Chapter 2

A night to be remembered

Kaeya was the most fitting candidate. The second time has to be the charm right? And this knight was full of suaveness, charm and could smooth-talk his targets into giving up information. What could go wrong?

"I need your help, Kaeya?"

"Our honorary knight needs a help from little ol' me? You sure know how to flatter people. Why, with that silver tongue, you can amass a harem."

"Yes, that's the issue. I need your ability to woo a person into giving up their harem."

"…This is all very enlightening, traveller. To think that you've thought about your bodyguard in that way…"

"No! Not me! My sister! She has a harem!"

"…Hm? If she was your twin, I'd suppose, she would share your charming nature.

But, is it that much of a surprise? You've been amassing your harem too-"

"My what?!"

"I must admit, your sources of admiration… are quite unusual. But, I'm not one to judge someone's preferences and fetishes. Albeit, the ones that pick your fancy are cold and sharp enough to make others bleed-"

"Please Kaeya! Can you be straight with me for just this once?!"

"Don't you look besotted with every sword you come across with? I was… admittedly… surprised when I saw you hug the fillet, bring the flute and prototype rancour to your bed to spend the nights away…

-And see you smother kisses all over the skyward pride. Well, my boundaries for love have truly been expanded, to say the least"

"You were watching that?!"

"No need to be shy, Aether. There's a lot you get to know about your friends-"

"You're hiding something from me. What else do you have on me-"

Kaeya swiftly ignored his increasingly hysteric companion, derailing the conversation again.

"What did you mean by your sister's harem?"

"She's made one out of the abyss order!"

"…My… you twins have quite interesting tastes…"

"Don't put us together in the same boat-"

"Aether! Kink shaming is bad."

"Why?! Why must you be like this?!"

Aether pinched his temple as he moved to the main point. He was a man on a mission.

"Okay, fine. We'll have it your way. Catfish her instead."

"…I'm, at least in name, the cavalry captain for the Favonius knights, you know?"

"You have a pirate's blood flowing through your veins, right? Do your grandfather proud. Aim for the booty."


"…He was right! That nutcase wasn't going to be the last of this charade!"

"Miss Lumine, it's nice to finally meet you. I've heard so much from your brother-"

"You're on his side?!"

Alas, even sibling bonds can't stand against lust. Or maybe it was seeing how the friend of her only brother turned out to be an insatiable murderer didn't spell good things about said brother's company.

Now, the next in line seemed to be a two bit gigolo.

"The Fatui have a very precarious position amongst Mondstadt, and naturally, us knights are also up on our guards against any suspicious movements. Of course, that puts the harbingers at the very top of our shitlist.

I heard about what that harbinger did. Man, that must be rough. Often times, that's what life gives you. Tell you what, this big brother's got just the right stuff to fix us up."

Then the exemplary captain whipped up two bottles of dandelion wine out of thin air.

"Tada! Tonight, let's drink our sorrows away! This is dandelion wine, it's what our city's famous for. My brother's in the business, so I can personally guarantee its quality. It's just fine for a little missy like you."

The hilichurls looked alarmed at the proposition. They'd personally nabbed the idiots who meandered into their territory after having many a drinks. Their breaths were nice and aromatic and they made for easy targets and they were so incoherent that it sometimes confused them about whether they were speaking in a dialect of theirs.

They were also very clingy with the closest thing/creature- making the hilichurl's clubs a victim of their saliva and snot as they became a microphone to confess all their woes, or sing really sad and pathetic love songs. Somehow, the hilichurls had become nuns and priests in confession booths. They were even more non-judgemental than the real deal, having absolutely no idea about what they were being confessed to. The whacks that the poor lambs would be subjected to hardly felt like anything because of the buzz. Plus, any expression was hidden behind the mask, so there was no bad reactions to any words or choice of words.

Some of the drunks would even cling at their feet as the warriors would shake them off as they plead to not be left behind in a strange SM play. The dominatrix hilichurls would stumble across other drunks who would be willing to join the ranks and confuse other wayward passengers about the nature of the raid, given the confusion in the identities of the allies and enemies.

Given how chaotic the regulars in Mondstadt were, the hilichurls were admittedly not very keen at letting their leader be compromised.

Seeing the monsters step in, Kaeya was only too happy to extend the invitation.

"It seems like our drinking party needs more company. The more the merrier, I say!"

Lumine looked at the man pouring drinks in anything that can hold liquid- even the shields of the hilichurls were being upturned as makeshift bowls. The gift from the mighty archons were used to conjure up some more glasses and make the ice for cocktails as the man became a literal host.

She gave on being suspicious of his intentions as she said,

"…Then, I want something stronger."

Kaeya's eyes glinted as he brought a bottle of fire ice on the table.

"Up for a challenge?"

Lumine's eyes glinted in acceptance.


"You… made my little sister drink?! Alcohol?!

What?! Fire Ice?! The drink that master Diluc took off the shelves because of its potency?!"

"To be fair, he's a lightweight."

"Do you know what the hydro mages do now? They fill their bubbles with pure alcohol. The ones purer than absinthe. If I pop them, it sprays all over my body and stings like fuck.

God forbid if I drink the stuff. They're thinking into the future after getting their unsuspecting victims liver failure and blindness. Now, if they team up with pyro mages, they set me on fire! How did they learn to do that?!

You guys don't even speak the same language! I thought they were dumb as bricks?!"

"I gotta hand it to you, your sister is a real champ. She guzzled down the fire ice like it was nobody's business. I thought we could go for some of the stronger stuff."

"So you whipped out methanol?! It wasn't enough for childe to think of murdering her entire love life so you decided to kill her directly?! Did you want to be her Romeo, lover boy?!"

He took several deep breaths as he asked.

"How did they think of setting it on fire."

"I wanted a champagne tower. I thought it'd be a great sight. Crafting the glasses take some time and we wanted to get drunk, so being sober enough to make things and think is boring.

There were some hydro mages that were peeking in, so I told them to make some bubbles so that I can show something cool to them.

They did make the bubbles, but the cryo mages were afk so I had to be the one to freeze things. I didn't want to, so the hilichurls went to find some slimes to squeeze into a barrel. It wouldn't fit in the barrel, so they melted it enough to fit in the tiny bubbles-"

"You were all torturing slimes for your kick?!"

"We helped it commit mitosis. It was the gift of life, the virtue of Barbatos."

"Ah, yes, Barbatos known for being the god of drunkards. Thus, as his apostles, you would crusade alcoholism-

Wait, you guys were actually drinking living alcohol?!"

"Those guys really know how to live it up."

Aether looked highly disturbed at Kaeya's nonchalance.

"I hate to ask, but, what else did you do?"

"Lumine said she wanted to play spin the bottle, but she was so drunk that she saw an axe Mitachurl as the bottle. She told him to spin but the players were mostly running away to avoid being beheaded. Well, if the 'bottle' did stop, she would have to kiss the lucky one's decapacitated head.

Gosh, alcohol can really ruin a person's love life, can't it?"

Aether looked at the man like he was a criminal mastermind. There was probably no killing the mood or any dreamy fireworks by guillotine-ing your one true love's head. Bonus points if you were to kiss that head and know that you were the cause of it. It sounded like the recipe for disaster…

This made Aether look like he was brewing an elaborate scheme to sow infighting…

Kaeya continued, to his dismay.

"We wanted to play 30 seconds of shame. But you know, the Mitachurl was axed to play the bottle-"

"Stop it. No puns."

"So, instead of the spin the bottle, we changed it to kinds with different sized straws. Turns out, even if the straws started out in different sizes, when it came to it, there were two short straws. Someone in the abyss order was conspiring to become the princess.

The hilichurl that drew the short straw seemed to claim that it was framed. The some of the other hilichurls seemed to think that its ambitions finally shone through."

All of a sudden, the genre changed to political intrigue. Who was the impostor amongst them? Was a hilichurl unsatisfied with its human leader? Did it want to be in the seat of power? Was there a hilichurl that wanted to get back at it? Why? For what reason?

Was it to gain prestige when it successfully protects the princess from the backstabber? Was it because the hilichurl had betrayed it before? Was it to frame Kaeya as the one who sought to sow discord amongst them with this game because of this conflict? Was there another hilichurl pulling the strings for this entire encounter?

"You know what I think? One of the hilichurls must have gotten the short straw, but it couldn't be the one chosen, so it had to make Lumine the one who would be king to make sure all is well. But before it could change its lot, it was time to have a show of hands. But this is all speculation."

"…What happened next?"

"It started with one of the hilichurls being furious with the allegation, so it took a barrel with a pyro slime and threw it at its accuser. At least, that's what I make of it. Times like this, I wish I had brought ella musk to gain more information."

"… I'm guessing the barrel hit the champagne tower."

"As expected of Aether. You're a genius!"

"Uh huh."

"Some of the 'glasses' from the champagne tower crashed outside the window.

And you know how our drunkards can be, they saw something that looked a bit like alcohol and they drank it. Turns out they were lightweights."

"You guys were drinking pure alcohol?! That's a death wish! What did you even plan on doing there?! Having a mass suicide?!

Lightweights my ass! If master Diluc didn't regulate the menu, Mondstadt would be a ghost town!"

"You forget, my favourite drink is Death by Noon."

"I didn't think it meant that in a literal sense?!

In the end why did you even plan on doing this?! What was the goal?!"

"Well, you know what they say. In Vino Veritas."

"You got blackmail material on my sister?!"

"You did ask me to catfish her."

"…Just out of curiosity, could you tell me some?"

"No can do. I don't kiss and tell."

Aether looked at the man's Cheshire grin and thought that this choice was horrible. This time's result was a total mystery box. Lumine looked like shit from the party last night. Her harem looked like they've seen better days despite looking like homeless vagabounds in their day to day lives. They did not look like they had a clue about what Kaeya had managed to squeeze out of them.

Lumine also saw that her 'harem' had reduced in number from the shenanigans of last night. Turns out that, the party was, for a lack of a better word, truly wild. The cavalry captain was much more effective than Childe in reducing their numbers. Also, her love interests seemed to have taken away that their leader might be a tad interested in necrophilia, thereby reducing their keen-ness in gaining her approval.

Man, Alcohol was sure scary…