Chapter Text
“This paradise shall be made for the sake of the humans who will one day walk these lands. Transient creatures they are; kind yet stubborn, foolish yet ingenious, powerful yet highly aware of their mortality. A lovely existence in one’s image to care and nurture until Time’s judgement arrives...”
Swinging his hydro blades in a practiced ease, Childe slices through the jaws of a Rifthound Whelp before it can clamp its jaws into his arm. The whelp yaps and growls at its injuries before teleporting away, but Childe had been battling on Tsurumi for days now, and he knows the pattern of these wolves even with his eyes closed.
“Shouldn’t let your guard down lil’ pup,” grins the Harbinger as he swings his hydro lance in a wide arc, successfully slicing the whelp right across its abdomen and sending it back through the wormhole it appeared in.
With a flick of his wrist and a sigh off of his lips, Childe deactivates his hydro blades and walks a little distance away where he had tossed his little sachet amongst a bunch of mushrooms. He finds it a little disappointing that an island that hadn’t been touched by humans in maybe a few hundred years only have mushrooms growing on it, but food is food and he’s not about to be picky when it’s scarce.
After his failed search for Scaramouche on Narukami Island, Childe had been wandering around Inazuma trying to find information about his rogue superior; asking around the Adventure Guild, Komore Teahouse, all the restaurants, even the Maidens and Mages in Chinju Forest. He’s only one short brain cell from barging into Tenshukaku and the Grand Narukami Shrine just to get answers. Scaramouche is nowhere to be found and the Tsaritsa is slowly losing her patience.
But Childe has also been keeping tabs on his dear travelling comrade who had somehow arrived on Tsurumi and lifting the foggy curse that had been plaguing the island. He doesn’t know how the traveller did it, but he’s impressed.
While he knows Scaramouche wouldn’t be on this island given how he’s always been a prick in terms of things benefitting him, and Tsurumi literally has nothing of use in his book, Childe visits it regardless as it’s devoid of human activity and the monsters that spawn here are like clockwork. Everyday there is a new monster, and he’s free to kill to his heart’s content without having anyone nagging in his ear.
Like a certain consultant he had grown so fond of.
“I really didn’t see the snake in front of my own eyes,” he sneers as he plops down against a tree to rest his strained body. The workout with the wolves had helped with his mood, but thinking of a golden-eyed man throws him back into a pit of despair, and Childe hates that he’s feeling this way.
For the first time since his fall in the Abyss, Childe thought he had met with someone who doesn’t care about his bloodthirsty Fatui nature, and is more than happy to hang out with him for who he is. Going out for lunches, talking about anything and everything, bantering and joking around, Childe thought what he and Zhongli had was genuine.
That became a bunch of bull after the fall of Osial and Zhongli revealing who he is and what his plans were.
Falling into the Abyss had been a lot less painful than the stab to the heart he felt that time. Having his ass handed to him by a teenager, becoming the villain in the eyes of Liyuens, losing his dignity in front of Signora, played like a lovesick fool by Zhongli. It took Childe everything he has not to destroy the entire bank upon the big reveal, mainly because he was still freshly injured from the traveller’s blows.
Plucking a nearby mushroom, Childe rinses it with his hydro before popping the whole thing into his mouth. He had learned early on that the mushrooms are harmless and quite delicious eating it as it is after not having the patience to start up a fire, so he’s been skewering them using his hydro and enjoying a quick meal whenever he desires. Thanks to how easy the mushrooms are, he also kept some in his sachet, all chopped up and ready to be popped into his mouth.
“Oh?”
The sound of someone talking behind him sends Childe to his feet and deftly pulling his hydro blades. For the first time in a long while, his heart races in surprise as someone had actually managed to sneak up on him without sound or presence.
There standing not far away from him is a young girl with the most silver eyes Childe had ever seen, probably around the traveller’s age from what Childe is guessing. She wears nothing more than a simple white sundress, her white hair cascading down her back and her feet bare, yet Childe can’t help but wonder how she had snuck up on him without the sound of crunching leaves and grass.
“Curious,” she says with a small tilt of her head. Childe feels the beads of sweat forming on his neck at her utterly non-human, undenyingly otherworldly voice.
“How did you step foot here where time once run rampant with disorder?”
Every fibre of Childe’s being is telling him not to lower his weapon. The girl is clearly something else in the shape of a human, but he’s not sure if she’s here to kill him or toy with him. His eyes never evaded hers even as she slowly steps behind the tree he had been leaning on, her feet, while physically touching the ground, makes absolutely no noise whatsoever. The hair on the back of Childe’s neck stands on end.
He nearly recoils when she emerges on the other side of the tree now as a grown young woman, but the gaze she sends at him is now sharper compared to the faux innocence her younger self held.
“This island was once under a dominion of a curse, born of hatred and pure sadness,” she continues as she caresses the tree. Her eyes forlornly looking upwards but Childe kept his trained on her as she encircles it. “She wanted to hear the song of a child robbed of life far too early one last time. Her will was so powerful that Time fulfilled its wishes, despite it being a curse.”
“What a tragedy,” Childe retorts with a hint of sarcasm in his voice, but his stance is lowered now that he sees she’s not doing anything suspicious.
“Indeed, thus Time repeated this island’s final four days of its destruction until she has been satisfied, lifting the curse and putting both her and the child’s soul to rest,” she finishes with a smile, her gaze now lowering back to Childe.
“It is a bittersweet feeling, to begin something only to have it end one day. Yet such is the cycle of life, such is the cycle of Time.”
With a silent leap as though the winds assisted her, the woman perches atop one of the tree’s branches while she stares at Childe with a look far too knowing for Childe’s comfort. The way those silver eyes are trained on him makes him feel as though all of his secrets are out in the open, and he doesn’t like it one bit.
Glaring, he wills his blade away and materializes his bow. “I don’t know who you are but anyone can tell you’re not human. And just because you’re on a tree branch, doesn’t mean I can’t knock you off your perch.”
The girl says nothing as she continues to scrutinize Childe with a somewhat bored look, the fact that Childe’s hydro-tipped arrow pointing right on her forehead doesn’t even faze her.
“You too share the fate of that librarian,” she pipes up all of a sudden, causing Childe’s attention to waver slightly. “The one who lives in the land of wind and wine, belonging to a wonderfully dear friend of mine. Why, he would be delighted to know of my existence, should he remember that is.”
Giggling slightly, the girl leaps off the branch and gracefully lands in front of Childe, causing the Harbinger to leap back and bring forth his swords again. Before he can say anything, the girl cuts him off with a lazy leer.
“Your time is cut short, did it not? On the day you stepped foot beneath the land They did not create and submerging yourself in darkness.”
This girl definitely knows about him, and she clearly has no fear at all. Even the thought of engaging her is terrifying to Childe. She’s way beyond his ability and he’s not about to test it, so he sends his hydro blades away to neutrally stare at her, gauging just how much about him she knows.
“So you know about me,” Childe starts in a level tone as she encircles him like a predator sizing its prey. He doesn’t bother moving for fear what she might do, but he does keep his eyes trained on her at all times. “Are you from the Abyss too? Maybe you know my old master Skirk, nasty lady living with a bunch of creatures down there.”
“That land’s Time has been distorted beyond words after a grave sin had been committed, but Time has its own laws should the world laws become void or irrelevant. As long as Time exists, it marches forward. Quietly, relentlessly, mercilessly, until all returns to the darkness. So will that swordswoman’s time flow too, regardless of this land’s laws.”
Childe grits his teeth in annoyance at her. “You sure have some obsession with time. What are you, a clockmaker?”
Smiling, she swiftly moves behind Childe only to reappear as an old woman, her white sundress now a cloak. “You are almost correct,” she grins with teeth so yellowed and rotten that Childe can’t help but grimace. “I am the moment; I am every moment. Every second of your joy, every moment of rage, every instant of longing, every minute of obsession, every flash of delirium... Such is I who you children call Kairos.”
Childe doesn’t know whether she’s crazy or he’s just losing his mind. All his life, he has never heard of a Kairos until now, and he would’ve taken this woman seriously had she not transform into a crazy old lady and spewing stuff at his face.
“Listen here lady-...”
“I am Istaroth, the ruler of Time and Wind, bent by no rule other than mine own across this universe.”
Appearing in his vision as a young woman once more, she sends Childe a sharp gaze as he tries to wrap his head on everything that had happened. One minute he was just resting after an enjoyable fight with some Abyssal wolves, and the next minute he’s talking to the literal Time God herself. Even Signora’s whiplash isn’t this severe.
“What’s a powerful God like you doing in a place like this?” asks the Harbinger as a last-ditch attempt to regain some semblance of control once more. “Why are you here anyway? Shouldn’t this world have only seven Gods that rule over it?”
Smiling, Istaroth stops her pacing to stand in front of Childe who have yet to move a muscle since leaping away from her.
“I do not fall under the rule which the Second had established,” she replies easily, though her eyes flick to the sky behind him, her gaze hateful and filled with wrath. “Did I not mention how I bend by no rule other than mine? While there are Seven who reigned sovereign on this world, there can be only one creator. History truly repeats itself, cycle after cycle.”
“Hey, stop evading the topic! I honestly have no idea half of what you’re talking about.”
Istaroth stops talking then to let Childe have his bearings. While he’s not too knowledgeable in terms of how time works or the Time God herself, given how there was little information about her to begin with, he knows that there’s a reason she appears before him out of nowhere. Perhaps his own time has come, and she’s here to take him away. It wouldn’t be a wild guess after all that had happened to him, but Childe had hoped he could go out in the battlefield.
“So,” he starts tentatively, his eyes meeting her defiantly. “I take it you’re here for me? Has my ‘cut-short time’ finally ran out and you’re here to collect your debt?”
The Time God merely smiles.
“Quite the opposite, child,” she says. “There is no fate I do not know, from the fishes to the birds to the beasts to the trees, and of course to the human They so dearly love. Your time is yet to come, but therein your heart lays a desire so strong that you have summoned me.”
This time, Childe is beyond confused. Despite spending a lengthy amount of time with the former Geo Archon, he can’t really say he has a grasp on the way a God thinks. He doesn’t even know how his own God thinks half the time, just that she desires a new world for everyone, and that the divine up above needs to be knocked down a couple notches.
Then again, Zhongli isn’t exactly a God he can ever understand after the sheer trickery he had done.
Ah, I wish none of those had happened. At least I’d be spared of all these headaches.
Hearing his own thoughts being conveyed by the girl sends Childe’s attention snapping to her, realization dawning in his mind. She’s here not because his time is up; she’s here because of his wish to turn back time so that he no longer has to deal with the constant feel of betrayal and broken heart.
And by Gods, Childe actually hopes she fulfils his wish without questions.
With a stern look, she raises a finger at Childe. “Time, while fluid like the Hydro you bear, is also rigid with its laws. It bows to no world in whichever universe. It shan’t be broken, it shan’t be denied, it stands above all. For your desire to be fulfilled and your time reversed, it requires a hefty payment; do you still wish to have it done?”
Childe never lost his defiant gaze; his silence alone is an answer to her. He’s tired of dealing with everything in the world. From being used as a pawn, tricked and have his heart stomped on, separated from his family in a work filled with assholes. He wants it all gone.
Sensing his determination, Istaroth solemnly nods her head as her eyes glow a bright silver and the sound of clocks being turned back rings in the background. “A new path shall be made in this world at the cost of your existence, thus is your payment, for a void defies this world’s and mine’s laws.”
“...And Time is a strict judge. One’s dear creations are susceptible to temptation after all, much like Time’s ebb and flow; it is for this reason that Time shall keep their desires in a balanced cycle. For a life anew, an end must be nigh. Such is Time’s absolute law.”