And so it is, just like he thought it would be, Wei Wuxian falling in step with Lan Zhan and flicking his fingers, a warning paired with a sidelong stare to the dead who lap at Lan Zhan, hounds coursing the hare.
He smiles, and there is more teeth than lip, more memory of violence than that of joy. Try him. To each of the dead who stretched to greedy outreach, try him. He is wise to the worst of the calling, and shelter, ah, shelter for whom may be the question. Shelter for what?
Hadn't that been the fear?
The shadows slip back, mill like the mindless, aimless collections of thinned emotion they are, and the wanting slips in, and Wei Wuxian lays hand to Chenqing.
"They already do," he says, "They'll hasten." No contest, no matter who sung them forth; they slip from one cavernous room in smooth stoned floors to the dark, dry insides of the cavern he'd slept in for the year and then some, called his home. Strands of straw can still be found molded and ossified along the cave's edges, but the thrum of the space is warmer, haunted by memory and not one glimpse of resentment or spirit or soul. Or warmer to him, in the bittersweet memories of a life fought for step by step, and the tears of backsliding into hopelessness because the world wanted the ease of his total, wholly evil guilt than truth, or honesty, or justice.
"Ward the entrance, ward as we clear each outward facing ring. Wards can't hold forever, but it delays, and time is what we need." Here, as he walks across floors thickening again with dust and debris of dead leaves, dead things, dead dreams, and feels the faintest hope. One day, to see Yiling bloom, to see it live, where it had been a condemnation of the damned.
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He smiles, and there is more teeth than lip, more memory of violence than that of joy. Try him. To each of the dead who stretched to greedy outreach, try him. He is wise to the worst of the calling, and shelter, ah, shelter for whom may be the question. Shelter for what?
Hadn't that been the fear?
The shadows slip back, mill like the mindless, aimless collections of thinned emotion they are, and the wanting slips in, and Wei Wuxian lays hand to Chenqing.
"They already do," he says, "They'll hasten." No contest, no matter who sung them forth; they slip from one cavernous room in smooth stoned floors to the dark, dry insides of the cavern he'd slept in for the year and then some, called his home. Strands of straw can still be found molded and ossified along the cave's edges, but the thrum of the space is warmer, haunted by memory and not one glimpse of resentment or spirit or soul. Or warmer to him, in the bittersweet memories of a life fought for step by step, and the tears of backsliding into hopelessness because the world wanted the ease of his total, wholly evil guilt than truth, or honesty, or justice.
"Ward the entrance, ward as we clear each outward facing ring. Wards can't hold forever, but it delays, and time is what we need." Here, as he walks across floors thickening again with dust and debris of dead leaves, dead things, dead dreams, and feels the faintest hope. One day, to see Yiling bloom, to see it live, where it had been a condemnation of the damned.