Lumine was disgruntled. An utter feeling of helplessness had washed over her mind. It felt like her existence in this battlefield was completely meaningless; utterly useless.
Nonexistent— perfect word to describe her significance in this battlefield.
Her role was simply unfulfilled. Or rather, there was no role she could fulfill.
She kept chanting her wind elemental magic— imbuing all the anemo power she could muster— in a desperate attempt to contribute to the fight, however, it was simply to no avail.
Her attempts did nothing to alleviate the burden of her teammates and in some cases, burdened them further, making her feel more and more useless as time trickled by.
She wasn't physically strong enough to try and chip away at Dvalin's shield, in fact, she was the weakest among all the close combat fighters present in her party; a fact she was aware of.
Moreover, the godly powers, that she had accumulated over the length of hundreds of years of her travels, had been sealed by the Unknown Goddess— that was also the perpetrator that kidnapped her brother, making her undertake this journey in the world of Teyvat— which made it impossible for her to use them.
Even now, whenever she tried to invoke those powers, that were so familiar to her once, she could feel nothing, as if her powers were a lie all along.
Presently, the most she could do was to use the borrowed powers of the wind, the anemo element, but even with that, she couldn't damage Dvalin directly as the Dragon of the East was of the same element.
In the land of Teyvat, it was an ironclad rule that beings endowed and governing over a particular element were immune to said element, which led to using that element against them utterly impossible and completely meaningless.
Looking around, taking in the sights and actions of her teammates, she noted that everyone was doing their very best…
Except for the useless God Venti, of course, who shot arrows at it once in a while in a carefree manner; all of which either bounced off of its shield or scales.
He must have noticed her gaze as he grinned at her, the impish smile plastered on his girlish face was rather cute, but it only made her want to punch him in annoyance.
It was kind of obvious he simply did not want to hurt his friend, Dvalin, and only boosted the speed of his teammates with his wind, imbuing the anemo element on their limbs and buffing their movements.
Occasionally, he would make sure that no one was swept away by the shockwaves resulting in them falling off the platform.
And if anyone was unfortunate enough, to get caught in the shockwaves and fall, he would simply use the power of the wind to gently bring them back up and they would return on their onslaught against the Sovereign of the Skies.
Seeing this display— of a useless God, who didn't even fight seriously and still be of help to her teammates— made her feel even more useless.
Diluc and Jean were battling, disarming and destroying numerous wind formations and traps that continuously formed on the platforms helping the others to not get caught up in them and get severely injured.
Moreover, Diluc, with his superior strength, used his claymore— adjacent to his pyro vision, coating it with his scarlet flames of destruction— and inflicted massive amounts of damage to Dvalin's shield whenever he spotted a hole in its defense.
Hu Tao on the other hand was fending off attacks that aimed towards Fischl, who was persistently drawing arrows, shooting them at the creature, annoying it to no end.
The Party Leader, Yomite, was currently focusing on avoiding Dvalin's attacks, to the best of his abilities, as the Dragon put all of its attention on him for some reason...
She could sense that it was hard for him, that he wasn't used to fighting, yet, he was doing his best to distract it so that the others could chip away at its shield and injure the dragon.
Everyone had their role.
Everyone did a good job fulfilling it.
Everyone did their best.
Everyone, except for her.
She was just standing there, unsure of what to do. Afraid of being in their way.
She couldn't even act as bait and lure its line of sight as most of its attention remained on Yomite.
Despair was settling inside her heart. The reality of being useless to her friends, of being unable to help them was gnawing away at her psyche.
She didn't want to be alone again.
She didn't want to be abandoned by her friends for being useless.
She wanted to pull her weight.
(What do I do? What should I do? What can I do....?)
She chanted away, desperately searching through her memories, hoping that she could find something, anything she could do in this situation.
As she watched on, restlessly trying to find a way to help, a sudden memory sparked within her mind.
***
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*
It was a memory from way back, right after she and her party were returning home from defeating the Cryo Regisvine.
Yomite was very interested in her ability, the one she borrowed from the statue of the seven.
"That's so cool! Imagine how many things you can do with the wind!" He excitedly pointed out to her.
"...Is it? Before, I just used it to throw away enemies that were nearby…It doesn't seem that effective or strong to me..." Lumine cast her gaze down as she muttered, her low voice lowering further during the end...
Yomite frowned at that and shook his head in disapproval, "No, no! I believe there are many great applications for it! Like, a lot of them."
"...Do you have anything in mind?" She asked, still not believing in him fully.
"Hmm...let's see…"
He thought for a moment before replying, "For example, if you remember that tornado that you generated, it sucked in the nearby fire from Hu Tao's Vision and turned into a fire tornado, right?"
She nodded, still unsure where he was trying to go with the question.
"Then...How about you do the same thing with the small ball of wind you summoned on your palm? It's pretty simple, yet I feel like the power would be great! If you could focus the output to a single point, it could be very deadly. I wonder what a fire bullet propelled by the wind of yours could do..."
"...A bullet? What's that?" She asked, confused by that word. In all her travels she had never heard of it which confused her further.
"Ah…Nevermind, forget it...I will explain it to you later..." Yomite gave up on explaining to her the concept of guns and bullets, for the time being.
Lumine furrowed her shapely eyebrows, exasperated, unable to grasp the meaning of his words.
Yomite wore a wry smile as he endured Lumine's sharp gaze.
"Don't look at me like that...I'm way too lazy to explain…Maybe later..."
***
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*
Alone, she was nothing, she understood that painful fact clearly. However, she could still help them with elemental reactions that could bring forth great results.
She decided to try it out. At least, it was better than doing nothing and being a useless burden to the team.
Not wanting to waste a single second, she unleashed every bit of her own magical power with unyielding resolve to assist them.
Grasping the wind's might, she formed a vortex of vacuum in her hand, the vortex swirling in a white spiral of uneven circlets.
Just like the Party Leader in her memory told her, she aimed the vacuum at the towering flames, sucking them in and forming a ball of fire that rotated swiftly around the edge of her palm, the white spinning spirals turning dark orange-ish red adorning the color of the flames.
(It...worked…) She thought, as she gazed in disbelief at the spinning fireball in her hand, scathing heat permeated in her surroundings, being emmited from the swirling ball of destructive fire.
The flaming ball quivered violently, and she could feel her control over the wind slipping by the second, it could go out of control at any moment.
She looked up at the Dragon and noticed that it was still preoccupied with Yomite who was desperately blocking its claws with his chipped claymore; it was evident that the claymore would get destroyed any second now, and with it, Yomite would be in danger.
Understanding that she had to hurry, she started concentrating, imbuing more and more Anemo power into the swirling fireball.
Her golden colored eyes shone in the light of the anemo element and the swirling ball of destruction started spinning faster and faster slowly gaining an unimaginable speed.
She didn't stop there, recalling more of the party leader's words, she started compressing the fireball to a singular point.
It was hard, harder than anything she had tried on this land, her control tried to slip multiple times but she gritted through and slowly but surely compressed it to the size of her palms.
The fireball throbbed and vibrated in a rapid unstable pace, she understood that she needed to throw it now or else it would explode on her face.
(This will do...Now is my chance…) She thought, satisfied at the end product.
Not wasting even a second longer, she ran towards the dragon, and with a small cute yell, thrusted her palm forward, twisting it at the end of her motion making the vacuum— separating the circling vortex of fireball from her palm— explode with might, shooting it towards Dvalin like a bullet.
Releasing it, the 'fire bullet' sped off at a tremendous speed, far faster than any bullet could ever go.
Anything and everything in its path even the air itself was disintegrated by its power, even slicing through Dvalin's wind barrier, surrounding its body, with ease.
It struck right through to the Dragon's clawed hand, once again, bypassing its shield completely, drawing fresh blood.
The color of death and the smell of decayed burnt flesh filled the air around them, making their noses twinge in disgust.
It seemed like fire was a huge weakness to its shield, or rather, maybe it was just an instability which the shield couldn't detect and let through instead.
*Sizzle*
A huge gaping hole in its draconic paw made Dvalin lose balance from the platform it was leaning against, forcing it to use its wings to fly above it.
*Screeeeeeech!*
Lumine felt its angry pained roar vibrate through her body and mind, making her almost feint. Thunder roared. Hellfire burned. Space itself trembled.
She ducked back instinctively, rolling awkwardly as a result, the dragon's wind blades erupted in the place she'd just been, slicing everything around the area to countless pieces— Her hunch had been right.
A sharp piece of rock— propelled towards her due to the aftermath of the exploding wind blades— scraped across her forearm, but she gritted her teeth against the pain and held onto her weapon, blood trickled down dripping slowly from her fingers along the hilt of her weapon.
But she did it.
She was of help.
All of a sudden, flapping its wings rapidly, Dvalin disappeared from view, into the clouds.
And in the next moment, It swooped through the center of the platform with its claws outstretched and its mouth opened, flying back up the next second.
It forced everyone to dodge the sweeping attack by dashing towards the sides of the platforms in an awkward fashion.
Everyone focused on Dvalin, circling the platforms high up.
Looking at its agitated gait and screeches of pain…they understood...that the final phase of their apocalyptic fight was about to descend upon them.
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