I do apologize for the terribly long wait. Four times as long as I would have liked. It's been quite a few months, what with an m.2 SSD slot failing on my motherboard, preventing windows updates and making my computer forcibly shut down at the worst of times while it tries, and inevitably fails to update the system despite a hardware failure forcing a BSOD every single time…
Then my monitor had a sector go bad. Had to send that in for an RMA (and they didn't send me a prepaid label, so I STILL had to shell out a hefty postage price for "free" warranty repairs).
THEN a total plumbing failure in my house. Sewage line collapsed. Old house, old clay pipelines, tale as old as time.
But by the Void, I am finally back in action. Took me a solid week or two just to get my head back in the game, as I hadn't played either Warframe or Genshin for a while—nothing against either game, just have been playing other things with my brother, like Elite: Dangerous, Remnant 2, Darktide, SCP: 5K, Helldivers 2, and others.
But enough of my complaining: Teyvat is under siege by an enemy that is unknown, and perhaps unknowable. And our Tenno is on a mission. As a sort of warning, certain things are going to speed up from here. The Tenno will be spending less time in places and making even less conversation, as the urgency level has gone way up. He's definitely feeling the pressure now.
So without further ado, let's drop back in. On with the show:
Jade Chamber, Liyue
...sleeping? Ganyu? Since when?! Xiao stared at the Millelith guard standing before the bedchambers in the palace in befuddled silence at the absurd information he just heard, a gesture that the poor guard misinterpreted as something more like extreme displeasure. He was practically melting in fear from the glare of the last of the Yakshas, when he was saved by the sound of the Tenno's ship departing with a howling mechanical roar that would make a dragon quiver.
Xiao looked off in the direction of the sound. Where was this god-slayer going now? Whatever his intentions, an interloper this powerful needed to be watched, and Xiao needed to keep up. But he also needed information, and where else was he to get it but the one place he saw this Descender land, here on the Jade Chamber?
With a frustrated "hmph", Xiao turned back to the poor guard. "If Ganyu is sleeping, then where is the Tianquan? Or the Yuheng? Quick, mortal, this is urgent."
"Th...the Yuheng is in the guest chambers, recovering from the elemental burst," the Millelith guard stammered out. "The Tianquan is in her office. She has undoubtedly recovered enough to see you, if you wish, sir."
"Fine." Xiao turned on his heel and headed towards the stairway to the second floor of the floating palace, when he turned back, a strange expression on his face.
"And you?" he muttered quietly, scowling to hide the concern on his face. "You possess no elemental power, no Vision. It is quite surprising you are still standing." Xiao could quite easily observe the shakiness in the man's stance, the sickly pallor of his face, and how heavily he was leaning on his spear for support.
The Millelith's mouth hung open in shock, for if his ears did not deceive him, the legendary Demon Slayer just inquired as to his welfare. The swelling sense of pride poured strength down into his limbs once again as he mustered his willpower to straighten his back and stand at attention.
"Sir! While the Millelith stands guard, evil shall never prevail!"
Xiao rolled his eyes and suppressed a groan, but he could not entirely suppress a momentary look of relief in his eyes. "Just...don't push it. An exhausted guard is a dead guard."
Without turning back to listen to the sentry's response, Xiao marched up the stairs and walked to the exquisite door of Ningguang's office. He gave it a singular push. Locked, of course. He didn't bother to knock. With a swirl of dark smoke, he simply appeared in front of Ningguang's desk.
The owner of the desk gave quite a start, but relaxed when she saw who it was. Ningguang, who was still looking a bit worse for wear, recovered her dignity, stood and walked to the front of her desk, and bowed courteously to Xiao.
"Greetings, Conqueror of Demons, and welcome to my office. It is good to see a guardian of Liyue in these trying times."
Xiao, per usual, ignored the pleasantries and got straight to the point.
"Tianquang, I need information. You spoke to the Descender, right?"
"I did, yes. But before that...could you tell me…" Ningguang broke off for a moment as if to consider how exactly to word her question, then gave up, "...what just happened?"
"Hmm?"
"There was a brilliantly bright light, a shockwave, a burst of energy that nearly killed us all, and yet here we are. The Tenno is gone and Osial is nowhere to be seen. I confess to being rather perplexed about recent events."
Tenno. So that's what the Descender is called, Xiao thought. He answered Ningguang's question in his usual brusque, direct manner:
"Osial is dead. This 'Tenno' has killed a god. And it seems he also has the power to heal an entire city. Whatever his intentions are, his power is dangerous, and I have been charged to keep surveillance on him. So I need you to tell me everything he told you."
Ningguang had spent more time in recent hours with her mouth hanging open in abject bewilderment than she had cumulatively in her entire life. After adding a few more seconds to this total, she snapped it shut once again and lightly shook her head. What a day. The kind of insanity it took to reduce the wealthiest and one of the most powerful individuals in the entire Continent to this indignity...well, for all that had happened, Ningguang supposed she could hardly blame herself.
"The Tenno...killed Osial?! He did it...he actually did it…" Her voice trailed off as she processed this groundbreaking news, her hands going to her forehead to ease the pounding headache tormenting her.
"Will Osial's spirit not poison the land and sea?" Ninguang continued asking. "I am not an expert on such matters, but you most certainly are. Are not the souls of dead gods a corruption to the world?"
"You're not getting it. Osial is gone. There is no spirit left. Nothing to corrupt. This Tenno annihilated him."
Ningguang's eyes started to go blank. Just who, or what exactly did she enter a contract with? "I...I must confess, I didn't think such a thing were possible. Clearly, the Tenno is more than he seems."
"Yes. Which is why you need to start talking. He's dangerous."
"Yes, of course, Conqueror of Demons, forgive my distraction." She walked shakily back behind her desk to sit, gesturing elegantly to the chair placed before her desk. "Would you like to be seated?"
"No."
"I—I see."
Xiao strode up to the desk and dropped both his hands heavily onto it, leaning over to glower at Ningguang.
"Did he say where he was from? Did he mention anything about the Abyss?"
Ningguang told him everything.
The Chasm, Liyue
Yelan nearly dropped her bow in surprise. But when the gleaming, hulking amalgamation of flesh and metal turned its eyeless helm to look at her, she snapped out of it and quickly nocked another arrow, keeping it pointed down. The armored beast had just annihilated that demonic arm that was certainly going to kill her, so it could be friendly—but that was no guarantee.
She observed the beast silently. It was human-shaped, but enormous, taller than any person she had ever seen. Judging by the way the ground trembled when it landed, it was far, far heavier than even its large size would imply. Its armor was elaborate, ornate, and regal, with gleaming bronze trim contrasting with royal purple highlights upon a rich brown background. Its…'skin' was like a shining, nearly transparent golden metal encasing its splendid armor in its entirety; yet unlike a metal, it bent and moved freely as the armor underneath it moved.
It had in its arms a weapon unlike anything she had ever seen. It was an intricately crafted fusion of metal and energy, cradled in the beast's grip like a crossbow or perhaps those new muskets that Fontaine had developed. Was this the weapon that vaporized that arm, when a full barrage of some of her strongest attacks barely made it flinch? Well, she would make absolutely sure she did nothing that would result in that weapon being aimed at her.
After a brief moment of looking at her, the warrior simply gestured sharply, pointing his thumb back towards the tunnel leading up and out of the mine. The message was clear: get out.
Yelan didn't have to be told twice. She nodded briefly in gratitude, then bolted towards the exit. Upward she climbed, scaling ladders, running across scaffolds, clambering up precipices in a mad dash to be out of there. She had made it up several levels in fantastic time before she realized what was so odd about her unimpeded progress:
She had not encountered a single enemy on the way up. Not so much as a geo slime. The mine was deathly still. It would have been deathly silent as well, were it not for the heavy sounds of combat coming from below where the armored monster had saved her. The ground shook from the ferocious impacts in the deep, the vibrations shaking age-old dust from ledges and rotting timbers to drizzle down into her eyes as she climbed.
Well, she certainly wasn't going to question her good luck. She could see daylight from above her as she pulled herself up a ledge, and found that she was on the last ramp to the exit. Elated, she sprinted towards the light, and within moments she breached the surface, gasping for the sweet, open air of the overworld with her hands on her knees and a grin of relief on her face.
That grin disappeared rather quickly when she stood up to look around.
A full minute. It took a good solid minute for her to absorb the image of the aftermath of the Tenno's rampage. Her eyes wandered the bowl of the Chasm across the veritable sea of corpses. The terrain looked a lot different from when she went in, too. A lot more...busted.
Then she looked up to see the Railjack floating in the sky far above the Chasm, the sound of its engines still thrumming.
She stared upward for yet another minute, arms hanging limply from her sides, eyes blank. After a moment, she dispassionately pulled a die out of her pocket, tossed it in the air, caught it, then looked lifelessly at it.
"Yep. Good roll. I'm going home."
The Tenno briefly watched the woman he had just saved as she ran out towards the exit. He was a bit surprised to find anyone living at all down here, but the fact that her mind still seemed to be intact was even more unusual. Still, he didn't hold out much hope for anyone else left in the Chasm; Void corruption had spread throughout, leaving its taint over even the very rock and ore of the caves around him.
He launched himself into the air and continued downward.
He went through multiple rooms and several levels clearing enemies along the way, when a sense of trepidation grew in him as he entered the next cavern and found it empty of enemies. This was highly irregular. The Chasm had been wall-to-wall Void army all the way down.
So why this sudden vacuum?
A bit more cautiously, he marched forward with his Arca Plasmor raised and aimed downrange, steps quiet despite Rhino Prime's vast weight. And in the unsettling silence, he was able to hear a sound that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end—the sound of a blade being repeatedly thrust into flesh.
It was unlikely that whatever it was making the sound was truly a threat to the Tenno...but something about the wrongness of it all put him on edge. Who was stabbing who down here, and why? Why were there no enemies around them? What was going on here?
He crept up on the small side cavern where he heard the noise coming from. There were signs of human habitation hastily abandoned: a cooking pot knocked over beside a fireplace, shattered flasks and other measuring instruments upon a table, a large tent partially set up and showing signs of damage…
...but the THING that drew his eyes involuntarily to it was the one sitting on a chair, leaning back with its legs stretched out and hands behind its back like it was enjoying a perfect day basking in the sunshine. Underground. It was looking bemusedly further into the side cavern where the horrible stabbing sound was coming from, but on the Tenno's silent approach, it turned its eyes—its bottomless, empty eyes—toward the Tenno.
Of course the Tenno recognized the one sitting in the chair without a care in the world. It was himself. A perfect facsimile, right down to the clothes he was wearing, the somatic scars on his face, everything except the eyes. They were deeper than the endless abyss, as if they contained the entire emptiness of the cosmos within them. The grin that stretched across his face was cruel and unnatural, and he pantomimed a soundless giggle as he gestured towards the direction of the sound of violence coming from deeper in the room. The Tenno tore his unwilling gaze from the fraudulent being in front of him to follow in the direction he was pointed to.
He wished he hadn't.
He saw a young woman, rather thin and frail looking, clothed in the standard garb of members of the Adventurer's guild, straddled over the body of an older woman with tools on her belt...and she was stabbing the older woman repeatedly. The older woman was clearly long dead, but that did not seem to deter the adventurer from plunging the small knife in her hands into the flesh of the corpse underneath her again, and again, and again.
The Tenno clenched his teeth and rounded back on the figure who had been callously watching the horrific scene as if it were an entertaining stage play—only to find him gone.
"Who are you?"
The voice, weak and rasping, came from the diminutive girl with the knife in her hand. She had paused her bloody assault upon the dead and was glaring at the Tenno with eyes as dead as the body underneath her.
Oh, those eyes...the Tenno knew the look all too well. Bitter memories from the blackest corners of his mind burned into his vision, memories of hiding in terror from the maddened crew and passengers of the ill-fated Zariman Ten-Zero. Memories of his own mother prying open the barred door to the classroom he was hiding in, the flesh of her fingertips stripped to the bone from clawing at the tiny gap between the double doors in her desperation to get to her child, but not to save him. Memories of her face—feral, inhuman—when she broke into the classroom and saw him. She was no longer his mother.
Memories of the surge of unwanted power he cast in front of him in panic.
Memories of her and the makeshift weapon she carried turning to ashes.
Clenching his eyes shut did not block out the memories. They would be seared into his mind forever.
This girl's eyes were the same. Humanity gone, all semblance of rationality and reason flown, replaced by nothing but the soundless howling of the eternal void.
"I suppose I should introduce myself first," she continued, her voice catatonic. Just flashes of old patterns of behavior, reflex actions of the brain. There was no meaning behind her words. All will and life was already drained.
"I'm Zhiqiong, adventurer. This is Jinwu, Technician of the Ministry of Civil Affairs. She was wearing my face. MY face. It's mine. Mine."
She resumed stabbing the body without even looking at her long-expired victim. Her cold, vacant eyes were fixed on the Tenno.
"Who am I without my own face? It's what makes me, me. No one else can have it. She took it. She must have. She was wearing it. So I stabbed her. I had to. You can't just steal someone's face."
She looked down at the body of Jinwu. "But no matter how many times I try to cut it off, she still has it. Why? Why won't she give me my face back?"
She finally stopped in her brutal knifing of the corpse and stood, extending her thin, trembling arm to point her weapon at the Tenno.
"Are you going to try to take my face too? You can't. It's mine. Only mine. Give me back my face."
Her dead eyes blazed with madness.
"GIVE ME BACK MY FACE!"
With a crazed shout, she rushed at the Tenno, knife waving wildly in the air.
The Tenno just felt cold. Lifeless. Hollow. It was far, far too late for this one. There was only one last mercy he could extend.
He drew back Rhino Prime's fist and struck. Zhiqiong's head instantly pulped into spray from the blow, leaving nothing behind but a ragged stump of a neck. Death was instantaneous. The only cold comfort the Tenno could derive was that he had managed to make it painless.
It was very little comfort indeed.
He remained standing, unmoving, slumped forward in the posture of defeat, the expressionless helm of his warframe staring fixedly at the crumpled, headless body on the floor. He felt drained. His growing sense of frustration with how things had been going turned to ice in his heart and left him feeling empty and apathetic.
Why does it always come to this…
He looked down at his fist, smeared with the grey matter and fragments of the skull of the adventurer laying on the ground before him, and slowly, vacantly shook them off onto the ground.
You know, kiddo, why DOES it always come to this? A voice that was and was not his own sounded, somewhere, whether in his ears or in his mind, he'd never know. By now I'd think you'd know better than to keep getting invested here. You know what's going to happen. So why bother?
The mocking whisper then laughed, a cruel, sneering sound that seemed to echo among the walls, though whether it was the walls of the cavern or of his mind, once again, he could not tell.
Perhaps it's that sense of Tenno 'honor' you're so proud of? So 'honorable', to be so concerned about a fragment of a dream...and yet…
The voice ceased echoing and snarled directly in his ears.
...n̴̗̹̞͕̈͗o̵̧̤͗͝ț̴̛̓ ̴͚͚̯̍̐͝͝h̸̟̹̎̀ǫ̷̝̫͇̂̈n̵̬͕̖̯̓̓ͅo̵̧̹̫̖̓̆͠ȑ̷̛̮̹̐͊ͅa̸̖͋̈́̈̏b̸͆̊ͅl̸͓͇̻̜̍̏e̶̤̪͂̈́̇̾͜ͅ ̷̨͕͔̥͆͒̑̀̈́͜è̸͎̹̀n̷̡͍͕̄͑̚ͅo̸͖̜͛͌̆͝u̶̡̧͉̪̅̄̑̎͝g̸̱̦̫̭̽h̶̜̯̀̒ ̷͇̮̂̿̌̈̀t̵̢́o̵̹͙̔͘͠ ̸̣̋̓̓̚͝k̶͓̞̩͚͒̑̈́͌e̴͚̘̭͊̿̃͜é̴̢͓̼̱̈p̷͎͇̩̝͈̏̓ ̸̥̜̓́͐̀͐y̴͚͕̭̽̌õ̵͚̣̱̠ǔ̴͈͎̔ŕ̵̛̛̼̆ ̵̢̛̙͇̀e̷̻̗̥͗̕n̷̰̼̥̭͔̔̓̀̌̚ḋ̸͖̬̬͇͆́̍̅ ̴͑ͅo̶̢̥̩̓̈́͋̅͝f̶̢̝̞͖̜̆̌̔͝͝ ̶̻̟̈́͜ţ̵̧͍̀̐̇͠ͅĥ̷̤̗̞͑̎e̵͚̯̥̔́̚ ̸̜̣̹̼͋̿͛d̷͎̙̺͍͊͜e̵̗̠͝ǎ̵̢͔̮͚̓̏̈́l̷̳̝͔͎̟̑͊͊.
The Tenno started hard, and snapped out of the trance he had been in. He had to take several deep, gasping breaths to collect himself. He bent over, hands on his knees, feeling more mentally exhausted than he had in a long time.
"Ordis…" he said quietly, not lifting his head.
"Operator, are you alright? Your vitals spiked for a moment there! Your cortisol levels are extremely elevated! Please, tell Ordis what's wrong!"
"Ordis…I'm not sure I can do this anymore…" His voice was leaden, defeated.
"Operator…" Ordis's voice trembled with emotion.
"It's hard," the Tenno mumbled, "so hard to just…put it all aside. To detach completely. But I need to. I can't keep doing it this way."
"Operator…I…" Ordis paused, a lengthy pause. No ordinary calculations would take this long. No, Ordis was considering his options not with his logic centers, but with a part of him that somehow managed to survive becoming a cephalon, deleting and remembering ancient memories—a human part of him that other cephalons might consider vestigial.
But not Ordis. He made his decision.
"Operator," He calmly stated, "the Lotus would like to say: she is always thinking about you. I am too, Operator. No matter what your decision is here, you will always be my Operator. I will follow you t͛o͛ h͛e͛l͛l͛ i͛t͛s͛e͛l͛f͛—anywhere you go."
A deep, long sigh came from the Tenno. He slowly stood, Rhino Prime rising to his full imposing height once again.
"Just please promise Ordis that you will take a nice long break after this is over?" Ordis pleaded. "We could play Frame Fighter on the ludoplex together! I promise to go easy on you this time!"
The Tenno could not help but allow a single, brief chuckle to escape his lips.
"Thanks, Ordis." There wasn't much in the way of enthusiasm in his reply, but he hefted Fragor Prime once again, clenching the grip in his fist as if he meant to crush it. "Let's get this over with."
He made to leave the alcove in the rock this small encampment was in to head down the tunnel to the lower levels, but stopped after taking a few steps.
"Ordis…really, thank you. Don't know what I'd do without you."
He then hurled himself into the hole leading to the depths of the chasm. After falling quite some distance, he crashed to the ground with a booming thud that reverberated from the stone walls around him, looked up, and saw himself once again surrounded by hordes upon hordes of enemies. Murmur, void-corrupted local monsters, all of them, gathered up nicely just for him.
Good.
He needed something to hit right now.
Entrance of the Chasm
Xiao gazed at the absolute mess the bowl of the Chasm was in with a dark expression of something nearing approval. He hadn't seen so many bodies since the Cataclysm, and the Tenno seemed capable of stacking them up faster than he could finish a conversation with the Tianquan.
That was quite the story he had heard from her. Were even a fraction of it true, it would overturn even the gods' understanding of the nature of the world, but the two important things Xiao took away from it were:
1. The Tenno was close to the Traveler. Xiao didn't have a lot of respect for most people, but the Traveler...well, she was different. And anyone whom the Traveler trusted couldn't be that bad.
2. The Tenno was, at least for the moment, helping the people of Liyue. He had done something incredible to save Ganyu from something no one understood.
A sliver of guilt pricked the stony casing around his heart as he wondered what had happened to his pupil; yet for all the wondering he did, he only ever arrived at the frustrating conclusion that he probably could have done nothing to help.
Bottom line, as powerful and dangerous as this Tenno was, he wasn't their enemy. For now. But he would need to continue following him, and it would seem to be a good idea—if the staggering carnage around the entrance to the depths of Teyvat was any indication—to avoid provoking him.
Well, no use standing around gawking. Xaio turned into a wisp of smoke and vanished from sight.
Deep within the Chasm
Murmur and native monsters alike were crushed under the Tenno's assault, though he did notice that resistance was growing thicker as he progressed. He was getting to the heart of the incursion, no doubt, so he renewed his attack, blasting aside huge clumps of enemies with waves of pure destructive energy from his Arca Plasmor and shattering bodies with vicious swings of his Fragor Prime.
Unharmed—for the void-defiled fiends were unable to breach his iron skin—he continued his advance until he finally heard it. Were there any doubt remaining as to what was responsible for this incursion, the frighteningly musical wail of a Void Angel removed it.
"You will be tempted to look for familiar faces among the angels. I beg you not to give into it."
Quinn's warning rankled in his mind, as it always did when he heard that sound. From where or when this particular abomination came, or who it was originally, he had no idea, and he didn't want to know. It would have to be destroyed like all the others he faced aboard the Zariman, and the tear in space and time it created upon its arrival mended. The Tenno pushed through the dense mass of enemies, bowling them over and knocking them aside like a freight train through a crowd of pedestrians, unheeding of their blows and slashes. Piling bodily through a tangle of crawling arms and corrupted hilichurls, he broke free into a wide open area, and finally laid eyes on his target. But that was not the only thing that captured his attention.
The room he was in was enormous, far walls stretching back beyond sight in the murk of the depths, and the roof of the cavern climbed so high that he could barely make out...buildings? Structures of some kind blended into the walls and roof, hanging upside down as if a city had been flipped over like a flatcake; yet impossibly, the structures did not fall to the ground, defying gravity and all principles of architecture and construction.
In the center of the massive cavern was a pillar made of what appeared to be stone. It hung in midair and gleamed with elemental energy, though it also showed signs of wear and decay. It had clearly been broken several times over, and its glowing crystalline interior was exposed and leaking elemental power—power that was currently being...well...eaten by the one the Tenno was hunting.
A Void Angel—a ghost of a victim of the Zariman Ten-Zero. No humanity remained in either its appearance or its soul, if it still had one. It stood on legs of crystalline void energy that made up its entire body. Fractal wings of pure void sprouted in swirls from its back and writhed like ferrofluid in a magnetic field. It stood in the center of the cavern, wings outspread and it's "mouth" gaping as it greedily devoured whatever power flowed from the strange pillar.
Found you, the Tenno muttered to himself.
The Void Angel, wroth at being disturbed from its meal, turned its head towards the Tenno and howled. The sound rang out through the Chasm, and in all likelihood was heard all the way out on the surface. Mortal, and perhaps even divine hearts would quail at the sound, for living beings were not meant to face the enraptured slaves of the Great Indifference, nor were mortal minds equipped to hear the voidsong without succumbing to it.
For the Tenno, it was a Monday.
The Angel stepped out of reality and vanished from sight.
The Tenno had fought many of its kind before, however, and would not be fooled so easily. He leapt to the side, brandishing Fragor Prime while turning to face the spot he came from. And just in time, too, as the Angel violently burst back into existence right on the spot he had just occupied, as talons made of condensed concept and nightmares-become-real shredded the ground in a vain attempt to tear the Warframe in half.
The Angel barely had time to turn its head to snarl at its elusive prey before Rhino Prime, already moving the moment the Angel finished its teleporting attack, brought Fragor Prime down upon its head in a killing blow that would have split a god. It was the Tenno's preferred weapon for outright deleting things that ordinarily stubbornly refused to die, and he had modified and attuned it until it became a weapon fit to smite the divine with pure, undiluted Tenno wrath. And this particular Tenno's wrath had been simmering to the point of boiling over.
The Angel's body crumpled to the ground with a cry of pain, but the Tenno knew this was not over. The physical body was only an extension of its true existence, and no matter how many times it was struck down, it would rise again unless its true form were defeated.
And the Tenno knew right where that form was.
He slipped out of his warframe and through the portal that only his eyes could see above the battered body of the Angel and found himself in the dimensional plane within the Void that this Angel resided in. By sheer willpower, a concept of a platform in the form of a large ring appeared for the Tenno to stand on, and in the center of this ring flew the Angel's true self: the Ethereal Void Angel.
The Tenno raised his arm and focused his power through his amp. He had spent a great deal of time building this as well—lenses and coils made of esoteric materials ripped from beings that should not exist, but he somehow killed anyway; strangely mundane components used as basic structure or catalysts (what sort of witchcraft Onkko needed fish scales for, he didn't want to know)—his amp was a finely honed control point and collimator for his immense power. Using techniques learned from the School of Madurai only made it more effective.
Two blasts of transcendental power felled the Ethereal Void Angel before it could even retaliate. The ethereal plane collapsed as the Angel's true form disseminated to spectral cinders, and the Tenno was forced back into the physical world again.
The end was near for the Angel. It forced itself to rise up, bereft of its true power, but its body was still alive and no less dangerous. It floated high into the air, arms and wings spread like a profane mockery of the grandiose religious iconography of ancient Earth cultures from which its name was borrowed, then shot itself down towards the Tenno, wings and arms now outstretched like claws seeking to rend and tear the hateful thing that had wounded it deep where no others could reach.
The Tenno was ready, the massive warhammer drawn back for the final strike.
One savage swing was all that was needed. With a trembling cry that echoed throughout the foundation of Teyvat, the Angel's body crumbled to dust and faded out of existence even as it fell to the ground for the final time.
Kamisato Estate, Narukami Island, Inazuma
"Everyone, please, calm down. The Tri-Commission is looking into the matter, and should there be any evidence of a credible threat to Inazuma, well, I'm sure you all share my faith in the Almighty Shogun to defend us."
Ayato Kamisato was doing his best to quell the fears of a mob that had formed at the doors of his family's estate. He couldn't blame them, really. They weren't angry at him, or any of the three commissions for some failing; they were just frightened. It was a fright he quite understood, for less than an hour previously, a blinding beam of light came from the continent to the west and split the seas, barely missing Narukami Island to the north. The shockwave had damaged buildings in the harbor, and the minor tsunami that formed had swamped fishing boats and ruined a fortune's worth of goods and products in the port village of Ritou. The spray from the blast had even drenched the shrine maidens in the Grand Narukami Shrine on the peak of Mount Yougou.
Fortunately, there were no casualties other than minor injuries from flowing debris in the flooded streets of the ports, but given the alarming power of the unknown shot, this fact could only be considered pure luck and did little to calm the general populace. What if it had struck the island itself? There was no way of calculating the devastation, but the death toll would likely have been measured as a large percentage of the island's entire population.
The mention of the Shogun's name, however, managed to mollify, though not completely erase, the concerns of the crowd at the gates of the Kamisato Estate.
"...is this something even the Almighty Shogun can face?" said one anxious citizen.
"Of course! She's the Almighty Shogun! She struck down the Orobashi, she can deal with this!" replied another zealous citizen.
"I don't know...could even the Musou no Hitotachi counter this? What if we've angered another Archon, or even a god from Celestia?" wondered yet another concerned citizen.
"My friends," Ayato interrupted before concern bloomed into panic, "we aren't even sure that anyone is angry with us. The attack did not seem to be aimed at our lands, after all. In all likelihood, we merely suffered some collateral of a battle that took place on the continent."
He walked closer to the crowd, holding his hands in the air to better gather their attention.
"I swear to you, as the leader of the Yashiro Commission, that we will all work together with the Shogun to determine what happened and why; and if indeed we find there are those hostile to us, we can be assured that our Archon will defend Inazuma and the Eternity it represents. Please, there is no need to fear. The best thing you can do now is to return to your homes and businesses and continue living as normal. Your children still need to eat and your business still needs to be attended to. I know in my heart that the people of Inazuma are no cowards, for you all have endured disasters far worse than this."
Ayaka Kamisato sat inside the estate near a window, listening to her brother's address to the scared crowd of people. She had to admit, he was really good at this. There were nods of assent and approval at his words, and groups of people in the back of the crowd began to disperse back towards the roads heading to Inazuma City. Their problems weren't over by any means, but Ayato had successfully headed off the beginnings of a mass panic, which meant that they could now begin focusing on solutions.
She sighed a heavy sigh, and found herself thinking of the Traveler...again. She really wished she was here right now.
Deep within the Chasm
Helios Prime chirped.
A scan? The Tenno looked around. There were no enemies left, and Helios Prime had documented pretty much all of the mineral and floral varieties in the Chasm already, but that was not what the sentinel had focused on.
It was the pylon in the center of the room. Interesting. Helios did not initially recognize elemental energy sources as scannable objects, as they worked on different rules here than the alchemical rules of his world. He had to manually scan those for reference. But Helios immediately recognized this object.
Strange.
The Tenno looked around the bizarre room. There was writing carved into tablets and walls on some of the structures, and when he looked closer, there appeared to be writing of some kind on the pillar as well. This was undoubtedly worth a look.
"Ordis, we may need that data from Irminsul again. This looks to be enlightening on the situation we find ourselves in."
"Of course, Operator. I have succeeded in parsing approximately 73% of the data, which will be available immediately for reference. The other 27% will have to be searched linearly, should we require it."
He approached the pylon curiously. It was indeed pouring out elemental energy, but that was certainly not all it was doing. He had noticed after he killed the Angel—the void rupture it created was not nearly as big as it should have been given the amount of time it had to widen it, and the reason seemed to be this pylon. It's as if it was...attempting to close off the rupture itself. No wonder the Angel seemed intent on devouring it.
So why did this thing seem so...familiar?
It had pale stone and elegant lines, and scan data revealed that, other than the sections that were clearly damaged, it also possessed perfect geometry down to the nanometer. The Tenno pulled up his own scanner to observe it. Compositional data, dimensions, energy readouts, all these were expected. But then he noticed the tag applied automatically by Simaris's algorithms to recognized objects. Two words that confirmed his worst fears.
"Faction: Orokin"
Rhino Prime clenched his fists hard enough to make a sound that echoed in the now-still cavern.
"I knew it. I knew something was off about this place…"
He was all in on finding answers now. Closer inspection of the decorative trim running around the crest of the pylon revealed writing, and not just any writing: Orokin script. With Ordis's help, he captured images of the entire circumference of the pylon, and collated the written lines into something readable. Interpolation algorithms patched in several sections that had taken damage, and the Tenno now had it all in his hands: answers he wasn't sure he wanted, but there was no ignoring now. The story of the world of Teyvat. This is what he read:
Hear now the tale of the Second Who Came, the Betrayed Lord of the System of Origin, Ruler of all humanity, Head of the Seven Principles, and prostrate yourselves in reverence, for your gods now speak unto you.
We, the Golden Lords of Humanity, were deceived. Vile hands driven by ungrateful hearts drew blade against their makers, and dared to shed the blood of their gods. In truth, it was our error in judgment; mercy for a devil is truly casting a pearl before swine, and we had shown them the mercy of allowing these demons, these void devils to not only live, but serve their masters with honor. Honor they forsook.
Even our undying essence was no match for the monsters that wielded the power of the Void. The Endless Dark, the alabaster staircase upon which our species ascended into the heavens was also the blade that severed our immortality. Yet the Void is a fickle essentia—for it grants new life even as it takes it away, and our reality is a slave to its whims.
For I, one of the Seven Emperors, was reborn. And reborn, I wandered the fields of crystal bone beyond the Untime Door for an eon or a moment, it matters not.
Why does humanity seek the stars? What drives our species to set out from the circle of warmth and light around the campfire and face the cold and dark of the unknown? What wanderlust leaves us discontent with the safe and the understood? It had been many generations since our people, the Orokin, had ventured off the map and into the realms where cartographers of old could merely write 'Here be Dragons'.
But I have found that realm. For here indeed be Dragons, primordial beasts of great power that rule over a world where humanity are mere servants. This will be my new domain. And I will not make the same mistakes as before.
I waged war against the Primordial One and its servants, the Ancient Dragons. It was a war I could not win by matching power against power, for this world possesses a new and hitherto unknown alchemy of magic, fundamentally different from our own. But I am Orokin. I do not have to match power to power, and all natural laws shall inevitably be subject to our intellect.
I did not defeat the Primordial One. I became it.
And I reformed the heavens in my image, and will rule the destiny of this world from my new throne, Celestia. Seven new principles shall I institute, distinct from the Seven that failed our race before. Seven Elements shall there be, and by Seven Virtues shall this world be governed.
By my word shall knowledge of the Void be forbidden. Divine artifacts will I create to bridle its influence and abolish its presence. Accursed it shall be named, and only as Corruption shall it be known.
Hear these words of your god and tremble, for I, Asmoday, the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles, have spoken.
"I BLOODY KNEW IT! I KNEW SHE SEEMED SO FAMILIAR!" the Tenno roared upon finishing reading.
Asmoday: one of the seven Emperors of the Orokin Empire. One known for her exquisite cruelty. It was said that her Continuity rituals had the fewest issues and the shortest acclimation time with her new bodies. And all because no one else, even among the decadent and depraved Orokin society, could so effectively torment a soul to the point of self-destruction. There was nothing left of the host when she finished with it.
The Tenno had personally dragged his blade across her throat when the beat of the Naga drum sounded so long ago. He had watched her lifeblood pour out onto the floor upon which many innocent had suffered and bled at the whims of the Seven. He had driven out her Oro with his Tenno power, casting it to the empyrean winds to be blown like so much dust into the endless abyss.
But apparently she didn't stay dead. So it seemed like destiny that he would find her again and finish what he started.
Two for two, bitch! he thought with an understandable sense of vindictive pride.
Well, this was quite the upheaval in his understanding of the world of Teyvat. All thaumaturgical measurements were conclusive—this world was a conceptual embodiment formed by the twins. But it seemed to attract, or perhaps simply re-embody, presences they had known previously in their lives. And those presences shaped and formed the world independent of the twins, before they even arrived. Causality was, after all, omni-directional in the Void. Temporal Linearity was far outdated as an understanding of the universe.
But ultimately, it didn't change what he had to do. The twins were still around here somewhere, and his time was running low. That said, this excursion had bought him some of that time back. A major Murmur incursion crushed meant pressure eased off the Albrecht Membrane for now, though that wouldn't last forever. The Indifference would renew his assault soon enough.
"Operator, Ordis has found something intriguing. Please have a look at this writing."
Ordis placed a waypoint on the Tenno's HUD over a tablet of stone, and on that stone was script worn from time and exposure to the elements of the dank underground. The Tenno peered at the writing.
"Hmm. I don't recognize this language."
"Understandable, as it is the language of Khaenri'ah, the destroyed civilization that was responsible for bringing Void power into this world, and where the Abyss Order was originally founded."
"Idiots. Yeah, I get rebelling against an OROKIN for a god, but they sure jumped out of the frying pan and into the fire with that decision."
"Indeed, Operator, but what may be significant is the one that first brought knowledge of the Void to Teyvat. I am using the Irminsul data to translate the language here, as well as corroborate it with known records. As the raw memory of Irminsul had to be condensed into digital form for me to properly interface with, I have no valid audio data on the language, so correct pronunciation eludes me. However, I can translate the meaning of any writing we come across."
"Interesting. So someone brought knowledge of the Void here...implying they were from the outside? Why do I have a bad feeling about this…"
"It would seem so, and 𝗜⃥ 𝗵⃥𝘢̸𝘃⃥𝘦̸ 𝘢̸ 𝘣̸𝗮⃥𝘥̸ 𝘧̸𝗲⃥𝘦̸𝗹⃥𝘪̸𝗻⃥𝘨̸ 𝘵̸𝗼⃥𝘰̸ooooo—your concerns may be warranted. The Abyss order calls this person "The Sinner". The data from Irminsul even has his name recorded. Again, as it is in a script I have no audio data to interpolate from, I cannot tell you how it is pronounced. But I can interpret the meaning of his name."
The Tenno took a deep breath. "Let's hear it."
"As best as I can translate, the name could mean 'Entering the noble bright', or perhaps 'Into the noble fame'. The Khaenri'ahn term for 'bright' and 'fame' are the same word and are often used interchangeably, so without further context, it is impossible to say for certain which translation is correct. It is also highly possible that both meanings are intentional."
'Entering the noble bright'? The Tenno stood in front of the old tablet of stone confused. The name didn't seem to mean anything to him. Perhaps he was looking for a connection where there was none. He supposed there was no reason some utterly unrelated person couldn't be responsible for this, for the multiverse was an infinite place after all.
So why did that name pester his mind like a pebble in a shoe?
'Entering the noble bright…'
'Entering…'
'Noble bright…'
Wait…
No…
Nonononono…
It couldn't be…
'Noble bright…' 'Adal bereht…'
'Entering…' 'Entrati…'
…
…
Albrecht Entrati
And boom, another chapter draws to its conclusion, a bit of a longer one than usual to make up for the wait. I do apologize for that, but between several events out of my control and a nasty case of writer's block partially as a result of those events, it took me way too long to get this out.
Do not worry. This story will be finished. And hopefully further updates won't take this long. Again, I have no set schedule and won't make any promises as to how long we'll have to wait, but I will try to make it quicker than this.
Thank you once again for sticking with me on this journey. I've enjoyed the blending of these two worlds immensely, far more than I thought I would, to the point where whenever I play new Genshin quests, I immediately think of how any new lore elements I learn would fit into the Warframe universe. That's what Genshin has become to me, a subset of Warframe lore, hahaha.
I hope you are enjoying the surprises I've been cooking up, and I hope you continue to enjoy this story right until the very end. Let me hear what you think! It always helps, even if you have something critical to say. There is no improvement without critique.
Until next time, we roll our load and go.