>> 005 | I’m a soldier, not a plaything

[acutabove]

[ Liyue is burning.

It had only been a few hours since the Snezhnayan army had landed on the city’s shores and in that time the soldiers had wasted no time cutting a swath of destruction and violence throughout the safe harbor. Merchant’s stalls were tipped over, their contents ransacked and pillaged. Temples burned on hilltops, shrines to the gods splattered with blood and viscera of their most devout followers. Ornate, gilded residences once home to nobles and elite politicians crumbled by the wayside and bodies of Liyue’s former citizens bled together in red trickles of blood that flowed like rivers through the streets.

Whatever class system that had been put in place before was inconsequential. There was far too much carnage to pick out the robes of a noble from ones of a commoner, and all parties bled the same.

It was uncertain what had prompted the attack. For all extents and purposes negotiations had been fine, with some trade ships conducting business as usual between the two nations as recently as a week ago.

One of the bodies laying in the street was a small figure garbed in Liyuen clothing, clutching a Snezhnayan matryoshka doll. Childe, better known as Tartaglia to his servants and Ajax to his close family, glanced over the grim sight and murmured a soft prayer before continuing on his way through the city. The bottoms of his boots and trousers were soaked with blood, stained until the fabric changed from a dull grey to a red so deep it was practically black.

He’d been pulled from his chambers by one of his men stumbling in, clothes ripped and tattered, blood flowing from a wound in his side. He’d yelled something about a surprise Millelith ambush and how several of his comrades had already been taken out while they were ransacking the Golden House, and then promptly passed out.

As Childe made his way there he took note of the destruction of the city with something like satisfaction and elation in his dark blue eyes. Perhaps it was because of his status as a Harbinger or maybe because his upbringing was less than conventional, but this was the sort of environment that he thrived in.

Bodies of Liyuen citizens littered the ground underfoot in the walk he took to reach the doors of the Golden House, and before stepping within he noted how they were slightly ajar, small handprints of blood standing out on the wood next to larger ones slimmer than his own.

How strange. He wondered if people had tried to take sanctuary here before the Fatui found them, or if they’d been chased here and sought to make their final stand in one of Liyue’s most well-known landmarks.

He sincerely hoped no blood got on the mora. From the last time he’d visited the mint he remembered that the caretakers tended to just leave it laying around in piles.

As he steps inside Childe finds himself staring at a scene of such carnage and violence he can’t help the catch of his breath, the way his pupils dilate while something warm and hot burns under his skin.

His men lay on the floor, clothes ripped and torn with the press of a blade or a spear. It’s a pole arm, he concludes, when he lifts his eyes and catches sight of a few more of his men surrounding a man with long brown hair dipped in gold.

And gods, he thinks. This man is a vision.

He wields the pole arm effortlessly, as though it’s another part of him. Childe watches as his men go flying with the force used against them, the butt of the shaft used in connection with an open palm to force the Fatui into giving the foreigner a wide berth.

Childe thinks he recognizes the uniform as something of similar make to the Millelith, but he’s not sure. There’s too much blood staining down the man’s front to be able to tell, and Childe hopes not all of it is this beautiful foreigner’s. ]

Enough. [ He calls out, voice ringing authoritatively in the open space. His men on the floor groan in reply. Childe keeps his gaze on the man in front of him, desire thrumming through his veins. ]

You’ve given my men quite the work out, haven’t you? [ It comes out teasingly as though there isn’t a Fatui lying limp with his arm missing. ]

My name is Tartaglia, Eleventh of Her Majesty the Tsaritsa’s Harbingers. But you can call me Childe.

[ And he smiles, the gesture so innocent it’s unfitting for the bloody scene all around them. ]

And what are you called, my lovely?