Why? Why were those memories coming to him now, of all times? Was his failure at protecting Conrad, at protecting Mila, really so great that his brain felt like it had to twist the knife with those memories? Weren't the pain and the knowledge of his failure enough punishment?

  Maybe not. Or maybe his brain was just trying to make him see something, now that the pain and blood loss had blurred his vision so much which, when combined with the dark of the night, made it so that the only things Kurt could see were blurry silouetes: Two rough silouetes at either side of his head, the roots that were constraining him. The contrast between two backgrounds, one dark and the other shinning and silvery, the full moon glowing above the tree line.

  A great, dark silouete clutching a much smaller, much brighter one, the wyldfae about to kill Milla. He could see enough to distinguish how the tree-woman's mangled arm, raised above head, dropped on Mila, its pointy end poised for her head. And then...

  ...Light...

  Light? What?

  But it was true, between both figures, both the wyldfae's and Mila's, appeared a golden light, so bright and warm that it reminded Kurt of the Sun, and so gentle he felt it tickle his face and cast away part of the fog on his eyes.

  "There you are, honey!" He heard the wyldfae say once the light had died down, her tone affectionate, almost maternal. "That was a big scare, wasn't it? That boy almost messed everything up for good, but you're lucky Auntie Ruth had her medicine on hand!"

  The fae began laughing heartly at her own joke, and Kurt's blood deprived mind, his thoughts moving like molasses, could only curse at her for it. She was laughing. She had killed Mila, and the bitch was laughing. Was stabbing someone in the face her idea of 'medicine'? Then Kurt would shove an entire's hospital supply worth of it down her fucking throat! The knowledge of his actual powerlessnes and pain both flew off his skull, leaving determination and sheer hatred behind. Even if had to gnaw her to death, or drawn her with his own blood, he would-

  Coughing, feminine but not coming from the wyldfae. What? He saw the great, dark figure move away from the small, bright one as it propped it up, and the small figure... stood up.

  "What? What happened?" Asked Mila. Mila. His vision blurred even further, and he felt hot tears run down his face.

  "We almost lost you is what happened!" Exclaimed Ruth. "That numbnuts burnt most of my body to ashes right when I had it filled to the brim with spirits. When they escaped, they...reentered the vegetation around us quite violently, just when you were connected to it, and the backlash... well, look at you poor dress."

  "Where's Kurt?" Asked Mila, ignoring the wyldfae's words.

  "Ugh." Groaned the woman. "Kurt this, Kurt that. Is everything about that fuckwad with you? I'm the one that saved your life with my amber, and he's the idiot that almost got you killed. Honey, I don't mean to be rude, but if you're staying with me, you need to be a bit more grateful for the stuff I do for you, or at least quit yapping about..."

  "KURT!!!"

  "Exactly!" Exclaimed the wyldfae. "See? That's the... where are you going?!"

  Mila's figure began moving, and growing larger and larger. Wait, what? No, not larger, closer. She was coming towards him.

  "Kurt!" She exclaimed again when she reached him. From this close up, and despite his blurring vision, he managed to catch every detail of her form. Her face, though still bloodstained, remained focused on him, and no blood was leaking from her eyes nor her nostrils. He took an idle look at her shoulder, and found the exposed skin there just as pale as the moonlight, without a hint of the rosiness the warlock's lightning had left behind. "Kurt, please! Say something!"

  Say something? In this state, would he have the strength fo even that much? He just knew that at least one of his lungs had been ruptured, maybe even both. Was it even possible for him to speak like that? The answer was yes, or atleast it would have to be. Mila was beging him to, after all.

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  Kurt groaned, and triend to squirm back in his prison at least a bit, to give his chest enough space to take a lungfull of air. He barely managed this, took a raged breath, and spoke, saying the only think he could think of in his current predicament. "Thank God you're okay. If you had died I... don't know what I would have done."

  Mila stopped... what was she doing? She was grabbing one of the roots holding him with two glowing hands, and throwing her body back with all of her... oh, she was trying to pry it off, to free him. Either way, she stopped, and stared at him. She was tearing up now, and the tears were washing off the scant blood that remained in those beautiful eyes of her.

  "Stop saying dumb shit!" She yelled, slamming one fist against the root she was holding onto. "Things aren't fine at all! We... we have to get you to the hospital or..."

  "Or he'll die, right?" Completed the wyldfae, who was standing right behind Mila, her body projecting a shadow that covered them both. "I don't think he's making it to the town though. I mean," She began chuckling. "just look at his hands!"

  The girl did so, and sucked in a whimpering breath, one so deep Kurt thought she would begin to cry as soon as she let it out. But she was made of sterner stuff than that. Not that she wasn't a crying person, no, she was about as emotional as far as sane people went, but she also possesed a mental resiliance that baffled even Kurt sometimes. The fact that she was the kind of person she was despite having the kind of story she had was more than enough prove of it, specially now that he had a 'less succeesful case' of a fae to compare her with.

  The point was this: Right then and there, with Kurt in the state he was, the mission and, most importantly, the lives of both Kurt and Conrad, especially Kurt, were hinging on her ability to not give in to fright or despair, and to keep a cool head no matter what. And as much as she didn't seem the type, if there was something Mila was good at, it was not giving up.

  Just as she was courageous though, she was also smart, mostly in the emotional sense of the word, but she had more than enough of the other types of intelligence to know that, first, they were not getting out of that forest without giving the wyldfae something she wanted, and second, to remember exactly what was that she wanted from them.

  And finally, and for this she did look the part, she was noble enough to make that sacrifice.

  "Okay, you win." she said, her voice sounding defeated, strained, as if she was holding back tears. "If you heal Kurt, and give him some of your amber, then I'll..."

  "Kill me."

  Mila's voice died down, to quickly to be said that it trailed off, and even Ruth herself seemed shocked at what she had heard Kurt say.

  "What did you say?" She asked, wary of him.

  "You heard me." said Kurt calmly, way too calmly for what he was talking about. He looked at the wyldfae's face. Every motion necessary to make that happen was pure agony, but he managed, pain not seeming able to reach him. "Look, if you make her stay here against her will, you will make her miserable, and a miserable person doesn't make for good company, not even her."

  "What the hell are you talking about?!" She exclaimed, and this time she was crying. Ugly crying, with tears rolling of her increasily puffy eyes and clear snoot running down her red nose. Uh, that brought some memories back, he thought to himself, and the thought almost managed to make him laugh. She still cried the same as when she was seven. "That's not on the table, so shut-UHMPF?!"

  One of the roots that had been holding Kurt, the one Mila had been trying to remove, moved, letting go of him and looping around the girl instead, covering her mouth and holding her in place. Mila began thrashin, and trying to use her magic, but it was no use, the root remained unmoving.

  "Continue." Ordered the wyldfae, her tone hard to read.

  Kurt nodded weakly, and complied. "Right now you want two things: To kill me and to keep Mila around. I just told you why the second is not going to work for anyone, but the fact you were willing to let me go in exchange of it tells me you are willing to make some compromises to get at least part of want you want. So, let's make a deal. The opposite of what Mila was proposing."

  The girl in question began thrashing even more violently, and screaming through her bonds.

  "If she takes my deal, you could get out this forest, completely healed, and take the amber with you." said the wyldfae.

  "That's true." He agreed. "At the cost of Mila being miserable the rest of her life. That's not a deal I'm going to take, even if she's fine with it. Plus, only Conrad and her are necessary for the quest we're on. I'm a bit of an extra measure, meant to protect them and such." He laughed sourly at his last comment, and the motion made him spit some blood on the ground. "You can see how well that turned out."

  The woman remained silent for a moment, so the only sounds filling the clearing were Mila's muffled cries.

  "Fine." Answered the woman. "I could kill you either way, but you offering it... that makes it more fun, so you got a deal." She then raised her mangled arm above head, and twisted her torso slightly to one side, like a pitcher preparing to make a throw. "Bye bye, unless you want to change your mind."

  Kurt smiled, and lowered his head so that the back of it was pointing to the sky. "Bye bye." he said.

  The wyldfae moved, snapping her hips forward, with the rest of her body following, her arm drawing a deadly arc towards his head. Distantly, he heard Mila scream even louder through her gag, and felt the air the wyldfae's move had displaced hitting his face. He somehow felt the spear-like limb of the woman growing closer and closer to his neck.

  And then he felt it... stop.

  A wall of wind hit the back of his head, heavy enough to make him lean even lower, but that was it. No piercing pain. No feeling of flesh being torn apart and bone being sundered. Not even a relief from his preexisting pain, as he would have expected death would bring.

  "Goddamnit" Muttered Ruth. "Congratulations, boy, you just found a new way of pissing me off."

  As soon as she had said that, Kurt felt the root holding him in place let go of him, and he fell to the soft ground with a thump. He then heard that same root recede back into the earth. No, wait, that wasn't right. He heard two roots recede back in the earth.

  "Tsk, really had to leave me with nothing, uh?" There was a sound of wood groaning, and Kurt saw something, a sphere roughly the size of a golf ball, landing besides his head. It emanated a golden glow, and it had the color of honey.

  With great effort, Kurt managed to turn his head towards the wyldfae, who was looking down on him. "Hope you choke on it." she said, sourly. And the the she turned her back on him and, fast as quicksilver, made her way out of the clearing, and into the forest beyond.

  And then his vision blurred and darkened even more, and he fell unconscious. Distantly, he heard someone screaming his name. He could no longer recognize the voice, feminine and rather high-pitched, but it still struck him as the most beautiful thing he had ever heard.