Chapter Text
The nearby corpse of a beast twitches once before falling still.
The loud ringing in your head gets louder by the passing minute. Mouth set into a grimace, you roll onto your back and hack out a wet cough.
It's hard to breathe with a gaping hole in your torso, still fresh and bloody. Your half-lidded eyes focus onto a speck of ash, floating up to melt into the night air.
The God of War doesn’t fear. No. He is the one who’s feared. And yet...
“No...”, Morax kneels there, watching his old friend, laid upon the charred grass.
Your once lustrous hair, now melds into the soot-stained ground, tainted by blood and grime. Your breaths come shallow and short. For all the dust and debris left in the battle's wake, Mt. Tianheng had a pleasant breeze to offer.
His palm find its way to yours; cold to the touch. Fingers tighten around you, and the clarity slowly returns to your hazy eyes.
The stench of burnt flesh permeates the air. His gaze lingers over the yawning cavity in your body; charred at the edges. From such a pair of gods, its not Morax who wields the power to heal and mend. It’s not you who possesses the energy to do so.
And so. his hands tremble uselessly over your gut, or the lack thereof.
His most trusted. His closest companion. His oldest friend... The one who shares countless memories with him. The one who had promised to do so for many more years to come.
"M-morax," his name spoken like a sigh. The corners of his mouth twitch into a small smile. Your stomach flares in pain when you fight back a strangled whine. "I am... not your burden to bear amidst a battle."
He sits by you, pained. “Hush... do not strain yourself by talking.”
You lie before him, bleeding.
-
“O great Rex Lapis, won't you be kind? Won't you be wise? Renounce your lands and people? Spare us all a calamity from befalling those subjects of yours? It’s the least of your payment... for eons of slaughter caused by your hands.”
A great many creatures had cackled, with many more swarming in. The seething mass of... beastly wasps, misshapen and overgrown, were all too eager for a massacre. A hivemind; disgustingly coordinated in brains and brawn.
By the first rumbling of his meteorite that bombed over Mt. Tianheng, a familiar billowing mist had rolled forward to assist. Whether in your solid body, or a lashing mist, it was hard to quell the pyro gnats.
The grass is stained red by now.
He takes your hand and grips it tight, to his chest. You brush your fingers over his bruised knuckles.
By the second rumbling of raining spears, Morax’s harsh orders had sent the adepti and yakshas scrambling towards the unprotected city of Liyue.
.
.
.
By the third rumbling of his shield molding around you... a flaming projectile had already shot clean through your torso.
You need to fight to keep your eyes open.
From a simple flesh wound... what a joke.
You're not the admired deity of recovery, just in name, are you?
Your fingers twitch, tightening around his robes. "Help me sit upright..."
His sharp exhale falls upon your brows, and with the utmost softest touch, You’re pulled up against his torso. Your head sags against his shoulder, where you can feel the thick pool of sorrow under his skin.
"Please... I do not want to cause you more hurt," The words fall hollow from his lips. He holds you up gently, and you can finally focus on his face.
… where you’re met with a wet shine to his eyes.
"What... are you trying to do?" His mouth flickers downwards ever so slightly.
But you... you break out in a rebellious smile, don’t you?
The pain is unbearable. And you laugh all the harder for it. Sweat beads your forehead, and your fingers dig into his arm when he presses into your stomach to slow the bleeding. You bite out a groan. It burns.
"Don't look at me like that Morax", you pant. "This... this is but child’s play for a healer of my caliber...."
Yet, your life trickles out like the grains of sand in an hourglass, and your vision flickers.
He wipes the blood off your lip, clearly vexed, "You are still yourself, I see. Even as you lay here, near death, you are still joking."
"Just... won’t you humor me one last time?" You rasp out, feeling faint. All sensations except the gritting pain have left already. "Lend me some energy- so my body can return to what it once was..."
"Because... I, the Healer God of Mist, am alone the revered one... who holds mortality at my fingertips..." your voice breaks towards the end, but you still flash a smile of dogged arrogance, don’t you?
(There is nothing but a theory borne from your feverish thoughts.)
He gazes at you; minutes away from the end. The god who holds no regrets, who has not one ounce of fear in their voice. (You have never been more terrified of death, for you only know how to run from it.)
With a melancholy rustle of feathers, comes another soft voice, "Ever so conceited, until the very end...”, Cloud retainer murmurs into the night.
His skin glows alight, veins illuminated on his chest and arms. His gnosis ignites for your fanatical whims. It always did. "How could I ever refuse you...?", his trembling voice, so quiet.
You’re met with a familiar embrace.
…
“If mortals pray to gods in their time of need, who does a god pray to?”
Two drops fall to your neck, rolling away until they wet your clothes.
“No one.”
His smile is soft, and voice raspy.
“A god can only pray to himself... but, he may have hope in others.”
Your body slowly starts to dissipate into millions of droplets of condensation that scatter into the air, where the wind blows parts of you away, and away.
The soft tunes of a zither ring out into the air, permeating the atmosphere with a slow melody. An adeptus sits atop a nearby rock, her eyes downcast.
ah. ‘Ping's zither’, you sigh. ‘How kind of her.’
And he smiles through his tears.
Isn't it beautiful?
A great rolling mist dissolves into the air. With dust and ash in the air, it swirls and rises up and above. The wasted grassland is littered with thousands of droplets that shimmer like stars as the moonlight reflects off them.
It is as beautiful. as it is empty.
On a night like this, Streetward rambler’s tune graces the wind, until her fingers bleed.
Cloud Retainer sheds no tears, but know that she holds your memory well.
And you, Rex Lapis,
Morax,
you weep for me.