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Winter was approaching, bringing with it a chilling bite, and Mondstadt was in the midst of celebration.
Candles burned in every window, melting wax and orange-flamed, turning the city into some glittering jewel. Families, small children and their parents, or lovers, young and old, all huddled together at their doors and blew out swirling torrents of dandelion seeds from between their cupped hands. Warm dusk met the evening, a powdered pink sky, with fleeting remnants of Summer’s breath, and bards slung out their sweet reveries from bar stools and open windows.
The final day of Löwenfest was upon them.
“So… Sorry. What am I supposed to do again?” asked the Traveller, awkward as they stood before the Favonius Cathedral, surrounded by knights. They scratched behind their ear in some kind of timid trepidation.
Jean, as Acting Grand Master, had been the one to not only recruit them, but also arrange and lead the entire event so far. They felt guilty for trailing behind her as she busied herself with the many, many duties of Löwenfest, but they knew they'd feel even worse if they somehow ruined everything she had so painstakingly set up.
The Dandelion Knight chuckled and gave them a reassuring pat on the back, like a true soldier, though it felt much more like a slap. “Stop stressing, Traveller. As an Honorary Knight, nobody is expecting you to be perfect. Your presence alone is enough. Just remember: shoulders back, chin up, and march with confidence.”
They wilted a little. That didn’t exactly answer their question, but Jean was already getting into position; with the expedition still not having returned, she was to lead the march in Varka’s place.
“You okay there, slacker?” Still fiddling with the cuffs of his uniform as he took his place at the Traveller's side, it was Kaeya - Knight of Favonius and Cavalry Captain. “Not getting cold feet, are you?”
“No,” they said in a huff, and stressed a hand through their hair. “This just seems like a pretty big thing for the city. I don’t want to mess it up.”
“What, Löwenfest? Ah, no,” Kaeya said with a dismissive wave. “It’s only the one time a year we pay respects to the knights who gave their lives for Mondstadt. Nothing important.” He grinned at the sudden scowl on the Traveller's face.
“Not helping.”
“Oh well,” he shrugged. “I tried my best.”
There was a snicker and the sound of clicking stone. When the Traveller looked back, they were surprised to see that even the notorious librarian had sacrificed her precious 'me time' to join the parade.
“Kaeya, dear, stop teasing the poor thing. You’ll scare them half to death.” She tutted, coming to a stand just behind the two of them. “No need to despair, Traveller. Look,” and she leaned in close, pointing between their shoulders towards the front, “see next to Jean? Even Klee gets to join in. All you have to do is march. Smile, if you can.” Then, Lisa stood up straight, crossed her arms and smirked. “Everyone loves a smile on a pretty face.”
The Traveller sighed and rubbed awkwardly at their neck.
“Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Lisa.”
“No problem, cutie,” she said with a wink, and then pouted, “can’t have you working yourself up too much. My little assistant would just be heartbroken if something happened to you.”
Kaeya stifled a snicker behind a cough into his fist.
“Thin. Ice. Alberich.”
He held his hands up in defence, but the Traveller only scowled further to see his arrogance remain thoroughly unshaken. “No need to be so frosty, Traveller.” Kaeya almost howled at the expression on their face. Something, somewhere, between disgust, betrayal and true, utter hatred.
Then, the bubble and chatter of music and laughter grew quiet.
There was a sudden silence amongst the people of Mondstadt.
The Traveller stilled, cautious; listening for a change. And they caught something. The soft tune of strings. One by one, each in time, the melody grew. An ode of instruments; lutes and lyres, flutes and tubas, singing together, one after another, announcing the start of something magical.
They watched as all eyes turned to Jean, sombre-faced and with a swelled chest of air. They could feel it. The unspoken, buzzing energy. Reverence and anxiety, a sadness of a kind, and a sense of pride.
Jean certainly looked proud.
“Attention!”
The command took them by surprise; Jean’s voice suddenly and entirely unfamiliar. It was full of bass and booming, so loud they were sure it could be heard at the very gates of Mondstadt. It felt almost as if it might pierce their chest and echo within the very core of their being, between the cavity of their ribs.
Following the movements of everyone around, the Traveller reminded themself of Jean’s advice.
Chin up. Shoulders back.
“Forward, march!”
March with confidence.
Together, the Knights made their way down the steps of the Cathedral, marching in time. Jean led the formation, alone at the front aside from little Klee, who held her hand and walked with big, awkward movements, but she too, had her chin up and shoulders back, a big, bright smile on her face.
They passed the statue of Barbatos, where many families and friends had gathered together to wave the knights off, most of which were avid church-goers and worshippers, or even servants of Barbatos himself.
Among them, there was Barbara, grinning at her sister, and singing with her chest so that her voice may carry among the many instruments and bards of the city.
Jean smiled back.
The march passed easily, much to the Traveller's relief. They had been stressed for nothing; the people of Mondstadt were overjoyed to see the hero who had saved them from Dvalin, and they cheered for the Knights who risked life and limb every day to honour the gift Barbatos had given them. To protect their city. To protect their freedom. After they reached the gates of Mondstadt, the Knights stood still for a moment, and there was silence amongst the people aside from the sounding of trumpets, to honour the fallen, and to honour the living.
“Löwenfest,” said Kaeya, sat beside the Traveller just outside the Angel’s Share, “means Lion Festival. Do you want to know why?”
The two of them were having drinks, the Traveller quite happy with a glass of apple cider, while Kaeya had his favourite - Death After Noon. Diluc had set up a large array of tables and benches outside, in preparation for the day. It may have been closing in on Winter, but no citizen of Mondstadt in their right mind would be indoors that night.
“I don’t know. Dandelions? There’s been a lot of those, today. I think I’ve still got some in my hair,” the Traveller frowned, picking out yet another fluffy white seed.
Kaeya chuckled and shook his head. “Not quite, but good guess. As you know, Löwenfest is celebrated as an act of remembrance for the Knights of Favonius. Even those still alive. But it wasn’t always! Originally, it was to remember one man; Arundolyn - Grand Master almost five hundred years ago. His title was the Lion of Light.”
“Huh. Like Jean’s the Dandelion Knight?”
“Exactly!”
The Traveller nodded as they took a long sip of their drink, watching two young guards stumble over each other, red-faced and bumbling around like fools. “What happened to Arundolyn?"
“Well…” Kaeya’s face grew sombre, and he ran a thumb across his glass. “Not a lot is known, anymore. All the Knights know of Arundolyn; it’s unthinkable for one not to know the reason for Löwenfest. But, the Lion of Light… He was Grand Master during the Cataclysm. A lot of that information has been lost to time.”
The sky was a deep blue now, like a thin smear of ink, and smatterings of stars were beginning to shimmer through the curtain of heaven.
Kaeya’s gaze was turned to that sky, and the Traveller watched his careful eye, almost a perfect reflection of an inky blue, marred in stars. Stars, four-pointed stars, stars that weren’t quite stars but symbols. Shredded fragments of memories that nobody even remembered.
How ironic, then, that they would be celebrating such a thing that day.
“But,” Kaeya started, and the solemnity of his face had softened again, “we do know one thing. The night he died was the night Mondstadt first saw the Luna Leonis.”
They hummed in curiosity. “Luna Leonis?”
“Some call them the Mountain Lights. It’s what we’re all waiting for; aside from the march, the Luna Leonis is the real star of Löwenfest. I’d describe them to you, but…” Kaeya smiled and swung back the last of his sparkling wine, “it’s better to just watch.”
And as the night took full swing, and all of Mondstadt waited with bated breath, there was a stirring on the quiet mountainside of Dragonspine.
Or, as it was once know - Sal Vindagnyr.
The terribly thick storms of sleet and hail and snow had grown quiet that night. Just trickles.
The hilichurls were settling down to sleep, piled on top of each other, huddled together and tucked up for the night in some rocky cave or hollow cavity. All of them quiet and hiding from the cold, warmed by each other’s breath and thick fur cowls.
All, except for two.
The chief stood like a statue before the silver-white tree; farther down than he ever normally dared trek. Towering and huge - a lumbering sort of beast, with horns of ice and bone, so thick they could tear a hole through pure iron.
And at the roots of the Frostbearing Tree, like a wilted flower, solitary and alone, there crouched his dearest, oldest friend.
She knelt in the snow, uncaring for the cold and the hoary wind, somber and dull before the thick, glowing shard of dragon’s blood. Durin’s blood, that had been shed five hundred years ago, and had brought the tree back to life, zombified, but alive.
Her mask, carved from bone and marked in the green lifeblood of grass, laid at her side. She scarce removed it. Not on the mountain.
But she wouldn’t dare wear it this night.
With agony in her hands, Asta reached out and pressed her palms to the frosted bark. And there, with cold-numbed fingers, and a white cloud of breath curling forth, she trembled.
“I’m afraid I can’t finish the fresco,” she said, so softly her voice was swept away by the gentlest of winds. “It’s been a while since… Since I last saw the blue sky. And the green grass. I don’t…” She paused. Took a shaky, hiccuping breath. “I don’t know which hues to use. To capture the landscape of thawing ice and snow that my father so longs for.” Her hands curled against the tree, nails suddenly digging into the unyielding bark, drawing blood from her fingertips. And there was a thrumming in the wood; a sort of pounding, like a heartbeat, thump, thump, thumping through the air, through her hands, through her body and the ground. “By the time he comes back, everything will be… Back to how it was. But I…”
There came a sudden, sharp, howling gust of wind, icy in its brush that whipped her hair from her eyes, pinching tears in their corners.
“I can’t take this cold anymore!” She sobbed. It was an ugly one; a nasty sound. It retched and tore and gulped like some kind of fish on land. “Forgive me, Father…” she wept. The lawa tensed and turned away. “Ukko… I’m sorry you had to see us like this.”
He could never bear to face her when she said that.
And then, with a heart-wrenching kind of pain in her voice, Asta pressed her forehead to the tree, the tree that was suddenly burning, burning hot under her skin, and begged like a prayer: “Imunlaukr. I wish I could see you again…”
The chief would frown if he could. Instead, he held himself and turned to watch.
Like a sudden wildfire, the thick red veins of poisoned blood that gutted the tree were turned. From dark red, to a bright, glowing pink, and from glowing pink to sinking purple, a violet that swallowed you whole, until finally, a brilliant, dazzling blue could burn through. Blue, like the sky. Blue, like a lagoon. Blue like fresh ice, paper-thin and glassy.
And Asta’s hands, bloodied from her clawing, they glowed too, the bark right under them. A shining blue so hot it was white.
She was weeping.
Her face was red with tears, her eyes overflowing, her chest gasping like she were in pain, but all she did was grip harder, tighter, closer to the tree. Like she wanted to merge with it, to become one, to never let go, never be separated. Like she were desperate, utterly and entirely, to suffer this pain forever and eternally.
And Mondstadt watched in jubilant celebration.
“It’s starting! It’s starting!” cried little Klee, grabbing onto the Traveller's outstretched hand, pulling them along.
They had barely managed to finish their drink before the entirety of Mondstadt, it seemed, was dragging them from their chair and shoving them out the gates. But once the crowd made it to the bridge, they began to understand.
There was a little gasp of wonder from Klee, and Jean hoisted her into her arms, as Barbara came to stand beside her, having finished her songs. Kaeya waited further behind the cluster, with Rosaria, and even Diluc. There was Diona, too, and Amber. Timeus and Wagner. Even Sucrose and Albedo, it seemed, had come to join the celebrations. It appeared only the Librarian was missing; Lisa had gone to watch the lights with Razor, in the forest.
For a moment, the Traveller did wonder where her little assistant even was.
But when they looked up at the sky, it didn’t seem all that important anymore.
They were just brief flashes, at first. Small swirls of colour that appeared and disappeared within the same breath. Until they got brighter. And bigger. And lasted for longer, and longer.
Ribbons and streaks, dancing patterns in the sky like strings of coloured silk, in violet and rose and ruby and azure. Purple, pink, red and blue, spiking and slicing through the dim of night.
It was like magic.
Dancing rays, like watercolours spilled from Celestia, rippling across the sky as if it were the surface of a lake, lapping and lapping at the stars and clouds. Powdered pastel chalks, burst into oblivion, showering the currents of the winds.
With every passing minute, they seemed to grow, exploding forth from the mountain’s peak like paper streamers, and casting over a rainbow of colour across the white-faced mountainsides. That was what seemed spectacular - not only did the lights fill the sky with colour, but they danced on the ground, too, reflected in the surface of the snow.
It was almost tragic. Their beauty.
To have something so bright and cheerful and wonderful mark a day that would be so sad and full of pain.
Dragonspine was so full of death. The adventurers who never came home. The beastly corpse of Durin that rots and dwells within the very core of it. The ancient tree, a husk of what it once was, now surviving on a diet of iron and poison.
It was hard to believe that something so good could come of it.
And it wasn’t good. Not that anyone in Mondstadt would suspect. Every ribbon, every streamer, every string of coloured silk was another memory, a haunting, howling, hounding glimpse of the past - they were ley lines, streams of ley lines, erupting in a shuddering display of power.
They were meetings, fleeting and swift, but sentimental nonetheless. A nervous hello, a shake of the hand, a smile that knocked the breath out of her lungs.
“And what’s your name, young man?” the priest had asked, hand on his daughter’s shoulder.
“Imunlaukr.”
“My name is Varuch. And this is my daughter - Astarte.”
They were midnight rendezvous, quiet and full of muffled giggles, darting eyes and quiet whispers.
“I heard you’re quite the swordsman,” the princess had said as she sat beneath a great big pine.
The Outlander shrugged as he sat beside her, knees knocking, arms brushing. “I try my best.”
“I’d like to see you fight someday.”
“Oh, really?” he laughed. “Well, Princess, I’m afraid that your dear scribe wouldn’t be so pleased with that idea.” Imunlaukr smirked as he gave Astarte a nudge, his face a little closer to her’s than it need be; her face a little closer to his. Eye contact that lasted longer than it should, eye contact that never lasted as long as it should, dipping below the lashes at something suddenly so distracting, just below the nose.
“He says I’m dangerous.” The Outlander watched as she tried to stifle the excited little smile on her face, and though it was dark enough to mask the colours of her face, he leant in to just a breath’s distance and could feel the warmth in her skin. “Do you think I’m dangerous?”
But those slips of coloured sky weren’t always so kind a memory. They were tears and pain, ice and hail, black dripping blood and unheard, unspoken goodbyes.
When the Outlander returned, having been gone for more than thirty days and thirty nights, he found that even the snow-capped slopes he had started to know were foreign. There was no glimpse, no hint nor slither, of green grass or grey stone.
White. White, snow. White. All white. Foreign white, entirely barren. A world in white. One he once knew as verdant and lush, like a bounteous orchard; suddenly fruitless. Barren, like fallen ash.
How could it all have changed so much?
How could he no longer recognise the place he once held so dear?
The very paths, the very trees, the very hills he had walked a hundred, a thousand times before?
He remembered them all so clearly in his head. The tree they had climbed together, where she had looked so free and joyful, and he, so timid and unsure. The path that led from her bedroom window, out into the night - one they had used to sneak along, like reckless children, disappearing into the wood. That nook over there, where they had shared their first kiss - short and messy and so stupidly bad that neither of them could hold face until they were laughing hard enough that their voices rang out across the mountainside.
Now all that rang were deathly echoes.
Winds that whistled like the escape of someone’s last, gasping breath. The sad, low howl like the knoll of death’s bell. Crunching, cracking, snapping of snow beneath shoes, each suddenly more grotesque than the last.
Frostbite had a nasty habit of turning fingers and toes into brittle chunks of blackened flesh.
That was one of the first lessons the Skyfrost Nail had taught them.
But all of that could be forgiven. The loss of memories, the now-foreign snowy paths, even the silence.
All could be forgiven.
But her.
If only he hadn’t found her.
Laid to rest between the dunes of chipped ice amid the mural room, half-buried under powdered snow, she looked so at peace. Blue skin, cold when he scarcely touched his lips to her forehead. Hair untangled, spread out like a halo about her resting skull. Fingers entwined, frozen solid, as they laid atop her belly.
She had never looked more beautiful. She had never repulsed him more.
“So even here, there is nothing left for me to protect…”
There was a coldness in his voice. In his eyes, that turned their sweet emerald green, green that had once reminded her of the thriving pastures and forested cliffs that she cherished so dearly, into something void. Something grey, something smoky, something lifeless and dull and hateful. Something like steel that sang for blood.
“You, who dwell in the heavens,” spoke the Outlander, whose name would never again be heard on her tongue, never again be used to scold, nor tease, nor even adore. “You must wish for naught but to watch our ashen suffering here below.”
And as the nameless man stooped beside her icy corpse and brought her up, tucked her close to his skin so he might feel the chilling sting against his own hot-blooded flesh, he began to cry.
“In that case…”
With one final moment, a chaste press of his cheek to her’s, the Outlander laid his princess to rest in finality, and left beneath her gentle hands the very thing she had asked him to protect her with. Forever, the Snow-Tombed Starsilver.
“Let me help you pass the time with a song of iron… And blood.”
And then he left.
Bright as the moonlight though she was, her final words, too, would never reach that wayfarer.
“I will wait for you, and pray for your return… Imunlaukr…” whispers the tree.
“I wish I could see you again,” replies the princess.
But she is no longer a princess.
She is no longer a human.
She is no longer - “Astarte.”
“What?” asked her father, who wasn’t quite her father. He was a man, yes. He had raised her, too. But her father was dead. Long, long, dead. All of them. The first father. The second. The third, and the fourth. The fifth, too, and then the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth.
So many dead.
“My name. It… It was Astarte.”
There was a paleness in Arundolyn’s expression; one of fear. “Inanna, what do… What do you mean? Where did you learn this?”
But his daughter seemed lost. A far-away look in her eyes.
“How long has it been? Five… Five thousand years. That was… Almost five thousand years ago…”
“Inanna, please, my love, what are you talking about? You’re scaring me-”
“You killed!” she exclaimed, suddenly shooting up from her chair. Arundolyn flinched, his outstretched arms shying away from her hateful gaze. “You killed-” she faltered. “You… You killed them. You killed them and then you… You took me.”
“Please, Inanna, talk to me, I don’t understand-”
“Khaenr’ia!”
And there was quiet.
Grand Master Arundolyn, the Lion of Light - slayer of monsters.
He had been there. During the Cataclysm. He had lost people. Friends. Family.
But they weren’t supposed to be there. He wasn’t supposed to be there. Because he wasn’t like the girl he had taken and raised. He was from Mondstadt. And she…
“I’m from Khaenr’ia!” she cried. “And my name! Is not! Inanna!”
“Sweetheart, please, you’re my daughter. Let me explain-” pleaded the man, now old and grey and weak. His girl wasn’t little anymore. It had been almost fifty years since the day he had found her.
So, it seemed, he had forgotten…
“I am not your daughter!”
Those were the last words he ever heard.
He died that night.
Went out to the mountain and froze.
He, who was almost eighty, had been chasing after the girl he thought was his daughter.
She had fled to the mountain after their arguement. To the tree, where she had learnt of it all. And there, she wept and sobbed and begged. Because she remembered.
She remembered every life.
Every single life.
The Princess. The Wandering Fool. The Khaenr’ian.
And the Khaenr’ian. And the Khaenr’ian. And the Khaenr’ian.
For thousands of years. Two hundred generations. Two hundred lifetimes. One hundred and ninety-eight Khaenr’ians. She had five and half thousand years of memories, two hundred lives, all of them swarming back at once.
And that man - that man who had marched upon her home in its time of crisis - that man who slaughtered her people. Called them monsters. Drew his sword and coated it black with their blood.
That man took her.
He found her, her who got to escape when so many didn’t, when everyone she loved, everyone she had ever loved, did not. He found her, untouched by the curse, because she was already cursed. He found her, her who had not felt her humanity ripped from out of her chest, because she was not human. Had not been for a long time.
He found her and took her.
Called her Inanna. Called her daughter. Had her call him father.
She was not Inanna. And she was not from Mondstadt.
She didn’t know who she was.
She was not Inanna. But she was not Astarte, either.
That name belonged to a girl who had lived, and who had died. But this girl, the girl stolen from her country, the girl he named Inanna, like a pet to be doted on, no, she was not that same girl. And she had not died in almost six thousand years.
But even through all that hatred, and anger, and vitriol, and spite. She had been his daughter. Because Arundolyn had raised her.
And when she trudged back down the mountain, full of sorrow and regret, she only found more.
The frozen corpse of a man who had tried so desperately to be good to her, who had killed her family when they begged for help, who had loved her, who had stolen her, who had only wanted to protect his nation; who had not been able to understand the people who pleaded for mercy.
He lay there, in the snow.
Blue. Black. A statue carved from ice, no longer a man.
There were tears on his face, frozen through.
She had done that to him. The spitting image of the cold-bitten faces of her friends, party members, who had led her to this pitiful fate.
“Forgive me, Father…”
Asta wept, once again, unable to continue any longer. Her body collapsed, giving way from under her, falling out into the snow.
And Ukko wished, as he did every year, that he could cry.
He hated this day.
But he knew how much it meant to Asta. With sweet, gentle arms, he cradled her body and tucked her against the warm fur of his chest, slowly lumbering back to their home. Back to the peak of the mountain. To what little was left.
He hated this day, not because he hated her tears, but because he hated the reason for them.
If he had not meddled…
If he had left her there, buried in the snow…
If he had never provoked the gods...
He hated this day because it was all his fault.
And he had no way to tell her.
To tell her just how sorry he was… That he had brought her back to life.
“So? What did you think?” Kaeya asked, sidling up beside the Traveller, who had not moved since the Luna Leonis had begun, and had yet to move since it finished.
The moon was now mid-sky, but hidden. Clouds had rolled in, masking the celestial heavens, no moon, no stars. No blue, no pink, no reds or purples. Just an endless void of thick black. Only the candles of Mondstadt shared their light, now.
“It was beautiful…” they said softly, their voice trailing off as they stared down, over the bridge, at the blackened water below.
“But sad?” Kaeya finished.
He joined them at the edge, resting his elbows against the stone barrier and peering blankly down at the lake.
“How did you know?”
“Call it a… Knight’s intuition.” Kaeya smirked, but the expression didn’t quite reach his eyes. It was a muted one. Even his endless mischief couldn’t seem to hold up. “Honestly, I feel the same… Only really show up to keep face. Reassure the people.”
“...”
They listened to the peacefully sloshing waves. A soft sound, gently lapping up against the bridge supports.
“Do you think… Do you think my sibling has seen it? The Luna Leonis?”
Kaeya was quiet for a moment. Then sighed, and dropped his head. “I don’t know. Do you think my dad has?”
The Traveller turned their eyes up to the quiet, starless sky.
“I don’t know.”