Luxa replies to Cynwyd’s query lightly, “I believe my secret lies more in the company I am keeping, good sir,” giving credit where it is due, for without Cynwyd blocking some of the attacks, it is unlikely that Luxa would have remained unscathed. Still, there is something undoubtedly regal about her that surely would trump any missing buttons, disarrayed hair, or muck and gore that might sully her being.
Luxa grins and says, “Ripred used to warn me that a path without obstacles probably doesn’t lead anywhere. Besides, I tire of being chased about like a mousling caught in the kitchen by the cook. Let us confront them and mark them as allies or enemies.”
Luxa follows behind him, at least he thinks she does for she is so silent that if he did not cognitively know she was there he would have no clue of her presence.
The tunnel narrows and Cynwyd needs to turn sideways now and then to make it through. The ceiling drops as well and he must stoop, putting him in an awkward position. The lighting is almost nonexistent now except for the occasional glow from pale swear toads whose gullets glow with a pale rosy light.
Perhaps sixty feet along the tunnel opens up into a kidney shape. The lighting is better and he notes that it is coming from an array of lights set into the wall encircling a vault whose door is at least eight feet high and at least four feet wide. It looks more like something he would expect to see on a spaceship or a submarine than something he would anticipate seeing in Amber.
Sitting on the floor a few feet in front of the door is a bedraggled child of perhaps four years of age. She is skinny and her clothes while not rags are ill fitted and have seen better days. She is scratching a tic-tac-toe grid into the floor with a shard of stone. She looks up at Cynwyd and gazes at him through a veil of tangled red hair, biting her lip nervously before blurting out, “Did my Daddy send you to get me?”
A surprised Luxa is looking at the area where the child sits and sheathes her blade as she whispers, “An orphaned Flyer . I wonder where her colony is?”
Well, at least they both are getting the impression that it is young and female in nature.