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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[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."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Sorry," says Gideon, "I don't know what the hell that means. There's a spirit in my sword?"

[lightbearinglord]

"Yes." That seems sufficient enough as an answer. Besides, if the sleeper means nothing to Gideon, then Lan Wangji would like to press a bit harder on the issue. The sword came with her; she had it when they met. This spirit must be from her world as well. He frowns and plays again, adjusting the question to narrow its specificity: What is your name?

Once he withdraws his own hands, the spirit begins to respond, a longer series of notes this time. Lan Wangji's frown deepens fleetingly. "Awake remembrance of these valiant dead," he says.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon looks around nervously. That seems like the kind of incantation that should have skeletal hands popping up through the hard-packed earth at any moment. When nothing happens, she looks dubiously at Lan Wangji. "Is that like—a you thing, or what the thing in my sword said?"

[lightbearinglord]

"The spirit in your sword." Lan Wangji gives Gideon another glance. "I asked its name. That was its answer."

[ninth_cavalier]

"That's its name?" asks Gideon. "No House affiliation? How'd it get in my sword?" How long had it been there, too? Had it followed her from Canaan House?

[lightbearinglord]

The only way to answer that question is by asking the sword again. Lan Wangji puts his hands back to the strings of his qin. How did you enter this sword?

A little frown pulls at his brows as the strings appear to pluck themselves in answer. That is an unsatisfying response. Before relaying it to Gideon, he takes it upon himself to ask another, the second question learned during studies of qin language: Who killed you?

As that answer, a brief one, plays, he schools his face to perfect neutrality. Again, he looks at Gideon. "It got into your sword by 'hanging on,'" he says, "and it says that it was killed by Gideon."

[ninth_cavalier]

"What?" Gideon asks "Woah, woah--I've never killed anyone. Like, not for lack of trying, but--"

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji battles back a pang of something sorrowful, reflecting on how very young Gideon is. "That was its answer. When I speak with spirits in this way, they are unable to lie to me."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon looks down at her sword, frowning. "But--" The only people who could blame her for their deaths would be Harrow's parents, who were tied way too tight to their own hideous corpses to take a joyride off-planet in her sword, and--"No way it's Ortus," she says, disbelieving. That sentence it'd claimed to be named did kind of sound like an excerpt from one of his bad poems,¹ but he would never introduce himself without a proud of the Ninth on the end, like a kicked dog still looking for treats.

¹ With apologies to Mr. Shakespeare.

[lightbearinglord]

Obviously, Lan Wangji is incapable of having any opinion on the likelihood of this spirit being or not being Ortus. He keeps a level gaze trained on Gideon. "What else would you have me ask?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Ah, hell, I don't know," says Gideon. "Is there a way to tell if it's, like--is it just hanging out? Does it want revenge on me for killing it?" She kind of wants it out, but if it's contained right now and letting it out would un-contain it, that's bad, and on the other hand if letting it out would dissipate it...well, it's sort of her only thing, right? From home? Not just the Ninth, fuck the Ninth, but--from her whole dimension.

[lightbearinglord]

It seems unlikely that the sword would cooperate with Gideon if it wanted vengeance on her, but then, as ever, Lan Wangji must remind himself that he knows only the rules for one specific world. He draws up a little additional qi to touch Wangji's strings as he asks the next question, enough to ensure without a doubt that the answer is compelled and that it is truthful. What do you want?

This question often takes some additional time. Spirits cannot refuse him, but sometimes even they do not know what it is that ties them to the world of the living beyond death. Lan Wangji waits until, at last, his qin begins to respond.

"It wants to kill God," he informs Gideon calmly.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon goes wide-eyed. "It--son of a bitch. It gave me the gun."

For the first time in her life, she kind of wants to drop her sword. Instead she lifts it, holding it out in front of her. "Listen. Whoever you are. You gotta calm down with that. We're not even in the same universe as the Emperor Undying. Also, you didn't give me any fucking bullets. So I don't know what you expect me to do with all that, anyway. But if you just--chill out and keep being a part of me, we're gonna get back there, and then maybe we can work something out. After the part where I save Harrow's life and she grovels in front of me for a month. Capisce?"