Chapter Text
Ajax was frustrated with the way the agents in Liyue treated him. It was not that he would rather them scamper at the sight of him or grovel at his feet, but moreso...
The agents stationed here treated Dottore like he was someone to be respected. Someone who had to be listened to with full focus, someone whose word was absolute, someone whose authority was unquestionable, someone who was capable and knew what he was doing and therefore should not be doubted.
But Ajax? That is- Tartaglia? Childe?
Tartaglia was too young. Tartaglia was rash and reckless and could not be trusted to keep himself safe. Tartaglia came from a backwater village in the middle of bumfuck nowhere and so his manners were not up to par, he did not fit into the high society profile the rest of the Harbingers easily slid into. Tartaglia was off.
Tartaglia was a brat given too much authority. Tartaglia's choices were to be questioned at least a little, he was to be doubted on most matters beyond base violence, his word was no authority on anything that was not how to kill others.
(Tartaglia was to be looked after like an unpredictable rabid animal that only behaved under certain conditions.)
Tartaglia was not like the other Harbingers. Tartaglia was not to be sent on missions alone, not important missions at least.
Tartaglia was backup. He was the Vanguard, yes, but one only deployed when there was an actual force behind him that would do all the work once he was done breaking things.
On his own? Only local missions, simple missions. Uncomplicated. Nothing that would require him to think too much.
Nothing that would put him out of Her Majesty's reach, forever may she reign,
Forever may she reign him in by the leash.
(That was why he was in Liyue with the good doctor, and not- alone, like Signora would be in some months in Mondstadt.)
For the record, Ajax was not at all opposed to being sent on missions as another Harbinger's backup. He was not fond of leading or directing operations (hence the lack of a proper division of men assigned to him), nor did he have a particular need to be the one calling the shots. As long as he was given things to fight and the rest of the tasks were not excruciatingly boring to get through, Tartaglia would comply without issues. Would accompany another Harbinger, take a couple of 'his men' with him, and stand by the side and either look pretty or look intimidating. Whichever was needed.
(That was on paper. In practice, it came down more to each individual Harbinger as people, whether Ajax would be thrilled or be begging for reconsideration if assigned to work for them for a round.)
So it was not that Ajax minded being sent as someone's backup. The actual mission, the actual tasks, the actual experience of being the backup was not the issue here.
The issue was-
...He was the only Harbinger being tasked with things like these. The only Harbinger being designated as backup. The only Harbinger being treated like a class below the rest.
(The agents in Liyue treated him like a rowdy teenager they had no choice but to listen to, and within the same breath, treated Dottore like the highest authority of the land.)
Part of Ajax had understood this, once. He was the youngest, he was the newest, he was the least experienced – he was younger than the others, he did come from the middle of bumfuck nowhere with no 'high society' manners to speak of, his only real use was killing things. It made sense. It made sense that, should a mission need more than one Harbinger, he'd be the one tacked on along with the one in charge.
Another part of him, however, didn't understand this anymore. He'd been Harbinger for eight years now. Yes he was still the youngest, yes he was still the newest, yes he was still the least experienced – but that was all because, by design, there had been no new Harbingers since he was ascended. He was- still young, yes, he was only twenty-six; but he was not new anymore. Was not inexperienced anymore.
It made sense that he was still looked down on by everyone – that part he did understand. That was not something that would go away no matter how many Harbingers came after him, he didn't think. If there were ever to be any more of them, which was unlinkely unless some roles switched around. It still frustrated him, of course; maybe all the more since he knew why and knew that, technically, none of them were wrong.
What he didn't understand anymore was why he was being sidelined like this as an asset.
(Was he truly so lacking in all other areas that, despite being the best at killing of them all, he could still not be entrusted with an entire mission on his own? Not somewhere Her Majesty couldn't reach?)
But it wasn't as though he could ask. What would that even look like?
"Hey, I was awarded this position despite being wholly undeserving of it by the sheer grace of Her Majesty the Tsaritsa, forever may she reign – why am I not more important? Why are you not giving me more respect? Give me more. Give me a better position. I am better than them. I deserve this. You owe me this."
That would be wrong. Not just wrong, but flat-out incorrect.
Because the truth was that some part of Ajax did, still, understand this, too. He might've been granted a title, might've been granted additional powers, might've been granted a name-
But deep down, he was still Ajax. Was still fourteen, trapped down in the Abyss. Was still...
Tartaglia was still just a mask. Just a role to perform on his Tsaritsa's stage. She had no use for Ajax, no use for anything that could get in the way of her play – as long as Ajax still existed, he would only weigh Tartaglia down.
As long as Ajax was still alive, Tartaglia couldn't be trusted with a greater role. He could be given additional masks, additional missions, additional means to push Ajax away and replace him with something more befitting of his name-
Something like Childe,
But until then, until Ajax was gone, Tartaglia wouldn't be considered 'ready' for his planned role. His performance wouldn't be up to par.
So Ajax-
...So Childe did not complain, when he was assigned to be Dottore's backup in Liyue.
Childe did not complain when the agents stationed in Liyue didn't immediately follow his orders, no questions asked, like they did with Dottore. He did not complain when they questioned him, he did not complain when they treated him like he didn't know what he was doing, and he did not complain when they didn't bother to wait for him to be out of hearing range to begin whining about his presence.
And Tartaglia was a knife, cleaned and polished by Her Majesty. An actor, hired and instructed by Her hand.
If this was what she believed him to be most useful for, then all he had to do was comply.
Even if it frustrated him. In the end, it was Ajax the one who felt like this.
Not Childe. Not Tartaglia.
And in Liyue, that was all he was allowed to be.
Liyue was bright and inviting when they made landfall. Ajax left the ship right after Dottore, leaving the rest of the agents to deal with everything else.
"You know your role, correct?" the good doctor had asked him as they were being towed into the docks, waiting to disembark. "How you must behave?"
"Of course I do," Tartaglia had scoffed, and the man had just chuckled like he found that answer funny, like he knew something Ajax didn't. Some of the Harbingers were always like that for some reason, so Ajax had learned to ignore them and not get worked up over their snide comments about his presumed lack of intellect.
Leaving the piers behind with a pair of agents in tow, Ajax made for the Northland Bank, mentally preparing for the role he was to play as a 'diplomat.' He was in this mission with one of the less egregious segments of Dottore, thankfully, and they were in Liyue for the same reason Signora would be sent to Mondstadt in a couple of months:
To retrieve the nation's Gnosis.
The Geo Gnosis, as far as Ajax understood it, was in the possession of the Liyue Qixing, who presently ruled the human affairs of the nation. They did so under partial supervision of the Mighty and Illuminated Adepti, who worked under spiritual orders of Morax, Rex Lapis, the Geo Archon.
The Geo Archon himself, however, had... How had The Steambird put it, back then? Ah- 'Ascended to a different plane of existence,' or something to that effect. The god had apparently decided about eight years ago (less than a month after Ajax became a Harbinger, funnily enough) that the affairs of the mortal realm either were no longer his concern or no longer required his supervision, and so he had essentially retired, passing the torch of protecting the nation onto the Adepti and of managing the nation onto the Qixing (along with the Gnosis).
The Tsaritsa, forever may she reign, had long since resented the oppressive rule of Celestia over Teyvat. It was only (relatively) recently that she had decided to take matters into her own hands, bulking up Snezhnaya's forces with the creation of the Fatui and the appointment of the Harbingers; and even more recently still deciding to take action in place of the rest of the Archons seemingly content to sit on their laurels and watch Celestia do what they wanted.
So they were starting on this mission of collecting the Gnoses, and the first ones on the shopping list were the Geo and Anemo pieces, having been deemed the most difficult to obtain of the bunch.
The Anemo Archon was absent, and he was the one in possession of the Anemo Gnosis,
And the Geo Archon had left his Gnosis with the humans. Which, contrary to popular belief – because this was Liyue, one of if not the only nation Snezhnaya could not work their way around as they otherwise would – made it more difficult to acquire than if it had still been in the hands of their patron deity.
It meant the Geo Gnosis couldn't be stolen or traded away with one singular person, but rather, had to be obtained via... different means. Either actual nation-scale diplomacy, or more underhanded, trickier, better thought-out methods of subterfuge.
Signora, then, would be sent to Mondstadt in a couple of months to figure out how to wake up the Anemo Archon; while Ajax had been tasked with accompanying Dottore in figuring out how to get the Qixing to hand the Geo Gnosis over.
Ajax' role in the doctor's plan, then?
The diplomat. The distraction. He was to sit tight at the bank and look pretty and sell the idea that the new batch of Fatui had come to Liyue for market research. Dottore was with him under a fake identity, this particular segment having fashioned himself a completely different look to slip under the radar and act out the actual plan undetected.
Ajax, as usual, was not privy to the smaller details of Dottore's plan – assuming there was a concrete plan to begin with already, and the situation at the moment wasn't just the man studying their foes and currently figuring out a route to the Gnosis.
All Ajax had to do was look pretty.
It wouldn't be the first time, and it wouldn't be the worst mission he'd ever been sent to. To 'placate' him, he had also been assigned debt collection at the bank, and Dottore had graciously allowed him to occasionally join the field agents in their duties.
The whole reason why the Liyue Qixing tolerated such a large Fatui presence in their borders beyond those at the bank was because they had a mutually-beneficial research and defense agreement – the Fatui field agents were allowed to set up stations in specific zones in the notoriously dangerous wilderness of the nation in exchange for keeping said areas clear of monsters, and the Fatui would get combat testing out of it, along with a slow and gradual increase of trust and friendly relations with the Qixing.
As far as the Qixing were concerned, the Fatui could be trusted to follow their interests, but so long as those interests aligned with them, all would be well.
Ajax only had to play by those same preconceptions. He had to be the Harbinger present in the nation so that they wouldn't suspect there was another one worming his way around.
Essentially, Ajax was to be a paper tiger. Hence, no matter how much the agents' treatment of him frustrated him,
He could do nothing.
He couldn't break character.
The first week in Liyue was split right down the middle between dull paperwork and the inviting, warm atmosphere of the harbor and all it had to offer for a foreigner like him to discover. Keeping up the diplomat facade at the Northland Bank, despite being boring and tedious, was not particularly time-consuming; so he used his shockingly-ample free time to explore the city streets and take in the culture.
After a week, however, he'd grown restless and bored of just walking around the place – not because of anything to do with the city itself, Ajax still thought it lovely, but rather-
Well, he was a little beast of the Abyss, and so he needed violence every once in a while to remain sane. That much about him, at least, every agent had always gotten right.
(Thus he couldn't really complain about the fact they sometimes regarded him like a rabid animal. After all- Were they wrong?)
There were only two debt-collection jobs available during that week, and both were swift and uncomplicated. The intimidation factor of a newly-arrived Harbinger, while lost on the agents themselves given it was just Tartaglia, was not at all lost on the actual people of Liyue.
Both debtors had folded fast under basically no pressure, and so Ajax had not gotten any sort of fight out of it. Not that he'd been wanting to, those were normal civilians, nothing he particularly wanted to fight against; but still.
So he'd gone out for a hike come his next long free hours the following week.
His first expedition out into the countryside had proved invigorating. Liyue's dichotomy as both one of the safest nations to live in and also one of the more dangerous ones to traverse had proved extremely accurate: as soon as Ajax had left the steady watch of the Millelith stationed along the more well-traveled routes and the areas where Fatui field agents had been allocated to, it hadn't taken more than a handful of minutes for a pack of geovishap hatchlings to jump him.
Ajax had taken a short, cursory hike around Mt. Tianheng before returning back to the city in order not to miss dinner hours.
So now, the next day, he was of course heading out again. A single afternoon had been far from enough to get rid of all his leftover unused energy, after all.
"Is Harbinger Tartaglia heading out again?" Felix, his assigned second in Liyue, asked upon coming across him heading for the bridge out of Chihu Rock.
"Correct," Tartaglia nodded, regarding the man for a second, and then added, "Did I forget about something?"
"No, no," Felix shook his head no, unfazed. "I merely overheard the Millelith mentioning the weather might not remain so fair for long, and I was unaware if Harbinger Tartaglia knew this."
"I'm not going to die out there," Tartaglia did not scoff, turned, and waved him off. "Send a cicin if something happens: those will find me."
Thankfully, Felix kept quiet; but also annoyingly, Felix kept quiet. Ajax kept his pace even and unbothered as he crossed the bridge, and tried to think nothing of it when no call of 'Yes Sir' or 'Understood, Harbinger Tartaglia' followed after him.
Again, Ajax didn't particularly want bootlicking or groveling, it was just-
Nobody stopped Capitano when he was headed somewhere without a greeting to just- question whether he was aware of what could await him. Like he hadn't checked. Like he wouldn't know. Like he had to be reminded of it, like he was reckless (which, granted, Ajax was, but-)
("Hey brat, where do you think you're going? You're not going to cause any trouble, are you? Did you remember to pack a coat? It's cold outside and I know you youngsters never take the weather seriously.")
...But what did it matter.
It did eventually start raining. Ajax made his way out of the city through lower Lisha, coming across some whopperflowers and slimes and getting to fight out some of the manic energy in his veins, like phantom electric shocks on his arms. The Abyssal monster living in the miasma in his bones was still not satisfied, it never was; but it at least calmed down somewhat and resigned itself to keeping an alert watch like always.
When it started raining, then, Ajax began to head back the same way he came. As a Hydro user, a little bit of water on his clothes was far from an inconvenience – he only returned because most beasts of the land were largely inactive in such weather, and thus it would be pointless for him to try to look for more foes to fight.
Unlike Dottore, who was staying under the guise of a normal citizen at Baiju Guesthouse, Ajax had been given a small (yet luxurious) apartment above the bank.
It was as he was making his way up the stairs, then, that chatter from the walkways above reached his ears.
"...I think," the voice trailed in, one he recognized as one of the several agents assigned to guarding the doors to the bank on the level above him.
"That doesn't sound... then again, far be it for us to question the Lord Harbinger," a second voice, with a sigh. Another one of the agents at the bank.
Ajax paused where he'd been climbing the stairs. Due to the rain, they likely hadn't heard him yet.
They must be talking about Dottore, he figured. None of the agents in Liyue referred to him as 'the Lord Harbinger' (even though, according to standard protocol, they should).
"Yeah. I just- This is going to be such a mess," another sigh, but from the first voice. "If that's what they go for, with the reputation he has..."
"All things considered, that's probably why they brought him in the first place," the second voice. "Don't you think? It'd make far more sense. Right now he's not doing anything of what you hear the others say he tends to do. I mean, debt-collecting? Seriously?" Ah-
"Surely the Lord Harbinger must have his reasons."
"And that reason might just be that. Now that I think about it, Dmitri told me something similar."
"Do you really think they could risk the bank's reputation tanking like that? They did make him a diplomat, he is an employee."
"I don't think they can afford that. The bank's too important, you've heard the feuds the Lord Harbinger has with the Ninth," a scoff. "If you ask me, if you're right, this idea of letting the beast lose might just be done to scapegoat him."
Scapegoat?
A pensive hum. "I can see that. That's- still, that's going to be such a mess anyway."
"We'll just have to hope the Lord Harbinger knows what he's doing."
Ajax pushed down his questions and resumed his climb, stepping down with more force than necessary as he went up to signal his arrival.
The two men at the doors to the bank gave him nothing more than uninterested nods of acknowledgment as Ajax passed them by and took the stairs up to the top walkway.
(Scapegoat...?)
"A 'Sigil of Permission,' you said?" Tartaglia murmured as he watched the Millelith apprehend the Yanshang Teahouse bodyguards on aggravated assault, a couple of days later, the owner of the establishment gritting his teeth and sweating bullets as he and his assistant discussed a settlement of both the incident and the debt with Andrei (the bank manager).
"Yes, Sir," Javert with him nodded, one of the very few among the agents stationed in Liyue who treated him the way all agents treated all other Harbingers. "Legend has it only a few remain in existence – they were once bestowed unto select mortals by the Geo Archon himself, holding but a fraction of his powers."
Ajax stared at the slip of paper in his hand. Well- if it allegedly contained the godly power of an Archon, no matter how little of it, he supposed that explained the tingling in his fingers were they made contact with it, even through his gloves.
"Find our good doctor," Tartaglia instructed, for Javert only. "Tell him we ought to have a meeting – he should know of this."
'Do let me know if you find anything interesting,' the man had told him last he saw him when he swung by the bank some days prior. It would seem that, while he had made some advances in his intel gathering on the Qixing, an actual concrete plan for how to get them to hand the Gnosis over had not yet been finalized. Her Majesty, forever may she reign, had given them blanket permission to use whatever means necessary to obtain it so long as they wouldn't completely screw over the Qixing's relations with the Fatui. Unlike the other nations, Liyue was one they could not afford to make enemies of just yet, so they had some limits to how far they could take this mission.
...Still.
"Scapegoat him."
...As long as relations didn't completely break down, as long as the Northland Bank wasn't evicted from the harbor, most of everything was on the table. And while Ajax couldn't claim to know how Dottore's brain worked, exactly-
He'd known the man long enough to have a rough idea.
The Sigil of Permission, then, remained in his possession for the next two days it took for the good doctor to have enough free time to grace him with his presence, in Andrei's office at the bank.
(For those two days, with an oddly-warm inner breast pocket, the miasma in his bones remained... calmer than usual, almost as though it recognized Ajax had more power at his disposal, and thus deemed it less necessary to watch out for as many threats as it always did.)
"Tell me, then, Tartaglia; to what do I owe the pleasure of these summons?" Dottore mused as he closed the door of the office behind him, Andrei having vacated the space to let them have privacy.
"I found something that might interest you," Tartaglia said, pulling out the slip of paper and placing it on the desk at their right. Dottore picked it up with that usual placid intrigue of his'. "Apparently it's supposed to contain a fraction of the Geo Archon's powers."
There was no reply to that as the man turned the paper slip this way and that, holding it against the light, slowly but surely starting to marvel at it with interest.
"How fortuitous," Dottore eventually hummed. "This does indeed hold the powers of one of the Seven."
"It was confiscated from Yanshang Teahouse," Tartaglia provided.
"That matters not," Dottore waved him off. Ajax held down an exasperated eye-roll. "Who else knows you have this?"
"One of the debt-collecting agents," Tartaglia said. "And the owner of the Teahouse. His assistant too, maybe, and maybe the guards. They are all in prison now, though."
Dottore hummed, and did not comment on eliminating the witnesses.
Ajax found that odd. Not because he himself particularly thought they should, but rather-
Either Dottore would want nobody to know, and would therefore silence all who did,
...Or he would want everyone to know.
(Scapegoat.)
"My, my..." the man droned, holding the paper slip against the light once more. "You might've just found us our secret ingredient for this mission, Eleventh." A chuckle, amused. He set the slip on the desk again, a clear sign for him to take it back. "Well done."
Ajax picked the paper slip back up, slow, cautious but trying not to show it. "What are you thinking?"
"Give me some time," Dottore said, holding his hands behind his back, ambling about the office is if in thought. "Negotiation for a... peaceful trade, of the Gnosis, does not appear to be within our expected possibilities. But with this, and with some time to set everything up..."
"What is your plan?" Tartaglia risked asking, keeping his tone neutral. "Surely I don't need to remind you-"
"I know what our constraints are, Tartaglia, don't you worry your pretty little head," Dottore chuckled again, again like something about the general situation amused him. Ajax held down a grimace. "I'll not jeopardize the Fatui's standing in Liyue too much, nor the bank's. We will merely... give the Qixing reason to trust us, by creating a little chaos. You do love your fights, now don't you?"
Fights. A little chaos.
Giving the Qixing reason to trust the Fatui.
...
A scapegoat.
"As long as Her Majesty approves," Tartaglia grit out, because there was nothing else he could say.
"Of course," Dottore mused. "Of course."
He was instructed to keep the Sigil on his person until further notice, and Ajax decided to go for an impromptu walk to the countryside.
As long as Her Majesty approved...
...And she would not, would she? Putting the blame for a possible international disaster on one of the Harbingers would stain the Fatui's reputation by proxy.
Surely this was off-limits.
Right?
His impromptu walk to the countryside ended up taking him all the way to Tianqiu Valley, every beast he encountered sending the miasma in his veins into a frenzy looking for the next one, his mind too preoccupied with frankly ridiculous thoughts to have any willpower to stop it.
Her Majesty wouldn't approve of such a plan. She wouldn't. And Dottore would not try to go against her wishes-
...Would he? That man was capable of anything. Ajax had no guarantee he wouldn't act first, ask questions later; and Dottore acting could cost those around him anything from a couple of hours of time to a couple of limbs off their bodies.
And Ajax couldn't stop him, because why would he.
Why would he be against this? This was absurd.
Dottore was going to come up with a plan to retrieve the Geo Gnosis for Her Majesty the Tsaritsa, forever may she reign, and Ajax was going to execute it.
That was his job.
That was why he was here in the first place.
Tartaglia and Childe could not complain, and so Ajax-
Ajax forced his thoughts away with the last of the geovishaps following him, and took a deep breath.
It was fine.
This was his job.
He was being stupid.
The situation had him too riled up – he was better than this.
So what if this was the umpteenth consecutive mission where he was sent exclusively as someone else's backup? This was the role Her Majesty had deemed him fit to play,
And he would play it.
He looked around, scanning the large ruined buildings against the cliff's face he'd wound up hiking to in his- restlessness. There was a lake just behind him, and he walked over to the edge of the dusty stone platform, dropping into the water.
He swiftly swiped the dirt and blood and gunk off his clothes, and then pushed up with a Hydro jet to jump out of the lake and back onto the ruins' platform, pulling the excess water off of him with a wave of his hand once he'd landed, now clean.
Much better.
Now that he'd cooled off both metaphorically and physically, the lingering warmth on his inner breast pocket caught his attention: it was warmer than usual, and he could feel the tingling sensation through his shirt, against his chest.
He looked around again, but- he was alone.
He pulled out the Sigil, watching it glow and dim in slow intervals. Had he not been supposed to let it get wet, or...?
...No, it seemed more like it was reacting to something.
It was still early in the day and he had no particular inclination to return back to the harbor so quickly, so he paced around the platform, trying to see if the... energy pulsing, would change depending on where he was.
Faintly, it seemed to grow stronger the closer to the central building he got.
Stashing it back in his pocket, Ajax produced his Hydro blades and walked the short distance to it, stepping past the partially-collapsed entrance, looking around the wide chamber inside. Whatever upper floors this structure might've had, they were all lying in crumbled pieces on the ground along with parts of the pillars that might've held them up. Still, the outer walls remained stubborn, so the view from within was an oddly-vertical, very tall room.
It was a bit mind-boggling. Chunks of the upper floors were still clearly visible, still attached in parts to the walls, but- He could practically see all the way to the rotting ceiling.
The most eye-catching part of the building, however, was the glowing back wall.
Ajax returned his focus to it after his quick scan of the place, having left the metaphorical elephant in the room for last just to ensure he wasn't missing anything else that could blindside him.
Across from the entrance, the wall that must've been built against the cliff itself had a... portion of it, that seemed to glow a faint golden. Like an outline of a grand doorway.
Ajax squinted, confused.
It seemed like an optical illusion. Like he was seeing it, but also not. If he moved, it seemed to move with him.
The Sigil in his pocket seemed to be reacting to it, as he stepped closer.
He came to a halt in front of the faintly-glowing wall, scanning the stone bricks, absently dismissing his blades. Aside from the fact it seemed to be glowing, he could find nothing wrong with it.
Part of him wondered if it wasn't just the Sigil making him see things. It was a distant thought, one among many trying to make sense of what he was seeing, but when he reached out to touch the wall-
His fingers phased through like it was not stone, but dense air.
Ajax jerked his hand back, startled.
Okay.
Some- Adeptal nonsense, maybe. The Sigil was connected to the Geo Archon, and- Morax had been the Prime of Adepti, yes?
Yes.
Ajax made to touch the wall again, and again his hand went through. He waved it through the- golden illusion, watching the way it seemed to almost shift with his movement – like the surface of a thick liquid being stirred.
Well.
Maybe if he brought the good doctor some Adeptal treasure, he would come up with a better, less-stupid idea for how to get the Gnosis from the Qixing.
Or maybe- if he discovered some long-lost, secret, ultra-important Adeptal treasure trove or- ...sacred place,
...Maybe he could ask the Qixing to please lend the Tsaritsa the Gnosis? Just for a while? Just until their rebellion was over. Ajax genuinely wasn't sure why they were not trying the diplomatic approaches first, and he loved a good fight, so that should tell you something.
(Though that thought might come from the fact there was nobody to fight the Gnosis over, in Liyue. He doubted he could waltz up to Yujing Terrace and demand the Qixing to send their best old geezer to duel with him.)
Either way, Ajax was nothing if not a curious man, so he took a deep breath and stepped through the stone wall.
Two things hit him at once.
First, he felt his monster stand down. Lower itself. Shut up.
(Ever since he'd left the Abyss, though it had gotten far easier to wrangle with time, the miasma roiling in his veins and the beastly instincts that came with it had never, never gone quiet. They had remained there, in the back of his mind, like a murmur he'd learned to tune out. Not quite noise, not quite a distraction, but a constant presence. Like someone hovering over your shoulder, making itself known, refusing to let you forget it existed.
But at that moment? It went away, like the- like the Sigil's seemingly calming powers on it had suddenly quintupled. There was still miasma in his veins, Ajax was still a little monster of the Abyss,
But his instincts had shut up. They quieted.
They stood down, in the face of... of...)
Second, despite his monster standing down, he was left with a clear, strong feeling of being watched.
Of not being alone in that room.
He looked up from where he'd been watching his step as he crossed the 'wall,' taking the place in. At the back of the room, past a small ceremonial table with a glowing chunk of- what was it called, cor lapis? There was a massive stone sculpture of a pair of hands, coming out of the top corners of the room and resting behind the ceremonial table in a cupping gesture, like someone holding water.
It seemed like a temple or a shrine of sorts. The only source of light was the glowing rock on the narrow ceremonial stone table by the fingers of the sculpture, and though everything was decidedly not covered in the same layers of dust and debris as the ruined structure just outside, it was still...
...Abandoned. Almost suspended in time.
Crucially, it was empty.
There was nobody in there with him, and yet, his instincts insisted there was. He was being observed, watched-
He just didn't know from where.
Ajax scanned what little there was to see, slowly walking up to the short table. Despite the sensation of eyes on him that he could not locate, he did not feel any sense of urgency.
Which was almost just as worrying.
He stopped in front of the sculpture, the- altar-table, at his knees.
Whatever or whoever this temple had been supposed to honor, it didn't seem to see any use anymore. The cor lapis chunk didn't seem like an offering, but more than a feature of the place. He also couldn't really tell what it was for, this place, the cupped hands being too nondescript to assume they were meant to belong to someone in specific. Either that, or Ajax was just not familiar enough with Liyue's culture of deities and local legends and their imagery to be able to recognize them.
...
A temple.
Someone watching him.
...Maybe-
He knew the Mighty and Illuminated Adepti still roamed the mountains of Liyue, so maybe... maybe this was the abode of one of them? Somewhere the humans had once worshiped them, now seemingly sealed behind the illusory spell of a rock wall passable only by someone with a Sigil of Permission? Or something similar?
And maybe the Adepti in question was still- there, somehow, and that was the owner of the gaze set on him since he entered.
In a poor imitation of the Liyue formal salute, Ajax put his fist in his other palm, held them in front of his chest, and lowered his head slightly, closing his eyes for a second.
"Sorry for intruding," he murmured into the silence, hoping it was enough to quell any possible consequences of sticking his nose where he shouldn't. The last thing he needed was to get the Adepti in conflict with the Fatui.
Resolving to head back to the city lest he trespass even further (there was no Adeptal treasure to be found there), Ajax broke the salute and opened his eyes, looking up, his body already stepping back with one foot to turn and leave-
But there was now a man on the sculpture.
Ajax froze, shocked still, startled.
He hadn't heard- Hadn't sensed-
No, that wasn't right- he had sensed a presence, hadn't he? Someone or something observing him?
Was this...?
There was silence in the room as Ajax' brain tried to kickstart itself back into working order. The man sat on the cupped hands and regarded him with a blank, placid stare, something between unfazed and curious, but it was so- so neutral that it was hard to tell what, exactly, he was thinking.
Having to force himself to stop staring at those amber eyes, Ajax' focus snapped instead to the pair of cor lapis horns crowning his head, then to the fine silken robes he was wearing, down to the long, serpentine tail with- amber protrusions and a tuft of golden hair at the tip-
Ajax' throat worked and failed to get any words out. His mind was a revolving cycle of that's not a human and Sweet Tsaritsa he's beautiful, pulling his focus between the mounting thoughts on the former and the stupefying effect of the latter.
"You have a Sigil of Permission on your person," the man's low, even voice snapped him from his thoughts. The words seemed to echo along the walls and rumble through the ground, up his bones. "And yet- You are not from Liyue."
Ah. Well-
"It's- not mine," Childe held down a wince, but relaxed his stance slightly, the way the energies in the room had made his monster shut up making him feel oddly- light. He could also sense no violent intent from the man, so... "I... obtained it, from someone."
"Did you, now?" the man hummed, unbothered, only vaguely intrigued. "Who might you be, then?"
"I... am Childe," he provided, forcing down the flash cramp in his gut at his brief hesitation. Absurd. "I am a Fatui envoy from Snezhnaya."
Something like recognition seemed to cross amber eyes, there one second and gone the next. "You are the Eleventh, Tartaglia," the man said, a fraction quieter, contemplative.
"I am honored one of the, uh... Mighty and Illuminated Adepti, has heard about me," Childe got out a practiced chuckle, pushing down the odd churning in his lungs from- just-
"Not quite one of the Adepti anymore, no," the man hummed, placid. Ajax quirked a brow, caught off-guard by that correction. "Adepti seldom linger around in this fashion, once they have left the mortal realm."
"Oh," Childe blurted out, blinking, scanning the man. Left the mortal realm? Was he-? "I- I'd thought-"
The vaguest hints of a smile appeared on the man's expression, halting Ajax' train of thought. "You are facing a very convincing illusion, is all."
The man stood up, unhurried and graceful, like it was a practiced, perfected action. His robes rustled softly and his tail made a quiet, dragging sound where it slid over the stone of the structure as the man stepped forth. Ajax took only the slightest step back, more of a shuffle than anything, mostly from uncertainty.
He otherwise stayed shock still as the man, with that same refined grace, stepped down from the sculpture, using one of the fingers as stepping stone, then the altar table. Once on the ground, Ajax stood eye-to-eye with him, only one or two inches of difference between them, as the man-
Walked up to him, and then phased straight through with ease. Like a gentle breeze, like the 'wall' that hid this temple – softer, fainter-
"I do not presently reside in a corporeal form," the man commented, relaxed, prompting Ajax to turn around so he could actually see him.
"I... had not heard of any Adepti that..." Childe trailed off, mystified, unsure what was happening anymore.
The man stopped his placid pacing and turned only slightly, only enough to look at Ajax partially over his shoulder. His hair was long and silky, a deep earthen brown, amber at the ends.
"Likely because the custom to refer to me as one of them has been fading with the decades," the man mused. "Still, I did use to be their Prime."
The Prime? Of the Adepti?
Ah-
"You're-" Childe began, stopping himself before he could blurt out the name he was fairly certain was considered disrespectful in Liyue. "...Rex Lapis?"
The man smiled, brief, small.
"That I was," he hummed. Ajax blinked, feeling like he was standing at the foot of an impossibly tall mountain, experiencing some- some inverse vertigo. "Perhaps I still am. Perhaps I always will be. I have gone by many names, some lost, some still-known. That was merely one of them."
Ajax opened his mouth. Closed it.
"Any chance you could talk the Qixing into lending Her Majesty the Tsaritsa the Gnosis for a time?" Childe blurted out.
Rex Lapis, somehow, did not appear to find anything odd about Ajax' stupidity. He merely chuckled, like nothing could really surprise him, and turned to face him only to once again walk in his direction.
"Your Tsaritsa's rebellion against Celestia does not require the Gnoses," Rex Lapis hummed, sidestepping him this time instead of phasing through him again.
But then Ajax' brain actually registered his words.
What?
"Moreover," Rex Lapis continued before Ajax could form a comprehensible question to that. Did not require the Gnoses? What? "I no longer hold any control over the Qixing."
Ajax got himself to turn around again, belatedly, watching the god take a tranquil seat at the altar table, like nothing was wrong.
"...What do you mean, the Gnoses are...?" unecessary, he couldn't get himself to say.
That was why he was in Liyue to begin with. That was why he was putting up with the agents stationed here, with Dottore, with a possibly-absurd plan that the good fucking doctor wasn't actually going to ask Her Majesty for permission to perform, and-
Rex Lapis lifted one arm to place his elbow back on one of the sculptures' fingers, resting his cheek on his knuckles, regarding Ajax with something like...
...like he was appraising him.
"The Gnoses would be a highly useful boon, but they are not an irreplaceable, indispensable piece of this particular puzzle," Rex Lapis said, even and measured. "Your Tsaritsa's rebellion will not collapse should any of you fail to retrieve one of them."
Oh.
Okay, that was-
Ajax got himself to nod, distracted, trying to force his thoughts into order, trying to cling to that explanation, trying to ignore-
Ignore the gut feeling that told him Rex Lapis was, in some way, trying to soften the blow. Not telling him the whole truth.
(Not that Ajax thought he was owed it, not from an Archon, not from an Archon he did not serve, but-)
He nodded again, more for himself than anything.
He still had a mission, regardless as to how... accurate, or true any of this was.
(If this was even- Rex Lapis, and Ajax wasn't merely being taken for a fool by some bored Adeptus.
Why was he here? Why was he giving him the time of day at all?)
Her Majesty had ordered him and Dottore to obtain the Geo Gnosis, and so he would.
That's all he had to do.
That's all he was allowed to do.
"Alright," Childe got himself to say, holding his voice at a normal tone. "That is- good to know."
There was a distant sound outside, muffled, like a thunder strike.
"There is a storm incoming from Huaguang Stone Forest," Rex Lapis mused, amber eyes studying him. "Perhaps it would be best for you to start heading back."
Ajax got himself to nod again. "Right." He took half a step back, forcing his mind to settle. He had a mission. He had to focus. He couldn't get bogged down by- unnecessary doubts and thoughts. "I- apologize for intruding, once more."
Rex Lapis shook his head no, his gaze softening. "Though the entrance has been hidden behind a construct wall, this is still, technically, a public temple. You have nothing to apologize for."
Ajax didn't quite know what to say to that, brain too fried to try and come up with something worthwhile,
So he made another Liyue salute, a bit clumsier, and hurried out of the room.
Maybe that wasn't really Rex Lapis. It would make more sense if it wasn't.
Either way, what did it matter?
Ajax- Tartaglia had a mission to carry out.
That was all he had to think about.