author's notes (top)

i can say with enough certainty that this fic won't have anything that would fall under the mandatory tags, but if you see anything that might warrant a warning in the freeform tags, feel free to contact me about it.

draft completed by 22 march 2022.

Xiao doesn’t mean to kill the child.

He hadn’t even known she had crept into the cave at all, hadn’t known to hold back to protect her from the weight of his karmic debt. He is, after all, an adeptus, a damn near immortal: a few extra cuts and bruises, a few more fragments of sin and damnation, mean next to nothing in the grand scheme of his life’s duty. But a child, a small, wounded, human child—

The other adepti do their best to keep her alive, to preserve the fragile thing with everything their strengths had to offer. But despite their best efforts, perhaps it is simply against the heavenly principles for her to be saved. Perhaps it is the taint of Xiao’s very existence that forces things awry. It’s hard to tell in the rush of things.

Regardless, the freshly-born little jiangshi girl must be sealed away in Mountain Shaper’s amber for the sake of everyone left.

Xiao knows what must come next. His contract is to Rex Lapis; his duty, to the people of Liyue. He has failed them both now that his hands are stained with the blood of one he was meant to protect.

His Lord should summon him within a matter of days to sentence his punishment. Until then, there is no rest for the wicked— he is meant to continue his work as normal.

But Xiao is not a patient creature. He lasts but a few hours, until nightfall, before simply waiting for his summons becomes too much.

(The thought of being able to roam freely through Liyue, even in service of his duty, would have almost made him puke, had he been human. For it is with his freedom, he chose this contract, and having failed his contract, freedom feels like a privilege he does not deserve.)

By his nature, it is rare for Xiao to seek anyone out for anything, but obedience has long been engrained into his being. He tells himself it would be more duteous to take the initiative for his punishment, and that alone allows him to repress his shyer nature and creep into the Geo Archon’s adeptal abode late that night.

“Xiao,” says his Lord, tiredly, mere moments after he enters. “Go back to Guyun. I will come to you when the time arrives.”

Xiao does not say anything, but neither does he rise. He dares not look his god in the eye, but the exhaustion in his voice seems enough to put dark circles beneath them.

Rex Lapis heaves a deep sigh. “So you cannot.” (Xiao cannot tell if he is musing on something or simply resigning himself to the situation.) “Very well. Then I myself shall take care of whatever’s left later.”

Xiao watches as the looming shadow of the dragon shrinks back and shifts into something more human, and he briefly wonders if his Lord is disappointed. (He hopes so, just so that he is not alone.) The thought of a god dirtying his hands to finish his work guilts him immediately, and he lowers his head further for it. (The last uneven locks of his hair fall away to bare his neck.)

His Lord places a hand upon his head, steady as the stone itself, and Xiao braces himself with what he is sure will be his final breath.

CRACK!

Everything goes black.

Then, when he can’t take it anymore, Xiao’s eyes fly open, and he expels his breath with a sudden pah! He’s not dead yet— for some reason— but he could be if he simply ceased to breathe.

However, his traitorous body works hard to keep him alive, with his lungs panting heavily in his chest and his heart pounding sharply between his ribs, each for want of air.

He calms his breath and lifts his gaze steadily upwards.

His Lord looks down upon him, then slowly retreats his hand.

“I’m not going to kill you, Xiao,” he chides, as if reading Xiao’s mind. “I did not rescue you from the control of evil gods to simply treat you like a tool.”

(You should, Xiao thinks sullenly but dares not say.)

They’re in Dihua Marsh, Xiao notes, atop the tall, lone stone pillar that once marked the border between Dihua and Guili. Nestled in the tree next to them is a little room, hidden amidst yellow leaves and gnarled branches. Xiao knows it is sometimes used by the other adepti for their own varied reasons, though he has never once cared to enter for himself.

Rex Lapis bids him inside, and Xiao obediently follows.

“Still,” sighs his master, “it is clear that you broke something in your contract. You made a mistake, and I must be strict in correcting it.”

(Xiao knows the classic verses his Lord currently references; he was taught to read by them many centuries ago. How soft of him, to speak to Xiao of teaching and discipline as one would a child.)

“In the eyes of the people of Liyue, I am no longer the God of War, to be feared and reviled behind closed doors, but The Groundbreaker, a steadfast protector of the people. As such, my responsibility towards them comes first. Your mistake weighs heavily upon you, but I am no longer the punitive Archon I was when the war was first won. To kill you outright would deprive them of one of their most devoted guardians.”

Rex Lapis holds out a hand, and, uncertain of what he means, Xiao summons his weapon and gives it over.

“If jade is not cut and polished, it cannot be a thing of use,” the Archon recites, again from the Three Word Classic. He traces a hand down the polearm until he reaches a thin, hairline crack, left in the stone shaft from centuries of battle pounding it into the earth. “But, a flaw does not conceal the rest of the gemstone’s beauty.”

Xiao’s spear shimmers into nothing, evidently confiscated. Xiao almost fears what this could mean.

Rex Lapis gestures to a bed in the corner of the room. “Go to sleep now, Xiao,” he says, and Xiao can’t help but to find his tone to be a little stern. “If in that time, I find that the people do not need your protection anymore, I will strike you down. But, if you are still needed in a hundred years’ time, then I think a century of piled up work will be atonement enough for your sin.”

Xiao stiffens. This… this cannot be all there is to his punishment. He may have been barely literate enough to sign his own name in blood on Rex Lapis’s contract, but he is certain that the penalty for violating a contract with the God of Contracts himself is death.

Still, if this is his command, Xiao will piously obey.

As Xiao reluctantly dresses down and approaches the bed, his Lord produces a few black pills.

“These will help constrain your karmic debt,” he explains. “I cannot guarantee that they will work outside your physical body, but do not worry about poisoning the earth with your presence as you sleep.”

Xiao wordlessly accepts the medicine and gets into bed, where he awkwardly eats them beneath Rex Lapis’s watchful gaze. They have a strong herbal flavor and stick to his teeth as he chews, but they’re not the worst thing he’s ever put in his mouth.

When he swallows, he remembers, for some reason, the days when he could turn into a bird. Perhaps it is because he is all too aware of the fact that his Lord is perceiving him so closely, and the feeling makes him want to pick at something in his chest. There is nothing to pick at, however, so he settles for turning away from his master’s gaze.

The bed lurches as Rex Lapis sits down beside him.

Xiao tenses. He feels so small, lying in bed like this. He doesn’t usually lie down to sleep— actually, scratch that. He doesn’t usually sleep at all. Not only is it unnecessary for an adeptus like himself, but the thought of being near mortals' dreams unsettles him. Though he hasn’t eaten one since his Lord freed him, the thought of losing himself in dreamland is still a worrying one. To know that he will be there for nearly a century… He is vulnerable like this.

(He doesn’t like it one bit.)

((But perhaps that is the point of it.))

“Good night, Xiao,” Rex Lapis says, putting a hand on Xiao’s head, much more gently than the latter thinks he can stand.

Although, Xiao remembers, good dreams are not the only dreams he is capable of eating. Nightmares, too— despite never once being made to take one, he has caused enough to know their shape and form in his mouth. What if instead of simply sleeping, his Lord is telling him to hunt the people’s nightmares to prove his efficacy as their protector?

Yes. Yes, that must be it, Xiao decides. He is to fall asleep for a hundred years and protect the people as they dream. That is something he knows he can do. That is something he can at least accept as punishment, even if he doesn’t think it is nearly enough.

He shuts his eyes and tries to slow his breathing.

“Sweet dreams,” Rex Lapis does not say, which at least brings some relief to Xiao. He does not think he deserves such things as sweet dreams, as softly, gently, and against his will, he falls merely asleep.

~***~

There is a rhythm to eating dreams. Xiao falls back into it so easily, he would find it worrying if he allowed himself think about it.

First, he must find the scent of terror on the air. That part is easy. He has smelled all varieties of fear in the waking world, and often, one’s senses are heightened when dreaming.

Next, he must track the sharp and all-too often bitter fumes to their source. This part is also easy, as he has been honing his tracking abilities since a time long before his contract with Rex Lapis. Then, when the burn of the nightmare begins to feel like Abyssal corrosion at the back of his throat, Xiao knows he is close to his target.

The next part is not easy, but then again, Xiao has never had an easy job. When the time comes to execute his duty, he simply prepares himself for what he must do.

There are several ways to take a dream— though, of course, Xiao has his preferences.

The first is how he was trained to do it as a child, and it is a method he has since sworn to never use again. To eat a dream, his master had taught him, one must first crush the skull of the dreamer in the waking world, and, from their fragmented remains, draw the dream out of their blood, sickly sweet and smooth as a river stone on his tongue.

(Sometimes, Xiao wonders how much the taste of dreams in his memory is actually that of human blood.)

The second approach is the one he currently employs. To take a dream while he himself is asleep is not at all unlike the way he subdues demons while he is awake. It means donning his mask and plunging into the darkness alone to wrestle with the monsters in the night; it means nearly choking on the vile, tendriling vapors of a nightmare as it threatens to writhe its way into his bloodstream instead of his belly. It is not that bad, really— at least in this case, its familiarity makes it easy.

(It is often quite hard to differentiate this life of hunting nightmares in his sleep from the one he lived of shattering vengeful souls in the real world.)

There is a third method as well, but Xiao never spends even a second considering it. He has several reasons for this, not the least of which being that it requires he enter the person’s dream directly.

It’s not as if he can avoid the dreamer when inside, either— in fact, he must actively seek them out, for the most surefire way to steal their dream is to pull it from their person. But the thought of grabbing a person’s face and jaw to keep them from moving, of entering their space and ripping away the dreams which spill out their helpless, gaping mouths with his teeth— it is far, far too invasive an idea. Xiao refuses to even think about it.

(His old master would frequently charm men just to use it on them, and Xiao remembers, vividly and viscerally, the horror that would shudder down his spine each time he was made to watch.)

And so he goes, endlessly hunting evil thoughts and dreams through that illusory land of sleep without rest. After all, he is already asleep and has never tired before; what use could he have for it now?

~***~

Xiao has always had the screams of the damned ringing in the back of his mind. He doesn’t remember a time when this has not been the case. With time and training, he has long since learned to keep them under control with the rest of his karmic debt.

What a failure it is of his now that they claw at his thoughts, shrieking and howling as they drag themselves to the forefront of his mind.

A remnant of the nightmare he had just swallowed seizes Xiao by the throat and rakes its ghostly teeth up his neck, from collarbone to jaw, and the adeptus’s instincts force him to flinch. Yet, despite only wavering for a split second, that’s all the opportunity the old gods’ howling curses and vows of revenge need to take hold of him next, and their fury and resentment burn his soul upon his chest as a funeral pyre.

Thoughts choking on the darkness, Xiao collapses.

He hits a bed of sand that wasn’t there before, though he doesn’t have the capacity to question it in his agony. Anemo pulses around him as his sight fades, presumably from his Vision— he’s heard that they are sometimes prone to outbursts of the elements when their bearers are close to death, as if the Archon who bestowed it is trying to save them.

He hasn’t bothered to track the time, not diligently enough to know how long it’s been since he put on the mask, but now that he is dying, he wishes he knew how many years of his sentence he will have failed to serve.

Xiao shuts his eyes and stops fighting.

(There is a pleasant relief in his heart that comes with accepting his doom, knowing that his suffering will soon be done.)

((He is content to let the wind be the last to hold his body.))

Then, like the wild wind before a summer storm, everything vanishes— the screaming and the howling, the curses and the debts, the pain and all his agony— at the distinctive sound of a flute, ringing through the air.

Xiao takes in a breath of fresh air; it no longer feels as if his ribs are about to crack beneath the pressure. His wild, erratic heart calms and slows to a peaceful rate as the melody continues, lovely and clear. Its power is nothing short of a miracle, returning not only his sanity, but his hope and will to live as well. Only the damn near divine possess the strength of will necessary to keep debt-laden monsters such as himself from succumbing to their dues.

Xiao knows this, but it is not until dawn’s first light that he is lucid enough to even begin thinking about it. Previously unnoticed birds nearby take flight, showering him with their loose feathers as he gets to his feet, but before he can collect himself further, the sound of the flute comes to a stop, and melodic laughter takes its place.

“Thank Barbatos you survived— there were moments I worried you were no longer alive. That’s a relief, though it seems you still suffered beyond belief.”

Xiao freezes, his heart even skipping a beat in surprise. He hadn’t actually expected anyone else to be here, but at the same time, his situation dictates that here can only be inside someone’s dream.

Someone has seen him— is still seeing him, actually— right now in their dream. The realization restarts his heart, which beats just as wildly as before (though this time for different reasons), and he turns around.

Perhaps, he desperately thinks, the voice hadn’t come from a person outside himself at all.

Perhaps, he struggles to believe, both the song and the player were simply a figment of his torment, meant to lull him into a false sense of ending.

Perhaps, he hates to hope, he is already dead.

He sees a boyish figure, sitting high upon a rock and haloed by the light of the sun rising above the ocean behind him. The dreamer (his savior, though Xiao is not yet ready to call him such) crosses his legs and waves at Xiao, who does not know how to respond to such warmth and sincerity.

“Quite the shy one, I see. Cat caught your tongue?” the strange fellow teases with a grin. He lets his flute fade out in a shower of light and shifts to let Xiao catch sight of the Anemo Vision dangling from his hip. “I’m Venti the Bard, from the land the wind holds dear. I must say, however, that while I’ve met many a stranger through the years as I’ve traveled, I never expected to see someone like you here in my dreams.”

author's notes (bottom)

zhongli's lines reference the chinese three word classic/san zi jing, which is a classical children's text abt the importance of teaching n discipline n stuff. The specific lines were "教不嚴, 師之惰" (meant to be referenced in "I must be strict in correcting it" bc t/l roughly out to "if [a child is] not taught strictly, then the teacher is lazy/careless") and "玉不琢, 不成器" (roughly t/l to "uncut/unpolished jade can't be used for anything" n basically quoted wholesale).

I don't remember where I first heard "a flaw does not conceal jade's lustre" ("瑕不掩瑜"), but it comes from a different classic, the book of rites [by dai sheng]/li jing, which is actually mentioned in san zi jing. I had an intended meaning in mind when using these, and while i hope that it came across correctly, I'll still leave the final interpretation up to the reader bc I love death of the author. (I will still elaborate if asked tho lol)

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this idea was mostly vibes until suddenly it wasn't anymore. One day, I thought I was gonna finally write this one ganqing college au I've been thinking about for a while. then I blinked, and I started working on this like a man possessed.

Anyway, in the tags I mentioned that this is fairy tale inspired. Originally it was gonna be a retelling of a specific fairy tale w/the added challenge of using the canon setting, and it should still have a lot of meat from the middle of that fairy tale, but I don't know how obvious the parallels are gonna be. I wonder if you guys can guess which fairy tale inspired this. I think it's a pretty obvious one for xv considering um… the way xiao's worldview(?) lends itself to be interpreted.

who knows! :D I'll add what inspired it to the tags if someone gets it or when publishing is complete. It might make more sense once you know where I got the title.

That's about all that I think needs to be said for now. Feel free to leave comments or criticism if you are so inclined, and thank you for reading~

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