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westwhere2022-11-13 04:42 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2022-11-13 04:42 pm
Entry tags:
- arc iv,
- arcane: caitlyn,
- arcane: viktor,
- better call saul: jimmy mcgill,
- doctor who: clara oswald,
- doctor who: the doctor,
- harry potter: hermione granger,
- kingdom of the wicked: emilia,
- kingdom of the wicked: wrath,
- legend of fei: xie yun,
- mcu: kamala khan,
- mcu: yelena,
- oh! my emperor: beitang moran,
- penny dreadful: vanessa ives,
- shadowhunters: magnus bane,
- star trek: leonard mccoy (aos),
- star trek: una,
- tian guan ci fu: xie lian,
- touken ranbu: kanesada,
- untamed: wen qing,
- warcraft: anduin wrynn,
- warcraft: wrathion,
- warframe: kahl 175,
- wheel of time: moiraine,
- word of honor: zhou zishu,
- x-men: charles xavier
hale and whole
Talismans burned, Serthica’s undeath reveals itself:
- ■ The dragon eye allows indefinite access to the undeath-sight pendant feature. Use it 15 minutes at a time, with a 45-minute cooldown.
■ Those who delivered talismans or the eye have residual immunity: they cannot be sensed by mannequins or by undead linked to the curse-sickness. This is transferrable once.
The Merchant presents the Serthica findings, recommending evacuation. Outvoted, he agrees to sponsor the group until the beacon’s annual start-up. To heal Serthica, the party must destroy the magical anchors of the curse-sickness, develop its science/herbal cure, then distribute it across the overground citadels.
BEHIND YOU
Courtesy of Five Hargreeves, the Child of the Unwinding you slayed his father, the undead lord Beastmaster. The burlap mannequins released from Remembrance actively hunt you.
- ■ They are constantly watching, stalking, hunting. You always hear the deep asynchrony of their footsteps. Some mannequins bear an uncanny human likeness: staring extensively chills you.
■ Most mannequins cover up in excess clothing and swarm you in crowded spaces to stab. They borrow your appearance, if they touch you. Some devolve into eldritch forms, mimicking voices or puppeteering husked corpses to lure you.
■ Each mannequin has a one-word code on its nape or right calf — once spoken, the creature glitches, letting you run.
A MAGICAL SEQUENCE OF EVENTS
The corrosive magic that spreads throughout Serthica is anchored in two areas: a port dock and a former Mouse House shelter. Cleanse it through exorcism, purification, healing spells, or by planting wards borrowed from Karsa.
This magic feels hot, asphyxiating, aggressively proliferating, intrusive. Uncontained, it gradually feeds off your power. It might drive you to anger, bitterness, doubt or violence.
To Arc III survivors, it feels like the overwhelming power native to the Ke-Sanwon volcano (not dark water).
- ■ Once you’ve destroyed both magical anchors, inhuman-looking mannequins deactivate. Human-presenting ones seem sluggish and inattentive.
■ Finn’s mannequin remains alive when supplied life or magical force (think 5% of someone’s reserves) — either through weekly transfers or a rewiring of the magic that sustains her (by a party magic user, or Finn can learn the skills in later travel.)
✘ WET OF THE DOCK'S WET
At first, locals don’t remember the putrid inactive dock exists as a distant extension of Serthica’s port, located past a familiar deserted marketplace. Here, rotten wood, a stench of perpetual moulding, torn ropes and rusted chains.
- ■ Thinking extensively about the dock before finding it incurs nausea, vertigo and the animal instinct to flee.
■ Persist, and you learn this dock was once used to smuggle in illegal arrivals from Ke-Waihu. Later, it loaded the bodies of the plagued that were burned at sea.
■ Rotten wood planks can break, dropping you into paralysing waters. The dead might reach out from the depths to drag you in.
■ You hear alluring, wind-born whispers of, How chilly it is, while the cold abruptly intensifies, and, It’s warm in the waters.. Won’t you… jump in?
■ Ships no longer call here — yet a small boat stops for you. You might feel compelled or curious to join the lone passenger — a man in white, whose features you forget after. As the boat drifts, attracting the swimming undead that seek to climb in, the man offers safe return, if you answer: What do you most want? Where would you stop to obtain it? Lie, and the boat capsizes, leaving you to swim back amid undead. Answer honestly to return unharmed.
✘ (UN)SHELTERED
Visit the impoverished, underground Mouse House and avoid breathing in the thick, memory clouding sedative infusions. The grandiose shelter is familiar, its recalling the ruined mansion of the Unwinding. Locals say the house — which preceded Ma’am Mariol’s shelter as an orphanage — is haunted. The coal sickness spread overground after a child was adopted from here.
- ■ Spirits jump to throttle you or trip you down stairs, throw knives or lock you in claustrophobic rooms. Stair steps, window sills and roof beams readily collapse.
■ The last entries of house logs, found open on a library desk, mention seven freshly arrived children — six native to the Mouse House, including Gavroche, and one heavily burned boy from Ke-Waihu.
■ The ghosts of orphanage caretakers are enjoying a tea party. They ask if you are a servant or a guest. Answer ‘servant,’ and you must pour tea, as attendants stab you with cutlery when you’re within reach. You are dismissed once you finish pouring. Answer ‘guest’, and you must join them at the table and perform whatever they ask: slap yourself, dress up as a doll, answer inconvenient questions, etc. You can leave once someone else has poured tea.
■ Find the dark magic source in the house greenhouse that has been overrun by ruinous mould. While physically unharmed, you feel overcome by crippling fear, loneliness, abandonment or futility. Talking about it helps soothe it.
THE SCENIC SCIENCE ROUTE
The science-based cure requires retrieving resources and researching an answer. Godspeed.
✘ THE SEED & THE STORM
The Unwinding revealed strands of juniper and rosemary that cure the sickness. Cain d’Ubiq confirms quantities of each plant remain cryogenically intact aboard the Serthica Aerial Healing Unit ships that were caught in the crossfire of the Sibilant Sands, when Eidris and Minaras fought their last battle. Find the vessels to retrieve the goods.
- ■ Take your transport flier or one of Cain d’Ubiq’s martial, fire-breathing dragons to traverse the Sibilant Sands, roughly one day’s flight each way of Serthica. Expect a hard ride, amid the growing howl of winds whipping your face and the accelerating pulse of a breaking storm.
■ Martial dragons challenge inexperienced riders, but fly sturdily through intermittent sandstorms and whirlwinds.
■ The ships can be found near dragon bones and human skeletons, in stages of burial or disrepair, stranded between rocks, or threatening to collapse once rattled.
■ Beware serpentine barbed wire animated by dark water, which jumps up from the sands. Just as vile are buried vermin-like creatures that send their razor-blade-ended tentacles to strike out from below ground.
■ Members of protest group Remembrance are also unearthing ships. They plan to board mannequins on the vessels, pass them as Minaraian and attack Eidris once more.
■ Their volatile leader Chrichter is personally fixing a ship.
✘ THINK, TANK
Time to liberate a lab. Minaras’ foremost medical unit is the Conclave Healing Academy, comprising research labs, libraries, equipment rooms and sample collections, including some of the coal sickness.
- ■ The Academy connects to the centre that treatsZenobius and brims with healing apprentices. Bring juniper and rosemary samples, pose as a bright-eyed novice healer or a concerned relative of Zenobius, or barge in.
■ The Academy is cold, sterile, clean and swarmed by practising medics and academicians. Some even debate resurrection and immortality. Access is barred below, where you can hear occasional, sharp… growls.
■ Several basement laboratories are marked to study the coal sickness. Steal the entry codes from guards or tease them from a lowly medical intern — but don’t linger on the corridors long. Large clockwork hounds patrol and are attracted to sweat, a heightened or rapid pulse, shortness of breath or other biological signs of fear.
■ Take over a lab to concoct a cure elixir from the herbal strands. Test it against the coal sickness samples. Work safely, or the start of a blood cough might announce you’ve taken sick.
■ Hold the fort until your cure’s done, while guards and hounds try to enter your lab through air vents, windows or ram the door. Fight back, distract them or persuade the Academy protective droids they’re the enemy.
■ Anyone affected with the sickness can drink the cure without waiting to destroy the magical anchors. Symptoms fully disappear within 24-72h. Characters remain sensitive to the un/dead.
SPREAD YOUR JOY
Mass-production time: take over the former underground Remembrance headquarters, one of Cain d’Ubiq’s factories, or make potions in your back yard. The cure can be drunk or absorbed through skin and must be spread overground.
You can pursue your own ideas, but some suggestions on the house:
- ■ Take your dragon or hijack a Minaras airship and a diffuser to spray down an incense mix that contains the cure. Minaras airships sleep in secured bays you’ll have to infiltrate. Careful taking a dragon into Minaras or an airship to Eidris — local authorities may perceive this as a security breach.
■ Reprogram or con hapless droids to feed the cure as ‘novel vitamins’ to their owners.
■ Commandeer the Mouse House train that ferries supplies from the Serthica ports and spray the cure on produce and grains.
■ Minaras High Councillor Arabella has been previously targeted by Remembrance and could be subtly persuaded to help by her rescuers.
■ Vanessa’s contact, crime boss Artemius Bale, might also have his people sneak the cure into waterways — if you cut a deal.
■ …lemonade stand?
NOTES:
- ■ We need one finished thread of breaking the anchors and supplying, making and distributing the cure to get the Very Best Ending, but there are multiple other finale options too — link your threads by 29 November!
■ Thanks to Finn and the Doctor’s efforts to help Ma’am Mariol’s orphanage, enjoy tips, information and help with legwork from her street-smart urchins.
■ You can ask for Artemius Bale & others here or at the NPC inbox!
■ BACK TO THE TOP.
(un)sheltered: the roof | this man is getting buried wet
( At the far side of the room, the boy-ghost swivels to face him. Pallor thinned to gauntness, a sheen of translucence. He's years gone, if the beauty of him struggles to remember itself. The myth, then, among amateurs and starting disciples: that the dead shed the colours of their skin along with their life’s blood. False. Only true of the drowned or the ice-entombed, those whose flesh sacrificed its natural flush before the passing.
The child’s face is tight as a candle wick before it curls in a strange, slouched bow, to flame. His anger is misplaced, coagulating a hundred subtler emotions that a young mind is too tremulous to understand. His nostrils flare as if to catch the scent of deep, dark moulding, like claws raking down every greyed wall. Here, he sees the velvets of silver-purpled tapestries, grazed by hungry fungal mouths into tattered indifference.
Lan Wangji has chased the boy for the better part of a quarter of a shi: first in the house’s gardens, where rocks and gravel stuttered to construct a barren path and absent foliage tickled his ankles, his calves. Down the narrow, tightness of corridors, where hands loomed and loitered and descended on his throat, searching a quick kill. Up stairs that contorted, before the sudden slip of their moth-pinched running rugs nearly toppled him over.
Now, he is here, at the head of the staircase — the boy waiting suspended, hovering by a half-opened door that creaks in rusted yelps, like a young hunting dog.
One of them asks, silently, if Lan Wangji may pass. He does not remember whose mouth speaks it.
And then, he has invaded, step slow and sticking in motes of dust accrued so long ago that the wet of condensation has brewed them into thick paste. He enters, to find — books, strewn on the floor, on the lone desk, on three deserted chairs. A bookcase, shelves defiled, some toppled down. Picture frames, at times depicting the child he had chased from various angles — ah, the vanity of hauntings — then only the domestic mundanity of soulless landscapes in fine-point ink.
Lan Wangji studies the rows, the swell of a desk lantern that erupts alight, then simmers, then dulls. It bears no candle. Before him, there is an opened tome — and of course he must read it, the ghosts would wish it so. )
Six children of the Mouse House, and one —
( …alas, an early end to his recital, some phantasms have no appetite for literature. It just so happen, the roof crumbles down. Please, retrieve one [1] lowly cultivator from beneath this mountain of the house’s rags, debris, plaster, bricks and the rare but mighty knitting needle. )
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There was no need, really, because Lan Wangji is a Daoist, and the ghosts in here will be little threat to him anyway, and also it was sort of fascinating to watch him single-mindedly pursue one particular child ghost. He ended up a rather enraptured spectator to the whole thing, at least until the roof suddenly collapses.
He jumps into action then, with his usual disregard for his own safety, and while unable to completely shield Lan Wangji, he does manage to put himself between the man and rather large slab of stone than ends up hitting his back instead.]
Are you alright?
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( Xie Lian is a man who crafts his misfortunes, who plans and seduces them and rejoices in their hardship, done. Lan Wangji remembers this: that he occasioned upon a dozen instances of Xie Lian, stupefied by his own meanderings into disaster. That Xie Lian, possessed of self-proclaimed godhood, continued down his path despite warnings thereof.
Rubble tumbles and rains down, riotous. Wangji, half skidding aside, half exposed, looks up beyond the mantle of his sleeve and find his unlikely, willowy hero bearing more than thrice his weight. Compassion strikes him, the glacial claws of the scars on his own back, singing in sympathy. Memory singes.
He crouches, rises, then pulls on Xie Lian's wrist — )
Fend for your back —
( ...but there is justice, symmetry and equity in this world, and so it should surprise very few when Wangji's tug hardly bears fruit, before the other half of the roof deigns to fall down, on him.
They're a handsome pair, buried under gravel. Truly, pristine. Lan Wangji brushes blood off his cheek, wet plaster from his mouth. Mould. He begins to crawl out. Then to his side: )
Harmed?
( ...of course they both are. )
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[Xie Lian, with his strange relation to pain and hurt, would probably say that no matter how hurt he actually was, but to be honest, supernatural strength means catching that rock was not, in fact extremely taxing in the way some other things can be.
In fact he is now pulling rocks off Lan Wangji and throwing them off to the side as if they weigh almost nothing, and to him, they truly are barely as heavy as pebble.]
I guess it's lucky the children left before this. I didn't realize this place was in such a bad state of disrepair. The house could have fallen on them.
... You're bleeding.
[And he is about to rip some strips from his robes to help with that.]
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( At first, he delays, strangled under stone, the confines of his prison stifling. Less the impact of toppled rock and the roof's tile, then the sheer darkness of his surrounding, opaque, overwhelming and condensed.
He comes back to himself in degrees, negotiating first the freedom to wave and situate his arms, then decent purchase on stone, then the great push to nudge it over. He emerges, victorious, cut on each side in ways his core rushes to mitigate, and elegant like... a worm.
A handsome silk worm. Yes. The exact image he wishes to project at all times, particularly when he hisses to the side: )
I remain — not a child. Do not intercede for me. It is - ( Unwelcome. But then, he is Zewu-Jun's brother: ) Unnecessary.
( There lives in some men the urge, the momentum, the inescapable hunger for self-sacrifice. If Lan Wangji were not sharing his bed with it, he might not know the shape and incandescence of this wish, and how best to constrain it through plain discourse.
And then, he is also his uncle's nephew, stiffened: ) Gratitude.
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[Xie Lian's hand falls back down. He doesn't look too put out to be told off, but that's also because upon closer inspection...]
It doesn't look very deep, but you should still get it cleaned up as soon as you can, once we get out of here.
[Sorry Wangji, but he's not going to pretend not be concerned, even if he'll respect your wishes not to get bandaged for now. There are more pressing concerns.]
We should probably get out. With this much weight on it, the floor might give out and send the whole building crumbling down.
[And then, almost absentmindedly.]
... You saw the book too, didn't you?
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( More mothering. He would scoff or turn away Xie Lian's protection, if not for the simpler truth that neglect and indifference always prove foremost efficient. There is no point in wayward cruelty, in stabbing a point's tip hard into flesh.
Lifting himself, he brushes off gravel, starting the slow, avid redirection of qi towards healing and the cuts that sting and itch and heal, while his jaw sets. Above them, another sheet of roof groans, and Wangji stares it back into submission and balance, shifting to wave Xie Lian after him.
Better the wiser man concede. Better still that they retreat without further damage. The book, then, deserted and decaying, alone in the office room. He nods, once. )
One child of Ke-Waihu. ( A pause, then a sigh like a tearing. Quite possibly, a wounding. The roof be damned. ) He of the rains. The retribution.
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[It's always been quite obvious to Xie Lian, and, he would hope to a cultivator with the kind of power Lan Wangji wields.]
What happened in Ke-Waihu happened years ago. If he were still completely human, he would have been older.
And whatever we're seeing here, it seems obvious he is at the root of it. I've seen it before. A child spirit causing a great sickness. But... from what others have told, I don't think he understands he is the one causing it.
And if the man in white created the Beastmaster and the others, how did he also manage to steal the man's son from under his nose when he's been looking for the child?
[This does, indeed, bring back so many unwanted memories of how Xian Le kingdom doomed itself. It all started with a dead child, and a grieving father. And a figure in white, who exploited all of it gleefully.]
The building itself is unsafe but... whatever magic is going here also needs cleansing. Can your musical techniques help?
[He remembers that from Ellethia, the guqin and the power it holds in the hand of this man.]
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( The child, at root of madness. He has heard this before, the call to arms, to dispose of a young, misshaped thing as if it were cattle. Xie Lian speaks his truth, as Lan Wangji too knows it: they face a creature corrupted, a child whose nature has been poisoned, perverted, mistaken.
And they cannot waste him through empty slaughter. Cannot simply presume that a deep fissure can cure where they side-step healing.
He startles, hand latched in the weed of his hair, drawing out gravel as he starts the slow walk down the emptied, gaping corridor. Then: )
Yes. ( Iron, unfailing. ) But too much sorcery is entwined with the house. Shattering one, we may eliminate both. ( Poorly, with frail odds of full success. Bringing the house down can root certain tragedies. ) Best first to exorcise the strand of savage energy.
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[That's a bit... drastic, but well, if the magic is tied to the place it's probably best to do it, it's just...]
Can we at least cleanse the ghosts first and not send the building down on top of them? I don't have enough energy for an array this big, but I have talismans, and I'm sure there's salt left in the kitchen that's usable.
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( A pause, then the shiver of a shake of his head, no more than a gesture aborted. ) I do not wish to. But the sorcery may prove too strongly entwined with the structure.
( Separation, if the claws of the corruption have dug deep, could be futile. There is nothing Lan Wangji alone can do to extirpate evil that has already substitute the core of the underlying material. If the mansion is husked of itself, half edifice, half illusion, then —
He should mourn that proposition. Cannot bring himself to. All that men raise may also fall. What is dust, if not the death of brilliance? Cloud Recesses burned just as well as crass timber. )
What array would you wish to cast? Energy exists. ( Then, sharper: ) Transferrable without intimacy.
( ...Alina will ever be remembered. )
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It doesn't matter, there are other ways.
[Salt, as simple as it is, is surprisingly effective.]
Let us just detour by the kitchen and then we can see about how to send on all those ghosts and undo whatever curse is there.
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( Power suffices. But then, it does not do to boast, and a man who has refused Lan Wangji once will not abruptly reconsider. Xie Lian's mind is set. Lan Wangji's must follow.
To the kitchens, down. He's slower than natural grace or training recommend, but stable, steps unhurried, unslipped. The railway nearly gives under a hard grip. His fingers tighten, steel. Hissing, a ghost's teeth graze his ankle by the corridor — he thinks it a dog first, but rouses himself to better senses, finding the small specter of a human boy, long dead, tattered, on hands and knees and playing the hound.
This was a children's shelter, once, he knows, it was writ, they came armed with learning. All of Serthica has linked to children. Yet it still startles Wangji t o see diminutive bodies so easily perished, to understand their futures wasted.
Traversing the corridor, he's nearly tempted to cast his eye into the tea room, where wispy silhouettes have been drawn to fete — but reconsiders, rushing Xie Lian over with a wave, and resists the urge to turn back when one ghost within cries, There? Who's there? Is there someone all the way over there? Come in.
In the end, he takes his shelter in the kitchen, back to the wall, breath easy — Bichen's length luminous and drawn, once Xie Lian has also entered, to bar the path. )
Make haste. ( And for all he suspects Xie Lian won't require the close instruction: ) We need not stop for tea.
( When they pass the tea room again, no doubt to another flutter of invitations. )
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There's no need for it, though. He can definitely punch through the house if needed.
In the kitchen, he rummages around a bit, stopping near disaster a few times when pots threaten to fall, until he finds the one containing salt.]
There's not much in there, but it will have to do. Let's go. Better to use it from the outside, and your techniques probably as well.
[He does agree to not stopping for tea, though. One stabbing was enough for him, thank you very much.]
Can we exorcise the ghosts first, or do you think they linger because of the building? They seem linked.
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( The salt, at least, reveals itself swiftly — amply armed, Xie Lian seems, for once, turned to the business of their companionship, to making use of themselves.
Agreeably, Wangji leads once more, a mother goose before her young. Bichen is a silvered line, slumped but unfailingly devoted in the slick, stubbornness of her promised violence. He thinks, more than Lan Wangji, she refutes the possibility of assault. She dares all who surround her to presume.
They abstain, drifting through the house more serpentine than the ghosts who would swarm and assail them, when Xie Lian speaks out, and Wangji — stills completely. )
Better to locate the heart of the... affliction. The ghosts may prove too numerous.
( They are but two, for all Lan Wangji's pride would name them a legion. )
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[He closes his eyes for a moment, easily filtering out the ruckus of the ghosts and the creaking of the old building to focus on pure energy. H's not an arcane wielder of magic, but there are certain things that come with the territory of being a god who became one after being trained in cultivation and educated as a prince.... and eight hundred years of dealing with various imps and demon infestations, too.
When he opens his eyes again, he points.]
It's this way. That's where the darkest energy is coming from. We should be careful advancing.
[A flick of his wrist and Ruoye slithers off, becoming almost luminescent as if answering Bichen's sword glare, and starts floating in a lay circle around them, about mid-calf-level.]
The rest of the ghosts won't bother us like this. At least the ones in the tea parlor, they won't be able to go through Ruoye.
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( That way. A moment, and perhaps an insult, for all Wangji would name it only the wisdom to consult a second doctor for his opinion of a grueling sickness. Ghosts are as afflictions, their combat as much discipline, learning and art.
He nods, tenuously, after the tendrils of energy he manifests in inquiry return, sharply deflected, from a distant point in the house. Xie Lian's guidance serves them well.
After, only an afterthought of wards, scattered here and there in strings of parchment by each doorway, to keep at bay pursuers and reinforce the curious, serpentine shifting of the — animal? Companion? Weapon? Xie Lian unleashes to protect them. Traversing the room, Wangji only murmurs: )
Ruoye. What forged it?
CW : suicide
He forgets that here, most of the people he interacts with daily don't know. he forgets, too, that this is a pain that has dulled, but never really gone away, even after hundreds of years, and that it sometimes pops up completely unexpectedly.
He could not answer. He could invent something. But what would be the point. It's not like this man here has not known tragedy, and he can tell this without being flippant or self-pitying.]
... My parents' death. They took their own lives with it.
[A length of white silk, the one grace afforded to people of royal descent to spare them the infamy of execution.]
I tried to join them, but of course, it didn't work. I had already ascended by then, so something like that could not kill me anymore.
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( ...a weapon of murder, blood-bound. And what is the greater perversion? To hold on to that which claimed the lives of beloved parents, upon which Xie Lian's mother and father no doubt breathed their last? Or to discard it readily, easily, as if it were a rang?
In truth, Lan Wangji cannot say which would define the greater transgression — only reaches out to walk the serpentine, fluid length of the rope with curious fingertips, the stroke unassuming. Greeting, as he might do Bichen at the end of a long travel's day when she has not gone drawn, and he only wishes to share nips and bites of his qi and the pleasure of his companionship.
After, they flee the room. The corridor. Up stairs, down a different, twisting, convoluted set. He assumes nothing about the topography of the house, but welcomes it when the pulse of his starting migraine builds and stokes and blooms, and he knows, instinctively — they are close, so very close. Here.
He stops. )
Here. Set the witch's wards. ( Unbidden, he surrenders his papers also — accepted from the allied sorceress to reinforce Wangji's own purification. Then, with a wave of his hand, he summons forth his guqin. )
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Lan Wangji might be able to sense the soft barrier emanating from it, isolating them from the spirits around. The barrier doesn't get weaker as they approach the source, but Ruoye tightens a bit around them, making a slightly smaller circle.
He accepts the paper charms, but before he puts them up, he also sprinkles some salt, sent to the corners of the room, the ones he can see at least.
It sort of lifts the stuffiness in soft, small ways, but the place will require more.
Once that's done, he'll take the paper charms, and infuse just a little qi in it and then start walking around to put them vaguely in the form of an array.]
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( Between them, they are armed, if not impenetrably: Karsa's spells curiously distort, then play on the energy around them. The slow, swelling synchrony of sorcery combines, layers, shifts, blooms.
He tinkers with the strength of the call for purification he directs towards the room, its ghosts. Better to be subtle, slow, delicate, kind. To tease out the trouble of the space, than to crudely, cruelly extricate them in a jarring stroke.
It works, in subtle increments: first, ghosts weep distantly. Then, they seek to claw his face, to live in the rivulets of torn flesh off his back, in the jade and onyx of his memories. Then —
Silence. Unearthly, calm nothingness.
And the weight of the world shifts off his shoulders. )
I believe it is done.
no subject
Karsa's sorcery is really powerful...
[Not that your powers are anything to scoff at, Lan Wangji, but cultivation is a more known entity to Xie Lian.]
Your Clan's musical techniques are impressive too. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like it with my own eyes before, even though I knew it existed.
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You honour the sect.
( A nod, cut short and forlorn, must suffice him; when he attempts an open bow, his back nearly creaks, head lead, mouth slackened. He hesitates, then rights himself — deplorably drained, but still a vestige of the Gusu Lan, tasked with composure.
If he is only half the measure of himself in fulfilling his duty, pray excuse him. Each of his bones feels depleted of marrow, mere parchment torn. His feet drag. His sleeves. )
We owe the witch a debt.
( But then, he remembers: Jin Guangyao, master of dolls and strings, manipulating their progress, their balance. The sects rushing to create an opportunity for their own glory, where only duty should persist. Too much of their interaction here feels — transactional. )
Or perhaps she owes us the same.
no subject
[Ruoye comes back to wind around his arm, joyful and puppylike until it seems to be back to looking just like a bandage.]
Still, it was a bit weird to suddenly have ghosts and spirits after weeks of just ... not seeing or feeling any. I wonder what changed to make them appear.
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Perhaps they always lived among us.
( As memories do, as spectres of revenge, as shades and nuances of colour the open eye might miss. Brush strokes create pictures that divert the eye, captivate the senses.
They searched a city for its dead, not nooks, not crevices, not crannies. The difference, then, between focus diverted and concentrated.
He hesitates: )
The dead here did not answer Wei Ying.
( A stubborn oddity, when the dead reject a necromancer. )
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