Faira blinked and staggered back slightly from shock as the woman addressed her by her name. She took a cautious step back, eyeing the woman suspiciously, the demon and others around her momentarily forgotten as Marianne continued, giving information Faira had already begun to guess at.

Before she could reply, Marianne guessed her thoughts, making her take another step away.

[i]Can… can she read my thoughts?[/i] she wondered, taking a cautious step back. [i]What does she mean, “yet?”[/i] She shook her head and brought a hand to her forehead. [i]Okay, this HAS to be a dream. Some crazy, messed up lucid dream.[/i] Even as she thought it, something inside her knew it was not so, something that only strengthened her desire to prove it wrong… or, perhaps, right?

She looked back to Marianne as she addressed the boy who had conjured the light, Dactrin. She blinked at the mention of fauns—creatures she had read many a story about, the image of Mr. Tumnus form [i]Narnia[/i] crossing her mind.

She shouted as shadows emerged all around, forming into the last thing she thought of as being a faun, their masks and forms with their binds making her jaw drop. She gasped as, as if one unit, the herd of fauns raised their crossbows.

As the sound of the first arrow being fired rang through the air, Faira shouted and her body melded once more into a shadow as a couple arrows passed through where she had just stood. She could hear her heart thundering in her ears even in the form of a dark blob, her vision shifting as the shadow twisted and turned to get a good look at the fauns, their arrows and bodies avoiding Marianne.

[i]Are they [u]afraid[/u] of her?[/i] She wondered. Noticing one of the fauns as it aimed its crossbow at Rosaline, Faira’s shadow sped across the floor as the demon Marianne had called Adrian shot flames out at one of the creatures.

Faira willed her shadow to form into a more solid shape as she wrapped herself around the faun, her dark form covering its mask as she silently begged for her plan to work.

Blinded, the creature’s arrow missed its target, hitting another of its ilk in the chest. Faira’s shadow uncurled to the floor. Her body reformed behind him, her side on the floor and propped up on one arm as she kicked the faun’s hooves out from under him. It fell forward as Faira jumped to her feet and, with a shout, quickly kicked it in the head as hard as she could, knocking it out.

Summoning her own fire, paying little attention to Adrian and Conna’Cel as they fought amongst themselves, Faira set the crossbow of the unconscious faun ablaze, the string burning through with a [i]thwang[/i] at the release of tension, before turning her attention to another faun and doing the same to its crossbow.

She shouted as an arrow whizzed by her ear, and her body turned back into a shadow without her conscious order.