Massive shoutout to Flameal15k—I now have the coveted honor of a tvtropes entry for this story thanks to them! No exaggeration, that site helped me improve my writing by putting names to patterns that I sometimes noticed but never properly organized in my head, or sometimes never noticed at all. Not to mention it's probably the most fun "wiki dive" site out there. I've loved that site for ages. Minor unmarked spoilers in there, if you care about that.
Now it's time to ramp things up. Heads up, our Tenno is not going to be having all the same adventures nor meeting every person the Traveler did. He's in far too much of a hurry for that, and he's not nearly as...caring. I am sorry to disappoint if your favorite Genshin character isn't featured or even mentioned, but there's just too many of them, and there's a clock ticking for our Tenno. Also, if the "incident" with Eula didn't make it clear, he wouldn't get along with all of them anyway.
I've seen a few reviews mention how it would be cool if he did x with some character or other due to their personality; and I 100% agree, it would. But I can't make any promises for any particular character, unfortunately, as having the Tenno meet every character ever would just feel contrived and not in line with how he normally acts, nor what his purpose is. There should be plenty of them, however, and I strive to keep his interactions with them consistent with who he is and who they are. You can certainly tell me if you find that I didn't do that right. Constructive criticism helps me improve.
Enough talk, let's rock. Onto the show:
Qixing Secretarial Offices, Liyue
The air was stuffy and smothering with the heat of summer, with only the light scratching of a quill pen on paper to break the heavy silence. Everyone else had long ago gone home, lanterns and candles snuffed out for the night and desks cleaned up and organized to at least a rudimentary level so as to make starting the next day all the easier. Only one office still was alight, piles upon piles upon piles of paperwork completely covering the massive, opulent desk and most of the floor. One clear pathway through the paper stacks led winding from the doorway to the chair behind the desk, currently occupied with the workaholic still up at the late hour.
Ganyu, secretary to the Qixing for so long that the word "tenure" might as well have been invented because of her, was still working. She was always working if she wasn't sleeping, and she slept as little as possible, a habit that was beginning to show inevitable consequences for one of her age. For she was the offspring of both Adepti and human, and had walked the land for millennia, every moment of it in service to her country and to her Archon, Rex Lapis.
But even the blood of the Illuminated Qilin cannot prevent exhaustion from slipping in. Even as she continued to draft the proposal for variable tax rates on fishing hauls that were caught in Liyue, international, and Inazuman waters—a new issue that didn't exist before the Vision Hunt Decree was lifted and trade lines opened once again—she found the paper getting more and more blurry as she wrote. No amount of rubbing her eyes, blinking, or shaking her head was clearing her vision. Her eyelids felt as if they were made of anchors. Sleep was winning a battle it had been fighting for...well, she had lost track of the number of hours.
Just this page, she thought. I'll finish this page, then sleep for a few minutes. With renewed focus, she refreshed her ink and went after the last few lines of draft.
Rap. Tap. Tap.
From sheer rote repetition and without a thought in her drowsy mind as to why, she answered the knock in a small and tired voice.
"Enter."
A few seconds of the door not opening was an odd enough occurrence to snap her out of her haze. Wait, everyone had gone home. Why would someone be at her door now anyway?
"Enter!" she called out a bit louder, in case her quiet and exhausted voice couldn't have been heard by her visitor.
No answer. She had her head up now, looking at the door over a pile of papers. No sound came from the hallway to indicate anyone was there either.
Oh boy, she must be more tired than she thought. She vigorously shook her head and gave her cheeks a light slap to galvanize herself enough to finish the page she had set her mind to. Maybe a few hours instead of a few minutes, she thought ruefully. The scratching of the pen once again broke the silence.
Rap. Tap. Tap.
Her head snapped up. She didn't imagine that one. She had definitely heard a knock; three firm, measured taps, slower than one would usually do when knocking on a door. Curious, and slightly worried enough to momentarily forget about sleep, she got up from her desk, carefully navigated the paper stack maze to the doorway, and opened it to look up and down the hallway.
Nothing. Not a soul in the building, the dark hallway empty of all life. She furrowed her brow in confusion, but pondering the situation to try to explain away the sound by heat expansion of wood or whatever scientific explanation she could come up with in her fatigued state was a waste of time. All she could think of was how weary she felt.
But she had made up her mind to finish that page, so having decided to put her confusion aside, she went back to her desk and picked up the pen again. She continued writing, her eyelids waging war against gravity to stay open, her mind losing territory to the armies of "overwhelming urge to sleep", but the last bastions of focus in her brain were determined to bloody well finish that page. So she wrote, one word at a time.
Rap. TAP. TAP.
Ganyu nearly jumped out of her seat. The knock sounded again, but it most certainly didn't come from the door. She could have sworn it somehow...got closer to her? Confusion was starting to turn into genuine concern. She slumped down on her desk, head in her hands, trying to calm the shaking in her body. What was going on? She had been tired before. She practically lived in a state of permanent exhaustion. But she never had...issues like this.
...was she finally losing it? Had she pushed herself a bit too far, and slipped over the edge? Qilin weren't called Illuminated Beasts for nothing; a benevolent and infinitely gentle race, they were in tune with nature and their surroundings in a way humans couldn't comprehend. One of the natural benefits of this was that qilin never had to worry about such esoteric problems that plagued the more transient races, like "insanity". A qilin never had to question their senses, for their senses were inextricably bound to the land itself.
But Ganyu was half human. And humans most certainly could suffer from insanity, paranoia, hallucinations, and other such ailments. And she knew full well that one of the major causes of such problems was, would you believe it, a lack of sleep.
Ganyu sighed, a heavy, defeated sigh that almost sounded like a sob. The page would have to wait. She needed sleep, and she needed it now. She laid her head down on the desk and waved the white flag of surrender to gravity and her urge to pass out on the spot, and closed her eyes.
But she did not sleep. For her heart was suddenly gripped with claws of ice, her stomach climbed into her throat, her adrenaline spiked, and she sat bolt upright in her chair with her eyes wide open. For she suddenly felt, for no reason she could ascertain, sheer and utter terror at the idea of going to sleep—or more specifically, of dreaming.
She had not a clue why. No explanation for why this overwhelming dread clutched at her. But she knew—she must not fall asleep. For something, she knew deep within her soul, would be waiting in her dreams. Something that grinned a grin too wide and grasped at her from the infinite darkness with ephemeral fingers.
RAP. TAP. TAP.
The knocking was upon her now. The sound came from directly before her face, near enough to reach out and touch, yet there was nothing to knock on, nor any hand to knock that eyes could see. Dread became panic. She had her back to the wall, eyes darting in terror around the dim room for whatever was in it with her. The pounding of her heart was so loud in her ears that she feared she would miss a vital sound that might warn her of impeding danger despite how hard she was listening for it.
Her breath came in ragged sobs and her knees nearly buckled from the trembling. The walls of the enormous office were closing in, the luxurious wooden beams and exquisite paneling writhing like liquid as the room threatened to suffocate, to crush her. Her mind rebelled against what her senses were telling her, as the boundaries of reality stretched distressingly thin, thin enough to peer beyond the solidity of the natural world into the boundless madness that lay across the veil. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the gaze of the vast emptiness accusing her, denying her.
Rap
Tap
...
T̵̝̘̫̬͒̅̀̽̿̄A̴̡͓͉̘̝̖͚̮̦̳̞̯͈̍̾̉̽̉͛̂͠P̴̮̱̦̣̮͓̞͉̦̊̂̈́̆̍̓̓̏̈́̃͘͝
...
Not a knock. Spoken words. A voice, colder than the depths of the Abyss, had said the words right in her ears...in her head.
Ganyu screamed and bolted.
Liset landing craft, in the skies above Liyue
Well...damn. The Tenno had to force down the urge to punch the desk of the codex terminal in rising frustration. The worst part was that his idea WORKED—but he got nothing out of it. The "Irminsul downloader", as he had hastily dubbed it, did exactly what he was hoping for it to do. Reams and reams and reams of memory from the world tree of Teyvat were captured by the endo in the ayatan sculpture, then encoded into a properly indexed data file by the vitruvian. Millennia of files of every event of every life that ever existed in the world, all now in his hands.
The sheer amount of data taxed even the Orokin device's capabilities, which is saying something, as the Orokin's technological level trespassed upon the boundary between science and magic. They did, after all, build perpetual motion machines to use as decorations and scienced away death itself. But even the vitruvian was nearly full to capacity with the data files it had pulled from Irminsul, the "tree" that somehow recorded all events in the world.
But the Tenno's excitement over this success was immediately blunted when, after having Ordis run a search through the files that took even his prodigious computational abilities nearly a quarter of an hour, there was not a single mention of the twins. Anywhere. It was like they didn't exist in the world at all. The Tenno tested searching others from Teyvat to be sure they were doing it right, and sure enough, it worked fine. He tried searching those he met so far—he found out Jean had a younger sister who went with her father, while Jean went with her mother when the family split. He found out that Kaeya had quite the tempestuous relationship with his brother. He even found out something that he had suspected was true, that the strange bard who gave off inordinate amounts of elemental energy was in fact the Archon of the nation.
So the device was clearly operating properly, the data was in fact intact, and Ordis's search function was collating results as expected. So why no mention of the twins? In a flash of inspiration, he had Ordis search for himself; and just as he had begun to suspect would be the case, there was no mention of him either.
"Hmm...so this Irminsul only captures data on those who are from the world of Teyvat. Those outside the system seem to have no entry."
"I must concur with your conclusion, Operator. Yet there is even more to this data than immediately apparent on first parsing, which may shed light on exactly what its purpose is."
"Oh?" The Tenno's annoyed scowl faded as his interest piqued.
"There is evidence of data tampering. Memory files deleted, replaced, or rewritten, as evidenced by missing entries in what functions as the data tables. But what is more fascinating is the effects of this data tampering; if something is removed from the record, it removes it from every person's memory as well! It's less like deleting a file and more like re-writing the history of the world! Therefore, this data matrix, designation 'Irminsul', is not merely a recording device—it is, in a sense, rendering the reality of the world like a ludoplex would render a game! Isn't that marvelous?"
The Tenno blinked. "Huh. Wild."
It really was fascinating, and quite the insight into how things worked in this place, but, the Tenno thought dourly, it would all be a moot point soon. He would keep this data, and perhaps have Ordis continue to parse it in case it brought up anything useful, but since it didn't give him what he needed, it would have to be shelved for now.
"Wait, something occurs to me," he held up his fingers to his furrowed brow. "So if the twins aren't in this data matrix because they aren't part of the world...does that mean they might continue to remember events that have been 'deleted' when no one else can?"
"Your hypothesis certainly has merit, Operator. With no file headers to index for them, their memories should remain untouched by any tampering, in theory at least."
"This might sound a little crazy, Ordis, but...could you change any files in Irminsul?"
"Not from here, most certainly. And even if we somehow found an access point like a ley line that would allow us to interface with the primary matrix, we saw just how difficult it was to translate the data into something I could analyze. In all likelihood, I would be unable to establish any baseline interaction protocols."
"Hmm, figures. Worth a shot, I guess. Well, speaking of that ley line, I guess I should pursue this...alternate line of inquiry."
He turned the head of his warframe, currently Nyx Prime, to stare eyelessly at two bound prisoners on the floor of his landing craft: a Fatui pyro agent and a cicin mage. They had attempted, quite unsuccessfully, to jump the Tenno when he showed up at the exposed ley line, and were now severely regretting their inability to judge which fights to pick and which ones to leave the hell alone.
Alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllright, who's going to talk first?
"We'll never talk!" the pyro agent growled. "Our loyalty lies with the Tsaritsa, and with…"
I wasn't asking you. I was talking to myself. But thank you for volunteering!
He stretched out the warframe's hand, and a strand of pure void power threaded its way from the hand into the head of the pyro agent, invading his mind. He screamed as his eyes burned with fire from inside while his mental defenses crumbled like a sandcastle before a tsunami. After a painful second, he fell silent, eyes empty and posture neutral.
So! What can you tell me about the twins?
Sanctuary of Surasthana, Sumeru City
Her dreams had been troubled of late, more than they ever had been even when the Sages had gone where angels feared to tread, creating the profane, the artificial deity that was intended to replace her. The Dendro Archon, carrying the title of Buer, Lesser Lord Kusanali, and others, but known to her friends simply as Nahida, was very worried. There was a deafening silence from the skies above where Celestia traced its astral path, and her dreams had been full of blood and teeth, grasping fingers and...knocking. Always knocking.
But even the creeping sense of dread her nightmares had been giving her recently was nothing compared to the alarm she currently felt. For someone had once again tapped into Irminsul. It certainly wasn't the Wanderer; she would know that even if she didn't have him under surveillance, for the invasion was brutish and crude, like an intruder breaking a door down rather than using a key as one invited would do.
Yet Irminsul itself carried no record of the event. And there was only one person, perhaps two, that Nahida knew of who could evade Irminsul's knowledge.
But could it really be the Traveler? No, certainly not. She had earned Nahida's complete trust. Even if she had figured out how to do it, she would never have done so without consulting her first.
Her brother, perhaps? Nahida had never met him, nor knew anything else about him other that what Lumine had told her, but she had always sensed a deep sadness whenever she spoke of him, a sense of...shame? Nahida could only suspect he had done something that grieved her. But this was all speculation, and as far as she knew, Lumine's brother had no more information on accessing Irminsul than the Traveler herself did when she arrived in Sumeru for the first time.
That left only the other logical conclusion as a possibility, as fantastical as it seemed—another traveler from beyond the stars had descended.
Nahida floated down from her place of meditation and lightly stepped onto the walkway leading out to the door, beyond which was the bright and wonderful world she had only recently had the unspeakable joy of seeing for the first time with her waking eyes. She walked out into the brilliant sunshine and blinked as her eyes adjusted to the light, smiling as the warmth of the sun made the shadows of her recent nightmares retreat for the time being.
But she couldn't spend too long basking. She had people to talk to. If her theories were correct—and they usually were—Sumeru would need to be ready.
The skies above Liyue
Picturesque. That was the word to describe this place, the Tenno thought. Liyue Harbor was right there, several thousand feet below his current elevation, and even from this distance it was beautiful to look at. It was far more than a mere utilitarian port of business, though it definitely was that as well. It was a work of art. It's grand seagate opened up to a broad stairway, flanked on either side by tasteful stone walls and buildings that, interestingly enough, resembled those from ancient Asian cultures on Old Earth, an architectural aesthetic that the Tenno preserved to the current day.
The port was surrounded by mountains on all sides, flat stone faces capped with green, only enhancing the natural look of the port city. Pools of water with flower gardens speckled the city with vibrant shades of blue, lavender, green, and white. The city was made in harmony with its surroundings, rather than in competition with them.
And floating above the city to the southwest was the place he was looking for—the Jade Chamber, personal residence of the Tianquan of the Qixing, Ningguang. He had heard stories about her from the citizens of Mondstadt; how a mere scrap of her notebook could sell for absurd amounts of money, or how businessmen would pay large fortunes for a nothing more than a brief conversation with her. Apparently she was just that good with money.
The Tenno wasn't entirely sure if he would get on with these people. They reminded him a little too much of the Corpus. Not that he was much better, he ruefully admitted to himself, as he had amassed a sizable fortune, not through business, but by what amounted to mercenary work and pillaging the bodies of his victims. And betting on himself in the Index, can't forget that.
Anyway, it didn't matter. If Lumine had been through this city, she would have caught the eye of the authorities, which meant this Ningguang would know something about her. So they were about to have themselves a conversation, whether either one of them liked it or not.
The Liset covered the intervening miles between itself and the city in mere seconds, hovering high above the highest peaks directly over the Jade Chamber. The Tenno, clad for now in his Ash Prime once again, released himself from the rotating hatch in the belly of the landing craft and allowed himself to fall a thousand feet to land in a picture-perfect three-point landing directly on the terrace of the ostentatious floating palace.
True to form by now, within seconds he was surrounded by scared faces and a circle of spears. He sighed an exasperated sigh.
Jueyun Karst, Liyue
It had been many centuries since the Adepti had gathered in such a way, which was readily apparent by the friction evident between long-standing loners finally meeting and being forced to interact. If it weren't for the presence of Rex Lapis, currently under the guise of the human Zhongli, the meeting would have ended with a huff and everyone going their separate directions.
"One finds it very hard to believe that Celestia's defenses would be so fragile. In fact, one could no doubt contruct a bulwark capable of repelling such inter-dimensional trespassers oneself, though it is unlikely any others possess the wit to use it."
Cloud Retainer—who for reasons all her own chose to take the form of a large bird resembling some combination of emu, flamingo, and perhaps peacock—made her opinion immediately known.
"May Rex Lapis preserve us all if you indeed somehow possess all the wit in the land, for we are doomed if that is the case."
Moon Carver, who rarely presented himself in any form other than a very large stag, found his patience tried as usual when speaking to Cloud Retainer.
"Ughhhh," groaned Xiao, the last of the Yakshas. Why was he even here? He was no good at this sort of thing. Neither was anyone else, clearly, but at least he knew it.
"Yet it is true. Celestia has fallen silent."
The somber voice of their lord, Rex Lapis, Morax, the Prime of the Adepti, Lord of Geo, wealth, commerce, and contracts, brought all squabbles to silence.
"The world has changed, and I among all the Seven am most loathe to adapt to rapidly changing times. The people of Liyue have shown their determination to forge their own destinies, free of divine planning, yet this may be a task too much for them to bear. Perhaps I have abdicated my authority too soon."
His voice was quiet and reflective, with perhaps a hit of regret. But he looked upon his long-time allies with no hesitation in his purpose.
"Yet we will choose to trust them to shoulder this task. Though they will not do so alone. I charge you all to remain vigilant. The veil has been pierced, and an unknown entity has entered this world. We do not know their intentions yet, so that is the first order of business. Xiao?"
Xiao perked up from his annoyed slump to respond to his lord.
"You and I will go to Liyue Harbor. I will maintain this form for now, so I will ask you to make contact first. Learn what you can of their purpose and their strength. Show no hostility unless warranted, but do not lower your guard."
Xiao bowed. "As you will, my lord."
Rex Lapis address the gathered Adepti as one. "We must remain a rock in these trying times, one that our people can cling to while the seas rage around them. I know I can count on you, my old friends."
Jade Chamber, Liyue
"Look, this is kind of an urgent matter. I know you've seen Lumine, and I need to find her and her brother. So why are you making this difficult?"
The Tenno addressed the lady Ningguang on the terrace of the Jade Chamber, and she clearly wasn't terribly happy with having a completely alien warrior drop out of the sky right down to her front door. The Tenno was standing outside his warframe, surrounded by Millelith guards as well as a very angry looking young swordswoman with purple hair, all glaring at him.
"Sir Tenno, you suddenly arrive from the skies without so much as a greeting card, at a very suspicious time, all to ask very suspicious questions with very suspicious motives. Why would you not expect some consternation at your arrival? I will have clarification before I share information on someone who means so much to us."
The Tenno sighed. He should have expected it to play out like this. "I told you, the twins are like family to me. I'm trying to do the exact thing she's been wanting all this time—get the two together again."
"And as I said, I find that immensely hard to believe."
"Fine. How about this? Lumine can use all the elements without this thing you call a Vision, right?"
"...yes? That is certainly something unusual about—"
She was interrupted by a circular formation of rock pillars suddenly rising out of the ground around the Tenno, which then crumbled to dust with a wave of his hand. A stunned silence reigned supreme for a brief moment.
"See? Same trick." He was glad he had checked out that statue earlier. Turns out elemental powers weren't all that hard to make use of here. That said, they were far inferior to his weapons, and lacked the metaphysical power of the Void, but it proved itself useful here, if for nothing other than credentials.
Ningguang's shocked expression slowly gave way to contemplation.
"That is definitely more than coincidence," she admitted.
"Right, glad we got that out of the way, now can you—"
Ningguang held her hand up. "But how can we know you mean no harm? You say you don't, but your coming has been a portent of misfortune. Though I find such superstition an uneducated way of thinking generally speaking, I can't deny that it is once again more than coincidence."
The Tenno kept his face neutral, but he sure didn't like the sound of that. "Misfortune? What misfortune?"
Her face grew concerned. "Perhaps you know something about this?"
She turned to look at the sidewalk leading to a postern door to the side of the main entrance, and out came two guards escorting, or more accurately, half-carrying a woman out to the plaza. The woman had a gentle and beautiful face, hair down to her waist, an elegant and somewhat soft looking build—and two horns growing out of her head. Not the strangest thing the Tenno had seen, but it stood out nonetheless. A non-human species, perhaps? Or a mix with human? He wasn't sure.
She would have been quite gorgeous...had she not been looking the worse for wear. Scratch that, she looked awful. Exhaustion had clearly taken a terrible toll on her health. Her cheeks were sallow and pallid, shrunken in until they strained against the cheekbones and jaw. Her eyes didn't so much have dark circles under them so much as she looked like she had been struck repeatedly, so puffy and bruised her eye sockets appeared.
But her eyes themselves—they were the eyes of a hunted animal. They darted around in panic, fighting against blinking as if the split second of darkness would be the end of her. They were bloodshot and discolored, and it pained everyone to look at them.
The young swordswoman with the purple hair ran to her side to help her stand, as her legs were so shaky they failed to properly support her weight. The swordswoman's face contorted in concern and grief, an expression shared by all in the room as they witnessed their demure, elegant, and always composed secretary reduced to this dreadful state.
Even the Tenno couldn't help but feel a pang of sympathy. "Who is this, and what's wrong with her?"
Ningguang regarded him with barely veiled suspicion. "You don't know?"
"How would I know? I just got here," the Tenno retorted.
Ningguang didn't quite lose the suspicious look, but she retained courtesy in her answer. "This is Ganyu, secretary to the Qixing for the last several millennia."
Millennia? Definitely not human, or at least not completely, the Tenno thought. The only humans who lived that long were Orokin, or someone like himself who spent most of it in stasis, and this woman certainly didn't look like either. She also gave off an energy, similar to that of the bard back in Mondstadt, though to a much lesser degree. Perhaps she had some "divinity" in her bloodline?
Ningguang continued: "She seems to have had a mental breakdown of some kind. She works extremely hard and by no accounts gets enough sleep, which normally we might contribute this to. But this...this is something different. She's terrified of sleeping now. She keeps rambling about things that don't make sense, muttering things about grasping fingers, grinning teeth, and...knocking. I don't understand it at all."
Knocking.
The Tenno froze. As rigid as he stood, he still couldn't hide the flicker of fear that moved across his countenance. It did not escape Ningguang's notice. Anger overcame her face for a moment, and she pointed accusingly at the Tenno.
"So you DO know something about this!"
"...yes."
Both Ningguang and the swordswoman glared at him with barely concealed fury.
"And yet you claim to mean no harm?! How can you expect trust and information when you have kept such dangerous secrets to yourself?! Are you responsible for this?!"
"No, but it's why I have to find the twins, AND NOW!" the Tenno raised his voice for the first time here.
That announcement came unexpected, and Ningguang found herself momentarily perplexed. A horrible possibility dawned on her.
"Is...is the Traveler somehow responsible for this?" She asked quietly, as if afraid of the answer.
Huh, how to answer that one...those two were responsible for, well, everything here in a way. The Tenno carefully considered his response.
"They...can't be blamed for this," was the best he could come up with.
"So it was somehow...unintentional?"
"Definitely unintentional."
"What did they do? What happened? Why is Ganyu afflicted by this? I need answers, Tenno!" Her tone was now as much pleading as angry.
"I can't give you answers. Knowing changes the outcome," he murmured, eyes downcast. He then looked up and met Ningguang's worried eyes. "But I can try to help."
He looked at the poor, wretched girl, by now collapsed to the ground in a sitting position. Fright and exhaustion were waging war over her consciousness. He didn't have time for this. He didn't have a reason to do this. It would all be pointless eventually anyway.
But by the Lotus, he was a Tenno. And Tenno help the innocent.
He slowly walked over and knelt in front of the enervated girl. The swordswoman's hand drifted to her weapon.
"I will be watching, Tenno. If I think for even a moment that you are going to harm her, you will answer to my blade."
The Tenno didn't look the slightest bit concerned about that. "What's your name?" he asked in a leaden voice.
The purple-haired woman scowled. "Keqing, Yuheng of the Qixing."
"Well, Keqing, Yuheng of the Qixing, maybe stand back a bit."
It was a testament to her self-control—and perhaps self-preservation—that she chose to take a step back. For a cold and tingling sensation ran down her spine when the Tenno glared at her with those golden eyes, eyes that hurt to look into. She restrained herself from reacting.
The Tenno turned his head back to the horned woman on the ground in front of him.
"Miss Ganyu?"
Ganyu looked into his eyes for the first time. And for the first time in a while, her vision cleared, and she saw beyond the veil once again. The Tenno appeared to her as a fire, wild, fierce, and uncontrollable—but the fire within him chased the shadows away. The darkness that had been crawling, slithering, oozing into her mind, the impossible shapes and limbs that squirmed and writhed in the gloom retreated from his brilliance. Hope swelled within her heart, hope that she could be free from this waking nightmare. She reached out her hand towards the light that emanated from him, trying with everything she had to grasp it.
"Help me! Please! He's waiting for me in my dreams! The knocking won't stop! Knocking, knocking, knockingknockingknockingknocking—!"
She looked up at him with tears of sheer horror in her eyes.
"He wears my face!" Her voice was a shrill whisper. "Help me!"
With a surprisingly tender expression on his face, he held out his left hand to her. "If you want my help, take my hand."
Without hesitation, like one drowning in a bottomless ocean clutching at the last lifeline from the last ship, Ganyu grasped his hand tight with both of hers. The Tenno closed his eyes and put his forefinger and index finger of his right hand to his forehead in a meditative manner.
The assembled guards and members of the Qixing watched in astonishment as a golden glow surrounded the Tenno and Ganyu. It was warm and cold, bright and dark, calm and rage. It was a paradox made manifest, but all present felt its power seep in and still the fear and disquiet that had infected all their hearts. The skin felt warm at its touch, and the shadows fled.
The Tenno then moved his right hand forward and placed his first two fingers upon Ganyu's forehead. There he held it for a moment as Ganyu's eyes started to go blank, and just as suddenly drew his hand back with a forceful pushoff. Ganyu's head snapped back for a moment, then her eyes closed and she collapsed limp to the ground, stopping short only because the Tenno caught her head at the last moment. The glow that had suffused the air disappeared like the snuffing of a candle.
Unheeding of the Tenno's previous instruction, Keqing dashed to Ganyu's side. With fear and anger in her voice, she shouted "What did you do to her?!"
Her anger gave way to bewilderment when she realized that Ganyu was breathing peacefully, evenly. Sleep, restful, dreamless sleep had finally come to her. "What...what did you do?" She asked, more politely this time. But when she looked at the Tenno again, her head drew back in shock.
For the briefest of moments, it was as if the Tenno had a thousand faces, all occupying the same place. He was gritting his teeth and had his hands to his head as if enduring serious pain, but the other faces that flickered in and out of existence were screaming. Screaming, crying, gasping in agony…
...and then it was all over. The Tenno was just there, kneeling down on one knee, face taut but controlled. He took a deep breath, and with some effort, returned to his normal neutral expression—though he certainly looked more drained than usual.
"I helped her get some sleep," the Tenno said flatly, the emotion in his voice dulled.
"But...what about her dreams? She was so afraid of dreaming!"
"She won't dream."
"...how can you be so sure?" Ningguang asked from the side, her voice soft and tentative.
"Because," the Tenno answered quietly, slowly rising to his feet, "I took her dreams upon myself."
An almost reverent silence took hold, as those present took stock of what the Tenno had just done for Ganyu. Their visages were in conflict, feelings of gratitude and guilt battling in their hearts as they awkwardly stood, unsure of what to say to him.
"And...what about you? Will those dreams not torment you too?" Keqing asked, showing a moment of uncharacteristic concern.
The Tenno shrugged.
"They can get in line."
Things are about to get serious. Also, I'm happy to say that from this chapter on, there's going to be significantly more action. I do acknowledge that there's been a whole lot of exposition going on so far. I try to keep it as succinct as possible and not re-tread the same ground over and over again, but I also believe it is necessary to set the stakes for what is to come.
On a small side note, I find that fanfiction's document editor is rather lacking in options. For that first little horror movie-style section, I had so many little ideas of how to play with font sizes, text body alignment, and other effects to really make the reader "hear" the text. But most of it is just lost in formatting. So I did what I could, but I sure wish the site could preserve more of what I have in my openoffice document.
Thank you once again for reading this far. Stay tuned next time, for there will be explosions.
