Dedicated for a love one.


The morning sun greeted her like a furious torch. Golden beams of light glittered across innumerable cloudtops as Amber glided towards the fiery horizon. She felt a cold gust of air rippling across her hair, and she knew the final throes of night were over.

Amber took a deep breath. A pair of shaded goggles reflected a green world as she tilted her gaze earthward. Pulling her wings to her sides, Amber effortlessly dove down through the cloudcover until she was skimming a series of rolling emerald hilltops. Sporadic ponds and rippling blue streams interrupted what was otherwise an immaculate landscape of high grass and bushy knolls. Several lakes loomed in the distance ahead, sparkling platinum reflections of the rising sun.

Amber's nostrils flared. As she darted mere inches over pond fronds and cattails, she was greeted with every scent and flavor of spring. On a whim, she spun upside down—gliding—and allowed her wings to break the top of several emerald blades. As a result, she was christened with a liberal spray of fresh dew. The sensation was cold, tickling the skin beneath her red outrider outfit.

It was the first thing that made her smile in hours.

There was a deep lake up ahead. The waters were so tranquil that the entire basin could just as well have been filled with pure sapphires. Feeling suddenly exhausted, Amber lowered herself to the sandy banks, relaxing her glider-wings for the first time since the prior sunset.

Walking to the very edge of the lake, she raised her goggles, exposing a pair of squinting golden eyes that took in the sunrise, and then tilted down to take in her own reflection.

Amber's hair was windblown, its dark brown threads mixing wildly as a testament to her nocturnal journey. Her cheeks was unkempt, bespeckled with dust. In spite of her haggard features, the one thing not remotely affected was her eyes. They appeared as alive and awake as ever as she looked herself over, then reached two hands up to her goggles.

Removing the article, she sat down and examined them closely in her grasp. There was a great deal of condensation and grime gathered on the lenses. Amber leaned forward and breathed hotly on the goggles. Using her condensation, she wiped the twin lenses free, then moved to slap them back on her head. She paused, however, upon seeing the canvas strap of the item.

Amber smiled gently. She finally placed the article back on her head and gave her reflection one last look. Her glider-wings lifted, exposing a dark red backpack strapped behind her waist, tailor-made to fit her agile figure. The pouches on either side were snapped shut by the insignia of a Pyro symbol, and from the meager weight of what was lying within, Amber knew that it was only a matter of time before she needed to find food again.

Just then, a familiar sensation struck her, that of a golden glint being shone into her face. Amber grunted, then glanced lethargically at what was weighing on her neck muscles. A Vision hung just below her throat, emblazoned with a orb-shaped like a raging flame. For the briefest of moments, she felt a wave of dizziness, and considered tossing the object viciously into the waters. Instead, she sighed, gave her face one last look, and slammed her head full-force into the surface of the pond.

After a major dunking, Amber flung her head straight up. She gasped as her wet hair filled the air with a wild splash of lake water. Reveling in the cold sting, she grinned devilishly, slipped her shaded goggles down, and took off once more towards the sky, burning a straight path for the rising sun.

The air bit harshly against her wet face. It served to remind her that she was alive.


Afternoon came, and the hilltops blurring beneath Amber turned into jagged promontories as she came upon the crest of a mountain range. The sun was well overhead, approaching its peak climb over the globe of the sky. Amber realized she was still squinting, so she raised a hand up to her goggles and turned a dial. A gift from a talented alchemist. With a gentle click, the shades of the lenses popped back to reveal a clear pair beneath. She relaxed her golden eyes and kept soaring eastward.

The earth turned progressively uneven below. When the mountains began, the topography shattered into a craggy affair, with several stretches of alabaster rock shredding the green vegetation into thin emerald scraps. The air above these sharp formations grew misty, coalescing into thick clouds that gathered into a gray miasma above the sharply rising landscape.

With experienced caution, Amber elevated her ascent several dozens of meters above the visible stone. She was adamant about making a speedy pass over the mountains, but she wasn't about to stupidly plunge into any hidden rockfaces beyond the clouds.

The mist in the air grew denser. Rays of sunlight danced around Amber in swathing beams. In mid-glide, she reached a hand out and played with the many yellow bands. Her mind wandered, and for the briefest of moments she thought she heard laughter. Her eyes blinked beneath her goggles, and the sensation left her, trailing on the fringes of a deep sigh.

There was a sudden gust of wind. If she was any other outrider, she would have been tossed wildly into the ether, but Amber swiftly countered for the gale attacking her wings. She leveled out and hovered up, getting a good view of the landscape beneath her as the misty clouds parted.

She spotted a sudden dip in the mountains. A deep ravine had formed suddenly, and a heavy current of cold wind was billowing down to fill the canyon.

As Amber coasted the top of this landscape, the clouds dissipated, and she was taken back by a sight ahead of her. Two mountain ranges rose sharply and met a single point, as if bluntly colliding. The result was a pair of tall summits, twin spokes of ancient rock that pierced the sky like granite antennae.

Amber hovered in place, staring for a prolonged period of time at the image. She couldn't help but feel as if the twin peaks looked familiar. Bothered by her lapse in memory, she spun cyclonically through the mountainous currents until she found a dry plateau of pale rock to perch on. A sharp rise in craggy stone behind her canceled out the wind, giving her a peaceful spot to touch down and reach back for her backpack.

She slowly removed the contents of her pack: a canteen of water, two loaves of crumbling bread, a first-aid kit, a metal hatchet, a compass, a container of flint and steel, three blankets, and finally a green-bound book. This last item she purposefully avoided looking at as a loathsome shudder ran through her body. Gently, she slid the book out of sight and reached into the backpack one last time. She produced a paper scroll with a Favonius seal.

Unrolling the scrap, she stretched out a rich detailed map labeled "Known Realms of Teyvet." In the center of the amber parchment was a landscape etched in black ink. Amber's eyes stared at the mountainous summit around "Celestia," then traveled to the left past "Fontaine", then past a broad stretch of dotted paper titled "Natlan." She traced her hand even further across the paper, past "lady Jivari," past "Black Beach," past "The Great Beyond," and finally settling on "Emerald Valley." Just east of this spot was an unnamed mountain range, but one thing stood out. It was a pair of mountains that rose like sharp spokes into the sky.

Amber looked up. She saw two enormous peaks lingering two kilometers in front of her, bathing a thick shadow across the grand, misty ravine surrounding the lady. She looked back down. The twin peaks dotted a part of the map that was no less than five centimeters from the right edge of the paper.

For some reason, that only made her smile all the more.

Amber rolled the map back up. She put away her belongings, lingering slightly with the green-bound book, and clasped the backpack shut with its Pyro buttons. Hoisting her goggles back over her eyes, she stood against the wind, gave the mountains a silent snarl, and threw herself off the cliff face so that she soared between the two peaks as if they were polished goalposts.


When Amber's stomach began growling, the mountain range had begun to slope into the brightest, greenest landscape she had seen for days. The air was wet here, filled with the most delicious scents of spring. She gazed down as she saw lush forests dotting the eastern edge of the mountains.

The afternoon sun warmed her flank as she touched down in an emerald glade. Several small woodland creatures bounded away immediately after her landing. Amber glanced around, feeling as if she was the first human in centuries to set hand in this beautiful, alien landscape. Her insides gurgled once more as she desperately scanned the nearby trees. She thought of the moldy bread in her backpack, the same pathetic thing she had nibbled on ceaselessly for weeks, and she couldn't help but grimace.

Something sparkled in her goggled vision. Her heart jumped, and she found herself running towards a cluster of trees to the north. She skidded to a stop as soon as she was underneath the desired branches, and she actually drooled.

They were apple trees, and the fruit hanging off them were of a plump and ripe nature befitting an outrider's dreams, her dreams. With a gentle glide of her glider-wings, Amber hovered until she was nose-to-skin with the brightest apple in sight. She gave it a close sniff and could already sense the sweetness. With two hands, she plucked the apple loose, raised her goggles, and turned the object over in her grasp.

The skin of the apple looked perfect, but she was hardly a qualified judge. There was no telling if there were parasites hidden inside the thing, or if the apple was rotten at the core, or if there was a bitter taste just waiting to poison her. So much as licking the strange fruit could very well have been an extremely dangerous prospect.

So Amber took a huge bite.

Immediately, her mouth was filled with a flooding river of euphoria. Her golden eyes flew back in her head, and she let herself fall like a feather to the downy grass below. She took another bite, reveled in the heavenly taste, and giggled like a child, her voice echoing gaily across the emerald clearing. Less than two minutes later, the entire apple had been scarfed completely. No sooner was Amber finished with this gluttonous feat, she was darting back up to the tree for a second fruit, then a third, then a fourth. She tucked these under her arms, armpits, and even her chest. Stifling another evil laugh, she victoriously ran over to a patch of shade and set her things down. Pulling her blanket loose from the backpack, she rolled it out along the soft blades of grass and laid herself down so that her forward half was in the shade and her rear half was warmed by toasty sunlight.

So luxuriously reclined, she took her time savoring the succulent fruit. Her eyes danced with the rays of sunlight glittering through the waving leaves above. Her mind toyed with errant thoughts, bursting through her head in cadence with the felicitous tastes bursting in her mouth. She let a giggle leave her lips, then another. Soon, the first three apples were consumed. Tossing the cores away, she polished the fourth and last apple against her chest and raised it to her lips.

But then she stopped.

Amber blinked. Slowly, her jaw clamped shut. She gazed with a solemn expression at her face being reflected in the immaculate red skin of the apple. Her nostrils flared, and scents that didn't belong to the emerald glade were now assaulting her. The next breath from her mouth was painful, and soon her eyes fell to the reflection of the golden lightning bolt hanging from her neck.

A sour lump formed in her throat. Amber said nothing. She didn't eat the apple. Shadows began filling the glade as the Sun was setting beyond the mountains to the west. It was still early in the afternoon, but Amber no longer felt like flying—not yet. The wind had been taken from her wings.

With a gentle yawn, she grasped the blanket in her mouth and dragged it to the base of a tree, where the shadows were thickest. Pulling a second blanket out of her backpack, she wrapped it around her blue body and settled down on folded legs. Amber lingered before resting her head. Gnawing on her lip, she reached once more to the apple. Instead of nibbling on it, she merely cuddled it close to her—even nuzzling its soft skin with her cheek.

Exhaling, Amber shut her eyes. There was a touch of moisture to her lashes, but she paid it no heed as she happily embraced the lulling kiss of slumber.


Amber stopped staring at the ground, and the first thing she saw was Noelle's bright green eyes. A breath escaped her lips as she saw her friend waving towards her from the front entrance to Angel's Share. More bright colors joined the fray, with Lisa winking and Klee giggling and Jean and Kaeya strolling around the bend.

Noelle cupped her hands around her mouth and hollered something before motioning Amber dramatically towards the group.

With a bright smile, Amber wasted no time. She blurred over the rooftops of Mondstadt on swift wings. Touching down in a billowing cloud of dust, she struck a heroic pose... only to blink confusedly at what she saw.

Noelle was making a strange face. Jean was squinting. Eula and Diluc flinched in disgust while Klee marched up and pointed worriedly at Amber's face.

Amber was confused. She turned to look in the windows of Angel's Share. Her reflection glossed over. In a blink, her eyes morphed into red-on-yellow phantoms of their usual golden luster. Before she had a chance to react to this, a lock of her hair fell limply from her head.

She fell on her haunches and raised two hands in time to catch the limp hairs. When they fell in her grasp, they lost all of their color, turning to a pallid gray... along with the rest of her skin. She gasped, glancing at her limbs, trying to find where her fair skin had disappeared to. She heard a whimpering sound.

Spinning, Amber glanced towards her friends, but they were gone. Angel's Share had also vanished, and in its place was a dense wall of green foliage. Amber hyperventilated, finding herself surrounded by a labyrinth of emerald hedges. She flexed her glider-wings, but all her equipment were suddenly gone. Just as she felt the urge to scream, she heard the whimper again, only this time it was directly overhead.

She tried looking straight up, but her neck was being weighed down by a Vision. After much sweat and aching, she finally gazed skyward, only to be flooded with a wall of impenetrable gray ash.


Amber shot up, gasping. She clutched for something—anything—and found a canvas blanket surrounding her. She hugged herself, shivering, under the shroud of fallen night. Her breaths slowly settled, as well as the frenetic beat of her heart. Sighing, she glanced down at her backpack and other belongings, dull shapes under the kiss of starlight. Leaves rustled overhead. The murmuring chirps of various nocturnal animals serenaded her from the apple trees bordering the glade.

It wasn't until five full minutes had passed that Amber realized she was caressing the Vision about her neck. It felt heavier than ever. Gnashing her teeth, Amber seriously considered tossing the golden-orb item away, but she knew better.

A cold wind blew through the shrouded valley. Amber felt her hair kicking like a flag behind her head. She prayed that there'd be colors when the sun rose. Gazing skyward, she regarded the stars with jaded interest. Her afternoon "nap" had carried her well into the fall of evening, but now she had become completely restless. With a groan, she stood up, collected her blankets and other belongings, then stuffed them into her backpack.

Last but not least, she found the crimson apple lying in the grass. She picked it up like an infant, cradling it. Another breath left her, only this time she managed a slight smile. Eventually, she pocketed this too away. Just as she snapped the backpack shut, her eyes lingered on the crescent-moon-shaped buttons to her pack. Thoughtfully, she looked up towards the night sky once more. A plume of pale clouds wafted far overhead. A dim glow suggested a waxing moon rising over the edge of the mountaintops.

Amber rubbed a hand over her Vision and tilted it skyward. She stood quiet and listened. Nothing happened; the golden necklace was just as quiet and dormant as ever. She knew better than to expect otherwise. After all, it wasn't a full moon yet. She was almost glad for the fact.

Wasting no more, time, Amber flapped her wings, ascended in a graceful spire, and bulleted her way eastward—away from the taller mountain ranges.

For hours, she glided under the glittering cosmos. The ivory band of the Milky Way stretched majestically above her, unimpeded by any stray lights or colors. Amber's nostrils flared as her goggled eyes took in the dull horizon looming beneath her, awash in the pale haze of celestial tranquility. She was alone in the sky, a single spot of warmth burning ever-eastward like a comet. At times, she closed her eyes and imagined she was one with the stars, beautiful and insignificant all at once. Her mind wandered to places as grand if not grander than the nightscape bowing beneath her, and she knew—secretly, she knew—that she was all that mattered in the grand silent dream of it all.

A dozen miles of flight later, Amber descended. She was attracted to the sound of rippling water. In the starlight, she spotted a glittering sight below. Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a babbling brook, cascading down lower and lower crags of jutting rock. The water started as a trickle, combined to a rippling stream, then coalesced into a majestic waterfall that emptied into an elevated spring cradled by the convergence of several mountain ranges.

Landing beside this high altitude pool, Amber raised her goggles and gazed with naked eyes. She produced a whistle of wonderment The water was so pure, that even in the dim starlight she could see three dozen feet straight down to the bottom of the spring. Smiling, she tilted down and gave the liquid a gentle cup with her hands and gave a sip. Her upper body shuddered; it was the cleanest water she had drunk in all her adult life.

She drank liberally, like a child lapping at delicious milk. Her body felt instantly refreshed. She forgot about the starlight, about the moon, about dreams. She was simply alive.

Amber exhaled long and hard. She had to carry some of this beauty with her. Squatting down, she reached into her backpack and produced her empty canteen. Swiftly, she filled it to the brink, smiling victoriously at her acquisition. Just as she finished screwing the top back on, something bright and lavender darted on the edge of her peripheral vision.

Amber gasped. She spun about, blinking. She was alone in the tiny spring clearing. The only moving shadows were those belonging to her. Nevertheless, that didn't calm her beating heart, nor did the blinding sensation that swiftly followed.

She squinted. She gazed sideways towards a crest of jagged rock to her right. Murderous beams of gold were setting the air on fire as the first slivers of sunlight pierced the otherwise tranquil moment. A part of her shuddered, regretting the death of darkness.

With icy resolve, she picked herself up, pocketed the canteen away, and faced the burning dawn. Raising her hand, she twisted the dial of her goggles and covered her golden eyes with dark lenses. The pure taste of spring water was like an angelic song on the tip of her tongue. She savored it, as she did all pleasant flavors that still clung to her, and carried the weight of the Vision with her as she flew into the fire.


Amber thought it was a boulder at first. However, as she flew closer towards the object on the top of the hill, it turned out to be hollow. Her goggled eyes finally made out what could only be splintery spokes of wood and the crumbling mortar frame of a fireplace.

There was no second thought to it. She shifted her wings, coasted down, and dove towards the site. The abandoned cabin was located quite literally in the middle of nowhere. Amber had since passed over two sharp mountain ranges. Here, a shallow ravine ran north and south, splotched over with thin grass and green shrubbery. In the center of this ravine—surrounded on all sides by forested mountains—was a lone, run-down cottage. It was as alien as alien could be. It called to her like a kindred spirit.

She touched down in a flat yard of grass bordering the cabin. Blades of grass splattered her limbs with cold dew as she walk slowly around the structure. The golden glow of early morning electrified the scene with a rising, platinum mist. Stray butterflies took off and fled lazily from Amber's presence as she approached the doorframe to the crumbled house.

Standing upon the threshold, Amber raised her shaded goggles and stared nakedly upon the junk-laden "interior" of the place. There was no surviving ceiling, so that every bit of the cabin's contents had been soaked to the brim with moisture, mildew, and the mountains' perpetual breath of fog.

There was a bed in the corner, its rusted springs overgrown with vines and flowers. A tattered mattress had spilled over. It must have once made a home for comfort creatures, judging from the threadbare nests half-stuffed in its fluffy folds.

The fireplace was full of dried logs, painted over with green mold and algae. Amber wondered who had left the pieces of lumber there, unlit, as if somebody was once planning on a peaceful evening alone.

She glanced around the lengths of the place. There was no sign of another soul having been there for ages. She could only wonder just how old the house was, or why it had been built in such a remote place to begin with. Every step she took sent crackling noises through the crumbled domain, tearing down countless years of abandoned history beneath her twitching ears. Her eyes fell over a sea of shattered dinnerplates. The slightest hint of floral designs across the porcelain material glistened in the neutral sunrise.

Amber let loose a strong exhale. The more she looked, the more detritus and rubble there appeared to be. She glanced at the top of the fireplace and saw what looked to be a picture frame. She marched over and raised a hand to the object, tilting it up so that its canvas surface once again graced the light of day. All that spoke to her was brown mildew, except for a few stray lines etched in the shape of what she could only determine to be the royal crest of Khaenri'ah.

The very moment she saw those royal bands, she dropped the picture frame like a brick to the uneven floor. Her nostrils flared. Spinning around, she walked firmly back towards the doorframe of the cabin's entrance. Just as she was about to take off, her peripheral vision caught something. She glanced aside, squinted, then knelt down low.

In the wooden surface of the broken doorway were two initials, carved within the unmistakable outline of a heart: "EJ & RG."

Amber's lips pursed. Her glider-wings flexed briefly. She wondered who could have left those initials, how old they had to have been, if the human who first etched them there could still be alive or not? She pondered over how many ages had gone by—cold winters and dew-laden summers—during which those lone and seemingly insignificant letters had lingered lonesome, abandoned in the vacuum of two steep mountain ranges, only for one soul and one soul alone to eventually stumble upon them.

Were they made for her? Could she have possibly given them the proper attention they deserved? Were the souls who scratched them into the annals of history properly vindicated from their existence?

Amber had flown by herself over valleys, mountains, rivers, and plateaus. She had pierced the penumbra of stars and the pale gaze of the moon. Only now did she feel suddenly and hideously alone.

A lump formed in her throat. The Vision weighed heavily. She walk numbly away from the cabin like a human possessed. Suddenly, though, she stopped. Her head lifted up, her hair being caught in a warm gust of morning air. She turned around, stared at the cabin again, and smiled.

Firmly, she walk into the cottage. She fetched several of the logs that had been left in the fireplace. Opening her backpack, she pulled her metal hatchet out and clamped it in her firm grip. Using the instrument with expert precision, she hammered four of the logs into the ground so that they acted as signposts. Next, she pulled loose a fallen panel of oak from the cabin wall itself. She slid this over and propped it in between the four logs. She gazed proudly at her work. Not even the strongest blizzard could shove this erect plank of lumber down.

Next, she squatted before the wooden panel and aimed carefully with the sharp edge of her hatchet. With a strong grip, she leaned her hand forward, back, left, and right, so that she etched several sharp lines against the pale surface of oak. It took the better part of an hour, but she was convinced that what she made would last for decades.

Once her work was done, she slid the hatchet back into her backpack, took a few steps back, and stared at the panel. Five names shone in the golden light cascading across the valley. The sign was arranged so that the letters would catch the sunlight at both dawn and sunset.

It didn't make Amber feel any less lonely, but the site felt a great deal holier than it was before she arrived. Satisfied with her task, she turned her back to the names, stretched her goggles over her face, and soared sunward, allowing the heat of the birthing day to melt her thoughts into obscurity.


Three hours into the early morning, and Amber had passed over two more mountain ranges. The rough topography was rather surprising to her. She briefly wondered if the map in her backpack was anywhere remotely accurate, for there was far too much uneven earth that she had covered and she yet she still hadn't stumbled upon the last two or three landmarks marked on the east end of the illustration.

What was more, the rocky peaks stabbed remarkably high into the air, breaking the clouds and disseminating the moisture so that a heated bubble of vapors gathered along the eastern slope. More hours went by, during which Amber witnessed rapid convection as she pierced the hot air. Sooner than she had hoped, she heard a loud rumble filling the troposphere around her. She glanced left and right, finding herself surrounded by black, anvil-shaped thunderclouds.

A groan escaped her lips as the first of several hot drops of moisture began to fall. Her wings were growing damp. The air tingled with the threatening hint of electricity. There was no way of avoiding it: she had to put her rapid flight on hold and find some cover.

Gazing down, Amber adjusted her goggles so that the clear lenses gave her an unobstructed view of the world below. Dense trees had given way to dry bush. There was no vegetation tall enough or spacious enough to give her a natural ceiling. So, beginning to grow desperate, she dove low and skimmed the west side of the craggy hilltops just beneath her. She studied every nook and cranny of the boulder landscape, desperate for an enclosure that could keep her from becoming soaking wet. To her gasping surprise, she stumbled upon such a niche. It was a cave, immeasurably deep, with a grand black entrance that entreated her like a Natlan atrium.

The world rumbled loudly behind her. Amber started to feel her coat hairs standing on end, something sparked by the queer sensation of cold winds pierced by hot rain. She had lost track of time, and she briefly wondered if summer had crept up on her.

Wasting no time, she darted straight for the cave. There was a flash of bright light in her peripheral vision, forcing her heart to jump. When she stood in the enclosure, she gazed out—panting—in time to embrace a wave of vibrations as the dipping valley below the rocky hill yelled from the storm's immensity. She gulped, breathed easier, and managed a deep chuckle.

Amber sat on her haunches and watched as the world turned gray. The dark flanks of the overhead stormclouds dipped down to kiss the earth, and soon there was a syphonous hiss of moisture pooling over the empty landscape as far as she could see. Her wings fluttered a few times to shake off the loose droplets, and then closed in on her sides. She had made it to the cave on time. Reveling in her miraculous dryness, she gazed at the rain soaked world like a lady might sit at a theatre show. This was just as entertaining—soothing, even—and the roar of the precipitation lent her gentle heartbeats a pleasant ambiance.

Half-an-hour passed, and Amber's antsy nature got the best of her. She stood up, turned around, and faced into the dark recesses of the cave. She raised the goggles and blinked widely into what turned out to be a black expanse. Marching forward, she came to a point where she was no longer gifted with the vestiges of daylight. There she stopped and whistled. The echo that replied was formidable to say the least. She couldn't help but wonder just how deep the cave was.

She needed light. In a practiced ritual, Amber stood still, took a meditative breath, and ran a hand up to the burning orb of her Vision. Once making contact, she spun concentric circles and murmured something to the stale air of the place. It took a few seconds, but a deep red glow came to life from within the gemstone. A dim crimson spotlight was cast before her, growing brighter by the blink, until the walls and floor of the rocky enclosure took shape.

Amber did a double-take. What she originally thought was a cave actually turned out to be a tunnel. The red light went down the distance of fifty feet, and then blackness once more layered the extremity of the natural corridor. There was no telling just how deep the passage went, or what may have been lurking within. It would have been very unwise to blindly trek down.

Amber smiled.

She glanced behind her at the bright world turned gray with rain. With a flick of her tail, she abandoned the stormy afternoon, choosing instead to walk firmly down the dark corridor. As her hands scraped against the polished rock, the world rumbled again. For the briefest moment, however, Amber imagined that the thunder was coming from below instead of above. She shrugged the thought off, adjusted the backpack on her back, and quickened her descent.


As Amber walk deeper into the descending tunnel, all she saw was barren rock. The polished stone was painted in the red glare of her glowing Vision. As she tilted her head left and right, the swath of crimson light bobbed with her. She proceeded slowly, her gait slow and cautious, for what had to have been several minutes in the heart of the hillside.

The air was dank and moist, though it wasn't from the storm that was still roaring against the surface of the world far above her. The subterranean passage had a finely preserved quality; the walls and floors of the place felt as if they hadn't been disturbed in ages. The deeper Amber went, the more shocked she was to find herself breathing normally. She was still getting plenty of oxygen. If she didn't know better, she'd imagine that she had been breathing just as easily in the open air.

Amber had assumed that this was a natural cave. As she glanced left and right, she saw no etches or finely carved grooves or insignias or any other signs of intelligent design. However, the tunnel was so smooth and perfect in its descent that she couldn't help but assume that something had willfully dredged it. She imagined that perhaps this chamber she had stumbled upon was built in ages long gone by. Maybe weather and time had eroded the material to its present smoothness, but Amber wasn't about to pretend that she was an expert in such area. She merely walk forward and explored.

There was suddenly a cold dust of air, as if a mysterious wind was being funneled through the chamber. What was more surprising, she felt the sensation from above. Coming to a stop, she gazed up and tilted her neck, and Vision towards the ceiling. She saw a branching junction of holes—all large and connecting to the corridor she was in. Two of them led diagonally upwards to her left and right. One led directly up.

She gazed into the hole in the ceiling and immediately flinched. Two things had stabbed her eyes: a dot of bright light and a drop of icy cold water. Grunting, she shook her face dry, slid her goggles back onto her eyes, and gazed up again. With her face protected, she allowed a tiny trickle of water to splatter across her lenses just long enough to focus on the light source. She surmised that the vertical tunnel led to the very top of the hill. There, it broke through the surface, and rain water was trickling straight down and onto her.

She smirked at the discovery. Twisting her lips in thought, she looked down and watched for where the moisture went. Sure enough, there was a collective puddle of liquid, and from there it rivered down the corridor that she had been navigating until it hung a sharp right through another, far steeper tunnel.

Amber swiftly followed the trickling, underground brook. The corridor echoed with the liquid and the splashing of her hands. The ceiling danced from the kaleidoscopic bands of her glowing Vision's reflections against the stream. The current grew faster, joining with other corridors that bled in from seemingly nowhere. Amber was spelunking deeper and deeper into an abysmal labyrinth, and she dared not stop for anything. She was carried forward by a smirk.

A few minutes later, the echoes of the trickling stream doubled, tripled, and then turned into a gentle roar that drowned out the storm above the mountain overhead. Amber's light stopped piercing the path ahead of her, and that's how she realized that the tunnel had finally opened up into a large chamber.

She stood at the entrance to the large underground cavern. Meditating, she ran her hand once more over her Vision and murmured a few breathy words. The crimson glow intensified. She found herself squinting, then lifting her water-slicked goggles to get a good look at what she saw.

The chamber was spacious, a surprising contrast to the claustrophobic corridors that had led her down there. Pooling about a forest of limestone stalagmites was an underground lake, stretching left and right—from wall to wall—at a width of over three hundred feet. How long the chamber was, Amber couldn't tell. It was like she stood at the entrance to a grand, foreboding stomach.

She flexed her gilder and flew straight into the hollow expanse.

Amber glanced down as she coasted over the cavernous lake. She was greeted with the sight of her Vision's bulbous, crimson reflection. The water was murky and covered with a thick layer of slime. The closer she glided over the lake, however, she could have sworn she spotted something oddly pale.

So, finding a fairly blunt stalagmite jutting a mere six feet out of the pool's surface, she touched down and perched on the pointed limestone. Positioned in the middle of the large pool, she leaned over and peered hard into the lake.

The glow of her Vision was glinting across the slime, making it hard to see through. She swiftly thought of a crude solution. Sucking all the saliva into the back of her mouth, Amber jerked her face forward and spat hard into the lake. The slimy surface of the waters parted ways, rippled, and re-coalesced. However, she had successfully afforded herself the glance she needed, and she saw what turned out to be many pale spheres resting just inches below the top of the pond.

As the loud roar of thunder echoed through the chamber from above, Amber couldn't help but make a face at what she just saw. They were the strangest rocks she had ever seen. She couldn't imagine a part of the limestone ceiling from which they could have crumbled.

The thunder rolled again, and this time it sent a heavy ripple through the waters all around her. Amber blinked. Her ears twitched as she realized that she was so far down in the cavern that there was no feasible way she could still have been hearing the storm above ground. And yet, the rumbling intensified, becoming almost deafening.

It wasn't until the stalagmite beneath her began to wobble and the waters parted ways once again that Amber realized what it was she saw. They weren't pale rocks. They were eggs.

The thunder developed a screeching tone. The air filled with a foul odor. Amber looked up, and her golden eyes reflect the looming overbite of a giant angular creature lunging straight at her. There was a huge splash of water, a flash of red scales, and then all Amber saw was teeth.


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