Legereculus | Genshin Impact

Mortala | Albedo

M o r t a l a

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There are few little things of interest to the Chief Alchemist. Everyone who knew him will be able to understand that just by a glance at his tealish eyes dipped with insouciance—and it's not like he's shamefully thinking about something else (actually, he does) when grossed with conversations he's least fascinated with.

The minor party included in knowing this behavior of his is the travelling pair.

After all those 'experiments' in Dragonspine—from cooking warm meals to fetching a stolen sketchbook, there really is nothing that fazes his earnest dedication to both research and art. 

So when they came back some other day to his campsite in the frosty landform to find him strewn over the table, mumbling incoherently to himself, they were no longer surprised.

At least until they saw the actual look of distress in his face.

"What's up with you?" bluntly asked Aether after cozying up at the torch, "Something to do with the sword?"

The Chief Alchemist raises his eyes from what the pair could deduce are broken fragments of ice[?], blinking with a hum.

"Far from it, actually," he answers, picking up the fragment to show it towards the outlander, "I discovered these odd fragments by the outskirts of the entombed city."

Flat silence.

.

"Odd?" echoed the floating girl, her bewildered look shared by her travelling partner.

When asked the reason for such a reaction, Paimon decides to be delicate in her wording, not wanting an encore of the Geo-user's passive-aggressive stance.

"It's just that you always seem to have a solid explanation for almost anything, so hearing you refer to those as odd is.. odd."

The teen in question blinks again.

Oh, well they certainly are right.

Facts can't be refuted, so he doesn't say anything to twist it, instead opting to state out the other phenomenons he encountered in his short venture hours ago.

He begins with the unusual sight of black, calcined flowers that used to emit icy mists and how they shatter asunder when touched. The second anomaly comes from the conclusion that they cannot be shaped to a new kind of creation through alchemy nor his ability, it remains dead. The third one stems from the sighting of a frostarm lawachurl placing a bunch of cecilias near the lakes.

It's no surprise for those creatures to do something peculiar, but this is beyond it.

It's almost as if it was actually doing something for a real reason.

He tells the travellers with a painstaking bluntness that he fears they won't be.. 'applicable' in searching for an answer to this conundrum, so he sends them away to gather more essence for the cursed sword while he dabbles in newfound research material. 

The agreement comes with him promising to call for them when danger strikes, and since it's a win-win situation, he doesn't object.

Hours after searching for the proper methods to test out the fragments to learn of its state, he's befuddled with a result he didn't quite... expect.

He would consider it a disappointment but results are results. He just anticipated something far greater, not the literal outcome of the end of life—which is death.