The nurse stopped right besides the operating room's door, gesturing at the illusion to go in. The 'doctor', being a mass of glamour, couldn't really push the door open. So Kurt, still shrouded by his own mass of illusory magic, had to do it himself, timing it very carefully with the illusion's movements so it would look natural. He managed it, and so he, Mila and the illusion slid into the room, the door closing behind them.

  Inside the sterile, white room were six people, two surgeons, three nurses, and Conrad in the middle. He was lying facedown in the operating table, naked from the waist up, revealing the absolute lack of skin on his back. The team had apparently been working on removing the charred parts of the whole mess, surely to avoid possible infections, because the exposed muscle of Conrad's back looked even reder and bloodier than when Kurt had left him in the hospital, with more spots of white peeking through.

  The five medicine men turned, not towards Kurt nor Mila, but to the illusion. "Yes? What's the matter?" Asked one of the surgeons, politely but firmly. The glamour-crafted man said nothing. Instead, its figure burst in a great puff of featureless white smoke, which quickly divided itself into five separate masses, each one bolting towards and quickly covering the head of one of the five staff members, covering hem like an astronaut's helmet.

  Each of the five faces went slack, light abandoning their half-lidded eyes, and the men slumped forward like automatons whose batteries had been removed.

  "Woah." Whispered Mila. "Neat trick."

  "Thanks." He replied. "I took a page from my sister's book: Wrap their heads with glamour charged with nothing."

  "Nothing? Like blank?"

  "Not quite." He replied, shaking his head. "More like 'Total sensory deprivation'. The kind that the human brain isn't designed to process. These guys were no exception, and so they just sorta... blacked out."

  "Are they gonna be okay?" Asked Mila, looking at the zombie-like figure that had been operating Conrad not more than five minutes ago. "Cause this looks kinda scary."

  "They will." He reasured her. "Once the glamour dissipates they'll go back to normal. They'll be a bit dizzy at worst. Like I said, this is a spell my sister uses rather frequently." He turned his gaze at the table at the center of the room, and to the young man lying on it. "Let's just be quick. Care to hand me the amber, please?"

  She did so, placnig the golf ball sized sphere on his hand. The first thing he noticed was how heavy and solid it was, as if it were made of tungsten instead of crystalized sap. But it didn't feel like metal either, because there was a softness and warmth on its surface that were more in line with living flesh than anything else.

  He turned to look at the screen above it.

  Wyldfae's Amber

  Quality: Legendary

  A marble of super condensed, crystalized sap brewed within a wyldfae's body over the course of decades. This relic is very heavily suffused with pure Primeval magic, to the point were the natural flows of energy of the planet naturally pools around it.

  Upon direct comsumption, this substance can briefly connect the user's inner energies with those of the planet itself, greatly restoring their stamina and massively boosting their healing for a brief moment.

  "It's gonna be difficult to have him suckle on it." said Mila, looking at Conrad. "Maybe we should try to get it directly to his bloodstream."

  "Good idea." he said. "But how? Do we just... press it against his back?"

  They both took a brief glanced at the bloody expanse of exposed muscle, and shuddered.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Maybe let's leave that as a last resort." Mila said. Her eyes darted to a spot right besides the operating table, where a bag of serum was hanging, connected to Conrad's arm by a thin plastic tube. "Hey! What about the serum?"

  "Once again, good idea." Kurt said, already walking up to the bag in question. He then pinched a spot near the top of it, above the liquid, and tore a small gash on it. Then, he proceded to carefully introduce the amber on the bag, slowly lowering onto the liquid until the bottom of the sphere dipped on it.

  The effect was immediate. Like the ink of a squid, a cloud of bright, opaque yellow exploded from the point of contact, rapidly dying the entirety of the bag's contents. Kurt rapidly retrieved the amber, pushing it into his inventory, and observed the now golden liquid descend from the bag and down the tube that led to Conrad's arm.

  The effects of it were made apparent as soon as the tube's contents had also been completely dyed. Thin plumes of steam began raising from Conrad's back, and Kurt saw how the exposed muscle fibers on it were beggining to twhich with life, and how the spots of exposed bone were being shrunk, swallowed by red muscle. On the edges of Conrad's wound, his tan skin began doing the same, regrowing and covering the still healing muscle with miraculous speed.

  Just a couple minutes later, the practical totality of Conrad's back had been returned to a pristine state. Save for a single spot. A tiny patch of skin, placed right between Conrad's shoulder blades, was still emanating steam so thick that Kurt couldn't make what was beneath it. Healed skin? Raw muscle? He didn't know.

  "What the hell is happening?" Kurt muttered, more to himself than anything.

  "I don't know." Came Mila's voice, and Kurt was surprised of how close it was. He turned his head, and found Mila standing right besides him, looking at Conrad's unconscious form with worry clear on her face. "Maybe we didn't put enough amber? Perhaps that spot was the one that got the worst of it, and this much isn't enough to heal it."

  It was a good theory. About as good as they had, at least. And yet, Kurt found himself disagreeing with it immediately. Something told him that it wasn't the depth of the damage what was stalling the amber's work, and with this, he found himself agreeing. But then, what was keeping that spot from healing?

  As soon as he tried to voice his opinion though, that same spot stopped its steaming, and only a couple seconds later, that last patch of flesh was revealed to them.

  Only it wasn't flesh anymore. Instead of smooth skin, the space between Conrad's shoulder blades was now occupied by a single patch of white bark roughly the size of a thumb, surrounded by green veins.

  Kurt and Mila observed this spot, then turned to look at each other, and then turned to look at it again.

  "...Shit." Finally said Mila, sounding so very tired. "Are you serious?"

  Kurt wasn't tired, however. No, right now, he too scared for that.

  "The amber..." He whispered, and Mila turned to look at him. "The amber did this. There's no other explanation." He then turned to Mila. "And we used it too."

  Silence overtook the room as horror did the same with Mila's eyes. Before she could say a thing, Kurt stepped up to her and took hold of her face with both hands, pushing their faces together. "Don't move!" He exclaimed when he fell, Mila bringing her hands to his wrists. "Before the amber healed you, you were bleeding from your eyes. If it transforms the parts it heals, then your eyes should look different. Just... please let me check." He looked her in the eye. She returned the look and promptly let go of him.

  "Thank you," he said, and began checking the girl's eyes for any hint of green. It barely took him a few seconds to reach a verdict. He had, after all, spent many hours looking at them, and even more thinking about them. About how big and doe-like they were, about how beautifully blue... He knew them by heart at this point, and if absolutely anything about them suffered any sort of change, he would be able to tell.

  "You're fine," Kurt said, relieved, as he let go of the smaller girl's face. Mila's hand caught his left arm an instant later, pulling it towards her as her other hand pulled what was remaining of his sleeve back to his shoulder. "Uh? Hey, wait a"

  "Now you stay put," she said firmly as she inspected his arm, not even turning to look at him. "You said it yourself, we both used the amber."

  "I know, but checking me is gonna take a lot longer because my wounds were more extensive. We don't have the time to..." This time, she did turn to look at him, their eyes meeting, and his objections died right on his throat, obliterated by the fire in her eyes. "...Okay, sorry."

  Mila nodded, her expression softening a little, and she went back to inspect his arm. Once she was done, she grabbed his other arm, pulled his other sleeve back, and did the same.

  "Your arms are fine," she said, letting go of his wrist. Her tone was still quite tense, though. "Take your shirt off."

  Kurt's eyebrows shot upwards. "Excuse me?" He asked.

  "Take. Your shirt. Off." She repeated, placing her hands on her hips. "I gotta check your back, and I can't do it through the holes in your shirt, so I need you to take it off."

  Kurt blinked in confusion at this and turned his head to look at his back. What greeted him was an expanse of mostly torn, blood-dyed fabric. "Ugh," he said, wincing a bit. "I... hadn't noticed that."

  "Well, I did," she said in response. "It was kinda hard to miss. Plus, you carried me here piggyback style. Now, can you please take the darn thing off so I can check you? Please?"

  With his mind still lingering on just what kind of damage his back must have taken, Kurt nodded abstentmindedly, and did as he was told. He removed his shirt, tossing it to the floor, and turned his back on Mila, leaning forward with his hands on his knees to make up for the height difference.

  A bit of heat rose to his cheeks when he realized that he was shirtless in front of the only girl he had ever liked in his life, but he managed to supress it. This was just her cheeking that he was fine, like he had done for her, so there was no reason to be ashamed.

  He managed to keep this stance until he felt both of Mila's very soft hands pressing against his shoulders, and making the way down his back. After that, he wasn't really thinking all that much.

  "Uhm, Mila...?"

  "Just checking, I promise!" she said, her voice agitated and a bit high pitched. "I did the same with your arms, remember? You are rather dark-skinned, so if a path of your skin has been turned into wood, and that wood isn't the same, white type as Conrad's... Well, I just wanna make sure."

  "Uh, yeah. Good thinking." he said, recognizing the truth in her words even through the haze of his embarrasment. So he simply remained still, and let her do her checking.

  They were so concentrated, Mila on her inspection and Kurt on trying to ignore said inspection, that neither of them noticed when the figure on the operating table began stirring awake. Or when that same figure propped itself up in a seating position, overlooking them.

  "Uh. Am I interrupting something?" Came Conrad's voice. Kurt and Mila both yelped, and turned hurriedly to the table, where a very tired-looking, but still smiling, Conrad Walker was seated. "I can go back to the coma, if you need more time."