| [ All you do is run, Childe snarls — and Aether doesn't have time to breathe out a biting response because he knows it's the truth.
The Harbinger's too fast. He's always too fast when he's in his Foul Legacy Transformation. Every time Aether has managed to win, he's beaten Childe not by strength or speed but by sheer endurance; he knows that he only needs to survive long enough for the transformation to take its toll on Childe's body, and so his strategy has never been to beat Childe, but to outlast him. The traveler's no fool: he's not going to risk getting within range of that electrified lance when Childe only needs half of a second to strike him down, so instead of engaging in melee combat, Aether dips and dodges, occasionally pausing to summon a Geo construct or a line of Geo spikes to defend or attack as necessary.
The problem with this as a tactical pursuit — and he's known it from the start — is that it's only going to work for so long. Childe gets stronger, lasts longer in his transformation every time they battle; Aether, meanwhile, hasn't been able to pull off his elemental changes on command. The initial burst of being able to channel Anemo and Geo energy at the same time was just a fluke — it wasn't intentional, but his powers going out of control. And if that happens again —
He can't have that happen. He tells himself that he won't let that happen. He just needs to last a little longer — but then, as he's running a short arc along the chamber inside the Golden House, Aether suddenly finds his path cut short by Childe's lance, thrown like a javelin into the wall. Swearing, the traveler skids to a halt, making split-second decisions — ]
Damn it — |
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