Chapter Text
:W- Y-g:
:…Wei -g:
:O-n -r eyes:
:Open your eyes:
:Wake up, Wei Ying:
:Wei Ying:
:Wei Ying!:
Wei Ying, despite his best efforts to remain unconscious, finally does as instructed and forces his eyes open, though once he does he can’t help but feel that it’s a bit pointless as there’s not much to see anyway.
It takes a few long moments before his vision clears properly and he takes a deep, slow breath in as he lies there on his back studying the rough-hewn gray rock above him. It looks far away, a natural cave, tall enough not to make him claustrophobic. There’s something around him, warm and sticky and close, and beyond it in his periphery he spots more gray rock much closer at hand. Literally – he shifts his hand to the side away from his hip and almost immediately his knuckles bump against the same stone, though thankfully this portion has been polished smooth.
Wei Ying sits up slowly, warily, but nothing hurts as he does, and though he can’t remember why he’s expecting pain the lack of it is a distinct relief nevertheless. The relief fades gently into confusion as he looks down to find that he’s as naked as when he first entered the world, littered with scars of past injuries, most of them faded but some of them still raw and red as if fresh though they’re thankfully not sensitive to the touch. None of that is truly the confusing thing, though; what’s confusing is that he seems to be sitting in a low, shallow pool of blood.
The metallic tang of it is in his nose and the back of his throat, and when he reaches behind himself to drag his drenched hair over his shoulder his hands come away dark with it, dripping in strings off his fingertips and in molasses-thick rivulets down his bare chest.
That’s…disgusting, really, but he decides it’s probably best to just take it in stride. It doesn’t seem to be his blood at least, which makes the whole prospect slightly less disturbing. A bit. He pulls his legs up out of the liquid one at a time to check them over down to the littlest toes of his feet and everything seems to be in order – limbs and appendages attached, no pain, no gaping wounds, no small wounds. He’s drenched in some other poor soul’s blood, but it could certainly be worse.
Assured that he’s unharmed, Wei Ying decides it’s probably time to try to stand. There’s a bit of weakness in his knees and his wrists when he pushes himself up to standing and he instinctively sends a probe of thought down into his core, seeking that flush of warmth spinning within him to repair it. The core he finds is weak, hardly formed, which doesn’t seem right (though he can’t remember why), but it’s at least enough to push him through the moment of weakness. He stands and waits for the following lightheadedness to fade on its own before looking around again from this new vantage point.
There’s still not much to see, honestly. The pool is surrounded by a string of talismans still glowing a faint red in the dim light, though as he watches the last of their power fades and they go dark, as does the array drawn on the ground just beyond them in the next moment. He snags the nearest talisman – careful not to cover the ink with the blood still dripping lazily from his fingers – and studies it as closely as he can in the candlelight. Whoever created it was brilliant, that much is clear, and whoever activated it was just as powerful as the creator was brilliant. If they were one and the same they would be quite the impressive figure, of that Wei Ying is certain. Even if they were two halves of a pair, they would be nigh on unbeatable with such tools and resources at their fingertips.
He studies the talisman for another few moments before he lets it drop into the pool, where it promptly turns red, saturated with blood, and disappears into the murky depths at his feet. He does his best to wipe the worst of the blood from his skin and wring as much of it as possible from his hair before he steps out onto the tamped earthen floor with a bit of a wet splat.
:There is clean water nearby:
Wei Ying freezes at the sound of the voice that had woken him, low and soft but..warm, like sun-soaked silk against his chilled skin.
Though he immediately knows the voice hadn’t come from anywhere in his physical vicinity, he can’t quite resist the urge to look around and make absolutely sure that there’s no one here to see him ass-naked and blood-drenched in the middle of a cave. What an impression that would be, and whoever owns this voice sounds..hm…proper. They likely wouldn’t appreciate the view.
:Wash and dress:
“Whatever you say, disembodied voice,” Wei Ying mutters and he’s unsurprised to find that his own voice is harsh in his ears in comparison, rough and scraggly at the edges. It makes him cough a bit, the unbearable dryness in his throat, and suddenly the concept of clean water is appealing for more reasons than just washing himself enough to dress without looking like an absolute disaster.
With his hair piled up on top of his head in an approximation of a bun (it doesn’t quite stop the drip of blood down his back but a man can dream), he begins to wander, following barely-visible tracks in the dirt until he finds a larger cavern that seems to have been used as a living space at some point. As he crosses the space, following the faint sound of trickling water now, he gazes around at the remnants of a life that was lived who-knows-how-long ago. Roughly made dishes, covered in a layer of dust so thick whatever color the glaze really is is completely lost under the grime. Papers everywhere, some blank, some covered in scribbles of notes that, at first glance, look relatively useless – all of it just as dirty and dusty as the dishes. Straw scattered on and around a rock that looks almost flat enough to rest on.
Wei Ying finds the little trickle of water on the opposite side of the living space, tucked into a shallow alcove, and he immediately steps under it, hissing for the chill of it against his skin – shocking after the warmth of the blood pool and the still, stale air he had been passing through as he explored. It stings against skin that suddenly feels too sensitive, raw in the way a freshly healed burn is for long after the injury has healed. But his desire to drink and to be clean outweighs the desire to take his time growing accustomed to the sensation, and so once he’s drunk enough of it to soothe his throat he simply shakes his hair out and begins to carefully guide it through the tumble of water until it begins to run clear.
It takes quite a while like that before he feels clean enough not to immediately sully any clothing he man don, but he’s not in any particular hurry. He doesn’t even know…well anything really, but in particular he doesn’t even know what time it is. Night, day, twilight, or dawn – it doesn’t seem to make a difference in here. If he allowed himself to, Wei Ying knows that he could easily spiral into a never-ending stream of questions, some of them answerable but the vast majority of them likely not. Better, the, to simply focus on the sharpness of the cold, the water sluicing the thicker blood from his skin, the dirt and rock under his feet.
Once finally clean, he steps away from the water again and continues to wander as he air-dries. He returns to the Blood Pool (might as well just call it that, he supposes) by a more circuitous route than he had left it, looping through a series of rather unremarkable caves and tunnels until he returns to the space from the opposite side. The blood is still there unchanged, and the row of talismans (minus the one he’d inspected). A closer look at the array reveals it’s an extremely strong containment array, which he promptly decides he’s not going to think too hard about.
After all, waking up naked in the middle of a literal pool of warm, viscous blood and surrounded by talismans apparently meant for soul-catching and healing and an array meant for high-level containment isn’t exactly the sort of thing that happens every day; sue him, but he’d rather not think about the implications behind such a thing at the moment, thank you very much.
He turns his back on the pool and finds a set of robes neatly folded and set aside on a small table, carved stone covered in the same dust as everything else. The clothes are strangely pristine and surprisingly high quality considering the source – they’re smooth and light against his skin, the first two layers made of a material so fine it runs through his fingers like water, though the final layer upon closer inspection is more like what he would have expected: rough to the touch and more loosely woven than a similar but more expensive garment would likely be. He slips into them all along with the accompanying pair of boots that fit him nearly perfectly, and does what he can to comb his fingers through his damp hair as he looks around the room again. There’s no obvious exit, is the problem, and considering he didn’t see one during his exploration of the rest of the accessible areas of the cave he’s not sure where one could possibly be. He knows logically that if he’s inside a place then there has to be an outside, and a way to get to that outside – he just really has no idea where it is.
He's looking around and attempting to solve the problem without panicking when something else grabs his attention – a small device on the table, previously hidden under the pile of clothing. He lifts it carefully and nearly drops it in surprise as he suddenly hears –
:A spiritual compass. It will guide you in your journey:
“A spiritual compass. Right,” Wei Ying replies skeptically under his breath. “What does this even point to? It’s not North.”
:Among other things, resentful energy:
Resentful energy? Wei Ying looks closer at the little device in his hand whose spinning needle can’t seem to settle on any direction and he shrugs. The thing is probably broken but he tucks it into the front of his robes anyway, just in case. (This disembodied voice is strangely persuasive, and had he woken up under different circumstances that ability to persuade might have concerned him. As it is he doesn’t particularly care one way or the other, considering the day has already been so damn weird.)
He looks around again, becoming a bit more anxious to find the door, and finally spots something – a wall with a faint moon gate-shaped crack in it, through which daylight is just barely managing to seep through. Weak, watery sunlight perhaps, but natural light all the same rather than the guttering candles that fill and otherwise light the sorry space of the cave. He looks around once more at the Blood Pool surrounded by its lightly fluttering talismans and depleted array, at the dusty remnants of a life long gone, and then resolutely he turns to face the door. Through pure muscle memory and instinct, he sketches a quick talisman in the air that glows a lurid red before it sinks into the middle of the stone blocking the door. The sun-ringed section of the wall begins to crumble away as the talisman Unmakes it, and that soft voice returns, a low, soothing hum in the back of his mind.
:Wei Ying…You are the light – my light – that must return to leash the darkness of this world. Now go:
The last of the stone crumbles away and without it the sunlight pours into the room, momentarily blinding. Wei Ying lifts a hand to cover his eyes as he blinks the spots away, mind still echoing with the call from this mysterious voice, gentle and warm like a lover’s entreaty to return to bed. A shiver slips down his spine but he ignores it in favor of walking forward through the short tunnel stretching ahead of him, his feet splashing through little puddles and kicking up clouds of dust until he emerges, blinking, into the world.
It seems spread out beneath his feet, his for the taking. High on a mountainside, he has a sprawling view of dense forests directly below him, the glitter of water in the near distance. Towers and low plains march away to the east. Another mountain range rises high into the clouds far to the north with their rounded shoulders shrouded in dense mist, and to the west a volcano sits in lonely splendor surrounded by a ring of lower mountains at its base. His gaze sweeps over it all with sudden wonder and curiosity, a desire to see it all, to know all its secrets, its roads and byways, the people who make their homes here.
:Come find me, Wei Ying:
“I will.”
