Descensus Averno does not hold back when it comes to showing just how horrific living under the tyranny of a powerful immortal would be.
Warning. This story and it's prequel do not shy away from graphic descriptions. Also be warned that there are beheadings. Lots and lots of beheadings.
Descensus Averno
- Aether. Just Aether in Descensus Averno. When he started traveling around Teyvat, he had originally had his abilities sealed away by the Unknown Goddess/Sustainer of the Heavenly Principles. However over time during his travels, he started regaining his abilities to the point that he overpowered all of the Archons, including the oldest and strongest being on the continent, the Geo Archon. He also started gradually changing from a dependable traveler to a despot. According to Venti, he had initially been a friendly individual who would go on to become a powerful and cruel tyrant.
- One of the first things Aether did early on in his reign? He made sure to emphasize that the era of the Archons was over by conducting executions via beheading in places that symbolized the Archon of the cities. And to just rub the salt in even more? He desecrated those same places with the executions. According to Jean, he marched the Knights of Favonius who were not able to get away in time on to the steps of the Cathedral behind the Anemo Archon statue and beheaded them on the spot. The sea of blood stained the ground for days.
- He did the same with the Liyue Qixing. Ningguang and Keqing were the only members of the ruling group to get away in time while the rest were rounded up and captured by the Constillon Guard. They were executed at the Yujing Terrace... where Rex Lapis' Rite of Descension, the most important and long-lived ceremony, is usually held.
- Lumine's imprisonment after she is captured by three people who come from the very world she and her brother were from. She is powerless and essentially at the mercy of these people, with one of them being Apollo, someone who torments her this very day. Even before she was captured, she was terrified of him.
- In Chapter 40, Jean goes into even more detail about what happened that day that almost all of the Knights of Favonius were executed. The Order was essentially destroyed that day as all of them except for the members of the surviving Insurgency were executed, their heads cut off. The execution took over an hour because over a hundred of knights were killed and the stone streets of Mondstadt were painted red with the knights' blood for weeks. Afterwards, their bodies were taken from the front of the church and dumped outside of the city to rot, scattered around the city in a circle as a means to keep the surviving citizens contained and under surveillance. And it worked.
- Chapter 43. Just Chapter 43.
- Mavey paralyzing everyone into the room, slowly crushing their minds. Sucrose's description of feeling her head slowly being crushed from the inside out is horrifying.
- Lumine in Chapter 45. Though it was alluded to at the end of Chapter 43, two chapters later we get to see just how much the events of the previous chapters affected her. She easily dispatches both Scaramouche and Mavey, releasing the latter's hold on the other members and she would have mercilessly beheaded the latter had she not been tackled away by Jean. The only reason the two of them are still alive is because Lumine decided that killing them was not worth it at that moment.
- Lumine ripping out Malcolm's tongue and then proceeding to strip him of his powers. By the end, Lumine and Malcolm are drenched in blood.
Hell Hath No Fury
- In the main story, we are only told what Aether did to the respective governments of each nation and how he had essentially thrown the entirety of Teyvat into turmoil but in this side story we get to see just what he did.
- In the first chapter alone, we get graphic descriptions of just how the knights were killed. Amber, Noelle, and Klee's deaths are described.
- Amber dies tearfully and bitterly accepting of her fate.
- Noelle is beheaded mid rant.
- Klee is beheaded so hard and fast that her head gets sent flying into the crowd, the crowd screaming in horror as blood drenches them and it lands close to them.
- There were so many knights that the execution lasted well into the knight. Then afterwards their heads and their decapitated bodies were taken and dumped outside of Mondstadt, leaving a city of bodies just outside that people would have to wade through if they wanted to escape the now lifeless city.
- The description of the rotting bodies in Sucrose's segment as she looks at the sea of dead bodies in morbid fascination. The description of Klee's decapitated head is particularly gruesome since it was described to have already been half eaten by scavengers.
- Veer watching his sister being executed. Because he's essentially in the front row, chunks of her body fly into his mouth and he and anyone close enough get sprayed with her blood.
- Veer butchering the man who executed his family in his sleep, completely expecting to go out Suicide By Cop afterwards but not without avenging his family. He takes a sword and breaks into the sleeping man's room, repeatedly stabbing the executioner over and over until all his insides spill out and his family's killer is pretty much nothing but pulp.
- The last scene of Veer's segment where he's raped and how he feels about it.
