Legereculus | Genshin Impact

Serendipity | Venti

(Part Three/Sequel to "Devoir")

S e r e n d i p i t y

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The city of Mondstadt had stormy grey skies centuries before, now it's clear with stratus and whites and blues. If you were to question a scholar about the difference of the land now from antiquity, they will first mention the reign of a tyrant, the God of Storms, and presently the Anemo Archon. Mondstadt now has such a pretty sky, one will say, but has the chain of dominating power rusted?

I fear that my heart will escape through my fingertips

They'll say yes, and it had—during the clutch of Venti, the land favored by winds came to know the beauty of music and freedom. The Winds of the North, East, South, and West, all swirl in cadence to the Archon's refusal to ground his people with rules. Long, he slept, awoke only to free it again, then continue his tale of trivial things—frivolous things that suit him just well. But he who is least restrained has gotten his own share of turmoil absconded never, it left as a wound covered by a bandage, remaining sore in the mind.

The friend he had lost in the tides of war against the rebellion—the revolution against the stormy god of ye old Mondstadt, the Winds he considered his friends but turned him away due to his insignificant aid, and Dvalin who he had once lost to the tainting of the world's blackness. One would say he learned from it, and he could've, he should've.

But what he gets after saving a vision-holder from a different land is protection, that mere mortal, [Name].

It's overwhelmingly sad, this odd feeling

Was she the reason for his continuous frivolity? Was her sworn oath of security caused him to be nonchalant, still?

It was.

Her death was his mistake, his fault. She had told him to go back to sleep, afraid that danger will be chasing his tail—ah she's always been correct with her hunches—but what did he do other than to turn her suggestion down? Dismiss her away in the most casual way, possible, but by the end of it all still, she came back.

And before he could try and take her away from what was supposed to his undoing, she had shouldered it, what was supposed to be the rightful smiting for an Archon too unrestrained. Long has he, since then, accepted the bitterness of her death and he had no way of remembering what she looked like. No images, no sheets of paper, and no songs.

Right now, we can't meet, you and I

So when a storm comes, Barbatos allows himself to get drenched in the rain, watching as the strikes of lightning pierce a land somewhere in Teyvat. His unwaning source of power stems from his hold on his city, strictly, as it should've been before he was too late to realize the ending of his dear protector. He didn't want her to die—no one wanted any death that day—so the strict rules he had implemented... was for the betterment of everyone. No more jests and songs, no more fun, to put it simply, the Archon has forbidden the existence of henotic tunes and the people abided.

Why should they not? When Barbatos will inflict his disdain unto them if they weren't to abide?

So is he considered a tyrant? Ask a researcher and they'll give their own different insights; the Archon doesn't bother returning to Mondstadt unless someone jeopardizes the safety of his people, but he also restricts them with rules that prevent them from spreading their wings to fly.

The gears of this universe's fate refuse it

Such is a day when he's walking amidst the shrubberies in the Whispering Woods many years later, searching for the perfect spot to watch the clouds unleash a shower of rain, when a whisper in the wind spoke—he stops walking—no, sung. The idea of a song immediately pinches his chest, and his lips twitched.