Chapter Two
Where Diluc is heading isn't that far from Dawn Winery- it's actually quite dangerously close.
The mysterious group of people, who may be the cause of the increase of abyss mages, was last seen on the cliffs that hangover near the lake the winery uses to produce their wines. All the more reason for his staff to remain indoors until this possible threat settles down. The thought of any harm falling upon them because of this unknown disturbance bothers him greatly, and he wants to avoid that at any cost.
Instead of taking the path that leads to the lake and to the base of those cliffs, or any of the well-worn paths for that matter, Diluc cuts through the forest towards the direction of the Valley of Remembrance domain. Before he reaches halfway to it though, he swiftly scales up the side of the cliffs and with a grunt, pulls himself up.
He takes no longer than an hour to reach the location. The sun has long settled by the time he arrives and past the birch trees, he can see the glowing bright lights from the winery peeking through. Diluc looks around for any sign of human activity; quietly and slowly moving past trees and sneaking past a sleeping hilichurl camp through the dark, but of course this wouldn't be easy, and he finds nothing save for the footprints of hilichurls in dried up mud, and traces of old abandoned hilichurl settlements.
Diluc decides to venture closer to the outskirts of the snow-covered mountain region as it's the most probable direction those people could have gone. The opposite way would be the direction of the winery, which would not have been a smart idea, and there hasn't been enough time yet for them to have gotten off the cliffs since he just came from there. Plus, there's the risk of getting spotted by patrolling knights if they had to cross any of the the well-worn paths.
Not close enough to feel the effects of the sheer cold from Dragonspine, but close enough to feel a slight chill in the air, Diluc takes a moment to find a place to set up camp and then he can go back to searching. Under some trees and nestled between rocks and bushes, he's carefully hidden away from any prying eyes.
He gathers some branches and places them in a pile on the ground, but doesn't light a fire yet to remain undetected. The sight of rising smoke from a fire would easily reveal his location. He doesn't really need the heat source anyway, and despite the eminently low temperature, Diluc is a pyro user and he can easily warm himself up if needed. But it doesn't hurt to prepare for one now in case he wants to cook something and needs it later.
He didn't bring anything with him, not even food. He didn't want anything heavy weighing him down that might interfere with his movements in case he has to fight at a moment's notice. When he feels the urge of hunger, he can search for and snack on sunsettias or apples, and if he wants some protein, he can hunt a boar and put a use to the pile of branches.
Just as he drops the last branch onto the pile and turns to leave his camp to return to his task of locating those people, he tenses at the sound of soft rustling from behind him.
Summoning his claymore in one hand, Diluc swivels back sharply towards the direction of the sound. How did someone find him so quickly?
His eyes narrow. It's coming from the bushes directly in front of him.
Diluc waits, adjusting his grip on the handle of his sword, until the rustling stops altogether, and without hesitation, calls out into the open darkness.
"Come out." He demanded. "Or do you want me to come to you instead?"
There's a brief lapse of tensed silence and Diluc is about to take a step forward to confront whoever dared to try and sneak up on him, until he hears the sound of more rustling.
Unhurriedly, a young man steps out of the bushes, brushing stray leaves off his arm.
He stops a few distances away from Diluc.
The man eyes the weapon Diluc's holding with a nonchalant look before cocking an eyebrow and smirking at the disgruntled red-haired man. "Oh my, if it isn't the Darknight Hero. That's not a nice way of greeting a dear citizen of Mond, is it?"
Diluc blinks at the sight of Kaeya. He almost lets out a small breath of relief but stops himself. He's slightly irritated at the fact that he's relieved it was Kaeya and not anyone else. It bothers him that Kaeya was able to sneak up so close to him like that. And of course, it just had to be him out of all the knights sent to investigate this situation.
He waves away his sword and crosses his arms over his chest. Diluc fights against the urge to roll his eyes at the absurd hero name and instead chooses to ignore it.
"Hmph. How did you find me?"
"I just so happen to be searching for a place to rest later. How surprising, we thought the same thing." Kaeya peers around Diluc's makeshift space before settling his eye back on Diluc. "This indeed looks like a comfortable spot. I take it, you're here for the same reason as me?"
"Why else would I be here?" Diluc gives him a deadpan look. "The knights are inefficient and I place no trust on you bunch in handling this situation alone."
Kaeya chuckles. "Be as it may seem, with the Darknight Hero investigating this matter as well, I'm sure we can be of help to you."
"No thanks, I prefer to work alone. There's probably not much information that you knights have gathered anyway." Diluc turns away to cut this conversation short. He doesn't really have the patience to talk to him right now. "Let's go our separate ways, Kaeya."
"Ah come on, wouldn't it be faster if we worked together? After all, we both have the same best interest in our beloved city." Kaeya closes his eye, and rubs his chin with slim fingers, striking a deliberately thoughtful pose. "And even if it's true that we don't have much on them, I do have other means to get information. But alas, there's barely anything that I've heard...and I can assume it most likely means that you don't either if you're here to investigate."
Reluctantly, Diluc can't deny it. It's true that he doesn't have much intel. And it would indeed be faster if they did. The faster this situation is resolved, the faster everything goes back to normal. Although they are most often seen interacting with each other in Angel's Share nowadays— all they seem to do is bicker and insult each other—and even though it's been awhile, they have occasionally worked together on troubling matters similar to this case since he returned.
Even after all those years...they still work efficiently together.
With a grunt, Diluc turns back to face Kaeya again. "Fine. I assume you've already done your fair share of searching, but I'm planning to look around more. We'll cover more ground if we split up. I've already searched the cliffs nearby, so I'm heading closer to Dragonspine."
"Alright then." Kaeya responds. "I'll head closer to the border of Liyue. We can meet here later before the sun rises. Let each other know what we've found."
Diluc nods in agreement. "That settles it." He is about to leave when Kaeya calls out again.
"And Diluc?"
Diluc pauses in his steps. He doesn't turn around, waiting for Kaeya to finish what he wants to say.
"It's a great pleasure to be working with you again."
There's a sense of nostalgia in that sentence but Diluc doesn't comment on it. He simply walks away, leaving Kaeya behind within his temporary camp.
Diluc scans the area as he moves quietly, not going anywhere that has no trees to take cover from nor any closer to the icy river. He can see in the distance, across the water, the lit campfires of fatui skirmishers. But other than those fatui, there's nothing he sees that tells him of where the group of hooded figures he's searching for are.
Searching around like this in a somewhat forested area...it takes him back to a simpler time when Kaeya and he were children. And this is where nostalgia hits him.
They loved to explore the forests surrounding the manor, and as quietly as possible, used to try to sneak up on unsuspecting boars, weasels, and other forms of wildlife, to then scare them. It's not so different to how the Traveler likes to scare away Timmie's pigeons every time they cross the bridge. Diluc feels a little shameful now, but he can't deny the fun Kaeya and him had.
As children, they sometimes splitted up to find animals, and amusingly, they often would reach the same area to scare the same targeted poor animal. Admittedly, Kaeya was the better one at stealth. Too many times, Diluc would accidentally step on a branch or the crunching of leaves would give his hiding spot away, and the animal they were trying to sneak up on would run away, too far for them to call it a successful scare. Kaeya would giggle at him, but then he would give Diluc advice to improve for next time. Diluc's better now of course, but from what had happened earlier, Kaeya's still better at it than he is.
An hour or two passes, finding nothing interesting. He even crosses the icy river, further into Dragonspine, and backtracks a bit towards the direction of his temporary camp, but remains on the outer edges. He can feel the effects of sheer cold now, but there's enough unattended sources of heat like torches that he can either light up with pyro or ruin braizers that he can turn on.
Something catches his eye. Footprints in the snow.
Diluc crouches and examines them, noting that it was of two people and although both of them are slightly faded from the inflation of falling snow, they're pretty recent. Both the pair of footprints are of similar size as his so he knows they were both male. It can't be the fatui because he's far enough from any of their camps.
He's about to stand up to follow the trail when a tug on his elbow drags him down behind some rocks nearby.
He lands on his rear, and almost lets out a loud curse but a hand covers his mouth to stop him. His eyes widen, his sword halfway through materializing in his hand, when he turns his head and meets the blue diamond-shaped eye of Kaeya's.
Diluc pushes Kaeya's hand away from his mouth and shoots him a harsh glare.
"What-"
Kaeya immediately shushes him quietly and shakes his head with a serious look in his eye. Now's not the time. Kaeya signals to a direction with a tilt of his head.
So many questions run through Diluc's mind. Why is Kaeya here? How did he get here so quickly? And why did Kaeya pull him like that? He wants to punch him. This is the second time today that he's startled him and—
Oh.
Diluc immediately understands the urgency from Kaeya when he peeks out from their hiding spot. There's five abyss mages up ahead surrounding a campfire, close enough that Kaeya and Diluc can feel the warmth from it and not have to worry about the sheer cold. Two Cryo, one Hydro, and two Pryo.
The most Diluc has seen at the same time is three mages, but five? Even with the increased sightings of them, the most were still only up to three at a time.
This is unusual.
"We should wait. Maybe they'll lead us somewhere of importance." Kaeya whispers to him.
"And how long have you been sitting here?" Diluc quietly asks.
"...a bit."
"Hmph. They're not going to move anytime soon. We should simply beat them and move on." Diluc's eyes widens for a second before narrowing his eyes at the blue-haired man, coming to a realization. One of the pairs of footprints that he was going to follow was Kaeya's. "I know you were following someone. We can still catch up to them."
"But this is an unusual occurrence, Diluc." Kaeya argues. "They could discuss their schemes without us engaging. And even if we catch up to the person I was tailing, I highly doubt they'd give up any information so easily. We can eavesdrop on the mages here."
"And have us wait until when? We know they merely do the biddings of higher authoritative levels in the Abyss Order. They practically don't know anything of importance, save for minor details."
As they argue, they both slowly forgo their quiet tones and reach to their normal volumes of speaking, forgetting the need of whispering to not alert the mages.
"They still might be informative enough."
"They may not have any information that we need, Kaeya. We should just fight them now."
"Eavesdropping on them can bring light to some things that might not be revealed otherwise-"
Suddenly, they hear a chorus of surprised cries from the other side of their hiding spot, and instantly their conversation ceases.
They've captured the attention of the abyss mages.
Surrounding the campfire, the mages spring out of their leisure positions, activating a shield around them.
"Ah, we were too loud. I guess we're going with your plan after all." Kaeya laughs, amused at the turn of events.
Diluc grunts in response.
With a nod, Diluc and Kaeya simultaneously summon their weapons and jump out of their hiding spot.
No words are needed.
Diluc runs ahead of Kaeya and dodging their projectiles, bypasses the mages to get to the other side of them, the cryo mages conveniently the closest to him. Confused and their attention now on him, all the mages turn around to face Diluc, leaving their backs unguarded.
After all, they aren't the most intelligent creatures out there.
Kaeya swiftly moves behind the hydro abyss mage and unleashes a blast of his Frostgnaw, the ice instantly freezing the mage in place. The remaining mages' attention now split, Diluc executes several slashes with his claymore using Searing Onslaught, the pyro damage successfully destroying one of the cryo mages' shields and leaving the other one with a silver of its shield intact.
Diluc abruptly kicks the dazed one so that it smacks against the shield of the frozen hydro mage as the other one teleports a small distance away. Diluc dodges another of its projectiles before rushing up to it and pushing against its shield to move it closer to the other mages.
At the same time, Kaeya's dodging his own share of projectiles and performing period bursts of cryo at the pyro mages while leading them to where he wants them to be, As planned, the pyro mages teleport next to the hydro mage, and Kaeya gives another Frostgnaw that breaks both of their shields and refreezes the hydro mage who had just thawed, just as Diluc strikes the last cryo abyss mage, shattering its shield into pieces.
Now all bunched together in a pile, Kaeya performs a last Frostgnaw that breaks the remaining hydro mage's shield, and Diluc deals several swift blows to each of the abyss mages, knocking them out.
Neither of them are out of breath. Kaeya digs his sword into the snow, leaning on it in a relaxed manner. "Haha. That was quite thrilling, wouldn't you say?"
"Hm." It was…fun, but Diluc won't reveal that thought out loud. Instead he vanishes his sword, before gesturing to the next task at hand. "Let's tie them up before we go."
Just as they finish tying the mages around a tree in a secure knot, an unfamiliar voice rings out in the otherwise quiet night.
"Prince...Kaeya?"
AN:
Hello! First off, I want to apologize for the late upload! (I also upload this story on ao3, and forgot to upload here ahh). I had some things to take care of and then the update happened and oml, that was a whirlwind of emotions, but it was so much fun and I loved the summer event.
The argument they had about the abyss mages was inspired by the one they had on the island in-game lmao, and that's my first time writing action ahhh
Also thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter ^^