Chapter Text
Hu Tao was exactly where she wanted to be. Her clothes had been peeled off slowly, before her arms were tied above her head by slick precise rope, thanks to her boyfriend. Xingqiu; who had recently returned to Liyue from Inazuma.
Her left ankle was tied to a bed post, and so was her right ankle. Her legs were spread, giving Xingqiu an easy entrance if he decided he wanted to do something with her privates.
Though more often than not, Xingqiu preferred to focus on different areas, Hu Tao had once asked and he admitted that to him the appeal of her tied up, was being able to do anything at all without her stopping him.
It was often him who suggested she struggle, or they do roleplay. It didn’t really surprise Hu Tao, after all, she was dating a writer. A writer who would often tie her up to have someone to describe when he was writing one of his famous Damsel In Distress scenes.
Right now, Xingqiu had occupied Hu Tao’s mouth with a pair of dirty socks that he had found lying around the funeral parlour. Hu Tao was pretty sure they belonged to Zhongli, or Xiao, perhaps even one of their friends like Chongyun or Xiangling. Though it was clear that Xingqiu thought they were hers.
Honestly, Hu Tao found the idea of being made to swallow the scent of her friends dirty feet by her boyfriend hot. That was probably why she hadn’t come clean to him about who actually owned the socks that she was sucking on.
Xingqiu was moving his head along her armpits, kissing upwards on her right one and downwards on her left armpit. The sensation was ticklish, but not enough to make Hu Tao giggle. Just enough to remind her she couldn’t stop the sensation if she wanted to.
“Hey Hu Tao, have you seen my—” A voice was heard before Hu Tao swore she heard something fall and shatter. She turned her head to see Xiangling.
Sweet innocent Xiangling who scared the life out of the funeral director, “MMPHHFF?????” She screamed into her gag, as Xingqiu lifted himself above her.
Instead of freeing her and letting her be part of the conversation, Xingqiu threw a blanket over Hu Tao to cover her. “Mmmph,” she grumbled but made no move to further protest the arrangement that Xingqiu quickly secured.
“Xiangling, as nice as it is to see you again, do you think this could wait?” Xingqiu asked as Hu Tao giggled at the blush on the poor chef’s face.
Xiangling blinked and nodded turning away, “I was just trying to find my socks I’m sorry! Uhm bye!” Without waiting for further information, the chef ran. Hu Tao honestly found the whole situation rather curious.
Xingqiu didn’t as he turned towards her. A hand was wrapped around Hu Tao’s neck, “You should have told me those weren’t your socks.”
Hu Tao blinked. “Mmmph?”
“You think you can get out after that?”
_________
Xiangling hadn’t thought about the previous incident for the past two weeks, she spent most of her embarrassment in the first week. Then she had gotten curious about what it would be like to be tied up: not to the extent of Hu Tao, but she was curious.
So, at one point during a day that she knew would be slow for business in the Wanmin Restaurant, she took Gouba somewhere she knew that no one else other than someone like The Traveller would bother going. Then she got Gouba to tie her hands behind her back, and her legs together.
It felt okay, but lacking. So Xiangling had gotten Gouba to free her, and returned to Wanmin Restaurant where Katheryne from The Adventurers Guild was sitting at one of the tables, which was rather strange.
“Hello Xiangling, the guild has had a commission that I believe would be made easier with your services,” the strange girl broke into greeting almost immediately as Xiangling and Gouba arrived, “There is a new set of unexplored ruins nearby Stone Gate that have just been uncovered, by a chef from the nation of Mondstadt, named Brooke, it is the guilds understanding that you have interacted with her before.”
Xiangling nodded, remembering that when she had first met Lumine the two participated in a cook off against the Springvale Chef Brooke, due to a disagreement between the two about slime condensate. “What exactly is the commission?”
“Well, while Brooke was able to escape the ruins, she keeps mumbling about strange and yet tasty food combinations, and it is the guilds' understanding due to reports of adventurers who eat at Wanmin restaurant, that you are no stranger to such a thing. We would like you to travel with the adventurer we assigned to the case, and explore the ruins,” explained Katheryne, and Xiangling could almost swear she wasn’t stopping to breathe.
Xiangling nodded. “Alright, we’ll help, won’t we Gouba?”
Gouba shook its head and gestured to the restaurant.
“You want to stay? Well okay…”
_________
A few days after her meeting with Katheryne, Xiangling had met up with Lumine at Wangshu Inn where the two had spent the night catching up before making the trek to Stonegate. Paimon, much like Gouba, had for whatever reason elected to not join the journey, which Xiangling found kind of suspicious, but nevertheless she had already started there was no point backing out.
“Okay, I think Brooke found the entrance to the underground ruins up on that hill that Stone Gate is kinda built into? Like the part where it connects to Wuwang Hill, do you see?” The rhetorical question from Lumine took Xiangling out of her thoughts and back into reality.
Xiangling nodded, “yeah, to get up there though, wouldn’t we have to backtrack and travel through Qingce Village?”
“Nope, watch this, Terra-Smash!” A small circular orb of geo appeared, which Lumine hopped on top of, before holding a hand out for Xiangling. Xiangling took it, as the duo repeated the process over and over again until they both made it to the top of the mountain.
The thing which greeted them was a ring of three pyro monuments on the left, and three geo monuments on the left. “Ah, with the way they’re positioned we need to activate all six elemental monuments at the same time, for the entrance to the ruins to open.”
Xiangling looked at Lumine, wondering if The Traveller would provide any sort of explanation for the reason she knew this. But Lumine didn't, instead moving into position on the side of the geo monuments, Xiangling copied her standing in the centre of the pyro monuments.
The two girls used their elemental bursts, draining them of their elemental energy for a period of time. As the monuments began to glow, a circular doorway slid open, letting the duo walk into a cave-like entrance to the mysterious ruins.
“Stay close,” Ordered Lumine as she began to walk in, summoning her Favonius Sword. Xiangling ran to catch up with her as the two girls descended further into the ruins, eventually they came to a big clearing with three paths.
One path went left, one path went forward though it was currently blocked off by a gate and the third path went right. In front of the left path was a bowl, a cabbage, a piece of raw meat, a radish and some water. Whereas in front of the right path was a bundle of strawberries that smelled the opposite of fresh.
Lumine hummed, “Xiangling, you're the food expert, what way do you think we should go?” The chef wasn’t exactly sure why the question had taken her off guard, it wasn’t even an unsuspected question. It was very valid, after all, she was the food expert out of the two of them.
“Well the left door doesn’t have rotting strawberries! Oh and I can make more interesting meals with the selection of ingredients there!” With that, Xiangling started skipping into the pathway followed by Lumine.
The two girls followed the path, Xiangling let out a small hum as she realised that the corridor that they were travelling down was slightly tilted. They were going deeper into whatever ruins had been uncovered, and it made her feel nervous.
Eventually Lumine stopped as she came face to face with two treasure hoarders. “Xiangling, stay back!” The Traveller ordered, prompting the liyuen chef to nod. She had no reason to disobey a direct order from the hero of Liyue after all. Besides, she wasn’t a great fighter and didn’t even have Gouba to save her.
Lumine’s sword came into contact with the hammer of the lead treasure hoarder of the current group. Lumine pulled back quickly, resonating with the hydro element to shoot a blast of hydro at them, though the treasure hoarder spun the hammer around redirecting the hydro blast towards a mechanism.
The mechanism activated, as a net dropped onto Xiangling prompting the liyuen chef to pull out her pole-arm in order to cut through the net. The commotion had distracted Lumine, allowing the treasure hoarder to grab her hands and pull them behind her back.
“I thought these ruins woulda had more treasure!” Complained another treasure hoarder, walking over to the lead one tying Lumine’s hands behind her back.
Another treasure hoarder walked over to Xiangling and held out his hand, as if he expected Xiangling to just give him her weapon. Xiangling thrusted it forward as hard as she could, though the treasure hoarder stepped to the side and then onto her once she had fallen to the ground.
“What a beautiful pair of girlies, though,” The treasure hoarder closest to Xiangling mentioned reaching down to tie her up.
Xiangling closed her eyes. As she did, she heard the sound of what she assumed was a bow string hit the treasure hoarder closest to her. Opening her eyes, she saw Lumine get thrown over the shoulder of a treasure hoarder.
Looking to where she assured the arrows would have had to come from, Xiangling oddly found nothing. She wasn’t tied up in any way, she was just alone. Realistically, the chef should probably go back and get backup to help Lumine.
But she didn’t know what the treasure hoarders were going to do to Lumine, and there wasn’t any time for her to waste by going back. Letting out a soft sigh, and pushing herself up, Xiangling got ready to go save Lumine herself.
Xiangling shook her head, as she walked towards an opening that led to a big open area. Looking down, the place was filled with water and white Lilly pads, as if trying to mock the sky of the beautiful scenes that you’d see in Liyue Harbour. As she jumped across the lily pads, she eventually tripped over one and looked up, the roof of the area was a bunch of buildings.
She was in an upside down version of Liyue, “whoa!” Was about the only word she could think to comment on the place she was at with, pushing herself up from the lying position. As cool and trippy as it was, she still had a job to do, finding Lumine before it was too late, bandits could want all sorts of things from Xiangling, who was just a chef, she shuddered imagining the things they might want from Teyvat’s mightiest traveller!
Hopping along the lily pads, Xiangling was quick to realise that there wasn’t another exit to the area. The way she came in, had been locked by a gate that had fallen without her realisation, trapping her in the weird replica of Liyue Harbour. Though there was a strange mechanism in the centre of the room, that was probably her only hope.
Hopping over to it, one lily pad after the other she eventually arrived to the mechanism and pressed it, causing the water to drain into something and the room to tilt. Instead of being on the sky, Xiangling was now laid on what should be the horizon, scanning it for another mechanism.
Groaning, she crawled her way over towards it. When the second one was pressed, the upside down replica of Liyue harbour was the right way up again and she laid on the floor. Both not wanting to get up, and feeling a bit hurt, though at the same time the ground hadn’t hurt her nearly as much as it should have.
That wasn’t something Xiangling had the time to think about however, as she still had to go find and save Lumine. The area surely couldn’t be completely empty, after all, there had to be something or someone who was behind this, even if it was just the abyss order or something.
First Xiangling looked inside of a house, only to find that the interior was completely empty. Which she supposed made sense, if the interior hadn't been empty then there was no way for the room to originally have been in the way it was before. It would have had to have been on the ground the whole time, still, it didn't ease the building anxiety as she checked between building to building only to find there was nothing.
Giving up on finding any interior, Xiangling continued traversing across the strange replica of her home city in hopes of finding either a mechanism to progress or Lumine. Shaking her head slowly, she saw that she had caught the movement of some shadowy figure in the distance, making her way towards it in a way that she felt would come off as if she hadn't seen anything.
Then a hand clamped over her mouth from behind. "Mmphf!?" Before Xiangling could squirm in her captors grip, the original figure she had scene tied her ankles together with a bundle of rope. Then her knees were tied together, much to her silent protest. Biting down on the hand as hard as she could, caused it to be taken away, only for a pair of what looked like panties to get shoved in her mouth.
“Mpat phf ffck?” Called Xiangling, freezing where she stood as the panties got shoved further down her mouth. Then over them, the stranger rolled several layers of tape, all the while she stared wide eyed. Surely these were the same guys who took Lumine from her, after all the treasure hoarders had described them as a beautiful pair of girlies.
The stranger who had grabbed her originally tied a pair of what felt like handcuffs behind her back, seemingly infused with hydro elemental energy. If the elemental energy had been cyro, or any other element really, Xiangling probably would have been able to burn the cuffs around, but since it was hydro, she was definitely stuck. “Mph me mo!”
“Don’t worry cutie,” One of the strangers teased, something familiar and friendly in her tone. A belt was wrapped around the top of Xiangling’s chest and the bottom of it, enlarging her boobs “we’ll take you to the boss soon enough!”
One of the strangers, the one who had been the one to grab her originally squeezed her breast, while the other tied around her waist, before tying several ropes between her legs at her thighs to create a crotch rope. “Mmot ft ffphem met mmph!”
Xiangling kept begging despite the gag muffling all of her protests, as the strangers added a blindfold and wrapped her elbows together. One of the strangers wrapped her hands in layers of tape, to ensure that she wouldn’t be able to free herself. After a while of standing there, expecting more humiliation to come, Xiangling came to the realisation that she had been left where she was.
Hopeless, bound, and away from home, lost underground in a strange set of ruins. Ruins that were only unearthed recently, she was sent down here to help guide Lumine, and now both her and Lumine were lost, captured and kidnapped by some strange group of bandits.
Xiangling had failed. There was nothing more to be done.