maskormenacelogs | Untamed/MDZS catch-all

[Her head aches, but there seems to be no lasting damage. A quick glance around shows other confused people, chattering animatedly about seeing strange things—none of them seem to mention Miu’s memories in particular, so she suspects only Jingyi saw them. Thank god. It’d be hard enough trying to explain any of it to someone who didn’t see spirits and monsters all the time before here.

Jingyi’s conclusions make Miu grunt a little, too irritated at first to speak.]

It was me. It was— Those were— [She scowls at herself for her own stumbling and speaks again in a slightly vicious tone] They were real. Those were some memories of mine. I don’t know how the hell you got them, but I’m ready to break those stupid glasses and blame them.

Memories?

[Jingyi is standing there, quivering with balked aggression and fear. He does not like strange ghosts at all. Not when the only thing he can do is wait for them to pounce.]

But how did--

[All around them, however, are people reacting to similar things. Not what he'd seen, apparently, but the glasses do seem a likely culprit. That explains how.

But. Miu's memories.]

You carry those around in your head all the time?! Why did I have to see them?!

[He is angry if it is true that they are her memories, and worried for her because they were terrible, and he does not want to run or fight any less now that he knows that he has just experienced something like Empathy against his will. It had felt very real, or real enough to be dangerous.]

How are you not more angry! Or not more sad! Or not more scared!

[He cannot yet put his sword down, can only demand to know what is going on in Miu's head.]

Of course I’m angry! [She snaps at him then, whipping her head up to glare at him] I’m pissed! You think I wanted you to see or know about any of that?! I’ve barely told Hanguang-jun half that stuff!

I’m used to seeing other peoples’ memories, it almost never happens in the reverse! [She eyes his sword and then swats at it recklessly as she climbs to her feet.] Put that away! Who do you think you’re going to stab with it?

Ghosts. What else would I stab?

[But her response has taken him otherwise by surprise, which is enough to knock his flight or fight response down a notch so that he can finally sheath it away without feeling like he is leaving the both of them vulnerable.]

I am not talking about angry at having the memories seen! I am very trustworthy. I am talking about—

[He cuts himself off here because Jingyi is feeling a familiar anger now, not just one born of fear. Because now that he is not in the moment, there are dots starting to connect. He moves into her space, because that is the best way he can think of to make sure she hears him when he drops his volume. This is something that belongs to Miu and he is not entirely an idiot.]

—the fact that horrible people sacrificed you. Was that what that was? You were pulled from a box. No—you called it a reliquary. You. [Were not angry. Were not prepared.] I did not understand. I do not understand. Who were those people? What was the ghost speaking to you about?

[You cant stab ghosts!! She doesn’t say that, but she’s thinking it. At least, you cant stab ghosts where she’s from so its a moot point anyway in her mind.

He moves closer and she hugs herself defensively, rubbing her arms. She gives him a wary look, not sure where he’s going to go with this or take it all. Of course, instead of just letting it all go or forgetting about it he has to ask questions.

They’re perfectly reasonable questions, ones any sane person would ask given all of what he just saw, but—

Miu takes a breath and looks around, before reaching out to take Jingyi’s sleeve.] Come on. Not here.

[She tugs at him to walk with her, but it still takes her a bit of time to figure out where to start.] They sacrificed me, yeah. God, where do I even begin... The mountain was like...a gateway into hell. In order to keep things from...spilling out from it and corrupting and destroying everything, girls with strong spiritual abilities like me would be sacrificed to keep the seals on the mountain strong.

The place is abandoned now, but the spirits there still keep the practice alive to keep the seals. I was stupid and didn’t know and I...got captured when I went on the mountain.

[There is no protest from him as she pulls him away by the sleeve and, for once in his life, he is silent as they walk and she thinks. He is attentive. Focused. He might not have been meant to see her memories, but he cannot unsee them, and they are all the more vivid for their ghostly content.]

How can you be both sacrificed and accidentally captured?

[Because at this point he is more concerned about her than a gateway to hell in some other world. Although, the description she gives is damning to someone like Jingyi who has spent his entire life learning how to combat such things so that he is the front line to protect others from having to make sacrifices.]

And how can those people think that sacrificing people is the proper way to deal with such a thing? That is the worst way!

[Miu huffs a breath and crosses her arms over her chest, hugging herself tightly.] I was captured by the spirits, and they kept up the old rituals and sacrificed me. It’s... Hard to really explain what it was like. It’s not really...

[She rubs a hand of her face and sighs, finally pulling to a stop once there’s a bit of distance between them and the convention.]

When the doorway first appeared and things started to get bad, 5 girls jumped into the lake and drowned themselves, becoming the first to sacrifice themselves. It started the first seals and they just never looked back I guess.

[She looks at him for a moment and then turns away, rubbing her arms again.] Okay let me just... Start from the beginning I guess.

At the top of the mountain there’s this gateway to the underworld. From it there’s this black, evil water called yomi that flows from it. It corrupts everything in its path. It turns spirits evil and twists them up, it kills people if they’re drenched in the water too long. Things like that.

The sacrifices... keep the water from overflowing, but they also act as...sort of filters. The reliquaries filter the yomi water in, and the water that comes out is purified and clean. Every so often a group of girls has to kill themselves again to keep the seals at the very bottom of the mountain from breaking. Those are the ones keeping the yomi from flooding the surrounding area—and maybe beyond that. [She doesn’t really know how far the yomi could reach. Doesn’t want to find out.]

Are you with me so far?

I am with you.

[His agreement is accompanied by an earnest expression of concentration, his brow furrowed as he listens.]

The water. That's why there was so much water everywhere. You were standing in it with all those corpses. Ghosts.

[He shudders when he says 'ghosts.' Though he is trying to match her words to her memories, untangling what had happened from what he himself had experienced while watching them...just. Strange ghosts. Not his favorite.

He eyes her though, and then their surroundings. She is wrapped around herself.]

Are you cold?

[She nods] Mm. In that area, water is considered especially sacred and worshipped like it’s its own deity. I guess in away it’s not wrong...

[Cold? She feels—numb. Her brow furrows slightly and she shrugs.] A little. It’s more just... Trying to comfort myself...I guess. It’s not like I mind talking about it, it’s just—history. [History that she happened to experience firsthand herself but. Whatever.] But it’s...a lot.

Where was I... Oh, yeah. So, the mountain ended up becoming this sacred place and this religion sprung up around it. There were priestesses on the mountain—only ever women. They had an ability called ‘mitori’. It’s... an ability I have too. I use it to exorcise spirits, but its original purpose was... Well. People would come from all around to visit the mountain on pilgrimage. They’d choose a priestess, go up on the mountain with her, and... kill themselves however way they wanted. The priestess’s job was to watch them do it and, using mitori, see into their souls. They’d take the pain of the death from them to experience it instead. They’d take on all the sins and secrets of the dying person so their soul would be cleansed and they could move on.

Most likely... Most likely if they’d still been around during my time, I would’ve been one of them too. [She shrugs as if to say ‘whatever!!’ Nbd, it’s fine it’s all fine.]

[Concern floods him. Both that she is cold, even if only a little, and that she would have been a priestess of this kind. In the abstract, he also worries about these people she speaks of, but much of his education has dealt with deaths of many sorts and there is nothing to fear from a cleansed spirit.]

But that is not a task for someone who does not seek to take it on. Of course it is a lot. All of it is a lot.

[He lets out a frustrated noise. Then starts taking off his outer layer of the robes he had worn tonight to be fancy for the swear-in. At the moment he is glad he did, because the clothes of this world he has been wearing do not always have a jacket.]

[She shakes her head, about to protest that he doesn’t need to use his robe, but... Well. It’s nice? Reluctantly she gives in and accepts it with a soft sigh] The majority of them did it willingly. I’m sure a couple were forced, but from what I know you had to choose to be a pillar—at least, back then.

Anyway, once a priestess... Couldn’t take anymore, [for lack of a better way of explaining it, since she didn’t really know what ‘when their hearts got too full’ would mean] they were put in those reliquaries filled with yomi. The priestesses would be... They weren’t dead, exactly. They were sort of stuck in-between, just... The yomi would make them relive all the deaths they saw, all the pain. The more they suffered, the better. They’d stay like that for... Years, really. As long their will held out, they’d be in that box, neither living nor dead, perfectly preserved. That’s what they did to me, in one of their important shrines. [She wonders if she should feel a little flattered by that, but she doesn’t.]

Once their will gave out, they’d be...dissolved by the water. And another girl would take their place. They did this for— God, who knows how long. Hundreds of years I guess.

Then one day things... Went wrong. A man who went on the mountain to use them got scared. He didn’t want the priestess to know the terrible things he’d done in life, so he killed her to escape. But when he realized that any priestess that looked at him would know, he... massacred them. A few managed to escape to the surrounding villages, but most of them were killed. Bodies thrown in the sacred pools and stuff. That much negative emotion and resentment was too much for the Great Pillar and her ritual failed. The yomi spilled out and only a few seals were able to hold. The place became cursed.

Because there’s no one there anymore willing to sacrifice themselves, sometimes the mountain just...draws in girls who have strong spiritual power. Forces them into boxes and traps them there to keep trying to purify things. It became a rather infamous suicide spot, so people are still breaking into the place and going up there to off themselves. No one really investigates when someone goes missing there anymore because of that... [She shrugs a little and shakes her head, pulling his robe tighter around her shoulders.]

[Jingyi drops his robe over her shoulders with satisfaction. Cold is cold, and the topic that she is telling him about is causing her more than enough discomfort without it. Once it is around her and she keeps speaking, however, he hovers. There is no other word for it, trying to be close but not too close because he does not know what she is feeling and does not want to interrupt her.

He does not care whether or not he upsets someone—he only tells the truth, and the truth should be something that everyone can handle—but he cares now that he will upset Miu as she speaks of her memories, of what she has experienced. Her anger at having him see them when she had before said she would only tell him of them...now that he is giving this thought, her anger makes sense.

Nodding as he follows along with her words, remains as close as he dares.]

I can understand choosing to be a pillar. That is what the ghost woman was speaking of? Being a pillar? [He does not wait for an affirmation.] It is terrible that the priestesses go until they collapse, and then for as long as they can after. For someone to take that upon themselves, or to be forced to do this thing—

[He wants to second-guess another world, because he means "terrible" as full of awe and the deeds of immortals that crush those who take on the mantle. Mythic.]

—but you were--you didn't collapse. The place caught you, because of this man.

[The tragedy of it is that he understands this kind of thing. The faltering will of a single individual can leave a gap through which horrors can enter.]

But you are out. You escaped. But this place. I know that it is in another world, but is it still like that? It did not look like you left after you were pulled free. Did you--did you stay? Or were your memories not in order?

[She glances up at him, at his hovering, and eventually decides she finds it irritating. She reaches out to take his sleeve again and to step closer, so that she can press her forehead to his shoulder and just sort of hide her face away there.

It wasn’t the violation of her memories itself she found infuriating—it was aggravating, but considering how much she did it to others, did she really have a leg to stand on?—but rather it was an anger born of fear. She was worried about what Jingyi might think of her, of her home.]

It’s a bit jumbled up. I was stuck in that reliquary for—a while. I don’t actually know how long. A week, maybe more...? [She shrugs.] Yuri—the other girl—she rescued me. We were both looking for people on the mountain though, so we couldn’t just leave... I went back a few times—to help her, or to...find who I was looking for.

[A pause and she seems to be struggling with what to say about it, her fingers clenching tightly at his robes and shaking slightly.] That’s who... the ghost woman was talking about. The person I was looking for, that I found there. My... My mother. I couldn’t leave the mountain until I found her. And then, I couldn’t leave because I wanted to help Yuri see this through. Trying to end the curse and everything.

[At Miu's taking the initiative to lean against him, Jingyi's arms come up and wrap around her shoulders. He will hug her within an inch of her life if that is what she needs. The hug is not tentative, especially not when he realizes that she is shaking as she speaks.]

It is okay. It is okay.

[A ridiculous reassurance, but he says it anyways because he understands about seeking parents. About mothers and fathers and what happens when they are taken away. He squeezes her shoulders in his embrace, not shy at all in his attempt at comfort.]

Did you end this thing? You and this Yuri? You found your mother?

[He has an ominous feeling even as he asks.]

[There’s a noise of relief and she exhales heavily, winding her arms around him to accept the hug.]

...I found my mother. I don’t know if it’s ended yet though. [Miu closes her eyes, shaking her head.] That last memory you saw—I fought that spirit and opened the reliquary anyway. I found my mother and got her back to Yuri’s place. But pretty soon after that is when I ended up here, so...I don’t know what’s happened. Or will happen. But Yuri... Yuri’s strong. She’ll end this, one way or another...

[She just hopes it’s not the way that requires Yuri to literally throw herself into the arms of death.]

[Jingyi pets Miu's hair. He is concerned, foremost, and layered beneath that is a riot of residual anger at both bigger and smaller injustices. That someone would have desecrated someplace like that of which she speaks. That she had been forced by fate to go through something so horrible.]

I am sorry.

[He is all sympathy. When he had asked before if she had been dead before she arrived--well, he had not forgotten her answer, but now it has context.]

Your friend will figure it out. She got you out, after all. So I do not think you have to worry. And you found your mother!

[That has to be a silver lining! And Miu is here, which Jingyi thinks is far preferable to half-drowning in demon water.]

And I am sorry that your memories--that I saw them when you did not want me to.

Not your fault. [None of it was, from the memories being seen to what had happened within them. There was nothing to be sorry for.

But his embrace is nice and the hand soothingly petting her hair even better, so she closes her eyes and lets herself relax against him.] But...Thank you.

[Miu goes quiet for a moment and then sighs a little] There’s...a little more. What the woman called me—A Shadowborn... It’s... [It’s something she should tell him about, simply because avoiding it in the aftermath seems too much like, well, lying.]

Yomiko. ‘Child of the underworld’ or..’child of the yomi.’ It means that... my mother was a living woman, but my father was... a spirit. I was born ‘half-dead’. [Half-jokingly she adds:] People are supposed to be balanced with yin and yang energy or something, right? I’m pretty sure I’m entirely pure yin.

But... It does mean I’m something not...entirely human, I guess. I don’t know. There isn’t a lot of information on it—we’re extremely rare.

[He doesn't stop petting her, but he does pet her a little confusedly for a moment. Out of his mouth pops the nonsense:]

That is okay, I have a lot of yang energy.

[Because, look, he has had to sit through many theory classes. He even took notes. The idea of half-dead sends a spike of alarm through him, though.

He pulls away, but only to put his hands on her shoulders and to peer into her face, searching for what, he has no idea. Ghost traits? Expressions? He has not planned that far ahead. Her shoulders are warm under his hands, so it seems to him that she is less ghost than she is human.]

You look mostly alive. It is not going to make you die in some strange way, is it? [Because honestly that is what is important here.]

[That makes her laugh at least and she smiles at him even as he pulls away to examine her. There’s no outward show of her half-ghost nature at least, and she shakes her head.]

No. At least, I don’t think so. There’s not a lot of research on this sort of thing? But... It... Cut my mother’s life really short. It took a lot out of her to bring me into the world. All I know is my spiritual power is off the charts and her life was shortened.

[Which she suspects is why she left, in part. Miu sort of gets it, but it doesn’t make her like it any more.]

[Jingyi rubs his thumbs across the fabric of the robe he'd loaned her, along the bones in her shoulders, brow furrowed in concentration as he listens with an increasing desire to tuck her under his arm and take off with her, even though they are about as far as they both can get from the mountain that has caused all of her problems.]

Her life, not yours. And if you have that much spiritual power, and Hanguang-Jun is teaching you, then you are likely to live a very long time.

[Golden cores would do that. Oh, but...]

Ah. You know, you probably have already found the thing that would make you die in a strange way.

[She’s not sure who he has more faith in here with that—Lang Wangji, or herself. The corner of her mouth twitches into a slight smile, but it quickly turns into a frown of confusion.]

What? I have?

[He blinks at her. When he speaks, he sounds very serious.]

I do not know what else you would call being trapped into a mountain full of demon water and almost dissolved? Do you really want to find something more than that? That is a very strange way for being half-ghost to kill you.

Oh yeah, that. [She sort of laughs a little, shaking her head.]

Well... Hopefully Yuri can break the curse. I won’t have to worry about the creepy demon water anymore.

[Miu shakes her head again and then leans into him once more, taking a breath.]

...Even if I don’t like that someone saw those memories... I’m glad it was you, at least. You’re... I like you, at least...

Your friend will. [He gives her a decisive nod. He has declared it to be so.] You should never have to worry about creepy demon water.

[He pats her hair again and tucks his chin against her. He will keep her like this as long as she wants to be kept like this.]

Good, I like you too. I do not know what I would think about sharing memories if--

[He cuts himself off, blinks, and what she said several minutes ago finally sinks in. He does not push her away, but he does ask:]

What do you mean that you are used to seeing other people's memories?

[She can feel it before he even says it, knows that her attempt to distract him from all of that hasn’t happened. It feels like she almost got off scot-free and then...

Miu winces a little, fingers curling into his robes.]

...That’s how I exorcise spirits. When I touch them, I...basically I relive their deaths. I experience everything they did—everything they thought, saw...Felt. I take the pain of their death from them, all their sins and secrets and stuff like that, and it lets the soul move on.

[Miu pauses, hesitates, and then adds reluctantly.] I can do the same thing to the living sometimes too. If I want to.

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Cw: vague mentions of suicide in this thread

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