The Air Cushion popped like a balloon, and the wooden scale hadn't been stopped.

  It had been redirected.

  The thing with bullet's was this: A bullet was, essentially, a projectile with a disproportionate amount of speed for its size and/or mass. For example, even the highest ammunition calibers for rifles weren't any bigger than a human's thumb, and that was the cartridge, with the actual mass of lead being shot being even smaller than that. And yet, those small, light objects carried the power to kill even bears, because they moved so very fast.

  A bullet from a gun would actually deliver less kinetic energy than, say, a swing with a sledgehammer, and yet it was much more lethal, because that energy was being delivered in a much smaller surface area, and did so fast enough that its energy simply didn't have time to disperse throughout the body the way a blow with a sledgehammer would. A bullet wouldn't destroy the body from the outside, it would punch a thin hole through it faster than any non magical being could hope to be able to react.

  And this massive strength was also its weakness: Bullet's carried such an absurd forwards momentun for their meager mass than any force applied from a different angle could send it wildly off course if applied properly.

  So, while his spell had failed at quelling the bullet's advance, its destruction, with the following blast of pressurized air that had hit the projectile from every angle, had been more than enough to change its destination from 'Kurt Celik's chest' to 'A tree some fifteen feet behind Kurt Celik'.

  For a moment, neither Kurt nor Ruth reacted, still trying to puzzle out just what had happened and, once they both had done so, Ruth was the first to respond.

  Her response being screaming psychotically, and shaping the bark of her other arm into those bullet-scales.

  This time however, Kurt had time to react, and an answer to those bullet's. He conjured another Air Cushion, this one the size of his own body, and flattened it. He made sure to compress it particularly in the point where the mass of air and his wand met.

  He couldn't just will the air he had solidified to move around, like he could with regular air. Shape it? Sure. But actually moving it by will alone was not doable. Lucky for him, he also had an answer for this problem.

  He took control of the air in the center of the cushion, at the point where the compression was at its highest, with Dynamancy, and made it flow outwards in a clock-wise motion.

  The effect was immediate, and the mass of air exploded in a verdant whirlind as wide as a minivan.

  Wind Sorcery: Maelstrom Shield (Rank D spell)

  The user conjures a miniature whirlind of compressed air to deflect any incoming projectiles.

  Power increases with MND stat, Aetheric Attunement skill rank, Evocation skill rank and AP spent.

  *Note: The direction at which the wind moves, clock-wise or counter clock-wise, is decided at the time of casting, and can't be changed after the fact. Any attemps to do so will cause the spell to violently dissolve.

  The wyldfae threw her arm in a wide arc, her hips spinning with the motion, and yet another wooden scale was shot. This one, the fastest and deadliest one yet, was aimed at Kurt's head, poised to splatter his brains on the grass.

  The projectile met his shield, there was a brief flash of green- whether it was Primeval magic or his own wind, Kurt didn't know-, and the bullet veered off. Its trajectory changed at a sharp angle of about 45 degrees, and it soon got lost in the folliage behind.

  "WHAT THE FUCK?!" Exclaimed Ruth. "How the hell do you pull that shit?!"

  Kurt smiled wrily, looking at her through his air shield, and shrugged. "Magic." he said as if it was obvious. "Same as you."

  The woman let out yet another scream, and swung her arm down with all of her might. She actually put so much of her weight behind that she staggered forward a couple steps when she did so.

  This bullet was directed at Kurt's left shoulder, perhaps trying to compensate for the force that had pushed the last one to the right. Another hit to his shield, another flash of green, and the bullet was deflected, upwards this time. It got lost in the dark sky, way above the tree line.

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  "Gutter ball!" yelled Kurt, laughing.

  While he enjoyed mocking the woman in front of him, mostly because how many of his buttons she had been pressing tonight, it wasn't the reason why he did so. The main reason was being displayed in front of him right now.

  The wyldfae was swinging her arms almost chaotically, leaving less and less of a gap between bullet's, and putting less and less power and accuracy in each one. Some of her bullet's would have missed him even without the shield, and some even missed the shield itself!

  She was getting mad, and with her anger came sloppiness. She was no warrior, nor was she a soldier. She was a regular, traumatized woman- an aspect of her he really didn't need to think about now- who had been blessed with magic by pure chance. She was quite skilled with her magic, probably due to multiple years worth of practice, but she simply didn't have the ability to think rationally when pressed in battle.

  There was no magic or blessing that could give you that, only effort and experience. She would soon run out of those scales, at the rate she was shooting them, and once she had truly expedited the armor covering her arms, something he would react to far faster than her crazed self could, he would close in and attack.

  The woman swung her left arm sideways, with enough strength to raise a gust of wind, but no projectile came with it. Without noticing this, she swung her other arm upwards. Again, no bullet was shot from the limb.

  It took her another three swings before she realized that she had ran out of ammunition, and that her arms were now two spindly tangles of thorned vines. But, by the time she did so, Kurt had already dispelled his shield, and closed the distance between them a few yards.

  It was the green light and the howling wind that alerted her of this but, again. Her realization came to late to do anything about the situation.

  Two Wind Blades of modest size clashed against her arms, each one no longer than her own hands. Her regular self would have been able to shrug off attacks of this caliber, something that would have been even truer for her current, physically boosted state.

  But both of these asumptions hinged on her body being comprised of its natural mix of vines, leaves, and more rigid vegetal matter, like roots and bark. As it stood, the vines alone weren't so tough.

  Both her arms were looped off right above the elbow, drawing a scream of pain from the wyldfae. Golden sap sprayed from the stumps. Not wanting to lose his momentum, Kurt kept his magical assault.

  First, he shot a Jet Bullet right at the woman's head. The blast hit true and, even though it did no real damage its target, it managed to make her stumble back. Just as Kurt predicted, the woman fell on her back because, magic creature or not, a twelve-foot tall, humanoid frame without arms wasn't exactly a very stable target.

  As soon as she had hit the ground, Kurt threw a singular Fireball, one just big enough that the risk of it veering off was minimal. The projectile blasted from Kurt's wand, and travelled in a perfectly straight line at its target: Right between the wyldfae's legs.

  There was an explosion, a blast of heat and crimson light that came from within the wyldfae's skirt. Soon enough, thick colums of smoke began pouring from the skirt's hem, accompained by the crackling sound of fire. The image could have been almost comical. If it wasn't by the very human-sounding screams of pain his felled foe was bellowing, and the almost wormlike thrashing her mutilated form was barely managing to produce.

  He felt a pang of sympathy and regret, just like the one he had felt towards the wooden golem he had faced before her.

  This time though, he crushed it, and kept his mind squarely on the track of violence.

  His eyes darted to his AP bar. When he had entered this forest, it had been full, but the fights against the Hulking Dryad before and with one Ruth Watlin now had already depleted it to a little less than half of its capacity. He didn't yet know how much it would take it to fill again, but he knew it would be well after this fight was over. Or forever, depending on the winner.

  He looked at his right. A couple dozen yards away from the conflict was Mila, still crouching with her hands on the ground, green pulses expanding from them and through the soil like a sonar. Now that Ruth wasn't actively trying to snatch control over the spirits around them, she looked more relaxed, as if her current endeavor was more of a light exercise than the titanic effort that blocking Ruth's will had been.

  But even then, he could see that she was at the end of her rope, and that her stamina was on the verge of running out.

  It was time to finish this, one way or the other.

  "The amber!" He exclaimed, as loudly as he could to try and make her hear him over her own screams. He wasn't sure if she had, so he kept talking. "Give us the fucking amber or I swear to God, I'll make fucking coal out of you!"

  The cruelty on his own words managed to surprise even himself. They were words of demand, threats directed to someone that was rolling on the floor, defenseless and agonizing. The words of a villain.

  Another pang of remorse pierced through him.

  He crushed it again, and kept on with his mission. He'd carve that amber out of her if he had to.

  He took a step forward, his sole coming down on the grass-covered ground.

  And so did his foe. Ruth's feet both came down at the same time, strong enough to burrow themselves in the ground ankle-deep. Green energy began darting from the ground and towards her body and, before Kurt could stop it, a massive tangle of roots, bigger even than the wyldfae that had summoned it, exploded out of the ground.

  Both the mass and Ruth's body unraveled, before coming back together as one, in a very different form: Where the wyldfae had previously been humanoid, this new figure was more like a six-legged bovine, with six particularly big roots acting as horns. Two coming from either side of the head, two right above those, and the last two emerging from where the forelegs merged with the rest of the frame.

  The form itself was as long as Ruth had been tall, and much bulkier. Green light pulsated from within its body with a heart beat-like rhythm, effortlessly shinning through the tangles of roots and vines that made her form.

  The only part that remained unchanged was the wyldfae's face. That feaureless extension of polished wood sat comfortably in the middle of its new body's front end, the six horns surrounding it like a flower's petals.

  She had been holding back.

  Kurt suddenly realized that his rival's previous form hadn't been meant to end the fight, or at least that hadn't been her intention until Kurt started to really piss her of. She probably had been planning to just keep him entertained until Mila couldn't keep her spirit-locking technique, and then use an only slightly weakened form of her chlorokinesis to end them both.

  And when they both, Kurt with his power and Mila with her resiliance, had proven to her that that strategy wouldn't work, she had simply changed it, and decided to really put all of her magic towards reinforcing her body.

  A part of him thought about telling Mila to stop her efforts, to not waste her stamina and support him in a more direct fashion, but… he didn't know how much it would take the wyldfae to go back to her normal form. With how depleted Mila seemed already, Kurt just knew she wouldn't be able to block Ruth's magic again, not if she didn't have the initiative.

  His gaze turned back to the wyldfae, scanning her form. Even with all the new tissue she had added to her body, Kurt could still see the wounds and scorch marks he had left her: The vines and wood at her sides slightly thinner than in the rest of her body, her hind legs were slightly bent, as if they could support the same weight the four in front of them could, and blackened vines could be seen at random points of her frame.

  She hadn't healed, at least not completely.

  "You…" She groaned, her voice sounding more strained than hateful. "BASTARD!!! I'M…KILLING YOU!!!"

  Correction: Sounding as strained as hateful.

  "I'd like to see you try, cow." He retorted.

  She charged, and he stood firm, ready to meet her.