Chapter Text
The sound of narwhals buzzing — or is that honking? — is music to his ears.
Tartaglia, he who was once called Ajax until he obliterated a rival clan’s hunting grounds the other year which forced his family to move farther north, hums along to the sound of the strange creatures’ haunting song. They’re the only company he has as he makes rounds on their settlement’s border keeping an eye out for sharks, marauders, or people who can actually give him a good fight. It’s been a while since the incident, anyway.
As he catches sight of his home for the second time, he starts to wonder where his friends have gotten themselves into. They’re the only one he can rely on to hang around him in these droll moments yet even they have failed him today. He resolves to only forgive them if they’re too busy brawling with their fellow fishheads.
On his third round, he scratches the skin around his horn. It’s not an impressive horn — just a standard-issue, pearlescent one like the rest of his clan’s — but it has served him well throughout the years. How many fights would he have lost if he didn’t have a perfectly splendid horn to stab his enemies with when all else failed?
The dullness grates him. How can one who’s constantly itching for a fight be denied the greatest pleasure his backwater life can offer him?
Despite his reluctance, Tartaglia accompanies his friends to a shipwreck the next morning, memories of the last time they visited such a location still fresh on his mind. All they found were booby traps everywhere and no thrilling fight in sight. What’s the point?
Kaeya the one-eyed blue tang and Diluc the clownfish lead the way, bickering as they swim farther into the ruins’ dark depths.
“Last time we found a shipwreck, you almost got skewered by those human contraptions,” Diluc grumbles, ever the grump.
“Come on now, don’t you enjoy the thrill?” Kaeya asks.
Tartaglia filters their argument out. It’s just how they are. He doesn’t even know how he keeps getting tangled into their scheming — Kaeya’s scheming, at least. He doesn’t care one bit about mysterious human treasures like those miniature tridents and strange boxes. It’s not like they can give him a satisfying battle.
The fishes argue all the way to their destination — a mass of wood and fabric that must’ve once been a mighty human vessel. To Tartaglia’s relief, there are no human remains here. He’s seen a fair few in his short life, and they’re never a pretty sight.
Kaeya assesses the area with a twirl of his fins. “Strange. There’s nothing much here.”
In spite of his earlier admonishments, Diluc swims down to inspect the mess closely. “Well, there’s human food. And a couple of tiny tridents.”
“We’ve run out of space at home for tiny tridents.”
“At least we can eat the food. It’s not a complete waste.”
“Tasty morsels are good and all, but where’s the glittering treasure, dearest Diluc?”
“I swear to the high seas if this is another attempt at flirting, I will feed you to the sharks.”
“Weirdos.” Of course, Tartaglia tried the food they’ve scavenged in wrecks before. It’s nothing but nasty stuff, and he highly questions his fishy friends’ tastes.
Filtering out their arguments, he casts his eyes around, looking for something to vent his restless energy on. There’s nothing else here, however, and he’s not about to beat up his only friends. Tiny fishes aren’t worth his time, anyway.
Something glints at his peripheral vision. Curiosity piqued despite his bloodlust-addled mind, he peers at the object in question, made of shiny yellow material. It’s a far cry from the abalone and pearl adornments that his people prefer, but he knows a necklace and a pendant when he sees one.
He’s won a fair few in his duels before.
As quick as a sailfish, he snatches the necklace, noting how cold it is against his skin. Odd. He pokes the circular pendant, noting the grooves on its surface, forming three interlocking shapes. His finger hits a hidden button and it clicks open, revealing — there’s no other word for it — the miniature image of a person.
He stares and stares and stares, enthralled by the sight. There’s nothing quite like this in the underwater world. To be quite fair, he’s never seen anyone as fine as the person depicted, either. Not that he’s seen proper humans to compare them with, of course.
Dark hair framing a moon-pale face, full lips turned up in a bemused smile, sun-yellow eyes — Tartaglia must admit that he’s enthralled. No, he might even be beguiled, like the tales of mankind luring mermaids into the surface world to be taken as unwilling wives.
“Hey! What are you looking at?” Kaeya asks as he approaches.
Diluc peers over Tartaglia’s shoulders with an amused hmph. “That’s a human.”
“Yes, thank you for stating the obvious,” Tartaglia grumbles. “Yes, it’s a human.”
“But how did he get in there? Maybe a shaman can free him —” Diluc cuts himself off at the sound of Kaeya’s laughter. “What?”
Kaeya shakes his head. "I don't think that's an actual human, dear."
"It's not?"
"Does it look like it's moving?"
Tartaglia lifts the necklace closer to his face in awe. "Whatever, it's still pretty amazing. Who knew humans could do this? What's it even called?"
"Finally showing interest in human ingenuity, are we?" Kaeya chuckles softly. "That, my friend, is called a hilliechillie."
"A hilliechillie, huh?"
Tartaglia stares at the image again, lamenting the fact that he’s never seen a live human being before. Is this simply how they all look like, or is this a fine specimen of its kind? Fuck fighting — he wants to investigate this quandary first and foremost.
It takes a bit of convincing, but he manages to drag Kaeya and Diluc along. He doesn’t tell them the exact reason why — they’d laugh if he tells them that it’s for science — but even his half-assed excuses are enough to earn their agreement.
Isn’t that what friends are for, anyway? Sticking together no matter what?
“You better make the trip worth it,” Diluc scoffs nevertheless.
Tartaglia shrugs off his friend’s petulance. That’s just how it is. Kaeya speaks and plots too much for his own good, Diluc complains, and Tartaglia fights. Except, of course, Tartaglia is the one plotting this fine afternoon.
He’s no stranger to the upper world — every merfolk worth their fins have tried dolphin leaping at least once. It’s never been done alone and unsanctioned like this, but what’s the point of doing something if it doesn’t involve a little risk?
Despite this, he’s starting to regret his decisions by the time they breach the surface. That which the elders call the sky is dark and gloomy, murkier than the depths of the abyssal underwater ravines that not even Tartaglia would dare visit. The surface water churns with the cold wind, both brushing violently against scales and silvery flesh alike.
A properly functioning ship can be seen sailing in the distance, its bright yellow sails flapping against the gale. Upon it stands a crowd of humans, laughing and singing despite the unwelcoming weather. They seem to fear nothing — perhaps that explains the amount of shipwrecks near merfolk settlements. Interesting.
Thunder — that’s what the elders called it, right? — rumbles overhead, followed by the flash of lightning. Though it unsettles Tartaglia, he realizes that he’s not about to back down. This might be his only opportunity to observe plenty of humans in the next few days, and he better make the most out of it.
“Let’s try to swim closer,” he hollers to his friends, too caught up in his planning to realize that they’re starting to struggle against the unstable waters.
“You know the rule — contact between merfolk and humans is forbidden,” Diluc warns him. “What will you do if the elders find out?”
Tartaglia laughs. Though this is nothing like combat, he feels the same thrill running down his icy veins, invigorating him. “The danger’s half the fun.”
Kaeya sniffs proudly. “We raised our boy well.”
“Stop enabling him! By the Seven Seas, you have the brains of a goldfish sometimes.” Still, Diluc follows them despite his nonstop protests.
Tartaglia stops a respectable distance from the ship, half-concealed by the constantly heaving sea. He takes the time to admire the ship, larger and more ornate than the better-preserved wrecks that he’s come across. This one even has the figure of a merman carved on its prow — an impressive feat, despite the inaccuracies.
He ogles at the carving for a full minute before he turns his attention to the passengers. The wind carries the sound of their merriment, amplifying rather than muffling it. He watches the humans, fascinated by how both similar and different they are from the myriad merfolk populating the seas. He wonders what it’s like to be pale and scale-less like them, with legs instead of tails to move around their world. How do they engage in battle? Does it give them the same thrill?
As he mulls that over, his eyes flit to a particularly tall, lithe human in a strange outfit, black segueing to a rich yellow hue. It matches his hair, from what Tartaglia can tell. Mesmerized, he tries to swim closer, only to freeze when the man turns to face his side of the water.
It’s him.
Tartaglia quickly comes into conclusion that the human in the hilliechillie, in fact, is a fine specimen of his race. For the second time this day, he thinks there might be something more to his backwater life than fighting.
"It's raining. We better go." Diluc's voice cuts through his thoughts, snapping him out of the moment.
The storm brewing earlier has truly begun, wreaking havoc on the surface world. They better leave before the surface's current washes them away into Archons-know-where. Sighing, Tartaglia casts one last look at the beguiling human before turning to follow his friends back into the swirling depths.
“That was close,” Kaeya notes with a sigh. “I don’t want to be swept away again.”
Diluc huffs. “Yes, you wouldn’t. I’m not going to search all the seas for you.”
“Hey, I thought you loved me?”
“Shut up.”
Before Tartaglia can butt into their argument, he hears a loud, bubbly whoosh above him. Something must’ve fallen from the surface. He looks up to investigate, only for a human to plunge straight into his arms.
Wait, it’s not just a human. It’s the human. In his arms. Underwater. Where he can’t possibly breathe.
As quick as lightning, he propels himself up again, back to the surface, despite his friends’ warning shouts. The agitated water continues to heave and toss around him, but he doesn’t care. He can’t let the poor, helpless man drown here. Fuck the rules.
He casts his eyes around, looking for the ship, but it’s nowhere to be seen. The rain falling overhead is too thick for him to figure out where it went, anyway, and he’s not equipped to see through the slightly stingy surface water. Shaking his head, he swims eastward instead, to the small strip of land that he’s absolutely not allowed to go to.
“Wait!” Diluc yells somewhere behind and under him. “The water’s too strong!”
“There’s no time,” Tartaglia yells back.
As the rain lashes harder, he makes it to the coast with great difficulty. He drags the man to a convenient space under a rocky outcrop by the shore, empty save for a small, young sea eagle taking shelter from the storm which looks up as he approaches.
“That’s a human,” he states as if it isn’t the most obvious thing in the world. “What’s he doing with merman?”
“He fell off his ship.” Tartaglia hoists himself along the damp sand, noting the coarse feel against his skin. He’ll have to return to the waters soon, but he has to make sure that the man’s fine first. “I’m Tartaglia, by the way.”
“The name’s Venti.” The eagle hops over to the human and pecks his leg. “And I think he’s dead, unfortunately.”
In the distance, Tartaglia can hear his friends bickering. Fishes being fish, they probably can’t go to the shore like he does. He ignores them for now and turns to the human, poking him on the forehead.
“That can’t be right. He’s still…” A gentle prod on the man’s nose confirms the constant puff of air. He rattles his memories around, trying to recall the right word the elders used. “Breathing.”
“Oh? He is?” Venti hops over to the man’s chest, tilting his head. “Ah, to survive such a storm must be bliss.”
“Why are you speaking in rhymes? My head’s starting to hurt.”
“Hold on, I believe I know this man. His name’s King Zhongli and I’m his biggest fan!”
King Zhongli. Tartaglia must’ve misheard. “Did you say that he’s a king?”
Venti bobs his head with a happy chirp. “He lives in that castle by the cliff overlooking the beach. He rules Liyue Harbor, whose lands are as far as the eyes can reach.”
No wonder his human is quite striking. Tartaglia rubs his chin, thinking. “But why isn’t he waking up?”
Venti hops off King Zhongli’s body and perches himself on Tartaglia’s shoulder. “Perhaps you need to wake him with a song, or else we might be here all day long.”
“Sing? I don’t sing.” The closest Tartaglia has attempted is to imitate the whirring call of the local narwhals. Singing is beyond him.
“It’s easy, like swatting off a fly!” Venti caws out a series of impressive notes. “Now try!”
Though hesitant, Tartaglia tries to imitate the strangely talkative eagle. Though it doesn’t sound bad in his ears, all he manages is something akin to a whale’s call. In the distant waters, Kaeya and Diluc burst into laughter.
Fish skewers will be on tonight’s dinner menu.
To his credit, Venti doesn’t laugh. Instead, he trills out another series of notes that Tartaglia valiantly — yet futilely — tries to imitate. Outside the little pocket of peace, the storm begins to abate, the wind and rain slowly crawling to a stop.
Just when Tartaglia’s throat is starting to hurt, King Zhongli stirs with a soft groan.
“Fuck,” the merman blurts out, cutting off Venti’s song. “He can’t see me.”
Venti clucks thrice. “Leaving so soon? But you’re his savior — he might grant you a boon.”
Tartaglia begins to panic as the king groans again. He’ll be waking up soon. “Humans and merfolk are not allowed to make contact. I can’t get in trouble.”
“Ah, that’s right. I pity your plight.” With a flamboyant flap of his wings, Venti rises to the air and flies around in circles. “Then it’s time for me to take over. I’ll make sure that his people find their ruler.”
“Alright. I owe you one, weird birdie.”
“I am not weird!”
With a squawk, Venti swoops down to peck his head. The commotion makes Zhongli turn to his side, coughing.
“Okay, okay. You’re not a weird birdie.” Tartaglia slowly shifts, feeling the dryness between his scales. He does need to go. “See you around.”
It’s enough to appease Venti. “Off you go, then! It’s time to clean up someone else’s mess again.”
Tartaglia slips away as Zhongli starts groaning again, wondering all about the strange encounter. No one back home ever said anything about the ability to understand birds. He adds this to his list of things to brag about.
“Your Grace! Are you alright?”
“Huh?”
Zhongli opens his eyes to the light of the mid-afternoon sun. He’s sprawled on sand, his clothes gritty and mildly damp. It seems like half his court is hovering over him with varying levels of worry and exasperation on their faces.
“We’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Minister Ningguang chides him. “What happened?”
He raises his hand, motioning for them to give him space as he slowly hoists himself up to a sitting position. “I remember falling off the ship,” he offers as an apology.
Ever the consummate professional, Lady Ningguang manages to keep a straight face despite the exasperation coloring her words. “Yes, we know that, Your Grace, but what happened after that? According to Captain Beidou, it was too far for you to swim all the way here.”
“Too far?” Zhongli closes his eyes, trying to recall what happened.
The last clear memory he has is of plunging into the sea. There was someone else beneath, he thinks, though that might just be his waterlogged brain making a mess of him. However, something else breaks through the murky haze of his thoughts — the sound of a mysterious, mournful keen.
What in the blazes was that?