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Xiao can’t remember the last time chains were strong enough to bind him, let alone a time when chains were strong enough to—to hurt him.
“Oh, Conqueror of Demons…” The voices clicked and rattled, inhuman and slick with wrath. “Oh, Conqueror of Demons, Conqueror of Demons… so small, and weary… brought to your knees…”
Their viscous bodies smelled like boiling calcium, and when he inhaled, it was hot. Not hot to touch, but hot to breathe, like pepper flakes ground to ashes and mixed with finer dust. The chains were fashioned from iron. He’d been bitten by whatever those damnations were, teeth like knives in the back of his neck, and his side, and his blood ran thin and slippery, burning with each second it coursed.
“Our brothers suffered much at the hands of things like you,” the creatures garbled, each one with more than one voice. “Vengeance… vengeance is finally ours, Conqueror of Demons… your blood on our hands, just as their blood was on yours…”
Claws, lashing. Shearing through his skin. Slammed into stone floor. Bitten again. Again. Venom. Xiao kept his head, even when it cracked against the floor. Energy. He tucked away energy, piece by piece, anything that made it above the venom and the pain and daily suffocating karmic debt.
“Die! Die! Die! Die!”
Unhinged. Their wrath soaked into him, just as his blood soaked into the brick floor and his chains and his clothes and his hair. Matted. The monsters advanced with teeth and venom and unquenchable rage.
Eventually, though, he had enough energy to move. His Vision flared and he lunged, chains snapping as his polearm leapt in his hand. The demons shrieked. Karma thrashed against the pull of his divine Vision, and the familiar pain was relieving. The familiarity grounded, and it didn’t take more than three pounds before the monsters were nothing but disintegrating ashes. Their karma seeped into his heart, and he choked on it. That familiarity was… less comforting.
But it was over.
Slowly, leaning on his spear, Xiao found his way out of their prison and into the night.
It’s raining now. Xiao’s hands are slippery with rain and blood and sweat and karma. It’s scarcely even a walking support anymore, he can barely hold onto it. He drags his feet through grass and mud, knees tight. The venom in his blood is pulverizing. A pain shrapnels through his chest and he gasps in air. His lungs stutter, taking in a fraction of what he needs. His throat boils.
At least it’s raining. He’s… less likely to be spotted while it’s dark and raining.
He loses his grip, his hands slippery with blood, and he catches himself on one leg. His knee buckles, but he grinds his teeth. Stand. Keep standing. Keep moving, move—
“Xiao! Xiao, is that you!? Xi—!”
Familiar.
Xiao’s head jerks to the side, a hand involuntarily reaching for the mask at his hip—but it’s Aether and Paimon, Aether holding his scarf over his head to keep off the rain, Paimon faring similarly with both hands. A headrush makes Xiao dizzy, and he tastes blood.
“Traveler,” Xiao manages, taking one step toward him, “I…”
Aether dives forward and Xiao falls listlessly into his arms. Aether’s chest is warm, heartbeat steady but jackhammering. He… smells like Mondstadt, which is comforting in its own way. Xiao dares to take a breath again. It hurts.
“Paimon, go tell Verr we found him! Tell her to get medical supplies, whatever she’s got—”
“Paimon’s on it!”
“Xiao?” Paimon buzzes off. Aether’s voice crescendos over the rain in Xiao’s ears. “Xiao, what happened to you? You’re—you’re bleeding from everywhere, I— teeth?—”
Xiao’s chest hitches. The rain is stifling.
“Okay—I’m going to carry you, I, I’m going to carry you, Xiao, hang in there—” Aether hauls him onto his back with a grunt but moves like Xiao weighs nothing. It hurts. Every footfall jostles every wound from the deep to the shallow to the wide to the thin to the stinging to the burning. But Aether is warm. Wangshu Inn is safe. Verr isn’t going to harm him. Those monsters are dead, dead, dead—dead and siphoned into the earth itself with no chart for reincarnation.
He hears a door bang open.
“There they are!” Paimon, her voice shrill, scared. “Aether! Here! I got Verr and Huai’an!”
“Xiao!” He feels Verr’s hand on his shoulder, then it moves to brush his hair away from his face. Xiao flinches. “Oh, my gods—bring him inside, quickly, I have his room prepared and a healer is on the way—”
Aether hikes Xiao up further, tightening his grip. Huai'an steps in and pulls Xiao gently from Aether’s back into his own arms. Pain rivets through him like bolts driven into the foundations of a ship, and Xiao—
Chokes.
He wants to scream, lash out, something. Pain is always lesser when turned into movement but now he… chokes. He can do nothing. He pries his eyes open beyond the hazy blood and grime and leftover… whatever came out of those monsters, and Huai'an looks down at him, his eyes wider than Xiao’s ever seen them.
“Hang in there, son,” Huai'an says, turning, “hang in there—”
Huai'an chases Verr upstairs, Aether and Paimon right on their heels. Xiao’s vision dips in and out, even with his eyes open. Huai'an settles him down onto a bed and a flip switches in Xiao’s head.
“No—” he struggles, thrashing unproductively, voice torn apart, “no, I—n-not—”
“Xiao.” Verr presses down onto his forehead. “You are not lying on the floor with these injuries. Beds can be washed. I’ve been meaning to change these godawful sheets out, anyway; they might be older than you are.”
That’s a joke, but Xiao’s not in the mood. Wangshu Inn isn’t a hospital, it’s a business, Verr’s business, damn it—
His heart stutters on a thick douse of venom, and he chokes again, lungs flaring. Verr’s smile disappears.
“Hang in there,” she urges. “Aether, press one of those towels into his side, there's a lot of blood—oh, my god, Xiao—”
The towel is pressed into his ribcage.
Xiao’s vision whites out.
The next thing he knows, he’s being turned over onto his chest. His lungs tighten. He kicks out again, again—he can’t breathe, there's too much pressure on his chest already he can’t breathe if they—
“It’s only for a second, Xiao, only for a second.” Verr pins him by the back of his shoulders, her touch deliberate, gentle enough that he could still push her off but desperate enough that he won’t. “We have to get those teeth out of your back, hold on.”
Something wet is poured over his back, his shoulderblades, his sides. He cries out, but disciplines his body into stillness. If he lashes out he’s going to hurt them. He will not hurt them. He will not hurt them. He will not hurt th—
Aether presses Xiao’s hand between both his own, and he feels Paimon’s fingers wrap around his wrist, too. It’s warm, and Aether squeezes and tells him to hang on, and—
Huai'an yanks one of the teeth from his back.
Xiao screams.
Again. Twice again. Xiao blacks out and wakes up to it again. Again. More disinfectant, water, whatever it is, poured over his back and pressed with towels and gauze and salves. Verr strokes his forehead, whispering gently. Aether presses hard against the towel in his wound. It hurts.
“Xiao,” Huai'an steps into his line of sight, reaching out to settle his hand across Xiao’s forehead. Xiao swallows hard, blinks upward at him. “I know how much you hate it,” Huai'an says heavily. “But I still have those sedatives that that older gentleman left for you, and I… I urge you to take them. Please, Xiao.”
He’s scaring them. He’s in pain, and his pain is scaring them. Aether, Verr, Paimon, Huai'an… the venom is bright, alighting through his blood like demonic fireflies, and he… doesn’t want to be a part of this anymore.
He nods, and Huai'an pats his head before dipping out of sight. He returns with a small cup of water in one hand and a thimble of clear, thick medicine in the other.
“Drink this first,” Huai'an says, kneeling. He and Verr support his head so he can drink, and the water does help, chasing away the blotting copper in his throat, softening the fierce burn of venom. Next comes the sedative, which tastes like absolutely nothing. Xiao swallows and they let him sink back into his bed, closing his eyes.
“I’m glad you chose to come here,” Verr says.
Xiao nods again. “It… wasn’t a hard choice,” he slurs. Truthfully, he doesn’t remember making the decision to come here at all: his legs carried him, and he went. “Thank you. Thank you, too, Traveler, and Paimon…”
Aether smiles, giving his hand another squeeze. Xiao doesn’t mind the contact so much.
The next time Xiao wakes up, he is bandaged, clean, dressed down into one of the simple dark-colored robes that Verr lends impromptu guests, and he… isn’t in any less pain, but he can tell that his wounds have been stitched and treated, and while the venom is still present it’s no longer scorching him alive.
A cold handkerchief is spread over his forehead, and Xiao pushes through the dizziness to look up. He didn’t notice Verr beside him, or Huai'an. They’re both present, looking worriedly over him. Aether and Paimon are nowhere to be seen.
“Welcome back,” Verr murmurs, her brow furrowed. “You weren’t out for as long as I hoped… how are you feeling?”
“Better,” Xiao manages. “Less filthy.”
“Well, you’ve a fever now,” Huai'an says, “so I can’t imagine you’re feeling much better. Hope you don’t mind us changing you into some clean clothes.”
“I don’t.” The bedding is clean, too. So are his bandages. Everything is clean and warm. “Did… Did the Traveler leave…?”
“Only to fetch help,” Verr says. “The healer we called in last night, she got held up by the storm. Aether said he knew someone from Liyue harbor that might be able to help. Those… bites haven’t healed at all, Xiao.”
“Did you keep the teeth?” Xiao croaks.
“Huai'an did,” Verr says, glancing behind her for her husband. “I nearly threw them into the bonfire and was done with it, but he realized they’d been venomous. That’s when Aether left for the specialist.”
“The venom will pass on its own,” Xiao says. “It’s already less taxing.”
Neither of which are lies, but they are grievous understatements.
Verr sighs. He feels kind of guilty for it. “Regardless, I won’t hear of you being in any more pain, so you’re just going to have to learn to cope with this specialist of Aether’s and not be so stubborn.”
As expected. Xiao lets himself relax into the blankets, knowing he can’t argue. He hasn’t a clue who this specialist is of Aether’s, but Aether’s network of people is leagues broader than Xiao’s. Overwhelmingly so.
“Thank him for me,” Xiao says. His thoughts are fuzzing up like mold, and there's little he can do to save face. “Remind him that it isn’t necessary to go this far for my sake.”
“I will thank him for you,” Verr says.
That’s all she says. Xiao sighs to himself, and his body drags his consciousness down under with it to sleep.