[pfsb]

[acrookedpath]

The good news: the energy-revealing array works!

The bad news --

It's not bad news, he insists to himself. It just... is. It's a complication, a hole in the road, a little snare tripping him up. That's all. It doesn't have to be more. It might not even be in the first place, yes? He is dead, Lan Zhan is alive, of course seeing just how very alive would stir something in him. That's all it is.

Right?

Never mind that he's fairly certain if he placed the same array on Harrow, or Tom-gongzi, or Ingress, he would not have been struck the same way. That -- it's ridiculous, this is all ridiculous, and that's why he's out here by the lake, standing on a flat rock with another array of talismans fluttering in his hand.

The key is not just luring resentful energy from the forest, despite the suppression around the inn. It is how swiftly he can do it. During his coffee-fueled spree of work last night, he drew up some new lures that ought to work faster than a traditional set. Now he scatters them in a wide circle around his feet, gestures sharply, and sends a bolt of red energy into the yellow paper slips.

Silently, in his head, he begins to count. One... two... three...

At the count of thirteen, something boils at the forest's edge, dark and oily.

Wei Wuxian smiles and lifts his flute to meet it.

Comments

[riddleofthebelow]

His eyes almost narrow when he hears another grown person of an attractive persuasion call his Ingress a delightful woman, but he remembers that Ingress does not and will never appreciate that kind of protectiveness.

"She's rather fixated on those squids. Always has been. Mr. Julia was kidnapped from the lake once, and she did not let me or anyone else rest until she brought him home."

[acrookedpath]

He laughs, startled. "How was someone able to kidnap a squid that large?"

[riddleofthebelow]

"I don't remember. Apparently the culprit made a habit of stealing large monuments and the like. Magic? Must have been magic. Sometimes it doesn't help to question things here. Accepting that they happen and then dealing with is usually the easiest way to proceed."

[acrookedpath]

Wei Wuxian snorts in loud amusement. "That, Tom-gongzi, I am well on my way to doing," he says. "I have accepted so much strangeness since I arrived! All the worlds so unlike my own, the fact that I am even here, a sky that explodes as regularly as the dawn yet harms nothing -- soon I am sure I will also shrug and go about my day if I awoke to find the lake had been replaced with a pool of lava, or the forest transformed into desert."

[riddleofthebelow]

"It's a remarkable place. Truly. There was a time when there could be too much excitement, but things have calmed considerably. There hasn't been an apocalypse of any kind in, oh, it must be years by now."

Well. That he knows about, anyway.

[acrookedpath]

"Were they truly that common?"

He sounds more curious than genuinely surprised. Wei Wuxian thinks of apocalypse as a devastation; a moment when the world feels as if it is ending, even if it stubbornly continues to exist.

[riddleofthebelow]

“I exaggerate slightly. But there were many times when we had to band together to resist powerful entities intent on wreaking havoc or taking over. The House of Arch has been an emergency refuge on more than one occasion, and once, our defenses were breached, and I didn’t know, for awhile, if we’d ever be all right again.”

[acrookedpath]

"Ah." He sobers, slightly. "I am sorry to hear that, Tom-gongzi. I am very glad you seem to have found your way back from such a calamity."

[riddleofthebelow]

“As am I. While I could have done without experiencing the events, I’ve learned much and gained allies I’d never have otherwise.”

[acrookedpath]

He nods.

"I have had others come into my life in a similar way," he says. "Through terrible events. But as awful as they were, I am glad, at least, they allowed our paths to cross."

How else would he have grown to care so much for Wen Qing and Wen Ning? Or A-Yuan and Granny? His grief has never taken the shape of wishing he had never met them at all -- for if that were so, they all would have died so much sooner.

(Except for A-Yuan, who miraculously yet lives, six years old now and -- he hopes -- growing strong and happy.)

He did not do enough for them. That, he will forever regret.

[riddleofthebelow]

He regards the younger man seriously for a moment. He's so very young; he can't be much older than Ingress. When Tom was that age, what was he doing? Terrible things with regard for no one, especially himself, as he churned with anger and hatred, miserably bitter in his machinations and lying to himself completely.

He's still baffled by how something as relatively benign as controlling the energy of restless spirits painted Wei Wuxian with such a malignant brush. There may be more to the story, of course, and Tom hopes it's something Wei Wuxian can confide in him at some point, as he once shifted some of the weight of his past onto others' shoulders. If there's any weight that even needs shifting.

"You're wise beyond your years, I think, Wei Wuxian."

[acrookedpath]

Wei Wuxian laughs, a little startled.

"Tom-gongzi," he says, "were I not dead, I would bring you to Cloud Recesses, stand you before my teachers from years ago, and have you proclaim me wise to their faces. They would collapse from the shock!"

[riddleofthebelow]

"I would delight in it. Let me guess, somewhere in Cloud Recesses there is an area - perhaps in a library? - where forbidden knowledge is closely hoarded and the teachers expect you to only listen and obey exactly what they tell you without thinking overly much for yourself."

[acrookedpath]

"Oh, yes," he says cheerfully. "Did I tell you that was where I had a scroll thrown at my head for daring to ask about the uses of resentful energy beyond mere suppression or elimination? I spent nearly all of my free time punished in the library after that, copying their list of rules. There are three thousand of them, Tom-gongzi. Three thousand. Ah, but perhaps I should not speak quite so ill of Gusu Lan -- "

Valiantly, he wills his cheeks not to start flushing.

"It is Lan Zhan's sect, after all."

[riddleofthebelow]

"You can respect and admire someone and still boggle at the fact they have to follow three thousand rules. Good Lord. That's about 2,990 rules too many."

[acrookedpath]

"Yes! Exactly!" He's laughing anew. "Ah, but I can still recite most of them standing on my head for all the times I had to copy them. And some are so petty -- he cannot drink, he cannot talk during meals, he must be asleep by hài hour each night..."

All of which, Wei Wuxian realizes, Lan Zhan has broken in some fashion since he arrived at the inn. (Granted, the incident with the ambrosia was only due to a miscommunication. Still.)

[riddleofthebelow]

“I’d have spent the entire time seeing how I could break every one of them just because I could. Without getting caught, of course. I never got caught.”

[acrookedpath]

"That is exactly what I did," confirms Wei Wuxian. "But I was not so good at avoiding getting caught."

This is not going to help his determination to stop blushing, he realizes.

"In fact, Lan Zhan was the one who caught me my first night. How many was it I broke, did he say then?" He hums in thought, counting on his fingers. "I dispelled one of their barriers, I entered Cloud Recesses too late at night, I brought wine, I tried to bribe Lan Zhan with the wine... I'm certain there were more."

[riddleofthebelow]

Tom laughs. “It sounds like you wanted to get caught, which is even more audacious. Rules are there for breaking; so long as they get broken, bravo.”

This, of course, doesn’t apply to the rules he makes and enforces. Good heavens, no.

[acrookedpath]

"Ah, I knew there was a reason I liked you so much, Tom-gongzi," he declares. "Perhaps some day I will find a way to send you to Gusu Lan. We can have a contest to see if you break as many rules as I did!"

[riddleofthebelow]

“If they find you unorthodox, I fear I wouldn’t be tolerated.”

[acrookedpath]

"I suppose not," he sighs. "And I would not truly make you suffer so. Not every clan is as strict as Gusu Lan, but none of them were particularly fond of me."

Not even Yunmeng Jiang, by the end.

[riddleofthebelow]

“It does seem like your world’s clans and sects are more rigid than their equivalents in mine. I’m thankful for the chaotic nature of the Underside. It’s a relief to exist in a place where nothing is black or white, but is instead on a shady spectrum of grays.”

[acrookedpath]

His laugh is quieter now, more rueful.

"It does sound a relief," he says. "Cultivators work to stand against evil -- it is a noble pursuit, to seek out justice and righteousness, to help the weak. But their rigid thinking means they have committed evils, and worse, believed themselves righteous in their evil."

[riddleofthebelow]

"Exactly," he says, nodding his head. "It's the righteousness, the intrinsic belief that you must do things a certain way, because you believe so very strongly that it's the only way. And when you combine that with power over others?"

It is a continuous struggle for Tom to not let his own needs for power and control, his own righteous beliefs, bleed into the reality of London Below. He and Door could rule the Underside and make it better, so much better, for everyone, instead of continuing the nudging diplomacy they conduct. Most of the time, he suppresses these desires easily. But not all the time.