Ren
Ren walked through Liyue with a slight slump. His mind was still on Mt. Aocang. Cloud Retainer's words repeating in his head.
He passed a fruit stall, a woman arguing with a cart operator over right of way, and a group of children chasing each other down an alley.
In just a few months, he'd seen so many around him grow and prosper. Yet today he realized that he had just been walking in place for nearly a year.
He had nothing. No hint or clue about how he would even start to get home.
'Stop that.' He told himself.
He caught himself spiraling and took a moment to take a breath. Moving to the side of the street while watching people go on their day.
'Even if I didn't find anything to help me get home… I still got a new sword,' he told himself. It did lift his mood slightly that he'd gotten a weapon that most people in Teyvat could only dream of holding.
And today was a celebration of his business expansion. After grueling paperwork and mental exhaustion, he could safely say that he's safe to run for years. His bank account couldn't be more grateful.
All in all, he did alright.
'I think Dad would be proud of me…' His eyes were unconsciously looking up at the sky, and what was beyond the clouds.
He stood there for another second and then came to a decision. He was going to eat something good. Not a cheap, homey meal he was used to buying.
But something expensive and fancy. Something that someone like Ganyu would eat.
He'd earned it.
His mind made up, he walked toward a staircase that led to the upper areas of the Harbor. He usually never bothered to go up here, unless it was for deliveries or to go to the bank.
After reaching the higher levels, he spotted one of the fancier restaurants that didn't have too many people. It also had a storytelling podium, so it would be an interesting experience for him.
He ordered a big bowl of warm noodles with braised pork, along with some sides and some sweet tea.
He ate slowly. The food was good. The view was good. He let himself just be in the moment for a while.
'This is pretty good,' He thought, drinking more of the broth. 'Still not worth the amount I paid, but—'
"Father, I want the red one!"
Ren's thoughts were interrupted by the shout of a child. Turning his head, he saw a small family settling down at a table to his left. A mother, father, and two small boys.
The small boy who shouted slammed his hands on the table playfully. Staring daggers at his father to give him what he wants.
"You don't know what the red one is yet."
"But I want it."
"Let me read the menu first."
"I want the red one!"
The father lowered the menu and laughed out loud when he saw the image. "Son, this isn't even red. Do you know what color this is?"
"I want the red one…"
"Alright, but share it with your brother."
The kid pumped their fist. The older sibling groaned loudly. The mother covered her mouth and laughed lightly.
It took Ren a second to realize he was staring and went back to his food.
He tried hard to focus on eating, but the thought came and went anyway.
Ren hadn't heard his parents' voices in almost a year. A part of him feared that one day… he might forget their voices entirely.
It was silly, really. He went here to eat some food, and now he's getting all sentimental about—
"Good morning everyone! Well, it's not really morning, but it's the thought that counts!"
A woman's voice cut across the restaurant. Heads turned towards the bright and cheery voice from the direction of the storytelling podium.
She was blonde, which was pretty rare in Liyue, and she was clearly not a local. Her presence seemed to attract the attention of all those around her without trying.
Ren could also see various men and women staring at the woman at the podium with intense stares.
He took another look at the woman before deciding to just focus on his tea. Her clothing wasn't anything out of the ordinary, but it definitely fit tightly and put emphasis on… certain parts of the body.
He made sure not to ogle her. It was rude.
The Chasm didn't count. It had been a moment of weakness…
Seriously… It was…
At the same time, the woman began to speak.
"Gather close," she said, her voice somehow ensnaring Ren's eyes and ears, "for I have a tale that most would dismiss as legend—and those people would be very wrong."
Light laughter came from the audience as Ren listened in silence.
"Far in the wilderness of Teyvat, there exists a mage. And I don't mean the kind that waves fire around impressively at festivals."
She extended her arms wide, "I mean a true practitioner of the arcane, a woman so breathtakingly talented and, one must say—" She put a hand over her chest, "—extraordinarily beautiful, that all other accounts of magical ability become rather embarrassing by comparison."
Ren raised a brow.
She pulled out a piece of paper that lit aflame, earning shocked shouts from the audience, "She moves between spaces the way you or I might cross a room. Dimensions are a suggestion to her. Distances are an opinion. She appears where she chooses, when she chooses, and if you tried to follow her path, you would find only air where she had been."
The storyteller threw the burning paper up in the air as it burned to ash, and paused for effect.
"Some say she has visited every corner of Teyvat. Some say she has visited places that Teyvat doesn't know exist. All accounts agree that she is impossibly well-traveled, devastatingly capable, and, I cannot stress this enough, quite remarkably gorgeous."
A few people in the audience exchanged glances. But the woman at the podium seemed entirely comfortable with the reception.
Ren had put his chopsticks down. This seemed a little too convenient. He wasn't sure when he'd leaned forward, but kept his attention to the storyteller's words.
Even with her… unique way of storytelling, the audience seemed captivated. She described the mage possessing a library as vast as a nation. Where one can enter from portals that the mage inscribed upon the lands.
"Those who have seen her say that there exists an entryway to this library. In the border of Dendro and Geo, a fleeting page or book inscribed shall appear in front of those who seek her."
She went on to say that the mage's knowledge is as vast as the gods and her personality as, quote, "an acquired taste that most people are simply not sophisticated enough to appreciate."
Then, without another word, she finished, and the audience clapped. Ren found himself clapping absentmindedly.
That sounded more like constantly glazing someone than telling a story.
Ren stared at the podium with a complicated look.
Of all the things to hear today. Of all the days for a storyteller to show up at a rooftop restaurant with a specific geographic detail about a teleporting mage. A mage, mind you, that can cross dimensions.
The logical part of his brain knew that whatever the woman spouted was unlikely to be true… But considering everything he's been through, this wouldn't be that odd.
'This will either be the best lead I've ever gotten or the most elaborate waste of time in my life.'
Either way, it was better than nothing.
/ — /
The applause died down, and the woman stepped off the podium and walked toward the paper screen at the back of the performance area.
Ren got up quickly to talk to her.
He wasn't sure what he was going to ask. But definitely something more specific than "border of Dendro and Geo." A location or landmark, anything she might have left out of the performance.
He weaved between tables and made it to the screen in the time it took most of the audience to start talking amongst themselves again.
He stepped around the screen, "Excuse me—Huh?"
Nobody was there.
"Where'd she go?"
He looked at the back wall. There was no door, and it was unlikely she jumped from the railings without anyone seeing. Just a wall, a storage shelf with extra cups, and an empty space where she should have been standing.
Ren closed his eyes and extended his senses. He didn't sense elemental energy from her so her fire trick wasn't the result of a Vision.
But even people without a Vision had some elemental contact. It was unavoidable in Teyvat, where elemental energy saturated the air and the ground and everything in between.
Anyone who had lived here long enough left traces. He swept the area where she had been standing during the performance, then where she would have walked to reach the screen.
There was nothing. No residual energy, nada.
Almost like she hadn't been there at all.
'What the absolute fuck—'
"Excuse me! Sorry, sorry—"
Ren jolted and turned around.
A man with an impressive mustache that looked like he had run a marathon was pushing through the edge of the audience toward the podium.
He was clutching a bundle of notes under one arm and straightening his collar with the other.
"My apologies, everyone, I got held up at the lower district—" He reached the podium and set his notes down, catching his breath. "I'm Lao Ming, your storyteller for this afternoon. Thank you for your patience."
The audience murmured. A few people looked confused.
"Sorry, but the woman who was just up here. She was blonde and probably a foreigner. You know her?" Ren asked.
Lao Ming blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"The storyteller before you?"
"There was no storyteller before me." He frowned. "I'm the only one on the schedule today. Did someone take the podium without—"
"No, it's fine." Ren cut him off and stepped back. "Thank you."
He walked away and couldn't help but stare at the empty podium once more.
A random lady hijacking a storytelling performance?
Disappearing suddenly without a trace?
Conveniently, just as he needed to find more info about teleportation?
'Yup. That's a sign.'
He went back to his table, dropped some Mora, grabbed his coat, and headed for the stairs without looking back.
He didn't know who that woman was or why she'd shown up at a rooftop restaurant in Liyue Harbor and then vanished.
But that didn't matter. What he needed right now was to do his own research.
'Time to do some research on this "mage".'
/ — /
Ren ran up the steps to the bookhouse and went to the front desk. She was surprised at his sudden appearance, but kept a respectful distance.
"I need any books about mages, witches, sages, people with unusual spatial abilities. So, historical accounts, legends, firsthand records, I'm not picky."
He stared expectantly at the lady, who looked at him with a befuddled expression.
"We… Don't really have much about mages. This is Liyue after all," She said, "At most it's about the gods or Adeptus."
"I figured. Just give me whatever you have."
"Very well, please give me a moment."
She disappeared into the stacks. He heard her moving between shelves. It wasn't long before she came back with one book and set it on the desk.
"This is honestly the most comprehensive thing we carry on the subject." She pushed the book toward him. "It's written by a scholar from Liyue who spent years traveling to other nations. It's a compilation of legends and accounts from across Teyvat. If there's anything, it would be in here."
Ren picked it up. Thick enough to take a while, but he's read his fair share of books. This shouldn't be too bad.
"There is one other thing," she said before he could wander off. "There's a book called the Teyvat Travel Guide. People say it was written by a sorceress, though I'm not so sure about the legitimacy of that statement. But it's not actually about mages, it's more of what the title says. We're completely out of stock, and I don't know when the next copies are coming in."
"That's fine." He tucked the book under his arm. "Thank you."
He found a table near the window with enough light and opened to the index.
'Alright. Mages, witches, sages, teleportation… Let's see what we've got.'
With a deep breath, he started to work through the book.
A part about Sumeru appeared first, surprisingly. There was a decent amount of material on sages.
Ren read through a few pages before realizing that these were titles. The Akademiya is actually governed by six Great Sages, each representing one of the Six Darshans.
Moving on, he hit a section about Abyss Mages and couldn't help but raise a brow.
He'd read about them many times and heard stories from adventurers and merchants alike. But he never actually encountered one himself.
Then, his brain made a connection. 'Could these Abyss Mages be related to the Abyss order? It's literally in the name.'
He set the thought aside for later.
Mondstadt had a small fragment. It was an account of how an adventurer encountered a woman near a sealed ruin who had a giant hat and was extremely powerful.
The book described the woman as a witch, but there wasn't really any information to support that, except for the big hat.
'Interesting, but not useful.'
Sumeru had another part in a different section. It described a woman with a big red abstract hat, whatever that meant. But the most interesting detail was the blonde hair.
'The likelihood of that storyteller lady being this mage is pretty high now that I think about it. I mean, who else would a mage glaze other than themselves?'
Ren set the book down for a moment.
Both parts were too vague to confirm they were the same person. But they were too similar to be completely coincidental.
The problem was that this book isn't something he could take at face value. The scholar's accounts were filtered through his own perception and his own limitations.
'This is basically just someone's travel journal.'
He finished the remaining sections, finding nothing else relevant, and closed the book.
Honestly, it didn't leave him with much.
He sighed, 'The only actual lead I have is from that lady…'
"The border of Dendro and Geo…" She was obviously referring to the borders of the two nations: Sumeru and Liyue.
It wasn't specific, and it could take weeks for him to find anything substantial. And he was literally going off the words of a random lady he didn't even know.
But it wasn't like he had many options.
He'd been in Teyvat long enough to know he wasn't going to get a better one sitting in Liyue. Every avenue here had been tried.
He stood up and stretched his back, thinking about how long the trip would take. He'd be gone for a week at least, but—
'Wait.'
He'd be gone for at least a week. Probably more, depending on what he found at the border. His business had employees now, which was good. That meant deliveries would keep running.
But employees generated paperwork. Scheduling, payment records, and incident reports if anything went wrong.
And he had now just realized that he had been doing all of it himself because there was no one else to do it.
'...Shit. A week's worth of paperwork… FUCK!'
He made a mental note that finding an assistant was now an actual priority, not just a vague plan. He'd deal with it when he got back.
Returning the book to the desk, he thanked the librarian and walked toward the exit.
Ren knew that he could just search for an assistant first. But too much time could pass, and something in his gut told him that he couldn't afford to wait.
Opportunities didn't come at anyone's convenience, after all. If you wanted something, you had to give something up in return.
'Looks like I'm taking a trip to Sumeru.'
/ — /
Volkov
Volkov read through a piece of paper that held his assignment and set it down with a shaky sigh.
'Thank Her Majesty!'
Why was he currently overjoyed?
It's because he was being pulled off Ren Roman surveillance.
After grueling months of logging every single action that the damned courier took. A single man who somehow kept making his job more complicated from his very existence.
It didn't help that he now knew that Ren was able to detect some form of energy. Not exactly elemental sight, but close enough.
The fact that he was somehow not noticed and killed either meant that Ren didn't register him as a threat or was just playing with him.
Both options were equally bad.
'I need to work on my concealment…'
What made it worse was when he found out that the freaking courier can jump into shadows.
His heart couldn't take any more weird shadows moving. Heck, he couldn't even sleep without at least four lanterns now.
Yeah… He's been through a lot.
'Never doing a long-term surveillance op again. I don't care how much they pay me.'
Even better was that this new assignment had better pay.
Sure, he was honored to assist the Tsaritsa and Harbingers in any way he was able to. But the pay did help motivate him.
He skimmed the details of his operation again. He was going on an active deployment to an area at the border of Sumeru, Liyue, and Fontaine to assist the House of the Hearth.
They had a group of missing agents last reported in Sumeru's border region. There weren't any other details, so he'd likely be briefed when he arrived.
He pushed the thought aside and finished packing. The border wasn't a short trip, and he'd been idle long enough.
This operation was likely a dangerous one, but he'd take this any day over the awful suspense of the Shadow Courier.
Yes, Volkov was really glad that Ren Roman was someone else's problem now.