☆ you sow; & thus you shall reap what you are owed
{☆} characters tsaritsa
{☆} notes cult au, imposter au, drabble, gender neutral reader
{☆} warnings blood, violence
{☆} word count 0.8k
You are dying.
Gold melts into the dirt, bleeds into the very earth that you'd molded by your own hands – a familiarity you do not understand the source of – you know it to be true, yet you do not remember it as Teyvat does. It weeps, in turn, for the way you bleed upon it, the way your lungs strain for breath.
It is fury and sorrow and fear and hatred so raw that your mind buckles.
You will die.
"A dying godling and its judge, it's jury – it's executioners," The voice is hollow and cold, sweeps across your broken body like the first chill of winter, "Archons who saw themselves Gods, now brought to heel by their own hubris."
A cold hand upon your cheek, the brush of a thumb across your lip, the gentle caress of cold across your skin. You know her – you don't remember, you shouldn't recognize her but you do – and she knows you. The cold beckons and you follow, let her kindness settle in the hollow space of your chest. You want to speak, to cry and scream and rage, let the world burn around you in a fit of flames so hot even she cannot contain it – but she silences you, quiets the anger seeping into your blood, quiets Teyvat itself.
"Do not speak, little godling. Guide my hand," She is cold; her hands are not gentle, yet it is bliss compared to the callous, cruel hands that have shattered you. She is cruel and cold and brutal but she is love in the way she kisses the crown of your head. She is love in the way she is the bulwark between you and the world that has scorned you – she is fury in the way she brings them to their knees. "And I shall enact judgement most divine."
They will pray for forgiveness, and they shall find themselves wanting.
"It wasn't our fault!" They cry, but you cannot recognize the voice – it breaks and cracks like glass. "They were too human. How were we meant to know? We– we thought they were.."
Silence.
You watch your judge – the executioner, the blade that shall carve their sins into the very marrow of Teyvat, stand above you like death. As cold as winter and just as brutal. Your temple has been painted in the gold of your divine blood, and she shall complete the masterpiece with their own. The Archons shall become the grandest art in the world – this temple the canvas, their blood the paint and their bodies the palette. The cold that cuts sinew cradles you – it sings to you, whispers sweetly in your ear and carves bone from body in the same breath. The cold presses it's lips to your wrist and it cradles a heart within it's palm – judges them and finds them guilty.
It is her spear that rests between their ribs, her sword that dissects and her dagger that carves – the cold devours.
In the breadth of this divine sanctuary, the Archons dwindle. They become the pieces of a divine work of art, they bleed and bend and break upon her hands. She shakes the heavens and carves mortality into the bones of the divine – your word is Law, and you weave their deaths into the roots of Teyvat itself.
They shall know of their grand folly in every moment henceforth and longer still and they shall weep.
And as the curtain falls, as the world crumbles beneath fist and blade, she cradles your face between hands too cold – as gentle as a shard of ice between your ribs, as brutal as the kiss of gentle snowfall. The world buckles at the loss of six, but she alone does not allow it to break – you will have to mend the wounds of the world when you are well, but today you weep and Teyvat weeps with you.
And alone, the cold remains.
Stone has eroded, the wind has ceased, the flames have been extinguished, the storm has been silenced, the forests have gone quiet and the seas go still.
But the cold remains, bathed in gold.
It wraps you in thick furs, cradles you against the winter storm that brews beneath a veneer of composure. It brings you home – lets the world settle into a stillness and silence that inspires only dread and still she presses a kiss to your brow.
It is cold, but there has never been something so warm.
Where hands have broken you, she drapes you in furs, wipes away the thick gold that clings to your skin. She pieces you back together where you have been shattered, reshapes you where you have been bent – makes of you something new. Not a god and not a mortal but something wedged between them.
But you are yourself.
And you are where you belong.
They shall put you back together and you shall know only the worship worthy of the divine. They shall carve this world into your image, tear out and burn away the rot that festers.
All you need to do is say the word and they shall be your tools to make this world your own.
One word and those who wronged you shall burn, too.
Just one word. That's all it takes, and they shall take away your pain.
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I just had a riveting discussion with a self proclaimed anarcho-capitalist at work, whose opinions included:
Tipping is bad because 'contracts with your employer are voluntary and they can leave if they're not paid enough.' He will still tip if he thinks his wife is watching
If you're stuck inside a torture chamber with an apple you can bite every ten seconds that sends you to paradise for a year, it is illogical to bite the apple and humanity is broken for thinking so
The ending to the good place was bad because the characters weren't being logical and there was so much shit you can do with the afterlife.
The marxist labor theory of value 'isn't true' because paintings have arbitrary value
Heidegger was an idiot
Kant was an idiot
Nietzche was an idiot
He is an anarcho-capitalist
If I don't have 100% certainty for something than I can't truly say that I know something is true, and isn't it illogical that people do that?
I have to see this man every Monday from now until I quit. We work one on one.
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Long rant about season 4, Johnny Lawrence, and the deterioration of the writing below so feel free to ignore this, but I just feel like I haven’t actually coherently expressed my main gripe with season 4 here.
In season 1 johnny is introduced and he’s racist, misogynistic, bullies kids based on their physical appearance, etc. etc. etc. And these are clearly his Bad Traits that are explicitly condemned by the narrative. When not portrayed as something that has explicit negative consequences (ie basically causing Hawk to go full incel), at the very least the story mocks and pokes fun at him for having such backwards ideals. And as the character grows through the story, so do his values. The show explicitly shows him moving past his racism in regards to Miguel, his sexism in regards to Aisha and then Tory. The story clearly articulates that these are all things Johnny learned from Kreese, and as he distances himself more from Kreese and his teachings, he learns and grows and leaves a lot of that ignorance behind.
And then season 4 comes along, and all of that just…goes away. And I don’t mean to say that Johnny necessarily regresses. But the way the narrative depicts him has completely changed. Johnny goes to Piper talking about how Karate can empower women, but it just turns into a joke about how he “learned feminism for this.” This is not meant to poke fun at Johnny, but to poke fun at feminism. The entire joke is as basic as “haha, of course Johnny’s not a feminist! Why would he be?” Later on, he makes a gendered statement to Sam and apologizes and corrects himself. But then the narrative literally undoes that by having Sam validate him! Tells him it’s fine, she understood what he meant and he didn’t need to change. Later this season we are even explicitly told that we should just accept Johnny as he is. Johnny’s ignorance has gone from being something explicitly condemned by the narrative to something they want us to love and accept him for.
And you know what? I don’t. Because Johnny Lawrence is not a real person. He’s a character in a story. I don’t have to accept the negative parts of him, because as an individual I don’t care about him at all. And that’s not to criticize him for being a flawed character, a flawed protagonist is fine—it’s great, actually! But when the show itself goes from criticizing those flaws to treating them as anything but, that’s where I take issue. Because I really don’t care about any of these characters as individuals. I care about the story that’s being told, a story I used to love about toxic masculinity and radicalization and cycles of abuse and how they all interplay with each other. A story that actually seemed like it was trying to say something important. But season 4 watered it all down so much to the point where I can’t even find a coherent central theme in the show anymore. At least not one the writers seem to have a solid stance on.
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