audio | un: wei laozu, following Wrath's announcement b/c bendytime

[weifinder]

With Prince Wrath having spoken as he has, let me follow up with what Lily Evans and I learned on a recent evening ( because life is busy and time is for HANDWAVING BENDINESS ). Lady Vannozza has been slowly carved hollow. We should secure her spirit's bonds to her body, and prevent other spirits from flowing in.

Lily and I learned of this from one such spirit forcibly filling Lady Vannozza. We've met the famed, or infamous, and long dead Lady Hatisse, and she is... exemplary of her school of magic. ( note: attaryl. note: the shit they've been up to. further note: this is and is not a compliment. ) She noted Lady Vannozza was prepared as a vessel for another.

She also offered trade. Lady Hatisse asks we bring out her entombed, preserved body before the moon swells full. In return, she says she'll assist in opening a beacon to send us home. As to what else she will or won't do, I wouldn't make claim. She's powerful. She's dead. Her body is her own.

I know my mind on this. I want to hear yours.

Comments

[downswing]

Then, kneel with it.

[weifinder]

So forceful! But neither of us have earned that, so I think not, Lan Zhan.

[downswing]

I ask satisfaction.



( Duel at dawns. )

[weifinder]

And I deny it.

( welcome to edging, wangji )

[downswing]

You are a fool. You embark on foolishness.

What tempts you in her? A woman as poison.

[weifinder]

Ask anyone. I've always been a fool.

How long will you guard that death does not touch where she lingers? How long before the invitation becomes damning either way, to have ignored it, or to have accepted it, once it's been stated. To what seduction do you presume me fallen now? To what poison choking down gladly and ignorant of the death that comes in clenched, twisted guts and everything else?

1/2

[downswing]

You think, because you controlled all spirits past, you may control her.

You think, because death kneels to you, she will.

[downswing]

I held you shivered and begging succour in hard snow.

You are no king here. They took your crown.

1/2

[weifinder]

If I ever wore a crown, Lan Zhan, it was carved out of my chest, and the healed over truth of it was invisible to all eyes, including yours, for twenty years.

I did not fail as a king. I failed as a protector who trusted, on any level, that the righteous were actually righteous, and that justice would matter in the end. It did not. It still does not.

[weifinder]

Next time I will not burden you by begging. My apologies.

[downswing]

Do not injure me, when you loathe truth.

It demeans you.

[weifinder]

I would have to possess dignity first, and you faith in anything I've been since living again. As we've neither, it's fine, isn't it.

[downswing]

I beg leave.

[weifinder]

So I shall go.