Jack Puts Me Through My Paces [open post]

[summerdude]

"Señor, you really should practice more," Jack says, as Magnus rearranges his mental notes and sighs.

(Anyone else might think Magnus is just lying back on a bench on the grounds, staring at the sky, lost in thought. And technically, he is. But he's working hard!!! He's trying to sort out everyone he's encountered so far!!!)

"You're right," Magnus groans. Being in a weird Mansion with no way out, no established Battle Practice, and no pressing quests to go on is not an excuse to let his limited fighting skills fall by the wayside. He hauls himself upright and shoves his (still largely blank) notebook into his backpack.

Twenty minutes later, he's secured a practice sword from some random closet or another in the Mansion. It's dull steel, not sentient, and heavy in his hands.

"Perfect," Jack decides, so Magnus tramps back out to the spacious lawn, one sword in each hand. Checking to make sure no one is directly in harm's way, he releases Jack and brings the dull training sword up, ready to parry whatever attack Jack decides to throw at him.

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[summerdude]

"Fascinating," Magnus says, and adds this to his growing list of mental notes on Lan Wangji's mysterious godly powers. Is his sword getting colder? It's certainly lighting up like Jack does sometimes, except it's Bichen's entire blade, not just a bunch of runes.

His arm throbs as he catches another of Bichen's swings, so he switches hands long enough to shake the ache out. While he ducks another jab, he says, "Jack does his own thing but he still uses my, uh, my energy? To do it. So when I pick him up again it's as if I did everything myself, wielding him. This one time, he flew me around... I passed out for hours."

Arm successfully loosened, he goes on the offensive again, trying to knock Bichen back a few paces.

[lightbearinglord]

Almost obediently, Bichen allows itself to be battled backward -- but then, that may be by design, as Lan Wangji lifts a hand and catches its hilt in his own grip again.

"Do not deplete yourself for me," he advises Magnus. "Do we need to stop?"

[summerdude]

"Oh, don't worry about it, Jack is training me on endurance right now as much as anything," Magnus says. He doesn't want this god to think him weak -- not because Lan Wangji feels threatening, but because Magnus feels compelled to impress him in some way. "I'll put Jack back on my necklace at bedtime and have a good night's sleep. Hey, do you wanna see something really cool?"

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji lifts his eyebrows minutely. He nods, however, to tell Magnus to proceed with whatever this demonstration may be.

[summerdude]

"Jack, I'm going to do the thing," Magnus warns.

"Señor," Jack complains, but he floats farther away as Magnus closes his eyes and concentrates on trying to summon the feeling that all fighting must stop. He's been practicing this, since the Boarding of Naglfar -- calling it on command without losing teeth in the process. (They grow back, in Valhalla, but it's not fun.)

Pressure builds inside of him. His vision goes hot, then gold as light golden light explodes from him outward. Any weapon -- indeed, anything that could be used in battle -- will go flying with the shockwave that spreads in a thirty-foot radius from Magnus. His own training sword is one of them: it flies out and lands, lodging firmly in a small mound of dirt.

Magnus wipes away a tiny trickle of blood from his nose with the back of his hand, healing himself of the tiny injury in the process. Then he looks to Lan Wangji, grinning hopefully. This is usually a lot more impressive in the heat of battle, when there are a lot of weapons around, but hopefully Lan Wangji will still find it cool.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji's first order of business, as Bichen wrenches itself from his grasp and Wangji flies free of his back, is to attend to that. Before either weapon can actually hit the ground, he is calling them back: Bichen cuts its way through the air and sails back into its scabbard. Wangji returns summarily, balancing on Lan Wangji's left hand.

He makes that same gesture, the small arch of his eyebrows. "Useful," he comments, sincerely enough.

[summerdude]

"Your instrument is a weapon???!" Magnus asks, so distracted by this that he barely remembers to worry that Lan Wangji might be upset, rather than impressed.

[lightbearinglord]

"It can be," Lan Wangji says mildly. He plucks one string, a single low note, but allows that string to vibrate against the tip of his finger such that it slices into the flesh, the most muted version of the chord assassination technique. To make himself clear, he holds that hand aloft with its bloodied fingertip.

[summerdude]

"Whoa," Magnus says, awed, and then, "Do you want me to fix that?" And then the fact that he just offered to heal a god catches up to him so he sets his jaw firmly, determined not to back down from the offer.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji hardly needs it; his spiritual power will close this wound within moments. But he is curious, and so he offers the hand to Magnus, watching him closely. Wangji stays balanced on the other.

[summerdude]

Magnus reaches forward. He doesn't warn Lan Wangji about the side effects of his healing -- this is a tiny wound, and things this small usually don't trigger either the memory-viewing or the glow.

He touches Lan Wangji's finger and, with the slightest dab of his power, heals Lan Wangji's cut.

To his surprise, he does get the tiniest little flash of... something. Something big. Something definitely divine.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji's eyes widen. The cut on his finger closes, as though it was never there, but that is not the surprising part. The surprising part is the clean, bright flash of his own memory, pulled to the fore like a fish hook has rummaged in his mind: Wei Ying, malleable under Lan Wangji, their hands linked as their qi cycles between the two of them with all the ebbing and flowing spiritual power that entails -- speaking of dual cultivation --

There may be the slightest pinkening to the tips of Lan Wangji's ears as he stares at Magnus. He could speak, but he can't say for certain whether Magnus saw the same thing he did.

[summerdude]

Magnus isn't entirely sure what he saw, only that it involved a huge amount of power. "Um, sorry," he says. He can't tell what Lan Wangji's face is doing. "Usually with little things like that I don't... see anything... but I got a flash of something? I would have warned you, but the wound was so small... this is not how the powers usually go. But you should know that I did see... something. In your memories. Just a little bit. I didn't mean to... pry...."

[lightbearinglord]

"I saw it, too," Lan Wangji says, a touch hastily by his standards. He looks away and indulges in one long, slow breath. That is certainly not the memory he would have chosen to share with a teenager, but Wei Ying is never far from his mind. His ears are still pink.

[summerdude]

"Wait," Magnus says. "That's never happened before, either." He blinks at Lan Wangji. "You must have a... lot of power, huh?"

[lightbearinglord]

Here Lan Wangji's gaze flicks back to Magnus, despite his embarrassment. Arrogance is prohibited, but arrogance is not the same as honesty. "I have high cultivation."

[summerdude]

"Yeah, I can see that," Magnus says. He tilts his head at Lan Wangji, assessing. "You're not a very forthcoming dude, are you?"

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji flips Wangji onto its place on his back so that he can tuck his hands behind himself again. "No," he agrees, without apparent opinion on the topic. His expression follows that up with And is that something you wish to discuss?

[summerdude]

"It's just," Magnus says, tilting his head, trying to fit this new piece into the puzzle he's been mulling over--since he got here, basically. "Most, um, people who I meet that are... like you, you know? Like to talk about themselves more. A lot more."

[lightbearinglord]

Ah, has Magnus met other cultivators? Luo Binghe alone would match that description, not to mention a good half of Lanling Jin. "I see no need," he says, full composure finally returning to him. "I can do what I can do. I help those I can help."

[summerdude]

"Wild," Magnus observes. "It's refreshing! I'm not used to it."

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji nods, understanding of that. His demeanor is unusual -- he is powerless to change it, but he is not stupid. He knows this about himself.

That settled, he draws Bichen again and inspects the blade. It has never been disarmed from him in that particular way before.

[summerdude]

More gods should be like Lan Wangji, Magnus decides. He -- and Jack -- watch attentively as Lan Wangji inspects Bichen.

Well, Jack floats closer and flirts terribly at Bichen. Magnus just watches Lan Wangji study the blade, wondering what he's looking for.

Oh, wait. He can ask. "What are you looking for?"

[lightbearinglord]

"Any change in Bichen's spiritual energy." The sword appears unharmed, but he would like to be certain after an encounter with an unfamiliar power. Lan Wangji swings it once, a controlled motion, toward the sky, and allows an ice-cold slice of blue sword glare to discharge into the atmosphere.

[summerdude]

Whoaaaaaaa. Magnus isn't willing to swear fealty to any new deities -- as an einherji, he's technically in service to Odin... and then, he supposes, there's also his dad -- but Lan Wangji is so cool and so powerful, in a way that is remarkably unlike any other god Magnus has met before.

"I bet I could learn so much from you," he blurts.