XIII

                                    

                                          
Fauna kicked a stone across the floor and watched it skid away. "Where was Mat?" She asked. 
                          
"He was busy," Nico answered and pulled an envelope out of his bag. "He gave me this which is all your letters from three years ago, he said that we should return to all your previous locations."
                          
She took them and shuffled through them before smiling. At least her hand writing stayed the same all this time. "Well what are we waiting for then?" 
                          
Nico gave a one sided smile. "For you actually, it seems that your handwriting is so curly that I can't actually read it." 
                          
Fauna chuckled with a small stage of the head. "The oldest one said that I was in some small town called... Devondale?" 
                          
Nico laughed. "See you can't read it either!" 
                          
"Yes I can!" She answered defensively as Nico pulled a map out of his backpack.
                          
"That's all the way on the other side of the country," he said and pointed to the map before grabbing a red marker and circling the town.  
                          
Fauna gnawed on her lip as she sifted through the letters. "It seems I've gone back and forth all over the place." 
                          
"So that begs the question of whether we retrace your steps exactly or just visit every town you visited. Either way we'll visit every place you've been too," Nico said as she handed him the letters and he circled every place Fauna had visited, and that was a lot of places. 
                          
Nico sat down on a tree stump and she sat down next to him. 
                          
"It would take to long time to properly retrace my steps, we should just visit all of them. First the ones closest to us then work our way out," she said with a careful smiled. "Yeah."
                          
Nico nodded. "We have safe houses all over the country so we should be okay most the time."
                          
She raised an eyebrow. "Safe houses?" 
                          
"Yeah. It was a safe place where we camped out for a while before moving on once we see a rift or any supernatural creature nearby," he explained absentmindedly. 
                          
"Rifts, as in the place where the Variant contacts here?" 
                          
"Yeah, basically." 
                          
She nodded just as a howl went up in the air before the forest went silent. They glanced at each other before dashing off. They'd sent Orion and Sage ahead and a howl was a sign of danger.
                          
"Orion?" Fauna snapped into the telepathy link and she imagined it like a bridge with her on one side and him on the other but she couldn't feel Orion on the other side. "Orion?" 
                          
He wasn't answering. 
                          
She looked over at Nico and he was paling as they paused. They didn't know where to run. 
                          
"Nico?" Fauna asked in a small voice. "What do we do?" 
                          
She had become so used to Orion being there that now she felt... empty without him there. 
                          
"Ni-" 
                          
"Sshhh." 
                          
Nico looked at her before drawing his sword. 
                          
"Nico?" She whispered quietly as she drew her sword too. "What are we-" 
                          
He placed a finger to his lips, cutting her off. 
                          
Her heart galloped in her chest as she swallowed hard. She wasn't ready for this. She felt the doubt clouding her mind and her body beginning to shake. She felt so small, so fragile and so helpless.