And the Other Half's Luck

When I First Saw You (Prologue)

Wolvendom, 2 years before Aether's arrival in Teyvat. 

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.