Chapter Text
Fischl, unlike others, is not stupid. She has a good head on her shoulders. Not only does she excel in Miss Mona’s class, she’s also one of the top students in Mister Albedo’s. Mind you, that is no small feat. Mister Albedo is the world’s greatest scientist at the moment and Miss Mona used to be the student of the High Priestess of Teyvat’s witches coven. That means that in a way, Fischl is the grandstudent (get it? like granddaughter) of the High Priestess. Besides school and life as a witch, Fischl is also streetsmart. Kind of. She especially knows how to bargain - much better than that one girl in Mondstadt that can’t even strike a deal with her friend.
One thing that she will never figure out, though, is how to get bullies off her ass. Not literally her ass, of course, but how to get them to lay off.
They pick on her mostly because of her clothing; it’s unnatural for humans, but it’s traditional witch clothing: black dresses with long sleeves and a hood, finished with purple evil-warding ropes around her waist. Fischl also has an eyepatch, which obviously not every human kid wears.
(If you ask her, she won’t tell you what happened with her eye. She’ll make it look like it was something very dark, spooky, scary - whatever drama she can make out at that moment. In truth, she has a lazy eye and it’s just temporary.)
This time, they’ve taken her familiar for ransom. Of course, they don’t know he’s her familiar, they just think Oz is her pet.
Pallad crosses his arms. “If you want that bird back, you have to do something for us,” he says with an overconfident grin.
“What is it?” she asks. For her situation, she’s calm - only because she’s holding back, though. She can’t risk them hurting him. Fischl will do anything for Oz. Oz will do anything for Fischl. It’s undeniable in this world, an axiom, an irrefutable fact.
Albert answers her. “You have to bring us a picture.”
It’s suspiciously simple. There’s more to it. “Of what?”
“Of who,” Palled corrects her. He still has that stupid grin on his face. Fischl thinks it’d look better if it was smashed onto the ground, but alas. They have a hostage, and with that, the upper hand. “Diluc Ragnvindr.”
She pales.
“And not just any picture of him, of course,” Albert says, matter-of-factly. “One of him that comes from his house.”
“But that’s suicide!” she shouts. “They say he’s a vampire! What do you think he’ll do to me if he finds me lurking around in his house, trying to steal some picture?”
Pallad shrugs. She curses his obsession with that disappearance of a baby all those years ago. Seriously, if he’s so obsessed, why doesn’t he get that picture himself? Maybe if he’s lucky he’ll even meet his idol in person and get an autograph!
(Sarcasm. Of course she knows why he wouldn’t want to do it himself. Diluc Ragnvindr is the infamous vampire that stole a baby about seventeen years ago. Apparently he was so curious about baby blood, that he abducted a one-month-old. Sick.)
“Don’t worry,” Albert says. “If you die, we’ll get Barbara to look after your bird. Maybe.”
Right, Oz. If it’s for Oz… “Fine. I’ll do it,” she bites. “One picture of Diluc Ragnvindr which comes from his own house. Anything else?”
Ignoring her sarcasm, Albert nods. “You have a time limit of one day.”
“You’re crazy,” she says. “I have to go home tonight and I have class tomorrow. I don’t have time. Give me more time.”
Pallad chuckles. “You’re forgetting something here, Amy. You don’t have the high ground here. I guess you’ll have to sacrifice one of the two. Which will it be?”
“Whatever, man. Message me when you have it. I’m outta here!” Albert laughs. “I gotta go see Barbara.” With that, he’s off. Pallad doesn’t spare Fischl another glace before following after him, leaving her alone. Without Oz.
It’s been a long time since she was separated from her familiar. She misses him already and it hasn’t even been two hours. They’ve been side by side for five years, after all. She summoned him for the first time when she was twelve - entered her coven for the first time, and as per tradition, had to try and summon a familiar. She succeeded in her first try - meaning, they’re extremely similar and close to each other. They’ve almost never fought. He’s her only friend.
…She can’t miss school. And truthfully, no one is waiting for her at home. Her parents are important in the witch community, so they’re always travelling and visiting other parts of Teyvat. Right now, they’re in Sumeru and won’t be home soon. In her bag, there should still be some food, as well - it’d be perfect if she left now, got the picture easily, went back and still got some hours of sleep.
With that reasoning, she sets off in the direction of the forest - it’s a long walk.
Everyone knows where Diluc Ragnvindr lives. With the story he has, or is rumoured to have, anyway, it’s normal that everyone wants to know what area of land they should avoid.
Fischl hopes and prays to Lord Barbatos that Diluc Ragnvindr isn’t actually a vampire. She knows they exist - only because she’s a witch, because normal humans aren’t supposed to know - but she’s never met one. She doesn’t know how to fight against one, should they attack her. It’d be smart to preserve her mana to fight Ragnvindr guy if it comes to it - meaning, she can’t fly there, or use her powers to walk faster than humanly possible.
The limits of a witch. A tragedy.
…
It’s boring. Walking alone like this.
Fischl isn’t a person that can easily stay alone, how independent she might seem. She lives without her parents most of the time, she doesn’t have more than one friend - she only really has Oz. Now that she’s alone, she realises it might be good for her to get more friends. She could approach Noelle. Noelle is a human girl, sure, but it might be nice to talk to her. She’s nice… She cleans.
Fischl doesn’t know anything else about her. Huh.
Barbara, maybe? But Albert’s always around her and he’s a creep. That’s a no. Besides, Barbara has a lot of friends already and she’s always busy with her side work at the church. How she gets good grades, Fischl doesn’t know.
Who else is there? There aren’t a lot of people her age in Mondstadt City that she knows - Barbara, Noelle, Albert, Pallad… Amber is a couple of years older…
She groans. She should stop thinking about this and just keep walking, but her mind keeps wandering back to it.
Another solution is just to use magic to get there faster - she should just keep enough magic for one teleportation spell. If Diluc Ragnvindr attacks her, she can use it to run away out of his immediate vicinity and then start running.
An escape plan. She has pride, but she also has intelligence. She’s not gonna win against a vampire that could’ve been alive for hundreds of years. She’s seventeen!
Holding her bag tightly, she starts running while using an advanced stamina spell. One ‘invented’ by Vennessa, the Lionfang Knight. She wasn’t a witch, exactly, but she had help from witches. The coven back then supported Vennessa unconditionally - worked alongside her numerous times and ended up often aiding knights by putting stamina spells on them, or healing spells.
The forest around her fades into colours as she sprints. Of the one hour walk towards her destination, she has already walked about a quarter. What should take another 45 minutes takes only 5 minutes. (Man, Fischl absolutely loves magic.)
There’s a large clearing with a mansion in the middle of it. Undoubtedly, this is Diluc Ragnvindr’s house - the Ragnvindr crest decorates the mansion. Fischl stands behind a tree, observing and checking if there’s movement inside the home. For what she can see, there isn’t. That’s good. If she’s lucky, she can get inside, find what she needs, and leave again all while no one’s home. That’d be great!
(Maybe… Just maybe, she’ll take a look around the house as well. Hey, it’s centuries old! It’s been here since Decarabian’s time! It’s perfectly reasonable that a witch such as herself is interested in such an old building. She could even find something really cool to show off to her coven and to Oz.)
Before entering the house, she takes out some food from her bag. To enter the lion’s den, her belly has to be full, okay?
After that, she walks towards one of the house’s windows. The window goes open with just a tiny bit of mana - the positives from an old house. At least positive for some people. Heh. Lifting herself up, she takes a seat on the window sill and looks if she left tracks. She didn’t - good. Hop, onto the ground. No one in sight!
The first room she enters is the bathroom. It’s clean and obviously owned by someone rich. Man. This room was twice as big as her bedroom. A huge tub, a shower, three sinks next to each other - three! - and cabinets. Anyway, no pictures. Of course not, who’d keep pictures in the bathroom?
Swallowing, she opens the door of the bathroom and looks around. Her heartbeat’s going crazy, dead nervous.
Hallway. No one’s in sight once again. The door in front of her is slightly open, so she decides to check out that room.
Seems to be a kitchen. It’s huge. Her family isn’t poor, far from it, but they’re not this rich either. Diluc Ragnvindr lives here by himself, but has a kitchen like he’s feeding an army. Or two. Does the guy even need to cook? He’s a vampire! Rich douches like him probably have tons of bathrooms too. That’s typical rich douche style.
She leaves the kitchen and enters the living room. This, too, is grandiose. The entrance is big, Fischl can spot at least three couches, the TV is big - and the staircases! She feels like she walked into an old castle. If you enter the mansion from the main entrance and you walk into the living room, there’s a staircase on either side of you and under each staircase that leads to the first floor, there’s a staircase that leads down to the basement. It’s beautiful. If it wasn’t so scary that the owner of this mansion was a vampire, Fischl would fall onto her knees in front of the owner and beg if she could live here as well.
The walls are decorated with pictures. Bingo. Rushing towards it, she notices there are multiple faces on them. The older pictures (assuming the date below is correct) are from a couple with red hair, then pictures of the couple with a little boy that also has red hair, and lastly pictures of the older man and the son. There’s a gap between those pictures and the newer pictures, presumably from pictures that got taken away. Under the newer pictures there are no dates, but it’s from a man with red hair and a little boy with white hair. Fischl wonders which one Diluc is, but it’s probably the one with red hair.
As she takes the most recent one in her hands, she suddenly hears footsteps on one of the staircases.
Internally, she curses. Two options lay before her: teleport away or hide. She chooses the latter.
The basement! Why should a normal person go to the basement randomly? At least for her, the basement is just a stocking place for food that has to be kept cold. It’s not a place to hang out.
Rushing down the stairs as quietly as possible, she finds that for rich people, the basement is something else. It’s a library here, it seems. And what a library it is!
It’s beautiful. If she would’ve begged on her knees to live here before, she would kill for it now. A dark, ominous space; perfect for her as a witch to do rituals or learn spells. It even fits her aesthetic - yeah, okay, she has an aesthetic and it slaps, no matter what bullies think of it. There’s even old portraits on the walls! Tons of different sections and thousands of books! This is Celestia on Teyvat.
“What are you doing here?” a voice behind her asks.