Chapter Text
When imagining an instrument of impending doom and destruction, one might conjure the image of a storm. Perhaps, if that were to be further compressed into a body, something with great hulking arms and barbed teeth, that left craters behind every footfall. What Venti was seeing matched none of that.
Instead, perched high in a tree and further away than any mortal would be able to perceive him, the god watched the form of something small, with frail arms hidden under a beaten brown cape and footfalls so light the grass barely yielded, never mind the ground. Poor thing had been dragged a long way, he could tell; everything from desert sand to sea spray still clung to its form, not to mention the staggered way in which it walked, being dragged by something bigger ahead of it.
Still, much as it didn’t look like the vestle of all-consuming death and destruction, it was, and the one thing Venti couldn’t reckon is how in Celestia it got this far north! Kusanali could be forgiven, he supposed. She was born after the cataclysm, maybe didn’t recognise the thing, not to mention her age and how little he’d heard of her. Perhaps, if they’d gone through Fontaine? Focalors was another fledgling god, and he highly doubted the hydro sovereign cared for affairs like this, but they hadn’t. For some reason, Morax had let that thing whalts right through Liyua.
He was a blockhead, sure, but Venti knew that old man felt every footprint laid into his soil as clearly as the animo archon sensed every breath in his breezes. This was intentional, Venti thought bitterly as he summoned his bow. This was intentional and cruel, an arrow hastily coalesced between his fingers. You could have handled it, feathers brushing against his cheek. You didn’t have to make me do this, a strained string cuts into the pads of his fingers. YOU KNOW- a wide, periwinkle eye and a muffled cry carried through the winds to his ear. The arrow dispersed back into the breeze.
You know this is the part I could never bring myself to do.
Venti watched as the…the something, was yanked onwards a few more yards and then dropped in the vineyards of the dawn winery. As the tall man who had been escorting it strode away, Venti solemnly summoned another arrow and this time didn’t hesitate before loosing it. It shot silently through the air and buried itself in the man's chest. The god looked away as he fell. He’d handle the something; clearly, it wasn’t going anywhere. The familiar red mane of a Raginvinder gently herding the thing into the winery's mansion assured him of that, but the man? He couldn’t be allowed to leave, and he couldn’t stay. There was only one thing to do and, despite knowing that arrow should have been and still needed to be a pair, Venti found himself hoping the something hadn't seen.