Chapter Text
Tartaglia, for all his distaste of subterfuge and trickery, is surrounded by it enough on a daily basis to recognise when he’s being led on a wild goose chase.
It seemed pretty straightforward in the beginning. After all with Signora reportedly vaporised by the Raiden Shogun and Scaramouche disappearing without a trace, taking the Electro Archon’s gnosis with him, Childe and his single minded focus on combat would be the Tsaritsa’s best choice at retrieving the gnosis as quickly as possible.
Months later, after raiding countless Domains alone with nothing to show but a surprise encounter with the Traveler and a musician from Liyue of all things, Childe is this close from giving up. Or if not giving up, at least crawling back to Dottore and asking him why the hell they didn’t implant a tracker on Scaramouche while tinkering on his puppet body.
“Really, now… anything would be better than this.”
It’s too tense to be the childish whine of his regular persona, but he sticks to it anyway. There’s no one around to judge him for it and there’s no way he’s facing whatever is forming in the pit of his stomach anytime soon.
Childe is staring at a portal.
The people of Watatsumi might talk around it, calling it a whirlpool or simply ‘an entrance' but the way the light shifts on the surface of the swirling water gives it away. It’s not natural and for all that falling in it would lead you down, it’d be foolish to think simply swimming upwards might bring you back to the surface.
Childe ignores the memory of gravity rearranging itself on his belly, cold freezing water wrapping with intent around his small legs and pulling him down, down, down.
It’s just stupid. Why would anyone hype up a wormhole in the middle of town as if it’s a sacred space and not a security risk where any stupid kid might trip and fall and be immediately killed by monsters? Sure, Childe would love to face the odds against them, to feel the blood pumping through his veins, but people usually call him a freak for it.
He glances up towards the edge of the horizon and curses under his breath. It’s almost dawn. The next shift of shrine maidens is soon to come and Childe didn’t think to bribe those. Didn’t think it’d be necessary.
“It isn’t.” He mutters mulishly, but doesn’t put any effort into it. Childe just stands up from his crouch at the edge of coral platform, calls forth his hydro vision, changing his form into water and as he flows down into the glittering abyss Childe thinks about nothing at all.
-
What he finds at the end is almost a disappointment until it suddenly isn’t.
Battling the local Vishaps lurking at the drop of the portal had worked up enough of a sweat that, after finally opening the door to Enkanomiya proper and encountering the light of the Dainichi Mikoshi, Childe does something he rarely does and stops to rest.
It's while he's eating the Inazuman snacks he bought beforehand that he feels it.
It's not something obvious like a crack of branches under someone's boots or even a shift in the air. What screams at Childe is that finely tuned sense of wrong, wrong, wrong he acquired so long ago, which was always followed by a mad rush to escape the howls and corrosive claws of the Abyss.
While it's Childe that puts away his sakura flavored crackers with a sigh, it's Ajax Tartaglia that summons his hydro blades with nary a thought just in time for a rift to form right in front of him.
The being that steps out of the shifting darkness oozes Abyssal energy, its armour a sleek intricate design of reds, blacks and golds, a striking metal halo around its head. Its appearance is both repulsive and comfortingly familiar, like Tartaglia's own Foul Legacy. Childe knows this uniform only from afar though. The Abyss Lectors were always too above small fries like him and-. Well, it's easier to say they never had any reason to cross paths.
Which is why Childe doesn't know exactly what he did to attract the attention of one. Is breaking and entering into a dead ruin enough to trigger the Order these days? Who's he kidding, with all the shit the Traveler keeps stirring of course any activity is closely monitored.
Tartaglia raises his hydro blades even higher in front of his face, knees lowering, ready to have Childe deliver a one liner and move in for the suicidal kill when the Pyro Abyss Lector puts both of its hands behind its head and, in a familiar familiar familiar relaxed stance speaks in a completely human voice.
"Hey, Ajax! Did you miss me?"