The Greek Theater
April 6th-12th
The British Expeditionary Force that arrived in Greece in March of 1941 was, by any conventional measure, a serious military commitment. General Henry Wilson commanded approximately sixty thousand men drawn from the British and Commonwealth formations, including the 6th Australian Division, the 2nd New Zealand Division, and the 1st Armored Brigade. They had artillery, armor, and an air component modest, but the support that they had was nominal with most of the Greek Army fighting Mussolini's Italians to a standstill in the Albian mountains and had done so with a tenacity that impressed military observers from London to Washington. They built up a strong defensive line anchored on the Aliakmon River that ran northeast toward the Yugoslav border. However, the circumstance that arrived in April of 1941 were not the right ones for the job.
The first problem was Yugoslavia's collapse with its organized military resistance ending within seventy hours of the April 6th invasion. This situation had stripped the BEF's left flank of the protection that it had been promised and left General Wilson's position exposed to exactly the axis of advance that his defensive line had been designed to assume was covered. The Germans did not require an invitation as List's twelfth Army moved through the Monastir Gap and into Northern Greece with the same lethal efficiency that had been demonstrated elsewhere in the Balkans, and by April 9th the Aliakmon Line barely occupied before it was already obsolete became a series of positions that Wilson began withdrawing south before they could be cut off.
However, the second problem was less conventional as it was in the same way that it had arrived in Yugoslavia. Before the Panzers and motorcycle scouts as well as the Luftwaffe aircraft through the fog.
The Vevi Pass, which commanded the road south from Monastir into the Greek plain below, was held in the first days of April by a composite force of roughly eighteen hundred men that were drawn primarily from the Rangers and from what remained of the Greek 20th Division after the chaos of the Yugoslav frontier's collapse. The position on paper was sound with the pass narrow where the ridgelines on either side offered excellent fields of fire along the road approach. The screen of W Force under General Wilson was tasked with holding the German advance long enough for the entire W Force to withdraw to a defensible line further south. The men in the Vevi Pass were among the first British soldiers on Earth to discover that the war they had prepared for was not the only war being fought.
Major Frederick Ashworth, commanding B Company of the Rangers at the forward position on the road approach, wrote in his subsequent report hat the first indication of something anomalous was the temperature. Not the fog itself, which arrived in the pre-dawn hours of April 10th and might, in isolation, have been attributed to the mountain weather that the pass was known for. It was the temperature that accompanied the fog, a drop of approximately fifteen degrees Celsius in under ten minutes, that told the sentries on the picket line that something was wrong before they could have articulated why.
By 05:20 of April 10th, the fog had reached the road and minutes came the first mechanical failures reported by troops. Bren guns whose bolts would not cycle despite showing no damage or obstruction where their internal components coated in a rime of frost formed. A vickers gun on the upper left position jammed on its third belt and a radio operator at the company headquarters found his set producing static and then died with its vacuum tubes burnt out.
Then the walls appeared. They would later be reported by multiple British, Australian, and Greek officers over the following week, and the consistency across those accounts was striking. The walls were described as solid stone rising from road surfaces and hillsides without excavation, machinery, or any visible preparation beyond the planting of a staff or similar instrument by one of the advancing figures in colored uniforms. They rose in approximately four seconds. They stood between one and a half and three meters high, and rifle fire, light machine-gun fire, and even anti-tank rifle impacts produced no visible damage.
The Fatui Infantry that advanced behind these manufactured walls moved with tactical discipline that British officers consistently described as professional in a manner they found almost more disturbing tan the walls themselves. Ashworth's B Company held for thirty-one minutes after first contact, which under the circumstances was a considerable achievement. Then the left flank section encountered the water attack from the blue-uniformed figures, and Ashworth gave the order to fall back. The withdrawal held together for approximately two kilometers and then the first stone wall appeared across the road.
This was the tactic first glimpsed in Yugoslavia, though reported there so inconsistently by shattered units that no coherent picture reached British planners in time to matter. Walls placed during a retreat served a different purpose than walls placed during an advance. Here they compressed withdrawing Allied forces into a narrowing corridor while Cryo and Hydro-attuned Fatui struck the column and panzers closed from behind. As at Maribor, some British troops tried to surrender with their hands raised. Like the men in Yugoslavia, they were frozen where they stood. In the darkness of a mountain pass, the result was catastrophe. Greece's fall to the combined German, Italian, and Fatui advance could now be measured in days
Meanwhile at Mondstadt in Teyvat
Earth Time: April 9th, 1941
They came down from Dragonspine following the switchback road through the adventures camp and down behind Windrise before they had to take a narrow path. However, once they passed the path, they could see the sight of the great massive tree towards Falcon Coast with the Statue of Seven of Barbatos visible from the distance glowing blue. The wind changed as the smell of early spring came upon the road and hill, where they could see Mondstadt from the distance. The city on an island in the middle of Cider Lake in its tall walls of stone. They could see the tall and massive structure of the Cathedral from there along with the windmill and the big stone statue of Barbatos. The amber light of the city was visible and made a nice sight for them. Paimon was floating behind filled with joy to finally see civilization, especially away from the frozen winterland that is Dragonspine and have to travel it for more than a few days.
"Paimon is going to eat at an entire restaurant," she announced. "Not just the food...The restaurant.....The building...Paimon is going to eat the chairs and the tables and the menu and the person holding the menu."
"We're going to the Knights of Favonius headquarters first," Albedo said, without breaking stride.
Paimon looked at him with an expression that communicated, across the full distance between them, the complete inventory of what the past two days on Dragonspine had cost her and what she thought of this new information.
"Paimon is going to eat while walking very quickly," she amended, and veered toward a street vendor near the city gate with the precision of someone who had been thinking about this exact vendor since approximately the frozen pond.
The city gate of Mondstadt opened to them with the easy familiarity of a place they had returned to often enough that the guards knew their faces and the vendors knew Paimon's appetite and the cobblestones knew the particular rhythm of a Traveler who had been walking for several days and was letting the ground take some of the weight. The stone streets of the city felt ordinary as usual with them passing the Adventurer's Guild with Katheryne manning it as usual, while walking up stone steps they also passed Majorie running her shop. Then as they reached the tops of the steps in front was the water fountain in the plaza, but Paimon was more interested in getting something good to eat at Good Hunter that was to their right as she floated in excitement to Sara running the restaurant.
"SARA!!!!!!" Paimon said as she floated up to the wooden booth with tears of happiness in her eyes, "Paimon is very happy to see you….you have no idea what Paimon had went through to get here. Please let me have some Sauteed Matsutake!!!! Or some Crispy Potato Shrimp….Oh, I know…some Hash Browns…..Yes, Hash Browns….PLEASE!!!!!!"
Aether rolled his eyes as he decided to entertain Paimon by getting them some Hash Browns to go in a bag, which did not take long for Sara to complete as it apparently was the special of the day for her store. As they continued up another set of stairs that would lead them to upper heights of the city, where the Headquarters of the Knights of Favonius reside, Aether noticed that behind him overlooking a stone railing looking over the plaza, the two Fatui agents that were always there chatting about on-going events or things that had just happened were the two Fatui diplomats standing there. One was a male with grey hair and other was female with pale pink hair, but they weren't talking to each other this time. Instead, they were watching them and leaning from the railing witnessing everything that Aether, Paimon, and Albedoe were doing. He could not see their eyes behind the masks, but he could tell that they were not there to chitchat again as they normally did.
Not stopping was the first and most important decision as the moment when a change in pace would have communicated that he had noticed. He kept his stride exactly as it was and did not look back.
"Paimon," he said, quietly and without moving his head.
"Mmm," Paimon said, through a Hash Brown, floating at his left shoulder with her eyes mostly closed in the specific contentment of someone whose immediate needs had been addressed.
"Don't look at the railing behind us."
Paimon's chewing slowed with a brief pause. Then, with the practiced casualness of someone who had spent enough time in complicated situations to understand what "don't look" actually meant.
"Paimon is not looking at anything." was the response that she gave.
"Good."
They reached the top of the stairs and turned onto the upper level walkway without looking back. There they walked left to the entrance of the Knights of Favonius, where they saw two knights on each side of the doors at guard duty. They stood at attention the moment that they saw the three of them with their arm to their chest and the other arm behind their back.
"Welcome, Honorary Knight." said one named Porothos, while the other with glasses named Athos remained silent but answered with a nod.
Aether returned the acknowledgment with the small nod that the situation called for. Albedo went through without ceremony, which was appropriate because Albedo had been going through that door for long enough that ceremony would have been strange. Paimon followed with the Hash Brown bag held close to her chest in the manner of someone carrying something important through a threshold.
The moment that they entered the headquarters and saw the main hallway with its black and white title floor and white wooden walls. However, the place was empty as usual as waiting knights were moving all over the place with reports, deliveries, dispatches, and talks heard everywhere. Before they could even turn right to the Grand Library, they were stopped by Amber, who wore a red and white outrider outfit with fake red tall bunny ears on top of her head, walked up to them.
"Honorary Knight, Paimon. It's good to see you again. Jean was wondering if you were going to in Mondstadt soon and is going to be very happy to see you. She told to me tell you to come see her immediately due to some recent news." Amber explained not sounding as cheerful as she normally would be to see them.
Aether looked at Amber with the attention the word immediately deserved, because Amber was constitutionally inclined toward warmth and welcome and the version of her standing in the headquarters hallway delivering a summons with that particular flatness in her voice was not the version that existed when things were ordinary.
"What kind of recent news?" he asked.
Amber kept her expression into being careful on what to reveal as she replied, ""Jean will explain it better than I can. I'm just the messenger. I've been the messenger a lot this week."
Paimon had stopped eating. She was looking at Amber with the focused attention she deployed when she was reading a situation through the gap between what someone was saying and what their face was doing.
"Is everyone okay? Like ….is it a Mondstadt problem or a bigger problem?" was what Paimon asked in response.
Amber glanced at the junior knight crossing the far end of the hallway with his stack of reports, waited until he had gone through the side door, and then looked back at them.
"It's the kind of problem," she said, choosing her words with an uncharacteristic deliberateness, "where Jean has been in her office since before sunrise and hasn't asked anyone to bring her tea, which means she forgot, which means she hasn't stopped thinking since she sat down."
"Let's go see her real quick." Aether said with a nod as they walked right to Jean's office knowing that if Jean was not eating or sleeping then it was not good news or it was news that deeply concerned Jean.
They entered the office where previously it was nice and neat with organization, but as they entered it was a mess with papers, maps, and anything for examining a situation was every in the office. The Grand Masters desk in front of them was a mess with even more papers and maps, but they did not see Jean there at the desk.
"Traveller." was what they heard they heard next tro their right, where they turned to see Jean looked at them relieved.
Jean looked like someone who had been awake since before the city woke up and had spent every hour of that time in direct confrontation with something she could not resolve by working harder, which was the specific exhaustion that Jean carried differently from other kinds because working harder was her primary instrument and discovering its limits cost her more than it cost most people.
She was standing at the side wall where she had pinned a collection of maps ranging from Mondstadts territory and surrounding regions. Her coat was on the chair behind the desk rather than on her shoulders. Her hair, usually immaculate, had looked as if she put it up in the early morning dark and had been running her hands through it at intervals since then without noticing. She crossed the room to them with three quick strides and the relief on her face was unguarded in a way that Jean's face rarely permitted itself to be unguarded.
"Jean," Aether said. "What happened?"
"Yea, what happened, Jean? Cause no offense, you looked as if you had a bad day chasing Jean all over Mondstadt," Paimon said and was shocked at how Jean was looking.
Jean blushed in embarrassment for a moments, "These days have not been kind on me, really. I might feel better if you could tell me something to get a better understanding. How much do you know about what the Fatui have been doing outside Teyvat?"
Aether glanced at Albedo. Albedo's expression was neutral in the way it was neutral when he was deciding how much to offer and in what order.
"Some," Aether said carefully.
Jean nodded, as if this confirmed something she had suspected.
"A few weeks ago," Jean said, "a Knight courier arrived from Springvale with a report from one of our long-range outriders near Stormterror's Lair. The Fatui camps there were packing up and moving. The next day, another report confirmed the Fatui had withdrawn from Dragonspine as well, taking their equipment with them. Then we realized the embassy at the Goth Hotel had stopped sending couriers altogether. Instead, our intelligence suggests they've begun sending messages through an electronic device called a telegraph."
"Telegrapth?" Paimon repeated poorly, "What is that? A new ruin machine?"
"Telegraph….Apparently, it is a device that sends messages through electronic taps. At least that is what I our intelligence network inside is telling us." Jean explained, "But the issue is where are the Fatui going? We thought that maybe that were reorganizing to invade and take over Mondstadt but after a few days nothing happen. Then we learned that they were redeployed to somewhere else and then news of the Fatui Alliance with this otherworldly power came to us through Fontaine."
"Fontaine," Aether said.
"The Steambird," Jean said. She went to the desk and produced a folded newspaper from beneath one of the map stacks with the distinctive cream-colored broadsheet of Fontaine's primary publication, its headline visible even folded. She set it on the clearer edge of the desk facing them. "Katheryne at the Adventurers' Guild receives it by courier two days after publication. This arrived yesterday morning."
Aether picked it up as he realized that it was another copy of edition from the Steambird that explained about the alliance, but it is talking about something else going on that involved the Alliance.
FATUI CONFIRM ACTIVE SNEZHNAYAN MILITARY OPERATIONS IN EARTH THEATER:
"METEL DIRECTIVE" NAMED AS OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORK
Then Aether read the paper more in how the Fatui would be deployed to a place called Europe to commence operations with the German Wehrmacht at Yugoslavia. The report does not explain fully what happened to where the Fatui and Germans were fighting this country called Yugoslavia, but it explained what the Directive mentioned to stabilize an alliance after a coup that occurred in that nation. All of this was information that was confirmed through sources that came only through the Fatui themselves which could mean that it was incomplete, fake, or distorted.
Aether set the paper down by a sigh.
"The Metel Directive," Albedo said quietly, reading the headline from where he stood.
"That's what they're calling it," Jean said. "The Steambird's sources are the Fatui's own public statements, which means we're seeing what they chose to release and nothing more. But the confirmation of active military operations…."
She looked at the paper for a moment as she continued, "That's not something they would announce unless the operations were already past the point where announcement created vulnerability."
"Which means they're winning," Aether said.
"Which means they're far enough along that winning is no longer the question," Jean said. "The question is what comes next."
Paimon was reading the headline upside down from across the desk with her brow furrowed.
"Europe," she said, "Yugoslavia. Metel Directive."
She looked up, "Paimon doesn't know what any of those words mean in terms of a place, but Paimon knows what 'military operations' means and Paimon knows what 'active' means and together they mean people are getting hurt."
"Yes," Jean said simply.
She moved to the window behind the Grand Masters Desk and looked out over the city for a moment through the window.
"The Fatui diplomatic mission in the city hasn't recalled their staff," she said, "They're maintaining the appearance of normal operations. We no longer know what the Fatui are planning or doing as they don't send paper dispatches any more from the embassy both in and out mostly. When they do, it is most likely a copy of message through that telegraph. We managed to retrieve one from a dead diplomat killed by the nearby Hillicurls. But it is not in a language that we cannot make out."
Jean then handed Aether a copy of a paper and immediately only saw letters and numbers in it. It was obviously some sort of code.
"We are sure this is some sort of code, you can see at the top that it is somewhat readable." She said as she pointed at part in reference.
Aether looked at the paper and examined what she was referring to where he saw it.
VI-1A5E, I-21U3C, II-12L5E
And then beneath it, in five-letter groups with no spaces or punctuation or any other feature that language normally used to indicate where meaning began and ended:
GPKQP HVUMJ QKYUV MMJEC HIWKR IKOJD DMMOT PYRCL
IGUES JQVUN YGSSJ CSRLI HYJGS XPGOE QKASO TJHIV
PNXZY XHZQM VZFTT GOAYZ HZXGQ VWJWK BLTNO OPYDV
EPYUR OZFGM SYONQ DTAKX RACZY YZEDT YFKBN RBTTA
RDJHE MFBNZ RTTAO CDDTL ZNUSK VAEUG NLWXR FVRKD
GQOYG AMSRD VHKTG KE
"WHAT?" Paimon said, recoiling slightly, "Jean, are we sure that this is a message really? It looks like as if a diplomat had his dying words in insanity."
"We are sure," Jean said. "Our cipher expert believes it is a configuration header. Instructions for whatever machine or method was used to produce the rest. The letters and numbers follow a pattern consistent with mechanical settings rather than language. But what those settings correspond to, and what machine they belong to? Well, We have no idea."
Aether looked at the five-letter groupings. They had the quality of something that had been language and had been deliberately unmade.
"Every letter in the body is capital," Albedo said, leaning slightly over the desk to examine it without touching it. "No punctuation. Groups of five. That is a transmission format designed for mechanical relay, not handwriting. Someone on the receiving end feeds this into a device and the device produces readable text."
His eyes moved to the header notation and continued, "The three lines at the top are the key settings. Without knowing what they correspond to, the body is unresolvable by any conventional means."
"Where exactly was the diplomat found?" Aether asked.
"The eastern road out of the city," Jean said. "Approximately two hours' travel toward Stormterror's lair. He was alone, which was unusual as he had no escort, no courier bag. Just this folded inside his coat lining rather than carried openly. Our working assumption is that he was silently heading to one of the few fatui camps that were still deployed in Mondstadt in Stormterror's Lair."
Paimon was still staring at the body of the message with the particular expression she wore when something had offended her fundamental understanding of how things should work.
"So this machine," she said slowly. "You type something real into it, and it comes out looking like that. And then on the other end, someone puts that into the same kind of machine and it comes back out looking real again."
"That is the operating principle, as best as our cipher expert could reconstruct it," Jean said.
"And the numbers and letters at the top…."
"How do you set the machine before you use it most likely," Albedo said. "Change the settings and the same message produces entirely different output. The recipient needs to know the settings in advance as they could change daily on when each setting should be used."
"So they could have been sending anything," Paimon said. "For weeks. And no one here knows what any of it said."
"No one here knows what any of it said," Jean confirmed.
Aether folded the paper carefully along its existing crease lines and set it on the desk. He held Jean's gaze.
"Keep it somewhere secure," he said. "Don't let the diplomatic mission know you have it."
Jean said, "They know that the Hillichurls found him, but believe that there was no body to find and that the Hillicurls ate him. As far as they know, the message that he had is destroyed. I've told no one outside this room that it exists, besides you of course."
Aether pulled a chair from the side of the room and sat down. Behind him he heard Paimon settle quietly at the edge of the desk, which was Paimon's version of the same signal.
"Close the door," he said to Amber, who had been standing at the threshold.
Amber closed the door.
Jean sat down behind her desk, folded her hands on the surface of it, and waited with the stillness of someone who had been in motion since before sunrise and had finally arrived at the moment that motion had been building toward.
Aether told her everything from the dream from Nahida, the film festival, Colonel Meyer, U-66 carrying chaos cores, and Zhongli handing them a contract seal. Jean had listened to it without interrupting at all. When he finished, the office was quiet for a moment with the sounds of the headquarters moving in the corridor outside and the distant sound of Mondstadt's bells marking the hour somewhere in the city below. Jean unfolded her hands and placed them flat on the desk.
"A contract seal from the Archon War era," she said.
"Yes," Aether said.
"And Rex Lapis himself told you to bring it to Albedo."
"Yes."
Jean looked at Albedo. Albedo met her gaze with the patient composure of a man who had spent years in Mondstadt earning exactly the degree of institutional trust he currently held and understood precisely what he was asking her to extend.
"What do you need?" she asked him.
"The Grand Library," Albedo said. "Specifically, the lower archive. The collection catalogued under Adventurers' Guild Miscellany, acquisitions from the second and third decades of this century. I've been trying to get access to that section through proper channels for approximately fourteen months."
Jean's expression moved through something that was almost rueful as she replied "And you didn't tell me why."
"I didn't have enough of the picture to explain it usefully," Albedo said, "I had a hypothesis about something my mother left here. The hypothesis has now been confirmed by rather more significant means than I anticipated."
Jean looked at him for a moment, then stood and crossed to the far wall where a key cabinet hung, unlocked it, and produced a ring of keys heavy enough that they made a sound against her palm. She selected one without looking and set it on the desk in front of Albedo.
"The lower archive," she said. "The lockbox on the third shelf past the reading table has a secondary lock that the Guild's key won't open. That one will."
She paused, "Master Albedo, whatever Alice left in that room, I hope it works."
"So do I," Albedo said, and picked up the key, "Paimon….Traveller, I will call you back in a few days to get the device ready to contact Mother."
War Rooms, London
April 13th, 1941
General Dill had been in many difficult rooms in his career. He had delivered bad news to politicians who did not want to hear it and soldiers who could not afford to. He had learned that the manner of delivery matter less than the completeness of it, and that the worst thing one could do with a difficult fact was soften it into something unrecognizable. He kept this in mind as he opened the red folder on the table in front of Churchill and began.
Prime Minister Winston Churchill with a cigar in his hand stood on a wooden chair with a large map of the world behind him around him in the larger elongated table was a group of other generals, cabinet members, and government officials present sitting. Churchill had not spoken since Dill started reading from Ashworth's report and sat his burning cigar down on a holder and kept his eyes on the table. He continued to listen and comprehend the report. Then Dill reached the part from a passage from Lieutenant Graves's section, there he read it without any pause and without any editorializing.
Without pause, Churchill asked him to read it again especially on the last part. Dill did that where he mentioned about a wall being suspended from the ground and it was parenthetical.
General Dill looked back at the report as he answered, "Twenty-two in the section, Prime Minister. Lieutenant Graves had returned to company headquarters three minutes before the attack."
Churchill raised an eye as he spoke, "He went back. Afterward. He saw them."
"Yes, Prime Minister. His written statement is in the second appendix."
Dill looked at the page as he continued, "He describes them as standing in their positions as though they had simply stopped in the middle of something and would presently resume."
The room held that sentence for a moment. Around the table, the generals and cabinet members who had been listening without expression were now very still in the particular way of men who have heard something they are not yet sure how to place inside the framework of the war they believed they were fighting.
Churchill looked up from the table. His eyes moved around the room once, not seeking reaction but taking inventory of who was present for what was about to be discussed.
"The demolition failures," he said, "The worst of them."
Dill found the page as he responded, "The Aliakmon bridge at Servia, Prime Minister. Two hundred kilograms of prepared explosive. The engineering sergeant's statement records that when the detonation order was given, the detonation cord had become …. "
Dill for the first time stumbled in his speech as he read directly from the document, "...brittle as old glass and snapped when touched. The charges did not fire. German reconnaissance crossed within forty minutes."
One of the cabinet members at the far end of the table shifted in his chair. The sound was very loud.
"The air temperature at the bridge," Dill continued, "was approximately eight degrees Celsius at the time of the failed detonation. The cord failed as though the temperature were well below freezing. The sergeant's hands functioned normally. The cord did not. He had prepared the demolition correctly by every standard in the manual. There was no error."
Churchill reached for his cigar and then did not pick it up.
"Menzies," he said without turning his head. "The secondary assessment reports."
Stewart Menzies, standing slightly behind the table in the manner he preferred, stepped forward, "Between the seventh and twelfth of April, Prime Minister, we received nineteen reports from Yugoslav and Greek military sources describing phenomena consistent with what Major Ashworth's report documents. Seventeen of those nineteen were assessed as probable combat confusion. The remaining two were flagged for follow-up review."
Churchill turned his head and looked at Menzies directly, "Had that review been conducted?"
"No, Prime Minister."
"Nineteen reports."
"Yes, Prime Minister."
"Beginning on the seventh of April."
"Yes, Prime Minister."
"Today is the thirteenth."
No one in the room said anything. Menzies held Churchill's gaze with the composure of a man who had decided before entering the room that he was going to hold it regardless of what was said, because anything less would compound the error rather than acknowledge it.
Churchill was quiet long enough that the only sound in the room was the distant hum of the building's ventilation. When he spoke, his voice had the quality his staff had learned to distinguish from ordinary displeasure which, in Churchill's case generally indicated that what was being controlled was considerable.
"Read me about the reports of the Snezhnayan's freezing surrendered and retreating troops in Greece," he requested to Dill, who nodded as he had been hoping that Churchill would not ask for it, but he absolutely needed to hear it.
Dill found the page. It was not the page he had been hoping Churchill would ask for, which meant it was almost certainly the page Churchill needed to hear.
"This is drawn from three separate sources, Prime Minister. Two Greek officers and one account from a New Zealand corporal of the 2nd Division who was separated from his unit during the withdrawal from the Aliakmon line and subsequently rejoined it three days later." Dill looked up briefly, "The New Zealand account is the most complete."
"Read it."
Dill read.
Corporal James Tūhoe of the 20th Battalion, 2nd New Zealand Division, had been cut off on the morning of April 11th when the road south of Kozani was blocked by what his statement described as a wall of stone that had not been there thirty minutes before. He had taken shelter with eleven other men in a farmhouse above the road and had observed from the upper window what happened on the road below when approximately forty men of the Greek rearguard, who had been covering the withdrawal and did not know the road was blocked, came down the slope and encountered the wall and then encountered the Snezhnayan element that had placed it.
Dill read the corporal's account of what he observed from the window without inflection, because the corporal had written it without inflection and it did not require any. Some of the Greek soldiers had attempted to fight. The ones who attempted to fight were dealt with by elemental fire of the pyro variety, which Tūhoe described in terms that matched Ashworth's report from Vevi with sufficient consistency to indicate they were describing the same capability. The ones who did not attempt to fight, who dropped their weapons and raised their hands in the posture that every soldier on every front in every war understood as surrender were dealt with by the cryo element. Tūhoe counted twenty-three men in surrender positions when the attack began. He counted twenty-three men still standing when it ended, in the positions they had been in when the cold reached them, hands raised, palms open, in the gesture that the Geneva Convention and six centuries of military custom had established as inviolable.
The morning sun, he wrote, had not thawed them by the time he and his group moved south through the fields above the road two hours later. He had counted them again as he passed above. He had written the number in his statement and then crossed it out and written it again. Twenty-three.
Dill closed the folder, while the room was very quiet. One of the generals at the far end of the table was looking at a point on the wall approximately two feet above the map of Greece with the expression of someone engaged in a private recalculation.
Churchill had not moved during the reading. He stood with his hands at his sides, no longer clasped behind his back, which for Churchill was a posture that indicated the performance of composure had been set aside in favor of something more immediate.
"Surrendered men," he said.
"Yes, Prime Minister."
"Hands raised."
"Yes, Prime Minister."
Churchill looked at Dill, and then at Menzies. Then he looked at the map of Greece, where somewhere above the road south of Kozani twenty-three men of the Greek rearguard were either still standing or had been found by the German advance and dealt with in whatever manner the Wehrmacht chose when it encountered something it also had no doctrine for.
"Is there any account," Churchill said, with the precision of a man selecting his words the way a surgeon selects instruments, "of the Snezhnayan forces in Yugoslavia or Greece releasing men they had…."
He stopped, and the pause was not hesitation but the particular kind of silence that precedes a word that has no good synonym,"....treated in this manner. Any account of the effect wearing off. Any recovery."
Dill said nothing for a moment. The nothing was its own answer, but Churchill waited for the word.
"No, Prime Minister," Dill said. "There is no such account."
Churchill picked up his cigar from the ashtray. He looked at it. He put it back down without lighting it.
"The Hague Convention," he said, half to himself. "The Geneva Convention. The accumulated law of armed conflict goes back to Grotius and before."
He was not addressing anyone at the table specifically, and no one at the table made the error of responding as though he were, "Three hundred years of civilization's attempt to put a fence around the worst of what men do to one another in war."
He paused, "And in the passes above Macedonia, they froze men with their hands in the air."
Churchill stood very still.
"This is not merely barbarism," he said at last. "Barbarism, regrettably, is common enough in war. Armies have shot prisoners before. Armies have bayoneted the wounded before. Armies have disgraced themselves in every century we have records for. But this is something different."
He looked again at the map of Greece.
"A retreating army can survive defeat. It can survive an exposed flank. It can survive an encirclement long enough, on occasion, to break contact and save the greater part of itself. That is the brutal arithmetic upon which campaigns are so often conducted. Ground is lost. Roads are yielded. Rearguards are sacrificed so that something larger may live."
No one at the table moved.
"But if these people can close roads as a force withdraws," Churchill continued, "if they can freeze weapons where they are held, raise walls where no engineer has laid a stone, and make surrender itself a death sentence, then they do not merely inflict losses. They destroy the machinery by which an army escapes destruction."
He turned from the map and looked directly at Dill.
"We went into Greece expecting what one expects in such a campaign. Hard fighting. A retreat under pressure. Delay bought in miles and hours, and perhaps enough of both to save the force from ruin. That would have been bad enough. But this…"
He stopped, and for a moment his expression tightened into something colder than anger.
"This is worse. Positions that ought to buy hours are collapsing in minutes. Rearguards that ought to delay pursuit are being turned into traps for their own retreat. The Germans have not merely been given another arm. They have been given a method by which retreat itself may be weaponized."
One of the generals at the far end of the table shifted slightly in his chair. Churchill did not look at him.
"Poland, France, Norway...those campaigns still belonged to the grammar of modern war, however ugly. One could study them, learn from them, adapt to them. But if these reports are true, then the thing unfolding in Greece is not simply a faster defeat. It is a change in the conditions of war."
He placed one hand on the edge of the table.
"And if it is a change in the conditions of war, then every road, every bridge, every mountain pass, every evacuation line on this continent must now be reconsidered from first principles."
The silence that followed was not uncertain but it was comprehension.
"Leave the folder," Churchill said, and his voice had returned to its operational register and was now moving to what came next, because what came next was the only place that mattered, "Dill. I want a full assessment on my desk by morning. Not what we've observed. What we can do about it. Every option, including the ones that look unpromising. Especially those."
"Yes, Prime Minister."
"Menzies. The nineteen reports. I want them all reviewed by morning as well and cross-referenced against everything we have from Yugoslavia. Whatever went into secondary assessment comes out of it."
"Yes, Prime Minister."
"And I want to know," Churchill said, picking up the red folder himself and holding it for a moment before setting it back down, "what the Americans know. Not what they've said publicly. What they know."
He looked at Menzies with an expression that conveyed, without requiring elaboration, that the distinction between those two things was unlikely to be small and that the gap between them was his immediate concern.
"Goodnight," Churchill said.
Pier 97, Hudson River, New York City
April 15th, 1941
As the MS Gripsholm sails into the harbor of New York City with its white hull with its name painted on the side as well as the word of 'DIPLOMAT' and the 'SVERIGE' . The flag of sweden and its colors were painted on the hull with stripes of the Swedish flag painted on the bow and stern of the passenger liner. She had made this crossing before multiple times during this war since 1939, where it had used marking that gave the accumulated institutional wisdom of a neutral nation.
She moved slowly through the Upper Bay as the pilot on board guided her passed the Statue of Liberty with the Manhattan skyline resolving through the April haze on the port side. A couple of tugboats came up to lead and guide her to the pier where she would be stationed in Pier 97, where the Swedish American Line had its own berth for its vessels making the crossing from Stockholm and Lisbon to New York. As the ship began to finally finish docking, the gangways were lowered. Normally, people at these piers in New York City would be waiting for friends or family that were on holiday or relatives and loved ones that were in diplomatic service for the powers at war in Europe. Even the occasion of new immigrants coming to America for a new life was possible, but the pier today was packed with more than lovers, friends, and families. There were reporters stationed waiting for someone to step out and just hoping to catch a photo of truth on the news that they got through a source.
On the exit of the first class passengers, a man with brown hair and blue eyes looked toward the crowd with a smirk. He wore an unbuttoned grey jacket and a red scarf that went across his chest and over the top of his left shoulder.
"This is quite the crowd. I guess, our talks won't be so secret afterall." Childe said to Pug as he noted all of the press and journalists.
Pug had been standing at the rail on the first class deck for the last twenty minutes waiting for the pier to resolve through haze and counting the press contingent, where he counted thirty-one. He travelled on the Gripsholm with Tartaglia, who he first met in the final planning phases of the trip through Pantalone. Pug found Childe or as he is also known as Tartaglia to be pleasant and friendly on the surface, the young man reminded him a lot of the personality of his youngest son, Bryon. He carried a lot about his siblings back home at Snezhnaya at a village called Morespeak, but he has a lower level of loyal fanatic feeling towards the Fatui's Tsaritsa. When Pug talked within him in front of Lyney and Lynette, the young man would not stop talking about his homeland and especially the kind benevolent ruler that the Tsaritsa is to her people. If the Fatui had a version of the fanatical loyal nazi's exist to shower Hitler with praise, this man might be in the lower level of that spectrum.
When looking back at the crowd of reporters at the pier, Pug was both confused and concerned at the reason for them. Did they somehow know that a Snezhnayan representative was on board for diplomatic talks with President Roosevelt? And if they did, then how?
"Oh, well, we can't be beggars." Childe said as he down the gangway as Lyney and Lynette followed with their luggage.
Pug didn't know why, but he had a bad feeling about this and just hoped that they can quickly get past the crowd and get them to the Secret Service car. He followed not far behind with a slow ease as he maintained a distance. Thank god, he didn't have Rhoda with him and left her in Berlin or she would have gave them away easily. As Childe made the last step following some of them other First Class passengers, some that he had interacted with during the voyage as Pug found it impossible to keep the man in his cabin for his life. If he had to guess as well, the magical siblings were just as concerned as him.
"I won't blame them, if their 'father' told them not to disappoint her in this mission through a telegram." Pug though to himself referring to how a telegram arrived to the twins during a dinner in this voyage where a steward delivered the message to them.
However, before Pug could continue his train of thought, he heard the sound of camera bulbs lighting up to take a picture of Childe as he came into their sight on his descent onto American soil. Suddenly, every reporter and journalist here wanted to talk to the soldier and diplomat from another world as well as being from a nation allied with Germany. The reporters moved a body in a semi-coordinated surge of a professional press contingent that had been waiting in the cold for forty minutes and had identified its subject. The shouted questions arrived simultaneously and therefore as noise rather than language, each individual voice canceling the others out in the acoustic competition of the pier.
Childe apparently already enjoyed the spotlight as he held up his hands with a smile and replied, "Please…everyone slow down…I just stepped onto the shores of your beautiful country….Let's do it one at a time, please."
The noise subsided with a speed that visibly surprised the reporters themselves. Thirty-one professionals who had been shouting over each other a moment before settled into something resembling order, not because they had been told to by a press handler or a government official but because the man who had asked them to had asked it in a way that made compliance feel like their own idea.
Then the first person stepped forward as if by the unspoken consensus of the press contingent, the acknowledgment that the man with the recording equipment going out to four million listeners had the first question, and extended his microphone.
"Is it true that you are Mr. Tartaglia of Snezhnaya and here as a representative of the Tsaritsa of said country?" was the first question out of the reporter's lips.
"Yes to both of your questions." Childe replied with the same pleasant ease he had used to ask them to slow down, "My name is Tartaglia. I'm the Eleventh Harbinger of the Fatui, which is the Tsaritsa's organization. I'm here at her direction for discussions with your government about matters of mutual concern. And what's your name by the way?"
"Frank Sheldon, CBS Radio. What are those matters between our government and the Tsaritsa specifically?" was the next thing that the report said.
"That's a conversation for Washington," Childe said, with a smile that indicated this was not evasion but simple sequencing, "I just got off the boat."
A ripple of something moved through the press contingent that was not quite laughter but was in that vicinity. Then Chide pointed at another reporter that decided to raise his hand and asked him to introduce himself.
"Harold Culps, The Washington Post. Is it true that your country is in another world, Mr. Tartaglia?" was the next question that came.
"Yes, my country is from the world of Teyvat. In it there are seven nations that rule it which of course includes Snezhnaya." Childe replied.
Childe scanned the raised hands and pointed to a compact woman near the middle who had her notebook already open to a fresh page.
"Helen Marsh, Chicago Tribune. Most Americans remember back in 1938, when Orson Wells fooled the nation on radio into thinking that the country was being invaded by Mars. How do we know that you or your Tsaritsa aren't a Wagner propaganda fiction made by Dr. Goebbels?"
Suddenly Childe had a smirk that gave Pug the intention that this was something the young man had been looking forward to. Pug knew that he was not going to like much at all. The smirk was not the social smirk Childe had been wearing since the bottom of the gangway. That one had been warm and accessible, the expression of a young man who found people genuinely interesting and wanted them to know it. This one was different in a way that Pug recognized from the third day of the crossing, when the Finnish shipping executive had said something wrong about Snezhnayan military capability at dinner and Childe had smiled before correcting him with a precision that had left the table very quiet.
He looked at Lyney, who had already seen the smile and whose composure had acquired the particular quality of a man who has identified the exact moment a situation passed beyond the reach of his management and is now simply documenting it for the record. Lynette's tail had gone completely still. The two federal men near the warehouse had not yet seen what Pug and Lyney had seen in Childe's expression, but they were watching the subject with the trained alertness of people whose job was to watch subjects, and something in their posture suggested they were beginning to understand that the next thirty seconds were going to require their full attention.
Childe looked at Helen Marsh with the direct unhurried attention he gave everyone who asked him something he found genuinely interesting.
"That's a fair question," he said, "Honestly one of the better ones I've heard this morning. But before I continue on my answer. Could you explain to me what you mean by the Orson Wells radio incident?"
The question produced a reaction that moved through the press contingent in a visible wave, not laughter exactly but the collective sound of thirty-one people updating their understanding of the situation they were in. Several reporters who had been watching Childe with the professional wariness of people covering an Axis-aligned subject looked at each other with an expression that had no diplomatic name.
Helen Marsh looked at Childe for a moment.
"October 30th, 1938," she said, with the crisp economy of a woman who had covered the story and was not going to embellish it, "A radio broadcaster named Orson Welles performed a dramatization of a science fiction novel called The War of the Worlds on CBS Radio. The story was about an invasion of Earth by creatures from the planet Mars. Welles performed it as a series of fake news bulletins designed to sound exactly like an actual live broadcast of a real event."
Childe was listening with the complete attention he gave things that interested him as he asked, "How many people heard it?"
"Approximately six million," Marsh said. "A portion of them believed it was real. There was panic in several cities. People called police stations. Some packed their belongings and tried to leave town. Six million Americans were convinced, by a radio program, that their world was being invaded by something from another world. And the lesson that most people drew from that episode was that when someone tells you something impossible is happening, the first question you ask is who benefits from you believing it."
She let that land where it was going to land.
"So my question stands," she said. "You're representing a nation allied with Germany, which has a significant institutional interest in American public opinion about that alliance. Dr. Goebbels has a huge budget and a staff and four years of demonstrated capability in producing exactly this kind of material. You're standing on a pier telling us you're from another world."
She tapped her pen once against her notebook, "Why isn't this the War of the Worlds?"
Childe nodded slowly. Then the third smirk returned, the one that Pug had first seen when the Finnish shipping executive had finished his wrong statement about Snezhnayan military capability and which Pug now recognized with the specific feeling of a man watching something inevitable arrive that he had not found a way to prevent.
"Wells was on the radio," Childe said. "I'm not."
He took four steps away from the gangway.
"Dr. Goebbels makes films," he said pleasantly. "I'm going to do something he can't put in one."
Everyone in the crowd immediately stood back as Childe started to float to the sound of bubbling water that swirled around his legs as his outfit went into a darker shade and started to grow twice his size. Black and violent armour appeared around him with zapping of purple lighting on his upper body. A cape appeared attached to his back that was longer than any movie red carpet that Pug had seen and was purple with stars doting all over it, while a mask appeared on Childe's face with long horns appearing. The mask was probably the thing that was the most terrifying to Pug as the mask had no defining features except a single glowing purple eye. Childe's hands grew into sharp gray claws that were made out of metal that looked like they could cut through a tank. He held out a hand as suddenly out of nowhere appeared a spinning purple glowing double ended spear.
"Well," Childe said as he is voice changed to a deeply distorted demon-like tone that made Pug nearly go into a heart attack, "Do I look like a work of propaganda fiction?"
Only the sounds of lightbulbs on cameras going off again like mad could be heard, while Pug saw one journalist near another journalist who was filming the entire transformation and being told to ensure that he got every second on Childe.
Frank Sheldon was speaking into his microphone trying to remain professional as he tried to describe what he was seeing to an audience behind a radio, "A mask, ladies and gentlemen, there is a mask with one eye that is glowing, I can see it from here, a purple light, and he is holding a spear that was not in his hand thirty seconds ago and I cannot tell you where it came from because I did not see it arrive."
Sheldon did not know at the time, but the sound of Childe's voice carried through the mic.
A pause of four second happened as sound of cameras firing in sequence audible behind his voice, "He asked us if he looked like propaganda fiction. The answer is no."
A Life magazine photographer had not stopped shooting since the transformation began. He was working with the mechanical focus of a man who had found the frame he needed and understood that the frame kept changing and that his job was to chase it and capture as much of it as he could before it was over. He would later tell his editor that he had shot forty-one frames in the two minutes and twelve seconds of the full transformation sequence, which was more than he had shot at any single event in fifteen years of work, and that approximately thirty of them were going to be publishable and that he did not yet know what to do with that information.
Then Childe returned to normal as a series of questions came as Childe held his hand up again as they went silent, then he pointed to the Life Magazine photographer.
"Is this something that all soldiers of the Tsaritsa do?" was the question that came.
Childe kept his smirk, "That varies between Harbinger and Soldier. For example, Lady Arlecchino who is in the Balkans has her own form of abilities that are similar but different. But for the regular soldier in service of Her Majesty that varies on role and rank."
"What about the fact that Great Britain is at war with Germany and Italy which Snezhnaya is a member of the Axis alliance? Is Her Majesty concerned that Prime Minister Churchill could declare war on your country?" was the next question that came from the photographer as some members of the press nodded as if that was a important question to them.
Childe looked at the photographer for a moment with the expression of a man receiving a question he had expected and had been thinking about how to answer since somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. The smirk had not left, but its quality had shifted as if he was choosing his words carefully.
"The Prime Minister," Childe said, with the slight pause of a man selecting the precise level of directness appropriate to the question, "is a serious man dealing with a serious situation. Her Majesty respects that. She has no interest in a conflict with Britain that isn't necessary to her objectives, and a formal declaration of war between Snezhnaya and Great Britain isn't necessary to anyone's objectives right now, including Germany's."
He paused.
"Churchill is fighting for his country's survival. The Tsaritsa understands survival. That's not nothing," He looked at the photographer directly, "But I'll also tell you honestly that if Mr. Churchill decides that declaring war on Snezhnaya serves Britain's interests, that's his decision to make and Her Majesty will respond to it as she responds to all decisions made against her. The Tsaritsa doesn't ask anyone's permission to exist."
Sheldon had his microphone angled toward Childe with the focused attention of a man who had come back from his break with his professionalism fully reassembled and was not going to waste the reassembly.
Garland from the AP raised his hand without waiting to be called on. "Mr. Tartaglia, you just said the Tsaritsa has objectives. You said a war with Britain isn't necessary to those objectives right now. What are those objectives?"
Childe looked at Garland, where then he looked at Lyney, not with the look that had preceded the transformation but with a different one. The look of a man checking a boundary he had been given and deciding how close to it he intended to stand. Childe looked back at Garland after a moment of thought.
"The Tsaritsa's primary objective," he said, "is the sovereignty and security of Snezhnaya and her people. Everything else serves that."
He paused for one beat, "The specifics of how she pursues that are the conversation I'm going to Washington to have. I'm not going to give you Washington's agenda on a pier in New York."
"That's the second time you've said Washington," Helen Marsh said, from her position where she had been standing since she arrived and had not left, "The State Department hasn't confirmed any formal meetings. Are you telling us those meetings exist?"
The corner of Childe's mouth moved in a way that was not quite the smirk and not quite a smile.
"I'm telling you I didn't cross the Atlantic to see the Statue of Liberty," he said.
Grand Library, Headquarters of the Knights of Favonius
Mondstadt, Teyvat
The Grand Library occupied the right side of the Headquarters, where after being called by Amber that Albedo was ready for them. Paimon and Aether entered the lower archive area of the library, which smelled musty. Albedo was at the reading table when they came down the stairs, the device sitting in front of him on the cleared surface. It was smaller than Aether had expected which was roughly the size of a large book that was pale metal housing with channels running through it, a speaker element at the center angled slightly upward. On the side panel, engraved in handwriting that was cheerful and unconcerned with straight lines: For when the regular post won't reach.
In addition, Aether noticed that in a glass container connected to the book with a wire was the Contract Seal.
Paimon read the inscription on the side panel and her expression did something complicated.
"That is extremely Alice," she said.
"Yes," Albedo said, without looking up from the contacts he was adjusting along the upper face. He moved a chair to the table's edge for Aether, then looked at Paimon.
"Paimon knows," she said, and floated to the far end of the table with the posture of someone demonstrating compliance they intended to honor but found difficult.
Aether sat and looked at the glass container connected to the device by a thin wire. The contract seal inside it was still warm-looking even through the glass, the jade inlay catching the lamplight the same way it had in his coat pocket on the road from Liyue.
"The seal," he said.
"The resonance in it is what the device needs to reach beyond Teyvat's elemental field," Albedo said, "It took me two days to understand that. Rex Lapis didn't give you a summons for my mother. He gave you a signal amplifier that only she would recognize."
He paused, "She built the device to receive exactly this kind of key. They planned this together. At some point before she left."
The archive was quiet for a moment.
"She knew she was going to go somewhere the Dodoco couldn't reach," Aether said.
"She knew," Albedo confirmed. "And she left the receiver here and gave Rex Lapis the key. In the event that someone needed to reach her badly enough to invoke a six-thousand-year contract." He looked at the device. "We were always the contingency. We just didn't know it."
Paimon was staring at the glass container with an expression that was working through several things at once.
"So Alice and Zhongli planned this," she said slowly. "Like, a long time ago. Before any of this started."
"Before any of this started," Albedo said.
"That is either very reassuring," Paimon said, "or very alarming, and Paimon cannot decide which."
Albedo placed his hand on the left contact, "It is probably both. Are you ready, Traveler?"
Aether placed his hand on the housing feeling its warm touch as metal responded immediately. The hum began, built, and shaped itself into a carrier tone that rattled against the archive walls and waited.
"Well," said a voice through the speaker, bright and almost cheerful, "The Mondstadt relay and the Archon War seal at the same time. Someone means business."
Paimon made a sound that was not a word.
"Alice," Albedo said.
"Darling." The warmth in her voice shifted registers. "You worked out the seal connection. I'm impressed really…. I thought that would take longer."
"It took two days," Albedo said.
"That's what I said. Longer.The Traveler is there I assume?"
"I'm here," Aether said. "And Paimon."
"Of course she is," Something moved through her voice that wasn't quite laughter, "The elemental field has been wrong for months. Something large is happening somewhere this world wasn't designed to absorb. Now tell me."
Aether told her. He kept it tight: the Gate, the Pact, Yugoslavia, Greece, the chaos cores, and the question at the end of all of it: how to reach Earth without going through the Fatui's infrastructure.
"Worse than my estimate," she said. "And I had prepared myself for something considerable."
"Can you help?" Albedo asked.
The pause was one beat longer than the question required.
"Albedo. You used a six-thousand-year contract seal and the receiver I built specifically for this scenario. You are asking me if I can help."
"Yes," he said. "I am."
"I've been here for four months. I know where the Gate is. I've been watching it for six weeks. The answer is yes …..I can get you here. I need more time to prepare the transit safely, and when I tell you to move, you move quickly."
The channels flickered.
"Left contact for a moment…."
"I know," Albedo said, and adjusted it.
"Good. Three things before I lose the window. First: I am alive and well. Second: whatever Zhongli told you about the scale of what the Fatui are doing here, he was right and probably conservative."
A pause, then direct, everything else set aside as she continued, "Third, tell Klee her mother is having a wonderful adventure and will bring back something interesting. Tell her I found something called hot chocolate from a place called Holland and she is going to absolutely love it."
"I'll tell her," Albedo said quietly.
"Good. And Albedo ..."
The tone dropped with loud static crackling like a fire in a camp but at a faster pace.. The channels went dark inward from the edges. The seal in its glass container dimmed and was still but no sound could be heard at all.
Albedo kept his hand on the housing for a moment before removing it. Paimon exhaled slowly. She had apparently not been breathing at full capacity since the carrier tone opened.
"She's alive," she said. "She knows. She's coming."
"She's coming," Aether said.
Paimon looked at the seal in its container, then at Albedo, whose shoulders carried the specific quality of someone who has set down something heavy without quite admitting they had been carrying it.
"Paimon is extremely glad Alice is ours," she said. "And also extremely alarmed by her. Both at the same time."
Albedo said nothing, but he covered the device with careful hands.
"We should tell Jean," Aether said.
They went upstairs without another word. At the library door Paimon floated up beside Aether.
"Hot chocolate," she said. "First thing when we get there."
"We're going to a world at war." Aether stated to Paimon.
"People in wars still eat," she said simply, and went ahead of him into the Mondstadt evening.