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To my favourite old blockhead,
It’s been a while, you big blundering buffoon! Before you tear up this letter, please please please hear me out. I know you’re a stickler for your contracts and all but you don’t need one to to be a good friend, right?
To tell you the truth, I am actually writing to ask for… your help!
Actually, I didn’t expect you to read this far You see, something BIG has happened here in Mondstadt. In fact, it’s something that I can’t handle on my own.
So, I am asking for the first time (in history!) for your help. I promise I’ll compensate you appropriately. How does a few bottles of osmanthus wine sound?
I’ll be waiting at our old meeting place.
(And please, for the love of Celestia, don’t show up in your Exuvia…)
Your old friend,
Barbatos
When Zhongli arrives at Stone Gate and does not see Mondstadt burning up in flames and anarchy in the distance, he is prepared to turn and head right back to Liyue Harbour.
The only thing stopping him is, unfortunately, a little green menace currently hanging off his elbow.
“Come on!” Venti whines, digging his heels into the wooden planks and putting his entire weight into heaving the older god backwards, to no avail, “It was just a little, ah, twist of the tongue! A bit of a jest! It’s no less of a sincere request!”
“I absolutely fail to see where the ‘sincerity’ of your request comes into fruition,” Zhongli scowls. “As far as I can see, Mondstadt is in no immediate danger, contrary to what you had detailed in your letter.”
Venti pouts, and kicks the other archon in the shins. Gently, of course. Kicking Zhongli is like kicking a boulder—the harder you try, the more you hurt yourself. “I never said there wasn’t any danger at all.”
“Did you now?”
Venti groans, unwinding his arms from Zhongli’s when he realises that the latter isn’t planning to move from his spot come hell or high winds. “Well, maybe not immediately, but more like imminently. You know that better than anyone. There wasn’t any need to spell it out in the letter, methinks.”
“Lying by omission,” Zhongli points out, “is still considered an act of deception—”
Venti stomps his foot. “Gods, Morax, you pebbles for brains! Would you even believe me if I said I just wanted to spend time with you?”
Zhongli blinks. “You need only to have asked.”
“But you’re so busy with your contracts and forecasts and whatnot, you never find time to drink with me anymore.. Ow! What was that for!”
“For still being such a brat after five hundred years,” he replies, digging his fist into the younger’s head. “Calling me out on a whim like this and lying to me, have you no sense of shame?”
“Hey! I deserved that five hundred year nap! You don’t know how hard I’ve been working!”
A sigh. “I am sure you have been working hard.”
“Okay, okay!” Venti throws his hands up. “That’s besides the point! I have a proposition. Hear me out, while I’m still here under your permission.”
“...Continue.”
“Okay, so. I was thinking, since I’ve visited Liyue so many times, wouldn’t it be fair to take you around Mondstadt for once in return? I’ll show you the sights! We could walk around, talk about the past, crack open some wine here and there…”
“...”
“Well?” The shorter archon arches a brow.
It… does sound nice, admittedly. He could use a change of pace from watching his people like a hawk. Zhongli mulls over it for a bit, and decides Liyue won’t implode if left alone for two days, he can trust the Qixing on that much, surely.
“...Fine. It has been some time since I have ventured outside of Liyue. A change of pace would be nice.”
Venti’s eyes immediately light up. “Yahoo! That’s what you said, no taking it back, Morax!”
“...Insufferable.” Zhongli pinches the bridge of his nose. “But a contract is a contract. I dare not go back on my words.”
Venti’s grin is absolutely shit-eating. He didn’t think this would actually work. “Anyways, don’t you think my penmanship has improved since the last time I wrote to you?”
“Your handwriting is as despicable as always,” Zhongli grimaces as if he were recalling an unpleasant memory. “Even human toddlers produce much more aesthetically pleasing typography than you do. I disposed of the letter as soon as I was done reading it.”
A scandalised gasp. “Rude!”
“...But it is good to see you again, after so long.”
“Haha,” Venti’s laugh is as light as Zhongli remembers it to be. “It’s good to see you too. I think we’ll have a lot to catch up on!”
“First stop, Wolvendom!” Venti announces, arms open. Zhongli squints against the early morning sunlight settling against twisted branches, seeing slithering paths and a giant stone arena spread out in front of them. The wind is chillier out here than in Stone Gate, and if he listens closely enough, he can hear the faint call of wolves resounding in the distance.
“This is the abode of one of your Four Winds, correct?”
“Yep. Ol’ Andrius and I aren’t really that close though, so I normally don’t dare to stray too close to his territory,” Venti grins. “You know, just like dogs and all.”
The breeze takes on a frosty edge, then. Zhongli arches a brow, and crosses his arms in a hopefully subtle attempt to warm his stiff fingers.
“Wanna try a Wolfhook berry?” the younger god squats down and holds up a small, round berry with spikes protruding from it.
Unfortunately, the shape vaguely reminds Zhongli of a certain species of sea creature he had spent decades trying to eradicate, so he shuffles back a little, opting to glare at the offending fruit instead. Venti simply laughs at him and pops the berry into his mouth, leaves and all.
Zhongli almost gawks. “You did not even wash the fruit,” he protests fruitlessly (ha), eyes as wide as starconches, “Who knows what insects or animals it had been in contact with? What kinds of dangerous microorganisms? And that shape— how are you swallowing that?”
Venti dismisses all his friend’s concerns with a wave. “No worries, no worries! We’re archons, right? A bit of germs won’t hurt us like an arrow to the heart might! Come here, try one for yourself— hhgk— cough—!!”
Zhongli, alarmed, immediately rushes over to slap Venti on the back with the force of a squadron of Milleliths. Multiple times. The latter coughs and hacks before the purple spit-covered berry falls from his mouth, still as intact and spiky as ever.
“...Sometimes I wonder how you are still alive,” he says as he rubs circles into Venti’s back.
“In retrospect,” the anemo god rasps, thumping his fist against his chest, “maybe I should’ve chewed a bit.”
“In retrospect,” Zhongli grunts, “perhaps you should not have attempted to ingest that thing at all.”
“Y’know, this takes me back to that time where you kept slapping at me with a slipper, back when I was in my spirit form.”
“You looked like an insect. You sounded like an insect. Thus, naturally, I assumed you were an insect.”
Venti pouts as he dusts himself off and pretends he didn’t just have a near death experience that would’ve offended every god up in Celestia. “Weren’t all the bugs dead in the war? Except for mosquitos… I remember a ton of them hovering around Guili Plains. Hey, remember when Alatus tried to kill one and ended up uprooting a whole tree? Hahaha!”
The temperature around them drops a little more, and Venti shivers before pulling the older god back towards the path out of the forest.
“I think that’s all the time that old man Andrius is letting us stay for. I can hear him telling us to get off his lawn now,” he grins.
After that, Venti tells Zhongli that he plans on making a short stop to visit a certain someone. On the way, he points out the different flora and fauna that they happen to see, and they clear out a few particularly aggressive hilichurl camps as well.
“Here, tea! I made it just for you.”
“...This is not tea,” states Zhongli, currently resting underneath the shade of a sunsettia tree.
Indeed, what Venti brought back to a resting Zhongli was simply two bowls (Celestia knows where he got those from— a nearby hilichurl camp?) filled with water from a stream nearby and topped with Lamp Grass leaves, Valberries and sweet flowers.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry, I know it’s not as fancy as the stuff you drink in Liyue, but I promise it’s just as good!”
Venti hands one bowl to his short-circuiting travel companion, while he downs his own, leaves and all.
There’s a distinct feeling of déjà vu.
“Pwah~! That hit the spot!”
Zhongli crinkles his nose. “Have you any concern for your health at all? Please tell me that you have hobbies other than singing, drinking and eating dubious things off the ground.”
“Well,” Venti pauses, “Maybe I do participate in a little extreme sport sometimes. Does running from my feelings count?”
The look Zhongli shoots at him could wither away half of Teyvat. “No.”
“See!” Venti has the audacity to point at him. “This is why you’re old and unfit and hermited away writing contracts all day, because you choose to marinate in your feelings like some ancient pickle instead of— aagh!”
Zhongli gracefully sips his not-really-tea while he listens to Venti scream as the latter is punted into the atmosphere by a stone steele. Nothing quite like some peace and quiet for the old and unfit, he decides.
“I’m back, old friend.” Venti smiles, kneeling down until he’s face to face with a small, inconspicuous headstone tucked away in the outskirts of what used to be Old Mondstadt.
Venti places down a fresh bundle of Cecilias that Chloris had gifted to them on the road beside Dawn Winery. It doesn’t make the small mound of dirt in front of them any more palatable to the eyes.
“How have you been?” Venti then asks, sitting down cross legged with a jovial grin. “I brought another old friend with me today. Hope you don’t mind.”
Zhongli looks at Venti, then at the weathered slab of stone sticking out of the ground, before bowing his head. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
He lets Venti engage in one-sided small talk as he looks towards Old Mondstadt in the near distance. Thanks to the war, he couldn’t afford to visit the nearby nations on a whim, but a glance at the intricacy of the remaining ruins leaves little about the city’s former glory to the imagination.
Zhongli closes his eyes, feels the wind cascade over his cheeks.
“Let me sing you a tune, old friend,” Venti continues speaking to the headstone. “I remember this one, in particular, was your favourite until the end.”
Then, a voice of two thousand years past, he sings.
(What makes a country?
Is it one man, the king?
Or is it the countless innocent people who call this land their home?
A kingless country is a country still, but a king without subjects
rules naught but hills.)
“How long has it been since you’ve had any fun?”
Zhongli tilts his head. He may not look the part of a child like the god in front of him, but surely Venti cannot be suggesting that Zhongli has lived like a cactus since the Archon War. “Centuries, perhaps,” he replies, half as a joke.
The joke flies over Venti’s head. Which isn’t surprising given his height, Zhongli thinks.
“Then follow me!” Venti grins. “I’ll show you just how beautiful Mondstadt can be, up in the branches of my favourite old tree!”
And then they spend an hour just like that, perched on the spindly limbs of Windrise’s old oak tree, apples in hand and the Statue of the Seven glowing gently beneath their feet.
There are no humans in sight— only the tang of sweetness on the tongue, the birds drinking from the river, the outline of windmills far in the distance.
Venti eventually brings out his lyre and blesses the land in song and rhyme. The world seems to slow to a crawl. Zhongli closes his eyes and loses himself in the immediacy of the moment, the timelessness of it all.
For the first time in a very long time, he feels at ease.
“What brings you here, Travellers?” Vind asks them at the whistling precipices of Stormbearer Mountains.
“A scenic tour, that’s what we’re here for.” Venti grins easily.
“It is rather dangerous to stand so close to the edge. Please keep your distance.” Zhongli tells her.
“Oh, I am not afraid,” Vind says with a twinkle in her eyes, “for if I fall, I know that Barbatos will lend me his benevolent protection.”
Zhongli blinks. “Even if Barbatos has not made himself known for five hundred years?”
“Of course,” she laughs, as if it were preposterous to think otherwise. “My ancestors have made many sacrifices back in the days. In return, before the last storm finally passed over Mondstadt, Barbatos had promised us eternal protection.”
Venti’s viridescent eyes flicker away.
“Well then, I shall be on my way. Farewell, unknown travellers,” Vind’s eyes crinkle at the corners when she smiles. “May Barbatos’ gentle wind guide you.”
When Vind has finally disappeared from their field of view, Venti sits down at the edge of the cliff, dangling his feet in the air. He motions for the older to sit next to him.
“Here,” Venti takes Zhongli’s hands and pries it open. When his dainty fingers leave Zhongli’s longer, slender ones, a single dandelion seed is left sitting in the latter’s palm. “Scatter it into the wind.”
Zhongli does just that. The two archons watch, silent, as the tiny speck of life washes away into the winds, carried into the far distance and over the dark horizon.
When the breeze dies down, Zhongli tastes ocean salt at the tip of his tongue.
“Wasn’t it so easy to let go?” Venti asks after an intermission of stillness. Zhongli swallows, rubbing at his palm where he had held the seed, so fragile and delicate against the thick fabric of his gloves.
“Because you instructed me to do so.”
Venti rests his palms onto the grass behind and leans back against his hands, swinging his feet. The sound of his heels knocking incessantly against the cliff pulls Zhongli out of his thoughts. “Where do you think that seed will end up?”
Zhongli’s eyes trace over the outlines of the waves, the jagged edges of the rocks, and replies, “Nowhere. The sea is fierce and inhospitable to such a miniscule, pitiful thing.”
The anemo god quirks an eyebrow. “But how do you know for sure? Maybe it’ll land on some tiny island, take root, grow into a great big ol’ tree—”
“But I know,” Zhongli insists, reading through Venti’s layered words with a learned familiarity, it will not survive. I raised the islands, melded the shores, but there are some things that even I cannot control.
Venti leans his head onto Zhongli’s shoulder, the tips of his hair tickling at the older god’s neck, and laughs; the sound dancing between the cecilias, weaving through the forests, echoing far into the distance like the birdsongs of spring, until it settles like ashes across the lands. “Oh ye, of little faith.”
That evening, Venti is thigh-deep into the waters of Starfell Lake and catching fish with an arrow and his bare hands, when suddenly, he asks, “If you could bring them back, would you do it?”
“Who?”
“The Yakshas. Guizhong.”
“No.” Zhongli replies as he turns the fish over the campfire. “Because it simply means that I may lose them again.”
“I heard Beelzebub is initiating a Vision Hunt Decree,” he says between bites of fish, an edge of lethargy to his voice. “She plans to immortalise her reign.”
“Tyranny, that’s what her rule is,” Venti responds. “None of our business though. Inazuma is, after all, her dominion to grow.”
“Do you think it is right?” Zhongli asks quietly.
It takes three more skewers of fish before Venti gives him a reply.
“Nope.” He hums. “Then again, who am I to say what’s right or wrong? I’m the textbook definition of a shitty ruler! I still have no idea what I’m doing, most of the time. Mondstadt may be doing fine but sometimes... I wonder if it would do better if there were no archon at all.”
And then he reaches over and steals Zhongli’s fish, devouring it all in one bite.
The crackle of the campfire is almost deafening against the hum of the cicadas.
“You may not be proud of yourself, but I am proud of you.” Zhongli says, unflinchingly.
Venti laughs, and the sound is decidedly insincere. “Thanks.”
That night, Zhongli dreams for the first time in decades.
He is in the Realm of Clouds, blinded by the vermillion rays of eternal dawn. As fog drifts between his feet and sinks into the ground, he hears the crowing of cranes far in the distance.
When he turns around, he sees nothing.
And yet, the sound is still there— only now, it morphs into a familiar song. It dances through the windless realm, soft, steady, and takes him by the hands, gently coaxing him towards its source.
He follows.
He walks and walks and walks, his bare feet sinking into the clouds as if dipping into quicksand. He passes by rows and rows of ancient innovations, gimmicky machines and contraptions laid to gather dust, sealed away from the mortal realm.
He walks until his soles ache, until finally, finally, he reaches the end—the place where reality meets the unknown, a liminal space at the edge of the universe.
In front of him stands a familiar figure, their back towards him.
“Guizhong,” he acknowledges, and his voice is strangely wary. “I thought the dead relinquish all power over the dream realm.”
A bird flies overhead. For all his encyclopaedic knowledge of the world, Zhongli does not recognise what species it is.
“You have done well, Morax.”
Zhongli swallows, his tongue suddenly feeling too large for his throat. “I would do no less to uphold your legacy.”
There’s a smile in her reply. “My legacy, hm?”
Zhongli waits, his feet sinking into the clouds up to his ankles. Guizhong slowly turns her body towards him, dressed in the fine silks and fabrics of the celestial realms, but he still cannot see her eyes.
“My dear friend,” she says, sunlight seeping through her visage like dust within its rays. “Then, what is your legacy?”
Zhongli thinks about the statues erected across Liyue, carved in his likeness. He thinks about the name of reverence on the tongues of his people, spoken aloud with utter, unfettered devotion. He feels, deep in his chest, the steady hum of divine power within, granted by the unknown forces above.
(He knows that these should not belong to him. He was an outsider, heavenly bestowed onto the pebbled beaches of Old Teyvat.
Guizhong, however, was there even before him, and her warm gaze—so alive, so ethereal—had welcomed him into the open arms of her people like he was simply a lamb, still wobbling on his feet, and she was his shepherd into a vast new world.)
“My legacy is your legacy.” He replies, and they both know it’s as good as saying nothing.
“Perhaps.” Guizhong says, but the lilt in her words suggests that she thinks otherwise. “But, Barbatos is right; it is time to move on.”
“Did—” —I not do well enough?
“Because you are not dead yet, Zhongli.” Her voice echoes, crisp, like freshly shattered glass. She is still not looking at him, but instead, at the endless open skies behind him. “It’s not yet too late to open your depths by plunging into them.”
In the distance, slowly, the sun begins to set.
“I dreamt,” Zhongli tells Venti the next morning, “last night.”
It wasn’t a terrible sleep by any means, but Zhongli feels far less rested than he should be for a generous nine hours of sleep.
“So did I.” Venti replies, voice a little hollow. “...I dreamt of him.”
Zhongli glances at his friend’s face—takes in the downturn of the lips, bags under the eyes—and looks back to focus on the road ahead.
“Was he of good health?” he asks, after a beat.
“He was. We sang together under the trees of Whispering Woods, just like the old times.” Venti smiles, miming the plucking of a lyre with his fingers, and sings—the notes rippling into the air like a mirage, “Daß wir uns hier in diesem Tal, noch treffen so viel hundertmal… ah, how does the rest go again?”
“It has been quite a while since I have heard the Old Mondstadtian tongue.”
“Right? I’ve almost forgotten how it sounds myself, it seems the future for such outdated vernacular isn’t looking so bright!”
Another beat of silence.
“I dreamt of Guizhong,” Zhongli supplies, feeling that if Venti shared so much about his own dream, then it’s only fair Zhongli should do the same, “she… was well.” He frowns.
“Hm. You don’t sound too sure about that.”
“I could not discern her face,” he admits, the age-old feeling of bitter shame pooling between his ribs like lukewarm old tea. “It has become harder and harder to recall her features, as of late.”
Venti peers up at him, the emerald pools in his eyes swirling like a lazy hurricane, a frightening calm amidst the rings of turmoil, but—
(—it is not human. It is not real. To pay homage to the dead by sheltering within their empty husks, held together by the glue of guilt and self-destruction—perhaps that is a special kind of sacrilege of its own.)
“At least you still remember her name,” says Venti, quietly.
New Mondstadt has changed dramatically since Zhongli last saw it. Back then, it was nothing but a colony of tents, campfires, haggard souls and desperate runaways trudging through the ferocity of Borealis’ eternal snowstorms.
Now, the streets bustle with people, flowers bloom along the paths, and the smell of local cuisine and wine colours the breeze that blows through the square.
“Ad astra abyssosque,” a dark-haired woman behind a wooden counter greets the two of them. She looks strangely familiar. “Welcome to the Adventurers’ Guild.”
“Adventurers’ Guild?” Zhongli asks, recalling a similar organisation that operates at a much smaller scale in Liyue. Perhaps it's the flightiness of the people in this nation of freedom that allows such an organisation to flourish much easier than in his own land of monoliths.
“Yes,” she says, and her name tag—Katheryne—glints against the sunlight. “We are a specialised network dedicated to providing intelligence and resources to budding and established adventurers across Teyvat.”
“I see.”
“But that is irrelevant,” she continues, and her voice is sharp obsidian while her eyes are the endless stretches of void; black matter throughout the sea of quanta. “Because you two have a far greater purpose than to meddle in these vapid human affairs.”
Venti scratches at the back of his neck—a nervous tick Zhongli recognises from millennia past. “Sorry, I think you have the wrong people—”
“Your task,” Katheryne recites without pause, “is to create glory out of destruction. To guide humanity towards a newfound utopia. To nurture them in preparation to withstand a force greater than death.”
Venti’s smile freezes across his face.
“I think we shall take our leave now,” Zhongli says suddenly, grabbing the younger god by the cape. “Thank you for your… guidance,” he says evenly.
Katheryne stares at the two of them, her expression blank, before her lips shift upwards into a cordial smile, black eyes mooning into crescents, something not quite human—not quite real—hidden behind her flawless lashes.
Somewhere on the balconies, a girl begins to sing.
Katheryne smiles.
“Ad astra per aspera, friends,” she says, as she waves the pair goodbye.
“That was strange.” Venti brings a hand to his chin.
“Indeed.”
“Well, no use mulling over it now!” Venti’s disposition changes as quickly as the minute’s passing. “Hey, since we’re here, I’ll take you to one of my favourite places!”
Zhongli squints. “...Your statue?”
“No! I’m not that narcissistic! Somewhere better!”
Somewhere better, of course, turns out to be the one and only Angel’s Share.
“...Do they serve tea here?” Zhongli asks, looking around as they step into the tavern. Venti wheezes and slaps his thigh, barely containing his cackles of laughter.
“Old man…” he says between gasps for air, “You don’t come to a Mondstadt tavern and ask for tea.”
“Not everyone comes here to get piss drunk.” A monotone voice cuts through their exchange. “But unfortunately, sir, we do not serve tea here.”
“Diluc!” Venti springs over to the counter and props his elbows up on the bar. “How's business going these days?”
“Terrible, because the resident bard wasn’t here to bring merriment and cheer to liven the place up.”
“Really?”
“No.” The red-head rolls his eyes and tilts his head towards the rest of the establishment, half-full with a mixture of sleeping, crying, muttering customers at varying levels of intoxication. “They all come to get piss-drunk off their feet, not listen to you sing about the forests and flowers and Mondstadt of the olden days.”
Venti huffs. “Rude!”
Diluc wipes down the bar one last time before he asks, “What can I get for you two?”
“Two bottles of dandelion wine, please!” The bard chirps, already taking a seat on the barstool.
“And a bottle of osmanthus wine, too.” Zhongli adds.
Diluc quirks a brow. “How did you know we stock osmanthus wine here?”
Venti leans over and holds a hand open beside his mouth, and drawls, “He’s got a sixth sense for it. Keep some around and he can sniff it out like a cat.”
“I can hear you.”
“Ow—!”
“Take a seat. I’ll bring it out shortly.” Diluc tells them.
“Splendid wine as always, Master Diluc! The fragrance of blooming dandelion flowers, the velvety burn of the subtly sweet liquid, the fresh aftertaste that sings of open summer skies! Oh, if I could compose a ballad for it all over again, I would!”
“That’s your twenty-fifth glass,” the redhead shakes his head in disbelief. “I’ll have you know that this is all going onto your tab.”
“Why meee?” Venti whines. “Put it on the blockhead’s! He can definitely pay for it all!”
“I am not risking economic inflation just to help you pay for your absurd alcoholic appetite.” Zhongli says. “One must only put back in what is taken out in order to maintain the balance of mora in the world.”
Diluc squints. “...Inflation?”
Venti groans, leaning so far back that he almost topples over. “That’s just fancy speak for saying you’re not carrying any on you, and that you don’t wanna make any!”
The redhead simply chalks it up to the wine talking, and turns back around to tally up the tab. A few more minutes pass before he hears someone call his name.
“Master Diluc,” Zhongli’s voice pipes up from behind him. “I have heard that Mondstadt’s wine industry is terribly competitive. You are still so young, yet you already shoulder so many burdens. Do you do it alone?”
“Yes,” Diluc replies steadily. “I do everything alone.”
“I see.”
He can’t help the defensiveness that creeps into his voice. “Why do you ask? I don’t need a partner. I’ve been doing perfectly fine by myself.”
Zhongli smiles, and it seems so far away. “You remind me of my younger self.”
“Oh.”
“Cherish the people around you.” Zhongli tells him as he nurses his cup of osmanthus wine. “Because in the end, we are all alone. But most do not live long enough to realise it.”
Diluc pauses.
He stares at the other man for a few long seconds.
Then, he plucks the half-full cup out of Zhongli’s hands, refills it to the top, and slides it along with the rest of the wine back towards the brunette.
“On the house,” he says, ignoring Venti’s accusations of blatant favouritism in the background.
Venti sends Zhongli off at the border between Mondstadt and Liyue, on top of the time-worn boardwalks of Stone Gate from where they started. The southerly winds of Liyue carry with it a distinct sort of yearning—a tinge of ocean salt and earthen dust, different from the pure, untethered spirit of the Mondstadtian gales.
“I… enjoyed our brief outing,” Zhongli tells Venti truthfully. “It was freeing, I will admit, to be temporarily relieved of my…”
“Burdens,” Venti supplies.
“Responsibilities,” Zhongli decides, then crosses his arms. “My people are not simply ‘burdens’ as you put it. You are incredibly tactless with your words sometimes, Barbatos.”
“Hehe, but it was fun right? A little soul-searching even does wonders for the gods, it seems!”
“I cannot disagree with that.” Zhongli smiles softly. “I think I’d like to visit Mare Jivari next time. Will you come with me?”
“Mare Jivari… the final destination. Never one to stray far from the dead, I see!” Venti chuckles, and if Morax tries hard enough, he can still picture Barbatos standing beside him, framed by his wings of sanctity, immortalised into the days of old.
“Then it is a contract, for both your words and mine are set unto stone.”
To which Barbatos spreads his arms wide open, as free as the birds above their heads, as if he could catch the world in his arms.
“Then, I’ll see you there!” the Anemo Archon promises, his immortal body seeping away into the wind like verdant watercolours.
It is not human, nor is it real. But, Morax thinks, it is good enough.
“Farewell, archaic lord!” the wind laughs. There is the scent of cecilias—fleeting—and then it is gone.
(And even the hardest rocks may be worn down after three thousand years,
nor will the wind ever return again.)