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westwhere2023-10-06 07:00 pm
groundrules) wrote in westwhere2023-10-06 07:00 pm
Entry tags:
- arcane: caitlyn,
- assassin's creed: jacob frye,
- assassin's creed: ratonhnhake:ton,
- doctor who: clara oswald,
- kingdom of the wicked: emilia,
- kingdom of the wicked: wrath,
- last case of benedict fox: benedict fox,
- mcu: america chavez,
- mcu: kamala khan,
- mcu: natasha romanova,
- one piece: luffy,
- one piece: zoro,
- original: red,
- penny dreadful: vanessa ives,
- umbrella academy: allison,
- umbrella academy: five,
- warcraft: wrathion
blood & sand
Hi folks! Welcome to Eastbound’s last test drive meme and the second event of the Ephes Arc, stretching until 25 October. Applications next open over 20-25 October, with invitations required for new players (but not returning ones). Individual cast and game caps are off.
Test driving characters can use this space for both network and log prompts, as well as play both the newcomer and shared prompts. Enjoy!
NEWCOMERS-ONLY PROMPTS
You wake to the creaky swaying of a large wooden cage, in the back of a cart. Balmy sun pinches your cracked, dried skin. Haziness and nausea assail you, your legs weak. Your supernatural powers are muted, due to recover within 48 hours. Several other carts trot by. You share your cage with a dozen others — largely farmers — and sacks of freshly harvested wheat, their bottoms stained dark.
The farmers point you towards a heap of rusted pendants that allow you to speak and glean local tongues, and access a network. They say you were recovered following an earthquake at a Hive — one of the agricultural clusters feeding the extravagant Senate-led city of Ephes. The Ephes army, the elite Hand, was patrolling nearby and is taking you to the citadel for healing.
- ■ Gather your bearings and distribute the scant water that Hand soldiers dole out — the earthquake, you hear, has dried the Hive wells.
■ You quickly learn why the Hand encaged all of you, as one of the Hive farmers starts to jerk, growl and shake, weeping black water as he strikes at anyone around him. Fend for yourself, before the Hand soldiers come to remove him!
You arrive at the main gate of Ephes, where crowds vie for passage. Your carts are inspected, and an irritable woman enters each cage, checking each passenger — before taking you and a handful of others for ‘further customs investigations.’
In the back of an alley, she introduces herself as the sorceress Karsa — and says you are otherworlders brought into the realm of Akhuras by undead lieges of the Brotherhood, who seek to weaponise you in their wars. Her patron, the Merchant, leads otherworlders to ancient transport beacons that can deliver you home.
One beacon sleeps in Ephes, where the rest of Karsa’s party is scattered. The citadel has mysteriously accrued an elite, nearly supernaturally strong army that the undead lady Messalina seeks to borrow from the Senate, in her quest to free her undead companions from the Brotherhood. The Senate is yet to vote on her request.
The black water that has touched you, Karsa says, has previously been found where the undead rally. For now, Karsa gives you a little coin, passport papers identifying you under various civilian roles (player’s choice, but keep it Ancient Rome-themed) and an iron pin of an eye with a sun for a pupil to identify other party members.
SHARED PROMPTS
Decadent Ephes is overrun by rumours, after several Senators who intended to support undead lady Messalina were mysteriously assassinated at the banquet of prominent Senator Maximus Faustus — who, Karsa informs, is one of Messalina’s shapeshifting creatures. Messalina offers her protegees demonic hound escorts.
Hand army recruits protect official buildings, while the rich hire gladiators to watch their homes. Both move freely.
The Senate fears further retaliation against those who champion the dead. Senate leader Caius Justus distantly mourns the Senatorial murders from seclusion at the temple of the Chained God.
Civilians face increased tensions and whispers of curfews in the market. Crowds frequently quarrel over undead allegiances
Following an exercise in divination, priests of the city’s patron, the Chained God, spread word that the deity holds strong despite his Chaining, and he still wishes to destroy and rebirth the world.
Karsa informs the existing party that more otherworlders joined Ephes and wear iron pins depicting an eye with a sun for a pupil. She gives the party similar pins for identification purposes. Newcomers and old timers can recognise each other by their pins or engage over the network!
THE PROSCRIPTIONS
OBJECTIVE: procure proscription lists.
You hear from the city crowds that partial target lists are circulating with the names of politicians targeted for bounties. Karsa tasks the team to recover the lists, which can be used as political currency. Find them by either:
- ■ Infiltrating a tavern run by the ruthless city gang of Livius Decimus and packed with unscrupulous bounty hunters, thugs and professional assassins.
A local ‘delicacy’ drink of wine and pickle juice is often inflicted on strangers. Brawls erupt randomly. Coax shady patrons to share target lists.
■ Visit the empty marketplaces just before dawns and raid the chained wooden submission boxes of news shouters, who receive anonymous tip-offs about fresh bounty lists. The boxes are pinned to the ground and tightly locked, but rusty from the cold seasons — allowing you to break them or pick their locks, while someone keeps watch. Tampering with a news shouter’s box is a jailable offence.
■ Turn in a finished thread to receive a clue!
AT SEA
OBJECTIVE: investigate abandoned ships and rescue sailors.
One early morning (OOCly: Oct. 13), as you entertain sailors for gossip on the docks or fish breakfast, you witness the port authorities screaming for help as several small merchant ships appear abandoned at nearby sea for reasons unknown.
Lookouts spot no activity on board, while sailors organise rescues.
- ■ Row a small boat some 15-20 minutes to one of the merchant vessels. All merchant ships have roughly three hours afloat, as they slowly sink from numerous small erosion holes in their sides.
■ You find no crew on deck, and doorways to the cabins below are locked from within. Below deck, you find numerous sacks of wheat from the Ephes agricultural clusters, the Hives. A black liquid, thick and tar-like, is seeping out of the sacks — corroding the ship’s wood and creating leaking holes.
■ You find a handful of dazed sailors who claim a dark, slithering creature knocked them out. They were selected by Narula, leader of the elite Ephes army of the Hand, to transfer grain onto the vessels of the ‘merchant’ Matthias, much farther at sea. If you mention Matthias to Karsa later, she reveals he is a man (?) who potentially created the undead Brotherhood.
■ Seven sailors who did not know each other were chosen to man the ship. Eight men are in the room, meaning one ‘man’ is the assailing creature. You must decide who to release upstairs for evacuation.
■ Tips: the creature, disguised as a human sailor, has no pain receptors and isn’t afraid of typical dangers (fire, drowning). It does not bleed if hurt. It sometimes forgets to blink and increasingly, unwillingly, slowly morphs its features into yours, the longer it speaks with you. Lastly, the creature has a tattoo on its forearm identifying it as a soldier of the Hand.
■ Once found, the creature turns violent, dissolving into wisps of shadow and materialising once more to strike from behind you. The shadow creature cannot be outright killed — but you can lock it inside the ship.
■ Leave by small boat before the vessel sinks & claim a question if you saved sailors. Merchant vessels can be patched up, if successfully returned to port.
THE RATTLING
OBJECTIVE: survive & explore the arena.
To stoke her popularity in Ephes, undead mistress Messalina organises a sumptuous gladiator game at the Colosseum (OOCly around Oct. 20), inviting plebes, patricians, politicians, soldiers — and you.
Gladiators may be hired (or coerced) to perform, while servants supply copious amounts of wines, oysters and honey pastries. A tiny mechanical golden mouse, passing by each seat, drops folded pieces of parchment with fortunes and riddles, ranging from teasing to morbid to philosophical or sweet. Pick up yours and make sense of it with your neighbour!
Politicians often interrupt the games to announce donations or make elaborate speeches. Toss peanuts to signal your discontent — or join in with your own speech.
- ■ The games start with matches between humans, but are building up to face-offs with reptilian demons, mounted rhinoceros and flying gargolyes whose voices thrall you frozen put.
■ During the games, you feel slight vibrations, and — if supernaturally sensitive — an undefined magical tension. By 15:00, this ramps up into earth tremors that worsen over 12 minutes — as columns and seats topple over, and the ground breaks in deep rifts, releasing black, chilled, tar-like water.
■ Crazed mobs rush for the exit, stampeding carelessly, while columns and decorations tumble down.
■ Dozens of the monsters brought to gladiate free themselves and hunt down spectators. Soldiers of the army of the Hand — disturbingly fast, strong and disciplined — intervene but it’s best you look after yourselves. Some spectators shout these Hand recruits practise some of the techniques performed by a recently missing gladiator — the Beast of Brenne.
■ Passing by the earthquake rifts, you see wisps of the tar-like liquid that gushes from them is gradually assuming the shadowy shape of humans. Stalking after you, they do not speak or bring you harm, but slowly steal your likeness and drain you of vigour and stamina. You get the sense that all they want is a shape. Encountering shadow creatures leaves you with a sense of bitter loneliness that only living company can soothe.
■ If you study the arena, you see the same black liquid is gathering around freshly downed corpses, slowly reanimating them. These newly-crafted undead struggle to walk and speak naturally and remember their lives, often unaware they died. Anguished, they beg help to escape, before inevitably succumbing to the instinct to harm you. Remind or convince them they are dead, and they withdraw.
■ The largest earthquake rift in the arena is overrun by the black liquid and by nearby undead. Within it, you notice a bloodless hand that seems to never sink — Enter a RNG draw to collect it and its clue.
■ As you gather your wits outside, you see followers of the Chained God rallying in the streets, comforting the traumatised crowd that all will be well now — for the Chained God’s destruction will be mercifully swift.
THE QUIET HOUSE
OBJECTIVE: Explore the abandoned gladiator barracks.
NOTE: a Halloween special, this area is entirely opt-in and features several frights. Mind the warnings!
As chaos consumes the Colosseum, you notice the earthquake has destroyed a previously locked arena gate, revealing a decayed tunnel. The corridor leads inside a closed-off barrack whose doors and windows have been barred from the outside with wood planks and chains. Touch these restraints, and your unhurt hand leaves behind a fading blood print.
The barracks building is withered and clearly abandoned, with scarce furniture and a few weapons in a training room.
Several discarded torches stay alight on wall fixtures. Pre-prepared braziers have been filled with spirit-fending incense of sandalwood and sage. Explore for clues.
- ■ THE HALLWAYS ( cw: guilt haunting ): corridors flow into each other, often leading back where you started. You run into shifting wall engravings, some listing the name and ranks of Hand soldiers, or precepts such as GODS OF THE ARENA and BECOME AS STRONG / AS FAST, AS NIMBLE / AS GLADIATORS. A large portrait of Hand leader Narula is increasingly more scratched, every time you encounter it, while the painted man looks healthier, younger and stronger. Inevitably, you hear heavy steps — a deep-shadowed spectre, the Drillmaster, who starts to stalk you with slow persistence. Visible to you and your companions, the Drillmaster fluctuates between assuming the appearance of Narula and the distorted, monstrous figure of someone from your past, who heavily criticised or intimidated you. The corridor lighting changes depending on your proximity to the Drillmaster: green for safe passage, white to tread lightly, red to stop. You can make the Drillmaster disappear out of your way by facing or acknowledging whatever weakness (true or self-perceived) you have that has caused extensive criticism or self-doubt.
■ THE BATHS ( cw: doppelgangers): a long marble hall featuring a large swimming pool, now drained and filled with mould and debris. Steam overwhelms the room, except for a wall-length black mirror at the end of the hall. The more you look into the mirror, the more the black substance that covers it slips down, flooding the floors and also dripping from walls and the ceiling. As the mirror clears, you see your black-eyed reflection that suddenly screams out verbal abuse or plunges at you. Once you subdue the doppelganger (claim a clue), it dissolves into more black water, while the mirror shows scratched inscriptions of A RIGHTEOUS HAND SHAPES EACH OF ITS FINGERS.
■ THE DORMITORIES ( cw: membranous cocoons): hollow, empty, quiet, the dormitories sport strange membranous cocoons in the walls, from which shadowy hands reach out. You hear young wo/men, whimpering and murmuring that they aren’t afraid and want to change to make Brother Narula proud, before erupting into screams or laughter. Break the cocoons without getting trapped into their webs — only to find nothing inside, except stone dog tags, engraved with the names of Hand soldiers. On the floor, you find primitive tattoo needles and ink.
Luck strikes at sunset, when a previously barred door opens to release you from the house — back into Ephes.
NOTES:
- ■ QUESTIONS
■ NPC inbox (for test drivers)
■ Event title shamelessly pilfered from a gory gladiator show!
no subject
Why is he here? )
It's nothing.
( He's not looking at Lan Wangji either, his gaze flat, levelled into the middle distance. He can hear another footstep, the sound of the rod thwicking through the air. Wen Kexing does not flinch, but something goes tight in his jaw. He takes a step of his own, neither toward or from, but spurned into movement anyway. )
You are not afraid of pain. ( The spectre continues, Wen Kexing's tongue unusually still. He cannot leave Lan Wangji alone with the old Master, and panic is making him dumb, stupid, a child. He is no longer a child. ) You enjoy it. You are not like them.
( His fan arcs through the air with barely a warning, sliding through the ghost like it is nothing. Wen Kexing's grip is white when he finds the weapon back in his hands. Still, the sound of footsteps. To Lan Wangji -. ) Is it like the kitchen ghosts? Do you know? Can it be stopped the same way?
no subject
( It burns his mouth, dries it: the cutting, cauterizing reality that he must inflict like plague upon Wen Kexing. Not for the first time, he wishes himself a different man, a shield sooner than a blade — one who could master the art of deceit to sufficient aptitude that Wen Kexing may now be spared.
The creature looms, stalwart, derisive. Taunting, in ways that Lan Wangji finds himself splintering Bichen from her sheath to disrupt. Her blade hisses cold violence. He does not yet aim her, only sketches out a circle when Wen Kexing sends out and receives back his fan.
They cannot struggle against this spectre, who does not so much as reach for them, yet, for all Lan Wangji spies strength and cunning in the catch and latch of his hands, for all there is a brimming red of anticipation to each of its movements. This corridor is too small, once more. )
Leave. ( Perhaps to the creature. More likely, to Wen Kexing. ) You do not aid. It seeks your — ( And he listens. ) Pain.
no subject
( The old master takes another lumbering step. How terrifying he had found that once upon a time. A child, quiet and obedient, learning cruelty to avoid his own suffering. He'd thought him so vast, so overwhelmingly present back then that all Wen Kexing could do was to listen and take his beating silently. What else could he do in the face of the Ghost Valley Master?
And then he'd killed him, taken his place, proven the man right and right again. )
Ah-Xing, you will learn. You will learn to survive.
Shut up! ( It explodes out of him, more violent that any of his actions so far. The spectre pauses in it's step, as if held back by the raggedness of Wen Kexing's breath. And then a blink, and it is gone. It is not unlike what they have been dealing with before, the Drillmaster dogging their steps around the hallway, and he is sure he the thing will be back. For now the light dims around them, steady white. ) Ha.
( He feels insane, all of a sudden, knuckles cramping when he shakes out his fingers. ) Lan Wangi, you should get out of here.
( Pleasantly, in a way that shows all his teeth. ) I'm going to burn this place to the ground.
no subject
( This... was not his sight to rue, not his ruin to bear. A tragedy unfolding in the shape of withered scars, malign upon a cleaved soul. He feels them, reverberating, copied unto his own memories.
Ah-Xing, you will learn. The likes of brutal killers never do. It is not their own survival that eludes them, only the significance of that of others. Wen Kexing screams, as if he wishes to surgically extricate the part of himself that spawns monsters. To cut, to tear, to rip free.
Lan Wangji should assist him, after the creature's dissolution, flecks of dust and motes of trickling shadow. He raises Bichen, a barrier between Wen Kexing and giving pursuit.
A mad dog must be stilled early. Culled, elsewise. )
You will not. ( Definitive. ) There may be people. ( Unlikely. ) Bones.
( Requiring appeasement. ) Your hardship is ended.
no subject
( The flash of his teeth. )
I can't leave here, not if he - if it - threatens to come back. Even a ghost of that man can wreak havoc on people if left unattended. And if you think I'm a problem, Master Lan, I am nothing compared.
( Wen Kexing is only dangerous when he wants to be. The old Valley Master did not house the same subtleties. He was a blunt instrument, meant for battering down doors, for bruising, bludgeoning. He survived for less time than the man currently standing here, and for all he is called a Lunatic there has always been method in his madness.
It pulses here, now.
Pressing a hand into his eye socket, hard enough to see stars. ) I need to figure out what it wants.
( The Drillmaster, the Valley Master. Either. Both.
And then he needs to get very, very drunk. )
no subject
You believe you need vengeance. ( Want, urgency, the private gnawing to understand oneself as a better man. One flattered by ethical imperatives to rescue his companions, sooner than abolish the dregs of his suffering.
No, there is no kindness in fast culling, in the jittery, clumsy silhouette of Wen Kexing's rage. He haunts himself: a child, or a boy, or the young man of yesteryear — breathing hate into the husk of the man he is today.
Figure out what it wants. Nothing. Everything. What is it such things desire? Like guttering candles, only enough wind's fuel to survive. These are unsophisticated hauntings. They have no intent past the base, no prospect beyond the first sip of a living being's nightmares.
One gasp is more than they had hoped to steal. )
It had the better of you, winning one battle. Leave it, to claim the war.
no subject
( As much as Wen Kexing would like to be cold, aloof, there is a fire burning inside of him now. It burns like an acid, each word tinged red with viciousness. It isn't Lan Wangji's fault, but the knowledge that he has seen him afraid is unbearable. His emotions are a heaving mass, his head splitting with pain. He wants to lash out and can't, taking an abortive step closer to where the spectre had been. The light remains the same, but his veins are rolling and alert.
A flicker in the corner of his eye and his hand moves, energy in the palm of it. But there is nothing and all it does is knock a sconce askance. He swears, sharp, and in the next step the light goes red again, shadows pulling together, a voice, the same, telling him he will never escape. )
Did you hear me? I've already killed you once, you think I can't again?
( He's bathed in the light, red, just like he'd been bathed in the Ghost Valley Master's blood then. He forgets Lan Wangji is there, in the face of it, his anger slicing like the edge of his fan. )
You're nothing now, there was nothing left, not a whisper, not a speck, nothing. ( A breath, ragged. ) I beat you.
no subject
( Red and pale and red again. The wave of a threat that blows and bursts and strikes Wen Kexing, assailing, consuming. The sickness that lives long in man is the sickness that becomes him.
And Wen Kexing appears inexorably, unmistakably consumed.
Lan Wangji seldom initiates touch. Never craves it. Hand withered, trembled, he reaches out first, and the bird bones of Wen Kexing's wrist feel hollowed. He turns his thumbs upon them, nearly hears sparks. )
What is his name? ( And unspoken, Come. Where? He has no destination, no refuge. A corridor like a tomb's lane, and Wen Kexing, struggling to find his place. Memories raise men. )
no subject
He might not have come from here the same. )
I didn't know it.
( Decades, and the words were always Master. It makes him feel sick now.
But bidden, he takes a step, away, and then his resolve falters. )
I told myself I wouldn't run. ( A child, and then, a man. Wilfully proud, viciously steady. Can he truly walk away? Desperately, because there is no one else here but Lan Wangji. ) I told myself he couldn't cow me again, Master Lan. Do you understand?
no subject
To bow himself so utterly, so completely, before another or their truths. To recuse himself from ownership of his own person. Under the white, spumed roil of his doubts and another's truths, to drown.
Once, a creature of Gusu Lan, he stood, spine steel and rigid. Did not bend before a discipline whip, did not break under the rod. Grief failed to dismantle him.
But men are not all cut, skittish and tender, to the same scale by equally kind fists. There was no Wei Ying to teach Wen Kexing the pillars of fortitude. And so — )
What did he do? ( And so, treating him as no better than one of the spirits to appease, Lan Wangji must do it for him. )
no subject
( Possibly too sharp for the nature of the question, but he is all jagged edges and ensnarled thoughts. Though something seems to come to him then, a bright spark of his madness. The spectre looms, and even though he is older now he still feels -.
A shake of his head, control spinning. To the spectre he demands. )
Who sent you? Why were you there?
( It is the question that Wen Kexing has asked himself so many times before. How did the Ghost Valley find his parents? What is he missing? He tries to focus on it now, his thoughts a foggy mess. But he is ignored and an old familiar pain lances again, slicing behind his eye. His attention skitters away. The Valley Master tells him he is not human, and Wen Kexing's fingers fist. He lets out a jagged exhale again, taking a step back. To Lan Wangji. )
You know ghosts - ( You're a ghost, the spectre echoes, you will always be a ghost, Ah-Xing. ) - could it be him? Or is something here trying to mock me?
no subject
( You know ghosts, and they know his bones, and they rattle and creak and scavenge their way into his marrow. And he is hale, but he is husked and the holes of him gather in lattice.
He knows ghosts. Knows the jittery, jutting shape of Wen Kexing's wrist bone, jumping. Knows to catch the rabbit's pulse that quakes his arm, knows to tug once, tug again, knows to hear, sooner than heed. )
He is dead. Your man is gone. ( And he will not be returned to Wen Kexing, not a ghost or a putrefied, dissolving remnant. Oh, but he is no longer. )
Wen Kexing. Allow him withdrawal.
( It is men who clutch their torments and their tormentors close, who woo them beside themselves. Men who do not allow their own horrors gone. )
Forgive him into indifference.
no subject
Forgiveness, tch. ( He is a man full to the brim of vengeance, he does not know the meaning. There are still people on his list, even now, and in his mind the graves are already dug. The one behind him did not have a resting place, Wen Kexing made sure of that. His bones became decoration, his guts a feast for the vermin of the valley. He is dead, and long gone, and Wen Kexing is not a child. ) I won't forgive him.
( He is of the Valley Master's making, he never taught him how. )
But you're right, he is indifferent. ( Even and careful, his voice suddenly devoid of the madness and the rage and the panic. ) And I will not be caged.
( He takes a step, and then another, and a third, and the light dims white and then a steady green. )
no subject
( What instinct compels a fox to gnaw off limbs, to shatter bones, all to defy the calling of a cage? Entrapment waves at Wen Kexing long from decades passed of memory. To Lan Wangji it appears — timid, faded, a sneering and scuffed allegory. A monster made of pilling cloth and spilling plushed innards, and the horrors his button eyes unleash. He is a dreary, tired, predictable thing, this scarecrow of Master Wen.
In another life, he should hang. In this way, it serves him to be derided.
Lan Wangji follows, more drifting whim than trepidation, a master of dispelling the dead merely seeking out his trail. He should perhaps show Wen Kexing the sympathy of pursuing no further. But they are in corridors black, tar at their feet, the cold to their backs.
And this is the man his brother wishes him to acquaint. )
What did he do? ( In no small part, this is exorcism: the surgery of man to extricate his demons, to lay them bare and hale and wholly rotten, to carve out their decay. ) In specificity. To what end?
no subject
( Would Lan Wangji find the original Valley Master's crimes appalling? Certainly. But Wen Kexing wonders briefly, terribly, if he'd think they were something deserved. ) Is killing my parents not good enough? No? What about the years of torture after? Perhaps that is something that was rightfully given. You've seen me, I'm wilful, I'm wicked, certainly someone else must have seen that darkness in me even then.
( The corner turns, Wen Kexing stalks it, the length of his body a caged animal. )
I could have been something else. Maybe not quite like you, but something better. I would have had a clan myself, I would have been taught how to do right, I would have been someone's shidi. ( He laughs, hollow, an ache in his throat. Could he have saved Zhou Zishu from himself if he had remained in Four Seasons? Maybe. Probably not. The world was turning even then. ) I wasn't the only one he hurt, but I am the worst of them. If you want a crime to pin then it is my creation. Is that not enough?
no subject
( Enough. Enough of this. A man carving away the needles and splinters of himself, peeling away his skins only to learn in rounded, moaned horror, the trick of his rot is his marrow.
The widening dark of the corridor swallows the world. Lan Wangji searches the windows, for a moment, the worn-in widths of tired, withered planks. His palm catches lies and ravines of weakness, where water should have logged the wood towards decay. A slow, trickled coaxing.
It stands, to defend against him. )
You are sufficient. ( Not quite like Lan Wangji, perhaps better. Absent a clan, but gifted the world. One pauper ever envies another. ) I ask to know him. The countenance of his sickness.
( He may have come to Wen Kexing, an evil ready. But it was Wen Kexing who armed him, who shaped him, bellicose. )
You have made of a small man a great thing, invincible.
no subject
There is a certain gratefulness to that. )
He was a coward.
( A breath, exhale puffed out. )
He was a tool used. Someone else's weapon. He wasn't clever, Master Lan. Brutish strength and fear, that's all. A usurper to another throne and a bad one at that. ( He was just frightening to the boy Wen Kexing might have been, the one he's never quite managed to bury even now. ) And he's long gone.
( This shade, whatever it is, it is of Wen Kexing's own making. ) Let's get out of here.
no subject
( A brute, a blunt knife, a fool. A usurper, used. Something ugly and ragged and turned, festering, into the flesh of others.
Let them leave, but not flee. His step holds soft, drifting, never hastened. If this were Wei Ying, he might contest or quarrel, but this — is not his battle, nor his engagement.
He is a spectator to another man's grief, not the musician who creates its tune. Therefore, he lives, he breathes. He obeys. )
Master Wen. ( No. ) Wen Kexing. ( Better. A certain intimacy has been brokered, where they now share the keys of Wen Kexing's past. ) Stand taller. You cast a longer shadow on the world.
no subject
Don't tell anyone of this.
( He doubts Lan Wangji is the type to gossip, but still. He has seen the bleeding insides of Wen Kexing's chest now. That would be useful to a crueller man.
Then, with more honesty, as though he remembers the kindness. )
I thank you for your help, Lan Wangji. You have been kind. I ask only that you would not think differently of me now. I much prefer it when you look at me like I'm a scoundrel.