Open Post: The Arms of the Emperor are Never Idle

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon spends her mornings in the practice yard, bright and early, despite the cold. She jogs and stretches to get her blood pumping and her muscles warm before she draws her sword, and then after drills she brings Tally her coffee, and then after that it's back to more sword—unless Tally hauls her off to some other activity, which she pretends to hate but is secretly devastatingly grateful for. The absolute worst part of this place is all the time. Endless stretches of time, with barely any work to be done.

In some ways it's just like the Ninth—except on the Ninth she knew her exits. They were few, sure, and near-impossible, but she knew them: buy her way out, fight her way out, trick her way out, or truly earn it.

None of those apply, here.

She breaks for lunch, and wanders the halls trying to locate various Clues and Mysteries that might end up giving her a way out, and mostly just finds people. More and more people.

She's not antisocial. She likes the people here, more than she's openly liked anyone in her life, individually or as a group. But a gnawing restlessness keeps her on the move rather than letting her time fill up with idle conversation as so many here do. She's always hunting for something to keep her busy, to wear out her body so that when she sleeps her mind is forced to rest rather than serving her a lovely buffet of the worst things she's ever seen and even worse things she hasn't, the things she was yoinked away just in time to miss.

Sometimes it even works.

[This post is open in perpetuity until something happens to make me close it, at which point I will edit it and say so! Feel free to find Gideon in the morning doing sword drills, or tooling around inside, opening and closing drawers and trying peel the wallpaper off in case there's flesh underneath.]

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[lightbearinglord]

At his earliest convenience¹, Lan Wangji comes to find Gideon at the training yard, not so very long after he awakens at mao hour, finishes a morning meditation, and kisses Wei Ying extensively to make up for the atrocity of removing his body heat from their bed. In anticipation of some exercise, he hasn't bundled up in winter robes, despite the biting chill. Bichen at his side, he stands and watches Gideon, awaiting a break in her drills that might lead to her noticing his presence.

¹Realistically, this would have been the very next morning after they discussed it, but time is an illusion here at the creepypasta mansion.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon's pretty in the zone, but Lan Wangji is hard to miss. He's a quiet man, but his presence is large, and something in the way he stands requests attention in a way that's both polite and impossible to refuse. Gideon lowers her sword, glad she's only just begun—she has a feeling she'll need her stamina for this. "Lan Wangji," she greets him, smiling a little. "Morning. Are you here to teach me how to counter flips and shit?"

[lightbearinglord]

As usual, Lan Wangji doesn't smile, but he is glad to see Gideon, and looking forward to this. He gives her a respectful bow, teacher to student. "Mn. Is that your goal? Countering flips?" He is a little amused, although she may not know him well enough to notice it.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon does detect a hint of something, a possible dryness, though Lan Wangji is so serious she's pretty sure she's making it up. She takes the question seriously anyway. "Countering people who can make use of a dimension I can't," she clarifies. "The flips are just the fanciest bit."

[lightbearinglord]

That seems fair enough. Lan Wangji draws Bichen, still relishing their reunion a little. There's almost nothing in the world more familiar than its weight in his hand, the texture of its hilt against his palm. "I do not know every sword style," he warns her, "only that of my own sect. Where would you like to begin?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon doesn't know. She knows where she would start with Luo Binghe, because she's gotten Luo Binghe's measure (and it broke her fucking measuring tool), but she's not dumb enough to imagine that just because he and Lan Wangji are both cultivators they fight the same. "Let's just spar, to start?" she suggests. "So we can see where we start?"

[lightbearinglord]

"Agreed." Particularly here, where there is every chance that Gideon will have some approach to swordplay he has never even seen before, Lan Wangji is curious to see how she fights. He lifts Bichen. In the wan early-morning light, its glow is icy. He nods at Gideon. "Try to disarm me."

[ninth_cavalier]

Lan Wangji's blade is so thin it looks like a child could disarm him. It looks like a single blow from Gideon's two-hander would shatter it immediately and leave him hanging onto the hilt like an idiot. But Gideon knows there's a spirit in there, and Luo Binghe's mean-ass bitch of a sword was pretty thin, too.

She closes with him immediately, aiming heavy, fast blows at every angle she can, trying to assess where his grip might be weakest before she goes in for the twisting strike of a disarm.

[lightbearinglord]

If he were not instantly busy and focused, Lan Wangji might be tempted into a tiny smile at the way Gideon attacks. It makes for a perfect match with what he understands so far about her personality. Instead, he narrows all his attention to her movement and to Bichen, into swinging his blade to meet each attempted strike of Gideon's; to another swordsman, Bichen might be heavy and difficult to maneuver, but to him, it moves as an effortless extension of his sword arm, cutting through the air, inexorable, to stop every blow Gideon attempts. She nearly puts him on his back foot, but he's quick and light enough on his feet to circle her instead of pressing only backward.

[ninth_cavalier]

The first time Lan Wangji blocks Gideon's strike it makes her eyes water. Is it too much to ask this place that someone's appearance tell her literally anything about their physical strength?? Between this and Tally's weird enhanced muscles—do people look at her guns and assume she's weak as hell? Like she blew them up with helium or something??

It's not just Lan Wangji's own strength—his sword is clearly much heavier than it appears. The wielder's own strength only goes so far—even if someone has the strongest grip in the world, eventually, against Gideon's two-hander, a rapier or genuinely lighter sword would at some angle be pushed away or knocked aside. It's clear she won't go for a disarm playing fair, sword to sword.

So she starts playing unfair. She strikes high, letting Lan Wangji catch the strike, then pivots, aiming to smash the pommel of her sword into Lan Wangji's knuckles.

[lightbearinglord]

Bichen can move very fast, but not quite fast enough for him to block an underhanded move like that. In the sliver of a moment before Gideon's pommel makes contact with his hand, Lan Wangji releases Bichen and claps his hands around the blade of her sword to immobilize it between his palms. Bichen, obedient, hovers in the air where he has left it.

"Unsportsmanlike," he informs her.

[ninth_cavalier]

"It's a good thing fighting's not a sport, then," Gideon counters, but she's grinning. She twists her blade, trying to free it from the vice of Lan Wangji's palms. "Also, does that count? You said disarm, and whatever—brain thing you're doing to talk to your sword, it's not arm."

[lightbearinglord]

"It is not," Lan Wangji allows, although he does not yet let her reclaim her sword. Gideon is strong, but he is stronger. "As I said, Bichen has a spirit. Its qi is connected to my own."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh, cool, so you guys are like, soul-friends?" asks Gideon, who doesn't know what qi is. She frowns at the grip Lan Wangji still has on her blade, then shrugs, lets go, and makes a lunge for Bichen instead. She's not really expecting to be able to wield it, but maybe Lan Wangji will have to drop her sword to recover his own from her.

[lightbearinglord]

"That is one way to put it." Lan Wangji, now in possession of Gideon's sword, shifts to gripping it properly, by the hilt. He allows Gideon to take hold of Bichen, then releases his control over it so that its full weight will abruptly become her responsibility.

[ninth_cavalier]

As soon as Gideon wraps her hands around Lan Wangji's fancy little sword it threatens to drop right out of them. "Oh, fuck—" She tries to compensate, brace for the weight, and manages to not fall flat on her face, but the tip of the sword drops to the ground, scoring long furrows in the frosty grass as she tries—and fails—to raise it to anything approaching a useful stance. It's like being ten years old again, badgering Aiglemene into letting her try to pick up the two-hander she'd found in the catacombs—the two-hander Lan Wangji is now wielding with ease. "You're strong as balls, dude."

[lightbearinglord]

"Handstands," Lan Wangji says, as if that is the entire explanation for his strength. He is distracted, now, by something tugging at his spiritual senses, like a fish snagging on a hook. With the hand that is not holding Gideon's sword aloft, he touches two fingers to the blade, his eyes narrowing momentarily. "Your sword is also not mere metal."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Sure it is," Gideon says, frowning and still struggling to lift Lan Wangji's sword even, like, a little. Her shoulder muscles are straining with the effort. "Unless you mean metaphorically, in the way where it's an extension of me—I do know all that, despite what it might look like."

[lightbearinglord]

"No." Lan Wangji extends his free hand. "You may return Bichen to me, if you are finished." He is still primarily focused on Gideon's sword, and on what it is about it that is plucking at his qi at an almost discordant register.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon sighs and relinquishes Bichen, wandering back over to Lan Wangji. It's clear they've shifted out of sparring mode and into—what? Lan Wangji is staring at her sword like it's personally offended him. "Sorry. What do you mean, no?"

[lightbearinglord]

The moment Gideon's hold on Bichen loosens, Lan Wangji calls the sword back to him, then slides it into its scabbard. "Your sword," he repeats, "is not mere metal." He offers it back to her. "Hold this." He is already unstrapping his qin from his back, letting it hover before him and tucking its white cloth covering into his sleeve with one hand.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon takes her own sword back. It feels almost like a rapier in comparison to Bichen's improbable heft. She holds it, slightly uncertainly, not sheathing it in case Lan Wangji needs it to be bared, and watches him with interest. "What are you doing?"

[lightbearinglord]

"Wait," Lan Wangji says, a gentle but firm quelling. He shakes back his sleeves and sets his hands to Wangji. Wei Ying had made gentle fun of him for continuing to practice so diligently when his musical cultivation has proven completely unnecessary here, but now he is glad that he did as he touches fingers and qi to strings in order to ask, as always, the first question any student of Inquiry learns, Who are you?

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon scratches her nose, and waits.

[lightbearinglord]

After all these months, it comes as a considerable surprise when Wangji's strings begin to stir in answer. Lan Wangji lifts his hands away and focuses on the slow unfurling of notes.

"The sleeper," he says, and glances sharply at Gideon. "There is a spirit in your sword that identifies itself as the sleeper."