content warning: this is where the 'eye gore' tag comes in. pretty graphic. if you wish to skip it it starts from the scene where zhongli opens the barred door and ends at the scene break.
The cages by the entrance stop their incessant rustling after a week. Morax thinks of taking them down, putting the bloated bodies within them to rest within the ground, but rest would be too kind a fate for their crimes.
Besides, it would serve as an adequate warning for any vagabond wishing to assail this seemingly empty fort.
Heeding his advice, most of the castle’s residents had left, taking with them their families to escape what would be a prolonged and messy war. Some of his knights had protested, but with his promise to them now broken, the rest of his path will have to be walked alone, dangerous and cruel as it is.
He repeats to them the same thing: his order is now without compassion.
He had hung the cages by the entrance on the day of their departure, to drive that point home. The assassins had remained tight-lipped till the end, resolutely silent as they starved inside their confines. He had considered running them through with their own black blades, but they should learn what Guizhong had been suppressing with her mere presence.
Castle now empty, Morax realises exactly how large it is.
No guards patrol the walls, ready to wave back to their lady when she takes her place in the courtyard, testing her ballista again and again. Out of habit, Morax casts his gaze to the tallest watchtower, expecting to see Xiao’s ever-so-formal salute.
Beneath his fingernails, he can feel the stone walls start to crumble.
He had been avoiding being inside these past few days, where Tartaglia was sure to dwell, slowly recovering from his long period of starvation underground. He will take Tartaglia out for some sun, as soon as the man can stand on his own feet.
He tries to put out of his mind the fact that Tartaglia does not seem to eat much.
Surely he will recover, Tartaglia with his will and his careless joy. Surely Morax was not too late, bringing him back aboveground only when the act posed no threat to his now broken dreams.
The dawn sun scorches the back of his neck, accusing.
Morax heads back to the ground, suddenly feeling very tired. He will find Tartaglia, maybe attempt to speak with him again. Apart from his few words that first night, the man had said nothing more, staring blankly out of the windows of his room whenever Morax tried to inquire about his health.
His mind wandering, the trip back to Tartaglia’s room takes less time than usual. Morax knocks on the door before pushing. His efforts are met with resistance.
He frowns and tries again, this time bracing his full weight against the door. It doesn’t budge.
Since when was he strong enough to set up a barricade? Morax reaches deep within himself, searching for the brand that has seared ever colder ever since that fateful day.
Cold flames burst to life, latching onto the door, turning it to ash in a matter of seconds. The chairs stacked behind the door suffer the same fate, crumbling to the floor. Morax steps inside cautiously, extinguishing his flames with a wave of his hand.
The room is mostly dark, the dawn light insufficient to fully illuminate it. Morax blinks in the dim light. His flames will offer little help here, so he attempts to recall the one and only spell he had fully mastered when he was still a scholar. Then he remembers: his spear is in his own room, far out of reach, left behind with the confidence that no one in the immediate area would dare to assault a demigod at full strength, Great Rune intact.
But then, Tartaglia had been a warrior of the highest calibre.
A sound catches his ear, a scuttling that puts into mind the rats that run along the downstairs kitchen. Morax’s gaze snaps to the corner, where the end of a trailing red scarf quickly follows its owner to the shadows.
Morax takes a step towards the corner, between the wall and a wardrobe.
‘Don’t,’ says a voice, rough from starvation.
‘Is something the matter?’ asks Morax.
‘Nothing. I—’
Tartaglia groans, collapsing to the ground. Morax hears the drip, drip of something viscous.
‘Don’t come any closer. I’ll hurt you.’
‘You will not harm me in any way that matters.’
Tartaglia cries out in pain now, curling in onto himself. The faint daylight glances off his hair, matted and dry.
‘Come on. Let me see.’
Whether it is out of willingness or weakness, Tartaglia lets himself be lifted up by Morax. His bones jut out of his form, sharp and painful, not a sign of the musculature in his glory days.
Something drips onto Morax’s hand, burning hot, but he doesn’t drop Tartaglia until they reach the bed. It slides down to his wrist, leaving a painful trail in its wake, sizzling when it falls onto the sheets, a bright, sickly splotch of yellow.
Tartaglia lifts his head, allowing Morax a good view of his face. Morax’s gaze slides up, past the cracked lips and the yellowing skin, landing on his eyes.
Morax balks.
The remnants of Tartaglia’s eyelids hang on by thin threads of tissue and skin. Bulging out of his eye sockets, misshapen and soft-looking, are what used to be his eyes. Bright and sickly yellow, trails of sticky, viscous liquid trickle down Tartaglia’s face.
‘Don’t look at me,’ says Tartaglia. ‘You’ll get it too.’
Morax does, but not before wiping away the liquid, flinching when it burns a hole through his glove.
Tartaglia curls up in the bed, shivering, shielding his eyes with his hands. Morax gently grabs his wrists, moving his hands down. Tartaglia’s attempts at resistance, tempered with weakness, prove futile.
He whimpers when Morax brings a finger to his eyes.
‘I’ll make it quick,’ says Morax.
The eyes are soft beneath his touch. Wildly, Morax considers taking off his gloves to feel the burn of the liquid fire against his skin, as inappropriately intimate as it is. Tartaglia stops struggling, lying on his spine like a fish on land, his breathing laboured.
Morax grits his teeth and sinks in his fingers.
He knows he has made a grave mistake when he realises exactly how soft Tartaglia’s eyes have become, misshapen without the usual liquids to give them their pressure, now dripping in trails down Tartaglia’s face. They give way underneath his clumsy grip immediately, bursting across his hands.
Beneath him, Tartaglia gives a strangled cry.
Morax grits his teeth against the burning in his palms. He closes his hands, feeling the soft squelch, squelch of the mass of sclera and membrane and yellowing blood vessels between his fingers.
Dimly, he remembers that Tartaglia’s eyes are as blue as the faraway ocean.
But his job is not done yet. He places the eyes, half-orbs filled with fluid and gore, onto the ground.
The rest of his eyes are still in the sockets, and so he reaches in until he feels a tough, leathery membrane, stuck to the side of the sockets. Part of a ripped-open eyeball, still filled with the liquid fire that now slowly eats at his gloves, trying to get to his skin.
Before his gloves can surrender to the liquid fire, Morax pulls.
There is a faint buzzing in his ears as he tears out the pieces of Tartaglia’s eyes, still connected to his skull by a tough string. Dimly, he thinks he can hear someone screaming, throat almost torn open from dehydration. He pulls again, feeling the strings snap beneath his fingers, in scorching pain as holes burn through his gloves.
The yellowish mass in his hands, leathery and soft and wet all at once, slips through his fingers and lands on the ground.
A hand claws weakly at his flank.
The buzzing in his ears stops.
And like a wave, pain crashes down on him. Morax rips off his gloves with all the desperation that he feels, choking back the horror slowly creeping up his throat. His hands are burned red, shiny flesh in patches across his fingers. Beneath him, Tartaglia’s eye sockets lie empty, viscera and fluids trickling down his temples to pool on the bed, sizzling when they meet the sheets.
Tartaglia reaches up with a shaking hand to grab at his wrist.
‘You…’
The hand drops limply to the sheets.
Briefly, Morax considers killing him.
Better unconsciousness than to face the blood on his hands, searing liquid fire leaving red, aching burns on his palms. Even his cooling flames do nothing to purge the pain.
The feeling of disgust the thought invokes is instantaneous, sending him to his knees. Morax chokes on his shame, hands braced against the cool stone floor, mind running wildly and far away from the present.
He should send Tartaglia away, far from this cruelty, the demigod who knows only to tear and kill and rip apart anything he loves. Tartaglia had spoken of his ancestors’ homeland once, to the north, beyond the fog. If he is fast enough, he can catch the ships leaving the continent en masse. Yes, far away from this violence.
If anything, Tartaglia deserves better.
The sun makes its way across the sky, casting shorter and shorter shadows in the small room. Morax sits with his back to the window, the accusing glare of the light burning just as much as the fire in his hands.
Not Gold, but golden nonetheless.
~~~
Most of the books fall apart in his hands, leaving him with fragments of paper that he has to piece together, bringing the text up to scrutiny by the faint light of his lantern. He copies them down diligently nonetheless, trying to ignore the Omen standing between him and the exit of the library.
She’d been nothing but helpful, casting no further judgement than a blank stare when he asked if she’d seen any Crucible Knights around. Of course, he’d have no better chance with them, loyal to the Erdtree as they are.
By all accounts, the encounter with this Omen was an incredible stroke of luck. She thumbs the blade of her scythe as she watches him write down another copy, critical information finally pinpointed.
He had ruined enough of this room’s texts, he should at least have the decency to replace them.
The Omen makes a soft, impatient noise when he attempts to find where he had taken the books from, stuffing the new parchment into gaps between the shelves. Hopefully whoever owned this library would be grateful for these higher-quality transcriptions.
‘Let’s go,’ says the Omen.
Zhongli follows her outside, sidestepping the trap of swinging blades that the two of them had disabled earlier. This dungeon was relatively shallow, only a few flights of stairs away from the open air and the night sky now littered with stars, moving through the night sky along their usual paths.
He would have completely forgotten about what he had left at the entrance if not for the hand that grasps at his foot. A gurgled snarl, pushed from a half-open throat, splits the air. The Omen doesn’t swing her scythe, not this time, instead looking at Zhongli. Underneath her tangle of horns, her shadowed face is impassive.
Zhongli looks down at the hand clawing at his boots, at its owner bleeding out on the ground. His horned helmet is lopsided and his cleaver lies abandoned, out of arm’s reach. The Omen must have killed dozens of these, their helms adorned with the amputated horns of her kind. Yet here she is, letting him deal the final blow.
He thinks he understands.
He unstraps his spear from his back, pointing the head in the man’s direction. The Omenkiller struggles more fiercely, his vicelike grip painful around Zhongli’s ankle.
Zhongli closes his eyes, pulling on the brand within him, summoning the ghostly flames that he now knows so well.
To his credit, the Omenkiller doesn’t scream as he burns in cold fire, the flames snaking into the gaps between his armour to eat at his flesh. The armour pieces drop to the ground, grating against each other as their owner’s body collapses into ash, folding in onto his bones, now dust. Zhongli watches his flames do their job, engulfing the whole form.
The helmet, now detached, rolls to a stop at Zhongli’s foot. But there is no time to waste.
Holding his spear like a poker, Zhongli shoves aside the fallen armour pieces to get to his intended target. The pile of ashes is large, not yet victim to the environment.
The Omen watches him work, sweat dripping down his face with the effort as he stokes the ashes. His lips move soundlessly, an incantation long lost, uttered with just as much conviction as the ghostly birds that stalk these lands, their authority over death lost to a new order. Now they, as well as he, sift through the ashes in memory of duty, a mockery of hope.
Zhongli has never had much faith, but in that moment he prays. To his mother, to her golden Tree, to what remains of their sympathy for a wayward son.
The ashes, now fully scattered, remain still. Zhongli stops to catch his breath, gaze fixed unblinkingly upon his handiwork.
A wisp, barely larger than his fist, dissipates from the ash to hover above it. It flies directly at Zhongli, but he dismisses it with a wave of a hand.
‘Congratulations,’ says the Omen.
Zhongli’s words are not sufficient at this moment.
‘Now, what are you going to do with this knowledge?’
Zhongli meets her eyes, impassive.
‘Thank you for your help.’ He manages to keep his voice steady. ‘I will be going on my way now.’
The Omen dips her head, a gesture of respect. She stays where she is as he leaves, her scythe over her shoulder, standing in place of its former sentinel.
Zhongli wonders if she has a name.
He knows his way around this area well. The crater created by the felling of the Starscourge he avoids, heading towards the one building he has gone out of his way to avoid throughout all his years of wandering.
The stars twinkle coldly. This night is devoid of wind. He runs to feel a facsimile of it as trees and grass and ruins rush past him, a lone shadow wandering no more.
This church is half in ruins, but the centrepiece, the only part that matters to him, remains intact. It seems that even in this time of decline, this woman’s image still commands respect.
He is unsure if he still feels that respect when he looks up at her, shrouded in darkness, her arms outstretched. The stone cannot capture her features, not ever, but his memories supplement what the weather has worn away.
‘Mother,’ he says. ‘I ask for your blessing.’
The statue remains silent.
‘No, I demand your blessing. You may not deem him worthy of your grace, but I wish for him to live.’
Reaching into his bag, Zhongli withdraws a silvery mass, squirming ceaselessly against the metal rods thrust through its body and the ropes that hold them together.
‘Bless this body. Bless the soul that will soon inhabit it.’
He hates how weak he sounds.
‘I have not seen you in years. Ah, Marika, will you ever stop haunting me? Here I am, hoping for your memory to grant me strength enough to do what needs to be done.’
He turns his back on the statue, facing into the distance. Even from here, he knows the way home.
‘My other half. My other self. Guizhong, perhaps you would have loved differently.’
Zhongli faces the statue once more.
‘Mother, were you like me as well? I think I know now—every attempt to love tinged with regret.’
‘You will not have my forgiveness. But I understand you. Your mistakes, mine… my whole self. And I must carry them with me my entire life.’
‘O Mother, protect us.’
Zhongli kneels before the statue, head bowed.
The night is silent.
thank you youtube cow eye dissection video