, but for moderation. Finding their footing again and again to stay in step, for all they stumble, and err, and break, and reform again, still whole despite themselves. )

I want every feeling, good and unpleasant, because every feeling you inspire in me affirms to me that I live. Let's find our reasons to laugh together, Lan Zhan. When I'm sad, or when you're sad, we don't let that live as all we remember. But we allow that it will happen, because we care, and we are not each other.

( His sister's lesson, echoing down the decades, out of a darkness as vast as sixteen years within a death that wasn't dying, in a hell that couldn't end. )

We're men, and men are terrible at this sort of thing anyway. Ask any woman. We'll suffer more, but we'll persist. We'll see happiness.

( His fingers gentle; his hold loosens, then tightens, Wei Wuxian leaning in to his husband, a man of great kindness, great pettiness, so many great things, and so many small ones. He's so much more human like this, so much easier to be with, with all his strengths and flaws in their ugly-beautiful metamorphosis.

Lan Zhan is not perfect. He is beautiful. Wei Wuxian would taste of him for a century to keep his stomach warmed, basking in that edge of him, and the awareness of his kind turns, his awkward pauses, the heart that cares in ways more awkward than Wei Wuxian's, but cares, deeply and genuinely. )

Trust grows, Lan Zhan. So let it.

( Or calcify and shatter before the rebuilding begins, and be on bone shards and bloodied knees, strangling in the silence of a tongue too heavy, for words too fraught. )

[downswing]

( He does not wish this to be how they come together again, like storms battering the shores, forces of nature in perpetual, hastened collision. Wei Ying's hand raking rivulets of white hurt down his scalp, calling and keeping him fettered.

Scratch and tumble of bones beneath his feet, the slide and shift of it, like sand breaking. He grasps, latches, holds in kind, first his palm, warm on Wei Ying's shoulder, then his nape. When their foreheads crash together, he thinks this is how crescendos stoke and break, how they simmer in aftermath, forever dissatisfied by the sustained violence of their movements.

When the current pulls, do not fight it. Go with the tide, until you may steer, if not the strength of the momentum, then its final direction. He does not wrench free of Wei Ying's hold, only leans to set mouth on the arid stretch of his cheek, his eyelids, the faint, time-dusted sorrowful intersection between his brows. )

Grow, as a stalk in spring. ( Strong, giddily unruly, beautiful. A jungle of trust. ) Come, rest abed. You have a birthday.

( And they have the entire cavernous intestine of the elevator shaft to slip down. )