Chapter Text
Consciousness comes to Illuga slowly, its pace so lazy that he’d mistake himself for being on a vacation if he isn’t so damn sure he’d died. That realization jolts him the rest of the way awake, veins singing with adrenaline as he sucks in a breath and rushes to touch where the wound in his stomach should be. Instead of a gaping hole underneath torn fabric, his fingertips meet skin, smooth and unblemished.
What the fuck.
“He’s awake!” A high-pitch voice he registers as Paimon.
Paimon?
Illuga pries his eyes open and lets his head roll to the side so he can see her floating figure. On a nightstand beside her rests his lantern, emanating Aedon’s kuuvahki. Something deep in his core sighs in relief. “What are you doing in the afterlife?” he rasps, frowning at her. “You didn’t die and leave poor Aether alone, did you?”
“Paimon would never,” she scolds, folding her arms. Her face, indignant, smooths again as her eyes water. “Paimon wasn’t sure you were going to wake up.”
The door creaks open, and Illuga snaps his gaze to Aether as he steps into the room. He holds a glass of water in his hand. “We’re glad you did, though,” he says, crossing to the bed Illuga lays in. It’s distinctly not his own given the purple sheets and wood that doesn’t look native to Nod-Krai.
Aether settles into a chair that’s been dragged to the bedside opposite Paimon. Whatever wood it’s made of clashes terribly with the bed, nearly a shade of red against black. “You’ve been here for a good week now.” He taps the water glass with his free hand. “Can you sit up? You should drink something.”
Illuga blinks. He looks down at his bare torso, taking in the blank expanse of skin.
Fall into the emptiness with us.
He shudders and pushes himself up, bracing for any pulling skin or sore muscles. No pain or discomfort comes. Illuga settles his back against the headboard and makes a disbelieving noise, fingers returning to the spot right under his ribs where he remembers the Hunter’s axe burying into his body.
“How am I alive?” he asks, extending a shaky hand for the water. He’d never hear the end of it from Flins if he didn’t accept it. “And where am I? This isn’t Piramida or the camp.”
Aether and Paimon share a glance over him, the Traveler’s expression bunched. Illuga sips on the water, unease pricking at his skin while the two of them have a silent conversation. Eventually, Aether sighs and sucks his lip between his teeth. “The second question is easier to answer, so we’ll start there.” He sits back in his chair, gesturing around the room. “Welcome to one of my guest rooms.”
Illuga sweeps his gaze over the room, taking in the deep brown trim against tan walls. Against the walls stand furniture from what seems like all over Teyvat: a blue-painted bookshelf tapering to a point at the top, a decorated black shelf, a light-colored wardrobe that feels far too plain compared to the delicate multi-colored dresser next to it.
He’s so sure he’s dead. And maybe in hell?
“It’s… unique,” Illuga says slowly. His free hand smooths over the sheets bundled over his lower half. They’re soft and light under his fingertips, a far cry from the thick wool he’s used to draping over himself at night.
“That’s polite for terrible,” Paimon chimes, hands on her hips. She stares at Aether with a gleam in her eye. “Paimon told Aether that he should try to match his decor better.”
Aether waves a hand, not looking bothered in the slightest. “I like having pieces from all over Teyvat.”
Illuga takes another sip of his water. It soothes his throat, which is thick from lack of use. “I didn’t realize a traveler like yourself would have a house, let alone a guest room in it.”
“Aether has a whole mini realm, actually.” Paimon’s expression lights up. She clasps her hands behind her back, tilting her head in the way Illuga has begun to recognize as being proud. “We got it from an adeptus friend in Liyue.”
An adeptus. A mini realm. Illuga looks to Aether.
“Basically, this realm is stored within a tea pot that I carry around. I’ve got several houses and a main mansion in it so that Paimon and I can rest, cook, talk with our friends, and garden when I feel like it.” He pushes back the hair too short to tie into his braid. “I was actually going to give you a key like I do with all of the friends I’ve made, but the timing was…” His voice tapers off with a wince.
Illuga stares at him. “And you’re sure I’m not dead?”
Aether snorts and shakes his head, folding his arms as an amused smile stretches across his lips. “Definitely not dead. Columbina confirmed.”
The Moon Goddess? Illuga parts his lips to ask but thinks better of it. He downs the rest of his glass before letting his eyes close. “And why would the Moon Goddess be confirming my status as living?” he asks, voice strained.
Silence. Suspicious silence. He cracks an eye open to watch Paimon and Aether have that same silent conversation. This time, Aether looks uncomfortable if not slightly pale. Illuga wants to roll over and bury his head under a pillow.
“We didn’t actually find… you,” Aether starts, voice clipped. “Or maybe we didn’t find you.” He makes a pained noise, swiping a hand over his face. “Varka wanted us to bring Nikita some papers, and then Nikita asked us to look for you because he hadn’t seen you return from your solo route—”
“And when we went looking for you, we found Columbina on the Pillar of Embla coast with your lantern,” Paimon interjects, her eyes wide.
Aether nods and leans toward the bed. “Right. And Aedon was on Columbina’s shoulder, which meant he wasn’t with you, so we knew something had gone really wrong.”
Illuga flinches. By his ear, almost as if he’s back on the coast, he hears, The hour of the hunt has come. Die.
He swallows thickly and shakes off the sensation of fog on his skin. “Routine route. It’s usually solo or in pairs since it’s rare for any Wild Hunt to show up there now,” he explains, shoving away the image of a Hunter looming over him. “I was more than outnumbered, and a Hunter managed to pin me before I could make a retreat.”
He’ll have to actually process all of this at some point, but he can’t bring himself to do it now. Illuga’s heart already feels like it’s crawling up his throat; he doesn’t need it—or anything else—to force its way out.
Aether regards him with something all too understanding, and Illuga fights the urge to squirm under his gaze. “Columbina gave us your lantern and Aedon. Told us to keep them with us for a while in our realm—”
“And so we brought Aedon in here and let him sit on your lantern, and when we came back to check on Aedon a day later, you were laying on the bed!”
Illuga inhales so fast he chokes. “What the fuck?” he manages, rubbing his chest.
Aether blinks, then laughs. “That’s what I said, too!” He reaches for the empty glass in Illuga’s hand, and he passes it to him. Aether’s fingers tap lightly on the glass as he twists it in his grip. “Obviously we were worried, so we went back to Columbina to tell her that you’d just appeared out of thin air—”
“And Columbina said that we should just watch over you until you wake up since you were regaining energy,” Paimon says. She gasps. “Oh! And she told Aether and Paimon not to tell anyone where you were, which Paimon thought was really strange.”
Illuga has never felt so lost. “Why would she ask that of you?”
“No idea, but we did make sure Nikita knew you were safe, so the Lightkeepers aren’t out on a manhunt looking for you,” Aether tries to console. He gives Illuga’s knee a pat, and the touch makes him realize that he’s not wearing his usual knee pads.
Frowning, Illuga shifts the sheets aside so he can see his linen-covered legs. It’s a foreign fabric, too light to wear in most parts of Nod-Krai but not completely unheard of. “Did you change my clothes, or did I ‘appear’ in these?”
Aether’s cheeks bloom with pink. “I didn’t want you uncomfortable in your heavy clothes,” he says, holding up his hands, the glass poised in his lap. “We weren’t sure how long you were going to be laying here or if you had any wounds, so we needed to check.”
A mortifying thought crosses Illuga’s mind. He groans, dropping his face into his hands. “If I’ve been out that long, have I had to… have I…” With his eyes screwed tight, he makes a vague gesture with one of his hands.
“No, no. No.” Aether blanches, his face scrunching up.
Paimon makes a confused noise, but Aether quickly talks again so she can’t. “You actually haven’t had to. Which is really weird, and I don’t get it, but Columbina said you wouldn’t need to do anything but sleep, not even eat or drink.”
“Right. Right. That makes perfect sense.” Illuga lifts his head so he can clap his hands together.
Aether worries his lip and shifts his weight in his chair. His fingers start twisting the glass again, faster than before. “We’ve been checking in on you every day. Xiao may have poked his head in a time or two.” He takes a deep breath. “But Columbina said she wanted to see you when you woke up, so we can go whenever you’re ready and see what she knows.”
Illuga wants to ask who Xiao is, if only to focus on something that’s not his fucked up predicament. He refrains in favor of pushing up from the bed, Paimon moving so he can get up.
His movements don’t cause any sort of pain, and not for the first time, his brain screeches that something is wrong. He knows he died at the hands of a Hunter, remembers the agony that had been the Hunter’s axe sinking into his flesh and then his organs. Illuga shouldn’t be alive let alone perfectly healthy, and it makes his body feel heavy with anxiety.
“Let me change my clothes, and then we should go.” Illuga lets his feet settle on the ground, the chill of the tile lighting up his nerves. It’s almost welcome at this point—a shock of cold to tether his mind to the present.
Aether stands and crosses to the plain wardrobe. He sets the glass on top of it before opening one side. “Are you sure? You just woke up,” he stresses, the frown evident in his voice as he grabs Illuga’s clothes from their hangers.
It’s thoughtful of Aether to take such good care of Illuga’s belongings. He glances at his lantern, soothed some by Aedon’s glow. “Thanks for looking out for Aedon,” he says.
“It was our pleasure.” Paimon beams at him from beside the open door. “Paimon will meet you by Tubby to give you privacy.” She waves and floats down the hall.
And yet another name Illuga doesn’t recognize. He’ll have to request a tour or something later. If Aether’s friends are welcome to visit, perhaps Flins has already been here and could show him around.
Illuga’s heart stutters. Flins.
He turns on his heel so fast he nearly makes himself dizzy. “I was supposed to deliver Sir Flins’ rations to him this week,” he blurts.
With Illuga’s clothes draped across his arms, Aether walks around the bed and gently lays each article out across the foot of the mattress. “I’m sure Nikita would have had someone cover it.” He frowns and cocks his head, clearly not thinking it a big deal.
Except it is. For almost two years, Illuga has made it a point to visit Flins monthly—him, no other ratnik. He brings rations, and while he puts them away in Flins’ kitchen, he takes stock of other provisions he may need. The old lighthouse has its charms, but it’s an abysmal place to call home, and if Illuga can make it a little nicer, he will. So, he visits, then stays to fish or play cards or have Flins regale him with stories. Each time, Flins cuts himself off so that Illuga will come back to hound him about the tale.
It’s been his routine for so long. He’s never missed a single day. Sometimes, he even makes additional trips on a whim, just to make sure Flins is alive and well.
He’ll never forgive himself if Flins ends up wasting away in that lonely cemetery. Flins is his to look after, and he’ll be damned if anything, including his own death, stands in the way of that.
Illuga stiffens, surprised by how possessive that thought had been. Flins isn’t his in any sense of the word, even if he wishes differently.
“I’ll get dressed quickly,” he tells Aether. The Traveler takes the hint and ducks out, pulling the door closed behind him, leaving Illuga standing at the foot of the bed with his head hung.
***
Aether wasn’t exaggerating when he’d said he had a mansion, and he certainly wasn’t kidding about it being located within a mini realm. When he looks out the window, he expects to see a sky of some sort, maybe mountains or a shoreline. What greets him is the sheen of water as if he’s underneath it, staring up at the sun.
He gawks at the random furniture, the eclectic buildings he sees when they step outside. Tubby, as he’s introduced, nearly makes his eyes bulge. There’s flora and fauna from places he’s only ever seen in pictures, all mingling together like patchwork. And then, Aether and Paimon guide him to a teleport waypoint, and as soon as his hand brushes against it, he’s incorporeal.
It lasts all of a second, but what feels like the movement of his very atoms lurches his stomach. When he registers being on solid ground again, Illuga allows himself to suck in a deep breath and look around. His instincts scream at him again, telling him to be on guard, to run, to fight if he needs to.
Illuga steadily realizes that he’s somewhere on Hiisi Island, a stretch of Nod-Krai he’s visited only a handful of times. Beside his feet bloom blue, kuuvahki-rich flowers, glowing against the gray-blue grass. Starsilver gleams opalescent beside shallow pools. High above him, deep blue stone closes them in, and from it drapes vines curling toward the ground. It’s peaceful in a way so little of Illuga’s life has felt.
His guard drops, but not entirely. He can feel her attention on him, even if she can’t actively see him.
Illuga turns slowly, taking in the cave until his eyes find the Moon Goddess. He crosses an arm over his chest and dips his head. “Lady Moon Goddess,” he greets.
Aether appears at his side, followed by Paimon. “Her name is Columbina,” he says with a snort.
She steps off her perch, landing with ease on the ground. She strides toward him, floating across the grass until she stops in front of them. Each movement she makes is both graceful and startling otherworldly. “You’re welcome to address me however you feel comfortable, Mr. Illuga, but I do hope you’ll call me Columbina.”
“Then please call me Illuga,” he returns, lowering his hand back to his side. With her in front of him now, the voice murmuring about danger and wrongness quiets.
Columbina’s lips draw into a slight, soft smile. “I have heard much about you from your friends. Tell me, how are you feeling?”
Friends. Plural. Perhaps she means Aether and Paimon, then.
He’s never been one to beat around the bush, so he answers, “Phenomenal for a man that should be dead.”
Paimon makes a noise in the back of her throat, but Columbina herself only hums. “You’re right. You were dead when I found you, but it was not yet your time. Aedon informed me.” Only the smallest shift to her features shows something like fondness as she tilts her head toward Illuga’s lantern at his hip. “He adores you.”
Illuga feels his cheeks redden. “Oh,” he murmurs dumbly, his heart squeezing.
“I learned many things when I became the sole Moon Goddess,” she continues, still looking at him as if she’s able to see him. Her eyes are closed and covered in lace, yet he can nearly feel her gaze. “One of those things let me see your tether to the moon, and I followed it until I could wake something in you.”
“Wake something?” he hears Paimon murmur to Aether. The Traveler’s responding hum sounds just as confused as Illuga feels.
Columbina tilts her head. “Has it had any physical effects? Please indulge my lack of sight.”
Illuga frowns. “I don’t have any scars from the Hunter now, if that’s what you mean,” he says. “It’s as if I’d never been attacked in the first place.”
Aether’s hand hesitantly lands on Illuga’s shoulder. “I didn’t want to stress you out more until we could talk to Columbina, but now that we’re here, you should probably look at your reflection,” he says quietly, carefully.
His body stiffens in an instant, and that feeling of wrong, wrong, wrong hits him again full force. He steps out from under Aether’s touch and staggers on autopilot toward the closest pool of water. Illuga crouches down at the edge, pushing his fingers into his hair for some sort of grounding as he leans forward, lantern knocking against his thigh. He catches sight of his reflection, and his world tilts on its axis.