Aether and the Multiverse of Madness (Xiaother)

That Feeling You Get When You 'Die' and Transcend Dimensions.

I open my eyes to a cheerfully bright sun and a brilliant blue sky.

Too brilliant a sky for a day where I live, the big city.

Wait...

Lumine!

I quickly get up but crouch down again as sharp pain shoots through my chest.

That's right...

I'd been stabbed. How am I alive? Am I...not alive? Is that why the sky is so blue?

But..if I am dead, why is my chest still hurting?

Shouldn't all my wounds have been healed?

I raise my head and look around.

Wait, I don't recognize my surroundings at all.

What the heck? Where am I? Was I taken somewhere when I got stabbed? What happened to Xiao?

I'm about to go into shock and lie down on the ground and cry when the snapping of a branch or something from behind me surprises me.

I quickly turn my head to confront whoever is behind me.

Or...whatever?

My eyes fall on a small creature wearing a strange mask.

What is that? It looks like...what I'd imagine a tiny werewolf to look like except it looks more human but sports a lion's mane.

And it carries a club in its hands.

And it looks like it wants to kill me.

The strange thing rushes me and I'm barely able to jump to the side to avoid its attack.

Uh oh.

I can't really do anything but slowly bleed, as it appears that my chest wound hasn't fully healed.

I try to stand up shakily.

Damn, this thing is barely up to my chest. Short bastard.

I reach into my pockets for my phone, but it isn't there.

Shit.

I'm currently I don't even know where without my phone all while being attacked by a miniscule thing that I don't even know what it is.

This can't get any worse.

"Oya, want some help with that?" A familiar voice says.

I was incorrect.

"V-venti?" Venti but dressed like...Peter Pan? Robin Hood? What the hell?

"The one and only~" Venti sings. "You know what, I'll help you anyways. Y'know, it's not every day the Traveler has problems with a singular hilichurl!"

Honestly, things have gotten so weird at this point that I'm honestly beginning to think that Venti's pulling a joke on me.

That's when he pulls out the bow.

Venti'd gone from standing next to me to placing an arrow in a harp-looking bow that he pulled from God knows where.

He fires his arrow and it hits the thing I guess called a Hilichurl right in its mask with deadly accuracy.

"Venti, what the fuck!?" I say.

"What?" Venti asks cheerfully.

"What the fresh hell was that?" I ask, still in major shock. Since when did Venti have a bow? And where did it even come from anyways?

"What was what?" Venti asks.

I take in a quick deep breath to prevent myself from straight up strangling the shorter boy.