| [The gods of Celestia have fallen, and all is right with the world.
Aether and Lumine are the new gods of Teyvat now.
It's the sort of thing that he should be happy about, but the way he feels hasn't really come into it yet. For the time being, they haven't yet reshaped the world to suit their ambitions, if only because there are too many bits and bobs to sort out before changes are made. Visions and Gnoses run on Celestia's power, but Lumine has not yet erased them for the widespread chaos that revoking them would cause. The false sky is still in place for the same reason; people would panic if they knew what lay beyond the blue skies. And the barrier between the abyss below and the paradise above has been destroyed — but Aether's own abyssal forces have not even dared to breach the former border they so long dreamt of tearing down.
What would we do beneath Celestia's sun, my liege? they ask him, in their defeated, half-envious tones. We have no need now to walk in the light.
(Is he happy? Yes — or maybe no. It's hard to tell. There's relief, certainly, that his long journey is finally over. Relief that he can finally rest — that the great injustice of the world has finally been addressed. He should have never doubted that Lumine, perfect, beautiful Lumine, would be the one to see it through to its end at long last. And yet — even though he loves his sister more than anything else in all the worlds — how typical, that she was the one to save this world. How typical, that in the end, he accomplished nothing, and she changed everything.)
The thing he can't get over is this: in the siege against Celestia, when everything was crumbling to pieces beneath their heels, Aether, his wings tattered, fell off the edge — and Dainsleif dove off the edge to save him.
Dainsleif dove off the edge to save him, and then there had been a rush of wind and gravity and — and the only thing Aether had been able to see was the blood and the shaft of light jutting out from beneath Dainsleif's ribs as one of Celestia's archers cruelly aimed a second arrow and fired at her target again.
He's alive now, but barely. Four of Lumine's companions had to help stitch him together with their healing magic, and even then it was touch-and-go. Aether hasn't left Dainsleif's side, in all the time it's taken for him to recover. They tried to dissuade him at first — told him to get some rest of his own — but now they don't bother. Aether's silent vigil over Dainsleif is the one war he still wants to wage.
It's a good thing that Dainsleif hasn't woken, the once and former prince of the Abyss thinks. He wouldn't even know how to react if Dain's eyes opened. Good morning and I'm sorry are two of the most honest things he wants to say, but an apology won't fix the hundreds of years he spent pushing Dainsleif away. The more he looks at Dainsleif's closed eyes, watches the slow, weak rise and fall of his chest, the more he realizes that the gap between them might now be impossible to breach.
More than anything, he wishes that it didn't have to come to this. He wishes that their journey together had never come to an end. In those days, he only ever had to wonder when Lumine would wake from her slumber and how to make Dainsleif laugh, but now they're long gone, and he is a different person.]
You really are a fool.
[There it is, that cold, pained voice that's plagued Aether ever since he looked upon the plight of those forsaken by Teyvat and cast into the dark sea below. The traveler's tone softens, his hand squeezes Dainsleif's as it lays unmoving upon the bed, and he buries his face into the man's chest, just barely avoiding the gauze wrapped about his ribs.
His voice is soft in a way that he hasn't been for a long, long time.]
...You're such an idiot, Dain. |
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