#lanshiang

[knifedunwall]

1853, the Tyvian tundra || @lanshiang

Meet me in the Void.

We'll take our chances.

Running. Daud remembered the impression of trying to escape from something. Something abhorrent. He wasn't alone either. A jumble of names and faces struggled to clarify- even though it was all important to him.

A clawing cold startled him to his senses, and the assassin jolted up with a sharp sting to his lungs. Daud raised his arm to cough into his sleeve, and focus on steadying his breathing, so he could figure out where they were-

'They'.

That was right, he was with someone when he crossed over. Daud glanced around himself, searching for someone he knew was there. Laying across from him, a woman with short, raven hair, smooth skin, wearing royal blue and a red scarf...

Ada, or Carla, his mind provided. Memories surfaced of trials, escaping monsters with another- Cahara. Building coalitions, protecting her, learning from her, fighting for her. Daud, in an instant, remembered everything he'd done for her, and what she'd done for him. Her inhuman nature as well... He just couldn't remember where.

But that didn't matter. The whole point was to escape. Both that place, wherever it was, and her husband, Simmons.

He sighed, fog in the air, and blinked around himself owlishly. Where were they now? Somewhere cold, in the ruins of some wooden structure, the collapsed beam bearing old scorch marks under icicles and rime. Daud lowered his hand to push himself upright, and paused. Through the crunching snow, his gloved hand hit something irregular. Frowning, he grasped it in his palm, and brought it to surface, turning it over in his hand to see a wooden figurine carved into the shape of an owl, half-eaten by flame.

Oh. Realization hit like a punch to the gut, recognizing his own handiwork destroyed. This had been his home, at some point, before Overseers came to the nearby village seeking heretics and prisoners for the labor camps to extract ore from dangerous mines.

He didn't blame the villagers for turning on him. It was a fact of life that when the Overseers came, even brother would turn on brother. A refugee from the South, and a loner like him was an easy choice to accuse of heresy.

Daud lowered the figure, releasing the broken thing back to the snow. He knew where they were, but how and when remained a mystery. And the mystery wouldn't matter if they couldn't find a real shelter before nightfall- not in this season, and not with roaming bears.

He rose to his knees, shaking Ada- because he remembered that was her preferred name- by her shoulder, "Hey, ya albi, we made it out."

[separateways]

❝ 𝖿𝗂𝗅𝖾  « : //   @mettamorph: Catches her as she heads out of an elevator, unprompted, and swings her arm around her shoulder. “ Ah-ah- we're going this way. ”

the sudden force of a chrysalid mutant's arm around her shoulder makes her knees buckle, they make a sound like bones grinding into dust that is as unflattering as she feels to be reminded of her age. she turns her head, careful so that the chiseled beak on her mask doesn't poke one of carla's eyes out. she imagines her doppelganger's got more somewhere beneath her skin.

what greets her is a mirror she doesn't like staring into, a reflection that is her but younger, sharper, more full of life than ada has felt for almost a decade. a bit like the evil queen & her magic piece of glass that tells her what a rotten old hag she's become, how much for a poisoned apple? ada purses her lips, not that it could be seen beneath the visage of the crow, & while she doesn't fight the switch in direction, the rubber sole on her boot scrapes against the ceramic floor as she quickly adjusts. “ are we? ” one grows beyond surprise & frustration, carla has a way of making people evolve to suit her needs, & all she can hear in ada's voice is exhaustion. maybe it's the age, that's a difference between her & carla that she can't stop focusing on, no matter how well crowley performs in sparring matches against new recruits. maybe it's another argument with mei li about sudden absences & distant travel, one she avoids by exacerbating the problem, coming to canada to visit her daughter's real mother.

if she could pry carla apart, maybe she'd understand what makes her teenager turn heel.

“ & where would we be going? ” now there's that sly curiosity that's made ada wong infamous, drained of all its glimmer & mangled by the voice modulator. “ i have a flight back to washington tomorrow, i don't have time to play games. ”

[righthandknife]

@lanshiang [x]

“I wouldn’t want a position I didn’t earn anyway.” She nods, having seen plenty how much nepotism just bred stupidity and cruelty.

There was a difference between her and the highborns, though- Her confidence came from knowing her own abilities, not knowing how much money she could throw at the problem to make it go away. Based on the way this woman carried herself, though, she doesn’t come off as the typical highborn- She may have more money then the entirety of the Isles, but her eyes spoke of experience.

Cunning, the kind that comes from years of biding your time.

She could respect that, she already liked this womans vibe.

Ousting a god, she says. It’s not too far off, but the god was someone who obviously didnt want to be there in the first place. If the Outsider really didn’t want to be found, he wouldn’t have lead her right too him…

“Couldn’t have done that without Dauds help, but, yeah. He did most of the information gathering, I just acted on it in his stead.” She nods, keeping her arms folded against her chest, the crystalline prosthetic clinking softly against some metal rivets on her coat. “He’s always been the better between us, but, he taught me everything he knew.”

[hallowedpurple]

"You know, I never imagined I'd end up like this."

It's cold. It's ridiculously, stupidly cold and he's never been good at this sort of thing. This thing being covered in his own blood and slumped in a side alley in the Crimson Lane. The name of the place suddenly strikes him as particularly funny when he slips down the brick wall pressed into his side.

After a decade of being able to deflect any damage coming his way and heal anything he didn't deflect, the burning sensation radiating from the slice that digs into his ribs and back is so alien that it makes him feel nauseous. A quick glance at him finds his back and limbs shredded like he's fallen into a thresher of some kind, bladed wounds covering a significant portion of his upper body.

He only vaguely recognizes where he is because of the sign posted over his head, stained on the corner with a print of his palm. It advertises the new hit club in the area, decorated by some horror combination of a butterfly and a spider. It hangs over his head like it's waiting for him to stop moving to take a bite out of him, which unnerves him on some personal level.

When he cracks an eye open at the woman standing over him, he cracks a grin that wobbles at the edges with pain. Ah, he knew her. She's the Madame, the Spider in the Web, and he cannot even begin to remember her name.

"Hey. Sorry about the blood on the sign. I don't suppose you'd be willing to keep me from becoming a cliche, would you?"

@lanshiang

[mad-archmage]

@lanshiang

A sudden illness overcame the Archmage in the middle of the night, seizing his body with a wracking pain that turned into a splitting headache. Fog in his brain and the taste of salt in his mouth, he lurched in such a manner that he was certain that he had fallen off of the bed.

Fallen far too, for when he awoke once again, all previous sensation was gone, and Mordenkainen himself was disembodied. And nowhere near the city, by the looks of things.

It takes far too long to realize that he was being spoken to by voices that he couldn't identify the source of.

He strains, and careens, adjusting to a rather feline-sized and feline-shaped draconic form, in an apparent shade of a steel dragon.

The voices offered a brief explanation: they had been split from their physical forms and placed outside the city, and that the only way to reclaim their forms was to have someone else dispose of the copies.

These bodies that were completely capable of their own skills and talents- and perhaps more.

Oh no.

Suddenly the fog in his brain lifts, and he had a clear awareness of his other Self, and impressions of altered memories that had been lifted from him.

A Him that lost the Circle of Eight forever to Vecna, that studied the dark god's secrets, and imprisoned him in a realm of Dread. That vowed that mortal souls would not be used in the schemes of otherworldly entities, the divine, or fiends.

Dogmatic, self-righteous, this was a Him that had taken ideas of Balance and had turned the Prime Material- the axis of choice- into a prison. Who sought to turn the world of Oerth into a soul trap... and himself became a Lich.

Well that presents a problem.

He would have to find the phylactery and break it to even have a chance of defeating the lich.

The other was that he could not face the Other Self. Anything harmful he could do would be met by a barrier, so all that was left was to try to find... someone that could counter him.

Perhaps... Ada?

He stretches out his wings, and propels himself into the sky. Mordenkainen soars over Spirale, scanning with slitted eyes over the wards. Monsters were trying to fight their way in, and other disembodied shades were either fighting these monsters or hiding from them...

But one shade stood out from the others. A pale, gelatinous mass with a boiling surface and a roiling parade of eyes that appeared and disappeared within- it would have been unrecognizable if not for moments where it briefly appeared to walk in the silhouette of a lithe woman.

"Ada?" he ventures, landing on a spoke of a streetlamp, "You weren't kidding about being a demon. You look fit to rival the Lord of Nothing, and the Faceless One themself."

Then, without further preamble:

"I need your help."

[dishonoredknife]

@lanshiang

Daud adjourned from the meeting with Billie and Thomas- a meeting that very quickly devolved into catching up on more personal matters in a way the three of them hadn't been able to since before the death of the Empress. Fifteen or so years by mutal reckoning.

Bringing everyone back into the fold over shared bottles of whiskey and exchanging of personal truths was a lot less bitter than the old man had anticipated, though the information he'd given about his current placement and disposition with his employer left his lieutenants very perplexed. Happy, in some regards, worried in plenty others.

Daud never had normal targets. Never made normal enemies. And now, the person he'd found capable of sharing affection with was as far removed from 'normal' anyone could be, even by the strange standards of this world and the strangeness of the people within it.

Billie still lent her support, and Thomas had reminded him of customs within his homeland as well as the ever-practical advice regarding the vendettas of unhappily married people. Daud acknowledged both, and tucked away the package of information Thomas had gathered as a bartering chip for Billie's life.

It wasn't needed- but the gift would be useful for Ada's purposes. So, he carried it under his arm, walking slowly to balance the floating feeling of indulgence in strong drink. He wouldn't be traveling home right away like this.

Instead, he made his way to Ada's office, quietly entering the space. She was hard at work entering in files and sorting paperwork for the new hires.

Daud placed the parcel on her desk, "From one of my lieutenants, Thomas. Porters. Names, meeting spots, schedules."

He walked over to the couch, slowly settling himself in, and leaning his head back while rubbing at his temple with his right hand, "Is it alright if I rest off this drink until I'm ready to go home?"

[coffinshared]

@lanshiang liked for a starter from Josefina!

Josefina Rojas is hardly paying attention to Ada Wong when she approaches her at the banquet table, but then, that's nothing new. she doesn't typically give focus to the various upper class donors who populate her husband's inner circle; it only irks them more when she keeps her head held high, unaffected by their disparaging comments about her looks and her body. instead, she's plucking out pieces of blue and white confetti from her dark brown hair with one hand, a glass of champagne in the other.

tonight has been, for all intents and purposes, the greatest victory Josefina has ever had. she and her husband, Apolo, have fought tooth and nail to get their organization approved by the UN, and those efforts haven't been for naught. finally, tonight of all the nights, they've gotten approval to go ahead with forming the organization. and oh, how worth it their combined efforts have been, she thinks as she surveys the crowd gathered here today — they love her, they love him, and they will love Blue Umbrella if they don't already. Josefina smiles brightly when she catches his eye from across the room, all sharp teeth, and then she turns her focus to the person at her side.

" Good evening, " she greets, dropping the last of the confetti into the trash. " It's a pleasure to finally meet you in person, Ms. Wong. "

Josefina's expression is a carefully practiced neutrality, and she keeps her head held high. this is something she's learned to do through nights in darkened rooms and politicians' dinners alike. her phone buzzes in her pocket, but she makes no move to answer it. whoever's been calling for the past twenty minutes can wait; if they don't feel like showing up to the biggest night of her life, then they're not worthy of her attention for now. besides, meeting her mysterious stranger of an ally is intriguing Josefina in only the best of ways. she smooths out her blazer, never once losing focus.

" I'm honored you found time in your schedule to come out here tonight. This is quite the celebration, no? "

[blankticket]

@lanshiang

Restless tonight, Vash's snuck out of Home at an odd hour; his frequent use of the Gemini Stones have made him attuned to the strange phenomenon of teleportation, the fog in his mind kept unbroken.

Years ago, when he lived as a part of Archimedes, his old self had come across the Savior's Respite by happenstance. Soft petals in bloom, in a strangely harmonious motley of color, had guided him to that secluded overlook when he'd needed it.

Those flowers lost all distinction in the dark.

Yearning hand outstretched toward the stars, the sound of footsteps—his own, and that of the one now following behind—are just as muted. When Vash turns to look, it's a belated movement of alarm; he's not sure how long Carla's been waiting for him to turn around.

Glowing Plant markings, noticeably imprinted on the skin of his face, and even in his eyes, are too slow to fade. She's certainly seen it, now—evidence that it isn't a human who stands before her.

The Plant stands stiffly, standoffish in a trance; a contrast to his timid, bashful demeanor he'd held not so long ago. Half-dazed from silent prayer, the Typhoon stares unblinking into the silhouette before him, an unmoored quality to his voice:

"Who are you?"