Chapter Text
After a sleepless night tracking down some Abyss mages, Diluc was exhausted. He was eager to get home, drink some fresh grape juice, take a bath, and immediately get into his bed.
If only the Knights of Favonius knew how to do their job properly, he would not need to stay awake at night to protect Mondstadt from such threats. That incompetence made his stomach turn at the thought that he himself had been one of them in the past.
He had not been resting properly for some time now, and to tell the truth, it was starting to get rough on him. He kept telling himself that he could still go on, but he was getting more and more burned out. If he continued like this, he was not sure how he would end up, nor did he really care. At this point, it was far more important for Diluc to keep the family business afloat and maintain the safety of Mondstadt than keeping his own body in good health, something that was beginning to take its toll on him.
“Oh, good morning, Master Diluc!” Adelinde, the housekeeper, greeted him from the main entrance of the winery. “Old Tunner is looking for you, says he must speak to you. It seems to be a very urgent matter.”
“Of course, I shall speak to him right away.” Diluc nodded. “Thank you, Adelinde.”
Tunner was in charge of supervising the plantation. Since Diluc's father had hired him, he had not missed a single day of work, and he always went above and beyond what could be asked of him. Diluc knew that if he asked to speak to him directly it must have been for a compelling reason.
“Tunner” Diluc greeted him, walking in his direction. “Is there any problem?”
“The vines are rotting, Master Diluc,” he said, “We have been using that new pesticide sold to us a month ago by that fraudster from Fontaine, but it has something in it that isn't doing the plants any good.”
“Surely in the next few weeks another fraudster will come along to sell us a remedy for our sick plants,” Diluc muttered angrily. “Stop using that pesticide, perhaps the problem will eventually fix itself.”
“That's really the problem, Sir. We already did so last week, as the leaves on the vines started to dry out, but it seems that it was too late. The leaves are still drying out, and the trunks are getting brittle. They seem to be aging rapidly. We may have to pull up the whole crop and replant...”
“That would be too risky, and the losses would be huge. Even if we have plenty of product in our cellars, I doubt we could recover.”
“So, what do we do, Master Diluc?”
“We will buy the remedy from that second fraudster...” he said, clenching his fist and gritting his teeth.
He despised being taken for a fool, which was exactly what would happen if they bought the remedy from whoever was going to sell it to them. But for the moment it was all they could do.
A week or two went by, and the vines were getting duller and duller. It was summer, so the vines should have been bearing fruit at that very moment, but instead they were struggling to survive. Already almost leafless, with brittle and fragile trunks, they seemed like they were going to die any moment now.
That morning Diluc observed the dying vineyard through his bedroom window, on the upper floor of the enormous cellar building that crowned the plantation, and wondered how they would fare if that second fraudster never showed up. He was not usually wrong about these things, he was well aware of how these kinds of scams worked, but if he was wrong this time, they would surely have a hard time. Both his employees and himself.
He didn't want to go back with his tail between his legs to the Knights of Favonius Headquarters and ask for his former job back. And he certainly didn't want to fire his employees. Biting his lip, he wondered how they could save the winery. Smoke could almost be seen billowing from his head as he pondered the options to save his father's legacy.
A sudden unusual movement in one of the outer vineyard ditches brought him back to the present. He squinted to see what it was that was moving through the vines. An unknown figure, crouched among the vines.
There was that second fraudster.
He clenched his fists. He would have to restrain himself from burning them.
He immediately climbed down the stairs to the ground floor of the building, where the maids had already prepared breakfast for him, yet he apologized for not being able to eat it at that moment: he had a fraudster to deal with.
He swiftly strode down the path towards the last row of vines, and stopped standing behind that person who was still on their knees, examining the vines and the ground. Diluc cleared his throat to get their attention.
“What?” replied nonchalantly that person, without even bothering to look at Diluc, which infuriated him, although he managed to keep his temper.
“This is private property.”
“Is it yours? Your plants are dying,” they stood up, still with their back to him. “Some idiot decided to spray silver dust on them.”
“Do you know that much just by looking at them?” he raised an eyebrow skeptically.
For a scammer, their interpretation of their role was a bit over the top. He looked at this person from head to toe: their skin was rather dark, and they were dressed in colorful clothes full of patterns he had only seen in Sumeru during his travels, their long emerald green hair was tied back in a thick braid that hung forward over one shoulder and reached almost to their waist.
On their clothes hung a Dendro Vision.
How could a Vision bearer fall so low as to collaborate in such a scam? Just thinking about it infuriated Diluc even more.
“It's more than obvious,” they said, turning to him. It was a woman. Her eyes were deep fuchsia and her expression looked tough, yet she seemed to be making an effort to be friendly. “Take a look at the soil around the plants: it's covered with a layer of silver. That’s the most toxic thing you can pour on a plant.”
“It seems you know a lot about this subject,” he crossed his arms. He already knew exactly how the conversation was going to continue.
“More than you do, certainly" she snapped unceremoniously. Diluc couldn't wait to forget his manners and kick her out of there. “You saw it had silver in it and put it on your vines anyway. Why?” She sighed. “Luckily, they can still be saved.”
There it was: the solution.
“And I suppose you know how,” said Diluc, pressing his fingernails into his arms as he held them crossed over his chest.
Rage was consuming him from within.
“In fact, I do,” she nodded dismissively. “Everything I need to revitalize them can be found nearby, and using the power of my Vision I can try to heal the contaminated soil.”
“Of course... And how expensive is it going to be?” he asked, getting fed up.
“Excuse me?”
“How much do you want for ‘revitalizing’ them and getting rid of the contaminated soil?”
“Help.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I want help gathering the materials to save the plants.”
She took out a notebook that she had in a small travel bag hidden under her clothes and wrote something in it to tear it out immediately and hand it to Diluc, who looked confused at the paper and at the young woman alternately.
“That's all I need,” she continued. “To a greater or lesser extent, but we'll see about that.”
“I don't understand, don't you want anything in return?”
“No, nothing.”
“Then what are you doing it for?”
“Do you think I have a Dendro Vision because I like to set forests on fire? I don't need a reason to do what I do. Go find those materials and then come find me, I'll show you how to make the revitalizer. In the meantime, I'll look for a way to get rid of the silver in the soil before it fully penetrates the earth and it's too late.”
Diluc blinked in confusion. It had been a long time since he had followed an order, and he had almost forgotten how to do it. Fortunately, if not unfortunately, his father had taught him to be a disciplined man, so he agreed to go and fetch the materials. If they could really save the winery, he didn't care about that woman's lack of manners.
He made his employees a list outlining the materials they had to find, which thankfully were mostly natural and grew in the vicinity of the winery, and urged them to help him find them.
Much to his surprise, he returned to the winery a few hours later to find it infested with dendro slimes.
That was the last straw!
His rage overcame him, and his claymore appeared in his hand as he gazed at one of those cursed beasts bouncing calmly in front of him through the vine rows.
The little slime, trying to save its life, began to bounce rapidly towards the green-haired girl, who was busy at the far end of the vineyard carefully scanning the trunks of the vines. When it was almost in front of her, it leaped, and she caught it just before Diluc's claymore blade could strike it.
“What are you doing, are you crazy?” she scolded him, hugging the trembling scared-to-death slime.
“Me?! Who do you think you are?!” he bellowed. “I’m away for two hours looking for those stupid materials, and when I come back my winery is infested with vermin! Was it all a ploy to finish off the winery? Do you and that guy from Fontaine work for another winery?”
“These ‘vermin’, as you call them, are helping me to purify the soil. And I don't know who you are talking about from La Fontaine, but I assure you I don't work for anyone. Now put your weapon down, dendro slimes do not handle stress well,” she gave the slime a friendly little smile and stroked it near the little stem that crowned its rounded head. “There, there, little one. It's all right. This mean man won't hurt you.”
A twitch in his eye that Diluc hadn't had in years reappeared as he witnessed her treat that slime better than she had been treating him. He reluctantly made his weapon disappear as he gazed in disgust at the creature in that woman's arms, who was beginning to generate a not-so-inexplicable rejection in him.
“You say you brought the materials?” She asked in a tone infinitely more bitter than the one she had used to talk to the slime.
“They're in the wagon.”
“Good, put them over there,” she pointed to the edge of the vineyard, where there was a Hilichurl cauldron over the fire with boiling water inside.
“Where... where did you get that from?”
“What do you think, you genius? I borrowed it from the Hilichurls from the camp nearby.”
“You... borrowed it...” He was losing his mind, there could be no other explanation. It was a fever dream; he was sure of it.
“What's so hard for you to understand? Hurry up and take the ingredients over there, I'll be right there. And tell your employees to leave the slimes alone.”
Diluc was close to shouting in anger as he made his way to the wagon. Some of his employees turned pale at the sight of his angry face because, although Diluc was strong-willed and serious, they had never seen him so pissed off before.
He spoke to them as politely as he could despite his anger, and instructed them to carry the materials to the - he paused to think about how absurd it all was at that very moment - to the hilichurl cauldron that was set up at the edge of the vines.
Once the instructions were given, he went into his house and went straight to bed. He hadn't slept enough that night to deal with all that at that moment.
By the time Diluc returned to the vineyard, the slimes had disappeared and his employees were watering the vineyard using watering cans filled with a green liquid. Not seeing the young woman anywhere, he asked for her, but apparently after preparing the remedy she had cleaned out the cauldron and left with it strapped to her back and a dozen dendro slimes following her closely behind.
With all the headaches that day had caused him, hopefully the remedy would work.