Cold Clouds 4 - (Genshin Impact, Ganyu!SI)
It was a quiet morning. The dawn had just manifested its beauty, the tree's leaves were rustling before the cool and suave breeze.
This little clearing down south to Guili was spared by the sights and the worries of trouble. It was a peaceful place... to rest.
Lying on the grass, I looked up at the small window to the sky offered by the lack of trees' branches stopping my gaze. And... I sighed.
"Today is the day, dad," I announced quietly, eyes unwilling to look away from the clouds. "Today I will leave Guili and move to somewhere else."
It's been four years since I had that curious 'situation' with Cloud Retainer and Guizhong, four years since I had made good progress with my skills and... four years since I was eight. As a twelve years-old, the idea of 'leaving home' should never be something lingering in my mind but... stuff happened.
And as I turned to glance to the side, addressing the object of my muted sorrow, I couldn't help but forcibly push my gaze away from the little gravestone I had personally build. The engraved name and titles, together with the drawing I made of the only family I had in Guili, dignified the owner as my father.
He passed away a few months ago. He had been working less than usual, but his body was constantly deteriorating. A genetic disposition, one I supposedly didn't get due to my Adeptus' bloodline, but one that claimed his life before he could get the last preparations for my birthday done. A week from that big day, that's when fate stole my dad from me.
I never had this bad luck in my previous life. I never had the emotional weight to face such an unexpected loss. I... I cried a lot. I don't know if it was my body, my own emotions or the idea that, despite all I did here in Guili, this place could hardly be my home.
My father was my family, and my family was my home. Without that, I had no home here. And like a bird without a nest, there was just one thing left for me to do. Spread my wings and fly away to find something else to do.
"I have all supplies ready, I made sure that Xiao was warned that he wouldn't need to watch over me and to tell Rex Lapis I wouldn't be staying. I think I upsetted him- I couldn't help it, it isn't a choice that could ever be taken pleasantly."
Leaving, departing. It was like dying in some way. It was to cut bonds when it was clear that no hard feeling would stay by committing to this decision. Xiao felt it- despite his best efforts to behave above some things, he still cared. And I did too. Like siblings, but he was still so lost. And I was even worse as I needed to find more to do.
Maybe it was me being a coward. I knew that the Archon Wars would hit Guili harder than most countries. It was more contained in other regions, and the outright destruction of the previous post of power felt like a massive toll to bear.
I could help civilians but, even then, what were the chances of the Heavenly Principles or the Sustainer to find it worthy of a beating? I was nowhere near to face that sort of monsters. I was definitely weaker than individuals like Lumine and Aether and, truth be told, I could tell that changing fate wasn't exactly an option. I could 'divert' some situations, but some fateful events were meant to happen.
It was literally what the Fontaine Archon Quest highlighted, that some 'prophecies' were just inevitable - one could just go around those and let them happen within the 'right details'. But that required a sort of foreplanning I lacked. I could look so deep into the future, and I knew already I could live up and beyond to those events, but I couldn't expect everything to stay firmly put.
What happens with new prophecies? What happens when my actions create new ones?
These possibilities worried me just as much as inaction did. And, at the same time, I knew that lingering would only limit my chance to 'at least' change things for better. I wouldn't outright fix things, but I would change directions to some minor events to go as planned. Then I would let the rest play out by itself.
With my first stop outside of Guili being... Inazuma. It was a chaotic realm at this point since it would take the Archon Wars to shape its unified destiny. Were Makoto and Ei around at this point? I couldn't say, but I was familiar with the notion that I was going to dwell into dangerous waters, but I could handle myself just fine and, by my own recollection, none of the deities at this point should be strong enough to match someone like me.
After visiting my father's grave one last time and changing his flowers with new fresh ones, I stood up and made my way to the closest beach. I already bid my farewells to Marchosius and others that I was in contact frequently, stating my decision, making it clear that I took enough time to consider all options and ultimately stood by this one.
No one stopped me, surprisingly enough, and I was quite sure that Morax himself had 'granted' me this opportunity. Without further ado, I mustered my trusty cloud and lifted off before rushing through the ocean and towards the closest island of Inazuma.
It would take a while to reach land, but I wasn't exactly expecting this to be a simple trip. One thing I almost forgot about was that the Guyun Stone Forest didn't exist yet as Morax had not faced Osial at this current time. What was there was dark water with some agitated waves that showed the God of Water was somewhere nearby.
I ignored it as I wasn't planning to delve into his domain, but as things go for people trying to live by peaceful ways, some dickhead will definitely say hi and ruin a good day to have an uneventful journey. In this case, the source of this trouble was Osial himself as, for some unknown reason I refused to even contemplate at this point, decided to manifest between me and my destination..
It was massive- I guess the proximity added to the real size of the monstrous deity, and I admit that I felt some unease as I looked at him. But as an individual that wasn't trying to pick a fight and rather go through without any disturbances, I made my feelings on the matter clear as the beast stared at me with a mixture of curiosity and annoyance.
"I will kindly ask you to move, Osial. Or I will be forced to show you how to do so."
The warning merely stirred the five-headed snake deity some more. He looked even more annoyed, but it was a far cry from the Osial that was faced in the main story. He was less 'brazen', less 'mindless'. And thus he was less driven.
Differently from me, he lacked a 'good reason' to go all out at once. He merely approached closer to my cloud, growling and trying to appear like a dog trying to assert dominance. While I was just 'a guy' with a rolled up newspaper that was about to bring the law in this 'wet lawn'.
I stood up from my cloud, lifting a hand up to the sky and doing something I had played with in a limited environment. One thing that many don't know about thunders in Teyvat is that they are packing elemental energy- clouds too.
What happens when you try to pull a Sasuke and harness the elemental Electro energy stored in those dark clouds? You get a rather amusing and 'cheap' technique that is going to show deities their place. Especially those that have bodies made of water.
Osial looked up, eyes perplexed at the tiny 'string' of electric current rushing upward, but then he 'froze' up as he noticed a bigger and meaner issue. Instead of a 'horse-thing' that Sasuke called 'Kirin', I literally mustered the right frame for a Qilin... except fifty times its biggest size.
I think I struck fear in the 'god' before I struck him with the purest and most intense Electro attack he had ever felt. While I wouldn't go as far as to say that the attack was as decimating as the one Morax used to then form the Guyun Stone Forest over Osial, the effectiveness was far more severe against the Water Snake since it was Electro and not Geo.
The pretty lightshow lasted two interesting minutes. With Osial's first response at being hit by such an attack being of... retreating. The bastard literally dove down and swam away as if I had just rushed at his 'metaphorical' balls with a pair of burning scissors.
I held back a smirk at the sight, merely shaking my head as I resumed my trip to Inazuma. Maybe Osial was going to 'want revenge' for what I did, but my 'Electro Qilin' attack was my second strongest technique in my arsenal, and my first one would have done far more than electrocute the water asshole - maybe even crippled him outright if given the chance.
Still, it was time to get my head back in the game and reach Inazuma. I just hope that cocky deities in the island I was going to settle for the time being weren't going to be idiots and rush at me without a plan - I just didn't need the attention.
AN
Local half-Qilin zaps water worm enough to temp switch it from dom to sub. Next time, Ganyu's life gets a little interesting as she makes a few familiar friends a few years into her 'domination' of Ritou.