"I wonder what they're talking about." Chongyun flipped a talisman between his fingers, and the voices of their companions mumbled along in concert. He tossed it a few inches and it slid through the air, gently folding and falling flat. As he caught it, it threw light against the cavern walls in a vibrant, ghostly burst of cryo energy.
"We shouldn't eavesdrop." Their words were indistinguishable. Still, she wasn't about to try and parse them.
"Oh, I wasn't suggesting that," the talisman fluttered to the ground and vanished against the soil, "I'm just curious. After all, Lumine was acting strange before."
"That's true, but I'm sure she has a good reason for her secrecy." Chongyun hummed and resumed his idle game; she knew it was wrong, but she envied his ability to practice. She couldn't afford to waste any strength, so she couldn't exactly throw her claymore around, and her textbooks rested innocently on Lisa's library desk. Far, far from here.
She couldn't stand being left to her own devices. Fortunately, her mind quickly compensated. It wandered back to Mondstadt again, and she imagined herself smashing the training dummies with fervent, precise strikes. What was there to learn?
Well, Lumine fought with a special kind of swiftness, and it was clear that Xiao fought the same. She couldn't perfect that kind of agility thanks to the weight of her weapon, but she could work to emulate their meticulousness. To see an enemy for their weak points and their strengths, to work deftly against that. To use the environment to her advantage, and sew each factor into every strike. Perhaps this is what she lacked.
At home she memorized each and every chip along the wooden targets, she knew the patterns of the wind, and in the controlled environment of the training grounds there wasn't much more to it than that. But in Liyue, everything was different. She didn't know anything, and the wind certainly didn't reach down here.
"It's been a while now. Do you think we should check on them?" Chongyun's voice guided her back into the present; she felt her body still in the Chasm with her, but she felt detached.
"Perhaps a bit longer." They stood awkwardly, unsure of the time and themselves. "We should check."
"Agreed." Her heels shuffled down the narrow hall and against the hardened gravel. Chongyun called out to Lumine and Xiao, just to be certain they didn't hear anything they shouldn't. Whatever that was.
"That's strange. Weren't they standing here just a moment ago?" There was no sign they had been there at all, which didn't make sense given the loose dirt everywhere. They should have left footprints.
Chongyun fiddled with the bracelet on his arm, "There's no way we could have passed them, right? We must have headed down the next tunnel by accident." That made logical sense, so Noelle followed as they retraced their steps, but when they returned they emerged from the correct direction. They were right where they had been before.
"Something is definitely wrong," Noelle glanced down at her heels which were now filled with gravel, "our footprints are missing." Chongyun paused in thought,
"The adepti can hear prayers and summons from any distance, as do the archons, but it's possible that this cave prevents that." For good measure, he called Xiao again. Predictably he didn't show.
"So we can't hear them, and the geography is likely changing around us."
"Which means it's even more important to stick together." Noelle nodded; as they pressed onwards the atmosphere thickened. The walls sank deeper into the earth as the path sloped beneath them. It eventually grew so dark she couldn't see her eye blinks.
"Sorry!" She stumbled into Chongyun, to the point that her nose entered the crease in his hood, but he didn't acknowledge it. "Chongyun?" The earth exploded white light, and suddenly she stood beneath an open sky. On the main street's cobblestones, she dreaded Mondstadt's familiar faces for the first time in her life. Outside the entrance to headquarters, Cavalry Captain Kaeya whispered in a hushed tone,
"I was entrusted by the Acting Grand Master to work in the background to support Noelle, and it's honestly become more hassle than it's worth." Outrider Amber nodded in agreement, the usually endearing tips of her headband bobbing maliciously,
"I can understand that. She's super resilient, but she doesn't seem to catch on very fast." On Noelle's other side, Mister Albedo chatted with Sucrose at the alchemy table.
"She's…a very willing helper. I can't deny that. It's just…she makes me a little anxious is all. One time, she saw three boxes of materials stacked just outside my laboratory door, and proceeded to move them inside for me. A nice gesture, but the thing is…I'd only just finished putting them outside…" Her heart sank, but her hopes immediately fluttered as Jean entered the scene.
Surely there was a logical explanation to all this, "Master Jean!"
The Acting Grand Master dawned her formal attire; the golden embellishments lining her suit coat gleamed under the morning sun, and with a steady hand gloved in white, she carried der Meister, the Favonius sword exclusively reserved for Varka himself. Jean walked straight through her, as if she weren't there at all.
"Knights of Favonius, we have lost much, but we will lose no further! Not wild dragons, not ceaseless tyrants, not even the ley's eternal strength will halt our blades! With Barbatos as our witness, we fight für Mondstadt!" She couldn't move as the city walls crumbled around her. Some of the knights seemed to recognize she was there, but they ultimately ignored her. Most didn't spare her a glance.
"Noelle…She puts enormous effort into trying to become a Knight of Favonius. However, I fear she is not quite ready for the dangers that lie beyond Mondstadt's walls." Suddenly, an enormous, domed spire she had never seen before burst into flames and it collapsed.
„Feuern!"
After all her efforts, after all she did, they still underestimated her? What did she still have to prove? What did she still have to say? Or was nothing ever good enough?
They used her.
They dismissed her from the start. Should she give up? Or should she demand, and take what was rightfully hers?
"The greater the power, the greater the danger erosion may bring about. The millennia may come and go, but even a stone may tire."
Anger percolated through the open air, and she raised her claymore. A forceful gale collided with her pauldron, and the world shattered around them. Warmth engulfed her, and the cave returned. Suddenly she forgot what she had been thinking about.
The adeptus leaned heavily on his polearm; a shadowy, four armed figure loomed between them like death with their scythe. She slammed a single heel into the ground and summoned her shield around Xiao, and she leapt, spinning in the air as she smashed her claymore into the shadow. It dispersed with surprisingly little effort into ribbon-like silhouettes.
"Mister Conqueror of Demons Adeptus Xiao!" She forgot to curtsey as he pushed himself to stand, and the shield faded into the dust around them.
Pain laced his voice, "Why…do you keep saying that?"
"Saying what?"
"You keep saying all my titles." She thought he was talking to himself in some karma induced haze, so his lucidity was a relief. And sure, now seemed like a strange time to talk, especially about manners of all things, but he clearly needed the distraction.
"It is customary in Mondstadt to use all of someone's earned titles. It's a sign of respect towards one's elders. Is the same not true in Liyue?"
"No," he sighed, some semblance of relief entering his voice, "you don't have to do that."
"Are you sure? You are far older and wiser than I, and if I may convey my respect with such a simple act, then I believe it is quite worth it. It doesn't trouble me at all. In fact, I was going to ask, is Yaksha a secondary title or does it replace Adeptus?" Her mind was still reeling from the previous encounter, but at least this seemed to ground him. "Is it 'Mister Conqueror of Demons Yaksha Adeptus Xiao' or is it 'Mister Conqueror of Demons Yaksha Xiao?" Oh, or perhaps it's 'Mister Conqueror of Demons Adeptus Yaksha-"
"You really don't have to do all that," he stood normally now, clicking his fingers against his polearm, "in truth, I still have more titles in addition to that. If I cared enough to force you, you'd be talking all day."
"Oh."
In the chaos she swapped Chongyun for Xiao, and Lumine was gone. They weren't where they were before, since the seal didn't taunt them from above. It was similar and simultaneously entirely new.
"So a simple 'Mister Adeptus Xiao,' then?"
"Meno-I mean Noelle," he clearly accentuated her name, "Noelle, the maid from Mondstadt. It's just Xiao."
"Alright." Selecting a direction from random, they found that the path took them in a long, arching circle where no other paths diverged. "Perhaps I should have asked this first, but how did you get here?"
"That's an excellent question that I really wish I knew the answer to."
Unsurprisingly, the blasphemous screeches of the damned woke him from his slumber. He was stupid, so he leapt to the window rather than away from the sound's source. He saw nothing out of the ordinary. A lamppost that defied the pouring rain, a trellis of grape vines that swung in the blasting storm, and a surging, distant stream.
"Xingqiu!" Zhongli threw open the door. He wore only his undershirt and slacks, and his hair tumbled over his back like a tangled rope. At times like these, Xingqiu was glad he slept with pants on. "Thank the adepti you're still here. I have to go."
"I'm coming with!" He booked it for the stairs. The front door slammed where presumably Diluc and Venti had exited. Adelinde emerged from the opposite wing of the house.
"Get yourself and anyone else to the cellar!" She nodded and ran back the way she came. Xingqiu didn't even remember running out the door, but now he sprinted across Mondstadt like he lived here. Lightning periodically flashed along the path, and thunder blasted his eardrums the further they traveled. He checked to make sure that he did in fact, have pants on.
"This won't be an average fight!"
"I didn't think it would be!" His lungs heaved against his ribcage. Just getting there was going to kill him. He could just barely see until a dragon shot over head. It radiated amber and gold, and the earth pulsed beneath it.
"Rex Lapis is dead!" Nothing made any sense anymore.
"Apparently not!" Zhongli conjured his polearm against the army of hilichurls that poured across the hillside. Sinkholes opened beneath them, and hilichurls flooded in like a waterfall crossing a cliff face. They were immediately smashed inside the ground, their bones splintering like firecrackers. Drowning in adrenaline and rain, Xingqiu drew his sword and followed his instincts.
Giant clouds of steam rose around him, and he quickly lost sight of Zhongli. A mitachurl with a shield of rock, dripping moss and grass, charged from Xingqiu's eight o'clock; he backflipped just in time, already focused on an opposing hydro abyss mage. The reality of his situation dawned on him, but only after he was encased in his own personal swimming pool.
He forced his lungs to a halt, since he knew breathing would only make things worse, and he fought against his body the entire time. Kicking his legs back, he swam forward in a desperate attempt at freedom. The abyss mage had the audacity to laugh at him, its cackle raising in the whirling air, and he allowed his anger to surface.
The moment he broke free he slammed his weight on top of it, but of course it hardly accomplished anything. His sword bounced off its shield like a butter knife against steel, and a blast he falsely assumed was Diluc's shot past in a spheric burst. A woman with hair of fire took out the abyss mage along with several unfortunate bystanders. She chanted in Liyuen in a dialect he couldn't place. Before he could call out to her, she flickered like both a projection and a flame, and she vanished.
Automated beeping called out behind him, and he cursed the day he was born. Breathe in. He sucked in an unsteady breath. Breathe out. He was going to show the world what he was made of, and it was going to pay for what it did to him. He smiled his most genuine smile at the soulless ruin guard, and he waited. He waited until it spouted missiles, and when it did he lanced its eye with four identical Guhua blades.
The ammunition backfired on it, and stunned, it fell backwards to a height he could jump. He leapt and pierced its hidden core. It collapsed but he let his guard down. Unbeknownst to him, it had a friend which promptly decked him from behind. His eyes shook in their sockets. Someone screamed profanities, many of them words he didn't even know, and he was plucked from the ground like a grape from a vine.
A splintering flame bloomed beneath him as massive, white feathered wings beat against the pouring sky. They threw back ethereal, bursting streaks of light as they reflected the explosion beneath, and he thought he must be hallucinating wildly. Now several hundred feet off the ground, he locked eyes with Venti.
"Fancy seeing you here!" His mind didn't have time to produce anything intelligible,
"You? You're BARBATOS?" Venti, Barbatos, pursed his lips in thought,
"Maybe-" His eyes flung to his side, and he caught a spare arrow aimed for his temple. He snapped it, and grinning angrily he retaliated. Xingqiu clearly cramped his style, since he was forced to carry him bridle style as he flew, but Barbatos didn't let that hold him back. He wound back his wings, and with one fell swoop he conjured a towering cyclone.
It touched down like a tornado and hurled hilichurls like spinning marbles; it dropped them suddenly and they fell back, limp like flies.
"As I was saying," he gazed back at him which felt awkwardly intimate, "maybe the real Barbatos is the friends we made along the way, eh?"
