"You're an adeptus? No way!" A man eagerly leaned across the table. "Maybe you can lift the curse on Morepesok!"
"You idiot, what's the point in asking him? There's nothing left of that place anyway." Another scoffed from his seat, arms laid across his chest.
"Right, nothing but the monster." The first man rolled his eyes. "But I guess we don't care about that."
"It's kept to itself for eight years, Maxim. I highly doubt it would come after us now."
"Still, do you like the idea of something so dark living so close to our village?"
"Gentlemen, please."
Both men quieted as the occupant of the third seat spoke. Zhongli patiently took a sip out of his wine glass. Taverns seemed to always turn up their fair share of gossip and rumors, but it all came at the expense of the drinkers becoming a bit rowdier than necessary sometimes.
"Morepesok is the abandoned fishing village not too far west from here, correct?" Zhongli asked. Both men nodded, and Zhongli hummed in thought. "I see. Why don't you tell me more about this curse?"
The village was small and withered. Each house looked as if on its last legs, groaning and swaying in the storm. It was bitterly cold—really, he shouldn't be having to deal with this kind of temperature in the middle of spring. Truly the most inconvenient kind of curse. But what reason would this ghost town have to be cursed? The men at the bar had drawn a blank at that.
Frowning, Zhongli squinted and tucked his face into the scarf around his neck as the harsh winds slashed at his exposed skin, trying not to feel too disgruntled. He would just have to push through it. He came here to investigate; a blizzard wasn't worth worrying about too much. Not for someone like Zhongli, at least.
"Nine years ago, the inhabitants of Morepesok all fled. The village had become unlivable: a fierce blizzard filled the town day and night, freezing their food and sapping their warmth. But as they began to settle into their new homes and talk about what they'd seen, they described the crop failure as the least of their worries, for there was something far more evil afoot…"
A monster. How curious. Zhongli had fought more than his fair share, but the description the taverngoers had given sounded different than almost anything he knew.
"It's got to be at least twelve feet tall, not counting the fact that it floats!"
"It has what looks like the body of a human, but trust me, it's anything but."
Giant red horns. A cape that looked like a constellation had been woven into its fabric. Thick armor of material blacker than night itself. A singular glassy eye set into the center of a face that was, well… faceless.
Zhongli had no idea how much of that was fiction, but it at least gave him an idea of what to look for. He was pretty sure he'd know a vile monster when he saw one anyway.
"If you truly want to get yourself caught up in this," the man at the tavern had said, "go to the old watchtower by the coast. It's said that was where the monster was first spotted. Maybe you'll find something there."
The docks were as cold and eerie as the rest of the village. Boats that had not sailed in nearly a decade lay with their hulls encased in ice—Zhongli's eyes widened as he laid eyes on the ocean, which had frozen over up until a few hundred feet out to sea. There was a pier dusted with snow which, under normal circumstances, must have been a lovely place to sit and watch the sea.
Zhongli's eyes traced the beach. At some point it faded away and sloped up into a steep cliff, on which sat the proud watchtower. Tall and made of grey stone, it had preserved itself much better against the nine years of blizzards and strong winds than the houses had. What was more, all the open windows had been securely boarded up so that the blizzard could not reach inside. Interesting. Had that been accomplished by Morepesok's citizens before they left, or was it the work of a more…recent resident?
There were no footprints in the snow near the watchtower, but then again, the monster was said to float. It was time to find out if it really resided in this place, Zhongli supposed. The door let out a long, loud creak that pierced the air when he opened it. Zhongli cringed a little bit internally.
That most certainly alerted every living thing inside this tower that I'm here. That was fine. The element of surprise was a luxury, but Zhongli was more than capable of defending himself without it. He stepped inside.
Zhongli strained his neck to look up and counted at least five stories, all connected by a spiraling staircase in the center. There didn't seem to be much on the ground floor save for a couple of tables. There was a hearth with two armchairs sitting beside it. Upon further inspection, the charcoal in the fireplace looked recent.
So this creature had intelligence enough to make a fire and presumably board up the windows. Even more interestingly, it seemed to have the incentive to do so—the extreme cold bothered it just as it would a human. The blizzard and the monster were two parts of the same curse, but the monster was unfit to survive in it. How curious. Zhongli shivered at a draft of cold air and wrapped his scarf tighter around himself. It was so quiet in here. He could almost hear his own thoughts.
Zhongli was not scared of old towers, and he was not scared of monsters. But there was a heaviness about this place. It was gloom and hatred and hurt. The space was too barren, the staircase too narrow. The chairs by the fireplace were lonely. Snowmelt dripped through cracks in the stone with a steady drip, drip, drip. But for all the emptiness, the air was thick in the way it settled, weighted, in Zhongli's lungs. It felt moist and damp and rested in his mouth and on his tongue. It felt sluggish, like tar. It made him feel dizzy when he breathed in.
He blinked away the brief blur in his vision, realizing the danger. Something is not right here. The energy is unwell. There was something there that should not be.
A prickle on the back of his neck. A shudder of unsettlement down his spine. It's here. It's watching me.
No, Zhongli was not scared of monsters. But Abyssal beings—that's what this was, it must be; he recognized the feeling—and Celestial ones did not mix. Its energy was a poison to Zhongli, and a potent one at that. He needed to find it before it could sink its fangs deeper. Rather, he needed it to come out—he could not track a predator on its own turf.
A spear materialized in his ready grasp. "Show yourself," he commanded.
He didn't expect the creature to actually oblige.
It was large. Maybe not quite twelve feet, but at least eight or nine, with broad shoulders and a hulking posture that blocked out what washed-out light filtered into the space, and it cast a domineering shadow over Zhongli when it floated down from an upper level, descending upon him like an angel of death. An ethereal cape spread out behind it like a galaxy of shooting stars blocking the light of the sun. Twin, twisting spires of metal formed the 'horns' rising out of its solid red mask. And, in the center, that single eye, cloudy and empty and not even an eye at all. The creature they called the Bane of Morepesok.
Zhongli braced himself, shuddering slightly under the weight of its energy. This was going to be a tough fight.
The creature held itself lightly, for sure—as a matter of fact, it was floating, just as the men had said. It cocked its head: a wolf presented with a bone.
Zhongli could play that game. So he walked.
Slowly at first, backwards on his tiptoes. A tease. A taunt.
It watched.
He speedwalked. It tensed. The air grew thicker; Zhongli grew dizzier.
Zhongli turned and ran, and right on time, it took the bait and was upon him.
Almost instantly, giant hands seized his waist; claws of cold steel wrapped his frame; vertigo slammed his stomach without warning. Then he went up, then he went down hard—that was the hard crack of stone, the burst of pain down his spine. The sound of heavy breaths too close to his face and the clatter of his spear on the floor. The talons grabbed his face, his cheeks. Zhongli squirmed. It was a bit of a shock if he was being honest—he hadn't expected the thing to be so quick, what with its massive size.
The head had cocked again. Considering. Studying him? Zhongli had no idea if this creature possessed such sentience. Whatever the case, it was strong.
It growled low in its chest. "Is running the best you've got?"
Zhongli grimaced, his back throbbing. "So you can speak," he managed through the creature's grip on his face.
The use of language was not all that uncommon in Abyssal monsters. More often than not, their mages spoke Teyvat's common tongue, their own native language, and even the language of the hilichurls. The strange thing, though, was that this monster had spoken to him in perfect Snezhnayan.
Before Zhongli had time to properly question this, it released him. It floated backwards, a challenge clear in its open arms. "Let's fight," it suggested.
Zhongli quirked an eyebrow, getting to his feet swiftly. "You would relinquish your advantage so easily?"
There was a snort, its timbre so low it was hard to tell if it sounded amused or simply gruff and annoyed. "Questions! Are you going to come at me or not?"
Zhongli considered the creature carefully as he assumed a fighting stance, polearm poised to defend. What an odd personality for such a creature. What purpose could it possibly have for inviting him to a duel?
Well. It was a predator after all, he supposed. Cats in particular were known for cruelly toying with their prey, taking pleasure in the ways they writhed and squirmed before putting them down altogether.
It could also just be bored. Zhongli supposed nine years of solitude would do that even to a monster.
Either way, he didn't have much of a choice but to indulge this foe, so he smoothed his hair away from his face and readied himself. The giddiness radiating from the monster was almost tangible.
"You're powerful, aren't you?" the thing crooned. "I can tell."
"And yet you wish for a proper battle."
"What can I say? I like the challenge," the creature said easily, leaving Zhongli to briefly ponder whether Abyssal monsters could be masochists.
"Then do your worst," Zhongli said. "I will not be taken by surprise a second time."
A crackling sound came from the monster, and a vicious-looking weapon made of pure electro materialized in one of its massive hands. "I'll hold you to that.
"Now," it crowed, "come at me!"
Despite its words, the monster was the first to strike, arriving in front of Zhongli in a flash and swinging its polearm. Zhongli ducked easily, taking an experimental slash at its calves, one of the places where its armor looked to be weakest. His spear cut through, but not far enough to slice skin. He hopped out of range before the monster could hit him, then darted back in to take a jab at his opponent's waist, but it blocked him easily. The ends of sharp, steel-tipped gloves swiped at his face. Zhongli dodged again.
Zhongli's fighting technique usually wasn't so evasive, but due to the smaller size of his current form, the brute strength of this creature could prove to be a major problem, and it wasn't like he had the time for an impromptu transformation. Decisively, he called upon the powerful elemental energy inside himself, and it only took the blink of an eye for a sturdy shield to appear around him, swirling with pure geo.
The creature paused. Without a face to reference, it was impossible to tell whether it was curious or surprised. "Making this difficult, are we? Ah, that's okay. I'm sure I'll find a way to break through." The dark certainty in its voice unsettled Zhongli. Most of his opponents' arrogance proved to be baseless, but there was substantial power residing in this one.
The monster let its polearm fizzle into energy, then re-crafted it into a set of dual blades, which it gripped eagerly and slashed messily once across the expanse of Zhongli's shield.
Zhongli felt nothing, but his eyes were drawn to a coalescence of electro energy gathering in the space just below his chest. He frowned. That shouldn't be possible. His geo shield blocked other elemental energy from getting in.
The ball of energy began to take shape: the symbol of a pair of blades crossed over each other that looked suspiciously similar to the ones the monster wielded. He narrowed his eyes. "What is this?"
The creature seemed exceedingly glad he'd asked. "You really wanna know?" It summoned a bow and nocked an arrow, where electro gathered on the head. The creature lazily aimed it at Zhongli and fired.
The arrow bounced off the shield harmlessly, but the electro sigil on Zhongli's torso pulsed, and he felt a static in the air as a set of invisible additional attacks battered against his shield.
"Neat, huh?" the monster said proudly. "I call it Riptide." It seemed genuinely excited to show it off.
A little baffled as to why this thing was seeking his approval, Zhongli said, "Not a terribly complicated technique, but a valuable and deadly trick if used correctly. However, I find it strange to name an electro-based attack on riptides."
"Oh, but that's where you're wrong!" the creature exclaimed. And it flicked, almost playfully, a splash of water at Zhongli's shield. The action was so laughable that Zhongli nearly cracked a smile.
Wait, a splash of…hydro?
Zhongli's guard heightened. This situation was becoming increasingly strange. Here was a monster who'd appeared because of a curse, but seemed to have no mal intent rather than wanting a fun spar. Here was an Abyssal creature that spoke fluent Snezhnayan, lived in a tower alone with seemingly no agenda, and wielded two of the elements simultaneously. It was all a little bit too absurd, and it gave Zhongli a bad feeling. Still, if he was being honest, the creature's antics were actually rather amusing.
Or, maybe they would be if its tar-like stench wasn't clogging his throat.
It was time to start taking things seriously. This thing was dangerous. In a burst of speed, Zhongli lunged forward and thrust the butt of his spear into its chest. It stumbled back with a startled yelp—or grunt; its voice was too deep for the word yelp to feel appropriate—and Zhongli took the opening to seize its hands and yank them behind its back. With a thrust of his hand, Zhongli created the strongest, heaviest geo handcuffs he could muster and clamped them around the monster's wrists. He did the same for its feet, the weight counteracting its ability to float so that gravity overtook it and brought it to the ground.
"Woah, hey, you actually fought back!" The creature seemed surprised, but unworried at its current predicament. "You didn't even hit me properly, though," it added wistfully.
"You…wish to receive wounds in a battle?" Zhongli frowned.
"Nah, nah, it's not that," the monster said. "Although it's true I don't mind a good battle scar. It just doesn't feel as thrilling when there's not a threat of injury, you know?"
Zhongli felt the urge to roll his eyes—a habit of modern mortals that he'd happened to pick up in his time among them—but refrained. "No, I cannot say I do know." Very few people had the ability, and even fewer the desire, to cause him serious injury.
"Hmm, well, you're missing out," the creature informed him. "It's the adrenaline rush, I think."
"Your kind are capable of experiencing an adrenaline rush?"
"Of course I'm capable of experiencing an adrenaline rush!"
Zhongli cleared his throat. "Either way, it is unimportant. There is a more important task at hand for me currently, and that is deciding what to do with you."
"Are you sure about that?"
Crack!
Zhongli gaped. The monster had broken out of the cuffs on its hands with raw strength, the geo constructs crumbling to the floor, and quickly landed a solid punch on the weights on his feet so that they would crumble too. It floated back up into the air.
That…was quite impressive. Also terrifying. This thing, however unthinkable the notion might be, just might be a match for him.
"Your strength…is commendable," Zhongli said in a half-daze.
"I appreciate that!"
Zhongli pinched his forehead. Clearly, this was getting him nowhere. He'd originally thought that killing the monster was the best way to go about his task, but this strange being seemed quite friendly. Maybe it would have some information for him.
"Why don't we call a truce?" Zhongli asked.
It sounded like the creature would have been grinning if it had a mouth to show. "If the one who initiates calls for a draw, it just means they're losing."
Zhongli scowled.
"I'm just kidding!" It said, voice barely containing laughter. "Alright, alright, have it your way. And make yourself at home! I'll see if I can get a fire going." It drifted over to the hearth cheerfully, leaving Zhongli to wonder just what he had gotten himself into. Why, exactly, was it showing him hospitality when the sweat of battle had not yet dried from their foreheads?
The creature fumbled around in the fireplace, Zhongli watching from a distance. "You are quite strange," he told it. "Do you have a name?"
"Call me Childe," it said offhandedly, struggling to control a small pair of flint stones in its large hands. A spark appeared from them and caught on the wood. "Ah! There we go." It turned back around to Zhongli. "And yourself?" It—or, perhaps, he would be more fitting; he had a name, after all—sank down into one of the armchairs, despite not really fitting, and gestured to the other one. Cautiously, Zhongli accepted his offer and sat down.
"You may call me Zhongli," he said. "Truth be told, when I came here looking for the Bane of Morepesok, I did not expect something fully sentient. The intelligence of an Abyss Mage, at most." He tilted his head. "But you're smarter than that, aren't you?"
Childe snorted. "I would like to think so." His tone turned wary. "Why were you looking for me? To kill me, I suppose?"
Zhongli made a noncommittal noise. "To investigate the curse on this town and try to find a way to break it."
"Good luck," Childe said dryly. "They tried when the blizzard first came. They've tried a couple times since then. I've tried." He cut himself off abruptly, as if he'd said too much. "Anyway, it's been nine years. If someone was going to break it, I think it would have happened by now." His voice was grave.
Wait, what?
Childe had tried to break the curse? That had to be a lie. If there was no curse on Morepesok, there was no Bane of Morepesok. So, surely, if the curse was broken, the monster was eliminated. Zhongli narrowed his eyes.
"Still, I think I'll try my hand at it," he said.
Childe shrugged. "Waste of your time, but good luck, I guess." He perked up a little. "Hey, if you're going to be doing that, does that mean you'll be staying in Morepesok for the time being?"
Zhongli glanced blearily towards the door, remembering the howling winds and the fragile houses. "I suppose I am," he said, resigning himself to constant cold.
"Can we spar again sometime, then?" Childe said eagerly.
What? Zhongli raised an eyebrow. Childe seemed to be under the impression that once the fight in which you tried to kill each other was over, you became friends and sparring buddies afterward. Well, he couldn't exactly blame the creature—his mind operated under the logic of the Abyss, after all.
"I'm afraid I must focus on my work," Zhongli said.
"Oh, come on!" Childe pleaded. "I'll even let you stay in the tower with me! It's a lot warmer in here than any of those houses." He waited expectantly.
Zhongli sighed, because that was very true, but Childe was far from his ideal roommate, if his constant noisiness was anything to go by.
But, still, it was a far more appealing option than holing up in one of the abandoned houses. What was more, this way he could keep a closer watch on Childe in case the monster got up to no good. Sparring with him every once in a while in exchange couldn't hurt. If Childe tried anything funny, Zhongli could deal with it.
"We are agreed. I accept your exchange," Zhongli said.
"Whoo!" Childe pumped his fist.
He really did act like a young, rambunctious human. Zhongli had never seen anything like him, to be quite frank, and he was torn between feeling oddly amused and feeling suspicious. And now he was going to live with him inside of a watchtower for who knows how long to find out a way to break a curse that, despite having presumably spawned from, Childe wished to get rid of too.
Zhongli felt he had a lot to learn about Childe and the history of this town, and he had somewhat of an inkling that it was not all going to be pretty. Either way, this was going to be rather interesting.