Angela was cold, wet, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten. Food seemed so unimportant compared to what was happening, but her stomach ached with hunger. Fer, the shapeshifter, didn’t appear hungry or cold. It seemed to pulse with countless forms, its visage never quite the same each time Angela looked at it. She couldn’t tell its sex, and didn’t ask. They hadn’t swapped a word since Vince left with the dwarf and the mermaid, but Fer had stayed close, circling the clearing where Sammi pored over the relics. It returned from time to time, looked at Sammi, looked at Angela, and then left again. She liked to think it was keeping watch for any dangers approaching, but it could just as easily have been keeping watch on them.

She hated Vince being away from her again, exploring somewhere deep beneath the Fold with a mining dwarf and an enigmatic mermaid, neither of whom she knew enough about to trust.

She hated every single thing about this situation, and over the course of the last half hour she had thought of ways to take action. Sitting, standing, waiting was not in her blood. She’d been doing that for too long since Vince had disappeared into the Fold, a stagnant existence with Sammi at the cabin in the woods, broken only by occasional visits from Lilou.

Poor, dead Lilou. Now she was gone, Angela realised how much she had grown to like the nymph, despite the doubts and suspicions she still had deep down about her relationship with Vince. She had been one of the most relatable Kin Angela had met, and the one with the most refreshing, open outlook, passionate about her causes and reasoning. That passion had resulted in her death.

Angela could no longer stand around and let events pass her by. Every heartbeat dragged them towards further tragedy, and there was no telling who might be the next one to die.

“Sammi,” Angela said, “we need to act, and now.”

Fer drifted in from the left, passing through the misty rain and catching starlight from unknown constellations.

“I need more time,” Sammi said. “It’s confusing.”

“How much more time?” Angela asked, and she sounded angry. She hadn’t meant that, but the pressure bit at her, the sense of uselessness just standing here in the rain.

“Angela,” Sammi said, turning around. “I don’t know. I feel lost. It’s all coming so quickly, all the knowledge, all this magic, and I’m getting smothered, and I don’t know...”