HONEY, WE’VE GOT VISITORSSa-Hareth-brand
Cassandra tries to flag the future, gets left on read.
True story — and then, the dead come.
His offer neglected, a desperate Unhalad resorts to sieging the farmhouse in search for the mirror
that was previously on the Imperious.
He’s in for disappointment, while the party prepare for... house guests over the
early-morning 16 June to 17 June period.
 |
Around 3:30am (16 June) of a storming night, those who are awake or sensitive to the supernatural may hear the winds and fleeing rats whisper that something comes.
At 3:45am, Karsa’s wards around the farmhouse set off, briefly shrieking. Within minutes, Unhalad’s undead infiltrate the farmhouse, with one slight creature first entering down the kitchen chimney.
A small faction of undead remain on the roof, while a swarming majority circle the farmhouse. Throughout the night, they attempt to break in through doors and windows, making slow progress. They are warier of the forest-facing back entrances.
The attackers comprise droves of undead, some clearly only recently converted in haste. They are weaker for it. |
 |
Over time, the undead drip into the farmhouse. They lack the coordination for a concerted effort. Attempting to exit within the first three hours of the siege will prove disastrous, as too many undead wait outside.
The undead will seek a mirror, being first and foremost drawn to Winnie, who carries a similar item on her person. Fox and Five will also be of interest. Fox can escape attention by discarding the shards.
Any character that was bound to Anurr’s tree still bears the lingering marks of Anurr’s undeath is especially perceived as an enemy. Regulus enjoys the same treatment, given his extensive recent stay with the free people.
The undead will savagely wreck the house in their hunt, striving to kill those in their path. They can be slain regularly. The older, "properly" summoned undead (identifiable because of their clear state of rotting) should be incinerated or severely amputated to avoid further resurrection.
Because of the overwhelming number of undead, it is best to keep lean, mean and mobile within the house.
Karsa joins the farmhouse around 6am. She’ll teleport in, but the density of undead outside will prevent her from teleporting out safely. Alongside three party volunteers, she reinforces some of the wards, decelerating the advance of the undead. Her group will also throw away any of Unhalad’s markings (salt and ash) out of the house and into the inner garden pond. |
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Come sunset (16 June) Unhalad himself will ride outside of the farmhouse, holding distant vigil over the hostilities with his retinue. On his arrival, unbound farmhouse animals will flee into the forest.
Unhalad will be recognisable because of the immensity of raw power he emanates — a feeling of great and overwhelming despair and hunger.
Options to evacuate the chaos include sneaking out, fighting the undead, calling on reinforcements from any local allies, or holding position until around 8am of 17 June, when Unhalad’s last-minute forces start to disintegrate because of the haste in which they were summoned.
The minority of Unhalad’s forces that were summoned back alive with the appropriate diligence will not break down and will need to be banished.
The free people will not intervene, unless they are called in. |
 |
If you’ve made it this far into Sa-Hareth’s worst hazing ritual, congratulations. A few more days of crud to go.
Over the next few days before the 21-22 June departure, characters will have to make do with their shattered lodgings and dearth of supplies, or can seek sanctuary back in Sa-Hareth. Any money spent on accommodations will have to come out of the travel fund. You're on your own, kids.
The animals can return from the forest, and the free people might spare some food and water, gifted to those who stood out during Anurr’s trials. The Anurr cultists of Sa-Hareth could also part with a few provisions for their good friends, Xie Lian and Xiao Xingchen.
To opt out of the event, have characters out of the house on the night of the siege. It will be difficult to re-enter. The OOC plotting floor is yours! |
FARMHOUSE LAYOUT
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westwhere2021-06-14 07:23 pm
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[ 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 blinks, slow and stupid, pulls himself out of thoughts that swirl thick and heavy and splits his parched lips, shadows stretching for him. No, not form him, simply the strangeness of this night and moon stretching down to drag silvered fingers across torn landscapes given such new form in the bitterness of cold.
"You were in here. You, and our son." Ours. Ours, and no blink, no hesitation, just as he does not move from Bichen beneath his chin.
"They had so much they were willing to give. So much pain, anger, resentment." The chorus of the shouts and pleads and demands, the ones he'd brushed past to understand in the months here. Given purpose, avenue, direction. A conduit, through song and application, and he to have touched it all without encapsulating it within the emptiness of his core. Touched by death, but not incubating it, not hatching it out of the hollow of his chest, even if it would be easy, so easy, in this world, to let it fill and spill over into something he's never wanted to be.
Letting go of the resentment as it had flowed and flowed and feeling the parts of it that left, truly left, having vented all that kept them trapped here. Practice of what he once asked, contrarian and too curious and too self assured in his youth: what if.
"Gone, now." Even Chenqing, forged of such things, only carrying the residue now, not the succor of lingering energies. A vessel filled and empty, left with the dregs of what passed, and processing those, slowly, so that he might be left bereft of that memory, too.
Was there no other recourse? Not effective enough, not acceptable enough in margins of error, not then. Perhaps now, the understanding of skills applied en mass to the solution finding, perhaps now he could trust to a solution relying less on what he gave, more on what the group could cobble together, desperate and united and fractured all at once. Perhaps now. Not then.
no subject
Fatigue eats at him like vermin propagating in the moist, fattened flesh of fruit. Beneath skin, roiling. The seed of his stubborness cannot withstand this. On his dominant hand, the guqin's toll: nails chipped down in effervescent play, joints inflamed. A maiden would dismiss his hand in stupor. Bichen does not presume.
"Will it be so again? As in the Burial Mounds?" Death unto death, and Wei Wuxian, Yiling Patriarch, lord above all. Armies summoned, enemies at each corner. The cavernous depths of a waiting abyss. A man who fell once will never learn his footing thereafter. Bichen stays long-mean-lean, trained.
If he grazes the sweet span of Wei Ying's pale neck, how much blood would gurgle out between an obscenity of gasps thereafter? Men bleed, men sink, men never rise again. And Wei Ying? Lan Wangji's lips lashed, mouth dry. "Tell me."
So Lan Wangji might, perhaps, banish himself like the smoke wisps of an excoriated ghost. So he might prepare for a second tomb, another burial, sixteen years of further mourning. So he might —
No. "Wei Ying."
no subject
Burial Mounds, and his and Wen Ning's response to the incursions when those restless yet spirits surged forth in frothing bubbling malestrom, when havoc was part of happenstance, when melody forced the bending of heads and purpose to ones which allowed them a measure of peace. Thin, fragile, a single log spanning a cavernous divide, steps careful, the pretense of surety to lead him forth.
Burial Mounds, near two decades later, where another man's strife drove spirits to possess the bodies of the villagers, dragged them up the mountain paths, sent them physically hurling like so many puppets on jerky strings: people stripped of one purpose, resenting spirits patched in with another. Stand firm, and sing the chaos, the turning away, the ending, as Bichen sings for blood and endings, and there's some harmony between them, some give and take and harrowing reverberating in marrow, knowing this is done, we are the breakpoint ahead of the blaze of the inferno, we are the levee before the river's gaping maw.
The worst, and oh he doesn't say this, but the worst of his transgressions were the ones seen by hundreds, the push of resentful energies that coiled close and clung like a malevolent cloak when he'd held the Tiger Seal still; forged and dripping with the power others wanted, and he'd known, but he hadn't known. There, too much called on, too much turned to a purpose of possessing he stayed away from, turning a battlefield into a charnel house and it is Nightless City and the pass where Jin Zixuan fell, wide-eyed and heartless, a knife in hand turned against his intent, that keens within. Loss, loss, his fault. No matter the interference, no matter the hands that played the shadows to make them sing, and the second pair that sung him back to the world he'd left behind, thinking now, now, is now when I'm done?
Explain what, in all that, feels powerless? Explain what he felt, cold and numbed to the point of feeling nothing but the whisper and rush of thoughts in his over busy mind, at surrounded, at no way forward, no way out. Explain the terror he knows now they both understand, the loss of one they cannot stop, the sliding with no breaker, the farewell no one is prepared to make too soon, come even sooner.
He laughs, or makes the bare attempt to. An exhausted exhalation, the lilt of it seizing his chest and making it cough up the sounds he hasn't been able to summon since the pre-dawn hours of the morning stretching only a day ago, or perhaps a touch more, or perhaps ten years before this moment.
"The Burial Mounds were my first graveyard. The dirt of that won't fully wash from what's left of my bones." The man he'd been is not someone he can say he was not; the actions of a lifetime ago will forever be his, claimed, even tempered by the shadow manipulations of those greedy in a manner he was not. He closes his eyes, two heartbeats passing, opens them again to stare up at Lan Zhan, to see a summation of a fear that had been his path to the edge, driven and herded, pressing back in rage and heartbreak, until his heart cracked too far, the dark swallowed its flickering light, and he stole the rest of that darkness, that evernight, and shattered it like the seal that still, still people scrambled after like dogs, those feral angry things, snapping jaws and swallowing flesh and bone and everything else that might have been food, even if they weren't starving.
"I'm tired of last stands, Lan Zhan."
no subject
Before him, Wei Ying breaks like notes in dissonance, a string of minor musical concessions to unskilled hands. So much of him is jarring, pained contrast, sharp and biting. Disassembled, dissolved. Foam in water.
"You perform them adequately." Among friends, taunts, wine, laughter. Among soulmates, this: the heavens-decreed right to name to tether the animal of another man's agony, look it in its wild eyes, name it for disaster. How many last stands yet between them? Claws digging dirt, Wei Ying bloody or torn or dead after one and each.
He makes no haste: shivers in anticipation, when he brings up the blade and gives Bichen her last feed, a clean swipe against the soft inner flesh of his thumb. Blood rushes, incautious, grateful for another spill. He has wasted so much already, what is another gift more? She wets, and, glistens, returns to the sheath with thanks murmured and blessings due — and he allows it, the scent of Lan Wangji's meat and his sweat after battle, and the grime tasting of his white clothes only another earthly conclusion. This battle was born of creatures, not sophistication.
He is of them, now. He collapses as one, graceless, breaking the fall on one knee, recalling the second at the last moment, with empty bereavement. Sat beside Wei Ying, always to his right, always bearing witness. Breathing, in and out, and remembering the last of his rites with finality — extending his wounded hand to tap Wei Ying's wrist, careless of his thumb leaving blood tarnish, alongside the gift of an anemic flow of qi. Too much of it with Jiang Cheng now, too much wasted in battle. So little to spare, and this only a token, but his to give, for all Wei Ying will ridicule its pace.
"What price, to keep you alive?" Gently, a father teaching an errant son the market. Trade.
no subject
He can't blame them for that. Not for the years that followed, the holes he left behind thinking there should be none, he was so divorced from the world considered right, he could not be missed for long. Selfish, in ways he couldn't see then, can recognise now.
Lan Zhan collapses like his strings have been severed, bleeding fresh with Bichen's anointment when he may as well have taken from Wei Wuxian's chin, his cheek, his throat. It'd be better reparations, he thinks, but also knows why not, and with Lan Zhan down, reaching out for his wrist, pouring thin trickle of qi in, he captures Lan Zhan's hand in turn, brings it up. Not to his lips, which no one truly trusts anymore, as far as he can tell. His pulse, instead, the turn of Lan Zhan's hand so its back lays against the side of his neck, his pulse steady and sure no matter his exhaustion. His heart beats. Does not stutter, does not strain. Half a wreck, but not for this, and not like this.
"Faith." He swallows, and that, too, meant for feeling. Mouth and throat dry, but in the usual way of things, those that speak of exertion and the lingering taste of smoke and ash and blood on the tongue. Lan Zhan's qi, thin as it is, finds familiar pathways, and no lingering darkness. No tempted holds on energies that would have their ways with him as their spearpoint, but evidence of their having passed through. A sort of hum in the spiritual veins and the familiar aching hole that would have been his core once upon a lifetime, but no hunger, no darkness lying in wait. "Faith, Lan Zhan, that I have more I want to live for than reasons to wish everything to end."
no subject
He watches the ghostly touch of his hand, chasing suspended flickers of Wei Ying's inhalation, shadow of his fingertips brewed in shrivelled dirt and rot and soot. Watches it linger and rise and droop, the wet gleam of Lan Wangji's blood catching the brazier light.
He does not retreat, but fishes, absently, to the side and behind himself, search stuttered. Tells the weight of metal — arrow? sword? he cannot look — and rams it with palm's push into the nearest wall. It shrieks, emptily metallic. Around them, the radius cleared, free of splinters and weapons and dark things that kill, he dares at last:
"Your son played his fingers raw." Later, when Lan Wangji's qi replenishes enough to scratch more than the nostalgic sketch of effort, he will donate Lan Sizhui his share. Flesh stitches, skin moulds together. Power forces the bind. Regrettably, a young man's cosmetic hurts could wait before Jiang Wanyin's urgent requirements. "You have not seen him injured before."
Tell him all hurts heal, for that is what young men wish to hear. That their scars will celebrate, but not define them. Wounds are the champion's claim, marks desired before a soldier first enters war — hated, viciously, relentlessly after. Battles are thieves, raising coin in ache and trepidation. Why give them more, why let them have skin?
Unhalad, Sizhui will recall the name. Wangji too never forgot Wen Ruohan. Walks of thin white on his arms and back, pinched where flesh remarried over two decades, remember him. A cruel, faithless thing, to gift so much to an enemy.
"Steel your face."
no subject
He's never had trouble steeling his face, lying to the world about anything he felt, because he knows the ease it grants others. Sizhui will never see the depth of his aches, now grown; he'll remember little of it from his childhood, because the pretense was all that saved Wei Wuxian at times, the need to give anyone else the ease he wished he felt more deeply than he did.
I am proud, and, This too shall pass. That scars are badges of experience, or like the mass of them across Lan Zhan's back, badges of your choices. Regrets or otherwise. Learned, earned, silent burdens.
He swallows, licks cracked, dried lips. Tastes salt and copper, though they haven't bled. The proximity of Lan Zhan's open wound, perhaps, to sate Bichen in ways that the long absent Suibian may well have forgotten, in her grief.
"Where is our son?" Child, young man grown, facing battles so unlike the particulars of what he should be, but a credit to himself again, as always. Wei Wuxian wishes his eyes were sharper now, but they see shadows in the breaking light, and his vision swims, unreliable.
no subject
They will want for sleep, without true roof or steadfast walls. And Wei Ying, blissfully, obliviously, ever so cruelly coreless —
...no. Sizhui. They will lend each other warmth like rabbits in their enclosure, and if Lan Wangji must herd them to find each other in the night, forgive the selfishness of his direction. Soft-fleshed and sweet, they may curl together, and speak nothing of their frailty: a father may accept the comforts of his son. Already, Wei Ying has paid for the companionship, with every growl and claw and curse of the resentful energies he called forth on this day, his armies.
Unbidden, Lan Wangji's hand trickles a red, bloodied line down Wei Ying's nose, skipping the span of his lips in courtesy, south on his chin.
"You reek of death." And Lan Wangji's blood, to wash that scent. The old way, the ancient claim, life holding over the unliving. Blood seals, but should never serve as first recourse. Uncle would disapprove. Uncle does not watch, owlishly.
Instead, they are two shadows in congress, half balancing on each other's proximity, too ashamed to melt into exhaustion. The rough-spun line that unstitches Lan Wangji's mouth means itself a smile. "Shall I fill Wei Ying a trough?"
Truce, before the Yiling Patriarch. They are young enough yet to tease one another without insult.
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i.
It's a familiar feeling that coils inside him as he stands next to Lan Wangji spattered with dirt and ichor, one so strong perhaps it's tangible to those with the right senses -- reckless and dark and rich and delicious, one he's felt through a thousand such brushes with destruction. Death nipping at his heels, an enemy before him. Ready to be crushed, brought low and humbled for the crime of thinking it could ever toy with him so.
Oh, the dark side can be a joyful thing, in the right moments. Oh, it can sing.
He doesn't flinch as the sword comes at him and stops, glancing Wangji up and down for a moment, briefly assessing, before he gives a slow nod.
His eyes turn toward the single horse that waits in the near distance. To one side another shambling undead tries to interrupt, vaulting in their direction, and he flings it off to tumble backward through the snow with an absent wave of his hand.
"I have your back if you have mine," he says over the noise of battle and the howl of the dead, and a small unwell sort of smile curls over his lips, and if Lan Wangji has ever wanted to truly know this frustrating stranger then perhaps in this moment he can find some weary insight at last.
"Let us lop the head off this serpent. If he deigns to show his face, it would only be rude not to welcome him."
Lightning dances on his fingertips as Archeval raises his saber for the charge, a sickly neon beacon amid the chaos. He can feel the sick sensation bearing down upon them, the darkness the creature is wreathed in. A familiar sensation, that, after all these years of murdering Sith masters, of carving a path through all the dark powers that thought they could step on him.
At last, this place feels a little more like home.
no subject
Too little. Far too late. Archeval's sword drawn, and the light of it blinding. War taught well: worse than men, than sorcery, than flights of talismans, than entrapment, than the lay of the land conspiring against its invaders, worse than any score of dubious, strained and tortured advantage, are animals in the enemy's hand. They frighten, then run wild, and in their chaos care for nothing. Not their rider, the safety of the men at their feet, not themselves as they stampede on, between the hissed entreaties of rock splintered, flinched off yielding ground.
The horse is of greater concern to Lan Wangji, absent archers on their side to still it. Wei Ying — ...but when did the Yiling Patriarch last hold his bow?
No matter. Lan Wangji wrenches back, weight on his hind leg, priorities redistributed — the lightning of Archeval's sword, in its pallor, betrays them. No matter, again: if the man advances, then Lan Wangji settles as his rearguard, his blade Bichen return to sheath while he unburies the spooled span of Eleven's crude, but efficient garrote wire. He webs it fast, first casting a broad circle, fattened and loose, then tightening it in snapped geometries and sophisticated formations, to sit wire between as many of the assailants as luck and haste-eroded skill permit.
Then, the last taste of it: qi, and the wire rises, cut of it feeding off Lan Wangji's own brand of strength, cleaving fetid flesh that drowns them in the cloying stench of stale, gelid blood and moulded innards. He does not look, as limbs fall, does not count the dead — only throws over his shoulder, where he expects Archeval to hold vigil, "Leave your back." Lan Wangji will have it. "Your legs."
One of them must ensure Archeval is not caught in friendly wire, and it is not Lan Wangji. He can only weave so much care in manipulating wire — an uncoordinated tactic, unless he directs the entirety of his attention to a scant pick of targets. No. Leave that to Archeval, tasks distributed.
no subject
Arche's long used to it, the saber, thinks nothing of the beacon he presents where Wangji is wary -- all eyes turn on the Sith or the Jedi in the middle of any fray, inevitably all blaster fire congregates in their direction -- here there's nothing to deflect but plenty to stab; he's as weary as anyone from a long day of exertion but still the Force moves faithful through his veins, still it lifts tired limbs and buoys him where he might falter. He's not worked around wire before, but he's well-used to accounting for a partner, and the Force makes his steps light as he dodges away. Here he skewers a creature to slice up through its neck, here he flings one backward right into the flying wire with a telekinetic push, watching it sheared straight through by the momentum--
Lan Wangji has his back, and he knows he can trust that as he watches severed body parts falling all around them, but Archeval doesn't leave people on their own. When there's a moment's lull in their push he finally has time at last to fling out a hand backward, feeling the presence still next to him without need to look -- Wangji's pain and fatigue will dampen a little as Arche reaches for the heart-pounding need to move that coils inside his chest, his anticipation and desperation stirring up the Force, his will demanding flesh to knit and muscles to renew themselves. There isn't time for anything fancier than that, but after hours and hours of this siege, they need to be prepared for what's next--
The lightning always so quick to his fingertips is little use against the walking corpses, but there's a roiling storm inside just begging to be let out, and now is no time to hold back reserves. He draws a black-gloved hand down the front of his robes, skin tingling as he feels the sensation of static wash over him and electricity arcs faintly from shoulder to shoulder, the thin barrier promising a nasty surprise to any who get close enough to touch. It will provide a moment's distraction to these things at least -- to the thing looming before them -- and sometimes one moment makes all the difference.
"We're pushing forward!" he calls out to any nearby to listen -- and if Wangji has his back, then forward he'll go. His blood races with anticipation, a potential end to all this in sight, dodging wire and cutting down the shambling obstacles in his path as they make their advance--
no subject
Around a blow that lands wet — his temple, never meant to survive unbattered, the blood of it singeing his mouth — Lan Wangji's lips feel sluggish and narrowing. Behind-beside him, sounds a wheezing, shrieked crescendo as bodies mount and fall. Archeval dashes, and the artistry of his combat might impress on days that are not this, when they are not partners imbalanced, strangers to each other's form — when Lan Wangji cannot predict the man's next turn, and must instead respond to it, mere moments before their enemies can. Trip the wire here, pull it there, carve Archeval's path. Read it, for the love of heavens. Learn his steps, when snow does not flurry hard enough to obscure them.
And the dead fall on. ( Forgive them, boot caked in blood and cold and filth, Lan Wangji does not linger on to bid their lids closed, their bones well. )
Forward. No time to excavate wire and set his trap again, not in the first stuttered, stifled heartbeat. Bichen creaks like well-aged wood, admonishing his step. He wrenches her free of her sheath, swivelling to capture the next undead strike before it lands and defend their flank. Forward, then.
He knows, without throwing the question, where he is needed. If they are two, and Unhalad's creatures encircle him as armour, then —
"Take the horse," he hisses out to Archeval, before the inevitability of spitting out blood that's traversed his cheek to pool in his heaving mouth. Take the horse, which seems to recoil from the electric breath Archeval summons to shield him already, and leave Lan Wangji the rest. White storm of silks, and the whirlwind of violence that surrounds him — forgive the dead, when they come, drawn.
no subject
Myriad undead hands claw at him, the horse rears and threatens to trample but he is Sith -- what has he learned in all his years of trial if not the lesson to go straight toward the thing that terrifies him most?-- There's no time at all to look behind him and he is truly, truly trusting his all to Lan Wangji as he twists away and lunges forward, grabbing for the creature's legs, its heaving sides, just a single touch is all that he needs--
There's a crackle of electricity and a scent of burning flesh as he pushes the power forward and a terrible noise from the horse, Force lightning being a torturous sort of pain -- a withered armored foot tries to kick at him but the damage is done, the huge bulk of the beast going flying, an unpleasant snap issuing from somewhere as it tumbles down to an unnatural angle, taking a few desperate undead with it.
Arche can hear Wangji's breathing next to him, can feel the gathering presences of everyone who's converged on the far end of the battlefield in this moment, fighting through the clumsy advances of the undead. And before him, rising from the ruin of its huge, pitiful, wrecked beast, two dark hollow eye sockets bore into the Dark Lord's eyes intensely. Unhalad endures.
And like calls to like. The sick, awful hollow of the thing before him matches a hollow within, speaks to all the frustration, the anger, the spite that coils waiting to be unleashed on his hated foe. He wants this. He's been waiting for this.
He's hungry.
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."
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Haste, he hears the word called. None of them are going to last much longer. This siege will beat them down any moment now if he doesn't end it all here.
They circle each other silently for a moment, boots packing down the slushy ruined snow and tundra grass and spattered ichor, and Arche looks for an opening. That weapon in the warlord's withered hand has a great deal of reach on his own saber, and the sheer hideous presence of Unhalad is an attack all of its own. This close it nearly feels like it could swallow him, maybe literally. The force of it beats down on him. Summons thoughts of dark nights on a faraway planet. Of having too little already, and trying to figure out how to divide it up. Of watching a bent back walk away from him for the last time. Of being small.
--But this is no time for reverie, and he can't let the creature overwhelm him. Haste. That well is one he's pulled from many times before. The dark mire of despair, thick enough to drown in -- the feeling of gnawing hunger and the knowing there's no way out -- these are old friends. These are pains that he's long ago turned into power.
He lunges. They clash. Unhalad comes at him with all the force of a creature desperate to consume, desperate for more. A bleeding gash goes down Archeval's side before he can dance out of the way, not trivial but there's no time to tend it -- no time to take his eyes off the objective. For all that he can barely recognize this thing as a sentient, as a human, it has such power. Part of him holds back a little more than he should, skittish to get close, to give room to that grasping hand to touch him. If it really were to take hold, could it start to devour him right here and now? Could it suck out his essence, try to turn his power on everyone else here--
Wait.
Of course. That is the path forward.
Like calls to like, and Darth Imperius is as hungry for power as either of them ever were for sustenance.
If he can put an end to this right now, can grab the spirit within the decaying husk and make it his own, can use its power and learn its secrets -- that could change -- everything--
2/2 wasn't sure if you meant me to go on, lmk if you wanted to interject, will happily make room
And so this is the great warlord Unhalad, the conqueror of Sa-Hareth, kidnapper and slave devourer, their inexorable demise. Brought low under the assault of so few as this. The sheer immenseness of presence around Archeval is absolutely dizzying now, threatening to overwhelm him once more as he stabs, as he slashes, as he takes no chances with taking Unhalad utterly apart. If it can't take him in body, perhaps it seeks to overwhelm him in mind, but in that last moment as he can feel the immense presence shifting he sidesteps into the currents of the Force--
It's called walking, but really, there's nowhere for him to go right now. He has only to expand his sight to the world beyond the world in front of him, and -- there it is. Massive. The thing that is Unhalad, or was Unhalad, a black blotch of spirit of truly overwhelming size--
His now.
Arche reaches out through the Force with all the weary, desperate anger left in him at the end of this long, long day. The one who started all of this is damn well going to answer for it. He touches that darkness -- wrenches it forth--
Stumbles backward and down to his knees in the snow as it rushes inward, the immensity of it blinding his every sense for a moment with sheer despair, utter futility, emptiness--
He breathes hard as he rests there, utterly vulnerable for a moment, bleeding sluggishly into the snow as the saber in his grip deactivates. Fighting for control. He is Archeval. His name is Archeval and he remembers it still and this thing is not the master, he has to wrestle his way back to himself-- It's snowy again today, they're outside Sa-Hareth and he still owes Theron fifty credits, and peace is a lie there is only passion--...
/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?
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On occasions, his eyes glow silvery purple, and the sigil appear on his forehead. hen it does, he sometimes dodges an attack he shouldn't have seen coming, or yells out a quick warning to a comrade ('On your right', 'Small detachment coming in from the east, about a dozen').
But seeing Lan Wangji in action, he knows, without a doubt when he is outmatched, and to let the people with the most power rush forward while guarding their back.]
If we take him out, there's a chance his legions will either completely stop or disperse.
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Before them, the swirling chaos of undead rising, clawing each other, learning their walk. Advancing. At the back shore, behind them, the farmhouse ravenous: its smoke stings, coming down Lan Wangji's lungs. Blinds and settles, crisp-brittle, flaked on his cheeks.
And then there is the man, Beitang Moran, his — visionary talent fruitless, but his sword skill fair, earning his keep. They've progressed too far past their fellows to do anything now but step further. Up the hill, then, to where the dead rider and his keep watch.
If we take him out —
Carelessly, Lan Wangji had thought the same as Beitang Moran, rushed to equal conclusion. And yet to hear it scratching another man's mouth now, Lan Wangji stutters to standstill, halts, blade Bichen haggard at his side. ]
...and if Unhalad's control breaks only to see them run rampant?
[ If the creatures' wilderness stokes for their new freedom, if Unhalad alone tethers them to a modicum of discipline? Can they withstand the undead still, if they turn aimless, feral? If they abide strategy now, it is not one predictable design, this much is certain — but if they abandon even that conceit? ]
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[One thing is certain, in Moran's mind.]
Always cut off the head as early as you can. Things won't stop until you do.
[And he knows someone like Lan Wangji would know that.
The sigil on his forehead glows again and he suddenly thrusts his sword backwards, lodging through an undead's chest who was coming for his head. The creature's movements stop as it flails, and Moran wrenches out his blade from its torso and lob off its head off in one smooth movement.
And then he stumbles back, breathing hard. he's not sure exactly how many time she's done just that in the last few hours, let alone the last few days. his muscles are screaming, but his hold on his sword hilt doesn't waver.]
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But Beitang Moran strikes back, the creature behind him topples over, speared, and a flickered arc of blood turned sludge from extensive decay and the mounting storms catapults to Lan Wangji's cheek. Lands. Splatters. He stills long enough in stupor to pass the back of his hand and smear it down, sketching himself marked and anointed, revolted and ridiculed.
Absently, he nearly (but never quite) neglects to raise his wire at the very last moment and catch another dead man in the spider's web of his entrapment. It's reeled in but struggles, like a hooked, squirming fish when it seizes the ground, and Lan Wangji distracts himself with the play of snow and shadows on its half-lingered, half-flayed-off face.. ]
They recognise threat of their own accord.
[ Do not, therefore, seem to require the leadership services of a guiding hand in granular detail. If Unhalad dictates them, it is not to the exclusion of their instincts — but to complement and refine their strategy.
So be it. They take the wager. Against the deep burning of the house, unwinding like thread from a fraying knot behind them, Lan Wangji shifts his gaze to Beitang Moran, holds it steady. ]
Will you come for him?
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Just like he doesn't begrudge Lee Chang for taking command inside of the house, he doesn't begrudge Lan Wangji for his clearly superior skill on the battlefield. He knows himself and what he can do. He has no idea what exactly Unhalad is or isn't, but he knows he is not going to be one of the ones who can take him down.]
I'll be more hindrance than help over there. I'm more efficient here making sure to hold them back from the house.
[And making sure none sneak up behind you.]
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Eyes ever on the prize of the coming assailant, raise Bichen, swing down, let the drip of innards foul the snow's dust red, before the sword comes up again. ]
You risk yourself in isolation. [ The art of conversation, come the cries of war. A lost endeavour. Still: ] No sacrifice required.
[ There is a man who waits. Pale as Lan Wangji, finely-mannered. A Jin by any other name, borrowed and held in foreign esteem. Su Xunxian will write a hundred grudges in blood for the loss of a comrade, and Lan Wangji will not be he to cast eyes red and askance.
Best they do not waste master Moran while live there still the owls to sing his dirge and the companions to grieve him. If he should commit his suicide, let it be with letter and inheritors, rotted by age.
Not here, with Lan Wangji within reach. ]
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[And thanks to his (useless) power, he should be able to see if this is the best tactic or not.]
Trust me to guard your back long enough for you to guard his [with a nod towards Archeval]. I have been in battle with insensate creatures before. I can hold a while longer.
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