No Mere Stone, part 2

[stormyseasons]

Summary:

Zhongli walking through Teyvat - the Chasm's deathly mysteries - Behold, a dragon.

Chapter Text

 

So Zhongli goes walking through the wilderness. Once outside the heart of his territory, he finds that Celestia’s envoys have been annoyingly loose-lipped – the little ones and little lives that do not know what name to call him shiver and run from him in fear. Some even call him Morax – and he has to search his memory of the older tongues to recognise the name. Ah. A demon that teaches knowledge and wisdom? There are worse use-names to earn from one’s foes...

He moves on, following the occasional resonant tremors in the ground, the not-quite-voice he could hear keening in the element of Geo. It leads him into the broken land where his vessel had landed – had crashed, really – and beyond that to the Chasm, that spiralling tear in the ground that had once been ocean. Zhongli stills, at the border of those not-mountains. There is something here. Something.... He tilts his head, thinking. Something that feels like, tastes like, a piece of Celestia. He considers the once-ocean again. Something had been destroyed here.

The keening voice in the stone calls him onward, and he follows, but more slowly and cautiously now. If a piece of Celestia is here, where the oceans had been forcibly turned to stone... Zhongli goes deeper. Deeper. Eventually, deep underground in lightless not-caves, he finds ruins. He flinches from the sight. How many times had Zhongli seen cities, civilisations crushed so? Too many. His eyes close, tears welling up at the waste. He knows what piece of Celestia is here now. 

A little deeper in, and he encounters a few cursed souls, lingering futilely and mindlessly where their home had once been. They cringe away from him – away from the light that he bears. It... probably hurts them.

“I can’t lift the curse – maybe not even if I’m not acting alone. I’m sorry.” Zhongli says quietly to them. They cower against each other, garbled and twisted words of fear falling from their mouths. It hurts to see them like this, even if Zhongli cannot do anything for them. He considers, briefly, putting them out of their misery – but it would hurt them to die like this as well – a ripple of residual power in the ruins draws his attention away. Perhaps... The fountain – and the rest of the tower it had once been in – is upside down, oddly enough, but still functioning, still running pure and purifying the environment it’s in. A relatively good sign, given what else had happened here. Zhongli feels for the fountain’s power source – ah. The ones who’d once lived here and built the purifying fountain – they had learned, had advanced enough to be able to access the leylines with machinery for their needs. Perhaps that knowledge had been what doomed them. Perhaps not. But who knew? Towards the end of the time Zhongli could stand to be there, even he had to acknowledge that some of the decision making had become.. Strange. 

Still, the linkages were already there, and even as damaged as the leylines were here, it is easy enough for Zhongli to reinforce those links, and power the fountain’s functioning for a long, long time. Soft noise from behind him – the cursed ones have come to investigate the change in their environment, whispering quietly and uncertainly. Zhongli whispers quietly, knowing they can hear him, wondering if they can understand him, “It hurts less now, right? It’s not a cure – but at least you have some relief.”

He leaves the fountain, the cursed ones warily edging around him. He came down here into the dark for a reason. 

---

Zhongli walks deeper still into the twisting labyrinth of the Chasm. The rocks shine softly around him here, humming and glowing with luminance in his presence – the ore is rich, the leylines generous despite the damage. Interesting. The resonant whisper he has been following all this while is stronger here, too. He must be getting closer.

He finds marks of movement next – old ones, scrapes and claw marks almost entirely eroded away. Scales of rock, so worn and so ancient that even Zhongli had nearly mistaken them for stone. ... Had Zhongli heard – had he happened upon – the resting place of some elemental being? Or worse – had the elemental being’s rest been disturbed by the piece of Celestia? .... Or had the piece been cast down to try and slay the elemental being, and the humans only collateral damage? It is an unpleasant thought – if one that Zhongli finds distressingly plausible. 

He walks onward. More ancient traces – no blood, not even crystallised, fossilised blood, not that that would mean anything. More ruins, here, and oddly enough fresh water and moss, quietly glowing luminous mushrooms to go with the crystals and ore. Traces of the Irminsul. The first live traces he sees here. The resonance leads him onward. There are more ruins here, now, and more water, falling down from some unseen source high above. The water – and the singing stones – lead him onwards, up and around the roots. Up and into a cave where the Irminsul’s roots tenderly, gently cradle a massive Geo elemental being lying coiled tightly amid them.

Zhongli stops short. Stares. This was.... So the vishaps had lived. And if... if what was undoubtedly one of their elders, or even a dragon-lord, was here, underground, like this... they were not doing well. He walks forward slowly, respectfully. Once closer, he realises that some of what he’d initially taken for marks of Geo elemental power were actually wounds. Some scarred and sealed over with seemingly tender scales the colour of fertile earth and cor lapis. Some still rent open – even after all this... this time, with nothing else that could possibly harm a dragon-lord hunting or walking the face of Teyvat to seek them. Still slowly bleeding blood the colour of Geo. He shudders. How... how much worse must the damage have been, then, when this dragon-lord had laid their head down upon Irminsul’s roots? Zhongli doesn’t know. He walks closer. The leylines sing and hum around them – sing and keen the dragon-lord’s dark and mournful dreams. Dreams of dying, of death. Faintly, ever so faintly, a singular dream of light. Of the sky – the true sky – the stars and the moon and the sun, of the green growing things and the fast flowing-moving-leaping-flying things. 

The dragon-lord dreamt of life and of death. Zhongli could only give them one of those dreams – could only give them part of one of those dreams. He reaches out. Lays a hand on the dragon-lord’s scaled shoulder. Reaches out to the earth surrounding them, and lifts them from the dark.

---

Zhongli does not go immediately to the surface, wary of Celestia’s surveillance of old. Instead, once they reach the shallower layers of earth where the near-surface leylines and Irminsul roots run, Zhongli stops, and asks the earth to bring them to the underground caves at Jueyun.

There, within his domain, he inspects the dragon-lord’s wounds, trying to see if he can help with anything. Unsurprisingly, most of the injuries are now on their way to healing, away from the influence of that... thing. The ones that aren’t... are beyond his skill. But the worst ones... the ones that aren’t... aren’t going to be able to heal unless the dragon-lord succeeds in physical regeneration.... The eyes are gone. Removed, and not kindly, long enough ago that the stone-scales about the eye sockets are scarred – and the scars so relatively faded as to seem part of the dragon-lord’s natural colouration. 

Zhongli can’t heal that. He can create replacements. He lays a hand on the dragon-lord’s shoulder. They are awake – they have been awake ever since he brought them from the deep caverns of the Chasm. .... the low, subsonic rumble of grief that he’d heard through their shared element is still continuing. Zhongli can sympathise. Who could not, would not grieve, at such losses as the vishaps had been forced to take so... he forces his mind away from that dangerous track and back into what he can do here and now. Carefully, through the resonance of their mutually compatible power, he asks if the dragon-lord would like to see again – even to walk upon the land’s surface in the light once more. They agree. And speak, verbally, for the first time since Zhongli found them, in a voice that rumbles like an avalanche. 

“I am Retuo, sometimes called Azhdaha, dragon-lord of the vishaps of Geo. Who are you, who promises the light, whose presence resonates with Geo as well?”

Zhongli bows, for all that Retuo cannot see it, and replies, “Retuo-longwang, this one is now known as Zhongli, and sometimes also as Morax. This one governs the area the humans and knowing-animals and adepti in the area have begun to call Jueyun Karst, and teaches those who are willing how to cultivate. This one... this one was once of those who now reign over the sky and cast down civilisations in fear.”

Retuo-longwang snarls, sharply. “You were one of those –”

“I left.” Zhongli says quickly. “I disagreed with what they began to do, and they would not hear me when I dissented, and so I left.”

Silence falls awkwardly between them. Eventually,  Retuo-longwang says, “I am surprised they let you go.”

“They did not want to.” Zhongli murmurs. “But they did not revoke my permission to leave as I please, among other things. They’re short one sun-chariot at the moment, in any case.”

“You were not pursued?” Retuo-longwang asks curiously. Zhongli shrugs and says, “They – their envoys to be exact – inadvertently attacked those I have taken as my people. But only once, and we – I – drove them off. And... there are things I can still do. Only that to do them indiscriminately would devastate the land even more – and there has been more than enough of such waste.”

Zhongli waits patiently, as Retuo-longwang digests that speech for several moments. After a while, the dragon-lord sighs. “Very well.”

“Very well?”

“You may attempt to heal my eyes.” Retuo-longwang clarifies. “Or even replace them outright. Cor lapis is a good mineral choice as a prosthetic material, if you can find – or create it – in a sufficiently pure state.”

Zhongli nods, and begins to get to work. Creating cor lapis from his own power is not difficult – it merely requires a certain degree of focus to maintain purity, and a certain amount of time. As he works, Retuo-longwang asks suddenly, “What happened to the humans near my resting place?”

Zhongli has no way to soften the blow, and so he doesn’t. “Dead. Or cursed. Or dead and cursed. She... they... the very memory of those humans has been effaced from the leylines. The shore and sea where they lived, their city – it is gone. Petrified and destroyed. I... there are ruins deeper in the Chasm. Remnants. A purifying fountain that still works and retains some power. A few lingering cursed ones. The fountain’s effects seemed to ease their pain, so I... ensured it would keep working.”

He pauses, and puts the completed crystalline orbs of cor lapis aside. Retuo-longwang is terribly still. “I... the thing that they used to do it, to damage the leylines and the Irminsul tree – it is still there. I couldn’t find it to shut it down, assuming I am still capable of it. I.... don’t know if it’s safe for you to return, even if it's to mourn, even if you’ve thoroughly hidden your presence from Celestia. If it was a place of sentiment... I’m sorry.”

Retuo finally moves, coiling themself tightly again. “Don’t be. Was it your hand that upturned the world? Your hand and your will that cast those things down?”

“No.” 

“Then you have nothing to be sorry for.... Zhongli.”

---

When the prosthetic cor lapis eyes are ready, Zhongli carries out the implantation. The procedure goes well, a little power from himself and Retuo sufficing to bind the eyes to Retuo’s form, to allow him to see once more. In order to test how well it had worked, Zhongli brings them out of his domain, into the crystal caves beneath Jueyun Karst, as near to the surface as he dares. This particular cave opened up to the karst’s valley floor, and at this hour of the day sunset gilded the karst’s features in gold and amber. 

Retuo opens their eyes, beholding Jueyun Karst’s sunset glory with wonder. Then they turn and look long and slow at Zhongli. 

“If you are here, treating and succouring this Teyvat, Zhongli-daren,” And Retuo’s mouth twists into a wry little smile, “Who or what is there, in the chariot of the sun?”

“Someone else.” Zhongli shrugs. “You... know who I was?”

Retuo shrugs in return. “I suspected, and now I know for certain. I will not speak of it if you do not wish me to.”

“Thank you.”

Amicable silence lingers between both of them for a time. When moonlight bathes the karst, Retuo speaks again. “Well? What is the price of my sight, my health, and my relative freedom of action?”

Zhongli blinks in surprise. “No price.”

Retuo turns to stare at him. “Surely you jest.”

“Surely I do not.” Zhongli returns. Retuo stalks to him, and shakes him by the shoulders. “You run considerable risk for no reward, Zhongli. What is the price?”

“None!” Zhongli snaps. “I only ask of you the same thing that I ask of all my people – that you do not harm me or each other, and you do not harm the territory that we all live in –”

“That cannot be all, surely.” Retuo growls, tail lashing behind them and voice beginning to take on dangerously deep rumbles. “You cannot –”

Zhongli wrings his hands. “It is. ”

Retuo stares at him, then turns away, prowling around the crystal-crusted edges of the cave. “It is inequitable to take without returning, measure for measure, sentiment for sentiment. You rule a territory, you guard and raise a people, who are at risk by my very presence.”

“Retuo –”

“If what you desire is the safety of you and yours, then I will give that to you. I, Retuo-longwang, Azhdaha, solemnly pledge to guard, guide and nurture the people of Zhongli, also known to me as Morax. May the Irminsul hear and record it.”

Zhongli stares at him, uncertain if he should smack Retuo or not. “You... you do know what it means to make a promise like that with someone like me, Retuo? Are you...”

The dragon-lord laughs. “I am as sane and well as any vishap can be at such a time. I do know. And I do mean it.”

Fine. So be it, then. “I will hold you to your word. If you are staying, you should meet the rest... can you take on humanoid form, and disguise the weight of your power, Retuo?”

“You fear hunters? Surveillance?” Retuo asks him. Zhongli nods. “The order to force any discovered dragon-lord to submit to Celestia’s will or to death has only been put into abeyance due to no one being able to find any more dragon-lords. I do not wish your freedom to be cut short.”