the house of manouk | test drive meme

[groundrules]

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!

Comments

[downswing]

( Him. For him.

Wei Ying drifts and catches, pledging. Aside and beneath, the spirit steadies him like a pillar the roof that has shattered from above, half-stabbing through the defenses of his emotional infrastructure. His heart feels at once wing-bearing, a white bird calling — and laden.

I'll follow. Last, Wei Ying tumbled alone. Lan Wangji's grip shifts, minutely, claws of his hands burying in the gentle crenellations of his collar. Beyond, the faint echo of water receding, a last few drip-drip-drips —

His eyes shutter against the tidal impossibility of such excess affection. Against Wei Ying's thunderous affection, he feels as if a blade of grass, wind-sundered. He cannot breathe for the vastness of that which engulfs him. )

Forgive me. For years, you have known only my attention. ( Like a flower, thriving in the singeing sun of midday. ) To deprive is cruel.

( No better than consigning an old dog to quiet culling, abandoned to his own devices, when he has known only life in shadow, at loyal beck and common call. Beneath, the spirit rights him — pushes up and away, as if propelling the unwanted cargo of a sunken ship. Rounding his stroke, Wangji's hand retaliates with a tug of Wei Ying's robe lapel, a clutch of his hair. He opens his eyes — kisses back once, only the corner of his lover's mouth.

And looks to stand. )

There are beds. ( A simple, practical, crude observation. Logistics sorted. ) After the search has ended. Bloodletting and birthings.

( This bathroom hides more than it intends. )

[weifinder]

There's nothing to forgive.

( He holds himself as a different sort of bridge, as captured and close without collapsing as any man might be, in this awkward looming near-collapse over the tub. Stirred to response by the kiss to the corner of his mouth, the shift of hands and the tug and clutching of his person, he sighs, releasing his own hold in Lan Zhan's hair. He transfers to gripping his husband's shoulder, grunting as he rocks himself backward, looking to pull Lan Zhan up with the assistance of the spirit pressing up from below, ever helpful, wide eyes still beseeching. )

For the moment.

( Said with a partial smile, even as he doesn't quite let go of his hold on Lan Zhan's shoulder, studying his face. There's the underlying feeling that said beds are going to find a way to spontaneously self-combust, or turn out possessed, or the rooms will simply be haunted like the house he'd "inherited" in Taravast, by plenty of overly brusque, hovering grandfathers.

As if this is a less haunted place, but ah, the hauntings are but different in intention, aren't they? And the grandfathers never so captured his husband's startled interest.

Then he allows his hands to fall away, glances around, back to the ghost who has resettled himself with his freedom from the crush of living human forms. The water dripping on the floor to either side of Lan Zhan, sleeves trickling wet as sweetness might drop from a lover's lips. His fingers twitch, to reach out again, but he curls them in toward his palms, swallowing. Follow, at delay. He's not patient with it, but he's not young enough to ignore the other realities they face. The pressing curiosities, and his wandering mind imagines Lan Zhan, dripping, dark eyes wide, and oh —

He clears his throat, blinking rapidly, lips pulling into a smile even as heat brushes his cheeks, the back of his neck. )

What are you hoping we find here? We achieve?

( His gaze falls to the ghost again, who brushes hair off his damp face, offering a hesitant smile in return. )

[downswing]

( For now, and it is a simple, trickling, kindly thing, the brightest star in a constellation of distant, gossamer possibilities. They have flirted with the notion of their bedding as often as with each other, at each step the natural conclusion stymied.

The air feels choked, their expectation performative. If it comes to pass, perhaps it is suitable it will find them so: Wei Ying out of synchrony with himself, movements artless, like a bird learning flight. Lan Wangji half wetted, neatly deposited on his feet by the dead, silks drenched and hanging.

He is asked, for a moment that stretches into agony, for his reasons. Mouth arid, lips smacking, the struggle now is to give their tell. )

To glean. Three men, living. ( The crippled elder, the exhausted scholar, the... dog of the dungeons, jailed. Lives like specks of blackened rice in a snowy mound, visible only as exceptions. ) Dozens of the dead.

( Here, there, scattered in perpetuity. Stumbled at every step. Gazing back now at Lan Wangji with meretricious fragility. Absently, Lan Wangji reaches a hand, fingers dripping, to pass his touch through the tangle of the deadened thing's hair, stroking it to soothe. )

Blood at each step. If they were wronged, why have they not retaliated? ( They have the natural numerical advantage. )

[weifinder]

( He hums, listening; considering what he's heard, or inquired after, even when frightened out of his wits in the dungeons below. He steps back into Lan Zhan's orbit, toes dragging through the water pooling at their feet. Three who live, and many dozens more who... don't, in any classical sense, no matter the confusion his senses feel around them. These hauntings, the shackled spirits, the eager eyes in the kitchens.

A place banished from the flow of the world, decaying and renewing and decaying once more in its own isolated consideration. )

I don't know if they all met the same ends, to the same understanding. This is a house of necromancy, isn't it? The ones who stand shackled, who know others at times and know nothing at others, I feel the shackles keep them bound. Those in the kitchens, preoccupied and obsessed. Those in the bathing rooms...

( He trails off, looking to the golden spirit, who leans in to Lan Zhan's touch, lids half closing, arms resting in folded politeness across the tub's edge. Almost, but not quite, in repose. )

Each hold something else dear. They may even be bound to where they are. We might see if they can be freed... or if the whole of this place must be brought back into time for any of them to return to the flow of everything.

( Saying in the slow circling of one predator around another, they are bound, they are held, they are not allowed retaliation, they are none of them free to take vengeance if vengeance they seek, or anything, anything at all. The bitter, stagnant taste it leaves in his mouth as bloodied as the tiles slowly bleed, the waters tinged with it, and yet clear, sparkling, in the next heartbeat.

He turns, angled away, catching sight of himself in the small mirror over the sink. Different haunts in different places, but the ones here don't scream and beg like the ones in Yiling did. )

[downswing]

( So sweet and penitent in Lan Wangji's hand, like a blade of grass yielding to a destructive footstep: this young man is child-like, kindly. Pleading and soft and his gaze molten and considering, downcast.

Wei Ying speaks, and Lan Wangji — reaches a hand to tap his wrist, the climbs it to unpeel his forehead and slip it back in Wei Ying's care like snake's skin, like a flimsy trinket of abstract, futile nonsense. As if Lan Wangji's heart does not travel alongside withered white, silk-bound.

Dancing down, it settles in Wei Ying's hand, silent. Here: know him. His loyalties, his pledges, his bond. Whatever paths his fingertips may walk, however deep their literal, coiling entanglement in another man's curls. )

Men are bound to agony or ecstasy. Places or people.

( This much, every exorcist knows, that only formidable passions keep a spirit livened and stirred, affixed after its passage. The dead are called to settlement, even when peace eludes them like recollections of a faint summer's dream.

For spirits to linger, there is attraction — and his gaze slants, sharpens in thin focus over blood dried and the silent battery of the furnitures, the chipping of the bathtub's crackled ceramic — to a cause. )

They perished here. Or at the hand of those present.

[weifinder]

( A low sound, like amusement, like resignation. Not for here, but for the remainders of spirits, of souls, of their agonies and ecstasies, as his husband so elegantly puts it. Wei Wuxian's fingers twitch, the ribbon draped over their valleys and peaks, held tight as they curl in toward his palm.

He wonders sometimes, if looking at his hands would show a life interrupted, paused then pushed forward. Or if it would show unbroken, somehow. He lifts the ribbon, no pause, no depth of consideration. This time, not bound around his wrist. This time, tied around the knot of his hair, draping down, red and blue-white and black, bruises and bleedings and birthings and hope.

They've been promised enough. They don't need the dead as witness yet again. )

As likely both.

( Three sets of greedy eyes, of men later worn down by the results of their own actions. Or are they? Are they worn? )

As likely one of the three responsible leaves, before or after our wake. They won't.

( His eyes fall, settle on golden curls, on his husband's hand, on the eyes too wide, too complacent. A softer smile from Wei Wuxian then, for the dead, for his husband. He shifts, a half turn, rounds the tub on the side closest to the dead, further increasingly from the living. Sees the setting of them all in reflection, one bound by desires, one bound within them, one bound to seek them through.

Beautiful, really. Even while the mirror mists, uncertain of clarity, of which moment bleeds next, this one into that one into the past, the present, the lack of future. For all of them, the only futures come from going forward. From what? From letting go? )

You know.

( The slow steps forward, soft and certain. The fingers that reach out, drag through condensation, while he considers, seeing not only those in this room, seeing the chained spirits, the kitchens, the other bathing chambers. The necromancers, caged in their different, similar ways.

A line, curving. The lift of his fingers, and the press of one tip, once here, once two fingerwidths apart. The smiling face drawn where it sits in observance of them all from his angle, and here he is, smiling back for a moment. Ducking around behind it after, leaving Lan Zhan to its contemplation, ribbons fluttering, entwining behind him, before the mirror's body blocks him most. )

You know what my argument has been. You've seen it at its worst. You've seen it at its kindest. What's your instinct, here?

[downswing]

( One moment, Wei Ying meanders beside him, another spirit given dominion.

The next, he is — ...drifted. Done and gone.

Physically present, if the light of his eyes slate-greyed and dulled and his touch diffuse, wandered over the mirror's spread. He has learned what these instruments are: silver beaten into the submission of losing itself and reflecting all that which surrounds it. A perfect enslavement, stripping that which is chained of its identity. No different than these ghosts.

Wei Ying slips into its orbit like a clustered constellation clings to the skirt of mother moon, brightened by the mirror's proximity. He looks — feels — one with the gelid translucence of the spirit towards whom Lan Wangji once, then again, before rupturing their connection.

The sound of his footsteps round, contracted. This chamber and its echoes, a universe unto themselves. He arrives, past the mirror's vantage, at a strategic angle — only his arm visible, when it crawls up to fasten around Wei Ying's waist, in a coarse, decisive anchoring. Then, onslaught: stream of Lan Wangji's hair coursing down his husband's shoulder, mouth pressed to burn his neck. Material, flesh-born marking. Where have you gone? And, Come back to me. )

There is no appeasement I may provide. ( He has attempted, in incursions prior. With the tall, tight-lipped man. With Wen Kexing.

Their gazes meet in the mirror, incandescent. ) Ask if they accept vengeance.

( Let it be done. )

[weifinder]

( A noise pulled involuntary from the depths of his throat, surprised inhalation, hint of a rumble that might turn toward a moan, given time and attention. Turning his face toward his husband, after the locked gazes in the mirror: the disconnect of reflection to what he wishes to see, the reality locked around his waist, pressed to his shoulder, decorating his front with hair dark as his own. )

I don't know, Lan Zhan. ( Said soft, said low, hint of roughness in his voice, the sly slide of one eye to take in the full of his husband's face from this angle. See in reflection the particulars of his smile: see the slow blossoming, the languorous stretch of plush lips into something teasing, knowing. ) I'm feeling somewhat appeased.

( Nothing to what they're truly speaking on, but the easiness of a moment leaning back into, welcoming without the permissive silence of the ghost who watches, blinking slow, from his bath perch. His eyes back to holding Lan Zhan's in the mirror, bright. Smile even more blatant, even more of a challenge, when he says: )

We can ask, but Lan Zhan. If they say no?

[downswing]

( Somewhat appeased, if not completely. Lan Wangji's gaze does not shift from that of his prey, utterly and hatefully canine, metabolising Wei Ying's restlessness as advantage. So close, Wei Ying's head turned, his sight is a lake blurred, rippled and startled. He cannot see the whole of his husband for the blandly pretty, delectable sum of his parts.

The next breath is a negotiation, lungs-burning. Each simple process of this interaction burns, the moment crisped and stormed, charged past measure. He exhales —

Wei Ying gazes into the mirror again.

— and the threat of submersion eases. A slow relinquishing, Lan Wangji's arm as much removed as unpeeling itself. In the wake of close intimacy, he feels at distance from himself, divided. Here a part of him rests, feverish and bright-eyed, flush governing his cheeks to a bloom. And there he looks away, askance. )

They will not. ( Before him, the ghost of the bathtub crawls up, nearly mounting the bath's rim to free himself. ) Spirits desire soothing or vengeance. He has not entrusted me.

( Despite their brief, tender moment of reunion prior. )

[weifinder]

( Wei Wuxian turns, freed from his husband's embrace, back toward him, to the space that stretches partly between them, one exhalation to the next. The ghost climbs the tub, settles on it, tries to set one foot outside, drips water while he doesn't quite manage the step out yet.

Wei Wuxian, eyes drinking in the blossom across his husband's cheek, and his own smile, different and promising in ways they keep saying later and after and soon towards. He reaches out, fingers tugging at Lan Zhan's waistband, even as he rounds him. Even as he looks toward the young man perched for freedom, gaze wide, still hopeful, still hungry.

It's such a different hunger than the despairs he's used to. What do you think, he wants to ask Lan Zhan, He really wants? Wei Wuxian keeps his fingers hooked into Lan Zhan's robes, the impulsive, impish tug of it, while his free hand lifts, extends to the young man caught in the translucence of his youth until he eventually fades.

There's a warmth to those fingers, to the weight of them, damp, in Wei Wuxian's hand. To the ghost who anchors himself with that hand, who levers upward, to feet finding purchase on tiles that flicker brilliant white to mottled, blood-splattered neglect. )

Soothing or vengeance, ah?

( Tremulous, that smile. Stark naked, the whole of him. There are ghosts who wear their deaths well, and so does this one, golden and sun-kissed and sky-eyed, the light of day to the night's skies found in both his gaze and that of his husband's. He shifts his grip, Lan Zhan tugged close, don't leave. The ghost, offered the escort of another step closer, eyes falling downcast, the false flush of youth and embarrassment highlighting a cheek structure, a nose, unlike those they'd grown up surrounded by. )

Some people are simpler than we are.

[downswing]

( Shivered, his posture seems fragile and child-like, a flock of birds startled. He does not shrug off the burdened weight of Wei Ying's coalesced interest, the hand on his silks, its print of heat and imprecations.

Around them, the old bones of the bathroom stretch and crack, and the spirit is a strange, immutable fixture — drawn to Wei Ying, like a mouse to the serpent's maws, the white of his eyes in rapture. They are two in this.

Lan Wangji's touch floats and chases his husband's wrist — shrivels — pulls away. )

...it would be cruel to harm him.

( It strikes him, all at once, like an axe's blade: Wei Ying can. May. Given opportunity, will. Red tints his gaze, blinding. He is man and tomb and Yiling, foremost a necromancer. There are spirits he housed, spirits he led, spirits he dispelled.

Teeth in his mouth are bright sheets of terror. The Patriarch cannibalizes all the ghosts who presume their claim to hurt exceeds his own. Feasts on their marrow. )

Be good to him. A kindness. ( To Lan Wangji, if not the spirit. )

[weifinder]

Why is it me having to be good?

( He grumbles, doesn't bother disguising it, and doesn't beset the ghost with a gaze holding weight or resentments of his own. Towards the ghost, he has none; towards most, he has none, let alone those that dig deep, carve harms into bones, near to breaking with their pressure.

He breathes in, breathes out. Ghost leaning, following, and Lan Zhan, here. Wei Wuxian tries a step toward the door, curious where the ghost might be caught, where it might be pulled backward, swallowed whole again by the tub and the nature of a haunting, but ghosts are not so anchored in that sense, not if they have reason to be otherwise.

Or do they? The grandfathers never wanted to leave, not in Taravast, until Anurr's violence stole them from their deathly comforts. Easy to swallow a spirit whole. Easy to bend, to break, to use for his own aims. Easy, but not his life, not his decision, permission and agreement far better fare for a laozu named in mockery, a man who never sought pupils, who never founded a sect.

Foundations, crumbling. Lan Zhan, he steps toward, backs toward the mirror, propped up as it is further held in place with the wall behind. The ghost a partner, dancing forward on feet that leave wet imprints in dried bloodstained floors, and a twirl, all it takes is the twitch of a wrist for Wei Wuxian to capture him between two warm, living bodies, step in, press, hands still occupied between Lan Zhan's silks and the ghost's strange warmth. Ask, and ye shall receive.

Never what one truly wants, is it? The murmurs of, )

Your time bled away, carried by the waters. ( And: ) What carries you now?

( Leaning in, eyes on Lan Zhan's, mouth near the ghost's neck, exposed in subtle degrees with the lack of any air in the ghost's lungs. Want, and he can admit, these are not the concerns of the ghosts he knew from Yiling. None of them had died wanting love, passion, things like this. All had died crying for a far bloodier vengeance than the gifts of what they'd yet to indulge.

An oddity, he thinks, he who had not missed this as the crux of himself. Understanding instead what it is to long and to grieve, and he waits, for Lan Zhan's kindness, be good, to him to find a fast conclusion or a longer fall. )

[downswing]

( This is a strange game, and Wei Ying plays it poorly — to slaughter, as soon as kill.

Lured, and Chenqing silent, the spirit situates himself between them, a specter of reckless doubt, seduced like a moth to Wei Ying's fire, turning his head towards his captor, to pay him silver-eyed, molten worship. And more fool Lan Wangji, consumed by both care and jealousy, who thinks, Another life, together, you would have made beautiful lovers.

They are startling together, in perfect and artificial harmony, like candied pieces woven in silk of spun sugar — cut resolutely to the same size, whatever their nature. They do not belong in this life, least of all together.

He finds his hand hooked and sinking in Wei Ying's arm, finds himself drawing his husband close. And just like that, the dam breaks. The spirit speaks.

Blood. Death. Justice. The necromancers. And end to pain. Words indistinct, like beads on a cut string. Lan Wangji, breathless but heeding, barely knows them, the tremors of the spirit's voice a chilled distortion.

After, when it is done — when the spirit turns to him, but Wangji waves once in cruel dismissal — after, he should have words. Does not, protractedly. )

...what use for me in this world? ( Selfish, to speak words so stained, so gelid. ) Where all is hurt, devoid of appeasement.

( He is worthless, mere extension of his sword. Too much pain walks this land. )

[weifinder]

( This is not his expectation for the moment, or the day, or whatever time is happening that he cannot fathom or count, endless in flow, unceasingly unchanging. There's the spirit, the ghost, still trapped between them. There's his husband's raw edges, cutting his hands, bleeding freely.

Blood. Death. Justice. The necromancers. An end to pain.

Pain never truly ends. Not without it being something let go; and to a spirit, there are ways it might be unable to do so. Like the witches Wei Wuxian had tried helping, had broken out of outside control, in Taravast. The ones frozen in endless burning. In pain.

He steps forward, surges like a tidal flow, trapping the spirit between them, hands for his husband now, side of his head against the ghost's golden locks. Day and night, a stark contrast. No heart beats against him, the damp negligible after Lan Zhan's, the heat less than what storms in his husband's eyes. )

We all learn to be more than what we were. That includes you.

( Lan Zhan. The ghost. His head turns, brush of lips past a ghost's temple, light against hair. )

A blade hurts, a blade protects. Justice for the blood drawn, for the lives consumed. Freedom. Trapped, do they not devour themselves, these necromancers?

( Murmured like a lover's words, for the ghost, for Lan Zhan. For the piteous half angry sob out of the golden man and his molten eyes, and the arms that encircle his torso in turn, not so much welcomed as an inevitability. )

[downswing]

( ...a blade. Words chosen breezily, yet he thinks, not without purpose. That is his likeness, then: an instrument of hate and hacking, of tearing and ripping and blood. He does not ask if Wei Ying thinks the better of him, or is satisfied with his use — if all these turns when they orbited each other, and his husband sought his back or his sleeve were tender trust or even more fragile manipulation.

If it makes a difference to him in the barest, the slightest. Beside him, the spirit encircles Wei Ying's waist like a sealing ring, ravenous with greed, consumed by burning sympathy for the creature who understands him. A necromancer and the dregs of his pet, and who is Lan Wangji to begrudge them their union?

His mouth feels ashen, dry, drenched in saline blandness. Metal stings its back. It strikes him, teeth dragging wet from his lip, that he has bitten in.

He recoils, withdrawing into himself. Steps, clacking, away from WeiYing. )

They have none of the enemies who exiled them. Therefore, make new of each other.

( Laying blame at whatever feet. The young man they briefly encountered in the dungeons, crying for the chance to slaughter his elders. The necromancer of their age, withering beneath the weight of his learning, disdaining the others. The elder, petrified of his pursuers. )

Unafraid of spirits. Knowing them — ( Tame. ) Subdued.

[weifinder]

( He is left clutched and abandoned, petting the hair of a ghost that is only kinder than the ones he survived in the midst of, only sweeter than sixteen dark years left with nothing but his own mind for company. He doesn't see it in himself, when his husband's withdrawal, when his words, dim Wei Wuxian's eyes. Doesn't note the ways he begins shutting down, the moment his empathy and sympathy cool, when the mask slides in place. Doesn't pause to reflect on the words that come easily, conversant: )

It's possible I could facilitate a permanent, final change in that perception.

( Almost a murmur, and the Adonis curled against him all but squirms in pleasant distress with his haunted yes. )

Right before we leave. To test how much their sway holds against another kind, giving them what they want.

( Conversing so evenly, so logically, over things he's witnessed, things he's leveraged, things the dead wish more fiercely that he. He dies in inches, moments like these, and for all he's found parts of himself, scarred and healing and stronger and weaker than his youth, the unwavering hopes of that time, he has his brother's chosen silences, he has his brother-in-law's love of convention, he has a world with a history of convenient hate, and he has the heavy demands of this world, to all point toward death.

Wei Wuxian and the dead. Fit companions, for the willingness to listen, the eagerness to be heard.

Gentle, firm extraction of the arms wrapped around him. The lack of any look to Lan Zhan. The blooming shadows beneath his eyes, as he aims to lead the ghost out of the bathroom, to test the breaking of traumatic binding. The ghost's, and not his own. )

[downswing]

( He should not make it a matter of himself, of his cares, his losses. Breath strangled, watching Wei Ying reconstruct himself against the tattered shapes of a decision.

The spirit seems — appeased, a child who plays at being a lover, and the innocence of before like snow on thickened mud. He used me, he knows suddenly, inexorably, And now he has found another champion, stronger.

All the same, he cannot bring himself to grudge. Ever, the weak will seek out their defenders. Wei Ying stepped first. )

...what will it cost you? ( Sweat, blood. the metallic sheen of a talisman now lost to memory and ether. He remembers: the Yin amulet, grace of the viscera it submerged in, thin coat and wet shine. Wei Ying's dripped hand on it, claws, then the grave. )

[weifinder]

( No word, those first few steps. Nor the ones subsequent, for the way his head turns on his neck, the quirking of the corner of his lips into a wry, dry sort of smile. )

What it will.

( Because he has not asked the costs, has only evaluated when they're too much, and only now to himself because of Lan Zhan's insistence on his sanctity of self. Some check on it, and this man as the only balance. )

Not to any last breaths.

( The closest to a promise in his trying, that he will not be tempting death, for all it persists in attempts to seduce him. Two steps more, and he and the ghost are out into the hall. Three past that, swallowed by the dark stretches between flickering lights, gold and oil alike. )