With a gasp, Amber dove low. The air crackled with the snapping sound of the beast's massive jaws, then she was mercilessly soaked by a spray of water and slime as the creature's forward half plunged straight into the cavernous lake just behind her.

Amber gnashed her teeth and flew forward as hard as she could. To her horror, she found herself having to navigate around a giant, red-scaled, serpentine body that was roping in and out of the waters all around her. Dipping under a looping flank of muscle and shooting up, Amber clung with four hooves to a stalactite. She hung upside down like a bat, panting, her mane soaked. Tilting her head, she aimed her pendant down at the subterranean pool beneath her. Her vison burned ominously.

The large, hulking body of the quarry eel was just then finishing its epic plunge into the underwater nest. But just as she was trying to get a mental estimate of its size, there was another gigantic splash, and two completely new heads were lunging at her, shrieking.

Amber kicked off the stalactite, spun, and narrowly dodged the two sets of razor-sharp jaws. Just as she dove under the two arching bodies, she was flung head-first into a third eel's maw, then a fourth. She barrel-rolled left and right, assaulted by walls of tossed water and ooze, but barely managed to evade the snapping mouths. Her world had turned into a heated kaleidoscope of dancing crimson light and bestial shrieks.

No matter how agile or evasive Rainbow was, these giant monstrosities caught up with her, forcing her to perform increasingly wild and acrobatic maneuvers. She had encountered quarry eels before, a terrible humor from a defeated god during the Archon War, but not in this fashion. She had never been foolish enough to have been stuck in the heart of a mountain, in a dank claustrophobic space with these giant carnivores completely surrounding her, and without the aid of her fellow Knights. Here she was now like a small field mouse caught in a pit of snakes, and as the seconds ticked by she was further and further amazed to still be alive.

Then her golden eyes caught a cluster of thick stalagmites sticking out of the waters several meters ahead in the crimson glow of her pendant. Spinning in mid-air, she threaded her way through two looping flanks of scales, darted through a pair of snapping jaws, and skimmed the slimy lake's surface as she made a bee-line for the rock formation. She strapped her glider wings harder than she had ever before. She could hear the conjoined hiss of nearly a dozen giant eels speeding towards her from behind. With dexterous grace, she soared straight towards a "fork" in the rising rock formation, spun sideways, and effortlessly slipped through them.

The monsters behind her were hardly as nimble. Six of them in a row slammed murderously into the rock, sending chunks of limestone debris flying across the echoing chamber. They collapsed like a giant bag of wet noodles as several more eels slithered past them and resumed their chase, albeit at an increased distance.

Amber exhaled in relief. She had been successful. She now had the space she needed to fly forward, unimpeded, and find a tunnel that could safely take her out of that place. Using her head and agility, the Outrider had once again avoided death, and now she was speeding for her life.

Then she stopped in the middle of the giant cavern.

Amber hovered in place, her deadpan face strewn with sweat and slime.

The roar of splashing water increases as the remaining quarry eels converged on her.

Slowly, Amber pivoted around, and her pendant's light along with her. She stared into the faces of the incoming eels. Her jaw tightened until her gritting teeth showed. Flapping her wings harder, she lowered her goggles and performed a complete about-face, flying directly towards the incoming phalanx of monsters.

Their red eyes glinted from the light of her neckpiece. Theirs forest of razor sharp teeth glistened with slime and saliva. Powered by hunger and rage, they lunged straight at their prey.

Amber's eyes flared beneath the goggles. The ceiling shook and the water parted ways as she burned a lightning bolt's path towards them, greeting their menacing scales and serrated teeth with a long, loud, and haunting scream.


Someone flinched, and it wasn't Amber.

As soon as the first of the many eels twitched, Amber angled her wings towards the lake. As a result, her body lifted up at the last millisecond, landing her hooves square in the center of the giant serpent's forehead. As a result of her full-on-impact, the monster's skull was sent colliding with all of the others. The eels collapsed like a wet sack of meat. A huge explosion of lake water shot up, but Amber was already majestically climbing above it. She shot straight towards the ceiling, and to her luck she saw a bright circle of light. There was a vertical tunnel directly above her daring charge, and it was bordered by several thin stalactite formations. Surging straight towards the hole, she twirled so that her hooves came into contact with one of the limestone spikes. She snapped it effortlessly off the ceiling and carried it with her into the thin corridor.

The echoes doubled, tripled. She knew without looking that two or three of the eels were darting up into the tunnel to chase after her. She also realized that they would catch up to her in mere seconds, seeing as they had to have been the ones who carved these corridors to begin with.

Amber maintained her speed, darting up the tunnel, flying towards the light, piercing the storm's rainwater pelting her from thousands of feet up. She felt the air turning rancid, heating up from the pursuing eels at her tail.

She had waited long enough. Finally, she pivoted the broken stalactite in her grasp so that she was scraping it along opposite sides of the thin tunnel at the same time. Showering sparks and pebbles, she spun in her ascent, carving the tunnel wider like a buzz-saw climbing its blurred way to the surface. The tunnel shook and crumbled, and soon it couldn't handle the punishment. Rivulets of cracking rock outraced Amber. Everything threatened to collapse all around her.

It was at this moment that the first of several hissing eels caught up with her. Its jaws lunged for her metaphorical tail hairs.

With a snarl, Amber flung what was left of the stubby stalactite down so that the creature awkwardly swallowed it. She then kicked her hooves off the gaping jaws of the thing and propelled herself upwards. The boost was well-timed, for a claustrophobic avalanche of crumbling rock was filling the tunnel. Soon, all of the eels beneath her shrieked as the lower end of the tunnel collapsed, carrying their meaty weight back down towards the distant nesting cave below.

Just as the combined cacophony of their collapsing bodies filled the chamber, Amber had reached the light. She burst out into a blindingly bright world, beset with rainwater, thunder, and wind. Her body spun awkwardly into the chaos, dodging gale force wind and sheets of needle-sharp precipitation. Ultimately, she dove towards the earth, ricocheted off a hilltop, and came to a grinding stop in a soaked bed of soil and grass.

Amber slumped to a stop there, panting. She was covered in water, slime, mud, and sweat. She was filthy and soaked to the bone. She was also laughing.

Amber's guffawing voice broke through the storm, challenging the lightning. She rolled over and clutched her mud-stained chest. As she cackled and gasped, her mouth caught gallons of rain hammering down at her. But it made no difference.

She was alive.

Her goggled eyes opened, taking in the cloud cover above. She smiled at the random flashes of lightning and bursts of sunlight, until her vision was overcome by just how gray everything was. Slowly—like a deflating balloon—her laughter stopped and her smile melted away. Eventually she gulped and just lay there, becoming one with the moisture.

She was alive, but she was still alone.

Minutes passed, even an hour, during which Rainbow spent the entire storm sitting up on her haunches and staring into the water-soaked landscape. Her back was to the east, but she knew it would only be a matter of time before she turned around completely and resumed her trek. For the moment, she simply enjoyed the natural shower. She could have caught a cold. She could have even risked pneumonia, but she wasn't afraid.

There was more than one way to cheat death, and if Amber was anything, she was an explorer.


When night fell, Amber was actually ready for it. She set up camp beneath a pair of dead trees on the east face of a low mountain. With the aid of flint and steel, she started a humble fire and laid herself besides the flames to dry her body.

Thankfully, her backpack was made of stern stuff. The royal fabric from Fontaine had little to no risk of allowing any moisture to leak through with its heavy enchantments. That didn't stop her—however—from habitually opening the pouches and examining the contents within. The bread was ever crumbling, but still edible. She chewed on a few morsels with boring precision before moving on to the rest of the pack. The map was untouched. The hatchet hadn't rusted. The green book...

Amber lingered. She slowly blinked and icily moved the tome beyond sight.

Reaching into the backpack once again, she produced the red apple. It was as shiny and beautiful as the bright afternoon when she plucked it. Squinting through the flickering firelight, she polished the surface once more and smiled proudly at the fruit's glistening skin. Her stomach—barely aided by the stale bread—gurgled deliciously for the sweet object in her grasp. She did not give into it, and instead placed the fruit back into the deepest recesses of the backpack.

Minutes later, Amber was lying on her back, her ears enchanted by the percussion of the campfire's crackling embers. She gazed at the stars, not with amazement and wonder but rather with a placid solemnity. It seemed as though no matter how far she flew or how many miles she traveled, the constellations looked the same, so that the lone Outrider wondered if she had crossed any distance at all.

At least the stars had texture to them. Drawing in and out of the streaming band of the endless night sky, she could have sworn she saw color—blues and reds pushing and pulling at her eyes. However, she danced with them like a stone golem would patrol a cemetery. There were too many stars to grow attached to. Amber wondered if there was another person like her a galaxy away, staring back and seeing her as just one more insignificant speck of light amidst the canvas of eternity. In the end—as her squinting eyes took her into the unforgiving realm of sleep—all of the light bled into a heartless gray, and it felt to Amber as if she had never taken to the air to begin with.

She tried to shatter these thoughts. She remembered the quarry eels. She remembered countless other dangers that she had recently encountered, each of them wild and spectacular. She had flown fearlessly into the angry faces of anything and everything she had come across, and still the night's sky looked gray as she fell into slumber.

So she embraced blackness instead. Clenching her eyes tightly shut, she rolled herself into her blankets until they enshrouded her like a cocoon. Somewhere in the midst of that lonesome dark, she felt her head filling with her own heartbeat. It was something worth dancing to, and it made herself feel like she had the ability to show off once more.

And as if to grant her most secret wish, she had no dreams that night. When the stars passed over Amber, they shone over a smile.


By the next afternoon, Amber had traveled a great distance. Unlike the two days previous, she hadn't let any passing landscape or random sight interrupt her. She coasted with great speed, breaking the clouds and piercing her way eastward like she was a second sun on an unwavering path.

When the horizon grew dim enough, she slid the shades out from her goggles and squinted at the world below. With clear vision, she saw the mountains smoothing from jutting frames to rolling curves. Instead of barren rock, the mountainous terrain was covered with a dense ocean of green fur trees. The air was thick with oxygen and life. Several flocks of birds crisscrossed with Rainbow's path as she sped towards a dark spot on the horizon.

From a distance, Rainbow tried to discern just what the grand blemish was. She had flown over so many mountain ranges that she had practically memorized the shape of such geographical features. She wondered if perhaps she was spotting a rainstorm on the horizon, but as she sped further and further towards it, the dark spot failed to move.

Her lips pursed as her forehead scrunched in thought. She wondered if it could have been smoke from a forest fire, or a random mesa jutting up from the ground, or even some building of sorts. How long had it been since she had seen civilization? She had studied the map on several breaks during her trek, and though she found the entire process boring, she had become well acquainted with many countries lying on the far right edge of her illustrated guide.

In the middle of her pondering, she was interrupted by the horrible sensation of her eyes forcibly rolling back in her head. Amber's entire world jolted as her wings briefly went numb, throwing her body limply through the air. She coughed, spat, and struggled to jerk her wings into action. Her vision had all but left her, and a nauseous dizziness was taking her over.

It was happening again.

She tried not to panic. She held her breath, relaxed her muscles, and stretched her twitching wings straight out. With remarkable grace, she glided her spasming body slowly downward, so that she approached the earth in a steady descent instead of a rock-hard plummet. All the while, the dizziness only intensified. The windy air filled with a low bass hum. By the time she regained control of her eyes, she saw the dim glow of her pendant fluctuating on its own, and then she saw a sea of green tree tops screaming at her.

Amber held her breath. She covered her face with her forelimbs. Her body barreled into branch after branch of sharp leaves and needles. Grunting, she bore the multiple slaps to her torso and skimmed her way downward until her nostrils smelled the dank earth. At the last second, she spun around and absorbed the impact with the soil through her side.

A loud gasp escaped her lips. She toppled. She rolled. She finally came to a tumbling stop against a mound of wet dirt. There, she curled into a blue ball and clutched the glowing pendant about her neck. A practiced hiss came out of her lips as she weathered the waves of dizziness coming out of her.

She had been through this before. She had been in worst spots when it hit. She simply had to keep calm, keep breathing, and wait it out. The world spun around her. There was no up or down, only her mind in the center of a great spinning chaos. She tore her goggles off, plopped them on the ground, and covered her clenched eyelids with a pair of hooves. She was afraid to open her eyes, for she knew the entire world would look nothing but gray.

Finally, after several hyperventilating minutes, the dizziness faded away. Amber didn't need to see to know that the pendant had stopped glowing. All she cared was that she had found the earth again, and it was warm and blessing to the touch. She cuddled the muddy ground like a child would nuzzle up to her mother's side, and finally... finally her breaths returned to a normal pace.

All in all, it wasn't so bad.

She sat up and opened her bleary eyes. She reeled; she was still dizzy. But the nausea was gone, and she realized she could move if she wanted to. First, though, she had to pick up her goggles. When she grabbed them and lifted them to her face, she briefly saw her reflection and immediately wished she hadn't.

Her eyes were different: red specks against yellow marbles.

She blinked. Just like that, her golden pupils and white cornea returned. Rainbow's nostrils flared. Everything was back to normal, or at least as normal as she could afford them to be.

She slid the goggles up but let them stay on her brow. After all, she knew that it'd be a good few hours before she felt healthy enough to fly again. She had done this dance far too many times to expect otherwise.

Sighing, she broke into a wobbly walk, shaking off the last threads of dizziness as she scaled up the mountainside on foot. Her only regret was that the day's perfect flight had been interrupted. There was still the next day, Amber reasoned. It was a palpable enough thought to make her smile, and her pace quickened.


Amber's muscles ached. She mentally cursed herself for allowing exhaustion to take over. All her life, she had become acquainted with opening her wings and propelling herself everywhere through the air. It was Barbatos' blessings after all. With meager shame, she realized that she desperately needed to put her earthen limbs through more of a workout. With the trek ahead of her, now was as good a time as ever to become familiar with her gift for jogging.

Still, her pace was a slow, even gait. She was attempting to master endurance more so than speed. In steady steps, she ascended a steep hilltop. She passed through the brown bodies of fur trees. Twigs snapped underneath as she scaled loose rocks and ducked under passing branches.

Her dizziness had almost entirely dissipated, and yet she wasn't about to take wing. Experience had taught her that after such "episodes" it was wise to wait a space of two hours before attempting to fly again.

By the time she reached the top of the forested hill, a deep red glow penetrated the trees. She skidded to a stop, her heart beating, for she briefly feared that her pendant was shimmering again. However, as she came upon a break in the trees, she realized it was something else entirely.

The sun was setting behind her, and the shadow of the mountain swimming over the eastern landscape cast miles upon miles of low lying forests with a purple haze. It was as if a blanket of pure magic had been tossed across the world. Towards the edge of the horizon, where the sun was most distant from the waking world, a thin line of cool blue tones prophesied the arrival of night. If Amber was to face east and then twirl one hundred and eighty degrees back towards her boundless destination, she'd be greeted with half a spectrum's worth of melting colors.

The dark shadow against the eastern horizon was still there, but it appeared no closer to her perspective. She wondered over just how immensely huge the structure must have been. From the distant angle, Amber assumed that perhaps it could have been a massive butte. There was no telling just how tall the structure was, but the fact that it was noticeable from several miles away made her ponder...

Certainly it had to have been on the map. Amber squatted down and reached into her backpack. She was halfway through un-scrolling the parchment when something dimmed in her peripheral vision.

She tilted her gaze up, blinking. She saw the bands of purple shadows washing over the valley below. To her better judgment, Rainbow knew that it was merely the shadows of the mountain range to the west as the sun dipped beyond the crest of the world. Still, she couldn't help but feel mesmerized, enjoying the poetic notion that she was watching the very edge of night stretching over the world in real time.

Amber knew she had only so little light left before she could look at the map without the aid of her pendant. Still, she simply sat in place on the side of the mountain—like a young girl would attend a puppet show—and gazed as the world was slowly swallowed into blissful twilight. The stars broke out overhead. The world was awash in a pale glow. If she shouted into the blossoming void, Rainbow wondered if her voice would echo all the way to the four corners of the earth.

The moon rose, and it was still not full. Amber judged it would be just a day or two. She wondered if her voice still had any use other than yelling. Her mouth became briefly dry, so she chose to gaze away from the bright orb in the sky, and once again she was at peace.

Amber never saw herself as a woman who appreciated beauty. But, perhaps, it was never too late to start. She sat there, staring into the edge of night, not bothering to count the passing hours. Sleep came upon her like a phantom, and she couldn't remember when the twinkling stars ended and her rolling eyes began.


By late the next morning, the sun was glaring in Amber's eyes, but she hardly noticed. She was too busy squatting by the side of the road, staring point-blank at a series of shallow ravines cut into the earthen path. She sat in the center of a great yawning valley, just before the earth rose once again into hilly prominence.

There was no mistaking it. She was seeing wagon trails.

Her goggled vision wandered carefully over every line of detail. Amber was a trained and proud Outrider, her tracking skills were only second to Kaeya's. She counted the impressions of four wheels. Then—judging by their complexities—she added another four. She judged that two wagons had been pulled along that path within a day's time. Judging from the angle of the impressions, she imagined that the caravan had been heading uphill, into the dense forest along the edge of the eastward mountains.

Just how many people were in the group? She couldn't judge. But she was intrigued nevertheless by the nature of their footprints. Most if not all of the people had been wearing shoes—but not just any ordinary kind. They were heavily spiked, suggesting that they hailed from a landscape replete with moist, soft earth that needed to be pierced with cleats in order to provide solid balance.

Amber stood up straight and craned her neck. From her low position, she gazed at the rising earth and the crest of the hills beyond. She saw a low cloud of heavy mist, and beyond that a gray haze that surrounded the large, shadowy structure still looming on the horizon.

The expert weather flier in her speculated that the mountain ranges divided the wind currents so that most of the moisture was being deposited east of where she was positioned. And where there was an abundance of moisture, there was typically civilization.

That's how she ultimately concluded that the tracks suggested that the wagoneers(?) were returning home instead of heading away from it. In just a few hours of flight, she imagined she could very well be chatting with these strangers.

She took a running start, flapped her wings, and lifted off. No less than thirty minutes into flight, she saw something beneath her that caught her eyes. Circling down, she once again landed and took a measure of her surroundings. At some point—perhaps during the previous night—the wagons had come to a stop, parking at forty-five degrees with one another. What was more, there was a charred spot in the center of the camp, suggesting where a fire had been made. Whoever these people were, they couldn't be described as very clean. They had left several scraps and litter and other less favorable belongings under the shade of a few leaf-bare trees.

Then something stood out among the rest of the detritus. Amber's eyes instantly twitched. Shifting about on her hooves, she stepped over, bent low, and got a good look.

There was a brown bag lying besides the grass line—half hidden in the dirt from the spray of the wagon wheels spinning into motion. As soon as she touched the folded material and shifted it around in her hand, she knew.

It was leather.

Amber bit her lip. She had seen leather before. But not of a kind like this. She had heard several people speak of cultures that used it. But never had she seen the smooth texture of an alien creature, especially not during her journey here. Nothing made her feel so much far from home than that single bag.

A sigh shook through her. She glanced once more up the trail leading towards the final ridge of mountains before the mist and the hazy structure beyond. She knew the wagoneers(?) had to be somewhere in that dense foliage, but suddenly she wasn't certain if she wanted to make contact.

But something urged her forward anyways, something akin to the spark that made her fly face-first into a phalanx of hissing quarry eels. Amber gave her back a little shake, and was momentarily relieved to feel the shifting weight of the hatchet in her backpack.

Tightening her goggles, Amber lifted herself up and bulleted west, ready to face whoever was prepared—or unprepared—for her.


The edge of night was lingering overhead when Amber caught up with them. They had come to a stop at a flat clearing of dry soil along the eastern edge of a mountain. Several tall trees towered above, stretching crooked branches over their heads like skeletal wings. Parking their two wagons at sharp angles with one another, the tall figures worked to set up camp for the evening.

There were fourteen of them total. It was a full caravan, and each individual was clad in thin strips of dark-brown armor. Some of them were hooded. Others wore metal leg-plates that matched the silver cleats of their shoes. If anything, they all looked appropriately geared for contending with all sorts of unimaginable wildlife. Judging from the unkempt nature of their lengthy hairs, Amber assumed that they had been journeying for a long, long time across the mountainous landscape.

Rainbow hid, perched quietly above the group. From where she sat on a rocky outcropping, she stared forty feet down at the scene. Her ears twitched. It had been weeks since she last heard a person's voice. Being privy to such a busy conversation of muttering travelers was suddenly an alarming sensation. There was not a single Vision user to be seen among them, so that she wondered if they had even had it in them to suspect a creature eavesdropping from above.

It wasn't as if she could make out entirely what they were saying. She heard something about a two day trip, about a deep river that needed traversing, about one of the person's and his penchant for snoring in sleep—followed by a burst of laughter. The people' voices were saturated with a thick accent that Rainbow had never heard before. She briefly contemplated how remarkable it was that she could understand them even remotely after having traversed so much wilderness.

But as the minutes wore on, and the world above became darker, she grew less and less patient with these darkly-clad strangers. They had very little interesting to talk about. Their wagon supplies were filled with seemingly superfluous junk. Before her eyes, she witnessed as several burly members of the group fumbled goofily to start a fire. For the life of her, Rainbow couldn't understand how so many adult people could appear so tactless. As their frustration and ire grew into the advent of night, Amber yawned, stood up, and flexed her wings to take off for the east horizon, ditching them.

She stopped, suddenly, upon spotting one particular person's graceful gait. She squinted and lifted her goggles as she watched the figure march quietly away from the rest of the group struggling to build a fire. Once he reached the fringes of the camp, he slumped to his haunches, sighed, and reached for his brown hood. Once the article was lowered, the air lit up with a shade of gold. A young person sat, running a hand through a short patch of silken-blonde hair that ended just behind his ears. With a look of supreme boredom, he glanced lethargically his party's way and exhaled slowly. Below Amber, his lithe body appeared to melt into the shadows of his place, his golden head serving as a final beacon of the day.

Rainbow blinked. She glanced from him to the rest of the group, then to him again. Slowly, a smirk crossed her lips. Instead of flying away, she reached back for her backpack...


"What's taking so blasted long, Fred?" A tall man in brown gear stood behind his squatting companion. "The moon's almost out! We won't survive the night if you don't get that fire started!"

"Don't blame me!" Fred hissed, his face grimacing and sweating as he fought endlessly to make sparks between two sticks. "Blame Kris for dropping these sticks into the stream!"

"Blame me, eh?" A red-haired man charged up, snarling, only to be held back by two companions. "You're the one who knocked me off the wagon, Fred!"

"The least either of you could have done," grumbled another person, "Was fetched some new materials along the way here. This mountain is too bouldery to offer anything."

"Why are we in such a blasted hurry?!" Fred muttered and fought with the stubborn task in front of him. "It's not like Charles will be gone by the time we get there!"

"You know that every day counts in this delivery!" The tall man uttered. He lowered his hood so that several threads of brown hair streamed from his thin neck. "The more we delay here trying to rest our worthless legs, the more those villagers have to contend with the unthinkable!"

"I swear to the gods!" Fred growled, his eyes twitching. "I've never had so much trouble in my life! If only we had some decent—"

A pair of Outrider boots slammed into the ground before him.

Fred fell back on his spine, his legs curled like a dead cockroach's. Several more people gasped and pulled glinting blades out from forelimb sheathes. The tall, gray man merely squinted at the sight.

Amber stood among them. She had something in her hands. Amber's Vision burned bright, a sign of the gods' favor.

Fred sat up, blinking down at some dry flint and steel. He glanced up at Amber in mixed relief and awe.

All around the camp, people murmured.

"Great heavens..."

"A Vision user..."

"Where did she come from?"

"I've always heard about them, but never before have I seen one..."

"Are those wings real...?"

Amber merely smiled. Her eyes scanned the crowd. Finally, she saw the small man towards the rear of the group. The person with a blonde mane caught her eyesight, then looked away. Amber's attention was gathered by the gray figure of the tall, elder man marching towards her.

"It seems as if you have something that can help us in our time of need. Remarkable timing, stranger," he said. "What's your name?"

"I'm crazy awesome," Amber spoke out loud. "Who are you?"

Chuckles broke through the crowd. Several wandering people shared smirks and watched as their leader stepped before the strange traveler.

"I am Tobias, leader of this caravan," the gray man said. "We're on a trip to the village of Autumnvale, west of here, to deliver some very important supplies. We're already behind by a day's journey, on account of some inclement weather we encountered."

"Rain falls where it wants to," Amber said, then gave a wink. "At least when there are no Outriders around."

More chuckles. The elder, however, was more curious than amused.

"How young are you, traveler?" He paced in front of her, his eyes narrow. "You sound no more than twenty winters."

"I'm old enough to know a party that's screwed when I see it." Amber pointed a finger at the unlit campfire. "If you don't get that blazing, you might as well kiss getting to Charlie on time goodbye."

"Charles."

"Whatever."

"And, no doubt, you would like some payment for lending your resources," Tobias exclaimed, gesturing at the pendant on her hands.

"Hmmmm..." Amber licked her lips and gazed across the camp towards the wagons. "I sure wouldn't mind a change of menu from the crumbs of bread I've been eating for a solid week." She glanced back at the elder and smirked. "If I can afford it."

His eyes were briefly resting on her Vision with the passionate burning flame. Slowly, he nodded. "Yes. Yes, I do believe you can." The man turned towards the group, whistled shrilly, and waved a hand as he spoke, "Alright, folks! We finally have the means for starting a fire! So no more lazing or slacking about! Let's get a meal prepared so we can rest sooner for tomorrow morning's journey!"

As John, the Blacksmith sparked a fire to life easily with Amber's Vision, the many people wandered every which way to gather whatever dry leaves and twigs they could find. A dull, crimson light swam across the clearing, and Rainbow once again saw the golden hair of the lithe man to the rear. He was stepping briskly towards a cluster of dry bushes when two other figures roughly bumped into him.

"Where do you think you're going, Mike?"

"Yeah, Mike, what gives?"

The short-haired person doubled back from their brutish contact, cleared his throat, and rasped forth, "What does it look like I'm doing? We need to start a fire—"

"Don't you mean WE need to start a fire?"

"Yeah!" The other large man chuckled. "You're on cooking duty, remember?"

Mike groaned. "Again?" His voice cracked as he gestured towards the wagons. "I was stuck doing that the last three nights in a row!"

"And if you don't fly right, your face will be stuck in the side of the mountain!"

"Now get a move on, you stupid boy!"

"Heheheh..."

Mike sighed, rolled his eyes, and marched in a lurching fashion towards the wagon. He glanced over his shoulder briefly to see Amber's gaze catching him, and immediately he pretended to ignore her.

As the toasty aura of the campfire grew warmer and warmer, Amber looked away from the wagons and smiled at Tobias. "So, Mister Tall Dark and Pale..." Her teeth showed in an excited grin. "What vittles ya got?"


"Are there lots of Outriders like you in the realm of Teyvat?" One of the many mans leaned closer to the fire so that his face lit up in the night. He and his companions gazed eagerly at Amber from where they sat in the center of the camp. "I was told that there were so many winged people to the east that they could summon hurricanes by their sheer flight paths!"

"Eh... we glider users can do pretty cool things," Amber said. She sat on her haunches before the fire, bathed in the mesmerized gazes of so many people squatting around her. The burning wood crackled and spat ashes beneath her rasping voice, "But we're not in the business of starting hurricanes. Now being part of the Knights and patrolling Mondstadt we've been known to do! Especially when it comes to gathering intel against those in the Seven Nations, like the Abyss Order or the Treasure Hoarders."

"Wow, knights did really existed in where you lived...?" Another man remarked as his brown-garbed companions murmured in awe. "If we had glider users here who could challenge any threats, it'd make life easier."

Another man leaned in. "We'd also be out of a job." He gestured towards the wagon.

Several people chuckled while the first man rolled his eyes. "Still, being a knight- no! An Outrider is an amazing thing."

"It can also be a wicked awesome thing." Amber smirked and flexed her wings. "Especially when you know how to use it right..." Her voice trailed off as she saw a familiar blonde sight.

Mike was marching towards the group. He had a tray clamped in his hands. He laid it down before the many people. Once his hands was free, he muttered in a tiny voice. "There. Freshly cut. Remember, equal shares..."

"Who are you, our mom, Mike?"

"Hahahaha."

"Heheh—"

"The boy's wise," Tobias said, marching his elder frame into the amber glow as he sat down close to Amber. "You should all listen to him. If we don't conserve our food supplies, we'll faint before we get to Charles's town of Autumnvale."

"Right. Enough talk. I'm famished!" John, the Blacksmith said as he approached by, scooped up a morsel from the tray, and began feasting on it. The other people muttered under their breaths and took their shares as the tray was passed around.

Mike didn't look remotely hungry, in spite of having just served the material. He ran a hand through his short, golden threads, then glanced across the fire. Upon seeing Rainbow's receiving glance, he once more made himself scarce.

"Mondstadt, it must be a great city."

Amber snapped out of it. She gazed aside. "Huh?"

"Where you come from," Tobias continued. "There must be a great city in the north for so many glider users to be situated in one place. I've been in this world long enough to know that glider users like to flock together, which is why we rarely see any of your kind this far out."

Amber smirked. "Well, I guess I'm just the one Outrider who felt like stretching her wings a bit more."

"Decarabian's Tower city, perhaps?"

"Hmm? What?"

"The name of your city?"

Amber giggled. "Ahem. No. Decarabian's Tower is a ruin now. There's a reason why that city supposedly 'disappeared away into nothingness.' It simply was just forgotten to begin with. Considering the history..."

"Nice to know that folks from Teyvat still have a penchant for storytelling as much as us western folk."

"Yeah, if you say so." Amber yawned and leaned back as the tray of food was passed around towards them. "I come from a place called Mondstadt."

"Hmmm... Mondstadt..." the old man seemed to ponder unto that.

"It's a large city. I imagine you would have... heard of it..." Amber was distracted.

The excitement she felt before slowly faded away, as the the roaring laughter and small conversations made her realize something vital. She missed home.

"Believe it or not..." She smiled gently. "Even for somebody my age, I know that there's more than history to share with old folks like you."

"And that brings me to another point of curiosity." Tobias smiled gently. "Does a traveler come this far for a change of pace, or is it because Teyvat no longer has that which used to fill her?"

Amber blinked at that. She had no response. So, instead, she quietly filled her mouth with the gentle soup, her gaze falling into the fire.


UPDATES EVERY FRIDAY/SATURDAY. MAYBE.