Chapter Text
The Consecrated Fanged Beast hit Varka’s claymore with the force of a falling building.
Varka grinned.
"Is that all you've got?" he shouted over the screech of dendro energy meeting steel. "I've had hangovers that hit harder than that!"
He planted his boots in the shifting sand, the grit crunching under his heels, and shoved. The beast. A massive, mutated tiger wreathed in vines and bad attitude, stumbled back. Varka didn't give it time to recover. He spun, the Wolf's Gravestone becoming a blur of red and black, and slammed the flat of the blade into the creature's flank.
It flew. Actually flew.
The beast crashed into three of its brethren—two crocodiles and a vulture that had been circling too low in a tangle of limbs and glowing green energy.
"Strike!" Varka declared, resting the massive sword on his shoulder like it weighed nothing. "Someone write that down. I want that in the official report. 'Grandmaster bowls a perfect game.'"
To his left, Lohen laughed, a sharp, barking sound as he drove his sword through a scorpion’s carapace. "I'll make sure the bards sing of your bowling technique, sir! Though they might struggle to rhyme 'consecrated beast' with anything good!"
"Feast!" Varka suggested, ducking under a sweeping claw. "East! Priest! Come on, Lohen, work with me here."
This was good. This was simple. Give him a problem he could hit with a sword, and Varka was a happy man. Politics required nuance. Budget meetings required staying awake. But this? The desert wind whipping his hair, the smell of blood and dry heat, the sheer physical joy of exerting force against something that could take it. This was where he made sense.
"Mika!" Varka bellowed, spotting the surveyor with his spear. "How are we looking on the flank?"
"Clear, Grandmaster!" Mika’s voice was steady, though he looked like a stiff breeze might blow him away. "Just the stragglers left!"
"Music to my ears."
Varka prepared to wade back into the fray, ready to wrap this up so they could find a watering hole that didn't taste like sulfur.
Then he saw Aldric.
The kid was nineteen, fresh-faced, and possessed the dangerous combination of talent and a desperate need to impress. He was fighting near the edge of the formation, engaging a Consecrated Scorpion.
"Aldric, fall back!" Lohen shouted, seeing the same thing Varka did.
But Aldric didn't fall back. He lunged.
It was a flashy move, a twisting thrust meant to pierce the chink in the armor, the kind of move you practiced in the courtyard to make the girls swoon. In the courtyard, the target didn't have a tail capable of moving faster than a blinking eye.
Time seemed to thicken, turning to syrup. Varka stopped smiling.
The scorpion feinted with a claw, drawing Aldric in, and its tail arched high, glowing with lethal electro energy. It was a trap. The kid was wide open. He was going to die.
The cold didn't hit Varka’s chest; it hit his stomach, a heavy, leaden drop that tasted like ash.
Not another one.
The thought wasn't a sentence. It was a reflex.
Varka moved. He didn't run; he exploded from his position, kicking up a wall of sand. He didn't have time to reach them. He knew the distance. He knew the speed of the tail. The math didn't work.
So he changed the math.
He released the claymore with one hand and grabbed the air itself. Anemo energy didn't just swirl around him; it obeyed him. He yanked his hand back, and a vacuum tunnel ripped through the desert heat.
"GET DOWN!"
The wind hit Aldric like a physical blow, yanking the boy backward off his feet just as the scorpion’s stinger drove into the sand where his chest had been a microsecond before. The ground hissed and blackened.
Varka arrived a second later.
He didn't bother with technique. He channeled raw Anemo into the Wolf's Gravestone and brought it down in an overhead smash that cracked the desert floor. The shockwave turned the scorpion into paste and chitin.
Silence fell over the dune.
Aldric was scrambling up from the sand, coughing, his eyes wide. He looked at the crater where the scorpion had been. He looked at Varka.
"I..." Aldric started, a shaky grin forming on his face. "I almost had him, sir. Did you see that thrust? If I’d just been a second faster—"
Varka grabbed the front of the boy's breastplate and hauled him close. The metal clinked against Varka’s gauntlet.
"You didn't almost have him," Varka said. His voice was low. The jokes were gone. The easygoing Grandmaster was gone. "You were dead. You were meat on a stick. Do you understand me?"
The boy’s grin vanished. He went pale. "Sir, I just thought—"
"You don't think with your sword arm, Aldric. You think with your head. You overextended. You left your squad. You risked the formation for a moment of glory." Varka released him, shoving him slightly back toward the line. "If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I will break your legs myself so you can’t march. Am I clear?"
"Yes, sir. Crystal clear, sir."
Varka stared at him for another second, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs—not from exertion, but from the adrenaline of the near-miss. He forced his hands to unclench.
"Good," Varka said, the mask slipping back into place, though the edges were jagged. "Now go help Mika pack up the gear. And try not to trip over your own ego on the way."
The adrenaline faded, leaving the familiar ache in his joints and the phantom taste of copper in his mouth.
Night had fallen over the Sumeru desert, bringing with it a sudden, biting chill that contrasted sharply with the day's brutal heat. The knights had set up camp in the shelter of a massive rock formation. Fires crackled, casting long, dancing shadows against the stone.
Varka walked the perimeter. It was a habit he couldn't break. He needed to see them. He needed to count them.
One. Two. Seven. Fifteen. Thirty.
They were all here.
He rounded a bend and saw a group of younger knights sitting around a fire, roasting desert lizards on sticks. Aldric was there. The boy held a cup of wine, gesturing wildly with his free hand.
"—so then the Grandmaster comes in like a storm!" Aldric was saying, his voice bright, the fear from earlier completely evaporated. "Bam! Crushed the thing flat! But I tell you, I loosened it up for him. Another second and I would have had a trophy for the wall."
The other knights laughed, clapping him on the shoulder.
Varka stopped in the shadows. He leaned against the cool rock, the stone rough against his shoulder through the fabric of his coat.
The boy was laughing. He didn't know. He had no idea that the distance between him and a grave in the sand had been less than the length of a finger.
Thommen.
The name rose up from the dark water of his memory, unbidden and sharp.
Thommen had been nineteen, too. Same sandy hair. Same desperate need to be seen. Thommen had begged to come on the Abyssal expedition. He’d stood in Varka’s office, chest puffed out, eyes shining.
"I'm ready, sir. I know I am. I won't let you down."
Varka had looked at the boy’s enthusiasm, at his solid sparring scores, and he had nodded. He had said yes. He had signed the paper.
Thommen screamed for forty-seven seconds.
Varka knew the exact duration because he had counted. He had been pinned down by suppressive fire, unable to reach him, forced to listen as the abyss lector tore the boy apart piece by piece. Forty-seven seconds of high-pitched, animal shrieking that devolved into wet gurgles.
Then silence.
Varka didn't remember the victory celebrations after that skirmish. He didn't remember the loot they found. He remembered the silence. He remembered sitting in his tent, looking at a blank sheet of paper, trying to find words to tell a mother why her son was coming home in a box.
I should have said no.
The thought was a groove worn into his brain, a track his mind slid into whenever the quiet got too loud. He should have told Thommen he wasn't ready. He should have shattered the boy's pride to save his life.
Protection wasn't nice. Protection was cruel. Protection was saying no, over and over again, until they hated you for it, because their hate was better than their funeral.
Aldric laughed again, a loud, carefree sound that grated against Varka’s nerves like sandpaper.
He’s alive, Varka told himself. That’s the job. They get to be stupid because you’re there to catch them.
But his hands were shaking. Just a little. A tremor in the fingers.
"Sir?"
Varka jumped, covering the movement by turning it into a stretch. He looked down. Mika was standing there, holding a clipboard and looking concerned. The kid had eyes that saw too much.
"You alright, Grandmaster?" Mika asked softly. "You've been standing there a while."
Varka forced the smile onto his face. It felt heavy, like a piece of iron armor he had to strap on, but he wore it. He always wore it.
"Just admiring the view, Mika," Varka said, his voice booming slightly too loud for the quiet night. "And thinking about how much I despise sand. It gets everywhere. I think I have an entire dune in my left boot."
Mika didn't look convinced, but he nodded. "The perimeter is secure. Lohen broke out the reserve cask of Dandelion Wine. He said it was for 'medicinal purposes.'"
"That man is a genius and a scoundrel," Varka declared, clapping Mika on the shoulder. He kept his grip firm, grounding himself. "Come on. Let's go make sure he doesn't drink it all."
He pushed off the wall. He pushed the memory of Thommen’s scream down into the box in his head where he kept the ghosts. He locked the lid.
He walked into the light of the campfire.
"Lohen!" Varka roared, spreading his arms. "I hear corks popping. If you finish that bottle before I get there, I'm demoting you to stable duty!"
The knights cheered. Aldric looked up, eyes shining with hero worship. Varka winked at him.
"Scoot over," Varka said, dropping onto a log between Lohen and a terrified-looking rookie. He accepted a tin cup of wine. It was warm and tasted faintly of tin, but it was from Mondstadt. It tasted like home.
"To the Grandmaster!" Lohen toasted, raising his cup. "The best bowler in Teyvat!"
"To the strike!" the knights chorused.
Varka drank. The wine burned a pleasant path down his throat, chasing away the cold in his stomach. He told a joke about a slime and a hilichurl walking into a tavern. He laughed at Lohen's dramatic reenactments of the battle. He played the part.
I am the Titan, he thought. I am the wall they stand behind.
A drop of water hit his nose.
Then another.
The desert sky opened up, rare and sudden. Rain in the desert didn't start slow; it arrived all at once. The knights scrambled to cover their food, laughing and cursing.
Varka didn't move. He sat on the log, letting the rain soak his hair, letting it run down the back of his neck. The smell of wet dust rose up—petrichor, sharp and clean. It washed away the smell of sweat. It washed away the smell of blood.
The rain cooled the ache in his shoulders, but it couldn't wash away the math.
Eighty percent.
He looked around the camp, at the huddled shapes of his knights seeking shelter under the rock overhangs. He had taken eighty percent of Mondstadt’s strength. He had stripped the city’s defenses down to the bone, leaving Jean to juggle politics and protect the people with a skeleton crew.
Sorry, Jean, he thought, swirling the dregs of wine in his cup. I owe you a raise. And probably a vacation. And definitely a written apology.
They were getting close now. The air tasted different here—metallic and wrong. They were nearing the edge of the map, the place where the ley lines tangled into knots. Nod-Krai. The jagged scar on the world where the Abyss bled through.
It would have been easier to stay.
When the Stormterror crisis began, the glory had been right there for the taking. He could have been the hero who brought Dvalin down. He could have ridden the winds, accepted the flowers, listened to the bards sing songs about Varka the Dragon-Slayer in the Angel’s Share. It would have been a hell of a party.
But a dragon was a problem you could see. A dragon roared and broke things. The Abyss... the Abyss whispered. It rotted the roots while you were busy looking at the leaves.
If he had stayed to fight Dvalin, no one would be going to Nod-Krai to hold the line. The darkness would have poured into Teyvat unchecked while Mondstadt celebrated a victory that didn't matter.
Glory is for the bards, he reminded himself, watching Lohen try to catch rain in his mouth to entertain the rookies. The job is the thing no one else is willing to do.
He swallowed the last of the wine. It tasted like home, and for a moment, the longing was sharp enough to cut. But he wasn't home. He was the wall. And the wall didn't get to go home until the storm was over.
* * *
The transition wasn't subtle.
One moment they were trudging through the arid, soul-sucking dryness of the desert, and the next, the world decided to light itself on fire.
Varka stopped at the ridge, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of a gauntlet that was already uncomfortably warm. The air here didn't just sit; it shimmered. It tasted of sulfur and hot rock, a thick, metallic tang that coated the back of his throat and refused to leave.
"Well," he said, squinting against the glare. "It's certainly... enthusiastic."
Below them, the landscape of Natlan stretched out in a chaotic sprawl of obsidian and magma. Steam vented from fissures in the ground with the hiss of an angry kettle. The vegetation—if you could call it that—was all sharp angles and defensive thorns, colors ranging from burnt orange to a red so deep it looked like dried blood.
He took a breath, hoping for relief, and got a lungful of ash.
He coughed. "I miss trees. Does anyone else miss trees? Big, leafy, non-explosive trees?"
"I miss oxygen," Mika wheezed from behind him.
Varka turned. The young surveyor looked like a candle that had been left too close to a hearth. His usually neat hair was plastered to his forehead, his face was a alarming shade of pale, and he was leaning heavily on his polearm as if it were the only thing tethering him to the earth.
"You alright there, Mika? You look a bit... melted."
"I am currently calculating the ambient temperature," Mika said, his voice thin. "If my calculations are correct, we are walking into an oven. A literal oven."
"Think of it as a sauna," Varka offered cheerfully. "People pay good money for this kind of heat in Liyue. Detoxifies the pores."
"I think it's detoxifying my soul, sir."
"Weakness leaving the body!" Lohen crowed. The Vice Captain, infuriatingly, looked energized by the hellscape. He bounced on the balls of his feet, his mint-green hair wilder than usual, eyes darting across the volcanic plains with predatory interest. "Look at those rocks! Look at that lava flow! Look at that lizard!"
He pointed a gloved finger toward a massive, hulking shape basking on a rock formation in the middle distance. It was covered in armored plates and looked like it ate boulders for breakfast.
"That is a Saurian," Mika said weakly. "Please do not antagonize the local wildlife."
"I'm going to wrestle it."
"Lohen, no," Varka said, though he didn't stop walking. The heat was seeping through his boots.
"Just a little bit! A friendly match! I want to see if I can flip it."
"We are here on a diplomatic mission," Varka reminded him, stepping over a fissure that glowed an ominous red deep down. "We represent the Knights of Favonius. We represent Mondstadt. We do not start our visit by suplexing the local fauna."
Lohen pouted. Actually pouted. A grown man who could sever limbs with a smile, looking like a child denied a sweet.
"It would establish dominance," Lohen muttered.
"It would establish that we are insane." Varka paused, considering the beast in the distance. It did look sturdy. "However..."
Lohen perked up.
"Once the official talks are done... and assuming we haven't caused an international incident..." Varka grinned. "I'll referee. Five Mora says the lizard wins."
"You're on!" Lohen slammed a fist into his palm. "Mika, record the wager!"
Mika groaned, a long, suffering sound that had nothing to do with the heat. "I am not recording wagers on animal cruelty. Or Lohen cruelty. Whichever this turns out to be."
"That's the spirit!" Varka clapped the boy on the shoulder, ignoring the way Mika swayed under the impact. "Let's move. If we stand here too long, our boots will fuse to the rock."
They descended into the basin, the heat rising in waves that distorted the air. Varka kept his stride loose, his expression easy, but his eyes never stopped moving. He scanned the ridges, the shadows, the steam vents.
It was impressive, he had to admit. Raw. Powerful. The elemental energy here was so thick it made the hair on his arms stand up. But it wasn't home.
He missed the cool bite of the wind off Cider Lake. He missed the smell of damp earth after a storm, the rustle of leaves in the Whispering Woods, the way the light caught the dandelion seeds drifting through the city gates.
He missed green. Real green. Not this angry, burnt landscape, but the soft, living green of home.
Focus, old man.
The path widened, paved now with massive slabs of black stone, leading them toward the heart of the region. And there, rising from the volcanic haze like a crown of obsidian and fire, was the Stadium.
Varka stopped. Even Lohen went quiet.
The Stadium of the Sacred Flame was less a building and more a geological event. It was massive, a colossal ring of stone that seemed to grow directly out of the mountain. Banners of crimson and gold snapped in the hot updrafts. And at the center, visible even from here, a pillar of fire roared toward the sky, eternal and defiant.
"That's... big," Lohen said, sounding uncharacteristically subdued.
"It's magnificent," Mika whispered, adjusting his glasses. "The architectural stress loads alone..."
Varka stared at the flame. It was beautiful, in a terrifying sort of way. A testament to survival. To war. To a people who looked at a volcano and said, 'Yes, we'll put our house there.'
But looking at it made his chest ache with a sudden, sharp longing.
It was too much fire. Too much stone. He wanted the gentle curve of wind. He wanted the unpredictable chaos of a storm. He wanted...
He shook his head, clearing the thought. He didn't know what he wanted, only that looking at that eternal flame made him feel thirsty for something he couldn't name.
"Right," Varka said, hitching Wolf's Gravestone higher on his back. "Let's go say hello. Try not to look like we're melting, Mika. It ruins the mystique."
They were met at the outer gates not by a welcoming committee, but by a single woman. She stood with her arms crossed, wearing the intricate, layered armor of the local warriors. Her expression suggested that she had eaten rocks for lunch and found them lacking in crunch.
"Halt," she said. Her voice could have cut glass. "Identify yourselves."
Varka stepped forward, flashing his most charming smile—the one that usually worked on angry tavern owners and Jean when she was holding a stack of overdue reports.
"Varka," he said, spreading his hands. "Grandmaster of the Knights of Favonius. We come from Mondstadt, bearing greetings, gifts, and a very sweaty surveyor." He gestured to Mika, who offered a weak wave. "We were told there might be a festival? We brought our own party tricks."
The woman stared at him. She didn't blink. She didn't smile. The corner of her mouth didn't even twitch.
"You are late," she said.
"Ah. Well." Varka didn't falter. "We took the scenic route. Stopped to admire the... rocks. Very nice rocks you have here. High quality. sturdy."
"The Pyro Archon expects punctuality."
"And I expect cooler weather, but we all have to make adjustments." Varka stepped closer, dropping the voice a register, conspiratorial. "Between you and me, my Vice Captain over there tried to wrestle a cactus three miles back. It slowed us down."
"I did not!" Lohen protested. "It was a spiny fruit bush and it looked aggressive!"
The woman's gaze shifted to Lohen, then back to Varka. If possible, she looked even less impressed.
"Follow me," she said, turning on her heel. "Do not wander. Do not touch the flame. Do not wrestle the wildlife."
"See?" Mika hissed at Lohen. "It's a standard rule."
"She's fun," Varka murmured as they fell into step behind her. "I bet she's a riot at parties."
The intake process was a blur of bureaucracy that felt oddly comforting. Forms were signed. Weapons were peace-bonded (a formality Varka respected but knew he could break in half a second if needed). Lodgings were assigned.
By the time they were released, the sun had dipped below the crater rim, painting the sky in violent shades of purple and bruised orange. The air had cooled, but only slightly. The heat here was a physical weight, pressing down on them.
Varka stood outside the barracks they'd been given, watching his knights mill about. They looked tired. Dusty. A little overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the place.
He clapped his hands, the sound echoing off the stone walls.
"Alright, listen up!"
The knights snapped to attention, though Varka waved them down immediately.
"At ease, at ease. We're not on parade." He looked over the group. "You did good today. That trek was brutal, and I know half of you have sand in places sand should never be. But we're here. We made it."
He grinned, the expression sharp in the twilight.
"Now, the official diplomatic work starts tomorrow. Which means tonight... we have a mission of utmost importance."
"Sleep?" Mika suggested hopefully.
"Reconnaissance," Varka corrected. "Specifically, reconnaissance of the local tavern situation. We need to assess their ale reserves. It's a matter of national security. If their beer is bad, we need to know so we can negotiate from a position of superiority."
A ripple of laughter went through the group. Shoulders relaxed. The tension of the alien landscape eased, replaced by the familiar camaraderie of the unit.
"Lohen," Varka said. "You're in charge of finding the place with the most food. I'm starving."
"On it, sir!" Lohen was already moving, sniffing the air like a bloodhound. "I smell roasted meat. And... spices. Lots of spices."
"Mika," Varka continued. "You're in charge of making sure Lohen doesn't order anything that's currently on fire."
"I will do my best, sir. But I make no promises."
"Good enough." Varka turned toward the city proper, where lights were starting to flicker to life, warm and inviting against the dark stone. "Let's go, everyone. First round is on the Grandmaster. But if you order the expensive wine, you're explaining it to Jean when we get back."
He led the way, his stride long and easy. The heat was still oppressive, the air still tasted of sulfur, and he still missed the cool wind of Mondstadt. But his knights were laughing, Lohen was already arguing with a street vendor about the spice level of a skewer, and for a few hours, at least, the weight of the command could sit a little lighter.
"To the tavern!" Varka declared, pointing Wolf's Gravestone (still sheathed) toward a brightly lit establishment that smelled of yeast and roasting meat. "For Mondstadt! And for my throat, which is drier than the desert we just walked through!"