Beyond Which Lies the Wind

11: Summer After Noon

You'd always been exceptional at gathering and picking out valuable intel – info sold just as well on the underground markets as tangible goods – and this time was no different. From Wagner's words, it sounded like a storm was brewing and it piqued your curiosity, outside of the opportunity to make quick mora. Something very important was going on in Mondstadt, and you were going to find out what it was.

Your own uncertain future aside, you should really learn to use your skills from your bandit days for some good, either to repay a fragment of what Wagner had done for you, or as a distraction so you could keep your light-fingered habits to yourself. With the latter, you could probably somehow do both. Maybe.

Your room above the smithy that Wagner rented out to you was very empty, with enough clothes in the cramped closet to get you through the week without laundry piling up and all other possessions you didn't wear on your person could be counted on one hand. The walls were as bare as the day you first moved in. There was no sentimental value to the place you returned to, but it was the first place you could ever call your own. Home. The amount that it made you feel ill to think about rivaled how much it meant to you, like your very survival instincts were at war.

You'd kept the old Fatui mask from all that time ago, the very one Wagner had warned you against wearing to conceal your identity when you came to Mondstadt to meet him for the first time. With the political tension between the Fatui diplomats and the Knights, you thought it would be a convenient excuse to hide your face while maintaining a private and unapproachable air. But you knew better now that it would be too risky to fully pretend to be someone you weren't, even if that meant you had to show your face in public.

Still, you took the mask from its place on the nearly-empty shelf and slipped it into your bag, a precaution of sorts because you could never be too careful in a city that could turn on you with one misstep. You weren't planning on making any mistakes, but it wouldn't hurt to be cautious. You swung the door shut behind you as you left, not realizing that it might be a very long time before you came back here again.

Summer was sweltering even away from the forge in late afternoon, with the sun high overhead. Your Pyro Vision didn't give you any heat resistance at all, and the fiery gemstone burned with a vengeance in the pocket of your shirt. It was so hot that you felt delirious, itching to set something on fire. You shoved your hands in your pockets before you did something stupid, like committing arson after all this effort of assimilating into a regular civilian life.

The best place to scour for information was an environment in which people drank and loosened their tongue, but taverns didn't usually open until later on into the evening. The second best place was where people talked – restaurants tended to carry gossip within their walls as people let down their guard as they ate.

You stopped by Good Hunter to order a cold Calla Lily Seafood Stew – extra customization, for a longer preparation time so you could linger around the entrance of the restaurant away from the heat of the sun as you waited for your food to be ready. The majority of customers were elderly folk or straggling adventurers that sat at their tables alone. Late afternoon bled to early evening, and more families and some of the personnel from the Knights or the Adventurer's Guild started to pile into the restaurant for dinner. You listened carefully, sifting through the conversations for something interesting.

But it was all idle talk from what you could discern, and you paid for your meal and collected your seafood stew take-out on your way out. The sky was darkening and the street lamps were beginning to flicker on, and so you headed in the direction of the pub.

"...said they'd protect us, then the Knights'd protect us," came a loud voice from within the bar, the words slurring. You could always count on drunk people to talk.