He was just about to throw the spell when he felt Mila's soft hand on his wrist.

  He turned to look at her, already thinking his arguments for this heinous course of action, and already knowing none would convince her. He didn't get to actually speak any of them, though, because the sight before him robbed him of any ability for speech.

  The first thing he noted was that Mila wasn't looking at him, instead her exertion-contorted face was pointed suarely to the ground, sweat falling in dropplet's from her brow and nose. The second thing was the aura of green energy that was pooling around her. The power of nature coiled and thickened around her frame like a shroud.

  She let go off his arm and, with a banshee like scream, fell to her knees and slammed both her hands against the ground. A pulse of energy expanded from the points of contact between her hands and the grass, and on the wake of this pulse all unnatural influence over the plants was purged. The grass lost its hold around their ankles, the trees around the clearing stopped their thrashing, and the emerald lights ignited by the wyldfae were quenched, leaving Kurt's Fireball as the only source of light besides the moon itself.

  "No need for that." She finally said, her strained face somehow managing to form a smile. "She may be stronger than me, but I can at least keep her from doing what she wants with the spirits."

  Stunned, kurt dispelled his wand, and the fireball with it. Through the corner of his eye, he saw his AP bar rise up, recovering most of the energy from the aborted fire spell.

  "What the fuck?!" He heard the wyldfae exclaim as she swatted her hand, as if it were a remote low on battery. "The hell did you do?!"

  "Go kick her butt." said Mila, still smiling. "She ain't using any plants while I'm here."

  Kurt nodded at her, smiling, before darting towards their enemy. She was still flailing her arms around, trying to exert her power over the plants and spirits around her and failing. And so, she didn't notice him until it was too late.

  He brought his sword forward in a wickedly fast and precise lunge, stabing right into her shin, before yanking in out in a spray of golden sap. The plant creature screamed, a high-pitched sound, and fell to one knee, caresing her wound.

  Kurt conjured his wand once more and pointed it at her face, pushing it close to the wooden surface. Fire sorcery was out of the question, at least for the most part, but wind sorcery was still very much on the table. His foci glowed green, and a Jet Bullet formed on its tip, pressed against her face and the implement, building up pressure.

  He let go of it, and it immediattely collided against the wyldfae's face with a mighty blast strong enough to burrow his feet onto the ground, and to send the 12-feet tall woman flying back a distance about twice her own height.

  "I'll ask again, Ruth." He called, emphasizing her name. "Give us some of that amber, just some of it, and we'll leave you alone."

  Her response came, not in the form of words, but as an incoherent, crazed scream that could scarcely be called human. Her body twisted violently, the vines and roots that made her frame untangling explosively before tangling back, forming her humanoid frame once again, only standing instead of lying on her back.

  Kurt looked at the shin he had stabbed, and found it in perfect shape, with no wounds or leaking sap to be seen. Great, he thought sourly, of course she can regenerate.

  With another scream, the woman darted forward, crossing the distance between them in an instant, before bringing her heel-shaped foot down on Kurt's head, trying to crush him like a cockroach. The arc drawn by her leg was a wickedly fast one, and with enough power to dwarf even the Hulking Dryad.

  It was also clumsy and easy to read, so Kurt didn't have much trouble sidestepping it.

  The limb landed less than two feet away from Kurt, and her leg, which was as wide as his torso, was so close that he could have reached for it and grabbed one the roots that formed it, had he wanted to. Instead, he stuck his foci in one of the crevices between the vines and roots, and conjured a Wind Blade. The tight space in which it was conjured forced the spell into a compressed state, increasing the pressure within it.

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  He commanded for the blade to blast forward, and blasting forward it did, slashing right through the leg, splitting the limb in twain. Once again, the wyldfae fell, only this time she didn't have a knee to plant, and so she fell flat on her face.

  Kurt walked up to her fallen frame, and pressed his sword against the back of her neck. "Last fucking chance!" He exclaimed, pressing his sword down slightly for emphasis. "Give us the fucking amber! NOW!"

  Her body began twitchin again, and Kurt knew better than to stay close for what came next. He jumped away, his Od boosted legs pushing him about five yards. The wyldfae's frame exploded in a tangle of vines and roots a second time, and a second time did those vines and roots tangle themselves back to form the standing, uninjured form of Ruth Watlin.

  "You…" She snarled, her tone so caustic that Kurt felt she would start spitting poison if she kept talking.

  She didn't keep talking, though. Instead, she shaped her left arm into a sort of whip, and brought it down, not towards Kurt, but onto the grass below her feet, and the trees nearest to her, snapping their trunks like twigs. Green light rushed from the ruined plants and towards her body, and the sound of scattering leaves and groaning wood filled Kurt's ears.

  Her limbs began pulsating rythmically, bulging with every beat, and the wood and vines tha made her body began darkening rapidly. The wood became a tar-like black, while the vines turned a dark green, with thorns sprouting from them.

  Kurt would only later realize what she had done to achieve this state: A fae's magic powers were centered around communicating and controlling the spirits that were birthed by Nature's power, in particular the spirits that dwelled within plants. When a fae controlled, say, a tree, they weren't really exerting a physical force over it that made it move that way. Instead, they simply compelled the spirits that were housed within that plant to make it move.

  This particular use of her powers had been cut off by Mila who, despite being much weaker than Ruth in terms of her dominion over these spirits, could keep her from exerting her will over them simply because she was using her own magic to reinforce these spirit's own wills instead of trying to control them herself. Thus, her magic and that of the spirits were combined, resonating with one another by way of their matchig desires for the plants to remain unmoving, creating a sinergy that even the wyldfae couldn't do any thing about.

  But controlling plants was just an application of a fae's magic. One of many. And now, Kurt had a first row seat to see another.

  The power of nature was a very special type of magic, one whose composition was closer to that of the life force that kept living creatures, well, living than it was to aether. It was this similarity between types of magic energy that made Nature one of the most reliable sources of healing magic around, tied only with actual holy power.

  Ruth Watlin was now using this principle for a different purpose: She was absorbing the spirits, those masses of pure natural magic, into her body, and using them to supplement her own life force and, with it, her physical prowress.

  Kurt didn't see the level above her head rise, as if she hadn't gotten stronger. Maybe she hadn't really. Maybe this state was less a boost to her power and more of an exchange: Increasing her physical power at the cost of keeping the spirits contained within her body, which would reduce, or perhaps even block, her ability to manipulate the spirits and plants around her.

  Of course, with Mila already blocking that option anyway, that wasn't much of a loss

  The wyldfae rushed forward, her left foot rising in a football kick directed at Kurt's chest. It was as straight forward and clumsy as any of her previous, easy to evade strikes had been.

  Kurt didn't evade this one, its speed was far too great for that, and it was only by blocking it with his sword, which had the secondary effect of carving a thin gash in her foot, that he managed to turn the rib shattering blow into one that simply sent him spiraling through the air, two feet off the ground, until he managed to land feet first into a tree's trunk. A tree in the opposite extreme of the clearing.

  Kurt landed on his feet, and pointed his sword, now held in two hands, at the wyldfae that was now about fifteen yards away from him. He saw the sword trembling in his hands, not so much out of fear as it was a natural consequence of blocking a blow that powerful.

  The woman didn't bother pursuing him, instead looking with mild interest at the small wound Kurt had managed to deliver at her foot, which was already beginning to mend itself, thorned vines crawling over it in mere heart beats, and black wooden roots doing the same after.

  "This is the first time I actually have to use this state." Declared the wyldfae. Her tone was casual, almost bored, and this struck Kurt in a way that even her hate-filled snarling hadn't managed to. She was talking as if this wasn't a fight anymore. "I actually figured it out of curiosity, y'know? My body is made out of plants, and these spirits can make plants move and grow and all that stuff, so I figured out: Why not try it with myself?"

  She turned to look at him. The wound on her foot was now completely erased.

  "I don't like using it. It makes me feel like my body's filled with worms trying to burst out of my skin." She lowered her stance. Arms folded to her sides, ready for tackling. "But you two made me use it anyway. Forced me to, in fact. So, I guess that's one more thing you have to pay for."

  And then she moved, blasting forward with such speed and weight that the ground she had stood on exploded upwards a few feet. It was only the greater distance between them, combined with the fact that tackles were slower than even the clumsiest of kicks, that allowed Kurt to react in time. He rolled to his left, and only a second later he heard the wyldfae's form crashing against the tree he had landed on like a freight train, reducing it to a rain of splinters.

  Rather absurdly, Kurt could only think about how little this woman seemed to respect nature for someone that was only alive because of it.

  "Well, would you look at that." she said, standing over the stump of the tree, splinters faling on her shoulders. "You sure can run away, I'll give you that." She then pressed a finger against the spot where her lower lip would have been, had she had a face, and began humming mockingly. "But you could not evade my kick, you had to block it. What's up with that? Harder to keep up with smaller attacks, ain't it?"

  Before Kurt could even think of answering her, the wyldfae made her next move. She extended both arms to either side, in a cross-like manner, and the thorned vines covering them and her torso began thrashing around like snakes. Then, for a moment, they stopped, and a green glow began building up within them.

  When they moved anew, they did it with speed, precision and towards a singular target: Kurt himself.