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Mondstadt’s doom looms overhead. It seems to be descending slowly, at all odds with what Albedo has uncovered of Dragonspine’s Nail. She suspects that’s only the effect of distance, in the same way that Celestia, according to Lord Barbatos, only appears small.
Either way, it will be here soon enough. There’s nothing more they can do to avert it. Almost nothing.
“You have your orders. Go,” Jean says, pointing Amber towards Kaeya. “Kaeya, you’re in temporary- in command as the Acting Grand Master in my place. I’m relying on you to keep order. Amber, you will be his adjunct until he releases you back to your Outrider duties.”
“What?! We’re not leaving you behind!”
“I need you to carry out the evacuation plans. I have one last duty to perform.” Jean hesitates a moment, then plunges on. Amber trusts her so easily; she can carry off this small dishonesty. “I will follow as soon as it is done.”
Kaeya raises his eyebrow, and Jean tenses, afraid he’ll give the lie away. But he only smiles a little, raising his hand in salute. “Make sure you don’t take too much time about it, or I’ll have to come back and collect you. I don’t care to stay the Acting Grand Master for long.”
Amber nods in agreement, determined but less indignant, and Jean’s shoulders slump with relief. There’s no time left to fight about this. She gives Kaeya a thin, tense smile, the best she can manage, trying to convey her gratitude at being spared that dispute. Her gratitude for everything. His own faint smile falls away into a grimmer look, but he only shakes his head at her and leads Amber away.
She looks around one last time once they’re gone, but no other knights are lingering in the Ordo’s halls. They’re all detailed to the evacuation. Jean has had plans drawn up to evacuate the city for so many causes: flood, fire, disease, Abyssal attack.... There’s none for this particular kind of assault from above, but the ones she’d written up when Stormterror began to threaten will have to do. She prays the knights can get everyone far enough away to avoid the fallout.
Other aftereffects will follow; she has read Albedo’s reports on the impact of that ancient Nail on their lost neighbors in Sal Vindagnyr, and heard what the Honorary Knight has to say about the others they’ve encountered. The evacuation is only the first step of many towards Mondstadt’s long-term survival. Her people will have it hard over the next few years.
If Jean cannot stop it. She has one chance--only the one. But she has a duty to try.
The streets of Mondstadt are empty, eerily so, this high up. The Church was detailed to help the evacuation too, and the Adventurer's Guild, while the wealthy who live on the highest tiers were the first out of the gates as soon as the Nail was seen. It's only the lower tiers of the city still frantic with activity: people streaming out of the gates with their possessions gathered close, knights and sisters directing them through.
Other knights, under Hertha's command, are stripping warehouses and tavern cellars without heed to who owns them, so that the countryside will not have to feed a city's worth of evacuees alone. Lisa has some sort of contingency plan for the most sacred, or dangerous, treasures in the Library's restricted section that Jean trusts her to execute alone; the alchemists have gone ahead with other members of the Church to prepare Springvale, as the closest population center, to take the city's people briefly until they can be spread out over the wineries and smaller villages around.
Up here, though, none of the noise of it penetrates. There's not even a breeze to stir the bushes along the streets. Jean climbs the steps to the Cathedral in that silence. The tip of the Nail points directly down at its highest spire. She can see its movement now, its speed gradually increasing, or seeming to increase, as it draws closer.
As she goes, she looks around at the city all about. The windmills are still turning, and the flowers are still bright even beneath the growing shadow above. Pigeons take advantage of the absence of pets to peck in the streets without fear, unaware of the greater danger above them. Her heart aches at these last glimpses. This is the city that she had sworn to protect, about to be shattered under her guard. She’d promised Varka, when he left, that he would come back to a Mondstadt better and brighter than the one he’d left behind. Instead he’ll return only to wrack and ruin. Unless she can, at the last, redeem her failure as its guardian.
The statue of Barbatos stands tall, hands upraised to the sky. Jean climbs it easily and uses a breath of Anemo beneath the wings of her glider to hop into the open palms. She reaches into her uniform jacket and pulls out a single white bloom. As delicate as the cecilia flower looks, it isn’t crumpled in the least by its time in her pocket, nor wilting despite the long months it’s been since Venti untucked it from his hair and handed it to her.
He himself is long gone, one way or another. She prays still that he’d managed to get their Honorary Knight to Celestia. That a Nail has appeared, by all reports, only above Mondstadt suggests that he’s either accomplished that goal or at least come close enough to threaten the Heavenly Principles. But it also suggests that they know he was responsible, and in that case--Celestia has more power over archons than regular mortals, not less. That, he’d confessed when he departed.
But if there is any of his power left in the world, it’s in this flower.
The Nail is falling faster now. Jean holds the flower in her hand, mouthing a prayer to Lord Barbatos. Then she lifts it up. It should serve as a channel for her Anemo, one better than her sword, better even than the catalyst she only indifferently knows how to use, if her use of one had been more than indifferent. Venti had warned her that using this would be a risk. It’s accustomed to channeling a Gnosis, to having no limit to the elemental power that flows through it. There are no guards upon it to keep her from giving it her all.
Jean is fine with that. Her all is exactly what she intends to give.
Anemo rushes through her, wrapping about her in a familiar breeze before flaring upwards, towards the Nail. She draws the breeze back into herself, calling upon the wind that turns the windmills and sends waves scudding across the lake. With the power of the cecilia backing her call, that wind comes. She can feel it running through her without pause, up through the flower, into the air above, until a whirlwind hovers above her many times greater than even the most powerful Gale Blade. She pulls her arm back, angles her elbow in just the right way, and then casts it upwards, towards the Nail.
Roaring upward, the wind peels through her, after her, dragging all her own Anemo along with it. Jean feels suddenly breathless. She doubles over in the statue’s hands, gasping for breath, finding none with all the air sucked out of the plaza to feed her cast. Her vision starts to narrow, light sparkling around the edges. With tremendous effort, she looks up.
The whirlwind slams into the Nail, every trace of Anemo in Mondstadt, every breath of wind, hammering against the underside. It doesn’t have to break the Nail. It only has to shift it, just a little, to turn it aside. Into the lake, or the hills to the north, just far enough for the city itself to be spared, so that Mondstadt’s people will have shelter against whatever devastation follows. She’s not trying to pull off a miracle. She’s just trying to do enough.
She’s always only ever tried to give Mondstadt enough.
And--as it’s always been--she doesn’t have it in her. The whirlwind hits the tip of the Nail and spins apart, winds rushing off in all directions, tearing sails from the windmills and slates from the roofs as the storm spreads wide and weak. Air fills the plaza again. Jean feels her ears pop. She sucks in a ragged breath and slumps against the statue's stone palms.
The cecilia flower in her hand is wilting, going translucent and grey. Her throat is tight, her chest aching, and tears burn in her eyes as it dissolves away into dust, swept away by a fading wind. Archon-blessed or not, it couldn’t save Mondstadt. She couldn’t save Mondstadt.
Overhead, the Nail plummets towards the Cathedral. Even if Jean could find the strength to rise, she wouldn’t be swift enough to escape the city. And if she did, how could she face its people afterwards, knowing that she’d failed? Better to fall in Mondstadt’s defense than to bear witness to its shattering.
Cool hands settle on her shoulders, pulling her up. “Impressive,” Kaeya says from behind her. “But since you seem to be finished, I’d say it’s time to leave. And in a hurry.”
“You came back for me?” He’d said he would, but--Jean had been so sure that it was a sop for Amber’s sake. That he’d understood what he’d had to do. “You actually came back for me.”
“You don’t need to sound so ungrateful.” Kaeya tugs the cord on her glider for her, unleashing her wings, and then nudges her towards the end of the statue’s fingers.
Jean lets himself push her forward, though she’s too shaky still to do more than drift downward as he leaps and dives. He’s ready on the ground when she lands, pulling the cord again to fold her wings before she can coordinate herself enough to do so. When she wobbles on her feet, Kaeya ducks low, catches her around the waist, and hauls her up over his shoulder, then breaks into a staggering run.
It’s a humiliating position, but it’s the right call. Jean can tell she wouldn’t have the strength to support herself. From here she can turn her head to see the Nail, falling faster and faster, nearly to the Cathedral’s highest point. She hooks her own arm around Kaeya’s waist upside-down to try and help balance her own weight as he sprints for safety, springing down stairs from the highest tier to the lowest.
The frantic activity of earlier is almost over; the last knights are through the gates, hustling people towards the bridge. Jean can still see glimpses of movement off to the sides, figures hiding in alleys or climbing through broken windows or huddling behind barred doors, the people who had been too stubborn or foolish or greedy to run. People she'd been responsible for regardless. Tears spring to her eyes, and they aren't just from the wind of their passage.
The Nail hits the Cathedral as they pass Good Hunter. Jean watches its belltower shatter, the bell tolling one last, tortured time as debris sprays wide. Kaeya puts on another burst of speed. His breath is coming harsh and panting, and Jean tries to swirl some Anemo around him, putting air into his lungs and imbuing him with fresh strength. He takes a deep breath in and flings them both through the gates and into the water.
Ice forms around them immediately, spreading out, rising high. Kaeya ducks under the bridge and keeps building up the ice like walls. It freezes slick against the bridge's stone underside, and Kaeya uses that as a brace as he pulls layer after layer up from the water's surface, until they’re held in a frozen cocoon too thick to see more than shadows of movement beyond. He’s crouched low, Jean pulled up against him. They both go tense as they hear the muffled thunder of stone collapsing far above.
That thunder goes on and on. The ice shudders a little as stone rains down on the bridge, and more when it shatters, sending them bobbing out into the wildly swirling waters of the lake. Kaeya’s teeth are gritted, his expression far away, as he makes little gestures with his hand, pulling more water in and freezing it to repair every scuff and crack that might endanger them. Jean breathes deep and feeds the trickle of Anemo that had regathered to her Vision into their shelter. She didn’t have enough, with all the power she could gather, to save Mondstadt; she does have just enough, at her weakest, to keep the two of them from suffocating.
Eventually, the bobbing slows, then stops, with a thump as if they’ve come up against something solid. The thunder of the city’s demise is dying down. Jean’s face is wet, the collar of her cape soaked; she’s frigid, shivering, but her tears have proven just a bit too salt to freeze.
“That was too close,” she says at last, swallowing against the stickiness in her throat. Her words still come out raw and hoarse. “You endangered yourself against my express orders.”
“Oh, did I? But I’m presently the Acting Grand Master. And last time I checked, the Master of the Knights has no authority over the Acting Grand Master.”
“Kaeya-” Jean swallows against the tangle of emotions in her chest. The despair of this loss is at right angles with selfish, breathless relief at their survival. But stronger than both of them is the shame she feels at her own failure. “Your duty was to help the Knights carry on if I failed, not to rescue one person at risk of your own life.”
“I was doing my duty. Do you really think we could really carry on without you?”
“I know you can.”
“You underestimate your own importance. I can make plans and execute them, and I’m sure the other Knights would contribute their expertise. But without you to inspire us, where would that get us in the end?”
Jean has to swallow again. Fresh tears feel hot against skin chilled by those already fallen. “I doubt you truly find letting Mondstadt fall inspiring.”
“Jean.” Kaeya shifts his grip on her to take her hand, holding it tight. She looks up without thinking and his eye catches hers. His expression is solemn. “The city might have fallen, but Mondstadt’s people haven't. We got almost everyone out, you know. We have lost some, and I know how you feel about that, but far more escaped. You’ve done what many leaders in the past have tried and failed to do.”
The glittering diamond of his pupil adds a weight to those words that she still doesn’t know if he knows she’s aware of. Jean takes a deep breath, remembering the glimpses she'd caught of those who lingered as Kaeya carried her out. And not all had been over the bridge when the Nail struck. Any of those caught up in its descent are still upon her head.
But Kaeya is right. Mondstadt hadn’t fallen when Decarabian’s city fell to ruin. Its survivors had moved on. Led, in part, by Gunnhildr herself. She took up a duty to them, then, that Jean still carries in her blood.
“Thank you,” she tells Kaeya, pulling her hand free.
He smiles. “I was only doing what the other Acting Grand Master always does when one of her knights is in trouble. Though... I don’t suppose you can take the title back before we return? Things might be confusing otherwise.”
Jean nods solemnly. “I hereby resume my post.”
“And I mine.”
Drawing his sword, Kaeya slams the hilt against one of the walls of ice. It splits open, beginning to melt away. Together they climb out of the lake and onto the muddy shore. Debris is scattered all about. Jean can only make herself look up once, briefly, at the sinking rubble where once had been an island, crowned by a glowing, pulsing Nail.
Then there's a pained cry from the lake, and she looks down to see someone clinging to what looks like it was once a window-shutter, floating low in the water, blood smeared down their face. She catches Kaeya's arm and points. He nods, casting ice out over the waves, and together they start forward to rescue one of Mondstadt's survivors. Tears sting yet in her eyes, but Jean faces the wind as she carries on, Kaeya at her shoulder, with a duty the honor and weight of which her failure won’t erase.