Chapter Text
Farewell, Archaic Dad (i)
“Without the Sigil, you’d never make it in,” Childe said. “The Adepti don’t take kindly to trespassers, and they’ve been known to kill them... or worse.”
“Worse?” gasped Paimon.
Childe nodded gravely. “Worse.”
Lumine and Paimon had barely entered Jueyun Karst when they heard footsteps from just ahead. Someone emerged from around the bend, a dishevelled brunette woman, covered in dirt, with large gashes torn through her tunic and muddy splash marks on her skirt. She looked like any of the poorer villagers they’d met in Liyue, only... with far, far more panic in her eyes. She ran in their direction, or tried to: she must have been running for quite a while, since every step she took was a shaky almost-stumble.
“Help me! Somebody help meeeeee!”
Lumine ran up to the woman. “Are you okay?”
The woman shook her head as she staggered toward Lumine. “The... the Adepti... They’re hunting me...”
“Hunting you?” said Lumine. She caught the other woman and helped support her weight. “What happened?”
The woman gratefully put an arm over Lumine’s shoulder for support. “I don’t know... They said that I broke their rules... That my soul is forfeit...” She took a deep, ragged breath. “Please... You have to help me get out of Jueyun Karst... before they catch me...”
“Paimon, how long ago did we cross into the Karst?” said Lumine, as she helped the woman walk.
“Um... Paimon thinks it’s been seventeen minutes,” said Paimon, looking at the woman with concern. “Should we...?”
“We’ll walk you to the edge of the Karst,” said Lumine, “and then... We can’t come with you, but maybe the Millelith chasing us will be able to help you. Or you can get to Wangshu Inn?”
“Chasing you...?” said the woman. “And... What’s Wangshu Inn?”
“The Millelith are...” Lumine looked to Paimon, who shrugged helplessly. “...it’s a long story.”
“And Wangshu Inn is the inn in Dihua Marsh,” piped in Paimon. “You know, the big tree in the middle of it with a building on top?”
The other woman looked perplexed. “There’s no building in the Dihua tree,” she said.
“Paimon is... pretty sure that inn’s been there for over a decade.”
“Ayo, I’m telling you, I’ve never heard of such... oh, never mind, it’s not important... Just... Thank you for helping...”
“We do what we can,” said Lumine. (Paimon began to clarify that usually they got paid for doing what they could, until Lumine shot her a warning look.) “And even as... tired as you must be, we should have you properly outside the Karst within half an hour. It’s no problem, really.”
“Paimon wonders what this lady did to anger the Adepti.”
The woman shuddered. “I don’t... I don’t know...”
That reminded Lumine: “My name’s Lumine, by the way. And this here is Paimon. What’s your name?”
“My name? It’s Yahu. ‘Ya’ as in, ‘I know martial arts, hi-yah!’; ‘Hu’ as in ‘Who stole my bookmark?’... I’m from Mingyun, big village to the east...”
“Nice to meet you, Yahu,” said Lumine. “Are you hungry?”
Paimon looked scandalised. “Traveller! You can’t just give Pai— give our food to strangers! Um, no offence, Miss Yahu.”
“None taken,” said Yahu. “And... it’s okay... I still have a little...”
She reached into her skirt pocket and pulled out a handful of bruised-looking berries.
“I have... these...” she said, slipping one into her mouth. She sighed and seemed to untense a little as she chewed.
(“Ooh, can Paimon have half? That can be your payment for our help!”
“Paimon,” said Lumine.)
The three of them walked for a while, the tense silence punctuated only by the crunch of dewy grass underfoot.
About ten minutes later, the mists started to thicken around them.
“Oh no,” said Yahu, and Lumine nearly lost her grip on the woman as she picked up her pace, staggering forward. “Oh no, oh no... They found me, miss, they’re here...”
“Paimon, watch our backs,” said Lumine. “Yahu, we’ll try to protect you as best as we can, but we don’t want any trouble with the Adepti either...”
“Don’t you understand?” said Yahu, looking hysterically at Lumine. “They don’t want us here. We’re already breaking their rules being here.”
Lumine kept her voice firm with some effort. “We have a... a Sigil of Permission,” she said, as they marched into the thickening mists. “Maybe it will keep you safe, too.”
“Paimon really hopes it works,” said Paimon nervously.
Without warning, an inhuman screech echoed around them, seemingly from every direction.
At the same time, the mist rolled in faster than ever before, until they could barely see more than a few paces ahead.
“I can’t, I can’t, I... Don’t let them take me!” shrieked Yahu. She pulled free of Lumine’s arm and ran ahead, her gait between a stumble and a sprint.
“Yahu! Wait! Stay close!”
Lumine darted ahead into the mists, trying to keep up, and with a panicked yelp, Paimon quickly followed suit.
She ran, but she’d lost sight of Yahu. All she could hear were the woman’s footsteps, and then—
An ear-splitting scream.
The mists fell away around them, and Lumine and Paimon found themselves alone, not another soul in sight.
“What? Where’d she go?” said Paimon.
“I... don’t know,” said Lumine. Her Elemental sight showed no trace of the woman, and...
...wait, no, something was ahead.
Lumine walked forward. Just out of view of the main path, a grey plinth was tucked beneath the cliffs.
It was a tombstone.
Paimon caught up to Lumine as she stood there, reading.
Here lies Yahu, arrogant mortal. For her crimes of trespassing upon Jueyun Karst and stealing its fruit, she is condemned to wander these mists for eternity.
“...what?” said Lumine.
“Was... was that woman a ghost?” said Paimon. “Did we encounter a ghost?”
Lumine bit her lip. “This is an area full of divine magic...” she said. “It’s... certainly possible...”
Paimon gasped. “And that’s why she hadn’t heard of Wangshu Inn! How long ago did she die? What village did she say she was from?... Wait.” Paimon clapped her hands to her mouth in horror. “She was cursed for trespassing and ‘stealing fruit’? Paimon ate those berries. Is... Is Paimon cursed, too!?”
Lumine shuddered. “We... But we can’t turn back, Paimon. We have to tell the Adepti about Rex Lapis’s murder. And the Millelith... We have to keep going.”
“Paimon really hopes that Sigil keeps us safe,” said Paimon. “Paimon doesn’t want to be trapped here forever like Yahu...”
(Rex Lapis’s murder?, thought the woman spying on them from a nearby hideyhole, juuust beyond the mortal plane. What in the world is going on in the Harbour this time?)
“Come on,” said Lumine, motioning the way they’d come, “let’s keep moving.”
It took about ten minutes for Hu Tao to find the perfect spot: a cliff-wall behind her, a cliff-edge before her, and nothing but grass and a lonely sandbearer tree on this outcropping.
She marched around the tree once, confirming she was alone, then retreated to press her back against the cliff wall, so that nothing could sneak up on her from behind. In front of her was the tree and the cliff edge, and past that, nothing for miles, after which other peaks and clouds dotted the landscape. The grey-blue sky lay further beyond still.
“Okay,” she muttered to herself, “okay. Here we go.”
She opened her eyes as wide as she could, blinked a few times rapidly, then stretched her eyes open again.
“Xiao,” said Hu Tao.
“You called?” said Xiao, stepping out from behind the sandbearer tree.
“I knew it!” crowed Hu Tao triumphantly. “You teleported! You must have!”
Xiao crossed his arms. “Hu Tao, if you’re calling for me frivolously, I will be having words with your master...”
“Oh, don’t worry, I have important news,” said Hu Tao. “But first, tell me, how did you get here?”
Xiao fixed the human girl with a quizzical look. “You called my name, so I came here.”
“Right, but did you walk? Fly? Turn invisible?”
“Why are you always obssessing over the details of how I get places, Hu Tao?”
“You don’t actually remember, do you?”
“I would throw you off this cliff if Cloud Retainer didn’t dote on you so much,” grumbled Xiao. “Now. Your important news?”
“Two travellers are entering the Karst, and they were too stubborn for my first layer of tricks to keep them away,” said Hu Tao. “And they said they had... what’s a Sigil of Permission?”
Xiao’s brows shot up. “I haven’t heard anyone speak of those for a few centuries. Adeptal magic, bearing Rex Lapis’s will. Used to invoke certain contingency clauses of his contracts. Did they show you one?”
Hu Tao shook her head. “I sensed faint Adeptal magic on them, maybe Geo flavoured, but I didn’t get a good look. But that’s a real thing, huh?”
“Yes. That is a real thing.” Xiao sighed. “Is that all you wanted to discuss?”
“Guess so,” Hu Tao shrugged.
She waited until Xiao began to turn around before casually adding:
“Oh, and they said Rex Lapis was murdered. Is that important?”
“What do you mean, ‘is that important?’”
Hu Tao smiled innocently. (Xiao clearly really wanted to stab her and he made the funniest expression when he was holding back.) “Didn’t want you to run off straight away.”
Xiao grimaced. “I shall inform the others.”
“Can I get a lift?” said Hu Tao.
Xiao glared at her.
Oh, oops, she was forgetting to flutter her eyelashes. She corrected her mistake.
Xiao’s glare softened.
“For a mortal, your powers of manipulation are nothing short of demonic,” he grumbled.
He turned his back to Hu Tao and crouched low. Hu Tao climbed on, piggyback style.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said.
“We have to go back,” said Paimon, looking around frantically as they crossed the first bridge of many. “Lumine, it’s not safe here, we’re going to be cursed.”
“I’ll protect you,” promised Lumine.
“What if Paimon falls off the bridge because of a curse...?”
Lumine fished around her pocket subrealm and held out a Fisherman’s Toast. “We’ve been walking for hours and hours. Here, get some food in you, you’ll feel better.”
“Paimon’s not hungry,” said Paimon. She shuddered. “Paimon’s just... antsy. What if that Fatui creep was lying about the Sigil? We... we can’t be here.”
Lumine blinked. Paimon wasn’t hungry?
“You’re shaking,” muttered Xiao, as they departed Mountain Shaper’s abode, leaping from peak to peak. “Are you okay? Rex Lapis’s death must be a shock to you too.”
“What? I’m fine,” muttered Hu Tao. “Besides, we don’t know for sure he’s dead yet.”
“If you... need to talk...” said Xiao, the words sounding foreign on his tongue.
“No, I...” Hu Tao frowned. “Oh, is it my hand tremors you’re noticing? That’s normal. Side effect of the caffy-berries I was eating.”
“Caffy-berries?” said Xiao.
“Berries injected with coffee extract! For the Yahu routine.”
Xiao twisted his head around to fix her with an admonishing look.
“What?” said Hu Tao. “Calm people are harder to spook.”
“Just hold onto my arm,” said Lumine, as they started on the next bridge.
“Paimon is trying!” said Paimon, who was trembling from head to toe. “Paimon is just really concerned about mortality today, okay?”
“Hi Mom! Apparently Geo Dad is dead,” said Hu Tao, striding past Cloud Retainer into her abode. “I’m gonna go change into work clothes. Be right back.”
“Rex Lapis, dead?” boomed Cloud Retainer. “Preposterous!”
“You let her call him what!?” said Xiao, looking between the two of them.
“One’s question is clearly the more pertinent one, Yaksha,” the crane bristled.
While Cloud Retainer’s adoptive daughter—not kidnapped, they had the paperwork to prove it—went rummaging, Cloud Retainer brewed qingxin tea to serve with sliced apples. Xiao refused the food, but Moon Carver and Mountain Shaper, who arrived shortly afterwards, were quite happy to partake.
“The mortals are on their way to Moon Carver’s abode,” said Mountain Shaper. “They shall be at his doorstep by midnight, an hour later at most.”
Moon Carver sipped his tea from a shallow bowl, and nodded. “And the Millelith following them; you saw them too?”
“Not even half an hour behind them,” confirmed Mountain Shaper. “One took the liberty of listening in on them as one passed them by. They seem convinced that our Sigil holders are, if not Rex Lapis’s assassins, then at least worthy of suspicion.”
“So it is true?” said Cloud Retainer. “They, too, believe our Lord to be dead?”
Mountain Shaper nodded. “One must see the Exuvia with one’s own eyes to be certain, but... yes, it certainly seems so.”
The assembled Adepti all stared at the ground in worried contemplation.
Rex Lapis... dead? They’d all known this day would come, but... so suddenly?
“Cloud Retainer!” The uneasy silence was broken as Hu Tao stuck her head out from the entrance to Cloud Retainer’s domain. “Where’s my firewood staff? The red one, glows menacingly, whispers to me in my dreams...”
Cloud Retainer flared her wings. “Hu Tao!” she said. “You will address one as Mother, or Master, or not at all,” she said, disgruntled.
“Aiyah, sor-ry. Have you seen my firewood staff, Mother?”
“Of course one has,” said a mollified Cloud Retainer. “It’s in the second storeroom with all the other spare gears and levers.”
“Levers? It’s an ancient relic— augh, sure, why not.” Hu Tao threw her arms up in despair and retreated back into the Domain.
Cloud Retainer chuckled quietly. “Ah, adolescents,” she said. “One cannot live with them, and yet, one cannot live without them.”
Xiao muttered something under his breath about how that explained all the kidnapping of orphans, Child Retainer.
“And what of your other disciple: Shenhe?” said Moon Carver.
“Shenhe is meditating by the Statue of Rex Lapis,” said Cloud Retainer. “One will not trouble her with Adeptal matters yet.”
“Whereas Hu Tao...?”
“...brought the news to us,” sighed Xiao.
Cloud Retainer nodded. “It’s better that she knows. Without Rex Lapis tending to her family business in her absence, Hu Tao will need to return to the city for her duties.”
“Unless he’s alive,” said the aforementioned human, striding into their midst in her usual black jacket-and-shorts workwear. Her head was bare save a dried plum blossom tucked into her messy hair. “Rex Lapis might still be alive.”
“Perhaps,” said Moon Carver gently, “but, child... one must caution you to harden your heart, lest the worst have come to fruition.”
“If the worst comes, and Rex Lapis is... is...” Hu Tao shuddered. “Look, if my monthly employee benefits expenses have been literally decimated, then I shall fulfil my duties and ensure the Rite of Parting is observed,” she mumbled. Her face brightened. “But I’m pretty optimistic! He’s faked deaths before, right?”
“Only for his mortal guises,” cautioned Mountain Shaper. “This is... not his usual modus operandi.”
“Yeah, well, this whole summer at work, ‘Zhongli’ was making cryptic jokes about retirement and seachanges.” Hu Tao shrugged. “Does that sound to you like a guy not about to fake his death?”
Cloud Retainer nodded thoughtfully. “In matters of deception, one shall consider your counsel carefully, Hu Tao.”
The other Adepti all mumbled in agreement, and Hu Tao beamed as if that had been a compliment.
“Now,” said Cloud Retainer. “Have you eaten, or are you planning to trek to the city on an empty stomach?”
“...I had some berries earlier today?”
“That sounds like...” Cloud Retainer shot a questioning look to the other Adepti.
“...not enough food for an adult human,” prompted Moon Carver.
“...not enough food,” said Cloud Retainer.
Hu Tao sighed. “Fine, fine, I’ll go make some egg fried rice or something before I go.”
“You will most certainly not touch one’s cookware.” Cloud Retainer turned to Xiao. “Yaksha. Make her some egg fried rice.”
“I can cook myself,” protested Hu Tao, “I’m not twelve any more.”
“Why do I have to cook for her? We’re discussing the assassination of our Archon here,” protested Xiao, “this is clearly more important.”
Cloud Retainer glared at him. “This is my ward you’re refusing to show hospitality to, Yaksha! Why, the... the insolence!...” She gave the adoptive daughter in question a thoughtful look. “Hmm. Hu Tao, if one gives you permission to use my cookware, would you make some extra food for Xiao to eat? Here, right now?”
Hu Tao brightened up. “You’d really let me? I promise I’ll be more careful with the oil this time, really!”
“Celestia damn you all,” said Xiao, walking over to the nearest stove.