#they speak...

[ruleofvee]

and also this one for the cyno-fontaine fake death au we also threw around. we're generating these aus at the speed of light

--

The rough fabric of the hood they’d put on Cyno chafes. It traps the air, turning everything much more warm and humid than it had to be- it almost feels like Sumeru, but with much less kindness and much less light.

That thought makes him huff out a laugh, and Cyno can feel the exhale he’d just let out linger against his cheeks. His head hurts. How funny, that it’s the nation of Hydro and yet, not a single sip of water has been spared for him.

You see. It’s funny because it has to be funny, because if it’s not funny then Cyno will start thinking and historically, that’s proven to be a pretty shit thing to happen to his sanity. Common sense. General well-being. Haha, general.

See: the thought that started this chain of events in the first place.

The rope tugs taught around his wrists, making him stumble for a single step before he quickly catches himself. Cyno had learnt this- invaluable skill, actually, in the desert. Little snippets of memory at the side of oases and hills of sand, seas of sand. He’d been taught to dance with the shifts of sands.

His wrists are burning with a newly-refreshed pain. The ache of too-tight rope pressing into abrasions and bruises. An ache in general. The throbbing feeling of nerves being abused too often and injuries forming before old ones could heal fully.

And then- the ground shifts into a new texture. Sun-warmed dirt instead of cool stone. Breeze against his skin.

The soft, rasping sound, of metal being drawn.

Cyno freezes.

i wanted to write a lil something to accompany this but then Finals Week happened

i love this tho its so good <3 ty for writing it <333

[ruleofvee]

VEEVEE GIVE ME NUMBER 5

You have excellent taste. It's 'Burn It All Down' from the League of Legends ost by PVRIS and it lived in my head rent free for a week

Favorite lyric: And they gonna watch you step over the ashes/Right now I'm taking my turn with the matches

[ruleofvee]

a small snippet for the au we were tossing around in dms:

-- Nahida, over the course of this somehow incredibly long-yet-short few months, has learnt quite a few things. Taught a few things. First and foremost is the injustice of her situation. The anger at it hadn’t come easy. She’d tasted the first scraps of it with Cyno first, her newfound yet incredibly old left hand. Cyno of the desert. Cyno the scholar. Cyno of the scales of justice.

The upset at what had happened to him had come first, because, as Nahida knows but did not know; it is easier to recognize chains that are not wrapped around your own wrists. It’s easier to see wrongs inflicted on someone else.

The realization had come to her like a gentle rain upon parched ground. Seeping slowly into her until it permeated every inch of her being until the realisation- What was done to me was wrong.

And then: It shouldn’t have happened.

And secondly, Nahida had learnt her capacity for rebellion. It’s often the stolen things that are the sweetest- time, moments, lives. It’s no different for gods than for humans. She’d say that it’s even sweeter for gods. Gods who have the world laid down at their feet, or at the very least, should have. Gods who have everything find it hard to have anything that’s stolen.

But. But, Nahida isn’t exactly a normal god, is she? Lord of Dendro, Lord of Sumeru, the little baby god of wisdom with her birthright stolen from her. Little bird all chained up, a hawk made to play the role of a songbird.

The rebellion comes to her, and it tastes as sweet as the deepest well-water. As satisfying as the most hidden of knowledge. There had been nothing wrong with what Nahida was doing, Nahida-and-Cyno, working together to root out the snakes in her garden. Driving the rot out, outside-in.

It’s the reclaiming that tastes bitter to her, as alien as that should be.

Adds my own snippet too heehee

~=~

“Your god wasn't enough for you.” Nahida’s voice, heartbroken and angry. 

“Your General was not enough for you.” Cyno, low and hissing. His polearm drags slightly on the ground behind him, tracing a faint line. “Did you think you could escape my reach?”

Azar’s words are heaving and fearful. “You're a monster.”

Cyno - the creature that looks like Cyno, the being wearing his face, half god and half mortal - tilts their head. “You said I had no authority to judge you. That I was just a mortal in the way of your creation. That I was insufficient.”

And this time, their voices speak in tandem, echoing in subtle mockery: “If that's the case, then how about the judgment of a god?”