[PALACE GAME - LAN WANGJI RUN]

[laughitoff]

Everything is red. You are dying, somewhere far beyond pain, the very essence of yourself going to pieces. You’re shattering so badly you don’t know if you’ll ever find all of yourself again, if you’ll ever put yourself back together. There are teeth on you, ripping, tearing, devouring. There are teeth inside you, carving their way out, and those are worse.

This is a memory, happening at a remove. It is not yours. This is not happening now.

Everything is grey. You wake up in a prison cell, eyes wide, the ceiling flat and blank and unfamiliar above you. For a moment you simply think, no. You think, Please, wasn’t it over? Wasn’t it enough? You consider closing your eyes again and refusing to get up, until oblivion reclaims you. Even if you’re no longer dying, everything hurts.

This is a memory, happening at a remove. It is not yours. This is not happening now.

What is happening, then?

You–

–sit up.

Comments

[laughitoff]

[It feels like skin. He does not get a revelation about why it's skin.]

[strikingchords]

Ridiculous.

[he's going to push the notebook a little away and ignore it in disdain for now, then loop the bell around his wrist and turn his attention to the cage. is there a way to open it from the outside?]

[laughitoff]

[There's gratitude and wanting in the bell, but also heartache, fear, the sense of something important being lost forever.

The cage has a small door with a simple lock, and the lock is currently undone. It looks like it can be opened from the outside quite easily.]

[strikingchords]

[okay, so here's the situation as Lan Wangji sees it:

- there is a small bell that he knows, from Ritsuka in the conversation that made him conclude that he guesses he'll die for her now, is meant for calming animals.
- there's a cage that looks like it's meant for a small animal here. the cage is shitty.
- whatever is in the cage appears to be both badly taken care of and hiding from the world after being stuffed into a shitty leather bag. it is presumably not calm.
- the bell is not on the animal.
- Wei Wuxian is frankly bad at small animals and has probably been a dipshit about this one.

all of these facts together may explain why instead of doing anything else here, Lan Wangji frowns at the cage for sixty seconds

carefully draws an array immediately around the cage that will keep anything from fleeing into the rest of the cave or knocking the rest of the desk stuff over, temporarily, and

reaches for the cage with his right hand and uses Heresy to destroy first it, then the pouch, in quick succession.

his goal: to touch whatever small animal is inside with his right hand, use emotion share to go CALM DOWN YOU'RE SAFE at it, and hopefully grab it, all before it really has time to react to the fact that the cage and pouch have been vaporized from this earth.

LET'S FUCKING GOOOOO]

[laughitoff]

[The cage, in the moment before he destroys it, feels like control, like taking your willpower and bearing it down on...something.

Does he pause, or is he moving too fast too furious to keep himself from destroying the cage and pouch?]

[strikingchords]

[NO

SHIT

JERKS BACK FAST ENOUGH TO NEARLY UNBALANCE THE CHAIR AND THEN HAS TO JUST, PAUSE

this is why you tested things Lan Wangji

vaporizing Wei Wuxian's control is what we don't want to do

please hold on he needs a minute]

[laughitoff]

[oh no]

[strikingchords]

[GLARES AT THE CAGE IN TOTAL OUTRAGE BECAUSE HE DEEPLY DOESN'T LIKE THE SYMBOLISM HERE STILL. FUCK THIS THOROUGHLY he is furious at this desktop. the mood after downloading too many things in a browsing session.

is there a key or a place a key could be hidden anywhere obvious]

[laughitoff]

[The lock is like this! It requires no key.]

[strikingchords]

[skdflsj fkgskfjsfjdkfjrjjrrrrr ggrrrrrrrrr. RUMBLES IN DEEP DISSATISFACTION AT EVERYTHING, considers and discards the urge to turn into a dragon and put himself into a sulky pile, and calms down by carefully touching everything else on the desk to see if anything ELSE has RANDOM FEELINGS DX DX DX]

[laughitoff]

[The notes feel like desperation, a sense of not having enough time.

The lantern feels like warmth and guidance, and gives a momentary vision of Jiang Yanli.

The teacup feels like nothing much. Does he poke the blood in it?]

[strikingchords]

[sure does!]

[laughitoff]

[Violence, the urge to bite and hurt.]

[strikingchords]

[...

well, that calms his own moment of having a tiny internal baby tantrum pretty effectively, yeah. breathes out and sets it to the side, then spends some time carefully sorting through and organizing the notes while he thinks. he does check for any notes that are pertinent to All This Shit In Here, though.]

[laughitoff]

[The demonic cultivation notes are enough that, to a layperson doing a quick read, it's quickly pretty clear that Wei Wuxian's an expert and also that it's some generally dark bad shit that has to do with channeling the grudges of the dead as energy. Since Lan Wangji is not a layperson he is likelier to recognize what the fuck it's talking about when it goes deeper into theory and application: personal projects like the Compass of Evil, Summoning Flags, etc. and that one Reverie-specific project on how to try to extend the Empathy technique onto living things and concepts other than ghosts.

The Reverie notes talk about something called the cognitive world that Akira and Minato know, calls the monsters in the inner prison and beyond the fence Shadows, talks about the Velvet Room being somewhere where Shadows are made stronger, and has a note of Warden = rogue attendant of Velvet Room? Further down in the heap he finds a page that only has a drawing of the Warden with FATHER underneath it in angry, slashing handwriting.

The electricity and indoor plumbing notes are just the notes of a guy trying to understand the principles and figure out how to build them in a world without modern technology. He seems to be having trouble. Logistics are hard.]

[strikingchords]

[...

it's stupid and selfish but he can't help but keep an eye out to see if there's anything in the cultivation stuff about working with Lan Wangji specifically, or if he's written out of plans unless he inserts himself...]

[laughitoff]

[Lan Wangji's name and what he's doing in the Reverie stuff is in there!]

[strikingchords]

[oh :X



finishes putting them in extremely neat piles, organized by topic area and how long it's been since he's worked on each project to Lan Wangji's knowledge, and finally pulls the notebook over to look at]

[laughitoff]

[There's an ink painting in dreamy monochrome covering the first double-page spread in the book when he opens it, of Echidnas relaxing in their common room. Most of them seem more vaguely depicted, or just a suggestion of a figure without any identifying features, but three are painted in sharp, clear detail. Akira's miming fainting on the couch in a dramatic fashion; Jiang Yanli is seated in a nearby chair polishing an object in her hands, smiling; and Geto is standing off in the corner, but holding a baby rabbit up to his face with a suspicious expression.]

[strikingchords]

[...Lan Wangji's eyes soften a bit; he touches the baby rabbit's ear with a light finger]

[laughitoff]

[Friendship, the urge to tease and banter. Familiarity, the feeling of looking back at someone who knows some of what you're going through and knowing some of what they're going through as well. A sense of agitated responsibility? You want to fix something with this person...]

[strikingchords]

[yanks his finger back and closes the book quietly.

right. he'll shift into a dragon, fly up to the ceiling, and get a Heresy use in by carving the stone into a loop he can tie some of the twine from the protective barrier through. he wants to create a sturdy system to suspend the lantern a comfortable distance above the desk, so it can't still be reached but can't be knocked over, with its light illuminating a larger circle below.]

[laughitoff]

[He can do that! The Orthodoxy pain reduces slightly. The living area is now somewhat better illuminated.]

[strikingchords]

[he restores his hand to its status quo of Orthodoxy Hurt by putting it on the skin book and deeply wishing for it to be bound instead in something tough and protective and nice that Wei Wuxian would like that would still generally be considered to be less weird and morbid than human skin]

[laughitoff]

[White dragonscale-stamped leather seems nice and classy!]