[ He moves like lightning, spread and fractured — kinesis, a poison in his bloodstream. Amid chaos, the doors gave first, crackling and aged, with old groans scratching deathly silence. In their house, metal and blood and the wet of tears or trailed snow, and the screams of bodies, disjointed.
Stirred again, the dead live with sharp, loud impunity. Hours of siege pass, and they fall a second time, like metal shedding rust, with a dissonance of anguish: shrieks where they lack pain and ability to suffer. Stillness, where the heft of their flesh should invite thuds.
The sun bleeds by the time the death's man appears in the distance. Lan Wangji watches him slink close, born of his shadows, and stay himself out of harm's reach. Of the vanguard he slaughters to reach Unhalad, he remembers little — nothing, shame burning his cheeks, tender under the grease of carnage. There is an animal wetness to butchering, to parting flesh from bone in amputation, to catching the scent of fat burning in arson.
Ache breathes in him. Exhaustion exhales.
He does not look back. Cannot, steps dripped and snow creaking, and the rush of dead grass underfoot clawing at his boot. A day of this, and he is worn, but Bichen's tip kisses the ground, lending the red stains of some recent kills, or the five before that, and he cuts his path up the hill, to where Unhalad gazes, and he expects —
There is a day to die, each man must greet it. Here, the skies blight his eyes.
Habit and learning alert him, senses years honed answer before his mind. He registers the smoke of a shadow, the charged air of movement besides him —
And turns his sword in a snapped swing to point at his assailant, only to welcome a familiar face. Ah. A moment's violence, wasted. He draws Bichen to his side, yet unsheathed, and nods up, where the undead convoy waits alongside its king. ]
The creature leads them.
[ He knows this: his spirit recoils; the nausea and revulsion of his churning stomach confirm. There is death, and there is travesty, and Unhalad twines the two. ]
ii. wei wuxian: words
After, another deed done, fresh bead dropped down the string of their offences. Far above, the moon cataracts and twins itself, shallow-diffused, glimpsed indiscreetly through the gaping, many-toothed mouths that now crown their rooftop. Footsteps, earlier. Their lodgings, trampled.
Around, sulphur and acrimony and the ill-drenching scent of smoke and fire, and the great, shark-like cut of crisp winter air. Cleanliness mocks Lan Wangji, soot strewn on his hands, his feet. If there were yet dignity of the sect to support him, standing, it does not live in his body. He waits, depleted for Jiang Wanyin's gain, an idle and tempestuous and grudging donation — for Jiang Wanyin is sect leader, and so finds himself the chief cultivator's burden, and Wei Ying's eyes linger dark and wanting in his wake. Let Jiang Wanyin live another day for his reckoning. And another day more.
The battle executed, Lan Wangji finds Wei Ying as he expects him, adrift like lichen and his limbs laden. Sat like a king calling court over slashed floors stained by a pox of bone ash. Recovering, Lan Wangji supposes. Earlier, Wei Ying gave of himself: talismans, time, travel. An army, beckoned and called and enacting.
Again, and Yiling spreads shrivelled and crimson and gaunt in Lan Wangji's memory, haunts his next exhalation. Again, and Wei Ying's footing now on his floor seems fragile again, lessened of purpose, the dance of a man bereft of himself, remiss of his rooftop.
There is the frantic exhilaration of anticipation, the prickling and allergic sensation of blood rushing to fend against inimic intrusion, agitating skin. Lan Wangji feels unlike himself, an observer, when his hand calls on Bichen, sluggish but certain, and he steers the blade beneath Wei Ying's chin, drawing it high to glimpse Lan Wangji as he is: lost. Found. Drained. "Was there no other recourse?"
But this, again. Demonic cultivation, unfettered and raw, undirected and crude. Consuming.
( ooc: Happy to match prose/brackets or write a custom starter for you, if the generic open one doesn't do the trick! Let me know \o/ )
no subject
[ He moves like lightning, spread and fractured — kinesis, a poison in his bloodstream. Amid chaos, the doors gave first, crackling and aged, with old groans scratching deathly silence. In their house, metal and blood and the wet of tears or trailed snow, and the screams of bodies, disjointed.
Stirred again, the dead live with sharp, loud impunity. Hours of siege pass, and they fall a second time, like metal shedding rust, with a dissonance of anguish: shrieks where they lack pain and ability to suffer. Stillness, where the heft of their flesh should invite thuds.
The sun bleeds by the time the death's man appears in the distance. Lan Wangji watches him slink close, born of his shadows, and stay himself out of harm's reach. Of the vanguard he slaughters to reach Unhalad, he remembers little — nothing, shame burning his cheeks, tender under the grease of carnage. There is an animal wetness to butchering, to parting flesh from bone in amputation, to catching the scent of fat burning in arson.
Ache breathes in him. Exhaustion exhales.
He does not look back. Cannot, steps dripped and snow creaking, and the rush of dead grass underfoot clawing at his boot. A day of this, and he is worn, but Bichen's tip kisses the ground, lending the red stains of some recent kills, or the five before that, and he cuts his path up the hill, to where Unhalad gazes, and he expects —
There is a day to die, each man must greet it. Here, the skies blight his eyes.
Habit and learning alert him, senses years honed answer before his mind. He registers the smoke of a shadow, the charged air of movement besides him —
And turns his sword in a snapped swing to point at his assailant, only to welcome a familiar face. Ah. A moment's violence, wasted. He draws Bichen to his side, yet unsheathed, and nods up, where the undead convoy waits alongside its king. ]
The creature leads them.
[ He knows this: his spirit recoils; the nausea and revulsion of his churning stomach confirm. There is death, and there is travesty, and Unhalad twines the two. ]
ii. wei wuxian: words
After, another deed done, fresh bead dropped down the string of their offences. Far above, the moon cataracts and twins itself, shallow-diffused, glimpsed indiscreetly through the gaping, many-toothed mouths that now crown their rooftop. Footsteps, earlier. Their lodgings, trampled.
Around, sulphur and acrimony and the ill-drenching scent of smoke and fire, and the great, shark-like cut of crisp winter air. Cleanliness mocks Lan Wangji, soot strewn on his hands, his feet. If there were yet dignity of the sect to support him, standing, it does not live in his body. He waits, depleted for Jiang Wanyin's gain, an idle and tempestuous and grudging donation — for Jiang Wanyin is sect leader, and so finds himself the chief cultivator's burden, and Wei Ying's eyes linger dark and wanting in his wake. Let Jiang Wanyin live another day for his reckoning. And another day more.
The battle executed, Lan Wangji finds Wei Ying as he expects him, adrift like lichen and his limbs laden. Sat like a king calling court over slashed floors stained by a pox of bone ash. Recovering, Lan Wangji supposes. Earlier, Wei Ying gave of himself: talismans, time, travel. An army, beckoned and called and enacting.
Again, and Yiling spreads shrivelled and crimson and gaunt in Lan Wangji's memory, haunts his next exhalation. Again, and Wei Ying's footing now on his floor seems fragile again, lessened of purpose, the dance of a man bereft of himself, remiss of his rooftop.
There is the frantic exhilaration of anticipation, the prickling and allergic sensation of blood rushing to fend against inimic intrusion, agitating skin. Lan Wangji feels unlike himself, an observer, when his hand calls on Bichen, sluggish but certain, and he steers the blade beneath Wei Ying's chin, drawing it high to glimpse Lan Wangji as he is: lost. Found. Drained. "Was there no other recourse?"
But this, again. Demonic cultivation, unfettered and raw, undirected and crude. Consuming.
( ooc: Happy to match prose/brackets or write a custom starter for you, if the generic open one doesn't do the trick! Let me know \o/ )