Chapter Text
To: Master Varka
c/o The Flagship
Nasha Town
I know not whether this letter will reach you prior to your arrival on Paha Isle; however, know that you are most welcome to stop by at your leisure. I recently received my monthly allotted supplies from the Starshyna, so my pantry will not be as embarrassingly bare as it was during your first, albeit unexpected, visit.
Your humble servant,
-Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins
*****
To: Kyryll Chudomirovich Flins
Final Night Cemetery
I’m sorry to tell you that I’ve been a bit delayed, once due to an unexpected encounter with the Wild Hunt and another time due to a spectacular hangover after a glorious campfire celebration feast. Both are stories well worth telling, and I’ll save them for when we meet. Similarly, I don’t know if this will reach you first or if I will. Regardless, I wanted to write you since I know, as a Ratnik, you track Wild Hunt activity, and you might want to know about an outbreak cropping up on the north side of what the locals have told me is called Nothing Passage.
I laughed when they first told me the name Nothing Passage. “So nothing passes through there,” I said as a joke, but they insisted that’s what they call it. If they’ve lied to me, I’m sure you will let me know. At the very least, you’ll be amused by it. It’s the place where the sands turn red and the Fatui have a dock stationed just north where they send their boats to the Design Bureau.
May the wind guide you.
-Varka
*****
“Were I you, I would not sit there.”
Flins’ voice floats down from the small shack underneath the lighthouse. Despite the metal buckles and chains on his large greatcoat and cape, Flins moves without a so much as a clinking sound, holding the blue flame of his lantern high as he walks slowly down the hill.
“Are you a wine enthusiast as well as a curator?” Varka replies, pointing at a wooden signboard tucked into a corner of a ruined building. There are similar stone structures dotting the hillside of Final Night Cemetery — crumbling relics of an ancient civilization that remind Varka of Mondstadt.
“I consider myself an enthusiast of many aged artifacts, but wines are not my area of expertise,” Flins says.
Crafted more recently than the ruins but weathered from the salt air and humidity, the signboard’s peeling paint advertises, “‘New brews in stock! Dandelion wine from Mondstadt, rich in flavour!’” Varka runs his finger across the top of the sign as he reads it aloud to Flins. His fingertips come away dirty and he wipes them off onto his trousers. “‘Warning from…’” Varka squints, trying to make out the name purposefully scratched off of the sign. “‘Please do not touch my seat without permission!?’ Did you write this?”
Looking up from the sign and the chair, Varka isn’t surprised to see that Flins is already shaking his head.
“I did not; however,” Flins gestures towards the chair with a graceful sweep of his lantern, “as previously mentioned, I would not sit there.”
Varka barks out a brusque laugh. He crosses his arms over his chest and looks at Flins defiantly. “You saying that just makes me want to sit on it more.”
“Far be it from me to tell the Knight of Boreas and Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius what to do.” Flins tilts his head imperceptibly as if granting permission.
The idea that he would need Flins’ permission to sit anywhere has Varka bristling internally. “You know my title.”
“My apologies for not treating you with the proper respect on your first visit.”
Varka gives Flins a broad smile, shifts the weight of his claymore from his back, resting it against the stone ruins, and sits down. “Apology accepted.”
His smile quickly turns into a hissed breath. Searing pain makes its way up his tailbone into his spine and down to his toes through his thighs and calves. It reminds him of one of the Knights’ first expeditions to Dragonspine, his periphery vision going white as the first traces of frostbite had begun creeping into his fingers as their warming bottle had expired prematurely. Only quick thinking, notes left from Arundolyn’s time, and Albedo’s knowledge of the mountain had saved them from their hubris.
“Who’re you?” A drunken voice slurs as Varka jumps out of the seat. “This is my seat and everyone in the tavern knows it!”
Varka blinks. A man appears in front of him, arms crossed over his chest. Varka tries to follow the annoyed expression on the man’s face as the man seems to fade into the stone ruins and then back into clarity, like someone is tuning an old radio dial on his existence.
Stunned and amused, Varka flexes his cold and slightly-numb fingers and looks to Flins for an explanation. He’s no stranger to ghosts and spirits himself having run into more than his fare share in Mondstadt alone, but any advice Flins has on this particular phantom would be welcome.
The blue flame in Flins’ lantern flares. Flames crackling in the wind, it draws the man’s attention away from Varka. “I did advise you not to sit there,” Flins says unhelpfully.
“Did you only just report in on the island or something? You can’t just turn up and take someone else’s spot!” When the ghost draws closer, Varka ignores the tingling in his fingertips and lifts his claymore back onto his shoulders. The ghost has a shock of hair so red Varka can still see it despite his fading opacity as he glares up at Varka and snaps his fingers. “Also where the devil’s my beer? Hurry it up would’ya? I’m going out on patrol soon.”
“A gentleman might ask if he could possibly borrow the seat,” Flins adds when the ghost stares at Varka, seemingly frozen until Varka says something. “He will continue to repeat the same line if you say nothing.”
Varka tries to level a glare at Flins but it falls off his face at Flins’ good-natured smirk. An ill-tempered ghost isn’t anything Varka can’t handle. This particular ghost seems more bemused than angry, and if he becomes violent, Varka can take care of that easily as well.
“Mind if I borrow it for a bit?” Varka asks.
“If you must have it! But first, come and sing with us. Once we’re friends, sit anywhere you please!” The phantom nods to himself, happy to have reached a sensible conclusion to the sudden problem Varka had created. “You know the tune, right? Yo-ho come on now! We’ll sing one line, you’ll sing the next!”
“The sound of dancing drifted from my neighbours’, it set my feet a-tapping, oh!”
“You knew this would happen,” Varka says to Flins rather than the ghost. “That he would ask me to sing.”
“Again I shall take a moment to reiterate that I did, in fact, recommend that you not sit in that chair.”
“You did at that,” Varka admits, his obvious amusement colouring his voice.
He recognizes the basic melody. Venti has sung a similar song — perhaps this particular Ratnik had been from Mondstadt — at the Angel’s Share myriad times. Unfortunately, Varka doesn’t recognize the lyrics that the ghost had sung, or remember the lyrics to Venti’s version. Varka opens his mouth and hopes that listening to Venti for decades with varying degrees of inebriation will allow him to think of something passable in the moment.
“I ran out into the streets to find the song, and found Windblume had begun-oh!”
“No, no no! Are you serious?!” Face twisting into a disgusted frown, the ghost returns to crossing his arms over his chest. “Everyone from Nod Krai knows this song, come on!”
The wind picks up as the ghost leans closer to Varka.
“If you don’t sing and have some fun, you’re not going to fit in y’know? An’ things don’t go good for soldiers without buddies when the Wild Hunt strikes.” The phantom reaches towards Varka, his voice loud in the way that only someone who is very drunk can be. It’s completely at odds with the gloomy surroundings.
“Go learn the song, then come back here, you got that?” The ghost urges Varka, who feels an icy chill as the ghost’s hand tries to clap him on the shoulder in solidarity. “Ya-hey! Hit me with another beer! C’mon!”
After these parting words are shouted into the wind, the ghost disappears. Varka looks to Flins, who stares at the spot where the ghost had dissipated, leaving only the signboard and the chair. Walking to the closest gravestone, Varka leans down and reads. The lettering carved into the stone is so old and worn that it takes a few extra seconds to parse what it says. “‘Here lies Dietrich the Lightkeeper.’ Dietrich?” he asks Flins. “Was that his name?”
“I do not know, but it is the most likely answer to the question of his identity. Although I have kept watch over Final Night Cemetery for some time, many of these graves existed long before my tenure. I fought alongside very few of them.” A distant expression flickers through Flins’ eyes. He shakes his head and vanishes, replaced by Flins’ usual slightly-amused countenance.
“However, my manners have been sorely lacking this evening.” Flins places his left hand across his waist and leans forward, holding his lantern high as he bows. “It is good to see you again, Grand Master Varka. I cannot hold a candle to you, but perhaps this lantern shall do the trick nicely.”
Varka laughs — loudly and genuinely — in spite of himself. “Your jokes are more terrifying than any ghost on this island.”
Raising an eyebrow, Flins’ eyes seem to grow brighter in the darkness. The edges of his mouth curl up and soften into a warm smile. “High praise,” he tells Varka, gesturing to the lighthouse as he starts to walk, “from a man who once said that my humility is as terrifying as it is obnoxious.”
“I stand by my words.”
Flins looks over his shoulder and nods. “You would, Grand Master, wouldn’t you?”
“You seem to enjoy saying my title.” Varka grins. “I was looking forward to seeing how long I could get away with being an ordinary knight only to find that you may have known this entire time.”
“I did not.”
“Who told it to you then?”
“I would rather not reveal my sources lest they face unintended retribution,” Flins says, bringing his finger to where his lips peek above the large collar of his caped greatcoat.
“Isn’t the definition of retribution that it is intended?”
“A question, and potential conversation, that requires a more comfortable setting than this one,” Flins answers. “I did write to you of how my pantry is no longer as bare as it was during your first unexpected visit.”
“Lead the way,” Varka says, gesturing grandly in front of them.
He means it as a joke, but as he watches Flins’ shoulders set squarely in front of him, following the light of the lantern, it occurs to him that, contrary to his own title and his usual personality, he wouldn’t mind following Flins.