Curses and spells: This Grave Will Not Be Mine

[ranalore]

Title: This Grave Will Not Be Mine
Author: Rana Eros
Word Count: 200
Character/Ship: Lan Sizhui, Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian
Rating/Warnings: Teen and Up, references to blood, fighting ghost puppets, one-sided Burial Mounds/Wei Wuxian
Summary: The Burial Mounds' claim to Wei Wuxian has been superceded.
Author's Notes: And now for something completely different. Eliza gave it the thumbs up.

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"There's a large array inside!" Sizhui shouts from the doors of the derelict palace. "If we mend it, it should hold them off a while!"

Wei Wuxian could confirm it, if anyone would listen. It will take blood, though; he'd created it during his first—unwilling—tenure in the Burial Mounds, and learned on his return that cinnabar was useless to reactivate it. So much of his blood is soaked into this land.

More still is necessitated for their escape. He might have predicted that. The ghosts here have a taste for him.

Luckily, it appears they're not the only ones. Fierce as they are, Wei Wuxian doubts any resentful force can withstand Hanguang-jun. He's always thought Lan Zhan looks on the verge of taking flight with Bichen flashing in his hand, a gorgeous, ruthless boddhisattva. Now he fights in protection of Wei Wuxian, who can't tear his eyes away. They move in concert, a synchronicity neither has or will ever share with another.

The ghost puppets roar all around him, as frenzied by his connection to Lan Zhan as the promise of his blood and flesh. Let them rage. Wei Wuxian has given his last offering here.

Comments

[elwendell]

It had never occurred to me that the array had originally been made by WW, but it makes perfect sense. I love your description of HGJ as a "gorgeous, ruthless boddhisattva".

[ranalore]

It's funny, because I immediately assumed WWX must have made the array when Sizhui pointed out its existence. One as large as that might well have been created during his second stay in the Burial Mounds, when he had additional people to protect, but I liked the narrative possibilities of its creation during his first period of survival there.

Lan Wangji is stunning in motion. The camera loves him, Wei Wuxian loves him, I had to acknowledge it. I'm so glad you liked the way I phrased it! Thank you!

[aroberuka]

"The ghosts here have a taste for him." => Oh, ouch. I never really thought about where that array came from, but that makes an awful lot of sense :(

I love how hopeful the ending is too.

[ranalore]

I think he probably had arrays of a few different sizes in strategic areas of the Burial Mounds, while he went about the business of refining the yin hu fu, creating Chenqing, inventing the Spirit Attraction talismans, and otherwise preparing for his vengeful return to the land of the living. He would have needed to be able to work undisturbed.

You know his complete faith in Lan Wangji trumps his fatalism regarding the Burial Mounds; it trumps just about everything. I'm so glad you liked it!