Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The Shacking Prison stands as formidable as ever, a cold gray-blue cut stone monolith that sits in a jarringly dark juxtaposition to the rest of the Xianzhou Luofu. The bulk of it is thankfully covered by the Scalegorge Waterscape, but its entrance still looms high overhead above land. Its heavy metal doors stand opened slightly like the parted lips of a bestial and archaic maw, ready to swallow Dan Heng whole once again. 

Well— again is a slight misspeak, he thinks to himself with no small amount of trepidation, standing before the ornate and rusted entryway. His arms sit firmly crossed over his chest in a vain attempt to block out the whips of wind coming from the sea. ‘Again’ would imply that it was Dan Heng who was the one sentenced here, amongst the frigid waves. No, Imbibitor Lunae had held that dubious honor. The room that imprisoned him still festers in the deepest recesses of the prison, he’s sure. But very few know that that room stands empty, an elegy to the man—the monster—that once resided within.

His stomach neatly ties itself into a complicated knot. He runs too hot and too cold all over alongside the thick pit in his gut; they’re the symptoms of a strange malady that’s afflicted him nonstop for the past few days, starting right around when he received a request to return to the Luofu from the general himself. It’s easy to chalk the feelings up to nerves, considering what he’ll be facing within the depths below, but there’s an anxious electricity coursing through his veins alongside the symptoms that has been unsettling him. They must be vestiges of genetic memory. The reincarnation was supposed to sever him neatly in two from past to present and yet the days of old cling to him with a nearly impossible assiduousness. Dan Feng, ever the fool, breaking more things than he healed—Imbibitor Lunae’s cursed touch poisoning the land around him. 

This time, that poison seems to be turned inward. Dan Heng exhales carefully, bracing himself against the cold. He’s been so sensitive lately as well, on top of everything–the previous visits here had not been nearly this chilly. Anxiety must be devouring him from the inside out if he’s taking consternation from everything so easily.

“I hope you aren’t afraid,” Jing Yuan says from out of nowhere, causing Dan Heng nearly to jump out of his skin as he whirls around.

The general regards him with a fond bemusement, cutting an imposing figure against the grey skyline beyond. He stands a few feet away, hands loosely clasped behind his back. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” he says gently, as goosebumps prickle along the lines of Dan Heng’s skin, “and so I do apologize. I merely wished to speak with you before you entered the prison. A…debriefment, of sorts.” His eyes ooze a tender liquid gold as his gaze flicks down and up his figure, and then bounce back over to the prison waiting behind him. “And also to make sure you didn’t think I was tricking you back into captivity .”

“I can’t say that I thought that,” Dan Heng responds truthfully, relaxing back into his crossed arm stance. The gifted Jade Abacus remains as a statement of trust and kinship between allies. They are friends—were friends, too, in a different life, although the shape of this camaraderie is different by dint of himself being an entirely new entity. “I figured you’d just come and arrest me if that were the case.”

Jing Yuan shakes his head magnanimously, silvered hair falling gracefully into his eyes. “Arrest a Trailblazer?” He asks stoically, the only indication that he’s teasing being the glimmer of humor in the faint twitch of his lip. “After you’ve all put your lives on the line to save the Xianzhou Alliance? I’d become a pariah. I’d be forced into retirement instead of sinking into it gracefully. Fu Xuan would kill me herself if I made that kind of mess, since she’d be the one cleaning it up.”

The pit in his stomach loosens slightly with the humor, and he allows a small smile of his own to slip easily onto his face. “I’d use the Jade Abacus as revenge,” he responds, and Jing Yuan’s face breaks out into a full-blown grin, “and summon you to help me escape.”

Jing Yuan laughs heartily, a warming sound that briefly distracts from the disquietude. He closes the distance between the two of them and stands next to Dan Heng facing the prison, clapping a broad and calloused hand onto his shoulder. He’s warm. He steals a little closer to the general as he is released, surreptitiously leaching as much heat as he can. “It really is good to see you, my friend,” the general says with an affectionate earnestness, his expression changing from joviality to a soft and strange tenderness. “And I cannot begin to explain how much this means to me that you would…come back, so to speak. Not…the you as you are, but…”

His stomach lurches once more, and he idly reaches down to press a palm against it as if to soothe himself. “I understand,” Dan Heng responds, a little more clipped than he’d intended. “I am just glad that you allowed me back on the Xianzhou Luofu alone. As myself,” he clarifies, looking up at the general, measuring his reaction carefully and attempting to find the words to placate both of them, “and…no one else. I appreciate that you trust me with this matter. But I can’t exactly understand why I’m here at all. He wants me dead for my predecessor’s transgressions. Why would he ask to speak with me?”

Jing Yuan’s gentle expression steels with duty. “It’s rare enough for him to ask for anything,” he recites. “I have offered him counsel time and time again, if only to gauge his mental state, and have been rebuffed a thousand different ways. Any other would retreat and allow him to rot beneath the sea, letting the mara consume what’s left of his fragmented mind…but I cannot deny the fondness and sentimentality that still vexes me.” His eyes grow cold, the shadow of a haunted thought flitting by as he stares through Dan Heng and at something far in the past. “This… Blade is cold and indifferent. He endeavors only to be a weapon for a cause he knows little about, and cares even less for. But he wears the face of a very dear friend indeed.”

Dan Heng shudders, despite himself. The Blade is a weapon, finely tuned and taut like a notched arrow. He had nearly been killed by him—it—the last time they had met, and it forced his transformation far before he was mentally prepared to face such a thing. The candlewicked madness within his gaze haunts him still, an inherited guilt and ancestral fear tainting the weapon that hunts him down. “I thought he still wanted me dead, though,” he says again, and accidentally bumps his shoulder into the general as he speaks. It’s like lightning courses through him as soon as they make contact; Dan Heng all but flinches away as soon as he touches him. How strange of him. He's never balked so blatantly at touch.

The general seems to take no issue, at least, if he even noticed. “Blade seems to have reconciled with the fact that you are no longer the Vidyadhara High Elder…at least for now. I doubt he’s truly given up his desire to have you ‘pay the price’ he speaks of. Above all, though, we need the information he withholds. He was able to tell me that he is the only Stellaron Hunter currently aboard the Luofu…but whether that is the truth or not remains to be seen.” Jing Yuan’s jaw tightens, imperceptibly, as a large wave splashes loudly against the bottom of the stretch of land they stand upon. “Torture will, understandably, not work; not like I am planning that from the get-go, but if another mara plague were to cross the city due to an outsider’s intervention, drastic measures would need be taken. When asked further about his motivations or reasons for being on the Luofu, however…he had merely said he would only confess to you.”

“It feels like a trap,” Dan Heng says, and Jing Yuan nods once in response. “What can I do to protect myself?

As if on cue, they both begin to close the distance between them and the giant doors. “You’ll keep your weapon on you,” Jing Yuan explains as he walks, “Blade is currently chained up for obvious reasons, so I’m not expecting much…but remain guarded, all the same. The Star Rail is, of course, aware of your current whereabouts and are on standby in case you need backup. You will have temporary jurisdiction over the Cloud Knights of the Luofu—from the moment that you enter to the moment that you leave, you will be able to call upon them freely for backup. The Ten Lord’s commission and the various jailers associated with them are also nearby, in case we have a prison break or an escape attempt.”

As he speaks they cross the enormous threshold, finally and fully entering the prison. It is a twisting, sprawling dungeon, cell upon cell lining the slow and almost maddening curve of the great stairs downward. They are instantly dwarfed by the sheer size of the place, cavernous and vastly empty, lined with row after row of unyielding steel doors. Cloud Knights stand at attention at every corner. The oubliettes on this floor are, fortunately, quiet; in the distance, however, screams and yells of chagrined prisoners reverberate infrequently. “Most of all,” the general continues as they begin to descend down into the bowels of the ship, “you will have me. I will be at your beck and call for the length of time you remain on the Luofu.”

They seem to have thought of everything. Dan Heng merely nods in silent agreement as they walk down the curve of the stairs, their footsteps echoing across the colossal space. He’ll be safe, for the most part. He can defend himself and he’ll have the guards and the Ten Lord’s commission at his beck and call. It doesn’t stop him from feeling like he’s entered a foreboding zoo just to walk blindly into the tiger pit covered head to toe in raw meat, though. That foreign anxiousness does not abate, either—it twists and turns in his stomach like a live current running the length of a wire. 

They remain silent until they reach a floor far beneath the waves and yet not quite at the bottom. Jing Yuan leads him off the stairwell and down a long, silent corridor. There seem to be very few cages upon this level. They pass a few doors unmanned, with thick barred windows over the doors themselves, but as Dan Heng steals several peeks into them upon passing, the rooms themselves all are empty. 

“I figured it would be best if he were out of the way, so to speak,” Jing Yuan explains as Dan Heng looks into another empty room. “He is an old friend, but a weapon as well. I am not entirely certain what he is capable of…so I have him cordoned off into a separate chamber.”

They turn a corner and Dan Heng immediately steps into a shallow sea-water puddle. It is very dark in this area; there are a few torches dotting the walls here and casting the area in an eerie flickering red-and-orange glow. Puddles of water dot the deeper crevasses between the rocky floor. Two Cloud Knights stand shoulder-to-shoulder before a large arched door made of heavy metal. There is no window upon this one, but there is a severe looking latch keeping the door closed. Water and age have discolored it in several places and its metal surface is mottled with the red of rust and the blue of oxidation. At their approach, both Cloud Knights snap up to full attention, clicking the handles of their glaives again the floor dutifully in perfect synchronization. “General,” one greets affably, “the prisoner has been chained up for interrogation as requested.”

“Very good,” Jing Yuan replies. “Thank you both.”

They salute in tandem before beginning to march back the way they came.

“What…?” Dan Heng asks, watching the guards retreat down the corridor, turning the corner and disappearing from sight with a fading clanking of metal. “I thought I had the Cloud Knights—”

“You do,” Jing Yuan assures him with a gentle smile, his hand coming down upon Dan Heng’s shoulder once more. “And everything I’ve told you before entering. However…I will be the one on the immediate other side of the door.” He tilts his chin toward the aforementioned door, gentle gaze hardening once more with obligation. “I trust the knights, of course…but given the circumstances, I would much rather be the one on call. I think it would offer both of us a little reprieve, don’t you think?”

Dan Heng nods once again, focusing his gaze on the general’s hand upon his shoulder. Physical touch has always been an untoward concept for him, but the general is…different. His hand upon his shoulder both reassures him and stokes that strange fire in his body once again, but he tries not to flinch away as he had before. They are…friends. He shouldn’t balk from the touch of a friend—but then again, his stomach doesn’t do flips when he brushes up against March 7th or obligatorily returns Caelus’ high fives. Jing Yuan is extremely warm against the damp climate of the prison. He must just be cold. That’s all.

It certainly doesn’t have anything to do with how handsome and regal the man is, like a dashing hero out of those trashy novels March 7th peruses between jumps. Dan Heng bites the inside of his cheek in reprimand as soon as his head makes the comparison, a blotchy heat growing across his cheeks and nose despite the chill. What is he thinking? What is wrong with him, lately? He’s never had thoughts like these. Of course he’s noticed things like Jing Yuan’s attractiveness, but it’s never caused a distraction and it’s certainly never ever made him blush. “It would,” he says after a quick throat clear, swallowing hard as if attempting to take the foreign thoughts out of his head along with it. “Thank you, General.”

Jing Yuan’s brow twitches, and his hand raises unexpectedly, middle finger pressing against Dan Heng’s chin and tilting his face up once more. “Dan Heng,” he says in a sotto voice, eyes lidded with unabashed affection and concern once more, “are you alright? You seem…distracted.”

Dan Heng jerks away in full once again, taking a deep breath to steel himself. His hand grips the hilt of Cloud Piercer behind him on reflex, like his body is working overtime to remind his traitorous mind of exactly why he came back. “Yes, General,” he addresses their feet, “I’m fine. Sorry. Just…nerves, I suppose. I appreciate all you’ve done. Please…open the door.”

After a long, heavy moment, the General’s feet move and Jing Yuan crosses the small space to the door, unlatching it in one smooth movement. The noise cracks across the emptiness like a gunshot, its dense weight thudding into the opposite side of the lock. “I will give you some time,” he says, turning back toward Dan Heng once more, expression carefully unreadable, “but if you need anything, shout. I will hear you through the door, and I will be there. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Dan Heng replies automatically. The sudden motion has woken him up a little; the anxiety remains but he’s able to draw himself up once more, teeth setting together hard. Good—he’s still capable of focus. The malady can be left behind and he’ll think about it later once he’s safe on the Star Rail. The General opens the door and it swings out toward him, just enough for Dan Heng to steal into its dark depths, a fish sliding into the maw of a beast.

As soon as both feet enter the room entirely the door closes behind him with an audible and heavy ‘thud’.

The mara hanging within the air is so palpable that Dan Heng can taste it on his tongue when he inhales. The thick affliction hangs heady and alien within the cell, smothering him in its cloying sweetness. It hits him like a brick wall. He reaches up before he can stop himself, clamping his hand over his mouth as his body’s immediate response is to begin to hack it out. There’s an overbloom to it, like fruit so ripe that it’s begun to mold—like the cloying decay of a corpse left under a sweltering sun. But there’s something metallic too, an unmistakable human salt to the heat in the air that mingles with the salt of the sea. It is the ferrous tang of blood. Is he bleeding? Or is the mara so intrinsically wound into Blade’s system that it carries the scent of his ichor wherever he goes?

It would lend credence to the other’s reputation as a specter of death. The smell of blood on the air—the stench of corpses and rot heralding in the blade as it leaves bodies where it is swung.

The room before him is long and rectangular, lit only by a very small glass window that casts the cell within a dim green-gray shifting glow, the illumination shaped by the surface of the ocean. He can hear the gentle but insistent lapping of waves against the thick prison walls a thousand yards above. The far end of the cell encroaches toward darkness, but there’s just enough light from the afternoon to see the long, thick chains growing out of walls like the tendrils of a freezing, clanking beast. There’s many, too many to count; they all hang languid and heavy down, and Dan Heng follows them with his eyes as his coughs begin to subside, tears watering his vision.

They split off into two large groupings near the ground which are woven and intricately melded into two enormous cuffs, each encompassing one of Blade’s pale wrists. His strong arms are lifted and stretched up in a ‘y’ shape by these bundles of chains, but he himself remains kneeling upon the cold ground between them, head resting on his chest as if he is asleep. His shirt has been removed but the myriad of bandages remain, wrapped haphazardly across the length of his torso. The strips of skin visible between each long triangle caused by the shape of the bandages is pale and unblemished. No doubt this is a symptom of the mara, the toxic influence of longevity devouring any disease or wound that his body incurs through its forced slog into the endless future. His long hair flows down and around him, tumbling around his shoulders before pooling on the ground beneath him like an inky blot, like blood in the darkness.

Dan Heng swallows, and winces as he feels the slick mara coating his tongue travel down his throat. There’s another scent buried deep under the mara and blood, something almost musky and inherently wild, and he feels his cheeks flush as soon as he takes notice. He opts to cross his arms over his chest again, pressing his back against the cool metal of the door. Cloud Piercer juts into the bone of his back as if reminding him exactly who crafted its cold metal handle and almost certainly marking the back of his ribs with the heavy outline of its bulk. He clears his throat and it clangs jarringly around the heavy silence of the room.

The only notion that Blade is still alive (like he wouldn’t be, by some wretched miracle) is the gentle in and out the chains follow, rattling ever-so-slightly with his deep and easy breathing. He does not respond—he does not look up. His face remains downturned and unseeable. Could he be asleep?

Dan Heng takes a few steps into the room, footsteps near-soundless against the stone floor. He really shouldn’t be getting so close, but he’s curious. There’s an archaic toxicity between the two of them; Blade threatens his newfound family, and demands him to slip into the skin of a stranger if only to die. Blade thinks of him the target of all rage and ire within his own too-long life. Blade would tear his body asunder if he could, wrapping strong pale fingers about his throat and choking him into nonexistence once more, no longer saved by the blessings of the Vidyadhara. 

He isn’t wrong, at least, in his hate—just at its target. 

“This,” Blade says suddenly, his voice a rumbling slice across the thick tension of the room, “is quite the interrogation method, Imbibitor Lunae.”

He doesn’t bother raising his head. His tone is deep and nearly unreadable, a certain near-apathy keeping his words carefully colorless. But he does exhale quickly, and if he were literally anyone else in the known universe it would have been read as a laugh. 

Dan Heng’s teeth worry the corners of his mouth without thinking. “You’re the one that called this interrogation ,” he points out, that pit in his gut twisting and churning with anxiety and fear. “And who even says it's an interrogation, anyways? Sounds to me like you were looking to confess.”

Blade makes that strange huffing noise once more. This time it’s strong enough to jostle the chains that hold him, a thousand quiet clanks suddenly bouncing off the walls and Dan Heng takes a step back, hand desperately twitching toward his polearm. “I bear no true confession,” he says, and this time it's punctuated by a nearly inaudible sigh. “The general wanted to know why I am here, and my reason is the same as it was at our previous…meeting.” There’s a frosty bite to his words and Dan Heng can almost picture the inane grin decorating the cut of his cheeks. “Of five people, three must pay the price.”

“Great,” Dan Heng says coldly, surprised at his own hostility. “You got captured in your attempts to hunt me down. How do you plan to kill me with your hands chained up?”

Blade shrugs, head still hanging low upon his chest, and the room echoes with a cacophony of clanking chains. “I’ll find a way,” he promises, a low growl crawling from his throat. “If not now, and here…then later.”

It’s almost laughable. Hundreds of denizens and multiple factions aware of this beast’s interference once again with the Luofu, currently on stand-by to discover if he plans to unleash another devastation event upon the flagship, or if he has even worse machinations planned—and he doesn’t. Of course he doesn’t. He’s not a master tactician, scheming wildly behind the scenes. No, he is a man plagued by the ghosts he chases, driven by a seven-hundred year bloodlust that will lead him to the ends of the universe and back again if need be. He’s a blade and he swings where he’s pointed. Should they really be surprised, at this point? “So you called me here to attempt to kill me once more?”

“They will need to release me soon enough,” Blade says dismissively. “Elio has foreseen it. The punishment can resume, at that point.”

Annoying, to put it mildly. “I’ll be sure to give the General your regards,” Dan Heng responds just as scornfully, turning fully to the door. Strange—he should be filled with relief over departing. A blessedly short visit with the Devil, and yet his insides continue to twist themselves into maddening knots. He shivers, despite himself, as he begins to reach for the thick lock upon the door. It must be the remnants of his anxiety. He’ll return to the Star Rail and have some tea to calm himself, and then return to work.

“You do still have your surprises, I suppose. I didn’t expect you to come to see me while you suffer your affliction ,” Blade says, and Dan Heng freezes with his hand on the metal latch.

Affliction? Dan Heng turns slowly. There’s no way he’d be able to pick up on a common cold, or whatever he’s coming down with. Blade still hasn’t moved from his almost penitent position but the mara seems to flex in the air, like lungs inflating. He tilts his head slowly to the side. A ‘crack’ of vertebrae bounces around the room, repeated over and over against the hollow between the stones. Goosebumps crawl down Dan Heng’s arms as if in response and he shoves his hands even more firmly underneath his armpits, glaring in what he hopes is an appropriately imposing way. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he responds thinly. 

Blade’s head bobs up and down upon his chest, and it takes Dan Heng a moment before he realizes he’s nodding almost sagely. “You cannot be so foolish to think that I’d help you,” he continues, as if Dan Heng hadn’t spoken at all, a thoughtful tinge coloring his indifference. “Bad timing, then…after all, it’s doubtful that something like this would be a part of the design.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Dan Heng says again, but there’s something about his words that trickles a strange hint of remembrance through him. He’s gotten relatively good at deciphering between his own knowledge of himself and Dan Feng’s, and which ideas that come to him are arcane knowledge from a High Elder or just learned experience as a Trailblazer. This…triggers something in-between. He thinks of the past few days, and the strange shivers and sensitivity he’d been experiencing, alongside the anxiety and the gnawing pit in his stomach like a maw upturned wide. Such feelings are familiar to him in a muted way, like something he forgot some time ago, but…if he was suffering an affliction like a cold or an illness he’d have other symptoms, right? And what would that have to do with Blade helping him? “I am in perfect health.”

Blade scoffs and it sounds like a knife dragging on ice. “Surely,” he deadpans, but there’s a mockery underneath that makes Dan Heng’s blood boil. “I see the way you hold yourself. You came back to the Luofu for help , then, didn’t you?”

He bristles, despite himself, hands balling into fists by his ribs. “I don’t need your help ,” he snaps back tetchily, jaw clenching tight enough to strain the tendons, mild pain shooting through his cheeks. “I came for the General. Not you.”

It’s like he’s flipped a violent switch. Blade’s head snaps up inhumanly fast, and Dan Heng’s body moves on reflex to jerk backwards. He lands hard against the door and falls with a quiet ‘oomph’, feet sliding out beneath him in the saltwater puddles below. Cloud Piercer makes an embarrassingly loud clanking noise as it hits the door, lighting the room once more with a cacophony of noise. 

It’s not just the unexpected motion that startles him so. Blade’s face is alight with a foreign rage, bright candlewick eyes blooming with a thunderous fury. His pale mouth is a thin, taut line, and his sable brows shoot up high on his forehead as if he is in disbelief. His bangs create a perfect curtained opening to the pure and unabashed ire that now coats the pale sharpness of his mien. “You came for the General ?” He asks with a snarl, low and hungry in his throat, the words stabbing the air and curling with miasmic hate. “ Why ? Why him?”

This conversation makes no sense. “Because he asked me to…?” Dan Heng responds quietly, although he cannot help the lilt of a question at the end of the sentence. Why would that matter? Of course the General would have invited him onto the Luofu—none other had the requisite clearance to welcome an old foe. “Why wouldn’t he?”

Blade’s hands twitch like he reaches for a nonexistent weapon, and the bolts holding the chains into the wall creak in ominous response. Dan Heng lets Cloud Piercer sit snugly in the meat of his palm as he stands, using it to help him rise from his ungainly position upon the ground. “Of course he asked you to,” he continues, muttering to himself as Dan Heng stalks the floor and presses the sharp edge of the spear against Blade’s jugular. He barely takes notice, eyes flickering like flames with that foreign rage. “Of course he’d do something like that. He was obsessed in his youth—disgusting about it. Blatant and troublesome. Of course he’d jump at the chance to finally… no . Leave. ” His eyes narrow, slightly, chin jutting forward with an almost youthful annoyance. It’s the most emotion that Dan Heng has seen cross the Blade’s face and it’s more jarring than the sudden anger. “ Leave the Luofu. Take your affliction elsewhere. Go back to the Star Rail.”

“I have no idea,” Dan Heng snaps, unable to stop his own annoyance from bubbling up and over like a pot too long on the stove, enunciating every word carefully as he presses the cool jade-colored metal to the elegant length of Blade’s throat, “what you are talking about. I carry no affliction. I am fine.”

At the word ‘fine’, his wrist twitches without his active participation, and Cloud Piercer draws a thin red line into the side of Blade’s neck. Crimson trickles out in a small bead and oozes down toward his collarbone.

It’s not normal. He knows it’s not normal—he prides himself on his patience and his level-headedness, and this current exasperation is not his own. It feels like someone else has donned his skin, someone with a temper more prone to snapping under pressure; someone who would draw blood from a chained enemy without even thinking twice or being able to stop themselves. But as soon as the ichor bleeds from his cut, delicious red shining rubies in the dull light, he suddenly feels light-headed and near-woozy. Due to the influence of the mara, the wound seals itself immediately, but that thin red line remains adorning Blade’s throat and Dan Heng almost wants to lean forward and take the skin tainted by crimson into his mouth and suck it clean, savor the taste of the metallic tang against the salt of Blade’s sweat—

He pulls away, clipping Cloud Piercer to his back again in a nearly unbalanced motion. “I am fine,” he says again, although he can hear the unsteady lilt to his tone. He shakes his head like it’s filled with water, mind dark and murky with thoughts he dare not give name to. Maybe he really is afflicted, although by what he has no clue. Sleep deprivation, maybe? He’d been staying up much later than usual working and archiving documents for the Star Rail. But the saliva pooling in his mouth from his untoward desire is a new one. No doubt there’s information on the Star Rail about some similar illness and he can discover exactly what is wrong with him. “I’ll let the General know that you’re just here to kill me, and they can process you accordingly—”

“You really have no idea,” Blade interrupts him flatly. The rage has melted from his expression, fire-pit eyes now holding a cold and careful scrutiny. If he’s taken any offense to the attempted throat-slitting, he does not show it upon his face. “You’re…referring, then, to Jing Yuan asking you here at my behest?”

“What else would I be referring to?” Dan Heng snips back, addressing anything but Blade, crossing his arms tightly over his chest once more. It does not help ground him in any meaningful way. He feels truly untethered, scattered mind attempting to reorient himself back into responsibility. Just what was that…flight of fancy? He wanted to lick Blade’s blood off his body? That’s…that’s insane. “Your request didn’t go unheard. The General asked me to come, in order to figure out why you were here. I suppose he had hoped the Stellaron Hunters had some plan and that I could get it out of you.”

“When was the last time you transformed?” Blade asks, ignoring his diatribe. “Into…your Vidyadhara form.”

Dan Heng shrugs toward the cold stone wall. “Does that matter? What, would that make it easier to kill me?”

“You are afflicted by something that afflicted you…before,” Blade explains almost clumsily, pausing as if attempting to find the words. His tone is tight, nearly chagrined, and he shifts almost uncomfortably upon his knees. “Long before. The…Cloud Quintet. When you were…when we were…it’s a Vidyadhara…” He sighs, suddenly penchant, and turns his own head, staring moodily at the wall to the left of Dan Heng. “I shouldn’t be the one explaining this to you. You know more about the Vidyadhara than I ever could. If it is something you have forgotten, then you simply will need to figure it out for yourself.”

A sharp pang of aggravation shoots up Dan Heng’s spine. “If there is information you hold about my past,” he says hotly, and Blade’s candlewick eyes flick back to his face before darting off into the distance once more, “something that could be afflicting me as a Vidyadhara, then name it. I don’t care for this…beating around the bush. If it’s sickness, then I’ve fought those off before in human form. I have been anxious as of late, certainly, but—”

“You run a fever,” Blade interrupts him once again, voice stony and clinical, “which you try to staunch in vain. You are anxious, and you are testy. No doubt you’re also fighting off…other…symptoms.” His sable brow twitches downwards, jaw setting into a severe clench. His long fingers wrap around the chains attached to the cuffs and hold them loosely, as if he’s trying to find something to do with the strange tension and energy permeating the cell. He glares daggers into the set of bricks inlaid into the wall, a lock of hair tumbling down his shoulder as he shakes his head quickly. “Sensitivity. Light-headedness. It is not my place to tell you, nor do I care to.”

He shouldn’t know these things off-hand. He hides something, and it’s an ominous enough ‘something’ to fully unsettle him, practically trembling with the weird energy and the cold. “Then I’ll go ask the general,” Dan Heng says firmly. “He is a friend to me. He will tell me what ails me and offer me the help and knowledge that you…decide to withhold.”

Blade’s response is a resounding, “ Don’t ,” a guttural hiss that slices through the thick tension like a heavy knife. His whole body tenses, a jungle cat ready to pounce, hands closing into near-shaking fists. “ Don’t consult him. Just leave the Luofu. Your Star Rail must have information on the…cycles.”

Cycles? It sounds familiar, but not enough to truly ring a bell. His reincarnation had left him scrambling to escape his past life, desperate to avoid any connotation with Imbibitor Lunae—he does not remember much of the Vidyadhara’s life cycles. The majority of his knowledge on his heritage is their reincarnations and not the circumstances of the life they lead. Clearly Blade does, though. No doubt a vestige of his time spent around Dan Feng. “That’s your choice,” he sighs, teeth worrying the inner corner of his mouth as he stares down at Blade. The man’s chest moves erratically, as if he is fighting to steady his breath. “Either you tell me, or the general does. I don’t want to play these games.”

There is a long, quiet moment. Blade’s quiet breathing is ragged, and Dan Heng’s stomach practices joining a local circus with all its twists and flips. Water drips down in a ceaseless tempo. Far above, wave after wave crashes into the chilled stones.

“Then transform,” Blade says finally, with an unsteady tremor in his voice. It’s fraught with meaning—a meaning Dan Heng doesn’t fully understand, and the emotion of it jerks his guts once more like a giant hand is wreaking havoc on his innards. He returns his candlewick gaze fully to him with an extremely slow turn of his head, amber and crimson dancing with a menacing determination. His lips part in a feral smirk, eyes growing wide and round once more, reminiscent of the mara madness that taints his bones. “Transform. You will know. You will know who can truly help you, when you are so…afflicted.”

It feels like a dare. Dan Heng absolutely loathes stooping to those, especially one from Blade, but he wants the answers to whatever the other man holds over his head more than he can put into words. He closes his eyes and sighs before mentally reaching inward, stretching out his psyche toward an ancient part of himself. He melts into the form as easily as putting on a coat; he feels the stretch of his skin accommodate the few remaining patterned scales across his lower back and legs, the push of his horns up through his scalp, the unfold of his hair tumbling down his back. 

As soon as the changes settle into his body he realizes that something is terribly wrong.

Immediately, his knees give out underneath him and he collapses in an ungainly heap, hands crashing down to the frigid floor and barely stopping himself from face-planting into the stones. Cloud Piercer pops off his spine and clatters noisily toward the far wall, coming to a heavy stop in the corner. The world blurs into a dim haze haloed by the green-gray light of the cell. The heat that had gently kissed his brow before now careens through him like a river with a breached dam, boiling floodwaters coursing madly through his blood and flushing his skin. Everything feels like lightning; the robes adorning his body, his hair brushing the tops of his exposed shoulders and upper arms, even the relief of the cool rocks below shoot strange sparks through him. His breath catches in his throat and his lungs heave like the act itself is nearly impossible. The haze clouding his mind seems to fully solidify into an altered mind-state, thoughts slow like syrup. 

And, worst of all, the knot in his stomach has grown into something worse. Something thick and heavy sits in the pit of his gut, slowly unfurling malignant petals across his nervous system. Saliva pools into his mouth once more and he gags, a thin trickle of spit dripping from his lip and landing with a quiet ‘plip’ next to his shaking hands still propping himself up. The ball in his core is nestled perfectly between his stomach and his pelvis, tense and taut and growing .

It’s not anxiety, he realizes with an embarrassed horror as another intoxicating wave of the ‘affliction’ rolls over him like a sticky tongue. He can feel it in the seat of his undergarments; slick builds up hot and wet and unfortunately needy between his thighs, and his hips jerk involuntarily as soon as he takes notice.

It’s his heat.

“This…” he splutters into the stones, heaving out another gasp as he shifts in such a way that shoots pleasant electricity through his pelvis and the base of his spine, “isn’t…ah.”

Remembrance crashes through the wave of lust and nausea. His heat. How could he have forgotten? No, no—he didn’t forget. He had disregarded it as a possibility because it shouldn’t be happening to him at all. He’s reincarnated fully into an entirely new person, and he remains in his human form every single day of his life. Base and banal desires of the Vidyadhara should not consume him so violently. Scientifically, how does it even work? Why would his draconic reproductive cycles bleed over into his human one? He had been keeping an eye on his own periods and cycles and he had handled them as a human would, with no issues or remaining vestiges of Vidyadhara influence over them. It’s an anomaly at best and a huge inconvenience, one that is impossible to staunch or hide when in Vidyadhara form.

Blade is, mercifully, silent as he breaths raspy breath after breath, head hanging low and swimming vision firmly affixed to the grey uneven slabs beneath. He feels a blush razing its way up his chest and cheeks. What an awful position to be in now; entirely at the whims of biological urges before someone who wants him dead. He shouldn’t have taken the ‘challenge’ or allowed Blade to goad him into such a situation. He needs to get out of here and contact the Star Rail, and have them lock him within his room for the next few days until the worst of it passes. The best thing he can do is wait it out. Alone.

He gathers himself as best as he can and begins to say, “I’m going now.”

What instead comes out is a half-broken keen and he instantly slaps his hand over his mouth, eyes bulging so wide that it feels like they are about to fall out of his head. The mortification is almost as overwhelming as the budding desire, the ignominy of the situation looming large over him and casting him entirely within its shadow. No, no, that makes it worse! He’ll practically have to drag himself to the door and pray the general knows some sort of time-forgotten cure to the affliction, or that he can contact the Vidyadhara on his behalf and obtain at least some tea or herbs that can help quell the worst of the symptoms.

“Look at you,” Blade sneers after a long moment. Dan Heng doesn’t even bother responding—he coughs again as if attempting to exhale the wave of biological desire and only succeeds in expelling more spit, a long thin line glittering in the low light as it reaches toward the floor from his lip. “Look at you, Imbibitor Lunae. A slave to your biological urges. Stuck in the thrall of your desire for knowledge and answers. Pathetic.”

But there’s a new softness to his tone—or at least as soft as the guttural growl of his voice can become—and Dan Heng looks up through the newest pooling of tears in the corners of his eyes.

Blade is leaning forward, barely held back by the thick chains attached to his wrists. He strains, as if attempting to get even closer. The candlewick of his eyes are nearly gone under blown-out pupils. A half-smile is frozen upon his cheeks, pale lips split to expose white teeth. He’s sharply handsome in his own way, and the low light casts his features into a relief that only serves to heighten his attractiveness despite the lunatic expression consuming his face. His chest is heaving, still, and it's such an obscene noise now to Dan Heng that his body jolts in response once more, hot all over and trembling out of pure want. 

Want. For…Blade.

No. No, no no. No way. Absolutely no way. Dan Heng takes in a wet shuddering breath, squeezing his eyes shut and accidentally pushing the hot tears out of his eyes, where they run tandem down his cheeks. Everything is all too much. Even that scent of mara is alluring, now, the thick musk alien and yet so completely Blade that his system feels like it’s going haywire just for a taste. His traitorous head conjures up another image of Blade’s throat, dotted with blood, and he breathes unsteadily in response, hands curling into fists beneath him. Breathe, he tells himself. Breathe. “The…” he gasps again, words a Herculean effort to a dumbed tongue, “the General is right outside—”

“Not him,” Blade cuts him off evenly with another strange rage, and he surges forward as if to grab him only to be stopped by the chains. He snarls out an unintelligible curse and tugs at them uselessly, fruitlessly, a crazed desperation tainting his face. “Not him, not him—you’re already here. Don’t give him the satisfaction of…of…”

He snarls out something else and yanks at the chains once more. The sound of a thousand chains clanking fills the room with a cacophony of noise and the ghosts of their echoes. “Just come here,” he spits.

An indignant incredulousness crawls into his murky head. “Thought…you said…you wouldn’t help ,” Dan Heng pants in response, pulling himself up as best as he can. Every moment is like flash fire, every shifting of cloth and clothing only stoking that wet heat within his core. His hips jerk forward and his soaking wet cunt rubs against the fabric of his undergarments, catching on the seam of his pants and it takes literally everything he has within himself not to shamelessly rut himself into oblivion before his enemy. God, he feels so out of control and it’s such an awful feeling. He really is a slave to his own desires. He manages to pull himself up into a mirrored kneeling position, arms wrapped protectively over his own chest, reaching up with a sleeved hand to wipe away the excess drool he’s mass-producing. “As if…I want you to…help me when I’m…”

He gestures helplessly at himself in lieu of finishing the sentence, and Blade’s eyes watch him like a hawk, gaze lingering on the movements of his hands. He’s a huge man; has he ever truly noticed this before? Broad-chested and strong, sinewy muscles lining his arms and stomach like—

Aeons. He has to get the fuck out of this room.

“You can’t make it to the Star Rail like this anymore,” Blade says hoarsely, still straining forward against the chains. Something pops from the wall behind him, and an errant chain comes clattering to the floor. He pays it literally no heed, still leaning forward and attempting to minimize the space between them as much as possible. “You’re already here. Come here. Come here. Use me.”

Use me. It sends lightning through Dan Heng and his fingers twitch, itching toward the hem of his robe as if to rip it from his frame. Blade is so animalistic, so wild and feral and inviting, and as Dan Heng lets his gaze shamelessly run over the other’s figure it lands squarely on his lap where his knees still strain from under him in his latest surge toward him. Even in the dim light, the pale gray of his pants is pulled taut over his cock. He’s hard, Dan Heng realizes in a distant horror, one hand reaching up to clamp firmly over his mouth. He’s so hard that his precome has begun to ooze through the fabric, dotting a darker stain through the light fabric. Use him…? Use him? That doesn’t sound so bad, anymore. “You want me dead—”

“I’m a patient man,” Blade barks impatiently. “I can kill you later. Just get over here—now.”

The heat plus the desire of being desired fully pushes his psyche over the edge. The discomfiture remains, but any thoughts of leaving the room are fully consumed by the half-mad Blade bucking forward in blind lust. 

His body moves before his brain has fully caught up, and Dan Heng all but crawls over to where Blade has begun to relax back into the penitent pose he had been in before, breath coming out in hot puffs of air. He must look like a fool. Mortification hits him through the desire once again and he stops only about a foot before Blade, biting down on his lip hard without thinking. Red pain burst through his lip; he’s sliced neatly through the skin on account of his Vidyadhara teeth, sharp as razors, and warm blood oozes from the pinpricks he’s left along the soft skin. Blade’s gaze immediately snaps to the blood as Dan Heng winces in pain. “Come closer,” he heaves out, leaning forward again. With the distance between them closed, Blade is so close, his face only a few inches away from Dan Heng’s. The mara twists and turns in the air as if trying to pull him the remaining space to consume, to devour, to use. “Take off your clothes and come here.”

There’s no more resistance left in Dan Heng; he watches in dismay as his hands and arms move robotically to shove out of his robes and awkwardly wiggle out of his boots and pants. He pushes them to the side and kneels once more before Blade, hands uselessly palming at the tops of his own thighs, each motion sending a new wave of fervid desire through him. The cold air hits his bare skin hard, and he shivers in the emptiness of the cell. A thin layer of sweat coats his skin despite the frigidity, but he’s completely laid bare now, the only thing separating him from Blade being the long loops of hair falling over his shoulders and pooling on the ground around him.

He can’t help but look down at the source of his embarrassment and the situation he’s been put in. His inner thighs are entirely soaked in his own slick already, and a warm desire pulsates from him in tandem with his heartbeat. He reaches down thickly, like in a dream, and lets his fingers press into the soft black hairs of his sex. They ease into him with no preamble and a sticky desire rolls over him languidly, like an impossibly large tongue. Dan Heng shivers, savoring the feel of his own walls against his fingers. His cunt grips his own digits like they want to pull them in deeper and he acquiesces, letting two fingers press even farther into his entrance, a soft moan escaping his lips. The blood from his bruised lip pearls up and oozes over the edge of his mouth, but he barely even notices.

“Stop,” Blade chokes out, a strangled voice breaking through the haze that clouds Dan Heng’s head, and another jangling of chains bring him back to reality. “I’m—”

And Dan Heng wrenches his gaze away from himself back to Blade. The other man jerks his hips forward helplessly, that precome stain slightly larger than it was before. He looks insanely desperate, teeth bared, still straining forward against the chains binding him back. It’s one of the most attractive things Dan Heng has ever seen. It’s like a drug, watching him writhe in an abject want for him. “Use me,” he says again with that same desperate insanity, and another spark crawls down Dan Heng’s spine and curls deliciously in the pit of his guts. “Use me, use me. Use me.”

Use him. Use him. It plays like a mantra as Dan Heng leans forward, finally closing the distance between them and removing his own fingers from within him with an obscene squelching noise, trembling fingers moving forward to undo Blade’s belt. It takes him a couple of tries, but he finally releases it and reaches his zipper, pulling it down with no preamble along with the top of the pants themselves, yanking them down about mid-thigh.

At the removal of the constricting fabric, Blade hisses out a sigh, pressing his face into the top of Dan Heng’s head and breathing in unsteadily. His briefs are taut, but the shape of his cock is much more visible, no longer tented by his pants. He’s huge. Heat radiates from him, alluring and intoxicating and nearly mouth-watering. Dan Heng reaches down and takes his length in his hand through the fabric, bracing his other upon Blade’s thigh, feeling its length and girth in his palm like one would weigh and measure a weapon. Almost as if experimenting, he pumps once, twice—Blade breathes hard but says nothing, mouth and nose still buried into the top of his head.

The idea of having his cock in his mouth suddenly forms itself within Dan Heng’s mind. He leans forward, ready to press his mouth to his length through the fabric.

“No,” Blade says sharply, and his whole body twitches. Dan Heng freezes halfway down, hand still clutching the base of his cock. “Not that. Just…use me.”

Dan Heng swallows thickly. His mouth is insanely dry. He becomes dimly aware of how stupid he must look—entirely naked within a prison cell, his enemy’s cock palmed within his hand, eyes lidded and mouth half-open in slack-jawed, uncontrollable heat. How pathetic. “You don’t want…?”

“No,” Blade says again, less sharply but more insistent. Dan Heng fully looks up at him and his expression is unreadable. His pupils are still blown out with lust, but there’s an uncertainty in the draw of his brow that stops Dan Heng entirely. “I…don’t want you to.”

It’s quite obviously a lie, based on the way his eyes flick between his cock and Dan Heng’s bleeding mouth, but his hesitance is not something Dan Heng is willing to unpack or deal with right now. Let him chase his ghosts. If he wants to be used, he will be used . He releases his member and instead hooks his fingertips beneath the thin elastic material of his briefs, and pulls them down unceremoniously. His cock springs free and Dan Heng has to fight the urge to take him into his mouth once more. It’s pale like the expanse of  his skin, but the tip is flushed a hot red, a visible vein almost pulsating with need. Come beads at the tip pearly-white and mouthwatering. “Are you sure?” He asks dumbly.

Blade huffs out an almost-laugh and pulls at the tensile chains once more, their creaking and clanking background noise to the rush rising within his head. “Just get on it,” he says insistently, and his cock twitches in an alluring response. 

Dan Heng exhales softly and pulls himself up to a kneeling position once more, tongue nursing the wound upon his lip. “How do I…when you’re chained…?”

Blade raises a pitch brow, lust giving way to an unimpressed impassivity. “How should I know?” He asks, a nearly cocky glint glimmering through his thick gaze. “Do you often stop and ask your weapon how you should swing it?”

“There’s no need to be a jerk about it,” Dan Heng hisses in response. He settles on scooting forward until he is practically atop Blade, straddling his thighs and positioning himself awkwardly above his dick. Both his hands come down with no small amount of uncertainty upon his shoulders, gripping loosely at the meat of his muscles. He’s so close to his face, now, and so he tilts his own away to look down at his cunt. It drips obscenely as if just waiting for him to see, a translucent drop oozing from his lip and landing squarely on Blade’s thigh. “I haven’t been in this position before.”

Blade snorts as if he’s said something funny, and Dan Heng’s gaze shoots back up to him in surprise. He’s fully smirking, now, an infuriating upward curl to his pale lips that instantly rubs him the wrong way. There’s something almost mischievous within the apathy of his gaze, mired within that feral hunger he had displayed earlier. “Yes, you have,” he insists quietly.

And before Dan Heng can say anything in his own defense, Blade jerks his hips up and his cock makes contact with the lips of his cunt, the hard ridged line of his arousal nestled almost perfectly within his slit. 

Dan Heng gasps, and before he can think he surges forward and clamps his jaw upon the junction between Blade’s shoulder and neck. His teeth slide into his skin like butter, a burst of copper erupting into his mouth. Blade moans in response, an electric low noise drawn from his throat. Pleasure and desire practically fry Dan Heng’s  system. He grips Blade tightly as his hips twitch forward, his slick coating Blade’s cock as his traitorous sex drags forward and back against Blade’s. “You have,” Blade says again, sounding near-breathless as Dan Heng whimpers through his mouthful of skin. “You know this. You know who you are…Dan Feng.”

Enough of Blade’s blood pools in his mouth to cause him to swallow on reflex. It’s practically drenched in the sweetness of the mara, and Dan Heng forces himself to release Blade, reeling backwards and staring at the other man in abject horror. Red blood coats his lips and his chin. The pure unfettered mara running through Blade’s veins knocked a little bit of common sense back into him. He isn’t a man anymore—it’s not something that should be surprising but it’s horrifying to taste him and find him devoid of humanity within as well as without. What is he even doing here? He’s riding his enemy in the pits of a prison? He forces his body to stop its gentle rocking, coming to a hard-won halt above Blade’s cock. “I’m not,” Dan Heng pants, fingertips digging into the muscle of Blade’s arms, breath crawling out of his beleaguered lungs in trembling pants, “who you think I am. Who you insist I am. And I won’t be carried away by desires that aren’t even mine anymore.”

Blade responds by bucking his hips up again with a purely wicked smirk, reconnecting his cock with his folds, and Dan Heng reels forward once more this time to bury his face in his hands still wrapped around the other. “You are,” he insists, the chains clanking behind him noisily as he bucks up into Dan Heng’s lips, sliding back and forth and sending delicious desire through every vein and nerve. “You can pretend you do not know me, but you know this. You even bit me, like you always did.”

Dan Heng peeks through his fingers and watches the aforementioned wound stitch itself up with no preamble, the streaks of blood remaining where his teeth had torn open the skin. “You move on reflex,” Blade hisses near-hypnotically as Dan Heng’s hips begin to match his rocking movements. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember when your body does.” It’s warm. It’s wet and lewd and impossible to pull away from, as darkly obsessed as he is in this newfound heat. Rational thought flees him once more as they settle into a rhythm. Blade twists his head quickly, chin slamming into the side of Dan Heng’s cheekbone and forcing his head to the side. Before he can cry out in pain or in displeasure, Blade’s wicked mouth makes hard contact with his own neck, licking and sucking at his sensitive skin.

He wants to protest—he wants to pull away, wrench backward out of the room, I’m not Dan Feng . But it feels so good. The climb to a climax buds within his pelvis, desire and half-formed thoughts of obscenities and fantasies running rampant through his head. His cunt is drooling all over the both of them, wet slick drenching Blade’s member and the tops of his thighs beneath, practically begging him to come inside. His body is electric, every part of him sensitive and mind-numbingly horny as he ruts shamelessly against Blade, the world beginning to dissolve into a sticky mess around him. His cockhead presses up against his clit on the next pass and it nearly knocks him into orgasm—he wheezes, fighting the urge to bite down into his skin once again, and Blade’s teeth press a rough kiss against his pulse point as if he could somehow read his mind and instincts.

He needs him inside. That is paramount. Dan Heng pulls away, slightly, and Blade bites at him as if to try and drag him back with just his teeth. “Wait,” he gasps, and reaches down, gripping Blade’s cock in his hand once again. His own slick drips lewdly down its length, mixed with Blade’s precome. “Wait, I need—I want you in me—”

“Do it,” Blade responds gutturally, eyes alight with lust and unnamed emotions. If he looked insane before, he’s nearly unrecognizable now, teeth gritted and still upturned in the remnants of that smirk from earlier, blown-out eyes obsessive and starving, mouth glistening with saliva from him practically slobbering against Dan Heng’s throat. He strains forward, helplessly; another few weaker chains pop out from the wall and fall to the ground with a faint clatter. Perhaps he should be more worried that Blade can yank the bolts from their metal homes but he cannot think anything coherent except want and need and feel . “Do it. Use me.”

Well, it’s not like he needed more confirmation than that. Dan Heng aligns Blade’s cockhead with his hole and allows himself to sink down fully onto his cock.

The noise that he makes is downright pornographic—Dan Heng doesn’t bother covering his mouth anymore, his mind fully clouded over in his untoward heat. His head lolls back, hair falling off his shoulders and pooling around him on the floor. Blade’s huge, and it’s a tight fit that is assisted by just how vulgarly wet he really is. He slides him in slowly, despite every part of his addled brain screaming at him to piston himself into oblivion, really and truly using Blade as a weapon. No, he needs to remain in control. 

Blade, evidently, does not agree.

“Come on,” he all but begs in a broken voice, hips jutting up once more, and Dan Heng immediately slams his palms down onto the tops of his thighs in an attempt to keep him down. He’s practically desperate to be inside him, he thinks unsteadily, and his hands twitch like he really wants to free him and just let Blade fuck him senseless into the cold tiled floor. “Come on, come on. You’re ready—you can take it. Come on. Move faster.”

Dan Heng is reeling. The thought of Blade fucking him in earnest…saliva pools thickly into his mouth again, mixed with the last vestiges of Blade’s mara-infused blood. His head is spinning. He wants it. He wants it more than anything, even though he’s knelt over his enemy. Draconic heat controls his every motion. He shudders as he eases himself down, reaching up and grabbing fistfuls of Blade’s hair within his fingers, wrenching his head to the side and biting him once more but this time allowing his teeth to dig in unrepentant until he can almost swear he meets the tough sinew of muscle, earning a raspy chuckle from Blade. He feels his walls clench around Blade, as if both inviting him in and begging him to stay. The heat emanating from the two of them drenches him in his own cooling sweat, small beads of salt forming upon his brow. 

He’s almost impossibly big. Dan Heng finally, finally hilts him fully within himself, but his cockhead presses up against something tight within him and the core of pleasure in his system is near-ready to burst just with the initial entrance. His slick runs down his inner thighs, a filthy display of his own monstrous biology. He’s so big. He wants to say something, do something, regain control, but his mouth remains firmly clamped down upon Blade’s shoulder, practically drinking the mara-tinged blood running through his system. He wants the line of his teeth to meet; he wants to rip chunks out of Blade and devour him whole, to use him, use him, use him.

Blade lets out his own filthy moan, a dragging of his voice like rock on cement, and a string of colorful swears daisy-chain themselves from his mouth. Dan Heng sneaks a look at his face, teeth still buried into the skin. His face is thrown into sharp relief in the dull light but it’s an expression of pure pleasure. His eyes are closed, half-crescents laced with sable eyelashes long upon his cheeks, mouth wet with saliva that glints in the light. His own jaw is half-slacked in pursuit of his own orgasm. “You’re so fucking soft,” he trembles out, voice husky and thick with saliva and desire. “You shouldn't be so...you’re so—you’re so hot, you’re so soft, you’re so fucking wet.”

Fuck, Dan Heng thinks blearily, as Blade recklessly bucks upward and fully undoes him.

His orgasm takes him by surprise, hitting him like a train as the taut ball within him bursts. His body spasms; he feels himself absolutely clench down around Blade’s cock, vision hazing out into white as the pit of heat spikes up into climax that stabs through his body. His spine snaps forward and down, keeping their groins firmly connected, brain going haywire. He didn’t even have to really touch him. Is that how insatiable his heat really is—that he can use Blade as a dildo and come from one thrust alone?

Blade laughs mirthlessly, tilting his head to rest on his shoulder as he regards Dan Heng with a lidded gaze. “You were pent up,” he pants, eyes closing momentarily as Dan Heng twitches with aftershocks. He’s still rock-hard inside of him, wet come no doubt leaking out around his cock and onto the ground beneath them. Dan Heng releases Blade again, jaw sore with how roughly and how tightly he had been holding onto Blade’s shoulder. Once again, the teeth marks heal themselves, but there’s almost a shadow of a scar that remains nearly invisible in the low light. Dan Heng reaches up and traces it in soupy confusion with a trembling hand.

Blade shrugs in response, as if he doesn’t know why it remains. He twists his hips left and right, and a delicious need crawls languid through Dan Heng once more. He’s unable to stop himself from grinding back down as if on reflex, a tired moan bubbling up from his throat before he can stop himself. “No one else can do this for you,” he says with a gasp. “No general, no Star Rail, no one in the entire fucking universe can do this for you.”

It all comes back in a sudden surge of clarity. How long have they been at this, frotting and further? Cold reality pours down Dan Heng’s spine–he straightens up suddenly, immediately self-conscious and imagining Jing Yuan upon the other side of the door, patiently and dutifully awaiting his return. “No,” he says in urgent response, turning to look behind him as if the door had somehow opened while he had momentarily snapped out of the fever consuming him. “No, it’s been—it’s been too long. I need to get out of here—”

He’s about to yank himself up and away from Blade when there’s a crack like a gunshot directly to his left. It’s the unmistakable splintering of bone.

Blade has broken his own hand. 

Dan Heng watches silently, equal parts horror and disgust, as Blade repeatedly breaks his hand in several systematic places, pulling his arm left and right as if experimenting while his wrist destroys the thin bones comprising his appendage. His face only reflects mild pain and annoyance, desire still tinged within the edges of the pupils consuming his irises, as he twists repeatedly. “What,” he says conversationally, a dark undercurrent to his nonchalant tone, “so you can go running back to Jing Yuan? Didn’t I tell you already?” His hand continues to crack and pop, loud jarring noises filling the room until he finally yanks himself fully free and out of the shackle holding him, the bones within his fingers and palm no doubt turned into a fine mist. Dan Heng looks away as soon as he’s free; the last thing he’d want to see is that mutilation he’s done to himself. “You’ll find no satisfaction with him. It will pale in comparison to what I’m capable of.”

Blade takes advantage of his frozen disgust to reach up and grab the back of his head with his now free (and fully healed) hand and grab a fistful of onyx locks, pulling their lips together in a violent kiss.

It’s mostly teeth and gnashing bites, Blade’s mouth hot and wanton into his own, but his tongue presses its way into Dan Heng’s mouth with his frenzied need. He swallows Dan Heng’s moans and pulls him closer once more, easing him down once again onto his cock. “Don’t you understand, by now?” He growls between breathless bites and nips, travelling his way down Dan Heng’s chin and cleaning his own drying blood from his skin with his tongue. “You can deny me all you want, but you cannot deny your nature. I know you better than anyone, Imbibitor Lunae. I know your body. I know what you want.”

It’s starting to feel like he’s right, Dan Heng realizes with a muted dismay as Blade slides back into him, using his newly freed hand to pepper him with lewd kisses and none-too-gentle bites along the length of his neck. The heat swallows him easily, his rational mind dissolving steadily in the darkness of desire. Blade begins to fuck him, now, angling his hips upward into Dan Heng and setting a pace that makes his breath catch in his throat. He can only keen in unabashed pleasure, still a slave to his own heat, hands gripping onto the other’s shoulders for dear life. He denies who he was, certainly—but his body responds so easily, as if they are lovers still in this new life. If the head forgets, the body remembers. He starves for the touches, liquid desire still pouring through his body like a poison, working its way methodically through his bloodstream to build up another orgasm. The banal desires have consumed him fully once more. He freely imagines Blade breaking out and flipping him over, broad hands kneading into his ass as he thrusts without abandon—

Blade reaches the base of his throat in his kisses and tender bruisings, and they both stiffen and freeze. He’s so vulnerable, open and wanton and baring his neck to a predator like a lamb to the slaughter. No doubt Blade has also realized this too, stopping at the exact same time, cock still fully sheathed within Dan Heng.

Dan Heng’s head is thrown back, throat laid bare to Blade’s teeth. His hand is still in his hair, keeping him violently exposed; but Blade’s hot breath puffs out in ragged bursts over his windpipe. It would be so easy for him to bite down and rip his throat fully out, red ichor pouring down his chin and the front of his chest. Blade shifts, slightly, as if in experimentation, and his hips rock up into Dan Heng and elicit another near-sob from within his chest despite the trepidation leaking through the arousal like cold water to a flame.

Dan Heng takes his own unsteady breath and merely closes his eyes, fingertips sinking slightly into the flesh of Blade’s arms. Blade’s grip on him is ironclad and he’s far too weak with desire to truly put up a substantial fight. If this is how he dies, then what can he do about it? Hopefully whoever finds his body won’t realize that his death was a result of his own uncontrollable desires. That would be embarrassing.

Blade stays unmoving for a long moment, but he doesn’t stop the slow grind he’s discovered, cock fully hilted within Dan Heng. He gently, nearly tenderly, opens his mouth and takes Dan Heng’s throat within his teeth but he doesn’t make any move to bite down. Instead, he sits like that for a long moment as if in a pensive thought, fingers moving to release his strong hold on the back of his head, carding through his hair and wandering down the length of his body. It settles over the curve of his hip, digits brushing against the sensitive scales of his lower back and causing Dan Heng to jerk forward into him, their chests pressed flush against each other. 

After a heady pause, Blade releases his throat and moves again to cup his lower back, fingertips pressing into the hard ridges of the remnant scales as if exploring what remaining sharpness or ridges they hold. He pulls out about halfway before guiding Dan Heng back down onto him. “I could,” he mutters into Dan Heng’s shoulder. “I could, I should. I have to. You made it so easy, and I need to, I have to. For what you did—for what you did to her, to me, to yourself, but I—”

He shakes his head, almost frustrated, and instead switches his grip to something that could easily break a bone, fingers sinking into the flesh of Dan Heng’s hip tight enough to bruise. He withdraws himself entirely, and Dan Heng only has a quick second to breathe before he spears him once again onto his cock, rutting into him like the animal he is, the room filling with vulgar slaps as skin hits skin over and over. “I need to be patient,” he rambles near-psychotically, eyes wide and round and glued to Dan Heng’s face like he intends to measure every reaction and expression he wears. “I’ve been patient. I can be patient. I know my script. I’ll find you anywhere. I’ll find you everywhere. I’ll fuck you until you melt in my hands and then I’ll kill you. I’ll choke the life out of you. I’ll cut you into a million pieces.”

He’s absolutely insane, but the usual perturbation from his inane ramblings is lost in the newest wave of climax threatening Dan Heng. He lets his fingers yank Blade’s head back as he babbles out a murderous diatribe, exploring his own throat with his teeth and letting his kisses cut and rip the skin open there. He wants to leave marks the way Blade no doubt has for him—he wants to bruise him and threaten him the exact same way, but every bloody patch he carves is immediately consumed by the golden fringe of mara stitching him up impossibly fast. It’s not fair, it’s not fair; why does Blade get to rip him to pieces and he can’t even return the favor? 

Blade fucks him relentlessly at a break-neck pace, and his fingernails dig into Dan Heng’s hip bone, drawing thin crescents of blood. “This is how you need it,” he hisses in a strangled voice as he essentially uses Dan Heng in return, and the thought only kickstarts the worst of the heat once more, a fever bubbling hot and wanton under his skin, wave after wave of growing pleasure hitting him and beginning to crest over. He’s right. He’s right, this is exactly how he needs it. He feels sated, nearly there, as his hips move on reflex to meet Blade’s thrusts again and again. Everything turns into a blur—the world practically crescendos, everything beginning to magnify itself around him, the sounds and the feelings and the heat growing until—

Dan Heng shoves his own hand into his mouth just in time. A strangled moan, now muffled between his teeth and the wrist he’s bitten down on, practically erupts from him. He climaxes again, a peak of sensations and sensitivity shooting through his core and wrapping around the base of his spine. This one is less surprising but his body devours the sensations greedily, his cunt shuddering and sucking on Blade’s cock with such feckless abandon, his body shaking soaked in slick and sweat. He buries his face in Blade’s chest, heaving out breath after breath, riding down the wave as best as he can.

Blade isn’t too far behind; his thrusts have become erratic, his hand forcing Dan Heng against him with that bruising touch, but as he comes his hips stutter once, twice, and then roll forward as he pushes Dan Heng down at the same time. “Fuck,” he splutters, and a splash of warmth coats the inside of Dan Heng’s core. He feels his own body clamp around him in response like his heat is trying to milk Blade dry and that thought sends another wave of spasms through him.

They stay like that, practically glued to each other, the only sounds for a long moment their heaving chests in tandem and the quiet ceaseless waves far above. Blade’s hand drops from his back like he’s made of fire to lay uselessly at his side, his softening cock still pressed up in him.

He needs to move. He can’t stay here forever, nor does he want to, despite whatever biological urges persuade him to act upon.

Dan Heng barely manages to roll off of Blade, sluggish arms and legs pulling themselves back into his robes haphazardly. Blade watches, impassively, all fervor gone. He reaches down with his now free hand and tucks his cock back into his underwear, pulling up his pants and zipping them. Anyone walking in would not be able to tell what had happened unless they inspected his lap carefully, where the precome stain still darkening the front of his trousers. Hopefully none of the guards will look too closely.

Dan Heng looks away shamefully, now fully clothed. The heat within him has quelled once more to its quiet fever, skin still sensitive to the touch, but at least he’s able to stand on shaking legs without falling to his knees with overconsumption and a blind fervor. He crosses the room unsteadily to retrieve Cloud Piercer, clipping it to his back once more. He hurts everywhere, a sweet pain that stokes the fires of his heat once more, and he tries not to think about the tired satisfaction rippling across his body. He instead focuses on the pain. Blade has most certainly bruised his hip; he can feel the large purpling handprint establishing itself, crowned by the crescent cuts of his fingernails right over the jut of his bone. His neck wears a long mottled trail of bruises—he hides this with his hair, pushing it forward over his shoulders. His jaw still aches, and his muscles do too, all pulled taut with tension and overuse. And above all, he’s unfortunately aware of their mingled slick and come between his legs through his undergarments, sending a flush up through his chest and cheeks. 

His head swims with thoughts of perfidy. Aeons above, what would the Star Rail think? What would the General think, finding him marked with the kisses and bites of his enemy, very obviously having fucked him? That he, Dan Heng, had become Imbibitor Lunae to sate his lust? He’d be thrown back into the cells to rot at best. He’d thrown everything that he had worked for away just to ride Blade.

It didn’t even fully fix his problem. His heat still runs rampant through his body, beginning to rise once more to the surface as more time passes without addressing it. He knows his biology, now–it will continue to beleaguer him until it is assuaged by herbs and teas or…tackled in a different way.

Blade grins wolfishly at him from the floor, free palm now placed upon the top of his thigh. “Thinking of taking more, Imbibitor Lunae?” He asks, his hand tapping out a ‘come-hither’ upon his leg. It’s like he’s a mind reader. Dan Heng bristles angrily in response, arms coming up again protectively over his chest. “You always were greedy and selfish, taking everything you could get your hands on until—”

He’s interrupted by the sudden screech of metal, and Dan Heng’s blood goes cold.

A long crack of flickering torchlight pours in from the opening door, before expanding the length of the room in a dimmed red light. He whirls around, prepared to face the general, but the vestiges of haziness consume him and he ends up dropping to a knee, gasping slightly. The core in his body pulsates in response, an open maw demanding more and more until he’s fully sated. 

A rapid series of footsteps approach him, and suddenly strong hands are wrapped around his biceps, helping him into a standing position once more. “Dan Heng!” Jing Yuan says, alarmed. His golden gaze flicks in minute dashes across his face, his horns, and his chest–his expression is that of surprise and uncertainty. “It had been a long time, so I wanted to make certain you were alright…what is…?”

And Dan Heng can practically see it in his eyes, even if he doesn’t give word to it; there’s a hesitation catching in their warmth as they land on Dan Heng’s horns once more, and then bounce over to the half-released Blade, hardening in anger. He believes the sins of their predecessors dog them—he believes, based on what he had walked into, that Imbibitor Lunae exists once more to break the sacred laws of the Luofu and to wreak havoc upon the denizens once more, his feral mutt in tow. His shoulders slump in Jing Yuan’s grip. He has no idea how he’ll convince him otherwise, now, and as he searches wildly in his shame-tainted head for any type of excuse or explanation, Jing Yuan opens his mouth once more no doubt to announce his own arrest.

Instead, in a very quiet voice, Jing Yuan asks, “Did he hurt you?”

His hands are still gripping Dan Heng’s shoulders with insistence, but his face has hardened into the kind of expression he wore when fighting Phantylia. There’s a cold sharpness in his gaze, jaw tightening with unabashed rage, but his expression is that of a man who is prepared to fight. “Did he hurt you?” He asks again, a little louder, but he remains staring at Blade.

Blade chuckles, a low grating noise, and the general’s hand twitches.

“No,” Dan Heng says finally, reaching up to place his palm upon one of Jing Yuan’s wrists. The general tears his face away from Blade and looks down where he touches him, gaze softening slightly. “No, I…I must explain everything to you, General. I know how this looks—really, I do…but, please. Let’s leave this place.”

Jing Yuan exhales carefully and then releases Dan Heng, but immediately shoots out to catch him once more as he stumbles. “There’s a lot going on,” Dan Heng mutters in response to the general’s panicked confusion, his pale brows shooting up his forehead. “Please. Let’s go. I will tell you everything, I swear.”

He pauses for a moment, golden eyes searching Dan Heng’s face. It’s a heavy pause–Dan Heng forces himself to meet Jing Yuan’s gaze. Perhaps his resolution will be enough to differentiate himself from Dan Feng; perhaps the General really will listen to him.

“We’ll adjourn to my office,” Jing Yuan says finally, and Dan Heng sighs in relief, his boneless knees trembling beneath him, “and discuss more there. But first…”

And he releases Dan Heng again, slowly this time, until he’s absolutely certain he can stand without faltering. Jing Yuan turns back toward Blade and stalks the floor, stooping down and picking up the abandoned cuff in one near-graceful swoop, before stopping right in front of him and crouching down before him. He stiffens, slightly, before leaning in and whispering something to Blade that Dan Heng can’t hear. He can, however, see Blade’s expression melt from his practiced apathy up into an insane smirk.

“Would you be jealous,” he breathes near-silently in response, the candlewicks of his eyes snapping back to Dan Heng across the room, “if I had?”

The general seemingly says nothing else. He none-too-gently grabs Blade’s wrist and a key from his belt, unclasping the cuff and then stuffing Blade’s hand into it once more. He is, again, drawn up into the ‘y’ shape that he was before, but he offers no resistance or attempts to pull away. His gaze focuses on Dan Heng, practically drinking him up, eyes darting here and there over his form. It’s invasive. It feels like he’s being scrutinized on every level and it feels almost as intimate as them fucking, so he forces himself to look away, focusing instead on the broad shoulders of the General as he rises to his feet, takes a deep breath, and then turns back toward the door.

His face wears that careful neutrality he had worn earlier, just before Dan Heng had entered the room. “Let’s go. Do you need help…?”

Like he’s made of glass. His knees tremble, but they have not given out since the general pulled away. “No,” he says evenly, brushing his palms down the front of his robe and immediately wishing he hasn’t. Sparks of budding pleasure course through him, and he flinches, the General’s eyes widening once more. “No, I…I am fine. I will be fine. Really. Lead the way.”

Jing Yuan thankfully saves the question growing in his eyes. He turns and walks toward the door, and Dan Heng follows, stepping out into the dimly lit corridor with no small amount of relief. It’s a step toward solving his problem. He’ll be able to get off the Luofu (if he’s not arrested) and lock himself in the archive for a few days until he can fully sort himself out. 

“Remember what I said, Imbibitor Lunae,” Blade calls caustically, and his low voice echoes one last taunting time as the door swings fully shut.