☆ you sow; & thus you shall reap what you are owed
{☆} characters tsaritsa
{☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader
{☆} warnings blood, violence
{☆} word count 0.8k
You are dying.
Gold melts into the dirt, bleeds into the very earth that you'd molded by your own hands – a familiarity you do not understand the source of – you know it to be true, yet you do not remember it as Teyvat does. It weeps, in turn, for the way you bleed upon it, the way your lungs strain for breath.
It is fury and sorrow and fear and hatred so raw that your mind buckles.
You will die.
"A dying godling and its judge, it's jury – it's executioners," The voice is hollow and cold, sweeps across your broken body like the first chill of winter, "Archons who saw themselves Gods, now brought to heel by their own hubris."
A cold hand upon your cheek, the brush of a thumb across your lip, the gentle caress of cold across your skin. You know her – you don't remember, you shouldn't recognize her but you do – and she knows you. The cold beckons and you follow, let her kindness settle in the hollow space of your chest. You want to speak, to cry and scream and rage, let the world burn around you in a fit of flames so hot even she cannot contain it – but she silences you, quiets the anger seeping into your blood, quiets Teyvat itself.
"Do not speak, little godling. Guide my hand," She is cold; her hands are not gentle, yet it is bliss compared to the callous, cruel hands that have shattered you. She is cruel and cold and brutal but she is love in the way she kisses the crown of your head. She is love in the way she is the bulwark between you and the world that has scorned you – she is fury in the way she brings them to their knees. "And I shall enact judgement most divine."
They will pray for forgiveness, and they shall find themselves wanting.
"It wasn't our fault!" They cry, but you cannot recognize the voice – it breaks and cracks like glass. "They were too human. How were we meant to know? We– we thought they were.."
Silence.
You watch your judge – the executioner, the blade that shall carve their sins into the very marrow of Teyvat, stand above you like death. As cold as winter and just as brutal. Your temple has been painted in the gold of your divine blood, and she shall complete the masterpiece with their own. The Archons shall become the grandest art in the world – this temple the canvas, their blood the paint and their bodies the palette. The cold that cuts sinew cradles you – it sings to you, whispers sweetly in your ear and carves bone from body in the same breath. The cold presses it's lips to your wrist and it cradles a heart within it's palm – judges them and finds them guilty.
It is her spear that rests between their ribs, her sword that dissects and her dagger that carves – the cold devours.
In the breadth of this divine sanctuary, the Archons dwindle. They become the pieces of a divine work of art, they bleed and bend and break upon her hands. She shakes the heavens and carves mortality into the bones of the divine – your word is Law, and you weave their deaths into the roots of Teyvat itself.
They shall know of their grand folly in every moment henceforth and longer still and they shall weep.
And as the curtain falls, as the world crumbles beneath fist and blade, she cradles your face between hands too cold – as gentle as a shard of ice between your ribs, as brutal as the kiss of gentle snowfall. The world buckles at the loss of six, but she alone does not allow it to break – you will have to mend the wounds of the world when you are well, but today you weep and Teyvat weeps with you.
And alone, the cold remains.
Stone has eroded, the wind has ceased, the flames have been extinguished, the storm has been silenced, the forests have gone quiet and the seas go still.
But the cold remains, bathed in gold.
It wraps you in thick furs, cradles you against the winter storm that brews beneath a veneer of composure. It brings you home – lets the world settle into a stillness and silence that inspires only dread and still she presses a kiss to your brow.
It is cold, but there has never been something so warm.
Where hands have broken you, she drapes you in furs, wipes away the thick gold that clings to your skin. She pieces you back together where you have been shattered, reshapes you where you have been bent – makes of you something new. Not a god and not a mortal but something wedged between them.
But you are yourself.
And you are where you belong.
They shall put you back together and you shall know only the worship worthy of the divine. They shall carve this world into your image, tear out and burn away the rot that festers.
All you need to do is say the word and they shall be your tools to make this world your own.
One word and those who wronged you shall burn, too.
Just one word. That's all it takes, and they shall take away your pain.
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Can't stop thinking about the fact that Wriothesley is a former underground boxer.
Was it... legal? Did he do it for money? For the thrill? He's called a "Duke" now, but it's unclear if that was a title awarded for his ascension to the head of the Fortress of Meropide (like the monarch "knighting" outstanding people (Sir Patrick Stuart for example)). It's perfectly likely that he had a humble start in life.
The livestream also confirms that Wriothesley is a somewhat recent addition to Meropide, so I'd say he's only had this role for a few years at most. Does that mean he was boxing up until recently too?
Wriothesley is covered in scars (there's a huge one on his neck)... Is that from his past? Did someone pull a knife out in a fight, or was he attacked afterward from some disgruntled opponent?
If this was an illegal practice, he could have been set up to lose a fight and refused, then attacked by whatever mob bosses he fucked over.
Idk. I enjoy the idea that in his younger years he wasn't quite so upstanding - I have this image in my mind of little twenty-something Wriothesley getting caught when the underground fighting ring got taken down. Everyone's put on trial but really Neuvillette & the courts care about the organisers, not the fighters that got caught in the crossfire. And Wriothesley is all freshly scarred and clearly not guilty of all the financial crimes going on behind the scenes.
Obviously there's some class disparity in Fontaine. Wriothesley has that voiceline "don't break the law... seriously" but he also reformed Meropide and treats the reasonable inmates as equals. Imagine if that came from his history, seeing his peers be punished for actions that society forced them into. And maybe Wriothesley got off lightly, but he'd be able to empathise with all the people who didn't.
And there's that official art of Wriothesley and Neuvillette in the office together, which obviously doesn't confirm that they have met (yoimiya & Kaeya art lol), but they almost certainly have. So I wonder if it was that near miss with a guilty verdict that put Wriothesley on Neuvillette's radar. Neuvillette is caring, so maybe he took steps to help the people who got caught up in the fighting, including Wriothesley. And it's those connections that later allow Wriothesley to take a position in Meropide, making the reformations that treat those who are guilty more fairly.
Anyway yeah. Wriothesley.
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Mhin: Poorly Disguised || Mhin x Unspecified MC (Dom!MC is implied??)
Rating: T || CW: Implied future misuse of a Senobium (clergy/government?) uniform. Brothel mention in narrative. Stolen clothes that don't fit. Premise: crack treated seriously.
Mhin's arms are crossed tightly, eyes closed, breaths carefully even. They can hear the shuffling of fabric behind them. Uncertain steps. The sound of your bandaged hands smoothing down starched fabric.
A long stretch of silence.
Their eyebrow twitches in impatience; they lose count of the exhalations they were taking a census of.
“Mhin, I…uh, I don't think this is going to work.”
Mhin turns to you impatiently, a sharp question poised on their lips, but once their eyes land on you they see exactly what you mean.
The Senobium uniform hugs the contours of your body far too tightly for propriety. The buttons on the blouse are splayed open a scandalous amount, unable to close due to the poor fit of the stolen garment, thus allowing Mhin a teasing glimpse of your chest. The tempting image of you is burned in their mind before they can look away, the heart that they had been keeping so carefully in check while you changed now racing.
You don't look a single bit like you'd be mistaken for a legitimate member of the clergy, not even to the uncaring or untrained eye. Not that much of anyone could possibly look away from you, once they’ve caught a glimpse…
Idiot, don't you know what you–
Mhin feels the heat staining their face as they press their palms against their eyes as if to ward off a headache. They need to reign themselves in before they forget all self control. They aren't going to allow themselves to look at you again while you're still wearing that.
Not that it helps. Mhin won’t be forgetting what they saw any time soon. You look like someone's very expensive, if very heretical, fantasy. Mhin doesn't even want to guess what someone might pay at Elyon’s brothel just to look at you, let alone…
“This was a stupid idea,” Mhin spits through hands still shielding their face. If they are lucky you'll mistake their body language for an expression of pure frustration and not the attempt to hide their blush that it is.
But Mhin has never been very lucky.
They're so flustered that they don’t even hear you approach–your lips brushing against their ear as you speak comes as a surprise, their cursed predator-sharp instincts gone silent.
“Maybe not that terrible of an idea…” you posit. Mhin shivers despite themself; if you didn't know the effect you had on them before, you certainly do now.
They can feel the fever of you against their side, can feel you like an arrow to the heart, leaning into them with your body, your own hands held carefully out of the way. You chuckle darkly, pressing a dizzying kiss against the sensitive skin covering their parotid before you rest your chin sweetly in the curve of their neck and shoulder.
“You put all that work into getting this uniform for us, Mhin... I know it turned out to be a dead end but... I should still reward you for your hard work, right?”
Against their better judgment, Mhin drops their hands. Turns to face you. Finds their fingers pressing urgently into your skin, curving along your jaw giving you the very touch they so often wish they could receive from you. The ease with which you welcome their kiss–the way you've anticipated their eager capitulation–is something they'll have to scold themself about at a later date. For now...
It is unwise to allow a debt to go unpaid in this city.
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this is one of my favorite theses in the inkworld each way it plays out is so!!
elinor's dad valued his books over her and her sisters to the point she internalizes it and becomes the same kind of hermit he was, before and after the folcharts come back into her life. basta was groomed into believing he was inherently unlovable except by capricorn so he'd do anything to keep that small remaining amount of love. brianna realizes if dustfinger wasn't dead then he had to have abandoned her, so the next person to give her their full attention? she'll throw away every other relationship she has for them, the same way she was thrown away. the verbal abuse violante endured as a kid (and currently, because 19 is still a kid) influenced the kind of mother she is and she doesn't even realize until it's almost too late that she's done to jacopo what the adder did to her! and I've already talked about the physical abuse from farid's birth family influencing how he forms severely anxious relationships.
and none of these are just character padding! all of these characters influence the plot so heavily by becoming traumatized and by working through it and I don't have any idea how she pulled it off
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11. Blood at the corner of your mouth.
It is not your blood at the edge of your mouth. Not your blood that your tongue swipes from the corner of your lips. Not your blood whose coppery tastes lingers between your teeth.
But he fucking deserved it.
Sister Kindness has you tucked under her arm as she, to use her words, books it. Something she must not do often because she huffs and puffs her way through the crowded Shaded Bower. And though some call out ‘Sister’ to her with warm recognition she does not stop ‘booking’ it.
(Sister Kindness would have you know that she is perfectly in shape for a woman of her age. She was ‘huffing and puffing’ from the extra weight of carrying you, thank you very much.)
She slows when the westshore pier appears around the corner and then she steps off the main path and sets you down. Kneeling to be something more like eye-level, she pulls a Roegadyn-sized handkerchief from the depths of her habit. Wetting a corner with a flask pulled from a separate, equally confusing pocket she begins to clean the blood from your face.
Sister Kindness’ hand is firm where it grips your chin, holding as little of you as possible. For once the contact does not send you recoiling. Perhaps it is the way your rage has left you as quickly as it had flooded you, leaving you feeling drained of everything else as well. Now that the moment has passed you tremble and, to your horror, you can feel a well of tears rising to fill that empty space.
“Was a helluva bite, darling girl,” Sister Kindness’s voice is quiet as she tilts your head to the light, searching for any blood she may have missed. You focus on her creek colored eyes and swear you feel their waters lapping at your ankles. Her smile is sudden but woozy around the edges; she is just as shaken. "Reckon he'll have a scar, too. Bet he lies about who gave it to him."
‘He’ was an elezen man -- maybe a merchant but likely not, as Sister Kindness did not know him -- with a face as sharp as his ears and a smile that spoke of too much confidence. And you had hated him on sight. His crime was making Sister Kindness uncomfortable and his mistake was not being aware of his surroundings.
It does not take much pressure to break skin.
Pleased with her work, Sister Kindness rises and disappears the handkerchief away. Handing you the flask, she instructs you to take a sip, swirl it around your mouth, and spit it out. There is some confusion about what 'swirl' means but, eventually, she is satisfied with this too.
“Well, we didn’t get what I came for but we’ll be headed home all the same. Come now, before the ferry leaves without us. We will, ah, not be telling the abbess about this.”
You don’t know if she means the bite or the trip to the city.
You don’t ask.
Thank you for the ask, Anon!
][ Sensory Prompts ][
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