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When this mission began, there were seven of them.
It was inevitable that the realization of this fact would be ringing relentlessly through the heads of all four people gathered around their campfire atop this dark abyssal ruin right now. At least, Yelan had a hunch that the others were thinking the same thing she was. Not that it counted as much of a ‘thought’—it was more like a brick wall that stood in the way of the rest of her thoughts. It was a hollow shock, a stubborn refusal to accept that this could have happened. Their deaths felt as real as the Abyss did, which is to say, not at all. Yelan knew coming in that the Abyss was a strange and unpredictable place, but this was like a waking nightmare. One which has claimed Yanxing, Xuan, and now Uncle Kai in but a mere five days.
Xiuying stoked the fire in silence, while Minjun remained in what seemed to be deep contemplation, eyes closed and oblivious to all of them. Rushi flipped through the pages of his notebook and Yelan watched him over his shoulder. He had some notes on the Abyssal monsters they have encountered thus far, complete with sketches and data on their mannerisms and their attacks. Yelan watched him flip back and forth restlessly before finally coming back and settling on the page with the yet-to-be-named Abyss monster they just met, the one that killed Uncle Kai. Its massive form and the way it seemed to swim weightlessly through the air was very similar to the Rifthounds, Yelan thought, although this being was more like a skeletal tiger in its appearance, with glowing magenta eyes and razor-edged claws.
Yelan, despite her best efforts to the contrary, felt her heart seize up merely at the sight of the rough sketch. This shouldn’t have happened. It shouldn’t have been there. They planned this. They scouted the ruins beforehand; they were careful this time, but still, that Lector found them and brought this monster right on top of them, where they couldn’t run. Uncle Kai was the oldest of them, the veteran swordsman with legendary feats to his name. Perhaps his strength today wasn’t the same as it was when he was younger, but he was a formidable fighter all the same. They respected him; they aspired to be like him; and Yelan had promised that she wouldn’t let him down—wouldn’t let any of them down.
They killed the monster, but the cost was too great. Uncle Kai was killed in that fight—one razor-edged stab through the heart was all it took.
“I’m thinking,” Minjun spoke up at last, dispelling the heavy silence and catching all of their attention all at once, “that we should leave. That is to say, I vote that we turn back and leave the Abyss while we still can.”
There were just a few beats of silence that passed as the implications sunk in. When that implication dawned on her, Yelan was the first to speak. “W-Wait!’ she blurted out with not nearly as much composure as she would have liked. “Are you serious? Is that it? We just ‘turn back’? I mean—I understand, but, what about everyone…?” she felt her voice choke up, her words fail her. “If we fail, wouldn’t that make their deaths be for nothing?”
“She’s right,” Rushi agreed, her eyes blank and his throat making a sound somewhere between a strangled sob and a laugh. “We haven’t even scratched the surface of what we came here to do. We…I don’t want anything else to happen, but…we’re just as clueless now as we were coming in.”
“I know,” Minjun agreed, his voice somber. It felt so strange to Yelan, hearing his voice like that. Minjun was the risk-taker, the daring one, the one who always enjoyed a good game or puzzle, who taught Yelan how to play cards and how to always be the portrait of perfect confidence when she did so. Minjun was their lead strategist—Yelan was following in his footsteps in the area of mission planning and data interpretation just as she was following behind her original mentor, Xiuying, the one who taught her how use a bow and how to fight.
Now, Minjun’s confidence appeared to falter. “I know, but, sometimes, there really is no choice but to cut your losses and accept your ‘nothing.’”
“True, but I wouldn’t call it ‘nothing’,” Xiuying countered, arms crossed and voice matter-of-fact. “The Ministry of Civil Affairs wanted information on the Abyss, and we got it. We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves into thinking that we were supposed to take down the entire Abyss Order through this mission, or even prevent a second Cataclysm.”
“But shouldn’t we be kind of doing just that?” Rushi questioned. “Abyss activity has definitely increased in the past few years—and we just got intel of a giant abyssal rift opening up in Snezhnaya! Whole civilians could just fall through that! What if the same thing happened in Liyue? The opening we came through is precarious enough as it is…”
“Rushi,” Xiuying stopped him with a word. “It isn’t that complicated. If monsters invaded Liyue again like they did five hundred years ago, we would fight them. Our ancestors didn’t let them destroy the land then, and we certainly won’t be doing the same now. As Liyue’s intelligence, we will do our part to act preemptively, but we can’t work miracles.” She shook her head with a sigh. “It’s only meaningless if we all die here. As long as just one person survives, it would be a victory, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Precisely,” Minjun agreed. “All we need is one, though with any luck, it won’t get to that point. Look, it’s not just about me, alright? I want to see the rest of us make it back in one piece. That…” he trailed off with a deep breath, failing to finish whatever point he was starting. “Yeah. That’s it.”
Yelan stared into the crackling fire, then looking out into the darkness beyond it. The Abyss had a way of making one feel like they were alone in limitless space, while at the same time being pressed up on all sides by the atmosphere itself and given no room to breathe, as if that air was made up of a million tiny creatures watching them with tiny, ravenous eyes.
“Yes.” She nodded. “I understand. I second your vote. We should turn back.”
+++
“Got a name yet?”
Yelan approached Rushi late that night (if it can be called nighttime if the dull lighting down here never changed), settling down against the wall beside his small form, which was busy scratching things in that notebook. She felt better, now. A little more composed of herself, a little more distant from the horror of what happened to Uncle Kai earlier that day. From the looks of him, Rushi seemed to be doing better now, too. Or maybe they were both just getting really good at hiding it, like their elders were.
“Nope.” He shook his head with just a small glare at the page. “Don’t have anything for its stupid face quite yet. You said he looked like a tiger to you, right? I guess I can see it. Could use the ‘rift’ motif too, as it is functionally very similar to the Rifthounds.”
“Hmm, yes…” Yelan mused with a conspiratorial hum. “But ‘Rift Tiger’ still seems far too grand for it, don’t you think? And that double ‘t’ sound doesn’t quite work so well, either. Perhaps ‘shrimp.’ What do you think of that? Just an annoying little shrimp.”
Rushi, as expected, snort-laughed a little at that one. “Pffft, ‘shrimp’? That’s an understatement. I love it. I can hear the Milleleth now: ‘The Great Shrimp is coming! Man the ballista!’ Ah, you know, though? That reminds me. You still haven’t told me the secret behind that famous dish of yours. ‘Dew-Dipped Shrimp,’ remember? Surely, I should have another chance at it by now, hmm?”
“Oh? You want to play me again at cards for it?” Yelan quirked a smile, embracing the chance to relish the memory.
“Ehe, any other game ideas that isn’t gambling? My dear, trusted comrade? Whom I have definitely forgiven for robbing me out of house and home last time?”
“Well, I can’t reward you without a little risk, now can I? Where’s the fun in that? Besides, it wasn’t that much Mora, honestly. It’s not my fault you spend your whole paycheck on heretical books.”
“Heretical?” Rushi echoed, hand to his heart in clearly exaggerated offense. “Fine words for someone who is definitely benefiting from me being the only one on this team who can read and speak abyssal script! And who I’m teaching said script to, on top of that! I should write those books off as a business expense, honestly.”
“True.” Yelan nodded in agreement. “You probably could…if most of them weren’t from the black market.”
“Hey, if we’re a secret team, we should be able to do secret things in peace, alright?” He pointed his pen at her to make the point, before turning to twirl it in thought. “But…it’s understandably shaky ground. Still, can’t beat what you don’t understand, right? I just hope that one day, we’ll find some scholars who know more about this than I do. Heh, or better yet, got some old manuscript that’ll tell us what really happened back in the Cataclysm.”
Yelan hummed in agreement. It was true; doing a mission like this did bring the mysteries of the past to the forefront of the mind. There were many questions: they didn’t know why the corruption happened at all, where the monsters came from, or how Khaenri’ah really fell. That, in a way, was the true goal of this mission—to find the hidden remains of the subterranean continent of Khaenri’ah, whose very existence had been nearly scrubbed from every record of the past they had. They may very well have been overrun by the Abyss for no other reason than the Abyss Order’s hunger for power, but Yelan suspected that there was much more to it than that.
It would be a difficult quest, but still, Yelan did have some faith in Rushi’s ability to figure it out, although he would have a long way to go, as did she. Rushi was the youngest member of the team; Yelan was the second youngest. They both joined at about the same time as a result of Xiuying’s recruitment efforts. Yelan remembers it well—not long after meeting her, the young Yelan, enamored by the woman’s fighting skills, went and asked to be Xiuying’s student. She wasn’t planning on becoming an intelligence operative, but after Xiuying had decided her to be trustworthy, that was exactly what happened. Honestly, Yelan was pleased. As difficult as the task so quickly proved to be, she had no qualms with letting her past life disappear into the dust and allowing her current life to be wholly consumed by her job. She was a non-entity in the eyes of the Ministry of Civil Affairs—she didn’t exist, and she shared her experiences with no one, save for her teammates. However, her teammates were enough. She could be honest with them; it was simply not an issue that she had to be an enigma with everyone else.
They chatted for a while longer before Minjun showed up with the intention of taking the next watch, and so Yelan and Rushi conceded to taking the time to actually get some sleep. Yelan found that sleep didn’t come all that easily, though. Stopping for long enough to think only put her on edge, feeling helpless in the grip of paranoia and fear as this disastrous mission keep replaying itself over and over in her head. She needed to think of other things, to stay sane. She couldn’t even think of useful things without slipping again. She had to lock herself in thoughts of just about nothing at all.
“Haha, impressive!” Uncle Kai complimented with that deep, bellowing voice of his. “Twice in a row, I see.”
“Indeed,” Xiuying agreed with a perfectly unconcerned expression. “She’s learning well.” She then drew her own bow back, letting the arrow fly towards the distant target, where it hit Yelan’s arrow perfectly enough to split it down the middle to take its place at the center of the bullseye.
Yelan glared at her teacher only slightly, just knowing that she was doing it to show off. “Heh, well! You’re not half bad yourself,” she commented with a jesting smirk.
“Oh? Someone sounds like she wants to get beaten in a spar to keep herself from getting cocky, hmm?”
“I would enjoy that,” Yelan agreed, although she knew very well that her chances of success were quite low.
“Well, you know what I think?” Minjun sauntered into the scene with a conspiratorial grin. “I say you all need a lesson in working smarter, not harder. My dear Yelan, may I borrow an arrow?”
“Why yes, you may.”
She then watched as Minjun inspected the arrow for a bit, scratched his dark hair as he cocked his head at it, then slowly walked over to the target to study that for a few moments, before he finally stuck the arrowhead into the bullseye with his own two hands. “Haha! See? A foolproof solution!”
“Aha!” Uncle Kai threw his head back and laughed out loud. “Well, Xiuying! Looks like there might really be a new sharpshooting master in town!”
Xiuying finally smiled in turn, stringing another arrow into her bow while raising her eyebrows at Minjun. “Alright? How about you go fifty paces back and we put your ‘foolproof’ technique to the test, hmm?”
“Hello there! We have returned with gifts!”
Yanxing’s voice sounded through the clearing, effectively interrupting wherever Xiuying and Minjun were about to go with this next. She waved a bundle of fish at them, Xuan following with their fishing poles close behind.
“Well, what do you know? You actually found something,” Yelan commented with an impressed nod, although she could have figured they would find something sooner or later. They were staying on an old base in northern Liyue right now, effectively in the middle of nowhere, doing a bit of scouting while fixing up the little-used camp, but mostly just recovering from their last mission, which was a clean success. Spirits were rather high, today. It was one of the few occasions when they were all in the same place at the same time and not deeply entrenched in work or busy nursing fresh wounds.
“Yes, if they haven’t been scorched beyond belief already,” Xuan expressed with a groan, rubbing his temple above his one good eye. “But if burnt fish is up your alley, go right on ahead.”
Yanxing rolled her eyes dramatically. “Oh, stop being difficult.” She pushed him a little on the shoulder, she and her Pyro Vision appearing wholly unrepentant. “It worked, didn’t it? The fish might be a little toasty, but they aren’t even cooked all the way! Much less ‘burnt.’ So! Who wants to cook it?”
“Eh, I will,” Rushi volunteered with a yawn and a stretch. “I wasn’t doing anything, just watching them train.” He gestured towards Yelan and the others.
“Not doing anything?” Minjun echoed. “What a shame, and here I thought you agreed to play some cards with me and Yelan after—”
“No!” Rushi refuted with a pointed finger of accusation directed Minjun’s way. “No, not again! Not after you, somehow, managed to beat me five times in a row! I don’t know how it’s possible! So, no! I literally have no Mora left to lose!”
“Well, there is collateral besides Mora…”
“No!”
“Fine, fine.” Minjun shrugged. “Hey, Xiuying, would you like a round—?”
“Stop corrupting the children.” Xiuying leveled an unamused glare his way.
“Well, if you’re taking participants, I’m in!” Yanxing offered. “How about you, Xuan?”
“Eh, sure.”
“Ha, excellent!” Minjun was pleased.
“Would you be interested in joining, Uncle Kai?” Yelan asked, once it appeared that they were gathering a larger group. They could probably get a good round or two in while they waited for dinner.
“Mm, not this time,” Kai decided, with a glance at the rest of the old training equipment. “I’m feeling a little restless, actually. I can’t say I’m all that hungry, either. I think I’d like to take my sword for a spin on those training dummies for a while. See how well they hold up,” he added with a wink.
He ended up going at it all night, as he sometimes did, either not needing food or merely forgetting about it. As the hour grew late and the moon rose up, Yelan watched him perform his sword arts from the sidelines, Rushi by her side, as the two of them chatted about history and the validity of that opera about Rex Lapis they watched a few weeks earlier, then finally turning their conversation to put their brains together on a riddle that would be able to stump Minjun.
It was a good riddle, too. Sadly, it only took Minjun two minutes to solve it.
+++
Yanxing was the only Vision wielder among them, as well as being a truly formidable swordswoman, and as such, she was always at the forefront of every fight. Seeing her bowl through enemies in a burst of flame, too nimble to let a single hit graze her, was a familiar sight for all of them. In this way, it was both unbelievable and very cruelly believable to Yelan that she would be the first to die. She was as strong as she always was, but these foes were stronger. Maybe, even at the beginning of the fight, she knew that. Still, she took the lead, telling the others to stay behind her, letting them focus on finding a way out of the space they were trapped in.
They got out, but that last fleeting sight of her body lying in two separate pieces on the ground would remain engraved in Yelan’s mind forever.
Perhaps, you could have argued that among all of them, Xuan was the most impaired. As a consequence of one disastrous mission years ago, he was missing his right eye and his left arm. He had to swap his claymore for a sword and dagger, then. Still, you could hardly tell that he struggled, if he struggled at all. He was a clever man, a master spy, and he could hold his own in a fight, always seeming to predict an opponent’s moves long before they came.
Three days ago, they laid out a trap in front of this gate. The plan was Yelan’s idea. However, it didn’t work. Their foe didn’t take the bait. And Xuan’s skills couldn’t save him. He was supposed to be concealed, but that infernal Herald found him without hesitation. What should have been a trap turned quickly into a battle. Creatures rose up from the very ground as reinforcements for the Abyss. Yelan couldn’t predict it. The last thing she remembers of Xuan is him saving her, blood drenching his coat and dripping profusely from where his prosthetic was ripped off, looking as if he couldn’t stand up any longer. Then, he didn’t.
They stood before that same gateway again, now. There were no enemies that they could see, but they were on high alert. The door they once walked through without any particular problems besides the enemies around was now sealed shut, apparently. Rushi was busy reading the script for it. It seemed as if it was going to force them to unlock, if they wanted to go back through this way. Yelan watched Rushi and attempted to pick up on some of the words herself, but her thoughts were inevitably distracted by memories of the last time they were here.
Yelan wondered how happened to make him lose his eye and arm. Maybe, it was a strange thing to be concerned over, in the sea of everything else, but she thought about it anyways, although she didn’t expect an answer or have any desire to ask for one. Xiuying was there with him when it happened, but she was unscathed. Xiuying had no such physical weaknesses, no scars from her many years of work, or so Yelan thought, until one day she was injured on a mission together, and Yelan had to be the one to do first aid on the wound. That was the day she became shocked to find many welt-like scars running up and down her back, as if someone had painted them in a pattern with full coverage in mind. There were many other little scars across her skin, but those welts were the most surprising. So much so, that Yelan dared to ask.
“People are cruel,” was what Xiuying told her, without any build-up at all, and those words stuck in Yelan’s head forever. “Crueler than the monsters, honestly. That’s why you should never hesitate, Yelan. Make evil pay. If you have to kill someone, just do it. Heh, although I suppose if everyone had that conviction in mind, I wouldn’t still be alive.” She smiled ruefully, her gaze turned distant. “If they toy with you, you get to live. A ridiculous notion, isn’t it?”
“Is there another way around?” Minjun asked in the present. “Let me check our maps…it is possible there’s another passage, I think, although it will take some time to find it, probably.”
“Eh, we…should probably stick to going back the way we came,” Rushi said, eyes still peeled to the script etched in the stone. “I almost have it. It’s an incantation to make it open up, and I can speak it just fine, probably. I just…umm…I just need a minute…”
“Alright then,” Minjun conceded. “If you think it’s fine, then we’ll leave it to you.”
Yelan nodded in agreement, but her eyes remained fixed on Rushi, with a bit of suspicion as she watched him read. “You look pale,” Yelan spoke to him in a softer voice. “Are you sure everything’s alright?”
Rushi appeared deep in thought. “Huh? Oh! Yeah, that’s probably just because of my injuries from yesterday. Blood loss and all that.” He paused for a few more moments. “Actually…maybe we should look for another way—”
“Incoming!”
Rushi was cut off abruptly by an alert from Xiuying. Yelan readied her bow and strung it before she even laid eyes on the enemy, which came in the form of a small hoard of monsters streaming into the tunnel.
There was no escape, obviously. It was a tunnel with an unopened door, which meant that they would have to battle them to the death right here and now.
“We’ll cover you!” Yelan yelled to Rushi as she let loose her arrow into the eye of a small Rifthound. The hound recoiled, but she knew that no matter how accurate she was, the damage would be infuriatingly minimal from a physical attack alone. Which was why they had already planned for this.
“Yelan!” Minjun threw an alchemy-created Pyro potion at the beast, which Yelan hit with practiced precision, creating a burst of flame with the impact that dealt damage and weakened its defense. Yelan attacked it again while it was down, while Minjun brought out his polearm and unleashed it in a flurry against the smaller enemies.
With the aid of a cryo potion to finish it off, Yelan killed the hound, making it dissipate into the air with a howl. However, that wasn’t the end of it. The monsters kept coming, and she couldn’t afford to waste one second not driving them back with everything she had.
“Rushi!” Xiuying barked. “How close are you!?”
“J-Just a minute!”
“Alright, it’s going to have to be!” Xiuying gritted her teeth as she fired an arrow into a beast, then using her bow as a bludgeoning weapon against another. With a few more swift moves, she pinned the feline-esque Abyssal monster to the ground and snapped its neck with her own bare hands.
“Ugh, did someone see us coming!?” Minjun questioned, sounding thoroughly annoyed with the possibility that he missed something. “This has to be a directed attack. There’s too many, but I can’t afford to use up all my potions at once!” he expressed after throwing another cryo one at a group of them.
“Look! You can save the potions, it’s going to—I’m almost…” Rushi said before trailing off again.
A Rifthound dove at Minjun, driving him to the ground. A claw attack followed before Yelan had the chance to step in and pull him out, before Xiuying took over in the attack against it and managed to kill it. The dark essence of corrosion radiated strongly from the fresh claw wound across Minjun’s torso, so Yelan pulled him to safety so she could cover—
“I’m sorry!” Rushi shouted at them, before his tongue turned to emitting a rapid fire slew of words in the Abyssal language. Yelan could only make out a few words of it, namely ‘sun,’ ‘moon,’ and ‘dreams.’
The moment he finished, there was a glow from the door, and everyone disappeared. Yelan felt herself get beamed along with the others to the space on the other side of the gate, free of any monsters. She recognized the appearance of this side of the gate from before, but she wasn’t expecting that spell to get them here without the door actually opening. She looked around to see Minjun and Xiuying here too, and then…
Yelan saw Rushi lying listlessly on the ground, face angled to the floor. Immediately, she darted over to him. “Rushi?” She turned him over, and…
Her breath caught. Rushi looked up at her, mouth moving into a weak smile. Blood flowed freely from within both corners of his mouth. Blood also flowed from the corners of his eyes, and from his nostrils, and from his ears. It kept coming as if it were the stream and he was the source, and it covered Yelan’s hands as she sat there holding him.
“I’m sorry,” Rushi told her again, as the whites of his eyes turned to bloodshot red. “I…I’m a coward. I waited. I just—” His voice stopped abruptly, his eyes widened just a little as his cheeks rapidly turned blue.
Oh no, no… “Rushi!” He was choking on his own blood. Yelan hurried to change his position, to bring him upright and hunched over so that it could better flow out of his mouth. He coughed and sputtered, his breath regained. Yelan felt the presence of Xiuying and Minjun silently drawing close to the two of them, but she paid them little mind.
“I tried,” he said with a weak laugh once he was able to again. “I just…wanted to figure out if there was another way, you know? A way around their…curse…” He broke off with a violent coughing fit. “Heh, it’s not a curse really, I think—it’s the pressure of breaking through…of breaking through space. But it’s…it’s okay now. I’m fine.” He smiled as if he were forcing it. “If you make it, then, then maybe…”
“Rushi, don’t you dare,” Yelan spoke to him finally, her emotions barely restrained. “Don’t you dare talk like that. You’re alive. You’re going to make it.”
“I’m not,” he spoke with what sounded almost like a sob. He shook his head. “I’m not.”
“Rushi! You’re—just stay with me, okay? Breathe with me. You are…you’re okay,” Yelan lied as she felt his blood drip through her hands and her throat close up with a tremor. “It’s…it’s Dipped Dew,” she said, tears welling just underneath her eyes. “The tea, Dipped Dew. I can’t…I can’t believe you never guessed it, before. Some detective you are, right?” She smiled with delirium. “I dip the shrimp in tea, and then I fry it. It’s…it’s that simple. It’s the perfect recipe. And it even goes perfectly with hot chili, too.”
“Heh,” Rushi said with a weak laugh, the color slowly draining from his face. “You and your spicy foods. I wish I could have…I mean, I think I’ll have to actually try shrimp with chili, one day. Maybe I’ll like it.”
“Yeah.” Yelan nodded, tears falling from her face. “Yeah, I think you will.”
Rushi didn’t say another word, after that. His stare had turned blank in that moment, his body growing limp. There was no color on his face except for the blood, which now resided in a pool surrounding him and Yelan both. When Yelan dared to check for a pulse, it was no longer there.
+++
Their retreat had turned into an escape.
This much was clear to them, now. It seemed that on every turn down this winding path, someone was there with the designs to make certain they never leave. They saw several battles and tried their hardest to keep on the offensive. It was only monsters. It should have been only monsters. Yelan knew there had to be a way to outsmart them—she was determined to make that so. Maybe, if she was honest, she was distracted. Maybe their goal of escape alone became difficult to stomach when she hungered for their pain. She wanted to crush them, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. She needed patience.
They traversed through a hall of ancient ruins—whether they came from Khaenri’ah or someone else, they didn’t know. They tread carefully through the stone halls lined with ancient murals and runes and took careful note of the various still-seemingly-active mechanisms; although they were going the same general route through which they entered into this place, they were careful to follow a different path, to reduce their predictability. Yelan had also made a personal effort to seal their path, as well. All along the way, she used the arts of her clan to seal the doors shut to the likes of demons—Yelan came from a line of thaumaturges and exorcists, and she was taught their arts at a young age, although none of her living family really practiced it actively. However, such things came in use in times such as now.
“I hear something,” Minjun spoke into the silence. They had been conducting their retreat through this stretch with as little talking as possible, in the interest of subtlety. However, if they had been found here anyways, Yelan wouldn’t be surprised. She was too exhausted to have it in her to be. She strung her bow without a word, before the danger was spotted, looking around for…
A laugh emerged from the darkness. Yelan whipped her head around to see a tall form step out from the corner, in a long purple cape and bright violet core glowing beneath an inhuman head, a book floating before its hands.
“Impressive,” it said with another laugh. Yelan noticed that it looked injured. “But did you really believe that your exorcist tricks would be enough for me? Behold! The light of the Abyss!”
Xiuying fired the first shot. She dashed towards the Abyss Lector and dodged away from the wreath of violet lightning, which illuminated the sun and moon engraving on the old, cracked walls behind it. Yelan fired at it in turn. Minjun used his polearm to attack head on.
“Hear ye, the words of joy!”
Giant balls of Electro emerged from the Lector, homing in on all three of them. Yelan dodged and ducked behind some structure that appeared to be a stove, perhaps, which took the brunt of the hit. Could this have been a kitchen, at one time? Yelan didn’t know and hardly cared—she hadn’t taken a lot of note of these ruins, not this time. The only important thing now was that they were in a space that was enclosed, and the lack of room for fighting seemed to hurt them a lot more than it hurt the Lector.
“We need to move!” Minjun told them, and with the entire plan spelled out, she knew what he meant. They had to back out of this room and get into the outside, where they could fight it better.
Xiuying immediately took the lead, getting up close to the Lector while Minjun fell back. A wave of lightning bolts rained down on all of them, and they went on the defensive. Yelan then got in front of Minjun to cover for him while he planted a bomb into the stone wall, stepping around some scattered old junk on the ground.
“Hear the truth!”
A thunderous wave emitted from the Lector. Yelan ducked and made a move to pull Minjun behind her, but Minjun moved out in front of them first, holding a huge broken pan with wooden handles like a shield in front of his and her heads. Lightning struck it and bounced off, and there was a cry of pain from the Lector, as if its attack had been turned back on itself. Minjun dropped the pan with a loud clatter.
Yelan stood back up again and strung her bow. It wasn’t needed, as she watched Xiuying dash up behind the monster in its moment of pain, and, within seconds, plunge a dagger through its neck. It dropped to the ground, but still, it laughed.
“You were always the resourceful one, weren’t you?” it spoke in mocking tones. Yelan quickly followed its gaze to Minjun, and she felt the grip of panic take hold when she realized he was still on the floor. While on his knees, he stared blankly at his palms, which were bleeding.
Yelan’s heart raced. She saw the wide cooking pan on the floor, and she saw the rough and jagged edges of its handles, which she had missed before. It was as if someone had come and sliced it up.
Minjun’s hands trembled. He smiled shakily as he inspected them. “Heh, poison. Well played.” He looked up at the Lector and at the rest of them. “Well played.”
Yelan rushed to grab Minjun by the shoulder, pulling him away just before the charges on the wall detonated, spewing pebbles and dust at the both of them as punishment for their lack of planning. With one final cry of pain, the Lector dropped dead, and Xiuying ran to meet them, pulling them both back upright and running before them out into the open.
They knew we were coming, Yelan realized, heart running cold. This was a trap; they set it up long before we ever got here.
Yelan ran while supporting Minjun. She noticed his old corrosion-infused wound begin to glow again from underneath the bandages, and then, also begin to reopen and bleed.
Three Abyss Mages met them outside. In comparison to the Lector, they were nothing, but for them Yelan hardly had the time. She watched Xiuying take the lead but—
“Take these,” Minjun instructed her, handing over his pouch of alchemical potions. “You’re going to need them. You can let me go now.”
Yelan did as he asked. She set him down on the ground, and she turned to join the fight. Her mind raced with plans on what to do next. He was poisoned through his hands. Shouldn’t she find a way to cut off the blood flow in his arms? Would they have no choice but to cut his arms off? But it might already be too late—whatever the poison was, it enflamed the corrosion. She needed another solution, any solution. She could purify it. She didn’t know how it would work, but she could try something, maybe use her abilities as a thaumaturge…
“Yelan!” Xiuying barked at her after one of the mages went down. “I have the rest; just take Minjun to safety! Now!”
Yelan did as she was told without hesitation. She picked up her comrade’s body to carry him and then ran, a million plans on what to possibly do racing through her mind.
She never got the chance to try any of them. By the time Yelan stopped running and moved to set him down, he was already dead.
+++
They almost made it out.
Yelan and Xiuying made it to the final passageway, the secret place through which they had entered the Abyss. One final gateway to unlock, and they could be transported back to the surface world. They already knew very well the sequence required to do it. However, it would also take time.
When a hoard of monsters emerged through the entrance to that final chamber, it was clear that time was not a luxury they had.
Yelan decimated a Pyro mage’s shield with a hydro potion and well-placed charged shot. She didn’t have the chance to take it down all the way before a Rifthound lunged for her and forced her out of the way. She turned to attacking it, just as small snake-like creatures never before seen on the surface world emerged to make bites at her feet.
She fought back-to-back with Xiuying. Her old mentor never faltered or flinched in her attacks; she kept nimble and quick, sometimes being the one to forcibly pull Yelan away from the danger in just the nick of time before some shot sailed past where her head once was.
Xiuying was relentless, and she fought with everything she had. However, ‘everything they had’ was something which stopped feeling like enough a long time ago.
“You are the best of the best,” an official had told the seven of them with a satisfied smile, confident in his discussion with them of this mission to go out into the Abyss and conquer its secrets for the benefit of the world above. “I can think of no one better suited to such a task.”
“Yelan!”
Yelan turned to the sound of Xiuying’s voice, barking at her again, as she still continued her attack.
Xiuying looked her in the eye, bow drawn, blood dripping down her face. “You have to get to that gate.” She nodded towards the small chamber directly connected to this large one. “Get there, and open it. I’ll hold them off.”
“W-What!?” Yelan felt that she could barely breathe.
“Yelan, for once, don’t talk back at me!” she snapped in anger. “Go! Don’t hesitate!” She fired off another barrage of shots, then turning to her once again in grave earnest. “I’ll be right behind you. Now go. You know how to unlock it.”
Yelan ran. She longed to resist the movement and fight by Xiuying’s side anyway, but she obeyed. She stopped thinking. She only got in there and started unlocking the lengthy mechanism, which was certain to snap back in place a mere minute or two after it was unlocked. Xiuying would have a small window. But she knew that. Yelan knew that she knew that.
A mage made it through and attempted to attack her, but Yelan was ready. She killed it, and then she returned to the mechanism, struggling sometimes with her hold due to her hands being slick with blood. But she made it. Long minutes later, she made it.
“It’s open!” Yelan shouted loud enough for Xiuying to hear. She disappeared from that room a second later, feeling herself pass through the same strange subspace as before, blinking her eyes against the sense of distorted reality…
She dropped to the ground and felt grass. The fissure leading into the Abyss lay inert behind her, but Yelan didn’t take much opportunity to inspect it. She tried to get up to stand up but couldn’t, so she laid there. She laid there and she breathed. She laid there and she bled onto the grass, and she waited.
Minutes passed by, and she waited. At some point, perhaps for want of something more than waiting, she felt her consciousness drift from her. Without an enemy in sight, she could rest.
…
…
Xiuying was a liar.
Yelan knew this, because she picked herself up off the ground, and she was alone. It did not take a genius to look up at the sky and know that hours had passed since she first landed here. Yelan looked up, and she thought nothing. She didn’t cry, although she wondered if now would be the time to. Her heart had stopped even though it was still beating.
Xiuying was a liar in two ways.
“As long as just one person survives, it would be a victory, as far as I’m concerned.”
That was what she said, but to call this a victory felt like the most laughable notion Yelan had ever heard, even more laughable than the thought that she also dared to believe Xiuying when she said that she would be right behind her. She wasn’t. Yelan knew this. She wasn’t coming back. None of them were.
+++
Yelan gave the worst report to the Ministry of Civil Affairs that she had ever given in her life. It was short and bare bones, weak and useless. She simply didn’t have the capacity to make anything longer. She retreated, after that. She didn’t quit officially, but she had in her heart. Or maybe, not as much as she thought. Her first long day at home, in her wood hut in the middle of the wilderness, was spent on nothing. Then, she spent those days doing everything. She started training again. She trained from dawn until dusk, and then, she trained past dusk. She fired her bow until her fingers bled and her arms could barely hold it up anymore. She ran and she fought inanimate objects with martial arts until she couldn’t feel her legs anymore. She kept going, heedless of time, heedless of sleep.
She passed out on her own training field, one day. She just felt the need to sleep and couldn’t imagine have the energy to walk back inside.
When she woke up, flat on her back, there was a Vision resting next to her hand.
She inspected it, and she laughed. Without any conscious thought of it, she laughed for the first time in many, many days, looking up into the light of the stars.
They really did it. They did it, now of all times. Oh, the absurdity.
If the gods really had wanted to help her, then they were much, much too late.