[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

[strikingchords]

[what...

what?

swallows around the lump in his throat and hefts the spear, pulling it loose of the rubble]

[laughitoff]

[He can do this.

In the wake of the memory, several dozen individuals appear perched and frozen upon the house timbers, a couple of them in ragged white robes with red flame motifs, the rest wearing threadbare homespun. All of them are elderly, and all of them appear to have been violently killed. Only the little child A-Yuan is missing.

He has seen them all before.]

[strikingchords]

...

[bows to them]

Honored elders.

[laughitoff]

[They don't appear to register him. They are frozen, unmoving ghosts.]

[strikingchords]

[... do they react to a touch...?]

[laughitoff]

[No. His hand goes through, chilled by the contact.]

[strikingchords]

[frowns and investigates the spear further. does touching the banner do anything, or is there anything strange about the spear itself?]

[laughitoff]

[Both seen ordinary -- the banner is red silk -- and touching both doesn't spark any changes.]

[strikingchords]

[...

tries taking out his guqin and asking the ghosts something through Inquiry

Are you able to respond?]

[laughitoff]

[He gets dull static back.]

[strikingchords]

[...

he does take the opportunity to push a little further past that, reaching out-- Wei Ying?]

[laughitoff]

[Static.

The one he is trying to reach is not currently capable of responding.]

[strikingchords]

[Wei Ying. I am here. I will reach you.

he's not sure what to do for these sad ghosts, but he will try to use Orthodoxy to envision their pile of rubble as a small shrine to them, instead]

[laughitoff]

[It comes back together into a long, low building that looks very out of place in this village but would fit right in at Lotus Pier, candlelight soft through the screened windows. He can faintly smell incense from inside.

An ancestral shrine, or something like it.]

[strikingchords]

[are the ghosts still hanging out in it...?]

[laughitoff]

[Yes. Some of them are clipping through the walls or roof where they intersect, like a bad video game still.]

[strikingchords]

[frowns, and burns another Orthodoxy to ask the question on a piece of paper:

How best to tend to the ghosts of memories?]

[laughitoff]

[How best to tend to the ghosts of memories?
Make change as you judge best.]

[strikingchords]

[--ah



uses Orthodoxy to change the spear into a tablet with the names of the slain inscribed, if possible...?]

[laughitoff]

[He is able to do this.]

[strikingchords]

[DOES THAT ALSO HAVE NO EFFECT ON THE GHOSTS THEN

goes inside the building??????]

[laughitoff]

[The inside is indeed an ancestral hall, a medium-sized, lantern-lit hall with kneeling cushions and incense burners in front of a broad display of wooden tablets with the Wens' names inked and/or carved on them. It has the feel of a place of veneration and respect, though not quite worship.

The ghosts are still frozen.]

[strikingchords]

[hmmm well his tablet was redundant in this case, but if the spear with a flag on it is now a tablet with names on it and the building itself is now a different building, he's not really sure what else there is to change...? is there anything he's missing]

[laughitoff]

[There doesn't seem to be anything else he's missing.]

[strikingchords]

[...

tries using Heresy instead, to sand the names on the tablet away and carve in Wen Qing's and Wen Ning's instead; to let them rest with their family]