In the aftermath, spillage. Flesh yielding to gravity, white skin and the sheered haste of syllables rounding, unlatched, and the quiet, animal arch of bone geometries reshaped to house pain. Unhalad first, inexorably. Then, Archeval. The better men fall same as the worst.
There is a sickness to it, a deplored and strangled quality in the wake of the kill, like storm breaking. Lan Wangji's heart beats dimmed with it — the wind stays long moments before recalling to stoke — and then the dead proceed onwards, transfixed.
They do not lose life with Unhalad's, puppet strings sturdier than expectation — only momentum shrinks, legs tumble, the next corpse carries the scent of something hungered and electric, a rush of itself to suicide. Bichen, for short range: the blade hiked and Lan Wangji stirring absently to defend himself against the claws that come for his face. Then, half rushed, half stumbling, dismissing the guqin with breath cut in little gasps, he nears Archeval. Exhaustion grazes babe-toothed at his awareness; he senses death, and death waves back his greeting, and the great sickly shift of bloodied snow abstracts itself to calligraphy and the history of one man's burdens — Unhalad's. The creature that was him once.
...rotten. Raw. Gaunt and skin barely stringing on core, as if even the bone lessened itself. Lan Wangji's boot hooks on a dead limb. Turns it over. The dead thing unspools, more furs and mantle than ligament and meat. You should be set to rest —
But the dead circle with quiet, shaky step, and Lan Wangji is too vague in his surety — a day of siege has left him with little sense of where strength begins, far greater one of its end. The guqin reappears, before he recalls giving the summon — another few notes, and the shockwave threatens the dead to retreat, if not flicker free of existence. He wastes nothing, wants less — grasps Archeval with one hand under his arms, rounding his back, in the way of every wound-carry Wei Ying has perfected, and pushes through the cresting wave of dead, the guqin's violence cutting his path.
Archeval reeks of death. They both do. And once the deed's done, and they're at the farmhouse to lick their wounds, Lan Wangji will wonder, laying down this man who has become his burden unto Eleven's care, Did he weigh anything at all?
/gently works around to bring this to finish!!!!
There is a sickness to it, a deplored and strangled quality in the wake of the kill, like storm breaking. Lan Wangji's heart beats dimmed with it — the wind stays long moments before recalling to stoke — and then the dead proceed onwards, transfixed.
They do not lose life with Unhalad's, puppet strings sturdier than expectation — only momentum shrinks, legs tumble, the next corpse carries the scent of something hungered and electric, a rush of itself to suicide. Bichen, for short range: the blade hiked and Lan Wangji stirring absently to defend himself against the claws that come for his face. Then, half rushed, half stumbling, dismissing the guqin with breath cut in little gasps, he nears Archeval. Exhaustion grazes babe-toothed at his awareness; he senses death, and death waves back his greeting, and the great sickly shift of bloodied snow abstracts itself to calligraphy and the history of one man's burdens — Unhalad's. The creature that was him once.
...rotten. Raw. Gaunt and skin barely stringing on core, as if even the bone lessened itself. Lan Wangji's boot hooks on a dead limb. Turns it over. The dead thing unspools, more furs and mantle than ligament and meat. You should be set to rest —
But the dead circle with quiet, shaky step, and Lan Wangji is too vague in his surety — a day of siege has left him with little sense of where strength begins, far greater one of its end. The guqin reappears, before he recalls giving the summon — another few notes, and the shockwave threatens the dead to retreat, if not flicker free of existence. He wastes nothing, wants less — grasps Archeval with one hand under his arms, rounding his back, in the way of every wound-carry Wei Ying has perfected, and pushes through the cresting wave of dead, the guqin's violence cutting his path.
Archeval reeks of death. They both do. And once the deed's done, and they're at the farmhouse to lick their wounds, Lan Wangji will wonder, laying down this man who has become his burden unto Eleven's care, Did he weigh anything at all?