westwhere | the house of manouk

the house of manouk | test drive meme

Hello, hello! Our latest event — doubling as a test drive meme and stretching until 12 August — is a one-off incursion in an uncharted time pocket dimension — the House of Manouk.

Anyone can hit up the test drive meme, but you will need an invite from an existing player to apply on 5 August. Have fun!

THE HOUSE OF MANOUK

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THE TERRACE

Old or new, you wake up on a white-stone terrace dominated by a twisting hedge maze that houses great columns, tattered statues, ponds, rivers, gazebos and pergolas — and high looming walls of thickly bound ivy, bloomed roses or thorny vines. Walking the Terrace somehow always brings you deeper into the maze, while a flushed, sunless sky stares down, unblinking.

You experience no thirst, hunger or language barriers here. Old translation & communication pendants can nevertheless be found scattered across the Terrace and Grounds.

New arrivals encounter the sorceress Karsa, who explains you were likely summoned by one of the undead lords who seeks control of Akhuras — and reached, along with the party she leads, a pocket dimension outside of time. Karsa’s associate, the Merchant, instructed to exit the time dimension by finding Ellethian waypoints — typically stone tokens engraved with the carvings of an eye with a sun for a pupil. Karsa may activate them for you to leave this place.

Your mission is to search the House and find the waypoints of Ellethia or of the rival Dawn’s Reach Trade Company without attracting the ire of the local exiled overlord(s).

■ Some of the statues you discover on the Terrace seem crudely carved, gaining the features of your loved ones, the longer you stare at them. Some seek to throttle. Escape them by having someone else stare at them, becoming their new target, or by leading them in a crowd of other statues.

■ Beware getting pricked by thorns: covetous vines can quickly ensnare and pull you into the maze’s green walls, or bind your hand to that of your companion.

■ The maze’s weather often mimics your mood: nice and balmy for contentment, cold for fear, torrential rain for sadness and a heatwave to answer anger. Smile.

■ Every now and then, you hear screams from other parts of the maze. Run, and you might find pairs of steel manacles or rusted chain on bloodied grounds, from where fresh rose bushes quickly rise up. Investigate.

■ Go deeper in the maze, and you find a heap of small stone tablets. Most list names, ages, occupations and include loving remarks, such as the finest husband or she smiled ever bright. Alarmingly, when your companion’s back is turned, you find tablets engraved with your handwriting, saying, don’t turn your back to them, blood reeks strong on them and that’s not their name. There are no waypoint tokens here.

■ Spend enough time in the maze, and you discover an old, red-eyed, white-haired and hunchbacked man with two chainless shackles on his wrists. He ignores you, muttering to himself about how the House must keep moving, moving. The House doesn’t like you. The House is awake. The House should sleep. The old man hits or trips you with his cane, or you might wake to find him hovering very closely over you. Engage him.

■ Now and then, he seems suddenly alert, if not outright fearful, shrieking that he comes and rushing to tinker with pulleys and stone mechanisms hidden within the maze vine walls. The maze’s architecture abruptly changes, with the ground quaking, walls shifting, while old plants wilt and fresh ones rise up within heartbeats. As the House changes, you might spot a long, spiralling staircase at short distance. Go down into…

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THE GROUNDS

The ground level of the House is splintered in dozens of decaying rooms, many locked. There are no windows here, dust thick in every corner, while faint scratches and canine footprints mar the floors — the marks of dozens of great skeletal hounds that haunt the corridors.

The dogs lead, chase or drag you towards a shuttered hall room, where a middle-aged, red-eyed and white-haired man furiously searches through haphazard mounds of tousled tomes. He too wears shackles. His manner is perfunctorily polite, as he calls back his dogs.

”…not from around here, are you? Must have broken time. Hooligan. Well, you’ve travelled centuries to be disappointed. There are no mysteries here, no epiphanies. All the great wells of myth and magic? Some other pigs have drunk them dry. Blame your luck, for bringing you to the shambling hut of — …the fine House of Manouk. Taravast’s greatest necromancer, til his mind turned to slaughter.

I was his disciple. Lisanther. Must’ve come from high on, did you? These cursed shackles… he senses everyone in his House through them. If he feels us on his scent, he works his little screws and wheels and moves the House stairs. Impressed? Don’t be. He’s a wreck, who feasts on time echoes of the anguished. That’s him. Paints a picture, doesn’t he? Stay out of his sights, or you’ll wear his chains soon too. Same as me, same as the dog he keeps in the dungeons. Dragged back every time he wanders.

If you want to make yourself useful, help me. I traded fairly with a caravan of the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company. They say they left behind scrolls in these grounds, with the words to free me. They overcharge, but they don’t lie. Help me find them. Break my chains, and I’ll break us out. I can. I swear it. ”

Deeper into the claustrophobic Grounds, you find specters of men and women, chained just like Lisanther — their skin translucent, their gazes lethargic. They feel neither dead nor alive to the magically sensitive. They are either very present in the moment or barely recall their whereabouts. If asked about tokens, they say the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company left scrolls in the Grounds main quarters:

▶ Bathing quarters

At times pristine and delightful, at others blood-marked and torn. The waters abruptly run very hot, cold or silty. The spectre of a wo/man might appear in the tub, staring unblinkingly or murmuring that people do all sorts of wickedness in this bathroom: they have even witnessed stabbings, treasures being hidden beneath tile boards, and even a birthing!

▶ Kitchens

Sprawling and soot-laden, bursting with supplies of stale wheat, eccentric cakes, exotic fruit and spice jars, these kitchens were built for long service. A heavy cauldron bubbles and boils a green broth in a cold fireplace, where ash and stone drown wood. A circle of spectres troubleshoots how to improve the meal — just as the kitchens’ doors slam shut, and they cordially invite you to do the legwork for their recipe. They instruct you to chop, clean and prepare the most unusual ingredients: hair of a dog, salt, moulded thyme, arsenic, one of your finest love stories… they’ll tire of their creation and release you within the hour. Don’t dine, dash.

▶ Sleeping chambers

There’s rest for the wicked in these deserted sleeping quarters, which boast exceptionally well-stuffed cushions and pillows, blankets and ‘reading materials’ — torn pages from books of history and magic. Some speak of the desperate attempts of the rulers of Taravast to flee death. Others talk of using spells, the elements and even mass sacrifice to achieve immortality. Enjoy your rest, only perturbed by occasional distant screams —

…or perhaps by a large, feral white bear that bursts in to briefly chase you, before disappearing. Veteran travellers may recognise him as the creature of Anurr.

Some of the chain-breaking scrolls of the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company can be found in each of the main rooms, along with some of the Company’s talismans, marked as waypoints, which should be brought to Karsa. See what your character finds.

Finish up here, or meander down a final stairwell to —

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THE DUNGEONS

Cold, deteriorating, crumbling — difficult to say if this is a tightly bound knot of underground tunnels, or a torturous weave of lost dungeons. Parts of the floor crumble to reveal abyssal depths below — or suddenly appear beneath your feet, to help your progress. Emptied, creaking bookcases abound. Here and there, you see your reflection in shattered wall-length mirrors, moving differently than you, or just slightly older or younger than you are.

■ Revived skeletons patrol the corridors, scantily armed with base blades, stones and torches. They largely ignore you, only blocking your path if you near a magically-locked stone door in the back of the Dungeons, from where you hear… human pleas.

■ Door engravings instruct to speak out the three truths of each day. Nearby, you find a mound of crumbled stone tablets, along with three golden ones raised on pedestals that read:

▶ with morning, my body is a weapon, sun-seeking, righteousness-bound

▶ by midday, my flesh has bent and battered, a shield of justice for young life to come

▶ come evening, I am blood and bone, a humble house to hope eternal

■ Tip bookcases into the narrow corridors to prevent the skeletal guards from reaching you, as you search diligently through the stone debris beneath the golden pedestals. You might even find Ellethian waypoint tokens: palm-wide, marked with a sun pupil. Take them to Karsa immediately… or open the now unlocked dungeon door as a man calls out.

■ Enter, and you discover an dimly lit dungeon alcove, with animate skeletal heads hanging on each wall. They cackle, Mind your step. Heed them and look for holes in the floor tiles — needle-thin spikes emerge from there periodically.

■ Go deeper, and you discover a large bare stone room, scantly livened by torches bearing green fire. A small hole — barely enough to fit a grown man standing and lying down — has been dug into one of the walls and secured. This inhumane prison’s bars crackle and sizzle with magical electricity. A skeletal hound waits by, with a set of keys fastened to its collar.

■ A white-haired, red-eyed twenty-something young man sprawls haphazardly in the prison: battered, swathed in rags, shackled and wild. He holds out his blood-tipped hand between the bars, but fails to lure the dog close — and calls out to you, instead:

”You must be mad to come to me. The old man sent you? Finally? Good. How wonderful. I’ll spit on you, and I’ll spit on his grave. He left me here to die. And now he’s remembered me? What does he want? …no. It doesn’t matter. Rip the keys off that mutt and get me out of here. ”

You can engage or release him, if you coax the key from the recalcitrant dog. Or leave him be and see Karsa with your waypoint token.

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NOTES:

■ There are multiple waypoint tokens to leave the time dimension: the Dawn’s Reach Trade Company talismans, hidden in the Ground rooms, and the Ellethian tokens, found in the dungeons. Bring whichever one you discover to Karsa.

■ You can optionally solve the mystery of Lisanther, the prisoner, Manouk and the spectres.

■ The House’s layout changes periodically, but characters can find the stairs to travel across the three levels every few hours.

■ Mention in your top level if you play an old timer or a test driving tourist. TDMers can make both logs and network prompts here!

■ QUESTIONS & NPC INBOX!

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( He laughs, briefly, but genuinely. )

The magic here has so many variations, you'll be learning the whole time to tell them apart! Or work them, depending on your inclinations. You can channel your qi?

( The question tossed back as he weaves between statues, choosing not to look at any one of them for too long. When he stops again, he's peering between a crude uplifted arm and torso, seeing the pursuing statue finally reach the collection of them they've ducked within. )

Not tire, exactly. Lose track of, ah? More likely. Things that take on forms of those you care for are usually looking to harm you in this world. Most hesitate before faces we find precious... oh! I think it's slowing!

( Losing some clarity of features, too, though Wei Wuxian doesn't let his gaze linger. )

Try to avoid staring, ah?

I can. I just don't exactly want to kick his head off. ( His, and not it, oh Wen Kexing wants to set something on fire. Why did it have to look like that, of all the faces? It's not even a perfect likeness! He takes a breath, resolutely looking at the space to the side of the statue and nothing belonging to it, fan clenched tight in one hand and a simmering, seething rage tucked behind his teeth. ) You've seen the thing, it wouldn't even put up a good fight.

( Zhou Zishu would. Zhou Zishu would absolutely stop Wen Kexing from kicking his head off by simply attempting to do the same thing himself. )

If this place wants to feed on us, what good is having us throttled within a day? ( A quick fire glance has Wen Kexing confirming the things mouth is becoming less human shaped, more a gash in the stone. He does as instructed though, resolutely not staring. ) Let's hope it stops when it goes back to it's original form. I don't know about you but I'd rather be anywhere else right now.

Oh, something necromantic as they call it here, I suppose.

( A nonchalant answer for what good is having us throttled, given years of dealing with this place when settled properly in time, and in the utter likelihood this is more of the same, simply... outside normal time. Which is a fascinating subject he'd enjoy thinking about more deeply if this wasn't also a possible sticking point for all of them, if they can't navigate out before they're as trapped as...

... he doesn't know yet, but he presumes trapped as something. This is a place that once had people, if tokens for returning to the proper continuum of time exist.

The statue, having reached the crudely carved stand of similar ones, slows. It looks around, but even as it does, were either of them to glance at it, the features it had displayed lose definition, becoming increasingly rough. More and more like raw rock, less and less like the finished, familiar sculpture it'd become. )

This place isn't so bad. At least it's not under siege by one of the death lords.

( A pause, and: )

So far as we know. Look, it's still, let's head out that way —

( He drops his voice to a murmur, as if the problem had ever been in the stone listening to them both, and gestures even as he begins moving toward the gap between two walls, with vines draping down their sides. )

You know, I have often lamented there wasn't a carving of my Ah-Xu out there for me to look at whenever I felt like it, but of course the bastard would have it out for my blood.

( He hopes, that back home, Zhou Zishu is feeling some repulsed little shiver at the idea Wen Kexing is thinking of him fondly. That is, if he isn't cursing his absense and the prospect of a lonely motherhood raising Chengling all by his himself. Or maybe, and more likely, he's worried. Wen Kexing has been a burr in his side from day one, he wouldn't actively choose to leave him behind. Once upon a time, the idea of that stoic man all caught up in concern would have appealed, but now it makes him a little sick with guilt.

He wants to go back, even if he has made a mess of things.

But, there is still a task at hand, Wen Kexing keeps his eyes downcast. his shoulders rounded at the sudden mizzle of rain. He doesn't look back to the group of statues, he's learnt his lesson, instead he slips after Wei Wuxian quietly, brushing aside the foliage. ) "Not so bad", he says, like the weather alone isn't terrible. ( Which is on Wen Kexing, but whatever.

Voice not quite a whisper, but still hushed in case he's overheard. ) Aren't the death lords who we're working for? ( Or undead, but it's been a long day. ) That's what I was led to believe, anyway.

( A tip of his head at the Ah-Xu, and he smiles to himself without saying anything at the moment. Getting into the details of comings and goings, returns and disappearances, how time never appears to be lost on the sides of the gateways belonging to those who'd been pulled in, that can be a conversation when out of the maze.

Especially when he's asked, in the drizzle of rain that's only softened by a summerlike breeze, if they don't work for the death lords themselves. )

The death lords used magic of some kind to pull us here. The gateways we travel toward are the means of us returning to where we came from. The death lords have a mind to take us and turn us into powerful sources of energy for their own weapons. Likely refining us into souls they bind or transform forcibly, we've seen evidence of such in their creatures.

( The vines on the walls by them shift without a breeze, tendrils on the ground reaching out toward them. Wei Wuxian sidesteps the clumsy, slow motions, picking his progress forward. Whatever the path they walked, there'd be some destination at the centre, he knows it likely. )

The one who calls himself Merchant aids us to keep us away from their hands. Not out of good will, ah? Men on paths of vengeance simply don't wish to allow their enemies advantages.

They can't have mine, it belongs to another.

( Simply said, as if Wen Kexing is merely here passing the time and not forced into strange acquiescence by forces unknown. Maybe it is arrogance, or maybe it is foolishness, but he clings to that thought regardless. Too many have tried to change him, and the monster he forged to fight back still resides in his skin, ever just under the surface. It doesn't matter here, if he's trying to be better elsewhere. His teeth are still just as sharp.

A vine sprouts out of the ground ahead, aiming to wind around his ankle. Wen Kexing slices it easily in too with the sharp edge of his fan, expression closing off the more he thinks into disinterest. )

You speak as if you have been here a long time.

They're remarkably unconcerned with details like that.

( Said with a sigh and shake of his head. So silly, these power hungry creatures. Almost irreverent, when he's serious about the consequences, when he's learned resurrection for the sake of preventing the greeds of others, the power of those who would consume them, from prevailing. From ease.

He does smile at the cut vines, the ease with the fan's edge. Always be prepared. )

Two years and counting. That's not usual — most who're brought here manage to make the gateway as an exit their first or second time.

( Another turn of the maze, or no, a split into three disguised by the turn. Wei Wuxian pats his chin with two fingers, considering. Listens, extends senses, and shrugs: )

Which way calls you?

( Two years.

Two years.

He is not staying here for that long, can not. A chill goes down his spine at the thought, the drizzle that had followed suddenly turning frosty. Wen Kexing cannot see the maze for a moment, blinded by the panic that thought brings. He manages to shake it off, eyes narrowed, going sharp before he points the slatted edge of his fan onwards.

Eventually his words find him again, strained slightly but still aiming for friendly. ) Why so long? Unless leaving is not, as I've been lead to believe, a mere matter of providing aid?

( And if not, what will he do? There's a dying man he needs to bully into remission. Another vine stretches, more insistent. It too gets treated the same way, though the movement might be more vicious than easy this time. )

( Would you look at how efficiently Wen Kexing disarms that particular vine! Skipping over a vine like this is a nice day out on a simple pathway, Wei Wuxian smiles, no real humour in it. The chill to snow solidifies even as the path curves gently, avoiding harsh angles for now. )

Leaving is finding a gateway and a beacon to power it. Leaving is that beacon powering it for long enough you get through the gateway. Leaving is also not finding the gateway has, for no good reason, spat you back out without sending you home.

( He smacks another questing vine away with a careless flick of the flute he pulls free of his waistband, twirling it between fingers before tucking it away again. )

You've made it home before. You'll make it again.

( Said in confidence, and as if that's a very normal thing to say at all. )

( A pause in his step, unnatural stillness settling over his shoulders. He can be forgiven, he thinks, for the way his temper ebbs and flows, anger and fear and strange exhaustion all warring at once within him. Wen Kexing is usually better at keeping his charming façade up, but the narrow-eyed way he watches Wei Wuxian for a second belies a little of the real person under his skin. )

Before?

( Tone merely questioning. )

What do you mean, before?

( What does this place know of him, that Wen Kexing has not willingly given? How did it know to use that face against him? What does any of it mean? )

( Wei Wuxian, sounding entirely relaxed, cants his head and keeps an eye on Wen Kexing when he replies, as calm as earlier: )

You've been pulled here twice before. Successfully got back through the gateways twice, too. Don't know if that's luck or the opposite of it, ah?

( Doesn't say Zhou Zishu had been here too, had been here when Wen Kexing was accepted by the gateway, and here still when he returned, and here still after, until finally his stepping through a gateway stuck.

Rarer, to have the gaps in time between. The memories all gone, which is what each person says it was like on their world returning home, who were spat back out the same gateway they managed to walk through. )

No worrying over it, you know yourself.

( Pain pulses behind his eye again, though this a little different from the usual agony of forcing himself to remember something he can't. It's part exhaustion, part frustration. Were he anywhere else he might hole himself up in one of the many Ghost Valley boltholes and try to think. Instead he is here, a place he does not recognise, hunted and harassed by statues of someone he does, with no memory of ever having been anywhere but Qingya and the Jianghu at large. Would he not recall somewhere so strange? The soup of oblivion is strong, surely, but he has thought off parts of it before. He'd make himself remember.

Wouldn't he? )

Say it's luck then. ( A little harsher than his friendly demeanour before, more frazzled through. ) I'm known to make my own. Perhaps this time it will stick.

( Anything to get away from murderous foliage, either way. )

( The upward turn of his lips, the inclination of his head. )

Charmed for a third time's try. I'll have faith in the possibility. You've better luck than most.

( The area right ahead opens up again, a pile of stone tablets in the middle of the area, collapsing outward. )

You'll be back where you left off, and by my guess, never will know you've been away.

( Again. It's a mixed blessing, that thought, but he's glad of it for the ones it remains important for. For those who have people to get back to, now. )

Isn't that worse?

( He makes a circuit around the tablets more out of necessity to keep moving than anything else, brow pinched in worry. The way they came, the vines still stretch forward as if desperate to embrace one or both of them, Wen Kexing gives them a wide berth, his attention doing it's best to keep up with several varying focal points. )

Not knowing. That someone has the power to do so not once, but thrice is alarming enough. And it must be forced. I do not see myself choosing to do so willingly.

( He hasn't, not since he was a child. )

It is.

( He agrees, easy enough with that honesty on his part; casting a glance across the tablets, noting phrases, words, no names. Identities have been stripped from what are meant as grave markers. He recognises the shape of them from Taravast, a time and place he spent much attention with the already dead, returning bleached bones to a home they never saw again. )

The heavens may be unknowable, but to understand our own minds, our own memories, can be made the same?

( A grim smile, dark eyes swallowing the scattered light as thunder rolls overhead in a cloudless sky. )

Some might choose that. Most would prefer to choose what they forget.

( Pausing at a half-hidden diagonal away from the open area with its sliding pile of tablets. The vines are closer, reaching, thirsty; they're also browning at the edges, curling toward a swiftening death for no apparent, specific reason. He reaches out, capturing a withering vine as it breaks from higher above his head. The thunder rolls again, only — his head whips around, shoulders following, turning toward Wen Kexing and moving himself as he does: )

The walls are moving! Out!

( No getting trapped in liminal spaces. )

( Oh, he can see why some people would choose the embrace of forgetfulness over what tends to be the harsher edge of reality. One only has to see some of the people who have found their way to Ghost Valley - not every one a vicious, hardened criminal. Wen Kexing is aware that to some, the unforgiving mountain of Qingya and the Water of Lethe provide respite, safety, a chance to start again.

It is unfortunate that it has done him so unkindly. He might have been tempted to let it live.

But instead of answering he makes a small, noncommittal noise. It is presumably for the best, whatever he might have said would have surely been cut off by the commotion. Wen Kexing's steps don't falter as he moves away, towards the nearest arched exit. He has to assume they're being led somewhere, but the where he'd rather not find out. After all, everything here has been vicious so far. )

Can we go over?

( Called to Wei Wuxian. Wen Kexing could certainly make the leap, wouldn't even fall out of breath for it, but he has no idea about his companion. Abandoning him after he's done everything to help would be a coward's action. )

We could, but they're vine covered and thorn thirsty — ah!

( He whirls back around to the tablets, dashing toward them to scoop a few up. He tosses one toward his companion, flashing him a triumphant, mischievous smile. )

But they die off during the shiftings! With a barrier, we can hold the higher ground!

( Which is to say, in that moment, he's making the leap with the tablet coming down first, keeping him separate from the dying and revitalised vines alike, their thorns deceptively sharp and long. He's perched on the narrow length of fine woman, fine whine as the vine-covered wall beneath him continues moving, steady and shrieking a touch. With the height, and limited time before the vines recover when the walls still, he's squinting for signs of a larger break in the maze. )

Toward the left, do you see it?

( A space made larger than the majority of gaps, not rough hewn stone heads visible. A deepened shadow he can't plunge the depths of from this angle, but promising, if promising meant underground enclosures. It might at least mean different, and with no looming structures visible even from this vantage point, different might be closest to finding whatever else might be existing in this querulous space. )

I see it.

( He doesn't need to be told twice, the tablet Wei Wuxian had thrown his way tucked safely under one arm, his fan held tight in the other. It's a precaution at best, he doesn't necessarily need his weapon but he certainly feels a little better for having it literally at hand. Especially with the way the vines have been. But he needn't have worried, not when the pair of them are fast enough to make it through to the gap before hungry fauna starts stretching after them. Wen Kexing stumbles just a bit at the new angled terrain, but rights himself just as quickly. It just means he's more tired than he'd thought, which isn't surprising considering the state of things before he'd woken up here.

He merely has to be more careful.

Still, the slope veers downwards, dirt giving away to stairs, stone and well-worn. Wen Kexing pauses for just a second, peering downwards. The stairs swerve out of sight, but he can't imagine they lead to nowhere in particular. He looks Wei Wuxian's way, one eyebrow raised. )

Well, how can it be worse?

( It could be that they're being very deliberately directed somewhere. He wouldn't be surprised. But he's also ... stubborn. It doesn't take him all that long to straighten himself up, to take a step forward. )

I'm hoping for a well-stocked wine cellar. How about you?

( The dry chuckle that meets the question not needing an answer produces one anyway: )

I wouldn't invite the answer.

( There are always, sadly, ways for things to be worse. If the walls down below still move, if the ceilings do, if roots creep for blood in their veins, if ghosts consume memories and vitality. It's unlikely to have any connection to the Hell of the world they're on, trapped in its own limited space, frozen in its own version of time, and yet.

And yet.

Down the stairs he goes, setting the tablet aside as the stairs descend in such a way that the height of the ground meets his arm's reach. If these are words or estimates of those dead on these grounds, they'll know sooner or later. )

I'm trying to be good. ( Wine sounds lovely; sounds horrific, with the ways it's betrayed him here. ) I'm hoping for real beds! I've spent the last however many months sleeping in a cave... a holy cave, the villagers liked to tell us, when they woke us before dawn every morning to sweep it out.

( He shakes his head as the darkness swallows him, swallows them, and his eyes adjust to the change in light. Nothing visible but the stone, worn and carefully set into the earth itself, and the seeping cool and scent of musty earthiness common to all subterranean dwellings.

Not even bones glint further down, though hints of light burning in sconces can be seen further down the stair. )

Edited 2023-08-19 23:58 (UTC)

( He pulls a face at the cave, and whether that is because of silent judgement or the lingering of memory well that's between him and the Gods. He's had his fair share of awful bedchambers after all. But still, he offers Wei Wuxian a sympathetic hum as they traverse further down the stairs. )

Ah, I'm afraid now that it won't be good.

( Well-lit tunnels should fill a person with comfort, but well --. )

This one can't help but feel like we're being led to something.

( The chasing statues, the greedy vines, the moving walls. It reminds him a little of Longyuan Cabinet and the little psycho's awful creations. Wen Kexing's grip tightens a little on his fan as they finally reach even earth, his attention on the opening of what looks to be a long hallway dug beneath the earth. ) Let's be careful, there could be traps.

( At least it's not a bridge, he thinks, as he steps further inside, wrinkling his nose at the smell of wet earth. )

( His original terrible cave at least had straw over stone. And a blood pool! He's not sure he misses either, only the people once protected when he was plagued by both. He doesn't even dream of proper bathing here, but what another kind dream it would be.

Instead he smiles, staring down the passageway, the dust and feel of what is dead, is not fully dead, lingering in the shadowed spaces between the flickering light of the sconces. )

Something not quite living, not quite dead is down here.

( Which may be trap enough as far as these things go, he considers, noting the evidence of scratches in the dust at the edges, the worn down clarity of the central lane of the hall. The sounds, further down, clacking and clicking, and the murmur of what might be voices. )

Besides, if it's trapped, isn't that exciting?

( Grim amusement, Chenqing, his flute, in hand and twirled between his fingers. What thing wicked this way comes. )

tw: v. v. brief ableism

( He ... does not exactly know what to do with that information.

Oh, he's aware people can have senses way above the norm, his own are heightened, but Wei Wuxian's comment is so very specific. Still, he only pauses in his step for a fraction of a second before he's moving on, grim determination tightening his grip on the fan in his hands. )

Is it?

( Conversationally, but with a tone that implies he very much doubts it. )

If it's trapped for a reason I might have to disagree. ( Like the terrible no good puppets and their cripple master, but well. He's not exactly afraid of much. ) Your perception must be quite strong, Master --. ( A pause, and then on purpose, in case he needs to know later, with a friendly smile. ) Ha, amidst all the running I haven't caught your name. We might want to exchange them before we get torn apart by ghouls. Mine is Wen Kexing.

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the house of manouk | test drive meme

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