The Light Of The Storm | Genshin Impact Fanfiction

5. those

He couldn't take even his broken sword. No rope connecting him to his previous life, taken from him by a firm hand, remained. Now he held in his hands a blade far more powerful than the one he had wielded for years, yet of a hundred times less value. The lavender-coloured steel emanated the power given to it by the one who had trapped it with Tomo in a place far from home.

Very far.

Despite the semi-darkness around him instead of total darkness, he was unable to see the sun. The cloudless sky took on the color of an ominous, deep indigo, turning to amethyst near the horizon, but turning to absolute blackness just above his head. Although he knew perfectly well that he was not in the Abyss, he sometimes woke up with the fear-filled thought that he was.

His days passed wandering inland, which seemed endless. Cool days turned into hot nights, during which he was unable to sleep, dousing himself with sweat and feeling the dormant, ancient energy vibrating beneath the rocks on which he lay. Sometimes he would ask himself how many gods had been trapped in the land he walked on, what had happened there, and why he had not met a single living person until now. In moments of weakness, when he gave up trying to fall asleep, he felt himself identifying with the enslaved deities.

Who knows, maybe some of them were only at fault with this, they searched which they could call home.

Hunger was becoming more and more unbearable with each passing day. Despite the lack of food for an unimaginably long time, it only manifested itself in the form of pain, a thick rope tightening ever tighter on his stomach. Zero weakness, zero starvation. Just suffering.

Sometimes he licked his lips, dreaming about the drop of water. He had unbearably dry tongue, There was not even a way to swallow saliva. Breathing became more difficult, and yet, it did not stop. It was as if his heart itself was stubbornly struggling to survive, turned into a never-failing machine.

He counted the days as if his life depended on it. In the belief that if he lost track of time, his contact with reality would also be lost, he would cut off a piece of his sleeve each morning and tie it around his wrist. One day, however, he woke up wearing thirty-two strips of cloth. He remembered perfectly well that the last one he had taken marked his thirty-fifth morning in the wilderness. From then on, he began his routine by making a narrow slit in his skin.

On one occasion he came across a cliff. He had been wandering wearily for so long that he took his steps in a mechanical manner, paying absolutely no attention to what was going on around him. His mind was somewhere far away, in Inazuma, trying to recall the memory of cool autumn rains and summer heat. He tried to recreate the feeling accompanying him as he lay under the starry sky. He tried as hard as he could to recall the faces of his friends.

There were several of them. One had blond hair, probably short. His eyes could have been the color of blue or emerald. He certainly smiled a lot, as this happy and caring expression was the only thing Tomo clearly remembered about this person. It seemed to him that he knew some other siblings. He could not recall the memory of their appearance for anything, but they were probably familiar with the art of sword wielding.

He also remembers the wanderer and his fascinating style of fighting. When he exerted himself, he could hear a quiet melody played on a fallen leaf. A few quiet high notes, as clear as no memory he had retained so far.

"Tu-tu, tu-tu-tu..." he hummed to himself under his breath, fascinated by how perfectly he remembered the sound of this melody. It was like a lullaby, soothing in its simplicity. He was already looking forward to the evening, to lie down on a cold rock and lose himself in the familiar sound.

He broke off halfway through his 'here' when he felt himself losing ground.

The abyss was not very deep. However, it was enough for his ribs to break during the collision with the rocky ground and the bone of his left arm to break. For a long time, he did not even feel pain, staring in shock at the ground on which he had landed. The world whirled before his eyes, but despite the blood oozing from his temples, he did not lose consciousness.