Lan Wangji (蓝忘机) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lightbearinglord) wrote2024-09-19 08:35 am
lightbearinglord) wrote2024-09-19 08:35 am
Entry tags:
[ interlude: to beckon a spirit ]
Who are you?
Shen Yuan’s spirit must be cursing Lan Wangji’s ancestors, wondering why in the heavens he would ask this question after the dozens of times he has already asked it. Lan Wangji can remember each time now. He can remember his own ignorance, his own resigned determination fresh and clean the second time, the fourth time, the tenth time. Time slipped away, silken and subtle and gone from his mind with such precision that it took much longer than it should have for him to notice the theft.
These are the first two questions, and they are the first two questions for a reason. He needs to be certain of whose spirit he has summoned this morning. Gideon did her utmost, as did the entirety of the mansion, to put Aornis to rest, but Lan Wangji knows as only a cultivator can that spirits are never predictable. And so he asks it nonetheless.
“Shen Yuan,” he says aloud, echoing the familiar sound from Wangji’s strings. It is not a surprise, but it is a relief.
Who killed you?
This is habit, but it comes with a little twist of pettiness, too. He wants to see out these questions without fear this time. He feels a grim satisfaction as he listens to Shen Yuan’s answer and then says aloud, low and clear, “Aornis.”
Nothing happens; the room is still and quiet, and his mind is unaltered. He releases a breath. Onto practical matters – and, for Shen Yuan's sake, onto matters they have not already addressed too many times. Lan Wangji returns his hands to the qin, playing the question he has been waiting to play: Is it time to bind your soul to your future body?
His relief at the following yes is more profound than he could have anticipated. Aornis is gone. Shen Yuan will return, and the last scraps of grief will have reason to dissipate. Luo Binghe's keeper will continue to restrain him. “I will, then,” he says aloud, to the visibly empty room.
One final question. Before I play Evocation, is there anything else to be done? Further messages to deliver?
He is used to Shen Yuan answering him with force, Wangji’s strings abused under the enthusiasm and vigor of his responses. This time, however, the note that plays is soft and simple, not some tangle of insistent chords: No.
Lan Wangji could almost be convinced that Shen Yuan is finished, and then Wangji’s voice curls through the quiet air one more time, so low that he might have missed it if he were not so attuned to the sound of this instrument. I’m so tired. Let me rest.
Very well. He gathers his things. Luo Binghe will not want to speak with him, but for Shen Yuan, he hopes, the emperor will make an exception. Lan Wangji is in the business of laying spirits to rest.
The last time Lan Wangji made this array, he was at home, tucked behind the Cloud Recesses walls inside the mingshi. Nie Mingjue’s arm proved uncooperative and dangerous; Uncle was injured. He expects Shen Yuan’s spirit to go more docilely. Bichen gleams in the half-light as he draws the array around the body, deep lines in the soil, careful where Claudius has directed him not to disturb what lies beneath.
It was grudging, but Luo Binghe agreed, reluctant and irritable, to allow Lan Wangji this task. Lan Wangji considered dressing him down, telling him what a fool he would be to refuse his help in this – but it was not worth the time or the wasted words. It never has been. His duty is to Galahad, Claudius, Magnus, the entire mansion – and, to his surprise, Shen Yuan himself. If Luo Binghe wants to believe that he has some ill intent, that he would go through their grueling battle against Aornis only to turn on Shen Yuan at the last, then that is his bitterness to nurse alone.
The array constructs itself around the plant body, which looks like neither a plant nor the Shen Yuan whose sneering face Lan Wangji once knew. Down here for the first time, Lan Wangji can sense the gathering of qi, like storm clouds in the air before a cleansing rain. Claudius is watching, and Lan Wangji knows he must be fascinated; Magnus, too, who always wants to know everything about what Lan Wangji is doing and why. Galahad's silence is less uncharacteristic. Lan Wangji feels all their eyes on him, only Luo Binghe's alight with anger rather than interest and hope.
When he sits to summon his qin across his lap, the strings flutter. He can't say whether it was an accident of the qi so thick beneath this pavilion or whether Shen Yuan simply had one last sigh of irritation to convey. It doesn't matter; he shakes out his sleeves and plays. Evocation, irresistible to any intact spirit, low notes spilling from Wangji one after the other. He barely needs to put effort into summoning up his qi. It springs to his fingertips, and the sound of the qin is infused with power, a gentle but inexorable command for Shen Yuan to follow.
He does. Lan Wangji feels it, like that first single drop of rain on his face, as his spirit slips into its new home, its future body. Nothing changes visibly, but he knows it to be finished. Heedless of Luo Binghe's likely protests, he shifts, kneeling to reach across the lines of the array so that he can touch Shen Yuan's wrist.
He makes eye contact with Claudius. “It's done.”
They have more to do – more experiments to run, more samples to take, more theories to pursue. But this is finished. Shen Yuan will live, and Aornis will not. The finality of it silences him again, but he will find his happiness again shortly, and the storm will break.
Shen Yuan’s spirit must be cursing Lan Wangji’s ancestors, wondering why in the heavens he would ask this question after the dozens of times he has already asked it. Lan Wangji can remember each time now. He can remember his own ignorance, his own resigned determination fresh and clean the second time, the fourth time, the tenth time. Time slipped away, silken and subtle and gone from his mind with such precision that it took much longer than it should have for him to notice the theft.
These are the first two questions, and they are the first two questions for a reason. He needs to be certain of whose spirit he has summoned this morning. Gideon did her utmost, as did the entirety of the mansion, to put Aornis to rest, but Lan Wangji knows as only a cultivator can that spirits are never predictable. And so he asks it nonetheless.
“Shen Yuan,” he says aloud, echoing the familiar sound from Wangji’s strings. It is not a surprise, but it is a relief.
Who killed you?
This is habit, but it comes with a little twist of pettiness, too. He wants to see out these questions without fear this time. He feels a grim satisfaction as he listens to Shen Yuan’s answer and then says aloud, low and clear, “Aornis.”
Nothing happens; the room is still and quiet, and his mind is unaltered. He releases a breath. Onto practical matters – and, for Shen Yuan's sake, onto matters they have not already addressed too many times. Lan Wangji returns his hands to the qin, playing the question he has been waiting to play: Is it time to bind your soul to your future body?
His relief at the following yes is more profound than he could have anticipated. Aornis is gone. Shen Yuan will return, and the last scraps of grief will have reason to dissipate. Luo Binghe's keeper will continue to restrain him. “I will, then,” he says aloud, to the visibly empty room.
One final question. Before I play Evocation, is there anything else to be done? Further messages to deliver?
He is used to Shen Yuan answering him with force, Wangji’s strings abused under the enthusiasm and vigor of his responses. This time, however, the note that plays is soft and simple, not some tangle of insistent chords: No.
Lan Wangji could almost be convinced that Shen Yuan is finished, and then Wangji’s voice curls through the quiet air one more time, so low that he might have missed it if he were not so attuned to the sound of this instrument. I’m so tired. Let me rest.
Very well. He gathers his things. Luo Binghe will not want to speak with him, but for Shen Yuan, he hopes, the emperor will make an exception. Lan Wangji is in the business of laying spirits to rest.
The last time Lan Wangji made this array, he was at home, tucked behind the Cloud Recesses walls inside the mingshi. Nie Mingjue’s arm proved uncooperative and dangerous; Uncle was injured. He expects Shen Yuan’s spirit to go more docilely. Bichen gleams in the half-light as he draws the array around the body, deep lines in the soil, careful where Claudius has directed him not to disturb what lies beneath.
It was grudging, but Luo Binghe agreed, reluctant and irritable, to allow Lan Wangji this task. Lan Wangji considered dressing him down, telling him what a fool he would be to refuse his help in this – but it was not worth the time or the wasted words. It never has been. His duty is to Galahad, Claudius, Magnus, the entire mansion – and, to his surprise, Shen Yuan himself. If Luo Binghe wants to believe that he has some ill intent, that he would go through their grueling battle against Aornis only to turn on Shen Yuan at the last, then that is his bitterness to nurse alone.
The array constructs itself around the plant body, which looks like neither a plant nor the Shen Yuan whose sneering face Lan Wangji once knew. Down here for the first time, Lan Wangji can sense the gathering of qi, like storm clouds in the air before a cleansing rain. Claudius is watching, and Lan Wangji knows he must be fascinated; Magnus, too, who always wants to know everything about what Lan Wangji is doing and why. Galahad's silence is less uncharacteristic. Lan Wangji feels all their eyes on him, only Luo Binghe's alight with anger rather than interest and hope.
When he sits to summon his qin across his lap, the strings flutter. He can't say whether it was an accident of the qi so thick beneath this pavilion or whether Shen Yuan simply had one last sigh of irritation to convey. It doesn't matter; he shakes out his sleeves and plays. Evocation, irresistible to any intact spirit, low notes spilling from Wangji one after the other. He barely needs to put effort into summoning up his qi. It springs to his fingertips, and the sound of the qin is infused with power, a gentle but inexorable command for Shen Yuan to follow.
He does. Lan Wangji feels it, like that first single drop of rain on his face, as his spirit slips into its new home, its future body. Nothing changes visibly, but he knows it to be finished. Heedless of Luo Binghe's likely protests, he shifts, kneeling to reach across the lines of the array so that he can touch Shen Yuan's wrist.
He makes eye contact with Claudius. “It's done.”
They have more to do – more experiments to run, more samples to take, more theories to pursue. But this is finished. Shen Yuan will live, and Aornis will not. The finality of it silences him again, but he will find his happiness again shortly, and the storm will break.