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Jul 21

Contracts of Renewing Rain

After everything he's been through, Shigaraki Tomura wasn't expecting to wake up at all, much less at full health to a world that doesn't hate him. Then again, it's never even heard of him. Or of Pro Heroes, for that matter. And he's never heard of it. Liyue? The Seven Elements? Huh. Did he get isekai'd? Well... He can live with that. Literally. Is he the only one here though? Haiyan, also known as Water Singer, was only looking for some Starconchs to feed to his Vision. What he found was the strangest Inazuman refugee he's ever seen. Or rather, pseudo-Inazuman. It's a good thing they can communicate, because he suspects he's going to be doing a lot of explaining. Not that he minds. His new friend doesn't just learn fast and work hard, he cleans up quite nicely as well. ...This is probably Alice's fault.

Rated E for Explicit.

Chapter CW: Near drowning.

Beta'd by the awesome @thatoneawkwardfeeling

Index

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Glaze Lilies

Haiyan goes down to the market for 'travel supplies' in the evening, and comes back apparently empty handed. Tomura assumes he stored what he bought wherever he keeps storing everything else.

The next morning, they check out of the inn, Huai'an giving them a basket of steamed buns for the road. They walk farther north than Haiyan has ever taken him before, beyond the bridge at the far end of Wangshu Inn's adjoining island. The land on the other side is flatter, not quite level but still barely enough to claim to have hills, and surrounded by silvergrass.

An hour or two after lunch, they stop at the base of a statue on a pillar. The pillar itself comes up to just above Haiyan's head, so Tomura has to step back several paces to look at the top. It's a man lounging on a throne, robe skirts on his legs and a hooded cloak covering his hair but his chest bare, holding up a blank cube in contemplation. The whole thing blazes in his Elemental Sight, mostly white but Geo-gold on the cube.

"Yanwang Dijun," Haiyan says reverently. He pulls a bottle and a small basket-plate of matsutake meat rolls from somewhere and sets it at the base of the statue, then bows his head in prayer.

Tomura doesn't expect anything to happen. It's just prayer. But after several moments, the statue lights up with a swirl of blue light, too deep and rich to be just Hydro, and there's a whiff of petrichor and floral perfume in the air.

"Did he… answer?" Tomura asks.

Haiyan gestures to the basket-plate. The meat rolls are gone. "See for yourself."

Tomura stares. Somehow, despite everything else, he wasn't really expecting much when he was told about the gods ruling here. "Should… Should I pray too?"

Haiyan smiles. "That's up to you."

He steps closer and reaches out to touch the pillar of the statue. Hi… He almost yanks his hand back, feeling stupid. Sorry? No one ever taught me to pray, there was no one worth praying to… I guess I live here now though. My Vision wants glaze lilies, anyway. I like it better here, even if there are no video games. It's way easier to just live here… so… thanks, I guess.

The stone warms under his fingers like sunlight, and there's another burst of petrichor-and-flower scent. It's… welcoming, somehow. He lowers his hand and looks at Haiyan, who smiles a little wider. "He noticed."

Tomura nods slowly. "Should I bring an offering next time?"

"If you genuinely feel like giving one, yes. If it just feels obligatory, it's better not to. Those don't taste as good, so to speak." The pretty man pauses. "And don't offer fish. He hates seafood."

"That's… weirdly specific. Is that in a scripture anywhere?"

Haiyan snorts. "Not as such, no. I should probably clarify something… When I said my mother served Yanwang Dijun as one of the Xianshou, I didn't mean she served the Archon Morax. Yanwang Dijun is also, and was first, Dijun of the Xian. Prime of the Adepti, in Teyvatian. It was with his blessing that she courted my father, and she presented me to him when I was born. I've known him personally all my life."

Tomura blinks. "…And how long is that?"

"Ah… The Bimillennial Rite was five— no six, next one is almost here — six years ago, so… Seven hundred and thirty-two."

His brain stalls out. "You don't look a day over twenty-five," he manages.

Haiyan looks… embarrassed? "Truthfully, I'm considered young enough to expect all sorts of stupid behavior from, at least by dragon standards… I'm not as young as Liuyun-ayi makes me sound though! She still considers Ganyu a child, and Ganyu-jiejie fought in the Archon War." In a blatant physical redirect, he turns away and heads back to the road. "We should continue."

By the end of the day, they reach Stone Gate, the near side of the border crossing with Mondstadt. There's no inn here, just a Millelith guard post, a tea shop, and a few private houses by the overlook. Tomura pulls on his loose jacket as the weather cools ever so slightly, and when Haiyan finds a spot by the water, he sits easily on a rock and watches as a wok in some kind of floating frame is produced and heated, and a stir fry is thrown together while rice cooks in a pot over an actual campfire.

"I didn't know you could cook," Tomura says when he's handed a bowl. Beef, mushroom, cabbage, lotus seeds, and a small amount of chopped Jueyun chili peppers.

"I've had plenty of time to learn," Haiyan points out, amused.

"Oh. Right."

"Ironically I don't have the patience for the more complicated things. Stuff like squirrel fish or triple-layer consomme? I'm good with a knife, but those things drive me insane. I'd rather just make grilled ticker fish or bamboo shoot soup. The soup takes a while, but most of that is just simmering in the pot, it's not three hours of cutting multiple ingredients into threads and stacking them in a pattern."

Tomura shrugs. "I never learned how to do anything that didn't start and end with 'add boiling water and wait three minutes.' I can't even boil an egg… Although that's because I physically couldn't peel them. There was no point when I wouldn't be able to eat them without help anyway."

Haiyan frowns. "Why?"

"My master. Everyone had some kind of power, where I'm from. Or close enough to everyone. His power was to take other people's powers and pass them to someone else or hoard them." Tomura stares at the campfire. "Like trading cards. Do those exist here?"

"If you mean the game where you build a deck and play against other people's decks, yes, there's a new one called Genius Invocation. I don't know much about it though. Just enough to get your comparison."

"Right… He gave me one when I was five. I didn't know, I didn't even know it was him, he disguised himself and walked me home and slipped it to me like… like planting a poisoned knife in my pocket. It was really powerful, but broken, there was no way to turn it off. Anything I touched with five fingers would be destroyed."

"…That's why you fight like that, then," Haiyan observes.

"That's why I don't know how to fight. Well, didn't. I didn't need to. I just needed to get close enough to slap someone and I'd win. I'm still not used to being able to hold things with my whole hand." He shrugs again. "You can't peel an egg like that. Or an orange. Or… whatever else. I couldn't even hold a full-sized sandwich."

Haiyan chews on a piece of beef. "Do you want to learn now?"

Tomura considers that for a minute. "Sure, why not."

CoRR

It takes two and a half more days to get to Qingce Village. On the morning of the first day, Haiyan shows him how to use the leftover rice from dinner to make chazuke. At lunch, it's how to gut fish to be grilled on a skewer. At dinner, he learns to chop vegetables for the stir-fry. On the second day, he learns to boil and peel eggs, but mostly he just does the things he learned yesterday while Haiyan watches, only intervening when he's about to cut himself. They camp for the night in a pavilion at the edge of a bamboo forest.

The final stretch of the trip winds through the forest and up a hillside, to a Teleport Waypoint overlooking a river valley filled with terraces, wide scale-like layers filled with green and gold. A series of rope bridges running between stone pillars provides a route from the small cliff they stand on to the path on the other side.

Adults walk through the terraces, while children run along the path. Several younger ones spot Haiyan and swarm him, chattering in Liyuese. A few of them break off to circle Tomura, several staring up at his Vision and jabbering at him.

"What do they want?" he asks.

"They want to know if you're a swordsman or a spearman." Haiyan accepts a fistful of small yellow flowers and mint from a little girl, and gives a few mora back.

Tomura brings out the Twin Nephrite and shakes his head at the kids. Most of them droop in disappointment, but a couple look even more excited. He sticks his hand in the water at the edge of the river and lets off a blast of Anemo, and they shriek with glee as water sprays everywhere. Then Haiyan pulls the splashes off of them all and molds it into dragonflies that buzz away, and the kids chase after them with happy squeals.

Haiyan grins at him, and Tomura grins back, then looks at the flowers and frowns. "Kind of young for a crush, wasn't she?"

"What, these? It's a Xian thing, not a crush. The kids always give me things like this when I come through town. They're more food offerings than anything else. Last time I got a basket of Jueyun chilis."

"Flowers, though?"

"Sweet flowers. The nectar is practically pure sugar." Haiyan stows the apparently-edible bouquet.

At the far end of the valley, they climb the hill into the village proper. Dark timber houses with blue-glazed roof tiles are planted around a mill powered by three wheels under a waterfall, with a plaza in the middle taken up by a produce market and a teahouse with a half-dozen bamboo tables.

Haiyan sits down at one of the tables and orders some tea and xiaolongbao, plus the same noodle dish that Tomura had the first night at Wangshu Inn and a plate of something called 'humbly enough,' which turns out to resemble mapo tofu.

"How often do you come through here?" Tomura asks.

"Once every few months, more or less. I usually stay for a week or two. Clean out the Treasure Hoarders that have moved in around the south and northwest, help with irrigation, duel Rhodeia."

Tomura pauses with his chopsticks halfway to his mouth. "Duel who now?"

"Rhodeia of Loch. East of here, there's a small lake where an Oceanid lives. I duel her for the purifying waters that my Vision needs."

Oh, boss farming. "What does she get if she wins?"

"An Adeptal seal that keeps mortals out of her lake and a year before the next challenge. Frankly, she's a bitter, paranoid old hag and it took me over a decade to negotiate the arrangement, but we aren't without common ground."

Tomura picks up another wad of noodles. "What kind of common ground is there to have with a bitchy water elemental?"

It's a minute or two before Haiyan answers. "The Oceanids are children of Egeria, the first Hydro Archon. But she died in the Cataclysm, and her Throne was taken by an Oceanid that became Focalors."

"Became Focalors?"

"The names of the gods are just that, the names of gods. Yanwang Dijun was not Morax until he ascended to divinity… Although the Archons are not the only gods, I should mention. So until she received her creator's Authority, Focalors likely had a different name." Haiyan takes a sip of his tea. "But to the point, the Oceanids lost their mother in the Cataclysm, and many of them died trying to recover her. Plus, the waters of Fontaine were poisoned by a creation of the enemy. They couldn't go home if they wanted to."

Tomura's eyes fix on the string of pearls around the Hydro Vision. "And neither can you."

"Neither can I," Haiyan agrees. "And my mother did not survive the Cataclysm either."

There isn't much he can say to that. "…Will you go for a duel while we're here?"

"Hm… On the way out when we leave, maybe. There's a tunnel on the far side of her lake that comes out by Stone Gate."

"And then a shortcut back to Wangshu… Cool."

CoRR

There isn't really an inn in Qingce Village. There is, however, a room in the home of Granny Ruoxin, the de facto village chief. Tomura's glad to get a hot bath. Despite Dabi's jokes about 'unwashed gamers', he never actually ignored hygiene. He spent enough time with his neck and face split and scraped open from the dryness and the scratching to know better. He just didn't linger on it. Why would he? Soap stung his skin, and too long scrubbing would make the eczema worse. But after spending months homeless, he's learned to enjoy the hot water when it's available. Of course, it helps that he's not clawing himself to pieces anymore, and the old marks where he used to have healed.

When he gets out, Haiyan strips the water from his hair as soon as he steps out of the bathroom. "Would you like me to put it up for you again?"

He shakes his head. "Nah, not right now. If you could show me how to do a braid for the night though…"

Haiyan nods, looking strangely neutral, and uses a lock of jade-green behind his own ear to show Tomura the pattern for a basic braid. Tomura copies it as best he can, and ends up with one that pulls to the left and won't hang straight down his back, but it holds together when he ties it off, and it's only slightly frayed when he wakes in the morning. Once he redoes it and eats the breakfast Granny Ruoxin sets out, they head out for the fields.

He almost doesn't recognize the first glaze lily he finds. The bloom is sealed up in a teardrop shape under the sunlight. It's not until Haiyan gets out his erhu and plays a song that it opens.

He glances incredulously at the pretty man. "How did you do that?"

Haiyan shrugs. "They like music. They always have. Liuyun-ayi said Guizhong used to play the guqin to help them grow."

"Huh…" He crouches down to pick the flower. "How much of it do I need?"

"Cut only the central stem, one finger-length down from the bloom, at an angle," Haiyan instructs.

Tomura pulls out the knife he was given on day one and carefully slices through the stem. When he stands, he gives the flower a curious sniff, and his eyes widen. "Hey, I've smelled this before!"

Haiyan raises his eyebrows. "Really? When?"

"At the Statue in the marsh. When the prayers were answered, I could smell rain on dry dirt and these flowers."

"Huh. That's not the most common manifestation." For some reason, he sounds pleased. "He must approve of you for whatever reason."

It only takes the one day to find enough glaze lilies to feed his Vision, even with how scattered they are on the terraces. The second morning, he culls the local Slime population to collect their condensation. He would use the stuff he's already collected, but Haiyan pointed out how having Cryo Slimes around growing crops is a bad thing, and while Geo Slimes won't kill plants with frost, they can still crush them with all the bouncing around.

"Where do I get the gem things though?" he asks at lunch.

Haiyan produces a few tiny fragments of gleaming teal. "I got these from... another guest at the Wangshu Inn. There's also a jeweler's shop in Liyue Harbor that will trade small ones like these for Geo Sigils, and certain Ley Line Outcroppings will produce them." He deposits the bits of glitter in Tomura's hand. "I will warn you though. When your Vision is ascended, it provides a temporary rush of energy, then after an hour or so exhaustion sets in and you'll need several hours of sleep.

"So an early night and a big breakfast tomorrow?"

"If you do that now, yes."

"Bet." Tomura takes the gems and feeds his collection of ascension materials into his Vision. The Anemo emblem in the center pulses wildly for a minute, then wind rushes over his skin, ruffling his clothes and hair and filling his lungs. His legs twitch restlessly under the table and his eyes widen. "Holy shit that's like three cans of Monster in a shot."

Haiyan stifles a laugh. "I don't know what kind of monster you put in a can, but if you need to move, go ahead. You're charged up with enough Elemental Energy I could probably see your trail from five li away."

"Right." Tomura picks up his bowl and shovels the rest of his food into his mouth, chugs the rest of his tea, and nearly knocks his chair over as he bolts.

Holy fuck he's running so fast, he takes the stairs down from the plaza ten at a time then jumps and nearly sails clear over the gate arch halfway down. He has to curl sideways and grab the tiles to stop. That gets the attention of the Seelie that's been drifting around up there. He didn't want to climb around randomly but since he's here now, he follows it to its garden back up at the plaza. Then he takes the wooden stairs down the steep side of the hill toward the water and heads for where he knows he saw a pack of Slimes before.

He obliterates three groups of blobs and follows two more Seelies before coming to a stop on the edge of a terrace on the north side of the valley and staring in confusion. "What the fuck? Am I high?"

That's a Hilichurl. He's pretty sure that's a Hilichurl. He's also pretty sure that Hilichurls do not wear pinstriped suit jackets with ties, however ragged, or boxer shorts, or dress shoes and little… straw crowns? No seriously, what the fuck? It has a briefcase! That it's using as a pillow!

"Screw it." He calls up Twin Nephrite and launches himself at it with Grinding Breeze.

It doesn't die in one hit. Instead, it freaks out exactly the same as every other Hilichurl, and, unlike every other Hilichurl, it swings the briefcase at him like an old lady's purse. It doesn't bother running after him when his Skill stops him several meters past it, instead it opens the briefcase and starts pulling out cabbages to throw at him. One of them hits, and he recoils, more in surprise than pain. It responds to the retreat by producing one more projectile, what looks like a bright yellow bunny plush of all fucking things.

A bunny plush that explodes when it hits the stone wall where he was standing before. Right. He's not letting it do that again. He tags it with another Grinding Breeze, then circles back immediately and hits it again.

At that point, it has enough, and… dives into its own briefcase to escape, apparently. The briefcase disappears in a puff of colorful smoke.

"…Right. I'm done now." Tomura sits down on the wall, all his energy abruptly draining away. Haiyan finds him there a few minutes later.

Haiyan listens to Tomura's slightly garbled explanation of the 'weird-ass fuckin' Hilichurl' with bemusement. He's heard of something like that, but never seen it. Before he can say so, however, Tomura passes out, so Haiyan picks him up and carries him back to Ruoxin's house, pausing by the waterfall to wash the sweat and grime away so he'll wake up clean.

CoRR

They spend a full week in Qingce Village. Haiyan does his usual chores around the valley, this time with Tomura helping him. Tomura is awed by the Hydro trick Haiyan shows him, sitting at the edge of the river with a foot in the shallows and using the water to transmit a short concert of erhu music through the whole valley. The next morning, the scent of glaze lilies fills the air.

"How did you do that?" Tomura asks.

"Sound is simply vibration, isn't it? Water carries it fairly well. A Geo Dragon could make a whole mountain sing."

By the time they leave, the Treasure Hoarders have fled, the Slimes are culled, the violetgrass on the cliffsides has been plucked, the Seelies are in their gardens, and Tomura has learned to cook fried egg, mora meat, mint jelly, and rice buns. Tomura has also shown a borderline supernatural talent for sniffing out chests, and Haiyan is sure that if the Treasure Hoarders somehow managed to recruit him he'd be promoted to Golden Raven within a month.

They take the west route out of the village, what amounts to a meter-wide ledge halfway up the northern cliff face of Wuwang Hill. Past the two shorter waterfalls, Haiyan leads the way in climbing down the old stone ruins that creep up the wall from where they're scattered across Rhodeia's lake. Halfway down, it starts to rain.

"She knows we're here," Haiyan says.

When they reach the water level, Tomura turns a nervous look at him. "I should probably mention, I'm shit at swimming."

"Ah? Would you rather watch from here? She drops the paving stones out of the arena, sometimes. Not all of them, and only a bit over my height down, but…"

Tomura stares out over the lake at the giant square of the dueling platform. "No, that looks big enough that I should have space anyway."

"All right, but stay close to the edge, stay ready to move, and don't attack anything."

Haiyan creates a surface tension path from the last chunk of ruins to the arena. As soon as he steps foot onto the stone, Rhodeia of Loch bursts out into the air in all her watery glory.

"An assassin from our homeland? Or a fool who trespasses on the waters of—" she starts in Liyuese, then abruptly stops, genuine offense reducing to disgruntlement. "Jiao."

He inclines his head. "Oceanid."

Tomura stifles a snicker. Badly. Haiyan turns to look at him, and he shrugs apologetically.

"What is this? A mortal? You bring a mortal to my lake?" she squawks, outraged.

Haiyan shuts her down quickly. "He's only here to watch, not interfere."

"Must he?"

"If you don't like it, I can go find one of your sisters to fight."

"You wouldn't. You Adepti never leave Liyue."

"Do I look like a crane to you?"

"Hmph. Don't bring him again." She pirouettes in the air, then spits out a few Hydro Mimics. "On your guard."

He draws his sword. "Remember, stay back," he warns Tomura, then rushes at the boar.

Humans think that Hydro attacks can't damage Hydro beings. That's not entirely correct. While an entity made entirely of an Element is immune to the common application of its Element, it's still vulnerable to disruption. Slimes have no defense against such tactics, being animated but lacking consciousness. The value in fighting Oceanids is that they do. They actively resist, and try to disrupt their assailant in turn. It becomes a contest of fine control, and when dealing with external constructs, a gamble of investment. Rhodeia, one of the oldest and most powerful of the Oceanids, has more Elemental power than Haiyan does, but conversely, his Yanjian require far less energy to create… And he's in a better position to claim the Hydro energy released by the destruction of a construct on this field than she is.

He cuts through three cranes, a frog, and a pair of crabs before the first paving stone falls. It's the corner piece that Tomura is standing on, and he tracks the splashing as his watcher hurries to the next one. The water is up to his knees by the time he reaches it, and he has to climb the edge to get out of the pit. A trio of falcons and three more cranes later, and that stone starts to sink too, leaving Tomura to rush for the remaining corner on that side of the arena.

"Pissy bitch," he thinks he hears Tomura mutter under the pounding rain.

Two pairs of boars and a finch appear next, and Haiyan frowns. That's quite a lot for one round, especially since the boars are designed to restore themselves using the rain, and all are thickly built enough that his sword can't simply carve through them in any way, unlike the crabs' claws or the cranes' legs. This will require focus.

So much focus that he dismisses the next sinking platform as insignificant, since it's only adjacent to Tomura's perch. So much focus that when Hydro power starts gathering on the field, he doesn't notice exactly where it's going.

He does notice Tomura's startled yelp and the drag against his ankles from a sudden current. He does notice the loud splash of a body hitting the water. He disrupts the finch and one of two remaining boars and turns to look.

While Haiyan was busy with the boars, Rhodeia trapped Tomura in the corner. Then she used a surging whirlpool to drag him into the pit between paving stones. She's not holding him down now, but she doesn't need to. When Tomura said he wasn't a good swimmer, Haiyan assumed he meant he had a weak stroke, maybe only able to do the 'dog paddle' common to small children still learning. But it looks horrifyingly like even that is beyond him. He's not treading water so much as trying to claw his way back to the surface as he repeatedly slips under, sputtering as water fills his mouth every other breath.

Then Anemo surges as he tries to grab at the air. It's a mistake. The froth that forms sends him straight toward the bottom.

"TOMURA!"

Haiyan shreds the final boar with a rushed, overpowered swipe, and lunges for the gap in the arena floor. He falls like the water isn't even there, forcing it to let him sink faster, and more runs than swims over to where Tomura is drifting. As soon as he reaches him, he shoves the water away from them both and directs it all underneath them, pushing them up to the surface by displacement. Another command pulls the liquid out of Tomura's lungs, but he's clearly still out of it.

With a thought, Haiyan produces his teapot and carries Tomura into the abode. Another thought drags the rain and lakewater drenching him away and sends it out into the flow that marks the boundaries of his subspace.

"Tomura! Tomura, can you hear me? Please say something, please," he begs.

"Khf… I think… I lost those hairpins…" Tomura mumbles, dazed.

"The hairpins aren't as important as you. Can you breathe okay?"

"Mh—" The attempt to hum an affirmative is interrupting by a coughing fit, and Haiyan hurriedly checks his lungs to see if he missed some water. "I'm— Gck! Okay…"

"Very well." Haiyan kneels to set him down, then turns back toward the entrance. "Wait here. I'll be back shortly."

When he reappears on the arena, Rhodeia is hovering at the edge of the field. "I wasn't trying to kill him," she says awkwardly. Petulantly.

Haiyan summons his sword without a word. His teeth don't quite fit in his jaws, and his talons cut into the hilt.

"How was I to know he couldn't swim?!"

"Two people to a duel, Rhodeia," he snarls.

"Is this a broken contract?" she asks nervously.

"Yes." What faint shadow he casts in the rain warps as his horns grow past their politely blunt length. "But it's also attempted theft. That is my fenghuang. You will learn not to touch him."

Oceanids in their natural form don't have throats. Rhodeia still swallows.

The Hydro Mimics she summons barely slow him down.

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