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Kaeya is the only one who sees it coming.
“Above us!” he warns everyone, and lurches forward—right into Childe.
Childe’s breath leaves him with the force of the collision, and he and Kaeya tumble into a heap in the thick snow just as an enormous icicle comes crashing down behind them in a spray of debris and shattered ice.
“Shit,” Childe hisses in both shock and pain as he and Kaeya scramble to their feet.
“Lumine,” Kaeya calls. “Amber? You guys all right?”
“Fine,” comes Lumine’s voice from the other side of the icicle.
Just their luck that they nearly get skewered crossing the longest, highest bridge in Starglow Cavern. The icicle has embedded itself deep into the floor and is wide enough to block the entire path, without so much as a foot of leeway to move around it.
“We’re okay,” Amber confirms. “Give me a few minutes to get this thing melted down—“
“No,” Childe says, eyes wide and senses alert.
Kaeya turns to him with a frown, but just as he opens his mouth to protest, a low rumble rises up from beneath their feet.
“The bridge!” Childe gasps. “Get back to solid ground, now!”
“But we need to stick—eep!” Amber cuts herself off with a yelp as the ground surrounding the icicle bursts with cracks, then crumbles away, sending the icicle plummeting hundreds of feet down towards the bottom of the cavern, and leaving a gaping hole in the middle of the bridge.
There is a moment of tense silence in which the four of them watch with bated breath for any further signs of movement. Briefly, Childe entertains the odds of him and Kaeya making the seven-foot jump over the gap to the other side.
Then, the rumbling begins again.
“Go!” Kaeya commands, startling them all into action.
As he starts into a run towards the end of the bridge, Childe allows himself a single glance over his shoulder, to see Lumine and Amber dashing down their side of the bridge towards the cavern’s entrance.
A sharp pain on the crown of his head makes him look up on instinct, and his heart jumps into his throat at the sight of debris, ice, and several more giant icicles raining down towards them from the ceiling.
“Whatever you do, don’t fall!” he yells at the top of his lungs and hopes it’s enough for the others to hear him. “The gliders will break!”
“Watch yourself!” Kaeya grabs Childe’s wrist and yanks him forward just as the floor beneath his feet falls away. “Come on, move.”
They throw themselves onto solid ground with just seconds to spare before the last of the bridge collapses and disappears into the darkness below. They don’t hear it hit the floor.
Childe coughs and spits snow out of his mouth, grunting at the numb sensation the cold leaves on his tongue.
“Dammit,” Kaeya mutters. He stands, brushes snow out of his fur shawl, and immediately begins scanning their surroundings. “We need to find a source of heat now.”
Childe would be making a remark about the irony of Kaeya’s words considering his affinity for the cold—were it not for his own teeth chattering so violently he couldn’t get a word out if he wanted. Instead, he simply stands and joins Kaeya in surveying the area, though it doesn’t take either of them more than a few seconds to discover that with the bridge gone, the only traversable path in their vicinity is one that leads straight into a dark, narrow cave.
They exchange looks.
Kaeya shrugs and, with a smile half-frozen onto his face, says, “Can’t be any worse than standing around and waiting to freeze to death, right?”
Childe agrees with a stiff nod, and the two venture in.
Later on, Childe will wish he’d had the common sense to disagree.
“Stay close,” Kaeya says softly as the space quickly grows dark around them.
“I c-can take care of myself,” Child just manages to bite out, struggling to keep his shivering in control.
“I don’t doubt that, but it’s cold as h-hell,” Kaeya hisses. “You want to get out of here alive or not?”
The warmth that rises briefly in Childe’s cheeks does nothing to offset the sharp, unrelenting chill of the cave’s stagnant air. “Sorry,” he mutters, and shuffles in closer, just short of bumping Kaeya’s shoulder.
They travel on. The cave doesn’t branch, change direction, or show any signs of ending—it merely continues on. A feeling of deja vu creeps up into the back of Childe’s mind.
He flexes his fingers, numb and heavy, and tries not to blink too much, for fear of getting his eyes frozen shut.
“Think the others are okay?” he asks to fill the silence.
“Yeah,” Kaeya replies. “I’m pretty sure they made it back to the entrance.”
“Think they’re getting help?”
“Probably, but I have a feeling we’re going to be on our own for a while.” With his eyes adjusting to the dark, Childe can see Kaeya glance towards him. “Why? Are you worried?”
“Not particularly,” Childe replies, and it’s the truth.
“Hah, you do seem a lot calmer than I thought you would be. You been here before?”
“No, but I’ve had similar experiences.”
Kaeya raises his eyebrows. “Really, now?”
“I fell down a hole once.”
Kaeya’s expression falls flat. “A hole.”
“It was a really deep hole. More like a chasm, really,” Childe mutters, feeling a little defensive. “Point is, I felt like I was falling for hours—but I hit the bottom eventually.”
“A hole going deep underground, huh? Interesting. You’ll have to share with me sometime what sorts of fascinating sights you saw down there,” Kaeya says with a shrewd look in his eye that makes Childe wonder if perhaps he ought not to have shared that little tidbit about himself.
He crosses his arms, hugging himself tightly in another effort to retain what little heat he can. “Maybe I’ll tell you all about it if we can get the hell out of here before our bodies give up on us. I think I’m already starting to see colors I’m not supposed to be seeing.”
“That makes two of us,” Kaeya agrees with a breathy chuckle, before suddenly stopping short. “Wait,” he says, gaze fixed forward.
Childe also freezes upon the realization that the gentle red glow coming from several yards ahead of them is, in fact, not a result of his brain’s functions shutting down on him.
“Scarlet quartz,” he breathes.
“Come on.”
They break into the deposits like miners striking gold, hacking wildly with their weapons until the ore cracks loose from the earth. The moment Childe picks a piece up in his hands, he feels its warmth rush through him, swelling in his chest and defrosting his near-frostbitten extremities.
But he knows it will only last for a moment.
“We need to light something.” He cradles the quartz against him as he strains his eyes against the dark to scan the area.
“Here,” Kaeya calls a moment later.
There is a spark of red light, then a flash as a fire bursts into life in front of them, crackling happily on what appears to be the remains of a campfire.
Childe feels like he could cry if his tear ducts weren’t probably still frozen over. “Archons above, finally.”
Kaeya somehow still has it in him to laugh as he crouches in front of the fire, single eye gleaming briefly in the light before he closes it to enjoy the warmth. “Guess you were right about there being an end to this tunnel, huh?”
Childe glances around and sees that they’ve come to a small cavern with rounded walls covered in thick, rough ice. Several deposits of scarlet quartz sprout up out of the ground, radiating their eerie red light against the ice.
“I was hoping there would be an exit,” he grumbles.
“Maybe we missed a fork in the path somewhere,” Kaeya suggests. “At the very least, we can rest here for a bit before we start retracing our steps.”
Childe frowns. “Has anyone ever told you your optimism can be a little grating at times?”
The smile Kaeya gives him in response is so bright it almost circles all the way around to sinister. “We could just sit here and wait to die if you prefer.”
“Never." He pauses. “Although I might be tempted to consider it if this fire was at least a little bigger.”
That pulls a soft chuckle out of Kaeya—but then, his smile falls. “Say, Childe?”
“Mm?”
“Why do you suppose there’s a campfire here in the middle of this cavern?”
Whatever reply Childe might have come up with is cut off by a series of ear-splitting cracks filling the cavern as the layers of ice surrounding them suddenly begin grinding against each other and peeling away from the wall, as if alive.
“Lawachurls!” Childe realizes at the exact moment a huge, ice-armored fist swats Kaeya like a fly, sending him skidding across the frozen ground to land several feet away, out cold.
Childe scrambles desperately towards the cavern exit, eyes darting madly about to take stock. He counts three…four of them advancing on him, circling around to flank and cut him off from his escape.
His mind races. If he makes a break for it, he’ll likely be able to make it back into the tunnel, but there’s no guarantee that he’ll be able to outrun them.
And—even as the lawachurls close in on him, their looming figures blotting out the dull glow of the campfire; even as the air grows thick and time grows short as Childe’s window of escape shrinks by the second—his gaze moves back to Kaeya, limp on the ground, chest moving slowly with shallow, ragged breaths.
It’s only for a fraction of a second, then, that a sensation he can’t describe outweighs the desperation to ensure his own survival—but it’s enough to make the decision.
Childe plants his feet and gathers a familiar dark, dense aura in the air around him. There’s no point in pulling punches now. Corrupted Electro energy coalesces into a crackling purple mist that swirls up his legs, torso, and arms to encase his body in black, chitinous armor. On guard, the lawachurls hesitate and exchange looks, bracing themselves for a different kind of fight.
“Ah, well,” Childe sighs, his voice growing distorted as energy sparks in front of his face, then settles against his skin in the form of a crimson mask. “Lumine would kill me if I made it back without you, anyway.”
-:-
The last lawachurl falls like its companions: cold and heavy, with a rumbling thud against the cavern floor.
Childe glances around the area for caution’s sake, but a moment passes, and there is no further movement. Kaeya hasn’t woken, and is shivering slightly now in his unconscious state. He’s close enough to the fire to not have frozen to death while Childe was fighting, but the ground is still cold and hard, and now there’s shattered ice everywhere.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Childe mutters. He raises a hand and flexes it, testing his power reserves. It hasn’t escaped his notice that lately, he’s been able to maintain his Foul Legacy form for longer periods of time. Perhaps he’ll convince Lumine for a rematch sometime soon.
Putting that out of mind for now, he reaches down and, being careful not to break skin, lifts Kaeya up in one of his clawed gauntlets.
Kaeya groans softly, a pained frown forming on his face as Childe pulls him in to hold in the crook of his elbow. He probably has some bruised bones, or possibly even fractures that will need to be looked at as soon as they find help.
Again, Childe runs his gaze over the walls around them, this time searching for something else. His eyes land on what appears to be a tiny, glowing dot standing out against the dark stone: a crack he’d spotted during the fight, most likely leading to the outside.
Without hesitation, he draws his free hand back and smashes it straight through the wall, the ice and rock immediately shattering upon impact and falling away to reveal—daylight, reflecting harsh and white off the snow.
“Finally,” Childe sighs, and makes his way out onto the mountain in search of a recognizable path.
Freedom brings with it the howling winds of the eternal blizzard that calls Dragonspine its home. It’s far colder out here than it was in the cavern, and any normal human who came here unprepared wouldn’t likely make it back home. But Childe’s armor protects him, and he uses it to his advantage to carry out his search.
However, not five minutes have passed before he realizes he’s hopelessly lost. The thing about Dragonspine is that the snow and cliffs tend to make everything look the same, and the fog surrounding the mountain is just thick enough in this area that he can’t see past it to use the landmarks in other distant regions for reference.
With each minute that passes, his legs feel heavier and heavier, his armor weighing him down. In his arms, Kaeya shivers uncontrollably, shallow breaths shuddering past dangerously blue lips. He knows the transformation will be up soon, and both of them will be back where they started. With what remaining strength he can muster, he hauls them up an incline that leads into what looks like an abandoned campsite inside a small alcove sitting against the mountain. Thrusting proudly up from the center of a rare patch of dry dirt is an enchanted brazier.
“Where were these damned things when we were stuck in that cave?” Childe grouses as he touches the runes etched into the brazier, activating it. Heat washes over the area, and as gently as he can, he places Kaeya down on the ground next to the brazier.
A single steel blue eye flutters open, accompanied by a wry grin. “My hero,” Kaeya croons.
Childe’s eyes widen. “Fuck,” he says emphatically just as the Foul Legacy transformation fizzles out, his armor dissolving into dark smoke and leaving him to stumble onto his knees. “How long have you been awake?”
“Long enough to know you saved my ass. Neat trick.”
“I…” With a sigh, Childe lowers himself onto the ground near Kaeya, his muscles jelly. He’s not sure he’ll be able to move at all for the next couple of hours. “I was hoping you wouldn’t be awake to see that.”
“Why do you say that? It’s not a secret, is it?” Kaeya asks. Childe hears the sound of dirt and clothes shifting, but doesn’t have the energy to open his eyes again.
“Something like that. Just show a little discretion, would you?”
Kaeya chuckles. “Rest assured. I’m got discretion coming out of my ears.”
Childe snorts. “Yeah, right.”
More rustling, this time closer, and then there’s a hand sliding under Childe’s head.
“Hey,” he says, opening his eyes to see Kaeya kneeling over him.
“Relax.” Kaeya slides something thick and soft underneath his head, and when Childe smells cedarwood and some kind of floral cologne, he realizes it’s Kaeya’s shawl. “I’ll have to thank you properly when we get back to the city for not leaving me to die.”
The fur tickles his nose, but is warm against his cheek; it isn’t an unpleasant sensation overall. Childe is careful not to admit this aloud as he simply closes his eyes again and exhales quietly through his nose.
Kaeya breaks the silence before it has a chance to settle. “You know, now that you’ve come to consider me a confidant…”
“I’ve never said anything even remotely along those lines.”
“…I can’t help but be compelled to ask: What did you find at the bottom of that awfully deep hole you fell into once upon a time?”
Childe would pinch the bridge of his nose if he had the strength to raise his arm. “Nothing,” he says flatly, not caring how obvious it is that he’s lying.
“Oh, really? And how did you ever find your way out?”
"Don't remember.”
“My, my. What a harrowing experience that must have been for you.” Childe doesn’t have to look to know that Kaeya is wearing one of those calculating smiles of his—the ones that make you wonder if he doesn’t already know everything, no matter how hard you’re trying not to let him.
“Why are you so curious, anyway? Never met a guy who fell down a hole before?”
Kaeya laughs at that, a genuinely amused, breathy chuckle that Childe feels on his face. It makes him realize just how close Kaeya is sitting. “Can you blame me for wanting a firsthand account from someone who’s actually been to the Abyss and returned to tell the tale?”
Childe tenses. “…I didn’t say anything about the Abyss.”
“You didn’t need to.”
Against his better judgement, Childe looks up, only to see Kaeya grinning down at him like a fox who’s cornered a rabbit. “Who the hell are you?” he asks.
“Trust me, that’s not the question you’re going to get the most interesting answer for.”
Childe desperately wishes he could move, if only so he didn’t feel so vulnerable in the moment. Perhaps out of some sense of rebellion, he musters the strength to raise an arm and, with intent, reaches towards Kaeya’s eyepatch.
“Ah—“ Kaeya catches his wrist with the ease of much practice, grip tight enough to be just short of painful. His skin is surprisingly warm, despite the weather. “This eyepatch was a parting gift from my mother. I don’t go around letting just anyone touch it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Kaeya chuckles, thumb sliding in a subtle but noticeable motion over Childe’s pulse. “A lie for a lie,” he says with a teasing lilt in his voice.
Childe pulls his hand out of Kaeya’s grip and drops it back onto the floor with a sad flop. “So what kind of truths would you have me offer in return for some of yours?”
“I’m afraid neither of us will know the answer to that one until the day those truths come to light,” Kaeya says with an exaggerated shrug. “But I get the feeling that’s a long way off, don’t you?”
Childe huffs and tries not to think about the warmth gathering around his wrist, despite Kaeya’s touch having long been removed. “It could be tomorrow, if the circumstances were right.”
“Well, then, we’ll navigate that when tomorrow comes.” With a quiet huff of effort, Kaeya lowers himself onto his back next to Childe, his head coming to rest just inches away from Childe’s on the shawl. “The others will find us soon, and we need to be ready to head down the mountain with them.”
Childe shivers at the sudden proximity, jaw tightening almost defensively. “There’s that baseless optimism again.”
“Amber’s an excellent tracker, and she knows Dragonspine well. They’ll find us.” Kaeya turns, the tip of his nose grazing Childe’s cheek and his breath cool against Childe’s ear. “That is, unless you don’t want them to…?”
“I’m not going to dignify that with an answer,” Childe mumbles, ears burning. “You could stand to have a little more grace.”
“Why bother with all that when it’s just the two of us here?”
At the mouth of the cave, the whistle of the wind turns into a roar, and the nearby brush rustles in response as snow-laden branches creak and shiver. A moment of clarity strikes Childe.
“You know, I’m starting to think you’ve never had an honest moment in your life,” he says quietly, feeling foolish. He’d almost let himself get pulled in by that shallow charm.
“Hm…maybe you just haven’t been around long enough to find out otherwise.”
“And how long exactly do you expect that will take?”
Kaeya chuckles again, but this time there is something soft, almost indulgent in his voice as he reaches over and brushes his fingers with the lightest of touches over the back of Childe’s hand. “Stick around and see?”
Childe stares up to where the ceiling of the alcove blocks his view of the sky above. The brazier hums with energy over his head, its magically generated warmth radiating out in pulses to fight off the sheer cold of the snowstorm threatening to flood in on them. An answer sits on the tip of his tongue.
He doesn’t reply.