Instruction neglected, impulse chased. The man — the boy is new to the game of wait and bait and the chokehold of strategy. He propels himself, claws battering his robes, and Lan Wangji remembers the duties of arriere guard, of reconciling his footing with the swirled, sea-like shift of snow-moisted dirt beneath —
With abandoning wire and casting Bichen on his back, when the great groan of lightning bursts bold of Archeval's body, when flesh around them shrivels and sears, and pain spreads like mould in sumemr's wheat infestation. Ahead, Lan Wangji barely distinguishes them, the dark of smoke and that of robes and of Archeval, in constant motion, and the warlord Unhalad, an agony of presence, a scar in winter's silence, fading.
They touch Lan Wangji. But for this, they might have continued the parody of their existence. Between the stink of their death and that of their liveliness, miasmic, the dead spread of themselves that imposition — first a hand on his calf, then rising to his thigh, another on his back. Bichen nearly dances to unsheathe itself, but he stills her, and two passes of the hand summon his zither to illuminate bright white sheets of ice below. He does not sing, but plays the anger of stringent, deathly melody, vibration and raw strength, braided and combined in a tight radius for how his fingers first fall short — then lengthening, when his play goes long.
A modicum of exertion, at the cost of the dead kneeling, of bringing those already weakened slain. His breath labours, slender and warm, and he does not try Archeval with the corner of his eyes, does not presume to tell him, Keep out of range. Only, before playing a few more notes of death, to cleanse their territory, while Archeval finishes his work, "Haste."
no subject
With abandoning wire and casting Bichen on his back, when the great groan of lightning bursts bold of Archeval's body, when flesh around them shrivels and sears, and pain spreads like mould in sumemr's wheat infestation. Ahead, Lan Wangji barely distinguishes them, the dark of smoke and that of robes and of Archeval, in constant motion, and the warlord Unhalad, an agony of presence, a scar in winter's silence, fading.
They touch Lan Wangji. But for this, they might have continued the parody of their existence. Between the stink of their death and that of their liveliness, miasmic, the dead spread of themselves that imposition — first a hand on his calf, then rising to his thigh, another on his back. Bichen nearly dances to unsheathe itself, but he stills her, and two passes of the hand summon his zither to illuminate bright white sheets of ice below. He does not sing, but plays the anger of stringent, deathly melody, vibration and raw strength, braided and combined in a tight radius for how his fingers first fall short — then lengthening, when his play goes long.
A modicum of exertion, at the cost of the dead kneeling, of bringing those already weakened slain. His breath labours, slender and warm, and he does not try Archeval with the corner of his eyes, does not presume to tell him, Keep out of range. Only, before playing a few more notes of death, to cleanse their territory, while Archeval finishes his work, "Haste."