Chapter Text
Lin Qiushi retreated to the bedroom he had used previously after he left Ruan Nanzhu. The two of them had spent a bit of time walking through the gardens following Ruan Nanzhu’s revelation. They walked in relative silence, only making the odd comment on some of the exotic plants surrounding them, but it was not an uncomfortable silence.
The space would give him time to process all that he had been told, but for Ruan Nanzhu it was an anxious wait. The last time he had felt like this was when he realised for the first time that Lin Qiushi had lost his life.
Needing to do something to occupy his mind, he found his work bench tucked away in one corner of the Archives, taking out the spike he had retrieved from the Dreamwalker. Until this point, he hadn’t had chance to properly examine it.
Although it was no longer blinking, the spike was still faintly glowing with a pale blue light. Looking at it closer, it became clearer to Ruan Nanzhu what the spike was made of.
Roughly six inches in length and one in diameter the main body of the spike was formed of a glass tube, tapered at one end into a point with dried blood and that mysterious clear substance that formed the Dreamwalker’s ‘skin’ caked over it.
At the other end there looked to be a sort of stopper in the open end of the tube. It was clear without too much doubt that this was a chunk of bone with the marrow still in the centre. It was a gruesome device and obviously made with purpose. Ruan Nanzhu needed to work out what that purpose was. He did have his suspicious about what was causing the blue glow, though.
Upon the workstation sat a powerful magnifying glass. The stand was black and gold, though less intricately decorated than many other parts of the mansion. It had not been used in some time. In fact, Ruan Nanzhu couldn’t remember at all why he had needed it in the first place but was grateful to have it now. Placing the tapered end of the glass tube under the magnifying glass, Ruan Nanzhu made out a tiny hole at the end.
The spike had been carefully crafted to act as a container for something, but designed to have the substance slowly leak out through one end. The function of the bone placed at one end was also unclear. However, the colour of it gave Ruan Nanzhu more than enough of a hint as to what the spike contained.
Given that when he removed the spike from the Dreamwalker he had had to tear it away from skin that had fused to it, he knew that the spike had to have been in there for some time. The chunk of bone, however, still looked fresh. Certainly not as though it had been left in the open air for who knew how long.
Someone had planted a spike filled with Life into multiple entities. But why? Ruan Nanzhu would need to gather more information to determine exactly how the devices functioned and what the purpose of them was.
Life, like souls, was a tangible substance and was entirely separate. Both were necessary for a human to live in the mortal plane. When Ruan Nanzhu first picked up the mantle of Death, he had been surprised to learn that lives were not predetermined. Life Stories held in the Archives were written in real time, not written in their entirety the moment a human was born. The soul formed the self. Puppet master of the body, to put it simply. Life was the substance that made the body function and survive, and the soul drew on this to make the whole operation run seamlessly; to create the ‘person’ that all of these things worked together to form.
Each soul only had a limited volume of Life that it could draw on that was contained within the physical body. However, whether that was cut short or not depended entirely on chance and the choices of the person in question. If the body sustained too much damage, the remaining Life would dissipate, resulting in the death of the person in question.
Knowing this wasn’t leading Ruan Nanzhu towards any conclusions, though. As he trawled through his thoughts, trying to arrive at some kind of theory, Lin Qiushi quietly walked into the Archives. Ruan Nanzhu had no idea how long it had been.
It took a few seconds for Lin Qiushi to locate Ruan Nanzhu, tucked away in a corner as he was. Upon noticing him, he smiled softly.
“How are you feeling?” Ruan Nanzhu asked, feeling vaguely awkward and not knowing what else to say.
Lin Quishi gave a vague nod to let Ruan Nanzhu know he was alright. He still felt like he needed more time to think before they properly discussed anything. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“I didn’t get chance to explain what happened with the Dreamwalker. Do you remember I told you that Bonnie had a glowing spike in it?” Ruan Nanzhu said, thankful for a topic he could focus on.
“I think so,” Lin Qiushi replied.
“The Dreamwalker had one too. I managed to pull it out of it and bring it back so I was just trying to make some headway into what it might be.”
“Did you get very far?”
“Not really. I figured out the construction of it but not much more than that,” Ruan Nanzhu explained.
Lin Qiushi paused for a moment, thinking. “I’m probably not going to be able to help much, but what’s your next step?” he asked.
At this point Ruan Nanzhu realised that any awkwardness between them had evaporated and they had slipped back into comfortable coexistence, “I need to test the function of the bone in the spike, but I also want to see what happens to this one if I leave it alone.”
“So you need to obtain another one?”, Lin Qiushi asked, sounding almost hopeful.
“I think so,” Ruan Nanzhu replied. “I need to assess and work out how we’re going to do that.”
“Is there anything else we can do in the meantime? Or anything I might be able to help with?”
Ruan Nanzhu gave Lin Qiushi a brief outline of his thinking at this point. Lin Qiushi seemed to grasp everything relatively quickly. “The Life in the spike is causing the bone to remain fresh, but there has to be a reason that bone specifically was used. I need to work out why that is but I’m unsure how I’m going to do that without either attempting recreate the spikes or figuring out who made the spikes. The first seems simpler.”
“To do that you’d need the bones of someone or something recently dead, right?”
Ruan Nanzhu paused, “Why do you say that?” he asked.
“Well, if I’m understanding correctly, there’s no way to return Life to a body that has already died. So the bone in the spike must have been taken either from a live body, or extracted and placed into the spike to be sustained by the Life within that within moments of death,” Lin Qisuhi explained. He was no longer looking at Ruan Nanzhu and was pacing as he thought. Some things never changed. For a moment, Ruan Nanzhu lost himself in the past.
“I-“ Ruan Nanzhu began to speak but quickly halted. Lin Qiushi was right. “I know I’m Death, but somehow I don’t see how we could do that without stepping into the realms of murder. I facilitate the processing of the souls of the deceased. Although I am capable of killing, it is intended that I only do so as self defence or in critical circumstances.” He explained.
“I don’t know whether I’d be comfortable with that regardless,” Lin Qiushi replied, thoughtful expression on his face, “I hate to say it but the only two other options we have are trying it with a small animal, or attempting to capture one of these entities with a spike and using it for the experiments,” he proposed. Ruan Nanzhu wasn’t completely sure whether Lin Qiushi was speaking to him or thinking out loud, but he continued, “Saying that, I don’t know if I’d have it in me to do that to a small animal either. And if we used a creature that was already spiked would we know for certain the results weren’t being influenced by that?”
Ruan Nanzhu nodded along as Lin Qiushi spoke. It was novel, after so long to have someone to think things over like this with. He was also having a little bit of trouble focussing on what Lin Qiushi was saying and not simply admiring the man’s face as he paced around, “I think this needs more thought,” he said stepping close to Lin Qiushi, “and I often find ideas come to me more easily when I’m not deliberately thinking about it. Shall we go and find some way to take our minds off it?”
Lin Qiushi quickly agreed, smiling, “That sounds excellent. What are you thinking?”