Chapter Text
Lumine steps into the Angel’s Share Tavern. Behind the counter is Diluc Ragnvindr, wearing his usual grave expression while he polishes a glass. It’s still early in the evening, and business is slow. Lumine is surprised to find that she’s nervous. It isn’t the idea of talking to Diluc that’s making her palms sweat. It’s that this whole ridiculous plan could go wrong in so many ways, and there could be hell to pay. Still, she has no choice but to follow through at this point.
She sits down at the bar, and without even looking up, Diluc asks, “What can I get you?” in the kind of tone that suggests her presence is making him suffer. She manages not to take offense; Diluc intimidates everyone he meets with his chilly personality. Really, the only thing keeping the Angel’s Share in business is the quality of the wine, and Mondstat’s fondness for drinking in general. Which is more than enough, clearly.
Thanks to how reserved he is, Lumine is never really sure if she should act friendly toward him or be more formal, despite the fact that they’ve already been on several adventures together. She decides on formality, to be safe. “Dandelion Wine, please,” she says, reaching for her mora pouch. It would be polite to buy something, since she’s bothering him at work. He pours the drink and sets in down in front of her, quickly observing her as he does. Thankfully, Lumine is alone at the bar. She settles herself onto one of the stools and wraps her hands around the cool glass, watching the yellow dandelion float across of the surface of the clear wine as she considers how to bring up her request. Diluc saves her the trouble.
“Well, what do you want, Hero of Mondstat?” He rests his fingertips on the polished bar, casually leaning on them while he looks down at her. Lumine can’t help thinking of his stance as “looming.”
She blushes a little, shrinking in her seat ever so slightly. “How did you know I wanted something?”
“You don’t typically come here just to drink-- unlike that one.” He gestures to the far corner of the tavern, where Venti is slurring the words of a lively song in front of a small audience. His face is flushed, but he looks like he’s having fun. Kaeya is sitting in the opposite corner, alone, for now. He observes Venti’s performance with his usual sly expression.
“He’s drunk already?” Lumine gasped. “It’s only five in the afternoon!”
Diluc sighs. “Par for the course, with him. He’d better remember to pay this time.”
“Don’t tell me he forgets to bring mora, too.” What was it with archons and money?
“Too?”
“I was referring to Rex Lapis.”
“Ah.” Diluc tilts his head, making his fiery red hair slip from his shoulder. He hasn’t heard all the story of her adventures in Liyue and beyond, but he is clearly willing to swallow his curiosity. “State your business, Honorary Knight.”
Lumine takes a sip of her drink for courage, and then tries to seem relaxed as she invites Diluc to join her in the Spiral Abyss-- as if this is just another monster-slaying mission. If all goes well, it will be. If not…
“I’m busy,” he says.
Well, better than the flat denial she’d half expected. “I know. I’m sorry to ask you-- its just, I need a team of four people if I want to delve further into the Abyss, and I only have two. I couldn’t think of a better option for a teammate than you.” She hopes a sprinkling of flattery will warm him up to the idea.
“Who is the other?”
Lumine swallows a lump in her throat and smiles. “Just a friend of mine from Liyue. I don’t think the two of you have met.”
A friend by the name of Childe, who also happens to be a Fatui Harbinger. But there's no reason Diluc ever needs to find out about that. The only reason she agreed to this harebrained idea was because she thought it would turn out better if Childe is able to observe Diluc’s skills by fighting alongside him, satisfying his curiosity about the Darknight Hero without going about things his own way-- which is to say, simply walking in here in his Fatui uniform and mask and challenging Diluc to a duel. The last thing she could ever want is those two getting into a fight. The situation is so precarious that at this point, she deeply regrets ever bringing up the Darknight Hero at all.
It had all started a month before, when she was visiting Childe’s home in Snezhnaya. It was dark and snowing hard, and the younger children were gathered in the great room around an enormous iron oven that roared and crackled from the fire inside. It was the only room in the house that wasn’t unbearably cold. The red firelight was the only source of light in the room, but it was bright enough that lamps weren’t really necessary; it cast a red-orange glow over the faces of Childe’s younger siblings.
“Tell us about your adventures!” Teucer said.
Anthon nodded enthusiastically. “Brother tells us about some of the things you did in his letters to Tonia, but I want to hear it from you.”
“Yeah!” Teucer bounced.
Lumine glanced sidelong at Childe, who was leaning against a sturdy wooden pillar on the edge of the light, rather than joining them near the oven. Wasn’t he cold? The side of Lumine’s body that was closest to the oven was toasty hot, but the shadowed side was chilled, even as close as she was to the roaring flames. Childe didn’t seem particularly bothered by the cold, though; he crossed his arms in a relaxed way and watched Lumine, waiting for her response.
“Don’t you want to hear some stories from your big brother instead?” she asked Teucer.
He shook his head. “Selling toys is cool, but I want to hear adventure stories.” His clear blue eyes sparkled with youthful excitement. Lumine had to use all her self-command not to roll her eyes, but she did shoot Childe a look that said, “This is ridiculous.” He missed it, though, since he suddenly became very interested in removing a speck of dirt from his coat.
Lumine sighed heavily. “Alright, what do you guys want to hear about?”
“Slaying the dragon!” Anthon suggested.
“We didn’t slay Dvalin,” Lumine gently corrected. “We saved him.” Anthon looked rather put out by this revelation. But, the reminder of the adventure with Dvalin, and the people she’d fought alongside that day, had given her another idea.
“Have you guys ever heard the story of the Darknight Hero?” she asked. All of the children shook their heads, including the fifteen year old Tonia, who was sitting behind her younger brothers, trying to seem more like a chaperone than one of the kids. To be fair, she kind of was; she was a sort of second mother to her young siblings when the older members of her family were away from home.
Lumine settled back into a comfortable posture and closed her eyes, trying to remember the events surrounding her discovery of the Darknight Hero’s identity in detail. “Some time ago-- before you were born, Teucer-- Mondstat was plagued with villains, thieves, and monsters. The Knights of Favonius did their best to protect Mondstat’s citizens from these dangers, but there weren’t enough of them, and the threats seemed to grow in number with every passing year. But one day, the tide turned in Mondstat’s favor. Overnight it seemed, the number of criminals and monsters around Mondstat dropped to levels the Knights could manage. The monsters that had plagued the country for decades were found scattered across the hills and fields, their corpses rotting in the sun. One morning, the citizens of Mondstat woke up to find that the most wanted thieves in the whole kingdom-- criminals the Knights had been working hard to capture for years-- had been bound, gagged, and hung upside down in Mondstat’s central square. For the people of Mondstat, it was like a miracle. For the first time in generations, they were able to live in peace, knowing that they were being protected by the mysterious guardian of Mondstat.
“And he remained mysterious for a very long time, because no matter how carefully the Knights of Favonius patrolled the streets, trying to discover his identity, and no matter how many curious citizens stayed up all night to catch a glimpse of him, they never did. But…” Lumine pause for dramatic effect. “I found out who the Hero of Mondstat is.”
“How?”
“Who is it?”
Lumine waited for the children’s questions to fade away before continuing. “When Paimon and I heard rumors of this Darknight Hero, as he was called, we decided we had to know who was really behind the mysterious vigilantism. After all, he couldn’t be any ordinary person. He’d taken on the Abyss Order in Mondstat single-handedly, and wiped out hordes of monsters that even a whole squad of Favonius Knights with Visions couldn’t handle-- and he’d beat them all in a single night. Whoever this person was must be one of the strongest warriors in all of Teyvat. At first, we thought it might be Jean, the Acting Grand Master of the Knights of Favonius. She is a powerful Vision wielder, after all. But after asking around about the Darknight Hero, we heard a story that convinced us it wasn’t her.
A young woman named Donna told us she’d been attacked in the middle of the night by robbers. They choked her so she couldn’t scream for help, and she thought she was done for. But then…” The children leaned in, fire reflecting in their eyes. Lumine lowered her voice to a dramatic whisper. “Dashing out of the darkness came a man wreathed in fire. She couldn’t see any more than a silhouette, but the robbers who had attacked her screamed in terror. Their screams were cut short as the Hero laid waste to their ranks in less than a single breath. And just like that,” she snapped her fingers, “he was gone. If it wasn’t for the robbers groaning on the ground, and the smell of burning in the air, Donna might have thought he wasn’t a man at all-- but a dream.” Lumine smiled at the rapt attention her little audience was giving her.
She sat back and returned to a normal tone of voice. “So, Paimon and I decided the Darknight Hero was a Pyro Vision user, and so it couldn’t be Jean, who uses Anemo. Besides, Donna was sure she saw the silhouette of a man.” She shrugged, spreading her hands palm up. “There was nothing to do but stake out the city at night and hope we got to see him in action. After about a week of seeing nothing, we were about to give up. After all, the Knights of Favonius had been doing this for years, and had never caught him. But then, while we were sitting on a bench, looking at the stars, we heard a short yell in the distance. We ran as fast as we could in the direction the sound came from. Using my Elemental Sight, I sensed a very powerful Vision user was in the area. I leapt over a wall and sprinted down some stairs, and then I saw that the alleyway we were in had been lit up by fire-- just like this.” She gestured to the light pouring out of the oven. “And then we saw him. Hearing my footsteps, he whirled around, an enormous two-handed sword raised to block an attack. When he saw me, he recognized me. And, I recognized him.”
“Who was it?” Teucer demanded. Lumine held a finger to her lips, shushing him. Careful to avoid any mention of the Darknight Hero’s real name, she proceed to regale them with the story of how she’d helped Diluc outwit the prying Knights of Favonius while simultaneously parrying a direct attack by the Abyss Order. Speaking of their battle against Abyss mages on the bridge to Mondstat, Lumine allowed herself to wax poetic about Diluc’s fighting prowess. “I felt a searing heat, like nothing I’ve ever felt before. It singed the hair off my arms--” she held out her arms to demonstrate. “I thought I would roast to death right then and there, and I thought, ‘Why is he aiming his attacks at me?’ But he wasn’t aiming his attack at me at all. He aimed his blow at the Abyss Mage in front of us on the bridge. The heat was just that intense. And then an enormous phoenix flew out of the sky. It was as big as this whole house.”
“Whoa,” said Anthon.
“The Darknight Hero had summoned it with the power of his Vision. It landed on our enemies in a raging inferno. They didn’t even have time to scream. They were incinerated into smoke and ashes in less than a heartbeat, and the phoenix, having answered the call to duty, raised its proud head up to the sky and released a piercing cry that knocked me off my feet. I could see every feather on its body, rimmed in perfect orange flame, and its eyes were bluer than the sky at noon, flickering with actual fire. It spread its wings and leapt into the sky, soaring away into the night, leaving thunder and smoke in its wake. All I could do was stare in awe with my mouth hanging open. But the Darknight Hero just turned his back on the inferno and walked back toward Mondstat, sheathing his greatsword. Just another day’s work, for him.” She laughed aloud at the memory. Diluc really had looked like that on his way back to the tavern, even if his battle with the Abyss mages had been slightly less awe inspiring than she told it. He hardly ever changed expression.
“But who was it?” asked Tonia. “You never told us his name.”
Lumine smiled. “I didn’t tell you, and I never will.”
“What!” Tonia protested.
“That’s not fair,” Teucer complained. “Just tell us.”
“Nope, I can’t. I promised to never reveal his identity.”
“We’ll never tell a soul,” Anthon assured her.
“I pinkie promised him,” Lumine said gravely.
“Awwww.” Teucer looked truly disappointed. His shoulders slumped as he moped. “Lumi, can’t you just give us a hint?” he begged.
How could she say no to that face? She sighed, “Alright, just one hint,” and the kids cheered. She crooked her finger, motioning them closer, and lowered her voice like she was telling a secret. They all scooted in to hear, eyes shining. “His eyes are red,” she said. “Red like the dawn, and blood, and burning embers, all mixed together.”
Tonia sighed, enamored by the description, and the boys’ eyes widened. “Cool,” they breathed in unison.
“But,” said Tonia, remembering her national pride, and sitting back, “remember, boys, he’s just Mondstat’s hero. He could never beat a Fatui Harbinger.” She shot a glance back at Childe as she said this. Lumine had almost forgotten about him, standing there outside the firelight, but the story seemed to have caught his attention as well.
Lumine, though, caught up in the drama of her story, couldn’t let that stand. “Ha! Please. The Darknight Hero could take on all of the Harbingers at the same time, any day.”
“Yeah, right,” Tonia said pragmatically, and Childe actually snorted. “The Harbingers are the best fighters in all of Teyvat!” Apparently, Tonia thought her brother’s honor was on the line.
“The best fighters that you know of,” Lumine pointed out. “Maybe not everyone who could work for the Fatui actually wants to join. I bet there are a lot of strong fighters out there who aren’t working for the Tsaritsa.”
Tonia looked like she was about to argue, but Childe finally eased himself away from the pillar and strode over to ruffle his sister’s hair. Annoyed, she tried to duck away. “She’s right, you know,” he told Tonia. “There are a lot of strong fighters outside the Fatui.” His smile was thin, and sharp, with a secret glee Lumine always found unsettling. “I’m counting on it.”
It was only then that it occurred to Lumine that she, perhaps, should not have told him that story. Two weeks later, when he mentioned Diluc’s name to her in passing, she’d felt alarm spike through her mind. She’d never said Diluc’s name to him. Not once. A knot of dread had started forming in her stomach then, that had only grown over time.