Archive of Our Own

She would not know. She does not commune directly with her patron god; that is neither her right nor her responsibility. She is only a delegate, and a delegate of Hermes is to deliver messages, which she does with great aplomb.

Currently, she is sitting upon a particular fluffy stretch of clouds, sorting her letters for the day. A delivery order from Hestia’s domain. Book pickups for Athena’s domain. Harvest reports for Demeter’s domain and casualty counts for Ares’s domain. The day will be strenuous, as most days are.

Beside Lumine sits her brother, Aether, who sighs languidly. His wispy braid flutters like a thread of gold in the wind.

“Great,” he says. “More trips to Fontaine.”

Lumine peers over at his stack of letters, which seems insurmountable. Thankfully, it is not as threatening as it looks. Unlike her, who is responsible for communications among Olympians, Aether bears messages between Olympus and Teyvat. He carries greater volume, but many of his letters are dispatched at fewer stops.

And he is less encumbered by creatures like harpies and chimeras, which teem throughout Olympus.

“Is it that bad?” Lumine asks, filing away a message for Lord Apollo himself.

“You have no idea.” Aether tosses the handful of epistles in his bag without a second glance. “It’s torture to fly past all that delicious food when you can’t taste any of it. You think Hestia will ever try making beignets?”

Lumine thinks of the cheery, bustling hearth of Hestia, and how its delegates are always quick to serve delicious treats with a smile. It’s one of her favorite domains. “Probably if you can get a recipe,” she says.

“Wonderful.” Aether returns sullenly to the pile. “I wonder when mortals will start sacrificing recipes instead of food.”

Lumine does not think it likely that some hapless mortal will burn one of their recipe cards for no particular reason, but she will not mention such. She merely returns to sorting the letters. Letters to Liyue, for Aether; to Aphrodite, for her; to Sumeru, for Aether; to Poseidon, for her. It continues without any promise of an end.

“Hey, Lu,” says Aether suddenly.

Lumine looks up from a greeting card sent by Zeus. Aether’s brow crooks as he raises an envelope slotted neatly between his fingers.

“It’s your favorite,” he says archly.

Lumine takes one look at the tidy address scrawled on the envelope’s face.

And groans.

ꕥ

The Harbingers, they are called.

Eleven shades of Death, bound together by bloodlust and a threadbare loyalty to their patron god Hades. Often they vanish to the surface of Teyvat to reap fallen souls, and, if necessary, dine on those twisted into demonry. Most regard them with fear, whether reverential or distasteful.

Lumine does not care for the Harbingers. She finds them strange and cruel, with their bitter smiles full of secrets and dark, bloodstained gazes. She is told they are a necessity, that there cannot be light without dark, life without death, but that does not endear them to her any more. Necessities rarely are.

And they have been, thus far, lousy tippers.

It is with a sigh that Lumine thumbs through the Hades-assigned epistles in her bag, counting how many are destined to Harbingers. One for the Sixth, Scaramouche; a wonderful start, with his hateful manners and bitter tongue. One for the Eighth, Signora; Lumine despises her especially for the barbaric methods that she seems to relish.

But the final two letters catch her eye. They are addressed to the latest addition to the Harbingers: the Eleventh, code-named Childe.

She has yet to meet the Eleventh, and that fills her with dread. Any unknowns in the realm of Death are dangerous, oftentimes deadly. Every Harbinger thus far has attempted to kill her at least once—not with murderous intent, they claim, but because it is oh-so-fun to tease the little messenger. She has been choked against a wall, ensnared over a pit of ravenous snakes, and dropped between two gorgons, just to name a few.

Lumine slips away the letters for Scaramouche and Signora. She will confront the unknown first, and get it over with.

ꕥ

The Eleventh Harbinger, Childe, is not what Lumine expects.

His face is not sharp angles and cruel lines like Signora, nor is his gaze bitter and thin like Scaramouche. In fact, his looks are distinctly softened by the unkempt fluff of fire-orange hair tossed around his head.

She would not guess him to be a Harbinger, an Erinys. If anything, perhaps he would be a Ferryman, or at most, a Warden. There is nothing intimidating or abrasive about his appearance, save how disheveled and mismatched he purposely chooses to be. If not for the night-dark hue of his clothes and the regal insignia pinned to his lapel, she would have easily passed over him in a crowd.

“Messages for Childe, the Eleventh Harbinger, Erinys to the current Lady Hades,” Lumine says stiffly as she crackles to a halt just outside his door.

The unassuming man accepts the two letters from her with a tilt of his head, then waves her into his room.

Like the other Harbingers, he lives in a hall of simple, almost barren chambers, each furnished with a plain bed, a single shelf, and a wall rack for weapons. He has chosen to display two obsidian daggers, a cruel polearm, and a sharp-tipped bow. Upon the wall, they look black as shadow, but Lumine knows that when in action, the blades glimmer a thick crimson like blood.

She does not enter that cursed room.

Childe is unfazed by her reticence. “You must be the Hermes girl,” he says with a grin, and there it is in those dead ocean eyes: that tinge of Harbinger cruelty and wrongness that always unsettles Lumine. “Thanks for the letters, dove.”

For a moment, she forgets her apprehension.

Ha-ha, dove, a kind of bird that rhymes with love, he must think he is positively a riot.

Lumine purses her lips, hands resting lightly on her hips. “Proud of that one, are you?”

His smile widens. “Kind of, yeah.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be,” Lumine says with a crook of her brow. She hops up, the wings on her shoes holding her aloft in a gentle hover. “Ask for a refund for the two seconds it took for you to come up with that.”

“Would that Chronos were so charitable,” Childe says. He’s still smiling. “Got a name, dove?”

“You seem more than capable of coming up with one,” Lumine returns.

A spark of mischief—or is it aggression, challenge?—in those dead blue eyes. “Maybe you don’t deserve my christening, Hermes girl. Maybe you have to earn it.”

Something about that digs under her skin. Hermes delegates, vital though their services may be, are often regarded as flighty, weak little creatures. She and Aether have earned respect aboveground with the tips of their swords and the heads of their arrows, but this arrogant Erinys would not know that.

“I only seek to earn things,” she throws back, “that are of value.”

Childe laughs. She expects it to be guttural and corrosive, grating like the laughter of the other Harbingers, but it is not so. Rather, it is light and rounded—a warm, throaty sort of laughter.

“Bold of you to taunt an Erinys, little bird,” he says. He is still grinning with that cold glint in his eye, and suddenly, Lumine regrets her jibe; perhaps she has just played with fire. Then he flips her a coin with his thumb and waves a hand. “Safe travels.”

He tipped.

Lumine is suddenly feeling much more charitable. She can forgive a lot of things for tippers. She does not know where this Harbinger has learned to tip—certainly not within his own unit—but she will not complain.

She nods shortly. “May night smile upon you,” she says, which is as kind a farewell as one could receive in Hades.

Her shoes crackle like white fire and the world blurs away.

ꕥ

Lumine continues on her route. Scaramouche is distinctly less pleasant—to hell with your bedamned letters, accursed harpy, why don’t you throw them into Tartarus where they belong—and Signora even less so—thank you for taking fifteen thousand years to deliver these, my sweet, you must have it very cushy up there. By the time her tour of Hades has finished, she is ready to crush a skull in between her fingers.

She takes brief respite in Artemis’s domain, a vast woodland kingdom flooded with friendly beasts and dangerous mists alike. It is one of the larger domains, mostly isolated from the rest of Olympus. Artemis’s delegates like to keep it that way.

As it usually goes after a delivery to Harbingers, Lumine would very much like to kill something, or at least hunt something down. Ill fortune that the patron god Artemis would not take kindly to outsiders hunting on her grounds. Perhaps she should be bold enough to attempt a writ of permission.

Of course, if she is that desperate for a fight, Ares would be more than happy to oblige. The arena of the war god always seems to be in some sort of brawl, whether in Olympus or Teyvat—and when not in the throes of a fight, they are organizing the next one. She and Aether have placed in one of Ares’s tournaments before, although she would never enter alone. She is more inclined to fight with soft wind in her ears and the brush of pine needles over her cheeks, not the raucous laughter of Ares’s arena.

So Lumine remains sullenly perched on her little rock, picking at the grass. She is so occupied in her thoughts that she does not notice a snapping twig.

Without further warning, a boar barrels out of the hedge just to her right, skull lowered and hostile. Like most creatures within Artemis’s domain, it is no helpless quarry: the tusks are lengthy and sharpened, serrated on one edge, ripe for gutting victims. The hunter god’s delegates would have it no other way; there is no pride in a hunt if it is easy, or so they say.

Lumine scrambles to her feet, feathered sword barely materializing in her right hand, but then—

—a jade spear whistles out of the unknown and lodges solidly into the boar, sinking in to halfway past the shaft.

The poor creature is throttled away at the sheer force, shoving up dirt and grass with its weight until it crashes at the root of a tree.

Lumine lowers her blade.

“Not like you to be distracted,” says a wintry, dry voice. From the shadows, a silhouette emerges, stepping forth to be painted under the dappled sunlight.

It is a familiar face: a colorful hunter, arrayed in patterned, ragged layers of scarves and furs, dark hair touched with strips of windblown teal. He is known as Xiao, one of Artemis’s five honored huntsmen—although Lumine has known him better as a consistent customer for food delivery, and over time, a friend.

Xiao grimaces as he extracts the spear from the boar’s middle, and she knows he is displeased. The pride of an Artemis delegate is a clean shot through the head, far from any vital organs or prized meat. Waste is the biggest disgrace of a hunter.

“Sorry,” Lumine says haltingly. She knows that he only missed because of the haste of his throw. Or rather, because of her inattentiveness.

Xiao looks at her sharply. “Then pay attention.”

She has no reply to that. He’s correct.

Xiao stoops by the carcass and honors it with a silent prayer. Lumine knows that he’ll spend most of the day preparing the kill: slicing meat for stew, cleaning bones for tools, tanning pelts for leather, even skimming intestines for catgut. Nothing will be wasted. For an Artemis delegate, to take a life is to be responsible for it.

Lumine hovers behind him, somewhat loathe to end her break. Xiao is known to be especially solitary, but he is not cruel, nor is he cryptic. If her presence is unwanted, he will make it known. For the most part, he appears to enjoy her periodic drop-ins ever since she delivered a plate of almond tofu from Hestia’s domain, so fresh that the osmanthus syrup had yet to run over the edges. Almond tofu seems to be the key to getting in his good graces.

Xiao lifts his head, rite concluded. His eyes cut to her, and he frowns.

“Bad route today?” he asks, gesturing at her.

Lumine blinks. Is she so obvious? “I met the Eleventh Harbinger,” she says.

Xiao’s lip curls in thinly veiled disgust, which is an Olympian’s typical reaction to a chthonic being. “My condolences.”

That makes her laugh. “Accepted. Although he did tip.”

Xiao’s eyes narrow, but he turns back to the fallen carcass, withdrawing his knife. “Don’t bother feeling indebted for it. Not to a Harbinger.”

“I won’t.”

“Good.” He pauses, then reaches to his belt and tosses her a small leathery pouch. “Eat something before you go.”

Lumine peers into the mouth of the pouch and finds several strips of pork jerky, cured with salt and faintly coated with sweet maple syrup. It is a perfect morsel for the middle of the day. After one delectable bite, Lumine is renewed and ready to return to work.

There is still half a bag of letters to deliver, after all.

“Thank you,” she says warmly, tucking the rest of the pouch in her belt. The wings on her shoes begin to flutter, ready to spirit her away.

Xiao glances at her. His eyes are quiet and calculating, but he eventually speaks. “No need.”

She wonders when he’ll ever say you’re welcome. When people will ever be welcome. If people will ever be welcome.

Lumine’s shoes blaze to life and she vanishes through the undergrowth.

ꕥ

Apollo’s domain is set next to Artemis’s, as is tradition. Its denizens are quite relaxed on boundaries, however, and from the skies, Lumine can see a number of muses trailing throughout Olympus, lyres or bows in hand. Aside from Hermes, they are the most nomadic of delegates, recounting ballads, keeping flocks, and treating the ill. They are a welcome sight in every domain, as music and healing follows in the wake of their steps.

Lumine soars over the swaths of broad, verdant fields, eyes searching for the resident Lord Apollo. With his free-spirited demeanor, he can be very difficult to find.

Thankfully, it is not long before she finds him perched on the stump of a tree overgrown with speckled flowers, lyre singing under his dextrous fingers. He is draped in lively green, from the wing-hemmed cloak falling from his shoulders to the plush hat set on his head, framed by leaves and cecilia flowers.

His delegate name was once Venti, which he has always preferred, but Lumine is here on official business.

She alights, her shoes letting her descend gently. “Hail, Lord Apollo,” she says, bowing her head.

Lord Venti’s eyes flutter open, revealing vibrant traces of green-blue. His face is smooth and round, his build slender. He is the picture of youth, which belies his age.

“Hail, Lady Hermes!” he calls cheerfully, waving a hand.

“I am not Lady Hermes, my lord,” Lumine says respectfully. “I am a mere delegate.”

Lord Venti tips his head, a glimmer in his green eyes. “Ah, but you will be, my lady,” he says jovially, “along with that twin brother of yours. The two of you are destined to claim the skies, hand in hand. The very first patron god of two separate forms.” He thumbs a glowing string on his lyre. “You should be honored! The muses will sing of you for a good thousand generations.”

Lumine sighs, but does not refute him. Apollo is also the patron god of prophecy, and it is well within the power of every Lord Apollo to clarify the future. Unfortunately, this current Lord Apollo is also a voracious prankster, and no Olympian can ever tell whether his tales are tall or true. He once prophesied a terrifying excess of grapes flooding the country in order to wrest free wine from Lord Dionysus, and another time, prophesied the spontaneous combustion of Lord Demeter’s storehouses to prompt a feast the likes of which was never before seen.

Needless to say, following those events, Lord Venti was banned from any prophesying regarding consumables.

“Now,” says the lord in question, sticking out a hand, “I believe you have a message for me?”

“Oh, yes,” Lumine says hurriedly, digging through her bag. She finds the special scroll within seconds: gold-rimmed and sealed with shimmering wax, to be opened by none but the recipient on pain of death. Contact between gods is strictly confidential, and if any Hermes delegate were to open it unprompted, they would immediately be cast into the depths of Hades.

Lord Venti accepts the scroll and tears his thumb across the seal. His eyes skim the tidy penmanship quickly as he gives a loose humming noise.

“Blah blah blah… uh-huh… no more drinking… taking his title… yeah, yeah.” He snorts, and flippantly tosses the scroll in his pouch. “Dionysus is always such a sore loser. You’d think a god who spent all day partying wouldn’t be so insecure.”

“What, does he think that you’ll commandeer his title of the god of revelry?” Lumine asks, baffled.

Lord Venti chuckles. “Right? Can’t blame me for knowing how to have a good time! Clearly, the man has to up his own game.”

He reaches into his pocket and flips a coin at her—a whole drachma for a tip. Lumine almost gasps as she catches it. Such generosity is rare.

“Something for the road,” Lord Venti says cheerily. “Before you head out, why don’t you hear a song? I’ve got a new one in store, just for you.”

Lumine is very inclined to adhere to any of his requests with that drachma in her palm, but she first checks her timepiece. A delegate of Hermes must stay prompt, and she has already idled away enough in Artemis’s domain.

“I, ah,” she says hesitantly, “actually, I’m not sure if I quite have the time, my lord—”

A cold wind sears through the glade. Lord Venti’s eyes flash cold emerald and his voice booms.

“SIT.”

Lumine sits.

In the blink of an eye, Lord Venti has changed. The eyes of the playful patron god glow like stars in his skull, brilliant and blinding. The lyre hums and trembles in his grasp, singing like a choir. He plays, and the wind swirls about his figure, whipping at his cloak and bearing him into the air.

“ABYSS TO STAR, AND HELL BELOW, FROM WAKING REALM TO DEATH,” Lord Venti calls, his voice resonant. “TWO FEATHERS FLY, AS ONE MAY FALL, CONSUMED BY ENDLESS DEPTH. CARE YE, ARROGANCE OF THINE KIND, TO FANCY NOT THE THRONE. FOR IN THE END, BUT ONE MAY STAND, AND OTHER FALL UNKNOWN.”

The lyre deadens.

The wind quiets.

Lord Venti slumps, his body collapsing onto the cushy field of cecilias at his feet. He sleeps soundly, his face boyish and peaceful.

Lumine breathes in, the air prickling at her dry mouth.

Nothing.

She stands on shaky knees, cold and hollow, as if the very ground has been pulled out from under her. She should return to work—she must return to work—but Lord Venti’s warning continues to echo within her skull, ringing incessently like the toll of a death knell.

Waking realm to death.

Two feathers.

One to fall, consumed by endless depth.

The implication is clear, and the Fates cannot be contested: there will come a day when either she or Aether will break this idyllic peace of Olympus, turn against all they know, and take up arms against the celestial realm.

And on that day, they will perish for their folly.