Chapter Text
Bright ideas only go so far when there’s no chance of freezing to death.
“Paimon really doesn’t think this is a good plan!”
And yet, here they were, so they might as well continue while they were ahead. “It should be around here somewhere…”
“Traveler! You’re doing that thing where you don’t listen again!” The tiny fairy companion screeched at the top of her lungs, pulling her fluffy jacket tighter around her small frame.
“No, I heard you.” Lumine barely lifted her gaze from the map, not wanting to lose her train of thought. She’d already come this far without her companion pestering her too much on the dangers of being exposed to the freezing elements– dangers she was far more aware of now, as her fur-lined gloves clung to the piece of hastily marked parchmen. “I’m just choosing to ignore you.”
“Wh- Hey! That’s so rude! Paimon is supposed to be your travel guide!”
“And yet you’ve been no help since we got here.”
“Because Paimon doesn’t think we should be in Snezhnaya of all places!”
Probably fair. Why Lumine thought this was a smart thing to do, she’d never understand. Maybe it was because she’d been cozy and warm in the Mondstadt plains when she’d finally chosen to make her next move after months of stagnation, unaffected by the sheer cold seeping through her clothes with every step. Maybe she thought her core of starlight would be able to handle a little chill– though why her pride hadn’t let her see the clear truth of that ridiculous thought, she couldn’t tell, since she’d nearly frozen solid when she’d tried climbing Dragonspine without the help of the Adventurer’s Guild for the first time all those years ago.
The frequent blasts of icy wind whipping at Lumine’s hooded cloak also seemed to agree, the chill cutting all the way down to her bones. Her boots crunched in the thick snow with each stubborn step forward, her eyes watering from the cold as she tried to focus on the map. “You’re the one who wanted to travel again.”
“Paimon assumed you would pick somewhere warm and tropical! Not the coldest nation in the middle of winter!”
“It’s November.”
“It’s so cold, it’s a wonder Paimon doesn’t freeze in the middle of her floating!”
Lumine quirked a grim smile. “Paimon-popsicle.”
“Let alone the fact that we’re surrounded by Fatui scum all of the time!”
Her companion’s bitter screaming likely wouldn’t help keep them hidden if she continued her rants whenever the wind died down, especially if her voice carried through the rolling valleys of this sprawling nation. “Which is exactly why I’m wearing this uniform.” Lumine tucked the map into one of her pockets and let out a shattered breath, tugging the dark cloak tighter around her trembling frame. “Although it definitely wasn’t made for this weather.”
Paimon let out a low moan, dragging her tiny hands over her face. “This is such a bad idea.”
Maybe. Probably. But she couldn’t help herself, having done far too much sitting around and waiting for her liking. She had always eagerly searched for the next adventure. And, to everyone’s dismay but her own, there was only one place she could go that she hadn’t explored, one nation she’d been avidly avoiding as long as she could. But as the summer dragged on in the peaceful Mondstadtian countryside, Snezhnaya called to her like a siren on the sea, beckoning her closer to its frigid borders. For months, she resisted that desire to give in, to scratch the itch on the back of her mind that yearned to travel and explore and witness. It wasn’t until she and Paimon were cleaning out her rucksack that she finally caved in her desperate desires to move onwards, after finding a very old, crinkled Fatui uniform acquired back in the early days of her partnership.
In truth, though, she probably should have put even more thought into it. Arriving at the Snezhnayan border at the end of October instead of waiting until the spring was the stupidest decision of all time. And she’d made a lot of stupid moves in her long life.
…Gods above, he was going to kill her.
“Stop griping,” She muttered, another blast of wind sending shivers up and down her spine, her chattering teeth enough to rattle her skull. “Snezhnaya is the last of the seven nations and the final place we may be able to get some actual answers.”
Paimon tilted her head. “About your brother?”
“...Amongst other things.” Like answers into understanding the next steps of the prophecy hanging over her head like a guillotine. Her nose crinkled in annoyance. “Where is this statue?”
“Well, Paimon still doesn’t like it,” Her companion mumbled, her bottom lip jutting out into that familiar pout until another gust of cold air caught them both off guard. It took another minute for them to brave the next move forward, but if they stopped now, they really would freeze solid like a certain partner had teased once long ago as they climbed Dragonspine. At least the sky was blue with no hint of another approaching storm– she didn’t want to get caught in the middle of a blizzard any time soon. “This could go so badly at any moment.”
“The same way it did across all other seven nations? It’s nothing we can’t handle.”
“Are you sure you don’t just want to see Childe again?”
Paimon may as well have developed elemental abilities in that moment and used them to send Lumine flying into the sky with such an accusation.
Childe.
She hadn’t heard from him in months. Again.
At first, she’d wanted to believe it was something as simple as he was focused on journeying back to Snezhnaya as fast as possible and was too busy to write. She tried not to let fear creep in, still remembering the eerie glow from his damaged eye when he’d left her under that tree in Windrise at the start of spring. Had something happened to him upon his return to Zapolyarny? Were his injuries more severe than he let on? Or was it something more sinister, something to do with his role in the Fatui? While she trusted him with her life, she did not trust the people he worked with in the slightest.
It didn’t help that the last letter she’d received from him had been decidedly cryptic and straightforward all in the same way. Bennett had run straight up to her during the middle of a late spring Mondstadt festival honoring wind and time; the young adventurer still felt extremely bad for his lack of assistance that afternoon in the cave of the Fourth Domain and continued doing everything he could to make it up to her no matter how much she promised he was fine. Diluc and Jean had given her odd looks over the bar as she sipped her fruity drink, lazily opening the message as if it were any other letter.
She hadn’t expected it to be anything of note, and had almost thrown it out in favor of the first fun night with her friends she’d had since the blockade had started earlier that spring. But some odd sense in the back of her mind, the same warning bell that chimed whenever danger lurked around the corner, persuaded her to open it. The letter, written on on pink stationary, the return address transcribed in frilly handwriting, surely hadn’t come from Childe. And yet, she immediately recognized their code enough to translate it without looking at their decoding sheet in the middle of Angel’s Share.
-.. --- / -. --- - / -.-. --- -- . .-.-.-
DO. NOT. COME.
The message had hung over her head for hours, days, even weeks as she tried to forget it. Only Childe would know to transcribe that text using their secret code, right? Besides, he had told her to wait for him to figure out the truth from his queen, so ordering her to stay away wasn’t exactly unlikely. But after months of sitting back and listening to stories of oddities happening across Teyvat (old dragons stirring from their slumber in Natlan, odd sightings of bleeding trees at the base of Dragonspine, catastrophic flooding events in both Liyue and Fontaine), her patience had snapped like a dry twig.
“I don’t want to see him again,” She muttered, a faux bitterness coating every word. She had to remember they were enemies on opposite sides of a looming conflict, not lovers who fiercely clung to each other when things had gotten hard, entangled in the safety of their bedsheets. And, this time, she had to make her so-called bitterness and hatred for Tartaglia, the 11th Harbinger, that much more believable.
She would not get them in trouble once more.
“What happened between the two of you?” Paimon asked, ducking behind Lumine’s shivering frame as they crested a hill, a grove of trees in the distance. “You’ve been acting weird every time Paimon mentions him ever since you fell into that crack in the earth.”
“It’s nothing–”
“You ended up a whole nation away only a day later! That kind of fast travel isn’t possible unless you have wings!”
Lumine winced, biting back the pained retort that she did have wings, but that they were currently trapped behind some weird blood magic inexplicably tying her and her lover together in ways they couldn’t even begin to process. Besides, thoughts of her and Childe’s great fall filled her mind far too full, her heart thudding against her frozen ribcage as the terror of the whole incident replayed over and over like a bad Fontainian film. Sometimes, when she was just on the verge of sleep, she swore she could still feel the rift wolves biting at her ankles, or the twist in her gut as she clung to the side of the cliff face over a looming maw threatening to swallow her whole, or the panic on her lover’s face as he realized they would both be going to the Abyss together…
“I told you the same thing I told Jean and the others,” She said through clenched teeth, her boots catching on a slick patch of snow and sliding forward. “I fell into some sort of… I dunno, abyssal portal. I woke up at Windrise with no clue how I got there.”
“And Childe? What happened to him?”
“I don’t know, nor do I care.”
A blatant lie. It hadn’t been the first. It wouldn’t be the last.
She shook her head hard once more as she reached the bottom of the small hill and entered the semi-circle of towering pine trees, trying to focus on what she had come here to do in the first place. She would resonate to the Statue of the Seven and collect all of the elemental abilities across Teyvat. Afterwards, she would head to the nearest town and get directions to a tiny seaside village Ajax liked to talk about in his letters, when they had been filled with warmth and family stories instead of bad omens. There, she would find his family and, hopefully, him, and they could finally work out how in the name of the gods they were going to work out this cursed prophecy looming over their heads warning of their impending doom–
Lumine suddenly stopped in place as they stumbled upon an open clearing. The wind ceased through the tall pines, the empty and hollow space eerily quiet. The ground had been cleared of most snow, with little white flowers poking up through the frost despite the chill. But her eyes were drawn straight to the towering Statue of the Seven she’d been looking for, the white stone monument tucked into the curve of the hillside. Its usual cloaked frame held a weariness none of the others had, its palms splayed flat and facing the heavens. The stone in her stomach dropped further into her gut as she settled on its face– or lack thereof–, the sight chilling her to her core far faster than any blast of icy wind.
The statue of the Cryo Archon Bronya had been beheaded.
“Archons,” She breathed, fingers grazing her parted lips. Horrified twinges raced up and down her spine, her heart thudding so loudly against her chest that it drowned out any other sound. An unusual but familiar spark of fear crept into the back of her mind, taking a moment to try and recall where she’d felt these shivers of panic before. Finally it clicked; this reminded her far too much of the Abyss Order’s upside down statues, hanging up by fragile chains that could drop at any moment. But whereas those had felt heretical in turning their eyes away from the heavens– heavens she, too, despised– this simply felt…
Heartbreaking.
“Wh-what happened to it?” Paimon squeaked, clinging to Lumine’s hood despite the nonexistent wind, as if even it did not want to see this act of destruction.
“I couldn’t even begin to give a good answer,” She gulped, forcing herself to move forward despite the hairs standing up on the back of her neck in warning.
Her traveling companion whimpered. “Could this be the Abyss Order’s doing?”
“I don’t think so.” Again, while it was in their wheelhouse of so-called expertise with the desecration of statues, it didn’t feel like something they would do. Besides, during her encounter with Aether in that extinct Natlan volcano, her twin had seemed pissed that she and Childe were destroying the statues in every Domain they came across, as if it were part of his grand schemes. “Still, this was definitely deliberate. The cut is too clean to be destroyed by nature.”
“Paimon doesn’t like it.”
“Neither do I.”
Paimon huffed, refusing to move. “The Snezhnayans are so awful for doing this to a statue of their Archon.”
One brow rose. “How do you know the Snezhnayans are behind it?” She reached the base of the statue, unable to take her eyes off the lack of its shrouded face. “It could have been a rogue group trying to intimidate the Tsaritsa out of their grand plans.”
“You sound like you’re defending the Fatui!”
Lumine bit her tongue to keep from saying stupid and accusatory back to her companion, blaming both of their frayed nerves on the cold. She may have been acting odd since she’d crawled out of the Abyss, but Paimon had been behaving strangely, too, trying to convince her to go anywhere but Snezhnaya and the occasional odd comment about what was going on in the heavens above. Part of her wondered if somehow, the fairy knew more about her and Childe’s relationship than she ever let on. She so very rarely brought it up, though, that Lumine thought she’d gotten away with hiding the obvious love she had for the Harbinger away from her childlike companion.
“Why don’t I just resonate with it and we’ll be on our way?” She said through clenched teeth.
Paimon gave a half-shrug, as much acknowledgement as she needed. She sank to her knees in the soft grass and pale white snowdrop flowers at the base of the statue. Another shiver ran up her spine, the half-formulated thought warning her against this move, but Lumine ignored it. With one swift move, she peeled off her gloves, closed her eyes, and pressed her hands against the stone statue.
Immediately, the resonation slammed into her like an open hand, striking her like a nail to the heart. She gasped in shattered surprise, but could not pull away no matter how much she tried, as if the tendrils of ice had crept their way up through the frozen grass like tiny vines to wrap around her small frame and pin her in place. The cold seeped through her raw skin and sore muscles, settling deep in her bones. Unlike with the other statues, it did not welcome her in with open arms, offering her a glimpse at their Archon’s fabulous powers. And in the back of her mind, she swore she could feel piercing blue eyes watching her every movement, invading every thought like a virus searching for healthy cells to infect, desperate to overwhelm and intimidate her.
She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was not supposed to be here.
A cry of pain bubbled out of her as she somehow mustered enough of her remaining energy to yank her hands back in one fell swoop. She landed flat against the crunchy snow with an inelegant oof, the chill seeping through her entire body. Her head throbbed, her mouth dry as a bone, and her heart frozen in its frantic beating as she cradled her raw, red hands to her chest. No matter how much she blinked, though, she could still feel those cold eyes watching her every movement.
“What happened?!” Paimon shrieked, hurriedly floating to her side, concern etched into her childlike features.
Her eyes darted to the faceless statue, sucking in ragged breaths. “It… rejected me?”
“You didn’t get the Cryo abilities?”
“No.” In fact, all of her other elemental powers felt dulled as well, as if frozen by the chill. She cycled through them slowly, barely able to summon a crackle of purple lightning at her fingertips, absolutely unable to recall the thorny vines of her Dendro powers. At least Pyro energy still easily coursed through her veins, the heat filling her core and melting away ice in her shivering body enough to push her into action. She pushed up from the ground, desperately sliding her gloves back onto her trembling hands.
Why had that happened? No other statue had rejected her before. Was it the Cyro Archon’s way of warning her she was not welcome in Snezhnaya and that she should get out while she was ahead? Or was it because the statue was damaged, rebounding its broken energy onto her while oscillating idly through her abilities. Even now, she could feel the other elements stored deep in her body spiraling out of control, fluctuating on their own accord as they tried and failed to stabilize themselves. Perhaps this was destined to happen the same way her destiny was allegedly written in marble in the very threads of this world, this very moment fated to be the start of her downfall. Was that why Childe had penned only three words in his letter begging her to stay away? Was the letter even from him? And why did she swear she could still feel piercing eyes watching her every movement like some bad Fontainian paparazzi lingering just beyond the treeline?
The wind suddenly picked up through the towering pine trees, strong enough to nearly bowl her back into the snow. Fat snowflakes fell from the sudden grey sky; so much for hoping there wouldn’t be a storm. Paimon twisted uneasily in her spot, tapping her fingers together. “Why don’t we go back to Mondstadt for the rest of the winter and figure this out–”
“We are not going back to Mondstadt.”
“Why not?!”
“Because–” Because she wanted more answers and only kept gaining new questions. Because she worried for her partner and where he’d disappeared to. Because, admittedly, going back now would feel like a failure. “Because we sat around all summer. We need to keep moving, if we’re ever going to figure out what’s going on.”
“Paimon thinks this is such a bad idea…”
So she had said over and over again. Lumine let out a careful breath, gritting her teeth as the elemental reactions inside her body continued drag through her. They needed to find somewhere safe and dry to hunker down for the evening before she passed out from too much elemental use in one day like she had during Natlan’s Grand Tournament, even without expelling any of her abilities. “Listen–”
A sudden, distant shout rang out above the roaring wind. Her heart sank into her stomach; so much for all of her plans to find a place to sleep off whatever affects there were for touching the statue. “Hide, Pai!” She quickly hissed, reaching into the jacket’s heavy linen pocket and slipping free the usual Fatui mask. Without hesitating, Paimon disappeared into her pocket dimension with a squeak.
The twinkle of stars had barely faded in the heavy snowfall by the time a group of three people crested the hill, just in time for her to set the mask firmly on her face. Immediately, she recognized them by their categorical outfits; a pyroslinger, his deep red and orange jacket blowing in the howling wind, face covered by a thick mask, as well as one of the massive vanguards carrying a heavy hammer on his shoulders, eyes gleaming with purple energy. A smaller framer led the pack wearing a normal dark suit, unlike that of which she’d ever seen on a traditional skirmisher. All of them watched her with their weapons drawn, outlined on the top of the hill in the afternoon’s blue tinge as the snow clouds blocked out any remaining sunlight.
Fatui.
Great. Perfect. Just what she needed. Could her day get any better?
“Who goes there?” A feminine voice called down, the sound just barely audible over the violent, cutting gusts of wind.
Lumine swallowed hard; time to pray that her acting skills had gotten better throughout her time in Teyvat. “H-hello comrade!” She said with a wave, trying her best to channel the same lingo she’d learned from the soldiers she’d encountered across her journeys that hadn’t immediately wanted her dead, including that of her favorite Harbinger. If Childe was here, though, he’d likely burst into laughter over her pitiful impression of him and his soldiers.
No, actually, he’d probably kill her for being here when he explicitly told her to stay away. And then he’d laugh at her pitiful impression.
To her relief, the rigidity in the smallest Fatuu’s shoulders dropped, tilting her head like a curious dog as she easily slid down the snowy hill, unaffected by the storm. “A fellow soldier? You’re far off the beaten path, aren’t you?”
“Could say that.”
Unlike his comrade, the pyroslinger following close behind aggressively raised his weapon against her. “What unit are you with?”
Lumine quickly raised her hands in surrender, praying Pyro swirls didn’t start swirling from her fingertips. “Please,” She said, desperate to avoid a fight. Without full control of her elemental abilities, there was no way she could battle her way out of this one. Plus, that would be the fastest way to alert the Tsaritsa that she was in Snezhnaya, a fact she wanted to avoid the Cryo Archon learning as long as possible.
The first soldier slammed her hand down on the gun, lowering the muzzle away from Lumine’s face. “Knock it off, Petro! Can’t you see she’s freezing?”
“Where were you stationed?” The man snarled, vicious orange eyes never leaving her frame.
“Mondstadt,” Lumine answered confidently, ignoring her racing heart and the knot in her throat. A jolt of Electro energy shocked up her spine, her elemental abilities still spiraling out of control internally, but she grit her teeth and ignored it. “Near Dragonspine.”
“And why have you returned?”
“Petro!”
“Answer the question!” The soldier ignored his comrade, pressing the rifle close to Lumine’s face. The stench of gunpowder and fire hung in the narrow space, but she refused to let her fear seep in.
She swallowed hard, ignoring the tiny, invisible thorns of sporadic Dendro energy clawing at her skin. “Because my unit received the recall order.”
A lie. A carefully crafted one, but a lie nonetheless.
Unlike what Paimon may have assumed, Lumine hadn’t come to Snezhnaya with nothing but blissful hope and sheer stubbornness. The moment she’d started down the possible path of heading to the most hostile of the seven nations with Childe’s concerning letter, she’d started taking every precaution necessary to secure her journey; stealing maps from Lisa’s library on the massive tundra nation, researching as much of their culture as she possibly could and burning it into her brain until it was second nature, even going so far as to only practice her skill with just a blade in sparring sessions with Kaeya and Rosaria and Bennett so that she did not need to use her elemental abilities if at all necessary.
Then around September, Varka and some of the Knights of Favonius had scrambled into action and left the city of freedom before the sunrise of Weinlesefest, leaving many families to wonder where their loved ones had gone without so much as a word. Acting Grandmaster Jean had soothed them by simply labeling it another expedition, but Lumine saw right through her uneasy voice and lack of a brilliant smile. The months-long embargo, too, had disappeared overnight from their massive base camp near Dawn Winery, but there was no sign of bloodshed to suggest a battle and no sign of a struggle to suggest they’d been chased out.
The Fatui had simply vanished.
Her anxieties reaching their peak as she remained stuck in place researching instead of exploring, Lumine had done the drastic thing of quietly breaking into Jean’s office while the acting Grand Master was distracted by Lisa–or was it Diluc?- and scouring for any details of the Snezhnayan military’s recent suspicious activities. What she had found had stunned her, though she shouldn’t have been too surprised by the fact that her friends were once again keeping secrets from her; they always had and likely always will, especially after last spring’s… disappointing revelation surrounding her partner.
The dozens of letters covering the acting Grand Master’s desk came from leaders across Teyvat, all saying the same thing. The Fatui who had carved out portions of their lives in each of the six other nations had packed up and shipped out without so much as a single word. The Northland Bank in Liyue Harbor sat empty and unused, the research facilities in Sumeru spotless but abandoned. Projects in Fontaine and Inazuma came to a grinding halt without Snezhnaya’s incredible funding to help support them. Diplomatic attempts to establish more connections in Natlan evaporated overnight, leaving many to wonder if they’d been a farce in the first place.
And then, in the middle of all of those concerning letters, Lumine had found a direct order written in bright red and blue ink addressing all of the regiments scattered across the globe– a recall notice, summoning the troops back to Snezhnaya by the start of the new year. Anyone who did not return would be deemed a traitor to the Tsaritsa and Teyvat as a whole. The influx of returning soldiers would be the perfect cover to help her slip into Snezhnaya unnoticed. If anyone asked where she was from, she could simply lie and pretend she was part of the recall.
She couldn’t let the opportunity slip through her fingers like sands in an hourglass, and in less than a week later, Lumine had vanished, too.
The soldier’s eyes narrowed as another gale of whipping wind cut through them, the icy droplets stinging her exposed cheeks.. “And where are the rest of your comrades?”
She swallowed hard, praying to whatever god listening that she would be able to accomplish this carefully crafted lie. “They fled.”
“Gods above,” The first soldier whispered, her shoulders slouching.
“Why didn’t you take them out?” The tallest of the three asked, hands on his broad hips. “You know her Majesty’s rules for abandoning the post, especially during this recall. Why didn’t you take them out?”
“Because…” Because technically, they didn’t exist? No, she needed to focus. “Because they were like my brothers. Surely you must understand what difficulty it would be to kill your fellow soldiers–”
The pyroslinger snarled like a feral cat, once again raising the muzzle of the gun into her face. “And yet I would do it in a heartbeat.”
“Will you quit it?” The female soldier snapped, pushing him hard enough to send him skidding through the slick snow. “She is the only one loyal enough to make the journey back. She listened to the Tsaritsa’s most direct order; that counts in my book. And since I’m in charge, I say she lives.”
The annoyed, chastised rifleman huffed and turned on his heel, grabbing the vanguard’s arm and dragging the burly soldier back up the slick hill without another word. Before they’d even reached the peak, the storm swallowed them whole, the wind blowing the sheets of snow sideways in the thick, white sheets. For the first time since the encounter began, Lumine let out a slow breath of relief and lowered her hands.
The leader watched her fellow men go, then turned and offered her a tentative smile, warm and gentle. She peeled off her hood despite the freezing temperatures, revealing her short, icy blonde bob of hair whipping in the violent wind. “You must be freezing to come from that tepid Dragonspine weather.”
Tepid. Archons. “Admittedly, yes.”
“My name is Yelena,” She said, sticking out her hand for her to shake. Lumine quickly scanned her mind, trying to recall if this was a traditional greeting Snezhnayans used or a test by one commander to trick her into revealing herself. She must have taken too long, as the woman awkwardly laughed and rubbed the back of her head. “Ahh… and you are?”
“Olena. Olena Alekseev.” Childe would likely kill her for taking his last name, too, but it was the easiest one for her to remember. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to see fellow soldiers again.”
A bright smile stretched across the soldier’s pretty features. “Come on, let’s get you back to camp and into some warmer clothes. I’m sure that will help you feel better.”
“Camp?” Lumine asked awkwardly as Yelena started towards the hill, scrambling to keep up with.
“Where all the other soldiers are gathering. Don’t worry– you can share my tent.” When Lumine still hesitated, the commander offered her another reassuring smile, her Cryo delusion clinking on her belt as she walked. “Ignore the boys being mean, too. They’re just nervous about the recall, that’s all. I promise you, you’re safe now.”
A promise made by a Snezhnayan, sacred and official. Lumine only hoped it still mattered if somehow they ever found out her true identity. Still, with her elemental abilities so out of sorts and the snowstorm intensifying with every passing minute, she had no choice but to go along with it.That odd, piercing gaze that had infiltrated every thought as she tried to resonate seemed to follow her as they crested the hill and caught up with the others, heading onwards to the base camp. Anxiety flooded her senses as she cast a glance over her shoulder towards the headless Statue of the Seven one final time.
Just what had she gotten herself into this time?