ravkanwitch | [[open post and announcement: no mourners, no funerals]]

[[open post and announcement: no mourners, no funerals]]

[cw: discussion of death!]

Nina knows that word of Shen Yuan's death has been slowly spreading. She tried to put out a general warning of danger right after it happened... but she's not sure how many people were warned by it. She wasn't in the right mind at the time, after all. This time, she's more careful and collected. With SecUnit's help, she's alerted and gathered everyone who's interested for an important announcement in the lobby of the mansion. Despite all appearances of bossiness and stubbornness - all quite true - Nina has never been in charge of anything so serious. Kaz, Zoya, and the King himself; she followed their lead. As people slowly begin to gather and she attempts to compose herself, she wonders why she decided to put herself up to this.

Deep breath, Zenik. Pretend that - well, that this is pretend. She's back in the orphanage as the official greeter, making an important announcement to all the other children. She's the governor of a small town, making sure that all the citizens are aware and prepared. It does have to be her, after all. She's playing a crucial role in everything. She also doesn't want anyone else to carry the emotional load.

"Hi," she tells everyone gathered, trying to paste on a somber but not-too-morose expression. "Thanks for coming. I'm sure some of you have heard part of this announcement already and I'm sorry that it took so long to pass this information onto everyone else... but there was an incident not too long ago. We're not sure what caused it, whether it was the house or whether it was an individual, but... Shen Yuan is dead." There's most likely a reaction at this point and Nina forges onwards as confidently as she can, pitching her voice above the hubbub.

"But there is a way that he can return. We're sure of it. We're just trying to figure out the details, which might take a while. If you want to know more about that, you can ask Magnus, but I'm not sure how much he can tell you. Also, if you encounter any signs of Shen Yuan's spirit, you can talk to--" Here she meets Aleksander's eyes almost instinctively; this line of conversation is something she's purposefully kept from him. "You can talk to myself. Or... to Lan Wangji. ...That's all. Thank you."

A confident start but slightly deflated by her last few sentences, Nina steps back and allows for conversation to happen. If anyone would like to speak to her, she's looking much less strained and grim than she has in a while.

[[Feel free to post a single comment reaction and/or start a thread with Nina in the comments!]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Whatever the results of your Inquiry were," he says, "they led you to her name." He taps the page beneath his fingers, eyes skimming the idle observations, first impressions he'd recorded before bracketing everything off. Too many speculations started from seeing her as agent of another world's laws, trying to understand the system she seemed to represent. All that remains are how she looked (blonde as any Dane) and dressed (with a kind of casual luxury, but he couldn't speak to the style, and at a party of other well-dressed women he suspected he'd struggle to say what made her unique). She seemed young to him, perhaps as young as Enjolras or Grantaire. According to the notes, she lost a brother. He had wondered whether he could step into that role, in order to know her better.

There's no record of the attempt. Perhaps he'd never made it.

Shaking his head, he says, "We've two mysteries, and we didn't know them. A murder, and a missing person. We should assume that they're connected, rather than disparate, because your lapses in memory seem to connect to them both. Naively, I suppose, we could imagine that she's in hiding from whatever killed Shen Yuan, and erasing your memory whenever you might risk revealing her." Saying naively suggests its likelihood, to Claudius. But he didn't seem to hate the woman he wrote about, even if he didn't trust her. "Regardless, I doubt she'll emerge until she's quite certain she's been forgotten. And that's once everyone's stopped saying her name."

Over Claudius' shoulder, Lan Wangji examines the notes. He has none of his own aside from the one Claudius wrote him in the kitchen. He trusted his own memory. He has never before had a reason not to.

A murder, and a missing person. One who knows when her name is spoken and who can excise memories with precision. This memory loss is not like Wei Ying, who drops important details and remembers others without any apparent pattern, whose fear and grief at the end of his life wiped the last several weeks of it from his mind entirely. It is targeted and specific.

"They are connected," he says, after another short silence. He's quiet but confident. "When I play Inquiry, I always begin with the same two questions. The first is who are you? The second is who killed you? The spirit has no choice but to answer me."

"Then it's obvious what the answers are, isn't it? Shen Yuan. And ..." Tap. He taps the name on the paper again. An unsettling certainty grows in him: the likelihood that they'll forget this, too. Even if they avoid saying the name between themselves, Shen Yuan's spirit is still somewhere to contact. Reliably enough, given how much of Lan Wangji's memory is missing -- he didn't contact Shen Yuan once, or twice, but day after day.

So the moment someone else contacts Shen Yuan, Claudius may lose this entire conversation, this moment of shared realization. Despite everything, that's good news. Shen Yuan's spirit is here. He tears a page out of the back of the dossier, and writes it down in his spidery hand.

"Mn." He watches as Claudius writes, as the words transform into spindly characters before his eyes. There is some reassurance in it. Evidently, Aornis can pluck memories at will, but the written word is beyond her power. If there is limited time before they forget this discussion, too, then they must make the most of that time.

He looks back up at Claudius. "I will play Inquiry again. You accompany me and keep a record of what we learn."

Claudius can't help but laugh, this time. It's a release of breath, of tension. "Thy amanuensis. Know'st thou, in ev'ry detective story, the detective has an amanuensis."

"Your records have proven invaluable," Lan Wangji points out, with a significant glance in the direction of Claudius' dossier. He steels himself, recalling the hand-lettered flag at the top of his qiankun pouch. Aornis took from him the memory of asking Wei Ying to make it. It is a small thing, but it lights him with a slow-kindling rage. He had thirteen years of time with Wei Ying taken from him. He would like to never lose another moment.

He steps back, waiting for Claudius to be ready to follow him.

Claudius runs his fingers once more over the creased edges of the letter, reading between the lines of the entry he wrote. He made a choice, a choice he can't remember, not to the copy information into the dossier. He wanted the words to be in Lan Wangji's hand. He wanted a puzzle he couldn't complete without conferring with another -- with the man he called a brother, and trusted more than any of his past selves. Claudius evaluates his actions the way he would a stranger's and, for a moment, the chill of unreality creeps back in.

The worst didn't come to pass -- he didn't forget his friend entirely. Claudius re-folds and re-places the letter where he found it, locks up the drawer with his dossier, and follows.

This is the same instinct that, now, he knows he must have had several times before: seeking some nondescript mansion room, one with no particular association for him or Claudius. Shen Yuan's spirit is unlikely to be malevolent this shortly after his death, and Lan Wangji is far from afraid of ghosts, but death is never kind. It's the same instinct, in fact, that led him to banish Galahad's sword so summarily from the bedroom they are now leaving. That room is a place of sanctuary for Claudius and Galahad, a room increasingly full with their shared life and love. He wants to keep resentful energy far from it.

A table, a few seats. He needs nothing more. He leads Claudius inside and notices only as he is taking Wangji from his back that he is still clutching his own note from Claudius. Before it can have any chance of slipping from his grasp like a stolen memory, he tucks it into the folded collar of his robe. It will be impossible to miss later.

He sits, then, the qin hovering across his lap, and glances at Claudius to tell him to do the same and to make himself ready.

Claudius lays out one of his array of notebooks, slim-signatured to lay flat, with the ballpoint pen he brought for the purpose. His pulse speeds, eyes dark and focused ... but he keeps his voice light and conversational. "Well, then," he says. "Let's see how this goes."

Just for a moment, Lan Wangji meets Claudius' gaze again. This is not the first time he has done this. In a general sense, he has played Inquiry countless times. It requires at least a thousand repetitions of practice before it can even be used to contact the dead. In specific, he must have set his qin across his lap just like this, asking Shen Yuan to speak with him, a dozen times or more in the past few days. He can't remember it.

This is not the first time he has done this, but it is the first time he has done it with Claudius, his sharp-eyed and quick-witted brother, by his side. It will be different this time.

He takes the spirit attraction flag from the pouch at his waist, unfolding it in a flutter of black fabric, and props it up in one of the admittedly convenient empty jars on the table before him. "This will draw any spirits within the mansion directly to me," he says, for Claudius' benefit.

Almost no sooner than the flag has been unfurled, Lan Wangji feels it, an insistent tug at his spiritual senses. Wangji's strings nearly hum, as if something other than him is trying to play them.

Claudius has seen magic many times since coming to the mansion, worked magic himself every time he's opened his wardrobe and willed something new into existence. Cultivation, he's learned, is more like alchemy than withcraft, which he'd been warned as a child could only come from demons. Cultivation comes from understanding the natural forces which move through the world. Living forces and, it seems, the once-living, too.

Time and again, Claudius has witnessed Lan Wangji work small wonders, conjuring flame, floating his qin upon the air, soothing small pains and great ones with swells of spiritual energy. Despite that, Claudius can still find it himself to be amazed. His mind turns back to time spent in meditation, trying to feel the breath of the world, trying to believe in its power. The power flowing through him also flowed through Shen Yuan and even in death, it hasn't gone from this place. Even in death, it's enough to stir the strings of an instrument, to make it sing.

His heart catches, and he waits.

Lan Wangji's hands know these notes with barely any conscious thought. He sets his hands to the strings, draws up qi from within himself, and plays. The first question: Who are you?

Rarely has he encountered a spirit quite this eager to answer. Shen Yuan will have no choice in any case; Lan Wangji's qin language is the work of decades, an irresistible compulsion for the dead. In this case, that skill goes wasted. When he lifts his hand, the qin appears immediately to play itself in answer.

"Shen Yuan," Lan Wangji says to Claudius, merely to confirm what they already know.

The second question: Who killed you? Shen Yuan must be weary of answering this, knowing the dangerous potential of the name. It hums out from the strings anyway, because he must respond, and because he must tell the truth. Aornis.

Here, he looks up from the qin, over to Claudius. This, too, is something they all but knew already. Now it is certain. "The name we cannot speak. She killed him."

Edited 2024-06-10 17:17 (UTC)

The two questions and their answers look so stark upon the page, in Claudius's slanted, spindly handwriting that always seems to rush from indent to margin. "We won't let ourselves forget," he says. Looking up, he asks, "Can Shen Yuan hear me, too?"

"He can hear and see you." Later, if the tangles of this murder unknot themselves to a happy ending, there might be some wry humor to glean from this situation. Lan Wangji must be the last person whose questions Shen Yuan wants to answer. "It will be easier for him to speak through my qin. What would you ask?"

"Well I'd like to tell him this was a rather rude way to get out of dance with me," Claudius says. Humor, it seems, is not beyond him. "And he's not getting out of attending our wedding. If his plant body isn't ready in time, then he'll have to come as a ghost. Ask him about the plant body, if you would. What does it require, and how can we ensure its successful fruition so that Magnus will stop losing sleep over it?"

Lan Wangji restrains himself from an expression of skepticism at the information that Shen Yuan was, apparently, invited to Claudius' wedding. That is no longer important. Instead, he nods, shakes back his sleeves, and returns his fingers to the qin. This question is a lengthier one that takes more time to translate into qin language, and its answer, too, does not come immediately. After a pause, though, the spirit plucks the strings, and Lan Wangji listens.

And listens. This is by far the longest answer he has ever received to an Inquiry question.

At length, the qin goes still again. Lan Wangji looks back to Claudius. "Maintenance is minimal. Do not change the balance of sunlight and moonlight. Keep the soil moist, especially in the morning. Keep the lattice clear and open and allow nothing to block it. Additional qi may speed growth, but too much haste will warp the final product."

Claudius makes his notes, neat and precise, despite the onrushing look of the letters. “We’ll take care of that, then. Does he know anything about harvesting the seeds, or did he simply accept them as a plot contrivance?”

Faithfully, Lan Wangji translates this into music for Claudius. Shen Yuan can, as he said, hear them, but spirits have difficulty communicating much of the time. Compelling his answers with Inquiry will ensure he remains coherent.

He gets the chance to indulge that faintly skeptical look after all as Shen Yuan's answer, again unreasonably verbose, plays itself. The qin is a beautiful instrument, the instrument of the sages. It was not meant to channel such nonsense.

"The seeds are, indeed, a plot contrivance, but Shen Yuan harvested these from Bai Lu Forest with someone named... Airplane." Resigned, he continues: "The plants that produced them had been inoculated with neither qi nor blood. Plants that are already growing into bodies may not produce seeds, but there is one beneath the pavilion that has also not been inoculated. He invites you to experiment with it." Here, Lan Wangji pauses, gathering the wherewithal to conclude. "He would like to look at something other than his own 'weird mushroom face.'"

"Well, that's for the best," Claudius says, pen still moving. "I had a theory that the body's development was part of the propogation cycle ... but if that were the case, I suspect the plant wouldn't produce more than one set of reproductive structures. There's already a way to harvest seeds from a human body, and it's rather intimate." A flicker of smile, as he brackets off the last three words. "Thank you, Shen Yuan. And thee, Wangji. When the time comes, canst thou summon Shen Yuan's spirit to the vessel?"

"Mn," Lan Wangji confirms, watching with muted relief as Claudius records every detail, and with even greater relief as he smiles at his own lightly off-color remark. "There is a musical cultivation technique known as Evocation. It summons a spirit into the center of an array. I can draw that array around the vessel."

Claudius records that, too, in case they have the same conversation again — he can rely on Lan Wamgi, at least, to come to the same conclusion. Claudius knows what happens when he’s afraid, how he spirals and grasps at straws, but Lan Wangji has always steadied him.

Here is a plan. And unlike every other plan (— a thought —) this one will work.

“Magnus,” he says, speaks aloud the thought. “We never found who targeted Magnus, did we? Dost thou think … ?” Someone who can perfectly cover their tracks, erase any memory of their involvement … it still feels like there’s a piece missing. Another move available in their game with Aornis. But there are connections in the gaps now, in the mysteries unsolved. “Ask Shen Yuan what happened, how she killed him. She may have used similar methods.”

Although Lan Wangji's demeanor was already serious, it becomes solemn anew. If Aornis attacked Magnus as well, it is almost a relief; it means, then, that there is one person only at this mansion with such ill intent. He nods grimly, a curt little gesture, and returns his attention to the qin: How were you killed?

The longest pause yet follows. Lan Wangji might almost believe Shen Yuan's spirit had fled if he did not know better. When the answer comes, the notes are softer, the strings plucked with less sure, brash intent.

Claudius will certainly see the hard set to Lan Wangji's expression as the music dies out, the cold glint to his eyes. He translates, carefully. "Shen Yuan was shot with the gun whose bullet Magnus gave me. It should not have killed him. His killer can manipulate coincidence. Everything turned to her favor. Luo Binghe's sword suffered a backlash of demonic qi. The poison that once blocked Shen Yuan's qi returned and he could not heal. A song from his childhood happened to play."

Claudius raises both eyebrows. "A rather fearsome power," he remarks. He finishes writing the last line, somehow the strangest of them all. He'd been teasing the spirit of Shen Yuan about plot contrivances (teasing because being too serious would make it terrifying) but there's a contrived perfection to that many layered coincidences. He can almost admire it, the strategy of it -- there's no better way to outmaneuver Luo Binghe than by removing his ability to make everything go his way.

Fearsome indeed. Lan Wangji doesn't much like to think of how it might be used against him, or against Wei Ying, or against Claudius -- against any of the people here. Death is cruel enough without its architect laughing in the background.

He has questions of his own. He sets his fingers to the qin strings and plays. His response comes without hesitation, one low note, a yes. Lan Wangji has gone colder still when he makes eye contact with Claudius. "That person is also the one who attacked Magnus."

Claudius taps his pen as he turns over the implications. It's as Lan Wangji thought, "It's almost a relief. I said we had two mysteries, but if we go all the way back to Dark when Magnus was attacked, we had three. But if all three lead us to the same culprit, then there's only one person we need fear. Fearsome powers or no, at least we don't need to contend with multiple fronts." Or fear the mansion itself. In some ways, suspecting some accident of mansion magic had injured Magnus or killed Shen Yuan felt like suspecting an old and trusted friend. It's like Kade said -- this world has its own nature, but it also shaped itself to Claudius's desires and beliefs. He and this bizarre place have been together nine months now, learning and growing from each other, long enough to bear a child. Would he have to stop trusting it now? Would it be his fault, if the mansion grew violent?

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