Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There was something incongruous about the Traveler, something the Wanderer couldn’t place. He’d seen it for the first time back in the Delusion factory, when the Traveler wore a mask of righteousness. He’d been too focused on his own ends at the time to pay much attention, and it wasn’t like he saw much of the Traveler anyways.

It wasn’t until after Nahida relinquished him into the Traveler’s dubious care that he really started noticing things, things that were a bit at odds with reality as he knew it.

It was in the way the Traveler never kept sustained injuries, how he always seemed to know which direction to dodge and how hard to deal the finishing blows. How he seemed to solve puzzles the instant his eyes alighted on them, how he always knew the right thing to say to those simpering fools he ran commissions for, to ensure their trust and loyalty.

How time seemed to stand still around him, how he kept a golden eye on everything, gaze sharp and attentive constantly.

“Enjoying the view?” The Traveler speaks, back turned to the Wanderer. Not even looking at him.

Speak of the devil.

“Just wondering why you’re dawdling about. Haven’t received any work orders from your beloved fans lately?” He bites back, angling his head down so his hat covered his face, until all he can see is the grass blowing in the soft breeze.

They’re somewhere in the soft plains of Mondstadt, loitering near Cape Oath. Paimon is zipping between various dandelions, delighting in how her quick flight causes the seeds to puff off and float away. She was too far to hear either of them, otherwise she’d surely complain again about his attitude.

He finds her voice grating.

“I’m taking a break for today.” The Traveler says simply, watching her frolic. “I’d promised Paimon we could take a trip to Good Hunter later, for some sweet madames. Until then, well, we’ve got nothing going on.”

The Wanderer bristles at the we, less than thrilled that he’s being dragged into this. He could be doing plenty of things on his own right now, but no, he was being babysat by a strange creature with a blond braid.

The Traveler chuckles as if he can hear the Wanderer’s thoughts, and instantly he begins a litany of I hate yous in his head, just in case.

“I know you don’t like it, Kuni,” the Traveler says, drawing out the syllables of his old moniker. “But then, you don’t like much no matter what I do.”

There it is, the Traveler’s mean streak. For all his easy acquiescence and kowtowing to random people with their petty requests, he has a secret vindictiveness that he only seems to be willing to let the Wanderer see. It’s as if he knows that the Wanderer is trying to puzzle him out, and keeps taunting him with just enough to keep him on his toes.

The Wanderer dares to look up again, seeing that the Traveler’s back is still facing him, and aims a grotesque, albeit childish sneer his way.

The Traveler turns his way. “Unless you’d like to make a request?”

His eyes reflect the sunlight, almost supernaturally shiny. The Wanderer hates that stare.

The Traveler looks at him like he can see straight into his non-existent heart, see all the strings that hold his joints together, the twist of the fibers unraveling before him.

He couldn’t turn away. The Wanderer feels like a pinned butterfly, a feeling the Traveler gave him more and more these days, as he slowly slipped down the facade of friendliness he wore everywhere else.

He scoffs, brushing invisible dirt off his clothing. “You don’t care what I think.”

“That’s not true.” The Traveler protests, showing sharp teeth in a mischievous grin. “I find your thoughts… valuable.”

Well, that is as disconcerting a sentence as the Wanderer’s ever heard. He keeps repeating I hate you within the confines of his mind, not allowing for more than surface thoughts to form.

And then, like a bolt from the blue, an idea strikes him, and it’s his turn to feel smug and superior.

“Fine then. I do have a request after all.” He announces, turning his chin up and crossing his arms. “Drop the mask.”

The Traveler purses his lips in confusion, and taps the side of his cheek with an idle finger. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. A mask?”

The Wanderer wants to yell at him. It’d be easier, anyways, easier to throw him to the ground and tell him that it wasn’t cute, that he knew what the blond was doing.

Instead, he sidles up almost passive-aggressively into the Traveler’s personal space, tilting his hat back slightly to get even closer.

He raises his eyes to the Traveler’s own and grits his teeth. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. That stupid mask you use on everybody else, when you’re polite and acting like you care about their problems. The mask you use to make people think you’re not fucked up on the inside, to make them think you’re the shiny little hero they worship you as.”

The Traveler’s hair gleams golden in the light, the part shadowed by the Wanderer’s hat somehow no less bright. He hasn’t stopped smiling, and now it’s like he’s laughing, like he’s enjoying a joke the Wanderer hasn’t yet understood.

He’s determined to understand it soon.

“That’s a big request.” is all the Traveler says, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “How much are you determined to give, in return?”

He steps back and turns away without giving the Wanderer time to answer, his braid swinging behind him in slow motion. He flags the floating child down, yelling something about lunch, and it was clear that the moment had passed, like he was tricking the Wanderer into believing that nothing had happened at all.

It leaves the Wanderer reeling, hand on his hat still like it might blow away in the gentle wind, brain occupied by the way the Traveler’s eyes had seemed to fractal in the split second before he turned away.

The Wanderer doesn’t know his answer.

✧❂✧❂✧❂✧

Two days later, they’re dawdling about the dragon’s old lair after a commission in the area, when the Traveler brings up his little demon deal again.

“You never said what made you so interested in the first place, you know.”

The Wanderer is momentarily stumped. “What do you mean?”

“You asked me to drop the mask.” The Traveler looks like he’s well at ease with the breeze blowing around them. “What makes you think there’s anything underneath to find?”

They’ve cleared the area for the time being, and there’s nothing around but windwheel asters and old stones, but still the Wanderer thinks that his keeper should be more aware of his location. He’s seen at least three ruin guards, and surely they’re not all in a state of disrepair.

“You’re toying with me.” The Wanderer coldly accuses him. “You’re…”

Not nice. He wanted to say. Thinking it, though, it seemed trite and superficial. The Wanderer himself was stubborn and ornery. Calling someone else “not nice” would be pot, meet kettle. It’d make him sound like a child.

“You’re not even from Teyvat.” He settles on. “You act like any other human, but you’re just playing house.”

The Traveler hums thoughtfully. “Well, I suppose you’d know.” He jabs back, offhandedly.

The Wanderer entertains the notion of stabbing him through the eye socket. He dismisses the thought, and bares his teeth at the outlander. “I want to know why you go through the motions. What do you get out of this?”

“I’m looking for my sister.”

“You’re pretending to!” The Wanderer rounds on the Traveler, using his Vision to propel himself about a foot in the air. “There’s nothing left for you in Mondstadt. You’re just running back and forth, playing errand boy. What do you get out of it? This entire world is just a dollhouse for you. You could be anything. You could be a god. Why are you so…. Subservient?”

The Traveler levels him with an unimpressed gaze. “Not all of us are selfish, you know.”

“Sure.” The Wanderer bites back. “But nobody is wholly altruistic.”

For a second, it looks like the Traveler actually approves of his answer, though the look is quickly covered by something far more tempered, which only serves to drive up the Wanderer’s irritation. Again, he is being played with, like a mouse and a cat, and he’s had enough. If he wanted to keep being a pawn, he would’ve just rejoined the Fatui.

“Show me your face.” He insists.

The Traveler hasn’t blinked. His gaze remains unbroken. And yet, something shifts as if under warped glass, destabilizes, and when the Wanderer is able to refocus on the other’s face, it’s unrecognizable.

The vaguely pleasant features are distorted, somehow, no physically different but inducing a sense of vertigo in the Wanderer, a sense that everything is horribly out of place. The Traveler’s eyes become fractals once more, layers and layers of fragments and shards warping into some facsimile of eyes, the color all but obscured behind the sense of shattered shining out from them.

The Traveler tilts his head softly, moving only once in a small motion, but it seems as if he repeats the action several times, like a mirage shifting piece by piece.

There’s a pressure building up in his ears, a heavy sound like the Wanderer has clenched his jaw too tight, and the being he’s looking at is so foreign, so alien it feels like he can’t process it anymore, his eyes skipping over it like they would a predator, perfectly camouflaged.

The Wanderer only notices he’s hit the ground when he’s stumbled back over a rock in the grass beneath them. His stare breaks and it’s like the spell is broken, everything returning to normal. The strange atmosphere dissipates, and once more the Traveler is just the helping hand he shows everybody else.

I knew it, he wants to say. I saw through you this whole time. Or maybe, what the fuck? His tongue is tied, though; nothing comes out. He can only stare, sprawled on his ass, as he realizes just what the scope of the secret he’s pried into is.

The Traveler regards him. “Huh.”

Huh?? That’s it?

“People don’t usually react that well.” The Traveler says.

The Wanderer sits there mutely.

“There’s usually a bit more… bleeding involved.” The Traveler says. He shakes his head to himself, then extends his hand to help the Wanderer up.

He takes it, hesitantly, still too disoriented to swat it away like he normally would’ve. His head feels empty. This information is stunning, world-ending, maybe. Why doesn’t he have more questions?

All he can focus on is the memory of those shattered eyes. Fathomless and flat.

“You’ll feel better in a minute or two,” the Traveler natters on, occupying the Wanderer’s silence. Behind them, the wind blows, but it sounds hollow. It’s like there’s nothing else outside their little bubble.

Where’s Paimon?

The Wanderer looks at the Traveler, looks where their hands are still joined together, his hand hanging somewhat limply in the blond’s.

“My name’s Aether.” The blond says, not letting go. He feels like an anchor.

“Isn’t it-” The Wanderer begins weakly, only to get cut off.

“No.” The Traveler says. “That’s what they all call me. But my name-” and here he tilts the Wanderer’s head back up, locking their eyes once more. They’ve again taken on a strange quality, but in comparison to earlier, this is nothing. “My name is Aether, one of the last Lights in the Dark.”

Chapter Text

The Traveler brings the Wanderer all the way back to Mondstadt City, the long journey seemingly shrinking into just a few short paces. They make their way up through the middle of town and veer off to the right, and before the Wanderer has a chance to question the other’s intentions, he’s pushed through the doors of Angel’s Share and sat at a table in the back, out of the view of most people.

He wants to comment, to say anything, but he is still bereft of words, everything sticking in his throat and getting too tangled to come out properly. Still, if the Traveler wants to cure his woes with alcohol, he’s got another think coming.

The best the Wanderer can do is level him with a mediocre glare that he hopes conveys his intent properly.

The Traveler laughs. “I only picked this place because I knew it’d be less busy this time of day. They’ve got food here too, don’t worry.”

The Wanderer doesn’t need to eat. Surely the Traveler knows this. His money would be better spent bribing Paimon for her silence.

The Traveler slips off and returns with two laden plates, placing them down on the table with a dull thud in front of the Wanderer. The food looks unappealing to his lack of appetite, and he deigns to ignore it rather than take the effort to stomach it. What would he gain from such a performance, anyways, other than pleasing the Traveler?

He still feels too out of it to communicate much, and just pushes the nearer plate away and drops his head on the table, head turned to the side so he isn’t smushing his nose into the sticky residue of drinks past. The wide brim of his hat obscures everything from his sight, and he’s perfectly content to sulk to himself and mull over what he’d seen at Stormterror’s Lair earlier.

The Traveler is having none of that.

He sits down opposite the Wanderer but makes no move towards his own food, content to drill holes in the Wanderer’s head with his gaze. The Wanderer may be obscured by his ha t but he could still feel the weight of that stare.

He thinks about the fractal eyes, the infinitesimal shapes amongst broken shards of glass. It makes him a bit sick to his stomach, the otherworldliness unsettling. He’s seen all manner of gods and beasts in his five hundred (a thousand) years, he’s spent his time with Harbingers as bedfellows, and yet he’s never seen anything like the Traveler. Like Aether.

He never suspected anything like that had lain beneath, either. Sure, he’d seen that something was off with the Traveler, but he’d just assumed it was a hidden personality or something equally secret but mundane. The Traveler made no secret of his origins, not to the gods, but his true nature was hidden with none the wiser.

What sort of beast was he roaming Teyvat with?

The Wanderer knows he hasn’t even seen a fraction of what the Traveler is. All that’d changed were his eyes, his face, and those alone had introduced a dissociation within him that he was struggling to overcome.

He wonders if anyone else has ever doubted the Traveler even a little bit. Surely he couldn’t be the only one to notice anything?

And why did the Traveler show him, when he could have just as easily kept it hidden and fabricated a lie?

The Traveler remains silent, just watching him, and for once Paimon is silent too. Maybe the little fairy’s picked up on the mood for once, however unlikely that would be.

“What are you staring at? Am I really that interesting?” The Wanderer asks, when the weight of the Traveler’s eyes becomes too much for the silence, and he feels enough like speaking.

“You should eat something. You’ll feel better.” The Traveler says, in lieu of an answer. Beside him, Paimon nods approvingly, little arms crossed over her chest.

“I have-”

“No need to eat, yeah, yeah.” The Traveler waves him off. “But try anyways.”

The Wanderer slowly picks up his head, the heavy feeling making his movements more difficult than usual. He takes a sullen bite of whatever the Traveler’s placed in front of him, paying it no mind, and doing his utmost to keep his face hidden under his hat. Suddenly, the sheer nature of his visibility is irritating him, and he feels ill at ease with even the few people existing in the room around them.

He takes another bite, and the fog surrounding his mind dissipates slightly.

He refuses to admit that the Traveler is right.

When he looks up, the Traveler is smiling at him thinly, the look not quite reaching his eyes.

The Wanderer doesn’t reach his eyes, either. He’s afraid to look, though he knows that all he’ll find is the usual soft golden hue that everyone else sees.

He hesitates for a moment, the start of every sentence that comes to mind too bland to encompass his thoughts, too artificial. What he finally settles on is a question, the most obvious to come to mind.

“Why did you show me?” He asks in a low voice.

The Traveler tilts his head. “I thought you deserved honesty.”

The Wanderer dismisses that answer without even thinking about it. It’s devoid of any actual reason, just an aftereffect of the Traveler deciding that he would.

He’s about to put voice to his thoughts when a blue-haired scoundrel comes sidling up, walking like he owns the place.

“Traveler! It’s been a while since you’ve been back to Mondstadt!”

The Wanderer eyes him from underneath his hat, put off by the interruption . The man is tall and dressed in blue, with an ostentatious fluffy thing draped over his shoulder. Somehow even more striking than that, though, is his single eye, the other covered in an eyepatch hidden under sideswept bangs . That eye gave the Wanderer chills, the pupil...

His gaze, which has been calculating up the Wanderer in return, makes him uneasy, though compared to Aether, it was nothing. Nobody could unsettle him like Aether, he decides.

“And who’s this guest you’ve brought?”

The Wanderer resolutely looks downward, concealing his face beneath his hat, while the Traveler slips on his blandly complacent smile he wears in front of everyone, a slight tinge warmer than usual.

Someone moderately important, then.

“Kaeya!” The Traveler says, sounding sincerely enthusiastic. “This is the Wanderer. We were just getting lunch before some commissions, you know how it is.”

“The Traveler and the Wanderer.” This “Kaeya” person muses in his smooth voice. “What a complimentary pair you must be.”

The Wanderer feels like his worth is being measured. Compounded with his unease from earlier, he’s thrown off-kilter, like a ship left unmoored. He feels like it takes more effort than usual to summon up emotion, though when it comes to him, it’s no less potent.

A hand settles on the table in front of him, attached to the newcomer as he leans heavily against their seating spot. Is he not going away anytime soon?

“And you are?” He says abruptly, without concealing his irritation.

“Where are my manners?” Kaeya flourishes, unperturbed. “My name is Kaeya, Cavalry Captain of the Knights of Favonius.”

The Wanderer doesn’t give a shit about his title. Or him, really, but the difference in the Traveler’s posture after his arrival is interesting. He’s arranged himself to seem more open and friendly. Approachable, even.

“What cavalry?” The Wanderer asks.

Kaeya takes it in stride. “Well, Grand Master Varka’s out with the horses at the moment, so it’s cavalry in title only for the time being.”

The Traveler nods along, and Paimon interjects, “ Somehow, Kaeya still finds time to have a job to avoid doing. ”

While Kaeya preens at what can only doubtfully be called praise, the Wanderer gives the Traveler a glare that even he isn’t quite sure the meaning of, though a second later he realizes he’s glaring at an eldritch monster and quickly looks back down . It’s fine, though, because t he Traveler pretends not to notice it, even though the Wanderer is sure he does. Frustratingly little escapes him.

Perhaps to diffuse the building tension (mostly radiating off the Wanderer), perhaps just to be annoying, the Traveler asks Kaeya what he’s doing for the day, and if he needs help with anything.

Kaeya acts affronted, slender hand pressed to his chest and mouth forming an ‘o.’ “Can I not come to socialize? It’s not every day the Traveler is back in Mondstadt!”

The Wanderer stares downwards.

“Fine.” Kaeya relents in the empty silence, shoulders lowering. He looks around conspiratorially, as if anybody actually cared to pay attention to the table in the back. “There’s a ruin by one of the temples of the Four Winds, Traveler, you know the one?”

The Traveler nods, though the doesn’t say anything. The Wanderer would have asked where Kaeya was talking about, but that would’ve meant expressing interest, and really he just wanted the man to go away.

“Well, there’s been something wrong with the ley lines in that area. They’ve been getting tangled to the point that they’re interfering with daily business.” Kaeya adopts an expression that the Wanderer doesn’t like; he looks like he’s plotting something. “Originally, the Knights were going to take care of it, but, Traveler, now that you’re here, I suppose we don’t have to worry.”

Paimon pipes up from stealing the Traveler’s food. “We were having lunch, calico.”

Kaeya doesn’t even blink at the nickname, just runs with it. “Oh but Paimon, think of the treasure in a ruin that old!”

He plays her like a fiddle; the little fairy perks right up. The Wanderer can practically see the reflections of shinies in her eyes.

The Traveler chuckles at her antics, and offers her a slice of bread as Kaeya’s attention once more turns to the Wanderer.

Again, he is being scrutinized, and at this point he can’t figure out what the Cavalry Captain wants out of him. He merely scoffs, crosses his arms, and risks another stare at the Traveler, daring him to accept.

The Traveler shrugs. “Sure, we can take a look.”

The Wanderer groans and slumps down so his cheek is resting in his palm. “Always happy to help.” He bites out, as sarcastically as he can manage.

“Be nice!” Paimon reprimands, floating far too comfortably in his airspace. Well, at least his tone was heard and received.

“It’s okay, I can tell where I’m not wanted!” Kaeya says, face still wielding a cheery smile. “Just thought I’d let you know.”

The Traveler waves at him as he walks away. The Wanderer counts the steps he takes until he’s out of earshot, then immediately looks long and hard into the Traveler’s face, hoping for some clue or other to indicate whether the man had cottoned on to his other-ness. The Traveler lets him, idly, like he’s indulging a small child, which does nothing to improve his mood.

He also gives nothing away.

The Wanderer sighs and preemptively gets up from the table, abandoning his half-eaten meal. It’s not like he’s hungry, anyways.

He stalks out of the tavern, the Traveler placing mora gently on the table before following him out, waving cheerily at the bartender as he passed.

“I don’t appreciate you just volunteering us like that.” The Wanderer grumbles.

There’s silence for a moment, as they pass through the front gates of the city and out into the open air. Perhaps it’s only uncomfortable in the Wanderer’s head.

“ You don’t?” The Traveler finally replies, once they begin walking with purpose down one of the packed dirt roads . “ I mean, your schedule was just so full.”

The Wanderer doesn’t actually know where they’re going, unfamiliar enough with Mondstadt that all ruins look the same to him, so he’s once again forced to follow the Traveler wherever he pleases.

“And whose fault is that?” The Wanderer asks. “Everywhere you went, calamities befell nations for you to fix. And now, suddenly there’s nothing? You’re keeping us drifting on purpose.”

“I just found us something to do!” The Traveler throws his hands up in false exasperation.

“A temporary distraction.”

“There’s no pleasing you.” The Traveler says, a ghost of a smile on his face. The end of his braid flicks in the wind in double-time, like the waving of a rather satisfied cat’s tail. It was… odd to see, especially how freely Aether was allowing it to happen, as if he hadn’t noticed.

“We’re not going to find anything anyways.” The Wanderer huffs. He lengthens his stride, walking faster than the Traveler, following the curve of the road. He’s sick of following. “All we’ve done is taken a day’s work off of that horseless captain so he can go day drinking.”

“I have a feeling there’s something more important to be found than just empty ruins.”

Ugh. Of course the Traveler’s holding out on him with his otherworldly knowledge. He’s probably already cased the place and figured out what’s in there so he can just march in all impressively and save the day from errant hilichurls. Maybe he’s been to the location before, and planted something interesting for just this occasion.

That would be startlingly prescient of him. The Wanderer didn’t want to give him too much credit.

The Traveler guides them up over hills and through the fields, navigating the grand openness like he’s lived there his entire life, the Wanderer following behind him and watching errant breezes gust up and ruffle the leaves in the trees.

It’s so idyllic it’s almost unfair. Mondstadt, nation of freedom, where slimes seem to be the biggest issue for miles. It holds true for them as they walk, too; nothing comes near enough to bother them the entire time they travel.

After a time, they draw close to a ruin tucked in the shadow of a sheer cliff face. The stones arching over the entrance are crumbled and dry, stacked so precariously that it’s hard to believe they were once some sort of organized structure. There’s a crater in one of the rocks that’d fallen to the ground, probably from the missiles of a ruin guard.

The main door is barred by what at first glance seems like a simple puzzle; the Wanderer thought that if they were actually trying to keep anyone out, they’d have installed something more secure.

The Traveler barely glances at it and inclines his head towards the mechanism, directing the Wanderer to it.

“Solve it.” He commands in a manner so outside of his normal soft demeanor.

The Wanderer doesn’t give him the satisfaction of a response, just draws nearer to the stone. It’s a simple cube, like the activator to any myriad number of ruins dotted across Teyvat, but inlaid upon its surface are the elemental symbols, one on each face, save for a pattern of squares representing geo along each edge.

“I don’t know what you expect me to do, Traveler.” He says snidely. “I only wield one element, contrary to you.”

The Traveler sighs. “I had hoped that it wouldn’t be elemental.”

He draws nearer to the Wanderer and the mechanism both, peering down at the cube with a disinterested expression. His expression changes, though, as his eyes alight on the surface with the anemo symbol, pulsating a soft teal light at the presence of two (currently) anemo users.

With a soft smile, he presses his palm to the surface. Nothing happens, but he doesn’t seem unsatisfied with the result, taking two steps back and directing the Wanderer to it again.

“Hit it, would you?”

The Wanderer grouchily slings an arc of anemo energy at the stone, irritated at being ordered around.

Simultaneously, the Traveler moves quickly and strikes it with his sword, dragging the edge of his blade solidly down the middle as if he’s trying to slice it in half.

There’s a deep, resonating echo coming from everywhere around them, like the sound of the impact had been magnified several times over and plunged into the earth itself. There’s a grinding, like stones are being pushed past each other, and then…

Everything stills.

The Wanderer is about to comment on the failure when the surface of the ruin lights itself up, a wave of teal rolling over the surface of every carving and crack and forming a screen of protective anemo, roiling like the wind before a hurricane sets in. It brightens, and if the Wanderer had a lesser constitution, it’d have made him cover his eyes, but he merely watches as the light reaches a peak and dissipates.

Their surroundings are unchanged.

And then, finally, the massive gate swings open slowly, with a discomfiting crunch of stone on stone. A wave of heavy, stale air rolls out. It smells odd, dry and dusty, but the Wanderer can’t place precisely what the scent reminds him of.

The Traveler smiles at him beatifically, and grips his wrist as he steps towards the entryway.

Immediately, the Wanderer wants to shake him off. The gesture shows too much familiarity, far more than the Wanderer is comfortable with, and his is rankled by the casual presumption that the other would be allowed so easily within his space.

For a reason he himself is unsure of, he doesn’t.

He lets the Traveler drag him forwards, into the darkness of a ruin that hadn’t seen the sunlight for centuries, and wonders if this truly is the worst thing he could be doing right now anyways.

Chapter Text

Before the Wanderer’s eyes even have a chance to adjust to the dark, the stones shift ominously behind them, sealing them in. Immediately, a breeze picks up, gentle and nearly unnoticeable at first. It takes a moment to build up into something that tugs at their clothing and makes their steps lighter.

At first, all he can see are small dots of color, the glowing baubles of the Traveler’s clothing that indicate what element he wields. The spots of teal don’t illuminate much, but they do an excellent job of showing where the Traveler is.

The Wanderer’s vision adjusts slowly to the dark, and the ruin that was bathed in near blackness formulates itself before him. The grand hall they walk into seems centuries old, wooden furniture collapsed and rotting on the floor. What may have once been luxurious tapestries are now nothing more than ragged fabric in muted reds. The metal rods supporting them are rusted and bent.

Despite the damage, it feels as if they’ve stepped into a snapshot of time, like the room’s disarray has maintained its stasis for a hundred years. It feels as if it was waiting for someone to see it.

Even in the breeze, Aether’s hair is unruffled. And Paimon is gone.

The Wanderer casually leaps upwards and alights on the cracked remains of a pillar, sitting cross-legged and staring idly down at the Traveler, who looks at him passively in return as he picks his way around the debris. From above, the Traveler looks smaller, less threatening.

“Do you even know what we’re actually looking for, or did you charge blindly ahead as usual?” He digs, all bite in his voice. He ignores the little voice in his head that says maybe provoking a living horror isn’t the best idea.

“A ley line disturbance.” The Traveler scoffs. “Do you know how many of those I’ve handled in my time on Teyvat?”

His dismissive attitude piques the Wanderer’s interest. Despite himself, he leans forward, watching the other more closely.

“Why are we here, then?” He asks.

The Traveler passes by the pillar he’s perched on, leaving no footprints. For a long moment, he doesn’t answer, and the Wanderer considers antagonizing a response out of him.

“There’s more than ley lines that can be disturbed.” The Traveler replies ominously.

The Wanderer casts his gaze once more around the room. Suddenly he feels like he’s been trapped in a cage with two beasts, both wearing shadowy faces. The fact that the Traveler is so at-ease doesn’t make him feel any better.

Nevertheless, he doesn’t see any signs of life. Everything is just as still and dust-covered as it was his first pass.

“At least with most ruins, you can figure out what you’re supposed to be doing easily enough.” He grumbles. “This is just…empty.”

“We’re still only in the first chamber,” the Traveler says, amused. “Do you expect ruins to flaunt their secrets?”

At the end of the room is an intricately carved archway, braids climbing up the side to meet the trifecta knot that the Wanderer’s been seeing everywhere since entering Mondstadt. A blackened hallway is visible beyond the arch for a scant few feet before being swallowed up by the heavy darkness.

The Traveler passes smoothly under the arch, heedless of the dark beyond like he thought there was nothing lurking in it. Nothing that could hurt him, maybe. The Wanderer follows after as the teal glow begins to fade into the murkiness. The domain… discomfited him, for lack of a better word. He’d rather not be abandoned to the dust and stale air if he could help it.

He follows the Traveler into the corridor, lined with sconces that have long been burnt out. It’s eerily quiet, moreso than he’d expected, and it takes him a few seconds to pinpoint the reason: the Traveler’s footsteps do not echo. The Wanderer can hear every whisper of shifting fabric between the two of him, the sound of his own steps amplified in the dark, but the Traveler passes without a trace, disturbing nothing.

They walk for what feels like far too long, the Traveler’s anemo resonance casting strange shadows on the walls. At length, they pass through the hallway and emerge into a new room, one that can only be described as “in slightly less disrepair” than the other one. Chairs and tables are strewn across the floor, and there is a bunched-up carpet in the corner.

The Traveler’s glow paints everything a soft teal.

The Wanderer looks around, but again, nothing about the room stands out beyond the disarray.

“What a wonderful use of our time.” He drawls, making his displeasure known. Briefly, he wonders if the Traveler would smite him for attitude, but then decides he wouldn’t. If he ever would have, the Wanderer would have long been dust.

The Traveler doesn’t respond, however, instead peering around the room slowly, rotating his head like a predator. The rest of his body is unnaturally still.

The Wanderer hates the way his voice comes out a smidge too quietly when he asks “What are you looking at?”

The Traveler wears all of his emotions loudly, be it pride, or compassion, or anger. Even without these past few weeks spent traveling together, the Wanderer had known this about him. It had been apparent in their fight against each other, and the Wanderer had caught glimpses of it over their mental connection before that. He’d heard about it from official Fatui reports. The Traveler wasn’t shy about expressing himself.

So why, then, was he so… hesitant? The smug competence from the entry hall of the domain was long gone, and if the Wanderer had to take a guess, he’d say the Traveler looks… haunted.

Slowly, ever-so-carefully, the Traveler turns his head until he can regard the Wanderer out of the corner of his eye. He keeps his gaze centered on some random spot in the room, but the Wanderer can feel the weight of his attention when he responds.

“There’s been another…”

Well, if that isn’t some ominous bullcrap.

“Another what.” The Wanderer asks, unimpressed.

The Traveler takes a moment, composes himself, and slips into altruistic-hero-mode. “I’ll explain in a bit. For now, though, please do me a favor and look for anything in this room that’s… different. Something you’ve never seen before.”

“A favor.” The Wanderer scoffs. And ‘anything he’s never seen before?’ What would it matter? Even if he were to find something, it could simply be a gadget from Fontaine, or hell, Khaenri’ah had been dabbling in some bullshit if the records on Rhinedottir were anything to be believed. “I knew you thought of me in a manner unbefitting, but an errand boy? New low.”

It’s a sign that the Traveler really is spooked that he doesn’t even rise to the bait, just keeps his wide eyes focused on the minutia of the room. He starts scanning the left side of the room, and with a sigh, the Wanderer trudges over to the right.

He runs his fingers through the dust covering a dilapidated table, scrunching his nose in disgust when they come away with a thick coat of grey. He brushes it off with a quick puff of anemo and turns away, grazing his eyes across the floor.

Armchairs, books, burnt-out candleholders… it’s a typical affair. He can’t work out what has the Traveler so puffed up like a frightened cat. He’s seen the… person… stare down a mechanical god, dive headfirst into empty dreams, gaze at the heart of Irminsul and be completely unruffled by it all.

What would it take to unsettle a being like the Traveler?

He kicks aside an empty metal ewer, sending it rattling across the bare stone floor. It rolls for a couple feet in a wide arc, and comes to a rest in front of a toppled bookcase.

The Wanderer sidles over to it, dismissing it with a bored eye, until he spots an odd shape amidst the dust.

The object thrums with a quiet energy, subtle until he picks it up. It’s long, nearly as tall as the Wanderer himself, a gnarled stick that looks like it was hewn directly out of a tree with little care. Embedded in it are numerous small gems, from which sprout tens of tiny, multicolored threads that twine around the stick itself and form a grip about halfway down, as if to protect hands from the raw bark still covering it. It feels like a catalyst, maybe, but it’s like no catalyst the Wanderer’s ever seen, long and unwieldy.

He shakes it to dislodge the dust, and wonders if this is the kind of novelty the Traveler was looking for. He turns, about to show it to him, only to find the Traveler already breathing down his neck, silently observing the walking staff/catalyst/stick thing.

He does not startle.

“Is this what you wanted?” He drawls, trying to slow the whirring fans in his core.

The Traveler stares at it.

“That’s…” He seems at a loss for words. The air around him starts blurring his edges, and the Wanderer takes a slight step back, holding the staff away from his body.

“You recognize it.” The Wanderer states.

Aether tears his gaze away from the staff and up to the Wanderer’s, pupils reflecting the dim light like a cat’s. When he speaks, his voice sounds like it’s stumbling over itself, syllables resonating strangely.

“It shouldn’t be here.”

Cryptic and unhelpful. “In a filthy domain?”

“In Teyvat.” Aether answers. He holds out his hand as if to take it from the Wanderer, but hesitates, fingers curled strangely in the air.

The Wanderer doesn’t like the weight of his attention. He never does, but moreso now that Aether is not only acting cagey, but also letting the mask slip, letting whatever’s underneath bleed out. It’s like he’s looking at something enormous, something taller than the highest peaks in Liyue, and that thing, whatever it is, is gazing back at him with a dispassionate eye.

He takes it from the Wanderer, gingerly, like he’s carrying a pyro barrel that is two seconds from setting off. The moment Aether’s fingers make contact with the wood, the strands wrapped around it burst into blazing light, bring enough to blind a human. Wind picks up in the dusty room, and the Wanderer can’t tell if it’s coming from the Traveler’s anemo resonance or the strange catalyst. The dust covering the dilapidated furniture gets blasted back in a starburst radius, and overhead, the ceiling starts to groan, as whatever held it up all this time is finally giving way.

“Out.” Aether says, strangely calmly. “We need to leave, now.”

“You owe me answers.” The Wanderer says, not moving, though he eyes the rumbling stones above him.

“You will get them. Outside.” The multi-layered voice brooks no argument.

The Wanderer decides this hill isn’t the one he wants to die in, and ascends into the air, shooting himself back down the long hallway. He doesn’t check to see whether Aether is following. He doesn’t have to.

The minute he reaches the heavy stone doors that constitute the entry way, Aether is there, blasting them open with a bastardization of his usual geo. The Wanderer tumbles out into a sunny daylight of afternoon Mond, and behind him, Aether steps casually out. The moment his feet touch the grass, the domain behind him sucks into itself, twisting like a black hole and consuming itself. The earth beneath their feet rumbles, and in a blink, it’s gone.

The landscape is unscarred, a smooth stone wall like there had been nothing there to begin with. All that’s left are the Wanderer, the Traveler, and that weird wooden catalyst, its light now dimmed.

Before the Wanderer can even say anything, the Traveler cuts him off with a flat tone. “Domains are memories.”

He casually sits in the shady grass under a tall cedar, motioning the Wanderer next to him. He scoffs and leans against the tree instead, looking down at the Traveler.

And then, to completely jump tracks, the Traveler asks him, “Are you familiar with film Kameras?”

Unsure where he’s going with this, the Wanderer nods.

“Think of it like this, then. Ley lines are the film strips, and every frame is a domain. They’re all unique instances of memory that connect back to a bigger whole. It’s very hard to see the whole context unless you were part of the events as they happened, or you can superimpose them together extremely rapidly.”

The Wanderer hates how easily he explains a phenomenon he’s seen lauded scholars in the Akademiya struggle with.

“If it’s a preserved memory, why did it collapse?” The Wanderer says. “And what is that, anyways? It’s a piss-poor catalyst.”

The Traveler smiles ruefully, almost. “This was the memory’s focus. Taking it out means there is no memory of it. Nothing to recall, no need for that frame. Normally, removing something from a domain wouldn’t collapse it entirely- how else would you get artifacts? But that domain… it’s a memory of something outside the leylines. It cannot exist without any backups.”

He eyes the Wanderer thoughtfully. “I wasn’t sure if you’d pick up on that, by the way. It shouldn’t have any energy left, being dormant in Teyvat for so long. I guess domains have some serious preservation power, huh?”

The Wanderer notes that the Traveler is exceedingly good at giving him a lack of real information. He still hasn’t managed to explain what the staff is, nor why it bothered the Traveler so much.

“You said it’s from outside Teyvat. Is it something your sister left behind maybe?”

The Traveler shakes his head. “No. I know whose this is, but… neither I nor Lumine had access to it. There’s no way it should be in a memory in Teyvat.”

“Well, I guess we can tell the horseless horseman that his leyline issue is resolved.”

The Traveler laughs at that, lighting up like the sun and brightening the very air around him. Disgusting.

“Yeah, we can.” He agrees. He eyes the Wanderer conspiratorially for a moment. “And then… What say we look into this, huh?” He gestures with the staff. “I’m very keen to find out how somebody managed to part the Magellan’s staff from him for so long.”

The Wanderer has no idea who “the Magellan” is, but by his count, there are far too many people running around with definite articles attached to their name. Even that scribe at the Akademiya is guilty of it.

“Ugh, if we have to.” He says. “It’s not like I’m busy anyways.”

“That’s the spirit!” The Traveler beams.