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The winds that have traversed through the sea carry with them cool currents and as they part the clouds up above in the sky, the day is a clear once.
Light falls gently unto the earth and illuminates the land, the gentle rustling of the leaves, and the swaying of the grass, the songs and callings of the birds, today the outdoors have been blessed, and many upon the good day decide to leave what they are doing and go outside to rest and play.
The day is an excellent one, to leave it to go to waste would be nothing but to spit on the face of the divinity, or at least that’s what Ayato heard one of the many workers of the Kamisato state heard saying.
And well, Ayato supposes that’s there nothing else to do but to begin spitting in the face of all that is holy.
The refreshing air that all who step outside have managed to enjoy is none existent here where he’s holed up in his office, none of the light is able to enter, all of the windows closed and illuminated by candlelight is how he read the documents pilling up on all the surface of his desk, (some may call him too paranoid, but right now said documents are related to less than legal things, having his windows open is a risk that right now he can’t allow,) inside the office, echoing around the closed room, there is no leaves or grass being moved by the wind, there are no birds singing their song, there is only the sound of his brush writing, and his sighs, murmurs and grunts, as a reaction to the documents.
Outside the sky is cloudless, there is nothing but light where you look at, and all around the world is illuminated and clear, a good sign that only good things are to come for their war-torn nation, some will say, proof that the darkness and corruption has been purged and from now and forward their land will only but flourish.
But inside, locked in silence and darkness Ayato knows that that is not even close to the truth, and he laments the fact that for now the wishes of justice and rightfulness that the civilians wish for will remain being nothing more than that, nothing more than wishes.
In front of him, written in code and cipher, hidden messages and having been concealed in the darkness, documents that were never supposed to arrive at his hands lay. The Fatui are amongst the biggest organizations in all of Teyvat, and when it comes to power and numbers probably the number one, their influence is also something that isn’t to be scoffed at. Their presence has extended to all of the nations, and their roots go deep, hard to see and difficult to completely take out.
They had once already put their hand into Inazuma’s affairs, immersed in shadows and behind closed doors, they were the ones moving everything to go according to their plans, their manipulation causing the conflict in Inazuma to prevail for far too long, and making it take countless of lives with it.
But with the involvement of his fallen star, both the conflict dividing Inazuma and the involvement of the Fatui, were stopped, and after that those in power who actually wanted the best for their nation were able to freely act and get rid of the ones corrupting and destroying their homeland.
But Ayato had been naïve, and he had been blind himself to the truth deep of the roots that the Fatui had panted, and now once again they were germinating, poisoning the land as they grew.
And now he could do nothing but suffer the consequences of his own mistakes.
Plans of different attacks and other crimes to be performed, deals and contracts made with several officials, hidden camps and the places in which they were laying low, future plans and their orders, statistics and the number of agents currently on the land of thunder.
For the past days Ayato has been doing nothing but read, and read, and try to decipher the documents that he was able to get.
It’s worse than what he had thought, much, much worse, and the solutions aren’t easy to come by. And in the rare case that he’s able to come up with a fix one thing or other is in his way.
There needs to be a reaction soon, or they will find their nation once again full of problems.
But it’s easier said than done, and the help that he has is limited, as far as he knows just his Goddess, Kujou Sara, the heads of the Commissions, and some of their trusted officials are aware of the ongoing hidden crisis that Inazuma is going through.
But still, even with all of them in the known, it’s still difficult to act, Inazuma is still weak, it resources yet to recuperate after their seclusion from the rest of the world, and contracts and trade with the other nations are slow to form.
But the same can’t be said for the Fatui, Snezhnaya stands tall and powerful, influential, and so far away that retaliation from Inazuma is almost impossible to bring. And even now, that the Fatui are no longer welcomed in Inazuma it is still so easy for them to come unscathed out of the situation no matter what the outcome is.
Whatever their motives to be on Inazuma are, it is clear to see that the Fatui have everything to win and nothing to lose.
With another sigh that leaves his lips, he decides to grab another document, it takes him a while to decipher the hidden message, but after days of doing nothing else it soon reveals itself.
An encampment, and an important one at that, supplies are stored there and is where orders usually arrive first.
And as his eyes are near the end of the page he sees it, it’s location, hidden near one of the many caves that form along the mountains close to the shore, the caves near, to the Kamisato state.
This, he thinks as he stands up, and leaves his office for the first time in days for other thing that is not imply going to his room, is at least something that I can take care of.
He leaves his office, and as he walks, he ignores the way in which his body aches and protests against the movement, ignores the way in which his muscles are sore after days of nothing but being in the same position.
He walks through the corridors and hallways and ignores the way in which his eyes ache and burn when he steps into the light, the new pain doing nothing but add itself to the headache that has been plaguing him for days.
With quick strides, he leaves the Kamisato state behind quickly, its late already, the sun about to set soon, he ignores the way in which sometimes his vision becomes blurry and focuses only on the sound of the waves becoming stronger and stronger the more closer he gets to the coast.
He goes down through a hidden descent, he doesn’t pay attention to the way in which his jumps aren’t as firm as always and ignores the wobble that sometimes takes over him when he lands.
His feet finally meet sand and he keeps on walking, the cave working as a camp won’t be far from here, soon he makes sure that none of his steps make sound and his breath becomes also inaudible. He thinks nothing of the way in which his chest complains about his now more controlled breathing, and even when a pressure starts to appear making breathing harder, he keeps on walking.
The sun is finally meeting the horizon, and soon the skies will darken.
As he gets closer to the zone marked by the document his body becomes tenser and tenser, so much that in some parts the ache intensifies, he ignores it and writes it off as simply nerves for the raid that he’s about to do.
Soon he sees it, for some seconds he wonders how it had never come to the light before, the zone is regularly patrolled, a report should exist, the only options are that someone in the Tenryou commission has been paid to let this zone be ignored, or the soldiers in charge of patrolling have been paid too.
It’s a big group, just what he expected from a place as important as this, but at the same time not that numerous that he can’t deal alone with it, the fact that they must stay hidden and out of the radar not allowing the Fatui the chance of having big numbers.
Summoning his sword he gets the closer he can while still hidden, tremors run along all of his body, his hand around the hilt of his swords feels weak and it trembles and trembles.
Approaching slowly the only things he knows is the sand shifting under his feet, his legs getting ready to move.
The first Fatui falls quickly, his strides are firm and he makes sure to cut deep, the second one falls before the rest is aware of what is happening.
The third one falls and his next move has to be a dodge, he avoids the shot of pyro directed at him, and a blade of water flying through the air is his response.
The sun goes down, the moon and stars rise, the fight keeps on.
He doesn’t know how long it has been, but tiredness is already taking hold of him, he keeps sending down enemy after enemy, but the battle sees no end.
He can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, the weight on his chest too oppressive to ignore.
There’s no air going to his lungs, around him the world becomes a blur.
He can’t breathe, he can’t see, his legs trip on something he can’t see, and he falls.
His body falls over the sand, he can’t get up, he hears the sound of his enemies approaching, his heartbeat wild and erratic echoing loudly inside his head, his head hurts.
They’re over him.
The world goes dark.
***
Lumine is quiet, just like the room around her, its other occupant just breathing softly and never moving from where he’s laying over his bed.
All of the documents that were previously on Ayato’s office are now here, and as she makes guards over the sleeping Commissioner she reads all of them.
The codes in which they are written are curious, and too many almost impossible to decipher, but to her, who carries with her thousands of different tongues and languages just a glance is enough to understand its contents. And it had been thanks to that that she had allowed her to find Ayato in time.
Few things have been able to scare her while here in Teyvat, but at that moment, when she arrived and saw him collapsed on the floor, not moving and unresponsive to the danger befalling him…
She had already feared the worst.
Because Ayato is an able fighter seeing him on the floor to her was but a signal that he had been stricken down.
In her fury and fear the Fatui were quick to fall, many not even aware of her presence even as her sword cut through their flesh.
And when she arrived beside the collapsed form of Ayato, preparing herself for the carnage and blood that she was to find. Yet the truth turned out to be different.
Long days in which he did nothing but worry about the problems that were being caused, almost no rest, and poor and small meals.
At the end what won over him was all of the stress he was under, and when his body was brought past its limits it could do nothing more than fail him.
For the past days, it has been nothing more than her silent self looking after him. It won’t be long before he wakes up, but as long as it brings him rest she will take it into her hands to sort through his affairs and try to lend her hand where she can.
Outside the night is quiet, and illuminated by both moonlight and candlelight she starts to write one of her many solutions for how to get rid of all of the bad seeds currently trying to take root inside Inazuma.