Solivagant ᵏᵃᵉʸᵃ ˣ ʳᵉᵃᵈᵉʳ

1

"OHHH SHIT! FUCK!"

Screams rang out. They were soon drowned out, however, by the sound of explosions and mechanical whirring - footsteps, too. Fast, panicked footsteps. Runsteps? Footleaps?

A cloaked figure, one that was responsible for this great amount of noise, burst out of a falling-apart ruin at full speed. Not a moment later, an extremely large, robot-looking thing burst out as well, a bit (a lot) more literally.

The thing was spinning, its arms creating a cloud of dust and debris, destroying everything in its path. The figure was just barely out of its reach, screaming. Running for their life.

That figure was you.

Now, just how, might you ask, did you get into this situation?

How did I, the author, end up writing that incredibly cliche line?

Well, I chose to, obviously.

I'll stop.

You had left home at the age of fifteen, in the name of adventure, adrenaline, and freedom! The three A's, as you called them. No, you never learned how to read.

You were now four years into your thrilling journey, having traveled much of Teyvat: from the industrial Liyue, to the cold-as-fuck (but still elegant) Snezhnaya, you'd seen it all. You loved the danger, the risk of it all - you wanted to travel until you died. People would ask you how you planned to really do that, especially when you got old, but that was easy: you'd end up dying in one of Teyvat's many, many ditches before arthritis ever kicked in!

Now, not having died in a ditch yet, you were on your way to Mondstadt! The City of Freedom!  They had one of your A's in their slogan!

You had sped up out of excitement, getting closer to the city sooner than expected. You, with all of your extra time, decided to stumble into a random ruin and eat lunch. That was your first mistake.

No, actually, your first mistake was putting fish in that sandwich. But that's not my place to judge, or even relevant to the story, now is it?

You ended up waking a ruin guard. Yeah, it started fighting you. Yeah, you left behind your lunch. Not that much of a loss, in my opinion, but you begged to differ.

Running had always been specialty of yours; you'd been a runner since you were a kid. Well, although you were agile, you were also kinda shit at fighting, so dunno. Didn't have much of a choice, did you?

Okay, okay, you weren't that bad. You could take a camp of hilichurls. You could defend yourself from treasure hoarders, or even a mitachurl, if you tried. You would sometimes even say you were better than most, and I could maybe back you up on that. The only issue, was, well...

You didn't have a vision.

"HAHAHAHA, OH MY FUCKING CELESTIA!"

You were running, the hood and tail of your cloak flapping violently behind you. Despite the way you were screaming, there was a large grin spread across your face, loud and rather nervous laughter accompanying your shouting.

Finally, the ruin guard - to your relief, but also slight disappointment - began to slow down. It eventually halted, you and its wonderfully destructive arms slowing to a stop as well.

"Damn, I haven't been this breathless since that Snezhnayan girl!" You gave an exhausted laugh, hands on your knees. Your head, however, was still up and watching the mechanical monster. It had already recovered and was once again stomping towards you. At least it wasn't shooting rockets this time.