#kreuzlied

“Pfft,” says Venti, and sticks his tongue out just to see Ragnvindr’s face scrunch in disgust. “Your wit is as sharp as your blade; it's a shame you tend to keep both sheathed. I don’t mean that law. Or, well, I do, but—”

“Get out of my bar,” Ragnvindr says, decisively.

“Aww, come on! You never let me suggest ideas anymore!”

Ragnvindr crosses his arms. Venti gives Vennessa a pleading look. Vennessa is abruptly very busy with her paperwork. Honestly! Just because the last idea ended in fire…

“Give Venti a chance to finish,” Kreuzlied says, before Ragnvindr can deliver a finishing blow. The spy looks somewhere between tired and amused; Venti whips around to look at him, and the much taller man presses his lips against a clear smile. “He might have a point, this time.”

“You’re my favorite,” Venti tells him, with shining eyes.

Kreuzlied’s mild expression twitches to a milder smile. “…Might have a point.”

“Hey!”

“What law do you mean, then?” Vennessa says, interrupting the argument before it can start. She has lowered her pen, the papers forgotten. She is watching Venti thoughtfully; he can never tell if it's humbling or embarrassing, that she can always tell his serious ideas from his joking ones.

Venti hops up to his feet on the bar counter (“Hey,” says Ragnvindr, aghast), hands on his hips and smile smug. He makes a dramatic little flourish and announces, “For the people in the days of old, left out in the bitter cold— a name to take, a family by Wind-blessed’s make.”

There is a beat of silence.

“Speak plainly,” Ragnvindr says. “Also, get off my fucking counter.”

“You people have no taste.” Venti hops off the counter, though, and faces Vennessa directly; he’d really only been thinking aloud before, but the more he muses on it the more reasonable it seems. Also, most importantly: if they take the bait, then this is going to end up hilarious.

Venti has been needing some new song material.

“Nobility writes the laws,” Venti says, for once forgoing poetry for speaking boring words like boring people do. “So we need to get rid of the law before we can get rid of the nobility. So… well, why not just use the nobles?”

“Gunnhildr alone is not enough...” Vennessa starts, weary.

Venti waves a hand through the air, dismissive. “That’s what I’m saying! We should make our own!”

Another beat of silence. This time, it is much more incredulous.

“Our own—” Kreuzlied starts, with a dawning look of horror.

“Nobles,” finishes Venti, and grins.

.

The law Venti recalls is simple: in the old days post-Decarabian’s Fall, when nobility was more title and oath than actual tradition and corrupt power structure, those blessed by the Anemo Archon could bestow such nobility on those they found worthy of it.

(The whole thing about “Barbatos’s Blessing” had really just been a funny inside joke he’d had with Gunnhildr, and also mainly something he’d made up to get Gunnhildr to stop chasing him down all the time for his “approval on new projects” or whatever. But when he’d said as much, years later, one of the new priestesses had given him a look so painfully resembling his former red-haired warrior friend that he’d been briefly unable to breathe, and had simply said: “Well, what does Barbatos really know, anyway?”

No respectful bone in that lady at all. Venti still thinks fondly of her.)

Anyway, the history of it isn’t really the point. The point is this: Vennessa has already been visibly granted Barbatos’s favor, nobility can be granted, and they need at least a three-fifths majority among the leading nobles to dissolve the stupid “only nobles make the rules” laws anyway. Malicious compliance! Limited bloodshed! Win-win situation!

“Absolutely not,” says Ragnvindr, at once.

“Please please please,” Venti replies, without breathing.

“We’ve already agreed Vennessa and I can’t do it,” Kreuzlied adds, who is turning out to be Venti’s most surprising ally. There’s an evil glint to his blue eyes; he is smiling his most mischievous smile. “Bad idea for the leader of an underground organization to get punted into the public eye. And Vennessa…”

Vennessa doesn’t even look up from her stack of documents. She’s gone back to fighting through them about half-way through the discussion, ever the practical sort. Her brow is furrowed and her expression is drawn, though; she’s always found the Mond text hard to read, and Venti sidles up behind her to look over her shoulder.

“No,” says Vennessa, to Kreuzlied’s expectant silence.

“You see?” Kreuzlied says to Ragnvindr. “I can’t argue with that. Accept your fate, my friend.”

“I don’t even get why we’re entertaining this idea at all,” Ragnvindr snaps. “Me— starting a noble clan, or whatever bullshit—”

“If the law Venti mentioned does exist, it could work.”

“If it exists. Even he doesn’t know!”

“The third line is a verbal trap,” Venti tells Vennessa in an undertone, underlining the contract clause in question with his finger. “See that verb there? It’s very old; only the Lawrence clan really uses it nowadays. It has two meanings.”

“Ah. I see.” Vennessa scribbles something on the paper and puts it to the side, starting on the next. Venti peeks over at it. In bold, bright red ink, she has underlined the verb in question and written No. in large font over the offending paragraph.

Venti fights not to collapse into giggles. Vennessa shakes her head at him like that can hide the fact she’s smiling too.

“Oi, useless Archon,” says Ragnvindr, and snaps his fingers at them. “How good are immortal memories?”

Too good. Not good enough. “I still dream fondly of the first apple I ever ate as a god,” Venti replies, tearing up from genuine emotion. “It was so good.”

“…No, I still think it's a long shot.”

“Blasphemy,” Venti says, delighted.

“It’s worth a try,” Kreuzlied argues back, apparently actually enamored by the idea. “The Lawrence clan especially is deeply moored in tradition; if we brought up the law in front of all the other noble clans, no matter how old the text, it would go against their pride to undermine it. Gunnhildr has already promised to back us. We might be able to undo the whole power structure from within! Using their own laws! Watching them choke on their own stupid clauses!”

There is real and vivid emotion in his voice. Ragnvindr stutters to a stop. Even Vennessa lifts her head to squint at him. Venti blinks bemusedly. “Ah,” he says, in realization. “I always forget how vindictive you are…”

Kreuzlied flusters, and then draws himself up and smooths his pale hair back like neatening himself up can save him face. He clears his throat loudly and avoids every eye. “I just… look, if it works, we could toss all those nobles out of the city without any more casualties. That’s all.”

The words are defensive; they are also true, and they hit perhaps a bit too hard. Kreuzlied swallows like he regrets them. Ragnvindr makes a face at the wall, but this time he is silent. Vennessa looks down at her stolen tavern table, laden with all the paperwork the noble clans tossed her way the moment she gained a sliver of power, the instance she gained a foothold. Her promised seat at the table, finally enforced, has brought them a stalemate… but it has not brought them any sort of freedom.

Venti, still standing behind Vennessa’s shoulder, watches them all. Their expressions, their clenched fists, the determination settling in their eyes. He is smiling. He is not sure when he started, but he can’t quite seem to stop. His heart feels as if it is full of light.

(My friend, he thinks. The bard. The warrior, dear Amos, faithful Gunnhildr. My friends. You would have loved them.)

It is Vennessa who decides for them. She sets down her pen with the same weight and regard she does to lowering her sword, and says, gold eyes burning resolute: “These documents, Venti. Do you know of anywhere we could find them?”

The winds trill with a distant song. Venti beams.

.

The announcement is planned for the next meeting with the noble houses later that week. The Lawrence clan and all their lackeys still hold onto their power, but it is by their grasping fingertips and everyone knows it. They are hopeful that the pretty title and fancy paperwork they have piled on Vennessa’s shoulders will appease her, and every time Venti walks into the grand room and sees the rickety chair they’ve set aside for her, he fights the urge to laugh. The Lawrence clan have never had a threat to their power, and even after three years of bold rebellion, they still haven’t learned one whit.

Vennessa would never be swayed by such paltry things. She is too clever to ever believe in a freedom promised by lying mouths. She has learned that lesson in blood, and she has learned it well.

The Lawrence clan appears to have learned absolutely zero lessons, but then, that’ll just make the whole thing all the more satisfying.

The real trouble is this: Venti and Ragnvindr are at the door to the Favonius Cathedral, where the largest of Mondstadt’s noble clans gather to drink wine and commit evil, still awaiting on Vennessa and the deus-ex-machina documentation… and she is nowhere to be seen.

“I think your sense of direction was off,” Ragnvindr announces, staring down the street.

“Was not,” Venti says, automatically. He scratches at his hair. “Well… I hope not. Those storage rooms in Old Mond were well-built, you know! They kept out even Decarabian’s wind! And Gunnhildr was always fussy about keeping historical backups to everything… I’m sure it's still there.”

“Well, they clearly haven’t found it.”

“Hmm.” Venti glances back. The meeting will start soon; the nobles will not wait for her. Wind-blessed, Barbatos’s chosen, Lady—all pretty titles, all with meaning, but the nobility will take any chance they have to close the door in her face. And after all the work Venessa put into breaking that door down…

Venti sighs loudly, and summons his lyre. “Oh, well. Distraction it is!”

Anemo power blows open the church doors, and conveniently knocks over the guarding knights all down into a groaning pile on the floor. Venti hops over them and heads for the secret rooms in the back.

Ragnvindr follows after him incredulously. “Oi, you— bard. You cannot be serious.”

“We were planning to join Vennessa in the room anyway…”

“I was going to join her, and you were going to snoop. What if they— will they recognize you?”

Venti grins back at him. “You mean, acknowledge that their archon appearing before that ‘upstart slave’ wasn’t a one-off blessing but a consistent backing? Recognize that their distant god is a drunkard and a bard and allergic to cats? That a divine being called the inheriting son of the Lawrence clan a loathsome toad to his face?”

“How would they even know about the cat thing,” Ragnvindr mumbles, and then sighs. “Well. A fair point, I guess.”

Venti strums the lyre. “A few probably do recognize me,” he admits, cheerful. “But they’d rather pretend otherwise, so in the end, they really don’t know anything at all!”

“Hm,” Ragnvindr says. But his steps pick up, his hesitance fading, and when they reach the meeting room, Ragnvindr throws open the doors and goes through first. Venti grins at his back (such a dramatic at heart) and skips in after him. This promises to be either very dangerous, or very funny.

Venti is betting all his hopes on “funny.”

Typically held in the Lawrence's hall, the gathering of nobles has changed, in recent months, to the secret rooms of the church for no real particular reason at all. (Hah.) The sight is both terribly familiar, and terribly disappointing: the lovely stained glass, the marble arches… all that is left is the beauty and the wealth, the meaning stripped away. Regardless of how Venti feels about a church in his name (awkward!), he knows its importance. People used to pray here; once a place of comfort, it is now just another corrupted tradition.

Their ancestors would have wept to see it. Venti squints at a stained glass depiction of his friend’s face, and shakes his head with a sigh.

The nobles do not look impressed to see them either. The head of the Lawrence clan rises, red in the face. His eyes flicker to Venti, narrow… and then determinedly flicker away. “What is this!? How did you get in here?”

Venti gives Ragnvindr a pointed look, like, see?

Ragnvindr crosses his arms and rolls his eyes. “Fine,” he says, grudgingly. “You were right.”

“Knights—!”

“Friends!” Venti announces, cheerful, and swirls up in the wind when one of the knights lunges for him. Ragnvindr steps out of range of his gale with a scowl and trips the guard as he passes— so petty. “The day is bright and new; won’t you relax for a moment or two?”

Bluntly, Ragnvindr says, “We’re here on behalf of—”

“The Dandelion Knight,” Venti interrupts, because the title is pretty and rebellious and it makes every face in this room twist. (Except perhaps the Gunnhildr heir. Good for them.)

Ragnvindr, because he is a cruel and heartless bastard with no respect for his dear archon friend, immediately adds, “—the favorite of the Anemo Archon, Vennessa. She is momentarily occupied with other matters; she will be here soon.”

Venti lowers himself back to the ground and tries to discreetly kick Ragnvindr’s ankle. Ragnvindr calmly steps out of reach. Jerk. This right here is why Vennessa’s his favorite.

Though really, where is Venessa? Kreuzlied is helping her search and everything. Surely they must have found something by now? Venti isn’t sure this little coup can wait another week; this month alone has been like watching a pot boil over. Boring, but also stressful, and liable to start exploding. Mondstadt is a city on a knife edge, and balancing acts can only go for so long.

Lawrence has gone faintly purple. “A washed-up drunkard bard—” Venti sticks his tongue out at him. The purple deepens. “—and—and some failure of a knight have no place—!”

Hmm. Perhaps he’s let this gone on a little too long?

Venti picks at his lyre; the chords ring loud and true, and the sound is so startling that Lawrence’s mouth snaps shut. There is a strange look on his face—almost remembrance, almost fear. Venti smiles right at him. “Show some respect! For you are clearly incorrect— the oldest oath in Mondstadt is to the people and not to gold; thus, my friend is as great as the knights of old.” Venti winks. “Besides! If noble you must be to enter, then my friend is soon to be a true contender.”

Ragnvindr is frozen in that way he gets when he’s been surprised and is about to lose his temper about it. Venti diverts a strand of anemo power to tug at his ponytail. So maybe it's a bit of a gamble! He has faith. Vennessa, after all, has a fantastic sense of timing.

The room has gone very quiet. It is the Gunnhildr heir— who hasn’t really been let in on the happenings, but at least knew there was a plan afoot, so they don’t really look all that surprised—who leans forward, interest in their eyes, and says, “What do you mean?”

“This upstart, a noble!?” Lawrence splutters, in the same instance. “That’s ridiculous. You can’t just make—”

“You can, actually.”

Venti beams over his shoulder. Ragnvindr slumps in visible relief. Kreuzlied, half-out of view behind the door, gives the room of nobles a dark and icy look and then vanishes out of view. Venti approves. Kreuzlied’s homicidal aura would not be helpful here.

Vennessa strides in, a grand sight, if a little rumpled. The shadows are dark under her eyes and her lips are pressed thin; she gives Venti a brief glance and he winces. Ehehe. So maybe Ragnvindr had a point about godly memories after all…

“Dandelion Knight,” Gunnhildr greets, mild.

Lawrence slams his hand on the table, apparently forgetting the whole month of careful compromise and also that his power on the city is tenuous as it is. “You! What is the meaning of this?”

“Well,” Venessa continues, ignoring him. “I can, actually.” Her eyes are clear and calm. “You’ll like this one, Lawrence. An old tradition, from centuries past— those blessed by Barbatos can grant nobility to those who have committed great deeds in defense of the city.”

“Barbatos’s blessed was Gunnhildr,” one of the smaller clans says. There is a desperate pitch to her voice; Venti bites back a giggle. “You—”

But the Gunnhildr heir raises a hand to their chin and hums. They look as if they are fighting a smile. “The Anemo Archon did appear to her. If anyone would carry that title these days…”

“It’s nonsense,” Lawrence insists, voice rising. In the back, the Church official hosting the meeting has gone abruptly pale; Venti meets her gaze over the table and smiles sweetly. The look of horror deepens. “Even if there was such a law, how can we know—”

“Thankfully,” Vennessa says, blandly, “I have the documents right here.” Silence. She adds, “Check the seal, if you’d like. It’s authentic.”

And then, apparently because she can, she turns to Ragnvindr right there and says: “For your service in helping fight against tyranny and oppression in Mondstadt—”

“Ooooh,” Venti says, approving. How shameless! How petty! Right to their faces!

“—I grant you, Ragnvindr, a title of nobility. May the Ragnvindr clan live long and protect Mondstadt always.”

It’s a very touching scene. It’s too bad Vennessa sounds deeply disgusted by her own words, and that Ragnvindr looks like he’s bitten a lemon. The dead silence of the room is, however, a little funny.

“…It is an honor,” says Ragnvindr, at last, through clenched teeth.

Venti slides next to him to pat him consolingly on the back. Gunnhildr blinks twice, nods, and then says, “Congratulations. Well, I suppose we’ll need another chair—”

And, as predicted, everything erupts into chaos.

Venti watches with great glee as the shouting rises, and leans in close to Vennessa. “Well?”

“Announced it to the city, first, before I entered,” she replies. “They can’t undo it now.” Her brows furrow. “Well, I suppose they could claim the documents as fake, but…”

“Law or no law, if the people accept it, then nobility he shall be,” Venti says, cheerfully. Honestly, the law is just salt in the wound. “But that’s not what I meant! So?”

“…So?”

“So, so, was I right?”

Vennessa watches Lawrence round on an increasingly-faint looking church official, and murmurs, “About two hundred steps off.”

Whoops.

“…Ehe. Well, you found them!”

“Somehow,” Vennessa mutters, but she looks out over the room of arguing nobles—Lawrence in particular losing color faster than a dying fish—and her lips twitch into something like a smile.

Venti beams up at her. For all she’d like to deny it—Vennessa, he thinks fondly, can be vindictive sometimes too.

.

The news spreads across the city faster than even the wind; there is nothing a city of song loves more than gossip, after all, even if the songs have been stifled the last few hundred years. Venti sits at the base of where the Archon statue once stood, and plays the Songs of the Wind, watching the murmur of the crowd.

Reactions, as expected, are mixed. Some see it as the political play it is and find it funny; others think the same, but with the caveat that it is doomed to fail. Some find it disrespectful—even if the nobility has… declined, as of late, it’s a title worthy of respect, blah blah blah—and others find it disrespectful in an entirely different direction, because how could Vennessa bow her head and act like nobility has any meaning at all?

The most worrisome—the ones with the meanest mouths—are more concerned about who is nobility. Ragnvindr, they whisper behind their hands, used to be a knight, after all. What if he sells them out? What if he betrays Vennessa? What if all he wanted was power after all?

One particular moron, an obvious plant of the Lawrence clan in a piss-poor disguise, questions loudly whether Ragnvindr can be trusted with Mondstadt at all—as noble or rebel. After all, history tells of a red-haired warrior from centuries past, who was the first to turn his back on the beloved Anemo Archon…

Venti sings a song about ripping out the tongues of liars who sell their words to tyrants, and trips the man with a swift breeze when he isn’t paying attention. Honestly. Only the nobles would have records of that whole awful event, and besides which, it isn’t even entirely accurate. It hadn’t been so much about Barbatos, after all, as it had been about gods at all…

(His friend had never meant to become entangled in the caged city—he had been a wanderer seeking refuge from gods, when the storms had chased him into the trap. He’d had a fiery temper he’d claimed was inherited, and stars in his eyes, and he’d used to sit in the bar and drink and talk of wandering again. Of all the places he would go, once they were free.

The places he would never go. The bard fell and Amos lay silent, and his friend lived—and stayed, for whatever reason. It is true he had never been able to look Barbatos in the eye again, in the end, but—

He had stayed, even so. He loved the land their friends died for more than he’d hated the gods, and isn’t that something to celebrate rather than degrade?

Ah. But what does Barbatos know?)

On the third day since the announcement, Venti retires from a day of song to swing by Ragnvindr’s tavern. It’s been emptier this past week than Venti has seen it in a while, but slowly but surely, the people trickle back in. Seeing the new head of a noble clan wait tables, same as he’s ever done, has seemed to convince the most open-minded that—whatever political brouhaha is happening now—Ragnvindr is as reliable as he ever was.

“Wine!” Venti crows, when he blasts open the door. Ah, but his throat is parched! “Blessed wine. My friend! Your best bottle, please.”

Ragnvindr calmly slides over the cheapest beer on the shelf. Venti makes loud noises of despair.

“You’re so cruel to me.”

“Mora, bard. Mora. Fork it over and maybe you’ll actually get drunk.”

Venti slides onto the stool and sips at the beer in defeat. Ragnvindr snorts and starts wiping down the counter.

“If you didn’t take apples as payment—” he starts.

“Don’t patronize me.”

“You don’t even need to eat,” Ragnvindr replies, exasperated. Venti makes a face at him; Ragnvindr rolls his eyes. “You don’t, though.”

“But apples are delicious!”

Ragnvindr shakes his head in disgust. “You cannot be helped.”

Venti finishes the bottle and reaches for the next. Ragnvindr slides it out of reach. Venti sends a gust of wind to knock the Flute across the floor in retaliation.

“Petty, useless archon,” Ragnvindr mutters, and goes to pick it up.

Venti watches him go, chin resting against his palm. “The city is adjusting to the news,” he says, absently. Ragnvindr pauses, still kneeling by the fallen sword. “Lots of rumors, lots of opinions. But faith in Vennessa holds strong, despite it all.”

Ragnvindr’s expression has gone quiet. He rises to his feet slowly. “But no faith in me,” he murmurs.

Venti taps his fingers against the counter, half-way to a tune. “They don’t know what you will do, yet, and so the cruelest voices sound the loudest.” Ragnvindr doesn’t respond. He is staring in the distance, expression halfway shadowed. Venti lifts his voice, determined to be heard. “There is no one better.”

“There are plenty better.”

“But none of them are you!” Ragnvindr gives him a tired look; Venti just smiles. “Give them time. Wild winds always calm down eventually.”

“…I suppose.” Ragnvindr slides Venti a glass of better wine; Venti cheers and downs it. Ragnvindr rolls his eyes. “It feels like a joke, honestly. One person doesn’t make a clan.”

“What about your little sisters? And your grandfather…”

“Four people don’t make much of a clan either,” Ragnvindr says, dryly.

“That just means you need to make it bigger!”

Ragnvindr scoffs at him. “Oh? And how would you propose I do that?”

The drink is a good one: already, Venti feels nice and floaty. He takes another sip, savoring the taste, and then lowers his glass with a grin. The past three years have had their ups and downs, but despite it all this tavern has quickly become like home: a place for drink and good food and good conversation, for crazy ideas and the start of songs. Only months ago, Venti began his ballads about Vennessa here on this seat— and Ragnvindr, too, for all his sarcasm, is a poet at heart. He has written his own words down here at this wine-stained table; he has sung his own eulogies. Dawnlight; Dawn Knight.

Once upon a time, Venti became a god, and a friend who looked much like Ragnvindr did turned away from him. Now Ragnvindr wears a title that chafes with every step. It is not the same, but it is not so different, and Venti can still recall what that friend had once said, before the distance between them had grown too great.

“Just because you wear the same title doesn’t mean you have to do it their way,” Venti tells him, and swirls a strand of anemo through his fingers. “Blood is just blood, in the end. And Mondstadt has long practiced the great and—hah—noble art of adoption!”

“…That wordplay was painful.”

Venti pouts at him.

“Adoption,” Ragnvindr muses, and refills Venti’s glass with a sigh. “I suppose… I don't know who would be interested, though.”

“Well, that’s easy,” Venti says, distracted with his cup. “Just take in everyone the Lawrence clan hates.”

Ragnvindr doesn’t say anything. Venti doesn’t notice; a burst of inspiration has blindsided him. “A noble clan of rebels…”  Something clicks. It may be the main alias of his friend, but the word has a longer history, after all. To rebel against the nobles was to be a Kreuzlied, which could make it… “A clan of Kreuzlieds!”

Venti wheezes himself breathless against the counter. Ragnvindr doesn’t join him. Venti catches his breath and finally sits back up, wiping at his eyes. “Ehe… did I miss something? Why the long silence?”

Ragnvindr is staring at him. He doesn’t move for a long moment. Then he blinks, and shakes his head, and brings a hand to his chin. His expression has turned thoughtful.

“Huh,” he says. “You know, bard…”

Venti tilts his head. “Hm?”

“…Never mind.”

.

Kreuzlied, as Venti had suspected, cannot look at Ragnvindr at all. He can hardly stand to stay in the same room as him; the news, it seems, has hit him harder than most.

“Stop laughing,” says Ragnvindr.

“Thirty people!” wheezes Kreuzlied and almost falls back into hysterics right then and there. “In two days! Thirty people!”

“It’s not that funny,” Ragnvindr says, looking pleased with himself. “…Grandfather always said he wanted a bigger family. This might as well be the way to do it.”

Kreuzlied barely even seems to hear him. “Old women and widows and young upstart teens, all of whom the Lawrence clan cannot stand. Do you even know half of their names?” Ragnvindr shrugs. Kreuzlied starts shaking again.

“Don’t hurt yourself,” Venti tells him, amused.

“You,” Kreuzlied manages. Tears have beaded in his eyes. “This is your fault, isn’t it? This sort of— this has you written all over it.”

“I don’t think it was me,” Venti mumbles.

“You were drunk,” Ragnvindr tells him.

Venti stares at him. “And you listened to me!?”

“And you listened!” echoes Kreuzlied, high-pitched and gleeful, and puts his head down on the table. Ragnvindr looks almost disturbed. Venti can’t blame him; it's been ages since he’s seen Kreuzlied laugh at all, let alone like this.

Vennessa, her pile of paperwork never-ending, just looks fond. “I like it,” she says, simply. “My people used to do something similar… we were connected in our wanderings and in our ideals, even if we didn’t all share blood.”

“Thank you, Vennessa,” Ragnvindr says, aggrieved. “You see?”

“Also,” Vennessa adds, “with Ragnvindr and Gunnhildr, we still only have two-fifths. If one of the other three doesn’t fold… well. We might need another one.”

She is looking at Kreuzlied very intently. Kreuzlied abruptly stops laughing. “…You’re not serious.”

“An actual clan of Kreuzlieds!” Venti says, delighted.

“I thought we agreed I couldn’t do it!” Kreuzlied says, voice rising a little in panic. “Secret underground society! And—and—”

“Ragnvindr didn’t want this either,” Vennessa points out.

“Yes, Ragnvindr didn’t want this either,” says Ragnvindr, with the sudden light of unholy glee in his eyes. “But needs must, of course. Come on, sir Kreuzlied. Are you committed to Mondstadt’s well-being or not?”

Kreuzlied splutters wordlessly. Venti laughs at all of them, and steals Kreuzlied’s drink while he’s too distracted to notice. The tastes of a once-nobleman are fancy, after all—and he’s probably never going to see Kreuzlied caught this off-guard again, so best to take advantage while it lasts.

“Of course I’m committed, I just— Vennessa. Vennessa!”

“Needs must,” Vennessa intones, but her eyes are laughing.

Venti drinks deeply from Kreuzlied’s glass, and smacks his lips. Ah-ha! Now that most certainly hit the spot.

The hour is late and the night is warm; Venti tunes out their conversation to soak it in. He feels sleepy and floaty and bright in the heart.

The tavern is long since closed by now, all the patrons gone home and the doors padlocked shut. Up here on the second floor, with only a few lanterns nearby for light, it makes the whole building feel shadowed and small. Secure, secretive… homey, perhaps.

Venti takes another sip of the wine. The warmth buzzes soothing in his head.

Beside him, the others’ conversation is taking a turn. Kreuzlied’s voice is lowering; Ragnvindr is starting to snap. Vennessa’s tone has turned neutral and stilted. Venti leans against the wall, and tilts his head to peer down through the windows. The window panes have turned foggy from his breath; the darkened streets are a familiar view by now. He has seen these streets lined with frost and turned green from summer weeds— he has seen knights marching the enslaved gladiators to their deaths and rebels hiding in its shadows, passing messages between them like flowers.

In the window’s reflection, behind him, he can see the four of them. This too is a familiar sight. He has seen them angry, and seen them grieving. He has seen them stressed and cheerful and crying by the firelight.

Now, in the dawning spring, Venti is seeing something new: the creeping, unavoidable hope. The unnamable fear. Ragnvindr does not want to be a noble; he has taken this title anyway, with a desperation that is uncomfortable to see. Kreuzlied has never known a world without his family’s overarching evils; Venti suspects he is as eager to see it come as he is afraid of what he will see. And Vennessa—dear Vennessa.

What Vennessa wants is a very simple thing: she wants to know her sister is safe and sound; she wants an assurance she will never be able to trust. Three years ago, when this fight began, she warned him she would be fighting for her people and no others. Venti had not disagreed. It was, after all, her right.

But as the rebellion dragged on, and more people came to fight beneath her banner— outsiders and travelers just as she had once been, Mondstadt natives burning for change, former and disgraced nobles disgusted with their legacy— Vennessa slowly stopped talking about freedom for one, and began planning for the freedom of all. She took on the title of Dandelion Knight with clear eyes. She knelt with the farmers and spoke with the weavers, and talked without hesitating of what they should do to prepare for the coming years ahead. And one day, barely months ago, Venti had found her at the Mondstadt gates, looking up into the city, up at the sky—

As though it was hers. As though it could be home. However flawed and however ugly she found it.

He can see it now, in her face: she wants this to work. But she has no idea what it means, yet, for them to succeed.

This city is not her homeland; in the past three years of fighting, however, he has seen it become her home. It is clear as day in just this: Venti, who is watching them; Vennessa, who is watching also. Who looks at Ragnvindr and Kreuzlied and Venti and the city itself like she is trying to drink it all in, like she is desperate to keep them close, safe within her reach.

The humor and goodwill has fallen to silence. Ragnvindr is staring at the wall. Kreuzlied looks lost in thought.

Even Vennessa, as steadfast as the seasons, has gone quiet. The quill held limp in her hand; the papers untouched. She stares at the stacks of paper like she is not sure what she is doing there, and her silence says more than her words.

It is Kreuzlied who voices it— always the one to speak the bitter truths first. “…Are we certain this is going to work?”

Ragnvindr glowers at the ground and does not answer. Vennessa seems caught up in the same question.

Venti hums, and drags his fingers across his lyre. The chords ring out in soft crescendo; Vennessa almost jumps. “Maybe,” Venti says, “and maybe not.” It is a long shot, after all—perhaps the third noble won’t fold; perhaps the Lawrence clan will throw all caution to the wind and attempt to hold onto their failing power by any means necessary. Perhaps it is a naive dream, to hope that they can overturn the final step of this city quietly. Revolution is a bloody thing, and by the end of this week, in spite of their efforts, it may well be that they will bleed again.

But perhaps not.

Ragnvindr seems about to speak; his eyes are dark, and his words will not help them. Venti picks at the strings to distract him, and starts a new melody, playing it clear and slow and ringing into the room. “Ages ago, when the Storm God and his tower still shadowed the land; the people sang in secret, and fought each day to stand.”

Ragnvindr’s mouth snaps shut. His glance at Venti is startled.

Venti waits for the words to settle, for their eyes to turn on him. He plays the lyre with a flourish, and raises his voice in a storyteller’s cadence. “In that time,” Venti tells them, “in those shadows, the first whispers of rebellion rose: let us fight! said the warrior; let me speak with him, said the girl with her bow. Let me sing, said a bard, with the wind at his side— but the people would not listen, deafened by their own cries. The winds roared, the tower tall, and slowly their spirits fell… until they gathered in a room much like this one, prepared for farewell.”

No one speaks. Vennessa looks at Venti with a clear and steady gaze; Venti meets her eyes with the smallest and most secretive of smiles.

“But the bard would not have it— ‘look,’ he said, ‘don’t you see? Though we are tired, we must keep fighting— for we are fighting to be free. For the wind and the sky, the rivers and birds, a star shining bright; for good drink and loud song, and for a land in sunlight.’ The warrior and archer lifted their heads, the wind quieting to listen; as the bard raised a glass to the silence, eyes bright, his heart risen. ‘We will fight,’ said the bard, ‘and we will speak with them, and we will sing— until one day our fight and our words and our song kills the king!’”

The tale trails off. There’s no need for a grander ending— Venti sings enough about those times that even Vennessa knows the history. The uncertainty of centuries ago echoes again in this room, and yet: they succeeded, in the end. The bard and the warrior and the archer— the people, who had believed themselves defeated. They had found the voice for singing after all.  

“Barbatos,” says Kreuzlied softly, at last, who can be annoyingly pious at the weirdest of times.

“Mondstadt has lived through many a storm,” Venti says, ignoring him. “And it’ll survive many more, especially with people like you around! Whether this works or not doesn’t change what you want to do, right? You’ll get there sooner or later.”

Vennessa smiles at him, the expression faint but fond. Her eyes have lightened. Her regard, at least, doesn’t make Venti’s skin crawl; he was her friend before she knew he was an archon, and her friend he has always remained. It is one of the things he treasures most about her.

(Amos would have gone green with envy at Vennessa’s eagle eyes; Gunnhildr would have sympathized with her duty to her people. She would have gotten along with his red-haired warrior friend best, Venti suspects; both wanderers, both outsiders, pulled into Mondstadt by unfortunate chance and both staying because of the people they found there. And the bard... ah, the bard.

He thinks the bard would have loved her.)

Venti grins back at her, and strums the lyre again. The notes ring out into the tavern room. “This isn’t the only way,” he says, simply. “It’s just the path with the most hilarity!”

Ragnvindr snorts; the mood breaks. Vennessa shakes her head and sighs at all of them, but some tension has eased from her shoulders. She is still smiling.

Kreuzlied just scoffs. “You just want to write a political comedy.”

Venti plays a ditzy tune and says, in his best storyteller voice, “Gather around, and let me tell you a tale, of the noble clan of Kreuzlied and how it prevailed…”

“It’s not happening.”

“Ehe.”

.

Under the combined might of Gunnhildr and Ragnvindr and Vennessa’s unfaltering Death Stare, the third clan folds. The law is overturned: nobility is no longer the only voice of power. Anyone can speak and be heard. The last of the Lawrence clan’s power falls through their fingers.

There is a moment there, at that table: the head of the Lawrence clan, who sits there knowing that at the end of this meeting, Vennessa will take Mondstadt from his hands and set it free from them. He looks at her, and she looks back. Her eyes are steady. Her feet are set. There is a promise in the straight line of her back and the way her hand rests against her sword. There is a quiet way, and there is a bloody way, and she has prepared herself for either.

He says nothing, in the end. The law collapses in on itself. The power of nobility dissolved. Vennessa keeps her hand on her sword and lists her terms in a calm, flat tone. Every name. Every face of cruelty. Every guard who laughed at her family on the ground and every sword that turned against its people.

“You have three days,” says Vennessa, the Dandelion Knight, the people’s chosen. “Leave this place, and never return.”

The nobles say nothing. They have gone pale and small from the truth. Venti, spying shamelessly from the shadows of the room, watches their faces turn. How surprised they look! How shocked. He wonders if they know how lucky they are, that things have turned out this way. That Vennessa has chosen to spare their lives.

Venti probably wouldn’t have.

“You cannot do this,” says Lawrence, in his final bid for power. “You— you, you cannot—”

(You don’t really think this will work, do you? He is a god, he is an Archon— you have barely a Vision among you! You cannot win. You cannot!)

“Who cares,” Vennessa says, and her voice is cold and her eyes do not waver.

Venti lingers in the back of the room, meets her gaze, and winks.

.

On the eve of the third day, the last of the noble clan of Lawrence leaves through the Mondstadt gates. The doors shut behind them. There is no new blood spilled on these streets; the people sing, and scream, and throw flowers in the air. Their tears mingle with their laughter. It is a dream come to life, and it is loud and it is beautiful in its impossibility.

Venti lingers near the bar—already drinking, already drunk on their happiness. Ragnvindr’s usually dour expression has lightened with a near-childish glee; he sings his half-formed ballads of grief like a victory song, and the Dawnlight Swordswoman’s sword glints on his waist like a star. Even Kreuzlied, the quietest of them, is flushed from alcohol and dancing along; he swings from the arm of stranger to stranger, his usual reticentance nowhere to be seen. His smile is the brightest Venti has ever seen.

Venti spies Vennessa on the balcony of the tavern. He grabs another drink for the journey, and swings up the stairs already humming. Vennessa doesn’t flinch when he opens the doors; when Venti settles next to her, wind buffeting around him and his legs kicking out over the balcony railing, she just fixes her hair back behind her ear and rolls her eyes.

Venti beams at her. The drink has warmed him despite the coming spring night chill; the lights of celebration still burn bright. He leans against her, shoulder to shoulder, and feels so light he might soar.

Below them, a song is rising—below them, the people are singing. A song of revolution, wielded like a banner— he heard it sung a millennium ago, and to hear it again now is like finding an old friend. Venti picks up his lyre, swaying to the breeze. Vennessa reaches out and steadies him against her. Her hand burns warm on his shoulder.

“If someone plucks out your tongue, you can still sing with your eyes,” Venti sings, and with his eyes closed and the crowd ringing below, he can almost fool himself into thinking the voice is not his but the bard’s from long ago. “If someone blinds you in both eyes, you can still see with your ears; if someone conspires to destroy tomorrow, then raise them a glass—”

The volume is rising. Venti raises his voice with them.

“—For even if tomorrow dies, this song shall live on!”

A ragged cheer rises up; the people spin and sing. Vennessa’s little sister Lind, seated upon Ragnvindr’s shoulders, claps her hands and laughs. A distant voice calls for more drinks; “Haven’t you heard?” Ragnvindr shouts. “Apparently I’m a noble now! Get your own!”

“Haven’t you heard?” someone bellows back. “Nobility got overthrown! Get me the drink, nobleman!”

The whole group bursts into laughter. Kreuzlied is still singing.

Vennessa looks down at them with a funny expression; Venti jostles her with his shoulder, giggling.

“Why the long face, my friend? The hour of your victory is at hand!” He throws up his hands; the lyre vanishes, and the liquor nearly sloshes out of its bottle. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for we are celebrating the freedom of the land!”

“Your rhymes get worse when you’re tipsy,” Vennessa tells him, calmly.

“And you are avoiding my question.” Venti lowers his arms. The laughter and the dancing are just below, but from this vantage point they feel—not far away, no, but distant. A touch removed from the glory and the glee.

Vennessa glances down at the party in silence. Venti smiles at her, legs dangling over the railing, and waits.

“…Do I look that upset?”

“You have a thinking face,” Venti says, matter-of-fact. “At a time and day when no one should be thinking of anything but their next drink!” Vennessa frowns a little. Venti leans against her shoulder a little harder. “So? Song for your thoughts?”

“The saying is mora for your thoughts.”

“Ah, but I have no Mora to spare…”

He is still leaning all his weight against her; Vennessa nudges him upright. “It is hard to put into words,” she tells Venti, at last, seriously.

“Troubled thoughts always are,” Venti agrees. “Thankfully, your dear friend is a skillful bard! I can’t promise I’ll understand, but I’ve been told I’m a very good listener.”

Vennessa gives one of her faint smiles. “I told you that.” But her gaze has gone distant in thought, and he can see her mulling the words over in her head. “I suppose… I just never really thought about it.”

It is not what he expected her to say. Venti hums, thoughtful, and kicks his heels over the empty air as he thinks. The party down below has caught on a new song; a Song of the Wind, long since buried by the nobility, belted out loud in all its gory glory. “Never really thought about what?” He glances at her from the corner of his eye. “…Freedom?”

“No,” Vennessa says, but then her brow furrows. “Hm. Well… maybe.”

“Ah,” Venti says wisely. “One of those.”

“…The aftermath,” Vennessa settles on. “The after. I never really…”

She trails off, then, but Venti sips at the liquor and lets the silence stay. He understands what she means, even so. It is one thing to dream of freedom—it is another to have it. To hold it in your hands and realize that now you must learn what to make of it. It can be a daunting thing. Open skies are beautiful, but they bring with them new burdens.

For Vennessa, too… the situation is more complicated. Venessa has led this city to free skies and laughter; Vennessa, he knows, is the one they expect to stay.

“On one hand it's a blessing,” Venti remarks, “to have to deal with this now, huh? The greatest threat is gone and so all the smaller problems come crawling out! But that doesn’t make the smaller problems less problematic… I don’t think it’s silly, to only be thinking of it now.”

Vennessa’s brow is furrowed, dark in thought. She grunts, wordless, and takes the bottle from Venti’s hands to sip at it. Then she nearly coughs it out. “This—”

“Snezhnayan Fire-Water! Nice, right?”

Vennessa stares at him. “…This is the most expensive bottle Ragnvindr has.”

“And he won’t know who drank it if you don’t tell him! Eh? Eh?”

Vennessa sets the bottle aside, out of reach. Venti sticks his tongue out at her.

The song below finishes up; a twirling dance begins. The sun is setting, the night creeping over—but the darkness does not touch them. The lanterns burn bright and the flower petals still blow through the breeze. They will sing until dawn, Venti thinks fondly, and perhaps even past that. They will sing themselves hoarse, and then they will begin again.

“You know,” Venti says, “you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

Vennessa goes a little stiff. Venti keeps his eyes on the crowd. “Mondstadt is a free nation,” he continues, cheerfully. “They might moan and groan a little, but they can figure out how to stand on their own. You fought for this freedom… you should get to enjoy it too.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Venti laughs. “Don’t you?” He turns to her and smiles. “I guess this once, I’ll be a little blunt. Even if you decide to stay in Mondstadt… that doesn’t mean you have to lead it.”

“…I’ve come this far.”

“Haha. But for what reason should you go farther? You earned your freedom through your own two hands; your duty to your people is more than fulfilled, on that front. And you have no duty at all to Mondstadt.”

That makes Vennessa twitch. “I— well.”

“Ahh, but of course you feel responsible anyway,” Venti sighs, fondly. “I should have seen that coming, huh?”

“I don’t know that I feel responsible, but…” She looks at the dancing crowd. Her brow furrows a little. “…For as long as I can remember, my people wandered. We had… no home. Mondstadt was more curse than blessing, but—”

“It was a place to stay.”

“A terrible place,” Vennessa agrees. “…But we have won. So it is mine, now. By my choice, this time.”

“I see,” Venti says. He watches her. “Home it may have become, but that still doesn’t mean you must be the one.”

Vennessa quiets again. Her gaze drifts away. “…It doesn’t bother you?”

He’s not entirely sure what she’s asking— if it bothers him that her feelings on Mondstadt are complicated? If it bothers him that now, once freedom has been secured, she might want to rest? Or maybe it has nothing to do with Venti at all; maybe it is just that already, people are looking to Vennessa to shape the future of this city… and Vennessa herself is still deciding on whether or not she wants to be that person.

Venti laughs anyway. “Why would it? I left too, remember! Eh, well, even if I was never really gone…” He squints in thought, then shrugs. “Anyway. My point still stands!”

Vennessa doesn’t answer right away. Venti looks to the sky. “You did not beg for it,” he says, quieter. “You did not kneel for it. You fought for the freedom you believed in, and you took it back with your own hands. I just… hope that whatever your choice, it is what you want.”

Vennessa shifts a little. “Are these the words of the Anemo Archon?”

He elbows her, gently. “These are the words of your friend.”

Vennessa is silent for a long while, considering. The laughter from below ebbs and flows; her eyes fall back to the crowd. Her people laugh and cheer. Her sister sings. Kreuzlied has somehow become wrapped up in some sort of arm wrestling contest, and Ragnvindr stands on the sidelines laughing loud and obvious at his struggling. The gruff apple merchant and his youngest daughter; the young girl who had once been the ill-fated chosen in the corrupt Ludi Harpastum. They gather together and sing in a clamor of a hundred different voices.

Vennessa looks at them all. Then she turns back to him. “…Thank you,” she tells him, at last. “I think I needed someone to tell me that.”

Venti nods. “Happy to be of service!”

“…But I think… I don’t want to stop here. I will keep going. I want to keep going.” She frowns a little. “Is that strange?”

“Life is complicated,” Venti says, knowingly. “I wouldn’t worry about it so much. If continuing on is what you want to do, then you should do it! You’re already doing a pretty good job, I should say.”

“Hm,” Vennessa says, as if the past three years are not enough proof of her stellar leadership abilities. “…You should worry more, I think. Just in general.”

How rude. “I worry just enough!”

Vennessa is smiling. Faint and thin, but there. Then she takes a breath, and says, apropos of nothing, “When I first came to Mondstadt, before we knew what we had wandered into… I remember looking up, and seeing the birds.”

Venti watches her.

“I remember thinking… the sight of them, against that blue sky, those green cliffs…” Vennessa trails off, and takes another breath. “After Ursa the Drake began hunting us, in the brief times of reprieve, I used to dream about it. The same thing, over and over. Flying in those green fields.” She pauses, then adds, “My father laughed, when I told him that. I think he found it funny.”

“Funny,” Venti echoes.

Vennessa looks a little embarrassed. “…I asked him how I could grow wings.”

Venti is startled into giggling, caught by the image—a much smaller Vennessa, just as serious and steadfast, bluntly asking silly questions. Vennessa looks amused. “I was little,” she says, scolding. “…I know it was silly, now. But my father… he just told me that it was a nice dream. That— that he’d keep his eyes on the sky, then, so that when I finally figured it out, he’d be the first to see me fly.”

Venti sobers slightly. He leans against her again. “Your father sounds like a good man!”

“Mm.” Vennessa smiles back at him. “He would have liked you.”

“I’m honored,” Venti tells her, and he means the words sincerely.

Vennessa leans back against him. Steady and sure as stone. She says, “Venti?”

“Hm?”

“Thank you for listening. It did help.”

“Hehe. Anytime!”

The sun has set below the ragged cliffs; the sky is scattered with stars. Venti looks up at them, and wonders a little at the sight. All this time, all these centuries—and yet. They look almost the same.

The wind sings of forgotten faces. The people below sing the songs of ages past. Venti says, very softly, “They would have liked you too.”

There is a long moment of silence. When he doesn’t continue right away, she glances at him, something concerned in the furrow of her brow. “Venti.”

“…You remind me of them,” Venti admits, at last. “All of them, a little bit.” He summons back his lyre, just for something to do. Vennessa’s eyes never stray from his face. Her gaze is searching. “You aren’t really alike, if I’m being honest, but you remind me of them anyway.” He turns to her. “Even though this is not what you expected—when the cry rang out, you answered.”

Vennessa considers that. Her eyes trail over the crowd again, but this time she seems to be searching for something else. Her sister, chatting with the apple merchant’s daughter. The Gunnhildr heir, talking quietly with one of Vennessa’s people. Ragnvindr and Kreuzlied, now embroiled in an arm-wrestling contest of their own—Venti almost laughs at them. They are so drunk.

“So did you,” Vennessa says, with finality. Venti opens his mouth to disagree anyway, and Vennessa takes the bottle of fire-water at her side and shoves it at him. “Don’t argue.”

It’s a useless command; his train of thought has already been derailed by the return of drink. Venti gives a cry of delight and immediately snatches the bottle back.

“…and maybe don’t drink it all at once—”

Venti tips back the bottle. Vennessa breaks off with a sigh, but her lips are twitching. In the distant light of the tavern lamps, her eyes shine like gold.

“Venti,” she says, after a moment.

Venti lowers the bottle and looks at her. “Vennessa,” he returns, cheery.

“I’m glad I met you.”

He blinks at her, startled. Then he flusters. “Flatterer,” Venti accuses, but he is smiling again, bright and pleased. His face feels hot. He takes a hurried sip of the drink.

Vennessa shakes her head at him, but this time her smile stays.

“There is one other thing,” she says, at last, “that I was wondering.”

Venti tips back down the bottle. He raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“…What are you going to call your comedy?”

Venti hems and haws and thinks about it. He turns his gaze back to the crowd. The light and the laughter and the people dancing arm-in-arm with strangers. The stars and sky, and the birds, still flying.

Far down below, Kreuzlied beats Ragnvindr in an arm-wrestling contest and whoops.