Chapter Text
When it came to Ley Line related situations, things could go to shit really fast. And, as always, if the situation could go from manageable to bad to worse… then it would. Definitely.
And after the whole debacle with the Irminsul and Dottore – again – and a sudden migration of people that hadn't been seen in centuries, well… things could have turned out worse. So much worse.
So all in all, things going sideways at some point didn’t really surprise him.
Nahida had told him to check out a strange Ley Line phenomenon at the southernmost area of the desert, near some ruins that had been mostly hidden under a thick layer of sand after the recent crisis. It hadn’t seemed pressing – not to him, at least. Not when everything else was still a mess. Nahida had been worried about it, though, because some Akademiya scholars had disappeared a couple of days before. They had probably gotten lost inside the ruins, he had reasoned. It happened regularly enough. Why had they even gone off on their own when Sumeru had just survived another apocalyptic event? The idiot scholars would probably be fine and the experience would hopefully teach them some common sense.
But Nahida had insisted, and at this point, Wanderer knew better than to ignore Nahida’s hunches. They were usually right.
And of course, the closer he got to the ruins, the clearer it became.
It reminded him a bit of Nod Krai’s illusions, but much more… fleeting. There were no actual phantoms; at least, not that he could see. He could hear faint words, though, and at first it startled him enough to send a sharp cut of Anemo through the sands, aimed at nothing.
“Ley Line disorder, most definitely,” he grumbled to himself, shaking his clothes and clicking his tongue at the sand now clinging to him. “How annoying.”
Ley Line disorders were more common than people thought. They were usually dealt with swiftly to avoid any potential chaos, but when they flew under the radar like this for long enough, they became more than mere annoyances – indeed, they could become out-right problems. And Sumeru already had enough of those.
He needed to deal with this quickly, then, before it spiralled out of control. The desert was already perilous and full of hidden landmines that could hurt or kill idiots on a good day. Adding a Ley Line disorder seemed a bit overkill.
Fixing it was pretty easy, though. Usually. He just needed to find the core of the problem and deal with it. And as the disorders tended to have a limited area of effect, finding the middle point was simple enough.
He would have been faster about it if he didn’t have distorted whispers in his ear every few seconds, though. And he definitely would have been more efficient if, halfway through his trek through the sand and into the ruins, the whispers hadn't become yells and curses and panicked screams. Great. The Ley Lines had an extensive collection of memories and just had to choose the more annoying ones.
After a long walk trough the ruins’ dark hallways, he had a raging headache that didn’t abate even after activating his Vision. He wasn’t even human, which meant that it was all the Ley Lines’ fault. He hadn’t seen even a peek of the group of scholars, either.
By the end of his search, he was about ready to finish the task and leave to take a shower to get all the sand off him and hole himself in his room, where there were no annoying whispers of days long-past and screams of tragedy. So, when he finally laid eyes on a suspiciously dense mass of elemental energy, he sighed and readied himself to approach.
“Hey! Anyone there?” he called, just in case the group of idiot scholars was near.
He got no answer, which only made it all the more aggravating.
Now, how to deal with the disorder…? Usually, taking care of the surrounding monsters was enough to get it under control, but he could see nothing and no one around the Ley Line knot. Not even a sign of Withering, which could have been the trigger.
No choice but to get closer to it, then. Maybe he should have dragged the General Mahamatra with him, but he always tended to avoid the hassle of teamwork if he could help it. The extra knowledge on Ley Lines by a Spantamad graduate would have been helpful, though.
It was when he was at arm-length distance from the Ley Line bloom that he heard it: a voice, familiar, too familiar, calling a long-forgotten name.
“Kabukimono!” called Katsuragi’s voice, of all people, slightly distorted with echo, as if his old friend was at the other end of a very long tunnel.
“What the hell?” he muttered, frowning deeply and taking a step back to glare at the reddish bloom. Then the voice registered and he huffed. “What? Is that all you’ve got? I thought I deleted all of that.”
And that was– slightly concerning. He had deleted everything related to the Kabukimono and Scaramouche, for all the good it did. But he had, and he had been quite thorough, he remembered, even as his existence crumbled into nothing inside Irminsul’s eternal light. Sure, Dottore had managed to figure it out, but it wasn't as if he knew the details– at least, Dottore hadn't used them against him, which he would have done, were he to know. And Dottore had mentioned that restoring everything to its original state would be too difficult to be worthwhile, anyway.
That just meant that this disorder was… more than it looked. Could it be related to the burning? Some kind of lost data? And who better to check it out, but a puppet with an Irminsul core who had already come into contact with said tree before and who had the God of Wisdom’s favor?
He reached out with a hand, intent on just feeling the current of elemental energy and checking for any Abyssal corrosion or any imbalances–
He should have guessed that the current would be stronger than he had thought. He had been expecting a calm stream, but he found himself plunging straight into a waterfall.
Feeling the first sparks of panic take hold of him, he tried to throw himself back with a gust of Anemo, but the act only seemed to make the chaotic energy of the bloom more determined to plunge him into its current and drag him away. It fed on his Anemo energy, his Vision glowed so brightly he had to close his eyes with a startled grunt, and he finally– lost his footing.
The Ley Lines swallowed him up into their current.
And Wanderer, cursing himself and his carelessness… passed out.
—
Back in the Mausoleum of King Deshret, Nahida’s hand hovered over the screen, eyes unfocused from the rows of parameters displayed in it. She blinked, coming back to the present, eyes wide. She felt as if she had just missed a step going down the stairs. Strange.
She had an inkling on why that was, though, so she reached out far, far away, into the desert, into certain ruins, into–
There was no one there.
Huh.
But there had been, just seconds before.
That was– concerning.
Pushing aside the panic and paranoia that had nested in her mind ever since she had taken her post as Archon back, Nahida closed her eyes. Aaru was… in good condition, as far she could see. That was a relief – they didn't have another back-up, and maybe they should figure something out, but– Then why…?
Nahida took a deep breath and turned around, a deep frown taking over her expression like a storm. The researchers around her paused, Kaveh himself glanced at her with a loud question in his eyes, but Nahida hurried off without looking back, with no excuses in her tongue, and Dendro energy already gathering at her hands.
She had work to do. Again.
—
He woke up in a room that smelled faintly of worn wood and cheap soap and the sea. It was… familiar, in a way that made his chest hurt where a heart would be. That was also familiar in its own way.
But something felt… off. He was in Sumeru, now, and yet he could detect none of the smells he had become accustomed to; tea and coffee, fragrant flowers, humid air. Sumeru had no sea, not unless he was in Port Ormos, and he didn’t make a habit of going too far south if he could help it. Plus, the air here was fresh, not sticky with heat like–
His eyes shot open in the dark.
He came face to face with a ceiling of dark wood, too low to be any house in Sumeru, where the ceilings tried to emulate the fake sky above with their vaults and decorations.
He sat up and the light quilt that had been covering him fell on his lap. The fabric was coarse and entirely in one single faded color, instead of the intricate and soft fabrics he was now used to.
He had been sleeping too close to the floor, not in a bed.
He could smell food, a familiar salty tang in his nose, and the sticky smell of a stone and clay kitchen.
When he turned his head, he saw a closed window and a closed sliding door.
He didn’t want to put names to all these things. He couldn’t. Because if he did…
A futon, a daidokoro, something that was probably soy sauce, a shoji door. He… knew this house. This home.
He was a puppet. He didn’t need to breathe – not in the usual sense. Sure, it could help him regulate his temperature, but usually, he just breathed to keep people from asking too many questions or to speak up.
Now, with panic and disbelief coursing through him like lightning, he gasped for breath as he kicked the humble quilt away and clawed his way out of the old futon so he could stand – on the fucking tatami that cracked loudly when he stepped on a certain point, he knew, he knew – in the middle of the too familiar room.
The walls trapped him inside his own nightmare, closing in on him and drowning him in memories he had decided to leave well alone for a good reason. They threatened to sweep him away, now, just like they always tended to do, which is why he had locked them away in the first place–
With a choked gasp, his hands moved on autopilot and opened the window – it creaked, which meant that Ni– he had not yet saved up enough mora to get it fixed before it inevitably fell apart in the middle of winter. The cool air of the night met his flushed face, but even that metaphorical slap in the face didn’t really help him get his shit together.
As he gasped into the night air, he could hear muffled voices behind the shoji door. He wasn’t alone. Of course he wasn’t. They wouldn’t– they were too kind-hearted to– Was he even–?
His hand clawed at his clothes and he sighed in clear relief when all he found was his usual fit – minus his white and turquoise haori, which he quickly found folded in a corner of the room, unassuming and untouched, and his kasa, leaning against the wall.
So, he was still himself. From– the future. Or present?
A laugh sounded from beyond the shoji door, loud and so painfully familiar that it tore at his chest like a knife, like a sword, like a heart that wasn’t his but that it technically had been because he had offered it to him on a silver platter even before it had become something literal–
He had to see. He had to see if he was actually insane, if the world had played a prank on him, if fate was laughing in his face once again. If – If– If–
He scrambled for the door and ripped it open with too much force, almost tearing it apart in a single movement.
He looked around, shoulders heaving and gasping and feeling like a trapped animal, wild and disheveled and probably on the verge of passing out once again, and he met three pairs of familiar eyes.
His mind, sluggish with shock and screaming in panic, helpfully offered him their names: Niwa, Katsuragi, Haruka.
They all looked up at him with equally wide eyes, surprise clear in their gazes. Everyone had fallen silent, so the only sound in the house was Wanderer’s gasps and the creak of wood.
This couldn’t be happening.
Before anyone could react or say anything, Wanderer closed the door with a slam.
He leaned on it heavily and covered his face with his hands, feeling a myriad of emotions, all at once, flowing around him like rapids, threatening to drag him along and drown him.
“Fuck,” he said, with feeling.