Tales from Teyvat

The Final Battle (Alatus)

The night was young. The maiden moon had just shown herself, as constellations lighting the skies slowly gave the battlefield a gruesome serenity. While the ranks tediously stood on attention, Haolun couldn't help but turn his head upwards. How big of an apath could he be? His elders and the village astrologer had told him that he now had a place among those twinkling lights.

'No matter how far away in this world you wander, your stars will always watch over you, guiding you to your true calling', they preached. Used...to preach actually.

Some looked to the skies with a sense of reverence, a hopeful eye; some others averted this belief. Nonetheless, most every Visionary Haolun knew had some sense of a sided view towards their constellation. He found himself to not align with either side. His apathy had deteriorated his opinionation.

Haolun immediately changed his train of thought. This was a cave he was not ready to explore yet.

Well what kind of thoughts can you even have about kindling... except this I guess, he thought to himself. And it was true in quite a few regards. What great role could incendo – his constellation – play? No matter how he looked at it, kindling always seemed like the most insignificant part of making a fire. Now, even more so, since he didn't even need kindling to light a fire.

This uncomfortable contemplation was what Haolun was doing, while everyone else was probably waiting for them to descend. The Guardians of Liyue. The leaders of men, who commanded battlefields like archons commanded elements. Destruction was second nature to those redeemed demons, and fierce loyalty to Morax, first. They were Teyvat's strongest weapon against Khaenri'ah, as were they the first and last line of defense...

The Yakshas.

The battle horn blared from both sides, and the towering monsters that were born Beneath began trudging through the battlefield. Some caught wind and started flying with weird spinning wings. Other spindly things moved by slithering on the ground, while some more started floating like fishes. Those monsters always looked lifeless, yet somehow all of them held pyro visions. From far away, they seemed to be moving very slowly, but so did a tsunami. Just one of those undead creatures was capable of vanquishing an entire village's worth of humans.

And here, a force which was three thousand strong, stood against five hundred humans and five Yakshas. Lady Dust – the smartest tactician known in this war spanning millenia – somehow deemed such a meager army worthy of defeating the enemy. That too, for good. And Haolun was a part of this army.

As if on cue, five streaks of pure and radiant elemental energies pierced through the sky. As they approached closer to the field, the lights split apart to create distance for what was to follow...

The Yakshas struck the earth with the force of a thousand Vortex Vanquishers, exploding into brilliant orbs of mighty elemental energy. The blasting force of cyclonic wind, the terrible crackle of thunder, the quash of a crashing tidal wave, the razing heat of an infernal void, and the unnerving rumble of the very ground, denoted where each Yaksha had landed. How they knew to descend perfectly in front of their respective companies, no one knew. But perhaps it was their very celestiality that allowed such perfection.

Having struck right onto the advancing enemy's army, the Yakshas had easily managed to distract the creatures. They were already engaging in combat, leaving behind craters so massive they could contain whole hamlets within. But for now, they were perfect vantage points for the companies to advance into – and join – the Final Battle, or so Lady Dust called it.

Haolun's company – named the Pyromaniacs by their commander, Ambustus Nemesios – lurched into a steady march. As the speed caught up, so did everyone's spirit. Haolun could feel his heart trying to beat out of his chest, not because of the pace – he was a considerably healthy man – but the anxiety of war. His ears heard nothing, for the thrumming of his comrades' feet on the barren lands were deafening. Vigor rose within his body, like a glaze lily opening eagerly to the envelopes of this bright night. His eyes widened in anticipation, for a single missed beat could potentially be life threatening. His legs felt sore, but he felt like a piece of metal; unfeeling and perpetual, for he kept moving his feet forward nonetheless. Whether it was peer pressure or eagerness, he did not know, but it was doing wonders for his apathy. Archons, he was feeling excited!