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herrsherofsorrow · 9 months

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Little Tempest

Sigh 😩😤, Kafka…Blade… god damn bastards stolen my mind and all I can think about it is those two. Then Kafka’s fucking banger of a trailer comes out and i couldn’t help but have a story idea. All I’ll share is if you have played Punishing Gray Raven and know about Selena, then you can get a grasp on where this could lead to.

My dumbass forgot to switch public post to draft post

Warnings, this will be taking place during and after Jarilo-VI but before Xianzhou Luofu

For Elio to summon everyone’s presence was rare but to express concerns about the future of the Trailblazer, Caelus, now that was new. Kafka with Blade following behind her enters the meeting where they are greeted by Elio, Silverwolf, and Sam.

“Sorry for being late everyone.” Kafka spoke unapologetically as she and Blade moved further into the room to join Silverwolf and Sam in front of Elio.

“You two are unbelievable and learn to lock doors, next time you get them Sam.” Sliverwolf complained, gagging remembering moments before when Elio requested their presence she was sent to get Kafka not knowing Blade was there. It led to an unsavory sight for her poor eyes.

“You’ll understand once you have a partner, Silver-“ Kafka teased, her and Blade’s relationship wasn’t much of a secret since they didn’t bother hiding the fact.

“No nope, I don’t want to hear from you.” Sliverwolf interrupted looking away with red cheeks.

“Learn to knock.” Blade added crossing his arms.

“I did-“ Sliverwolf started glaring at him but he simply ignored her.

“Please save this conversation for another time, Elio has something urgent to share.” Sam intruded into the conversation nodding to Elio.

Silverwolf huffs, turning her attention to Elio who begins to speak, “Yes, it would seem the Astral Express will need to head towards Capriccio earlier than expected.”

“Although I don’t mind visiting, both Welt and Himiko personally handled the Stellaron sometime ago and it shouldn’t be active for a while.” Kafka stated.

“That should have been the case but it does confirm a theory that something or someone undetected is trying to change destiny and prevent the Trailblazer from reaching Nanook. Capriccio now contains four different fates and one of those will lead to the Trailblazer death.” Elio wasn’t going to share the other fates due to how unstable each one is nor was he going to warn them about the anomaly(s) possibly still being on Capriccio to ensure the Trailblazer death.

“And how do we prevent this,” Sam asked.

“The Chairman of Capriccio has the Stellaron within a laboratory, he’ll be the first to come into contact and will be under its influence. All you must do is ensure that the Chairman doesn’t contain the Stelleron in a suitable core.” Elio then looked to Blade, “Worry not Blade we will reach the Xianzhou Luofu in a timely manner, the Astral Express are less than halfway through their first journey on Jarilo-VI. It will be enough time for all of you.” Elio finished before dismissing them all.

“Oh, and Kafka,” Elio called out, causing Kafka to stop in her tracks and look at him as the others continued out the door although Blade lingered. “I trust your judgment on the fate of the core.”

“What are you hiding this time Elio?” Kafka muttered to herself walking out the door.

#honkai star rail #hsr blade #blade x reader #kafka honkai star rail #kafka x reader #blade x kafka #hsr silver wolf #hsr sam #hsr elio #stelleron hunters #trailblazer #hsr x reader #honkai star rail x reader #Blade x reader x Kafka #astral express #female reader #hsr aeons

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sssquiddles · 9 months

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of clay and stardust

*Spoilers for Kafka's quest*

Stelle takes the mysterious pill left to her by Dan Shu and experiences a world of memories that had been locked away before. As the dust settles, she finally ruminates over these memories, and with Dan Heng's help, she comes to terms with the purpose of her place in the Express.

2.4 words, light angst, comfort, deep talks, slight canon divergence, danstelle if you squint

Check out my other works on AO3

Stelle stumbled into the Seat of Divine Foresight, clutching her lance as a sort of cane, her body swaying and stumbling. Of course this should happen to her while she’s separated from her companions—it wasn’t meant to turn out like this.

Welt, March 7th, and Tingyun were all resting back at the inn, but Stelle couldn’t sleep and ended up pulling herself from the covers to carefully exit their lodgings, feeling unsettled and on edge.

As soon as she’d stepped out the door, she’d received a message from Dan Shu concerning the prescription she’d given to the woman. It wasn’t very late, Stelle figured she could run over and get the information to give to Qingzu.

She hadn’t expected to be sent on a couple errands, first, but she wasn’t too put out about it. She was always happy to offer her help to those who need it, and it offered her a unique insight into the society of the Xianzhao Luofu—the particular misfortune of those deemed ‘incomplete’, the poor little girl who couldn’t even be given comfort in troubled times, only told to toughen up.

At the end of it, when Dan Shu left her with a unique gift, Stelle hadn’t thought anything of it, as she popped the pellet in her mouth and swallowed it with a mouthful of a sugar free energy drink.

She’d never quite had the greatest sense of danger—she’d been given food and other vitality raising items as gifts for her deeds before, so why would this be any different? She hadn’t even thought about it, as she turned to walk back to the inn, hoping to catch at least an hour of sleep.

All of a sudden, though, as soon as she felt the pellet sink into her stomach, her body started to heat up, her vision blurring. Cold sweat ran down her back, her limbs shaking as darkness encroached on her vision. Stumbling forward, she held herself up on the post of the pagoda, trying to get her lungs to suck in a full breath of air.

Slowly, her vision cleared and her body returned to normal, but her hands were still shaking as she straightened out.

That… wasn’t right, that couldn’t have been right. She shook her head, pressing her fingers to her temple, trying to calm herself down. She’d never felt anything like that before.

Could it have been…

Stelle pulled herself together, for just long enough to run to the Seat of Divine Foresight, entering the doors as her vision started to pull once more.

“No…” she whispered, looking up at the Cloud Knights standing guard by the door, blinking and shaking her head as the leaves of mara began to grow out of their armor, their weapons rising as she approached- they were being struck with mara, right in front of her eyes-

“N- No, no,” Stelle shook her head, pulling out her lance, standing on unsteady legs. She had to protect the innocents in there, if the Cloud Knights inside of the Exalted Sanctum could turn…

Her vision flashed, instead of the inside of the Seat of Divine Foresight, she’d found herself standing in a darkened room, lightning flashing outside the window as rain pounded the ground outside.

A man sat in a chair in front of her, the dull eyes of an old god staring down into her very being. Pale framed his face, gaunt and haunting. It was something that hadn’t been around for that long, but had seen the intersecting weaving lines of fate, every ending. And he was looking down at her. She’d done something wrong, her actions hadn’t followed the script. Freewill, again. She’d done it again. Her creator was going to deconstruct her and start over.

Destiny’s Slave.

Stelle’s vision flashed again, feeling the stinging cold rain on her skin as it came down in sleets, someone’s cold hand held her’s, dull pinkish eyes looking back at her. Lipsticked grin tugging at the woman’s lips as bullets weaved between droplets of rain, a torrent of malice.

The flashing bright light of a holographic screen, symbols and lines intersecting and cascading down to the fingers pounding out a code like a melody on a piano, rewriting, recoding, reworking.

Other scenes overloaded the young trailblazer, as she failed to distinguish between each scene and setting- blinding lights, hailing bullets, blazing will, freedom and captivity, tubes and wires, bubbling liquid, memories of a life her body had lived, but her brain had never recalled.

An old life, an old existence. A soulless receptacle with its memory reset and wiped and cleansed and scrubbed clean over and over, a doll forced to stand and move and learn and relearn over and over, until it was perfect, until it was ready to bear the weight of destiny…

…

“Stelle!” Hands gently shook her shoulders, ripping her consciousness back to the present.

Stelle’s glowing golden eyes blinked open, numbness drawing out from her sore limbs, as she felt the hard support of a bench under her back, those hands on her shoulders, and she gazed up at the worried face of her senior Trailblazer, Mr. Yang.

“Aeons, you’re awake…” Welt breathed, drawing his hands away from her, as he let go, more feeling came back to her. Her limbs burned like she’d gone through hours of rigorous exercise, her throat was dry, and her head pounded. “The Cloud Knights said you’d gone into the Seat of the Divine Foresight, swinging your lance around, they said…” he shook his head, trailing off.

March 7th piped up, her usually upbeat voice sounding much smaller, much more scared, “It’s impossible, but they said that they’d believed you were mara-stricken. If the General hadn’t been there, they would have…”

Mara-stricken.

That’s exactly what it had been- an overflow of old memories, tugging at her sanity and tearing her apart from the inside.

“Miss Stelle, can you tell me exactly what happened?” General Jing Yuan’s voice was low, grave. He was suspicious, of her. Her intentions, her actions. It wasn’t unheard of—in fact it was still painfully common, despite the laws and punishments put in place—a short life species coming to the Xianzhou in search of the Plague Author’s curse. Immortality.

Stelle’s head was still swimming, she was awake and much more conscious than she’d been moments before, but she could still hardly distinguish between real and memory. She blinked, the backdrop of the Xianzhou falling away into another setting, and when she blinked again it was back.

The gray-haired trailblazer only squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head, laying a hand over her chest as it pounded harshly. Another flare of heat expelled from her chest, as a headache threatened to split her head open.

“I think she still needs time to recover,” Welt said, his voice not quite sharp, nor warning, but it bordered on both feelings, protective. Like a father looking after his child.

“As soon as she’s feeling better, I’m sure she’ll give you the whole story! Like, she was poisoned! Or, something!!” March exclaimed as she moved to help Stelle to her feet, throwing the taller girl’s arm over her narrower shoulders. Her voice portrayed a little more of her typical energy, but it was clear she was still worried.

With that, March 7th helped to slowly walk Stelle back to the inn that the three Trailblazers had been staying in.

~~~

Time passed, Stelle recovered, and that was it. In the midst of chaos, as the full resistance of Sanctus Medicus pushed against the forces of the Ten-Lords Commission and the Cloud Knights, it was easy to forget the mara incident with Stelle.

At least, it was easy for everyone else to forget- not as much for the affected Trailblazer, who lay awake each night rolling over the blurry memories in her head. All that was left in her memory after the battle in the Alchemy Commission and the battle against Phanthylia were wisps and fragments of scenes that she’d seen after she’d initially taken the pill Dan Shu left for her. Like trying to discern the full memory of a dream, Stelle grew frustrated trying to recall any concrete memories…

As early evening slowly dragged into the simulated, starry night time of the Xianzhou, Stelle rose from her bed. The Nameless crew still had things to finish up in regards to the stellaron on the Luofu, so they couldn’t return to the express just yet.

Drifting past the sleeping form of March 7th, Stelle exited their room, her legs carrying her outside of the inn, down the sturdy walkway, and to the very place that she’d first gazed upon the Ambrosial Arbor.

The greenish, life-giving flames of its branches glowed against the twinkling backdrop of the simulated night, making a beautiful, if not ghastly, sight.

“Without the context of its creation, the Arbor could almost look lovely,” A familiar voice approached, and Stelle turned- catching sight of the new form of her fellow Trailblazer as he walked up to her, hands clasped behind his back.

Dan Heng appeared taller- and maybe he was, but it was easy to chalk it up to the tall horns that had sprouted from his forehead. His air was different, too, but it was still familiar. He hadn’t revealed much yet, and she hadn’t asked yet.

Stelle gazed silently at her friend, before she turned her head back to gaze out at the Arbor once again.

“It’s quiet,” Stelle murmured, finally, a forlorn tone in her voice that he’d never heard before.

The young Vidyadhara moved to stand beside his friend, nodding as he rested his hands on the ornate railing in front of them. “It is.”

He didn’t say much, he never did, and Stelle rarely felt like filling the silence, that had always been the role March 7th took up.

“I was struck with mara,” Stelle said, suddenly, practically blurting it out like it was a secret, and it felt like one since no one had brought it up since it happened.

“...What?” Dan Heng turned his head towards his companion in confusion, eyebrows knitting together. “You… do know that can only happen to long-life species, right?”

“I’m not a long-life species,” Stelle replied, or confirmed, rather, though she chewed on her lip pensively. “I… don’t know what I am. I’d taken a pill left by, apparently, a very high ranking member of Sanctus Medicus. I thought it was- I don’t know, a vitamin or something, and when I took it, I started to like… freak out. Like my head was splitting open and my chest was burning and I started to see these things- memories, I think. Of being created, spending time with this group of people, and an apathetic leader—the person who… created me.”

Stelle stopped, resting her hands on the ornate fence in front of her as she continued to stare out at the sea of ships, starskiffs and other such aircrafts, in constant motion despite the time of night.

Dan Heng was silent, politely waiting for her to continue- it was obvious that it was something she’d been holding on to for quite awhile, something that she hadn’t been able to vocalize, bottling it up since it happened.

“I’m not a long-life species.” Stelle repeated after a moment, hands gripping the fence. “But I think… that I’ve been alive for a long time. Or that I’m not… alive at all. I’m just a thing, I was created for something. I can’t remember any of it clearly, now, and the stellaron or- or the properties of my body neutralized the affects of mara, but the memories are still there. It feels like- like trying to remember a dream. I can see pictures, remember feelings, a whole lifetime of them, but when I try to focus, to fully see it, there’s just… nothing. Nothing but an empty space where memories and meaning are supposed to be.”

Silence settled over the two of them as Stelle calmed down, her shoulders sinking.

“I just… want to know what I was made for. Kafka said that my sole existence was to be the one to kill an Aeon- or, to make a decision, that would one day lead to my killing an Aeon, but… is that it? Was that all that I was made to be?” She finally said, her gaze turning up to the endless expanse of stars, feeling as though she was losing herself in the sea of twinkling lights.

Stelle was brought back to herself as she felt a hand on her shoulder, warm and comforting.

“I… can’t say that I know about your destiny or anything like it, but I can say you’re facing a dilemma that anyone could. The circumstances may be different, if… you truly aren’t ‘human’, but everyone has had to stop and wonder what purpose their existence serves. It’s… the price of being alive, in a way,” Dan Heng said, his hand falling away- he wasn’t sure why he’d touched her at all, only that he’d had this inexplicable fear that she was floating away from him at that moment. That she’d disappear if he hadn’t intervened.

Stelle looked over at him- glowing golden eyes meeting his in the dim moonlight. She didn’t say anything, eyebrows raised as a cue for him to continue.

“Your destiny may be to slay an Aeon, but that isn’t all that you’re here to do. You’re not working day and night with the sole purpose of building the strength to carry out such a feat. You’re a living breathing being, and every decision you’ve made up to this point is your own. I can’t speak on behalf of your ‘creator’, but I can say that you were made to live life as you see fit, otherwise they wouldn’t have left you alone on the Herta’s Space Station.”

The gray-haired trailblazer nodded, slowly, as her gaze fell away, a smile pulling at her lips as she shook her head. “...Thank you. That was… probably exactly what I needed to hear,” she said, letting out a soft sigh. “Those memories… they don’t even feel like my own. It feels like I witnessed the life of another person, from their perspective. The only ‘me’ I know of is the one you and March 7th picked up from the Space Station.”

Dan Heng let out an amused breath as Stelle bumped her shoulder into his. “I understand completely.”

As the stars drifted across the sky of the Xianzhou, the two Trailblazers made their way back to the inn, side by side, the warm light of dawn casting a future of endless possibilities onto their backs.

AO3

#honkai star rail #dan heng #stelle #female trailblazer #my writing #danstelle #march 7th #kafka #kafka hsr #welt yang #jing yuan #imbibitor lunae

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