Chapter Text
Waking up from a restless sleep has never been a pleasant sensation for mortals, least of all for someone like him whose “restless sleep” is more like a “failed shutdown.” Groggy and head submerged in a thick fog, Wanderer doesn’t even protest when Albedo hands him a potion, bringing the cold glass beaker to his lips and pouring the liquid into his mouth without a single word. It tastes gross, like burnt coffee left out in the morning and drunk in the evening.
When the potion seeps through his system, swimming through his wires as though it belongs there as much as his power source does, his body lightens. The heaviness in his limbs no longer weighs him down, urging him to sink back into the cot and return to unresponsive idling, nor do his eyes have a sheen of blurriness in their lenses.
Wanderer licks his lips, the last drop sinking into his tongue. “Durin?”
“Sleeping,” Albedo answers factually in a short staccato, moving to continue his work at his lab bench. “At home. I had Klee bring him back. He hasn’t slept in days, too worried about you. Just as you haven’t slept in weeks inside the Abyss, am I right?”
“Who in their right mind would sleep in the Abyss?” Wanderer sniffs weakly, setting the empty beaker aside with a quiet clink against the ground. “Not without claimed territory.”
“Perhaps it would be beneficial for you to claim some if you intend to remain within its embrace for as long as you do,” Albedo suggests without any fluctuation in his tone. His gaze does not even leave the workbench as he concocts another strange mixture. “You should be careful, by the way.”
Wanderer swallows back the I know what I’m doing just on the tip of his numbed tongue. “With what?”
Albedo raises the test tube he holds above his head, swirling its contents as he observes the bottom where unwanted sediment sits. Casually, he sets the test tube aside with the others that are to be safely disposed of later. Uncaring; merely something that must be done. “Let the corruption settle into your bones just the slightest bit deeper and not even Lumine can save you when she returns.”
Wanderer sticks his tongue to the back of his teeth, taste buds thoroughly defeated. “That’s fine.”
“For who?”
He flicks his gaze over to the alchemist barely giving him the time of day. Wanderer amends his answer. “The Abyss is not what’s hurting me; it’s just taking the opportunity to slip in through the cracks.”
“Arguably worse, no?”
Wanderer sighs, closing his eyes as he does so. “I’ll try.”
“Make sure that’s good enough,” Albedo concedes. Finally, he turns his full attention onto Wanderer once more, another potion in hand. “Drink this.”
He takes it. “What’s this?”
“A stronger healing potion, specifically one for you and me, so you can be assured of its efficacy.”
“Me and you?” Wanderer raises a brow, bringing this new beaker to his mouth.
“We are inorganic in make, unlike Durin who’s base is of organic matter. Perhaps Manekin and Manekina might be able to take advantage of it, but that is yet to be tested,” Albedo replies. “You’ve done a lot of damage to your body. This might help.”
Wanderer hums around the glass lip, drinking steadily. It slides down his throat as smoothly as liquid clouds, and just as cold. Unlike the previous one that had felt akin to sparks of electricity, this one prickles frost just beneath his skin.
In his peripheral vision, he studies the way Albedo moves about the lab stiffly. Wanderer takes his lips from the beaker, swallowing the mouthful before speaking. “You have something you want to say.”
“I’m saving my breath.”
“Hm?”
“I know my concerns will fall on deaf ears,” Albedo clarifies. “Whether your ears or mine, it is to be seen, but I find that this is one worldly answer I don’t mind not having. It won’t change what we end up doing, either way.”
“It won’t?” Wanderer raises a brow.
“It’s difficult; the positions we’ve been put in. Emotional, and possibly even illogical. Impossible.” Albedo turns to face the cave entrance somberly, where the sky remains just as solemnly dark – the snow brighter than the stars. “You chose Lumine over yourself. Durin, on the other hand, while I’m sure he feels immensely guilty for it, chose you over her.
“And whether or not you continue to dive into the Abyss at the risk of your body and life, I am under the impression that you remaining above ground to recover will only leave you restless and antsy, which is just as damaging.” Albedo shakes his head with a subtle sigh departing from his lips. He turns his eyes back to Wanderer. “Am I right?”
“I won’t leave her there.”
“Exactly.” Albedo nods. “It is up to you whether you wish to weigh my, Durin’s, or anyone else’s opinions on the matter upon your conscience or to let it float away with the winds, unheard. The final decision is only yours to make. As I said, I can only waste my breath and plead to you that you know your limits, but you know that, don’t you?”
Wanderer does.
He does know. That they don’t want him to continue this dangerous path. But their hands are just as tied as his—because they won’t leave Lumine behind either.
“I’ve tried fishing them out myself,” Albedo suddenly informs.
Wanderer looks up from where his gaze has strayed in thought. “Sorry?”
“The memory fragments.” Albedo goes back to work, tidying up the table. “They’re fragile, so I couldn’t study any one orb you brought back for long before either Manekin or Manekina insistently snatched them away. Not that I opposed them, of course. But after several simple analyses on them, and I’m sure you’ve noticed this yourself, they feel less like fragmented shards, and more like Lumine’s natural presence. As though she, in her entirety, were standing mere meters away.”
Wanderer furrows his brows. “What are you getting at?”
“I used Manekin and Manekina as bait in an attempt at luring the fragments to rise to the surface.”
Wanderer stands from the cot, swaying as his vision swims. “Hey—"
“Worry not.” Albedo shakes his head. “They were consenting, and I explicitly told them to step away from the rift should they begin feeling ill.”
He swallows his protests. “And?”
“No experiment is futile, for they still give an answer,” Albedo begins with a long sigh, “but for once, it felt like an exercise in futility.”
Wanderer bites his bottom lip.
Nothing anyone is trying is working.
He takes a deep breath himself. “You ended up saying all of that anyway.”
Albedo scoffs lightly, uncharacteristically. “I suppose I did.” The alchemist picks up Wanderer’s hat set to the side of the lab, walking over carefully and handing it over. “Should I stop you, or should I let you go? The sun hasn’t even crested over the horizon yet.”
Wanderer takes the hat, putting it where it belongs.
With it on his head, he slips into the night like a shadow cast by the moon; out of Albedo’s lab on Dragonspine and down the snowy mountain towards Stormterror’s Lair—when Durin still sleeps, when even Manekin and Manekina have yet to arrive for duty after routine defragmentation in Miliastra Wonderland during the hours of human slumber.
And like a shadow, he is devoured with the rest – just another ghost seamlessly blending into the gross amalgamation where one is indistinguishable from the other.
Without a sound, as quiet as a grave, he reenters the food chain inside Mother’s belly, reclaiming the title of monster once more and being added to the mix of abhorrence searching for hate. He is dropped where splashes of hidden gold remind him of forbidden love, smearing across his cheeks yet tauntingly just out of reach and barely grazing his fingertips.
Wanderer treads through the empty cold. Through paths where his footprints have already been left in the deep snow. Through paths where battles have dyed the melted frost crimson and refroze it over into scarlet ice. He searches for pristine white amidst pure black, forgetting how to see in the light as his eyes grow accustomed to the dark.
So what if the only colors he remembers how to see become hues of red? The only color that matters in the world where blood means either victory or defeat, he needs nothing else. And especially not when the world is engulfed in flames.
Wanderer dodges out of the way of his own tornado now tinged in pyro. An ally that has turned into a foe. It singes at the edges of his clothing, catching the soft material alight and fraying the threads. His synthetic skin begins to melt, mixing with the sweat produced by his biocomponents in mimicry.
But what does it matter? What does any of it matter?
He has always fought while at a disadvantage. What’s even new?
Wanderer fists his hands, pulling at the mental leash of his control over the borrowed, corrupted anemo and forces it under his command once more, no matter how it snaps its fangs back at him in objection. Even as those fangs pierce into his shoulder all the way through, burn through the puppet strings in retaliation until he is but half a motionless doll, he orders it forward to consume alive its former master.
Of course, it is not taken lying down. What monster in the Abyss doesn’t fight back? Any who dare to lie down on their backs with their bellies exposed are eaten right then and there. There is no mercy here; in a place where everyone laments their abandoned fate.
A wall of flames erupts from the Abyss Lector’s catalyst, raising the temperatures to unbearable in this bubble space for even monsters, let alone lost little humans.
Wanderer digs his feet into the scorched ground, sprinting forward with a mighty push. He follows the gouges left behind by the pyro-imbued anemo tornado until he dives into the sea of flames himself.
So what if the only colors he remembers how to see become hues of red?
She’ll reteach him the niceties of the world, just as she had done before – make it seem as beautiful as she.
Wanderer scoffs, swallowing a mouthful of flames as he does so. He really is going crazy, starting to think like that. She’d have a laugh, he’s sure.
He drowns in the flames yet stubbornly breaches the surface with his hands splayed out. The second his fingers touch monstrous skin, they curl tight. “I’ll be taking that.”
Blades of anemo come out of his palms, slicing through the thin neck beneath his clenching fingers. A head pops off with a burst of red, red, red blood, joining the plumes of crimson fire searing the stars. It spurts onto his cheeks where the gold had once caressed. The head tumbles.
How ironic. Did he not just give a lecture because of something like this?
The body falls limp at his feet. Wanderer ignores it, his eyes tracking the rolling head – glowing eyes never leaving his stare no matter which way it twists. The illumination pulses in a final retribution.
And suddenly, the headless body right before him explodes.
Wanderer twists his own head away, arm raising and protecting his eyes from the worst of the acidic burns that boil his flesh off his bones.
“Ha… ahahaha!” The chortle bubbles out of him.
As the Abyss claws at his thoughts, he similarly digs his nails in deeper and holds tight.
“Fuck you too, then,” Wanderer huffs, lungs heaving and breathless. He spits searing blood out of his mouth, tongue feeling raw with a layer scorched off and now pooling silver sap into his orifice. His systems warn him of the array of damage, loud but not blaring. He’ll probably have to surface, lest he wants to leave a silver blood trail all over, leading right to him.
The fight got too messy, but he just can’t let that Pyro Abyss Lector have it. Not on his life.
He turns towards the shimmering, stagnant painting amidst empty void, bursting gold stars splattered everywhere like marring wounds still left weeping. The memory cradled in a blanket of black that both he and the twin brother’s lackey wanted. Where other monsters ran, he and the Lector had gotten closer – searching and searching.
This shard wasn’t easy to find either – sunken into some of the deepest trenches the Abyss can offer, and shrouded in so many despairing fates unchosen that the empty space and motionless air feel similar to heavy shackles on his ankles drowning him deeper. He has come here specifically, trudging through the underbelly of Mondstadt and following the map of the land above – following a vague feeling that has led him to traces of gold in an endless void.
Wanderer swallows – his breath, his saliva, the silver sap that is his version of blood – and steadies his body’s functions from exertion. His foot stepping forward bursts another bubble of golden glitter beneath the black protective sheet. Then another. And another yet. The entire pocket space is about to be gold at this rate; and it doesn’t seem to be recovering either, wounds left open and never scabbing over to become a scar.
Standing before the memory shard now, he stares at the frozen moment in time, wishing he could touch her cheek, drag her back to his side—nice and safe. Feel her warmth.
She looks happy here.
“Are you going to drag me in?” Wanderer asks in a whisper to no one. He extends his hand in offering, hoping a hand will reach out to accept.
The tiny little dots that make up the artwork scatter before striking back and consuming him whole in a tidal wave of colors he had forgotten he knew what they looked like; the hunter becoming the hunted.
Opening and closing his eyes as bright white light takes over pitch black darkness, Wanderer finds himself gazing at a golden coin with a square hole in the middle, his—Lumine’s—dainty fingers adjusting the bright red tassel hanging from it.
“Are you sure you two want to go out in these outfits?” She asks, one part amused, one part concerned. “We’re in Nod-Krai, you know?”
“Is there something wrong with Nod-Krai, Master?” Manekin wonders as he remains perfectly still in front of her. “You know as much as we that this is our first time here.”
“Going out in an outfit so eye-catching and shiny gold will attract all the people who’d want to pickpocket you. Or worse,” Paimon replies as she flips herself in the air, ending her speech with hands fisted to her chest and rearing back.
“If they are in need of mora, we don’t mind sharing some of our allowance. They’ll find that the coins in our pockets are mere counterfeits of a different world’s coinage, and would sooner melt in their palms than they could be traded for any valuable goods,” Manekina says casually, fiddling with her pale grey hair tied in pigtails of intricately braided knots.
“Miss Octavia noted that the 66th planet’s civilization’s customs were much like those found in Teyvat’s Liyue during the new year,” Manekin informs. He raises his chin as Lumine straightens out the lapels of his vest and fixes his collar. “If these are troublesome, we can change and wait until our travels take us to the Land of Geo.”
“No, no,” Lumine reassures quickly. “If you two want to show off these, then by all means, but… please just be careful, alright?”
“Understood, Master,” the two simultaneously agree.
“You know, Paimon was wondering,” Paimon suddenly voices. “You two don’t call Octavia your master?”
“Because Miss Octavia is no longer our master,” Manekina begins without much fluctuation in her tone; a sharp contrast to the way she jovially bounces into her place in front of Lumine to get her hair redone and tightened, switching places with her counterpart.
“While she remains a respected administrator, we were gifted to you in our entirety,” Manekin finishes, stepping to the side. “Everything that we are is at your disposal, Master Lumine, Master Paimon.”
“Serious business,” Paimon awes. “But don’t say it like that. We’re friends, right?”
“Exactly,” Lumine approves as she undoes half of Manekina’s hair and combs through her long tresses with a brush. A sparkle in the corner of her eye catches her attention for a moment, gaze lingering a second too long before diverting it back to the task at hand. “You’re your own person. Someone who will journey with us not as a tool, but a companion.”
“And we’ll have lots of fun?” Manekina jests, seemingly repeating words she had heard some time prior. “Understood, Master.”
“Although we do not mind getting put to work,” Manekin adds, “we will follow your lead in learning about this world and this new life along with it.”
“That’s all I ask for.” Wanderer feels Lumine’s smile curve on his lips. With skilled fingers, Lumine braids Manekina’s hair, muscle memory working its magic as her stare drifts off to the corner of the room again. Holding the styled braid up, she blindly reaches for a red ribbon and hairpin nearby, only turning back when she pushes the pin in. “There you go. That should be more secure for running around now.”
“Thank you, Master,” both Manekin and Manekina express, bowing their heads.
“Come on, come on, let’s go get breakfast! Paimon’s starving!” Paimon urges eagerly then, already flying towards the door.
“You three get something from Demyan; I’ll catch up,” Lumine announces.
Manekin and Manekina tilt their heads curiously but don’t voice their questions. Paimon, on the other hand, who is zooming out the door, yells over her shoulder. “Hurry up or Paimon will eat your share!”
Once alone, the door closing behind the trio, Lumine slowly makes her way to the desk, pace careful and senses on high alert. Her fingertips skim across the metal surface, the cold chill of the material biting away at her warmth and piercing a tendril of frost through her limb. Her gaze roves over the expanse.
Behind the decorative bottles, between two tall stacks of books—there is a glimmer like stardust.
She reaches out, pinches the edge delicately between her fingers.
Lumine flips it back and forth. No written sender, but a wax seal—
The memory begins breaking, colors extending past the outline, mixing into a smudge. The window Wanderer looks through shatters.
The letter has already been pulled out next he—not Lumine—blinks his vision back into place.
▇▇▇▇▇ ciedosvrde ▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇
▇ ekwn ▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇
mntegoSih ▇▇▇ ▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇ ▇▇ ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇ Mondstadt. seI?tetdrn
▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ Outlander, ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇ ▇ eden ▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇ enuuiq ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇ fdoreem ▇▇ ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇ ehsgmiton ▇▇▇▇▇ dangerous.
▇▇▇▇ ▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ if you choose to accept. ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇ ▇▇ dne, ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇ ▇▇
Barbatos ▇▇▇ ▇ ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇ ▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇ ▇▇ ▇▇▇ ▇▇ eurrnt ▇▇▇ ▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇ risk ▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇
You ▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇ able ▇▇ ▇▇▇ ▇ ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ ▇▇ ▇▇▇ Abyss Order ▇▇▇▇▇ eroy’u ▇▇ ▇▇ ▇▇▇
Ugh. Wanderer’s eyes hurt; the lenses straining and a headache forming behind the ocular implants.
Someone mixes the watercolors in the cup, swirls it around violently, and suddenly he is accosted by bright sunlight reflecting against the metal sheets soaking in the burning heat every which way. Lumine sits to the side with Paimon hovering nearby as she fondly watches Manekin and Manekina entertain a group of kids, handing out coins from their pockets with warm smiles kinder than the makeshift walkways of Nasha Town in the middle of a sunny day could ever be, metallic surfaces melting everyone’s shoes.
Children, with eyes lit up brighter than that very same, merciless sun, eagerly peel back the shiny, gold foil wrapper to reveal the coin-shaped chocolate inside – a rare and expensive treat around this part of the world. Children, eagerly tugging at the white, red, and gold ensemble of the twin terminals’ clothing, ask for their share, ask if they can take one home to a younger sibling, if they can have an extra for their parents who do so much.
Manekin’s clothing doesn’t get tugged into a folded wrinkle, remaining nicely on his body even as the fabric is stretched. Manekina’s hair doesn’t come undone, no matter how much she plays tag with the little ones, handing out chocolate coins each time one of them catches her. Together, they learn a little more of what it’s like to be human.
The sun moves to the apex of the day, causing Wanderer to close his eyes completely as it blinds him with bright white light.
And when he opens them again, he can barely see in the dark abyss still splattered in ruins of gold.
Wanderer exhales lengthily. His head hurts. His chest aches. He doesn’t know what the right thing to do is. Even so, “Let’s go home, alright?”
The dotted pigments gather themselves into a golden ball, floating in the ocean of black towards his open palm and cuddling into his skin. His hand shakes, fear rising at the mere sight as his systems urge him to reconsider for the nth time since beginning this treacherous gamble. But even his core has learned by now: there’s no stopping him.
Wanderer tilts his head back, staring towards the emptiness.
There’s no door above.
If anything, even if there is one, the memory has sunken far too deep to so easily reach the surface.
He wonders if that nameless island even still exists in the Human Realm—where that pocket of space of reality could have gone, and if it had taken its Abyssal counterpart with it.
He tried to reach it, tried to follow the map, but there is no telling where bursting a hole through the barrier in between will take him now, if it’s even possible. Thus, he takes a deep breath of lonely coldness, swallowing down his screaming computational systems. Wanderer will have to travel to a different bubble area to get out safely, keeping the memory protected within his gut all the while.
A splash of gold sprinkles far in his peripherals.
There is no hiding in this space where the dying stars reveal all.
Opening his mouth, Wanderer lays the golden orb on his tongue and hurriedly swallows it dry – the memory shard getting stuck on its way down; it would choke him if he needed to breathe.
He’s been followed. Watched.
Wanderer bites his tongue, forcing back the instant fever and nausea rising from deep in his belly, making sweat drip down his back. He twists, another wave of golden stardust becoming displaced beneath his toes, and looks towards the dark depths even further below – a distant, bloomed flower of gilded glitter is the only thing he sees. “I know you’re there. Save us both the trouble and stop hiding.”
A hiss in his ear as the stagnant air is brutally pierced is his only warning.
Spinning around and with sheer instinct alone, honed by long years of excruciating experiences, Wanderer swipes his hand in front of his face and makes a forcefield of anemo, barely catching the silver blade just centimeters from his nose.
The anemo cracks akin to glass.
Foggy gold stares at him through the shatters.
His eyes widen, shards of anemo scraping across the delicate skin around them threateningly as the forcefield breaks. He leans out of the way of the sword’s path, the both of them jumping back.
“Lumine?” Wanderer chokes out in surprise, breathless and gravelly.
The woman he has been looking for lands lightly on her feet, as per usual – the stars barely burst beneath the dark veil that hides them. Her outfit, white and pristine, as though she has freshly stepped out of her home for the morning, is immaculate; inteyvat flowers in place and hair perfectly combed.
“Lumine,” he calls out again softly.
She barely looks at him, eyes staring forward yet not truly seeing. Her expression remains passive; emotionless and unchanging.
For a second, Wanderer questions whether the person before him is the real one.
But her presence is unmistakable, despite being drenched in abyssal energy. Unlike that poor copycat from before.
Lumine’s wrist twists, the sword held in her hand reflecting the subtle illuminations of dying stars in a different direction now.
Wanderer deflects the blade coming his way with a sharp blade of anemo of his own; again and again, the metallic echoes ring out in the ruined space. Their feet dance through the glittery puddles, swirling the watery shadows into a blizzarding flurry. Up, down, towards horizons unknown; there is no floor, and there is no ceiling, stepping wherever they will it and falling deeper into the Abyss when there is nowhere else to run.
“Lumine!” Wanderer yells, his brows furrowing. Her quiet, even breaths wisp across his cheek as he catches her wrists in his hands, clenching his fingers to hold her strength back. Wanderer digs his feet in, gouging out a river of gold until their momentum comes to a stop. “It’s me! Snap out of it! You’re stronger than the Abyss!”
He spins them around, forcing her beneath his weight and sending them both plummeting straight into nothingness.
Although the dizzying freefall is making his nausea worse, his vision beginning to swim, Lumine barely reacts to it outwardly; even the pulse beneath his clenching fingers is steady. Neither does she scream in fear or frustration, lips passively closed.
A knee braces against his hip—and suddenly, they are flipped back around, a kick into his gut making him cough and gag.
Wanderer stares up into gold eyes that don’t recognize him. Silver reflects gold. “Lumine…”
His breath is forced out of his lungs, the bile finally rising in his throat alongside silver-white blood. A sharp, unimaginable burn rips through Wanderer’s body; a cluster of stars burst where they crash, causing a tidal wave of gold to spew across the night sky.
Red. The system warnings behind his eyes are red, red, RED—flashing blindingly and blaring in his ears. Danger. Damaged. Unrecoverable. His biocomponents are racing to secure what they can, shutting down portions of his functions to reroute priority. His consciousness flickers, red and black, red and black.
He’s about to die.
Lumine shoves the sword deeper through his chest, piercing it through even the stars.
She’s about to twist it.
Wanderer grits his teeth, the silver sap spilling out of his mouth making his teeth slip against each other with so much pooling onto his tongue. Reaching out with trembling fingers, he clenches them into Lumine’s dress.
And fires.
What little abyssal energy is left in his body’s vessel, he uses it to get Lumine off him – Wanderer gurgling on a scream as her hand is thrown off the sword’s handle, blade jerking sideways inside the wound further.
The wind around him is unsteady; violent one minute and entirely stagnant the next. Wanderer rolls himself onto his hands and knees, throwing up blood in putrid splatters, masking the revealed gold with globs of silver sap like mercury. He’s panting, whole body trembling and heaving. Shaking like he’s a dry leaf in a field of frigid snow.
“Haha…” A chuckle escapes him again. Saliva mixed with blood dribbles free. “You want to play like that, do you? For old time’s sake, then, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Never go easy on someone intent on killing.
He’s been on both sides now.
Wanderer grasps the handle of the sword in his chest—
—And draws it out of the scabbard that is his body.
With shaking knees, he stands, pivoting around and swinging. The blade catches against a new sword aimed to murder him where he lies.
The violent vibrations nearly crumble the structural bones in his arms, threatening to shatter them into the dust that is parched dirt where trees have sucked it dry of the last droplet of moisture. Wanderer’s posture is unsteady, back hunched and chest on fire as it spills a waterfall of silver. Still, he grips the sword handle like it is the most natural thing in the world, and lifts it right into place to parry the oncoming attacks.
Lumine’s gold and bronze sword, likely shaped merely from memories, rattles against the dull silver one in his hand.
A crack begins to splinter the silver blade.
There is resolve behind Lumine’s glazed eyes, simmering; her expression still remains unemotive.
With as much strength as he can muster, Wanderer pushes Lumine away. Gold bursts beneath their moving feet. He falls to a knee, sword getting pinned to the willed ground only to break in half. Wanderer pants, coughing harshly amidst his haggard breaths. A hand moves to clutch at his bloody and sticky chest, fingers becoming soaked.
He bites his tongue, swallowing down the pain and raising the broken sword above his head.
Lumine has always been a relentless fighter.
Memories rise out of the dark Abyss like lingering souls.
A blade of the Senju Arts attaches to what is broken—he recognizes the craftsmanship immediately. It holds steady against Lumine’s blow, the phantom blade aiding him in getting off the ground and crowding into her space. The two swords scrape against each other in a piercing shrill, Wanderer stepping forward and Lumine dancing back.
But she never stays on the losing side for long. With a twist, Wanderer is sent flying forward, his back exposed to her blade as he goes. Awkwardly craning his arms, the phantom blade made of an unused fate knocks Lumine’s precise swing off its path, shattering in the process.
Gone as fragilely as the original school.
Wanderer spits out blood.
He doesn’t know why they’re here – the memories, the nightmares, his regrets – but he’ll use them as fuel to protect love now instead of destroying it.
A blade soaked in crimson blood grows out of the fractured steel once more. A blade of the Hyakume Arts, the school where indiscriminate slaughter was carried out.
Wanderer matches Lumine’s rhythm, keeping up even as his legs threaten to collapse. They plunge deeper into the underbelly of the entire universe, uncaring as they take steps into darker shadows where even the hidden stars no longer accumulate out of sight. The curved tip of his blade draws a line onto Lumine’s cheek, sliced skin immediately flaring red.
Hatred begins to simmer behind those glazed eyes, face not even twitching.
“That’s it,” Wanderer encourages under his breath even as another – a stronger – swing shatters his sword of forgotten arts once more. Sweat drips from his temple, spilling off his chin.
He functions like a human, despite not being a human. Wounds hurt like it would to humans, even if silver sprays out instead of crimson.
And like a human—he will be selfish.
Allow greed to boil in his veins.
“Give her back…” He heaves breathlessly.
Wanderer unsheathes a pale blue blade from its memory, the hamon as beauteous as rippling water – a blade of the Futsu School whose member would later have three proud pupils creating the Isshin Sansaku together. He aims it at her heart, just like she did him; where Abyss accumulates. “Give her back to me! I’m taking her home!”
Clang, clang, clang – their repeated bouts echo in the emptiness, becoming the screams neither of them can voice aloud.
Many say that blades are indwelt with the souls of those who forge them. Like the original blade that had broken and been reforged before; like Minori, a broken woman not unlike an untampered steel sword, tortured by alcohol, old wounds, and lingering memories of Tatarigami; the sword breaks once more against Lumine’s true blade – one she often carries and not one made of unforgotten memories.
Kaedehara. Niwa. Akame. All three clans—families—of the Isshin Sankaku would go on to fail due to the tampering done to a blueprint of a blade meant for the Raiden Shogun. The untampered version takes its place upon the broken hilt Wanderer still grasps of a Lumine’s old sword – the version that never got to see the light of day; just as Wanderer remembers it.
Crimson mixes with silver in the dark.
“You promised to teach them how to be human!” Wanderer forces out between grinding teeth, swords locked between them.
Lumine still stares at him blankly, only a glimmer of detestation behind the eyes he once knew like the back of his hand; their pure color now muddy.
“You can’t die here!” He pushes her back. She merely digs her toes in and launches back at him. “You have dolls waiting for their master to come home.”
More red decorates the shadows.
Silver soon follows.
“You said they had feelings, free will,” Wanderer croaks out as his body falls through the floor. He rights himself with a jerk, shoulders hitting a wall to steady himself forcefully for the oncoming blade aimed between his eyes. “You said their experiences mattered! That they feel love!”
Lumine stumbles, mouth parted as though to yelp in pain, yet no sounds come out. Blood drips freely from the slash on her thigh.
Wanderer doesn’t relent, pushing forward. He’s good with a sword too, if she’s forgotten. “You said you would show them the world. Are you so cruel as to break that promise?!”
The sword that never came into being splinters into shards of memories, Lumine nearly breaking Wanderer’s wrists with a well-aimed twist—the blade taking the violence in his place.
A new blade hurriedly takes its place to stop Lumine from slicing him clean in half across the abdomen, the craftsmanship on it the only one anyone can experience firsthand in Inazuma in today’s era. The only surviving school in the Raiden Gokaden.
The blade, honed with sheer persistence and willpower, abiding patience and the determination of water as it turns to stone and sand, shines in the dark.
So deep, the shadows attempt to reach out, attempt to slither their tendrils across both of them and imprison their limbs. A slithering snake attempting to slip into the hole in his chest is repelled by pure white light.
A memory shard…
“If I have to live as a sentient doll,” Wanderer knocks Lumine’s sword from her hands with a reckless and mighty swing. It falls into the Abyss where no one returns. “You have to live as their master!”
He rears his arms back.
And stabs forward.
Mimicking exactly as she had done to him—piercing the phantom sword straight through her chest.
Lumine’s body glitches like a computational system going haywire, colors fraying and outline misaligning before returning to normal, like those watercolor paintings of her raw experiences floating in the Abyss. Wanderer pulls the sword out and lets go, allowing it to sink alongside hers into Mother’s belly where it belongs.
They, the memories, hate him. He hates himself too.
Lumine becomes limp, floating in an ocean of the deep universe that cradles the disposed tales.
Wanderer winds an arm behind her back, keeping her close to him.
With his free hand, he reaches towards his chest and plunges his fist inside with a choked scream. Agonizing torture catches his body on fire. Biting his tongue until he tastes the silver sap, until his teeth nearly go all the way through, Wanderer stubbornly digs inside himself. His fingers scrape against the deep gouge on the edge of his core as he searches, so close to rendering it completely ruined.
His blood splatters onto Lumine’s chest. From his mouth. From his bleeding eyes. From the wound he reopens forcibly and rearranges his wired innards.
There.
Wanderer curls his finger around the golden orb stuck somewhere between his mouth and stomach all this time, nestling somewhere close to where a heart might have rested. Clenching his fist tightly, ignoring the wires that are tangled in his grip consequently and accidentally, he yanks.
In his hand, he holds nothing. In his hand, he holds everything.
Red warnings overtake his vision again.
Electrical static belts in his ears.
Wanderer raises his hand high.
“If I have to continue living with every step I take thanks to you, using every day learning how to be human, you, as the person who gave me this chance, have to too!”
He brings his hand down harshly, barely able to make out Lumine’s figure through the shutdown timer playing out behind his eyes. Wanderer presses Lumine’s raw memory shard into her own chest, the purifying light that had protected him from the Abyss now engulfing her entire body.
The world goes white.
His goes black.
Did he do it?
Warmth washes over him as much as cold clings to his artificial skin.
“…now you’re the one who owes me…” Wanderer finds himself whispering with his final breath.
Does he fall into the abyss alongside the dead and the unchosen?
His eyes have long gone blind. Perhaps he merely closed them.
His systems are quiet, like the last second before peaceful death takes hold.
Gravity shifts. Up or down, he doesn’t know.
But as he sinks into darkness, his ears catch a distorted wail.
“SC▉▇Amo▉Ch▇!”