Imogen’s narrowed gaze snagged a pile of sticks and wares in the back of the cavern, and she quickly utilized one of her many talents – her mouth opened, sparks ignited the dried wood, and fire melded and molded into the corridor. She watched the brilliant blaze, commended herself on her efforts, then waited, witnessed, the exchange of Menders, healers, soothers, and sages with the other beast; carefully, meticulously, surveying, ensuring her bonded was safe. Lena, along the other intervals, wielded her invocations until one more joined in; she opened her eyes to stare serenely upon the younger Enna, upon a newly forged, fledgling piece of their puzzle, and smiled. The nymph, the naiad, ignored the howling wind and the accursed cold, the chilling portal and the bestial fringes, the treacherous rimes and the ghostly shackles of the void, choosing to christen and anoint one of the fallen instead. Her eyes shifted across the predator, and while Imogen supplied her with a monumental grate, rasp, and warning, the sylph felt no danger, no alarm, no peril, from the stray, wayward tiger. Her questions, however, were numerous: why was she here? How had she acquired such wounds? What was she doing so far in this wake, amongst these towering mountains, brutal, beautiful, and rapacious? As they presided, deeper and deeper into the shadowy fixtures of the cave, and the unrelenting sparks of Imogen’s own powers, she asked none of them, but was supplied with one from the beast. The inquisition was fair: any other moment in between could be see as a carnivore easily snatching them as prey, but something, something ensured Lena, nor the other fair individuals in their midst, would flee from the tiger. How, why, she couldn’t explain, and left it sifting and meandering, listless, through her sentiments and notions, another enigma, phenomenon, lifted and cast into their magical, nefarious, warren world. Her stare shifted from the dancing sonnets of embers trembling across the walls, and back towards the hunter, still grinning, still enchanting, still alluring amidst the chaotic frames, shambles, and tapestries. “Because you needed it.” One more selfless plunge into a realm, an empire, a sovereign, of nefarious acts and sinister calculations – perhaps this moment, juncture, hour, would be remembered because it wasn’t made in Machiavellian interludes or manipulative tendencies; crowned in pure, winsome virtue.