April 20th, 1941
Berghof, Obersalzberg, Bavaria Germany
The great hall of the Berghof had been arranged for the special occasion that was occurring where the coffered ceiling rose high in a grid of dark oak squares that absorbed the upper light and gave the room a sense of heights. The red floors filled the center of the room with some marble steps behind the couches. This location is considered Hitler's personal favorite retreat, where he spent much time here since his rise to power in 1933, is the location where Hitler makes a number of the important, secretive, and darkest definitions of the Third Reich.
The fire in the recessed fireplace had been burning since the midmorning and had reached the stage that it no longer needed tending. Near it was a gathering of many people of the most important of the Nazi political and tyrannical apparatus. Hitler occupied the armchair nearest the fireplace that was always his. He had been in a happy mood for the occasion especially, where Yugoslavia had fallen, Greece was collapsing and counting its final days, and Rommel was at the Egyptian border. The morning's briefings had confirmed what he had been telling the General Staff for months, and the afternoon had the quality of a vindication that had not yet finished arriving.
Martin Bormann sat nearby with a leather folder he had not opened at all during the party, but ensured that the information would always be satisfactory to the Führer and satisfactory to his own career prospects. Göring occupied the longest sofa with the ease of a large man who has decided that furniture exists to accommodate him rather than the reverse. He was celebrating how his Luftwaffe had single handedly destroyed the Yugoslav's in the bombing campaigns while not making any mention of the contributions of the Fatui. Eva Braun sat at the far of the seating area with her own personal 8mm camera where she took film of everyone in attendance. In her film, she took footage of smiling Hitler, Borman, Göring, and other guests as music played by a privately selected group of Bavarian music players.
In her footage, Eva braun took film of Arlechhino sitting at the long long along the wall that was right beside the fireplace. In those fifteen seconds of colored film taken, the camera caught something that Eva braun would not have known how to name.
Arlecchino sat perfectly with stillness that looked at a different world than what she was currently in, where behind those red X-eyes were concern. Her hands rested in her lap with controlled placement. However, those red crosses in her eyes, which Eva Braun's camera rendered simply as two pale points of light in the firelight room were directed at a point somewhere beyond the place that she was at. Eva Braun lowered the camera after fifteen seconds and turned it toward Hitler, who was more photogenic and whose expression did not make the back of her neck feel cold in a way she could not explain.
Just then the most important guests to the party besides Hitler have just arrived with Reichsführer-SS Henrich Himmler arriving in his black and white SS uniform and Harbinger il Dottore entering the room. Many of the people in the room looked especially at il Dottore with questioning expressions on them. Out of all the harbingers that the Third Reich encountered since the signing of the Pact of Iron and Frost, Dottore was the one that appeared least outside of Columbina. This harbinger had long blue hair with a pointed beak shaped black mask that covered his eyes, while wearing a long white coat over a blue dress shirt and cravat that included a raven feeling to his shoulders.
The Bavarian musicians did not miss a note, while several officers near the door found reasons to examine their drinks. However, Arlecchino's reaction was the most unique compared to everyone else as the stillness that she had worn when Eva Braun's camera found her was gone. In its place was something that the Germans nearest her could not have correctly named because they lacked the context for it, but would have recognized in its texture: the particular controlled rigidity of a person who has just seen something walk through a door that they had been hoping, on some level, would not walk through it. Her jaw set with her hands immediately closed in a loose restraint. The red crosses in her eyes had sharpened from their distant unfocused quality into something immediately and directed that included hatred, disgust, and annoyedness. She did not move from the couch or speak, but simply watched him.
Hitler rose from his armchair and walked up to him.
"Herr Doktor," he said, extending his hand.
Dottore looked at the extended hand for a moment as if he was completing a social valuation and then took the hand with a shake.
"Mein Führer," he said with a hint of mocking that no one caught and his German was complete with no accent.
Dottore reached into his coat and produced a slim dark case, where he extended it to Hitler with a bow of his head.
"The Tsaritsa extends her felicitations on the occasion of your fifty-second birthday," he said. "She wished you to have something that reflects the nature of what our alliance is capable of producing."
Hitler opened the case himself where inside the Iron Cross was recognizable in its shape to everyone within sight of it. The metal held a luminescence that no German forge could produce with it pale and cold in the deep color of a color that was like deep ice. The cross-arms were proportioned correctly, the dimensions faithful to the decoration that it resembled and at the intersection of the arms was the pale star of the Fatui. Hitler looked at the pale star at the intersection of the arms for a moment and then he looked up.
"Tell the Tsaritsa," he said, "that her nation's craftsmen honor a soldier's decoration."
"I will convey it," Dottore said.
Hitler turned the Iron Cross once more in his hands, the pale light moving across his fingers, then handed it to an adjutant who understood without being told that it was to be placed somewhere appropriate and treated accordingly.
"Herr Doktor," Hitler said "There are matters I wished to discuss with you directly. Private matters with Himmler present."
"I am at your disposal," Dottore said as he followed Hitler and Himmler to the balcony.
The balcony door closed behind the three of them and the noise of the party became a muffled thing, present but distant, belonging to a different conversation entirely. Hitler moved to the railing and stood with his hands resting on it, looking out at the dark shape of the Untersberg across the valley. Himmler stood to his left, hands clasped behind his back, his spectacles reflecting a faint rectangle of light from the hall behind them. Dottore stood to his right and waited with the patience of a man for whom waiting was not an expenditure but simply a state.
"Himmler has briefed me on the broad shape of your proposal for our activities behind our forces as we march into Russia," Hitler said, without turning from the valley, "I want to hear it from you directly. Hiimmler expressed immense euthanism at what you were suggesting."
"Of course, but before I move on to the proposal that Pierro approved for me, I was especially sent to you due to…..well…." Dottore said with a smirk, "how should I say a nasty annoying fly that follows the Fatui around and has landed in your Reich."
Hitler turned from the railing as the word 'fly' had not offended him but instead interested him.
"Explain," he said.
Dottore clasped his hands behind his back in a posture that mirrored Himmler's, though on Dottore it carried the quality of a professor arriving at the portion of his lecture that he personally found the most stimulating.
"His name, or the name that he uses, is Aether," Dottore began. "He is also called the Traveler. He is not Snezhnayan. He is not, in the conventional sense, from Teyvat at all. He arrived in our world some years ago under circumstances that remain unclear even to our intelligence apparatus, and since that arrival he has made himself an extraordinary nuisance to the Fatui on three separate occasions."
Hitler's eyes narrowed but he said nothing. Himmler's spectacles caught the faint light from the hall behind them as he tilted his head.
"In Mondstadt," Dottore continued with the tone of a man reciting from a file that he had long since memorized, "he disrupted a Fatui diplomatic operation that had been cultivated over months and personally confronted one of our Harbingers. The operation was not trivial and he dismantled it in a matter of days with the help of local elements. In Liyue, the same pattern repeated where he involved himself in a crisis that intersected with the objectives of another Harbinger. That Harbinger, the Eleventh, is known to you already."
"Tartaglia," Hitler said as the name had reached Berlin through multiple channels since the Port Affair in New York.
"The same," Dottore confirmed. "And in Inazuma, the damage was considerably worse. The Fatui had invested significant resources in the internal conflict of that nation, where we were providing support to both sides of a civil war in order to weaken the state as a whole. It is a method we have employed before with success. The Traveler intervened, exposed the operation, and the Harbinger responsible, Signora, challenged him to a duel in front of the throne of the shogun of Inazuma."
Dottore paused for a moment to let the moment settle into their minds.
"And what happened in this duel?" Himmler asked with curiosity.
"Oh, Signora lost but not just the duel. As per Inazuma tradition of the rules of the duel before the throne, the Shogun has her formally executed by the Raiden Shogun's Musou no Hitotachi…and do mean formally executed. As I had attended her funeral in Snezhnograd with the other harbingers, there was enough ash left from the execution to maybe sweep it under the rugs of your Berghof."
The balcony was quiet for a moment. Himmler looked at Dottore as if trying to determine whether the man behind the mask had just made a joke or delivered a clinical statement. It was, in fact, both, which was part of what made il Dottore difficult for the Germans to read. The man operated in a register where humor and horror occupied the same sentence without apparent friction.
"One man," Hitler said slowly, "caused the death of one of your Harbingers."
"One man created the conditions," Dottore corrected. "The Shogun delivered the stroke. But yes, the Traveler was the architect of it. Signora was the Eighth Harbinger. She had served the Tsaritsa for longer than your Reich had existed. And she is dead because this individual understood the local rules better than she did and used them against her."
"And this man is now in Berlin," Himmler said.
"In Berlin," Dottore confirmed. "Specifically. And if left unattended for some time, who knows what he could build against you in your Reich? In a sense, in your National Socialist ideology and your book, he is worse than any jew that threatens your pure world."
The effect of the sentence was immediate and visible. Hitler's posture changed as his shoulders drew back and chin lifted a fraction. Dottore had found the frequency, and he had found it deliberately, because Dottore understood that every man had a language in which threats sounded loudest and Hitler's was written in the pages of his own book. Himmler, for his part, watched the Führer's reaction with the attentiveness of a man who understood that when Hitler's body moved in that particular way, policy followed shortly after.
"Recently," Dottore continued, "two of your Gestapo agents were assaulted on the steps of a church in the Hedwigskirche district. One sustained injuries to the shoulder and arm. The other suffered cracked ribs, facial damage, and a concussion. Neither man was struck by a fist or any conventional weapon. The force that hit them was atmospheric in nature where no natural weather could produce it."
"The Traveler commands what we call Anemo," Dottore said. "The elemental manipulation of wind. In Teyvat, this is unremarkable. Here on Earth, it would appear either miraculous or impossible depending on the observer. Your agents did not understand what struck them. I do."
"The report described the assailant as a blond male of foreign origin, accompanied by an unidentified figure concealed beneath his coat," Himmler said. "It was filed as a routine assault on state officers."
"It was not routine," Dottore said, "It was him."
"And he is somewhere in the Hedwigskirche district," Hitler said, "In my city and my reich, hiding like a rat hides from a catcher."
"Rats are found," Dottore said, "when one knows where they feed. Someone in that district is sheltering him. A church, a sympathizer, someone with a back room and enough quiet conviction to hide a stranger that the state is looking for. He has not been sighted since the incident, which tells me that whoever is harboring him knows enough to keep him indoors and out of view."
"Then we will turn that district inside out," Himmler said with flat certainty, "Every building, every cellar, every church."
Dottore raised one hand slightly.
"A general sweep would find him," Dottore acknowledged. "It would also alert him that we know his location, and if he possesses even a fraction of the resourcefulness that he has demonstrated across three nations, he will find a way to move before your men close the net. The Traveler does not panic. That is part of what makes him difficult. He thinks, he adapts, and he uses whatever is available to him."
He paused as if selecting the next words from several options and choosing the most precise.
"I would suggest a quieter approach," Dottore said, "Through the Northland Bank's Berlin office, I have already arranged for a bounty circular to be issued. Two hundred thousand Reichsmarks. Kill or capture, either outcome serves our purposes. The circular includes a physical description, the floating companion as an identifying marker, and a specific warning regarding his elemental capabilities so that whoever encounters him does not repeat the error your Gestapo agents made on those church steps."
"Two hundred thousand," Hitler repeated.
"The circular will reach every policeman, every block warden, every informant in Berlin," Dottore continued, "Two hundred thousand Reichsmarks turns the entire city into a net. Every neighbor becomes an observer. Every shopkeeper becomes a pair of eyes. He cannot stay hidden forever, because the people hiding him are also the people who could profit from revealing him, and that arithmetic works in our favor with every day that passes."
Hitler looked at Himmler, while Himmler looked back at him.
"Issue it," Hitler said.
Himmler nodded once, "It will reach every desk in Berlin by morning."
"There are other matters I wished to discuss with you regarding our preparations for the eastern campaign," Dottore said as his voice shifted to a register that was quieter and more precise, "Matters that Pierro has authorized me to present personally.But they require a different setting and more time than this evening allows. I would suggest a private meeting within the week, with the Reichsführer present."
Hitler regarded him for a moment and nodded.
"Bormann will arrange it," he said.
"Excellent," Dottore replied.
He turned back toward the valley and for a moment the three of them stood at the railing.
"The Traveler will surface," he said, almost to himself. "They always do. It is the nature of the specimen. He sees injustice and inserts himself into it. Consistent across every theater in which we have encountered him. In Mondstadt, in Liyue, in Inazuma with always the same compulsion to intervene."
He smiled beneath the beaked mask.
"In a city like Berlin," he said, "there is no shortage of injustice to attract him."
American Embassy, Pariser Platz, Berlin
April 20th, 1941
The American Embassy at Pariser Platz was still a building that had a normal procedure. Even with Commander Henry absent from Berlin, the place continued in its accustomed rhythm of things like memoranda, cables, interviews, guarded conversations, and the quiet traffic of men whose business was to observe history without ever admitting. Colonel Forrest was gathering his own information through an inspection provided by the Wehrmacht. Everyone in the building was busy still with clerks crossed between offices with typed memoranda, while telephones and typewriters rang.
Inside one of the upper offices, Leslie Slote sat behind a desk covered in the ordinary burdens of bureaucratic diplomatic work. On his desk were files to and from washington, the latest diplomatic understandings of these Fatui, internal notes, and the administrative paper associated with his impending transfer to Moscow. Originally, he was suppose to be already transferred to Moscow by now after officiating Natalie Jastrow and Bryon Henry get married at Lisbon and tried to help get Natalie's uncle Arron…well, help Natalie forced her uncle get the hell out of Siena and Europe altogether. However, the whole Fatui and Snezhnaya business suddenly changed and delayed his transfer where he was sent to the embassy in Berlin.
He had read the reports of what was really going on in Yugoslavia and Greece. Needless to say, Leslie thought that the idea of these Fatui being Wagnerian propaganda is out the window and the British were playing for that disregard. However, some of the other things that disturbed him more were the reports that came but were not confirmed. One of them being about a Harbinger named Dottore visiting villages in Yugoslavia with the SS not far behind him. Not enough information was provided on what these visits were about, but they were all villages near routes used by Fatui units employing their so-called Eiskrieg methods. Slote did not know why but just reading the reports gave him a bad feeling.
He leaned back slightly in his chair and looked across the desk at the open files. Then a knock came at the door.
"Come."
A junior clerk entered carrying a folder and several typed sheets, "Transfer papers from administration, sir."
"Moscow?"
"Yes, sir."
Slote took the folder, opened it, and scanned the first page without visible reaction. The clerk remained standing for a moment, uncertain whether any further words were required.
"Anything else?" Slote asked.
The clerk hesitated. "A translated police circular, sir. Increased attention to foreign nationals, irregular movements, suspicious persons. I thought Colonel Forrest might want a copy as well."
"He probably does. Leave one for him."
The clerk set the papers down and withdrew. The door closed behind him with the quiet finality common to buildings where everyone had learned to keep voices measured.
For a minute Slote did not move. Then he rose, crossed to the window, and looked out over Pariser Platz. The square possessed the same unnerving quality the city always seemed to possess now: everything in order, everything watched, everything arranged so carefully that the violence underneath appeared almost theoretical until it was not. Warsaw had cured him of underestimating what orderly men could do when given ideology and administrative confidence.
Behind him, on the desk, the open file still showed Dottore's name. Before he look into the file any further, there was another knock but much softer.
"Come."
The door opened only partway. One of the locally employed German staff stood there, discreet and cautious.
"Mr. Slote," he said in careful English, "forgive the interruption. There is a matter which may be nothing. I thought it better not to place it in the general basket."
He held out a folded piece of paper, but Slote did not take it at once as he looked at the man's eyes with a question look.
"From whom?"
The man hesitated just enough to suggest that the answer was imperfect.
"It came through a private hand, sir. Indirectly. I was told only that it must reach you personally."
For the first time that afternoon, something in Slote's expression changed.
"Personally?"
"Yes, sir."
Slote extended his hand.
The note was ordinary vanilla, folded twice, unremarkable in every visible way except that it had bypassed procedure. He looked once at the messenger, who had already lowered his eyes in the manner of a man signaling to Slote that he preferred not to possess any more knowledge of the matter than he already did.
"Thank you," Slote said.
The man nodded and withdrew as he closed the door with a soft click. Slote only held the note between his fingers, but turned it over where it had no name on the outside, no return address. Then he opened it, where he could immediately see that the handwriting was cramped and the writer was writing it in a hurry. He read it once, quickly, to get the shape of it, where it immediately had his attention. Then he read the note again and slowly to process each and every word.
You have probably never heard of me, but let me assure you that the Fatui know me by name and deeds. I am not a German or with the Fatui. I am from the same world as the Fatui called Teyvat, well I travelled there. But please, here me out; In Teyvat, news of the alliance has hit our world and some people are concerned. I know that your country is neutral, but I was intending to land in Kent but something went wrong and now, me and my friend are trapped here. This is not the first conflict the Fatui have involved themselves in. In our world, they did the same in a nation called Inazuma but were supporting both sides secretly just to weaken the nation. We beg you to hear us out and come to the name of the shop that I have included. I can prove to you that what I am writing to you is true.
Signed Aether also known as the Traveller
Slote finished the note and did not put it down. For several seconds, he simply sat there with it in his hand, his eyes still on the last line. He went through a number of possibilities that went through his head. The first option was that it could obviously be a trap designed by the Germans. The diplomatic explosion from Tartaglia's transformation in New York was still fresh in the shocked minds of the Embassy staff and the current chargé d'affaires in Berlin. This might be a German provocation, or a Fatui one, designed to see which American diplomat might be induced to step out of procedure and into embarrassment. If the Fatui were behind it, perhaps they hoped to further destabilize the American position just as Tartaglia's framework to President Roosevelt was spreading through diplomatic channels in the wake of what people were already beginning to call the Tartaglia Port Affair. This concern would have been enough to call for caution.
However, the second possibility haunted Slote and already he disliked it more as he looked back at those words about this person being from the same world as the Fatui. Under ordinary circumstances, no sane official would have permitted such a phrase to survive the first reading. It belonged to the category of things sorted into private amusement, not diplomatic consideration. Yet the note had reached him personally. It invoked the Fatui not as rumor or theater but as a matter already understood. More troubling still, it did not sound like the work of a crank. Instead, it was hurried, compressed, written by someone frightened and trying not to show it. Slote had seen it many times from people in Warsaw before and during the Nazi invasion of Poland, where people (especially Jews) were trying to leave the country to escape the anti-sementic Germans and their racial Nuremberg policies.
Then his eyes moved again to the reference about Inazuma, where the name would mean nothing to him itself. Secret support to both sides of a conflict in order to weaken the whole of a nation, even six months ago, might have sounded melodramatic. However, these days common sense was no longer functioning the way that it used to.Then he read the name in the signature where said "Aether, also known as the Traveller." Leslie then folded the paper once and then unfolded it again and looked at the shop name written below, which somehow gave the message its weight. Cranks demanded belief, traps would invite haste…however, the way that he was reading the note, it was only asking for an interview with a location attached that seemed so ordinary that gave only risk than a trap.
He remained seated a moment longer, the paper still in his hand, while the office held its ordinary silence around him as he tried to make a decision.
Hours later at Marta's Shop
The shop had grown quieter as the afternoon wore on as Paimon and Aether hid upstairs for the entire day, which had been more difficult than either of them had expected. Marta had warned them early that morning that too many kinds of people came through her front door for them to risk even a glimpse from below, which was apparently justified. Customers came and went in a steady, carefully ordinary rhythm where housewives needed mending done, an elderly man wanting a coat patched before the weather turned again, and a Nazi Party functionary collecting an altered jacket.
From upstairs, Berlin reached them in fragments with the bell above the shop door, Marta's voice below being police and unremarkable as well as the murmur of the customers. Paimon and Aether silently stayed where they were as time passed with the sounds of cars, people, and a radio that Marta was playing music where it said something where Aether only understood the words of 'Gloria Gloria.'
By late afternoon, the traffic inside the shop slowed down and the grey light beyond the window begun to soften toward the evening. Paimon exhuasted herself from working hard to hold back her complaints for many long hours and finally decided to low herself beside a bed with her arms folded.
"This," she announced in a fierce whisper, "is the worst game of not being seen Paimon has ever played."
Aether, seated in the same wooden chair he had occupied for much of the day, gave her a tired glance as he replied, "You say that as though there have been many."
"There have been at least several," Paimon said, "but nothing as tense as this."
Aether could not argue against Paimon with her logic as they continued to remain silent. As a few more hours passed, then the front door with its bell rang one last time. Paimon and Aether heard talking in german between Marta and a male where they could not tell what they were talking about. The voice was lower than most of the customers who had passed through the day. After a few minutes, the sound of footsteps leaving the shop could be heard as the ring of the bell could be heard one last time. Then a moment later the stairs creaked under slow and careful weight until she appeared at the top of the stairwell with one hand on the railing.
Paimon was first to speak, "Well?"
Marta came the rest of the way up the stairs, "The message reached him."
For a second neither Aether nor Paimon replied.
Then Aether stood up and asked, "It reached him?"
"Yes, but we will find out what he does soon, I imagine."
"So we're still waiting."
"Yes," Marta replied.
Aether glanced toward the curtained window, though there was nothing to see through it now except the deepening gray of evening.
"At least," he thought, "the note had not vanished into the city's machinery and immediately brought trouble to us."
He looked back at Marta, "Then we wait."
Marta gave a short nod.
"Yes," she said. "And while we do, we do it quietly."
Night would later fall over Berlin with the last gray light thinned behind the curtains. Marta light a lamp with its glow climbed the stairwell in a narrow band of amber. Outside the city continued its business with the same cold discipline it had shown all day within the city as people continued to the day with walking and talking. Marta began making dinner that she said was called Eintopf and needless to say Aether could tell that paimon did not liked the way it looked.
Paimonn stared at the bowl that Marta set before her with the expression of being personally offended by a kitchen.
"What... is it?" Paimon asked tilting her head as if a different angle.
"Eintopf," Marta said. "Potato, turnip, a little cabbage, some of the sausage I had left. It is what there is."
"It's all... in one pot," Paimon observed, as though identifying the source of the problem.
"That is what Eintopf means," Marta replied.
"What are you arguing about? We had Adeptus Temptation before in Liyue, remember?" Aether whispered to Paimon.
Paimon opened her mouth, paused, and then closed it with the expression of someone who had just been confronted with evidence that she could not dispute but deeply wished to.
"That was different," she insisted, though her voice had dropped to a whisper to match his. "Adeptus Temptation had flavor and presentation and it glowed a little. This is just... everything sad in a pot."
"Paimon, eat," Aether said.
Marta, who had not understood the reference but had understood the tone perfectly, set a spoon beside Paimon's bowl without comment. It was the gesture of a woman who had fed reluctant children before and knew that argument was less effective than simply placing the utensil within reach and waiting.
Paimon picked up the spoon with the air of someone accepting a diplomatic compromise. She took the first bite. Her expression moved through several stages that went through suspicion, resignation, mild surprise, and something that stopped just short of grudging approval.
"It's... not the worst thing Paimon has eaten," she conceded.
"High praise," Marta said, and for the first time that day something close to a real smile crossed her face.
"Paimon has had a lot of things," Paimon added, as if to clarify that the field of comparison was vast and that Marta should understand the compliment accordingly.
Marta then proceed to pour them a cup of tea, which Aether actually enjoyed having only that it needed sugar.
When he kindly asked if she had any, she said, "Sugar has not been available widely since Hitler taken power and the start of this war, the military especially has been rationing it from the public."
Aether looked at his cup and then drank it as it was. In Teyvat, he had eaten meals in places where the ingredients were stranger and the company more dangerous, but he had rarely sat at a table where the absence of something as small as sugar carried the weight of a government's priorities.
Paimon, for her part, drank the rose hip tea without complaint. She wrapped both small hands around the cup and held it close, letting the warmth rise toward her face.
"This is nice," she said quietly, "It smells like flowers."
"Rose hips," Marta said, "Bruarer grows them in the garden behind his church."
"Speaking of Father," Aether said as he continued to drink his tea, "where is he? He has been gone for a while."
Marta set the teapot down and was quiet for a moment before answering.
"He returned to the church this morning before the first customers arrived," she said. "It was necessary. A priest who is absent from his parish on a Sunday invites questions, and Father Brauer has already invited more questions than are good for him."
Aether's hand paused on his cup. "Sunday?"
"Yes," Marta said. "April the twentieth. Hitler's birthday, as the radio has been reminding us since dawn. And a Sunday means Father Brauer has a congregation to tend to, a sermon to deliver, and two Gestapo agents in his district who will remember his face from two days ago."
"He went back," Aether said surprised, "knowing that they might be looking for him."
"He went back because if he did not go back, they would come looking for him here according to his words," Marta replied, "He said that a priest who holds his service on schedule is a priest with nothing to hide, but a priest who disappears the same week that two of Himmler's men were knocked down his church steps is one who has given them reason."
Paimon lowered her cup slightly. "Is he going to be okay?"
Marta looked at her, and the directness in her eyes softened by just a fraction.
"Father Brauer has been managing the Gestapo longer than either of you have been in this city," she said, "He knows what to say and what not to say and how to make a sermon sound like a sermon and not like a confession. He has done this before."
She paused, then added more quietly, "But no. I do not know if he is going to be okay. I have not known the answer to that question about anyone in Berlin for quite some time. Not since the Night of the Long Knives especially…."
Aether did not know what the Night of the Long Knives was, but he understood the tone. It was the same tone he had heard in Inazuma from people who remembered the moment the Vision Hunt Decree was announced where a government revealed to its own citizens that it regarded their lives as instruments rather than purposes. Here in this world and this country, the weight of the words and language were different. At least the Shogunate had made lots of improvement since the Civil War and the peace that had been made between them as well as the Watsumi Resistance.
"Paimon hopes he comes back soon," Paimon said softly.
Marta picked up the teapot and poured herself a cup. She held it between her hands in the same way Paimon had, and for a moment the two of them looked remarkably alike in the lamplight, each holding warmth in their palms because warmth was what was available.
"So do I," Marta said.
After a while, Marta cleared the bowls and empty cups where she washed them in a small basin. Paimon started to settle onto a folded blanket near the bed, her eyes growing heavy despite herself, while settling herself into a folded blanket near the bed. Aether remained in his chair by the table, watching the curtained window as though the act of watching might accelerate whatever was coming.
Marta returned to the chair opposite of Aether. Neither of them spoke, but Marta looked at him with tension being felt.
"You are thinking about your sister," she said.
Aether looked at her. He had not mentioned Lumine to Marta.
"Father Brauer told me a little," Marta said, answering the question he had not asked. "Not much. Only that you are looking for someone."
Aether was quiet for a moment.
"Yes," he said.
"And every day you spend here is a day you are not looking."
"Yes."
Marta nodded. She did not offer comfort or reassurance. She simply acknowledged it, the way a woman who had lost her own person to a war understood that some distances could not be closed with words.
"Then I hope to god," she said, "that whoever reads your note is the kind of man who does not take long to decide."
The clock on the wall continued its work as Paimon's breathing was soft and even. The lamp not far from them was steady in its brightness. Then they heard a bell on the wood of the entrance door itself and three knocks on it.
Aether's breathing stopped and Marta's hands went still. They looked at each other for a second. Marta stood up and went first as she walked down the stairs, she held her back to Aether as a sign for him to keep his distance.
Paimon stirred on the blanket, blinking awake, "What?"
"Stay here," Aether whispered from the stairs.
Marta stepped up to the entrance after getting down the stairs. Aether heard the bolt slide as she opened the door at a slight angle.
"Hallo?" Marta asked softly in her German language.
Then came the voice of a young male on the other side that replied in German.
"Mein Name ist Leslie Slote. Ich arbeite in der amerikanischen Botschaft und habe eine Nachricht erhalten, kurz in Ihrem Geschäft vorbeizukommen, um etwas abzuholen."
Marta did not respond immediately as she looked at the man through the narrow opening of the door.
Then she made a reply, "Einen Moment, bitte."
She closed the door, but did not slide the bolt. She turned and looked up the stairwell where Aether stood halfway down, watching her. In the dim light, their eyes met. Marta gave a single short nod as she opened the door wider. The man stepped through inside as Marta closed the door and locked it behind him. For a moment, he stood in the narrow hallway that smelled of fabric, thread, and cleaning soap. He removed his hat and held it in front of him, while his eyes adjusted to the lamplight that reached down from the upper floor.
Marta walked to him as if examining him as he handed her the note that he had received and Marta reviewed where she afterwards looked to Aether. She gave a nod with a smile as if good news had walked into the building.
"Please, Mr. Slote, upstairs."
Slote looked to the stairwell and began to walk up the stairs, where Aether had already walked back to the room upstairs. As the man entered the room, he meet the eyes of Aether. The man appeared to be in his early thirties, lean in shape, black neatly parted hair, thin frame spectacles, and a gray suit. The man looked at Aether for a moment as if examining his own looks as well, then the man turned his gaze toward Paimon. She had just risen from the blanket and was hovering at Aether's shoulder. He almost looked like he was having a heart attack at that moment, but remembered that this meeting's discovery by the Nazi's was dangerous and refrained from making any loud sounds.
"So, you are Aether also known as the Traveller…Man who wrote the note that came to my desk….and what you said as well as recent events have confirmed as the scourge of the Fatui," the man said, "You know the picture and description that the SS and Gestapo gave of you in that wanted poster was not far off reality."
Aether's expression changed to almost surprise.
"Wanted Poster?" Aether repeated.
"Two hundred thousand Reichmarks," the man said as the number landed in the room with a weight that even Paimon felt, "Sponsored by the Northland Bank in Germany, which means that your Fatui buddies really want you out of the way. When I caught that after reading your note, I knew that most likely meant that the Fatui see you as a big threat that they are willing to pay any German that brings you to them, Dead or Alive. It was circulated through the German security agencies first, then to the German public. It included your description of Blond hair, foreign origin, accompanied by a….."
The man looked at Paimon for a moment as he continued, "An unidentified companion of unusual appearance. There is also a warning about what they call elemental capabilities."
Paimon's eyes went wide, "Two hundred thousand?!"
"Reichsmarks," The man clarified.
"Paimon doesn't know what that is but it sounds like a lot!"
"It is enough," The man said, "to make every policeman, block warden, informant, and ambitious Party member in Berlin very interested in finding you. Which raises my first question."
The man then looked back to Aether and it was direct as he spoke, "How in the hell are you still free in this city?"
"I found good people." Aether said sheepishly with a smirk.
"I'll say, you sound like a man I knew from Siena and Warsaw." the man said with his own smirk as he walked closer to Aether and held out his hand, "Leslie Slote, Second Secretary at the American Embassy in Berlin."
Aether took the hand and shook it, "Aether. Though you already seem to know that."
"I know what a wanted poster and a handwritten note tell me," Slote said. "Which is enough to get me through the door. I'm going to need to hear from you."
He released the handshake and looked at Paimon, who was still hovering over at Aether's shoulder.
"And you are..." Slote began.
"Paimon," Paimon said. "Paimon is Paimon."
"Of course you are," he said.
"Paimon is also Aether's guide, best friend, and emergency strategist," Paimon added, as if a complete curriculum vitae were necessary at this stage.
"Noted," Slote said.
"Now, Aether, tell me your story and situation."
Aether told it as plainly as he could. He began with the unknown god who caused his separation from Lumine, the years of searching, the arrival in Mondstadt with nothing but Paimon and questions. He described Dvalin and the Fatui's attempt to destabilize the region through diplomatic manipulation, and how he and the Knights of Favonius had stopped it. He described Liyue and Childe, which apparently made Slote's eyes sharpen visibly as if he already knew the name. Aether continued to explain how Childe awakened Osial that could have drowned Liyue.
"Your friend Childe, if history is anything to go by at this point, has already put himself at the top of the American headlines and British ones as well."
"Yep, That's Childe for you." Aether acknowledged as he continued.
Aether then described the Vision Hunt Decree in Inazuma, where the Shogunate was confiscating the elemental powers of its own citizens under the authority of the ruling Archon. He described the civil war between the Shogunate and the Watatsumi Resistance, and how the Fatui had embedded themselves on both sides, supplying delusions that enhanced a fighter's power at the cost of their health and, eventually, their life. He described how the Fatui's goal had never been victory for either side, but the prolongation of the conflict itself, weakening the nation from within while its people destroyed each other with weapons they did not fully understand.
Slote went very still as he spoke quietly, "Both sides."
Aether nodded as he continued, "The soldiers using the Delusions didn't know what they were. They thought they were fighting for their cause. They were dying for someone else's."
The room went silent for a moment, but after a minute Slote removed his spectacles and cleaned them.
"You have just described," Slote said slowly, replacing the spectacles, "a foreign intelligence service embedding itself in both sides of a civil conflict, supplying weapons that it knows will kill the users, for the strategic purpose of prolonging the war and weakening the nation. Not to win. To weaken."
"Yes," Aether said.
"And you believe they are doing the same thing here."
"Maybe, but the odd thing is that they normally do not physically get involved in wars." Aether said.
Aether gave a shortened and censored version of what happened in Sumeru, where he described Nahida's imprisoned state caused by the former Grand Sage and Dottore, which made Slote nearly want to jump at the mention of his name. Then Aether explained Fontaine with the crisis involving the prophecy, where actually in this situation the Fatui were not directly involved as much. However, Aether explained about Nahida's dream in a dream description and then the news of the Alliance between the Fatui and the Germans at the Film Festival.
"And that is why you came," Slote said.
"That is why we tried to come to England," Aether said. "Something went wrong with the crossing. We landed here instead."
Slote pinched his nose and let out a loud breath, "Do you have any idea what you've just given me?"
Aether looked at him as he shook his head left and right.
"No American intelligence service has a source inside Fatui operations," Slote said. "We have reports. Fragments even. The damn Tartaglia Port Affair gave us spectacle, not strategy. We were only getting reports through our naval attache here, who is in New York right now. But even those reports gave us confirmation that the Fatui exist, but not what they are operationally capable of."
Slote paused for a moment.
"You are the most valuable intelligence asset in Europe right now," Slote said. "And you are sitting in a tailor's shop with a bounty on your head that could buy a Panzer. But the biggest issue is that politically, America can't get you out of Berlin and not even through any asylum programs."
Aether's expression tightened, "What do you mean?"
"I mean," Slote said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, "that the United States of America is a neutral country. We are not at war with Germany. We are not at war with Snezhnaya or whatever the Fatui call their nation. We have an embassy in Berlin that operates under diplomatic protocols that both sides pretend to respect because the alternative is worse. If I walk you through the front door of that embassy and declare you a protected person, I have just committed an act that the German Foreign Ministry will treat as a provocation, and the Fatui will treat as a confirmation that the Americans are actively working against their alliance while in the middle of diplomatic talks between the two countries."
Paimon's face fell broken, "So... you came all this way just to tell us you can't help?"
"No," Slote said as his tone shifted to something more of determination, "I came all this way because I read your note. I came because what you just told me about Inazuma is the most important piece of strategic intelligence I have encountered in two years of diplomatic work during this war."
Aether and Paimon both leaned as they became interested to know what he was going to say next.
Slote continued as his voice dropped lower as if the walls could somehow be recording notes, "I have contacts in the British diplomatic and intelligence community from my time at the embassy in Warsaw. Some of those people are now working out of London, and a few of them are very interested in anything related to the Fatui, especially with the news of the Fatui fighting British and ANZAC soldiers in Greece."
He paused for a moment as he chose his next words carefully, "The British are at war and they do not need to pretend to be neutral. However, they have networks for moving people out of occupied and hostile territory. If anyone can get you out of Berlin and eventually to England, it is them. But it will take time, and it has to look as if American hands are not involved in it."
"How much time?" Aether asked.
"I don't know," Slote said honestly. "Days…..Possibly weeks….Possibly longer. It depends on the route, the availability of contacts along the way, and how aggressively the Gestapo and the Fatui are searching this district. Two hundred thousand Reichsmarks is a number that does not encourage patience."
Aether looked at Marta, then back at Slote, "Can Marta keep hiding us that long?"
Marta answered with a smirk, "I have hidden worse things from worse people longer than either has been alive."
Thermopylae, Greece
Early Morning of April 22nd, 1941
There were many places in war where geography seemed to take seem sides multiples times in history. The Thermopylae Pass has held the reputation that has existed centuries before any living man in the pass had been born. The name had been passed down in written human history through schools, atlases, military lectures, patriotic speeches, and theater plays about the Greek spirit against the might of the Persian Empire and delayed its advance. Now on the morning of April 22nd, 1941, the ancient ground of Thermopylae was being asked to do that great work of delay once more.
For Force W and the allied armies, the situation was grim. The Greeks at the Metaxas Line had been surrounded and surrendered; In Epirus, the Greek Army that had fought Mussolini's Italians with such tenacity found itself struck from a new direction as the Fatui fell upon its right flank with weapons no Greek officer could properly name and no infantry manual could explain. Men reported jets of unnatural flame that set uniforms alight where they stood. They reported hovering armored machines with spinning guns that swept charging formations down as if the battlefield itself was rehearsing for a redo of World War One. These Sky-Chariots, as the name that Greek Troops gave the floating infantry fighting vehicles with spinning guns and other deadly weapons attached to them, became a weapon of fear upon the mindset of the Greek Soldier when they are seen on the battlefield.
At the same time, the German divisions had cut off their retreat south and now the entire Greek Army in Epirus was surrounded on all sides with no way to escape and evacuate completely like the British did at Dunkirk. By the 22nd, the Greek Army, surrounded with its 220,000 troops and cut off from retreat, would surrender that day to the German forces, though not to the Italians they had beaten, and not to the Fatui whose name they had learned to curse in a language not their own. However, the Allies started to understand the powers of the Fatui and were trying to find stop-gap measures that would allow them to maintain a stabilized front at all costs. It was hoped that Thermopylae would be one such measure as the Allies started to make preparations to pull out of mainland Greece and fall back to the island of Crete. Thermopylae was one such measure. The ground was narrow, ancient, and still, in theory, defensible. Australian infantry of the 19th Brigade and New Zealand troops of the 6th Brigade occupied the pass, their morale shaky at worst, their orders to delay whatever was coming.
Private Ian MacKenzie of the 2nd New Zealand Division had been a schoolteacher in Dunedin six months ago. He had taught his students about Thermopylae, about the three hundred Spartans who held the pass against an empire. He had drawn maps on blackboards, traced the sea on one side and the mountains on the other, and explained how a few could hold against many if the ground was right.
Now he stood in that pass, a rifle in his hands that had been manufactured in a factory he would never see, and watched the morning light creep over the hills where the Persian scouts had once appeared. The sea was the same color as the maps had shown. The mountains had not moved. But the thing coming down the road from the north was not in any history he had taught. The two New Zealand and Australian brigades were given the order to hold the pass as long as possible to allow the evacuation of Force W out of Mainland Greece. Australian General George Vasey would be later quoted in saying, "Here we bloody well are and here we bloody well stay," as his brigade would be stationed south at Bralos and Gravia.
Private Ian MacKenzie heard it pass down the line from the officers who had gotten it from brigade, who had gotten it from General Vasey himself: "Hold! Delay! Buy time for the evacuation!"
Around him, the men of his platoon were doing the same things that they had always done ranging from checking equipment to smoking cigarettes down to the very last fragment of tobacco. He could tell that most of the men were nervous about what was coming as they all heard about what happened at Vevi, which confirmed everything that was coming out of Yugoslavia before it. A corporal named Davies, who had been a postman in Christchurch, was writing a letter that he folded and placed inside his right chest pocket on his battledress. He looked nervous and sweated profusely on his forehead.
Then at 7:14, a private on the forward listening post called out that the temperature was dropping and immediately started to get into action stations. Lately many times that the post called it turned out to be a false alarm and natural, but the men at this point stopped caring. However, this time was different and Mackenzie felt it already as a chill crept across his hands and settled into the metal of his rifle. The sky was clear and the road north was still empty. But he could see something moving from the base of the hills, where it was low, dense, and rolling south with a speed and thickness that no morning mist that in Greece or New Zealand that MacKenzie had seen them possessed. The fog was grey and hugged the ground as it moved forward.
Davies, a postman from Christchurch, lowered his binoculars.
"That's not weather," he said.
"No," MacKenzie said, "It isn't."
As the fog got closer to New Zealander positions at the Spercheios River, where then a sound came. The sound reminded the men of a tank on tracks, he could tell that the tanks were definitely a panzer for sure or at least he thought it was.
"Here come those bastards," called out an officer behind them.
He did not bother to specify which bastards. By then, every man on the line had learned there were at least two kinds coming out of the north.
Because what came out of the fog was terrifying, it was lower than a panzer and moved with a heavy set of tracked wheels with a smoothness that he had never seen a Panzer do. Its hull was angular and pale grey with heavy armour plating that shined like no steel that MacKenzie had ever seen, where it was layered and geometric. The terrifying thing about the hull was the way that the plates formed a glowing purple face with eyes. From the armoured chassis rose a turret that stopped the breath of every man watching, where it had an arm extending from each side of it was glowing spinning purple blades. On the top of the hull was the spinning gun coated in purple, just like the blades, and then right beside the gun was a box with a bright purple plate with the pale star of the Fatui.
"What the hell is that?" Davies whispered.
Mackenzie did not answer as he watched the gun on top start firing at Bren gun position that was thirty meters to Mackenzie's left. The burst struck the gunner as he made a bloody curling scream after being hit as purple electricity coiled around him. Then the Sky-Chariot turned to a fox hole as it continued to fire a burst of purple glowing bullets out of it.
"Open fire!" yelled the officer behind MacKenzie.
MacKenzie raised his Lee-Enfield and fired. The round struck the hull of the Sky-Chariot and sparked off the pale grey plating without leaving a mark. Around him, every rifle in the platoon opened up. The rounds hit the armor and bounced off it like pebbles thrown at a cathedral wall. However, the vehicle did not slow down at all or seemed to take any damage from the bullets.
Davies was working his bolt and fired with all his energy.
"It's not doing anything!" he shouted. "The rounds aren't getting through!"
"Keep firing!" the officer behind them yelled back as he fired his own revolver at the vehicle as it got closer and closer to the river edge to cross.
The 2-pounder not far behind their position was firing rapidly at the thing since it emerged from the fog and had a miss on the first shot, but then hit the right front angled upward plate where it bounced upward into the air. Then it fired again where it hit the ground in front of the vehicle, where it was immediate to MacKenzie as to where it decided to start aiming for. As the vehicle got closer to the water, it fired another burst of purple electric bullets at the 2-pounder and its bullets started to move closer to them. Until the next shot of the 2-pounder hit the tracks of the vehicle that stopped it in its tracks and the crew quickly then loaded another shell. The 2-pounder fired again, where it hit the gun on the top of the tank and tore it to pieces as it sent the barrels flying backwards behind it. The gun crew kept firing at the vehicle with the rate of 22 rounds per minute as it tried to find a weak spot. Eventually within seconds, it did as it hit the hollow purple eyes that made up the face of the angle armor and penetrated it with skill as well as precision. After four shots hitting it, the sound of it seeming to be turning off and running out of power could be heard.
The men cheered with a smile, even Mackenzie and Davies smiled as they held their rifles in the air.
"Well, that solves that problem." Davies cheered.
The purple panel with the pale star on the box that was right beside where the gun was suddenly opened. Then the sound of what Mackenzie could compare to the launch of compressed air was heard as a rocket of purple light flew out of it at a slow speed. For a second men tried to shoot it down as it headed towards the 2-poundered, but when it hit the shield plating on the 2-pounder caused a spread of purple electricity to curl around it. Two of the gun crew were still on it as they were trying to return fire, but everyone watched in shock as they remained locked in position as if unable to let go and shook with a loud scream. Around them, the purple electricity coated them and electrocuted them to death until they were steaming blackened corpses.
The silence after the rocket was worse than the noise had been. MacKenzie's ears rang with the absence of sound. The gun crew lay where they had fallen, their bodies still steaming in the cold morning air, the acrid smell of burnt flesh mixing with the fog that was beginning to thin.
Davies lowered his rifle with his hands shaking.
"Bloody hell," he whispered, "Bloody bloody hell."
Another sound could be heard from the fog as the sound reminded them of artillery as everyone ran for cover. However, the shell did not land anywhere near them, but instead landed onto the water of the river where it made a solid white and blue splash. Immediately after the blast, the water froze into solid thick ice.
"They froze the river," the officer behind MacKenzie stated with shock heard in his voice, "God help us all."
Then the fog dissipated as more of those Sky-chariot's appeared, at least twenty-six of them of various types which came actually floating like the Greeks described. But not far behind them was the infantry of the Fatui in varying colors and sizes but also in numbers. And far behind was the feldgrau of German mountain troops moving in disciplined formation, rifles slung, content to let the Fatui do the work of breaking the line before they advanced to occupy what was left.
The officer behind MacKenzie assessed the scene for approximately five seconds and then he spoke.
"Right," he said. "We can't stop that. We can slow it. Every minute we hold is a minute the ships have at the beaches. That's the job. That's all the job is now."
Nobody argued against him as Bren guns, Enfields, and anything else fired, while the rest of the 2-pounders continued to fire and a few 25 pounders that got into position started to fired at the armoured vehicles until rockets started to fly toward them.
"Concentrate fire on the infantry!" Hargreaves, the officer behind him, called down the line. "Ignore the vehicles. We can't hurt them, let the anti-tank guns do the job. Hit the men behind them. Make them pay for every meter."
MacKenzie shifted his aim from the nearest Sky-Chariot to the column of red-uniformed troops crossing the ice behind it. He fired and a red-uniformed figure staggered, where he clutched his chest and fell. He worked the bolt and fired again as another fell. Around him, the men of his platoon were doing the same, their rifles cracking in a steady rhythm, the Bren guns chattering in short, controlled bursts. But the red-uniformed men kept coming. Some of them were firing back now, and where their shots hit, men's battledresses ignited, the flames consuming them in seconds. MacKenzie heard screaming from his left, a sound that went on too long and then stopped. He did not dare look as he could not.
"Keep firing!" Hargreaves shouted with his voice was raw, almost gone, "Make them pay for every meter!"
A 2-pounder managed to hit another of the tank tracked chariot and stopped as it hammered 40 millimeter shells into the eyes at rapid succession until it exploded. The 25-pounders, depending on their position, were firing at either the Chariots or the incoming infantry with high-explosive shells. The high-explosive shells sent from the 25-pounders managed to make the infantry that were of the lighter build go flying, but some of them that were a wider build were sent sideways to the ground. Then three of the Sky-Chariots that actually were walking with two metal legs and were blue extended their left arms that looked more like two exhaust pipes and made a purple transferparent shield that covered the front of them as they marched forward with the rest of the enemy behind. It wasn't very tall on the shield as the 2-pounders and 25-pounders could fire over them, but it made firing at the Sky-Chariots from the front impossible to do. Even as the Chariots and the Infantry crossed the now frozen river.
Then the 2-pounders and 25-pounders started to go silent as the mirrors near them appeared at every gun station and a tall woman in dark blue appeared with a smile. These women were spotted by the gun crews; but before they could act against them, the women trapped them each in a prison of watery light and triangular mirrors around them. Then an upwards blast of pressurized water killed them on the spot.
With the guns gone, the pass belonged to the machines.
"Fall back now!" Hargreaves shouted, "Before these bastards somehow trap us."
The men did not need to be told twice as they began to withdraw. Hargreaves positioned himself at a rock outcrop where the trail narrowed and began covering the retreat with his revolver as the gunners set up beside him and laid down suppressive fire that forced the red-uniformed figures to slow their advance.
MacKenzie ran with Davies right beside him. Around them, the men of the platoon moved south along the goat path that wound behind the ridge, their boots slipping on loose rock, their rifles clutched across their chests. The sounds of the battle behind them grew fainter with each hundred meters but it did not end. The path descended toward a dry streambed that led south toward Brallos. Men were pouring into it from multiple positions. Officers and NCOs were directing traffic at the junction points, pushing men south, counting heads, shouting names. MacKenzie was fifty meters from the streambed when the Sky-Chariot appeared above the ridge behind them. It was one of the floating ones with its run glowing gun spinning as it traversed the line of running men with the mechanical precision of searchlight.
"Down!" someone screamed.
MacKenzie threw himself behind a boulder. The burst passed over him, where he could feel the heat of it across his back. Men around him hit the ground, where some got up and some did not.
Davies was five meters ahead of him as he had not gone down. He was still running as he moved toward the streambed with his rifle in one hand and his other arm pumping with his legs driving him forward over the broken ground. Then the second burst caught him behind the shoulder blades. MacKenzie saw it happen as the red light struck Davies in the back and then Davies' stride broke. As he fell to the ground onto the rocks and he did not move again. MacKenzie laid behind the boulder and looked at Davies and did not move for what was probably three seconds, but it felt like the rest of his life. Then another burst hit the ground near him and the instinct to survive overrode everything else and he was running again, running past Davies, running toward the streambed, running with the knowledge that the letter in Davies's chest pocket was now beyond his reach. Afterwards, MacKenzie made it to the streambed and then to the secondary line at Brallos, where Vasey's Australians covered the withdrawal with a steadiness that the retreating men would remember with gratitude for the rest of their lives. He made it to the beach at Porto Rafti on April 25th, where he made it to a ship to Crete and took him to safety.
The Battle of Thermopylae would last for four hours and 50 minutes before the rest of the Australian and New Zealand forces would be forced to withdraw entirely. Enough for two additional convoys to the embarkation points at Porto Rafti and Rafina. However, the battle had brought in heavy casualties for the ANZAC forces that were fighting where it is estimated about 50% of the fighting forces in the two brigades were either killed, captured (if allowed), and wounded. Lieutenant Hargreaves was among the last to leave the pass. He withdrew only after confirming that every man still capable of movement had begun the retreat, and he covered the final withdrawal with his Webley until the cylinder was empty. He was captured on the road south of the pass by a patrol of the German 5th Mountain Division. The officer who took his surrender offered him water and a cigarette, and Hargreaves accepted both with the courtesy of a man who understood that certain formalities persisted even after everything else had been destroyed.
The evacuation would continue for 5 more days with some units unable to be evacuated due to the swift pace of the German and Fatui advance; especially with additional delaying tactics done by the courage of the ANZAC Corps units as they fell back. Greece would fall on April 29th with the city of Athens occupied with the Acropolis flying the Swastika of Nazi Germany and the Pale Star of the Fatui.