Ajax, thanks for the preliminary reading.
Diluc looked searchingly at his half-brother. They sat in an office at the distillery — the most protected and closed place in Mondstadt, if not in all of Teyvat. Diluc asked:
"Are you sure there are monsters from the mainland on the island?"
"I'm sure they bred profusely with the creatures the Ordo Favonius created," said Kaeya. "The stupid light-hair tramp didn't understand anything. The school teacher who hired her to guard the children, too. They are just monsters for both of them, the same as everywhere else. Children especially saw only the tour and another knight who tritely chopped down another company of evil creatures — this was no different from a Sunday trip with their parents to a fair near the Falcon Coast: the townspeople unite in a caravan, hire a knight or an adventurer who accompanies them and always kills something. And children under the age of thirteen who had not passed the swordsman's or archer's examination were always forbidden to cross the bridge alone. So it was when their grandfathers were children, and the grandfathers of their grandfathers, so it is now."
"But when you and I were children," Diluc objected, "we were not forbidden to play alone outside the city walls. We were just not allowed to enter the mainland, which would be correct even without the monsters: there are too many places on the mainland where children can get lost or injured. But we ran on the island wherever we wanted. And now parents are beginning to forbid their children from visiting even the lawns between the city wall and the stairs. The nuns demand that the mayor and the Order make a garden terrace on the cathedral gallery and build another gallery on the square so that there is a place for the children to walk. This helped the church regain the respect of the townspeople."
Kaeya replied angrily:
"The fetuses of love between the forest monsters and the creations of the knights are slowly conquering the city. But the late Grand Master Varka was a scoundrel, not an idiot. He wanted to cheaply and easily increase the influence of the Ordo Favonius, however, it was not his plan to rule the deserted ruins. Varka was strict about keeping the Order's creations barren, just in case one of them escaped his shit-crafts knights. And none of the forest or mountain monsters could ever cross Cider Lake to get to the island. A knightly patrol outside the walls was always needed to break up fights between drunken servants in merchant caravans, to keep an eye on that prostitutes didn't pester passers-by, but went to city brothels, and that children didn't climb onto the bridge. The sudden fertility of knightly monsters and the ability of mainland evil creatures to swim are the work of the same hands. And their owner doesn't need a living Mondstadt."
"You will be surprised," Diluc said, "but the whitish tramp noticed it too. She isn't bright, but she is more intelligent than most Travelers. And she asked me strange questions today. She was interested in the wind forecast: how many days it covers, and how accessible to anyone who wants it."
"And she asked you about it?" Kaeya was amazed.
"Yes. She's a knight, and the Order has a weather mage. And there is a library with textbooks for knights. And the city has a Gliding Inspectorate that teaches newbies everything they need to fly for free — including simple short-term weather predictions if they didn't learn it in school. There are also weather mages at the Adventurer's Guild, and Lumine signed up there as well. Finally, there are the Keepers of the Mills, all with a degree in weather magic, and all dying of boredom while on duty. And deep three-monthly wind forecasts from weather magicians hang on the wall in all taverns, they can be bought at any shop."
Kaeya himself knew all this very well, but Diluc's words made the careless guy feel the situation more sharply. And what happened was disturbing. And Diluc added:
"She was also very interested in what happens in the Windrise on calm days. Again: this is a question for the Inspectorate and for the Hawkers Guild."
"Why did she ask you?" Kaeya asked.
"She knows that I am the "Darknight Hero". Who came up with this stupid illiterate nickname for me? How can the night not be dark if we are not at the North Pole? I am the "Guardian of Mondstadt."
"Are you only interested in philology now?" Kaeya got angry. "How did this bitch know about you?!"
"She tracked me after I killed the monster. She has her own magic that I can't see."
Kaeya turned pale.
"Oh no…" But then he said with force: "Her own magic is negligible! That is why Lumine stayed in Mondstadt and joined the Order - she needs to learn how to work with the Elements in order to survive in Teyvat. She could only find out because someone told her!"
"Her magic not so little if it helped Lumine drive off the Stormterror."
"You should have seen her during this process!" Kaeya grinned in disdain. "The dragon ran away more out of boredom than Lumine. And just because the Knights of the Ordo Favonius were even worse doesn't mean she was any good. How could such a misunderstanding track you down, master of disguise?!"
"Even the smallest poison can kill you if you don't have the antidote. Lumine promised not to tell anyone, but… You understand." Diluc sighed.
Kaeya softly squeezed his fingers.
"Don't worry. This ass-critter is going to have a fatal accident today."
Diluc stroked his hand.
"You are the best in the world. But take your time. I took care of my protection. Lumine can still be beneficial for us. She asks helpful questions. Lumine wondered if I could transform. A mage who becomes a monster, or a magic monster who becomes a human..."
"What?!" Kaeya was amazed. "How could such nonsense even come to someone's head?"
"Lumine was extremely persistent in her desire to learn about transformations. So she saw them."
"But not in Teyvat!" Kaeya said confidently. "This was not the case even in the heyday of Khaenri'ah."
"There wasn't before," Diluc clarified. "But who knows what is happening now? If Lumine was thinking about weremages, then what is the guarantee that they were not one of the other Travelers? Or that one of the Travelers didn't know a way to turn a human into a weremage? Lumine was worried and scared, she didn't like that. She found fault with me for a long time, but she believed that I had nothing to do with weremages. However, she didn't explain why she considered me suspicious and where she got the signs of the appearance of a weremage from. Lumine said that she herself wanted to check everything, so as not to mislead the "Guardian of Mondstadt."
"Do you believe her?"
"I don't know," Diluc replied thoughtfully. "Now she can't survive without Mondstadt: she herself is weak, she has no money and patrons, and the information about Teyvat that her partner… or maid Paimon can give is too small for independent life. But I can't guarantee that Lumine will remain loyal to Mondstadt if something even a fraction more profitable appears. And she's looking for her brother. Who knows with whom and against whom he is friends? And even more so, it is not known what Lumine will choose: to unite the family or finally break the ties."
"The Windrise…" Kaeya said thoughtfully. "Why is it?"
"I don't know. I have already given orders to my agents. You plug yours in. And contact Khaenri'ah."
"You would go there yourself," said Kaeya. "You would buy a fruit plantation with a distillery or a weaving factory… A person always needs a backup option! And my father will be very happy to call you son or nephew, son of his brother."
"I have houses and shops on rent in Khaenri'ah. I have a lot of it. And I am recorded as a citizen of Khaenri'ah, your father's nephew. I thought of a spare mink, no fool. But the land is something else! In order for it to love you, to be generous to you, you must live on it constantly. And changing the land is much more difficult than any lover or even spouse."
Kaeya just rolled his eyes with an ironic sigh. And he asked seriously, businesslike:
"What do your friends from the North say?"
"Nothing about the weremages. The usual routine about the ambitions of the Tsaritsa of the Snezhnaya and Fatui's attempts to embody them, what Northerners were able to disrupt of Fatui's operations, ordinary skirmishes with the Abyss. I sent a request to the Northerners about weremages."
"That's good," Kaeya nodded. "And that secret network that operates against the Ordo Favonius? Did you know something?"
"Nothing. I only know, that they act exclusively against the Order, and Mondshadt itself is not interesting to them. And what do you have?"
"It's the same," Kaeya replied gloomily. "The little things. Khaenri'ah talks about the increase in magic in the Abyss. However, I'm not sure if that secret network is connected to the Abyss. Although they give them information about convenient strikes against the Order, they never warned the Abyss about the attacks from the Order."
"Can we assume that the unknown network is not involved in the emergence of new monsters?"
"I don't know. But that's exactly what I'm going to find out. You take care of the weremages and the Windrise."
"Agreed," Diluc nodded. And poured both of them some fresh juice.