Sitting around a worn wooden table under the solemn glow of the tavern was a golden haired traveler, his little fairy, his invisible companion that gently squeezed his hand, a god, a tavern owner, and Cavalry Captain with no cavalry.
"My... connections," Diluc spoke up, filling the silence with his rough, surprisingly steady voice. "They found a domain with an abyssal portal that's frequently used by the Abyss Order to get to and from Teyvat. We can use that to sneak into the Abyss and find [Y/n]."
"How will we know how to navigate? How do we know where in the Abyss we'll end up once we pass through?" Paimon piped up.
"You," Barbatos spoke. "Are not coming with us."
"WHAT?!" The little fairy shrieked, indignation written all over her face. "Why not? [Y/N] is my friend too!"
"Paimon, as much as I love your 'moral support' when taking down a Hilichurl camp, you might get in the way during something like this, and I can't keep an eye on you to stop you from getting hurt during a rescue mission." Aether soothed, reaching out with his non-taken hand to guide Paimon into sitting on his lap.
Paimon huffed and kicked her feet, but eventually settled down and listened.
"We don't know what's on the other side of the portal, but does that really matter when we are attempting to save a friend?" Ever since Aether had told Kaeya everything - the visions, the abyss, the injury, the kidnapping. He told Kaeya when he saw Venti from the corner of his eye, giving him a short nod. - his eye had lost a particular sparkle in them. Normally filled with mischief and humor, were now a saddened gray, lips set into a constant frown.
Aether couldn't guess what Kaeya was thinking about the situation, grateful at the very least that he was still determined to get Polaris back. Perhaps it was the lies of omission that shook him so hard, or maybe the kidnapping is what's really bothering him and the secrets kept don't matter.
Aether found that hard to believe but he shook the thoughts from his mind. That wasn't the focus now.
"Besides, we have a... god," Kaeya swallowed harshly, the most emotion he's shown all night. "On our side. What firepower could they have that would stop you?" Kaeya's held an air of mocking to it.
Barabtos simply stared at him, eyes whirling like a storm. Strands of green, blue, and gray swirled through his irises like a kaleidoscope. "I am the weakest of the seven. There is always the possibility that they have gotten another god on their side that is more powerful than I, or several dangerous monsters of old that I would be unable to defeat on my own."
"Do you think that's highly possible?" Diluc questioned.
Barbatos was silent for a moment, wings rustling being the only indication that he wasn't a statue as he thought. "No." He said finally. "I don't find it all too probable at this moment. The Abyss Order has bad relations with every country on Teyvat, I find it hard to believe that they would be able to convince one of the seven on their side." Barbatos put his hand to his chin. "And even if they had stirred a monster of old, I would have felt it. Morax would have as well, and he would've informed me if it was unintentional."
The final sentence tapered off into a grumble. "I noticed fairly soon when Dvalin had begun terrorizing Mond, even in my hibernation. Now, awake, I would've heard the movement of an ancient being."
"Then what's stopping us from entering?" A giddiness welled up in Aether's head, an excitable twitch to his fingers.
"Nothing but exhaustion."
"Oh are you tired, poor Master Diluc?" Kaeya scoffed.
An instant glare narrowed Diluc's eyes. "And what have you been doing all day Sir Kaeya? Have you been the one to wander all across Mond with only the hope of information?"
"Stop." Aether said simply. "We should rest tonight and head out in the morning when none of us are tired or hungry. I have a feeling this trip isn't going to be easy."
It took long enough for everyone to agree, each person filled with anxiousness and the desire to go. But just as they were hasty, were they also reasonable, and they knew that Aether was correct.
Soon, the tavern was clear and closed, everyone going their separate ways to prepare for tomorrow.
-
In the long stretch of silence after your daily interrogation - a little smile found its way on your face when you noticed Lumine's growing frustration with you - you swung back and forth, putting all your body strength into it.
Your wrists ache and you could feel every new cut from the metal of your shackles. Every joint in your arms was filled with a dull pain, torso sore and hurting.
The chain squeaked with every swing, and you could feel it getting closer to breaking every second.
A tiny jerk caused pain to flood your body, but when you looked up, you saw that some of the chain had detached from the ceiling, letting you hang closer to the floor.
Invigorated, you swung faster and faster, eager to let these chains fall.
It took longer than you'd like before the chains snapped from the ceiling and you fell to the concrete floor with a harsh thud. It took everything in you to bite the inside of your cheek and not let out a scream of anguish as the pressure from your arms, shoulders, and wrists was finally alleviated.
"Deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths, deep breaths..." You muttered as you lay still, the chill seeping into your back.
You didn't know how long it took you to stand up, rolling your shoulders and kicking your legs to revive feeling in them.
You quickly shuffled behind the door to your cell, so that when it swung open in the room, you would be hidden from view.
With steady breaths you gathered the chains in your hands, shackles still around your wrists. Holding it in both hands, you held the chain taunt, waiting.
-
Morning could not have arrived faster for Aether, who, for the life of him, could not get a decent sleep. He slept, he supposes, in the most technical sense he did rest. But his night was plagued by vivid nightmares. Nonsensical, violent images that made him twist and turn in bed.
Black bags hung under his eyes as he stared at himself in the mirror. Brushing his hair he couldn't help but notice the new sallowness of his face, brought on by stress and despair. The wide toothed comb was a pleasant feeling and he soon let his silky, golden strands hang around his shoulders in a pretty curtain.
Strapping his sword to his side and adjusting the last of his clothes, he and Ariel set out for the tavern once more.
Ariel had been concerningly silent. Unless it was comfort for Aether in his times of panic, the angel did not speak often, choosing to act as a form of quiet reassurance.
Aether slid his palm against Ariel's fingers. "How are you... managing?" Aether felt the fingers twitch. "I don't want to ask if you're alright, I know you're not, none of us are. You were undoubtedly the closest to Polaris, but you've been so kind and calm, it's disconcerting. I just want to know how you're handling it."
"I-T I-S D-I-F-F-I-C-U-L-T." The fingers finally spelt. "I D-O-N-T T-H-I-N-K I H-A-V-E B-E-E-N D-O-I-N-G W-E-L-L."
Aether intertwines his and the angel's hands, giving Ariel a firm squeeze. "Well, we're going to find them. They'll be with us soon." Aether stopped, quickly jumping forward where he knew Ariel was, and wrapped his arms around him.
Ariel was stiff in his hold before melting, hugging Aether close in an intimate fashion, burying his face in the crook of Aether's neck and laying his head on the traveler's shoulder. Aether's arms went around Ariel's waist as the taller man bent over him.
For the first time, Aether felt Ariel cry.
-
It took far too long, in your opinion, for someone to come by your cell.
Seriously, what if you died? No one would've known because the guards only come every 100 damn hours. Honestly, you would've escaped already if it wasn't for the shackles hindering your movement.
The heavy door creaking open brought you from your strange inner rant about how these people should be better kidnappers and instead to the pyro Abyss Lector entering the room.
Without hesitation, you launched towards the creature, wrapping the chains around its neck from behind and dropping all your weight on them. Its claws bit into your forearms as it scrambled to remove the chain from its neck, but no sooner had it tried had it fallen still.
Dead or passed out, you weren't sure, but you wasted no time rifling under its armor till your fingers bumped against the cool metal of a set of keys.
Grinning wildly, you yanked them out and undid the stiff shackles from yourself, revealing your red and swollen, tender wrists.
Holding back a chuckle you also grabbed the Lector's long knife, a pretty red thing with jagged edges and a jeweled handle, from its waist.
Slipping from your cage, you stalked the halls of this abyssal palace.
-
Weaving between an incessant rain of elemental arrows and weird purple bubbles, Aether looked at the rest of his group.
The strikes of swords filled the air, the whizzing of arrows over head, shot by both the Hilichurls and Barabatos made his ears tingle unpleasantly.
Trap after trap and enemy after enemy had Aether and his group progressing much slower than he desired.
It made sense for a domain with a portal to the abyss to have an unnatural amount of guards and tricks (seriously why was there a tile stepping puzzle, a poison arrow trap, a music puzzle, a word puzzle, lava, a lot of boars, and still guards?), but with how much it slowed them down, it was beginning to make him frustrated.
With a final shot from Barbatos, five arrows hitting the hearts of the last five elemental archers all at once, the arrow rain halted. Weaving through the rest of the slow-moving bubbles was easy enough until everyone stood on a platform in front of an impossibly tall, metal door with strange lettering engraved on the walls surrounding it.
"Can you read what it says, Kaeya?" Diluc asks, stonily.
"No." Kaeya's eye roam over the lettering, looking at words he had lost the understanding to. "I can't."
Soon, the large door was pushed open, into a spacious room. It was a stark difference to the rest of the domain. More care was obviously put into its appearance, with it overall being much more cleanly despite it still being mostly stone. Towering pillars reached to the ceiling and swirled together in an obscure pattern.
But the main draw was on the opposite ends of the room. Lighting up every crevice was a glowing portal or spinning blue clouds and what looked like stardust. It was eerily silent, not even a hum emitting from the hypnotizing spiral.
"This will take us to the abyss?" Barbatos' wings fluttered in concealed anxiousness, his grip on his bow tight and white knuckled. His eyes were focused, not a trace of a drunken haze as his pupils were pinpoint like trackers.
"If my information is correct."
Kaeya scoffed quietly, though it was more out of nerves than any current resentment. "Let's hope it is."
Steadily, each man walked through the portal with determination and trepidation.
-
Once through the portal, they were greeted with a copy. They were in a mirror image of the room they just had been in, only instead of just being clean, this room was grand. The spires were made of worn white gold instead of stone with blue marble wrapped like snakes around each one. The ceiling was dressed like the night sky and Aether could almost imagine the little stars falling from the ceiling to his hands.
The room was octagonal, with each side having another portal, with the portal they came from being the direct opposite of the door.
Heels clicked along the white marble floors as the group crept through the room.
"These portals must be to other areas, maybe even other countries. That would explain how the Abyss Order travels so quickly. Besides the small portals they can make, they have large ones that travel across far distances." Aether nodded. "They could have portals everywhere."
"Hush." Diluc hissed, gently opening the door, wincing when it creaked. The red head stuck his head out, looking both ways. "It's clear, let's go."
The five sneak out of the room, jogging lightly through the halls, doing their best not to make any noise. They twist and turn though they make sure to mentally note the paths they take so they could make their way back to the portal, hopefully with their friend in tow.
A sudden bang caught their attention, like something being bashed against a wall, with heavy, quick footsteps following closer behind.
A body slammed into Kaeya as it turned the corner and the two went rolling on the ground, though the unknown came out on top, a jeweled knife to Kaeya's throat.
Before the captain could attempt something, the unknown spoke, their voice shocked. "Kaeya?"
-
You had fucked up. Really badly.
In your escape attempt, instead of finding a good, guard free hallway, you had accidently run into one full of the creatures. Hilichurls, Mitachurls, mages, lectors, you name it, it was there, and now they were all running after you.
Your legs felt like jelly and your hand was clamped so hard around your knife that it was beginning to cramp horribly. You didn't know where you were going, the halls of this palace fading into a terrible blend of white, gold, and blue.
You looked behind you to see your pursuers getting uncomfortably close, a Mitachurl right on your ass. It raised its ax and swung it right for your head. You yelped and ducked, sure that the swipe was so close as a couple of hairs had just been trimmed.
You staggered as you tried to stand up properly and turned a corner only to run right into a very human body. You tangled with the human as you both fell to the ground, but in your haze, the only thing going through your mind right now was survive and so you managed to pin the human down, thighs bracketing their waist and knife to their throat.
It was a few blinks later when your vision cleared slightly as you were about to slit the human's throat that you noticed who was under you. Dark blue hair and tanned skin was spread across the white marble floors in a contrast that looked like a painting.
"Kaeya?"
The captain looked up at you, a smirk on his face. "Hey."
You didn't have time to scold his unnecessary smirk when another body rammed into from behind. "Oh my god!" You groaned as you hit the floor.
Seeing the golden hair fall around you, you immediately knew it was Aether. "Hey kid, how ya doing?"
Aether pulled back, a deep frown on his face. "Do not ever do that again."
"It's not like I consented to a kidnapping." You deadpan.
Heavy footsteps from behind had you scrambling to your feet, pulling Aether and Kaeya alongside you. "Okay get up, not the time for a reunion. We gotta go."
"Why? What trouble have you gotten into now?"
You whirled around to find Diluc, Venti- Barbatos if his form said anything- and Ariel looking at you with a dry aggravation and relief, a furious calm, and pure happiness, respectively.
"Oh wow, so many people came to my rescue. I'm touched." You grasped Aether's wrist and began to run. "But we've got people following us so let's go!"
The six of you dashed down the hall. "So how the hell do we get outta here?! I've just been running around!"
"What a stellar strategy." Kaeya commented dryly.
"There's a room full of portals down one of these hallways. One of the portals will take us to a domain in Mond!" Diluc ran steady despite the claymore being lugged on his back.
"Sounds like a plan."
-
Running down a series of several passageways that all looked too similar to your eyes was making your head spin. Your injuries and lack of sustenance was already slowing you down, but you pushed your legs as fast as they could go, hoping you weren't holding anyone back.
Monsters were encountered along the way; ones you were sure you wouldn't be able to take on alone with the state you were in. Elemental spells from mages flashed through the halls. Diluc's fire burned brightly in your eyes and against your skin, while Kaeya's ice was such a startling contrast it made your head spin, and Barabatos' winds avoided you as much as possible, but when an enemy got too close, they would occasionally bat you around. Aether and Ariel stuck by your side, slicing and punching anything that got too close that wasn't already dealt with by the other three.
Truly, you could do little more than duck and dodge and wayward arrows.
Though the monsters weren't dealt with easily, they didn't necessarily slow you down. The portal room however, that was a different story.
Upon bursting through the doors of the room, you were greeted to the sight of the Abyss Princess herself with two lectors beside her, and fierce scowl on her lips and her sword at the ready.
"Oh shit." You muttered.
And 'oh shit' is right.
With no time to waste, the lectors were on you, pouncing with their elemental blades at the ready. Diluc had parried the hydro blade with his own, steam erupting from where the two swords connected, while Kaeya met the pyro lector, ice so cold it crept along the fire.
Barbatos went to help Diluc, his winds fanning the flames of the lector's destruction, while, with encouragement from you, Ariel joined Kaeya in battle, using his swift physical combat to knock around and daze the lector.
But that left you an Aether with Lumine; Lumine who stared at you hungrily, desperately. Lumine who didn't even look Aether's way, eyes focused on you and your hand in her 'beloved' brother's.
You looked to Aether, noticing the sadness on his face at seeing his sister once more, so far gone and out of his grasp. You pull at his hand. "Tag team?"
He turned to look up at you, sorrow slowly fading from his eyes, replaced with determination. He nodded. "Tag team."
Just like with Childe, you and Aether attacked with ferocious compatibility. Aether with his beautiful sword and you with your stolen knife, the two of you lunged at Lumine, slashing and cutting unhindered by the other's presence as you weaved together perfectly.
However, Lumine was no slouch, parrying both your weapons with relative ease. A slash to your leg, a cut to her cheek, a rip in Aether's cape, an elbow to her stomach. It was a wild exchange of blows, and you slowly felt your energy dipping with every hit you took.
In a swift strike to Lumine's knee from your foot, Aether was able to pin his sister to the ground. He looks at you, hair messy and eyes wild. "Go. Now!"
You didn't hesitate before sprinting to the portal across from the door, as they had told you. Don't fuck up. You thought to yourself. Last time you tried to hero it didn't work out all too well. Recognize that you are not doing good, trust that they can handle themselves, and go!
Only a few meters away from the portal did you hear a shrill "NOOO!" as a beam of light crashed into your side, knocking the air from your lungs, and sent you careening into the portal right next to it.
The last thing you heard were a series of screams and shouts as you fell into a portal tinted green.
-
A gasp left your mouth as all the air was punched from your lungs. The sensation of falling curled in your stomach, harsh scrapes scratching against your skin as you fell through the air.
Your back hit the harsh ground, the air once again leaving your body, making you feel flat against the ground, as if nothing was filling you up. Absentmindedly, you realized you were laying in a patch of stark green grass, towering trees shading you from a bright, violent sun.
You heard rustling around you, rushing foot falls and far away calls that couldn't be heard over your haze of pain. Your shoulders hurt, your back hurt, and your legs had felt like they had been running for far too long. Little droplets of blood dripped from the cuts across your body, staining the rips in your dusty, now riddled with dirt, clothes.
A shadow hovered over you; thin fingers wrapped in gloves pressing delicately to your neck. Your growling stomach churned at the scent of berries mixed with rich earth from the person above you, a groan leaving your lips as you tried to move.
Hands pushed your shoulders down to stop you from moving, the voice turning stern as those lithe fingers searched all over, looking for all your bleeding wounds.
A harsh bark, an order from the person, sent some others (Assistants? Friends?) scrambling, but all it did to you was send a shock of surprise through your body.