Chapter Text
Nahida absolutely could not make sense of what Irminsul was doing. Sure, she was accustomed to the occasional bit of information that it would beam into her consciousness at random (which she had noted down as happening on average once every 16.7 million seconds, but this was an entirely new level of strange. First of all, normally it would send her a still snapshot of somewhere, sometime in Teyvat, or a short time period, but now it was just repeatedly spitting out… a wall of blue? With some text on it? She couldn’t make sense of that either. What was a PC ? Why did it encounter an error? What did “Stop Code: BAD_POOL_HEADER” even mean? And why now, while she was trying to select a new Grand Sage?
Her train of thought was interrupted when Irminsul sent a voice message to her.
“Buer. Please report to Celestia immediately.”
Oh. Oh no. That was the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles.
The people on said island in the sky were also not having a good month, as evidenced by several buildings burning down and the telepathic communications systems between staff being filled with nothing but the sound of heads banging against tables. One such staff member was trying to boost morale, saying that they established contact with one of their experts in Teyvat. Their efforts were, to succinctly put it, rather unsuccessful. Errors had been rippling throughout history, and they should have been able to contact said expert at least five centuries ago. Why they were unable to at the time was chalked up to someone being incompetent (although everyone knew that Celestia-Teyvat communications issues weren’t really anyone’s fault, they needed some scapegoat for the current crisis.)
It wasn’t just the workers at the bottom of the chain of command that were struggling, too. The Sustainer had risen, grumbling, from a centuries-long rest and was just about convinced to not raze the entirety of Teyvat with a rain of Nails. A certain falcon reasoned that while staring fresh would erase the anomalies in Irminsul, destroying the nations shaped by one of the Four Shades would not be conducive to successful negotiations for her to come back home. A swordsman contributed, saying that the optimal thing to do isn’t always the right thing to do, and that as the force overlooking all civilization, they should strive to do the right thing, if only to set an example. The Sustainer acquiesced.
Nahida walked through the gates of Celestia for the first time in living memory. It wasn’t at all impressive. “Pretty nice craftsmanship, I guess?” was the only praise she could come up with.
“Buer. Welcome back to Celestia. Report to the burning cluster of buildings to your right.”
Wait, had it occurred to them that she could not just simply walk into fire?
But such was Celestia’s unbreakable will. So she went.
The first thing that was apparent when she arrived at the burning cluster of buildings was that nobody seemed to be actively trying to suppress them. They just proceeded with work, ignoring the extreme heat. Unfortunately, as someone who was decidedly able to burn to death this was not an option for her. Thankfully, a Liyuean swordsman walked out of the flaming building to greet her.
“Welcome! Miss Buer, I presume? As you can see, we kind of need your help. Irminsul is experiencing a lot of errors, which means a lot of issues for the branches that stretch into Celestia. Oh, my name’s Guhua, by the way. This is technically above my pay grade as an HR worker, but since this is an emergency it’s all hands on deck.”
“Hello, mister Guhua. It’s nice to meet you too. There might be a slight problem - I can’t exactly… walk into fire and remain unharmed.”
“Ah.” He had the decency to look a little embarrassed. “And we can’t exactly keep the fires from re-starting themselves with the current situation… Buer, just follow me.”
And so, they walked into the flames.
A wave of telepathic messages slammed into Nahida, most of which was particularly anguished gibberish. One of the words she was able to discern frequently was “tanuki” - rather perplexing.
“Stolas? This is Buer. Our new assistant. Avatar of Irminsul.”
“Welcome! Welcome!”
Nahida noticed two things about this “Stolas.” One - they looked eerily similar to each other. Two - she felt incredibly uneasy looking at her.
At any rate, now was not the time to analyze why.
“Okay, so, the issue boils down to there being multiple of the same person in different locations simultaneously. Not copies of the same person, those would be identified as different individuals even if their attributes are the same. It’s the same person being instanced more than once, which is a few too many. What’s worse is that it’s spreading rapidly like a virus. The individual in question is a certain Sayu, one of the Shuumatsuban of the Yashiro Commission in Inazuma. Irminsul reacts adversely to this failure in reality, throwing out error messages and trying to fix itself, the latter to no avail.”
“And it caught fire how?”
“I’m getting to that! It just overheated. Once it cools down it should stop burning and we can finally extinguish the burning buildings for good.”
“I see. And the solution is to do anything that fixes the errors, then?”
“Pretty much, yeah. An idea was floated to wipe Teyvat clean, but that was axed. We’re desperately trying to delete the copies as soon as they appear, but… it’s pretty fruitless. My superiors tell me you’re Irminsul’s avatar, yes?”
“I am, but-”
“Excellent! Please help us find a solution. You’re our new way of interfacing with Teyvat. I’m sure it’ll be a pleasure to work with you!”
“But I don’t remember how to work Irminsul anymore,” Nahida trailed off quietly.
And just like that, Nahida found herself back in the Sanctuary of Surasthana.
“Back from Celestia already?”
“Yeah, wait - Hat Guy?”
“What did they ask of you this time?”
“So, apparently, there are multiple copies of one person going around, and it’s interfering with Irminsul. I’ve been asked to help resolve it. With that in mind, could I ask for your help? ”
Said guy with the hat was about to reply snidely, but remembered a certain blond-haired traveller who had picked him up and pinned him to the wall to intimidate him into “playing nice with Nahida.” However, he could never make it seem like he was doing this for his own benefit. No. His pride would not allow it.
“Very well, Buer. I’ve been meaning to investigate it myself. As a puppet made of Irminsul’s wood, any anomalies in it affect me too.”
(This was a lie.)
“He’s lying about this. Best to just play along.”
“Great! This –” she created a projection of the tanuki girl “ – is the problem child. Literally. Could you help me traverse Irminsul so I can create a chart of where she’s showing up?”
“She’s Inazuman.”
“You went there the other week to tell a random swordsman that you were personally responsible for his clan’s downfall.”
“Fine.”
“Buer?”
“Yes, Hat Guy?”
“This kid is everywhere.”
“We know this.”
“Remember how supposedly the sixth Fatui Harbinger seat has been vacant for centuries? Well, this kid is the sixth Harbinger now.”
“What?”
“She’s filled in all of history since the day I joined the Fatui up until several months ago. The mechanized god body appears to have changed. She also appears to have appeared at Tatarasuna, disappearing shortly after. She’s taken my role in the fall of the Raiden Gokaden, and yet nobody has interrogated her present self.”
“I see… Celestia’s initial approach of removing all her duplicates may be more difficult than intended. Are you able to find where the first duplication occurs?”
“Inazuma. A Kamisato Ayato, as well as Beelzebul are apparently coerced into leaving the country for some time. Sayu is sent with the Kamisato, but also manages to avoid going by hiding somewhere.”
“I see. Could you help me collate this data into a chart which I can send to the team?”
“Fine.”
“Many thanks, Hat Guy.”
“Like I said, I did this for me only.”
“Still, thanks.”