A lost friend's journey

Chapter 5

There had been no sign of Barbatos anywhere.

Soon enough, the other Archons had joined his sides, all of them scotched to the ground, unable to move, eyes glued to the tragic remains of the battle scene in front of them. Murata had been the first to regain control of her body. She had taken slow steps forward, careful as if walking on glass. She had walked to the closest blood stain on white snow and crouched down. Extending a hand, Morax distantly remembers her trying to hide the way she was trembling. Murata had touched the blood and picked up some of the now red snow, examining it. The silence had never been louder, ringing in their ears, no one quite able to break it, all solemnly and anxiously waiting Murata's verdict. The Pyro Archon had let the small snowball she had been examining moments prior fall and merge back with the ground before she got up. Her back still turned to them, tense posture and head staring straight ahead, she had taken a deep and long breath of fresh air before slowly turning around, facing all of them, ready to give them an answer they had all been dreading.

"It's Barbatos'," she had whispered so lowly they had barely heard her, eyes getting visibly wet.

And it was as if something broke, then. It probably was because they had never seen Murata cry, or perhaps because the reality of the situation had finally sunk in. Focalors and Tsaritsa had sobbed, Rukkhadevata had put a hand on Makoto's trembling shoulder while Morax had lowered his head, clenching his fists. They had known. Of course they had all known that the blood was Barbatos'. But hearing it from Murata had only made them realize how much they had messed up. This must have been what had caused Barbatos to be late, there was no other explanations. He had clearly been injured when he joined them.

That very same day, they had searched the mountains for the wind Archon, hoping to find a trace of him. There had been nothing else but bones and a foul smell. They had tried contacting him through his gnosis, to no avail. He didn't respond. And when Makoto had tried to feel his gnosis, resonate with it in a last desperate attempt at contacting the God they had all wronged, she hadn't been able to feel anything. Not being able to feel an Archon's gnosis was equal to saying said Archon had passed away.

And so they had mourned the loss of a colleague they once knew.

They couldn't exactly qualify as friends, could they? Back in Jueun Karst, they had put a tombstone close to the table they usually sit at as a memorial. They had then decided to decorate it, so they had taken a trip to Mondstadt to get Cecilias after Focalors recalled Barbatos telling her once it was his favorite flower, and that it grew only in Mondstadt. They had picked a few and learned together to make a flower crown out of them. And so, they put it on the tombstone. Rukkhadevata was also the one letting those precious flowers stay alive by taking care of them with Dendro energy.

They had stayed some days in Mondstadt city, learning as much as they could about their lost Archon. The stories they had heard were not much, but they had learnt about the way Barbatos helped free the nation from the tyranny of the royalty, or even about a song he loved to sing, something the Mondstadt citizens liked to call the "Song of the Wind". Later, Tsaritsa had cried.

"I heard him hum something once when he thought no one was listening, it must have been this," she had managed to say between sobs.

No one had said anything for the rest of the night.

They had expected a new Anemo Archon to appear soon, and they had sworn to themselves they wouldn't repeat the mistakes of the past. For days and days, they had waited for the birth of a new Archon. But it never happened. A thought that had been sitting in all of their minds had been voiced by Makoto, the only one who had dared to ask it out loud.

"Does this mean... that Barbatos is still somewhere out there...?"

No one had an answer to give to her, no one had responded. But they had all hoped such was the case.