Chapter Text
PART I
Wei Wuxian had been looking forward to this day for an eternity. Or sixteen years, really, but what was the difference?
Of course, there was no small uncertainty in it, but that just made it more fun . Wei Wuxian, of all people, wasn’t about to let the unknown stop him from having the time of his life at the assignment field, perhaps to a fault. Living with his mother had taught him that life was best led with every foot in, devoting oneself fully to whatever the future held.
Cangse Sanren herself was walking a little ways in front of him, arms crossed, humming something cheery and devastatingly off-tune as she continued to refuse to hold his hand. He couldn’t hide his pout at the injustice. Yes, he was sixteen, but only as of this morning, and just because he was old enough to receive a powerful shadow companion from the other-realm didn’t mean that he wasn’t worthy of love! Of course, his mother only responded with laughter at that, and gave his hair an ill-received rumpling that left his red ribbon as off-kilter as her smile.
It was unfair.
What if he got something awful? What if he reached his hand into the other-realm and pulled out a cockroach? Or, god forbid, a dog?! His mother had assured him that in his youth he’d actually liked dogs—a terrible thought—but after having been bitten by one while coming home and eating a steamed bun (totally minding his business), he’d decided that if the other-realm chose a dog for him he’d go ahead and return it. Did the other-realm even have a return policy for assignments? He doubted it, but had no reservations being the first at something. If the other-realm could give, surely it could also receive.
Anyhow, he had faith. The other-realm had something good in store for him. And if it didn’t, as long as the result wasn’t a dog or a cockroach, he could surely make it work.
“You should be counting your lucky stars that the weather is good today,” Cangse Sanren told him as he followed her down the steps that led to the assignment field. A small crowd had already gathered there: all the rest of the sixteen-year-olds from the villages in Yunmeng, accompanied by a few conspicuous representatives from Lotus Pier. Their gaudy purple robes shone under the morning sun.
“Oh?” Wei Wuxian replied, brow raised. “I haven’t heard this story before.”
Cangse Sanren was all indignant innocence, as she always was. “Of course not. What kind of traitor is going around telling my stories?” When Wei Wuxian reached for her hand again, she slapped it away. “Not now, baobei . I’m trying to look cool in front of my peers. Oi, Jiang Fengmian!”
One of the purple figures, now very clearly a tall man in ornate robes, turned to them as they left the stone steps and crossed the grass. Cangse Sanren waved a wild arm, grinning, and she finally grabbed Wei Wuxian’s hand if only to tug him along.
“I take it this is your Wei Wuxian,” said the Jiang Sect leader.
His smile when he faced Wei Wuxian’s mother was filled with a warm affection that remained on his face even when his attention shifted to Wei Wuxian himself. It was a kind, favorable smile, but Wei Wuxian was also more perceptive than he would often admit out loud. He noted, silently, that there was something else in Jiang Fengmian’s expression. Recalling that Cangse Sanren had mentioned that she had been “a little more well-pursued” in her youth than she would have liked, he wondered if her calling him a peer was less a courtesy than it was a boundary.
“That’s the one,” his mother told Jiang Fengmian, as cheerily as ever. However, Wei Wuxian was scrutinizing, and he heard the finality in her voice. He glanced down at his mother’s shadow, searching for some reaction, but Wei Changze was surprisingly still. Even his shape was still human.
“It would be nice for him to meet Yanli, and perhaps even Wanyin, once he’s been assigned,” Jiang Fengmian continued.
Cangse Sangren bowed her head as she started to walk, Wei Wuxian following not far behind. “Of course. I’m sure he’d like that. Wouldn’t you, A-ying? You need more friends.”
“You need more manners,” Wei Wuxian shot back.
Jiang Fengmian threw him a surprised, nearly shocked glance, but Cangse Sangren just laughed and patted Wei Wuxian on the head. “Good luck with that. You didn’t pop out of nowhere. Now, there’s your spot. In you go!”
“A-niang—”
“What, are you scared?”
Wei Wuxian frowned, glancing again at his father, hidden away behind his mother’s feet. The shadow stirred, but seemed to be waiting for Cangse Sanren’s reaction first.
“As if,” Wei Wuxian scoffed, though he didn’t mean it. He meant what he said next. “But what if...what if I really get something unexpected? Or it turns out that I’m weaker than we all thought? Wouldn’t that…”
“Absolutely not,” Cangse Sanren interrupted, her face suddenly darkening. Her expression didn’t change when she looked up at Jiang Fengmian over her shoulder, and he straightened, folded his arms behind his back, and strode farther up the line of pending assignments (although Wei Wuxian didn’t fail to notice that he looked back once or twice).
He wasn’t able to dwell on it, though, because his mother suddenly took his chin in her hand as if he was eight years old again and tipped it up so that he stared into the grey eyes he shared with her.
“You are strong. No matter what the other-realm assigns you. It’s the truth and you know that, right here.” She pressed her hand against Wei Wuxian’s chest, right above his heart. “But, if you do end up with a shadow creature that isn’t as powerful as you’d hoped, or that can’t speak, or that won’t turn human for you, have no fear. Your father and I are a force to be reckoned with, and we’ll make sure to convince it that you’re well worth the fight. Alright? Even if I have to annoy the disapproval or incompetence out of it. Hm? You’re already annoying; imagine if that thing had to deal with your mother.”
Wei Wuxian let out a weak laugh, and his mother echoed it with a soft smile.
“Where’s all that excitement you had this morning? I want that back and in full force when you reach into the other-realm, yes?”
“Mmm.”
“Wei Wuxian,” Cangse Sanren admonished, poking his forehead. “Use your words.”
Wei Wuxian headbutted her finger. “Fine.”
“Good. Now, they’re starting. I understand that you’re my progeny, but we can’t be late to everything .”
Wei Wuxian let her gently nudge him into the line of other sixteen year olds, and couldn’t help but crane his neck at the place at the head of the line where the Jiang Sect representatives had begun the first ritual.
He’d heard stories about the process of assignment, and not only from his mother. Everyone in the village had an assignment story if prompted—and Wei Wuxian was very good at prompting. He’d learned of portals that opened to reveal nothing, only for squirrels and other woodland animals to be found in bedrooms hours later, or portals that barely opened before horses and wolves came barreling through, or portals where arms sank nearly to the shoulder and waited and waited until finally brushing a fairy or butterfly’s wing.
To Cangse Sanren, though, assignment was a rainy day in spring, hair plastered to her neck, reaching with a dripping hand into a portal of darkness and feeling her hand settle in that of another. One that felt distinctly human, she said, but when she pulled back, the portal closed to reveal the dark silhouette of a giant bull with curved iron horns pointed toward her like swords. And yet, when the bull had appeared, the first thing it had done was fall to its knees before her, head bowed all the way to the ground.
Wei Changze had pledged fealty to Cangse Sanren before even asking her real name, as most people never forgot to. And now he was one of the few creatures in the world who knew that name, given that several years after their assignment he married her under spiritual pact, a blood oath. The strongest show of harmony and power between two souls that there was.
Assignment didn’t always end in marriage, though. Most of the time it didn’t. It was, as Wei Wuxian and Cangse Sanren were constantly reminded, both a rare feat and taboo to marry one’s own shadow companion. Some felt that it was a narcissist’s way of marrying a piece of themselves. Others claimed that it was not possible to actually love a shadow companion—a fated partner, a creature meant for one’s own soul—in the same way that one could love another human. Others still felt that a shadow companion was meant to be strictly platonic, and that marriage through a spiritual pact was a corruption of the other-realm’s gift.
Wei Wuxian didn’t particularly care one way or the other. The crux of the matter was that his parents loved each other, and both had been human enough to have a child—that child being him.
And now he would have his own story to tell. Wei Wuxian very much enjoyed a good story.
He’d thought that waiting sixteen years was an eternity, but somehow the hour that it took for the Jiang representatives to make their way down the line felt even longer. The only thing that got him through it was sneaking looks at Cangse Sanren out of his periphery, where she stuck out of the crowd of solemn-looking and hopeful parents like a sore thumb with her wildly waving arms and equally wild grin.
“Wei Wuxian?”
Finally. He nearly forgot to bob his head in response and was almost tempted to strike up a conversation with the Jiang representative. However, before he could open his mouth—or even process that this was what he was doing—the Jiang representative had already snapped his fingers.
Instantly, Wei Wuxian’s wayward attention returned in singular, focused clarity. The air in front of him crackled and then split open to reveal a fathomless darkness, so black that no inkwell or description could ever compare.
The Jiang representative held out of a bowl holding some liquid of a similar shade, sparkling with other-realm energy just below the surface. Wei Wuxian blinked at it, and at a dip of the representative’s head, pressed his fingers onto the surface and then into the bowl. The liquid felt airy and cool, a thousand feathers brushing his skin, but when he raised his hand it dripped as if with oil.
“Now,” said the representative, cold and commanding, and Wei Wuxian didn’t even have time to think or wish or plan before his hand was through the portal.
He didn’t feel a hand. A gazelle didn’t come rushing out at him, nor did a crow’s claws scrape against his splayed, expectant fingers. He couldn’t even tell if the other-realm was hot or cold.
He couldn’t tell because it didn’t matter. The instant his hand disappeared into the portal, something screamed . And what he felt in that instant wasn’t the comfort of skin or scales or fur.
Instead, he felt pain.
It was searing, so white-hot, so vivid that Wei Wuxian felt as if his entire soul was being ripped apart. It occurred to him, belatedly, that the scream belonged to him.
Hands gripped his back and sides, yanking, and someone pulled on the part of his arm that still remained in this world. Not that it mattered. Something was emerging from the portal, surging through that burning agony that felt as if it was tearing Wei Wuxian’s arm to pieces, and it was about to—
The world exploded in blinding white, and as Wei Wuxian toppled back-first onto the grass, a creature whirled out of the other-realm, wings outstretched until they blocked out the sun. Wei Wuxian, from his vantage point on the ground, could only clutch his ruined arm and stare. He took in the creature in parts, as was the only way: the long snout and flaring nostrils, scales rippling azure blue and pearl white in the sunlight, batlike wings beating hard enough to summon the winds, talons as scaled as the rest of that snaking, curled body, the sinew and muscle and pure power that could only belong to one shadow creature.
A dragon.
The most fabled of all shadow companions, assigned equally to heroes and villains of legend.
This one roared loud enough that it rattled Wei Wuxian’s bones. That he could see all of its teeth in terrible clarity wasn’t helping. Briefly, he wished for his sword, and then realized that it would do absolutely nothing against a dragon. Wei Wuxian tried to run through his options as he scrambled backward through the grass, but the dragon was already shooting toward him. Wei Wuxian could only wonder, rather belatedly, at the speed and power of this creature, how every muscle moved so beautifully in this mystical work of nature from the other-realm, before he met his end.
Or so he expected, as that end never came. He’d closed his eyes, already anticipating the pain that still throbbed in his arm to reach the rest of him in a single instant, and thus missed the beginning of the confrontation.
It was the dragon’s sudden piteous cry that signaled that something had changed. Wei Wuxian’s eyes flew open and he rushed to his feet. Four figures, with strings of other-realm energy pulsing from each, surrounded the dragon as it writhed under a sparkling black net. Wei Wuxian could recognize the back of Cangse Sanren anywhere, but was surprised to see his father in human form, as well as Jiang Fengmian and a grey lion with a purple mane.
“A-niang,” Wei Wuxian started softly, reaching for his mother’s back. She stalled him with a warning hand, not turning her attention from the whimpering dragon crumpled on the grass. Around it, the rest of the sixteen-year olds watched at a respectful distance, huddled together and whispering.
Wei Wuxian didn’t have the strength to pay them any mind. He just watched, clutching his arm, as the net pressed in on the great white dragon and transformed into a black-barred cage. As the cage shrunk, so did the dragon, until it was small enough to fit in Wei Wuxian’s arms.
Wei Changze stepped forward and reached with human hands to lift the cage and hand it to his son. He then grasped Wei Wuxian’s shoulder and squeezed it. The pressure was barely there, as Wei Changze was already melting back into shadow, but Wei Wuxian leaned into it all the same.
“You have the strength to handle this,” his father rumbled in his quiet way before stepping back and melding into the steps of Cangse Sanren as she approached.
She gave Wei Wuxian a small, lopsided smile. “An assignment for the ages, hm?”
He had been afraid of the wrong thing. His soul wasn’t weak at all. He looked down at the dragon— his dragon—as it paced the floor of the other-realm cage, growling and hissing, smoking from its nostrils, golden eyes flaring as if they wanted nothing more than to finish what they had started. Some part of Wei Wuxian recoiled, but another part of him wanted to hold the dragon close, press it to his heart, let it feel his heartbeat.
He didn’t know which he wanted more, and he didn’t dare choose. He just looked back at his mother.
“Well,” he said with a helpless laugh. “At least it’s not a dog or a cockroach.”