Wolvendom, 2 years before Aether's arrival.

As Outrider Amber felt the blessed Mondstadt winds caress her hair with their cool fingers, she mused that Wolvendom was quiet today; much too quiet for her taste. When the Knights of Favonius had sent their one and only Outrider to the edge of the Old City (as many whispered the name), she had been secretly hesitant to patrol anywhere near those old ruins. She had heard some adventurers swear that a dragon lived up there, and she was not eager to find out if that was true. Yet, she was an Outrider, and fear was no reason to abandon her responsibilities. Plus, if Grandmaster Varka had faith in her, she felt confident that she could succeed in clearing out a particularly nasty hilichurl camp they had received word of from their newest investigator and her talking raven.

Looking down at the landscape from her nearby perch, Amber inhaled a deep breath, and then let it out softly. Then she puffed out her chest, strapped her flight goggles on, and tested the wind. "South by southeast," she said confidently, before taking a swan dive from the rocky outcropping and extending her glider's wings.

She let out a whoop as the glider caught the air, swooping under her and lifting her upward, higher and higher. She never got sick of this feeling, and she suspected she never could. She tilted her wings to turn right and soar above the forest path below. Verdant trees whooshed by beneath her, and a few birds ejected themselves from the branches as she passed overhead. "Sorry, little guys!" She laughed and adjusted her course to avoid treetops since she was descending rather rapidly.

Her feet touched the forest floor a minute or two later, leading her to stop rather abruptly and stumble forward a little. From her aerial position, she had not yet seen the hilichurls that the investigator had sworn on her duty as the lady Something-or-Another from Who-Knows-Where (a title that sounded noble but quite wordy, if Amber could comment). "This is a disaster!" She grumbles to herself, ripping off her goggles, and the ends of her ribbon seeming to match her mood, drooping slightly. "Well, back to work. They can't have gotten far by now," she chided herself.

Ahead, she recognized the bowl-shaped natural amphitheater that was revered as the ancestral dwelling place of Boreas, the Wolf of the North. She had also heard rumors about that place, that there was still a wolf population and possibly a lupine ghost, but she had no intention of finding out for herself whether these rumors were true.

Just as Amber turned to climb another cliffside to continue her patrol, she heard a strained cry arise from a thicket not far from where she stood, followed by the exclamation, "Ouch! Why do they never miss?" The young girl folded her glider and drew her bow, nocking an arrow to the string. She could hear that a struggle had broken out and that whoever was being attacked was fighting for his life. She slowly crept toward the voice, fearing the worst. Had several hilichurls ambushed an adventurer? Or maybe it was one of those terrifying beaked-masked mages she had heard the older Knights whispering about. As she pushed through the branches with her shoulder, she pulled back the bowstring and willed a Pyro charge into the arrow.

"Get out of here if you know what's good for you!" she yelled, and leapt from behind the last tree, aiming toward the voice she had heard - and canceled the Pyro arrow she had prepared for the unknown attacker. "Oh, you look like you handled it," she said with a slight chuckle.

The apparent victim of the attack was surrounded by the carcasses of three wild boars, which he had cleaved in half with a sword. A flaming sword, she thought."He's Pyro, like me!" He seemed to be a little stooped, and from his cream-white hair, she assumed he might be studying the carcasses. Weird behavior, for sure, but she had seen weirder and more dangerous things. Then he turned around, and she saw he had three large wounds, one on his stomach and two on his right leg. The blood on the tusks of the boars explained everything she needed to know about what had happened here. She was about to remark about his condition, but only got one glimpse of emerald eyes that widened when they landed on her before the boy mumbled, "'m okay," and promptly collapsed.

"Hey!" the Outrider shouted, and, remembering her limited emergency training, strained to flip the boy onto his back. She thanked Barbatos profusely for the extra hours that Sir Kaeya had made her train because the boy was surprisingly denser than he looked. He's got some serious muscle, she thought, and subsequently wondered who this guy was. Perhaps he was from the Adventurer's Guild, but he looked like he couldn't be much younger than her. She tilted the head to the side to avoid aspiration from vomiting and then laid her head on his chest to listen to his heartbeat. A soft but sharp groan caused her to twist her head to look up at the boy.

"Your...hand...," he whispered, barely able to speak, and she gasped, removing her hand from his abdomen, and realized she had been pressing on his rather large wound with her left hand. She removed the hand quickly and turned pale.

"I'm sorry!" she said and wiped her blood-soaked glove on the grass next to them. "I really hope I didn't hurt you!"

"'s okay," he mumbled for the second time and smiled weakly. "I've had worse." He winced as he touched his own abdomen. Of course, it was a miracle that saved me last time, he thought ruefully.

Amber pulled the pack off her waist and opened it up to retrieve a small vial of Hydro slime condensate. "Sorry, this is going to hurt," she said and pulled his tunic up above his abdominal line. She turned a light shade of pink at the strangely intimate position they were in before he coughed and a fresh spurt of blood erupted from the wound. "Oh, Barbatos!" she cursed, and looked in her pack for anything to impede the bleeding, but came up empty. "Oh, Archons!"

The boy sat up a bit and said, "You have...Pyro Vision?" he asked, pointing to the flame-crested amulet at her hip. "Use it to...stop the bleeding," he urged, pain lacing his voice, but he still tried to smile.

"But that will hurt, won't it?" she protested, and the boy waved off her concerns.

"I'm used to pain, but I really don't want to die today," he responded, and the fear she saw in his eyes betrayed exactly how he truly felt.

"I...I don't know if I can!" she said, anxiety creeping into her tone.

"It's already...a miracle you're here," the boy encouraged her. "If you can't help...this is the unluckiest day of my life."

She nodded and reached for her quiver and a square of cloth, resolve flooding through her. She may not be the young sister from the church that the Knights brought in to heal the injuries they frequently suffered, but she could do something. It was her duty, and by Barbatos she was going to fulfill it. She soaked up as much blood as she could before the rag was soaked, and then said, "I hope you don't hate me for this." She retrieved an arrow and willed her power into the tip, igniting it. She then carefully pressed the flaming shaft into the puncture wound on his abdomen, eliciting a scream. "Just a little longer!" she begged, and the smell of char and iron and boiled bodily fluids assaulted her nose. She scrunched it up and tried to hold her breath, and at last, the hemorrhage stopped. His abdomen was ringed in blackened flesh, and she wondered if he would ever fully recover. From his hyperventilation, she felt vindicated that at least he could still breathe.

She repeated this procedure on his right leg, cleaning out the puncture on his thigh. She offered up another prayer of thanks that the third wound was merely a simple, though deep, cut. She then picked up the vial of Hydro slime condensate and smeared it across his abdominal muscles -

His very strong abdominal muscles, she thought, before shaking the thought from her head.

- and then his thigh. The boy groaned again as sharp pain arced through every nerve from the middle of his femur to his hip, but he was ultimately too weak to form any more words.

As she wrapped his leg and waist with the strips of cloth bandage and tied it off, Amber looked toward the sky. She noted the sun's position barely reached above the distant tree line, and she cursed. This land was not called Wolvendom because it was full of rabbits, after all, though Amber would have much preferred that alternative.

Amber looked at the boy's sword and hefted it in her hand. Archons, this is heavier than I expected. She huffs, willing a different set of muscles than the ones she trained for archery to lift it, and swung at the nearest tree to lop off several branches. With another directed burst of Pyro, she set the sticks she had retrieved ablaze and then sat next to the sleeping boy's body. The evening turned to night, and still, she sat vigilant, tending the flames and listening for intruders. By the time the moon had fully risen, the air was filled with faint howling, and she shivered a little despite the fire's warmth. Fortunately, none of the howls seemed to get any closer. As her eyes grew heavy, she swore she could hear another howl arise — but one distinct from the rest. She chuckled and mused, That sounds like a kid out there.

Dawning sunlight jolted Amber awake, and she looked at where the fire had been. It was mere ashes by this point, but she also noted that someone had tended to it in the nighttime. A circle seemed to have been carved around it, and from the depth of the furrows, she surmised it was made by a really big sword. A line from the edge of the fire led toward one of the trees, against which sat another boy, whose silvery hair hung nearly all the way down his back. As if called, the boy looked back toward her, and suddenly bared his teeth. Upon seeing she did not have her bow or sword in hand, he stopped snarling and then did something she did not expect. He spoke.

"You…him…frendz?" the boy stammered, and if he had had ears, she imagined they would have drooped in shame. She nodded in response, and he stood up and retrieved a massive hunk of metal that she realized was a claymore. "Frendz…go away," he said to her, but she sensed no anger or malice, but instead concern. "Not safe." With that, he scampered off and left her with more questions than answers. She inspected the place where he had been and noticed a line of wolf paw prints that did not cross a pair of human footprints that she assumed belonged to the mysterious stranger.

The cream-haired boy stirred and opened his eyes. "Is it morning already?" he whispered less hoarsely than last night. Amber knelt down next to him and nodded.

"You slept a long time," she said and gave him a reassuring smile. "Do you think you feel good enough to travel?"

The boy sat up and winced, and a small pool of red darkened the bandage on his waist. That was not a good sign. "I…I'll try," he said, surprisingly optimistically for someone in his situation. He pushed up with his hand and tried to stand, but collapsed to his uninsured knee with a whimper. "Guess I'm not strong enough," he lamented, hanging his head.

Amber frowned, heart racing, and racked her brain for a solution to their situation. Her eyes fell on her crumpled glider. "Hey, don't give up just yet!" she says. "Take my hand and I'll be like a human cane for you."

The boy nodded but also protested. "That would work, but I don't want to make you carry me."

With his wounds reopening, she did not have forever. The bandages would keep it uninfected for a time, but he would not last long if the bleeding was not fixed more permanently than her patch job had done. "It's the least I can do for you; The city is only a little ways away. We can make it by nightfall if we hurry!"

The boy nodded and grinned weakly with a thumbs up. "Let's do this then!" He takes her hand -

It feels like sparks shoot through his arm, but not sparks of pain.

- and Amber helped him to his feet. He gritted his teeth and shuffled to let her get to his other side. She looped an arm around him and helped him walk with his one good leg toward the City of Freedom.

She had been inaccurate by a few hours, and they arrived at the city gates as the sun dipped just above the horizon, sweat pouring from both of their foreheads. As they neared the gates, she gestured to the guards standing nearby. "I found this boy in Wolvendom; he's injured! Fetch the Sister!" she implores them just as the boy's eyes roll into his head and he slumps to the ground. The older of the two took one look at the blood-soaked bandages and promptly turned and dashed toward the Church of Favonius. The other guard scooped the injured boy up in his arms and carried him to the headquarters for the Knights of Favonius.

The Knights wasted no time finding quarters for the young man, laying him on the smooth cotton sheets of the infirmary, and a harried-looking Sister was ushered into his presence. "Oh, dear!" she said in shock upon viewing the boy's injured body. "I'll need some cloth and some privacy; he needs immediate healing!" She waved away the knights observing, all except a tall blonde one, Jean the Dandelion Knight. For some reason, the Sister did not shoo her or Amber from the room but instead asked her to come back later if she wanted to visit.

Outside of the infirmary, Amber sat, exhausted by the effort she and the boy had put in while traveling to the city.

"Outrider Amber?"

She turned her head to look at the man who spoke to her, and her face broke into a weary smile when she saw it was Grandmaster Varka.

"I didn't hear you walk up, sir," she said, "Can I help you?"

Instead of responding immediately, Varka sat down next to her and put his chin in his hand. "I just got word from the Adventurer's Guild; they've been looking for him for a few days now. It was very fortunate and brave of you to have found him and taken care of him until he got back." He smiled warmly. "I'm proud of you, Amber. And your granddad would be, too."

Amber's face turned a bright shade of red and she waved her hands in front of her as if resisting the compliment. "Oh, no, Grandmaster! It's what any knight would have done."

"Exactly," he responded, and she was taken aback for a moment. "You are a Knight of Favonius, and you acted exemplary in the field yesterday. Don't downplay your contribution," he added.

She looked away as memories flooded in, and Varka put an arm around her. "Cheer up, Outrider. He woke up from Barbara's healing, and he asked to see you."

She looked back to the Grandmaster and straightened. "Permission to visit the guest?" she asked.

He chuckled. "Of course. Your duties for the rest of the day can wait."

She stood up and clasped her hands in front of her. "Thank you thank you thank you, Grandmaster!" she said and pushed the door to the infirmary.

Varka laughed and said, "Oh, kids these days," and nodded to Jean, who had just left the infirmary. "Come, Dandelion Knight, we have work."

The boy stirred in his sickbed as she entered, and sat up with a grin that became a grimace and quickly returned to a grin. "Hey, hey! I thought you'd be all busy with Knight stuff!"

She sat on the stool near the side of the bed and asked, "No, the Grandmaster let me off. Are you okay, though? When you collapsed at the gates, I was so worried!"

He waved a hand dismissively and said, "That's barely the worst tumble I've taken, and I'm used to my bad luck by now."

"Oh?" she raised an eyebrow. "I'd say it was good luck that I found you when I did, or you could have been dead!"

He laughed with a wheeze and a groan. "Ow! Hurts to laugh." Once he got control of his breathing again, he said, "By the way, I never got your name."

"Oh me? I'm Outrider Amber, at your service!" she said, standing at attention and then bursting into a fit of giggles. "What about you? I can't just call you Strange Boy forever."

"I'm Bennett!" he said, extending his thumb upward.

As the two talked late into the night, Amber was pretty sure she had made a new friend for life.

The first time he saw her, she saved his life.