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There is a war coming. Venti can feel it on the wind. Snezhnaya is working itself into a frenzy, into a fury, into a fight . There is violence coming, for his city and his people, but also for himself.
Celestia does not know he harbors an astrologer, an alchemist. (Three Alchemists, really. But one of them has not accomplished anything of note, and another is permitted. It is the third that worries him. Celestia continues to look over the alteration in its records. So perhaps he can plead ignorance as well.)
Mondstadt thrives. Its current era is one of unmatched prosperity, and he does not intervene. But he watches Jean Gunnhildr’s anxiety grow and grow and he knows she feels it too. How could she not, the woman conscripted by a power that is not his into being his general in the war so thick on the wind that it hangs like it’s already upon them?
Master Jean is not the praying sort- he should know. But one day when the sky is gray and his winds are icy rather than cool (Mondstadt’s winters come upon her fast and hard) he feels his attention drawn to her, the part of him that is old and powerful tug on his heart.
Snezhnaya has cut communications. Every Fatuus in the city poured out overnight, like they’d vanished. And Jean sits at her desk, head in her hands, papers rumpling beneath her elbows. And she knots her hands together.
For a long moment, she just sits there, fingers interlaced, silent in this still room. But he knows, knows, knows that this is a prayer in itself. She breathes deeply, heavily, but when her voice comes out it is weak, small.
“Please,” She says, “Just-please.”
And that is enough. He reaches out and undoes the lock on her window. Frigid air rushes in and scatters paperwork across the ground. She curses, scurries to pick them up, weigh them down. There is a too-long moment where she is still on the floor, and he nudges her, gently. When she rises she does it tiredly, with leaden legs, and her footsteps to close the window are equally heavy.
He has to stop her for a moment, turn her head just slightly, to make her see the city. And when she does- he opens her eyes, just a little wider than they should be, and lets her see the city, as he might. Not for long, not enough to hurt her or to let her know anything she shouldn’t. But for a few seconds, Mondstadt is in her eyes the shimmering gem he knows, its shadows familiar to her, its people her sacred children.
Once it leaves her she is again still, but it is of a different kind. There is the ghost of a smile at her lips, and when she blinks she blinks tears from her eyes. She is still, and then she nods, acknowledging, and closes her window.
This is an easy sort of feat- help, for those who ask. Simple, quiet things which rely on his power as a god instead of as an Archon. Sister Barbra prays for an end to this storm, and so he changes the direction of his currents. He turns attentions away from a door easy to unlock, ushers out a tiny girl in red and white.
Clear skies for his people. Freedom for their children. I love you, he whispers in every ear, even those determined unimportant by the stars. Glory, Herta, Majorie. I love you, and I know you, and you matter. You matter to me, if no one else. When spring comes, the fields of dandelions bloom brighter and wider than ever before, plains so yellow a traveler might think themself in Liyue.
He brings himself as close to his city as his persuasion will allow. He has been asleep so long and he has missed her like a limb.
Besides- there is a war on the wind. Mondstadt will need his doting in the coming months.
He reads. He has never taken the time for it before- too comfortable to become wind and song for a decade, a century. And then asleep, when he had gotten mouthy after the cataclysm. But he finds himself wishing time would slow, and so the breeze guides him to the library, where he feels he can get much done in a single day.
“You ought to be careful,” Says Lisa Minci, when he checks out a series of books- he’s going to read at Windrise, where the sun will almost but not quite filter through the trees and leave him just a little too cold, the way that is nice, the way that feels like being one spirit in a thousand winds. “Mondstadt might think her archon ever so present.”
“I never meant to leave,” He says, but it comes out hollow without an explanation that he cannot give, an explanation that she cannot have. “I never do.”
He reads fairy tales. Memoirs. Anything without a war. Days pass and with growing despair he finds that, despite his best efforts, time will not stop for him.
“There’s something coming, isn’t there?” Lisa asks. Her tone is conversational. Her eyes are not.
Functionally, Lisa Minci is already dead. When the war begins, Celestia will come to collect and she will die because she knows too much.
But if Lisa Minci is already dead, why does she still take afternoon tea? Why does she breathe and walk and laugh politely at poor jokes? Why does she sit here, deadly serious and privately scared and always asking questions he cannot answer?
“There are a great many things coming.” He says.
And she knows. More sand slips through the hourglass.
There is a war on the wind and he cannot catch it.
Morax arrives in Mondstadt. He does it quietly, like he does most things- he checks himself into a room at the Gothe hotel under an alias and sits outside the Angel’s Share and waits.
Morax does it quietly- but what kind of god would not recognize another in his land? Venti sits with him.
“There’s a war coming.” Says Morax. He does not ask for an alliance or a truce. They both already know that if this were that type of war they would be at each others’ backs by default.
This will not be a war of gods.
“What do you want me to do about it?” Asks Venti.
“It is more what I would like your people to do about it. There will be- panic, I am certain. And there is a good chance that the average person might get it in their head to do something drastic. I only ask that you advise against an attack on Liyue Harbor.”
“I do not advise.”
“ Barbatos,”
“I do not advise.”
Morax bargains, and then begs, on behalf of Liyue. It is a shame Rex Lapis is dead, because he might be able to warn off surrounding nations- but Barbatos will not interfere with his people’s governance.
Venti remains unconvinced, and Morax drops the matter. They sit in good-natured silence (for neither can begrudge the other their nature, their domain) until Morax sighs, sharp, and clicks his tongue.
“Will you turn your arrows from the earth?” He asks.
“If I am certain they will not come back down on my people. And of you, your spear?”
Morax looks up to the heavens, as though they might part and reveal the sky. “I died to live. I think I might like to do it freely.”
The alchemist Sucrose is the type to ask for a blessing over each of her experiments, if only so that she knows that her variables are consistent. She ensures precision in her calculations, and each step is performed with equal care and dedication- what she is conducting is a ritual.
Perhaps it is of no wonder that Mondstadt attracts alchemists. The meter and rhyme here is clear as crystal, and Sucrose, whose particular dedication is so dependent on the natural world, is as much a poet as he is.
He worries for her. Even a permitted alchemist has the opportunity to stay farther than she ought to- he will not stop her, but he can certainly hope she has both the fortune and sense to know to stay in what could be considered her own lane, distract Celestia for her mentor.
There is an alchemist who should not exist running blasphemous experiments deep in the heart of a mountain that should not exist.
Albedo does not pray- not even once. But Barbatos watches him regardless. Watches him and hopes that he does not draw attention to himself. Because he may be of Khaenri’ah make, but Mondstadt is a home for travelers. Albedo is as much of Mondstadt as he is of chalk.
The same goes for the Alberich boy- another prince who found his way into a land no longer foreign. Who more of Mondstadt than the right hand of the Favonius’ Grand Master? Who more of Mondstadt than an enjoyer of fine clothes and fine music and fine wine, who makes the time to live while working for the betterment of his city?
When his homeland rises again (because Barbatos is certain it will), he may return, if that is what he wishes. But if that is not what he wishes, Barbatos will fight for him to stay. He is a son of the wind as much as his brother, and Mondstadt’s god does not take blows to the freedom of his people.
Mondstadt is a home and a refuge and a repository. Travelers come and go but for the time that they are within his city walls they are his , beloved and free.
It is perhaps something he should have expected, that a visiting little Collei of Sumeru arrives with a love of his city so like his own he can feel it. He has never met her- but he knows of her, so he watches, and makes sure that when Outrider Amber squeals at the sight of her, the wind that dries her joyful tears is warm.
Her mentor (and Venti knows this is what he is from his constellation- how funny that a little girl has formed a place in the stars from two different halves of safety, thousands of miles apart) stands guard, clearly on edge in this land not his own. Venti reaches out, puts a hand on his shoulder. I am watching, too. She will be safe here.
When she sleeps, Collei dreams wide and sprawling, encompasses half of his city in a story of rabbit and serval that ends, unlike most, with a friendship so encompassing it seems to coat Mondstadt in good cheer. (Barbatos knows this because he can feel it. Venti knows this because his tips are particularly good.) She is gone too soon.
Summer has truly come upon Mondstadt when, sat upon the steps of his church, Venti is busy composing a little number which certainly only could correspond to reality by coincidence, about a disbelieving nun who mostly spends her time shirking prayers to go fight evil. It will earn him exactly zero points with the church at larger, and Sister Barbara in particular will loathe it, but he thinks the people at the Angel’s Share will enjoy it, and that perhaps even Sister Rosaria herself might crack some sort of smirk at the various ways in which he’s managed to butcher his own name.
“Felicitations, o humble and marvelsome trouveur! Your Prinzessin comes bearing tidings of good fortune indeed- intelligence of a most blessed event shall soon travel from my everlasting nous to your own feeble one - so tread carefully, and do not catalyze mistide in eschewing this great opportunity for conspiracy befitting the glory of the Ruler of the Ashen Darkness.”
Fischl von Luftschloss Narfidort is a poet, at heart, a bard of a sort rare to find mostly in the sense that her sort of eccentricity gets folded out of a person by the machine of sociality. Being mostly unimpressed with this dull conformity, Venti makes no effort to berate her particular mannerisms.
“Indeed?” He asks, curious.
“On a meeting of dawn and dusk sovereignly recent, the sky was torn open, and I, the Prinzessin der Verurteilung, was affronted with conversance, that it might be of great benefit to your highness to become acquainted with great tales of old, that in turn I might remediate the abilities of my historians in chronicling my awesome and subdolous exploits.”
“You wish to compose for yourself a ballad.”
“Well- a Prinzessin needs not write her own tales. I merely aspired to ascertain the quality of those already written by my many subjects within the Immernachtreich.”
One thing is certain: she has come to the right place for a repository of stories. He has composed a thousand songs, a hundred thousand, uncountable. Prinzessin Fischl is a quick learner, too- he directs her to collections, and all through the fall she eats through them, figures mostly for herself how to play the lyre- albeit clunkily.
He pushes her a little, and then makes himself scarce. She finds him a few times- her night raven is terribly good at scouting him out- but ultimately, she is left to her own, and she works through it like a paper shredder, with so much determination it is frightening.
The last time he sees her before the dawning autumn, it is coincidence, with her bird on her shoulder and her weapon at her back. She’s on a scouting mission for the guild and he happens to be on a walk.
She stops him, and with a solemnity that is real rather than put on, she says, “Are you of this world?”
“As much as I can be,”
“Is this the way the sky is meant to be?”
He looks at her. Hesitates.
“Because I get the sense, sometimes, that the stars we can see are only little tears in its canvas. That someone has rearranged the constellations to create a different picture than what was intended. I would like very much to pretend that it were my doing, but-,”
“Yes- how can you see past the sky, Prinzessin?”
She opens her mouth, closes it again. “My Auge der Verurteilung sees all,” She says, but it is hollow.
“Mein Fraulein has very keen eyes,” Half-echoes Oz.
Once she is gone and he has had time to think on it a second longer, he reaches for the answer and finds it hidden behind a sort of barrier- Venti cannot conceive it. Barbatos, then, stretches farther, around, pulls it out like sword from stone.
It is a small piece of hope. In the creation of vision-bearers, allogenes meant to keep the gods in check with an underlying hum of you can be replaced, Celestia has put a piece of itself in each and every one of them.
Lightning descends upon the land that summer. Raiden Ei has warned the knights of her arrival in advance, and so when she appears it is met with a degree of pomp and circumstance that Venti quite frankly believes to be irrequisite overkill. But he has left his city to his people, so rarely does Mondstadt have the opportunity to welcome a god in such a physical way, a way which involves fine gifts and explanations of worth.
And he would be lying if he said he was not working on a gift of his own.
Varka has yet to return (he will not, not before the war), and so it is Dame Gunnhildr who greets the Raiden Ei and her- well. The nature of their relationship has never been clear. The Raiden Ei and her companion, Guuji Yae Miko.
There is a time when Venti believes his acting Grand Master will be thrown off her game, but between herself and her hands (Alberich to her right, Minci to her left), the talks are as amiable as one can expect discussion of a coming war to be. There are plenty of Almighty Shogun- s and Immortal Shogun -s, but in the end, it does not storm in Mondstadt. It does not even rain.
He stows away on the ship she leaves on, makes sure he is caught and dragged out by the captain, who asks what the Master of the Euthymic Plane would like to do with this little stowaway.
Ei asks, curt and commanding, to be left alone with him, and then when they are she rolls her eyes and asks why this must be the way he finally shows up.
“You believe yourself to be a creature of humor.” She says flatly.
“Yes,” His grin is a genuine, soft thing, meant for a friend he has not seen in five hundred years.
Instead, he faces down the full disdain of the Narukami Ogosho. “You are wrong.” She says.
His hand flies to his heart, as though wounded.
He has made her arrows. They are fine, fine, fine things, oak bathed purple in valberry and wolfhook, with goose-feather fletchings and quartzite heads, sturdy and so sharp they had shredded the skin of his fingertips while he’d worked on them.
They are so of her and they are so of him that they are the perfect gift.
“There is a war coming.” They say. ”You are my friend and so I will arm you as I am armed.”
They part quietly. What else is there to do?
One day, little Klee gets herself stuck in his tree at Windrise, and instead of staying where she is, she climbs further and further up, like a cat.
Once she has reached the top, where even (light though he may be) he might have trouble getting her down again, she crosses her legs and begins to draw. A few crayons slip through the lower branches as she pulls them from her bag, but she reassures Dodoco that they still have all of the colors of the rainbow, so they’ll be alright.
He watches her, through the eyes of a curious bird, as she twiddles away the hours. Never does she express any form of discontent with the situation, so eventually he carries on with being a part of the wind, only occasionally stopping to check on her.
When he returns a third time, she’s scratched open a hole in the bark and is eating crackers and cheese and sap for dinner. She sings Dodoco a lullaby before she falls asleep.
Surely, he thinks, someone is looking for her. But he does not check- he leaves his people to their own. No one has asked him anything, and so he does not speak.
“Today, Dodoco,” She says in the morning, “We are going to get down.”
And with less care than is advisable, she begins to descend, almost hopping from branch to branch, only briefly reaching a leg down testily to see if it might hold her, gaining speed and confidence as she goes.
When she reaches the place where she had gotten caught up the day before, she pauses, eats her last cheese cracker, and jumps, landing hard on hands and knees. She shakes it off, almost like a dog, and bandages a knee that might be scraped or might just be dirty- it is hard to tell.
And then she walks off, bouncy, if slightly lopsided, by herself- hardly even in the direction of the city.
He does not follow. She will be alright. His people will be alright.
Eula Lawrence dances on the seashore. Up and down, blade in rhythm. Eula Lawrence prays regularly. It is an act of rebellion to her.
Frequently, when he is called, he is called for kindness. For acts of benevolence and mercy. Deliverance from a world which kicks and bites. He is freedom’s foremost defender, after all. So when he is celebrated that is what it is for. For freedom, and the revelry therein.
Eula Lawrence has never prayed for kindness. She begs forgiveness (given, time and time over - Eula Lawrence has nothing to be forgiven for) and vengeance.
The thing about the wind is that it is not a gentle beast, and that it is inside of him, and that it is him, and that it exists, entirely separate from him, unknowable and wild.
(The thing about being a god is that it is complicated).
Eula Lawrence prays for vengeance and her blade comes down hard and blessed. Eula prays for vengeance and gets it, because that part of him is untapped- revelry, for all its merit, leaves him stretched thin on festival nights- vengeance is fun, because he never gets to do it.
There is another, more secret part of him that greatly enjoys helping Eula , specifically. They are the same, after all. Separated by lofty ideals from the so-called family meant to accept them. Considering their high-and-mighty attitudes and haughty demeanors, the only difference between the Lawrence Clan and Celestia is that one of them is easily brought low.
In this digestible metaphor, his fellow archons take the place of Eula’s knights. They are accepting and kind- but most of all they do not understand. Freedom is a hard idea to reconcile with six people who fought and killed and were rewarded with the right to rule. Lawrence is a hard name to reconcile with an order which has fought against it for however many years.
In both tales, the tide has begun to turn.
When a knight corners a citizen for a committed crime, what is that act if not one of vengeance?
When his companions draw at the sky, what is their fight if not one of freedom?
But that is assuming they fight at all.
“War will kill this land,” Says the Kusanali in his dreams. “War will kill every nation but Shneznaya dead, dead, dead. And then it will kill Shneznaya, too. A thousand trees like dust on the wind. A thousand memories, gone forever. War with Celestia will kill this land and we will go with it.”
“You wouldn’t fight?”
“I couldn’t. Sumeru is weak. In its quest for a greater weapon, it threw the old one away- I’ve grown rust. Irminsul is dying. I am going with it. What wisdom is there in war? What dreams but the singular, the terrible? What strength do I have to fight with?”
“You only grow weaker with time. What good is there in putting it off? Can you not see the greater harm?”
“Why should you not put it off?” She asks.
As the people of this world grow outward, build ever-greater things on merits of their own, the influence of the presiding god shrinks, and with it their power. Morax may be the Prime of Adepti, the Warrior, the Groundbreaker, but Rex Lapis and his influence are dead. Expanding society weakens the archon.
Except for him. But ultimately- there are six of them and one of him. And he will never be able to carry them on his own merit.
“Because it’s not about me.” Says Barbatos. “If it was about me, we might as well be dead already.”
Master Diluc Ragnvindr of the Dawn Winery knows there is a war coming- but misattributes it. Does not recognize the cracks in the sky. Fails, as is terribly typical of him, to see the forest for the trees.
There is some kind of dread that, so far separated from Mondstadt’s walls and its everyday joy, seems to overtake him. He is out night after night without fail month after month. It is no wonder when he grows ill- but he continues his vigil.
Dread, yes, and paranoia. He shuts himself off, becomes snappish with his staff, cold and demanding and without even the faintest hint of heart. Master Diluc begins, slowly and then with growing speed, to fall apart.
It is as though there is some kind of awful snapping that happens the night he goes to Jean. It is dusk, and the sun is beginning to set earlier and earlier as the fall months come on them.
“You should go home,” Is what she says when she sees him. It is pointed, sharp, halfway to a command. He had tried to make certain his presentability, straightened his jacket, finger-combed through hair that was getting too long, even on him. He had not done it well.
“There is a war coming,” He says.
“I know.” Jean tells him, not dismissive- but not kind. “We are doing our best to prepare.”
“Bull shit ,” Spits Diluc, Crepus’ boy. “If you were doing anything-,”
“I understand-,”
Jean stands, a violent motion that makes her chair careen back and forth, and they begin to speak over each other, louder and louder until it consumes the entire building whole, a great black hole from which nothing can escape.
“-act as though you’re completely uncaring-,”
“-find for yourself some shred of observance-,”
-And so on, until they’ve both exhausted themselves and silence settles, thick and nauseating, over the room.
Neither folds, and so they go stale and broke. Impasse, like double knives held to the gut.
Master Jean sits again. Draws some loose hair up behind her ear. “I’ve nothing more to say on the matter, especially not to anyone so clearly not in their right mind. Good night.”
It is almost visible, the way Master Diluc has to gather the scraps of his dignity to overcome the urge to slam the door.
He rode a horse into the city, but he leaves it, walks back to Dawn Winery. “Mighty Barbatos,” He says, in a half-cracked speaking voice, a few miles from the city.
Barbatos, being very practiced at not getting involved in things that are technically n0ne of his business, had been largely content not to intervene, but he will admit to there existing some relief in being allowed to. He appears, in what to any other man might be a blessed omen, physically.
“Yes?” He asks, for once not having to adhere to a brutal pace to keep up.
“There is a war coming,” Says Diluc. It is not a question- why would it be? “And your city seems not to notice. Is there nothing you can do?”
“I’m afraid so. But rest assured they do notice, Master Diluc. Mondstadt prepares in its own time.”
“Is there nothing I can do?” He asks, brokenly, as they crest the hill that overlooks the winery.
Venti pauses at his statue. Tries his best, even restrained as he is in this form, to look the part of bridge between false heaven and man. “That is up to you,” He says. The wind picks up. He does not issue commands, Barbatos reminds Venti. He does not issue commands. “But if you want my advice, It seems the leap you are trying to make now is so far, tired as you are. You might make a more coherent case well-rested.”
He does not have to look back to hear Diluc breathe, slow and heavy, deeper than he likely has all night. And then, very suddenly, Venti feels himself grow something like sickening strength.
Diluc Ragnvindr shuts his god out.
It’s as autumn draws to a close that he finds his winds drawn to maid Noelle, carrying his allowed alchemist up through the streets of Mondstadt, running as fast as she can without jostling Sucrose too much.
“Keep her alive, please, please, please,” She whispers, voice cracking, short of breath.
What is wrong with her? He asks without asking, catches Noelle and her glider in his winds and carries her up the steps. What he lacks in healing ability he can only make up for in speed- in an act so blatantly divine it is almost blasphemous.
There are flowers growing out of her. Full, primrose pink ones, which cloud the air sugar-sweet. They might be beautiful if not for the way they break through her skin. Noelle’s sleeves and all down the front of her dress is stained dark red.
Sucrose’s Vision flickers like a light about to go out, alternating between too-bright and misty gray. She is awake, Barbatos realizes. She would not be the first of his to die too alive. He whispers to her, harried reassurances as the wind rushes past. He lies to her, because to tell her that she may not live would be to kill her.
Noelle does not have to shift Sucrose in her arms to open the doors to the church- they fly wide in front of her. Noelle, for her gentle nature, makes herself known, screams like she’s possessed for help and six or so sisters materialize around her.
In this place of his worship, Barbatos is more archon than god. He is more of power than he is of nature, more of force than of habit. And it is here that he recognizes Celestial recompense.
He ignores the violence of the decree and reaches in, draws all he can out of his little alchemist, not to die of any fool-lead tyranny while he watches. There is no punishment for asking warrented questions in his city, and if there is, he will bear it alone.
Sucrose gasps, sharp and wheezing, like her airway has suddenly cleared, and Barbatos slips, not gently but clawing his way up against it, into sleep.
Godly sleep is unlike human sleep in that he still has his ear to his city. He hears her heart beat, the wide strokes of a city in motion. A thousand prayers could not wake him. There is only time, only gathering his strength and waiting to break free.
It is a good thing breaking free is all he has ever been successful at.
When he wakes, it is by way of his mortal form- the energy that is Venti cannot go nowhere.
He wakes in Wolvendom. The formerly orange trees are barren, and snow covers the ground, sticks terribly to what is ultimately a Summer outfit.
It isn’t actually the snow he sleeps in, though. Someone’s sat him up against the wall of a roomy cave. A fire cracks and pops a few feet away, and tending to it is a still-teenaged Razor of Wolvendom. So he can’t have been asleep long.
“You are- awake?” Razor asks, slowly. The wolf circling his feet pauses to trot over, and Venti pats it a couple times.
“I should think so,” He says, attempting cheer and falling short, voice hoarse from misuse. Unfitting. He stands, a little shaky on his legs.
“Snowing.” Razor says. “Too cold for Razor to hunt. No going out.”
The snow is coming down hard. It piles up over the entrance to the cave, creating what is almost a wall. Out of one cage and into another- although this one is much nicer. He could get out, if he needed, and when he closes his eyes he hears only that the prayers he receives are the typical, implicit ones made from acts of freedom.
“Very well,” He says. “What do you tend to do when it’s too cold to hunt?”
Razor thinks a moment. “Guard Lupical. Keep fire. No other wolf good as Razor at keeping fire.” He pauses, proud. “Eat. Sleep. Play.”
Venti hums, noncommittal, and begins to pick at his lyre. There is nothing really to it- a simple, slow tune, the warmth of the fire contrasting the cold outside. And Razor is not one to be particularly adverse to instinct- he falls asleep easily.
Godsong. “I could have waited.” Says the part of him that is Barbatos, not fully awake yet and so not fully adjoined to his being. Venti hums, noncommittal, and begins to pick at his lyre.
He helps Bennet- stuck in a freak snowdrift while delivering food to one of his few friends still sticking around (he’d been truly at little risk thanks to his vision), and points him in Razor’s direction.
And then the God of Mondstadt walks through his snowswept lands towards his city. They do not need him- but he is there, if they ask.
Tomorrow, he will have to fend off a herd of cats, outrider Amber will notice he’s torn his cloak and give him a flier for a sewing class, and Sister Barbara will chastise him for playing music on top of the church again.
Tonight, Venti falls asleep in the hands of his statue. Barbatos watches him, watches his city, watches his people, watches the world revolve.
There is a war on the wind. But today, the wind stills.