Chapter Text
The evening of the dinner had been a happy one. Kaeya would even dare to say that he had bonded with Diluc. The boy who was to be at least his friend. Possibly even brother, considering that Kaeya had no idea how long he was supposed to spend in the country. What he knew was that he had a job to do.
Still, the same night, Kaeya found himself looking at the door leading outside. He wanted to escape—just run away. Kaeya didn’t really want to hurt anyone. He had never wanted to, but it’s not like there were other choices. Kaeya was a spy, born to be a traitor to anything or anyone who was considered a threat to Khaenri’ah. Kaeya was an Alberich after all. It was what he was born to do as the Last Hope of Khaenri’ah.
With those thoughts in his head, Kaeya turned around and sneaked back to his(?) room.
First year of being in Mondstadt, December
8-years-old
The star-eyed boy looked at the papers on Crepus’ office desk. The desk was old in a vintage way, perhaps older than the man himself. Definitely older than Kaeya’s and Diluc’s ages put together. The thought of Diluc made Kaeya feel even more guilty about what he was doing.
The papers contained information about Crepus’ business deals. There had to be something useful somewhere. Kaeya didn't believe (or at least didn’t want to believe) that there wasn’t anything important anywhere. But these papers were useless for his mission. In frustration at not finding anything useful, Kaeya started opening the drawers almost hopelessly. In the drawer second from the bottom were three important-looking papers.
Kaeya still couldn’t read Mondstadtian all that well. The letters were completely different from Khaenri’ahn's, and the grammar was almost as different. His father hadn’t bothered to teach Kaeya to read or write Mondstadtian, and even the lessons in spoken Mondstadtian had been proven to not be all that good. Kaeya took part in Diluc’s private lessons, and that itself had been useful for Kaeya. He was also forced to speak the language every day, making it impossible not to learn it.
It was no wonder that this type of text was too hard for him to completely understand when Kaeya had at least twice worse vocabulary in Mondstadian than a child of his age should. He already had trouble reading, but the contents of the papers were too hard for him to understand, even if they were to be read out loud for him.
Still, the words Ordo of Favonious, route,knights, and similar ones made it seem important to Kaeya. He couldn’t really understand the meaning of the few papers, but it was good enough. This paper could be useful for Khaenri’ah. The next problem was how Kaeya could take a copy of the papers without stealing them. Kaeya was smart enough not to steal them because Crepus would surely notice it sooner or later. This was no problem anymore for Kaeya, as he had solved this one long ago.
Kaeya’s birthday had been celebrated a few weeks ago. The boy had spent days trying to figure out what date his birthday was on the Teyvat’s calendar because Khaenri’ah followed a different one. The 30th of November wasn’t probably even the exact date, but it was close enough. Kaeya was left in Mondstadt on the 10th of March. And Kaeya loved to make those kinds of things that were crystal-clear if one knew what to look for. But no one ever seemed to know what to look for, making it a little fun game for Kaeya. His father hated when Kaeya did that, so he never ever told anyone.
For Kaeya’s birthday, Crepus had wanted to throw a major ball for him like he had thrown for Diluc, but Kaeya had refused. He knew that it would have been a good opportunity considering his mission, but he just couldn’t do it. Too many people and having to communicate with them. Kaeya had never been good at being in the spotlight. He preferred being more in the shadows, as much as an 8-year-old child could be. But it’s not like Kaeya was a normal child who lived in naiveté.
So Kaeya had celebrated his 8th birthday with Ragnvindrs and people working for them. One might wonder what this has to do with anything. As it was his birthday, Kaeya had, of course, gotten gifts. There were many, as they wanted to spoil the boy for his first birthday at the manor. One of those gifts was a Kamera. It was one of Fontaine's newest inventions. With it, one could take a photo. A photo is like a painting, but it is so much faster to get and many times more accurate. One didn’t need to be a witch to see that the Kamera was a groundbreaking invention and that its popularity would rise in the years to come.
Taking photos of important-looking papers wasn’t anything new to Kaeya. In fact, he had done this many times. He would get an accurate copy of the papers, and there was no way for Crepus to know what Kaeya had done. It didn’t take much time, and it left no marks behind. Kaeya took the Kamera that he had left on the desk waiting for use, and took a quick photo of all the papers. Hurriedly, Kaeya put the papers where he had found them before leaving the room; every extra second spent in the office was a risk.
While tiptoeing out of the room, Kaeya felt the adrenaline rush slow down. It was not a feeling he enjoyed at all. No, the feeling was something to be linked to danger, to hunger, to no good.
But he had to just brush it off; Kaeya was an Alberich after all. Not doing his duties because of not being able to handle a little adrenaline rush was pathetic. If Kaeya didn’t do his job for such a ridiculous reason, he might as well commit treason. In a way, it already would be one.
No Alberich would ever commit treason. If someone carrying the name would do such a horrendous act, they must never have been an Alberich to begin with. And if Kaeya was no Alberich, then what was he?
All in all, it was so easy for Kaeya to steal information. No one had once even batted an eye while Kaeya was actively trying to weaken their precious city. It was like the Ragnvindrs had been waiting for an opportunity to give up all their trade secrets and possibly even the information about Ordo Favonius.
The thought of the family made Kaeya feel something bubbly. It would be shameful to admit, but Kaeya didn’t mind staying with them. They treated him well for the time being. Of course, that wouldn’t last long. They took him in, fed him, treated him well—anything you could ask from people. Still, Kaeya couldn’t truly trust them. Ragnvindrs were the closest children of Anemo Archon.
Nevertheless, it has been a good months for Kaeya. When he finally managed to get to his (?) room, he put the kamera in its place and hid the photos under one of the desk’s drawers. It wasn’t a magical hiding spot, but nevertheless, it was better than nothing.
April
Kaeya and Diluc were by the river collecting seashells. While in Mondstadt, there never was a true winter, there were more rainy and colder months. April was a month between those. The weather had started to get warmer and sunnier, unlike anything Kaeya had experienced before. Those few times that Kaeya had traveled with his father had always been in the colder months. Perhaps there was a bigger reason for it, perhaps not. It was the warmest weather Kaeya had ever experienced before, and it wasn’t even summer yet.
The boys had been out there for quite a while. It was what Kaeya and Diluc did often.
Diluc took a big shell from the ground and showed it to Kaeya.
"Look how big a shell I found; it’s the best in the entire world!"
Kaeya looked at the shell, mesmerized. It wasn’t the first time they were collecting sea shells, but nevertheless, Kaeya felt the same way when Diluc kept finding bigger and better-looking shells all the time. This one was red and blue in colors. Kaeya hadn’t even known that it was possible for a seashell to have this color scheme.
Diluc did, of course, know at this point how Kaeya felt when he showed him his newly found shells. They made him, for some weird reason, always so captured. There were a lot of things in Kaeya that Diluc didn’t really understand. Why did Kaeya have so many nightmares? Why did he eat like there was no food left for tomorrow? It felt like he was scared that someone would steal it.
He had tried to eavesdrop on his dad, fully knowing how wrong it was. Not like it had actually worked when it seemed like dad had some superpower that made it known to him when someone tried to eavesdrop on his conversations.
Diluc gave the shell to the younger boy. On the side that was up, there was a lot more fiery red, almost crimson, than the royal blue. There was a line that made the edge between colors clear. Kaeya rotated the shell, and Diluc saw a little peek of the side that was almost perfectly half and half of the colors. The other side was different from the other side by a whole lot. It was mostly that royal blue color, with a little red. The edge between the colors was, again, clear.
Kaeya didn’t really think while holding the shell. It was beautiful. In the caves, there had never been things this beautiful or colorful. (Maybe. In all honesty, there might as well have been, and Kaeya would not know any better. (Just the thought of that made Kaeya taste stone)) The colors made him feel something bubbly. He had no idea what it was called, but he had no time to figure it out when Master Crepus’ voice broke his trance.
"Boys, food’s ready."
The boys looked at each other, and without a word being spoken, they started to race to the winery.
That was when Kaeya still hadn’t started to collect information. He would never admit it, as it was treason just to have these thoughts, but perhaps he had been happy at the time. While he didn’t trust the family all that much, he didn’t care for them at all.
Kaeya sat on his(?) bed and just stared at nothing. Sometimes it felt pointless. His father still hadn’t contacted him at all. Without his father, did he have any purpose? The darkness of it all just consumed him. Kaeya was born for two reasons.
- To continue the Alberich bloodline. The bloodline was at least centuries old and proud of it. The Alberichs were not to make any evidence of any kind of their existence, and thus there was no person sure about how old the family was. It was old, and it was not going to die out. The living family had been much bigger before the Cataclysm, with a few dozen members alive. Unfortunately, during the Cataclysm, most of the family died, leaving only a few survivors. After the Golden Age of Khaenri’ah, there were few survivors and even less food. (Kaeya was proof of this.) It had been better for the family to keep a smaller size until the Second Gold, which was to come soon. ( How soon, you ask? Kaeya had no idea.)
- His father needed someone completely loyal and moldable for his use. He had made it crystal clear to Kaeya. "It is so hard to mold an adult to make everything just as he said", was a complaint Kaeya heard often. Sometimes, when he did what his father wanted perfectly, Kaeya would get a compliment. "You’re so loyal, and thanks to my training, when you bother to even try, you can do things so perfectly. But don’t let it rise to your head; you’re still most of the time a complete brat." Just thinking about the voice his father said it with—so proud, so happy—still made Kaeya smile. His father really did know what was best for him. After all, he was the perfect tool for his father to wield and mold, just as he saw the best.
Kaeya, with that smile on his face, felt a sudden use of Abyssal power. In mere milliseconds, Kaeya was aware of every place on the winery’s land. He felt the outside power looking for him, going quickly from one room and hallway to another room and hallway, and so on. He responded to the call of power, letting a tiny amount of his magic move freely around the room. Not too much; after all, it would be enough for even a normal, visionless person to detect.
Of course, the other Abyssal magic user's, whoever it was (hopefully his father), magic would have found him fast enough, but Kaeya wanted to show his eagerness. He had been months without any contact from Khaenri’ah or Abyss (not that there was much difference between those two). (Especially after the Cataclysm.) Kaeya was ready to complete his duty and make his father proud of how well he had trained his son.
The Abyssal power felt Kaeya’s own and made a sprint equivalent of magic to Kaeya’s room(?). It made a little loop around Kaeya. A normal person should have felt a death-like threat loom over them, had a harder time breathing, felt anxiety, etc. from experiencing such an amount of Abyssal power around them. But the Albrichs were not normal people. In fact, they wielded the Abyssal power like no other and played it like an instrument. Being surrounded by power made Kaeya feel at home in a way that no one else could.
All of the magic went on Kaeya’s lap, thick enough to be cut with the right kind of scissors. In mere seconds, the magic had materialized an envelope seemingly out of thin air and continued its way out through the caps between the big window and wooden walls.
Kaeya felt the magic go further away second by second before disappearing from the area that he was ‘in control’ of. But he didn’t pay attention to it, instead being interested in the letter on his lap, surely from Khaenri’ah. He opened the envelope carefully, making sure not to damage it, as there was no way of knowing when he would receive the next one. The black envelope still lingered with Abyssal power.
As expected, there was a letter in the envelope. Admittedly, Kaeya felt excited but also anxious. (He ignored the stabbing feeling on his chest, fully knowing he shouldn't feel it.) The letter was on black paper, and the ink was Alberich blue instead of the typical dark Abyss purple, in true Alberich fashion. The words were clear, written in loopy and royal-looking Khaenri’ahn by his father’s hand.
Come to the waterfall that connects the waters of Dragonspine and Mondstadt next night, when the night is at its darkest.