The Abyss Never Lets Go

Chapter 4

 Ajax took his duties as the Abyss Princess's one and only knight seriously. Every day he woke up before her and made her breakfast. This might have seemed a weird duty for a knight, but it was one he was determined to do. After arriving in the Abyss Palace and discovering that His Princess usually didn't eat anything, he had sworn that would change. She may not have needed the food, but it would help bring something new to her days. He had also discovered that the Abyss Princess was even wealthier than the Tsaritsa through this. Turns out she was powerful enough to create gemstones on a whim, and had taken up converting different materials into gems as a hobby hundreds of years ago. As such, there were entire rooms in her palace filled with diamonds, emeralds, rubies, and more. She had enough wealth to probably fuel all of Teyvat for the next hundred years.

So he had insisted on using some of these gems to fund Operation Abyssal Breakfast. Lumine hadn't seemed to care that he was using them, and had instead somewhat absently created a few more diamonds and handed them to him. She found the process of converting fascinating and saw little to no use for the gems aside from a brief moment of entertainment. So Ajax had made several trips to stores across all of Teyvat and had purchased a massive stock of food using the gems. The waypoints had been incredibly helpful here. When he was sure that he had enough food to last till the next period of time the way points were closed, he stopped there. He himself was not concerned about what he ate. He had survived in the Abyss before without a supply of food and would do it again. The creatures in the Abyss were food enough for him and the thrill of a fight always brought him joy.

So every morning he made his Princess breakfast and woke her up. He had also enforced a sleeping schedule on his Princess after finding out that she almost never slept either. She had complained at this that he was more of a babysitter than a knight, but he had informed her that it would help her handle things better. Plus it would offer a few hours of respite from everything. Ajax personally knew how helpful not thinking for hours was. It always helped reset him when he was struggling with his thoughts.

Breakfast and sleeping were the only changes he had enforced on her though. After she had woken up, eaten, and gotten ready, he mostly stayed with her as she went from task to task. Before becoming her knight, he never would have thought that ruling the Abyss involved so much work. Surely a bunch of monsters weren't that hard to rule? Wrong, the monsters were, if anything worse.

Each breed had to be considered each day. Their movements were mapped out, and Lumine spent hours making sure that each monster had it's own territory and was only killing what it needed for food. The monsters that were not were placed on a list and observed for two days. If by the end of those days a viable reason for its odd behavior hadn't been found and it hadn't stopped, then Lumine ordered it's death. She couldn't have the monsters running amok her. They would quickly tear each other to shreds and waste all of the Abyss's resources. Ajax also learned here that the lack of Abyss Children was hurting the Princess in more ways than one.

He had come across a neat chart overlaid with lines and notes. Lumine had noticed him staring at it and had explained that it was Skirk's chart. It showed where Skirk usually moved, dens of monsters she had cleared out, and resources that Skirk had used. To Ajax's surprise, the chart most clearly showed that Skirk had gotten rid of several problematic monsters on her own and had cleared up the population of the area around a particular water hole, allowing the water to be used according to plan. This led him to realize that the Abyss children had not only been a source of entertainment for Lumine, but had also been her gardeners in a way. Tending to the Abyss in their own way as they journeyed. Before Jasmine there had always been at least 10 wandering around and cleaning up the Abyss. All of that work now fell to his Princess's shoulders and Ajax cursed this Jasmine.

After Lumine had gone over the Abyss reports, then came the plotting. Ajax had quickly learned that the Abyssal Princess was busy weaving an elaborate net out of Teyvat and he learned so much about her from watching. She was incredibly careful that no movement was wasted. The random camps of Hilichurls and scattered Abyss Mages were a carefully planned distraction, designed to distract people from her true movements. Ajax didn't really understand what exactly she was doing, he wasn't anywhere near smart enough for that, he did understand that she had very, very good reasons. At his first planning session he'd asked Lumine why she was doing what she was doing, and she had explained to him what had really happened in the Cataclysm 500 years ago. She had told him how Kheanriah had been wiped out simply because the Sustainer of Heavenly Principles had deemed an Archonless and quickly advancing realm a direct threat to her reign. How the Archons themselves had been involved, and this story horrified Ajax and he suddenly understood why Zhongli and the Raiden Shogun had been so casual about their Gnosis. And the Tsaritsa's desires suddenly became crystal clear and he felt proud that he had served her for a time. He had also heard Lumine explain how she and her brother had become separated and he had given her a huge hug, pulling her into his arms and holding her till she'd finally pushed him away what felt like hours later. No one deserved that.