I know. The title makes no sense if you read the chapter :P
Mild-gore. I guess? IDK man, I have no idea of what I'm writing
Aether POV -
Katheryne gave me Asmoday's last letter almost 2 months ago. He said that he would be going to Sumeru after finishing his work, but I didn't get any letters after that. I had fully explored Mond and we couldn't find any traces of Lumine, so we decided to go the Liyue.
The journey took us a few days and we stayed at Wangshu inn for some days, before we reached the harbor. I saw that the waypoint there had some gold lines in it. Guess Asmoday unlocked it.
I asked Liyue's Katheryne if she had any information about Asmoday but she said that he hadn't been seen after he gave her the letter. She assured me that he probably went to Sumeru and would be busy.
Me and Paimon rested for a few days before the Rite of Descension and did some exploration of nearby area. On the day of the Rite of Descension we were near the front when Morax's dead body fell on the ground and the area was locked down for searching. We almost escaped but some of the guards saw us. I was about to fight them when a ginger saved us and took to a fatui bank. I almost stabbed him but he told me that he was Asmoday's friend.
"How did you even become his friend?" Paimon asked.
"Simple. I challenged him to a duel and he instantly defeated me. Then we became friends :)" he replied.
"Do you have any idea where he might be?" I asked him.
"And here I was hoping you'd know about him. He just vanished after that day" Childe told us.
I was starting to think that something was wrong but we didn't have time to find out. Childe gave us a Sigil of permission and we went to talk with the Adepti. We told them about what happened and I asked if they had seen a person with white hair who wears a black-gold mask. All of them said they had no information about him but Xiao said that he met Asmoday at Wangshu inn.
"You met him? Can you tell me where he went? Or when did you meet him?" I asked him.
"So, that demon is your friend? I tried attacking it, but it patted my head and flew away. I still feel weird about the corruption he tried attacking me with" he told me.
After we found out that the emo won't tell us anything useful we returned to Childe. There we met Mr. Zhongli who introduced Childe to Asmoday.
"Your friend agreed to a contract with me. In exchange for his help, I would help you but he never showed up to fulfill his part. That means I am not obliged to help you, but I can get you close to Rex Lapis' corpse if you help in the Rite of Parting" Zhongli told us.
I knew that people of Liyue are all about contracts, but I was still irritated that he won't help us to the best of his abilities because Asmoday was missing.
After all the preparations were over, I was invited to the Jade chamber by Ningguang, who told me that the Millelith won't try to capture me anymore. She also told us that a Fatui factory had been conducting weird experiments as massive energy pulses were felt from there.
We went to raid the factory and found hundreds of Sigils of permission. We destroyed them but the weird energy was still coming from deep inside the factory. I had a bad feeling, so I took out my sword, that I had named Cursed Gale. It started absorbing the excess energy as I destroyed a massive door with it. On the other side was a laboratory and Fatui agents and Ruin guards started attacking us. Whatever was out there was very important to them. I channeled elemental energy in the sword and blasted one of the ruin guards with geo crystals. I took one of the crystals and overloaded it with elemental energy and threw it at the Fatui, causing it to explode. The ruin guards started attacking me as I quickly defeated them. We went through the door they were protecting and saw many dead scientists. In the end of the room was a person tied to multiple tubes, constantly extracting their blood and processing it. I went close and saw that the person had white hair.
"No, no, no, no. Please don't be him" I said in a panicked tone as I destroyed the equipment and took the person out.
They were missing their limbs and rest of their body was in a pretty bad shape. I turned them around and saw that their face had been fully destroyed. Then I saw something I didn't want to. A star shaped scar on the throat.
"A-Asmoday?" Paimon cried.
That seemed to wake him up. He looked at us, before trying to say something as his head exploded.
"NO!" I shouted as I recovered from the explosion.
"Seems like someone found my lab" a voice spoke through a speaker.
"The subject seemed to have conserved his energy and tried to escape when Signora wasn't here, but we managed to capture him. I implanted a small bomb in his skull if he tried to escape again. He can survive getting his head blown up, so don't worry. If you found him, then contact your nearest Fatui base for further instructions. I'll be abandoning the factory for the time being. This is an automated message and will repeat in 10 minutes" it said.
THOSE FATUI !
I would take my revenge later as Asmoday needed urgent healing. We quickly escaped the lab and used the nearest waypoint to teleport back to Mond. I took him to Barbara and she started healing him.
All of our friends had arrived there to find out what happened and I told them. Diluc left us saying that he needed to 'blow up some rats'. Albedo asked me to go back to the lab and get any notes I could find to help in healing Asmoday.
I returned and gave him the notes I found. He read them for some time before falling back in a chair.
"You alright Albedo?" Jean asked him.
"Y-yeah. Just a bit traumatized after reading the notes. The Fatui did a lot of experiments with him and I'd rather not talk about them" he said in a shaking voice.
Everyone understood what he was implying and went dead silent.
"Any way to heal him faster?" Lisa asked.
"He can heal if his blood absorbs large amount of organic matter but according to the notes any form of pure, concentrated energy can get similar effects. I'd say the best method would be to let him absorb a ley-line opening" he told us.
Ley-line openings were quite rare and no one knew what would happen if someone absorbed one but we had to do it for him.
"I'll deploy all my spies to look for the nearest ley-line" Kaeya said as he walked away.
After a few hours, Barbara came out.
"Is he alright?" I asked.
"I was able to heal his head but I don't know how much it'll effect his memories. As for rest of his body... I couldn't to anything" she said as she stared crying near the end.
Jean took her away as I took Paimon with me.
"Where are you going Aether?" she asked me.
"Liyue. Childe and Zhongli need to answer some questions" I told her, as we teleported.
When we reached there, I found Zhongli and attacked him in the middle of the forest near the funeral parlor.
"Aether! What are you doing!?" he shouted.
"Didn't you sigh a contract with him? Then why didn't you help him!? ANSWER ME MORAX!" I started crying as I fought him at full power.
He turned into his divine form and summoned his polearm to fight me. We fought for 2 hours before I managed to get a major wound on him. My sword was able to slice through his shields and get a critical hit. He summoned a meteor at me in pain.
I sliced through it and blasted him with a wind blade as I finally stopped because of my fatigue.
He was in a critical state as he came closer.
"Care to explain what is going on?" he asked me.
Paimon gave him the notes we found in the fatui lab and he went stiff after reading them.
"Aether" he said, voice full of rage.
"Tartaglia is in the golden house. I'm going to fulfill my broken contract, you get your revenge" he said as he left us.
I was really tired but we managed to reach the golden house.
I barely defeated Childe but the got to the Exuvia and tried to take the gnosis but it wasn't there. Zhongli had told us that he agreed to give his gnosis to Signora but Childe probably had no idea. Seems like he had no connection with Signora. I tired to tell him that we didn't have it, but he created a black armor and started attacking me. I managed to defeat him but he summoned Sigils of permission and released Osial before teleporting away.
Jean POV -
Kaeya told me that he had found a ley-line opening. We gathered some of Asmoday's friends and went there.
Some abyss mages were trying to open it but ran away when they saw us. Albedo opened the ley-line and allowed Asmoday to absorb it. His body started absorbing it and everything was fine for the first few minutes. When he looked to have almost healed we were going to close the ley-line, but the Abyss mages stopped us.
"We will not allow you to stop the birth of a god slayer!" one of them shouted as they created a barrier around Asmoday.
We tried breaking it, but more Abyss mages and a weird looking tall creature came to help them.
I noticed that the abyss mages inside the barrier were chanting something and Asmoday's body was floating. Suddenly there was a large earthquake and the ley-line started opening further.
"What are you doing to him!" Kaeya shouted.
"Do not interfere!" the tall creature said as it finally defeated us and trapped us inside an electro prison.
They ley-line energy was being forcefully absorbed by Asmoday as the abyss mages helped him.
"Behold! The Abyss has come!" the tall creature said as the ground around the ley-line started getting destroyed.
Asmoday's body started getting covered in weird markings.
"Jean, we need to stop them. The curse I told you about is spreading" Albedo told me.
We tried to break free but couldn't. The markings on Asmoday started turning into crystals similar to Divalin and soon covered his body. He regained consciousness but was probably running purely on instinct as the ley-line opening finally collapsed.
"Abyssal light, shine!" the creature shouted as it launched multiple balls of electro at Asmoday, which were absorbed by the crystals. The crystals were absorbed into his skin and it started turning black and gold.
Suddenly there was a blast of energy coming from Liyue's direction.
"Amazing. This is just amazing! A sacrifice is ready for the god slayer!" it said.
Asmoday noticed the giant ray of light in the sky and quickly flew there.
