Zhongli

The mists of dreamless sleep parted long enough for Zhongli to wonder one thing, but he merely felt his lips twitch once, making no real motion or sound. He was not sure if he had woken up at all when he slid back into the darkness.

It was later, he knew. He could feel the stone beneath him. Where he was lying was all a dim blur but the knots of rock and crystal deep beneath him were a clear rendering in his mind. There was something pulsing there, something deep. Through well-wrought ground and hardened earth, he could feel something calling for him.

"We have to go back, we can't just leave him behind."

Who was speaking to him? To him? No- a second voice now. Another pulse from the deep washed through him, and it was as if his body was straining to move with it, but it couldn't. The other voice was clearer now.

"-no going back. No getting out. We can only go down."

Something inside him leaped to agree. Yes. We can.

"Not without him."

The first voice, now returned.

"So we wait."

"Well, he's stirring."

"That can't be-, I'll restructure the seal... how could he already be resisting-"

Everything trailed away then, like a rolling ball of yarn that had reached the end of its tether, leaving nothing but a string to the darkness, and the call.

Hu Tao

"We won't do anything standing here, we need to go down. If it leads nowhere we're in as bad a situation as we are up here," Xingqiu declared, wiping his cerulean hair back with one hand.

The flickering orange light from her butterflies cast uneven shadows over his face that made him look even more exhausted than he probably was, but Hu Tao still felt worse than he looked. She had treated grizzly injuries and seen and made corpses, but a friend dying, relying on her alone, was not easy to bear. The bandages were tight, but without skin from the missing arm, she couldn't seal the wound. She had managed to slow his blood flow and cauterize the wound to some extent, but the magic only went so far.

If Zhongli kept breaking through the seals as fast as he was, blood loss would kill him when she ran out of magic. Then again, like this, the wound would kill him anyway, just slower. That was; if the heart seals didn't deal slow him down enough to deal permanent damage to his brain or stop his heart. They were only meant for emergency transport. This… there was no protocol for this.

Hu Tao looked down at her hands, which were still covered in blood. She had thrown her jacket aside and her arms shone crimson in the firelight.

"We won't leave him, I can't predict his condition," she responded.

She forced small arcane flames out of her palms and fingers, and as they passed through the skin the blood burned away and any germs perished. It wasn't comfortable, but it was better than suffering an infection.

Hu Tao looked around for a second, taking note of their surrounding in a way she had only done quickly before. The stone chamber wasn't large, and it seemed more like a fork of a tunnel than anything. A path led upwards, but it ended shortly in a wall of stone. Another went down at a gentle angle, into the shadowy abyss far below, but for now, they stayed at the top. Xingqiu saw the sense in that, she knew. It didn't feel good but what else was there?

Xingqiu had only nodded, and now he sat, staring into her dancing flames.

Tao really needed to rest. Her eyes ached from squinting in the dim light and trying to keep her hands precise, and she wished she could just close them for a minute. A second would be fine, it really would. She pulled on her jacket and leaned back against the cave wall. Somewhere far, far in the distance, she felt her head drop onto her knees.

Something cold snapped around her wrist, like a manacle. Her eyes flew open and were met with bloodshot amber irises, bloodshot and desperate. Zhongli, a stern and reserved man, looked as wild as a rabid dog.

Yet, he managed to say "Go. Down," before he collapsed onto her.

She had quickly moved him back against the wall, and Xingqiu was there in a second.

"It's only been a few minutes! He stirred a bit and so was about to wake you, honestly, and then he just shot up," he stammered, feeling the captain's forehead with a pale, uncalloused palm.

"It's okay," she said quickly, half listening to his testimony.

Hu Tao's own hands, scarred and dirtied, were spinning another seal as she fervently examined her charge. His eyes had looked sicker than she feared, and she had some adrenaline now but she wouldn't be able to maintain the energy to keep casting spells for long.

She pulled the magic into an intricate butterfly and sent it flitting towards Zhongli's chest, where it dissipated in eddies of warmth. That should help for now.

She stood, shaking the static of the spell out of her fingers. Xingqiu looked up, confused.

"You heard the captain," she said. "If he had even a second to sense our surroundings we need to follow it."

The boy just looked back at her, startled. "You think we can carry him down? You just said-"

Hu Tao knelt again and slipped one arm below the captain's neck, supporting his missing arm at the shoulder, and the other under his legs.

"I know what I said. Just forget it, we'll just take turns, maybe it won't be far to go. Besides, he's lighter now than he was an hour ago!"

Xingqiu did not appear to appreciate that comment.

They made their way carefully around jagged boulders and slippery patches of moss. The mountains were growing damp and they occasionally passed small rivulets of water running down the rocks from cracks in the wall. As they went, the path behind them became dark as well and they were suspended in limbo. Darkness above and below, and nothing but stones around them.

They reached a flatter cavern after what felt like a hike. The cave was full of massive stalagmites reaching up to meet dripping stalactites. The rocks were a yellowish brown in the light, and suspicious pools of groundwater runoff filled with salt and gods-know-what were scattered around the uneven ground. There looked to be two tunnels leaving the cavern, and Hu Tao went over to have a look after handing Zhongli to Xingqiu.

Both openings were roughly opposite the way they had entered, which she had marked with a surgeon's knife, cringing as she felt it scraping harshly against even the soft rock of the pillars. She would need to sharpen that one for a long time, or else replace it.

One path angled upwards and was so narrow that she would be more comfortable using her signature than squeezing through, and she didn't know how they could get Zhongli to the other side. The other was more akin to their previous tunnel, but at a steeper angle. The choice was clear… but still it felt ominous, to be making a choice here. The risk of getting lost was just a little bit wider, and with too many of these as they went down…

They didn't even really know what Zhongli had seen, or how he had the time but was better than waiting to die. It was always better than waiting to die. They had enough food and water in the three packs to last for a few days, and if they really needed to she could backtrack and then go through the wall and try to steal medicine from the camp, or maybe more water.. There would be guards posted, and probably too many to slip by but if she pushed her signature to the limit…

It was a bad plan. Hopefully, she wouldn't need it. She resolved to waste no more time considering their deaths and turned back, calling out to her companion; "This one!"

The newfound path did not prove to stay similar to the other for long at all. It was merely a hill that opened into a narrow path. To one side was a stone wall, that just barely started to arc inwards at the highest point her lights reached. To the left was a yawning abyss. The other side of the gap was out of sight. The bottom was much the same, and as she sent her butterflies diagonally downwards it did not come into view. The other side, however, proved to be about 100 feet across, which was about as far as she could extend the lights before they lost connection and died out.

Hu Tao felt her hopes of a short journey withering, but she led the party of two and four-fifths onwards.

They sent gravel skittering down as they went, and at one point, Xingqiu accidentally kicked a rock off the ride and it took so long for the echo to reach them that Hu Tao had almost concluded that the cavern had no bottom at all.

The ledge eventually turned into a narrow stone bridge that left a small gap to their right as well as their left. It was also worn on both sides, and became almost cylindrical, and roughly the width of the average fallen tree. Hu Tao pushed out first, slowly creeping over the stone and avoiding glancing into the chasm. Then her foot slipped.

She activated her signature in a panic, and landed safely on the other side, breathing heavily. That was close.

"Are you aright?" Xingqiu asked.

She could only nod in response. He had just reached her in the small doorway-shaped cave entrance on the platform when he stopped.

"Want me to take him?" Hu Tao asked, feeling slightly more optimistic after making it past the drop-offs.

Xingqiu nodded slowly, and handed the captain over awkwardly. "Do you feel something?" he asked suddenly. "Like, something reaching upwards for you, from down there?"

"No, I don't think so?" Hu Tao answered. She paused for a moment; but she felt normal, if not a little disturbed.

Xingqiu looked puzzled, or maybe bothered, but he didn't say anything further.

"You might just need food," she offered.

He smiled at that, almost hopefully it seemed. "When we rest. Let's just see what's up ahead."

The answer was; not much. The cave through the hole in the rock was much larger than expected but it was more barren than the other passages. The floor was mostly even, and most of the area was in view. The first passage on the left tapered into a dead end, and the second became a vertical climb up a sheer wall. The third passage was like the others, but far more narrow, and it proved to be the only real option when the fourth passage ended in a cave-in. Fortunately, it also happened to lead down. There was also a drop-off of one side into a pool of dark water that looked freezing and dangerous, but Hu Tao did not want to try that option.

After Xingqiu marked the way they had come, they pushed onwards. The air felt heavy with moisture here, and the patches of moss and damp spots were growing more and more frequent. Zhongli had not stirred, though Tao was constantly expecting him to. He had been crashing through the seals before, had he calmed after delivering his message? Or, the other option, was the magic shutting him quicker than she feared?

If that was the case, she would have to let his heart quicken again and hope the blood loss wouldn't be too fast. Even like this, the bandages were ruined already, and she had to stop on a flat section to change them. Xingqiu crept forwards with half the lights and called back that it was only more of the same.

Hu Tao cleansed her hands again. What was- she must be tired. They should take a short rest soon if they could afford it. She could have sworn she felt a sort of pull, but that didn't make sense. Still, as she stood up with the captain, her arms and back aching already, there it was again. A pulse, like a wave washing gently past her feet, urging her down.

"I feel it, I think," she said quietly to Xingqiu as they walked.

He frowned. "I don't know whether to be relieved I'm not hallucinating or scared of whatever it really is."

"Maybe I'm just tired, and imagining things as well," Tao proposed, trying to sound optimistic and coming up short.

"Maybe," he agreed, but he did not sound any more sure than she felt.

As they continued down, and the passage snaked from side to side, Hu Tao got worried for a second when she realized she didn't know which direction they were facing, but she almost laughed instead when she realized she had actually lost track of that a long time ago.

As the tunnel rounded to the left, they stopped short in the same beat. The passage had become a stone wall, broken up only by a long crawlspace at the bottom.

"Shit," Xingqiu groaned. That about summarized Hu Tao's feelings as well. The crevasse was so narrow they would be hard-pressed even to crawl through on their hands and knees.

"We won't be able to get him past that," she observed dully.

"We won't even be able to get our packs through unless we push them ahead of us, much less him," Xingqiu bemoaned.

He sat down heavily, and Hu Tao followed suit.

"How much magic do you have left in you?" he asked.

"Not enough, so I guess we have to rest here."

Xingqiu looked as if he wanted to agree, but was almost reluctantly concerned; "Will he be safe doing that? Do we have time?"

"If we push back up, I'll run out. It's probably safer to take a break," she answered. In truth, she wasn't sure what was the better decision, but her eyes were getting even heavier and she wasn't sure if she could physically walk back up the passage.

"You sleep first then, just to be safe," Xingqiu proposed. "I'll wake you up in a few hours."

She nodded, honestly too tired to politely offer to watch first. "That, or there will be poisonous gas down here and we wake up dead."

Xingqiuiu looked worried for a second and then shrugged. "We tried our best."

Hu Tao smiled softly. At least they were doing that. Her eyes were shut, and the world around her was black. She wouldn't know that she was awake if not for the sound of Xingqiu settling down.

She didn't even recall falling asleep.

She was trudging through the snow, which reached all the way up to her hips. Above her, the sky was grey, like a flat plane of stone discharging snow down towards her with the force of a rainstorm. As the flakes hit her they burned through her clothes, and it felt as though the skin itself had been replaced by ice wherever they hit. She was slowing and suffering. She was cold, so cold. A gust of wind slammed into her, and she held up her hands to block her eyes. It picked her up regardless and she was blown back to the ground, amidst her own tracks. Beneath the layers of water and ice, her body was quiet, and growing too numb to feel the pain and cold. She could sleep here, she really could. Down where all the worries of the world seemed to fade away, and she could feel the darkness knocking. Coaxing her, to let it in. To relax.

Xingqiu shook her awake, and when he let go the shaking did not stop.

He started to say something, but the earth ground like the brakes of a train and drowned him out. The sound woke Hu Tao up quickly enough, and she sprung to her feet. Dust filled the air and her lungs seized up, trying to expel a breath that she did not have. Another violent cough heaved from her lungs, and she dove on top of Zhongli. This was it, the cave was collapsing, and they would not make it out. Xingqiu was right, they had tried their best. If she could protect Zhongli maybe he could wake up and liquefy the stone later. Maybe-

The shaking stopped and she became acutely aware of how tightly she was clenching onto Zhongli's coat, her hands trembling with fear. She pushed off of the captain in a panic, had she put pressure on the arm? No, he was fine. Her mind and heart were racing. She was breathing heavily, and every time she drew breath it stung her throat.

Xingqiu was standing, wordless, beside her.

"What just-" she started, but then stopped as she followed his gaze.

The narrow tunnel on the ground had been blown away, the rock wall bowled down the tunnel in the form of scattered boulders and rubble. Beyond that, a massive stone door was just faintly visible beyond her firelight's radius.

Truth be told, she was only mostly certain that it was a door, and even that was mostly because it simply felt like it should be. It was perfectly square, and inside the outer frame was a thick indent of another perfect square, rotated slightly. Inside that was another of the same, smaller and more tilted, and it went all the way down to a miniature square when the indents had rotated completely around. Something about it was enticing. She might have turned back then, normally, but she stood up and took a step towards the door.

Xingqiu grabbed Zhongli and they approached carefully, picking their way between the jagged chunks. Hu Tao could feel the pull now, stronger than ever. It was like she was hooked on a fishing line, or caught in a riptide. Whatever this was, whatever lay behind it, she couldn't go back without reaching it.

She was distracted by a chunk of rock as she walked around it, peering at the jagged lines.

"What happened?" she asked in a whisper, almost afraid to disturb the suddenly-acquired silence in the tunnel.

Xingqiu shook his head solemnly. "I have no idea. It was so sudden. The shaking started, and the dust was in the air before I even heard the wall breaking."

"Could he have-?" she ventured, looking curiously.

"I don't think so. You feel it, right?"

Hu Tao slowly let out her breath from wherever she had been holding it. "Yes," she said. It scared her.

She had reached the door, and so she put a hand on one of the first inner rings. The stone was dusty and felt ancient, but it was not weathered. The outer square must be 20 feet to a side, and the innermost one maybe a single foot. There looked to be two dozen rings in total, she judged.

Each one had a near-invisible seam running up it, but they were rotated to the same angle as the squares themselves. Was there a key of some sort required?

Xingqiu caught up with her, weighed down by the captain.

"It's got to be a door, right?" he asked aloud, voicing her own thoughts.

"Yes, I think so."

She tried halfheartedly pushing the second ring towards the other one, but as expected it did not move.

Xingqiu crouched and set Zhongli down on the outer ring. In that instant, it exploded in light. Having relied only on the dim butterflies for so many hours, Hu Tao was hit with a jarring physical pain in her head as the blinding white light burst outwards, stinging her eyes. Xingqiu gasped in surprise and scooped the captain back up, turning away himself.

Carefully peering through her fingers as the light died down, Hu Tao saw that yellow-gold runes had appeared along the inside rim of each square. They appeared to be traditional Liyuean, which was strange in an untouched cave on the Mondstadt-Snezhnaya border.

Once more, the stones around them shook. The innermost ring had slowly started to turn, and as it lined up with the next; that one started to spin with it at the same speed. This continued slowly until all 23 inner rings locked as one into perfect vertical form with the outermost, and the seams of the doors lined up as one line straight down the middle.

There was a brief moment of silence, and Hu Tao almost laughed out loud in wonder. Then the doors started to swing open.

Stone with the weight of a building ground over uneven rocks as the panels ground into the dark beyond, and the hideous cacophony it made was enough to force Hu Tao back from the door. When at last she looked up, Xingqiu was staring into the room beyond intently. The call she had been feeling without a pause had all but vanished, and it was as if her head had cleared of some haze. Why did they open this door? Why would they go down in the first place? She looked back behind her, but they couldn't turn away now.

"Wow," muttered Xingqiuiu, staring at the gargantuan doorway. "I really didn't think we could open it."

"More importantly, how did he open it?" Hu Tao worried.

She pushed her lights to the opening, but it was as if they could not illuminate past the threshold. Even the ground did not come into view. The butterflies simply shone on something dark and churning. She walked up beside them, and her eyes began to sting.

Smoke. She realized. This room is full of smoke.

"You."

The voice was quiet, from within the smoke, but if it had been a roar Hu Tao would not have reacted differently. She jumped away from the sound, and Xingqiuiu started to back up entirely, looking around nervously.

"No, nonono" the voice mused. "I see now. You are weak where he was strong. And you are foolish as well. He was anything but."

The voice was hoarse and groaning and sounded a bit like a drawn-out sigh of sheer contempt.

Xingqiu did not move an inch, and Hu Tao couldn't find the strength to either. She did not know what she expected to find, but this was not it. This was ancient. Whatever it was, this was dangerous.

"I thought I recognized my old friend as well, but I see it is much the same. And this one is dying, at that. Such a curious mystery. Tell me truly, little ones. What exactly are you?"

Smoke began to pour out from the doorway, and Hu Tao backed up again but found that she was pressed against a boulder. The smoke rushed past her legs, flowing into the tunnel like a wave over sand.

"Humans!" she yelled, her heart racing.

"Hmm, then come closer, little humans. I would look upon your faces," growled the voice in the smoke.

Xingqiu looked over at her, terrified, and she found the strength to nod at him in a way she hoped was encouraging. She forced herself to the doorway and peered into the smoke, but it was no clearer than before. Her eyes did not hurt though, and her breath still came easy.

"Closer, little ones, I will not hurt you," groused the voice.

Hu Tao strode forwards into the chamber. All around her was black soot and smoke, and there was no light save for the reddish glow from the lights behind her. However, it still did not hurt her. The chamber was hot though, and she was growing uncomfortable very quickly.

As she took a few more paces into the smoke, straining to see further into the room, she suddenly came upon a metal ring set halfway into the ground. Attached to it was a thick chain that trailed along the ground into the darkness. Each link was at least a foot long, and they seemed to shimmer faintly with yellowish magic akin to the door, even in the oppressive darkness.

"You do not look like he did," the voice announced, resonating through her like a low, orchestral note. It had a direction now, and as she turned, she saw a figure standing within the smoke billowing. He appeared no different from his surroundings except that he was a little darker, and he had eyes as well; burning orange flames, dancing in the air.

"Me?" Hu Tao asked quietly, her nerves no less heightened than before.

"No, the stone beneath your feet," the figure snapped, and a chill went through Tao's blood.

I should shut up, and run, right now.

She continued anyway, trying to sound calm. "Who is it that I don't look like?"

"Your soul has the same stench as someone I knew in an earlier time," the figure answered. "But he is long dead."

"Are you one of the gods from the war?" Hu Tao asked. It wasn't truly a question, deep down she could feel it.

"You are smarter than you look, little one."

Xingqiu had crept up towards them now, and the figure turned to face him.

"Whoever you might be, you hold an equal disappointment. His weakness disrespects the being that sits within him," the figure scoffed. "And how did he manage to lose an arm?"

"It- was removed," Xingqiuiu stammered.

The figure paused for a good, long second. "Thank you little one. I had not noticed that ever-so-subtle detail."

Could a god be sarcastic? Was he going to kill them?

"It was cut off by a Snezhnayan man, some water mage with saltwater blades. We escaped to these caves," Hu Tao jumped in, louder and higher-pitched than she intended.

"Fascinating," drawled the smoke. "And what was the name of this northerner?"

"Childe, or at least he calls himself that," Xingqiuiu answered, audibly frightened.

What are we going to do? What are we doing here?

The figure did the thing Hu Tao expected the least and laughed.

"That's truly amusing, actually. Thank you little one. It is a fitting end, I should think. And to believe that I get to see him die," the figure snickered. It almost sounded like a taunt.

"We wanted to stop that," Hu Tao declared, more boldly than she felt.

"Good luck," the figure mused, shimmering slightly in the tangles of dark mist.

"Please, can you help us?" Xingqiu pleaded. "We don't know how to get out, and we need him alive."

"Can you help us, he says," muttered the figure. "Of course I could. But what reason has the bear to build a beaver's dam? You should help yourselves, little one, and in fact, there's a pretty little tool sitting right beside you."

He indicated the chain.

"Long ago, your friend, or some part of him, made that chain. If he reabsorbs its power, I do dare say that he should be more than saved."

Hu Tao stared at it, and when Xingqiu made for it she held up a hand to stop him.

"If he does, the chain will disappear?" she asked.

The figure shrugged, "I suppose."

"But that chain keeps you here, doesn't it? He imprisoned you, or else you're trapped. So you want us to set you free to save his life?"

"Oh, I see you might share more with Oberryn than your eyes, little one. It's a strong theory, but the question is; what will you do with that knowledge?" the figure said, drifting slightly forwards. The flaming eyes weren't exactly revealing any expression, but he seemed to be watcher her intently.

"Well, who exactly are you?" she responded. If this being was locked away for a reason… could they risk freeing it?

"It doesn't matter in the slightest," the figure answered. "Do you know why?"

Xingqiu looked back and forth between them. "Why?" he ventured, shifting the captain in his arms.

The flaming eyes did not leave Hu Tao. "No matter who I was, or what I answered, you would make the same decision. I could leave right now if I wanted to, assured that our deal has been good as completed."

"How would you know?" she asked.

"You are simply not as complex as you might hope," the smoke growled, backing off.

"Tell us your name, at least," Hu Tao challenged. "Why were you kept here? How long has it been?"

"It is as I told you, little one. I need not say a thing."

The fires winked out, the darker smoke unknotted into wisps of inanimate gas, and the two operatives were left alone with a dying captain and a long, thick chain.

While she wanted to prove the god wrong, he was correct. There was only one possible decision she could make.

"We'll do it." Tao decided.

"Yeah. But-"

"I know," she stated. "But we need to get the blood back, and he must live."

Xingqiu knelt and propped up Zhongli by the chain, holding him half in his lap by the first chain link.

"I hope this works," Tao sighed as she guided his remaining hand onto the ring.

Zhongli's eyes flew open at once, and the whole chain began to glow. Hu Tao saw him try to get up away, but he seemed stuck in place like he was stuck to the link.

"It's okay!" she tried to yell, but she was drowned out by the churning rush of the smoke in the room whipping past them. It had suddenly started to swirl, like a fiery vortex, and the room was getting hotter and hotter.

Zhongli began to glow as well, and the smoke started to spin faster, and then faster still. The world shone brightly for a second, and then it all went white and silent.