[ Thick treacle and cloyed, the stream of his recent memories snagged and dammed. He steps; stumbles. Descends, dark shroud and white peppered &dmash; pass of his fingers on gravel, the thin yield off a nearby wall, dusted — salted.
He feels his own fever, the spell of lethargy, like wine work. Finds his body slowed, qi fettered, thinks, thinks: wards. No. None cast, none binding, no part of him mutilated. Lessened, but the whole survives. Poison?
Go east. Disruption before, after, when progress bides him a handful of paces forward, balance barely brokered. Water, somewhere, past what eyes, slanted and sedate, can grasp in darkness. He hears threat, before he spies it — knows, in rare, hot surges of instinct, to abide it, and eases soft against rock wall, slides beside it. Rodent or his inhuman captors, something walks with him. He waits it out, calculates —
Starts, hand gentle and failing, to unbind his hair, until the spiked filigree of his guan yields, and he may bind the crown against wrist, end points to his palm. Poor weapon: silver bends, before it stabs. Shame to his ancestors, to consider jewellery reduced to this. He will bear it. Distant, Bichen roils, separated from him. (Soon. Somehow. They were parted once.)
He encounters the boy's shadow, first, arm at the ready to strike — then, lowers it, glimpsing the young man, better than Lan Wangji, more secure on his foot. Good. Unbidden, Lan Wangji falls in line beside him, easy fealty for their one shared trait: human, and living, and warm. The food of my enemy is my friend. ]
Seek light.
[ To help. Stranded in the belly of a blind stone beast, they only live if they secure air, passage, an exit. ]
salt mines | excuse lan wangji, the loopiest of drugged folk
He feels his own fever, the spell of lethargy, like wine work. Finds his body slowed, qi fettered, thinks, thinks: wards. No. None cast, none binding, no part of him mutilated. Lessened, but the whole survives. Poison?
Go east. Disruption before, after, when progress bides him a handful of paces forward, balance barely brokered. Water, somewhere, past what eyes, slanted and sedate, can grasp in darkness. He hears threat, before he spies it — knows, in rare, hot surges of instinct, to abide it, and eases soft against rock wall, slides beside it. Rodent or his inhuman captors, something walks with him. He waits it out, calculates —
Starts, hand gentle and failing, to unbind his hair, until the spiked filigree of his guan yields, and he may bind the crown against wrist, end points to his palm. Poor weapon: silver bends, before it stabs. Shame to his ancestors, to consider jewellery reduced to this. He will bear it. Distant, Bichen roils, separated from him. (Soon. Somehow. They were parted once.)
He encounters the boy's shadow, first, arm at the ready to strike — then, lowers it, glimpsing the young man, better than Lan Wangji, more secure on his foot. Good. Unbidden, Lan Wangji falls in line beside him, easy fealty for their one shared trait: human, and living, and warm. The food of my enemy is my friend. ]
Seek light.
[ To help. Stranded in the belly of a blind stone beast, they only live if they secure air, passage, an exit. ]