Meanwhile in a hotel room in the Court of Fontaine
Night had fallen over the court of Fontaine with the city and the whole nation resting long after a tragedy that nearly drowned and destroyed it through the prophecy. Now, after talking to Neuvilletee, Aether was stilled tired and out of energy with Paimon in the same state. They took up a room in a hotel room that Navia provided to the two. Aether did not want to trouble Navia, but she insisted and Paimon pretty much begged him to accept it on the fact that they went through a lot lately with out a break in Fontaine from solving murders to preventing a nation ending catastrophe seemed to be too much for the flying pixie that Paimon can be. Aether thought about everything from the fact that now the Fatui have the Hydro Gnosis to Focalors. He laid on the bed of the hotel room starring at the ceiling in wonder, while waiting for the moment that he went to sleep. The soft pillow that his head rested on helped to allow him to feel comfortable and sleep.
Meanwhile, Paimon had curled up on the other side of the bed with her entire body resting on a large pillow that could swallow her small body. She had already began to snore softly with her breath drawing in and out. Eventually Aether's eyes closed and the sound of the world faded from his mind. For a moment, there was nothing at all just darkness behind his closed eyes.
Then light came back in his vision as he opened them again, where this time he was no longer in the hotel at all. He stood barefoot on a surface of grass that was looking at a giant tree that towered above a valley with its trunk of pale lilac and white that were braided together. Great roots coiled from its base like luminous rivers. Clusters of leaves hung from the branches where each one were shard of light that glowed brightly.
Aether knew this place immediately in his mind.
"Irminsul…." he breathed.
"Whoa….!" was the next thing he heard.
He glanced behind him was Paimon hovering with eyes wide as saucers.
"This isn't Fontaine," she said. "This isn't anywhere we've flown over. Did we get dragged into another Domain? Again?!"
"Not exactly," came a gentle voice.
They both turned where at the crest of the hill was a small figure in white and green with pale hair, leaf like ornaments and barefeet pressing into the glowing grass. Instantly, Paimon and Aether knew this small archon that looked like a little girl.
"NAHIDA!!!" Paimon cried out in excitement, "It's good to see you again, Paimon had been thinking about you a lot since we last saw each other."
The two walked toward the Dendro Archon where as they walked closer to her, the sheer size of the Irminsul became more overwhelming.
"So Nahida, any reason why we are suddenly here at the Irminsul?" Paimon asked bluntly without hesitation, "Not that Paimon minds seeing you again, but Paimon prefers to be at more sociable areas like a restaurant."
"Is food all you think about?" Aether commented with a roll of his eyes.
"Hey!" Paimon retorted with her hands at her sides as she floated closer to Aether.
"Actually, there is a reason for this gathering at the Irminsul, I called you using your previous connection to the Irminsul to make you appear here in a dream. I only pulled your consciousness here from Fontaine, your bodies are still in bed." Nahida explained before Paimon could go further.
Paimon grabbed her own cheeks. "So this is a dream, but also not a dream? Ugh, Sumeru stuff again…"
Nahida giggled once, but the sound faded quickly. Up close, Aether could see the worry in her eyes, the way her shoulders were just a little tenser than usual.
"You didn't bring us here just to admire the view," he said quietly.
"No," the Dendro Archon admitted with a returning to the trunk of the Irminsul, "I wanted you to see something that I had found in the Irminsul recently."
Aether and Paimon followed her down the slope.
The closer they came, the more overwhelming the tree's presence became in terms of size. What had seemed immense from a distance now felt cosmic up close. The braided trunk soared up and up until it disappeared into the glowing crown, each pale lilac strand shot through with currents of light.
Soft grass brushed their ankles, shining faintly with each step. Glowing leaves drifted all around them like slow-falling fireflies, bathing the air in a gentle green gold.
"For now," Nahida said, "look at Irminsul as it should be."
She placed her small hand against the trunk.
Rings of light rippled outward from her touch, racing along the spiraling ribbons like waves on water. Where the glow passed, the memories inside flared brighter with faces, cities, battles, celebrations becoming Teyvat's story written in the light of the Irminsul.
Then the wave hit something and broke.
Aether frowned. Near Nahida's hand, one of the lilac strands was wrong. A streak of color had crept through it that was dull brown and ashy gray that looked like dried blood or some form of smoke trapped inside. The light inside that vein was murky, flashing in short, jagged bursts instead of flowing.
"Uh… Paimon doesn't remember that being there last time," Paimon said, drifting closer. "Did someone spill something on the world tree?"
Nahida's expression tightened. "I wish it were that simple."
She stepped aside so they could see more clearly. The dark vein coiled upward along the trunk like a scar, splitting into thinner threads that climbed into the branches. Where those threads reached the crown, some of the falling leaves were wrong too where they were dim yellowed slivers that crumbled into ash before they vanished.
She stepped aside so they could see more clearly. The dark vein coiled upward along the trunk like a scar, splitting into thinner threads that climbed into the branches. Where those threads reached the crown, some of the falling leaves were wrong too with dim, yellowed slivers that crumbled into ash before they vanished.
"Irminsul holds the memories of this world," Nahida said quietly. "Every era, every nation, every person who has lived and left a mark on Teyvat. I watch it as often as I can."
She looked up at the wound.
"Recently, I found this. A branch of memories that does not belong to Teyvat at all."
Aether's brows drew together. "Not… from Khaenri'ah? Or beyond the Seven nations?"
"No," she said. "Not from any land I can name on Teyvat. Not even from our sky."
Paimon swallowed, suddenly less flippant. "H-how can you tell?"
Nahida lifted her hand again.
"I'll show you."
Her palm met the trunk and the world lurched violently.
The lilac trunk, the glowing grass, all of the raining leaves shot past them like streaks of light. For a heartbeat Aether felt weightless, as if he were being pulled down a tunnel made of memories, currents of color whipping by on all sides. Then his feet solid ground, but a ground that wet, cold, muddy and filthy. He staggered with his boots into thick mud that sucked at his ankles. The air around him filled his lungs with something no longer sweet or clean but heavy with the damp stench of earth and smoke but with a strong hint of something that felt bitter and metallic.
The three of them were standing in a long narrow ditch that was gouged into the earth with wooden planks lined up on the sides and above them sandbags were stacked unevenly on the walls. Beyond them, only a slab of low, colorless sky was visible filled with an ugly endless gray. Barbed wire snarled in jagged tangles along the rim of the tunnel.
"Eugh!" Paimon yelped, jerking herself up higher so mud wouldn't touch her, "What is this place? Did someone drain out all of the color of the world.
Dull booms rolled across the distance...one, then another, then a chain of them, too steady and deliberate to be thunder. Each impact made the mud tremble under Aether's feet with patches of water on the ground trembling as well. Then just a few arm length away, figures moved around the trench. Men with their shapes strangely blurred around the edges, but their movements were clear enough to make out. They were bent at the shoulders with slow steps, and the kind of tiredness that lived long in bones as if they had been fighting for their whole lives. They wore thick colors, strange metal helmets, and carried long wood and metal sticks that reminded Aether of the muskets that the Fatui skirmishers would use. Some had rubbery masks with round glass eyes and tubes that were dangling from the necks.
Paimon floated closer to Nahida, voice dropping. "A-are these… illusions?"
"Yes and no," Nahida said softly, bare feet somehow untouched by the muck. "This isn't a Domain created to test you. We are inside a memory Irminsul has recorded."
"And this is one of those branches you said doesn't belong to Teyvat?" Aether asked.
Nahida nodded once.
"The earliest strong one I could find," she said. "From another world. Long before the time when the other memories you will soon see take place."
Aether looked up at the oppressive sky. There was no trace of Celestia, no constellations, no familiar arrangement of stars…..just an endless gray.
Before he could comment next, a shrill whistle came with more men coming out into the Trench as they appeared from behind the three blurring through them as if they were not even there. Then the men roared like a lion as they climbed out of the trench with ladders and someone shouting orders to charge. They scrambled over the lip of the Trench and into the unseen field beyond. For a moment, Aether caught a glimpse through a gap through the sandbags. All that he could see in the field was more mud, barb wire, bodies, craters, and smoke. The bodies was the important part that churned Aether's stomach with the numbers he saw more numerous than he could count as they lay there like discarded dolls.
"Wait!" Paimon yelled as one of the soldiers ran straight through her. She flinched as she clutched her arms around herself. "Cold, cold cold! Paimon did not like that!"
"They can't see you," Nahida said gently. "And they can't touch you, not really. You only feel the echo."
Another shell landed somewhere beyond the trench. The air jumped with a heavy whump, then a rain of dirt and smoke rose above the parapet and then rose, hanging there in mid-air like an unfinished painting. The scene around them shivered as the men who had just charged were suddenly back in the trench, shoulders pressed together, mud caked all the way to their knees. The whistle shrieked again, the same as before and the order to charge barked in that harsh language. They surged past Aether and Paimon once more, a blurred current of bodies and hoarse voices. This time Aether watched more carefully. When the first few helmets rose above the sandbags, the world skipped like a breathless instant where everything smeared sideways then snapped to a later moment: bodies scattered in the field, wire torn, new craters gouged into the mud. Then the memory jumped backward again, depositing the soldiers at the ladder as if none of it had happened.
"Nahida, what is going on with this memory?" Aether asked.
Nahida's eyes were sad as she watched the loop repeat and spoke, "Irminsul isn't supposed to hold this. It can only catch fragments when the flow of that world's history brushes near our own. It is trying to determine what is real in this battle.This is the earliest intact memory that I can find in the Irminsul, but it does not end with this. This world at the time in the memory seems to be much different than any nation in Teyvat, they could even be the same level of progress as Khaenri'ah. But the pain of this conflict does not end, I was able to determine that from this war to the next one that a span of 20 years will pass between."
"What do you mean?" Paimon asked as she hugged herself tighter while floating in the air.
Nahida tore her gaze away from the trench and looked at them.
"In this world," she said, "they call this conflict the Great War. When it ends, the people who survive will swear they have seen the worst that war can be. They will redraw borders, punish those they see as guilty, and promise themselves that this was the last time they will let something like this happen."
"But promises are not the same as understanding," Nahida went on. "This war will leave wounds you can't see from this trench. Entire generations who know nothing but loss, nations that feel humiliated, leaders who believe they were cheated instead of defeated. Their fear and anger harden into new ideas, new hatreds… and those take root."
She pointed upward.
Then the gray above them peeled back like smoke torn by a wind. Mud and wood and barbed wire fell away, and the three of them were suddenly standing high above a vast stone square, as if they were ghosts floating in the air. Floodlights cut white spears through the sky. Torches burned in long, straight rows, their flames shivering in the wind and lining the edges of the square like rivers of fire. Red banners hung from every wall and tower like huge sheets of cloth with a white circle in the center and a crooked black cross inside it. The symbol repeated over and over until it seemed to press in from every side. Tens of thousands of people crammed the open space below, a sea of dark uniforms and caps and bare heads. From up here they looked like a field of grain rippling in the wind whenever they shifted or raised their arms all at once.
Paimon's mouth fell open. "Where did? Is this still the same world?!" she blurted.
"Yes," Nahida said quietly. "Roughly twenty of their years have passed since the war in the trenches. This is one of the consequences."
At the far end of the square stood a raised stone platform, flanked by tall columns. More banners hung behind it, so large that the crooked symbol on them was bigger than any human being. Banks of lights shone on the platform, turning it into a glowing island in the darkness.
Aether's gaze was drawn to the figure at its center.
A man stood behind a podium with sheets of paper on it, dressed in a brown uniform with a band bearing the same symbol on his arm. From this distance they couldn't make out every detail of his features, but his posture was rigid, his gestures sharp. As they watched, he leaned forward, gripped the podium, and shouted something into the crowd. The words were in the same harsh language as before, but here they rolled over the crowd like thunder. The people below reacted in waves, roaring back, their voices merging into one enormous, ugly cheer.
Paimon flinched at the sheer volume. "He's so loud…" she muttered. "And they're all just… yelling with him…What's with this ugly toothbrushed mustache man?"
Despite everything, the corner of Aether's mouth twitched. "Paimon," he said under his breath.
Nahida's lips curved in a sad, brief smile. "Your description may not be wrong," she said softly. "But to them, he's more than a strange man with an odd mustache. He is the voice they've chosen to listen to."
"He is one of the leaders who rose from the ruins of the first war," she said quietly. "In this country, at this time, many people feel humiliated and afraid. Their money is worth less than paper, their pride is wounded, and they want someone to tell them it isn't their fault."
Down below, the man sliced the air with his hand, his voice rising and falling in practiced waves. Each time he hit certain words, the crowd answered in perfect unison, arms snapping up in that stiff, unnatural salute.
"He gives them that answer," Nahida went on. "He tells them they were betrayed, not beaten. That their suffering was caused by enemies inside and outside their borders. He takes the pain left by the first war and shapes it into blame."
The chant rolled over the square again, rhythmic and relentless. From this height, the crowd's movements looked almost mechanical—tens of thousands of bodies moving like a single creature.
Aether frowned. "They all just… agree," he said. "No one questions him?"
"Some do," Nahida replied. "But in this memory, they are not the ones invited to stand here. This rally is meant to show unity and strength, not doubt. The ones who cheer believe that if they follow him, their nation will rise, and they will never feel weak again."
Paimon's nose wrinkled. "So they had one giant, horrible war… and instead of learning not to do it again, they listened to this guy?"
"Many of them do," Nahida replied. "Some because they are afraid. Some because they are angry. Some because it is easier to cling to simple blame than to face how complicated their pain truly is." Her gaze darkened as the leader pointed into the distance, words pounding out in a relentless rhythm. "He gives them a story where they are always the victim or the hero. Never at fault."
As if to prove her point, the man on the platform drove his fist down on the podium and leaned forward, face flushed, voice rising to a harsh, cutting pitch. The crowd quieted just enough to catch his next words.
"Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Führer!"
The slogan cracked across the square like lightning. Tens of thousands of throats roared it back in perfect unison, the three short phrases slamming into each other like hammer-blows. Again he shouted it, again they answered, arms snapping up in that rigid salute until the whole mass of humanity moved like a single, jagged shadow.
Paimon flinched, hands flying to her ears. "What did they say?" she shouted over the roar. "It sounds awful even without knowing the words!"
Nahida's eyes stayed fixed on the man below.
She said quietly, "that they are one people, one realm, under one leader. That everything they are should be bound to him."
Aether was suddenly disgusted by what he was seeing.
"I think that this is enough Nahida."
Then Nahida nodded.
"...You're right," she said softly. "For tonight, this is enough."
She raised her hand.
The sound didn't stop all at once. It thinned, like someone was turning down a great, terrible instrument, the words stretching into a distant hum. The floodlights dulled, their white spears fading into pale streaks. The red banners bled into violet and white, like paint running in the rain.
Below, the crowd became smudges of gray. The rigid salutes softened, stilled, then froze entirely as the whole square cracked along invisible lines.
Dust and stone and torchlight all shattered into motes of lilac light, where they were back beneath the Irminsul. The valley's sky glowed with soft pink and gold again, and violet grass rippled at their feet, luminous and clean. The giant tree towered above them, trunk braided from pale lilac and white ribbons that pulsed gently with the flow of Teyvat's memories.
Paimon let out a long, shaky breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding.
"Paimon's ears are still ringing…" she muttered, rubbing the sides of her head. "And her stomach is doing flips. Seriously, that world is the worst."
Aether didn't answer right away; instead, he stared up at the scar, at the way the wrong-colored threads had started to spread into the branches.
"This is all one story," he said quietly. "The trenches, that rally… it's the same world, moving toward the same cliff."
"Yes," Nahida said. Her voice sounded very small against the vastness of the tree. "Irminsul shows me their time like the rings inside a trunk. The war in the mud, the years of fear and anger, the rise of leaders who feed that anger… all of it is connected. And none of it belongs here."
She stepped closer to the dark vein and laid her hand where lilac light met ashy gray.
"Every time I touch this branch," she went on, "I feel more of their history pressing in. More rallies. More speeches. More decisions made in rooms far from any battlefield. Then lines on maps start to move. Borders vanish. Armies march. But I needed you to see the beginning, "The roots of their second great war. Not just in the mud, but in their hearts. So that when I show you what comes next, later… you'll remember that it grew from here."
Aether tore his gaze away from the scar and looked at her.
"You said this second war is happening now," he said. "While we're here in Fontaine, in Liyue, in Mondstadt… that world is already burning again because of choices like this."
Nahida met his eyes. For a moment, the weight of an entire nation's god looked out through a child's face.
"Yes," she said. "Right now, somewhere under a sky you haven't seen yet, this man and others like him are making decisions that will plunge their world into a war even greater than the last. And somewhere woven into those events, Irminsul's foreign branch grows thicker and more tangled."
Paimon hovered a little closer to Aether, her usual flippancy gone.
"So what do we do?" she asked. "We can't just… jump over there and bonk him on the head, can we? Paimon votes we start with that, but Paimon also guesses it's not that simple…"
A faint, weary smile touched Nahida's lips.
"No," she said. "It's not that simple. For now, you can't cross over at all. The doors between our worlds are still small, unstable. The ones that exist are opened by others….by Fatui experiments, by desperate humans in that world grasping for power they don't understand."
She let her hand fall from the scarred trunk and turned to face them fully.
"The reason those doors between worlds exist at all," Nahida said, "is because that man's nation reached for power it did not understand… and the Fatui answered."
Aether's expression sharpened. "You mean… the Fatui found them?"
"In a way, they found each other," Nahida replied. "Their scholars built a machine in the far north of their land... Instead, it tore open a crack between their sky and ours."
"On our side," Nahida continued, "that aperture opened in Snezhnaya's winter. The Tsaritsa felt the intrusion. She sent her envoys to look through the crack and decide whether this new world would be a threat, a tool, or prey. When they stepped into that bunker, the first true meeting between your Fatui and that man's Reich began."
Paimon swallowed. "Let Paimon guess," she said weakly. "They did not decide to just shake hands and go home."
"No," Nahida said. "Your Harbinger spoke with one of their generals, then vanished back through the gate with a warning: 'Tell your leader we know you are there. We will return when he is ready to speak.' "After that spectacle, they signed a pact. On this world, they called it part of their 'Tripartite' alliance. Between their Reich, other empires of that world… and now Snezhnaya. On Teyvat's side, your Fatui named it the Pact of Iron and Frost as a formal binding of the Tsaritsa's realm to their war."
Paimon's face twisted. "So the Fatui chose them," she said. "Out of all the worlds they could have made friends with, they picked… those guys?"
"They chose a world already on the edge of catastrophe," Nahida replied, "That pact is the moment two histories truly began to entwine. It's when this branch stopped being a distant echo and became a living wound. From then on, whenever Fatui acted in that war Irminsul had no choice but to remember."
Nahida turned back to them, and some of the steel left her eyes, replaced by a tired gentleness.
"That is enough for one night," she said. "I showed you more than I intended already. Any further, and I fear I'd drag your hearts too deeply into a war that is not yet yours."
Paimon let out a breath that was half sigh, half whine. "Paimon agrees," she muttered. "Paimon would like to stop seeing mud and creepy banners now…"
"You needed to know that Teyvat did not stumble into this by accident," Nahida continued.
Aether nodded slowly. "And we can't do anything about it. Not yet."
Nahida looked at him.
"Not yet," she agreed. "For now, knowing is enough. You've seen their first war, and the seeds of the second. You understand that what's coming there did not appear from nowhere and that the Fatui did not just 'stumble' onto it."
She stepped back from the trunk.
"I'll keep watching this branch," she said. "I'll slow what I can, divert what I can. And when the cracks between our worlds grow larger…maybe a door opens that is wide enough for you to reach, then I'll call you again."
Paimon huffed, folding her arms. "Next time, Paimon votes for a nice dream first. Maybe a food dream. Then the horrible war stuff."
Nahida giggled once, a small, real sound that lightened the air just a little.
"I'll see what I can do," she said, "For now… you've both done enough. You've carried other people's memories long enough for one night. It's time to return to your own."
Her small figure grew distant, framed against the faint outline of the tree. For a moment, Aether could still see her hand resting on the dark vein, as if she were holding it in place by sheer will.
Aether up to the soft tick of clockwork somewhere beyond the thin hotel walls. The ceiling of the room swam into focus above him toward the window, faint blue light spilling around the curtains. He exhaled slowly, feeling the tension ease out of his shoulders.
On the other side of the bed, Paimon was sprawled across her massive pillow like someone had dropped a doll and forgotten to pose it properly. One arm dangled off the edge, little fingers twitching. She snored very softly, then flinched and rubbed at one ear even in her sleep.
"Mmm… too loud…" she mumbled, face scrunching up. "Tell… mustache guy… to shut up…"
Aether huffed a quiet breath that was almost a laugh.
"So you do remember some of it," he murmured.
He lay there for another few moments, listening to the waterfall, to Paimon's faint grumbling, to the calm, familiar noises of Fontaine. The dream clung to the edges of his mind: violet grass, Irminsul's shining trunk, the dark vein running through it like a scar… and beyond that, mud, gray skies, torches, and a slogan that cracked across the air like lightning.
Behind him, Paimon jolted fully awake with a tiny yelp.
"Yeah," he said. "It's morning. And… we'll talk about the dream. After breakfast."
Paimon hovered shakily into the air, still rubbing her ears. "Paimon votes we start with something sweet," she muttered. "Paimon needs sugar to erase… whatever that was."
Aether stood, stretching the last of the stiffness out of his limbs, and moved to the window. He pulled the curtain back just enough to see Fontaine's sky—soft, clear, touched by early light. The falls glittered in the distance with the Automata ticked along their rails. People were beginning to stir on the streets below.
He let the sight sink in.
"Yeah," he said quietly, mostly to himself. "Let's enjoy it while we can."
Meanwhile in a different sky in Washington, DC with a morning light slated in through the tall windows of the Oval Office.
The rain had finally stopped, but even then the city of Washington., DC was wrapped in a damp gray that matched the tone of the shock and unease felt about the release of the news of the Nazi alliance with an unknown foreign power. Inside the White House, the air smelled of tobacco, paper, and a faint trace of wool dampened by weather. In the oval office, a fraile old Franklin D Roosevelt that could be as white on his face, he sat in a chair behind the resolute desk with his cigarette holder angled jauntily on his mouth with heavy smoke curling toward the ceiling. Before him, the morning papers lay spread on top of his desk…The New York Times…..The Washington Post…. The Herald. Each newspaper had the same grainy photograph in the top half of the first page.
This photo had Hitler at a podium with an arm extended in a stiff salute. Beside him was a smaller unfamiliar figures in dark formal dress. One of them had eyes that didn't quite look right, even in the black and white newsprint. The Caption in the New York times said:
REICH ANNOUNCES ALLIANCES WITH 'REALM OF SNEZHAYA'
New Pact proclaimed as an Extension of the Tripartite Agreement
Beneath it was even in a thinner type:
Berlin sources Snezhnaya as 'another world' with Nazi propaganda elaborate as ever.
Roosevelt removed the cigarette holder and tapped it onto the photo with his lips twisting in wry irritation.
"Another world," he muttered, " They've run out of countries to bully, so now they annexing fairy tales."
A discreet knock sounded at the side door.
"Come." he called.
The door opened with a naval aide stepping in with a raincoat folded over his arm.
"Mr. President," the Aide said, "diplomatic bag from Berlin just came over. They thought you'd want this one straightaway."
"Straightaway?" he echoed. "From the Germans? What's our ambassador done now, told Ribbentrop a joke?"
"Not this time, sir," the aide said. "The log shows a personal dispatch from Naval Attaché Henry. Marked 'Personal and Confidential for the President.'"
Roosevelt's hand stilled on the newspaper.
"Pug," he said softly.
Something in his tone made the messenger stand even straighter.
"Set it on my desk." Roosevelt said.
The aide stepped forward with the leather pouch creaking softly as it was set down on the desk.
"Thank you, Commander," Roosevelt said. "You're dismissed."
"Sir," the man replied, backing out and closing the door behind him.
For a moment Roosevelt just looked at the pouch, cigarette holder dangling between his fingers. Rain tapped faintly at the windows; somewhere deeper in the West Wing a phone rang and was snatched up before the second ring.
He reached into his vest, took out a small brass key, and turned the lock.
Inside were several routine cables and, tucked on top, a thick envelope stamped in red:
PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL
FOR THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
Roosevelt grunted.
"Victor never did waste ink," he muttered.
He slit it open and unfolded the first page.
The letterhead read: American Embassy, Berlin, Germany. The date was a few weeks back which was about right for something that had to cross a war-torn Atlantic under neutrality rules. He began to read, eyes scanning the familiar, tight Navy type. He began to read the dispatch:
Mr. President,
Today the Reich publicly proclaimed what until now has been discussed only in private rooms and corridors: an alliance with a power calling itself the 'Realm of Snezhnaya.'
His gaze flicked to the newspaper photo, then back to the page.
Henry described the ceremony at the chancery: the flags, the Party elite, the Wehrmacht brass, the bombast. At first, he admitted, he'd assumed "another world" was just one more piece of Nazi pageantry for domestic consumption.
Then came the part that made Roosevelt's hand still.
My initial assumption, that this 'other world' was metaphor, has been revised completely. I witnessed a demonstration by one of their envoys that cannot be explained by any earthly physics known to me or to German officers present. I unfortunately in sound mind, Mr. President, do believe that it is possible that this 'Teyvat' that the Fatui come from does exist and the Nazi's have 'achieved' the means to reach whether intentional or not.
The next paragraphs laid it out in Henry's dry, precise language: the woman with the strange eyes, the small pistol thrown into the air above the courtyard, the way it stopped and blossomed into a fireball that hung in place, mushrooming upward without blast or shrapnel. No gunpowder. No wires. No crane. Just… power…..power caused by one of the Envoys present at the signing of the Pact of Frost and Steel
Roosevelt inhaled smoke and forgot to exhale for a beat.
"Good Lord, Pug," he murmured.
He read on.
Henry named them as best he could: Pantalone and Arlecchino who are Harbingers of an organization called the Fatui, answerable to a sovereign known only as the Tsaritsa of Snezhnaya. He noted how Hitler had spoken of them as proof of destiny, while one of the German generals.. A man named von Roon…..had looked, in Pug's words, "like a man who has just realized he may not be the most dangerous animal in his own cage."
One section was underlined twice:
In my judgment, Mr. President, the Führer believes he has acquired heaven's endorsement. I suspect instead that he has invited a different order of predators into Europe…..ones who talk like allies and think like experimenters. I strongly recommend we treat this 'Snezhnaya' as neither myth nor miracle, but as a hostile power with its own interests, now entangled with his. The fact remains that Arlecchino is a woman capable of summoning a pistol out of a persons hand and send high then destroy it with an explosion that can create a mushroom cloud without any sign of explosives that attached that can be noticed…just a scythe that she materializes….is very concerning to questions to what this war will become. The fact that Arlecchino's eyes are not natural with red X's concerns me to what else she can do.
Roosevelt leaned back slowly, the chair creaking under his weight.
"The war we thought we understood…" he murmured.
He let the sentence hang, unfinished, as smoke curled lazily toward the ceiling. Outside, a streetcar bell clanged faintly, swallowed by the wet hush hanging over the city.
"…isn't the war we're fighting anymore," he finished under his breath.
He continued to read more
For a long moment he just sat there, the letter open on the blotter, the ink on Pug's underlined lines staring back at him like a diagnosis. Almost all of Europe under the occupation of the Nazis and the Italians….London still standing, but by a thread under the blitz being done by the German luftwaffe….The Atlantic a hunting ground for U-boats to sail and find British ships to sink before said ships can even deliver vital cargo for the British war effort. Now this...whatever it is…an alliance of fantasy but real…. Roosevelt pinched the bridge of his nose, feeling the dull ache that had been his companion more and more these days since the war started….oh how he missed the first days of his administration where his main worry was helping America get jobs and food through this depression when it was at its worse….now those days seemed more calmer and less fantasy like.
"Predators and experimenters," he muttered, eyes dropping back to Pug's neat, underlined hand. "As if Adolf wasn't enough of both on his own…"
He reached for the telephone.
The operator came on at once. "Yes, Mr. President?"
"Get me Secretary Hull," Roosevelt said. "Then Admiral Stark. We'll have a quiet little council this afternoon. Call it a general war review for the log…..and don't trouble the press office with it."
"Yes, sir."
He set the receiver back in its cradle and sat for a moment with his hand resting on it, thumb rubbing absently along the bakelite.
On the desk, the morning papers screamed in bold type about a bizarre alliance with a "realm of snow," most of the column inches devoted to mocking phrases about Wagnerian fantasies and Nazi myth-making. Right beside them, Victor Henry's sober lines described a woman calling a weapon into the air and turning it into a standing sun. Roosevelt pushed the newspapers aside until Pug's letter lay alone in front of him.
"All right, Victor," he said softly. "You and I will assume it's real until the universe apologizes."
He rang the buzzer by his knee.
The door opened almost at once; the same naval aide leaned in.
"Sir?"
"Come in, Commander," Roosevelt said. "Close the door."
The aide did, stepping forward to stand at attention.
"I want a cable drafted to Berlin," Roosevelt said. "Eyes only, for Commander Victor Henry. You'll take it over to State yourself and watch them send it, and it doesn't go into any file a clerk without a clearance can sneeze on. Understood?"
"Yes, Mr. President."
Roosevelt tapped the open letter with two fingers.
"Tell him his report is received and appreciated," he said. "Tell him to stay close to these… Harbingers. Discreetly….Names….habits….anything that looks like a limit to their tricks. And tell him that at least one old Navy man on this side of the Atlantic isn't treating 'Snezhnaya' as a bedtime story."
The aide's mouth twitched in something like grim satisfaction. "I'll see to it, sir."
"And Commander?" Roosevelt called out.
"Sir?" The Aide responded turning back around from walking.
Roosevelt's gray eyes met his.
"From this moment on," he said quietly, "as far as this office is concerned, that 'realm of snow' that Snezhnaya is a potential belligerent power. We will not say that in public. Not yet. But when War Plans talks about German capabilities, they will start penciling in a line marked 'unknown: Snezhnaya.' Make sure Stark understands that."
"Yes, Mr. President," the aide said. "I'll pass it along."
"Good man, now go." Roosevelt instructed.
Roosevelt turned his chair toward the tall windows. The Washington Monument still speared the low clouds, a pale needle lost in gray. He imagined, not for the first time, looking down on this capital from somewhere else….from a sky that wasn't Earth's at all. A higher vantage point. A colder one.
He could almost picture her there: the Tsaritsa, whoever she was, looking at Europe the way he sometimes looked at the globe in the corner of the room…..moving pieces, testing lines, seeing nations as squares on a board.
"She's not on our side," he said aloud, to no one. "She's not on his side either. She's on hers."
He let that settle, made a small face, and reached for his cigarette holder again.
"In this war, there are devils you know," he muttered. " and devils you don't. And now devils from out of town apparently."
He lit a fresh cigarette, then swiveled his chair enough to see the big globe standing near the window. Slowly, he rolled it under his hand. The Atlantic slid by, then Europe…..