Chapter Text
Varka was well aware that Mondstadt prided itself as the city of freedom. It was a place where anyone could come and belong, so long as they posed no threat to the city or its people. This freedom was a rare luxury, the freedom to become whoever you wished to be. Unfortunately, that same freedom also applied to Lohen, who had apparently decided to use it to become an absolute little shit.
Back in Mondstadt, Lohen had been the picture of a model knight, a prodigy who could almost rival Albedo in intelligence. He was diligent, polite, and showed great care for those under his command. Whenever they crossed paths in the hallways, he was always composed, courteous, and almost princely. His posture was impeccable, his speech refined, and his appearance that of a proper knight. Charismatic to a fault, he had a knack for inspiring even the most cowardly, trembling recruits into becoming steadfast soldiers.
As the Vice Captain of the Fifth Company, Lohen was nothing if not responsible. He had to be, especially when leading a unit that specialized in ranged combat. His mind was a strange and fascinating blend of genius and madness, the two working in perfect harmony. How else could one explain a company that could fight as a single, cohesive unit even when split into multiple squads?
Sure, he liked to fight. Varka had assumed it was for the glory, much like himself in his younger days. But no, Lohen was different. Very different and that became glaringly obvious in Nod-Krai.
"Feral" wasn’t the right word to describe him.
Lohen was unhinged.
Lohen was not insane. Far from it.
If anything, he was deliberate.
There was a meticulousness to him, a practiced sleight of hand that belonged more to assassins and spies than to knights. Every movement had purpose. Every choice, no matter how reckless it appeared, was calculated beneath the surface.
Still, that did little to lessen the impact of his strange alignment between joy and violence.
Varka could be calmly discussing troop movements and battle formations one moment, only for manic laughter to ring out across the battlefield the next, followed closely by the agonized cries of monsters unfortunate enough to have caught Lohen’s attention.
Whenever Lohen returned, he was always a sight to behold: his clothes, hair, and face splattered with blood, wearing a grin as wide and delighted as a child clutching a fistful of candy. If asked what he had been doing, he’d reply with something like, “Testing new dummies,” or, “Just a delightful little round of recreational stabbing.”
What, exactly, was “recreational” about stabbing monsters? Varka couldn’t say. But as long as Lohen remained firmly on their side and never decided to redirect that gleeful bloodlust toward him, there were no real complaints. After all, few soldiers had the stomach to deal with the Wild Hunt’s surprise ambushes at five in the morning, especially after a heavy night of drinking. Lohen, on the other hand, met those ambushes with the unbridled enthusiasm of a child playing with their favorite toy.
Case in point: it was early morning, and the scene was nothing short of chaotic. Hungover knights stumbled out of their tents in various states of disarray, none of them remotely graceful, all of them clearly struggling to piece together the poor decisions of the previous night. Two were locked in a heated argument over a missing sock, voices hoarse and accusatory, while another sported a fresh black eye of completely unknown origin.
All in all, it was a perfectly normal morning. Mondstadt was the City of Freedom, after all, and while you could take its people out of the city, you certainly couldn’t take the freedom, or the alcohol, out of them.
Still, they had reached the goal area of the expedition: Amsvartnir. This was where they would rest before some of the troops spread out to investigate what had happened to Andrius. However, given the current state of most of the knights, either dead asleep, hungover, or unable to walk in a straight line, that would have to wait until they were lucid and their bodies didn’t actively hate them.
Lohen, however, had not participated in the previous night’s festivities. And so, in the pale light of dawn, he leaned casually against a tree, wholly absorbed in his own work. In his hand, he held a knife. It was a curious thing, beautiful, in a way that bordered on unsettling. The blade curved like a feather caught mid-fall, forged from a crystalline material that caught the light in sharp, prismatic glints. It looked delicate, almost ornamental. It was anything but.
The edge was honed so finely that an untrained hand would be cut before realizing it had ever made contact. Yet the weapon was not designed for clean kills. Its spine was lined with subtle serrations, cruelly deliberate, meant to tear rather than slice, to linger, to hurt.
And Lohen wielded it with the care of an artist. He worked methodically, layering the blade with a fresh coating of poison. A viscous mixture, clinging thickly to the edge, slime condensate, for adhesion. Flaming flower stamen, for the slow, searing burn that followed. And then he paused, tilting his head slightly as if considering.
“Mm. Needs something with a bit more… pizzazz,” he murmured, almost contemplative.
From a small vial at his side, he tipped in the final ingredient, a concentrated extract, golden and faintly luminous. It clung to the glass like liquid sunlight, deceptively warm in appearance, though the sharp, volatile tang that cut through the air betrayed it at once: whopperflower nectar.
The reaction was immediate.
The mixture hissed as it kissed the blade, a soft, hungry sound that seemed to linger just a second too long. The sickly green deepened, darkening into something richer, more insidious, as though the poison had found a pulse of its own, threading, coiling, living along the serrated edge.
Lohen watched, quietly pleased. “There we go,” he said lightly, as if he had just finished steeping a cup of tea rather than crafting a weapon meant to prolong suffering. “Now then… should I dull it or not? It would make it hurt more, right?”
A few meters away, the sound of retching broke the stillness as several knights, pale and visibly shaken, succumbed to their nausea, completely oblivious to the absolute war crime Lohen was cooking up in the twisted head of his.
Said Vice captain however paid them no mind as he tilted his head almost idly. “Though, if it isn’t sharp, that does take away from the satisfaction of the stab,” he paused, growing slightly as he looked down at the blade, “No… best to keep it sharpened—for now.”
Varka, watching from a distance, found himself thinking, once again, that perhaps there were certain interpretations of “freedom” Mondstadt had never quite meant to encourage.
As he stood there debating whether or not it was smart to let the Vice captain continue with his hobbies, a low, crawling fog followed in its wake, coiling between tents and boots alike, and with it came the sound. Moans. Groans. The hollow, broken echoes of things that had once been alive.
The Wild Hunt. Abyss-corrupted beasts and the restless dead alike, drawn together by something older than reason, creatures shaped by festering hatred, by stories left unfinished, by paths fate had abandoned.
Lohen’s head snapped up.
For one brief moment, he went perfectly still.
Then he smiled.
In the span of a blink, he was gone, already striding forward to meet the approaching horde as if welcoming dear, long-lost friends. His arms lifted in an enthusiastic wave, his smile warm and bright.
“Hi!”
The first creature reached him moments later. It lunged from the fog, ragged and shrieking, all snapping bone and grasping hands.
Lohen laughed.
Not the startled sound of a man caught off guard, nor the hard bark of a soldier bracing for impact, but something bright, delighted, almost fond. He slipped aside with effortless grace, the creature’s claws tearing through the empty air where he had stood a heartbeat before.
“Careful,” he chided lightly, as though correcting poor manners at a dinner table. “You’ll hurt yourself if you rush.”
Then he drove his dagger deep into its shoulder.
It wasn’t a clean cut. The serrated edge caught and dragged, tearing as it went. The poison took hold almost instantly, a sickly green shimmer racing along the wound as the creature convulsed. Its shriek collapsed into something wet and strangled.
“Oh,” Lohen said, eyes bright with interest. “Very nice.”
The creature spasmed again, limbs jerking in a broken rhythm as the toxin worked deeper, unraveling it from the inside out. Lohen crouched just enough to watch more closely, studying it with the pleased focus of someone examining an especially promising specimen.
“Fast-acting,” he murmured. “Responsive, too. And here I was worried the mixture might be a touch too slow.”
A twitch of his fingers sent the blade spinning once before he caught it again with practiced ease. “Though…” His gaze flicked up as another shape lunged from the fog. “I suppose we should test consistency.”
Before the creature could close the distance, Lohen flicked a cryo dagger into his hand. Frost coiled along the blade, quickly laced with a venomous green sheen. He threw it straight into the creature’s chest.
It staggered. Then collapsed in on itself.
“Yes,” Lohen breathed, rising smoothly. “That’s the one.”
His smile widened by the smallest fraction as he looked toward the remaining shapes stirring in the mist. “Don’t worry,” he called, voice warm with invitation. “There’s plenty left to go around.”
They surged toward him in a writhing mass of limbs and decay, drawn by the living heat of him, by the sound of his voice, by the promise of violence.
Lohen stepped into them.
To call it combat would have been inaccurate. It was movement. Fluid, precise, almost elegant. Like the sharp, biting winds of a winter storm, each step landed with intention, each motion economical, as though he were following some unheard rhythm. He wove through grasping hands and snapping jaws, his laughter threading through the fog like a melody gone terribly wrong.
Steel whispered.
Flesh answered.
And at the center of it all, Lohen shone. Where he passed, the horde faltered. Limbs failed. Bodies collapsed. The poison worked patiently, cruelly, turning even shallow wounds into lingering ruin.
“Come now,” he called, almost coaxing. “Don’t be shy. You came this way, didn’t you? It would be a shame to back down now.”
From the mist emerged one of the Wild Hunt’s hunters. It moved with deceptive slowness, its hulking frame warped and uneven, as though poorly stitched together from ruin. Magenta corruption seeped from cracks in its decaying form, pulsing faintly beneath what remained of its armor. Each step dragged, heavy and wrong, yet something in its posture hinted at sudden, unnatural speed.
Varka’s hand moved instinctively toward his claymore, but he never drew it.
After all, he knew Lohen was more than capable of handling himself.
The creature vanished, space folding in on itself with a distorted flicker. Not that it mattered. Lohen was already moving.
His polearm struck the ground in a sharp, controlled sweep, sending up a blinding arc of sand and grit just as the hunter reappeared. The instant it solidified, Lohen was inside its reach, close enough that its size became a hindrance rather than an advantage.
A sharp kick drove into its knee. Bone, or whatever passed for it, gave way with a sickening crack, forcing the creature down. Before it could recover, Lohen seized what remained of its helmet and wrenched its head back with almost casual ease.
For one heartbeat, his expression was almost gentle.
It was the same soft, polished smile he wore when greeting Jean in her office.
Then it shifted.
Something sharper broke through. Something unrestrained. The red of his eyes caught the dim light, gleaming with manic, unfiltered joy, the kind that had no place on any battlefield. His free hand flicked outward and steel flashed.
The cut was too quick to follow cleanly. Varka did not see the moment the blade bit, nor the instant the head separated from the body. What he did see was the aftermath.
Ice burst from the wound in a violent bloom. Jagged shards tore outward, splintering through corrupted flesh as though the air itself had turned vicious. Frost raced along the creature’s ruined form, locking it in a grotesque stillness before it convulsed once, twice, and collapsed in on itself.
Its body unraveled into dark vapor, dissolving into the fog like all Abyss-touched things.
Silence settled over the battlefield.
Lohen blinked, as though the reality of the moment had only just caught up with him. Then he pouted. "Aw... boo." His shoulders slumped with theatrical disappointment. "I thought they'd be tougher."
His gaze drifted outward, following the slow unraveling of the fog and the subtle shift passing through the remaining creatures. They no longer surged forward with reckless hunger. Now, they hesitated, and that made him smile.
“Then again…” he mused, eyes flicking toward the place where the hunter had fallen. “I suppose that’s only natural. It’s hard to stay motivated when your head honcho’s gone.”
The knife spun once between his fingers, its poisoned edge catching the dim light far too innocently for something so lethal. “What a shame,” he said, sighing as though personally inconvenienced. “I was just getting warmed up.”
Varka sighed because he knew better.
To most knights, fleeing enemies meant the threat had passed. The battle was over. There was no honor in cutting down creatures already retreating into the mist.
To Lohen, however, they were not retreating enemies.
They were moving targets.
Easy ones.
Sure enough, the little shit spun on his heel with all the casual grace of a man remembering a forgotten errand. Three cryo daggers flashed between his fingers, bright and cold, before vanishing into the backs of the fleeing creatures.
The reaction was immediate.
One lurched forward with a strangled cry. Another stumbled, clawing uselessly at the blade buried between its ribs. The third made it only a few more steps before frost bloomed across its spine, poison threading through the ice in sickly green veins. Their bodies seized one after another, collapsing into the thinning fog like marionettes with their strings cut.
Only then did Lohen seem satisfied.
He turned back toward camp at an easy, unhurried pace, as though returning from a pleasant morning stroll rather than the aftermath of a slaughter. There was no tension in his shoulders, no strain in his breathing, no sign at all that he had just dismantled a Wild Hunt ambush before breakfast.
If anything, he looked refreshed.
“All taken care of, Grand Master!” he called, bright and cheerful, as if he had done nothing more troubling than tidy up a misplaced stack of paperwork.
Then he smiled.
It was a neat, almost boyish thing, polished and pleasant, the sort of smile one might offer after holding open a door or delivering good news. It might even have been charming, had it not been paired with the blood drying at his cuffs, the dark streaks across his cheek, and the lingering, delighted gleam in his crimson eyes.
Varka stared at him for a long moment.
And not for the first time, he found himself wondering how in the name of every Anemo-blessed breeze this absolute menace had managed to escape Jean’s so-called solitary confinement.
Klee was obvious. Her fondness for explosions and “creative” problem-solving made her a frequent visitor. Varka himself had not been especially surprised the one or two times Jean had confined him, mostly for his habit of conveniently “forgetting” paperwork. Even Alice, the Alice, famed mage and leader of the Hexenzirkel, had been subjected to Jean’s stern lectures and temporary grounding during some of her more chaotic visits to Mondstadt.
But Lohen?
Lohen had escaped Jean’s grasp entirely.
It was not that he did not deserve it. Oh, he absolutely did. If anything, Lohen’s antics made Klee’s explosions look like harmless party tricks.
Varka’s gaze lingered on him as Lohen casually wiped his blade clean with a scrap of cloth, each movement precise and unhurried, as though he had not just single-handedly dismantled a horde of Abyss-corrupted creatures. The blood on his face had dried into faint streaks, almost like war paint, and his crimson eyes still gleamed with lingering satisfaction.
He looked like a man who had just finished a particularly satisfying meal, not someone who had been standing at the center of a battlefield moments ago.
“Lohen,” Varka began, his tone carefully measured, “do you ever stop to think about how… unsettling you are?”
Lohen glanced up, expression mild and curious. “I’m not sure I follow, Grand Master.”
Varka exhaled slowly. Because this menace could not possibly be serious.
He had just wiped out an entire horde of Abyss creatures with the enthusiasm of someone playing a particularly spirited game of tag. Now he stood there covered in blood, smiling as though he had just been crowned champion of the Windblume Festival.
With a tired groan, Varka made a vague gesture toward all of him.
Lohen blinked. Then, slowly, he glanced down at himself, taking in the streaks of dried blood on his cuffs, the faint splatters across his armor, and the dark smear near his collar. “Oh, this?” He lifted one stained sleeve as if only just noticing it. “It’s not that much, really. Besides, it’s not my blood, so it doesn’t count.”
The silence that followed was deafening.
It stretched on and on, broken only by the faint, miserable groans of hungover knights somewhere in the distance.
Varka stared at him, caught somewhere between disbelief and the creeping suspicion that Lohen genuinely believed what he had just said. Lohen, for his part, appeared entirely unbothered.
“Anyway,” Lohen said brightly, as though discussing the weather, “if any more of them happen to show up, do let me know. I’d hate to miss it.”
Varka opened his mouth to respond.
Then closed it again.
There were no words in any language that could properly capture the sheer absurdity of the man standing before him. So instead, he let out a long, resigned sigh and silently questioned every decision that had led him here.
Lohen seemed entirely unbothered by the lack of response. If anything, he took it as permission to move on. With a cheerful nod, he turned on his heel and strolled toward a cluster of knights who had apparently decided the best cure for a hangover was more alcohol.
They were already raising their tankards again, voices climbing back into drunken cheer despite the early hour.
“Next round’s on me, boys!” Lohen called.
The response was immediate and thunderous.
A wave of unrestrained enthusiasm rolled through the camp, loud enough to make several nearby knights visibly regret having ears.
“That’s what I like to hear!” one knight bellowed, slamming his tankard down hard enough to send ale sloshing across the table.
“You heard him! Vice Captain’s paying!” another shouted, already halfway through his drink. “Drink up!”
“Yeah—oh, ugh…” A third knight went an alarming shade of green and staggered away from the group, one hand clamped over his mouth. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
Lohen did not miss a beat. With the ease of someone who had seen this exact scene play out far too many times, he clapped the unfortunate knight lightly on the back.
“There, there,” he said, all sympathy and no sincerity.
Then he turned back to the others, his expression softening into something almost fond, though the glint in his crimson eyes gave him away.
“Oh, by the way,” he added casually, as if the thought had only just occurred to him. “Should any of you happen to drink yourselves unconscious tonight, do make sure to report to me afterward. I’ll arrange some special training for you.”
The reaction was immediate.
A chorus of groans erupted from the group, loud and heartfelt, as though the phrase “special training” had awakened some shared battlefield trauma. A few knights winced outright. Others slumped where they stood, already mourning their future selves.
“That’s cruel, Commander!” one protested, horror creeping into his voice.
“Have mercy—just this once!” another pleaded, clutching his tankard like a last lifeline.
Lohen’s smile only widened. “Mercy?” he echoed, light and teasing. “If you insist on behaving like idiots, the least you can do is be durable about it.”
Several faces fell.
“And whether or not you tell me is irrelevant,” he added sweetly. “I’ll know regardless.”
The groans grew louder. A few knights muttered curses into their drinks, though none of them were foolish enough to meet Lohen’s gaze.
He simply chuckled, low and warm, then raised his tankard in a mock toast. “To Mondstadt’s finest,” he said, voice dripping with playful sarcasm. “May your hangovers be brief, and your regrets even briefer.”