@gorgeousgalatea asked: > Uhhh Kaeya, violet, owl? This is extremely rambly and incoherent because I didn’t have any idea

@gorgeousgalatea asked:

> Uhhh Kaeya, violet, owl?

This is extremely rambly and incoherent because I didn’t have any idea where I was going with it when I started, owls just made me think of night and then night + violet made me think of the night sky and then I poured myself a drink and hit ‘start’ on a word sprint and went from there. XD;; But enjoy the rambling I hope!

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The sky is already darkening when Kaeya slips out of the city. He goes by the eastern side-gate, where he can pass unremarked in the twilight gloom; if Guy sees him, he doesn’t say a word. The last bands of orange are gone from the western horizon, and the sky is deep violet and darkening fast. Stars begin to twinkle to life across it as he rows across the lake and pulls up onto the shore.

He keeps his sword in its sheath as he heads up the hills of Wolvendom, eschewing the road and the usual hilichurl ambushes along it. Tonight’s mission is one of stealth, and a noisy, ice-flinging fight might give him away. Instead he skirts along bluffs and ducks behind trees, avoiding any eyes that might catch sight of his pale cape flapping in the dark.

Almost all eyes, he amends halfway up, hearing a howl ring out so close that it makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. Before he can worry too much that it might be a call to drive out the intruder, though, another howl answers off in the distance, to the north. When the nearer cry comes again, it’s farther from him, and by the third exchange farther again. Kaeya doesn’t know if the wolf hadn’t noticed him, or if Lisa’s shaggy protege had spoken for him somehow, or if the wolves had simply decided on their own that he wouldn’t be a threat. He’s relieved at the distance, regardless.

Soon there’s the soft squishing of fallen wolfhook berries underfoot. Kaeya turns even farther from the road, passing by dormant pillars, shielding his eyes and night vision from their faint Pyro glow. Down one short bluff, then two, and that’s close enough. Several trees grow near the cliff. He takes up station behind them to watch and wait.

Minutes tick by, and Kaeya yawns behind his hand. For all his late-night drinking, he’s never been a night owl–that was Diluc, a matter of much juvenile amusement once Kaeya learned both his brother’s constellation and the idiomatic turn of phrase. But the demands of intelligence work don’t relent simply because he’d rather be an early riser, and he’s learned to adapt his schedule. In a noisy tavern, it’s easy to stay awake, even if he’s lurking in the corners. He’s never been one whom wine put to sleep, either. Out here in the wilderness, though, with the quiet hum of night insects and the gentle brush of the breeze, it’s easy to waver a bit on his feet.

Whooo~ooh!

In the near distance, off where the trees are thicker, an owl’s warbling hoot breaks the night. Kaeya tenses unthinking, hand going to his sword. It’s not likely to be anything but a true barred owl; Diluc would first have to be out here, then have noticed him, then have chosen to fall back on an old signal neither of them have used for going on ten years. But it’s worth paying attention to. Diluc’s interrogation methods are… clumsy, to say the least. He may get the bare bones of what he needs, but he’s limited to intimidation and pain, without any ability, by either his nature or his pure humanity, to offer his Abyss Order victims an out. It’s only when someone thinks they have an exit route that they’re willing to trade away the fine details that Kaeya likes to collect.

(Though he can’t blame Diluc. Aside from his innate inability to be convincing–the Abyss Order and the Fatui both know his reputation too well to think he’ll give them any mercy once he has what he wants–he hadn’t had the experience when he first started out to restrain his temperamental impulses, nor anyone to train him better since. Kaeya had always done the interrogations back when they were Knights, the ‘informal’ ones that didn’t have a senior officer sitting in. He can’t help but wonder sometimes, when seeing the results of Diluc’s brazen style, what his brother had assumed he did with the bottle of wine he always took into the interrogation room along with the hidden knife.)

Kaeya cups his hands around his mouth and takes a moment to remember how his lips and tongue need to be shaped and calls out the 'whewhewhey!’ of a screech owl in answer to the deeper call. There’s nothing but silence in response. If it was Diluc, he would have answered. Satisfied that his own information-gathering will proceed unimpeded, Kaeya slides his hands into his pockets and waits. The urge to fidget is strong, but he’d left all his Mora behind in the city for just that reason, in case a thoughtless coin-toss glints in the dark.

Wolvendom is a place with potent elemental potential, infused with the aura of the Wolf of the North after being his residence for thousands of years. It hadn’t surprised Kaeya to hear that their honorary knight had found Abyss mages conducting rituals here. Only Jean and Lisa know what Kaeya had known as soon as he’d heard the tale: no matter how thoroughly they were beaten at the time, they’ll inevitably come back. Just as they always come back to the same spots elsewhere to strengthen hilichurls, days or weeks after they were beaten back. Places where they can filter the Abyss’ power like that are rare.

An hour passes, and then another. The moon doesn’t rise; it’s the new moon tonight, another strong connection to the Abyss, which is why Kaeya has chosen this night for his stakeout. If the Abyss Order was spooked enough not to return tonight, they’ll wait another month. He’s gambling that whatever strange projects they’ve been working on lately are meaningful enough to take the risk.

Sure enough, as midnight draws near, three round bubbles come bobbing down from the north, dropping off the cliff a few hundred yards to his right and circling around the trees he’s hidden in towards a spot out in the open, near the edge of the bluff. They carefully set up a little wooden tripod, murmuring to each other. Their elemental shells give their voices an echoing edge.

Most people talk about them chattering or babbling, as if what they’re saying is gibberish, as if only the tone of voice matters. To be fair, most people can’t understand their actual words. Kaeya knows, though, why knights and adventurers alike tend to avoid the thought that the Abyss mages, and the hilichurls they command, are speaking a language. When you see no choice but to destroy them, it’s easier to think that they aren’t talking. That they aren’t people.

He lies to himself a little less than most of the knights do, by amending that with 'anymore’.

For Abyss mages, at least, he can cast away all sympathy. Especially listening to them talk. They still have the posh accents of the well-bred nobility that they descend from, the higher classes that led Khaenri'ah into fruitless, hopeless war. He can hear the faintly nasal tones of the one who used to oversee his training when his father was preparing him to infiltrate the world above. Maybe he’s imagining the same condescension in these voices. Or maybe not. They all think obnoxiously highly of themselves.

Without a coin to hand, Kaeya has started fiddling with the hilt of his sword, tensing and untensing his grip. He doesn’t stop, because it won’t hurt to be a half-second closer to drawing it if he needs to, but he’s careful not to rattle it in its sheath or pull it out. He’s not here to fight. He’s here to listen. And as the Abyss mages prepare their ritual, he lets their words roll over them, lets the language of his youth pour into his ears. Even in their grating highborn accents, there’s something about hearing it again, in casual conversation rather than battlecries of fear or taunting or rage, that plucks at a string in his chest.

Soon their words change to the sing-song chanting of magic, a subject in which Kaeya’s never been well-versed. He goes on listening anyway, hears them out, watches the air ripple with power over their tripod, feels the distant tendrils of the Abyss uncoil and push, just a little, though the fabric of the world. It feels familiar, in the way that a foul memory feels familiar, in the way that an old injury feels familiar when it aches. For a moment Kaeya lets it press against him. He stares at the trio of Abyss mages and imagines holding them helpless with ice and slicing into them with his blade, the way he could section each limb from the body, how if he did it right and fast enough they’d survive until he’d carved all four from them, the way that they would scream. Then he shakes off the dark touch and the thoughts alike.

Tomorrow he’ll let Lisa know that she should take a look at that during her next trip up to Wolvendom to see her protege. As long as she deals with it promptly, before they conduct enough rituals to create an actual rift, it’s something she can handle. They’ve tested it often enough before.

He waits until they’ve finished and gone back to talking again, disassembling their tripod–a lesson learned, it seems, for the honorary knight had been able to use those them to find these sites last time–as they bicker over who was pulling the most weight in their ritual just now. It’s less informative than the earlier discussion, but they do mention a name again that they had before, in such context that Kaeya mentally underlines the earlier mental note. He waits longer, as they float away back over the cliffs towards Old Mondstadt and, presumably, some traversable domain there.

Once they’re well away, Kaeya climbs up the cliff himself and starts off through the trees again, listening to the occasional hooting of the owls and the howling of the wolves. He’ll have to sort through what he learned to see what of it is useful, compare notes with Lisa and Albedo, maybe see if any of it is meaningful to their honorary knight. Kaeya has to tread carefully there, because he suspects that this line of intelligence is going to go places, eventually, where sibling loyalty will conflict with the needs and goals of the Knights. Something Kaeya certainly understands.

Skirting around the last group of hilichurls, Kaeya climbs back into his boat and pushes off from shore. Another yawn seizes him, and another. He blinks back sleep as he rows back across the lake. There’s still work to be done tonight, writing everything down; mental notes are all well and good, but even he can’t keep everything he knows in his head alone. Then he can sleep. No one will be surprised if the Cavalry Captain wanders into work late tomorrow.

No one has to know that he’ll dream tonight in a language that none of them can speak, and almost none of them would think to try and understand. That’s between him and the night, and the night has never given away his secrets.