Chapter Text
Zhongli wiped the blood from his mouth with a tender hand, gloves held in the other. The waxy silver of a moonlit sky hit the polished hilt of his polearm, dazzling light reflecting onto deep red, slicked all over the leather of his boots. A soft wind whispered through the grass. A calm night, quiet and beautiful, blessed by the Archons.
He nudged her horn with a heel, watching with a terrifying calmness in his golden eyes as her head lifelessly met tile. Her cheeks were pale, paler than usual, her porcelain skin interrupted by ghastly maroon gashes, splitting her clothes open in lightning bolt shapes.
Fresh air flooded his lungs as the taste settled at the back of his throat. The tastes coated his tongue - mint, oregano, honey. It felt much like ice in his mouth, harsh and distant, but it still felt lovely all the same, life returning to him one piece at a time.
The same could not be said for the victim, who stared up at him with glassy mauve eyes. The utter routine of it all had removed any remorse he might have felt in this situation. It was only business, a quota to fill before moving onto the next task. He felt nothing personally toward her, toward the unmoving woman who had once been just as alive as anyone else.
“I apologize, but I must take more,” he muttered, leaning down on the balls of his feet to run his free hand over her neck. “The best is here, you see, and I’m feeling rather tired.”
Her skin was frozen to the touch, but still he palmed at it, searching for the best part, the muscle that would sate his hunger with the most nectar. It didn’t feel quite the same, sinking his teeth into dead flesh, but her blood still welcomed him, still hummed as a fresh kill does.
Like biting into a pomegranate, sweetness exploded over his taste buds. The first few times it had hurt, digging his teeth that far into something so tough, but now it felt like clockwork, polished and bloody clockwork - it was his favorite part.
“Thank you, dear,” he whispered, combing through her hair with careful fingers. “You taste divine.”
She didn’t answer. Zhongli didn’t expect her to - after all, he had mercilessly gouged out her intestines just minutes ago - and all he did was smile, blood dribbling down his chin like juice.
What a mess, he observed, straightening his back and grabbing the end of his polearm with more force than needed. A terrible noise that resembled the death of a slime erupted through the trees as sharp blades retreated from the organs of her stomach and met the air, wet and warm and redder than the leaves of a silk flower.
From a distance, Zhongli would be assumed to be holding a broomstick. His facial expression was only slightly annoyed, the type you would expect to see looking at a wet pile of leaves or a small spider, not the mangled corpse of the Liyue Qixing’s secretary.
The able-bodied vampire slapped a glove against his thigh, a crack echoing in his eardrums, and this wordless ritual seemed to mark the end of his feast. His stained hand held tightly onto a weapon that never left his side, and he began his journey back home, feeling much less hungry than before.
Once day broke, a wandering trader would encounter her body on the road to Liyue, seemingly mauled by a boar, if the shape of the wounds meant anything. Zhongli would pretend to know nothing of this, freshly bathed and wrapped in silk as his "boss" gave him the news like it was harmless gossip, and he would live his life as free the day he was born.
For now, Zhongli parted the tall grass with long strides, a hunter satisfied. With a single twitch of his finger, a bright amber light flashed behind him. He didn’t bother to check if the trick had worked - it always did. The puncture on her neck was gone, encased in hard rock for a few miserable seconds until it crumbled away, skin closed and unmarked.
It was only life. It could end at any moment, could begin just as fast, could never end no matter how hard the owner tried - there were so many possibilities. It was daunting, sure, but to Zhongli it only meant there were no rules but the ones he made, and he was always a stickler for rules.
Life was a contract, plain and simple. Zhongli could allow it to go on, reap all the benefits, et al., or he could terminate it. All contracts had to end eventually - that was the point of them in the first place.
Zhongli just liked to end a lot of contracts.
That’s all it was. Contracts. So many contracts ended, for the sake of keeping him alive.
Well, as alive as a vampire could be. As alive as he wanted to be.
Zhongli mentally removed Ganyu’s contract from his records.