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He wiped the blood off his spear and let out a heavy sigh.
Another day had gone by, just another day of nothing but ruthless killing. And he knew this was something that would never end, so long as he remained in this plane of existence.
“Time to head home,” Xiao murmured to himself. And then he scoffed, thinking about what he just said. Home? Where was home? He didn’t have a home. The roof of Wangshu Inn could barely be called such, with no bed or any other furniture for that matter, and no warmth or comfort that one would expect from a place with called “home.”
Wangshu Inn was not his home, and he had no need to return there just yet anyway. So maybe he would visit Jueyun Karst and see how the other adepti were doing. From a distance, of course. He didn’t want to disturb them by alerting them to his presence.
And so Xiao put away his spear and headed towards the adepti’s abode, dashing through the plains of Liyue. He had already expended most of his energy in battle, and was too tired to teleport straight there.
He had not yet reached the mountains when he felt a sinister presence that put him on edge.
“Who’s there?” Xiao tensed up and reached for his weapon, heightening his senses as he surveyed his surroundings.
No response. He could feel it though, the slimy, sinister sensation that radiated from the miasma oozing from the remnants of slain gods. Fatigued as he was, he could not shirk his duties. He had to suppress this accumulation of hatred before it could wreak havoc on the world around it.
So he bolted forward, spear in hand, preparing himself to take down the evil that awaited him.
And the evil that faced him was great, a more densely coalesced mass of hatred than all the other monsters he had fought that day. Of course, in the past, Xiao had fought much greater and won. But the little energy he had left made him less steady on his feet than he would have been under normal circumstances. He needed all his strength to dispel the miasma and to also still be able to drag himself to a place he could finally get some sleep.
“Focus,” Xiao muttered to himself. He gripped the shaft of his polearm so tightly that his hands turned white, and he thrust himself into battle.
As he fought, he could feel his reflexes slowing down from exhaustion, making him hit and dodge slower than he ever would on a normal day. With his movement decreased in range and speed, an attack from his enemy that would have never touched him if he was in a better condition managed to scrape his side. The jolt of pain from the injury acted to both further his physical deterioration and to also bring about a rush of adrenaline that heightened his mental clarity for one mere second.
And that one second was what he needed to pull ahead just enough to finish destroying this manifestation of a slain god’s malice, just barely enough.
The adrenaline left him almost as quickly as it had entered, and Xiao collapsed onto the ground, his spear lodging itself into the earth beside him.
His vision blurred before going black as he lay crumpled in the dirt, with the grit of the soil abrading the skin of his cheek.
It came to him all at once, the fiery, agonizing pain of his karmic debt that was the result of all his millennia of killing, a pain that threatened to burn up his insides and swallow him whole.
But he didn’t even have the strength to scream.
The thoughts that plagued him for years and years echoed in his ears, the words ringing sharp and each one slicing into him. Worthless. Useless. You are nothing but a burden to others. You exist only as a tool to be used.
He was prepared to just lie there and take it, but before another wave of gut-wrenching pain or self-loathing thoughts could hit him, he heard something else that went over his body like a salve and calmed down the voices in his head.
The song of a flute, the sound coming from far away across mountains and rivers, but Xiao could hear it as clear as the wind that carried it to him.
He let out the breath he was holding and basked in the warmth of the tune. He let it lull him into the sleep he had long been awaiting.
Xiao stood poised in a lovely meadow, the sweet scent of flowers filling the air around him.
A song, that very song, playing on the Dihua flute — it rang clear as the blue sky above him, the flowers in the field swaying to its tune.
Holding one arm in front of him and one to the side, Xiao began to dance. He lifted his foot to his supporting knee, keeping his shoulders back. His brought his arms to the front, the tips of his fingers touching, and he spun himself around.
He leapt high into the air, one leg in front pointing towards the sky, and the other leg in the back pointing towards the ground. He moved with a nimble gracefulness he never knew he had, supplementing each step with a careful application of his Anemo power, allowing him to spin faster, leap higher than any other dancer could.
All he was missing was a partner.
The music then rang louder, coming closer and closer, until Xiao could see the very source of that music, a young man with black and teal braided hair, dancing his way towards him, playing the flute.
Barbatos, the god of wind and song, the Anemo archon himself, he was playing for Xiao, playing a song just for him.
He looked at Xiao, smiling, and then set his flute down on a nearby rock, the sound of the music still somehow emitting from the instrument, even with no one holding it. Just one of many powers of the god of songs.
Barbatos reached out and took Xiao’s hand in his, and they danced together in the meadow amongst the flowers, the music never ending.
Xiao could hear the morning birds, their chirping sounds mingling with the tune of the Dihua flute, still playing even after Xiao awoke.
His dream, dancing in a meadow with the Anemo archon himself — none of that was real. But something about the dream just felt so real to him, so much that it couldn’t have just been fabricated in his mind.
What was Barbatos doing in Xiao’s dream?
Xiao sat up, but kept his eyes closed, soaking up every note of the song that continued to play. In his dream, Barbatos came dancing up to him, playing the flute. Perhaps, that meant…
He turned from side to side, looking around. Despite knowing that the sound of the flute had travelled from far away, in his heart he had hoped that maybe, just maybe, he could get a glimpse of the individual who was playing the tune. But he couldn’t even tell which direction the music came from, let alone how far the flutist was from him.
He closed his eyes again, replaying the sweet memory of his dream in his head. He lifted himself onto his feet, and thinking back to how he had danced in his dream, he held one arm in front of him and one to the side, and began to lift his foot to his knee, preparing for a spin.
What Xiao did not prepare himself for, however, were the injuries he had sustained on his real body that his dream self did not have. The pain from when he was injured in battle had not yet abated, and his attempt at dancing had just made it worse. Xiao sighed, sitting back down, in his heart a desperate wish, as improbable as it was, for the Anemo archon to come dancing towards him, playing the Dihua flute.
He waited for a while longer, immersing himself in the sound of the music, but the flutist never came. Xiao knew deep down that it was a futile endeavour, but he had still waited because somehow, inexplicably, he had hope in his heart that his dream would come into fruition. No matter how hopeless of a dream it was.
Not only was his dream proven to be merely a dream, a hopeless dream, but soon enough, the sound of the flute had stopped. The plains of Liyue became quiet again, and alone in the middle of nowhere, Xiao could hear very little besides the chirping of birds and the beating of his own heart.
Since the music had stopped, Xiao had no reason to be sitting on the ground in what had not so long ago been his battlefield, dirt caked onto his skin and in his wounds, his skin feeling gritty and uncomfortable.
And so Xiao stood up, pulled his spear out from where it had lodged itself into the earth, and began to leave for somewhere he could at least clean himself up.
Perhaps to Wangshu Inn, which was not his home — no, he had no place to call “home.” But at least it was somewhere he could get clean and get some proper rest, not the kind you’d get when you pass out in a field with injuries that still had yet to be properly cleaned.
Looking back at the field where he lay, Xiao could see that it was far from the meadow in his dream, bearing no semblance at all since the song that was playing had faded into nothingness. Whereas the meadow in his dream was teeming with flowers, his battlefield held little more than trampled grass and stains of his blood, along with wisps of the remnants of the god he had suppressed.
Befitting of the nature of a yaksha, Xiao thought. After all, his purpose for living had been violence and slaughter for more than two thousand years.
He would continue to kill and destroy, suffering the karmic debt that came with these actions, and trying his best to accept all the pain he had to endure time and time again.
A song, carried by the wind from afar and played on the Dihua flute, a song played by the Anemo archon himself was not enough for Xiao to forget his responsibilities and dance.
And so his dream would remain merely a dream.