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Too proud. Too beautiful. Too bright among the rest of us in our dented armor and dull helms. We are covered in dust and dirt and sweat; he shines like the sun itself, glorious in his chariot, golden in his armor, rapturous and lovely as the dawn breaking over this burned and bruised landscape.
And proud. So proud. I say it now, but I will never pronounce it often enough. That deadly pride. It makes him a tower of marble, immortal as he yet breathes.
And I?
I am a shadow, a sulky red shadow at his heels. A smudge on all that gleaming armor. I am the dirt beneath his nails. I am his mortality.
#
I might have been important once. I was a Ragnvindr, at least until my father died. Then I was just a lost boy, a boy without a home.
My father was a merchant, a wealthy, successful man. He was known among the people in Mondstadt, yet when he was gone, there was no one left to care for me. No mother, no friends, nobody at all.
They therefore sent me to him to be a prince’s companion, a brother, a shield at his side. Perhaps we would be friends. Perhaps I would merely prove useful.
How little they understood.
I arrived alone and afraid, bereft of my father, my belongings, my country. I was a bargain, a peace offering. Perhaps Mondstadt and Khaenri’ah could get along at last, if I, the son of an important man, could go off and charm Khaenri’ah’s prince. We would grow up side by side, uniting our lands over time.
At first, though, I did little but sweep and clean and fix broken lyre strings. I ran errands while Kaeya trained to be a king and a warrior both.
I didn’t mind. Often, it meant I could watch him practicing with his spear or listen to him learning to play instruments. He did both with such beauty that it is forever imprinted on my mind as the pinnacle of grace, a thing worthy of poems and paintings.
I am no poet, no painter, no prince. I am not even his sworn brother, as they hoped, his brother in blood, in honor, in all senses but the most literal.
I am … something more.
#
No person may love another perfectly. That is a fiction, a comforting myth. But I believe we came as near that goal as any mortals may claim.
During those first moons in Khaenri’ah, I lived as an outsider, an orphan. They watched me, eyes and mouths tight little lines of suspicion. I shrank down, became as small as I could.
They hated that he chose me, even without being forced. I was as a weed plucked from a garden of roses. Mondstadt hoped he would do so, did all they could to ensure he would, but it was merely a wish for most of our lives. Kaeya could have simply refused, could have dug in his heels and denied me entirely.
But he didn’t. And no one in Khaenri’ah ever quite understood why. Why this boy, so surly and so mean and so slight? Why him and not one more worthy?
At first, they did not lower their voices. They did not attempt to hide, stating it plainly right before him.
The first time Kaeya struck one of them, the questions stopped, or, at least, we never overheard them again.
From then on, I was his shadow. We shared our meals, our training, even our quarters. I, a boy with no home, no family name, no magic to match his dancing ice, I was the one that he chose.
#
His magic dazzled me instantly. I saw it burst out one day as he trained. His spear spun and ice followed, sharp, glittering projectiles that danced around him at his command.
I asked how this could be, what god had gifted him such a boon, but Kaeya shrugged and said, “Just something I’ve kinda always been able to do.”
I tried. I dug within myself, searching for a spark, something special I might present him with. Oh, how I wanted to show him something, anything. How I wanted to move as beautifully as he did. How I wanted to be worthy of being chosen by him. But nothing special ever awakened in me.
Eventually, he was the one who found something within me worth keeping. We were only boys, our touches clumsy and fluttering, but he said he loved my voice when it turned toward pleasure, said he loved my light, blunt hands, said he loved my mouth and the things I learned to do with it.
I found it absurd. But sometimes, when he lay there flushed and delighted, I nearly believed him.
#
When they sent him to this war, I knew I would go too. I was afraid, but not so afraid as I’d be if we were separated.
We sailed toward Khaenri’ah’s enemies. I did not know who they were or why we had to fight them. When I asked him, he said, “So they will write stories about me.”
Oh, if I could be a poet. If I could be a singer, weaving his tale from the safety of our little room in Khaenri’ah.
How frequently I wonder if that might have kept us home, kept him safe. If I was worthy of telling his story, would we be in this miserable tent in this miserable war right now? Would we be fighting for some other man’s wife without ever knowing why?
I do no know. I certainly did not know back then. Still, I tried. “I will write of you.”
Kaeya smiled. “Luc, you aren’t a writer.”
I know, I know, but gods, if only.
#
I remember when we came to this shore. I remember the blood we spilled our very first day. It was the first time he ever killed a man and when it was over and we set up our tent and crawled into it exhausted and frayed I said, “What was it like?”
“Do not ask me that,” he said and we did not speak of it further.
Can you believe that we were only boys back then, just stupid, fumbling boys? Yet when the sun rose, Kaeya led his father’s army and he was so bright and so glorious that he returned that first day a hero.
He smiled as I helped him out of his blood-splattered armor.
“You see, Luc?” he said. “Now they will write of me.”
“I see,” I said.
It was a lie. It is a lie. Ten years on and I do not understand why he wastes himself in this wretched place.
#
The men must know, after 10 years of war on this shore, why we share a tent, why we take every meal together, why the only time one is glimpsed without the other is when he goes off to battle, a whirling drop of sunlight burning bright among all those mortals.
“Kaeya,” they chant. They love him. They adore him. He dances across the battlefield and men cry his name in fear and wonder and worship.
“Kaeya,” I breathe. I love him. I moan his name in fear and wonder and worship. After 10 years, I do not quiet my voice as I once did. There is no one left to fool.
#
I fix the straps of his armor. I like thinking of my hands being the last kind ones to touch him before he plunges back into this damnable war. Does anyone even remember why we are here? Some other man’s wife. Some slight to honor and pride. And all of Khaenri’ah must fight in response.
He is the best of them, the strongest, the most graceful, the brightest. They begged on their knees for him to join their cause. I begged for him to refuse.
He was young. He hungered for glory. “You are our last hope,” they said. “You must go. Kaeya, you must fight.”
So he fights. Some other man’s wife. Some slight to honor and pride in a strange, faraway place. But the men love him. The other princes revere him. The king of Khaenri’ah places Kaeya at his right hand, higher than all other men aside from himself.
I finish with his armor and tell him, as I must most days, to return to me.
“Of course,” he says, as though it is the easiest thing in all the world to wade into another man’s war.
He returns covered in blood and beaming bright. It is never his own blood. I have ceased even to worry.
#
After 10 years of fighting, 10 years of being second to a king, 10 years of winning their war for them, Kaeya grows restless.
When the king summons him, his smile flickers. His eyebrows draw down. His lovely face pulls in tight and so does my stomach, knotting around fear.
He is a storm when he returns.
“Kaeya,” I say. He brushes past me and into the tent we share.
“Diluc,” he says when I follow him in, “he means to dishonor me.”
War prizes. Gold. Servants. Honor. These are things beyond one such as me. I am just a companion, just a sulky red shadow, quiet and sullen, the darkness cast by his glory.
Still, I understand the outline, the hasty sketch he draws with his rambling. They mean to take from him, to temper him. He has grown greater than kings and for that he must be punished.
Fear fists in my stomach, hardening to stone.
#
I could almost come to love this. Now that the king has dishonored him, he shuns them. He dooms them. He damns them. And it means he stays with me instead.
We spend hours and days in our tent, until our voices have so filled and clouded that confined space that we must fling the flaps open wide to let them out.
We run to the ocean and dive into the waves and we are very nearly boys again. I almost forget there is a war steps away, that men are dying just over that hill, that as we rejoice in our little life together they perish under wicked blades.
He could stop it, end the carnage, but oh, he is so proud. So beautiful and so proud.
#
“Kaeya,” I say one day. I enjoy the sound of his name in my mouth as we lie in his tent, escaping the hazy heat of the afternoon, his arm around me as I press close to his side and trail my fingers over bare skin. He is so exposed like this, so mortal. It is terrifying.
“Will you save them?” I say. The war turns against them without Kaeya fighting. The enemy pushes in, encroaches closer every day. I have seen the wounded in the medical tent. I have smelled the funeral pyres burning. More and more every day. I shudder.
“No.” His voice is hard as ice.
“You could save them,” I say. “You could spare them.”
“Why would I do that?” he says.
“Because they are dying and they are our kinsmen. Because you are...” Incredible. Inhuman. Bright as the sunrise and cold as the snow-capped mountains where only gods dwell.
“I will not save them,” he says. “They do not love me.” He strokes my face, smiles, eye skimming over me. “You love me, Diluc, so I will save you.”
“But I am in no danger,” I say.
“Then I have done all I must.”
#
When we were boys, I would watch him fight and think, I could never be thus. I could never move as he does. I could never be so glorious and so bright.
I learned to fight too. We all did. I was passable, but my heart was not a warrior’s and my blood was not a god’s, not like his. I am just a mortal and I hate to see my fellows die, hate to smell their demise in the air, hate to watch them dashed against this hard, rocky coastline.
Thus I tremble within his golden armor, my red hair bound up and hidden away under his helm, afraid that every step betrays me. Blood is thick and cloying in the hair, a putrid fog I pass through on my way to the battle. I try to keep my steps even, but my heart pounds against the breastplate. Surely, they must hear its terrified patter.
Perhaps they merely want to believe.
I do too, especially as battle closes in thick around me.
I am a blunt and brutal instrument. He is a song and a poem. Trite as it is to compare men to music, his body does not move as ours. His steps do not slam down, kicking up puffs of dust. His spear does not slice in efficient, harsh, direct lines.
Mine does and surely the men see it, but so great is their relief that they keep shouting his name as I whirl through the enemy, wielding simple, stark death where he might paint the battlefield and make even this something beautiful. It is horrible to witness, but that does not make it less lovely.
I am no fool; I know it cannot last forever. But I hope it will last long enough, that this carnage might tilt the battle in our favor, might afford me just one more day, one more moment, in which I might sway him and save them.
It is not enough to save only me, Kaeya. It is not enough.
#
The arrow knocks me to my knees. It lodges in the space between my chest and my shoulder. My arm is numb and throbbing and burning all at once. My fingers convulse, dropping my spear.
His armor is just a little too large for me. Just a tiny adjustment. But that is enough to leave an opening, a gap where someone might see beneath and know it is not him – it is only me.
The men are not shouting his name anymore. I am bleeding. I cannot be him.
The enemy advances, their raised swords like gashes against the sky.
The magic arrives suddenly and explosively. It wells up in my chest like a funeral pyre roaring outward and licking at the heavens.
I know even before flame coils around my injured arm and dances along my fingertips that it is wrong. Fire. Bright, red, gleaming fire. Not ice.
If they did not know before this moment, I have left them no room for doubt. The fire is here and my desperate, terrified mortal body whips it out at the enemy, one last attempt at life.
They startle back. They did not expect this. How could they?
Their fear and surprise are temporary. Still, a passable fighter wreathed in flame may become something a little more. I hold them off for a time, wielding a spear with my one undamaged arm.
I think I hear him calling for me.
The fire must be bright. It must be huge. Or perhaps I merely imagine his voice in my desperation as the knowledge that I will fall here sharpens and clarifies. Already, the spears encircle me, jabbing in. Already, another arrow finds some gap in his armor. The fire burns and burns, but I cannot burn forever.
I let myself believe that chime in the air is his voice ringing out for me, music to accompany the final seconds of my strange, mortal life.
#
These fragments are all that remain to me now as I seep through the soil of the world. I did not think dying would take so very long. I am as rain upon an already flooded plain. I creep and fade slowly, losing a little more of the world each moment. The memories flash like fireflies, little lights amid the encroaching darkness.
And Kaeya the brightest light of all.
I feel his footsteps like thunder upon the earth. I hear his wailing as cracks of lightning. He cries the name of the man who killed me, a prince, it seems, a man of great renown. I’ve died well above my station.
Kaeya is a storm. He is colder than the deepest winter, an avalanche arriving to bury our enemies.
He kills the prince. It is not even difficult for him. I grieve beneath the earth. I am not worth the price he will pay. I am only a shadow, only a lost boy offered up so I might be of some use to someone.
I suppose, in turning him against our enemies, I have served a higher purpose than I might have otherwise.
#
My grip becomes tenuous. The present slips between my fingers. It is like grasping air; I feel it for a moment, think I might just hold on, then it courses past my hand and I have nothing but the phantoms.
Diluc.
I do not know what I expected from the underworld. Mostly, it is just empty. Just space.
I may have called the men who arrive here enemies once, but the distinction seems almost quaint now. They pass me by without recognition, just another shade in the land of the dead.
Diluc.
The whispers gather. They gain strength and form; they collect like rain slowly forming a river out of mere drops. And I cannot stop the tide of his name washing over me, the way the dead rustle with it, hum with it. The way it adds a something to this space of nothing.
But he is not here. And, gods be gracious, hopefully he will not arrive with any great haste. Hopefully his life will be long and beautiful and proud, as radiant as he is. Hopefully they will have so many great deeds to write of when he does pass from the mortal realm down into this place that they will level entire forests for want of pulp.
In the meantime, I am content to wait. It is not so bad here. Quiet. Still. Lonely, but there are worse things than loneliness and I knew it so seldom in my life with him that it is nearly a novelty.
Diluc.
There are so many shades and ghosts who pass me by, muttering his name. Sometimes, they even mutter mine. Each time it stings, like a hook trying to drag me back up to the surface.
So often they speak of him. It terrifies me to hear. I get clips and fragments of the war above, but I can make little sense of it. The only thing that stands out among the lamentations of the fallen is his name, like a bead of sunlight in the middle of the night.
His name becomes stronger, the only bright thing in this murky pit. I tremble. Please, let it not be so. Oh, please. By all the Archons. Let his name fade. Let it lose solidity in this place. Let it and him remain wh—
“Diluc,” he says.
I turn. And here, of all places, I find him again.
Too proud. Too beautiful. Too bright among these dull, restless shades. We are shadows in a land of shadows; he shines like the sun itself, glorious even in death, rapturous and lovely as the dawn breaking over this landscape of endless gloom.
And proud. So proud. I say it now, again, but I will never pronounce it often enough. That deadly pride. That pride that places him here before his time.
And I?
I am a shadow, the sulky red shadow that he loved in life, that he loves even now.
I am his immortality.