Of Calm Calamities

Of Calm Calamities (5)

It was through ragged breaths and heavy steps that Childe trekked through the valley of Liyue, his mind only half-present. He couldn't just focus on the long walk back to the city, oh no. If he did, he'd lose whatever strength he had left and would die behind some old mountain that no one, not even the Geo archon himself, came to anymore. No, he needed to focus on other things. Like how Zhongli was waiting for him, and he couldn't keep Zhongli waiting, no matter what. He'd made a promise - sure, he'd only said it to himself, but it was still a promise, and nothing would force him to break that. So he focused on the promise instead, his aching body moving on its own, as if it were an afterthought. 

He wrote to Tonia at least once every week because he'd promised her he'd never let her get worried about him while he was away. He bought out the entire bookstore in his little village of Morepesok because he promised to buy whatever would make Anthon happy. Hell, he'd fought a literal leviathan because he promised Teucer that he'd bring him the biggest fish he'd ever seen for his birthday. Childe wasn't about to break a promise because of something as stupid as him feeling on the brink of death. He wasn't going to let something as simple as that force him to break a promise for the very first time. 

Still, each step was torture to him. He cursed himself for getting so far away from the city without telling anyone where he was headed, and he cursed himself for being overconfident in his own strength. It wasn't really his fault, though. Had it been normal ruin guards that he was fighting, he would've been perfectly fine. But no. These idiots just had to be some weird hybrids that had only the goal of making Childe suffer in their mind. And, of course, it was his cockiness that almost left him for dead, but that didn't matter right now. He just needed to keep his promise.

Staying in his transformed body was a harsh effort, to say the least, but Childe knew he had no other option. He'd known it from the moment he chose to take on Foul Legacy and don the mask of Tartaglia rather than that of Childe, even if it was only for the span of a short battle. Keeping the swirling mist of electro and hydro took his everything, but it was better than shifting back to his mortal body - the wound on his stomach, though already deadly, would be even worse after Childe's use of Foul Legacy, and he knew there was absolutely no way that he'd be able to get back to Liyue Harbor with an even worse wound than before, especially since the previous cut had rendered him more or less immobile. No, shifting back was definitely not an option. Childe just needed to stay like this for a little longer, to pull through and get to the city where someone could find him and, hopefully, bring him to Zhongli. Then he could die, for all he cared. As long as he kept his promise, he would be fine.

The walk there had been pleasant, a stroll that had given Childe the time that he desperately needed to gather his thoughts and put himself together. This was the opposite. Each step tore him farther apart, destroying any sense of awareness he had left and leaving him as nothing but a mindless creature who only had one goal - to fulfill his promise. He couldn't focus on anything, not even on the fact that his manifested form was slowly slipping from his very grasp. If he wasn't careful, he'd shift back into his human body soon, and that would be completely unacceptable. Childe attempted to keep his focus on his body rather than on the blazing pain that he was left with, but it was hard, so very hard to do.

Each step made him want to give up, to abandon everything he'd ever worked for and to forget every stupid promise he ever made. All he wanted was to rest, to close his eyes and embrace the pain rather than fight it, to finally, finally, be at peace after fighting for so long, but he couldn't. He still had things to live for, he still had people to live for. No one would miss a Harbinger if he died, but he knew his little siblings would miss a brother, and Zhongli would miss a- a friend. And he couldn't do that to them, at least not without passing his goodbyes on through Zhongli. So he pushed forward. He forced back the bile that rose in his body and he pushed forward, one foot after the other, one step and then a second, making his slow, slow journey through Liyue.