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The Interdarshan Championship has hit its second phase. Tasked to find Ley Line Disruptor Beacons in the sands, the competitors spread out in various directions.
The esteemed Madam Faruzan recalls a time she was came across a Primal Construct that was acting abnormally within a certain vicinity. She heads there, presuming she can find the next key to winning this championship.
She reaches her destination, armed with a shovel for digging. Not before long, The Traveler and Paimon, who are acting as tournament commentators, approach her to ask about her progress. She assures them that she's in it to win it with her standard exaggerated confidence. After sending them on their way to go find Kaveh, she turns her attention back to her digging spot.
“Alright! Let's get to it.” With a smile, she starts digging, eager to claim her prize.
After a few heavy scoops of sand, she's formed a small pit that she herself fits inside just nicely. She wipes some sweat from her brow, fanning herself with her dress.
“My my. I didn't think this darned thing would be so deep.” She says out loud to herself. “Ugh, I really have to put my back into this one.”
She keeps digging herself deeper into the hole, getting slightly frustrated. Suddenly she pauses, and listens closely. She can hear the beeping of the device! Getting down on her hands and knees, she digs at the sand with her own hands. Eventually, she uncovers the Disruptor Beacon.
“Huzzah! There you are, you sneaky little thing.” She sings as she grabs on, but the beacon is a bit more resistant than she anticipated. After digging around it, she can see it's slightly embedded into some rock. Archons know how that happened.
She huffs, grabbing her shovel to pry the beacon out. After some resistance, she huffs again in frustration. “Ugh, stop being such a stubborn dastard! I have a competition to win!”
With that, she hits the shovel against the stone which dislodges the beacon. With a satisfied and triumphant smirk, she reaches down to claim her prize. But suddenly, the impact of where her shovel hit and the resulting alcove where the beacon had been starts cracking, breaking. The ground beneath her gives away, and she finds herself falling into darkness.
“What the-” She hesitates before finding herself in free fall, she yells out in surprise as she rapidly descends towards the floor as gravity dictates.
In an act of quick, yet desperate thinking, she tosses out her Vairambhaka device towards her descending point. When it clatters against the floor, it lets out a repulsive blast of Anemo energy. The sudden force of the blast violently twists Faruzan’s body in the air, sending her sideways and tumbling along the stone floor.
The stone and sand that had crumbled away in her fall piles up quickly and unexpectedly. Faruzan sees the incoming rush of sand and in her dazed state, rolls her body away before she's caught and buried. Once the silence dies down, Faruzan opens her eyes.
Complete, blinding darkness. The hole from where she had fallen had been sealed due to the downpour of sand from the surface above.
“Urghh… ack! ack!” Faruzan starts coughing up sand that she had swallowed. Her heaving and violent coughs for air echo through… wherever she is. She gags hard, and upchucks a glob of sand and spit onto the floor, finally getting airflow.
“Wh- what happened? Where am I?” She recalls her Vairambhaka from the floor. And it emits a small light, but not a powerful one. Faruzan groans as she wipes blood from her now split open lip. Looking down at herself, she's quite battered. Clothes dirty, knees scraped, bruises on her arm. She winces as she finds her footing, and looks around at the darkness surrounding her.
She throws her polyhedron out to survey the area around her. It whirs close to a wall and starts outlining the perimeter of the room. Using her vast knowledge, she quickly concludes that she's… she's fallen into a ruin.
Faruzan's eyes widen at the revelation, and she turns herself and the Vairambhaka towards the cave-in point and shouts. “Hey! Can anyone hear me!? I need help!”
No response.
Her heart accelerates, but she eases herself, she needs to think rationally. She ponders her options, but her head is still aching from her fall. “Maybe I can blow away the sand… No, I don't want to risk making things worse.”
Seeing there's no way back out in that direction, her heart leaps more. Her breathing grows rapid, and her eyes widen once again. This situation is all too familiar, too painstakingly familiar…
“No… no no no… no…” She whispers to herself, feeling the panic start to grow within herself. She turns her back and walks with haste towards the wall of the room, trying to locate a way out. It's hard for her to focus, her body is aching, and her mind is racing. “This can't be happening…”
She runs her hands along the wall, using her knowledge to try and find a release. Her hands shake, and fingers tremble. She whimpers in slight desperation, “Please…”
After walking halfway along the wall opposite of the cave-in point, she continues to feel around to desperately find something, anything. Her hand eventually finds a release, and pushes into the stone. After some resistance, she slams her body against the wall. It pops open to reveal a hidden doorway. Faruzan lets out a steady sigh of relief at the discovery. And she pauses to calm down.
“Steady yourself, Faruzan. It's okay. This isn't going to be like last time…” She opens her eyes, her angular pupils slightly dilating as she gazes into the darkness before her. Despite her calming nerves, a hint of desperation still escapes her.
“It won't be like last time…”
With that, she walks through the door. Using her Vairambhaka as a weak light source that barely extends more than 4 feet out in front of her. She watches her steps carefully so as to not accidentally step on any hidden mechanisms. Her uneven breathing and racing heart is all she can hear.
“It's okay. It's okay. You're alright.” She continuously repeats to herself, needing to assure herself, needing to rebuild her confidence. “Th- this is nothing…”
“There's no one better at ruin exploration than Madam Faruzan.” Is a common sentiment shared among the students of the Akademiya because it's an unequivocal truth. Faruzan has explored more ancient ruins than students currently attending the Akademiya, and she's solved hundreds of puzzle-like mechanisms with ease. She's not called the “Master of Ingenious Devices” for nothing.
With all these feats under belt, one would think escaping a ruin like this would be child’s play for the elder. To Faruzan herself, it normally would be. However, falling into a ruin, while not a completely uncommon occurrence, is still dangerous. To Faruzan specifically though, it reminds her too much of the one ruin she couldn't conquer with ease… the one that stole a lifetime from her.
After a few steps in the sheer darkness, Faruzan throws out her Vairambhaka to illuminate the area as she did the room prior. It flies around the room, and Faruzan makes a mental note of the wall formations, drawing a map in her mind of where she is. As the polyhedron continues its steady scan of the area for the Madam, she notices a noteworthy structure. A raised, stone table.
Upon further inspection, Faruzan sees inscriptions on the flat surface. And on the side, the table has seemingly collapsed, revealing an interior. It's no table, it's a coffin.
“A coffin, huh? I'm in a tomb… a tomb.” She lets out an exasperated laugh, though not a confident one. She can at least be rest assured she's not in a similar ruin to… the one. But given her general feelings and mental state at the current moment, a tomb seems like nothing but a bad omen for her.
“A tomb… This should be easy then.” She whispers, recalling the many tombs she has explored in her lifetimes. With that knowledge, she quickly draws a map in her mind, remembering the way similar structures were designed.
With a shuddering sigh, a hard swallow and another wipe of her busted lip, she presses on towards where she has outlined where the exit should be in her mind.
“Not through here… No, here.” She muses quietly, walking through the sacred tomb at her own pace. She passes through dusty and sandy doorways, uncovering hidden passageways and solving puzzles that she's solved before in the past. “This one is more decrepit than normal…”
Her heart maintains a steady and fast beat. She's regained some confidence, but the feelings of uneasiness and the lingering thoughts won't go away. She's doing everything in her power at the moment to maintain a steady demeanor.
Faruzan expertly navigates her way through even with her visibility at a minimum. The glow of her Vairambhaka being the only spark of hope she has to escaping this place. She reaches a large room. It's the centralmost room of the tomb, and from here, it should expand in 4 directions, with one being the exit.
“Almost there, Faruzan…” she whispers as she approaches a tablet that sits by the largest door. Her heart rate speeds up drastically as she stands before the tablet. She's observed this tomb feels and looks way older than most other ruins, she hopes and prays that the technology of King Deshret’s era still works here.
“Please turn on. Please please please.” She whispers, tracing her fingers along the ancient tablet. Every second the tablet doesn't respond makes her worries grow higher and higher. “Just do it…”
She gives the tablet’s surface a desperate but gentle pat. The tablet suddenly springs to life, illuminating the area with its neon blue glow. Faruzan lets out a hefty sigh of relief. “Thank the gods.”
Her celebration is cut short by a small roadblock. It's locked, barring her from entry. She huffs in frustration but it's no big deal, this has happened many times before. All it takes is a little puzzle solving and she'll crack it open.
Her fingers tremble, even though she knows she's close to freedom. As she's deciphering the tablet and the nearby walls for hints for a password, a looming shadow of doubt starts to creep up from the back of her brain. What if it doesn't work? What if it's not as simple as she may think? It's happened before, many times in fact, but she keeps thinking of the one time it cost her dearly.
“Got it…” Faruzan murmurs before she returns to the tablet, nervous and full of trepidation. Her fingers trace along the tablet's glowing surface and patterns as she inputs the deciphered code. Though, her nervousness gets the better of her. Her trembling finger slips and she misinputs the code. The tablet flashes red from the mistake before it returns to its blue hue, the failsafe hasn't triggered yet. She can try again.
But she doesn't.
Faruzan jolts back from the red flash, and she looks down at the blue tablet ready for her to correct herself with hollow eyes… She turns around and slides down the base of the tablet until she's sitting on the floor. The flashbacks hit her instantly. The flashes, the screaming, the failures… the never ending amount of failures…
“No… No… No… No…” She pants, the panic starts to set in. Her hands fly to her face as tears start streaming down her face, dripping off of her chin and onto her dress. Her body is trembling as she begins hyperventilating. Her throat catches a lump, and strained gasps and whimpers start pushing their way out of her mouth. “Not again- Nghh… Not again…”
Her worst fears are coming back to her. To say her time in that ruin is a scar is not true, it's still very much an open wound. She tosses and turns late at night. Plagued by nightmares that she'll be back there, that she'll be stuck again.
That she'll be alone again.
She's scared.
Nobody is here for her. Nobody is coming to save her, she thinks. Those faces, she can see them clearly. Collei, Cyno, Tighnari, Kaveh, Layla, The Traveler… The people who helped pick her back up on her feet when she was at her lowest. She's going to forget them… Their faces will eventually fade away like the faces of her parents all those years ago. Becoming nothing but a distant memory…
Out of options, unable to get proper sentences out, she falls back to her last bastion. Her Vision. Fumbling with her dress, she unhooks her cyan Vision and holds it closely to her face, pressing her lips to the bead. Like a lifeline, she holds onto her most sacred treasure that she holds so dear to herself, something she values more than her own life at times.
Faruzan's vision is more than a research tool. It's more than a force that powers her Vairambhaka. It's more than a gift from the heavens above.
To Faruzan, her vision is her constant, never-ending reminder of her resilience. After the blinding lights of the Sumeru sun scorched her irises, and after her body collapsed with exhaustion, dehydration, and hunger after 100 long years… She found her Vision. It's a symbol that she made it through the worst of the worst, to show that she is still strong, and always will have an unbreakable willpower.
Her breathing slows as she kisses the Vision. Her body gradually slows down the trembling, and her throat opens up once again. Out comes a strangled cry as her face is streaked with tears and snot runs from her nose.
“Y- you can do it… You can do it…” She reassures herself. Looking into the small, glowing Anemo Vision, she finds strength once again.
Hooking her Vision back onto her dress and wiping her face. She stands back up with her Vairambhaka floating by her side, looking down at the stone tablet.
“Find your way again…” She whispers. Her fingers start on the tablet again, tracing the patterns along the facing. Her nerves are steeled, and she's focused.
“I- it's just a s- simple mechanism… What am I getting so worked up for?” She laughs to herself as her fingers continue their dance along the stone facing. With a swirl of her finger that she connects into a J shape, the tablet flashes blue. And the large, stone door rumbles as it slowly opens up.
Faruzan feels the sudden rush of wind as air floods into the tomb. It's freedom. But she's not completely out of the blue yet. The tomb was connected to a cave, so it's still extremely dark. But she doesn't care, nothing can stop the Madam now.
With her Vairambhaka to guide her through the cavern, she marches through it with determination. After a few minutes of walking, she can see it. Sunlight. It peeks out through a few rocks that block the path to the outside world.
Faruzan sneers, gritting her teeth in sheer and utter frustration. She throws her arm back, and points at the loose formations. Her Vairambhaka Gear barrels towards the rocks like a bullet as she screams, “MOVE!”
With a powerful pulse of Anemo energy, the rocks are dislodged and blasted backwards to make way for an exit. Faruzan rushes through the opening to finally bathe in the scorching sunlight of the Sumeru desert sun. She looks out at the rocky terrain with tears in her eyes, she had triumphed once again.
But something happens that she couldn't even expect. A familiar face descends and lands in the sand in front of her, looking down at her with an impassive gaze. It's that weirdo representing Vahumana?
“H- hat guy?” Faruzan pushes herself up to look the boy in the face. It's the last person she could've expected to come to her rescue.
“Are you hurt?” Hat Guy says with an unamused tone. He already knows the answer just by looking at her current state. Her ruffled hair, her bruised arm, scraped knees, and blood red face from tears.
Faruzan sighs, wiping a tear from her eye. “A little banged up, but still in good shape.”
“Good. Make sure you watch where you step next time.” He says with that monotone voice that carries the slightest hint of snark that peeves Faruzan.
Brushing aside her annoyance at the callousness of her rescuer,she looks at his backside. “H- how did you even find me?”
Hat Guy looks at her over his shoulder. He pauses for a bit, as if choosing his next words carefully. “Intuition.”
It's an answer that leaves Faruzan a bit skeptical, but it's an answer she's willing to accept given her current circumstances. With that word said, Hat Guy begins to walk away, leaving her behind. With wide eyes, she watches him walk not even 5 steps before he stops in place. He stays quiet for what borders on an uncomfortable amount of time.
“Fine.” He sighs before he turns back to Faruzan. Keeping that same impassive facial expression. “Do you need me to escort you?”
She nods a few times. Even though she powered through the situation. Deep down, she still doesn't want to be left alone. Not again, though she won't admit that outright.
Hat Guy walks towards her, getting only 2 paces away from her before he turns around and gets on one knee. “Get on.”
It sounded like a demand, but Faruzan is too desperate to scold him for his behavior. She presses herself against his backside and wraps her arms around his neck. He then grabs her legs, looping his arms around her knees, holding her steady.
“Now let's get you back before people start to miss you.” He says in what Faruzan initially picks up as condescending, but reading between the lines, she can sense a twinge of genuineness in his words. His hat disappears from his head to form a halo behind them. And with a sudden burst of speed, he rockets off from where they were standing. Faruzan's eyes widen as she holds on tight, looking at the Sumeru landscape below them as they fly back towards Aaru Village.
Even though Hat Guy is that one weird student with an attitude who also frequently talks to himself. Faruzan knows he's a good kid. She presses her head against his back. Fighting back tears, “Thank you.”