Chapter Text
“There will come a soldier, who carries a mighty sword,” sung a young bard, his eyes alight with hope. “He will tear your city down, oh lei oh lai oh Lord.”
“Oh lei, oh lai, oh lei, oh Lord,” followed a quiet wind spirit, raising his own voice and hoping the others would share his resolve.
“He will tear your city down,” finished a chained people, “oh lei oh lai oh Lord.”
Decarabian dies spiting his own people.
He calls upon the storm with his last bitter breath. His wind-walls part, not to open skies, but to the fury of the blizzard Andrius raised against him, and he bends it to his will and brings it all down at once. The storm falls like a hammer upon land and lake, field and fortress, and breaks everything the rebellion has not. For if the God of Storms is to die, his kingdom is to die with him.
The people live, in spite of his spite, but the land does not. When the king lies dead in his shattered citadel, all they find outside are fields frozen hard, and biting winds, and death, decay, and tragedy. What should have been Cider Lake is a frozen crater, and there is no ground where a house may stand in safety from the ragged wind.
Overhead, clouds shadow both sun and Celestia. God-wrought magic chokes the sky, and with Decarabian dead and Andrius free of his mortal form, there is nobody left who has the strength to undo it. The closest thing, a little wind spirit half-ascended by the weight of belief, cannot break the enchantments, though he tries with all his might.
And so, the seventh seat in the sky goes unclaimed, and Decarabian dies spiting his own people, and Mondstadt dies with him.
“I… I’m sorry, all of you,” muttered a lonely wind spirit, choking back tears he still wasn’t used to, clutching the form of the young bard like a comforting blanket. “I can’t. I’m… I’m just not strong enough.
“I’ll never be enough.”
“But you already are,” said a free people.
Those who will settle, do.
Liyue is still new, in those days, struggling through its own afterbirth and reckoning with the fall of the Assembly. Its people are wary, hungry and tired, but they understand the loss of home and the callousness of Gods; their own Archon, Rex Lapis, is steady and dependable as bedrock, and will protect his people to the end.
So, when the folk come down from the frozen north, scattered and starving, they find a city of the same that has space for many. Contracts are signed, homes are made, roots go down on the harbour’s edge, and though there will always be mistrust, there is a solidarity too. The decree comes down that those from Mondstadt are to be welcomed, and so, even by the reluctant and recalcitrant, they are.
But not all settle on that lonely shoreline; some mistrust the word and contracts of a close-ruling God, memories of tyranny fresh. And soon, those wandering northern-folk wash up in Sumeru’s lush eastern rainforest. There, too, some take root, under the Greater Lord’s watch, while others wander on still, to the desert or to Snezhnaya and beyond; even the great under-empire of Khaenri’ah receives some refugees.
And so, a diaspora stretches out, across the ragged land of a war-scarred Teyvat, and those who will settle, do, and those who will not, do not, and among them walks a young bard.
“Why?” asked a regretful wind spirit, wiping his eyes for what felt like the hundredth time. “Why are you still following me? I… I can’t lead you, not like the others can.
“That isn’t who I am.”
“And that’s why we do,” said a free people.
Others start calling them the Free Folk.
They start wandering when their home falls, broken by storm-wind and ground-blizzard, and they simply do not stop. For every mortal who takes root in Liyue, or Sumeru, there are two who do not, and they stay on the roads even as the rest of Teyvat watches, and waits, in those early, fragile days, for those roving souls to settle.
But they simply refuse to. The scars are just too deep; they spent so long breaking a tyrant’s grip that they cannot give another God the chance to put it back. Who would see the sky freeze, and ever let a God present them a contact, or talk in their ear? No, they will go alone, for if the Archon War has proven anything, it is that those above cannot be trusted with the lives of those below.
And yet, they do trust in something. The name Barbatos passes quiet-as-the-wind amongst their ranks, the name of a God who holds no power, who claims no throne, but who, they claim in quiet moments, walks amongst them. The wind goes where it pleases, and so do the people of the Wind, and the God of the Wind goes with them, not in front, but in their midst, as an equal.
And so, Mondstadt lives on in its people, and others start calling them the Free Folk, and the Heavenly Principles seethe and grind their teeth, because there were meant to be seven and a throne lies unclaimed and these wandering folk and their un-divine deity will have to do.
“You’re not going anywhere, huh?” said a roving wind spirit, the mirth back in his voice after what felt like an aeon. “You really want to keep following me?
“There are better Gods, you know.”
“Yes,” said a free people, “but not for us.”
They remember the old songs.
In Old Mondstadt, songs were a sign of rebellion. Culture grew under unturned stones, spread by a travelling bard and a little wind spirit, hidden from Decarabian’s bitter perfectionism. So the songs of that time are of freedom, of strength of will, solidarity, and better time, and their authors long mastered the art of hiding meaning within that which seems meaningless. And on the roads, this code endures.
Songs sing of where the Free Folk are welcome and where they are not, who can be trusted and who must be kept well clear of, and of the other symbols born in those rebel days. Amongst those who wander, a flower in a cap marks a friend, and sigils and scraps of ribbon, blowing free in the wind, delineate safe passages and sleeping-places. It is never spoken aloud, but song and gesture say more than enough, and they remember.
Those who have settled try to remember, too, but assimilation is inevitable on the scale of milennia, under new and sturdy Gods, and as years creep to age the diaspora vanishes into its hosts. Some fragments remain; taverns in Liyue brew wine from apples, and some in Sumeru bear family names with High Mondstadtian roots, but they do not have the songs, or a God who sings them. Not anymore.
And so, a young bard sings for his people, and they remember the old songs, and the other nations miss the meanings, and so does Celestia.
“There will come a poet, whose weapon is his word,” sang a lively wind spirit, filling that small, warm room with his voice. “He slay you with his tongue, oh lei oh lai oh Lord,
“Oh lei, oh lai, oh lei, oh Lord…”
“He will slay you with his tongue,” finished a free people, “oh lei oh lai oh Lord.”