There is no hunting, raw and cruel, like the pursuit of man.
He feels the shadows: growing, grazing, like ink-stained tulle stretched thin enough to moan out the birthing pains of translucence. Too absent for the likelihood of producing harm, though click of Lan Wangji's tongue — tch — and Wei Ying's parting wave, and lo. They disperse like breaking sea foam.
And he feels them again, more toxic in their aftermath, in the stench that drowns his silks now, his body, an inorganic, wistful petrichor. Lungs open to it, eyes brighten wild and feverish. Absurdly alarmed, his gaze ricochets each way, off the cave's edges. And Wei Ying asks, wards. Futile, in a space so narrow, where they entomb themselves alongside ghosts, where the great, groaning tumult of Lan Wangji's power sabotages more than sustains them.
But he pledged to work as disciples do, and no boy of Cloud Recesses would defy his master. Tradition favours parchment and the fast, flame-like ignition of seals. Whim and Wei Ying turn to blood-carved renditions of the same. Between them, testing the tumble of rubble under his boot, the screeching, creaking sounds of stone floor plates finding their balance — Lan Wangji only kneels to scry the symbols with fingers wet disgracefully on his tongue. Dust hindered, enforcements set: they stir alive only once they've passed into the next circle of... quarters, into the crumbling core of Wei Ying's cave. Without an active element, they are anemic: but they are instructed to leech on energy within their reach, to use that for their awakening.
"So they linger as precaution, once we've fled." This, before Wei Ying need ask his explanation. He has nothing to hide: less so than does the man who stripped himself of flesh and the riches of his body's beauty in this alcove, who gave up his likeness along with his fealty to Yunmeng Jiang. As if a Wei Wuxian in health and glory could not have abided to become the monster that the sects named him.
It slips from Wangji's mouth like a wretched thing, tongue slack. "Once, you were king here."
no subject
He feels the shadows: growing, grazing, like ink-stained tulle stretched thin enough to moan out the birthing pains of translucence. Too absent for the likelihood of producing harm, though click of Lan Wangji's tongue — tch — and Wei Ying's parting wave, and lo. They disperse like breaking sea foam.
And he feels them again, more toxic in their aftermath, in the stench that drowns his silks now, his body, an inorganic, wistful petrichor. Lungs open to it, eyes brighten wild and feverish. Absurdly alarmed, his gaze ricochets each way, off the cave's edges. And Wei Ying asks, wards. Futile, in a space so narrow, where they entomb themselves alongside ghosts, where the great, groaning tumult of Lan Wangji's power sabotages more than sustains them.
But he pledged to work as disciples do, and no boy of Cloud Recesses would defy his master. Tradition favours parchment and the fast, flame-like ignition of seals. Whim and Wei Ying turn to blood-carved renditions of the same. Between them, testing the tumble of rubble under his boot, the screeching, creaking sounds of stone floor plates finding their balance — Lan Wangji only kneels to scry the symbols with fingers wet disgracefully on his tongue. Dust hindered, enforcements set: they stir alive only once they've passed into the next circle of... quarters, into the crumbling core of Wei Ying's cave. Without an active element, they are anemic: but they are instructed to leech on energy within their reach, to use that for their awakening.
"So they linger as precaution, once we've fled." This, before Wei Ying need ask his explanation. He has nothing to hide: less so than does the man who stripped himself of flesh and the riches of his body's beauty in this alcove, who gave up his likeness along with his fealty to Yunmeng Jiang. As if a Wei Wuxian in health and glory could not have abided to become the monster that the sects named him.
It slips from Wangji's mouth like a wretched thing, tongue slack. "Once, you were king here."
And beneath Lan Wangji's step, crackling bone.