It kept happening. It kept happening but it was to be expected because of the Abyss – the Abyss had an unlikely connection to a lot of people.

While Venti was nowhere to be seen anymore by the time the group closed up, someone else, someone familiar, was standing in front of the domain's entrance, hands on hips, back turned on them. Like anyone else, he wasn't supposed to be here either.

"Why are you here?", Aether blurted out, less annoyed than he might've sounded.

"Why, hello there! Fancy running into you at a place like this, Traveller." Kaeya turned around halfway to face them, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. His gaze lingered on the Fatui Harbinger for a moment longer before snapping back to Aether, but nothing of his body language gave him away. "Shouldn't come as a surprise when even Mondstadt's bard just dashed past me, right? It feels rude that he hasn't even stopped to say hi." Kaeya lifted his hands into a shrug. "I thought being drinking buddies counted something. Guess not."

"We must follow him!" Aether moved forward but Kaeya lifted an arm to block him off: "Woah, easy! It's dangerous to storm into enemy territory blindly. Wouldn't want to repeat a certain hothead's mistakes, now would we?" His eyes became crescent but there was a slight warning in his words that contradicted his facial expression.

"Hothead?" Aether's face became complicated when he tried to make sense of Kaeya's words other than his premonition that he knew who Kaeya was talking about. But next, Childe stepped close behind him, threateningly smiling at Kaeya, diverting his attention onto himself with just this step. The air immediately felt several degrees colder.

"Comrade", Childe said, voice still friendly when his face was not, "you heard him. You're in the way."

"It's unwise to seek the Abyss' company voluntarily. This part especially feels unstable. You should know that, Fatui."

"Then stay out of it if you can't handle the cold."

"Guys!" Paimon made a motion to fly between them but sensing the dangerous tension rethought her decision and backed off to Aether's other side, anxiously watching them from behind his shoulder. "Traveller, what should we do?"

"I don't have the time for this! You either follow or stay back!" Aether pushed past Kaeya's arm, prompting the Cavalry Captain to break eye contact with Childe, and ran into the domain's entrance. Paimon flew after him quickly, turned around mid-air to throw back a look at the other two, and then followed.

-x-


-x-

The pungent smell of blood permeated the air, but it wasn't easy to tell whom it belonged to. During this fight, Diluc had received a couple of injuries, too many to count. He could feel the pain through his coat where Abyss mages and the Abyss Lectors' lightnings had cut his skin, stinging because of the cold air and the ice particles trying to freeze him to place.

He moved coated in his own fire, painting the ground and himself with the blood of his enemies as well, his claymore always hitting its aim when he swung it. And yet, the enemy never seemed less, and more Abyss mages poured into the cave the more Diluc killed, their number sheer endless. Diluc's stamina wasn't.

Despite all this dodging, despite all the hard training to keep him in top condition, some icicles managed to penetrate his flames and get to him and soon enough, water bubbles didn't completely evaporate and froze on his limbs, slowing him down for milliseconds before he managed to melt them again. Seemingly just milliseconds, but precious moments and attention he couldn't allow himself to divert to – and so, Diluc didn't notice how slowly but steadily, he was pushed against a corner; or rather: the statue of the Seven that Mondstadt had once lost and now emitted strange corrupted light.

Diluc's heel bumped against something, he lost his footing and found himself falling backwards onto a flight of stairs leading to that exact statue, hitting the back of his head hard so that he saw stars for a moment. A group of Cryo slimes was above him immediately and Diluc barely managed to fend them off with a swing of his claymore, struggling to get up again. He may have stormed into this domain blindly because of his informants but he hadn't come here to die. Once maybe, he had been ready to cast away his life, but nowadays, he didn't seek the danger and thrill of a dance with death.

Also, he still had a mission to fulfill. Not only was this place swarmed with creatures and sounds of the Abyss toying with his mind, but clear information had indicated that the Fatui were here too, and whatever their schemes, the Harbinger in question had been in recent contact with Mondstadt's Honorary Knight - so who knew the truth behind this matter?

Through the fall and the bone-deep exhaustion, Diluc's constant Pyro shield had died away completely. When he tried to get up, his eyes went black as his knees gave in under his own weight, so Diluc didn't notice the bundle of icicles coming his way to freeze him into an ice sculpture. He didn't hear the Cryo Abyss Mages' cackling laughter either. But he did hear the shout.

"Light's out!"

With this shout, an enormous ice lance dropped out of thin air right in front of Diluc's feet, missing him by centimeters, and rammed into the ground, the ice manifested from the cold surroundings in here. Accompanied by an enormous wave of cold through the ground that almost gave Diluc brain freeze, someone stepped into his peripheral vision and a gloved hand with silver claw rings stretched out to help him get up.

"Let's go, Diluc. Get a grip." Rosaria pulled him onto his feet roughly, holding onto his hand as they competed with their gazes – or rather, Rosaria stared up to Diluc, attentively looking for something in his eyes, while he was shaking off the ringing in his head and the darkness from his eyes. He blinked, rammed his claymore's end against the ground to support himself and quickly grasped the situation. Rosaria's elemental burst wouldn't hold forever.

"Take down the Lectors?" He wasn't sure that his strength would be enough to melt down their shields as well.

"Obviously." Rosaria let go of his hand, stepped back, and twirled her spear around, still as serious as ever. But no matter what one might want to say about her and her attitude, Rosaria's agility and battle overview in the following fight was worth more than gold once the two left their cover behind in opposite directions, and they quickly diminished the numbers of enemies.

That was, abyssal enemies, of the group that had stayed behind.

Just when Rosaria pierced the last Lector into dust by applying Cryo to their Electro shield until it exploded, the handful of remaining Abyss mages suddenly fell back, leaving Rosaria and Diluc behind in high alert. Looking around for dangers, the two came to stand back to back, knees bent, weapons raised, senses sharpened. What had just happened and more importantly, why?

It would be wrong to say that the silence was deafening because the Abyss was never silent - but listening too intently to the Abyss' screams, shouts, pleas and what was in its depths would make anyone mad.

"Do you hear that?" Diluc turned his head, trying to make sense of what he was hearing other than the screeches and pleading voices to end it, filling attentive listeners like him with despair. Diluc thought he could make out this other sound, like a scratching against a wall, but nagging doubts also got hold of him - could he be mistaken or was there nobody else in this domain but them? Where was the Fatui Harbinger?

"Battle noises." Rosaria's words cut through the Abyss' illusion. She straightened up, pointing the end of her polearm to where Diluc was looking, adjusting his attention. "Pretty sure it must be Kaeya and the others."

"Kaeya?" Diluc made his claymore disappear and instinctively crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Why should he be here?"

"Says you." Rosaria crossed the cave, her heels making clicking sounds in the surreality, and she checked over the frozen solid stone by putting a hand against it, sending a shiver from her own Vision over the wall, reflecting its natural shine like a wave. "If not for him, I wouldn't be here either. Who knows how you would've ended up then." She pointed at the wall. "Can you send your burst against this? I feel like this part could break if you apply enough force."

When there was no answer, Rosaria turned her head to look over her shoulder and saw that Diluc's attention was focused elsewhere, his brows furrowed in concentration. She wanted to tell him that he should snap out of the Abyss' control but since she fell silent, she could now hear it too – the scratching against the wall that Diluc had mentioned before grew louder on the opposite side of the cave. Something, or someone, was scratching against the stone. Could this be another creature of the Abyss?

Suddenly, the wall in question got cracks and something broke free from its prison with a snarl, landing on all four together with an avalanche of stones that had held it closed in. The room's lighting around it seemed to drown away into the aura of darkness surrounding the crouching figure, and when it lifted its head, there were two scorching green flames instead of eyes, giving the someone a really demonic look.

Just by looking at it, Diluc shivered with a cold that didn't come from the Abyss (that this was no Abyss' creature was obvious), and he felt a part of himself dragged away to this demon in a manner that even the Abyss couldn't enforce with such intensity. This ... thing ... could be deadly by just existing.

"What is that!" Both Rosaria and Diluc evaded the demon's straight way of attacking in a singular breath – its path forward as quick and straight as a bolt released from a crossbow – and only felt it snap close past them by both its enormous force of attraction and the violent gust of Anemo before it broke through the other wall effortlessly. Rosaria and Diluc followed suit and through the dust in the air saw the other battlefield that Rosaria had been able to hear before: Kaeya, the Fatui Harbinger, Aether, Paimon, the bard, having an Abyss Herald surrounded and almost defeated, and the demon who had broken through the wall, standing in front of them, the black flames lashing out everywhere.

They stared at each other, screams and growls and pleas in the air.

"Xiao!", a shocked shout broke through the silent stalemate. Venti took a couple of quick steps forward, but Aether's arm shot up and held him back.

"Wait! Something's not right."

"Xiao?" Venti clung to Aether's shoulder, eyes wide.

"HEY! HOLD IT!" At the same time, Childe noticed that the Abyss Herald had taken advantage of the situation and slipped away into a self-created portal, but even his reaction was too slow and instead of being able to land the finishing blow, he was only able to strike air. His Hydro blades broke into ice when he let them fall, frustrated. "Dammit!"

Not that Xiao cared for any of it. With his inhuman speed, he shot forward again, aiming his spear at Aether and Venti through his clouded sight, but Childe had already manifested another pair of blades and lashed out at the attacker more because of his own quick reaction and the feeling of pure blood lust rather than conscious realisation. Sometimes, his body still remembered survival better than his mind did because if there was something in the Abyss that one couldn't trust, then it was your own mind.

"No! Don't hurt him!" Metal hit against water blades, got deflected and screeched over the ground to leave an ugly gash across stone but the next hit followed suit with the spear's shaft and all that Aether could do at this moment was hoicking his sword to protect his waist from getting some ribs broken. Venti immediately stretched out an arm past Aether's raised arm and sent a strong gust of Anemo against Xiao that pressed him to his knees but this wouldn't be Xiao if he couldn't use his spear to gracefully lift himself out of the way with a loop on the spear's tip. He landed lightly on his feet and followed up with another set of attacks –

"Xiao, it's us!" Aether met the spear's tip with Geo and was backed up by Venti, both still close to each other because Xiao didn't leave them an opportunity to collect themselves. And Venti only shot balls of concentrated Anemo to cover Aether's weakspots, obviously unable to take his bow and shoot. "Xiao!"

Childe had been jumping up and down in anticipation to join back in from where he was standing, but Kaeya grabbed Childe by his shirt's upper hemline and pulled him back, stopping the excitedly vibrating Harbinger from jumping into the fight again with the next opening that didn't come. He pulled him into a loose embrace, frowning at the situation at hand.

"Hold your horses." His voice was calmer than he felt. They had to act immediately, actually.

"They're too close to break them apart." Diluc came to a dead stop next to them, voicing Kaeya's thoughts out loud. They were both good fighters, after all. Not that the quick exchange of blows before their eyes needed a trained gaze to be understood. Neither elements nor swords nor Rosaria's needlework attacks would be able to thread into those swings to interrupt them. "But we have to help."

Help – neither of them had envisioned a gigantic water whale summoned by Childe, dropped onto the fighting people to break them apart without that the Fatui had told the others of his plans beforehand (namely, he had barked in laughter, broken free of Kaeya's arms and then proceeded as he saw fit). But Rosaria and Kaeya, in sync thanks to their friendship, had the same idea at the same time when they saw waterdrops fall from the whale and not immediately freeze mid-air.

An opening. A little one. Just enough to use.

When Xiao jumped out of the attack's way and landed on all four quite out of range, waiting for his next opportunity to strike by pure instinct, the Cryo users used the Hydro remains to manifest Cryo around the raging demon and nail him down for a moment. The frozen prison wasn't anything that could've stopped the yaksha for a longer time, but the breathing period was just enough so that Venti could lift his flute to his lips and start a shrill song on it.