Chapter Text
After he stepped through the portal, Diluc was greeted with a never-ending void surrounding everything his eyes could see. There was seemingly no ground for his feet to stand on, yet he was standing firmly. There was no sky or horizon in the distance for him to focus on.
Just the emptiness of nothing.
Although that wasn’t entirely correct. Because there was one thing standing before Diluc with a frown on his face: Dainsleif.
When the redhead entered wherever this was, he heard a faint whizzing from behind and turned to investigate the source. Only to observe the portal he passed through shrank in on itself before expunging from existence entirely.
“How did you do that?” Dainsleif asked. Judging by his tone, he was beyond baffled.
“Do what?” Diluc seethed in fury, but then shook his head. “You are the one being interrogated here,” he reminded. “What did you do to Kaeya?”
He did something to his eye and opened that portal. Diluc had no choice but to tail the suspicious blond. He knew the man was immortal, but Diluc wasn’t unfamiliar with other ways of acquiring information. They were considered immoral by most, of course, but he needed to protect Kaeya.
Dainsleif didn’t answer his question and tried to summon Abyssal energy in his palm. Diluc barged in to make him stop, but the man held up a hand to the redhead, indicating that this was important.
The nerve!
“I can’t create an exit,” he breathed, almost airy but edged with worry.
Diluc frowned. “What do you mean?”
“It means we are stuck,” he said, looking around.
What?
“What?”
“How did you close the gate?” Dainsleif faced him. “How did you do that?” He repeated.
“I didn’t do anything,” the redhead replied, now understanding the meaning of the first question.
“Then this might be his doing,” Dainsleif concluded, by looking up at the nonexistent sky.
Now that his throat was in full display, Diluc saw how the piercing hole there was slowly closing up. Dainsleif was lucky that he wasn’t stabbed by the windpipe, but the artery was clearly severed. Despite the circumstances, the blond seemed almost undisturbed.
“Are you blaming Kaeya?” Diluc asked after he understood the implications.
Dainsleif turned to him again, and an unimpressed expression was worn over his face. “I am not blaming anyone. But there are a handful of people who could trap us here in the domain I created.”
Trapped here? As in, there was no exit?
Still, that was a topic for another time. The reason he came here was to gather answers to help his brother.
“What is your goal?” Diluc repeated as he discreetly summoned a dagger from his Vision space behind his back. His claymore was discarded behind the portal when the man disrespectfully kept it hanging on his throat. It must have fallen off at some point Diluc didn’t see.
“We need to proceed forward if we want to leave this domain.” Dainsleif completely ignored his question again, and this time Diluc decided he had lost his patience with the blond.
He lunged like a viper fixated on his prey, and he didn’t even try to threaten his foe with a promise of a strike. He just aimed to maim. The man could clearly take the hit.
Still exhausted from the encounter from before, Dainsleif’s reflexes were very clearly hindered, almost lazy. He took the stab wound like he didn’t care for the consequences and stared at the redhead with a pained wince.
“Are you satisfied?” He asked as he hissed in agony before slowly pulling the dagger out of his abdomen.
“Stop dodging the question,” Diluc ordered. “You cannot die, that much is obvious. But you also feel the pain.”
“I am not hiding information from you,” Dainsleif answered, almost irritated, and placed a hand over his bleeding stomach.
Diluc scoffed. “Yeah, right. Then what are you doing, not replying to any of our questions?”
The blond frowned, puzzled before opening his mouth to retort. “I gave that Alberich his chance to explain himself. It was him not replying to my question.”
“You didn’t ask anything!” Just how lacking were his abilities when it came to social interactions? “You just attacked unprovoked.”
“He knew exactly what he did. And he knew exactly what I was talking about.”
“It seemed to me that he didn’t.” Diluc crossed his arms.
“He did,” Dainsleif replied with a tone to end this.
Diluc sighed and changed tactics. He needed to learn what the hell was happening.
“Then what did he do?” He asked. “I was also caught up in this. If you are not hiding anything, then tell me, what is all this about?”
Dainsleif’s stoic eyes stared at him for a brief second before he turned around to move forward. Diluc had no choice but to follow the man.
“You are either too naive for your own good to help a traitor without knowing his true nature, or a hopelessly loyal idiot.” Or you are collaborating with a traitor, he was going to say, but Dainsleif kept himself back. It was for the better, because he was already teetering on the edge of crossing a line.
The blond glanced at him to test his reaction, but Diluc had no intention of giving him the satisfaction of riling the redhead up.
“I saw him,” Dainsleif finally spoke up. “In Natlan, working directly under the Abyss Order.”
He… What?
“That is not possible,” Diluc replied confidently. “You are either mistaken or you are lying.”
“I saw him,” Dainsleif repeated a bit more harshly. “And he saw that I saw him. Still, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Thinking that his lineage did not define his loyalties. I was clearly mistaken.”
“It wasn’t him,” Diluc tried to clear the misunderstanding. He felt the need to protect his brother’s image, even to this scum. “You saw someone else.”
“Believe what you will,” Dainsleif shrugged. “All he had to do was to explain his reasoning for helping the Order, but he failed to do that.”
Was he dense? “It wasn’t him,” he said once again. “How was he supposed to explain something he didn’t do?”
“Are you sure, Ragnvindr? Are you so sure to stake your life on it? Stake everyone’s life on it?”
“You aren’t making sense.” Diluc bitterly stopped in his place, crossing his arms.
“He was working with the Order. The very organization that cares little for the subjects of Celestia. Are you so determined to protect a man you don’t know?” He also stood in his place, glaring at the redhead over his shoulder.
“I know him,” he almost yelled. “He wasn’t there. Even if we entertain the fact that he was, then I trust Kaeya. I believe he must have motives hidden from the members of the organization.” Then he huffed. “Besides, it is impossible. He was in the city for the last two months. Unless you saw him and waited months to pursue the matter, it simply wasn’t him. He has daily strong alibis.”
Dainsleif spared him an unimpressed glance. “It is not impossible to traverse great distances by creating Abyssal portals. I saw him teleport. He is capable of wielding the Abyss.”
Well, as far as Diluc knew, Kaeya didn’t know how to make those kinds of portals, but he had no solid proof for the claim.
Taking the silence as his victory, Dainsleif continued to trek forward to nowhere in particular. Diluc sighed and quickened his pace to keep up.
“Where is this place? What did you do to him?”
“I didn’t do anything to harm him. He will wake up after he has rested enough. The spell wore him down because he resisted me.”
“So he is just exhausted?”
“Yes,” Dainsleif exhaled, exasperated. It was weird to see no animosity from the blond. “What I did was a domain-creating spell. When I saw him in Natlan, he didn’t have his eyepatch on. But when I got close to Alberich in Mondstadt, there was a strong energy radiating from his eye.”
Diluc frowned, not sure where the explanation was going.
“So I created a domain that revealed the essence of his eye.”
This time, the redhead’s eyes widened in horror and a tinge of disgust. “We are in his eye?”
“Not physically, no. But this domain reflects its purpose. So in a way, yes.”
Obviously, he wasn’t going to let this random asshole learn his brother’s secrets. So he ran ahead of the blond before turning to face him and blocking his path.
“Then you are not moving any further.”
Dainsleif raised a brow. “That is not up to you to decide.”
Diluc crossed his arms and refused to budge, while daring the blond to take another step. After reading Diluc’s intention with crystal clarity, he sighed and softened his tone, albeit almost imperceptibly.
“I will not abandon my course, no matter the obstacles. I suggest you stop being a hindrance before I decide not to be so patient anymore.”
“Your threats are empty,” Diluc replied. “Create a way out and see that you leave this place where you are unwanted.”
The blond let out a sharp exhale through the nose. It could either be a mocking bark or just a sigh, but Diluc couldn’t tell. “I have already informed you that I am unable to do that. Besides, even if I could, I wouldn’t leave this domain until I found my answers.”
“If we are stuck here, as you claimed, then we should work to find a way out, not go further in.”
“I am doing both,” Dainsleif shook his head. “When we reach the essence, I can try to create another exit.”
Diluc scoffed. “How convenient!” He blatantly mocked the man. “We can only attempt to leave after you learn the secret you are after.”
“It is convenient,” Dainsleif agreed, and an annoying smirk tugged at the edge of his lip.
Was Diluc being made fun of?
“You are not going any further,” Diluc said, standing his ground.
“I don’t believe you are aware of the situation you are in,” Dainsleif began without a trace of falter in his voice. “You have a limited time at your disposal, and you are not invulnerable. No matter the outcome of our next battle, I will emerge victorious. So you either follow me to the essence for a way out of here, or you will draw your final breath in my presence right here.”
Diluc considered the words. Dainsleif could not die; that was the truth. He was also capable of regenerating exceedingly fast. Even if Diluc were to win every battle, all Dainsleif had to do was to wait until Diluc was dead, one way or the other.
There was no way he was bluffing, right? He didn’t catch anything that could indicate that. But he wasn’t simply going to accept the terms!
“I can still make you regret staying alive, unable to die, even with the never-ending agony. Not until you create a way out.”
“I have seen countless battles in my five hundred years of involuntary living. There is no torture you can use to scare me. I am only standing here, negotiating with you, because I do not want to spill unnecessary blood.”
Yeah, right, was his first thought. But then he thought back to their battle at the ruins. Dainsleif never aimed to kill, not even Kaeya, and he didn’t strike his hardest when Diluc was in the way. His actions seemed to be in line with his words.
Regardless, it didn’t matter in the slightest. Whether he was truly intending to hurt Diluc or not, he still intended to get past him, no matter the cost. And Diluc could acknowledge that he did not have the advantage in this dispute.
“Where were you going?” He reluctantly asked.
Dainsleif smiled once again, knowing that he had won. “The domain was created to unravel the secrets. And I feel something attracting me in that direction,” he gestured behind the redhead.
“What will we see there?”
“I do not have the slightest idea,” Dainsleif answered truthfully.
Diluc scoffed. “I thought you created this place.”
“I did. But I only gave it its shape. The spell I use is used to uncover any Abyssal spell's properties. Whoever the creator of Alberich’s eye was, they gave it its meaning, and I made this domain by willing its meaning into being.”
Diluc rolled his eyes and hesitantly fell to the blond’s side. He was going to get the upper hand somehow in the future. But right now, he had to make Dainsleif think he was safe. Diluc needed to collect information, observe, and lay low until he learned a key information that could turn the tide.
Just wait, Kaeya. I won’t let you down.