( The dull blade moves, swift and sure and outwardly seeming toward careless, metal dragging across dirt and stone, collecting the fetters that would consume Lan Zhan, if they had their way. It would not be so even if Wei Wuxian were not here; distractions pass, and Lan Zhan isn't injured or inebriated or otherwise drugged or trapped within an array. He has not lived a coddled life without danger.
He forged himself within it, as so many of their generation had. As they'd survived by doing.
It still looks like the chaotic layering of floss from dragon's beard, without the promise of a sweet, a treat, as he moves around Lan Zhan, no comment on his observation of the engraved names. Only the cluck of his tongue and the picking away of strands now attempting to wed his husband as thoroughly as his husband kept wedding him. )
We hear its echoes, yes. It's unlikely that's all we'll find here.
( A gentle push, at Lan Zhan's hip, spurring him toward motion. The shuddering sway of the unsilken tendrils around stir in the vast breath of an unseen beast, and make to reach forth again, lay claim. Fill their empty bellies once more, desperate for repeated impregnation, the loss of their transformed children.
No. He won't let such thoughts linger. )
The unaffected wore these on their persons. Names, I suspect now. Identities made into tokens. Here, here, this reminds me of that silly not-quite xuanyu, do you remember? That creature's shell was its own qiankun pouch, I tell you.
( Being the part he doesn't choose to recall in great detail, but yes, that journey, the walls within, tissue and sinew and silk-like dangling protrusions, and a sword he likewise chooses to forget. Move forward, away from these hauntings, and onto the next. Into the smaller side hall paralleling the one he first eschewed. Dampness taints the air, something not quite clean and not quite ready and too dusty from sitting and too deprived of sunlight to grow any of what might have come in time elsewhere, even in a place abandoned and purposefully forgotten as this had been. )
no subject
( The dull blade moves, swift and sure and outwardly seeming toward careless, metal dragging across dirt and stone, collecting the fetters that would consume Lan Zhan, if they had their way. It would not be so even if Wei Wuxian were not here; distractions pass, and Lan Zhan isn't injured or inebriated or otherwise drugged or trapped within an array. He has not lived a coddled life without danger.
He forged himself within it, as so many of their generation had. As they'd survived by doing.
It still looks like the chaotic layering of floss from dragon's beard, without the promise of a sweet, a treat, as he moves around Lan Zhan, no comment on his observation of the engraved names. Only the cluck of his tongue and the picking away of strands now attempting to wed his husband as thoroughly as his husband kept wedding him. )
We hear its echoes, yes. It's unlikely that's all we'll find here.
( A gentle push, at Lan Zhan's hip, spurring him toward motion. The shuddering sway of the unsilken tendrils around stir in the vast breath of an unseen beast, and make to reach forth again, lay claim. Fill their empty bellies once more, desperate for repeated impregnation, the loss of their transformed children.
No. He won't let such thoughts linger. )
The unaffected wore these on their persons. Names, I suspect now. Identities made into tokens. Here, here, this reminds me of that silly not-quite xuanyu, do you remember? That creature's shell was its own qiankun pouch, I tell you.
( Being the part he doesn't choose to recall in great detail, but yes, that journey, the walls within, tissue and sinew and silk-like dangling protrusions, and a sword he likewise chooses to forget. Move forward, away from these hauntings, and onto the next. Into the smaller side hall paralleling the one he first eschewed. Dampness taints the air, something not quite clean and not quite ready and too dusty from sitting and too deprived of sunlight to grow any of what might have come in time elsewhere, even in a place abandoned and purposefully forgotten as this had been. )