The Prosperity and Fall - 1/7
Sagau!
Oh boy, it's here. 3k+ words, one part out of seven.
Sorry for bad formatting! I wrote this on my iPad and posted it on my phone.
Warnings (please lmk if I missed any!):
Blood, minor swearing, death, gore, graphic descriptions of all of the above, use of Archon abilities for murderderder, ANGST NO COMFORT. Musou no Hitotachi is used to unalive you.
Please, take caution when reading. If you're not in a good headspace, go read about my fluffy, soft Scaramouche or Tsaritsa. If you are, have at thee!
Reblogs appreciated!
PART ONE
Many, many millennia ago, the seven nations of Teyvat had but one god to rule over them all. They called them the Divine One, the Overseer, the kind and benevolent Deity. The Divine One answered to no one but themselves, and yet were kind all the same, making sure everyone had clean water, fresh, nutritious food and were all happy. While they were not the creator of the land, they tended to it as if they were.
Then the Archon War happened.
Blood flooded the plains of Liyue, stained the mountains of Dragonspine, turned the Sacred Sakura of Inazuma pink from the roots absorbing it all.
Countless lives were lost, bones fertilizing the soil quickly enough for nature to grow over the bodies scattered across the lands; but, alas, it was too much for the Divine One to handle.
They wept and wept, body slowly fading as the fighting continued under their weakening influence over the land.
By the time the war was over, the seven Archons sought them out to tell them of their many victories over the gods they so triumphantly executed by their own hands, but they were nowhere to be found. In a panic, the new rulers sent out countless searches, looking for even one drop of the gold and silver and star-blessed blood that their god had.
But it was fruitless.
Teyvat no longer had their Divine One, so beautiful and kind.
This hardened the Archons, building walls around their hearts and nations, their souls and vessels, until many generations of humanity had passed, and their Overseer had all but slipped from memory, only faded, rough drawings of their hands and face, legends passed down by mouth, some so diluted that all they contained were a blurry description of Them and the story of Teyvat’s creation. This was all that was left to remember them by.
When the Divine One disappeared, they left a mark in the exact center of Teyvat, a mark they held on their body when they still existed in the plane of reality; it was a seven-sided shape, similar to the one that marked Celestia and its beings (sans three sides), given to them by their maker. Seven points for seven archons, seven nations and seven elements.
Seven unforgivable sinners.
It was a popular visitation spot, though a solemn one. Anyone who visited kept their voices low and eyes averted, bringing their offerings and then praying.
All of Teyvat awaited the return of their Divine One, but no one expected the chaos that would ensue when they finally did.
After all, They would never descend in mortal form.
—+—
“Dammit! Why a Pyro damage bonus?!”
You slump back in your chair, glaring at the words across your computer screen that signified yet another failed domain run; the Blizzard Strayer goblet would have been amazing for your Kaeya, but alas, the opposite element had to ruin it once more.
Ah well. On to Hu Tao it goes.
You click out of the domain, sighing in exasperation. Of course you were out of Resin, and had no Condensed Resin (damn crystalfly cores) or Fragile Resin either. Well, none of the latter you were willing to spend, anyway. Besides, you could always run the Vindagnyr domain again tomorrow.
A few more clicks gets you to the character screen, Kaeya displaying his current artifacts, which included a two-piece Blizzard Strayer and two-piece Gladiator’s Finale. The stats on both weren’t all that bad—they were enough to deal a good bit of crit damage with a little bit of help from Bennett, who was running four-piece Nobless Oblige—but you were really biding on that Cryo goblet.
“Ah, another day, I suppose.”
One last look at your long list of characters lends a smile to your lips—you, being a medium spender, were lucky enough to have every character in the game, even a C6 Kaeya—before you exit the game and shut your computer down for now.
A big stretch has you turning your head to look at the clock sitting by your bed, reading 2:15 P.M.
“Not a bad time to take a nap.”
As if answering your own statement, you yawn loudly then shake your head, getting up to crawl in bed. You had a day off of work because of a holiday, and a day off always constituted a midday nap.
But before you close your eyes, you make a few notes on your phone’s calendar, mostly reminders for a doctor’s appointment and old-fashioned weapon handling classes, as well as a reminder to PayPal the seller of a bow you had just bought the additional hundred dollars you still owed him. Genshin had gotten you really interested in weapons, and while you certainly weren’t proficient in handling them yet, you had picked up the polearm and bow quite quickly, the bow mainly because of going hunting with your parents and friends when you were younger.
Of course you never shot anything (the deer were always too cute), but you did become very accurate, very quickly learning to land bullseyes on moving targets. You kept the skills up, even to this day, and even reviewed a bit of your rusty self-defense skills by signing up for karate.
With a yawn, you set your phone down on your bedside desk, pulling your blankets up to cover your shoulders, and, with a smile, fall into a light sleep.
Or so you thought.
A dream of you falling through the clouds enters your mind’s eye, fear racing through your body like blood as you flail helplessly in the air.
Fortunately (unlike normal falling dreams), you land safely, nothing more than a bruise or two to show where you came from.
Huh, this dream seems really real—wait, am I lucid dreaming? Cool!
You look at your hands, flipping them over only to see strange symbols resembling the elements appear across your forearms, fading after a few moments, leaving only a faint, seven-sided shape where they once were.
“Weird…” you mutter, standing up and brushing grass off your legs, the green staining your pants. “This seems… really real. Ah well.”
With a quick stretch and a wave of your hands to clear the sparks appearing in your peripheral vision, you begin to walk towards where you think the Anemo Archon’s statue is. Hopefully, if you’re right, you’ll be able to get a grasp of where you are in Mondstadt.
So, if this is a lucid dream, then you can do anything you want, right? That means you can have abilities like Aether or Lumine!
You squeeze your eyes shut and envision their wings from the cutscene at the beginning of the game, but alas, no wings appear on your back, just a bruised ego and blurry vision.
Ah well. Sometimes lucid dreams are a bit disappointing, but hey, if it’s inside the world of the game you so loved—
“You there! Outlander!”
Your thoughts are interrupted by a very familiar voice. Whipping around to face the person, your suspicions are confirmed when you see that the person is the one and only Outrider Amber herself.
Her face turns from confusion to shock to anger.
But… why is she nocking her bow?
“Oh shit—“
You barely spring into action in time, dodging the flaming arrow, which makes a loud thunk in a log before extinguishing itself, but before long, Amber has another arrow ready and almost fully on fire.
“How dare you steal our Divine One’s face?! They would never descend as a mortal!”
What?
This one crashes into a crate placed haphazardly against a tree, shattering the wood into a bunch of pieces and sending a bow and sword flying in opposite directions. You choose the former, noting the fact that it resembled the one star bow all the archers initially came with, but hopefully, it would be enough.
As you fumble around for an arrow, Amber begins to draw again, aiming right for your abdomen to incapacitate you.
On instinct, you pull the string back, watching a star-spotted gold and silver arrow begin to form, the same weight of any arrows back home.
This takes the archer momentarily off guard, long enough for you to loose the projectile into her calf. She cries out in pain, clutching her leg at the injury, distracting her long enough to allow you to scramble to your legs to begin a sprint for your life, still clutching the bow in one hand.
Shit shit shitshitSHIT—
You duck under a tree branch, panting hard, deciding to climb up that same tree to catch your breath. Damn, you really should have gone out on a run more than twice a week.
Once perched on the wood, you carefully peer through the leaves hiding your form from the world around it (the branches seem to close subtly around you) to see if Amber alerted anyone, perhaps a passing patrol or some Vision wielder walking by.
“I don’t think this is a dream,” you murmur, deciding to take a closer look at the bow you snatched from the crate. Your suspicions were indeed correct; it’s the one star bow everyone gets when they pull an archer character, whether they be a four or five star.
The only reason it did anything against Amber’s Polar Star you so painstakingly gave to her (yes, the original team was your team, what could you say, you liked nostalgia) and level 90’d was that you took her off guard. Had it been you that had the arrow driven through your leg, you’d probably be bleeding red all over the grass with a sizable hole in your thigh—
Wait.
A glint of something catches your eye; you look to see that you’re bleeding from a gash in your leg, but that’s not the important part.
It’s the silvery-gold starriness of it that’s important.
You stare at it for a moment, thinking you got some—some sort of glitter on your leg, but nope, it seems like blood alright. It even tastes like iron.
Okay, maybe not red then, but whatever this stuff leaking over your leg was.
Yep, that’s one hundred percent blood. When you wipe it away, letting it drip to the ground, more bleeds out of the wound in your leg. You grimace hard; seems like the scrape is deeper than you originally thought.
On top of the fact that you were dropped into a video game out of nowhere, you also bleed a color not human.
What the hell is going on?
-
In Liyue, a lone Yaksha feels the balance of the land shift. Normally this would be insignificant; the land shifts every day, swaying with the balance of the world and time.
However, this change feels different.
This change reinvigorates the land in ways the Adeptus hasn’t seen in millennia, since the Archon War and when the Divine One disappeared.
The Divine One…
What if it’s them?
What if they’ve come back?
Xiao shakes his head to snap himself out of the hopeful fantasy. Why would they have come back after he and so many other immortals committed grave, unforgivable sins?
And if they had returned, why would he be the first one to sense it? He, the Vigilant Yaksha, the Conquerer of Demons, the one harboring the karma that threatens to overtake him day by day. He, the least worthy to know of the second the Divine One returns to the land.
Why would he be chosen?
Nevertheless, he decides to check out the disturbance, one that feels so similar to the Traveler entering this world, yet so, so different, so hopeful, at the same time.
Maybe he can redeem himself just a bit.
Some uneasy feeling comes over him later, when everything that is to come is said and done. He knows that the glory Teyvat is experiencing is about to fall into despair.
——
You were lucky enough to find bandages to wrap your leg up with. The Treasure Hoarder camp you stumbled across was (blessedly) empty, but it seemed recently deserted, the fire still burning in the evening light.
The hiss that escapes your mouth isn’t a pretty one, though nor is the wound you accidentally received jumping down from the tree. Twisted ankles hurt like a bitch.
When you’re finally finished wrapping your ankle and the other scrape you have, you sit back against a crate and stare up at the night sky, not recognizing any of the patterns of stars dotting the darkness.
It was beautiful.
The occasional shooting star flies across the inky blackness, interrupting it for mere moments before disappearing into the dark once again.
Teyvat seems to be taking it easy on you for the most part, providing you slivers of luck amongst the misfortune you’ve found yourself with in the past day or so.
This world… it seems so familiar, beyond the fact that you’ve been playing the game since its release. It feels…
It feels like home.
The wetness on your cheeks surprises you. You’re only now just crying? After all that’s happened today so far, your eyes now decide to shed their tears?
It makes you laugh.
Somehow, your emotions stayed under wraps while you were scrambling to stay alive against Amber—which, by the way, you never did figure out why she attacked you so abruptly. You suppose that’s why. Adrenaline does some weird things to one who is under its influence.
Watching the flames of the fire in front of you dim into embers, you decide to get some sleep, or as much as you can, anyway.
When your eyelids flutter shut and slumber consumes you, you dream of nothing but golden comets.
—
So Inazuma is definitely out of the question.
Instead of heading straight to Liyue, as you normally would, you manage (on accident) to use a waypoint to teleport straight to Inazuma, merely by touching it.
The only reason you made it to one in the first place was because of Bennett shoving you into a bush, making an excuse up as to what the rustling noise was. Because of Razor, who guided you through Wolvendom. Kaeya, who led the Knights away from you, seeing your fear-addled expression and blood dripping down your temple. And even the girls, Klee and Diona, provide a distraction, Diona tossing her signature mix to the ground and Klee setting it alight, alcohol burning just long enough to provide cover for your escape.
For a few days, nobody notices you under the stolen cloak you procured from an unattended merchant’s stand.
They only begin to pay attention when you trip and fall to the ground, dropping the little Mora you had in your possession, banging your knee on the cobbled streets.
They definitely start to notice when your hood falls off, revealing the face you so tried to keep hidden.
“How dare you steal Their face?!”
So much for anonymity, I guess.
Scrambling to grab the dropped golden coins, narrowly avoiding a rock thrown in your direction, you manage to dodge any other makeshift projectiles sent your way, all the while enduring jeers and taunts.
Who the hell is this so-called revered Divine One? They were never mentioned in Genshin’s lore, and you should know. You spent hours reading up on each nation’s backstory, every detail of lore gobbled up by your knowledge-hungry brain.
Don’t even get started on the characters.
You loved this game with all of your heart, spending countless hours and hundreds of dollars on it.
Guess you’d have to rethink that now that you saw its true nature.
News travels quickly, thanks to the power of Electro, and within days the entire nation is on high alert, looking for the one who dared to have the same face as their god, their high deity.
Somehow luck is on your side once again, as you find yet another abandoned campsite with clothing that mysteriously fits you perfectly. No complaints here.
It seems as if Teyvat is, in a way, trying to shield you or help you out with your troubles with its people.
You send a silent thank-you up to the heavens, sighing at the exhaustion sinking deep into your bones. It’s been a long couple of days, and the stress has begun to take its toll on your body.
No sleep comes to you that night.
Or the next.
Any sleep you do get is filled with nightmares of angry mobs and terrifying Archons, Adepti and any mysterious figures glimpsed in the shadows. You run. You run from them, but even in your waking hours, you cannot escape them.
Liyue is a bit easier to traverse, what with the plains and all, but the mountains there and there make it a challenge to navigate properly. Despite your misfortune with (nearly) everyone seemingly out to kill you or kidnap you, Teyvat seems to have taken mercy on you; slimes are friendly, providing heat when needed and bringing fruits and the like about; Hilichurls are also quite amicable, giving you aid when necessary, and even the samachurls heal you if you need it.
Birds don’t fly away, instead flocking to you. Boars bring you sticks for your fires. Squirrels fall asleep on your lap. Pinecones drop on your pursuers, slowing them down enough to allow you to make a narrow getaway.
Water always seems to be plentiful and clear. Night falls just a bit earlier, concealing your figure in the shadows when the Millelith pass by. Your wounds heal much faster than they normally would.
But, alas, you can only hold out for so long.
Liyueans are ruthless in their actions, cuffing your hands behind your back and immediately bringing you to face the Geo Archon himself. You don’t dare look up at him; any energy you may have had was drained in the chase that led to your capture. But some part of you, some small voice, screams at you to make one last retaliation.
A glob of spit lands on his shoe, eliciting a noise of disgust from his mouth. Venti and Baal look appalled as well, and they show no mercy in their execution.
You knew you shouldn’t have C6’d them.
The suffocation comes first.
Then the shattering of your bones. You can’t even scream.
Lightning shreds your vocal cords as the Electro Archon steps up to you.
“Perish, mimic.”
One of the last things you see is the Musou no Hitotachi ending your life, purple lightning stabbing through your heart and ripping it out through your rib cage.
In those few seconds you’re still alive, you giggle at their shocked expressions when they see the gold and silver star-spotted blood.
“Oh well. Better luck next time. Or never.”
—
An Imagine Dragons ringtone plays in your ear, startling you fully awake, tears soaking your pillow. You glance over to the clock, seeing it reads 3:18 P.M. When you push your hair back stuck to your sweat-covered forehead, you find that your hand comes back with blood, the same colored blood that was in your dream.
Dream?
Was it a dream?
Or was it reality?
Either way, you need to clean yourself up.
You wince at the soreness that wracks your limbs, spotting bruises littering your legs, cuts across your arms and chest, and feeling an ache in your torso; when you look down, you see a faint scar right where your heart would be located, patterned with lightning-shaped marks around it.
What?
You stumble into your bathroom, breath heaving from your lungs, and take a look at yourself in the mirror.
Eyes meet a battered reflection, blood sticky across your head and neck, shadows under your eyes, a scar on your lip—a busted one at that—, tear tracks on your cheeks… so much damage.
And that’s just your face.
The rest of your body hurts more, but you can see it healing—something you thought was impossible. Either way, you bandage the still-open wounds, disinfect the worse ones, and brace your ankle properly, wincing at the dirtied bandages barely holding on.
Somehow, you think, that nightmare was no fantasy horror. No; it actually happened, despite it being seemingly impossible. Video games weren’t reality, so why were you so battered?
Whatever the reason didn’t matter now.
What did was confronting the issue.
You hobble out of the bathroom to your desktop, powering it on and booting your (former) favorite gacha game up. You stare at the loading screen, reluctant to click into the world of Teyvat.
No. Taking a deep breath, you left-click the mouse, watching the familiar elements darken in color as the computer slowly loads into the game.
When your character finally comes into view, your normal team appearing on the side, you make a decision, no matter how petty.
Opening the character screen, you begin to take artifacts off of characters.
First is Jean. The Acting Grandmaster was C3, but now artifact-less. You also give her Dull Blade.
Eula comes next. Pale Flame sits in your inventory, no character using them. Snow-Tombed-Starsilver is replaced by a two-star claymore.
Then comes Albedo. You hesitate, remembering his expression when he spotted you in Dragonspine. It was neutral, and he pointed you in the direction to exit the snowy area. Sucrose clarified for him, even giving you a potion to assist in resisting the cold climate.
Instead of him, you switch to Amber, stripping her of her weapon and artifacts.
Then Lisa. Then Venti. Mona gets left alone, along with Kaeya. (You actually upgrade his weapon.) Diluc? Bye-bye. Rosaria aided you, so she’s ignored. Noelle too. Barbara… you leave her be. Same with Fischl.
On to Liyue characters.
Keqing. Ignore Xiangling. Ignore Chongyun—you toss him Eula’s sword. Zhongli’s artifacts get used to upgrade Razor’s, which feels great. Xingqiu? Bye-bye. Xiao… never made an appearance, so you keep his stuff on him. Same with Qiqi and Hu Tao. Ganyu, Yanfei, Shenhe, anyone else that wronged you is stripped of their pride.
Inazuma now.
Kokomi, Ayaka, Gorou, Kujou Sara, Thoma, Ayato, fucking Ei, anyone and everyone save for Yoimiya, Kazuha, Itto, and little Sayu. You take the hard-earned artifacts off with glee, putting them on characters you favored, reworking your main team, which now consists of Kaeya, Bennett, Razor and Klee. Diona couldn’t fit, poor thing.
Everyone else?
Benched.
The final straw is clicking the uninstall button for Genshin Impact, seeing the guilt-tripping screen come up before the confirmation is selected.
It’s closure.
—
In Teyvat, all of the Archons suddenly feel a burst of weakness that comes with the Divine One swapping their enhancements around, but to their surprise and dismay…
It stays.
Others experience the same, while a rare few feel an increase in their power, shockingly, considering the Archons of all people lost some. Chongyun especially is shocked when he finds his exorcisms working more effectively, while his aunt, still stunned by the killing of Them, can’t even seem to fight off a hilichurl without his help.
Hu Tao jumps around with glee when she’s given a new polearm, so similar to Zhongli’s, while he’s stuck with an Iron Point he can’t seem to convince the funeral director to trade for his old polearm.
In Mondstadt, Jean looks at her sword, stunned, while Kaeya whistles and taunts Diluc with his more powerful blade. The redhead, gritting his teeth, tries to parry his strike, but his brother overpowers him easily. Klee runs around with Diona, fish-blasting with no one but Kaeya to stop them, and why would he?
Venti sits on top of his statue in the town square of the City of Freedom, tears tracking down his cheeks as he tries desperately to command the wind, but it’s like Teyvat just ignores him, only allowing him to control a small breeze, maybe a gust here and there if he’s lucky.
Bennett’s bad luck seems to recede, allowing him and Razor to travel around a bit easier. His Pyro attacks seem to inflict more damage, especially when combined with Razor’s Electro slashes. The wolf-boy also sees an increase in the sheer force in his hits.
Ei just… stares. Stares at her weapon. Makoto would be so disappointed.
The Resistance is panicking, having noticed that the General and High Priestess have lost a great deal of their ability to heal and support. It’s balanced by the Tengu, Kujou Sara, missing her shots that would normally land true.
Kazuha, meanwhile, enjoys the quieter breeze and his newfound, more precise control over Anemo. When the rumors of the Electro Archon losing control of her own element, he merely smiles and laughs a bit. She deserves it, some little, malicious voice in his head says, for killing him.
Ayaka and Ayato feel fatigued, both excusing themselves to bed-rest for a few days, but even that doesn’t help what seems to be a persistent illness.
The individuals you took the artifacts off of or exchanged weapons on aren’t the only ones affected.
All of Teyvat slowly crumbles. Crops fail, wildfires spread, the storm around Inazuma gets worse, monsters invade cities, the Abyss becomes more prevalent, anything you can think goes wrong goes wrong.
The few blessed narrowly avoid the destruction, finding out that the famine doesn’t affect them, or that the fires avoid them, or that the lightning strikes more than a few yards away from them, or that terrifying Abyss Herald seems to ignore them, or the Hilichurls pay no mind to them or their actions.
Prosperity falls into ruin.
And it’s all their fault.
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i adore your sagau writings ! could i have more of casita protecting reader, maybe even a silly showcase of casita pushing out intruders without god!reader noticing? like the characters found out reader was god and tracked them down, but now theyre up against a very protective house and land, and theyre losing miserably
Osdksjdjs THANK YOU ANON!! this will be in headcannon format if you dont mind!! Since I'll be focusing on my event reqs for now! If you wanted more specific ones, feel free to send an ask again!!
You didn't specify characters so have the three idiots acolytes! I hope you enjoy this crack, anon!
♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡
Venti♡
He's cheating by using his wings
Leaves Zhongli and Ei behind
But no, Casita is not going to let him get to you so easily!!
As Venti flies higher and higher, stopping at cliffs to restore stamina
Casita decides it would be fun to magically get rid of that cliff <33
Venti has wings so ofc he doesnt actually fall to the ground
But it's enough to shook him and force him to fly more
At one point he ends up seeing the trees moving to confuse the fellow archons he left behind
It finally clicks
"I want to apologize! Let me in!! Let me in!!"
Teyvat responds with a "no♡" by punting him with a tree
If somehow he manages to get within the circle of mountains and sees your casita, he approaches the front door
He admires the architecture, how lush the plant life was around your dearest casita, it was all so beautiful...
He walks on the tiles towards your front door, admiring everything around him
You know that scene in the Family Madrigal where the tiles became Luisa's treadmill? Yeah <33
Impromptu leg day for lord barbatos
The tiles went so fast he got yeeted to a hidden cave entrance to get rid of him
That cave disappeared after venti was gone, teyvat risks nothing
The wind blows a little bit more, circulating the cold/warmth of the mist/flaming flowers that decorated your windows. Perhaps you should enjoy your garden outside...
Zhongli♡
"I didn't put those mountains there??"
He investigated by himself at first
Dragon form go brr as he gets a sky high view
He spots the house where the Creator's domain should be
Ah.
Still in dragon form, he carefully flies down
The winds seemed to get harsher and harsher as he got closer and closer down
The winds got to the point that they felt like knives slicing through him
He retreats begrudgingly, it was too much
the geo archon gets bullied by wind/j
He recruits Venti's and Ei's help after the other adepti didnt get too far
He and Ei (or Ei's puppet rather sjdbsn) try to actually climb
It was fine for the most part but didn't they pass by that plant next to that rock before??
He argues with ei's puppet like an NPC cause neither of them want to admit they're lost 🕴
The earth shakes below you, and the source of it seemed a bit too nearby as you tended to the flowers in your garden. Casita distracts you with big bouncy geo slimes! They're the reason the earth shook around you, definitely not because Zhongli once again fell from the surrounding mountains <3
Ei/Raiden Shogun♡
I headcanon that Ei kinda controls her puppet hands-on sometimes like she's playing a video game
Like, she meditates and enters a state where she sees her puppet like virtual reality or sumn
Since Ei is in her Plane of Euthymia, it's her puppet that accompanies Zhongli and Venti
That being said- the climb was fine at first, Venti leaving them behind and having to climb by herself
She doesn't lose stamina as she climbs, but Teyvat had other plans :)
If you guys remember Donkey Kong where he throws barrels at you and you have to dodge while trying to climb-
Well :))
It doesn't take long for Ei to get frustrated as her puppet falls for the 946438363736th time
Teyvat drops anything on her really- from rocks, to plants, to geo slimes, to exploding pyro slime barrels-
The lightning accumulating around the puppet is a power up Ei used to her advantage
She missed the aim for her power up
Better luck next time Ei!
You hear lightning as you finish up trimming some bushes in your garden, you look up at the sky; bright and beautiful with no clouds allowed in- I mean, ahem- anyway, the thunder seemed to be nearby, but no need to fear! It seems the electro whopperflowers were just glad to see you! There is no Raiden Shogun that missed her target outside, none at all! <33
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