Chapter Text
The traveler bolted through the tawny grass with wicked speed. The agent was close on her heels, but she didn’t dare turn to see his flame orange eyes. She couldn’t hear his footsteps over her own heavy panting and thunderous clomp of her own foot falls. Her legs ached from the spontaneous sprint that had begun only one minute ago, and her arms felt like they could fall off at any moment. She couldn’t stop moving forward even though her lungs felt about to bleed.
It looked as though a clearing was ahead and she squinted her eyes to clear them of the watery blur that had accumulated from the rushing warm wind on her face. She would’ve cursed had she the breath to utter it; a clearing would not be a good turn of circumstances for her. The clearing came quick and in a moment of shoc the woman gasped a startled and choked sound. Her footstep faltered for only half a second before she urged herself forward with a determination of that of a woman with no other choice. In that small moment she heard the agent behind her chuckle, dark and foreboding. The traveler thought spitefully of how he had breath left to make such a taunting and unforced laugh.
The woman steeled her nerves and drew her eyebrows. Paimon appeared but the traveler ignored her. She could barely make out the terrified expression on her face as she glanced forward and back not knowing which direction held more peril. Paimon spoke a few words, but they melded together in the woman’s thundering ears and after covering her eyes with trembling hands Paimon vanished into multicolored geometric lines. The traveler made out the galactic colors of Paimon’s disappearance and grinned; she wondered if those would be the colors she would see.
The cliff came quickly and without a moment of hesitation when her foot stepped on the last patch of earth before nothing, she jumped. Her stamina was spent, and she thought bitterly about her glider – what a useless object now. She spread her arms to her sides out of habit and took a breath as she began to plummet to the deep bottom of Nantianmen. She thought that the water below would feel good on her hot skin, and she was happy for the fall. The fall that never came.
A firm hand gripped her spread arms just as the toe of her boot was about to lift from the dirt, and pulled her back to a nasty end. A short scream of pain ripped from her hoarse throat raw from gasping for fresh air as her arm felt as if it had been pulled from its socket. When her back hit the ground and her head reeled from the impact, blinking stars edged her vision, but she immediately tried to get up from her compromised position. She grunted and rolled onto her side, but another harsh, black-gloved hand yanked her forearm back, so she lay on her back once more. The stars had barely begun to fade when a hand was on her throat pressing up into her jaw. She thought that she must look about as good as a slime smushed between two hilichurl shields.
The traveler coughed and tried to wriggle free. She could feel some strength returning to her, but it would not be enough to shake this Fatui agent. The man snickered as he settled his weight on her lower abdomen and pressed his booted toes onto her wrist at her side. His other leg kept her from kicking him. After a heartbeat of catching his breath that was almost inaudible and that made the traveler smirk, he said in a husky voice, “Some say you cannot run from debt, but you can run – you just can’t escape.” The woman underneath him blinked up at the sky like she was simply clearing dust or stars from her eyes and said after taking as deep a breath she could with the restriction on her windpipe, “I believe I almost did.”
The agent’s unfeeling orange slits peered down at her or at least the traveler thought they were. There was a moment where neither of them spoke, and the hot wind of Liyue blew around them rustling the yellow leaves of the Sandbearer trees. The traveler supposed it might be a wish for some yaksha to come from the sky and save her, but she stayed her tongue.
Instead, the agent said, “Not going to beg for your life?”
The traveler spat, “I don’t beg for just anyone.”
“Maybe I can change that.”
The traveler grimaced at his comment before realizing his other arm was still holding his deadly sacrificial knife. In a swift swipe of her arm that was left surprisingly unfettered she wacked the blade from his hand and reached up. She gripped the agent’s uniform under the thick collar and pulled herself closer to his menacing mask. Though the mask didn’t change, she liked to imagine a look of surprise on his face especially after the unexpected grunt that sounded from him.
The traveler bared her teeth and whispered in a way that would’ve been sensual in any other situation, “I have defeated a dragon. I have faced the abyss and forced their ranks to retreat. I have fought beside yakshas and archons. If you think you can make me bend to your whims, I’d like to know why much deadlier enemies could not.”
The agent snorted and leaned his head next to her ear and spoke in a low voice, “I think you’ll find that I have many ways to make prey bend to my whims.”
The woman tilted her head away from the man’s voice but his grip on her neck tightened just slightly. She talked through the restraint, “And I think you’ll find that I am not easy prey.”
In the moment she grabbed his collar the agent stepped off her wrist. With her free hand she pulled a bottle from her inventory and smashed it on the ground. A strong current of wind blasted from the earth sending the traveler and her assailant in different directions.
The woman lay on the ground and scrambled to a crawl. The agent was on his feet in moments and stalking toward her. With a burst of anxiety, the traveler stumbled into the wind and opened her glider just as the agent reached into the current to grab her.
The glider held steady as the woman shot up into the light blue sky. She flew off the cliff and turned to glare at the agent. He now stood on the very edge of the cliff, his sacrificial knife in hand again. He was looking up at the traveler with his emotionless face.
He shouted above the wind and rustling leaves, “Next time I won’t be so kind!” Without any other words the Fatui agent vanished with only an orange-red imprint of his form left standing on the cliff’s edge.
The traveler could still feel his hand on her throat, but she was alive, and he was gone. She took a relieved breath and glided down into the valley where a geo vishap awaited her.